Guardian Environment News

Move comes after Trump administration announced restrictions that could slash water supplies

Arizona has joined Nevada in its legal battle against the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to their shares of the shrinking Colorado River.

The move comes after the interior department announced restrictions this summer that could slash the water supplied to lower basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – over the next two years depending on the river’s condition.

Exclusive: Research confirms official advice about high-risk properties and warns worsening conditions will make more homes unsafe

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Almost every home destroyed in New South Wales during the black summer bushfires of 2019-20 was inside the 100 metre buffer zone used to identify properties most at risk, new research has found.

The findings are an endorsement of the risk maps used by authorities, but the research warns that as global heating generates ever-worsening fire conditions, firefighters may have to extend the recommended distances between homes and vegetation to keep properties safe.

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As Mark Cocker approaches a landmark for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper, he is still inspired by powerful encounters with nature

In the autumn of 1987, Mark Cocker sat in a field near Norwich and watched a jay burying acorns for the long winter ahead. He described the scene in his first country diary for the Guardian. Thirty-nine years on, some of those jay-planted acorns will be mature oaks now, and Cocker is completing his 1,000th diary for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper.

In his next diary, he will reflect on the changing birdlife around Flint Clough, in the Peak District, where he first marvelled at rare birds aged 12 after devouring bird books in his bedroom. As a boy, he would find cuckoo, golden plover, ring ouzel and twite, a once-common bird which is now virtually extinct in England.

Environmental watchdog Mighty Earth reveals two-year effort to postpone and weaken EU Deforestation Regulation

US corporate lobbyists launched a two-year “blitz” to postpone and weaken the world’s most progressive legislation to protect forests, according to a new investigation by the environmental watchdog Mighty Earth.

Major US firms and trade associations, including Cargill, Bunge, Mondelēz and the US Soybean Export Council, as well as numerous other US firms and organizations, sought to influence the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in more than 350 meetings, the advocacy group found.

As a surge in beekeepers has led to increased numbers of honeybees, researchers record them pushing bumblebees and other rival species away from flowers

Honeybees are outcompeting wild pollinators for resources by aggressively bumping into them and chasing them away from flowers, research has shown.

The study, by researchers from Anglia Ruskin University, found that areas where there were higher concentrations of honeybees had fewer wild pollinators, such as bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies.

Data shows 2026 could be worst harvest on record, as growers suggest painting faces on vegetables instead of carving

In the lead-up to Halloween, front porches across the country feature fat, proudly carved pumpkins, lit from within by tea lights.

But this year there is likely to be a shortage due to drought, experts have warned, with the squashes much smaller than usual.

Chancellor says government will study responses to public consultation, with airports being ‘big part of jobs and growth’

John Healey has said there is a pro-growth case for going ahead with a third runway at Heathrow despite the prime minister declining to back it.

Healey’s predecessor as chancellor, Rachel Reeves, put approval of the long-planned runway at the heart of her “growth speech” last year, saying it would “make Britain the world’s best-connected place to do business”.

Forest clearance at smallest total since records began in 1988 in success for Lula ahead of presidential run-off

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began, new government data shows.

But whether this globally important success is maintained or reversed is on a knife edge ahead of a presidential election run-off on 25 October between two candidates with sharply different visions for the future of the rainforest and how that affects relations with the US under Donald Trump.

Polls show that Democrats and Republicans in battleground states want to hear more from candidates about the climate crisis

Most Americans feel unease or alarm about the climate crisis and, in both red and blue states, want to know how political leaders are going to fix it. But in midterm election campaigns across the US, candidates have responded to this desire with near silence.

People in the US have this year endured a record hot summer as well as soaring costs, equating to roughly $2,000 per household, in extra energy and mortgage payments, due to the country’s dependence on a fossil fuel supply scrambled by Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

Low-interest loans kept many eateries afloat. But the industry never recovered enough for them to repay the debt

For almost 20 years, Jai Mazumdar has served vegetarian curries, samosas, gulab jamun and other Indian delicacies at Spice N Curry, a cafe and grocery nestled inside a modest strip mall near Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. When the Covid-19 pandemic devastated his business, as it did with so many restaurants, Mazumdar took out a $370,000 economic injury disaster loan (EIDL) from the federal government in early 2021.

At the time, it provided a desperately needed lifeline. He was confident that once business returned to normal he could begin repaying the 30-year loan, which came with a low 3.75% interest rate and a 30-month deferment period. But when his business didn’t recover, the disaster loan turned out to be a disaster of its own.

Landslide blocks river and triggers downstream flooding, while summer temperatures persist in Portugal

Flash floods have swept through Nepal’s central Gorkha district after a pre-dawn landslide on 11 October blocked the Budhi Gandaki River, triggering severe downstream flooding. Two villages in the worst-affected Chumanubri rural municipality were reportedly destroyed, with homes, roads and bridges washed away. Part of a hydropower station was also damaged.

After river levels surged from 2 metres to nearly 8.5 metres within hours, the national disaster risk reduction and management authority reported that 204 homes were damaged, and more than 650 people had been affected. More than 100 foreign trekkers were stranded in the popular hiking region. The floods come just two months after catastrophic flooding and landslides devastated parts of the country on the border with Tibet, leaving thousands dead or missing.

Iguazu Falls, an Unesco world heritage site, has reached a record water flow after heavy rains across the river basin. El Niño weather patterns are said to have driven the water flow to hit 10 times the normal amount. Usually the water flow is 1.5m litres per second, but local government registered a flow of 15m litres of water per second.

• Argentina temporarily closes Iguazu Falls after El Niño-fuelled surge in water levels

Mines in supply chains of western carmakers linked to widespread deforestation of primary rainforest in nickel-rich lands inhabited by Tolaki people in Indonesia

Volkswagen, Ford and Tesla are among the electric carmakers whose batteries may contain nickel mined in indigenous woodlands plagued by deforestation, an analysis has found, highlighting the struggle to make vehicles that are free from environmental destruction.

Corporate disclosures and trade flows from the last two years show mines in the battery supply chains of automotive giants are linked to the loss of trees in Sulawesi, a wildlife hotspot in Indonesia that houses the world’s largest nickel deposits. The metal is widely used in cathodes in car batteries because it boosts energy density and increases range.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Some reservoirs in south at critical levels as water companies call for extended restrictions that would affect golf clubs, private schools and car washes

A severe drought has been declared in six areas of England, with some reservoirs at critically low levels, threatening public supplies.

Parts of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex and West Sussex have moved into severe drought, and urgent measures are being taken to secure public supplies of water after the UK experienced its hottest summer on record.

While anglers cannot take endangered sand tiger sharks, a loophole lets private firms catch the fish to sell abroad, profiting from Delaware Bay’s conservation success

Shortly after 12.45pm, what remains of a 300-metre line goes taut. Somewhere beneath the murky green surface of Delaware Bay, on the eastern US coast, a sand tiger shark has taken the bait of a mackerel chunk. Marine researchers at the University of Delaware haul the line towards a small boat as the shark’s grey-brown outline emerges.

It is a large animal: 225cm (7ft) long with a 90cm girth. Its mouth hangs open, revealing rows of jagged teeth. The researchers work quickly, measuring the shark, recording its sex, and taking blood and muscle samples. A tag is then fastened beneath its dorsal fin, through its thick sandpapery skin.

Environmentalists of all political hues must find the language and ideas that turn passion for climate action into impetus

The future of Green politics is under constant discussion after the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, but a much heavier clash – in meaning, symbolism and portent – happened earlier this summer, in King’s Lynn and West Norfolk. The council declared a climate emergency in 2021, along with hundreds of others, and while it was under Conservative control. It is now controlled by independents, and a Reform UK councillor, Austen Moore, moved to scrap the declaration.

It was the end of June, and the meeting had to be called off, because of the extreme heat in the King’s Lynn council chamber. A lot of people paused to grimly remark on that irony, but not Moore, who simply rescheduled the motion for the following week, where it was voted down (by 33 to seven). A local scientist and member of Extinction Rebellion liveblogged that debate, adding helpful maps, such as how much of the county was already below the annual flood level – most of it, including King’s Lynn itself. If this all sounds like a cheerful take home, numerous other Reform-led councils have had the same debate and Reform has prevailed. Their arguments can be terrifyingly illiterate. In Kent, councillor Linden Kemkaran asserted that climate change is fine because the world was warmer in Roman times, and as “carbon dioxide … is a trace gas essential for life on Earth”, to try to cut carbon emissions would itself be dangerous.

The Guardian’s climate forum 2026: On Tuesday 20 October, join Zoe Williams and our panel of experts – including professor Andrew Haines, Katie White MP, Asad Rehman, Shruti Suresh, Gareth Thomas and Amy Fairman – for a hopeful and solutions-focused evening. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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Government says ambition for 2036 will be good for food and climate resilience, but concerns remain over funding

The government has set an ambition to increase the share of English land farmed organically to 10% by 2036, but concerns remain over how the transition will be funded.

Currently, just 3.4% of England’s agricultural land is farmed organically, one of the smallest shares in Europe. France, for example, farms 10.4% of its land organically, and aims to increase this to 18% by 2027.

Peak of French mountain now 4,807 metres high and fluctuates year by year due to changes in Alpine climate

Western Europe’s highest mountain shrank by more than a metre last year. The peak of Mont Blanc in France now stands 4,807.47 metres above sea level, a team of surveyors said on Wednesday, putting “the roof of Europe” 1.29 metres lower than in 2025.

The mountain is about 4,792 metres tall but the summit constantly shifts as heat, wind and precipitation change the thickness of snow and ice on top. The height scientists recorded during an expedition last month was 1.88 metres greater than it was in 2023, when it reached the lowest levels in recent memory.

The emissions might occur elsewhere, but they generate global harm that scientists can now quantify

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The Coalition has come up with the perfect solution to deal with the climate pollution from when Australian fossil fuels are burned overseas.

We should either just pretend they don’t exist, or ignore the reason why people are concerned about them, even if those people include a majority of high court judges or the international court of justice.

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