The next government must give Windermere greater protection from sewage pollution, campaigners including the naturalist Chris Packham and the comedian Paul Whitehouse have urged in an open letter to all party leaders.

The campaign group Save Windermere, which organised the letter, says the lake has huge ecological significance, is home to rare and protected species and brings in about £750m to the economy. But the signatories, who include the Wildlife Trust, the countryside charity the CPRE and WildFish, say it is being degraded by pollution.

As party leaders prepare to publish their manifestos this week, Matt Staniek, the founder of Save Windermere, said greater protection for the lake was urgently needed to make sure it was looked after for future generations forever. “This is not ideological, it’s non-contentious, and it is absolutely necessary to save Windermere whilst also setting an example for the treatment of our freshwater and our natural world on a national level,” he said in the letter.

The protections for the lake are contained in the EU-derived water framework directive, but Staniek said the system failed to address the ecological, cultural and economic stability of the lake and the surrounding area despite its national significance.

The letter says: “We urge you to commit with haste to granting greater environmental protection for England’s largest lake. The mechanism used to achieve this must have legal underpinning, whilst current legislation must also be enforced. Success will be defined as the long-term recovery of the lake, with it returning to, or as close as possible to, its natural oligotrophic state.”

Last month it emerged that millions of litres of raw sewage had been illegally pumped into Windermere in February, and that United Utilities had failed to stop the pollution of it for 10 hours. It did not report the incident to the Environment Agency until 13 hours after it started.

Suspected illegal sewage dumping into the lake also took place more than 70 times in 2022, according to analysis by the academic Prof Peter Hammond, and in June that year a serious pollution incident in a beck feeding the lake left hundreds of fish dead.

The letter says Windermere has been victim to decades of pollution and exploitation resulting from inadequate investment and substandard regulation, leaving the lake unadaptable to our changing climate.

“Over the last year alone, we have seen unprecedented rainfall which has increased sewage discharging into the lake,” it says. “This, combined with the threat of drought in the summer months, leaves our lake in a precarious position and at risk of extensive algal blooms which, at worse, can cause mass fish kills and leave its waters potentially toxic to the general public.”

A United Utilities spokesperson said that phosphorus levels in the lake had been steadily declining since the early 1990s, while the lake’s four bathing waters all consistently achieved the highest “Excellent” status. “Since 2020 United Utilities has halved the amount of phosphorus that is now entering the lake from our own processes. However, the factors affecting water quality in Windermere are complex and, without targeted action by multiple sectors, we will not see the changes we all want.”

The company said it did not recognise the Hammond figures. Regarding the February pollution, it said: “This incident was caused by an unexpected fault on the third party telecoms cable network in the area, which United Utilities was not notified about and which affected both the primary system and United Utilities’ backup. As soon as we discovered this fault was affecting the Glebe Road pumping station, our engineers took urgent steps to resolve the situation and we informed the Environment Agency within an hour of the pollution being confirmed.”

South Korea’s military has said it fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border this week, amid rising tensions after Pyongyang sent rubbish-carrying balloons into the South and Seoul retaliated with a loudspeaker propaganda campaign.

“Some North Korean soldiers working within the DMZ on the central front briefly crossed the Military Demarcation Line,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to the line of control in the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas.

“After our military issued warning broadcasts and warning shots, they retreated northward,” it said, adding the incident happened 9 June.

“Apart from the immediate retreat of the North Korean soldiers following our warning shots, there were no unusual movements observed”, the JCS said, adding the military was closely monitoring troops near the border.

South Korea’s military has assessed that the North Korean soldiers didn’t appear to have intentionally crossed the border because the site is a wooded area and MDL signs there weren’t clearly visible, JCS spokesperson Lee Sung Joon told reporters.

The mine-strewn DMZ is the world’s most heavily armed border, with hundreds of thousands of troops facing each other – a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, which ended with an armistice but not a peace treaty.

Tensions between the two Koreas – which remain technically at war – are at one of their highest points in years.

In recent weeks, North Korea has sent hundreds of balloons laden with cigarette butts, manure and toilet paper south of the border in what it calls retaliation for balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda sent by activists in the South.

The South Korean government this month fully suspended a 2018 military deal and restarted loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border in response to the balloons, infuriating the North, which warned Seoul was creating “a new crisis”.

South Korea’s military said on Monday it had detected signs the North was installing its own loudspeakers.

North Korea had used loudspeakers along the border since the 1960s, typically broadcasting praise of the Kim family, but suspended their use in 2018 as ties improved.

Experts have warned that the decision to jettison the 2018 deal and restart loudspeaker broadcasts could have serious implications.

Previous propaganda tit-for-tat actions have had real-world consequences for inter-Korean relations.

In 2020, Pyongyang, blaming anti-North leaflets, unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with the South and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.

With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press

Five of the world’s biggest banks are “greenwashing” their role in the destruction of the Amazon, according to a report that indicates that their environmental and social guidelines fail to cover more than 70% of the rainforest.

The institutions are alleged to have provided billions of dollars of finance to oil and gas companies involved in projects that are impacting the Amazon, destabilising the climate or impinging on the land and livelihoods of Indigenous peoples.

The banks say they follow ethical policies that help to protect intact forests, biodiversity hotspots, indigenous territories and nature reserves. However, the investigation says it has found geographical and technical limitations on their ability to monitor and achieve these stated goals.

The report was produced by the watchdog organisation Stand.earth and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). The organisations mapped the extent of the environmental and social governance (ESG) commitments of five leading funders of fossil fuel operators in the South American biome. Those banks – Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Itaú Unibanco, Santander and Bank of America – together account for more than half of the loans to companies in this sector.

The analysis found that on average, 71% of the Amazon is not effectively protected by the five banks’ risk management policies for climate change, biodiversity, forest cover, and Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights.

The gaps ranged significantly from company to company. At one end of the spectrum is JPMorgan Chase, whose biodiversity protections, the report’s authors say, apply only to Unesco world heritage sites that cover just 2% of the Amazon and are, in any case, unlikely to be considered for oil and gas exploration.

On the positive side, the study commended the British bank HSBC, which was once a major funder of destructive projects in the region but has not provided any financing since it adopted a 100% Amazon exclusion policy in December 2022.

“So far, HSBC has been true to their word,” said Angeline Robertson, the lead author of the report. “This shows it can be done and has been done, even by a company that used to have a big stake”

Some banks argue they play a positive role by encouraging extractive industries to adopt more responsible policies. However, according to the authors of the report, while bank loan arrangements involve long-term relationships and potential influence, the majority of financing by the big five comes in the form of syndicated general corporate purpose bonds. These bonds, which are standard practice, are for broadly defined purposes and require little or no follow-up once an agreement is signed. This potentially makes it difficult to apply due diligence guidelines on specific environmental or social concerns.

The Spanish bank Santander – Europe’s largest financier of oil and gas in the Amazon and fourth largest worldwide with almost $1.4bn (£1.1bn) in direct financing between 2009 and 2023 – has one of the most extensive exclusion policies for oil and gas, covering 16% of the Amazon, but the report indicates that 85% of its transactions are in the form of syndicated bonds, which lack transparency and reduce the bank’s liability as a contributor to adverse impacts.

The authors examined 560 transactions involving oil and gas activities by 280 banks over the past 20 years in the Amazon using Stand’s Amazon Banks Database, to determine whether deal structures that bypass ESG exclusions and screens are common.

They found two North American banks, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, have made the most capital available – $2.43bn and $2.42bn respectively – to companies that operate oil and gas projects in the Amazon. JPMorgan Chase recently withdrew from the Equator Principles Association, which serves as a common baseline for institutions to manage environmental and social risks when financing projects.

The third biggest financier over the past two decades is Itaú Unibanco of Brazil, which, the report claims, does not have any exclusions or screens that apply to oil and gas operations in the region. The database shows it has financed projects by Eneva, Frontera, Geopark, Petrobras, Petroquimica Comodoro Rivadavia and Transportadora de Gas del Perú.

Fifth on the list was Bank of America. Last year, it was the number one financier of oil and gas in the Amazon and extended 99% of transactions in the form of syndicated bonds, the report says, which means these deals would not necessarily have been subjected to enhanced ESG screening.

The report urges banks to adopt a geographic exclusion covering all transactions involving the oil and gas sector in the Amazon. The authors say this is essential because the rainforest is the world’s most important terrestrial carbon sink and home of biodiversity, yet it is degrading towards a point of no return.

“We are literally living in a rainforest on fire, our rivers are either polluted or drying up,” said Fany Kuiru, the general coordinator of COICA. “Our fate is your fate: the Amazon is critical for the future of our planet. The banks try to wash their hands of the blame through vague policies but must be held accountable for the damage their money is causing to Amazonian Indigenous peoples and the biodiversity of the rainforest. Not a single drop of Amazon oil has been extracted with the consent of Indigenous peoples. We demand Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Itaú Unibanco, Santander and Bank of America to end oil and gas financing.”

Since Stand.earth launched its Exit Amazon Oil and Gas campaign, it says several banks including BNP Paribas, Natixis, ING, and Credit Suisse have promised to end their financing of trade in oil from ports in Ecuador and Peru, which covers much of the fossil fuel trade from the Amazon. HSBC and Barclays have also applied comprehensive geographic exclusion policies.

The authors say they want to work with the remaining funders of Amazon oil and gas to tighten their ESG policies and exclude petroleum projects in the rainforest from their portfolios.

Robertson said the five banks have policies that “seem very token; they appear to be more about risk to reputation than risks of impacts on the ground”. But she stressed this could change. “There are lots of opportunities for banks to respond adequately and to embody environmental risk in their portfolios because that is what the future holds. With climate change and biodiversity loss looming over us, we need banks making better decision for the sake of their clients and their own business interests. This is a reckoning here and a call to responsibility.

“We have tried to give a sense of the adverse effects on the ground. This is an effort not just to reveal banks’ greenwashing but to put voices front and centre of those most affected in the Amazon.”

Some in the financial industry dispute the methodology of the report, saying it was not appropriate to add up multi-year financing, lines of credit, refinancing and indirect financing and then suggest this amount was funnelled to a particular group. They said general corporate purposes loans have long comprised the vast majority of the credit markets and that it would be necessary to ask specific companies whether or how this capital is used.

Several banks said they apply ESG guidelines to general corporate purpose bonds.

Citibank said it had a “comprehensive enterprise security risk management policy, which outlines our expectations for clients and leads us to do enhanced due diligence around activities with elevated risks related to human rights, biodiversity, Indigenous peoples, critical habitats, community conflict and/or environmental justice. We engage directly with clients to evaluate their commitment, capacity, policies, management systems and staffing to manage these specific environmental and social risks.” The company updated its agricultural risk policy in 2022.

JPMorgan Chase said: “We support fundamental principles of human rights, including Indigenous peoples’ rights, across all our lines of business and in each region of the world in which we operate. Our 2023 ESG report reflects our policies and practices regarding environmental and social risks as well as human rights, including restricted activities and sensitive business activities. Client and transaction screening against our restricted activities and sensitive business activities subject to enhanced review includes GCP (general corporate purposes) financing activities. It is not limited to project finance.”

Regarding JPMorgan Chase’s decision to leave the Equator Principles Association, a spokesperson added that EPA membership was “not necessary for us to independently uphold best-in-class environmental and social risk management standards”, and that the company would remain aligned to the organisation’s principles.

Bank of America referred the Guardian to its environmental and social risk policy framework, which notes “enhanced due diligence for transactions in which the majority use of proceeds is attributed to identified activities that may negatively impact an area used by or traditionally claimed by an indigenous community”.

A spokesperson for Santander said: “We understand fully the importance of protecting the Amazon and supporting sustainable development in the region. All financing decision are guided by a strict policy framework approved by our board of directors, and our activities align with all environmental regulations in the region. We are also actively involved in several industry initiatives to protect the region and work proactively with clients, as well as other banks, governments, regulators and other institutions to help improve practices, recognising this is a highly complex challenge that requires a multifaceted, multilateral response.”

Itaú Unibanco had not replied to the Guardian’s request for comment at the time of publication.

Isobel Chetwood moved to her dream home on her birthday just over a decade ago. As she wound up a 40-year career in the NHS as a GP practice manager in Stockport, Greater Manchester, she was keen to return to her roots in Cheshire. She settled in a comfortable house in the quiet village of Plumley.

Chetwood, 68, lives alone. When she moved in, she found a gardener (“I don’t do dirt down me fingernails,” she says, laughing). He made her a raised bed for growing strawberries, alongside a fence that divided her garden from her neighbour’s. “It was beautiful out there,” she says.

All was well until – a little over two years ago – alien shoots began rising like spears from the soil around her strawberry plants, having somehow found a way through the heavy railway sleepers and bricks used to build the bed.

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of retaining classified documents agreed on Monday to expunge from the indictment a paragraph about an episode where the former president waved around a classified document at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.

The US district judge Aileen Cannon ruled she would strike the paragraph because Trump was not charged with a crime for the conduct it described and would be unfairly prejudicial if a jury later saw it at trial.

Cannon’s ruling is notable because it could indicate how she will rule on future motions by Trump to suppress evidence as he attempts to limit the scope of the evidence prosecutors can introduce against him – and thereby dramatically undercut the case.

The move to strike the paragraph was unusual, legal experts said.

Cannon ruled that the passage should be expunged relying in part on a federal rule that says evidence of “other crimes” cannot be used against a defendant to suggest bad character, without addressing the second part of that rule that allows it in the case that it shows proof of motive.

The prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had argued that they included the passage precisely because it was allowed under the second part of the rule but Cannon took issue with the fact that Trump had not been charged for the conduct it described.

The passage in question – paragraph 36 – uses vague terms but describes Trump in 2021 waving around a classified map of Afghanistan while criticizing the US withdrawal to his now 2024 presidential campaign chief Susie Wiles, according to sources familiar with the matter.

“In August or September 2021, when he was no longer president, Tump met in his office at The Bedminster Club with a representative of his political action committee (the ‘PAC Representative’). During the meeting, Trump commented that an ongoing military operation was not going well,” the paragraph said.

“Trump showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close. The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation.”

The move by Cannon came in a broader 14-page decision, where she denied Trump’s request to have the obstruction counts dismissed.

For the most part, Cannon wrote that she was rejecting Trump’s motion because his complaints were factual matters that should be raised as part of his defense arguments at trial and could not form the basis to dismiss an indictment, as opposed to matters of law, which can be adjudicated pre-trial.

Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who has served nearly 50 years in prison for the killing of two FBI agents, was due to have his first parole hearing since 2009 on Monday, his lawyer said.

Peltier, 79, has maintained that he did not kill the FBI special agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Advocates, including figures such as the late Nelson Mandela and a former prosecutor and judge involved in his case, have long said he should be freed because of what they call legal irregularities in his trial.

But in letter send to the top federal parole officer, Christopher Wray, the FBI director, called Peltier a “remorseless killer” who should never be freed.

“Throughout the years, Peltier has never accepted responsibility or shown remorse,” Wray wrote to Patricia Cushwa, acting chair of the US Parole Commission, on 7 June. “He is wholly unfit for parole.”

Peltier was to meet with a US Parole Commission federal agent inside the Coleman federal complex in Florida, according to Peltier’s attorney, the former federal judge Kevin Sharp.

The US Parole Commission did not return requests for comment.

Peltier, who was a member of the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, has said he was among a group of Native American men who fired on the two FBI agents who arrived on the Pine Ridge reservation in June 1976, in search of a fugitive. Peltier has said that while he fired, he was not the person who killed the agents.

Two other Native American men who fired at the agents were tried in 1976 and found not guilty by reason of self-defense. Peltier fled to Canada before the trial. He was eventually extradited back to the US and tried separately in 1977, when he was found guilty.

Amnesty International has long championed Peltier’s case. Like others, they say that government prosecutors withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Peltier at trial and fabricated affidavits that painted him as guilty.

Since his conviction, a former prosecutor in his trial, a federal judge involved in an appeal, Pope Francis, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Coretta Scott King and multiple US senators, among others, have called for Peltier’s release.

Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International, wrote in letter to the US Parole Commission that granting parole on humanitarian grounds “is not only timely but a necessary measure in the interests of both justice and mercy”.

Rebecca Grossman, the California socialite who was found guilty of murder earlier this year for fatally striking two children with her car, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

A Los Angeles county judge on Monday ruled that Grossman should serve two 15-years-to-life sentences concurrently. She will also serve three years for fleeing the scene concurrently with her other sentences.

She had faced 34 years in prison for her role in the 2020 deaths of Mark Iskander, 11, and Jacob Iskander, eight.

In February, a jury found Grossman guilty of second-degree murder, gross vehicular manslaughter, and one felony count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death. The 60-year-old had recently sought a new trial, but her request was denied last week.

The sentencing brings to a close the years-long legal saga around the deaths of the Iskander brothers. Grossman, a cofounder of the Grossman Burn Foundation, was speeding in her Mercedes SUV through the community of Westlake Village on 29 September 2020 when she fatally struck the two boys at 73mph. The children had been traveling through a crosswalk on scooters and skates with their family.

During the highly publicized trial, prosecutors said that Grossman had been driving behind Scott Erickson, a retired Dodgers pitcher who she was allegedly romantically involved with. The pair had been drinking at a nearby restaurant before the collision. Moments before she hit the Iskander brothers, she had been traveling at speeds of 81mph, far above the 45mph speed limit, the prosecution argued.

“She acted with disregard for human life,’ a prosecutor said during the trial.

Grossman’s defense team had argued that the boys were first struck by another car, and that her role in the incident was an accident rather than murder.

Prosecutors had asked that Grossman spend the rest of her life in prison, serving 34 years to life. They said her actions had shown a lack of remorse and that she had refused to take responsibility. “She has lived a life of privilege and clearly felt that her wealth and notoriety would buy her freedom,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum.

Grossman’s attorneys and supporters pointed to her work for the Grossman Burn Foundation, describing her as a “humanitarian”. Her lawyers asked for probation or a shorter prison term of about 12 years. In a letter to the judge, Grossman said she was not a murderer.

“My pain, my recognition of the pain the Iskanders suffer and the pain I watch my family endure, are punishments that I already suffer and will for the rest of my life,” she wrote.

The UN security council has adopted a resolution calling for Hamas to agree to a three-phase hostage-for-ceasefire proposal outlined by Joe Biden, the first time the body has endorsed a comprehensive peace deal to end the Gaza war.

A Hamas statement said the group welcomed the resolution, though it was not immediately clear if that meant the leadership in Gaza accepted the ceasefire plan.

The position of the Israeli government is also ambiguous. It has officially accepted the peace plan but the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has sought to distance himself from it, and his coalition has shifted to the right since the proposal was put forward.

Fourteen council members voted for Monday’s resolution, none against, and only Russia abstained on the US-drafted resolution which calls for an initial exchange of elderly, sick or women hostages for Palestinian detainees held by Israel in the course of an initial six-week ceasefire.

The ceasefire would evolve into a permanent end to hostilities and the release of all hostages in a second phase that would be negotiated by the two parties and US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators. A third phase would involve the launch of a major reconstruction effort.

The resolution calls on Hamas to accept the agreement and urges both parties “to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition”.

The US has been seeking UN endorsement for the proposal since it was unveiled by Biden on 31 May. It won the support of the Palestinian mission, with a clause saying that an initial six-week ceasefire would be extended as long as talks continued over a second phase.

The resolution said the US, Qatar and Egypt would “work to ensure negotiations keep going until all the agreements are reached and phase two is able to begin”.

A Palestinian presidential spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said that the Palestinian Authority leadership would accept any resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza which preserved Palestinian territorial integrity.

Palestinian support for the US resolution made it much harder diplomatically for Russia or China to veto it. Since the start of the Gaza war in October, the security council has struggled to find consensus against a backdrop of deep polarisation. It has agreed on humanitarian resolution involving temporary ceasefires but this is the first time it has embraced a comprehensive peace.

“Over the past eight months this council has often faced divisions and the world has taken notice with understandable frustration,” the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said after the vote. “But there’s another side to this story because today we adopted a fourth resolution on this conflict.

“Colleagues, today we voted for peace,” she declared.

The text stated that Israel had already accepted the ceasefire terms, though that claim is increasingly in question, as the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has made a string of sceptical comments on it, claiming that the US had only revealed parts of the plan, and insisting that any proposal for a lasting ceasefire without the complete destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capacity is a “non-starter”.

The resignation over the weekend of a centrist minister, Benny Gantz, has left Netanyahu even more dependent on far-right members of his coalition, who adamantly oppose the deal.

Hamas made positive comments when Biden first announced the deal, and said it welcomed the security council vote, but it has yet to give a formal response to the ceasefire proposal. The unusual show of relative unity by a deeply divided security council helps put pressure on both parties to strike an agreement, though both have shown themselves far more influenced by local constituencies and the personal interests of leaders, than by international public opinion.

Prospects for a hostage and ceasefire deal were significantly complicated by an Israeli raid in Gaza on Saturday to rescue four hostages, which killed 274 Palestinians.

One of the late changes made to the US draft resolution was designed to make it more palatable to Israel. It said the security council rejected any attempt to change the demographic or the geographical boundaries of Gaza, but it omits wording from the earlier version which specifically rejected the creation of a buffer zone around the coastal strip.

A council is trying to extend a controversial injunction against “persons unknown” to stop any future protests outside an oil terminal operated by Shell UK.

Lawyers for North Warwickshire borough council will argue in the high court on Tuesday that an interim injunction granted in 2022 should be made permanent to stop protests outside Kingsbury oil terminal in Tamworth.

The move comes as concerns are growing over the use of “persons unknown” injunctions, which Friends of the Earth says allow private companies to create bespoke public order laws that stifle peaceful protest.

The injunctions, which have begun appearing in the last two years, are taken out against unknown defendants to maximise the number of people who can be caught by them, even if they are unaware of the orders.

Sixteen people have already served time in jail for up to 85 days for breaching the interim civil injunction granted to the borough council in 2022 to protect the Kingsbury oil terminal, which is operated by Shell, along with Essar and Valero Energy Corporation, from the impact of demonstrations by Just Stop Oil.

More than 50 more people were arrested in September 2022 for breaching the injunction. Most were given two-year suspended sentences, six were jailed.

Those jailed included the retired GP Dr Sarah Benn and Sarah Webb. One hundred and twenty individuals are named on the injunction, as well as “persons unknown who are organising, participating in or encouraging others to participate in protests against the production and/or use of fossil fuels in the locality of the site known as Kingsbury oil terminal”.

The council, in its legal argument, denies it is using taxpayers’ money to protect a private oil company facility. It says it is seeking to make the injunction permanent in order to “protect the interests of the inhabitants of their area and those who work there and travel through it”.

The council cited the dangerous behaviour of some of the protesters in 2022, which included breaking into the terminal and tampering with pipework, while using electrical devices in the vicinity of potentially explosive oil fumes.

The local authority said there were no protests at the site now, but argued that there remained a high risk of disruptive and dangerous protests at the terminal if a final injunction was not granted.

None of the defendants are legally represented at the three-day hearing, which begins on Tuesday. Webb, who spent 16 days in Foston Hall women’s prison in Derby in 2022 for twice breaking the injunction, intends to ask the judge if she can speak. She said: “I knowingly broke the NWBC injunction twice in 2022. These were not selfish acts, but acts of peaceful protest.

“I was sent to a prison that at the time was deemed the most violent women’s prison in the country. Inside prison, I was physically assaulted by the prison guards.

“As a result of being sent to prison, I have lost my career as a children’s special educational needs tutor. I now have no income. Most of us named defendants broke the injunction in an attempt to protect millions of lives, and we were sent to prison as a result of our peaceful protest.”

She said she feared that the council would seek its costs from her and the other named individuals.

Asked if they were going to apply for costs from the defendants, a spokesperson for North Warwickshire borough council declined to comment.

Friends of the Earth is challenging the use of injunctions against persons unknown in the European court of human rights. The environmental NGO says it is concerned over a “rapid and widespread” increase in use of the orders in recent years, amid a wider crackdown on environmental protest and the introduction of strict anti-protest laws in Britain.

Katie de Kauwe, a lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said: “Anti-protest injunctions are a confusing, opaque, parallel system of prohibitions that private companies and public authorities are using to create their own bespoke public order laws.”

“These measures have really gone under the radar,” she said. “People don’t realise how serious the issues are, given the penalties for a breach are so severe. ”

The UN rapporteur for environmental defenders has heavily criticised the draconian clampdown on the right to protest in England and Wales, including the use of civil injunctions, saying the measures are having a chilling impact on fundamental freedoms.

The new European parliament is on course to have more politicians from parties that deny climate science and fewer from parties that want to cut pollution faster.

The results of the four-day election, which are still being finalised, show sizeable gains for far-right parties and a drop in support for the Greens that has cost them about a quarter of their seats. It has raised fears that the EU is about to put the brakes on climate ambitions that have helped set pollution-cutting standards globally.

Sven Harmeling, the head of climate policy at the European branch of the campaign group Climate Action Network, said many of the far-right groups that won seats could be characterised as climate deniers that were not up to the task of solving the climate and energy crises. “However, European climate policy cannot be rolled back easily,” he said.

After the last elections, in 2019, the EU pledged to make Europe the world’s first climate-neutral continent by cutting pollution and protecting nature. Under the leadership of the centre-right commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and with the support of other centrist factions, it passed a raft of measures known as the Green Deal, most of which ultimately made it over the finish line after being watered down by politicians and member states.

The European far right, while deeply divided over cutting its ties to its fascist roots, has mostly stood together in its opposition to the Green Deal. But its members have treated climate policy as a side issue – one that scores easy wins in culture wars but that is not worth pushing in election campaigns based on immigration, identity and the economy. Their supporters generally accept the science of climate change and vote based on their other policy positions.

Analysts say far-right gains are unlikely to unravel Green Deal policies put in place over the past five years but may dampen support for bringing the continent’s policies in line with what scientists say is needed to stop the planet from heating by 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels.

Vincent Hurkens, the lead on EU politics at the climate thinktank E3G, said: “Despite a lot of the attention going to the far-right gains, a vast majority of Europeans still voted for parties in the political centre. It is up to the centre right, liberals and social democrats [to decide] how much power and influence they allow the far right, and their ideas, to have on the future of the European Green Deal. Choices by these political families in the upcoming weeks will be decisive for Europe’s capacity to act against dramatic impacts and risks of climate change.”

The policies that have attracted the most ire from the right are those that affect voters directly – from phasing out combustion engine cars to in effect banning new gas boilers – and those that increase short-term costs for farmers. The centre-right European People’s party, which is projected to have increased its seats, had already begun to backtrack on support for some Green Deal measures in the outgoing parliament.

The next commission president is likely to be under even less pressure from the Greens, who are projected to have shed 20 of their 72 seats. The party took big losses in Germany and France but had small wins in the Nordic EU countries. Among the under-30s in Germany – traditionally seen as champions of climate action – exit polls showed the Greens shedding votes as the far right and newer parties gained them, a shift that could sound alarm bells for progressive parties that rely on younger voters in other countries holding elections this year.

Jessica Haak, a political scientist at Hamburg University, said there was no single explanation for Green losses but that a shift in the perceived importance of the climate crisis partly explained the trend in western Europe.

“In previous European parliamentary elections, climate protests had pushed environmental concerns to the forefront of the political agenda across most of the EU,” she said. “Although voters in some western European countries still consider climate issues important, they prioritised economic concerns, migration and war.”

Big battles remain over existing climate policy proposals. The EU plans to set a legally binding emissions target for 2040 under the next commission, while European environment ministers will vote on Monday on the fate of a proposed law to protect nature that has faced a huge backlash from farming lobbies.

European leaders are also still struggling to respond to the vast subsidies pouring into green industries in big economies such as the US and China.

Matthias Buck, the Europe director at the climate thinktank Agora Energiewende, said the election underlined the importance of affordable energy, security, safe jobs and competitiveness. He said responding to this would mean speeding up investments in clean energy and developing a robust industrial strategy that provided certainty to companies investing in a climate-neutral future.

“The past five years have firmly established the Green Deal as the EU’s growth strategy on its path to climate neutrality,” Buck said. “The main task for the next five years is to make sure that citizens and businesses fully benefit from the transition.”