The cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C, study finds

Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a new study that shows the costs of damage are six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.

Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (£30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, shows the research published in the journal Nature , which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken.

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As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all

Read more: World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts

The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco. He chose a spot near an old bigleaf maple. Many people loved this place: there was a creek and a scattering of picnic benches nearby.

As a soundscape recordist, Krause had travelled around the world listening to the planet. But in 1993 he turned his attention to what was happening on his doorstep. In his first recording, a stream of chortles, peeps and squeaks erupt from the animals that lived in the rich, scrubby habitat. His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove.

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Woodland grant schemes bring the potential for many ecosystem benefits, writes Dr Robert Mills

It is of deep concern to see the core funding for national parks fall, and it is widely known that the UK has a considerable challenge to tackle nature depletion and the biodiversity crisis ( National parks in England and Wales failing on biodiversity, say campaigners, 9 April ).

There should be an overhaul of how parks are funded to emphasise these issues, and how actions by all interest groups, from landowners to tenant farmers, can be supported towards positive outcomes and maintaining livelihoods.

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The tree all but vanished in the 1970s. Now, thanks to two amateur nature lovers, it may soon grace our landscapes again

Constable painted them. Shakespeare wrote of them. And Francis Drake sailed the world in a ship made from them. English elms were a mainstay of England’s landscape and culture – until they all but disappeared to Dutch elm disease in the 1970s.

Since that devastation, when 25m elms were felled, enthusiasts and academics have searched for varieties resistant to the fungus spread by Scolytus beetles that kills the trees.

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Bulldozed tracks and informal byways in tropical forests and palm-oil plantations ‘almost always’ an indicator of future deforestation, say researchers

A vast network of undocumented “ghost roads” is pushing into the world’s untouched rainforests and driving their destruction in the Asia-Pacific region, a new study has found.

By using Google Earth to map tropical forests on Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea islands, researchers from James Cook University in Australia documented 1.37 m kilometres (850,000 miles) of roads across 1.4m sq kilometres of rainforest on the islands – between three and seven times what is officially recorded on road databases.

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Chamonixia caespitosa found during rewilding project in west Highlands while removing non-native Sitka spruce

Naturalists have found a very rare type of truffle living in a Scottish forestry plantation which is being cut down so a natural Atlantic rainforest can grow in its place.

The discovery of the globally rare fungus near Creagan in the west Highlands has thrown up a paradox: the work to remove the non-native Sitka spruce, to allow rewilding by native trees, means the truffle will be lost.

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Country had previously turned the tide on deforestation but armed rebels have revoked ban

Deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is surging and could be at a historic peak as armed groups use the rainforest as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations with the government.

Preliminary data shows that deforestation in the region was 40% higher in the first three months of this year than in 2023 as armed groups tightened their control over the rainforest, said Susana Muhamad, the country’s environment minister.

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Coffee is the country’s biggest export, but millions of smallholders are being asked to provide paperwork to prove their land is not deforested

The first white flowers are starting to appear on the branches of Habtamu Wolde’s coffee bushes in the Kafa region of southwest Ethiopia. They will bloom several more times before turning into round red cherries ready for harvesting in October. Then they will be prepared for export and shipped to the capital.

“Our coffee is iconic, you cannot find a higher grade,” boasts Habtamu. Coffee is more than a drink in Kafa. This region claims to be the birthplace of Arabica coffee, which grows naturally in its temperate cloud forests. The plant is at the centre of daily life and the people’s main source of income.

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Trees for Life and Woodland Trust Scotland hope to revive remote pockets of forgotten forest before they vanish

James Rainey reads trees like most people read signposts.

The senior ecologist with the rewilding charity Trees for Life is using a small hand lens to identify a particular lichen that is wreathing the base of an aspen tree in a secluded glen on the west coast of Scotland. He is looking for “ecological clues” of species associated with the ancient Caledonian forest that once covered most of the Highlands, like this aspen, certain wildflowers, such as serrated wintergreen, and some lichens, such as black-eyed Susan and Norwegian specklebelly.

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