My mother showed me the importance of Indigenous and Afro-descendant women in protecting the natural world. Yet they continue to face barriers and discrimination in their work
I learned about the importance of women in small communities from my mother. She was a peasant woman – a campesina as we say in Colombia – in the mountains near Cali, where I grew up. She searched the forest for food and cultivated the earth to grow vegetables to feed me and my four siblings. It is women like her that I try to empower with my work supporting the collective rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant women in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In an era of environmental crises, people from such communities have an outsized role in preventing the destruction of nature and slowing the climate crisis. Colombia, where the biodiversity Cop16 was held last week, is home to 10% of all life on Earth, stretching from thick mangrove forest of the Pacific coast to the Amazon rainforest. Many of the communities I work with live alongside this rich nature and have made its survival part of their culture, something increasingly recognised in conservation. This is true from the Arctic Circle to the Indonesian forest. My job is to make sure women in these places receive practical support and a fair share of growing financial assistance.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/06/2024 - 01:00
11/05/2024 - 21:02
Australian Marine Conservation Society says Safcol’s No Net Tuna is only entirely ‘green’ product on a red, amber or green scale
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Environmentalists have given the green tick to just one brand of canned tuna as industry heavyweights threaten dwindling fishing populations and other marine life.
For the first time, the Australian Marine Conservation Society has evaluated the nation’s most popular tuna brands and classed them as green, amber or red based on their sustainability credentials.
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11/05/2024 - 18:19
Unexpected appearance sparks rush to catch animal in a trash can as it hides at check-in and dangles from wires
Passengers awaiting an early morning flight at New York’s LaGuardia airport were surprised by the sudden arrival of an unexpected extra flyer: a raccoon who fell through a terminal ceiling and proceeded to cause mayhem at a departure gate.
Video of the animal’s abrupt appearance at a Spirit Airlines gate inside the airport’s Marine air terminal, and almost comical efforts to capture it in a giant transparent trash can, was posted to social media by an observer.
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11/05/2024 - 17:51
Weather warnings across multiple states on Wednesday as Dirranbandi residents told to evacuate
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A heat warning is in place for large parts of Queensland on Wednesday with temperatures hitting 40C in parts of the state.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued a heatwave warning for much of the state, forecasting severe conditions around north-west and inland areas.
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11/05/2024 - 14:30
More than 150 million people and 318m acres of crops are affected by droughts after summer of record heat
Every US state except Alaska and Kentucky is facing drought, an unprecedented number, according to the US Drought Monitor.
A little more than 45% of the US and Puerto Rico is in drought this week, according to the tracker. About 54% of land in the 48 contiguous US states is affected by droughts.
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11/05/2024 - 13:39
As a new report makes clear, the timetable is dauntingly tight. But the potential rewards on offer are huge
One of Labour’s first acts in government was to lift the de facto ban on new onshore windfarms introduced by the Conservatives in 2016, which closed off one of the key pathways to clean, cheap energy by the 2030s. This week, progress was resumed as plans were outlined for what would be the most productive onshore windfarm in England. According to developers, the Scout Moor scheme in Greater Manchester could meet 10% of the region’s energy needs by the end of the decade.
As a major new report published on Tuesday makes clear, if Labour’s mission of a clean electricity system by 2030 is to be met, an avalanche of such projects will be required. The publicly owned National Energy System Operator (Neso) estimates that a doubling of onshore wind capacity will be necessary, along with a still bigger expansion of offshore wind and a tripling of solar power. When this is all considered alongside the need to transform the country’s power and transmission networks at an unprecedented pace, the daunting scale of the task becomes clear. Crucially, though, Neso’s analysis finds that the 2030 date is achievable if, to put it non-technically, the government, the energy industry and regulators truly go for it.
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11/05/2024 - 09:07
Carmakers sell 29,800 electric cars in October as diesel models drop by a fifth and petrol cars by 14%
Sales of electric cars in the UK grew in October despite overall demand for vehicles shrinking as manufacturers raced to meet government targets.
Carmakers sold 29,800 electric cars during the month, up by a quarter compared with the same month last year, according to data published on Tuesday by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group.
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11/05/2024 - 07:55
Christian Åslund was shocked at the difference between what he saw in 2002 and what confronted him this summer
Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared.
Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard were melting due to global heating. The difference in ice density in those pictures, taken almost a century apart, was staggering.
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11/05/2024 - 05:53
Collaboration between RSPB and Chester zoo leads to best mating season on record for the semi-aquatic fen raft spider
Thousands of giant spiders that can grow to the size of a human hand are thriving in the UK, thanks to a successful breeding programme from Chester zoo.
The fen raft spider is a harmless arachnid that plays a vital role in aquatic ecosystems, but 15 years ago was on the brink of extinction because of habitat loss.
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11/05/2024 - 04:30
Expert analysis backs our policy and its benefits for the country. Defeatist critics should take note
Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zero
Labour fought and won the last election on the argument that every family and business in the country was paying the price of the previous government’s failure to deliver clean, homegrown energy for Britain.
Families and businesses know from the cost of living crisis that our dependence on fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators such as Vladimir Putin left the UK vulnerable and exposed to energy price spikes, as well as the escalating costs of climate breakdown. We also know that the drive to clean energy represents the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. That is why the prime minister has put delivering clean power by 2030 at the heart of one of his five missions for government.
Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zero
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