26 May 2020

The threat to biodiversity is no less than posed by climate change – the cuts to UKs conservation budgets over the last decade have fundamentally weakened our ability to restore biodiversity.  The government has allocated £15m in additional funding to Natural England for this financial year after a decade of cuts that have left England’s wildlife agency […]

26 May 2020

EU ‘ BIODIVERSITY – THE NEED FOR URGENT ACTION From the world’s great rainforests to small parks and gardens, from the blue whale to microscopic fungi, biodiversity is the extraordinary variety of life on Earth. We humans are part of, and fully dependent on, this web of life: it gives us the food we eat, […]

26 May 2020

Abstract The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has resulted in global lockdowns, sharply curtailing economic activity. It is a unique experiment with substantial impacts that will form the agenda for research. There are five sets of questions: the short-term impacts on emissions, the natural environment and environmental policy, including regulations and COP26; longer-term consequences from the deployment […]

24 May 2020

As the government guidelines for England changed to allow people to travel, sunbath and take unlimited exercises, and the weather stayed dry and sunny, people flocked to beaches. Southend, Bournmouth and Newquay were some of the places flooded with visitors with many apparently unconcerned about public health issues. The amount of litter dumped near overflowing […]

24 May 2020

Texts previously only shared by the UK negotiators with the EU counterparts are now available on line Click here. They include a draft free-trade agreement, draft fisheries plan, draft energy deal, and draft law enforcement and judicial cooperation proposal. The fisheries framework is mostly a series of headings covering key issues such as annual negotiations […]

24 May 2020

Scientists trawled waters off the coasts of the UK and US and found many more particles using nets with a fine mesh size than when using coarser ones usually used to filter microplastics. The addition of these smaller particles to global estimates of surface microplastics increases the range from between 5tn and 50tn particles to […]

24 May 2020

The EU Biodiversity Strategy ’Bringing nature back into our lives’ is part of the European Green Deal, the roadmap for making the EU’s economy more sustainable. The strategy proposes actions and commitments to halt biodiversity loss in Europe and worldwide by 2030. Click here They include: Establishing a larger EU-wide network of protected areas on […]

24 May 2020

An initiative of 14 serving heads of government to support Sustainable Development Goals for the oceans. The High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy has commissioned a series of ‘Blue Papers’ to explore pressing challenges of the ocean and economy. The aim is to summarise the latest science and state-of-the-art thinking about innovative ocean solutions […]