This precious resource should never have been privatised, and tougher regulation won’t solve the problem
Labour could have chosen the public interest over the profit motive, as it set about its promised reorganisation of the water industry in England and Wales. Polling last year showed a higher level of support for publicly owned water companies than railways. Yet while train companies are being renationalised as contracts expire, ministers ruled out a reversal of 1989’s water privatisation before they commissioned Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former central banker, to report on how they could improve this failing industry through tougher regulation.
This newspaper regrets that the question of ownership was taken off the table. Water is among the most precious of all natural resources and the pro‑market logic for the sell-off was bogus. In the absence of competition, regional monopolies were created and, in the decades since, businesses have enriched themselves while failing to fulfil their responsibilities. No other European government has followed suit in offloading vital infrastructure including pipes and reservoirs, and enabling investors to extract wealth by loading up balance sheets with debt.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/21/2025 - 12:47
07/21/2025 - 12:17
A harder rain needs to fall on those responsible for the water crisis. Let Thames Water fail – it doesn’t deserve a bailout
In a bone dry summer, every drop of water counts. So, even though the rain is finally falling again now, it’s still hard to take it for granted, or to ignore the way that everything in the countryside still feels unnervingly out of rhythm: earth too cracked, grass too bleached, wheat harvest being brought in too early, rivers too low – and, knowing what Thames Water has been pumping into them, water quite possibly too dirty to cool off in.
In May, the company was fined £122.7m for the combined sins of sewage dumping and continuing to pay shareholder dividends despite its environmental failings. It responded by protesting that it might go bust if actually held accountable for its actions, a sentence that sums up everything people find infuriating about the water industry. Yet its resentful customers have no choice but to keep paying bills that are expected to rise by a third over the next five years – though Thames Water, inevitably, asked to be allowed to charge more – while wondering how we ever let a commodity this precious become so badly managed, heading into a volatile new era of summer drought and winter flood.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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07/21/2025 - 10:00
Queensland Conservation Council releases images appearing to show large areas of bushland felled within threatened species habitat
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Conservationists have called on the environment minister, Murray Watt, to intervene after satellite images appear to show clearing in threatened species habitat at the site of a proposed coalmine in Queensland.
Images and drone footage obtained by the Queensland Conservation Council over the past two months appear to show large areas of bushland cleared at the site of Magnetic South’s proposed Gemini coalmine near Dingo in central Queensland.
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07/18/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 19 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00148-z
Marine biodiversity change impacts relational values: expert survey shows policy mismatch
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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