Countries responsible for 40% of world’s carbon emissions to formally approve historic pact and pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5C, reports Climate HomeChina and the United States, the world’s two leading carbon polluters, said on Thursday they planned to formally join the Paris climate agreement in 2016.In a joint statement, the major powers agreed to sign the historic deal to cut carbon emissions at a UN ceremony in April, and take “respective domestic steps” to approve it as “early as possible this year.” Continue reading...

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton loses her patience with a Greenpeace activist who asked her whether she will reject money from the petroleum industry. Coming face-to-face with the activist after a rally in New York, Clinton says she only takes money from people working for companies involved in fossil-fuel and accused Bernie Sanders’ campaign for spreading lies

Scuffles break out and shots fired in Cotabato province when police move in to break up four-day demonstrationPolice have clashed with farmers blocking a highway in the southern Philippines to demand drought relief from the government, leaving at least two demonstrators dead and dozens of people injured.Scuffles broke out and shots were fired when security forces moved in to disperse about 6,000 farmers and their supporters, who were protesting for the fourth day in a row in Kidapawan, the capital of Cotabato province, police sources and the Cotabato governor, Emmylou Mendoza, said. Continue reading...

Sprinting hares, lesser deer mouse and Sumartan slow loris are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

The iconic US soup maker will stop using Bisphenol-A by 2017, after the chemical was found in all 15 of its cans tested in a US surveyThe iconic US soup manufacturer, Campbell’s, has said that it will stop using Bisphenol-A (BPA) in cans by mid-2017, after the hormone-mimicking chemical was found in all 15 of its cans tested in a US survey.

Immigration chief Ronny Sompie says Oscar-winner’s visa could be revoked after comments made on environmental campaign visit – but DiCaprio appears to have left the country alreadyThe Indonesian government has threatened to deport Leonardo DiCaprio after the Oscar-winning actor and film-maker made critical statements about the country’s palm oil industry during a visit.DiCaprio, an environmental campaigner, landed in Indonesia on 26 March from Japan. On Tuesday he posted a photograph to his Instagram highlighting the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s plans with local partners to establish a “mega-fauna sanctuary” in the Leuser rainforest ecosystem, a lowland Sumatran national park where palm oil plantations, mining, logging and other developments are endangering local populations of Sumatran elephants, orangutans, rhinos and tigers. Continue reading...

Ever-changing weather in much of the world as seasons change from spring to summer or autumn to winter – what does it mean for the wildlife near you?

Prototypes go on show in California in front of 800 fans as chief executive Elon Musk reveals 115,000 preorders ahead of 2017 launchTesla Motors has finally unveiled its long-anticipated lower cost electric car, the Model 3, at its design studio in Los Angeles.

Rescued olive ridley sea turtle is too buoyant to be able to dive for food but experts hope to change that with decompression treatmentVets have put a rescued sea turtle into a hyperbaric chamber, usually used to treat human divers suffering the bends, in a bid to remove gas bubbles in its body that stop it diving.Experts from Seattle will test the buoyancy of Tucker the 20-year-old endangered olive ridley sea turtle on Friday in the hope that they can one day release him back into the ocean. Continue reading...

Vale of Strathmore, Perthshire Dams are constantly being repaired and rebuilt to create canals where the beavers can move safely undetectedThe dipper bobbing along the top of the dam looks oddly smart in this drunken landscape, his clean white bib reflected in the water below. All around is chaos. The beavers have felled most of the bankside birch, sycamore and other trees they like to eat and use for their dams.Less tasty species, like larch, left marooned in the flood, have simply toppled over, exposing great root bulbs, which, now, are slowly rotting. Fresh shoots sprout from a recently gnawed willow; the cartoonish stump is pointed, as if it has been put through a giant pencil sharpener. Continue reading...

My first butterfly of this year, a canary-yellow male brimstone, materialised in exactly the same spot as last year, zig-zagging along an ivy hedge in my garden. This year, however, its meticulous search for a female was 15 days later, testimony to the cold, late spring.In Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books, a golden butterfly is a lucky omen for the summer ahead, but my optimism last year was misplaced. After a mediocre 2015 (except for the brimstone, which enjoyed its best season in 40 years of scientific monitoring), 2016 is not promising much. Continue reading...

Species expected to suit changing conditions have outperformed other birds in the past 30 years, joint European-US study showsBirds that were expected to do well due to climate change have outperformed other species in the past 30 years, a study of wildlife in Europe and the US has found. Scientists said they have shown that common bird populations thousands of miles apart are responding to changing weather in a similar, pronounced way.The international team, led by Durham University, found that birds they thought would be suited to the changing conditions “substantially” outperformed those expected to suffer between 1980 and 2010. Continue reading...

Former employee of The Energy and Resources Institute alleges she was ‘scared of Pachauri’s motives’A third woman has claimed she was sexually harassed by the former head of the UN climate change panel, Rajendra Pachauri, who is charged with sexually harassing, stalking and intimidating a female employee.The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said on Thursday she had decided to make a public statement after reading an article in the Observer in which Pachauri denied the allegations against him claiming his email account had been hacked and the claims were a conspiracy to defame him. Continue reading...

A startup incubator in an Osaka shopping mall lets customers test experimental prototypes such as drones and holograms. Its aim is to stop the city’s brain drainAt first glance, Grand Front Osaka in the heart of Japan’s second city looks like any high-end international mall. Fashionistas parade their latest purchases from upscale boutiques, while expensively dishevelled youths cruise endless escalators, coffees in hand.

If Liz Truss’s plans for deregulation come to pass, the part of the industry that regards animals as products will determine how they’re treatedThe UK government will tell you that we have some of the best animal welfare standards in the world. We are hailed as a nation of animal lovers, and in common consciousness a typical British farm would involve lush green pastures and animals happily grazing the day away.The long-held notion that the UK is a world leader for animal welfare carries some truth. The achievements that have been made over the years since the dawn of large-scale, industrial farming have been monumental when it comes to the welfare of farm animals. The banning of the veal crate in 1990, for example, meant that calves were no longer confined into such a tight space they couldn’t turn around, were often tied by the neck, and fed low-quality feed which made their flesh turn white. This was one of the first of a string of victories in the ongoing fight against farming systems which are cruel to animals. Continue reading...

In part two of the eel saga, I take a more detailed look at how the pieces of the trade fit together, and what’s being done to combat it.This is my second blog about the illegal trade of eel between Europe and Asia. In the first I wrote about the ecological plight of the eel and the scale of the trade. You can read that post here.In January 2016, David Baker, an ecologist at The University of Hong Kong’s Swire Institute of Marine Science received an unusual package: a frozen, lumpy mass of unknown fish seized at Hong Kong airport. His job was to carry out DNA analysis on the samples to find out what they were. But in solving the mystery, he also uncovered a crime: the fish were European Eel, a species that should never have reached Hong Kong, because trading these animals between Europe and Asia is completely illegal. Continue reading...

Figures show a 4% reduction in the national annual emissions of carbon dioxide, with coal now burning at its lowest level in at least 150 yearsPlummeting coal use in 2015 led to a fall of 4% in the UK’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to government energy statistics published on Thursday. Coal is now burning at its lowest level in at least 150 years.The closing of old polluting coal-power stations and the rapid rise in renewable energy meant coal consumption fell by 22% compared to 2014, the biggest drop ever seen outside of miners’ strikes, according to analysts at Carbon Brief. Production of coal in the UK also fell to a new record low, dropping by 27% due to mines closing. Continue reading...

Students are flocking to study agriculture – and the student farmer of the year says he’s not surprised

Senior official says India plans to borrow from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to meet 100GW solar expansion targetIndia hopes to receive one of the first loans issued by the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) later this year, as it looks to raise $500m for solar power projects from the newly created lender, Indian officials said.Funding for clean energy projects would allay fears of environmental lobbyists that the bank’s relaxed lending criteria could promote dirty fuels like coal in developing economies, like India, that are in a hurry to ramp up energy output. Continue reading...

What does it take to ride for the world’s best women’s cycling team? Helen Pidd went to Mallorca and tried to keep up with the Olympic gold medallist and her Wiggle High5 team matesIf you want to feel fat, old and totally out of shape, I thoroughly recommend joining the world’s number one women’s cycling team for a bike ride up a big hill.I’d been invited to join Wiggle High5 in Mallorca as they prepared for the 2016 season with a winter training camp. My preparation for riding with the best female cyclists on the planet had largely involved eating bacon butties all winter and ending every other ride in the pub. Lean, I was not.

A new exhibition showcases a local artist using jerry cans to draw attention to the country’s pollution crisisThe brightly coloured plastic jugs once played a vital role transporting water during Ghana’s droughts. Now, they’re creating a new environmental catastrophe of their own.Seas of discarded yellow, blue and white containers – referred to locally as “Kufuor gallons” after the water crises endured under president John Kufuor in the early 2000s – have become a troubling part of Ghana’s landscape. Continue reading...

Long-tailed tit returns to the top 10 most commonly seen garden birds for the first time in seven years, results from the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch showA mild winter has boosted the number of small birds visiting UK gardens, with the long-tailed tit returning to the top 10 most commonly seen species for the first time in seven years, according to results from the world’s largest garden wildlife survey.Recorded sightings of the tiny, sociable tit rose by 44% on 2015 figures and the species was seen in more than a quarter of participants’ gardens. Other small garden bird species that are thought to have benefitted from the warmer weather include the great tit and coal tit. Continue reading...

Advocacy groups and Australian Capital Territory consumer affairs minister say a density of 10,000 hens per hectare is out of step with expectationsA new national definition for what constitutes a free-range egg falls short of consumer expectations, advocacy groups have warned.State and commonwealth ministers on Thursday agreed on a legal definition of free-range, meaning a standard on animal welfare will be put in place for the first time. Continue reading...

Much Wenlock It is hard to imagine any human culture not seeing some kind of symbolism in eggs – spring, rebirth, life emerging from chaos, fertilityThere is a nervousness about the crow’s swagger. It walks as if it’s concentrating on something else, nothing to do with an egg, never noticed it before. Then it half-hops, half-shimmies a few steps towards it. Head cocked, one eye over its wing to see who else may be watching and the other inspecting the thing as if it ticks, as if it might go off.I don’t know how the crow came by the egg, whether it took it from a nest, or another creature did and was either persuaded to relinquish it or just left it there next to some dead stumps for the crow to find. The egg is forlorn, there is no hope for it despite the crow’s edgy circumspection, and it’s already a bit cracked. It has lost the rocking movement of an irregular sphere and, despite its apparent weightlessness, it now looks ill-defined, like crash wreckage. Continue reading...

In addition, vehicles must stay off the road one Saturday a month as the Mexican capital grapples with its worst air-quality crisis in over a decadeAuthorities in Mexico City have temporarily ordered all cars to remain idle one day a week in response to this notoriously smoggy capital’s worst air-quality crisis in over a decade.Until now vehicles have been exempt from the Mexican capital’s “no circulation” rules if owners obtain a holographic sticker from a smog-check centre certifying them as lower-emission. Continue reading...

The Venezuelan government extended the Easter holiday to an entire week this year, and it’s all because of the weather. Although Venezuela is a big oil producer most of its power is produced by hydroelectric generators.The massive Guri dam, one of the largest in the world with a capacity of more than 10GW, provides almost half the country’s hydroelectricity. However, power generation needs adequate rainfall. Continue reading...

The likelihood of achieving a vital part of the UK’s future power infrastructure appears to be waning by the weekAt Port Talbot the government appears to have assumed, even at the eleventh hour, that Tata would not dare to walk away from its UK steel business. It was a bad bet, thus the undignified scramble to get the business secretary back from Australia to explain what government intervention in the steel industry might mean, and cost.But let’s not ignore the other industrial drama involving vast sums, thousands of jobs and a key plank of government strategy. Yes, it’s Hinkley Point, where the UK’s energy policy for the 2020s rests on the premise that French state-backed outfit EDF really will build a £18bn nuclear station in Somerset that will open in 2025 to supply 7% of our electricity. Continue reading...

Despite regular coastal cleanups around the world, the problem of ocean garbage continues. Now, two Australians say they’ve found the solution – the SeabinBy now, reports that our oceans are turning into swirling garbage dumps should come as no surprise. There are some 5.25tn pieces of floating plastic debris in the oceans right now, and it’s estimated that some 8m metric tons of plastic waste enter global waters every year. A researcher recently likened it to lining up five grocery bags of trash on every foot of coastline around the world. The US is adjacent to the largest of the five ocean “garbage patches” – it’s estimated the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which extends from the coast of North America to a few hundred miles off the coast of Japan, contains some 480,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer.Now, two surfers from Australia say they may have the solution. Peter Ceglinski and Andrew Turton have invented a device they call the Seabin, a kind of submersible garbage can that siphons and captures floating debris. Continue reading...

The records will include data on behavior, reproductive success, and skin diseases and will be used to monitor individual health as well as overall trendsEndangered orcas in the inland waters of Washington state will now have individual health records, which researchers hope will help them identify threats to the whales’ health.There are typically 84 whales residing in Puget Sound from spring to fall. These were listed as endangered in 2005 and are both genetically and behaviorally distinct from other killer whales. They use distinct calls to communicate and eat salmon rather than other marine mammals. Because of pollution, lack of prey and disturbance from boats, their numbers have fluctuated in the past few decades. Continue reading...

Gaping Gill is one of the finest natural creations in the UK, ranking with Ben Nevis, Malham Cove or Cheddar Gorge. The recent linking of the Three Counties system – a network connecting Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria – was equivalent to the completion of the Scottish munros or the first polar expeditions.The legal position for access to caves on access land is bizarre and irrational (Cavers want the right to roam taken to a much deeper level, 29 March). You can go into a cave entrance, according to Defra, only as far as the light penetrates. Why not as far as sound might penetrate – or fresh air can be detected? Continue reading...

Italian officials to investigate company’s role in acquisition of disputed oil block jointly owned with energy group EniItalian anti-corruption investigators have opened a formal investigation into Shell’s acquisition of a stake in a $1.09bn (£755m) oil block in Nigeria.

New research factors in collapsing Antarctic ice sheet that could double the sea-level rise to two metres by 2100 if emissions are not cutSea levels could rise far more rapidly than expected in coming decades, according to new research that reveals Antarctica’s vast ice cap is less stable than previously thought.The UN’s climate science body had predicted up to a metre of sea level rise this century - but it did not anticipate any significant contribution from Antarctica, where increasing snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance. Continue reading...

Union-backed director says plans are ‘not credible’ in new blow to troubled Somerset nuclear power station developmentAn EDF board member has called for the £18bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be postponed, in the latest sign of discord at the top of the French energy company over the troubled project.Christian Taxil said a raft of changes to the Somerset reactor scheme agreed over the past three years significantly raised the risk for EDF, while a promise to commission the plant within 72 months of concrete being poured was “not credible”.

Lucy Lamble reports from southern Africa on the recurring droughts, exacerbated by an unusually strong El Niño, that are causing a severe lack of food

Thirteen sperm whales stranded on the German coast had ingested huge amounts of plastic. They are symbolic of our shocking disregard for marine lifeIn January, 29 sperm whales stranded on shores around the North Sea. The results of the necropsies (the animal equivalent of autopsies) of 13 of those whales, which beached in Germany, near the town of Tönning in Schleswig-Holstein, have just been released. The animals’ stomachs were filled with plastic debris. A 13-metre-long fishing net, a 70cm piece of plastic from a car and other pieces of plastic litter had been inadvertently ingested by the animals, who may have thought they were food, such as squid, their main diet, which they consume by sucking their prey into their mouths.Robert Habeck, environment minister for the state of Schleswig-Holstein, said: “These findings show us the results of our plastic-oriented society. Animals inadvertently consume plastic and plastic waste, which causes them to suffer, and at worst, causes them to starve with full stomachs.” Nicola Hodgins, of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, added: “Although the large pieces will cause obvious problems and block the gut, we shouldn’t dismiss the smaller bits that could cause a more chronic problem for all species of cetacean – not just those who suction feed.” Continue reading...

The Obama administration is to allow surveying of the seabed using seismic airguns that have been likened to a ‘grenade blast’ for whales and other creaturesThe Obama administration is to press ahead with proposals to allow loud underwater prospecting for oil and gas off the east coast, even though the practice has been likened to being at the “epicenter of a grenade blast” for whales and other marine creatures sensitive to noise.Related: Obama bans oil drilling along Atlantic seaboard Continue reading...