Climate

Coffee once drove the economy but war, migration, climate and disease crippled the industry. Now, a new generation with women at the fore is focusing on quality as the answer

The new highway has taken chunks out of Ines Ortiz’s coffee farm but the land lost to the Los Chorros Megaproject, El Salvador’s largest-ever infrastructure scheme, is only the latest crisis faced by growers in Central America’s smallest country, who have survived deforestation, civil war, climate change, falling prices for their beans, and infestations of rust disease in recent decades.

A former head of natural resources at the agriculture ministry, Ortiz, 72, still cannot believe what she sees on her farm of shade-grown coffee plants in the hills spreading from the San Salvador volcano. The farmed forest lost to the $410m ($300m) highway graphically illustrate how the government’s construction boom and deforestation have hit the coffee industry.

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Under pressure to control housing costs, Republican lawmakers rejected standards meant to protect against disasters, experts say.

El objetivo del Tropical Forests Forever Facility es pagar a los países con bajos índices de deforestación 4 dólares por cada hectárea de selva en pie que pueda identificarse mediante imágenes satelitales cada año.

Brazil is proposing a fund that would pay countries to protect tropical forests that are crucial to curbing climate change. It would generate returns, too.

Farmers in the heartland are restoring swaths of the prairie with government help. The aim is to reduce nutrient runoff from cropland, and help birds and bees.

Forests around world being changed from carbon sinks into carbon sources, making it harder to slow global heating

Wildfires are burning through the carbon budget that humans have allocated themselves to limit global heating, a study shows.

The authors said this accelerating trend was approaching – and may have already breached – a “critical temperature threshold” after which fires cause significant shifts in tree cover and carbon storage.

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Devotees of agroecology tell the Guardian about their rejection of chemicals and fertilisers to create diverse and thriving crops

From degraded fields being brought back to fertile life to community gardens flourishing as food co-operatives, a growing revolution is happening in countries across the African continent.

The climate crisis, conflict and the dominance of multinationals with industrial-scale production for export have popularised the concept of agroecology – promoting small-scale farming and farmers, protecting biodiversity and adapting traditional methods that do away with the need for chemicals and expensive fertilisers.

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Credibility ‘damaged’ by proposed 12-month delay, which followed lobbying from governments and firms around the world

A former top environment official has said the EU’s credibility on its climate commitments has been damaged by plans for a one-year delay to a law to combat deforestation that followed intense lobbying from companies and governments around the world.

Virginijus Sinkevičius, a Lithuanian MEP who was the environment commissioner until mid-July, said postponing the deforestation regulation would be “a step backward in the fight against climate change”.

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Experts are calling for ‘rapid rescue package’ for nature to improve condition of protected sites

The amount of land that is protected for nature in England has fallen to just 2.93%, despite government promises to conserve 30% of it by 2030, new data reveals.

Campaigners are calling for a “rapid rescue package for UK nature”, as government delegates head to Cop16, the international nature summit, which will take place from 21 October in Colombia. They intend to ask other countries to stick to ambitious nature targets.

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As storms intensify, so do the legal clashes with insurers, aid agencies and others over compensation, rebuilding and even scams.

The automaker reported a gain of 6.4 percent for the latest quarter, its first such increase this year.

Tim Walz said climate change is real, but boasted about high U.S. levels of oil and gas production. JD Vance called climate change “weird science.”

In response to concerns over climate change and plummeting biodiversity, a shift is afoot in the city’s parks. Manicured is out; rugged is in.

Extreme climate was supposed to shock us into action. What happened?

Event will push for greater transparency and aims to rank AI firms in terms of ability to meet climate goals

World leaders at the next AI summit will focus on the impact on the environment and jobs, including the possibility of ranking the greenest AI companies, it has been announced.

Rating artificial intelligence companies in terms of their ecological impact is among the proposals under consideration, while other areas being looked at include the effect on the labour market, giving all countries access to the technology, and bringing more states under the wing of global AI governance initiatives.

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Proponents say using hallucinogens can spark ‘consciousness shifts’ to inspire climate-friendly behaviors

Thousands gathered for New York City’s annual Climate Week last week to promote climate solutions, from the phaseout of fossil-fuel subsidies to nuclear energy to corporate-led schemes like carbon credits. Others touted a more offbeat potential salve to the crisis: psychedelics.

Under the banner of Psychedelic Climate Week, a group of academics, marketers and advocates gathered for a film on pairing magic mushrooms with music, a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on “Balancing Investing & Impact with Climate & Psychedelic Capital”.

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The emissions impact is obvious but with full employment in construction, approving three mine extensions is saying you want workers there rather than building homes

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When the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, approved three new coalmine expansions last week, she not only failed abjectly to act on climate change, but by diverting scarce workers from constructing homes to expanding fossil-fuel projects, she also made it harder for the government to improve housing affordability through its aim of building 1.2m new homes in five years.

Last week Plibersek posted photos of her releasing a cute little bilby into a wild training zone. Oddly there was no such cute photo, nor mention on her list of “some of the things I’m most proud of”, of her approving those three coalmine expansions, which will generate about 1.3bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetime.

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Research on hundreds of tropical storms finds that mortality keeps rising for more than a decade afterward, for reasons you might not expect.

Bill to formalise state net zero target for 2050 left off list of legislative goals ahead of March election

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The Western Australian Labor government has been accused of shelving plans to introduce climate change laws before a state election next March after it left the bill off a list of legislation it hopes to pass.

The absence of the climate bill – from the list of 14 legislative priorities circulated with the Liberal party and crossbench MPs – reignited claims that WA Labor is in thrall to the gas industry and failing to address the climate crisis.

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The exodus of the young means high-risk towns could enter a population death spiral.