Jamie Carpenter

The government has named the UK’s first global envoy for nature, who will be tasked with supporting ministers to raise global ambition on nature recovery, as a major international biodiversity summit gets underway in Colombia.

Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has pledged to scrap carbon budgets if he makes it to Number 10, promising to sweep away the Climate Change Act and other major pieces of Blair and Brown-era legislation under a “Great Reform Act”.

Legislation to ban the sale of single-use vapes from 1 June 2025 has been laid in Parliament, DEFRA has announced, in a move described by ministers as the “first step on the road to a circular economy”.

Last year was among the five worst years for wildfires in Europe, according to a European Commission report. More than 500,000 hectares of land were burned, an area half the size of Cyprus, the report states, with 41% of the total burnt area in the EU affecting the Natura 2000 network, essential for biodiversity.

EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra has welcomed the accord struck at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, saying it is the “start of a new era for climate finance” – but campaigners warn the deal falls far short of what is needed and have blasted the EU for showing a “troubling” lack of action and ambition.

EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra has welcomed the accord struck at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, saying it is the “start of a new era for climate finance” – but campaigners warn the deal falls far short of what is needed and have blasted the EU for showing a “troubling” lack of action and ambition.

Official statistics published this week show that the number of bathing waters in England classified as ‘poor’ has more than doubled.

Exposure to air pollution is leading to tens of thousands of premature deaths in the European Union and resulting in crop damage, reduced yields and economic losses, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said as new EU air quality rules entered into force this week.

The government has announced plans to develop new legislation to strengthen the mandate of national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) – recently rebranded as ‘National Landscapes’ – to recover nature.

Nearly 40 sites have now been added to the official register of information about off-site gains delivered under the biodiversity net gain (BNG) mechanism, according to the nature minister.