A ten week Call of Evidence was launched by the UK Government on Friday, to gather knowledge on safeguarding nature in the UK Overseas Territories. Many of the Overseas Territories are globally significant in their ecological richness, containing over 90% of UK’s marine and terrestrial nature. They are hotspots for biodiversity with an estimated 3,300 endemic species, but they are also highly vulnerable to environmental change.
Eight former Brazilian environment ministers blasted new right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and his administration in a letter on Wednesday, saying it is dismantling the country's environmental protections.
US objections to the wording on climate change prevented Arctic nations signing a joint statement at a summit in Finland, delegates said. It is the first time such a statement has been cancelled since the Arctic Council was set up in 1996.
Human activities have put as many as one million other species at risk of extinction, according to the first comprehensive United Nations report on global biodiversity. The report, a summary of which was released on Monday, emphasizes humanity’s devastating impact on the natural world, which is accelerating extinctions at an unprecedented rate in human history.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has declared a “climate emergency” in her speech to the SNP conference. The SNP leader told delegates in Edinburgh she was inspired after meeting young climate campaigners who had gone on strike from school.
Thousands of emperor penguin chicks drowned when the sea-ice on which they were being raised was destroyed in severe weather. The catastrophe occurred in 2016 in Antarctica's Weddell Sea. Scientists say the colony at the edge of the Brunt Ice Shelf has collapsed with adult birds showing no sign of trying to re-establish the population.
Some of London's busiest streets re-opened Monday for the first time in a week as climate change protesters regrouped and plotted a new course after police made more than 1,000 arrests. The so-called Extinction Rebellion took over the heart of the British capital in a bid to focus global attention on rising temperatures and sea levels caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
It has been the hottest Easter Monday on record in all four nations of the UK, the Met Office has said. England reached the highest temperature with 25C (77F) recorded at Heathrow, Northolt and Wisley.
On April 22, 1970, millions of people took to the streets to protest the negative impacts of 150 years of industrial development.
“In nature, nothing exists alone.” — Rachel Carson, 1962<br />
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Nature’s gifts to our planet are the millions of species that we know and love, and many more that remain to be discovered. Unfortunately, human beings have irrevocably upset the balance of nature and, as a result, the world is facing the greatest rate of extinction since we lost the dinosaurs more than 60 million years ago. But unlike the fate of the dinosaurs, the rapid extinction of species in our world today is the result of human activity.