Karen McVeigh

Karen McVeigh is a senior reporter at The Guardian who links environmental damage to global systems, focusing on the oceans, plastic pollution and the communities carrying the heaviest burden of climate and ecological breakdown. She reports across environment and global development, moving between detailed investigations, news pieces and on-the-ground features that track how policy, industry and supply chains translate into lived experience. She has reported for The Guardian since 2006, with a current focus on the Seascape series on the state of the world’s oceans and related environmental justice issues.

Oceans, plastics and ‘waste colonialism’

McVeigh’s defining strand of work follows plastic and other waste from wealthy countries into the landscapes, waters and food systems of communities far from where the products are consumed.

In her Seascape reporting from Turkey, she documents how UK plastic exports contaminate water and crops, describing the country’s farming heartland as bearing the burden of Britain’s “waste colonialism”. She combines data on export volumes and contamination with testimony from smallholders and residents living beside recycling plants and informal dumps, showing how microplastics and toxic smoke turn a distant waste stream into a local health and livelihood crisis.

Her coverage of corporate plastic footprints extends this line of accountability to multinational brands, including work naming major beverage companies among the top plastic polluters for repeated years.

She connects those findings to broader questions about global treaties and regulation, contributing to audio coverage on whether a global plastics treaty could “turn off the tap” of the never-ending stream of plastic pollution. Across these pieces, she treats ocean and coastal pollution as the outcome of specific decisions by governments and corporations, rather than as an abstract environmental problem.

Deep‑sea frontiers, Antarctica and marine life

Another consistent thread in McVeigh’s work is the scrutiny of activities in remote marine frontiers, from deep‑sea mining to whaling and polar expeditions. She has reported on a Canadian deep‑sea mining company’s efforts to negotiate directly with the US administration to bypass a United Nations framework and secure authorisation to mine in international waters, setting out the governance risks of opening up the deep ocean to commercial extraction.

Her coverage of a proposed bill in Iceland that could ban commercial whaling examines the mounting political and public pressure on the industry and the implications for marine conservation in those waters.

McVeigh’s work also highlights the biodiversity of little‑seen marine ecosystems, including reporting on a documentary that reveals life on the Pacific seabed through creatures such as the so‑called “Barbie Pig”, a deep‑sea sea cucumber. She brings the same attention to polar heritage and environment in her feature on the quest to locate and protect Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance in the Antarctic, treating the wreck as part of a fragile frontier where exploration history, climate change and conservation intersect. Her reporting from the Galápagos Islands for the Seascape series and related audio coverage underscores how iconic marine reserves are still threatened by plastic pollution and other human pressures, and how these places serve as laboratories for global ocean governance.

Climate justice, global development and communities at risk

McVeigh carries a longstanding global development perspective into her environment reporting, often focusing on communities at risk from climate change, deforestation and harmful practices. Her work on Ethiopia’s plan to plant 50 billion trees by 2030 follows the mobilisation of citizens into a vast reforestation effort, examining how large‑scale tree‑planting is organised, funded and experienced on the ground. In coverage of a $15m fund to create “unstoppable momentum” to end female genital mutilation worldwide, she traces how targeted financing and advocacy aim to shift entrenched practices, situating the announcement within broader struggles over rights, health and international support.

She has written on fears of “catastrophic” language loss as rising seas threaten coastal and island communities, framing the climate crisis as both an environmental and cultural emergency.

That concern with justice also runs through her reporting on UK plastic waste exports to developing countries, where she documents an 84% rise in shipments in a single year and connects that growth to regulatory gaps and unequal exposure to pollution. Her recognition in round‑ups of notable environmental journalism for a long‑running investigation into how demand for farmed fish in British supermarkets contributes to overfishing and food insecurity in Senegal reflects her ability to follow complex supply chains from retail shelves back to impacted coastal communities.

Formats, range and reporting style

McVeigh’s output spans long‑form investigations, fast‑turn news reports, newsletters and audio, but keeps a consistent emphasis on evidence and human impact. As part of The Guardian’s Seascape series, she regularly delivers deeply reported features that combine field visits, interviews and data to build a grounded picture of conditions in places such as Adana in Turkey, the Galápagos Islands and African fishing communities.

She also contributes to environment and global development news coverage, writing clearly structured pieces on policy decisions, funding initiatives and legislative moves that have environmental and social consequences.

Her long tenure at The Guardian, including work as a global development reporter and then as a senior news reporter, gives her a wide frame of reference for connecting environmental stories to geopolitics, trade and human rights. Across beats and formats, she tends to foreground the voices of people living with pollution, resource extraction and climate impacts, while maintaining a precise, fact‑driven style that makes complex international issues accessible without losing detail.