A UK deposit return scheme for recycling drinks bottles has been delayed to 2027, meaning it will not be in place until almost a decade after it was proposed.

Campaigners say the delay is a “huge disappointment”, adding they are doubly dismayed that the plan will not include glass bottles.

The environment minister Robbie Moore told parliament on Wednesday that the scheme would not include glass because glass recycling would “create undue complexity for the drinks industry and it increases storage and handling costs for retailers”. Large drinks companies have been lobbying the government to remove glass from the scheme across the UK.

He said the delay was because additional time was needed to synchronise the policy of the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales with that in England. Scotland has agreed to remove glass from its scheme after being asked to by the UK government, but Wales is still including it.

Moore said: “We will continue our conversations with the Welsh government, but if their position does not change, we will reiterate the duty to protect the UK internal market and facilitate free trade within the UK so businesses can continue trading unhindered across the UK and ensure better prices and choice for consumers.”

UK consumers use an estimated 13bn plastic drinks bottles a year. Only 7.5bn are recycled, with the remaining 5.5bn sent to landfill, littered or incinerated. The scheme is intended to cut litter on land and sea by paying consumers a small cash sum to return their bottles and cans. Once returned, retailers are responsible for properly recycling the containers. Deposit return schemes have increased recycling rates to more than 90% in other countries.

Sandy Luk, the chief executive of the Marine Conservation Society, said: “It’s a huge disappointment that the new scheme isn’t going to start for another three years and isn’t going to cover glass bottles. For our ocean’s sake, we can’t keep kicking the can – or bottle – down the road. We call on the UK government to speed up this law and to follow Wales’s ambition to include plastic, metal and glass.”

The charity Keep Britain Tidy estimates 25bn bottles and cans will be littered between now and the start of the scheme. Allison Ogden-Newton, the head of the charity, said: “This delay means oceans of bottles and cans will continue to needlessly pile up in bins and continue to be strewn on roadsides and in our green spaces, rather than being recycled.

“The exclusion of glass is hugely disappointing. Glass containers start fires and cause harm to people, pets and wildlife. This is why 78% of people want to see it included in a deposit return scheme. We are pleased that Wales look determined to pursue their best-in-class scheme, and encourage the rest of the UK to follow suit.”

Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, said: “We’ve gone through four prime ministers since the Conservative government first promised a deposit return scheme for recycling bottles. And yet it will be nearly a decade until they have something to show for it. The Conservatives simply don’t care that plastic bottles end up littering our streets, parks, rivers and seas. Labour will work across Britain and with business to bring in a deposit return scheme that will stop this waste and clean up our environment.”

As someone who actively campaigns for environmental protection, I admire George Monbiot, but his attack on the excellent film Six Inches of Soil seems to suggest that he is prepared to assault any idea that does not conform to his apparently very limited worldview (There’s no such thing as a benign beef farm – so beware the ‘eco-friendly’ new film straight out of a storybook, 15 April).

First, the film is primarily about how we can improve and protect our soils, which for many years have been degraded by the overuse of agrochemicals and overproduction. Regenerative farming aims to improve soil quality, increase biodiversity and allow farmers to grow food for us while making a profit. I would have thought these are aims that Monbiot would heartily endorse. Instead he focuses on the beef farmer in the film and his contribution to the climate crisis.

Second, yes, cattle farming is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, but the real villains are the big food lots in the US, Brazil and elsewhere. The regenerative farmer keeps beef and dairy cattle as part of the farm’s ecosystem, using the manure to fertilise fields that would otherwise be covered in artificial fertiliser, much of it produced by fossil fuels. The keeping of animals on a small scale encourages greater biodiversity, improves animal welfare and produces high-quality beef or milk. In the long term, regenerative farmers are encouraging less frequent consumption of meat of a higher quality, which has to be better for us and the environment.

It is naive to expect farmers to completely rewild their land – they need to make money and we need food. Rather than attack those who are trying to improve their farming methods, let us celebrate the regenerative farmers who are making real improvements to the ways in which we produce food and look after our countryside.
Rev Richard Stainer
World development adviser, diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Suffolk

Mosquito-borne diseases are spreading across the globe, and particularly in Europe, due to climate breakdown, an expert has said.

The insects spread illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, the prevalences of which have hugely increased over the past 80 years as global heating has given them the warmer, more humid conditions they thrive in.

Prof Rachel Lowe who leads the global health resilience group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, has warned that mosquito-borne disease outbreaks are set to spread across currently unaffected parts of northern Europe, Asia, North America and Australia over the next few decades.

She is due to give a presentation at the global congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona to warn that the world must be prepared for a sharp uptick in these diseases.

“Global warming due to climate change means that the disease vectors that carry and spread malaria and dengue [fever] can find a home in more regions, with outbreaks occurring in areas where people are likely to be immunologically naive and public health systems unprepared,” Lowe said.

“The stark reality is that longer hot seasons will enlarge the seasonal window for the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and favour increasingly frequent outbreaks that are increasingly complex to deal with.”

Dengue used to be primarily found in tropical and subtropical regions, as freezing overnight temperatures kill the insect’s larvae and eggs. Longer hot seasons and less frequent frosts have meant it has become the fastest-spreading mosquito-borne viral disease in the world, and it is taking hold in Europe.

The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), carries dengue fever and has become established in 13 European countries as of 2023: Italy, France, Spain, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Greece and Portugal.

The insect is thriving; nine out of the 10 most hospitable years for transmission of the disease have occurred since 2000, and the number of dengue cases reported to the WHO has increased eightfold in the past two decades, from 500,000 in 2000 to more than 5m in 2019.

Lowe said climate breakdown would turbocharge this spread as droughts followed floods: “Droughts and floods linked to climate change can lead to greater transmission of the virus, with stored water providing additional mosquito breeding sites.

“Lessons from previous outbreaks underscore the importance of assessing future vector-borne disease risks and preparing contingencies for future outbreaks.”

She said that if the current trajectory of high carbon emissions and population growth continued, the number of people living in areas with mosquito-borne diseases would double to 4.7 billion by the end of the century.

Lowe added: “With climate change seeming so difficult to address, we can expect to see more cases and possibly deaths from diseases such as dengue and malaria across mainland Europe. We must anticipate outbreaks and move to intervene early to prevent diseases from happening in the first place.

“Efforts need to focus on enhancing surveillance with early warning and response systems similar to those seen in other parts of the world, to more effectively target finite resources to the most at-risk areas to control and prevent disease outbreaks and save lives.”

Climate breakdown is also amplifying the threat from antimicrobial resistance, a separate presentation at the conference will warn.

Prof Sabiha Essack, the head of the antimicrobial resistance unit at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, said climate breakdown was a “threat multiplier” for antimicrobial resistance: “Climate change compromises the ecological and environmental integrity of living systems and enables pathogens to increasingly cause disease. The impact on water systems, food-producing animals and crops threatens global food supply.

“Human activities associated with population growth and transport, together with climate change, increase antibiotic resistance and the spread of waterborne and vector-borne diseases of humans, animals and plants.”

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