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Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016
Draft Motion prepared by Rapporteurs Pavel Poc (Socialists and Democrats Group), Kateřina Konečná on behalf of the European United Left and Nordic Green Left group, Bas Eickhout of the Greens / European Free Alliance Group, Piernicola Pedicini of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group, Mark Demesmaeker, Sirpa Pietikäinen and Frédérique Ries. This draft Motion was carried forward for the vote in a Parliamentary Plenary Session in April 2016.
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Nature Watch Poisons Beware Glyphosate: EU draft Motion, March 2016
Environment secretary points to measures to stop lake being ‘choked by unacceptable levels’ of pollution
The government has said it will “clean up Windermere” after criticism over the volume of sewage being pumped into England’s largest lake.
The environment secretary, Steve Reed, pledged “only rainwater” would enter the famous body of water in the Lake District, putting an end to the situation where it Windermere was being “choked by unacceptable levels of sewage pollution”.
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Llandrindod Wells, Powys: They’re such captivating birds to watch, and this pair is indulging their preference for flower buds on my cherry tree
“Hardly hedgerows, little lines of sportive wood run wild”. I was sitting at my dining table, relishing the growing warmth of early spring sunlight, idling over coffee and musing on how apt a description of the towering unkempt hedges around my garden Wordsworth’s lines from Tintern Abbey are, when the pair of bullfinches that inhabit there captivated my attention.
They are so conjugal – the dowdier hen always in close and discreet attendance on her more brightly coloured spouse. To my mind, few small British birds can match the exquisite colour balance of the male bullfinch – the bright pink glow of his breast, his sleek black cap, the beautiful grey of his wings. I love them, and can watch their activities for hours, especially in early spring when they are notably active, with branches bare of foliage and little else stirring.
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Dealing with PTSD, Merlin Hanbury-Tenison retreated to his family farm in Cornwall. There, working to revive a rare fragment of rainforest, he found a way to heal himself
A straight-backed, well-spoken former management consultant and ex-soldier in a wax jacket might not resemble much of a tree wizard, but the man leading me into a steep Cornish valley of gnarled, mossy oaks is called Merlin. He possesses hidden depths. And surfaces. Within minutes of meeting, as we head towards the Mother Tree – a venerable oak of special significance – Merlin Hanbury-Tenison reveals that he recently had a tattoo of the tree etched on his skin. I’m expecting him to roll up a sleeve to reveal a mini-tree outline, but he whips out his phone and shows me a picture: the 39-year-old’s entire back is covered with a spectacular full-colour painting of the oak. “It took 22 hours. I was quite sore,” he says, a little ruefully. “But I was in London afterwards, feeling quite overcome by the city and I had this moment: I’ve got the rainforest with me. Wherever I go, I feel like I’m carrying the forest and its story with me.”
Merlin is keen to tell the remarkable 5,000-year story of this fragment of Atlantic temperate rainforest – a rare habitat found in wet and mild westerly coastal regions and which is under more threat than tropical rainforests. In fact, he is now the custodian of this special, nature-rich landscape filled with ferns, mosses, lichens and fungi. He is slightly more reticent about his own remarkable life. Both stories are well worth telling.
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After fears £11m would be diverted to Treasury, money will be spent on restoring polluted areas where penalties issued
Millions of pounds of fines imposed on water firms will fund environmental schemes to protect the country’s waterways after fears the money would be diverted to the Treasury.
The water restoration fund was set up by the Conservative government to ensure that polluting water firms paid for the damage they caused. The fund received £11m in fines and penalties from April 2022 to October 2023.
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Tougher laws said to be inspiring clandestine attacks on the ‘property and machinery’ of the fossil fuel economy
It was raining and the sparkling lights of the City of London shone back from the cold, wet pavement as two young men made their way through streets deserted save for a few police and private security. In the sleeping heart of the global financial system, they felt eyes on them from the city’s network of surveillance cameras, but hoped their disguise of high-vis vests and hoods hiding their faces would conceal them.
Reaching Lime Street, they stopped by a maintenance hole and looked around to make sure no one was watching. One took off the cover, located a bundle of black cables and started hacking away. Hours later, an email was circulated to news desks: “Internet cut off to hundreds of insurers in climate-motivated sabotage.”
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People in capital breathing much cleaner air, with significant improvements in capital’s most deprived areas
People in London have been breathing significantly cleaner air since the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (Ulez), a study has found.
Levels of deadly pollutants that are linked to a wide range of health problems – from cancer to impaired lung development, heart attacks to premature births – have dropped, with some of the biggest improvements coming in the capital’s most deprived areas.
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Damage to trees in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene was ‘extraordinary and humbling’ but urban areas face particular problems
The city of Asheville and its surrounding areas have been left vulnerable to floods, fires and extreme heat after Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees that provided shade and protection from storms.
Helene was catastrophic for the region’s trees – in part due to the heavy precursor rainstorm that pounded southern Appalachia for two days straight, drenching the soil before Helene hit, bringing yet more heavy rain and 60-100mph winds.
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Experience has taught many residents in flood-prone areas around Lismore and northern New South Wales the value of leaving early
Valerie Thompson is heading home to Brunswick Heads in an hour. The 52-year-old lives in a low-lying area just north of Byron Bay and was among those who got out early before Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The idea that the climate crisis may generate a cyclone that ploughs into south-east Queensland was already a “nightmare scenario” for the country’s insurance industry – the same companies that wanted to charge Thompson $30,000 a year to insure her home. If they were taking it seriously, why shouldn’t she?
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Pencil pines grow for more than a thousand years each, and only in Tasmania. As lightning fires become more common, humans must mobilise to protect them – or lose these ancients forever
Steve Leonard finds it hard when he goes bushwalking in Tasmania’s high country these days. “I look at a stand of pencil pine and I wonder: ‘how long will you be there?’”
The ecologist is just back from a rapid survey of the cost to ancient trees of the latest lightning-strike fires across the island’s drying landscapes. Among the losses he found near the overland track, an alpine walking trail through central Tasmania, were groves of pencil pine.
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I loose the horses, the wild, red horses
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses
And terror is on the land.
From the end of 2025 exporters will need to prove products sold in the EU have not come from land that has been deforested since December 2020
Beef farmer Glenn Morris only had to look up to know the world was changing.
During a heatwave in 1998, Morris stood on a cattle property in the New South Wales Hunter Valley and saw the trees cowering.
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Continue reading...The NHS is looking into claims that a software flaw at Medefer left patient data vulnerable.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is looking at how it can speed up the approval process for lab-grown foods.
Women who have quickly lost weight say strangers are now more likely to smile at them or strike up a conversation.
Calls are made to help address stigmas attached to chemsex and improve support.
The at-home light therapy treatment is increasingly being seen as a must-have skincare accessory.
It does not spread easily and the risk to the public is very low, experts say, after finding a case.
Edith Eagle says she felt she was "drowning in her own body" after using one of the unlicensed products.
School and nursery staff in the poorest areas will be asked to help young children brush their teeth
A hospital trust is investigating if medical records of the three victims were accessed "inappropriately".
New part of the immune system - hidden inside our bodies - could be used to make new antibiotics.
Indigenous leaders on the island of Palawan recently signed a landmark deal to establish the country’s first locally owned forest carbon project. The project aims to halt deforestation through the sale of carbon credits
Recent news provides a grim affirmation of Conservation International research — and underscores what must happen next.
One of the world’s most important places for nature is a small strip of mountainous forest no more than about 40 miles wide. And for want of a relatively small amount of money, its long-term health is in doubt.
Conservation International science fuels effort to help island countries manage a deep shift in their waters.
In Kenya, competition for food leads to conflict between livestock and wildlife. A new study offers a simple approach to avoiding it.
An interview highlights a spate of new roles for the Hollywood actor — and one old one, characterized by his trademark steadfastness.
The Indonesian government has granted six species of threatened “walking sharks” the highest level of protection — a move experts hope will lead to the conservation of other sharks, whose numbers have plummeted due largely to the shark fin trade.
The catastrophic impacts of climate breakdown may soon outpace humanity’s ability to adapt to it, according to a new report.
Costa Rica announced Friday that it will expand its protected ocean area from 2.7 percent to more than 30 percent of its territorial waters.
Earth is teetering perilously close to a tipping point — but it’s not too late to bring us back from the edge, says Conservation International’s Chief Scientist Johan Rockström in a new Netflix film.
