The government has offered to make changes to the bill to both the Greens and the Liberals hoping to reach a deal on legislation that can pass the Senate
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Years of debate about environmental law reform have come down to a tense standoff in the final sitting week of federal parliament for the year, with Labor claiming it can do a deal that will pass the Senate by Thursday.
The government is still pushing to pass its major changes, despite not yet having reached an agreement with either the Greens or the Coalition.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/23/2025 - 09:00
11/23/2025 - 03:00
Alison Gaffney believes her son’s rare leukaemia was caused by dumped toxic waste from the town’s steelworks
Alison Gaffney and Andy Hinde received the devastating news that their 17-month-old son, Fraser, had a rare type of leukaemia in 2018.
Two years of gruelling treatment followed, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, before a stem cell transplant. Fraser, then aged three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the surgery, before doctors declared the cancer in remission.
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11/23/2025 - 03:00
Cross-party coalition behind proposals hope eco-friendly scheme for million people could begin before end of decade
In the next few years, spades could be in the ground for a city made of wood, in the middle of the largest new nature reserve created in England in decades, with four-bedroom homes on sale for £350,000.
It sounds too good to be true, but a cross-party coalition of campaigners is trying to make a “forest city” to house a million people a reality, with construction commencing by the end of this parliament. It would be the first such project in England since the purpose-built new town of Milton Keynes in the 1960s.
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11/22/2025 - 18:41
Australia may not be hosting Cop31, but the unprecedented Turkey partnership is a real chance to secure global influence and turbocharge a new green zeitgeist
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The Cop30 climate conference has finally come to an end, with Australia having lost out on the grand prize of hosting next year’s gathering. But Australia’s formal partnership agreement with Turkey nevertheless provides an opportunity to secure unparalleled global influence and turbocharge our own transformation to a net zero, green export economy. Here are three ways to make it happen.
First, Chris Bowen’s new role as Cop31 “president of negotiations” puts the climate and energy minister at the helm of the most complex and consequential multilateral process in the world.
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11/22/2025 - 07:25
After a series of all-night meetings and fears the summit could collapse, an agreement has been gavelled through at Cop30
We have some texts, but we do not have the big one yet (the global mutirão decision).
So far, we have the final versions on the mitigation work programme, the global stocktake, gender, loss and damage, and the global environment facility.
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11/22/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 22 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00168-9
We must integrate effective protection with scalable restoration to ensure resilient coastal ecosystems. We identify five challenges, including unequal ecosystem coverage, spatial protections that are weak or centered offshore, compartmentalized restoration efforts, and policies that are not fit for purpose, and propose actionable solutions for scaling effective marine conservation. Emphasizing underserved habitats like kelp forests and seagrasses, we call for integrated, equitable, and community-supported strategies that align with global agendas and promote future coastal ecosystems.
11/21/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 21 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00164-z
Emerging climate-smart governance through maritime spatial planning in northern Europe
11/19/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 19 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00159-w
A machine learning-based evidence map of ocean-related options for climate change mitigation and adaptation
11/18/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 18 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00162-1
Critical energy minerals face persistent shortages. Deep-sea mining offers a potential supplement but raises environmental, technical, and governance concerns. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature and policy review, this comment analyzes the resource potential and commercialization challenges of deep-sea mining. We propose five priorities: building sustainable consensus, advancing green technologies, establishing commercialization safeguards, strengthening global monitoring, and enhancing the International Seabed Authority’s capacity to foster cooperative global governance.
11/17/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 17 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00158-x
Co-producing ocean plans with Indigenous and traditional knowledge holders
