Along a stretch of bush by a muddy river, laborers dug and slashed in search of bamboo plants buried under dense grass. Here and there a few plants had sprouted tall, but most of the bamboo seedlings planted more than a year ago never grew.

Now, environment protection officers seeking to restore a 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) stretch of the river's degraded banks were aiming to plant new bamboo seedlings, clear room for last year's survivors to grow and look after them better than they did the first time.

On a dry riverbed one recent sunny morning, residents of Kasengela village toiled away mixing cement and sand to make concrete. The sound of their shovels resonated through the valley while other residents, working in pairs, carried rocks to the site in wooden frames.

They were building a sand dam, a structure for harvesting water from seasonal rivers. The barrier, typically made of concrete, impedes water flow and coarse grains of sand settle behind it, creating an artificial aquifer that fills up during rainy seasons.

A major European Union plan to better protect nature in the 27-nation bloc and fight climate change was indefinitely postponed Monday, underscoring how farmers' protests sweeping the continent have had a deep influence on politics.

The deadlock on the bill, which could undermine the EU's global stature on the issue, came less than three months before the European Parliament election in June.

The wind gusting across north German farm country brings much to the village of Sprakebuell: fog and rain from the sea, the occasional migrating stork, the faint smell of manure in the newly fertilized fields.

And perhaps best of all, money — from selling the electricity generated by the wind turbines studding the flat green fields stretching out to the North Sea. A slice of the cash goes to the villagers themselves, with the local buy-in making this windy farming enclave near the border with Denmark a showcase for ways to push ahead with renewable energy projects.

Greek authorities have presented new plans for tackling wildfires which often ravage the country during its hot, dry summers, including changes in the deployment of firefighting aircraft and increased staffing in specialized forest firefighting units.

The new plans come after massive fires last year killed more than 20 people and decimated vast tracts of forest and farmland, including a blaze in northeastern Greece which raged out of control for about two weeks, growing into the largest wildfire recorded in a European Union country since the European Forest Fire Information System began keeping records in 2000.

As the world warms from human-caused climate change, fresh water for drinking, cooking and cleaning is becoming harder to get for many people.

That's because the warming world is leading to erratic rainfall patterns, extreme heat and periods of drought — on top of decades of bad water management and extractive policies around the world. The United Nations estimates that around 2.2 billion people worldwide don't have access to safely managed drinking water.

Regional and local leaders in eastern Morocco met this week with residents and civil society groups after months of protests over a water management plan set to take effect later this year.

Thousands in the town of Figuig stopped paying water bills and have taken to the streets since November to protest a municipal decision transitioning drinking water management from the town to a regional multi-service agency.

Food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with climate change, a new study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank found.

Looking at monthly price tags of food and other goods, temperatures and other climate factors in 121 nations since 1996, researchers calculate that "weather and climate shocks" will cause the cost of food to rise 1.5 to 1.8 percentage points annually within a decade or so, even higher in already hot places like the Middle East, according to a study in Thursday's journal Communications, Earth and the Environment.

More than 30 countries -- including European nations, the United States, Brazil and China -- took part on Thursday in the first-ever summit held by the United Nations' atomic energy agency to promote nuclear as a "clean and reliable source of energy".

A study that looked at how the immune system reacts to hot weather offers new insight into what's happening when the mercury rises.