🗞️ In Climate News

• 🇻🇺 Vanuatu criticises Australia for extending gas project while making Cop31 bid

  • Climate minister says greenlighting North West Shelf project until 2070 is not the leadership Pacific countries expect as Australia seeks to host summit.

• 🇪🇺 Only two European states have net zero military emissions target, data shows

  • Just two of 30 European countries —Austria and Slovenia—have set a date to stop their militaries from emitting planet-heating emissions, a Guardian analysis has found, raising concerns about the carbon cost of Europe’s coming rearmament wave.

• 🌊 Deep-sea science expedition embarks on 40th voyage

  • The RRS James Cook left the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton on Friday morning to continue its long-term study of the Porcupine Abyssal Plain.

• 🇨🇦 Western Canada wildfires emergency hits another province as thousands flee

  • He has declared a state of emergency as 14 wildfires rage uncontrollably in the province.

    A day earlier, 17,000 people were told to flee wildfires in the neighbouring province of Manitoba, which declared its own state of emergency. More than 166 fires are actively burning across Canada, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

• 🇨🇭 Glacier collapse buries most of Swiss village

  • The Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed after a huge chunk of glacier crashed down into the valley.

    Although the village had been evacuated some days ago because of fears the Birch glacier was disintegrating, one person has been reported missing, and many homes have been completely flattened.

• 🇮🇳 At least 34 dead in India's northeast after heavy floods

  • More than a thousand tourists trapped in the Himalayan state of Sikkim were being evacuated on Monday, a government statement said, and army rescue teams were pressed into service in Meghalaya state to rescue more than 500 people stranded in flooded areas.

• 🇳🇬 Death toll rises to at least 200 in devastating floods

  • Another 500 people are still missing but rescue operations were called off, as local authorities no longer believe there could be any survivors.

    Floods swept through Mokwa, in the north-central Niger State, after torrential rain fell on Wednesday night and into Thursday.

• 🇮🇩 Indonesia quarry collapse kills 19, search continues for victims trapped under rubble

  • A rock collapse at a quarry at Cirebon in West Java province has killed 19 people, injured eight and there are six still missing, local police said on Sunday.

• 🇮🇳 Cargo ship carrying ‘hazardous material’ capsizes off India coast

  • A Liberian-flagged cargo ship, MSC ELSA 3, carrying roughly 640 declared containers, sank off the coast of Kerala state in southern India. Indian authorities rescued all 24 crew on board, but most of the containers remain untraced and their contents unknown, raising environmental concerns.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🍄 Fungal biobatteries: 3-D printed batteries using fungi

• 🌳 Using biodegradable cardboard “donuts” to grow trees in dry areas

♾️ eco-story

“You can’t stop important, high-quality journalistic work.” Alessandra Sampaio, widow of British journalist Dom Phillips, says it was the main driver that led her to unite forces with his friends to finish his book after he was killed in 2022. “As soon as the tragedy happened, it became very clear to me and also to [Dom’s] journalist friends, from whom I had a lot of support, that it was important to finish the book,” Sampaio tells Mongabay in a video interview.

On June 5, 2022, Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were brutally killed in the Javari Valley region, in the Brazilian Amazon. The British journalist was investigating illegal fishing in the region, aimed to be the second-last trip for his book, according to Sampaio.

Near the Brazil-Colombia-Peru triple border, the Javari Valley region is a hotspot for organized crime, including drug traffickers, illegal loggers and poachers. The region is home to the second-largest Indigenous territory in Brazil — 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres), an area twice the size of Switzerland — and an estimated 17 isolated Indigenous groups live there, with little to no contact with the rest of the world.

Three years later, How to save the Amazon: A journalist’s fatal quest for answers, by Phillips with contributors, will be launched beginning May 31 in the United Kingdom, the United States and Brazil, accompanied by dedicated events in the three countries.

🌏 The Culture Column

📺 What we’re watching: Green River: The Time of the Yakurunas

📸 Profile of the week: @amazonconservationteam
📖 What we’re reading: How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist's Deadly Quest for Answers, by Dom Phillips
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: Over the past decade, more than 300 environmental defenders have been murdered in Brazil while protecting forests, Indigenous territories, and natural resources.