Sandra Laville
Sandra Laville reports on the environmental consequences of how infrastructure and industry are run, with a particular focus on water, rivers and the systems that govern them. She is environment correspondent at the Guardian and a longstanding reporter at the masthead, with work in its archive stretching back to the mid-2000s. Her current coverage combines investigative projects with daily news and policy reporting on climate, pollution and ecological recovery.
Water industry and privatisation scandals
Laville’s recent work repeatedly returns to the failures of privatised water companies and the regulatory frameworks that oversee them. In a major long-form investigation into “dirty water, death and decline,” she traces how privatisation, weak oversight and corporate decisions have produced chronic pollution, infrastructure decay and public health risks, treating the water industry as a systemic scandal rather than a series of isolated incidents.
She examines the political response as closely as the environmental damage, reporting on MPs urging ministers to break off talks with hedge funds over the future of Thames Water and to use special administration powers instead, framing the company’s crisis as a test of government resolve. She also reviews and interprets broadcast investigations such as Channel 4’s “Dirty Business,” presenting them as clarion calls for radical reform up to and including nationalisation of the water industry.
Across these pieces she threads together corporate finance, regulatory detail, party politics and the lived impacts of sewage and contaminated water, making governance of utilities a core part of her environment beat.
Rivers, drought and pollution
Laville covers rivers as frontline evidence of climate disruption and regulatory failure. She reports on research finding that 2025 was among the driest years on record for the world’s rivers, translating technical study results into clear consequences for ecosystems, water supplies and future climate risk. Her story on toxic algae at a newly designated Thames bathing site shows the human edge of this work: she details warnings to swimmers, the conditions that allow harmful blooms to thrive and the tension between efforts to reconnect people with urban rivers and persistent pollution problems.
In her coverage of Thames Water’s financial and environmental troubles she links corporate decisions to river health, highlighting how sewage discharges, underinvestment and complex restructurings manifest downstream in degraded waterways. She also brings in land management, reporting on a revival of hedge laying as farmers rediscover an ancient craft that supports wildlife, stores carbon and protects soils, treating field boundaries and rural practices as part of the river and catchment story.
The pattern is a beat that moves from global hydrological studies to specific stretches of river and farmland, always tying physical changes in water and land back to policy, industry and enforcement.
Climate pledges and fossil fuels
Alongside water and rivers, Laville tracks how political leaders handle climate commitments when confronted with new fossil fuel projects.
In coverage of calls for the prime minister to uphold climate pledges made during a previous mayoral tenure and to ban new North Sea oil drilling, she sets out the direct collision between stated climate goals and licensing decisions for expanded extraction. Her reporting in this area emphasises accountability: she documents what leaders have promised, what campaigners and experts now demand, and how specific project approvals or bans would affect emissions trajectories and the credibility of national climate policy. This sits within her broader treatment of climate issues as questions of governance and follow-through rather than solely scientific debate, reinforcing the through-line of her beat across utilities, energy and environmental regulation.
Long Guardian tenure and reporting background
Laville is a long-serving reporter at the Guardian, with bylines in its archive over more than two decades. Earlier in her career she covered crime, policing and justice, including pieces on the security operation in London after the 2005 bombings, CCTV footage in a fatal shooting inquiry and the death of a member of the Birmingham Six.
She reported extensively on child sexual abuse investigations, including coverage of a national operation examining hundreds of suspects across politics and celebrity, which required handling sensitive testimony, large-scale inquiries and complex institutional failings. This background in scrutinising state power, law enforcement and major investigations informs her environmental work, which applies similar investigative habits to regulators, corporations and governments.
The continuity in her reporting is an emphasis on systems and accountability, whether the subject is a miscarriage of justice or a privatised utility discharging sewage into rivers.
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.