Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Without regulatory reforms and proper funding, the country will lack a muscular enforcer to strike fear among polluters The organisers of the March for Clean Water – that’s Feargal Sharkey and River Action, supported by organisations that range from Surfers Against Sewage to the RSPB to the Women’s Institute – make an excellent point: while it’s nice that the government will bring a water bill to parliament, the initiatives revealed so far “are not nearly extensive enough to address the scale of the UK’s water pollution crisis”. You bet. None of the four “initial steps” announced by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, last month are likely to cause sleepless nights in any boardroom. The first, to ensure companies’ funding for infrastructure investment is ringfenced, read like a description of how the regulatory system in England and Wales was always supposed to work. One fears that the second, to add the protection of customers and the environment to companies’ articles of association, will be cosmetic; directors can always be fuzzy about how they interpret their fiduciary duties. Continue reading...

Pilot scheme in Amazon communities of central Peru aims to help people choose a more sustainable way of living Read more stories in the Alternatives series “At the beginning, there was a lot of fear and disbelief,” said Ketty Marcelo. “There was a perception from the communities that this was another scam, that it was only looking to steal information or our integrity.” Indigenous communities in the Amazon have grown weary of people coming in from outside with plans that could mean them losing their land or way of life. When a team from Cool Earth, a climate action NGO, came to the Amazon communities of central Peru in October 2022, local people were hesitant. “These fears caused some families not to participate,” Marcelo said. “And we, as an organisation, were afraid this would be another project that would seek to impose activities without respecting the autonomy of the communities.” Continue reading...

Green MP tells home secretary sending Just Stop Oil activist to prison is unjust and waste of resources A 20-month prison sentence handed to a 77-year-old woman for a climate protest on the M25 is disproportionate, unjust and a waste of resources, the Green MP Carla Denyer has said. In a letter to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Denyer called the jailing of Gaie Delap three weeks ago “an example of an ongoing and serious problem with disproportionate sentencing for climate activists”. Continue reading...

Just cutting carbon emissions will not prevent climate breakdown, says Susana Muhamad before Cop16 in Colombia Humanity risks catastrophic global heating if it focuses only on decarbonisation at the expense of restoring the natural world, Colombia’s environment minister has said in the lead-up to the world’s key nature summit later this year. Susana Muhamad, who will be president of the UN biodiversity Cop16 summit in Cali in October, said that a singular focus on cutting carbon emissions while failing to restore and protect natural ecosystems would be “dangerous for humanity” and risk societal collapse. Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features Continue reading...