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Investigation shows extent of green land lost across UK and mainland Europe to development from 2018 to 2023

• The Santa Claus effect: how expanding tourism ate into Lapland’s green space

Europe is losing green space that once harboured wildlife, captured carbon and supplied food at the rate of 600 football pitches a day, an investigation by the Guardian and partners has revealed.

Analysis of satellite imagery across the UK and mainland Europe over a five-year period shows the speed and scale with which green land is turning grey, consumed by tarmac for roads, bricks and mortar for luxury golf courses and housing developments.

The World Health Organization has warned that more than 40% of pregnant women in the Gaza Strip are malnourished. Here, Nour Ziad al-Batsh, who is expecting her third child in March, describes her daily struggle to find food and healthcare

This pregnancy is not like my others. I have not been allowed to feel the joy I felt last time, to plan for the future and dream about where my child will go to school and how to decorate his room. In Gaza these days, I can only wonder whether I can find food to keep my baby healthy and how it will be to give birth in a tent.

The natural joys I felt for the births of my daughter and son have been overwhelmed by depression, fear and anxiety because of this continuing genocide.

Increasingly erratic water cycle is creating food scarcity, rising prices, conflict and migration, says UN agency

Only a third of the world’s river basins experienced normal conditions last year as the climate crisis drove extremes of drought and flood, sometimes both in the same region.

The increasingly erratic water cycle is creating big problems for societies and governments and causing billions of dollars in damage, scientists warned.

The next pandemic or geopolitical shock could be close at hand. To look after our people, we’re looking after our supply chains, agriculture and fuel reserves

• Miika Ilomäki is chief preparedness specialist for Finland’s National Emergency Supply Agency

In times of crisis, food is more than sustenance. It is a pillar of national stability. Finland has long understood this, not just because of policy, but because of who we are and where we live. Geography, a mild continental climate and our history have shaped a mindset where preparedness is essential. In a country with vast territory, a sparse population and long distances between communities, resilience must be built into everything we do.

This understanding is deeply rooted in our society, in individual households as much as government institutions. Today, Finland’s approach to preparedness is rightly seen as a model for Europe. But it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. What works for Finland, such as our high levels of food self-sufficiency, strong institutions and a culture of cooperation, may not work elsewhere. Still, our experience offers valuable lessons. Preparedness must be proactive, inclusive and deeply integrated into national strategy.

Miika Ilomäki is chief preparedness specialist for Finland’s National Emergency Supply Agency

We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2021: From ultra-processed junk to failing supply chains and rocketing food poverty, there are serious problems with the way the UK eats. Will the government ever act?

By Bee Wilson. Read by Elinor Coleman

In today’s newsletter: Extreme heat, droughts and floods are proving disastrous for farmers on the frontline of climate change, and consumers in the supermarket, too

Good morning. My mum is a livestock farmer in Kent. This year her hay crop was down by 50% because the spring rains never came. She’s not alone – up and down the UK, farmers have watched their fields turn brown and their hay crops collapse.

Hay keeps animals alive over winter (when there is no fresh grass outside) and some farmers are already selling off cows because they can’t guarantee they will be able to feed them. From extreme drought to biblical floods, more than 80% of UK farmers are worried wild swings in weather are affecting their ability to earn a living.

Israel-Gaza war | Israel bombed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Monday and then struck the same place again as rescuers and journalists rushed to help the wounded, killing at least 20 people including five journalists, health officials said.

UK news | Schools will need to give democracy lessons to children from the age of 11 and ask teachers to leave their politics at the classroom door to help prepare for votes at 16, the head of the UK elections watchdog has said.

Health | People using the weight loss jab Mounjaro have been warned against switching to black market sellers or bulk buying after its manufacturer announced the UK will get a significant price rise this autumn.

US news | Some national guard units patrolling the US capital at the direction of Donald Trump have started carrying firearms, an escalation of the president’s military deployment that makes good on a directive issued late last week by his defence department.

UK news | Ministers are introducing a clearer legal definition of “honour-based” abuse in an attempt to catch more perpetrators and protect women and girls from violence and coercion.

It is hard to keep the mind sharp when the body is thin and dehydrated, but solidarity is teaching starving students their thoughts still matter

I must admit: I write this piece while starving – too hungry to think clearly, too weak to sit upright for long. I do not feel ashamed because my starvation is deliberate. I refuse my hunger even as it decays me. I can survive no other way.

Since 2 March 2025, Israel has imposed a full blockade on Gaza. Little aid – food, medicine, fuel – is getting in or being distributed. The markets are empty and bakeries, community kitchens and fuel stations are shuttered.

Last year’s floods have been followed by heatwaves. Ministers must throw their weight behind resilient, adaptable agriculture

British farmers are, of course, not the only people who are suffering from the effects of this summer’s heatwaves. Across Europe and the Middle East, record-breaking temperatures are threatening lives as well as livelihoods. France has experienced its largest wildfire since 1949, while across Europe an estimated 500,000 hectares of land have burned.

But farmers are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather, which has a direct impact on crop yields. So reports of a second consecutive year in which food growers in parts of the UK are seeing dramatic falls in production should concern the British public. Access to food is frequently taken for granted in the world’s wealthiest nations. But increased food insecurity is among the dangerous effects of the climate crisis, as well as being worsened by Trump’s tariffs, and geopolitical instability including the war in Ukraine.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Official and ministers either deny that Palestinians are being affected by hunger or say it is not Israel’s fault

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel is pursuing an extensive PR effort to remove itself from blame for the starvation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is responsible.

As dozens of governments, UN organisations and other international figures have detailed Israel’s culpability, officials and ministers in Israel have attempted to suggest that there is no hunger in Gaza, that if hunger exists it is not Israel’s fault, or to blame Hamas or the UN and aid organisations for problems with distribution of aid.

High cost of staples due to extreme weather could lead to more malnutrition, political upheaval and social unrest

Climate change-induced food price shocks are on the rise and could lead to more malnutrition, political upheaval and social unrest as the world’s poorest are hit by shortages of food staples.

New research links last year’s surges in the price of potatoes in the UK, cabbages in South Korea, onions in India, and cocoa in Ghana to weather extremes that “exceeded all historical precedent prior to 2020”.

Curbing waste, eating a plant-rich diet and limiting ultra-processed food (and sadly, coffee and chocolate) will dramatically reduce your carbon footprint

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Food production globally accounts for nearly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, with the average Australian diet contributing more than 3kg of Co2 per person per day. And what’s worse, we waste about 35% of the food we bring home. If we keep this up, it has been estimated the already unsustainable environmental cost of the food system will nearly double by 2050.

Calculating the precise impact your individual food choices have on the environment isn’t simple, but research suggests the actions we can take to bring that impact down are – and they aren’t just better for the environment, they’re better for our health too.

In Chile’s drought-stricken Atacama desert, Indigenous people say desalination plants cannot counter the impact of intensive lithium and copper mining on local water sources

• Photographs by Luis Bustamante

Vast pipelines cross the endless dunes of northern Chile, pumping seawater up to an altitude of more than 3,000 metres in the Andes mountains to the Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper producer. The mine’s owners say sourcing water directly from the sea, instead of relying on local reservoirs, could help preserve regional water resources. Yet, this is not the perception of Sergio Cubillos, leader of the Indigenous community Lickanantay de Peine.

Cubillos and his fellow activists believe that the mining industry is helping to degrade the region’s meagre water resources, as Chile continues to be ravaged by a mega-drought that has plagued the country for 15 years. They also fear that the use of desalinated seawater cannot make up for the devastation of the northern Atacama region’s sensitive water ecosystem and local livelihoods.

War has intensified poverty and hunger as aid is cut, with many families living in makeshift camps barely surviving

The pain of going to bed hungry is becoming familiar for Jamila Rabea. It’s hard to sleep. The meagre rations of bread, tomato paste and tea she spends much of her day trying to gather, she gives to her children. Five of them live with her in a shelter built from tarpaulin, cloth and scraps of wood.

Like many of the refugee families living here in a makeshift camp to the east of the Yemen port city of Al-Mukalla, she has had to leave home because of the bombs and fighting.

Water shortages hitting crops, energy and health as crisis gathers pace amid climate breakdown

Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown.

More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced.