Breaking Waves: Ocean News

11/21/2024 - 02:00
Former climate minister for Canada reacts after Saudi delegation said it ‘will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels’ My colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text. Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that the summit can be finished by 6pm tomorrow. Continue reading...
11/21/2024 - 02:00
On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada, researchers at the frontier of climate change are seeing its rich ecology slide into the sea as melting permafrost ice leaves little behind Last summer, the western Arctic was uncomfortably hot. Smoke from Canada’s wildfires hung thick in the air, and swarms of mosquitoes searched for exposed skin. It was a maddening combination that left researchers on Qikiqtaruk, an island off the north coast of the Yukon, desperate for relief. And so on a late July afternoon, a team of Canadian scientists dived into the Beaufort Sea, bobbing and splashing in a sheltered bay for nearly two hours. Later, as they lay sprawled on a beach, huge chunks of the island they were studying slid into the ocean. Continue reading...
11/21/2024 - 01:00
Exclusive: Trail would help region with few areas where people can walk in countryside, report says A new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature. A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications. Continue reading...
11/21/2024 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 21 November 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00092-4 Effects of stock rebuilding – A computable general equilibrium analysis for a mackerel fishery in Korea
11/20/2024 - 20:04
Powerful storm is predicted to be strongest region has seen this season, causing ‘life-threatening’ conditions A set of powerful storms that could rank among the strongest in decades will slam British Columbia, the pacific north-west, and northern California this week, with torrents of rain, inches of snow in high altitudes and damaging winds. The region is bracing for widespread power outages and flash flooding, with extreme rainfall that could linger until the weekend. After a relatively mild autumn, these rains are part of a familiar pattern caused by atmospheric rivers – strong storm systems that can bring both relief and ruin. Continue reading...
11/20/2024 - 19:30
The tropical coastlines of Southeast Asia are home to some of the most important and biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet. But as well as being essential to communities along these coastlines, fishing and tourism were found -- in new research conducted by an international study team -- to be among the most damaging from an environmental perspective.
11/20/2024 - 13:14
As Cop29 in Azerbaijan reaches final stages, countries try to shore up support for conference where question of limiting global heating will be key Australia is locked in a standoff with Turkey over which will host vital UN climate talks in 2026, where the question of whether the world can limit global heating in line with scientific advice is likely to be decided. Australia’s government wants to host the summit in partnership with Pacific nations, which are among the countries most threatened by climate breakdown. Continue reading...
11/20/2024 - 12:41
Ukraine's environmental protection minister, Svitlana Grynchuk, and the Palestinian chair for the environmental quality authority, Nisreen Tamimi, raised the alarm on the ecological impact of war in their countries and beyond. Grynchuk said Russia's 'unlawful reporting' of its carbon emissions on Ukrainian territory was undermining the integrity of the Paris agreement. Tamimi said the rebuilding effort in Gaza would release an estimated 30m tonnes of carbon dioxide Cop29 live: campaigners say talks are ‘reaching point of real emotion’ Continue reading...
11/20/2024 - 12:06
Communities on Paraná River fear privatisation of waterway operations will destroy way of life River communities in Argentina fear that Javier Milei’s plans to privatise operations on a key shipping route could lead to environmental damage and destroy their way of life. Since taking office almost a year ago, the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president has pledged to privatise a number of the state’s assets. The latest is the Paraguay-Paraná waterway – a shipping route of strategic importance for Argentina and its neighbours. Continue reading...
11/20/2024 - 10:00
OECD complaint alleges top firm has increased investments in companies implicated in environmental devastation BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, faces a complaint at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for allegedly contributing to environmental and human rights abuses around the world through its investments in agribusiness. Friends of the Earth US and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil accuse BlackRock of increasing investments in companies that have been implicated in the devastation of the Amazon and other major forests despite warnings that this is destabilising the global climate, damaging ecosystems and violating the rights of traditional communities. Continue reading...