A number of reports to stir up the environmental lobby have been published recently – some officially and at least one not so.

The eagerly-awaited second part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report into the effects of global warming, due for publication at the end of the month, has had a premature airing thanks to a report by The Independent that it has seen a leaked draft of the document. It makes grim reading, by all accounts, forecasting widespread crop failures and flooding, with consequential mass migrations. That, say the panel’s experts, will result in conflict and tensions.

Crop yields are forecast to reduce by an average of 2% per decade for the rest of the century, against a rise in demand of 14% per decade, The Independent reports. That will be the result of a 2.50C increase in temperature compared to the fall of 20C required to stave off disaster.

For someone who has been banging on about the rain for the past two and some years I suppose I’ve been a little quiet now that large swathes of the country have been under water for some considerable time. Large swathes of the country nowhere near where I am, you may be cynically thinking. It’s not that I have been avoiding the issue – I’ve been occupied with other things.

When I last had something to say on the subject it was to nearly sympathise with Owen Paterson over his treatment at the hands of the people of the Somerset Levels – which are still flooded! Money, however, is no object when it comes to tackling the crisis – now it has engulfed the South East and Oxfordshire, where PM Dave has his constituency. With even parts of London seeing waters rising, the chequebook came out.

• As I write this column the TV news is treating the nation to the tirade of abuse suffered by Environment Secretary Owen Paterson. I have long been sympathetic to government ministers accused of being responsible for the weather (I remember one woman in the West Midlands in recent years firmly placing responsibility for a tornado on the powers that be), but that sympathy gets a bit stretched when it concerns an environment minister who has presided over a 41% cut in funding for “climate change initiatives” in the UK. Those are figures published in The Independent on 26 January in response to a freedom of information request.

As we pass through the season of gluttony and full rubbish bins, the issue of food waste becomes more pressing than ever. It is also an issue that has returned to the headlines. One of the ‘challenge prizes’ developed by innovation charity Nesta in association with the Cabinet Office is the Waste Reduction Challenge, which carries a £10,000 funding boost for the winning project to develop its programme.

As the name suggests, the Waste Reduction challenge prize was offered to projects that helped reduce food waste. The winning project was the Gleaning Network, run by the admirable Feeding the 5000 – the waste-fighting charity whose free lunch events were reported on in this column back in May. The Gleaning Network aims to reduce waste at its source – the farm – by gathering in as much of the produce left behind during harvesting as possible for distribution to charities.

According to Nesta, to date the project has ‘gleaned’ 36.74 tonnes of fruit and vegetables, providing over 183,000 meals to beneficiaries.