Locals complain of a changed landscape, flooding, dust and disruption as rail project cuts through area of outstanding natural beauty
UK fifth-worst country in Europe for loss of green space to development
‘Desecration of landscape’: the fight over development in areas of outstanding natural beauty
Margaret Bunce used to look from her cottage window over a swoop of fields of wheat and small copses. Now when she opens her curtains each morning, the rural valley between Great Missenden and Wendover is dominated by the concrete and earthworks of HS2.
Orange-clad men and their yellow diggers and dumpers are building cuttings and viaducts to take the high-speed railway on its path through a swath of the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), now known as a national landscape.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/02/2025 - 04:00
10/02/2025 - 01:00
The theme of this year’s Women By Women exhibition, Rooted in Resistance, is to showcase images of women defending their land and communities from destruction – by powerful people and corporations or the climate crisis. The pictures, taken by female photographers from Nepal, Cambodia, Brazil and Nigeria, will be on show at the Oxo Gallery in London from 9 to 12 October
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10/02/2025 - 00:00
Tory leader says she would replace it with ‘cheap energy’ strategy, ending decades-long consensus on climate
Kemi Badenoch has vowed to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Conservatives win the next election, doing away with controls on greenhouse gas emissions and dismantling what has been the cornerstone of green and energy policy for successive governments.
The Conservative party leader was already committed to scrapping the UK’s net zero target but repeal of the Climate Change Act would go much further. It would remove the need to meet “carbon budgets” – ceilings, set for five-year periods, on the amount of greenhouse gas that can be emitted – and disband the Climate Change Committee, the watchdog that advises on how policies affect the UK’s carbon footprint.
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10/02/2025 - 00:00
Residents of Woodgate estate in West Sussex enjoy its open spaces and wildlife but conservationists say it has set worrying precedent
UK fifth-worst country in Europe for loss of green space to development
Revealed: Europe losing 600 football pitches of nature and crop land a day
A flock of goldfinches circle before settling on a rooftop as Sue takes her morning walk around the Woodgate estate in Pease Pottage, West Sussex. Rounding a corner, she reaches a large wildlife pond where eight cygnets and a swan are feeding. Dragonflies circle overhead.
For the last three years, the estate a few miles south of Crawley built within the High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) has been Sue’s home. Her son and daughter-in-law also live on the estate, where the 600 homes range from shared ownership flats to £1.4m luxury detached houses.
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10/01/2025 - 18:00
Nominee companies – paid to be listed as shareholders on behalf of unnamed investors – could be reducing accountability over financial support of industry
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Three global banks are being paid to obscure who profits from 51 fossil fuel projects in Australia that produce 22m tonnes of carbon emissions each year, according to new analysis.
An analyst who authored the report says it highlights a “massive problem” in Australia that could be reducing the amount of scrutiny investors face for financial support of the fossil fuel industry.
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10/01/2025 - 16:53
The world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has died at the age of 91.
Born in London in 1934, Goodall began researching free-living chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960. In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which works to protect the species and supports youth projects aimed at benefiting animals and the environment.
She was considered the leading expert on chimpanzees, with a career spanning more than 60 years. Her research was pivotal in proving the similarities in primate and human behaviour
Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, dies aged 91
Jane Goodall – a life in pictures
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10/01/2025 - 15:49
Greta Thunberg arrested and taken into custody after six of the flotilla’s boats were boarded
Middle East crisis live
A number of boats from a pro-Palestinian flotilla have been boarded by Israeli forces roughly 75 miles off the coast of Gaza, as the vessels attempted to breach the maritime blockade of the war-torn territory and bring aid.
The raid began with the flotilla’s leading vessel, Alma, whose crew were detained by Israeli soldiers on Wednesday. A video from the Israeli foreign ministry showed the most prominent of the flotilla’s passengers, Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, sitting on a deck surrounded by soldiers.
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10/01/2025 - 12:41
Pontiff laments that some ‘ridicule those who speak of global warming’, days after Trump’s claims of ‘con job’
Pope Leo XIV has taken aim at people who “ridicule those who speak of global warming” as he embraced Pope Francis’s environmental legacy and made it his own in some of his strongest and most extensive comments on the subject to date.
Leo presided over the 10th-anniversary celebration of Francis’s landmark ecological encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be), at a global gathering south of Rome. The encyclical cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern and launched a global grassroots movement to advocate for caring for God’s creation and the peoples most harmed by its exploitation.
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10/01/2025 - 10:30
Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their autumn encounters with nature
Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months, as the UK enters a new season, we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.
The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a bug under some leaves, a rutting stag or a garden bird.
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10/01/2025 - 09:03
Ed Miliband’s move to bring forward ban is gambit to stop would-be Reform voters from backing Nigel Farage’s pro-fracking party
Ed Miliband announced on Wednesday that Labour was speeding up plans to bring in a “total ban” on fracking. But how will this work and could it stop a future Reform government from fracking?
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