Letter from 150 scientists, MPs and activists calls for action to protect lower-income and minority-ethnic communities
The government must hold an inquiry into the unequal impacts of air pollution, 150 scientists, MPs and activists have urged.
Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that across England, lower-income areas have persistently higher levels of air pollution than wealthier areas.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/19/2026 - 00:00
10/19/2026 - 00:00
Warning for other Arctic communities as residents told not to use water in Longyearbyen in Svalbard, one of the world’s fastest-warming places
Residents of a remote village in Norway that is in one of the fastest-warming places in the world have been told they must no longer drink tap water due to heavy metal contamination that scientists have linked to the thawing permafrost.
Longyearbyen, in the archipelago of Svalbard, gets its main drinking water supply from a 1.5 mile-long (2.5km) dammed lake called Isdammen, or “ice pond”. Higher temperatures as a result of the climate crisis have thawed permafrost, leading to newly exposed bedrock leaching metals into the pond.
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10/18/2026 - 23:21
Bill to authorise production expansion at Mount Pleasant coalmine, subject to a landmark high court decision, criticised as ‘legislative overreach’
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The Minns government says it will introduce special legislation to allow a mine in the New South Wales Hunter Valley that was the subject of high court proceedings to increase its coal production by 32% per year.
The premier, Chris Minns, said the bill would authorise MACH Energy to increase the annual coal output at its Mount Pleasant coalmine by 4m tonnes to 16.5MT per year until 2032. He claimed it was necessary to save 400 jobs at the site before Christmas.
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10/18/2026 - 23:00
This month’s biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia, aims to push governments to meet the 23 targets agreed at Cop15 in 2022
Can countries deliver on a deal to save the world’s plants and animals?
This month, nearly every country on Earth will return to the question of how to stem the rapid destruction of the natural world. Humans are driving it, but so far we have not found a way to stop it.
In late 2022, governments reached an ambitious once-in-a-decade deal to better protect nature amid scientific warnings that the planet is going through the largest loss of life since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Now, they are assessing their progress on the targets for the first time.
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10/11/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 12 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00248-4
Adaptations to sustain fish consumption rarely quantify nutritional outcomes. We introduce a simple ‘fish meals’ approach that translates catch into per capita dietary protein intake recommended by the World Health Organisation. The approach is applied to an adaptation to help small-scale fishers catch tuna more efficiently – installing anchored fish aggregating devices (aFADs) in nearshore waters – and is readily scalable to other fish-based interventions to support nutrition security.
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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