The destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.

Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s.

In a report that received input from experts across academia and government, the authors argued that “gradual, year-to year environmental degradation is as detrimental or more so than climate change”.

The continued loss of natural habitats in urban and rural areas would compare unfavourably with the financial crisis of 2008, which took about 5% off the value of UK GDP, while the Covid pandemic cost the UK 11% of its GDP in 2020.

The academics used three scenarios to construct the report: domestic risks from continued UK environment breakdown; international risks – including destruction to nature in countries which are key UK trading partners; and a health scenario, focusing on the dangers of a fresh global pandemic.

All three took into account current trends in environmental breakdown – including water and air pollution, soil health erosion and biodiversity loss – resulting in a hit to GDP worth up to 3%, or about £70bn by the late 2020s.

The report then added “acute risks” on top of these trends – including floods, droughts and wildfires – which would result in a 6% loss to GDP in the domestic and international scenarios, and a 12% hit in a health scenario, reflecting the extreme dangers to the UK economy from a renewed pandemic.

Ministers are expected to take an interest in the report amid concern over the potential dangers to the economy from nature breakdown. Environment minister Richard Benyon said the report showed that nature “underpins the health of our economy and it is under threat from a global nature crisis”.

The former Conservative MP, whose family controls a 5,600-hectare (14,000-acre) estate in west Berkshire, southern England, said the responsibility to conserve nature “lies with all sectors and sections of society, and green finance has a crucial role to play”.

He said: “The findings in this report will help people and institutions across the corporate and finance sectors understand that it is in their own interests to go further and faster for the planet to protect it for future generations.”

Shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, blamed the government for the UK becoming “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”.

Saying that the UK needed “to reverse the tide of destruction”, Reed committed Labour to cleaner air and water “and growing nature-rich habitats for wildlife to thrive”.

The Green Finance Institute describes itself as the UK and Europe’s “principal forum for innovation in green finance” bringing together banks, academics, philanthropists and government bodies to develop climate-friendly policies and financial products.

The report warned that unless action is taken, UK banks will need to reduce their exposure to the worst hit industries or find themselves increasing the risk of losses from bad loans. About 50% of the extra cost will come from the loss of nature overseas that the UK relies on to provide food, natural resources and trade.

Partly funded by the government with input from the Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the authors also relied on advice and information from the Bank of England, Oxford and Reading universities, the UN’s environment programme, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

The report said: “The impacts of biodiversity loss and environmental degradation will not be felt alone but will compound with climate risks. Both are happening at once and there are strong feedback effects between the loss of natural capital and climate change.”

The study follows a Treasury-backed review in 2021 by the Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, who found that the world was being put at “extreme risk” by the failure of economics to take account of the rapid depletion of the natural world.

Last year, the government agency Natural England launched its Nature Returns programme to coordinate efforts across government and the private sector to explore how the UK can best use land in England “to address climate change whilst producing food and promoting thriving nature”.

The agency said it wanted “to mobilise the billions in private investment that government estimates we need to meet our national net zero commitments”.

Authorities are rushing to save more than 150 whales from a mass stranding at a beach in Western Australia’s south-west. Four pods have spread across roughly 500m at Toby’s Inlet near Dunsborough and 26 of these have died, Parks and Wildlife Service Western Australia confirmed.

“There are 20 whales in a pod about 1.5km offshore. Another pod of about 110 animals are together closer offshore,” a spokesperson said.

Wildlife officers, marine scientists and veterinarians are on site assessing the conditions of the whales that have become stranded.

“Our teams on the water are trying to keep the animals together and away from the beach,” the spokesperson said.

Based on previous strandings, including the one near Albany last year, whales often have to be “euthanised as the most humane outcome”, the spokesperson said.

At least 90 of the mammals died in that stranding in July last year.

People trying to help are urged to abide by the directions of the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.

“The highest priority at mass whale stranding events is always human safety followed by animal welfare,” parks and wildlife said in a Facebook post.

“We want all staff and volunteers to go home safe.”

Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with five responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.

The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.

“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.

An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.

Less than half of that plastic litter had discernible branding that could be traced back to the company that produced the packaging; the rest could not be accounted for or taken responsibility for.

“This shows very, very, very well the need for transparency and traceability,” says a study author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a plastic pollution researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “[We need] to know who is producing what, so they can take responsibility, right?”

The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just five companies.

Altria and Philip Morris International made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, Danone and Nestlé produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.

“The industry likes to put the responsibility on the individual,” says the study’s author, Marcus Eriksen, a plastic pollution expert from The 5 Gyres Institute.

“But we’d like to point out that it’s the brands, it’s their choice for the kinds of packaging [they use] and for embracing this throwaway model of delivering their goods. That’s what’s causing the greatest abundance of trash.”

The Guardian approached Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company.

The Coca-Cola Company said: “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way.” It has pledged to make 100% of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025, and to use at least 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030.

Nestlé said it has reduced its virgin plastic usage by 14.9% in the last five years, and supports schemes around the world to develop waste collection and recycling schemes.

“Since launching our voluntary commitments to address plastic waste five years ago, we have significantly outperformed the market at large in reducing virgin plastic and increasing recyclability, according to the most recent report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation,” it said.

The company also supports the creation of a global legally binding regulation on plastic pollution which is being negotiated this week.

However, while many of these companies have taken voluntary measures to improve their impact on plastic pollution, the experts behind the study argue they are not working. Plastic production has doubled since the beginning of 2000 and studies show only 9% of plastic is being recycled.

When the team collected data on self-reported yearly plastic packaging production for each of these multinational companies and compared it with the data from their 1,500-plus litter surveys, their statistical analysis showed that every 1% increase in plastic production was directly correlated with approximately a 1% increase in plastic pollution.

“Actually seeing this one-to-one increase, I was like, wow,” says a study author, Kathy Willis, a marine socio-ecologist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.

“Time and time again from our science we see that we really need to be capping how much plastic we are producing.”

However, Kartik Chandran, an environmental engineer at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research, said that while this new data was striking, the observation that 1% plastic production was equal to 1% plastic pollution was “a bit unrealistic” and “simplistic”.

He said the data did not consider plastic pollution in China, Korea and Japan, nor take into consideration recycling or clean-up initiatives under way.

A better analysis could be based on the net plastic flows into plastic production – also accounting for credits from the reuse of plastic materials – and the net plastic load ascribed as plastic pollution.

The team behind the study, some of whom are participating in the talks being held in Ottawa this week to discuss a UN Treaty for Plastic Pollution, said their findings emphasised the urgent need for a globally binding treaty focusing on production measures.

The talks will run to Monday, and Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, told the Guardian earlier this week he was hopeful that countries would come together to secure an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.

“It is very important we are negotiating this treaty now. The world is in a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. But while there are agreements in place for the first two, we have no legislation, no global agreement on plastic pollution.”

The Conservatives have pushed through a duty on the water regulator to prioritise growth, which experts have said will incentivise water companies to value their bottom lines over reducing sewage pollution.

Campaigners fear this will weaken Ofwat’s ability to crack down on water companies as it may force the regulator to consider the company’s financial situation and the impact on growth if it is heavily fined for polluting.

The Liberal Democrats forced a vote in parliament on Wednesday on the government’s new “growth duty” for Ofwat, which requires the regulator to “have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth” when cracking down on water companies. They lost, as 50 MPs voted against the statutory instrument and 395 in favour.

The growth duty specifically mentions fining companies as a measure that could hamper their growth: ‘‘Certain enforcement actions, and other activities of the regulator, can be particularly damaging to growth.

“These include, for example, enforcement actions that limit or prevent a business from operating; financial sanctions; and publicity, in relation to a compliance failure, that harms public confidence.’’

Last year, water companies were ordered to cut more than £100m from bills after repeated failures to stop sewage pollution.

Campaigners fear the growth duty could cause the regulator to be less stringent with penalties because it would have to consider the commercial impact of fines on the company. The financing of some water companies is already in a precarious state; Thames Water is currently at risk of collapse.

Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “The growth duty once again privileges business bottom lines over nature. Public demand and environmental need are totally clear – Ofwat should be promoting investment in nature and ensuring polluters pay.

“A new duty that obliges the regulator to think twice before taking environmental action is headed entirely in the wrong direction. Parliamentarians are right to oppose this backward step.

“The real economically responsible action is to protect the natural assets we depend on. Political parties should commit instead to a new green duty on regulators to ensure they take action to stop climate change and restore nature.”

Labour MPs voted with the government, and it is understood this is because they did not want to be accused of being “anti-growth”.

The Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson, Tim Farron MP, said: “Conservative MPs have just voted to help water firms get off the hook. Ofwat will now be fighting water companies with one hand tied behind their back.

“This government is all talk and no action when it comes to the sewage crisis. Time and time again Conservative MPs have voted against taking tough action on polluting firms.

“It is a scandalous vote by a government which is woefully out of touch with this environmental crisis. The public will be furious to hear the industry’s enforcer has been weakened even more. Conservative MPs should hang their heads in shame.”

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been contacted for comment.

Doctors groups are calling for urgent consideration of the rules for medical professionals who take peaceful direct action on the climate crisis, which they say is the “greatest threat to global health”, after a GP was suspended from the register for non-violent protest.

Dr Sarah Benn, a GP from Birmingham, was taken off the medical register for five months on Tuesday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), over her climate protests.

The tribunal said Benn’s fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct. Benn, who is retired, has taken part in a number of peaceful protests since 2019.

Benn received conditional discharges after being convicted for taking part in peaceful protests, including two offences of obstructing a highway. In 2022 she was jailed for 32 days for breaching a civil injunction at Kingsbury oil terminal as part of a Just Stop Oil campaign.

Doctors groups were united in condemning the suspension from the medical register. The Doctors’ Association said: “Not all doctors subject to a custodial sentence having broken the law have been sanctioned by the MPTS. The MPTS can use its discretion.”

The suspension of Benn showed that the GMC would impose sanctions on doctors for raising serious concerns about the risk to public health from the greatest threat to global health the world had seen, the association said.

“Climate change, its effect on the planet, weather patterns, future health and even the survival of the human race is evidence-based,” it added.

“The profession has not been undermined by her actions, and the public is not concerned about one doctor trying to protect them and the planet but more by the inadequate response of the government and organisations, including the GMC, to our overwhelming and unprecedented climate crisis.”

The British Medical Association (BMA) said many people would find it very difficult to understand that a doctor’s ability to practise medicine could be suspended because of peaceful actions they take in protest of the climate crisis.

It called for urgent consideration of the rules, which it said meant a doctor was suspended for a punishment they had already received for taking part in a legitimately peaceful protest.

“This ruling sends a worrying message to other doctors about the regulation of matters not directly related to patient care or their clinical skills, and raises serious questions about the rules behind the handling of such cases,” the BMA said.

“The climate crisis is also a health crisis and as such doctors are understandably concerned.”

Benn’s case will be reviewed before the five-month suspension ends, when she could be struck off. In her submission to the tribunal, Benn included a statement by the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, who earlier this year condemned the UK’s crackdown on environmental protest.

In his most recent statement Forst said the professional tribunals of medical doctors taking part in peaceful direct action suggested the situation in the UK was deteriorating. “It is important for me to stress that professional sanctions can definitely be considered as a form of penalisation, persecution or harassment,” he said.

Benn told the tribunal that as a doctor she had a “moral duty to take action”.

She said: “The climate emergency is a health emergency; not a potential future one, but here and now. If I know all this and I choose to stay quiet, I am failing in my obligations. I am breaching the guidance in good medical practice to make my patients’ health my first concern.”

But the tribunal found the “overwhelming majority of the public would not condone breaking the law in the repeated way in which Dr Benn did, especially given the impact, on the final occasion, to the wider public resources involved”.

Benn was the first of three GPs facing disciplinary action by the GMC for peaceful protest on the climate crisis.

In a letter to the GMC this week, the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which includes the royal colleges of medicine and medical journals, said there was widespread dismay among doctors at Benn’s suspension from the medical register for Just Stop Oil protests.

“Doctors cannot understand how a doctor can be punished for taking action to mitigate the damage to nature and climate, the major threat to global health,” the letter states.

“There is also dismay that Dr Benn is among the first doctors to appear before a tribunal after protesting and that the finding will set a precedent for other doctors who will be following. Many in the GMC must recognise that they are finding themselves on the wrong side of history.”

A GMC spokesperson said: ‘Dr Sarah Benn was referred to a hearing at the MPTS not for protesting about climate change, but for multiple breaches of a court order which resulted in a custodial sentence. Like all citizens, doctors have the right to express their personal opinions on issues, including climate change. There is nothing in our guidance to prevent them from doing so, nor from exercising their right to lobby government and to campaign, including taking part in protests.

“However, patients and the public rightly have a high degree of trust in doctors and that trust can be eroded if doctors repeatedly fail to comply with the law. Our fitness to practise investigations consider cases which are referred to us and where doctors have broken the law, not their motivations for doing so. It is not the role of regulators to determine UK law – that is a matter for parliament.”

The UK has been accused of “helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine” by continuing to import record amounts of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels.

Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to £2.2bn in 2023, the same record value as the previous year, up from £434.2m in 2021.

Russia is the largest crude oil supplier to India and China, while Turkey has become one of the biggest importers of Russian oil since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

This comes as Russia is increasingly targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, with only a few major power plants not yet damaged or destroyed. UK politicians have been lobbying the US to approve £60bn in military aid for Ukraine, which finally passed on 20 April. The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has been advocating for frozen Russian assets to be deployed to Ukraine’s war effort.

In response to the 2022 invasion, allies of Ukraine pledged to divest from Russian oil and gas. The UK officially banned the import of Russian oil products from 5 December 2022. However, a loophole in the legislation has allowed Russian oil to continue to flow into the UK.

As long as Russian oil is refined in another country it is no longer considered to have originated in Russia, allowing it to evade the trade ban. As a result, Russian oil is being sold to allied countries for processing before being exported to the UK.

The campaign group Global Witness has called this a “laundering” process that is undermining Ukraine’s resistance to Russia.

The value of refined oil exported from India to the UK has risen dramatically since Russia’s 2022 invasion. In 2021, the UK imported £402.2m worth of refined oil from the country, which rose to £1.82bn in 2022 and stood at £1.5bn in 2023.

Imports of refined oil from China have increased more than 20-fold since 2021 – up from £30.2m in that year to £395.1m in 2022 and £663.9m in 2023. The value of refined oil imports from Turkey, meanwhile, has increased from just £1.8m in 2021 to £60.3m in 2023.

Lela Stanley, a senior investigator at Global Witness, said: “Millions of barrels of fuel made from Russian oil continue to pour into the UK. Last year alone, this trade was worth over £100m to the Kremlin. Make no mistake: until the government closes this loophole, Britain is helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine.

“The good news? We can fix this. The UK should act now to ban the import of fuels made from Russian oil and show its support for Ukraine is sincere.”

Global Witness has estimated that throughout 2023, about 5.2m barrels of refined petroleum products produced from Russian crude oil were imported to the UK, with jet fuel accounting for most of the imports (4.6m barrels). It has been estimated that Russian-linked fuel has been used in one in 20 UK flights.

UK government records show that direct oil imports from Russia fell from £1.5bn in the first quarter of 2022 to zero the year after.

This led to a surge in fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates. The UK spent £19.3bn on oil and gas imports from Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the year to March 2023 – a 60% increase on the previous year.

In addition to procuring fossil fuels from petrostates, the UK and the EU have been buying refined Russian oil through the likes of India, China and Turkey.

Global Witness found that the EU imported 130m barrels from refineries processing Russian crude oil in 2023. The campaign group estimated that these purchases would probably have contributed €1.1bn (£940m) to the Kremlin in tax revenues.

Russia is now China’s largest crude oil supplier, with the volume of trade having increased by 24% in 2023 compared with the year before.

Oil and gas purchases by China and India have helped to stabilise the Russian economy, which shrank by just 2.1% in 2022 – considerably less than the 12% that had been forecast.

India has been unashamed about its purchasing of Russian oil. In November, the country’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said India should be thanked for “softening the oil markets” by buying and selling Russian oil. “We have, as a consequence, actually managed global inflation. So people should be saying thank you,” he said.

Russia is India’s top oil supplier, contributing 40% of its oil imports. The country imported 1.76m barrels a day of Russian oil on average from April to September 2023, more than double the previous year.

Turkey has also been accused of “disguising” Russian oil and exporting it to Europe. US senators have even warned that oil supplied by Turkey’s Dörtyol plant may have ended up in American warships. Turkey is now the third largest recipient of Russian crude oil after Russia and China.

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “After Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and weaponisation of energy, we took immediate steps to end all imports of Russian fossil fuels, including a ban of oil and oil products that came into force in December 2022. In addition to providing proof that goods are not of Russian origin, importers must now include the country of last despatch to ensure oil from Russia is not being diverted through other countries. Since the ban came into effect there has been no import of Russian oil and oil products into the UK.”.

Every year from February through to June, the early morning chorus of birdsong is one of the most evocative manifestations of spring. During late winter I open the bedroom window before going to sleep, to hear that incredible mix of flutes, whistles and chirps that begin before first light, when I wake. I listen for the layers of song that simultaneously come from close by and far away.

This year though, the dawn chorus that once was the soundtrack for spring in central Cambridge has collapsed. It was noticeably quieter in 2023, and this year strikingly so. Blackbirds are depleted and song thrushes no longer heard at all. The dunnocks – once one of the most common garden songsters – have disappeared, as have the chaffinches, whose early February song was among the first audible confirmations of lengthening days. The cheery chatter of house sparrows is absent and the once familiar sound of coal tits has fallen silent. Long-tailed tits are now rare, and so far this year I’ve heard no blackcaps. Great and blue tits, robins and goldfinches, are still present, but down in number.

Ours is a normal suburban street, with Edwardian houses and a few interwar semis. We are lucky enough to have gardens with some mature trees, shrubs, patches of grass and plenty of places to nest, and all that looks pretty much the same as it has for years. Now, though, it is a neighbourhood that has fallen eerily quiet. The question of why is something I’ve pondered quite a bit during this unusually silent spring.

There are cats and magpies, but they’ve always been about. The odd sparrowhawk makes an appearance, but no more than usual. Disease, including avian influenza, has been a problem for various species nationally – but there is little evidence that it has so far been especially damaging to songbird populations. Nesting sites seem to be about the same and I can’t imagine why there might have been a sudden increase in pesticide use.

There is one factor though, which I think alongside many others, might have recently made a difference: the climate crisis. The brutal drought and heatwave that hit England in 2022 turned soils to concrete. Trees shed their leaves in summer while wetlands and ponds evaporated to rock hard pans of dried mud. That weather hit invertebrate populations hard. On top of the heat, disruption to seasonal patterns have in turn affected the timing of insect food being available for chicks. There seem to be very few insects around compared with previous springs.

Everywhere is different, with extreme weather and its consequences for wildlife varying from place to place, making it hard to pin down the blend of factors affecting populations. Friends and colleagues across the country report a mixed picture, with some hearing a dawn chorus like previous years. But in our eastern urban locality the change is dramatic.

So what might be done? Keeping trees and shrubs and adding more of the right kind would be useful, creating shade, food sources and nesting sites. More wildlife ponds to provide food and water. Lawns with uncut margins and more wild corners providing food and nest sites. Saying farewell to garden pesticides. Cats with bells on and ensuring feeders are cleaned to prevent infection will all help hard-pressed birds cope with bigger change.

When the climate crisis has been discussed, much of the emphasis has been on faraway places – Bangladesh, the Maldives, the Arctic – but now it is also local, personal and quite unsettling.

One way to cope would be to keep the window shut. A better one is to help the birds recover, by taking action in our gardens and parks, and redoubling efforts in boardrooms and among governments to drive forward with net zero ambitions. The frontline is both global and local if we want to enable wildlife to survive extremes.

Tony Juniper CBE is an environmentalist and Chair of Natural England

The plants slowly choke to death, wither and dry out. They die en masse, leaves dropping and bark turning grey, creating a sea of monochrome. Since scientists first discovered Xylella fastidiosa in 2013 in Puglia, Italy, it has killed a third of the region’s 60 million olive trees – which once produced almost half of Italy’s olive oil – many of which were centuries old. Farms stopped producing, olive mills went bankrupt and tourists avoided the area. With no known cure, the bacterium has already caused damage costing about €1bn.

“The greatest part of the territory was completely destroyed,” says Donato Boscia, a plant virologist and head researcher on Xylella at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Bari.

A decade later, far from nearing resolution, the threat to European plants from Xylella and other diseases is only growing: in February 2024, Puglia scientists found another Xylella subspecies, which had annihilated US vineyards and never previously been detected in Italy. For many farmers, scientists and regulators, the disease is emblematic of a far broader problem: the EU’s difficulty curtailing the introduction of devastating new plant diseases, despite regulatory efforts over the past decade. New data, released to the Guardian, shows that dozens of newly introduced disease outbreaks are detected in the EU every year, even as farmers and scientists struggle to contain previously introduced pathogens. As the climate heats, scientists warn the problem will get worse.

Across the EU, data shows, outbreaks of newly introduced plant disease have continued unabated at an average rate of 70 a year between 2015 and 2020, despite regulations introduced to stop their spread in 2016. While a number of member states have taken steps to prevent and curb the outbreaks, scientists, plant epidemiologists and agronomists say it is still insufficient.

“I can’t understand how, after Xylella, we learned almost nothing,” says Pierfederico La Notte, an Italian plant epidemiologist.

Import system – open or closed?

On a scorching June morning in 2023, Paolo Solmi, a phytosanitary inspector at the port of Ravenna in northern Italy, tells his team to open the first of 28 containers of Egyptian potatoes to check that day. They fill bags with 100 potatoes each before taking them to the labs for EU standardised tests.

“Once these checks have been passed, the goods are free to move within the European Union,” Solmi says.

The EU has an open import system: everything that is not known to be harmful can enter. Some countries, such as New Zealand and Chile, have opted for a closed system: everything is considered guilty until proven innocent.

Evidence shows that the Xylella bacteria came from Latin America and, most likely, got a ride from ornamental coffee plants passing through the Netherlands. About 30 billion rooted and unrooted plants, cuttings, bulbs and tissues came from third countries into Europe between 2005 and 2014, mainly through Dutch ports.

According to Alberto Santini, a forest pathologist at the Italian National Research Council, such an open system has been letting in an alarming number of plant pests and diseases from third countries.

“If you know your enemy, you can try to stop it from entering your country,” Santini says. But, he added, many pathogens are harmless elsewhere because ecosystems evolved with them. While Xyllela might not have affected coffee plants in Costa Rica, it thrived when it met the defenceless southern Italian olive trees.

The EU introduced new regulations in 2016 to better manage what gets in and how, and to deal with outbreaks quickly. Still, with so many ports of entry, scientists and regulators can’t keep up with the volumes coming in. Trioza erytreae, a sap-sucking pest, has been endangering Portuguese citrus; a bacterium infecting carrots and celery has been raising concerns around the continent; and Hymenoscyphus fraxineus has been killing ash trees in Poland. Many scientists fear the spread will be helped by the climate crisis, which is making Europe a warmer, more hospitable place for foreign plant pests to thrive.

“With the current system in Europe, we continuously introduce new organisms,” La Notte says. “In the context of climate change, it will be more and more difficult to manage them.”

Data provided to the Guardian by Wopke van der Werf and Hongyu Sun, researchers at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, shows that there were 1,720 recorded outbreaks of alien plant disease between 1975 and 2020 in the EU, with Italy, France and Spain accounting for half of them. 2018 was the worst year, with 115 known cases.

The data is drawn from the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) database, which records where alien plant diseases – outbreaks caused by alien insects, pathogens and nematodes – are found for the first time or in a new region inside the union. That data is likely an underestimate: EPPO collects new findings by scanning the scientific literature and acquiring official pest reports from its member countries’ national plant protection organisations, so its reports are limited to each country’s responsiveness and interest in investigating an uncommon pest sighting.

According to La Notte, a few crops – such as grape vines – are heavily regulated. But many others, especially ornamental plants, are treated more leniently, making them potential carriers of alien plant pests. Wooden pallets, internet plant sales, and travellers carrying prohibited plants or fruits are all responsible for bringing in diseases, according to several researchers interviewed for this story.

A long trading history

For some countries, such as the Netherlands, open trade in plants is a core part of their history and economy – and they have been resistant to increased regulation. Christian Linden, the founder and CEO of IBH Export, walks around his 14,000-sq metre storage area in the Aalsmeer Flower Auction house in the Netherlands. He imports cut flowers and pot plants, mostly from Turkey and east Africa, and redistributes them around Europe.

Linden says he doesn’t know much about pathogens or bugs entering through the plant trade, but isn’t concerned because the phytosanitary authorities “are very strict”. He thinks the 2016 plant health regulation created higher protection for the EU, and points out the introduction of plant passports, which did not exist when Xylella arrived in Italy. Today, he adds, if one customer finds a disease or a bug on an imported plant, the whole shipment is tracked down and destroyed.

“When it’s necessary to protect the environment, you have to do it,” he says.

John Van Ruiten, the former director of Naktuinbouw, the Netherlands inspection service for horticulture, says their controls on imported material are strict. However, he admits it’s hard to detect everything – insects, symptoms of bacteria or viruses – especially during a visual inspection: “It is impossible that inspectors have the knowledge of all diseases in all commodities.”

Only a sample of about 2% of imported plants are inspected for the presence of symptoms, according to international protocols, says the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA). Given the number of plants that come through the main EU ports, it is “possible that new species will be introduced”.

The NVWA says it believes the Netherlands has a robust control system. For example, once certain live plants pass the border and end up in a nursery, the phytosanitary inspector rechecks them after two weeks to see if they carry any latent disease.

According to Van Ruiten, the burden of preventing disease shouldn’t fall entirely on the shoulders of the importers. He says exporting countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America should also conduct proper checks.

Balancing costs and benefits

In the port at Ravenna, phytosanitary inspector Solmi recognises the challenge. “Europe was born around the movement of goods, capital and people,” he says. “Our mission is to do our best within the open phytosanitary system because an alternative currently does not exist.”

But while the economic cost of what the EU could lose in terms of trading is substantial, so is the price of the damages caused by alien pests and diseases. How do you put a price on a lost forest of ash trees?

“The main issue on the economics is that data is kind of scarce,” says Françoise Petter, former assistant director at EPPO. The costs and benefits of a closed system have not been calculated, and it is unknown whether losses incurred by a slower trading system would be offset by the preserved value of EU agriculture and biodiversity.

“We’ve never tried to do a full comparison with a closed system,” Petter says. “That’s a little bit depressing, isn’t it?”

This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe

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The Coalition leader, Peter Dutton, has been trying to paint a picture of what life in Australia will be like if it tries to power itself mostly with renewable energy and without his technology of choice: nuclear.

Towering turbines offshore will hurt whales, dolphins and the fishing industry, factories will be forced to stop working because there’s not enough electricity and the landscape will be scoured by enough new transmission cables to stretch around the entire Australian coastline.

At the same time – so his story goes – only his option to go nuclear will save Australia from falling behind the rest of the world.

But Dutton’s dystopian image, with more brushstrokes added in an interview on the ABC’s flagship Insiders program, is a picture of inconsistencies, partial truths and misinformation.

Let’s have a look between the brushstrokes.

Is it a credible plan?

The Coalition has said it wants to put nuclear reactors at the sites of coal-fired power plants, but hasn’t said where, how big the reactors will be, when it wants them built or given an estimate on cost.

The Coalition has previously said it would give more details on its plan in time for its response to the Albanese government’s budget next month, but Dutton is now saying it will come “in due course”.

Despite this, Dutton claimed in his interview with the ABC’s David Speers that: “I believe that we’re the only party with a credible pathway to net zero by 2050.”

OK then.

28,000 kilometres?

Dutton claimed the government’s plans relied on “28,000km of poles and wires being erected” to connect renewables to the grid – a distance he said was “equal to the whole coastline of Australia”.

That’s a catchy soundbite, but where does this number come from?

According to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s most recent plan for the development of Australia’s east-coast electricity market, the most likely scenarios to decarbonise the electricity grid would require about 10,000km of additional transmission lines to be built between now and 2050.

What about the extra 18,000km? That figure comes in an estimate of what would be needed if Australia chose to become a major exporter of clean hydrogen as well as decarbonising the grid.

So about two-thirds of Dutton’s 28,000km is not so much related to decarbonising the electricity grid, but rather to an export industry that may or may not happen, to an as-yet-unknown extent.

Turning off power?

Dutton claimed: “At the moment, we’re telling businesses who have huge order books to turn down their activity in an afternoon shift because the lights go out on that grid. Now, no other developed country is saying that.”

Dutton is suggesting that businesses are being routinely forced to reduce their demand for power. This is simply not true.

Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems analyst at UNSW, says it’s very rare for businesses to be told by the market operator they are going to have their power interrupted.

Such “load shedding” has happened only five times in the last 15 years, he said, typically occurs in extreme conditions such as storms or coal plants going offline, and only a subset of consumers are affected.

There are two main formal voluntary schemes in place across the National Electricity Market (everywhere except NT and WA) where major electricity consumers can offer to reduce their demand for electricity at certain times, but businesses are compensated for being part of those schemes. Nobody is telling any of these businesses that they have to do anything.

Neither is it true that no other country is engaging in some sort of process where demand for electricity can be managed.

Is Australia really the only developed country engaged in what’s known as demand response? No.

The International Energy Agency lists the UK, US, France, Japan and South Korea as having large markets already in place to help their electricity systems balance the supply of electricity with demand.

McConnell said: “Demand response is becoming a common and important part of modern electricity systems. This includes countries like France and the US, which have both nuclear and demand response programs.”

G20 and nuclear

Dutton said Australia was the only G20 nation “not signed up to nuclear or currently using it”.

According to information from the World Nuclear Association, Australia is one of five G20 nations with no operating nuclear power plants, alongside Indonesia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Turkey.

But aside from Italy, Germany and Australia, the rest do have some plans to develop nuclear power in the future. Dutton’s phrase “currently using it” allows him to capture countries like Italy that import electricity from nuclear nations.

But what’s also important to note is that among the G20 countries (actually 19 countries) nuclear is mostly playing a marginal role. Nuclear provides more than 5% of its electricity in only seven of those 19 countries.

Social licence?

Projects would need a “social licence” to go ahead, Dutton said, but there was opposition in western New South Wales where “productive” land was being sold for renewables projects.

This is a variation of a previous Dutton speech, where he lamented a supposed “carpeting of Australia’s prime agricultural land with solar and windfarms”.

The renewable energy industry’s Clean Energy Council has countered claims like this, saying even if all the country’s coal plants were replaced with solar farms, the amount of space needed would be about 0.027% of agricultural land.

The Coalition leader has been to the Hunter coast more than once where offshore windfarms are being planned, telling reporters they were a “travesty” and that they would put whales, dolphins and the fishing and tourism industries “at risk”. He told Speers the turbines would rise “260 metres out of the water”.

Dutton told the ABC that Australia should be mindful of the environmental consequences of windfarms – which is, of course, true – but his past statements have sounded more like cheerleading for voices opposed to the plans than an attempt to understand the scale and legitimacy of the concerns, some of which are being stoked by misinformation.

Dutton can’t know what impact offshore windfarms will have on fishing or tourism, but is willing in any case to use labels like “travesty”.

The UK government’s decision to weaken some of its climate commitments was a “retrograde step” that would set back vital cross-party action to cut carbon emissions, Claire O’Neill, a former Conservative climate minister, has said.

O’Neill, who was known as Claire Perry when she served as a minister under David Cameron and Theresa May, said the rolling back of emission reduction efforts by Rishi Sunak appeared to be a ploy for political advantage.

Speaking during a business visit to Sydney, she said the changes “are being made for political reasons to try and create political division and dividing lines”. She added: “If I did anything right in my time, it was to build cross-party consensus.”

She said she had considered it vital to maintain such consensus. “This had to outlast political cycles. And that’s what I find [the U-turn] a bit of a retrograde step.”

Last September Sunak delayed the ban on sales of petrol and diesel vehicles in the UK from 2030 to 2035, a move criticised this week by the outgoing chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, Chris Stark. Stark told the BBC the rest of the world now viewed the UK as “less ambitious on climate”.

Some senior Tories, led by Boris Johnson, criticised the move last year, with the former prime minister telling his successor that he “cannot afford to falter now” because heaping uncertainty on businesses could drive up prices for British families.

O’Neill said she was now “politically unaligned” after resigning her Conservative party membership a few years ago. It was vital to maintain “grown-up collaboration” to ensure the economy maintained a path to net zero emissions while grabbing the economic opportunities that arose as the world decarbonised, she added.

“Does anybody really think the price of carbon is going down? Do we think that the atmosphere is going to become more stable?” O’Neill said. “At some point, you have to take some risks and stick your neck out a bit and be courageous.”

O’Neill also commented on the delay in filling the vacancy of chair of the Climate Change Committee, left open since Lord Deben stepped down last year.

“I would hate to think it’s being done because it’s being offered up as a job to somebody retiring from politics,” she said. “But I can’t help but think, given the quality of the candidates they’ve got, that this is taking way too long.”

O’Neill holds several business titles including being a non-executive director of the Singapore stock exchange. On Tuesday, she took part in another of her roles as a global advisory board member to a hydrogen startup, Hysata.

Based in Wollongong to Sydney’s south, Hysata claims to be able to produce hydrogen with electrolysers that boost a world-leading energy efficiency.

Using earth-abundant materials, the company said its devices could split water into hydrogen and water with a 95% system efficiency (usually 41.5 kWh/kg), compared with about 75% for incumbents (or 52.5 kWh/kg).

“There’s going to be massive opportunities for hydrogen goods and services,” O’Neill said.

The Danish wind turbine company Vestas is among Hysata’s shareholders.