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The Mexican women who defied drug-dealers, fly-tippers and chauvinists to build a thriving business

The Guardianas del Conchalito ignored chants of ‘get back to your kitchens’, determined to protect the environment and create a sustainable shellfish operationAhead of the small boat, as it bobs on the waters near La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California, is a long line of old plastic bottles strung together on top of the waves. Underneath them are as many as 100,000 oysters, waiting to be sold to the upmarket hotels down the coast.Cheli Mendez, who oversees the project, pulls a shell up from below, cuts it open with a knife, and gives me the contents to try: a plump, tasty oyster. Mendez is one of a group known as Guardianas del Conchalito, or guardians of the shells, and theirs is the first oyster-growing business in the region run entirely by women, she says.The women dug a channel with shovels and pickaxes to allow seawater to reach the mangroves Continue reading...

Ahead of the small boat, as it bobs on the waters near La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California, is a long line of old plastic bottles strung together on top of the waves. Underneath them are as many as 100,000 oysters, waiting to be sold to the upmarket hotels down the coast.Cheli Mendez, who oversees the project, pulls a shell up from below, cuts it open with a knife, and gives me the contents to try: a plump, tasty oyster. Mendez is one of a group known as Guardianas del Conchalito, or guardians of the shells, and theirs is the first oyster-growing business in the region run entirely by women, she says.But this is far from the only success this unusual group of women has had. It all began with four of them sitting round a rickety picnic table, staring out across a rubbish-strewn mangrove plantation in the spring of 2017. They were angry: their fishing village was being ruined by drug-dealers and fast-encroaching tourism, and the shellfish they treasured were being depleted by illegal fishing.We said to the men, ‘we want to clear the place up. And we want to be paid to do it’None of the women had been educated beyond school, but they did understand that they risked losing everything unless something was done to change things“The mangroves were dying, the trash was everywhere,” says Graciela “Chela” Olachea, at 63 the oldest of the group. Huge lorries would arrive to fly-tip on a regular basis, and joyriders on motorbikes would screech across the land. Claudia Reyes, 41, says: “Things were bad, and getting worse.”Soon others had joined them at the picnic table in El Manglito, the neighbourhood of La Paz made famous by John Steinbeck. He wrote about the area’s pearl divers – the forebears of these proud, strong women.El Mangalito, near La Paz, was made famous by John Steinbeck, who wrote about the area’s pearl divers. The women’s sign says: ‘Please keep this wetland clean’“The picnic table became our office,” says Reyes. They had come up with the name for their group by then, based on the callo de hacha, a rare type of scallop that are a prized local delicacy. “We went to the men who were the decision-makers in our community, and we said, ‘We want to clear the place up. And we want to be paid to do it.’”The men – their husbands, fathers, grandfathers, sons – were not impressed. But they eventually and reluctantly agreed, offering wages for five women. But now there were 14 meeting around that picnic table. The money amounted to 8,500 Mexican pesos a week (£320) between them all, a tiny amount for each woman.“But we agreed to it,” says Reyes. “We wanted to show we could do this: we wanted to make a difference, and we wanted to earn some money.”The women set about positioning boulders around the perimeter of the plantation to stop the lorries from coming in and to deter the motorbikes. They dug channels from the sea to restore the water flow to the mangroves and cleared the rubbish. They kept watch at the water’s edge, shouting at the illegal fishing boats, some of whose occupants were their own relatives, to go away.We knew we deserved more … And the men would shout: ‘Get back to your kitchens’And perhaps most impressively, they patrolled the land through the night, facing down, they say, the drug-dealers and telling them to move on.Today we are talking near the old picnic table, sitting under a newly built palapa, or thatched sun shelter. Although February is winter and it’s early morning, the sun is already strong; temperatures will reach 28C (82.4F) in a few hours’ time.The Baja peninsula, snaking for 775 miles (1,250km) down the Mexican coast from the US border, is desert plains dotted with cacti. It is a growing tourist destination, and the guardianas suspect some of the rubbish in their mangroves was illegally dumped by construction companies. ‘It’s not just what’s happening in the ocean … it all affects the shellfish,’ says Wildcoast’s Celeste Ortega, pictured. Above, the palapa where Las guardianas meet The jewels of the region are the beaches: the nearby coves of Balandra are said to be the most beautiful in Mexico. And the seas here in the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, is teeming: the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau called it “the world’s aquarium”. It is home to about 900 species of fish, including more than 70 found nowhere else on the planet, and its marine megafauna includes whale sharks, grey whales and humpback whales.Slowly, the fishers of El Manglito came to understand the importance of sustainability, and the need to stick to quotas so the shellfish would thrive. The women’s first meeting around the picnic table had been in 2017; by autumn the following year, the area was unrecognisable. The drug-dealers had moved on; the fly-tipping had stopped. The mangroves are green and healthy now, and the whole plantation is pristine, with no litter in sight.At one point during our conversation, a motorbike appears with two young lads on the back. Several of the women get up and run across, shouting at them to go away. They do and quickly: the guardianas clearly are not women to be ignored.After the mangrove was cleaned up, the women say that the men thought they could go back to how things had been – them doing the fishing, the women cleaning the shellfish for very little money, as they had in the past. “But we felt we had done the work,” says Daniela Bareño, 35. “We knew we deserved more. Chela would go down to the shore when they were out in their boats and yell: ‘These are ours.’ And the men would shout: ‘Get back to your kitchens.’”By now they were getting funding from environmental organisations. One of their backers was Wildcoast, a California-based charity dedicated to conserving coastal and marine ecosystems. Celeste Ortega, Wildcoast’s mangrove conservation manager, says: “We started talking to the women about the mangroves and how it’s not just what’s happening in the ocean, but what’s happening on the land that affects the shellfish.My girls are proud of me. One is at university doing bioengineering“The trees are a vital part of the ecosystem and that’s the reason the shellfish are here: they attach themselves to the mangrove trees, and that’s how they grow.”Today, the Guardianas del Conchalito is a legally recognised community co-operative and all its members receive a living wage.“We do things differently from the men,” says Bareño. “They had a more individualistic attitude; we work democratically. We have meetings each Monday, we talk things through, we reach decisions collectively.” The picnic table where Las Guardianas first got together; some of the community’s 100,000 or so oysters; Andrea, El Manglito’s first university graduate; the mangrove seedlings being planted to restore the plantation And their work has paid off in other ways too. Andrea Mendez Garcia, 27, studied marine biology after school, becoming the first university graduate from El Manglito. Her inspiration is her mother, Marta – a guardiana.Other women say their work has influenced their children as well. “My girls are proud of me,” says Adriana Mendez, 56, of her two daughters. “One is at university doing bioengineering and agriculture.”Away from the sea, the biggest changes for the Guardianas del Conchalito have been in their own lives. “Before all this, I didn’t really believe in myself,” says Reyes. “But now I know I can achieve things: I know it’s possible.”Other women say their relationships have been upended, too. “I used to ask my husband’s permission if I wanted to leave the house,” says Rosa María Hale Romero, who’s in her early 60s. “Now if I go out, I just tell him: ‘I’ll be back.’ And instead of me serving him, he brings me my coffee.”All the women laugh, in shared recognition; and then they are silent for a moment. After a while, Reyes speaks again. “The truth is, it wasn’t only the mangrove we transformed,” she says. “We transformed ourselves as well.”

North Sea collision may have ‘devastating’ impact on marine life, says expert

Fears grow over leaking fuel as investigations begin into cause of crash involving cargo ship and tanker off Yorkshire coastLeaking fuel from the collision between a cargo ship and oil tanker in the North Sea would have a “devastating” impact on marine life, an expert has warned, as investigations began into the cause of the crash.Fires continued to burn onboard both vessels 24 hours after the Stena Immaculate tanker was struck off the coast of Yorkshire on Monday morning. A search for a missing crew member was called off overnight. Continue reading...

Leaking fuel from the collision between a cargo ship and oil tanker in the North Sea would have a “devastating” impact on marine life, an expert has warned, as investigations began into the cause of the crash.Fires continued to burn onboard both vessels 24 hours after the Stena Immaculate tanker was struck off the coast of Yorkshire on Monday morning. A search for a missing crew member was called off overnight.As investigations were stepped up into the cause of the collision, a White House official reportedly refused to rule out foul play amid questions about why the cargo ship, the Solong – which was carrying cargo for the US military – appeared not to slow down or change course before striking the Stena Immaculate.Smoke billowing from a vessel after a cargo ship collided with a tanker carrying jet fuel off eastern England on Monday. Photograph: Bartek Śmiałek/APEnvironmental experts warned that the jet fuel leaking from the 183-metre-long vessel was toxic for humans and wildlife.Dr Simon Boxall, an academic in oceanography at the University of Southampton, said the Jet A-1 fuel had a “much higher toxicity” than crude oil and that “the impact on that on life in the oceans would be devastating”.Melanie Onn, the MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, said it had been a “shocking 24 hours” since the collision and that people were worried about the potential harm to the ecosystem.She said the government had not confirmed reports that the Solong was carrying the highly toxic chemical sodium cyanide when it ploughed into the Stena Immaculate.Onn told the Guardian on Tuesday: “They don’t know what the cargo is on that vessel. I think if it were sodium cyanide that would be really quite bad because it gets into contact with water and becomes airborne as well. It’s a very, very serious chemical.”Boxall said it was not clear whether any sodium cyanide had leaked into the ocean but that it was “not good news” if it had. “If they do fall into the sea in the middle of that huge fireball then they turn very rapidly to hydrogen cyanide, which is really quite a dangerous gas,” he told Sky News.Dr Seyedvahid Vakili, a maritime expert at the University of Southampton, said it was difficult to determine the main cause of the collision but that in most cases “human factors play a significant role”.“This is particularly relevant for container vessels where high workloads and fatigue can be major contributing factors. At this stage it needs further comprehensive investigation,” he said.A US sailor onboard the Stena Immaculate told CBS News that the Solong “came out of the blue”, giving those onboard “only seconds to react”.The crew member, who was not named, described how flames were lapping at the sailors as they evacuated the burning vessel, leaving some with singed hair.The whole incident from impact to evacuation lasted about 30 minutes, they said, adding that the operation was “textbook”.The crew member said the Stena Immaculate had anchored at that spot and relayed its coordinates on Sunday, meaning all other vessels should have known where it was.Matthew Pennycook, a government minister, said Coastguard aircraft were monitoring the site of the incident off the East Yorkshire coast. He said: “We are working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to assess the impact on water pollution. The fire is obviously still raging.”He added: “The Maritime and Coastguard Agency are well equipped to contain and disperse any oil spills. We don’t think air quality impacts are outside of normal levels, but we will keep the situation obviously under review.”

Fires Burn After Ships Collide off UK, Stoking Fears Over Environment

By Phil NobleWITHERNSEA, England (Reuters) - Fires continued to burn on Tuesday after two ships collided off the coast of northeast England a day...

WITHERNSEA, England (Reuters) - Fires continued to burn on Tuesday after two ships collided off the coast of northeast England a day earlier, adding to concerns the jet fuel carried by one and toxic chemicals aboard the other could cause an environmental disaster.Following the crash, both crews abandoned their ships and 36 people were brought ashore, the coastguard said. Rescue teams called off a search for a missing crew member from the Portuguese-flagged container ship Solong on Monday.The tanker Stena Immaculate, which carries jet fuel for the U.S. military, was at anchor when it was struck by the smaller Solong, releasing fuel into the sea.Equipment to minimise pollution at sea, such as spray dispersants for oil spills and containment booms, were on standby, said the British government, as its agencies prepared for action to protect the North Sea environment and wildlife.The potential environmental impact was being assessed, coordinated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and an East of England environmental group, and the situation was being monitored overhead by plane, the government said.Two maritime security sources said there was no indication that malicious activity or actors were involved in the incident.The Stena Immaculate was carrying 220,000 barrels of jet fuel in 16 segregated cargo tanks, but it was unclear how much of it was spilt after at least one tank was hit, Crowley, the U.S. logistics group which operated the vessel, said on Monday.Onboard the Solong were 15 containers of sodium cyanide, a toxic chemical used mainly in gold mining, and an unknown quantity of alcohol, according to a casualty report from maritime data provider Lloyd's List Intelligence.Those cargoes could pollute the sea, harming large colonies of protected seabirds including puffins and gannets which live on the coast in the area, and the fish on which they feed.The crash occurred on Monday morning in a busy waterway, prompting a significant rescue response from British teams who sent aircraft, lifeboats and other vessels.While Britain's Marine Accident Investigation Branch will gather initial evidence, overall responsibility for investigating the crash lies with the U.S. and Portuguese authorities, the flag states of the vessels.(Writing by Sarah Young; additional reporting by Sachin Ravikumar, editing by Paul Sandle and Bernadette Baum)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Op-ed: The Food System Cannot Become Another Fossil-Fuel Industry Escape Hatch

While the current administration may blame “woke” DEI environmentalists for the blazes, science shows that the climate crisis contributed to the severity of the damage. Meanwhile, the administration is decimating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country’s premier climate research institution. Most of us didn’t need another reminder that the climate crisis is […] The post Op-ed: The Food System Cannot Become Another Fossil-Fuel Industry Escape Hatch appeared first on Civil Eats.

As I started thinking about this piece in January, wildfires had begun ravaging Los Angeles. By the time I had written it, entire neighborhoods had been wiped off the map, from fires that were among the most destructive in California’s history. While the current administration may blame “woke” DEI environmentalists for the blazes, science shows that the climate crisis contributed to the severity of the damage. Meanwhile, the administration is decimating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country’s premier climate research institution. “Fossil fuel producers continue to shapeshift to shirk responsibility and find new avenues for oil and gas. They’ve got their eyes on one: the food system.” Most of us didn’t need another reminder that the climate crisis is not a future to fear, but a reality on our doorstep. We are heartbroken for those who have lost everything, and angry and frustrated that our political leaders have failed to confront the driving force behind the crisis: the fossil fuel industry. The political headwinds we’re facing make it all the more challenging, enabling fossil fuel producers to continue to shapeshift to shirk responsibility and find new avenues for oil and gas. They’ve got their eyes on one: the food system. The food system is responsible for an estimated one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions driving this crisis. One key reason: the industrial food chain and its ultra-processed foods are deeply dependent on fossil fuels. Consider, if you will, a simple bag of potato chips with a not-so-simple origin story. At nearly every step of this ultra-processed food’s path from the field to the grocery store, fossil fuels are key. Growing vast monocultures of potatoes requires synthetic fertilizers whose production requires massive amounts of energy. It also necessitates petroleum-based pesticides, from fungicides to herbicides, to ward off weeds and stop sprouting. Irrigation and farm equipment also depend on fossil fuels. Most processing facilities still rely on non-renewable energy to power the machinery for sorting, washing, trimming, slicing, blanching, frying, and seasoning. Fossil fuels provide the raw materials for the plastics in packaging, and, typically, the power to transport those chips to distribution centers and supermarkets, corner stores, vending machines—wherever you find them. And that’s just potato chips. Fossil fuels are used throughout our food system—across much of the foods produced by the industrial food chain. By one estimate commissioned by my organization, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, food systems account for at least 15 percent of annual global fossil fuel consumption. (Though, we stress, this is a rough estimate, since assessing usage around the world is exceedingly challenging; we need more and better data.) “Where Are the Fossil Fuels?” infographic from the Fuel to Fork podcast. The analysis found that 42 percent of that total fossil fuel consumption comes from processing and packaging stages, largely driven by the global rise of ultra-processed food. Another 38 percent comes from retail consumption and waste; and the rest is from industrial inputs (like pesticides and fertilizer) and agriculture production. To paraphrase grocery industry expert Errol Schweizer in the podcast Fuel to Fork, which my organization helps produce, fossil fuels are the lifeblood of the food system. Fossil fuels are on track to be an even bigger presence in our food system. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a nonprofit environmental organization, warns that as sectors like transport are decarbonizing, the fossil fuel industry has its sights on food, particularly through petrochemicals. CIEL notes that an estimated 74 percent of all petrochemicals are already used for agricultural fertilizer and plastic. The International Energy Agency projects that by 2050 half of all oil and gas will be used for petrochemicals. Based on current levels, 40 percent of that will be going into our food system in the form of plastics and fertilizers. In another report, CIEL notes how chemical companies are introducing microplastic-coated pesticides and fertilizers as a ‘climate solution’. Industry boosters state that microplastic-coated pesticides and fertilizers reduce nitrous oxide emissions by slowing the release of pesticides and fertilizers, so the farmer has to apply less frequently and use less. But, as CIEL adds in the report, the industry has acknowledged that assessing use reduction is challenging. CIEL also points out that using these plastic-coated agrochemicals “directly introduces microplastic into the environment and potentially into the food supply. It also compounds the health and environmental hazards posed by agrochemicals themselves.” Also, as CIEL and others call out, these products not only don’t significantly reduce usage, they cause other problems. Along with increasing the presence of plastics in food production and threatening public health, microplastics used this way dissolve in the soil, impacting soil health, reducing how much water soils can retain, and destroying healthy microorganisms essential for nutrient cycling. But raising the alarm about the growing connections between food systems and fossil fuels is a challenge, because these emissions are often made invisible. Back to that bag of potato chips: The petrochemicals used in fertilizer’s manufacture are responsible for some 34 percent  of energy used in potato crop production, yet they aren’t counted in the total emissions for the food sector according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or in national emission inventories governments share with the United Nations. “Despite being crucial elements of our food’s journey from field to fork, and carbon-intensive ones at that, neither fertilizer, pesticide, or plastic production are made visible as food-related emissions.” Instead, they are accounted for in different sectors altogether: manufacturing and industry. The same is true for plastic used in food packaging. Despite being crucial elements of our food’s journey from field to fork, and carbon-intensive ones at that, neither fertilizer, pesticide, or plastic production are made visible as food-related emissions. What is also hard to see are the subsidies the fossil fuel industry enjoys. By one estimate, the industry benefits from $7 trillion in subsidies annually, making inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides artificially cheap and therefore possible to use on a vast scale. As Raj Patel, author and a Civil Eats advisor, points out on Fuel to Fork, fossil fuels “enable certain kinds of large-scale industrial agriculture to be profitable.” Meanwhile, we collectively pay the true cost. Fossil fuels make it possible to grow crops in vast monocultures using pesticides instead of biodiversity to deter insects and employing energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers that actually deplete natural soil health and fertility. Fossil fuels also help make ultra-processed foods often the cheapest and most profitable to produce and sell, contributing to a global epidemic of diet-related ill-health. They allow our food to be grown in far-flung places and wrapped in plastic to sit on shelves for months on end, adding further to the carbon emissions bill as well as disrupting local foodways. This method of production also enables us to raise livestock on an industrial scale: Artificially cheap fossil fuel makes it economically feasible to grow vast monocultures of feed, primarily corn and soybeans, needed for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The CAFO system, with its dependence on vast amounts of feed crops, has many knock-off climate effects. Soybean production in Brazil, one of the world’s largest exporters of soybeans for animal feed, has contributed to massive deforestation and land use change there, releasing locked-in carbon into the atmosphere. Mismanaged farm waste on CAFOs has a climate toll as well, responsible for as much as 7 percent of global farming emissions. And methane emissions from ruminants, like cattle, are another significant source of climate impacts. Fossil fuels have enabled us to soar past our ecological limits. A man watches the flames from the Palisades Fire burning homes on the Pacific Coast Highway amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo credit: Apu Gomes/Getty Images) I’m not naive about the challenges of reducing the use of fossil fuel in the food chain or loosening industry’s stranglehold on policymaking. I do believe, however, that by exposing the links between this industry and our food, we can mobilize the political will for action on food systems transformation to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. And, as more people see the links between fossil fuels and food, we can start to trace a path out of this dependency and find solutions—not just big, thorny, political ones, but everyday ones, too. For those who have the access, and the means, we can make changes ourselves: increase our consumption of whole foods from local, small-scale organic farmers, reduce our consumption of ultra-processed foods, avoid plastic when possible, eat less meat from factory farms, and reduce food waste—to name just a few examples. Alongside these choices, we must collectively work to prevent the industry from using the food system as an escape hatch, a new market for oil and gas as the public demands decarbonization in other parts of the economy. We can support practices like agroecology and regenerative approaches that reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides while catalyzing a cascade of benefits, from better health outcomes to biodiversity protection. And we can also make clear that climate action requires food system action. If we needed any further reminder about why this is so urgent, the thousands of acres of blackened, charred Los Angeles neighborhoods should be more than enough. The post Op-ed: The Food System Cannot Become Another Fossil-Fuel Industry Escape Hatch appeared first on Civil Eats.

Chicken manure can be classified as industrial waste, judge rules

US-style mega-farms in Herefordshire face tough new regulations after high court rulingIndustrial poultry farms face tough new regulations around the disposal of chicken manure after a judge ruled it can be classified as waste and requires a detailed and transparent plan to dispose of it without damaging the environment.The high court ruling means new US-style mega-farms in Herefordshire will have to deal with poultry manure as if it was industrial waste. Continue reading...

Industrial poultry farms face tough new regulations around the disposal of chicken manure after a judge ruled it can be classified as waste and requires a detailed and transparent plan to dispose of it without damaging the environment.The high court ruling means new US-style mega-farms in Herefordshire will have to deal with poultry manure as if it was industrial waste.The ruling has implications for industrial chicken units all over the country. It comes as the English and Welsh governments announced £1m in funding to investigate the devastating pollution of the River Wye, where about 23m chickens are being produced in the river catchment at any one time.The health of the river, which flows for 155 miles from mid-Wales to the Severn estuary in England, has been downgraded by Natural England from “unfavourable-improving” to “unfavourable-declining”, meaning its condition is poor and worsening. Its decline has been linked to intensive chicken farming in the catchment from the spreading of poultry manure, which contains high levels of phosphate, on to fields, which then leaches into the river.Studies have shown 70% of the phosphate in the River Wye catchment comes from agriculture, although not all is chicken-related. One study recommended an 80% reduction in poultry manure in the Wye catchment to protect the river and called for a cut in the overall number of birds and for the exporting of manure out of the area.The high court judgment defining chicken manure as industrial waste came after the National Farmers’ Union challenged waste rules set by Herefordshire council.The NFU said poultry manure should be treated as an agricultural byproduct, not as waste under the waste framework directive.But Mrs Justice Lieven in her ruling said it cannot be assumed that manure will be used in an environmentally safe way. Given the environmental problems caused by chicken manure in the Wye catchment area, she rejected the NFU challenge and said poultry manure amounted to “waste” in law up to the point it was sold or transferred to a third party.The ruling means that new chicken units in Herefordshire will have to provide a detailed plan at the planning application stage to ensure chicken manure can be disposed of safely, including full transparency on the manure’s destination and application.The campaign group River Action, which intervened in the case, said the ruling was a landmark decision that had implications for all new industrial chicken units.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionCharles Watson, the chair of River Action, said: “We believe the ruling clarifies once and for all that the intensive factory production of livestock is clearly an industrial manufacturing process, whereby the often-toxic waste that it produces must be treated as such.”Carol Day of Leigh Day, who acted for River Action, said: “People proposing new intensive poultry units in Herefordshire will need to put in place proper arrangements for dealing with the huge volumes of manure that is produced. The judgment should also now mean that proper environmental controls are put in place across the country to oversee the production and handling of manure from animals on farms.”

Thames Water faces court claim that £3bn bailout is ‘poor, short-term fix’

Campaigners to argue in court of appeal that plan is not in public interest and special administration is best optionEnvironmental campaigners will challenge the granting of a high-interest £3bn emergency loan to struggling Thames Water at an appeal on Tuesday, arguing the “eye-watering” costs for a short-term fix are not in the public interest.With protests planned outside the court of appeal, Charlie Maynard, a Liberal Democrat MP who represents the campaigners, will argue in a three-day hearing that the public and consumer interest is not served by the debt package, which comes with a bill of almost £1bn in interest payments and financial adviser fees. Continue reading...

Environmental campaigners will challenge the granting of a high-interest £3bn emergency loan to struggling Thames Water at an appeal on Tuesday, arguing the “eye-watering” costs for a short-term fix are not in the public interest.With protests planned outside the court of appeal, Charlie Maynard, a Liberal Democrat MP who represents the campaigners, will argue in a three-day hearing that the public and consumer interest is not served by the debt package, which comes with a bill of almost £1bn in interest payments and financial adviser fees.Thames, which has 16 million customers and 8,000 employees, has been on the verge of collapse for months with debts of about £19bn.The company was given approval for a £3bn debt package by the high court last month, but campaigners who have been fighting its plans won the right to take the decision to appeal.Represented by a legal team that is working for free, the groups, including Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, the Rivers Trust, the Angling Trust and We Own It, say the approved restructuring plan is a “poor, short-term fix” that “aggravates rather than mitigates the Thames Water doom loop”. Taking the company into special administration, which is a power contained in the 1991 Water Industry Act, would be cheaper and in the public interest, they say.Thames, Britain’s biggest water utility company, said the emergency loan was needed to stave off an imminent cash shortfall and as a bridge to attracting new equity for wider restructuring.But the loan carries a 9.75% annual interest rate and will cost £898m over six months in consultancy fees and servicing interest. This includes £210m Thames Water has paid financial advisers who helped draw up the bailout.These costs were described as “eye-watering” by Mr Justice Leech, and “deeply uncomfortable” when he approved the plan.Maynard, who is acting on behalf of more than 25 MPs, 34 charities and a number of individual Thames Water customers, will argue the judge was wrong to sanction the bailout.In court documents William Day, the lawyer representing Maynard, said the judge had accepted that the only alternative to the costly loan was to put Thames into special administration.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionDay will argue the cost of special administration would be less than half the costs of the bailout loan that has been approved. Day said Thames had offered no evidence that the emergency debt package would help it raise billions of pounds of additional equity to repair its finances over the longer term, and should not have been approved. “The company should not have been granted sanction simply by saying, ‘We will give it a go’, especially where the costs of taking a punt are so high,” Day said.Thames is raising average water bills by £31 a year, pushing the average household bill to £588 between now and 2030, to pay for £21bn investment into its treatment works and pipes, which the company admits are assets it has “sweated” for decades. But it is taking legal action to raise bills even higher than the 35% allowed by Ofwat, the industry regulator for England and Wales.The approved bailout would give Thames £1.5bn in cash, released monthly, plus up to £1.5bn more to see it through the fight to increase customer bills further.A Thames Water spokesperson: “The restructuring plan sanctioned by the high court is the best way to resolve the issues facing Thames Water. We remain confident in our plan and are focused on its delivery. It does not financially impact taxpayers across the UK or our customers, and it allows us to continue to invest in our network to improve critical infrastructure for our customers and the environment, without further delay. It is better than any other alternative course of action and we do not believe that the grounds for appeal meet the required thresholds.”

Majority of the World's Population Breathes Dirty Air, Report Says

Most of the world has dirty air, with just 17% of global cities meeting WHO air pollution guidelines, a report Tuesday found

BENGALURU, India (AP) — Most of the world has dirty air, with just 17% of cities globally meeting air pollution guidelines, a report Tuesday found. Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir analyzed data from 40,000 air quality monitoring stations in 138 countries and found that Chad, Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India had the dirtiest air. India had six of the nine most polluted cities with the industrial town of Byrnihat in northeastern India the worst.Experts said the real amount of air pollution might be far greater as many parts of the world lack the monitoring needed for more accurate data. In Africa, for example, there is only one monitoring station for every 3.7 million people. More air quality monitors are being set up to counter the issue, the report said. This year, report authors were able to incorporate data from 8,954 new locations and around a thousand new monitors as a result of efforts to better monitor air pollution. But last week, data monitoring for air pollution was dealt a blow when the U.S. State Department announced it would no longer make public its data from its embassies and consulates around the world.Breathing in polluted air over a long period of time can cause respiratory illness, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, said Fatimah Ahamad, chief scientist and air pollution expert at Malaysia-based Sunway Centre for Planetary Health. The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills around 7 million people each year. Ahamad said much more needs to be done to cut air pollution levels. The WHO had earlier found that 99% of the world’s population lives in places that do not meet recommended air quality levels.“If you have bad water, no water, you can tell people to wait for half an hour a day, the water will come. But if you have bad air, you cannot tell people to pause breathing,” she said.Several cities like Beijing, Seoul, South Korea, and Rybnik in Poland have successfully improved their air quality through stricter regulations on pollution from vehicles, power plants and industry. They've also promoted cleaner energy and invested in public transportation.Another notable effort to curb severe air pollution was the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreement on transboundary haze pollution. Even though its had limited success so far, ten countries in the region pledged to work together to monitor and curb pollution from large forest fires, a common occurrence in the region during dry seasons.Shweta Narayan, a campaign lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said many of the regions witnessing the worst air pollution are also places where planet-heating gases are released extensively through the burning of coal, oil and gas. Slashing planet-warming emissions to slow the heating up of the planet can also improve air quality, she said.Air pollution and climate crisis “are two sides of the same coin,” she said. ___The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Only seven countries worldwide meet WHO dirty air guidelines, study shows

Annual survey by IQAir based on toxic PM2.5 particles reveals some progress in pollution levels in India and ChinaNearly every country on Earth has dirtier air than doctors recommend breathing, a report has found.Only seven countries met the World Health Organization’s guidelines for tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 last year, according to analysis from the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir. Continue reading...

Nearly every country on Earth has dirtier air than doctors recommend breathing, a report has found.Only seven countries met the World Health Organization’s guidelines for tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 last year, according to analysis from the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.Australia, New Zealand and Estonia were among the handful of countries with a yearly average of no more than 5µg of PM2.5 per cubic metre, along with Greenland and some small island states.The most polluted countries were Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and India. PM2.5 levels in all five countries were at least 10 times higher than guideline limits in 2024, the report found, stretching as much as 18 times higher than recommended levels in Chad.Doctors say there are no safe levels of PM2.5, which is small enough to slip into the bloodstream and damage organs throughout the body, but have estimated millions of lives could be saved each year by following their guidelines. Dirty air is the second-biggest risk factor for dying after high blood pressure.“Air pollution doesn’t kill us immediately – it takes maybe two to three decades before we see the impacts on health, unless it’s very extreme,” said Frank Hammes, CEO of IQAir. “[Avoiding it] is one of those preventative things people don’t think about till too late in their lives.”The annual report, which is in its seventh year, highlighted some areas of progress. It found the share of cities meeting the PM2.5 standards rose from 9% in 2023 to 17% in 2024.Air pollution in India, which is home to six of the 10 dirtiest cities in the world, fell by 7% between 2023 and 2024. China’s air quality also improved, part of a long-running trend that saw the country’s extreme PM2.5 pollution fall by almost half between 2013 and 2020.The air quality in Beijing is now almost the same as in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The latter was the most polluted city in Europe for the second year running, the report found.Zorana Jovanovic Andersen, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in the report, said the results highlighted some chilling facts about air pollution.“Huge disparities are seen even within one of the cleanest continents,” she said. “Citizens of eastern European and non-EU Balkan countries breathe the most polluted air in Europe, and there is a 20-fold difference in PM2.5 levels between the most and least polluted cities.”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionGovernments could clean their air with policies such as funding renewable energy projects and public transport; building infrastructure to encourage walking and cycling; and banning people from burning farm waste.To create the ranking, the researchers averaged real-time data on air pollution, measured at ground level, over the course of the calendar year. About one-third of the units were run by governments and two-thirds by non-profits, schools and universities, and private citizens with sensors.Air quality monitoring is worse in parts of Africa and west Asia, where several countries were excluded from the analysis. Poor countries tend to have dirtier air than rich ones but often lack measuring stations to inform their citizens or spur policy changes.Roel Vermeulen, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University, who was not involved in the report, said biases were most likely in data-poor areas with few regulated monitoring stations – particularly as satellite measurements were not used for the analysis – but that the values presented for Europe were in line with previous research.“Virtually everyone globally is breathing bad air,” he said. “What brings it home is that there are such large disparities in the levels of exposure.”

Lawmakers Urge Trump Administration to Cancel Owl-Killing Plan, Say It Would Cost Too Much

A bipartisan group of lawmakers urge the Trump administration to scrap plans to kill more than 450,000 invasive barred owls in West Coast forests in coming decades

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday urged the Trump administration to scrap plans to kill more than 450,000 invasive barred owls in West Coast forests as part of efforts to stop the birds from crowding out a smaller type of owl that's facing potential extinction.The 19 lawmakers — led by Republican Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas conservative, and Democrat Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California liberal — claimed the killings would be “grossly expensive” and cost $3,000 per bird. They questioned if the shootings would help native populations of northern spotted owls, which have long been controversial because of logging restrictions in the birds' forest habitat beginning in the 1990s, and the closely related California spotted owl. Barred owls are native to eastern North America and started appearing in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. They’ve quickly displaced many spotted owls, which are smaller birds that need larger territories to breed.An estimated 100,000 barred owls now live within a range that contains only about 7,100 spotted owls, according to federal officials.Under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year, trained shooters would target barred owls over 30 years across a maximum of about 23,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) in California, Oregon and Washington. The plan did not include a cost estimate. But the lawmakers said in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that it could top $1.3 billion based on extrapolating costs from a grant awarded to the the Hoopa Valley Native American Tribe in California to kill up to 1,500 barred owls.“This is an inappropriate and inefficient use of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” the lawmakers wrote. "This latest plan is an example of our federal government attempting to supersede nature and control environmental outcomes at great cost.”A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about the cost estimate and the owl removal program. The agency's plan called for more than 2,400 barred owls to be removed this year and for that number to ramp up to more than 15,500 birds annually beginning in 2027.Scientists for years have been shooting barred owls on an experimental basis and officials say the results show the strategy could halt spotted owl declines. As of last year, about 4,500 barred owls were killed on the West Coast by researchers since 2009.Killing one bird species to save others has divided wildlife advocates and is reminiscent of past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants. Or when, to preserve warblers, cowbirds that lay eggs in warbler nests were killed. The barred owl removals would be among the largest such effort to date involving birds of prey, researchers and wildlife advocates said.Barred owls arrived in the Pacific Northwest via the Great Plains, where trees planted by settlers gave them a foothold, or via Canada’s boreal forests, which have become warmer and more hospitable as the climate changes, researchers said.Their spread has undermined decades of spotted owl restoration efforts that previously focused on protecting forests where they live. That included logging restrictions under former President Bill Clinton that ignited bitter political fights and temporarily helped slow the spotted owl’s decline.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Long Island Wildfires Began With Backyard S’mores, Police Say

The wildfires began accidentally when someone in Suffolk County tried to light a fire to make s’mores, officials said. They were fully contained by Monday.

The wildfires that broke out on Long Island Saturday afternoon and spread over hundreds of acres appeared to be accidental, caused by a failed attempt to make s’mores in a backyard, local officials said on Monday.The preliminary determination came after detectives with the Suffolk County Police Department conducted an investigation into the cause of the fires, interviewing 911 callers and using drones and helicopters to determine whether arson had played a role.What started as a backyard fire in Manorville, near Sunrise Highway on Long Island’s South Shore, became several blazes as strong winds contributed to the embers’ spread, officials said at a news conference on Monday. The fires were under control by Sunday morning and were 100 percent contained on Monday, said Amanda Lefton, the acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.Kevin Catalina, the Suffolk County police commissioner, said that around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, a person in Manorville was trying to make s’mores but was initially unable to light a fire because of the wind. The person used cardboard to light the fire, he said, and soon the backyard area went up in flames.That fire was put out within an hour, the commissioner said, but a few hours later, another fire was reported less than a quarter mile southeast of the initial fire. “The wind was blowing very strongly from the northwest, so that path makes perfect sense,” he said, adding that two additional fires were reported later.“It is believed that the embers from each fire traveled and continuously started more fires,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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