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As São Paulo faces a climate-induced water crisis, campaigners are fighting to reverse the impact of pollution and illegal deforestation on its largest reservoir

In a small motorboat laden with water-monitoring equipment, biologist Marta Marcondes and community activist Wesley Silvestre Rosa cross Billings reservoir on the far southern edge of São Paulo. Bright white herons glide over the water, which is flanked by thick dark green clusters of Brazil’s Atlantic forest, as the boat heads towards one of the more polluted parts of the reservoir.

“We see where sewage is entering, we see what has been deforested and how that has affected the water quality of the reservoir,” Marcondes says.

As recent conflicts expose vulnerability of fertiliser markets and its effect on food security, VunaNexus offers an alternative

When staff answer the call of nature at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in Paris, their urine is not simply flushed away – it is turned into something much more useful. While urine-diverting toilets are often associated with smelly festival loos, there is nothing bohemian about recycling nutrients from human pee, said David de Chambrier, the chief executive of VunaNexus.

The process isn’t so different from recovering minerals in used electronics.

Exclusive: New loopholes for developers will exacerbate extreme disparities across country, charity coalition warns

The poorest and most nature-deprived communities in England will be further left behind in their access to green spaces if proposed changes to planning laws go ahead, a report finds.

More than 7.4 million people in England live in areas completely devoid of immediate biodiversity, including 1.4 million children under 15, the report commissioned by a number of wildlife and environmental NGOs says.

Electric shock is one of the biggest causes of death among wildlife in the country but a court ruling is a first step to making power lines safe

Peque, a small black howler monkey, scratches her head as she sits on a thick wooden branch in a wired enclosure with seven other orphaned baby howler monkeys at a rescue centre in Nosara, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

Last year, Peque was one of more than 100 animals to arrive at International Animal Rescue Costa Rica (IARCR) as a result of electrocution on power lines, which primates such as monkeys frequently mistake for trees and vines.

Protests in Albania over a proposed luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to intensify after opponents rejected an offer from the country’s prime minister 'to discuss solutions'. Footage showed police firing water cannon at protesters as thousands of people took to the streets of Tirana for a third day on Wednesday, some of them holding inflatable flamingos to symbolise the environmental damage they fear the project could cause, amid growing calls for it to be blocked. In January, Ivanka Trump made a surprise visit to Albania with a team of architects, touring the site earmarked for development by her husband’s investment firm, Affinity Partners. The resort is planned for an area that includes the uninhabited outcrop of Sazan, Albania’s largest island, as well as wetlands and coastal habitats within the surrounding marine national park

• Protests in Albania grow over Jared Kushner-backed luxury resort

Global report provides an alternative to climate breakdown, political extremism and economic tensions

• ‘Happiness is not just about GDP’: ambitious plan or utopia?

Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival.

The report by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) aims to be the most comprehensive attempt yet to navigate the polycrisis that is pushing the world toward climate breakdown, political extremism and ever greater economic and social tension.

Our plan is radical – but by transforming how we live on a finite planet, nearly everyone gains

• ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

Imagine a future in which everyone enjoys high levels of wellbeing; where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world in which the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from just 2% today to 30%; a world where we consume enough, but nobody over-consumes. And imagine achieving this on a planet that can comfortably sustain human life without its climate breaking down.

Against the bleak techno-authoritarian futures now being sold to us, a radical new vision for global progress in the 21st century feels urgently needed. The most credible vision is one in which the habitability of the planet is a precondition for human development and equality.

Smartphone data shows how we seek refuge in extreme heat, and why social inequalities leave some vulnerable

Heatwaves are now an increasingly expected part of summer for many. But how people stay cool varies from place to place. A new study uses mobile phone location data to track where people go when the mercury climbs, and assesses how we need to adapt to live better with the inevitable heatwaves to come.

During the summer of 2025, a 10-day extreme period of heat across Europe led to 2,300 deaths. Globally, governments are implementing heat action plans, but social inequalities mean some people are more vulnerable to heat than others. Researchers used mobile phone location data across seven countries – Brazil, China, France, India, Nigeria, Turkey and the US – to assess how people stayed cool during heatwaves in 2022 and 2023.

In the March quarter Australia’s economy grew 0.3%. But the real issue is what drove that growth

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The March GDP figures, not for the first time, showed that the focus on economic growth seems rather foolish when you place it within the context of the climate crisis. While the economy did grow in the first three months of this year, the big driver was investment in datacentres, which a new report on Wednesday revealed is greatly increasing the risk to the climate and Australia’s environment.

You probably could do worse than say that the March GDP figures suggest Australia’s economic growth will “push up power prices, prolong the use of polluting coal power stations, increase gas generation, and derail the progress we are making towards our climate goals”.

​The first heatwaves of the season reveal how ​ill-prepared governments across the continent are to protect people from increasingly dangerous temperatures

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Meteorological summer has begun, ushered in with scorching heat that struck before spring was up. Although western Europe is now mostly free from last week’s heat dome – which shattered temperature records for May in the UK and Ireland – it is already bracing for yet another sweltering summer. Oppressive days, restless nights and furious fires are brewing. On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organisation warned us all to prepare for the imminent return of the warming weather pattern El Niño.

Scientists have not worked out how many people died during this latest bout of hot weather, but one environmental epidemiologist’s early modelling pegged it at 250 extra deaths in the UK alone on the weekend before temperatures peaked. The full death toll is likely to be particularly high because the heat struck before people had properly adjusted their behaviour to stay safe in the heat.

As summers get hotter, investment and education are vital to ensure we all have access to the clean, safe water we need

A local row about swimmers and swans in Hampstead Heath has now inspired a government reaction. Environment ministers over the weekend wrote to the City of London Corporation, which oversees the heath, to say that they were “deeply concerned” by footage of crowds of people in the water during last week’s heatwave.

One viral video showed young revellers – who had defied a “no swimming” sign – in a wildlife pond, disturbing the nesting birds. It was picked up by the press, with headlines calling the swimmers “selfish”, “horrible” and “appalling”. Like many who saw it, I was saddened and shocked at the disregard for animals: people were clambering over nests, and trying to reach an island specially safeguarded for birds. Yet I also wondered what a polarised, emotive debate is going to achieve when, lurking behind the justified anger, is another question about our access to water.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

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In the Guardian’s Against the tide series, the documentary photographer got to know some ‘amazing’ 16- to 25-year-olds living on the fringes of England and Wales, and now her work is the centre of a new touring exhibition

It was while reading a landmark report about the poor health of people who live on the English coast that documentary photographer Polly Braden had her big idea. “I was just blown away by it,” she says. “I thought: this is about England. And it affects all of us.”

At the same time, as a single mother of teenagers, she had become interested in the lives of young people who had grown up under austerity, lived through a pandemic and were becoming adults during a cost-of-living crisis.

Campaigners say builders’ demolition of nest site highlights weak protection of wildlife from development

A building that was a noted nesting site for swifts, among the UK’s most at-risk birds, has been demolished during the nesting season, highlighting significant weaknesses in the protection of wildlife from development, campaigners say.

Contractors for the housebuilder Hill Group carried out the demolition of Regent House near Dorking station in Surrey over the last few weeks, during the nesting season which runs from 1 March to 31 August.

Understanding whale sounds could help prevent strikes from ships and even aid in search for extraterrestrial life

If you stand on certain shorelines and listen carefully you might just hear deep rumbling noises. Sharp-eared fishers, lighthouse keepers and sea kayakers have been haunted by these late-night sounds for centuries and now, for the first time, scientists have recorded these thrums and pinpointed them to humpback whales, proving that whales have a far larger vocabulary than previously thought.

Fred Sharpe from the Alaska Whale Foundation and his colleagues set up land-based microphones to tune in to the mysterious ocean noises. Tip-offs from Alaskan coastal communities helped to narrow down the best recording locations. Along with the previously documented trumpets, blows and shrieks that humpback whales make, the researchers recorded very low frequency rumbles, a bit like distant thunder, and new sounds including pizzle, howl and hooting noises. The night thrums travelled through the air and could be heard up to 6 miles (10km) away.

Physical and psychological impacts of a tap water parasite outbreak continue to be felt in south Devon

• South West Water fined £1.85m over parasite outbreak in Devon

Most of the tourists milling around the busy fishing harbour or visiting Agatha Christie’s riverside holiday retreat have probably forgotten what South West Water euphemistically calls the “Brixham incident”.

But for residents at the centre of the “incident” – a parasite outbreak that caused perhaps hundreds of people in south Devon to fall ill after they drank contaminated water – the physical and psychological impacts are still keenly felt.

Scientists believe they may now have found the cause of Fair Isle’s pollution – and warn that it should be ringing alarm bells in other coastal areas

When the wind picks up on Fair Isle, Britain’s most remote inhabited island, puffs of seafoam start to drift across fields like tumbleweed. The pale yellow blobs are ubiquitous enough to hold their own place in the island’s mythology: known as the butter churned by a local troll, Lukki Minni.

“When the Atlantic gets going, foam covers the whole island,” says Tommy Hyndman, an artist who moved to the Fair Isle from upstate New York two decades ago. “Your windows get caked and your plants all die from the salt.”

Seasonal wardens and netted fences are helping protect the rare ground-nesting birds that arrive each spring on the UK’s shores

On Ross Sands in Northumberland, a little tern has caught sight of a group of people and is sprinting across the beach. “It wants us to follow it,” says Andrew Craggs, senior manager at Lindisfarne national nature reserve. “It’s a diversionary thing – it’s got a scrape and it wants to take us away because it thinks we’re predators.”

Craggs is no predator, and he’s not after the scrape – a small pit the ground-nesting bird has dug into the sand to lay its eggs. He is a guardian of these little birds, as well as more than 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of sand dunes, saltmarsh and mudflats that make up this tranquil nature reserve perched on the tip of England’s north-east coast.

While Westminster’s attention is focused on Andy Burnham and Makerfield, another pivotal byelection is taking place in Scotland’s north-east

The coming byelection in Makerfield, from where Andy Burnham aspires to make rapid progress towards Downing Street, is perhaps the most consequential in British political history. But the decision by the Scottish National party’s former Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, to relocate to Holyrood means that another pivotal contest is taking place more than 350 miles to the north. If Makerfield is a test case for Mr Burnham and Labour’s ability to see off Reform UK, Mr Flynn’s old constituency of Aberdeen South is on the frontline of the increasingly fraught politics of North Sea oil.

Labour, despite finishing second in the 2024 general election thanks largely to anti-Tory tactical voting, will not be expecting much this time round. The ramifications of Donald Trump’s reckless war in Iran have exposed Britain’s ongoing vulnerability to fossil-fuel-related energy shocks, highlighting the practical benefits of moving to a green economy. But the knock-on effects of the closure of the strait of Hormuz have also been a gift for the Scottish Conservatives and Reform, who are framing the byelection as a local referendum on reviving oil and gas production beyond Westminster-imposed limits.

The 15-week-old triplets get their first swimming lesson from their mum, Bonita, and dad, Manu. The two boys, Uca and Yali, are named after an area of the Amazon rainforest and the second largest region in Peru. The female pup is named Yara, which means ‘river spirit’ in Brazilian folklore. Endangered giant otters face an uncertain future as conservationists estimate that only a few thousand remain across South America. The pups have been born as part of the international conservation breeding programme in European zoos that is working to safeguard them from extinction

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Investigators are still searching for what caused the recent deaths of a mother and her calf, but conservationists say the animal’s shrinking habitat may be the first place to look

The two elephants were found dead in the Indonesian province of Bengkulu, in an area of “production forest” in southern Sumatra. The mother and her calf were lying side by side with their tusks still intact.

Unlikely to be poachers, the cause of their deaths – and that of a tiger nearby – at the end of April is still being investigated but conservationists say this is not an isolated case. It is estimated that seven wild elephants have died in Bengkulu since 2018.

Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away?

At first, the small purple flowers are hard to spot in the weak May sunshine. Slowly the drifts of delicate mountain pansies, along with the white rosettes of alpine pennycress, begin to jump out, scattered across an area little bigger than a football pitch, on the banks of the River Allen in Northumberland.

This is a pocket of calaminarian grassland, an increasingly rare habitat where specialist plants called metallophytes have adapted to live in soils deeply contaminated by heavy metals, the legacy of more than 1,000 years of lead mining.

The Lincolnshire seaside town is often written off by YouTubers as a place defined by deprivation and decline. But for many young people it's a place they love and are proud to call home, even though high unemployment limits their opportunities. The Guardian follows 19-year old Cohen, who is desperate to find a permanent job while running a mascot hire company and chasing his dream of becoming a professional wrestler

• This video is part of a year-long project, Against the tide, from the Guardian’s Seascape series, reporting on the lives of young people in coastal communities across England and Wales

High unemployment and a lack of support mean life can be tough in Grimsby, but 19-year-old Cohen is determined to make the best of life in this coastal town

It’s mid-afternoon in the Lincolnshire seaside town of Cleethorpes and Cohen is sitting in the back seat of a car putting on an Easter bunny outfit. A group of teenagers nearby stare in amusement. Cohen isn’t fazed. He is hoping we can take some new photographs that he can use to advertise his mascot business for the upcoming holidays.

Cohen, 19, lives with his parents a couple of miles down the road in neighbouring Grimsby and set up Co Co Mascots last year as one of his many attempts to find work. People can hire him in one of the outfits for birthday parties, events and doorstep surprises for children. He’s done a few paid gigs so far, which has been a boost for his confidence, he says, but what he really wants is a permanent job.

Cohen, who is looking for a permanent job, makes money as a mascot at birthday parties and events

Staff at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy are helping the repatriation of ‘the shiest antelope’ from western zoos to their native east African country

“We are bringing the boys home,” says Ngenoh Erick Kibet, a wildlife officer at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, as he hears of the moment that a cargo plane carrying four mountain bongo has touched down on a wet runway at Jomo Kenyatta international airport.

The operation is the culmination of two weeks spent in Czechia, a first flight for Kibet, and a decades-long collective effort to rescue a species on the edge of extinction.

The 100th bongo calf was recently born at the conservancy