Helena Horton
Helena Horton is an environment reporter at the Guardian, covering how climate policy, nature protection and pollution are shaped by politics and corporate decisions. She focuses on national stories that reveal the consequences of government choices for land, water and the wider environment, often using leaked documents and exclusive data to set the agenda on the beat. Her reporting combines fast-breaking news with sustained coverage of evolving policy rows, keeping pressure on officials and regulators when environmental protections are at stake. She also turns to the human impacts of these debates, from farmers trying to fund nature restoration to workers organising for better conditions in high-profile industries.
Climate policy, Brexit and regulation
Horton devotes significant reporting to the way climate and environmental law is reshaped by Brexit and shifting regulation in the UK.
In one analysis of post-Brexit farm subsidies she explains how the new system became mired in delay, opaque pilot schemes and changing direction, testing farmers’ faith in promised nature-friendly reforms. She has reported in detail on how divergence from European legislation is removing vital legal protections for the environment and human health, showing the UK falling behind the EU on most areas of regulation. Across these pieces she highlights the practical consequences of legal changes, from pollution controls to public health, rather than treating policy as an abstract debate.
Farming, land use and nature recovery
Horton returns often to farming and land use, examining how government funding schemes support or undermine nature restoration on working land. She has covered farmers’ fears that they will no longer be able to afford to restore nature in England after payments for sustainable practices were frozen and the main incentive scheme paused for review. Her series on attempts to scrap environmental land management subsidies tracks how proposals to dilute or abandon long-fought-for nature recovery payments triggered an “attack on nature” backlash from green groups and rural communities. These stories follow the politics around subsidy design but stay anchored in farm businesses, habitats and carbon footprints on the ground.
Water, drought and pollution
Water and drought are another recurring strand of Horton’s beat, where she links climate change to everyday infrastructure and river health. She was among the first to report that drought had been declared across England after a prolonged dry spell, tracking impacts on water supplies, agriculture and public behaviour. Her coverage of dry springs and low river levels illustrates how changing weather patterns can devastate freshwater ecosystems as well as disrupt households and businesses.
She has also contributed to work examining regulation of the water industry, helping to explain how oversight failures and corporate decisions affect pollution and leakage.
Climate politics, energy and corporate accountability
Horton’s reporting on climate politics traces how organised groups shape the public debate and government policy on net zero.
She has investigated the small but influential Net Zero Scrutiny Group of MPs, exposing its links to climate-sceptic organisations and showing how it drags climate policy into wider culture-war battles. In a separate fact-check she dissects myths about wind power, unpacking claims about expense, efficiency and safety to show how they depart from evidence. Her environmental coverage also stretches beyond the UK, including work on mosquitoes appearing in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes new regions hospitable to disease-carrying insects.
In another piece she reports on Grand Theft Auto workers seeking union recognition after mass firings, extending her focus on power and accountability to labour conditions in the games industry. This mix of political investigation, energy fact-checking and labour reporting makes her coverage distinct on the environment desk, foregrounding who holds power and who bears the risk.
4 more environment journalists.
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace covers where energy, climate and politics meet, with a focus on how net zero, power markets and extreme weather affect people and institutions. She is an energy and climate reporter at POLITICO, covering U.K. energy policy, climate targets and the transition from fossil fuels. Her subjects include government and opposition debates over net zero, decarbonization, support schemes, infrastructure, public spending and climate adaptation. She also reports on energy companies, household bills, labor standards, supply chains and corporate accountability. Her work connects technical policy choices to jobs, competitiveness, public services and voter sentiment. She uses polling, expert voices and political analysis to examine public attitudes and government response to extreme weather. Before POLITICO, she worked on the companies desk at the Financial Times and the business news desk at Insider. She has also freelanced on politics, business and climate.
Adam Fulton
Adam Fulton is a digital news producer focused on fast-moving global stories where environment, conflict and politics meet. He works on the Guardian’s Australian operation, using rolling live blogs to cover geopolitical crises, climate-linked disasters and wars with clear structure and context. His Middle East coverage, including the Gaza peace plan, tracks tension between political messaging and on-the-ground realities, tying leaders’ statements to military movements, diplomatic reactions and humanitarian reports. His disaster reporting, such as on Nepal–Tibet floods, links rising tolls and missing people to infrastructure damage, rescue strain and cascading environmental threats. His Ukraine war blogs treat resource scarcity, especially water and energy, as strategic factors and track how infrastructure damage shapes the conflict. A former entertainment and arts reporter and senior editor at major Australian newspapers, he applies careful pacing and narrative arcs to collaborative, time-stamped live coverage.
Alec Luhn
Alec Luhn is an environment reporter whose work follows climate change at its extremes, frontiers and human consequences, often reporting directly from places where warming, instability and displacement intersect. He covers climate, conflict and migration, showing how abstract climate trends turn into risks for communities, infrastructure, health and preparedness. He reports for New Scientist on climate breakdown, extreme events, El Niño, limits of models, melting glaciers, warming seas and adaptation to heat, mixing scientific explanation with lived experience. A defining strand of his work is reporting from remote icy and mountainous regions on Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost, polar bears, pollution and fragile ecosystems. He has a long record on conflict and security, including the Skripal poisoning case. His reporting appears in New Scientist and major international outlets, with work across print, digital, audio and television and recognition from climate and journalism awards.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall is a regular contributor to The Connexion, and her work stands out for turning French rules, services and the built environment into clear, usable advice for everyday readers. She covers housing, energy use, resident obligations and the practical steps behind things like getting air-conditioning approved for flats. Her beat also includes national and local schemes, insurance and legal conditions for lending a car, mobile network coverage, mosquito-borne diseases, water filters, fruit harvests and emergency drones with defibrillators. She writes news, practical guides and magazine-style features, using plain language to explain technical topics and official systems. She also writes explainers on French words and phrases and occasional culture pieces on unusual sites such as Maison Picassiette.