On March 1, the start of the holy month of Ramadan — observed by most of Turkey’s Sunni population — the imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Abdullah Öcalan, made a historic call for the party to disarm and end its 40-year-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.
Though seemingly unexpected, this call for peace — made a few weeks before Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year, on March 20 — followed months of negotiations between Turkey’s ruling coalition made up of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), Devlet Bahçeli’s Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and Kurdish officials.
In a political landscape long shaped by conflict, Erdoğan’s recent overtures to Kurdish political forces mark a striking shift. In his speech during his party’s congress in Trabzon earlier this year, Erdoğan emphasized the unity and shared history among Turks and Kurds — the latter of whom have long been victims of imperialist designs of dividing the region and have been a mainstay of his populist rhetoric.
Change of course on the Kurds
Erdoğan’s speech suggested not only a willingness to re-engage with Kurds but also the possibility of a broader political compromise.
This is not Erdoğan’s first attempt to resolve the Kurdish issue. In 2009, he launched the “Kurdish Opening,” aimed at ending the conflict through dialogue. Similar initiatives followed in 2008–11 and 2013–15.
But all initiatives ultimately collapsed due to political disagreements, shifting alliances and Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian approach to governance.
This latest initiative follows the same transactional logic that marked the earlier processes. Erdoğan’s renewed interest in engaging with the Kurds appears driven less by a desire for peace-making and more by political necessity.
Domestically, Erdoğan’s AKP has grown increasingly reliant on its alliance with ultra-nationalist MHP. While this partnership secured his 2023 re-election as president, its fragility became evident in the country’s 2024 local elections, when opposition candidates won key mayoral races throughout the country. They were aided by the tacit support of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM.)
The process that led to Öcalan’s statement from prison is quite likely to bring significant realignments to Turkish politics.
By engaging with the broader Kurdish movement, Erdoğan seeks to destabilize the fragile and fractured opposition coalition, whose unity hinged on their shared opposition to him. Their continued relevance also depends on the tacit support of DEM and its Kurdish voters.
By opening a new dialogue, Erdoğan may tip the balance in his favour by positioning DEM as a privileged negotiating partner. Drawing Kurdish political support away from the opposition and securing Kurdish backing for constitutional reforms would allow him to seek another presidential term.
With 57 parliamentary seats, DEM holds significant sway and can make all the difference if Erdoğan initiates a constitutional amendment process.
Regional and strategic implications
Erdoğan’s overtures also carry significant regional implications. Turkey’s military operations in Syria and Iraq have strained relations with Kurdish factions across the region.
By addressing the Kurdish issue domestically, Erdoğan could strengthen his hand regionally, perhaps replicating his co-operation with Iraq in relations with the Democratic Union Party in Northern Syria, positioning Turkey as a stabilizing force in both Iraq and Syria.
What comes next?
Despite Erdoğan’s conciliatory tone, the future of this peace process remains highly uncertain. Previous negotiations unravelled due to unresolved questions about Kurdish political autonomy, cultural rights and power-sharing.
The AKP’s emphasis on disarmament without addressing broader Kurdish political demands resulted in the eventual breakdown of dialogue.
Internal divisions within Kurdish political forces also complicate the process. While Öcalan’s influence remains strong, some Kurdish factions may resist concessions without meaningful political guarantees. And despite Bahçeli’s recent statements, Erdoğan’s MHP allies remain deeply skeptical of any reconciliation efforts.
As Nowruz approaches, Erdoğan’s engagement with Kurdish political forces could culminate in a new phase of dialogue — or serve as a strategic manoeuvre to consolidate power ahead of the next election cycle.
Whether his shift leads to genuine reconciliation or remains a political gambit will depend on Erdoğan’s willingness to address Kurdish demands for autonomy and cultural recognition.
If the past is any indicator, pro-Kurdish parties and civil society organizations currently engaged in negotiations may once again be discarded if they no longer serve Erdoğan’s interests. For now, the Kurdish question remains one of the most critical — and volatile — fault lines in Turkish politics.
Whether lasting peace is on the horizon, or another cycle of repression and conflict, will depend on how any potential peace process unfolds in the coming months.
Spyros A. Sofos receives funding from SSHRC and SFU.
A US biotech company has genetically modified mice to have traits from the extinct woolly mammoth. Researchers at Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences endowed their mice with the thick, shaggy hair of the mammoth and its efficient fat metabolism, which helped it survive in icy conditions.
Colossal’s ultimate goal is to introduce these woolly mammoth traits, along with others, into modern elephants. This general area of science has become known as de-extinction.
However, elephants have long gestation (pregnancy) periods, exhibit complex social behaviour, and experimentation on them raises significant ethical challenges, including the issue of animal welfare. Therefore, the researchers have chosen mice for the initial experiments.
Mice breed quickly, and their genes are easier to modify, which allows
scientists to test and refine their methods in an animal they understand well.
Instead of trying to clone a dead mammoth, Colossal is trying to transform an modern elephant into a mammoth. The process begins with ancient DNA. Colossal’s team extracted genetic material from woolly mammoth remains preserved in Arctic permafrost – a natural archive that has safeguarded genetic secrets for thousands of years.
By comparing this ancient DNA with that of modern elephants, the researchers identified the specific genes responsible for the mammoth’s distinctive woolly coat and its rapid fat metabolism.
The next step was to use a powerful gene editing tool called Crispr. This molecular technique enables scientists to make precise modifications (changes) in an organism’s DNA. In the laboratory, the researchers applied Crispr to edit the DNA of mouse embryos, introducing the mammoth versions of the genes that control hair texture and fat metabolism.
Many experiments were needed and a large number of mouse embryos underwent testing to ensure the genetic modifications were successful. However, the work clearly demonstrated that these complex genetic traits could be replicated in a living model.
This is a process that would be far more difficult, and ethically challenging, if
attempted directly in elephants. However, the success in mice provides a critical proof of concept.
In an elephant, the process would involve editing early-stage embryos and implanting them into a surrogate elephant mother. For now, the work in mice offers a safer, efficient and more cost-effective way to test and perfect the scientists’ gene editing approaches.
Although the prospect of an elephant with woolly mammoth characteristics may still
be a distant goal, the current work with mice is an essential early milestone. By focusing on a manageable animal, the scientists can gather vital data and refine their techniques without the immediate complications that would arise from working with larger, more complex animals.
This methodical progression – from mice to elephants – ensures that each step is
shown to be effective before moving on to the next. Such incremental progress in science can eventually lead to groundbreaking advances.
Although the whole concept of bringing the mammoth back might sound like science fiction, Colossal envisions a future where de-extinction and genetic enhancement play a key role in restoring natural ecosystems.
Their research could pave the way for reviving other species, such as the thylacine – a carnivore that lived on the island of Tasmania – or the dodo, which once roamed Mauritius. The work might even contribute to the survival of current endangered species by enhancing their natural defences, such as introducing genes that confer immunity to disease.
As habitats shrink and species become increasingly endangered, innovative conservation strategies are urgently needed. Gene editing, as demonstrated in these experiments, could provide a complementary tool to traditional conservation methods.
By bestowing modern species with traits that once helped extinct animals survive in extreme conditions, scientists hope to improve their resilience to a changing environment.
Timothy Hearn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kieran File, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick
Motor sport’s governing body the FIA (International Automobile Federation) has not ruled out extending its recent swearing ban to Formula One (F1) team radio communication. Last month FIA president Mohammed Sulayem said the body could “shut down the radios of live communication” over the issue.
At first glance, this might seem like a minor issue of professionalism. After all, athletes in many sports are expected to control their language.
For some, the idea that drivers need to swear during races may seem unconvincing, given that emotions can be expressed through other word choices. Many people are not permitted to swear in their workplaces, so why should F1 drivers be an exception?
But research suggests that banning drivers from swearing during races could have wider effects. It may disrupt how they regulate their emotions in Formula One’s extreme environment.
It could also affect how they communicate efficiently with their teams, and how they shape their identities as racing drivers – functions that swearing, arguably, serves in live racing communication.
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Experimental and lab-based studies suggest that swear words are processed differently to other words. They have been linked to brain regions responsible for processing emotion, threat detection and survival responses.
Given that F1 drivers operate in an intense, high-stakes environment where rapid decision-making and threat assessment are key, this connection may suggest that swearing is a natural response under pressure.
Some studies also suggest that swearing activates the fight-or-flight response, triggering physiological changes like increased heart rate, faster breathing and adrenaline release. The fight-or-flight response is an instinctive mechanism that helps humans react to danger.
For F1 drivers, who must remain highly alert while making critical decisions at extreme speeds, this connection between swearing and physiological arousal could play a role in maintaining focus and performance under pressure.
Beyond cognitive and emotional regulation, swearing may also increase pain tolerance, which has clear implications for F1 drivers enduring G-forces, mental strain and long stints behind the wheel in a very cramped space. Banning swearing could interfere with drivers’ instinctive mechanism for coping with extreme conditions involved in racing.
Swearing and communication
Beyond these more cathartic functions, swearing, arguably, plays a crucial role in interpersonal team communication, particularly in the high-pressure environment of live racing. In Formula One, where split-second decisions can define the outcome of a race, communication between driver and engineer must be concise, clear and unambiguous.
Research suggests that swearing, far from being just an emotional outburst, serves several pragmatic functions that may enhance communication in such high-stakes environments. One key function of swearing in interpersonal communication is that it acts as an “attention getter”.
Studies have shown that swear words command more cognitive focus than neutral words, making them particularly effective in cutting through noise and grabbing attention when urgency is required. For drivers, an expletive-laden message may serve as an immediate cue for the race engineer and the wider racing team to prioritise a response.
The strong response from drivers may also reflect the inextricable link between language and identity, and that, at a deeper level, this swearing policy may challenge how they construct their identities as racing drivers.
F1 drivers are socialised into the sport, often from a young age, learning not just how to drive but how to talk and interact like racing drivers. Perhaps due to these cathartic and team communication functions, swearing may have become an assumed way of claiming and performing the identity of a racing driver.
People (and communities) resist imposed changes to their language, especially when it is seen to alter how they present themselves. Seen in this way, the proposed swearing ban is more than a simple matter of professionalism. It is an external attempt to reshape how drivers construct and “perform” their identities within their sport.
Entertainment value
It is also worth mentioning the potential effects on the entertainment values of such a ban. One of the biggest shifts in modern F1 has been the opening up of the team radio communications to the public.
Once a private channel for strategy and decision-making, it is now part of the entertainment package – broadcast, clipped and replayed for millions of fans. This has given audiences insight into the intensity of racing, but it has also altered the meaning of driver communication, turning functional exchanges into public performances.
Yet team radio is not designed for entertainment: it is for the vital, two-way flow of information during racing events. So any decision about what is broadcast should be a negotiation, not a policy imposed on speech itself.
It should also see the broadcasters accommodating the norms of the environment rather than the other way around. The FIA’s approach treats this as a regulatory issue rather than a broadcasting one, placing restrictions on competitors instead of reconsidering how private communication is curated for public access.
Viewed in this context, this ban may inadvertently create a contradiction in F1’s wider media strategy. The sport wants the authenticity of raw radio exchanges but not the discomfort of unfiltered emotion.
A swearing ban risks making team radio feel sanitised and staged, diminishing the very sense of access that made it compelling and exciting in the first place.
Kieran File does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Magdalena Frennhoff Larsén, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster
US president Donald Trump sees himself as a born negotiator with a knack for driving a hard bargain and striking a good deal. When it comes to trade, his approach is clearly positional, and negotiations are treated as zero-sum games with winners and losers.
Imposing tariffs – or threatening to do so – is his preferred way of exerting influence over US trading partners. While tariffs are unilaterally imposed – and not the result of negotiations – they can be interpreted as an opening gambit to gain leverage in trade negotiations further down the line.
Since taking office, Trump has already announced a series of sweeping new tariffs, including an across-the-board steel and aluminium tariff to be effective from March 12.
As the biggest trading partner of the US, the EU is concerned. Yet the EU is also a formidable negotiator.
Negotiations are very much part of the EU’s DNA. They are the bloc’s preferred way of engaging with third countries, and in trade the European Commission negotiates on behalf of the member states, projecting a unified EU front. With more trade agreements in place than any other country or regional bloc, it is considered a champion of a liberal global trade order.
Unlike Trump, the EU prefers a more open approach. Negotiations are considered win-win games, with a focus on relation-building and trying to understand where the other party comes.
Its response to the provocation from Washington has been rapid and strategic. Even so, the EU has already found that the only option with Trump is to play him at his own game.
The art of other deals
Sticking with what it knows best, the EU has hurried to conclude trade negotiations with other partners to offset some of the economic losses resulting from potential US tariffs, and to demonstrate its continued commitment to trade liberalisation and international cooperation.
Since Trump’s election, the EU has finalised negotiations for a groundbreaking trade deal with Mercosur – a South American trade bloc bringing together Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. This agreement –- if ratified – will create a market of 800 million citizens and boost trade and political ties between the two regions.
Indirectly rejecting Trump’s “America first” approach, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, stressed how the EU-Mercosur agreement is a political necessity, “bringing together like-minded partners that believe in openness and cooperation as engines of economic growth”.
This reaction is similar to the EU’s response to the isolationist approach taken by Trump during his first administration. Most significantly, it then reached an extensive free trade agreement with Japan.
Cecilia Malmström, the EU trade commissioner at the time, highlighted how the EU and Japan were “”sending a strong signal to the world that two of its biggest economies still believe in open trade, opposing both unilateralism and protectionism”.
It was also the first time the EU used a trade agreement to commit to the Paris agreement on climate change – a commitment that was replicated in the EU-Mercosur agreement. This again, was a way of taking a stance against Trump’s broader rejection of multilateralism and withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
Although not intentionally, Trump has triggered an expansion of the EU’s network of trade agreements. But while these are significant, they cannot fully protect the EU from the effects of US-imposed tariffs. After all, the EU and the US are each other’s largest trading partners, and they have the world’s most integrated economic relationship.
For that reason, the EU has engaged in intensive diplomacy to try to avert the looming tariffs, and to lure the US to the negotiating table. It has expressed openness to lowering tariffs on industrial goods, including cars, while insisting such a move needs to form part of a broader negotiated deal, compatible with the rules of the WTO. However, these efforts have been to no avail.
This has left the EU with no choice but to adopt Trump’s positional approach and threaten to impose retaliatory measures. In response to the economic pressure exerted by Trump in his first term, the EU has expanded its arsenal of punitive measures, including an anti-coercion instrument that allows for rapid retaliation.
There has long been strong resistance to use such measures as it runs counter to the EU’s traditionally open negotiating approach, but the tone in Brussels has now hardened.
A tit-for-tat tariff war would negatively affect businesses and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. During his first term Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium, and the EU responded with targeted tariffs on goods, such as American whiskey and jeans.
This was followed by a political agreement, opening the door for trade talks. While a trade deal never materialised, it demonstrates how both the US and the EU recognised the need for a de-escalation of the dispute, and a return to the negotiating table.
This time around, the looming tariffs are more comprehensive, and they would have more far-reaching implications. The question is how long – and how damaging – the trade war will be before the parties return to the negotiating table. After all, that’s where you reach a deal.
Magdalena Frennhoff Larsén does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
During a wide-ranging 90-minute speech to the US congress of March 4, Donald Trump revisited his determination to “get” Greenland “one way or the other”. Trump said his country needed Greenland “for national security”. While he said he and his government “strongly support your right to determine your own future” he added that “if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America”.
Trump’s ambitions regarding Greenland and its considerable mineral wealth are just one of a raft of issues in the first six weeks of his second term that have plunged European global politics into disarray.
As the White House ramps up the pressure on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to allow the US access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, the US president is also talking about “cutting a deal” with Russian president Vladimir Putin. That deal would not only mean territorial losses for Kyiv, but would prepare the ground for a potentially far-reaching economic partnership between the White House and the Kremlin.
Currently, Trump and Putin are primarily focused on Ukrainian territory and mineral assets. But discussions have also begun on where else “deals” might be made, including in the Arctic.
A carve up of the Arctic is an attractive proposition for the two countries given the importance both leaders attach to mineral resource wealth. As in the case of Ukraine, such an approach would reflect Trump’s predisposition for transactional geopolitics at the expense of multilateral approaches.
In the Arctic, any deal would effectively end the principle of “circumpolar cooperation”. This has, since the end of the cold war, upheld the regional primacy of the eight Arctic states (A8) that have cooperated to solve common challenges.
Since the Arctic Council was established in 1996, the A8 has worked on issues of environmental protection, sustainable development, human security and scientific collaboration. That harmony has been crucial in an era in which climate change is causing the rapid melting of Arctic ice.
Notably, the Arctic Council played an instrumental role in negotiating several legally binding treaties. These include agreements on search and rescue (2011), marine oil pollution preparedness (2013) and scientific cooperation (2017). It also supported the Central Arctic Ocean fisheries agreement (CAO) signed in 2018 by the Arctic Ocean states with Iceland, the EU, China, Japan and South Korea.
The Arctic Council – and more broadly, circumpolar cooperation – withstood the geopolitical aftershocks of Russia’s seizure of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2015. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine left trust teetering on the precipice.
Within a month, European and North American members had pressed pause on regular meetings of the Arctic Council and its scientific working groups, isolating Moscow. Some activity eventually resumed at the working group level in virtual formats, but full engagement with Russia has remained conditional on a military withdrawal from Ukraine. Meanwhile, hefty sanctions were imposed by the US and Europe, including targeting Russian Arctic energy projects.
Russia’s response was to enhance its relationships with others. Countries such as Brazil, India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia now work with Russia in the Arctic on commercial and scientific projects. This pivot raised concerns among Nato allies about a stronger and challenging Russia-China presence across the Arctic. But the second Trump administration has changed the calculus. There’s now the threat of a new Arctic order based on the primacy – not of the A8 – but on a reset of US-Russia relations.
Change of focus
Trump’s signing of an executive order on February 4 to determine whether to withdraw support from international institutions may lead the White House to conclude there is no place for the Arctic Council. Its longstanding focus on climate change and environmental protection is anathema to the Trump administration, which has already withdrawn from the Paris agreement and is destroying domestic climate-related science programmes.
The longstanding commitment of the A8 to circumpolar cooperation, or even a narrow A5 (Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US) view of the primacy of the Arctic Ocean coastal states, is likely to be dismissed by the White House, which favours the embrace of great power politics. While many have warned that the Arctic Council can’t survive without Russia, losing US interest and support would surely be its death knell.
In this landscape of “America first”, the prospect of Washington and Moscow dividing the Arctic and its resources seems increasingly realistic. In such a situation, the international treaties signed by the A8, and the CAO may also be at risk. Denmark may find itself excluded altogether from Arctic affairs if Trump gets his way over Greenland. At any rate, all the Nordic Arctic states are likely to struggle to make their voices in the region heard.
A key question for European Nato and EU members is whether Trump would worry about Russian dominance in the European Arctic if it brought US-Russia economic cooperation to extract the region’s wealth? Might Trump even be supportive of Russian attempts to revisit the terms of the 1920 Spitsbergen Treaty, which ultimately gave Norway sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago (albeit with some limitations), if that too meant jointly unlocking Svalbard’s mineral resources let alone the wealth of the Arctic seabed?
What room, if any, would a deal leave for Indigenous people to be heard, or for international scientific collaboration on critical challenges related to climate and biodiversity?
If we have learned anything in the tumult of recent weeks, it is that European countries, individually and collectively, struggle to exercise strategic influence over contemporary geopolitical events. If Trump and Putin do begin negotiations over the Arctic, Europe may simply have to accept the end of the Arctic Council and circumpolar cooperation.
Climate science, environmental protection, sustainable development and the ability of Indigenous people to decide their future would all suffer. The UK and Europe meanwhile will be left to consider what, if anything, can be done to defend Arctic interests.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
What we think of as “normal” body shape is affected by what we’re accustomed to – the range of body shapes we see. My new research with colleagues shows that this is true for young children as well as adults.
Research with adults and with children as young as five has already found that our understanding of what a face looks like is always being updated based on the faces we see around us, from childhood through adulthood.
This process of the brain flexibly changing in response to new repeated inputs is known as “adaptation”. When the brain adapts to the same input repeatedly, we can see long term changes in perceptions. For instance, viewing a series of images with larger (as opposed to contracted) facial features leads to an increased preference for large features afterwards.
But so far, research like this on how we view bodies has almost entirely been run with adults.
Among adults, we can see the same effects with body weight that we see with face shape in adults and children. If we are shown a lot of heavy bodies, the bodies we rate as attractive get heavier, the bodies we rate as “normal” get heavier, and the point at which we perceive a body being heavy or not shifts lower. And the opposite happens when we view a lot of thin bodies.
Altered perceptions
Our study tested whether this also holds true for children. Children aged seven to 15 years of age and adult undergraduate students completed the same experimental study. They rated a series of bodies for how heavy they were, then viewed either 20 very thin figures or 20 very heavy figures, and then rated the same bodies for heaviness as they did at the start.
We found that children, adolescents and adults all rated the same bodies as significantly lighter after viewing the heavy bodies than they did beforehand. This suggests our participants’ mental picture of a “normal” body got heavier, and so every body was perceived as “lighter” than it had been in comparison.
In contrast, those who viewed lighter bodies did not show this shift. They continued to rate the bodies as just as heavy or light as they had beforehand.
It’s difficult to say for sure why this is, although it is likely in part due to the stimuli used. In my own wider research with adults using the same images, I’ve found that larger images tend to produce stronger effects than thin images, but experiments in other labs with adults using different stimuli have shown shifts in perception as a result of viewing both heavier and thinner bodies.
When we compared just the youngest children with the adult participants, we found that the effect of viewing heavy versus light bodies was equally strong in the seven-year-olds as it was in adult students.
These results tell us that the brain’s “model” of a body becomes flexible in the same was as in adults by seven years of age.
Previous research shows that playing with ultra-thin dolls changes young girls’ perceptions of the body they want to have, making them want it to be thinner.
Our new study shows that the effect of dolls on girls’ body ideals isn’t just driven by dolls being aspirational or pretty. Just visual exposure to bodies can change body perceptions. And that means that changing that visual experience, for instance by giving girls a broad range of body sizes and toys, is an important part of maintaining healthy body perceptions.
These results also mean that the large body of research on the effects of visual media on adults’ body perceptions is also likely apply to children as young as seven. For instance, gaining access to television is associated with preferences for thinner bodies in rural communities, and viewing images of muscular male models increases preferences for muscle in male laboratory participants.
Therefore, all of the warnings and recommendations that exist in relation to reducing the biases in the bodies we see in adult’s visual media also apply to children.
Young children in western countries have been shown to associate being heavier with being less pretty or less desirable as a friend. We therefore need to think about how body sizes are represented in all aspects of children’s media and ensure that children do not have a bias towards one size or another if we don’t want them to develop the strong thin ideals that we often see in adulthood.
Lynda Boothroyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In any negotiation, understanding your counterpart’s style is paramount. The Ukraine conflict, and especially the heated discussion between presidents Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office recently, has revealed a critical disconnect between the two administrations.
Volodymyr Zelensky later called the fiery showdown with President Trump and vice-president J.D. Vance “regrettable” and wrote to Trump to say he was ready to negotiate. But the Ukrainian president and his European allies have approached talks from a principles-based position. In terms of negotiating style, this means they tend to emphasise multilateral mechanisms, such as collegial decision-making, long-term relationship-building and cultural sensitivity.
Trump is a businessman and operates from a fundamentally different negotiation paradigm. Unfortunately, this misalignment has significant implications for Ukraine’s strategic position and for European security.
Research my colleagues and I conducted, comparing US and Italian negotiation styles, has shown that US negotiators typically use a more competitive, transactional approach. They might appear unilateral or domineering but are also adept at connecting different parts of a deal and trading concessions across issues to achieve their goals.
Trump, however, combines this with highly competitive tactics and emotional rhetoric. Unlike typical US negotiators who are thought to avoid emotional expression, as shown in our study, Trump uses anger and confrontation to dominate discussions and control narratives.
He frames negotiations in zero-sum terms, where every deal must have a clear winner and loser. This reinforces his public image as a strong leader.
And most importantly, Trump appears to negotiate selectively. He enters discussions only when he believes he holds the stronger position.
Our study shows that Americans prioritise bottom-line outcomes and use competitive tactics when they perceive themselves to be in positions of power.
Trump exemplifies this approach but adds his own distinctive elements – emotional pressure, public posturing and an unwavering commitment to his positions until a more favourable alternative emerges.
Zelensky’s miscalculation
President Zelensky’s primary negotiation error has been attempting to engage in a principles-based negotiation with a counterpart who favours transactional deal-making. When Zelensky appeals to democratic principles, territorial integrity and international law, he’s speaking a negotiation language that Trump doesn’t understand.
Classic negotiation research suggests Zelensky should have structured negotiations around US economic interests rather than western unity or moral imperatives.
Trump has made clear that he will protect Ukraine and Europe only insofar as it serves these economic interests. Zelensky is negotiating from a dependant position (Ukraine needs aid to survive). As such, the key is making the deal appealing to the stronger party while protecting his own interests.
In our study, we also found that the Italian negotiators often emphasise emotional engagement, treating counterparts as collaborators rather than adversaries. They tend to focus on mutual interests and their approach balances technical considerations with human relationships.
It is underpinned by principles such as liberal values and adherence to international norms. This chimes with other findings on the evolution of negotiation styles within the EU.
But this approach can be ineffective against Trump’s confrontational, power-based tactics. Emotional engagement may be misinterpreted as a weakness, and consensus-driven approaches fail when the counterpart insists on domination.
The liberal world order appears unprepared to negotiate at Trump’s level. It still expects rational, interest-based discussions rather than emotionally charged confrontations.
The rest of the world will have to adapt to Trump’s approach.
The EU’s experience negotiating Brexit provides a relevant template for addressing the Ukraine conflict. The appointment of Michel Barnier as chief negotiator, backed by a bloc of 27 nations, proved effective despite initial scepticism.
A similar approach could work for Ukraine. Appointing an authoritative chief negotiator with a clear mandate could be successful. Barnier, economist and former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi or ex-German chancellor Angela Merkel are obvious candidates. This structure might neutralise Trump’s preference for one-on-one, power-based deals and force negotiations on terms more aligned with European interests.
But to engage Trump, European and Ukrainian leaders need to reframe their approach.
First, proposals should be presented in terms of economic benefits. Trump prioritises trade, jobs and business opportunities over security or moral arguments. The negotiation landscape should emphasise the actual distribution of aid to Ukraine, highlighting that European nations collectively have provided substantial financial and humanitarian support.
Second, objective data and power-based arguments are better than moral appeals. Economic impact assessments and strategic calculations will resonate more effectively than principles-based reasoning.
Third, competitive tactics should be matched with controlled confrontation. Emotional engagement must be strategic, reinforcing firm but pragmatic positioning rather than appearing defensive.
Finally, win-win scenarios will allow Trump to claim victory. Trump negotiates to win, and deals must enable him to declare personal success in front of his own supporters.
The path forward requires strategic adaptation, not ideological entrenchment. Zelensky and European leaders must recognise that negotiating with Trump demands an understanding of his approach to international relations, perhaps favouring pragmatism over idealism.
A crucial insight from previous research on Trump’s negotiation behaviour is this: he rarely backtracks explicitly but frequently pivots to new objectives when they become more appealing. This should inspire European leaders to develop attractive alternatives that serve both Trump’s interests and Europe’s security needs.
Deal-making may not be the most desirable approach to geopolitical negotiations, but Trump’s return to power makes it the current reality. After decades of business negotiators learning from politicians, we now face a reversal. Political negotiators must learn from business tactics.
In the high-stakes arena of international security, understanding your counterpart’s negotiation style isn’t just good practice – it may be essential for survival. The lessons from Trump’s first term suggest that principled stands alone won’t secure Ukrainian or European interests. Pragmatic deal-making (underpinned with principles) offers a more promising path forward.
Andrea Caputo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The US president, Donald Trump, is set to introduce a “gold card” visa that would allow wealthy foreigners to buy permanent US residency – and a path to citizenship – for US$5 million (£3.9 million).
Speaking at the Oval Office on February 25, Trump said: “I think it’s going to be very treasured. I think it’s going to do very well. And we’re going to start selling, hopefully, in about two weeks.”
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has touted the plan as a way to raise revenue to bring down US national debt, which currently stands at over US$36 trillion. As Trump put it when answering questions from reporters at the White House: “We’ll be able to sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that. And if you add up the numbers, they’re pretty good. As an example, a million cards would be worth US$5 trillion.”
Trump has also suggested that the gold-card holders can help stimulate the US economy. “They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes,” he said. When asked whether Russian oligarchs would qualify for the visa, Trump responded: “Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people. It’s possible.”
The idea that wealthy foreigners can address a nation’s faltering economy is not new. Trump’s gold visas will themselves replace the current EB-5 immigrant investor visa, which offers permanent US residency in return for job-creating investments of at least US$1 million.
In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, various European nations also floated similar golden visa schemes as a means of reversing their economic downturns. The visas offered by Spain, Greece, Hungary and Portugal, for example, all cost significantly less than Trump’s proposed scheme.
A Spanish gold visa, which will no longer be available from April 2025, is granted in return for €500,000 (£417,000) in real estate investment. The required investment in Greece and Hungary is €250,000. And people looking to obtain a gold visa in Portugal have two options: a €250,000 donation to the restoration of national heritage, or a €500,000 property investment.
There is little data to support the argument that such policies boost the national coffers. Some experts have suggested that golden visa schemes typically bring in no more than 0.3% of GDP in revenue. So, it’s no surprise that there is plenty of scepticism around whether Trump’s gold card scheme can reduce US national debt.
Critics of the plan argue that the scheme will not add trillions of US dollars to the economy, as Trump has claimed. This is because demand for any such programme is likely to be limited to thousands of people.
In a recent poll conducted by Forbes, 18 billionaires were asked if they would like to take advantage of an American gold card visa. Most of them (13) said they would not be interested. Many of the ultra-rich foreigners interviewed simply did not think they needed American citizenship and don’t want it.
“If you’re a billionaire, you don’t need it,” said one Canadian billionaire. “I don’t have to come to the United States to invest in the United States.”
Marginal benefits
The global rich are unlikely to be queuing up for Trump’s gold cards. At about US$5 million per application, it is “the most expensive” golden visa option in the world. Any potential buyer will carry out cost-benefit analysis prior to committing to such a deal.
Two reasons a wealthy person might invest in a second or third passport are to ensure greater mobility and protect their wealth.
US tax laws have traditionally reduced the attractiveness of American residency or citizenship for the global rich. American citizens and residents are required to pay income tax on their US earnings as well as any income they earn overseas.
Trump has said that gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income. This tax loophole could open the door to more wealthy foreigners looking to protect their wealth. However, many details about the scheme remain unclear.
Notwithstanding this, golden visas in many other nations provide better opportunities than those offered by a Trump gold card. In terms of mobility, the US passport ranks eighth on an index of 198 different passports. American passport holders can travel to 171 countries without needing a visa.
Spain ranks second, with a Spanish passport allowing access to 177 countries without a visa. And Portugal, Greece and a host of other European nations follow closely behind, with their passports allowing visa-free travel to 176 countries.
The most powerful passport in the world is offered by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), allowing access to 179 countries visa-free. The UAE government introduced a golden visa in 2019, offering long-term residence in exchange for roughly US$550,000 of investment.
The US passport is ranked eight in the world by the 2025 Passport Index. KieferPix / Shutterstock
An American passport also has its own inherent limitations and hazards. A US-born colleague of mine who acquired Irish citizenship through lineage has never used his American passport while out of the country.
He believed that in a crisis situation, such as being taken hostage, a US citizen was far more vulnerable and exposed to danger than a non-American counterpart. In his opinion, people were far more prejudiced and hostile towards a US citizen than those belonging to other nations.
The return on investment of a Trump gold card remains unpredictable. The asking price is extremely high and the benefits it promises buyers are – at best – marginal. The offer comes with enough holes to sink a ship.
Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation fellowships.
Difficult relationship: Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Charles de Gaulle, and Winston Churchill at a conference in Casablanca January 1943.U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Eighty-five years before Volodymyr Zelensky visited Downing Street in search of support for Ukrainian democracy, a Frenchman arrived in London with a similar request.
Charles de Gaulle was not the French prime minister. That job belonged to Paul Reynaud. De Gaulle had been undersecretary of state for defence in Reynaud’s government for less than two weeks.
He started June 1940 as commander of a tank squadron fighting to stem the German advance. But his decision later that month to leave France rather than surrender – and to proclaim himself the leader of all Frenchmen who wished to fight on – was the foundation of his political career.
French citizens became aware of de Gaulle as a wartime political leader through his broadcasts on the BBC. The most famous of these, the “Appeal of 18th June”, was actually heard by very few in France – but for those that did listen, it contained the core of de Gaulle’s message of defiance.
He arrived at the BBC at 6pm to record the four-minute speech which was transmitted by the BBC at 10pm. De Gaulle said: “Nothing is lost for France.” He insisted that: “She has a vast Empire behind her. She can align with the British Empire that holds the sea and can continue the fight. She can, like England, use without limit the immense industry of the United States.”
Transmission of this speech is widely regarded as the moment when French resistance was born. The BBC describes it as “one of the most remarkable pieces in the history of radio broadcasting”.
Had the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), responded positively to Churchill and Reynaud’s impassioned pleas in June 1940, to actively support France and Britain, de Gaulle might have remained a dynamic and courageous military officer. But Roosevelt refused, Reynaud resigned, and Marshall Henri Philippe Pétain led France into collaboration.
FDR was a Democrat and author of the new deal, the economic policy that helped America recover from the Great Depression. He had little in common with Donald Trump, but they shared one instinct: a reluctance to spend American blood and treasure in foreign wars.
When Churchill honoured his promise to Reynaud and told the 32nd US president now “is the moment for you to strengthen Reynaud the utmost you can, and try to tip the balance in favour of the best and longest possible French resistance”. Roosevelt replied that he was not committed to military participation. He reminded Churchill that only Congress could declare war.
When Zelensky arrived at the White House on February 28, he hoped to sign a minerals deal and secure continued American support for his country’s battle for freedom and independence. Instead he found himself accused by Trump of risking a third world war and showing too little gratitude to the US.
In an extraordinary failure of diplomatic norms, Trump and his viscerally isolationist vice-president, J.D. Vance, berated and humiliated Zelensky before a worldwide television audience.
Roosevelt’s contempt for de Gaulle was less bluntly expressed, but it was real. The US recognised Pétain’s regime and granted Vichy France, the collaborationist regime which governed southern France during the German occupation of northern France, full diplomatic recognition.
Roosevelt agreed when his ambassador to Vichy, Admiral William D. Leahy, described de Gaulle as “an apprentice dictator”. There is a chilling echo in Trump’s description of Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator” who refuses to have elections and has done “a terrible job”.
US and France: ‘difficult’ relationship
At the end of June 1940, Roosevelt decided that France was beaten – and that Britain was likely to follow its ally and neighbour into defeat and collapse. He dismissed de Gaulle as an irritation with no democratic credentials.
His opinion did not change when the US entered the war in December 1941. Indeed, Roosevelt believed France could not have a recognised leader until it had been liberated by American arms and helped to organise fully democratic elections.
When he needed someone to represent French interests, Roosevelt preferred to choose senior French military officers who would obey US orders. His choices included Admiral François Darlan who had served Marshall Pétain as Vichy’s minister of foreign affairs and minister of national defence. Darlan, who was loathed by the Free French and scorned by Churchill, nevertheless attracted favourable coverage in the US.
De Gaulle’s June 22 broadcast to the free French people.
Well aware of Roosevelt’s hostility, de Gaulle never gave up. The BBC microphone allowed him to reach a growing audience in Vichy and German occupied France. He ended his initial June 18 talk by announcing that he would broadcast again.
The BBC had not actually made any commitment to a second broadcast – but the ruse worked, and de Gaulle made a second appeal to French public on June 22. This broadcast was heard more widely (in fact very few people heard the June 18 speech and no recording survives). Soon the Free French were given five minutes per day on BBC radio.
De Gaulle was a soldier who used radio to inspire hope and organise resistance. When he returned to France in 1944, many of his countrymen recognised his voice before they became familiar with his appearance.
Zelensky began his career as a comedian and appeared as a fictional president of Ukraine in a TV series called Servant of the People. He was widely recognised before he became a war leader.
Both have provoked the enmity of US presidents and reminded different generations that America first isolationism is a deep-seated and enduring instinct that can cross political divides.
Tim Luckhurst has received funding from News UK and Ireland Ltd. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Society of Editors and the Free Speech Union.
“The biggest challenge to limiting climate change to 2°C, the upper target of the 2015 Paris agreement, is this: methane emissions are rising very fast,” says Euan Nisbet, a professor of earth sciences at Royal Holloway University.
If each CO₂ molecule is like a candle that patiently warms the atmosphere, methane is like an exploding bomb: responsible for much more heat, but over a much shorter timescale. Satellites are identifying the methane that’s leaking from oil wells and gas pipelines, and most countries have at least promised to reduce these emissions by a third by 2030.
But if humanity is to throw the brakes on runaway climate change, something has to be done about the biggest human source of methane there is: agriculture.
Earth’s atmosphere is warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be, thanks to fossil fuel burning. This is inducing wetlands, once a reliable carbon store, to emit more methane to the atmosphere, and so speed up climate change, Nisbet says.
This makes it even more urgent to tamp down the methane sources under our immediate control. Nisbet has calculated that roughly 210 million to 250 million tonnes of methane come from agriculture and its products. Most of this is in the breath of livestock animals and their manure, and food rotting in landfills.
Here’s the good news.
“Cutting agricultural methane emissions involves a wide range of relatively cheap measures that need good design and management, but could cut food-related emissions substantially over the next decade,” Nisbet says.
Adding a layer of soil to a landfill provides habitat for methane-munching bacteria. Covering manure storage tanks, banning the burning of crop waste and only flooding rice paddies when necessary could pinch other methane sources.
These aren’t expensive or difficult changes, Nisbet says. It might cost more to vaccinate cattle or breed them to produce more female calves, however. The point with both measures is to have smaller herds for the same quantity of beef and milk.
Lower consumer demand would also shrink these methane mobs (here’s where you come in, dear reader). If more of our essential nutrients like protein came from beans instead of meat, our health would benefit along with the climate. While nutritionists and environmental scientists urge us to eat more fruit and vegetables, the global food system is stacked against this outcome.
Globally, every fifth dollar of public farming subsidy goes towards rearing meat. In the intensively farmed UK where I live, 85% of farmland is devoted to livestock and the crops that feed them. Yet these captive animals are the source of less than one third of our calories.
“The longer the livestock-intensive system prevails, the greater the environmental, economic and social costs,” says Benjamin Selwyn, a professor of international development at the University of Sussex.
The fruits of our labour
Selwyn favours a “green new deal” that would make farming “complement rather than undermine the environment”.
What does that look like? Fewer cows, more woodland and more crops grown for human consumption, Selwyn says. This is essentially what government advisers recently proposed to keep the UK on track for net zero emissions.
To nudge the food system in this direction, researchers like Yi Li, a senior lecturer in marketing at Macquarie University, are testing the effect of labels on meal choices.
In Australia, where Li is based, meat accounts for half of all greenhouse gas emissions from products consumed at home. Producing 1kg of beef may emit 60kg of greenhouse gas, while the same quantity of peas yields just 1kg of emissions. But Li found consumers weren’t always savvy to the gulf in emissions between the two.
“Our label creates a mental link between a food source and its carbon impact,” she says.
“When a consumer sees high carbon scores and red traffic lights appearing more frequently on meat and other animal products, they begin to make the connection between those products and higher emissions.”
While better informed consumers are important, the food system needs deeper reform.
“Many conceptions of the protein transition from animal sources to more plant products ignore the necessity of improving farmers’ and agricultural workers’ incomes. But this will be crucial,” Selwyn says.
Just as oil and gas workers will need financial support and training opportunities to ply their skills in a low-carbon energy sector, farm workers will need security and guidance to adapt to new forms of food production says Alex Heffron.
Heffron, a PhD candidate at Lancaster University, researchers agricultural transitions and is a farm worker himself. He says that people picking crops, milking cows and driving farm machinery are among the most exploited and precariously employed of the UK’s workforce.
In fact, if the country were to begin phasing out livestock and ramping up fruit and vegetable production tomorrow, the burden would fall heavily on migrant labourers who the UK attracts with a seasonal worker scheme. This scheme has been criticised for overlooking allegations of forced labour.
“There will be no green transition unless these workers have a stake in it,” Heffron says.
What kind of stake might move farmers away from steak? Selwyn has some suggestions, which include spreading land ownership more evenly with community land trusts and allowing public bodies to acquire vacant, derelict or damaged land for allotments and nature habitat.
“Farms can be paid directly by government for sustainable production to combat farmer poverty,” he adds. “And the real living wage of £12.60 an hour should be compulsory for agricultural workers.”
The biggest challenge to limiting climate change to 2°C, the upper target of the 2015 Paris agreement, is this: methane emissions are rising very fast.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that, molecule for molecule, traps heat in the atmosphere more effectively than carbon dioxide, though over a much shorter timescale (decades versus centuries). Reducing emissions of methane to the atmosphere could drastically slow the rate at which Earth’s climate is warming.
Unfortunately, a warmer and wetter atmosphere is already causing wetlands to make more methane and so exacerbate climate change. This feedback loop makes the task of cutting methane from sources under our immediate control, like agriculture, more urgent. The good news is, my colleagues and I showed that there are lots of ways we can do this in a recent study.
Each year, about 600 million tonnes of methane are emitted to the air, very roughly 40% from natural sources and 60% from human activities. Of this latter portion, fossil fuels contribute 120-130 million tonnes. This is methane that leaks from gas pipelines, coal mines and oil wells. There has at least been some progress towards controlling these leaks: new satellite technology has excelled at finding them, while 159 countries have pledged to cut emissions by 30% by 2030.
In contrast, roughly 210-250 million tonnes of methane come from agriculture and its products, but these emissions are much tougher to tackle. It’s easier to spot a leaky gas well from space than farm leaks that are collectively large but individually small.
These sources include the breath of livestock animals and their manure (roughly 120 million tonnes), rice fields (about 30 million tonnes), crop waste fires (about 20 million tonnes) and organic matter rotting in landfills (about 70 million tonnes).
Since 2000, the UK has slashed total methane emissions, especially by covering landfills and piping out gas, but farming emissions, from manure stores for instance, have hardly changed. The methane is made by methanogens, which are microbes that live in oxygen-poor environments, like the stomachs of cows, and biodigesters (which grow bacteria to convert organic waste into fertiliser, oils and gas) and landfills.
If the UK cuts its own agricultural emissions by importing more food from tropical nations like Brazil it may still increase climate damage on a global scale. The problem is a global one, and very few countries are successfully reducing methane emissions from farming.
Where there’s muck, there’s methane
Cows, pigs and chickens make vast amounts of manure. In the US, Europe and East Asia, manure is often kept in big tanks or lagoons. These are usually under covers, but still release a lot of methane.
Gas-tight coverings can prevent this, and the captured methane can be harvested and then burned to generate electricity. This still produces CO₂, but the warming impact is smaller, while the electricity can replace new natural gas in the national grid.
The remaining slurry can be turned into fertiliser. Though it’s not commercially feasible now, it may one day be possible to turn it into aviation fuel.
Biodigesters are becoming common in towns and on farms, but are often very leaky. Methane doesn’t smell, but if a biodigester is releasing other gases that stink, it’s probably also releasing methane. Leaks are easily controlled but much tighter regulation is needed to ensure this happens.
Most of the world’s cattle are in India, Africa and South America. In large parts of the tropics, rain-fed crops aren’t enough to sustain people. The difference is made up by meat and milk from cows and goats that browse trees and bushes and graze seasonal grasses.
Smaller herds can produce the same amount of food if cattle diseases are reduced. Bovine mastitis, East Coast fever and African trypanosomiasis can be vaccinated against, for example and agricultural experts in India have even used artificial insemination to make more calves female, and so slash dairy cattle numbers. It’s possible to give drugs to cattle to reduce methane emissions, but poor countries would struggle to cover the expense.
Rice paddies emit methane, but rice is essential for nutrition, especially in East and South Asia, and increasingly in Africa. Flooding paddies only when and for how long it is needed during the year may cut emissions by as much as a quarter.
In China, India, Africa and many parts of the US and Europe, landfills are major methane emitters. This is where wasted food ends up. But as the UK has shown, emissions can be sharply reduced by good landfill design and gas extraction.
Simply adding a metre of soil to the surface of a landfill creates habitat for methane-eating bacteria, and also prevents landfill fires, which are very common in Africa and India. Still inexpensive is putting a plastic liner between the waste and soil and inserting pipes to extract gas that can generate electricity.
The widespread burning of crop waste that pollutes skies in India and tropical Africa has terrible consequences for human health, but it also includes methane emissions that contribute to climate change.
After a harvest, farmers may burn crop residues to cheaply prepare the land for future cultivation. RGtimeline/Shutterstock
Crop waste fires were once a major source of air pollution in the UK and Europe. Today they are minimal thanks to better farming practice and straw processing. To cut burning, farmers need good advice, good management, good regulation and targeted financial help.
Cutting agricultural methane emissions involves a wide range of relatively cheap measures that need good design and management, but could cut food-related emissions substantially over the next decade. High on the list should be tackling landfills and crop waste fires in India and Africa. In the US, Europe and China, it is manure storage facilities and biodigesters. With determination and inexpensive financial carrots and sticks, much could be accomplished.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Euan Nisbet is an honorary fellow of Darwin College at the University of Cambridge. He is a member of the science panel of the UN International Methane Emissions Observatory.
A rally for science drew a big crowd during the American Geophysical Union’s meeting in San Francisco.MarcioJoseSanchez/AP, CC BY
March 7 has been recognized as the “Day of the Stand Up for Science Movement”, launched in 2017 in response to the anti-science actions of the first Trump administration. Under the second, attacks on scientists and scientific inquiry have escalated into a systematic assault–tantamount to a coup d’Etat against science itself.
While Donald Trump is often portrayed as erratic, his policies in this area have followed a consistent trajectory. His new administration has once again declared ‘war’ on evidence-based national policymaking and science diplomacy in foreign affairs as evidenced by several early actions. Immediately after taking office, Donald Trump issued executive orders freezing or canceling tens of billions in research funding. All National Science Foundation projects have been halted pending review, while the National Institutes of Health faces suspensions under Health and Human Services directives. The US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, alongside a sweeping review of 90% of USAID-funded projects, signaling a major retreat from climate and global health diplomacy. Federal agencies and universities are in turmoil, leaving thousands of research-professors in limbo amid a politically driven funding freeze. The 2025 March simply calls for the restoration of federal research funding and an end to government censorship and political interference in science.
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The US is the world’s undisputed scientific superpower–for now
While the Trump administration is not the sole force undermining academia worldwide, its actions are particularly striking coming from the world’s leading scientific superpower. Moreover, the situation is especially concerning because developments in the United States often have a ripple effect, shaping policies in other regions in the years that follow.
Neither of the world’s top two scientific superpowers–Washington and Beijing–is positioned to champion academic freedom. China, having failed a liberal constitutional tradition and academic independence since the 1920s, restricts academic freedom to the confines of one-party rule. Caught between these rival scientific giants–both partners and competitors–the “old” Europe and like-minded coutries remain the only actors capable of setting new standards for academic freedom.
A Nobel prize for academic freedom
A decisive step toward its legal protection would be formal recognition by the Nobel Committees for Peace and Science of academic freedom’s fundamental role–both in ensuring scientific excellence and as a pillar of free, democratic societies.
For the past decade, the Scholars at Risk association (SAR) has documented a broader global decline in academic freedom in its annual Free to Think Report. The 2024 edition highlights particularly alarming situations in 18 countries and territories (including the United States), which recorded 391 attacks on scholars, students, or institutions across 51 regions in a year. Data from the Academic Freedom Index in Berlin confirm that more than half of the world’s population lives in regions where academic freedom is either entirely or severely restricted. Some of the most concerning conditions are in emerging scientific ecosystems such as Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, or Saudi Arabia. The overall trend is deteriorating: only 10 out of 179 countries have improved, while many democratic regimes are increasingly affected.
Academic freedom in the European Union remains relatively high compared to the rest of the world. However, nine EU member states fall below the regional average, and in eight of them, it has declined over the past decade–signaling a gradual erosion of this fundamental value. Hungary ranks the lowest among EU countries, placing in the bottom 20–30% worldwide. Recent laws have further weakened university autonomy across the EU: financial autonomy in Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Slovakia; organizational autonomy in Slovenia, Estonia, and Denmark; staffing autonomy in Croatia and Slovakia; and academic autonomy in Denmark and Estonia. Moreover, the European Parliament’s first report on academic freedom (2023) highlights emerging threats in France–political, educational, and societal–that impact the freedom of research, teaching, and study.
Academic freedom, a professional right granted to a few for the benefit of all
Freedom of expression, a fundamental pillar of academic freedom, has long been established as a human right, overcoming centuries of censorship and authoritarian control. In contrast, academic freedom is a more recent principle, granting scholars–recognized by their peers–the right and responsibility to research and teach freely in pursuit of knowledge. Like press freedom for journalists, it is a right granted to a few for the benefit of all.
Rooted in medieval Europe, academic freedom has evolved from a privilege granted to students in the Quartier Latin to a recognized principle in international rights frameworks. It gained a collective and concrete dimension in the late 18th and early 19th centuries with the rise of the modern university. Wilhelm von Humboldt, founder of the modern public university in Berlin (1810), articulated the concept of ‘freedom of science’ (Wissenschaftsfreiheit), later enshrined in the Weimar Constitution of 1919, which declared that “art, science, and education are free.” The rise of American universities around the same time reshaped the concept, giving rise to “professional academic freedom.” This was formalized in the American Association of University Professors’ 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which affirmed the scholar’s primary duty to seek and establish truth. Though its roots lie in Germany, academic freedom ultimately became a cornerstone of American academic discourse.
In the United States, academic freedom draws from multiple sources, with its protection varying by state laws, customs, institutional practices, and the status of higher education institutions. However, U.S. Supreme Court rulings have gradually reinforced its constitutional foundation, particularly after the McCarthy era, by invoking the First Amendment. Landmark cases such as Adler v. Board of Education (1952), Wieman v. Updegraff (1952), and Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) helped establish a constitutional doctrine on academic freedom. Finally, Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967) extended First Amendment protections to academia, ruling that mandatory loyalty oaths violated both academic freedom and freedom of association.
Interestingly, the American interpretation of academic freedom is currently more restrictive than the German model in certain respects. Article 5(3) of the 1989 Basic Law affirms the “right to adopt public organizational measures essential to protect a space of freedom, fostering independent scientific activity”. In contrast, the U.S. places greater emphasis on prohibitions and prioritizing individual rights over institutional autonomy.
The ‘right to be wrong’
Despite local variations, academic freedom is fundamentally tied to a shared vision of the university that upholds freedom of thought, with rationality and pluralism at its core. It includes the genuine “right to be wrong”–the understanding that a scientific opinion may be incorrect or even proven so does not diminish its protection. This stands in stark contrast to the anti-science, scientistic, or techno-nationalist approach, which views knowledge as a tool of power to serve a predetermined truth and objective of dominance. Authoritarian science, driven by power interests, seeks to diminish critical humanities and social sciences while elevating religion. It tends to reject interdisciplinary work, is exclusively mathematized, and is oriented toward a centralized yet deregulated autocratic tech-utopian state model.
Since 1945, we have operated under the illusion that academic freedom is an indispensable condition for scientific excellence. However, we have recently learned that no systematic link exists between academic freedom and breakthrough scientific innovation in our era of new technologies. Given these circumstances, this proposal advocates for a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, for the first time in its history, in recognition of academic freedom.
The Nobel Prize Committees for Science and Peace share the responsibility of using their prestigious platforms to uphold fundamental scientific and democratic values. They are uniquely positioned to champion humanist science, reinforcing its importance for scholars, students, and civil societies worldwide. Since the 1950s, around 90% of Nobel Prize laureates in scientific fields have either been US citizens or have studied and worked at Ivy League research institutions.
While some US scientists are contesting actions of the Trump administration in court, academics worldwide should stand in solidarity with their American colleagues in resisting the erosion of science. To strengthen their efforts, they require the support of the Nobel Prize Committees.
Stéphanie Balme ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – France – By Benoît Grémare, Chercheur associé à l’Institut d’Etudes de Stratégie et de Défense, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3
In February 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron said it was time to reflect on the European dimension of French nuclear deterrence. He proposed a strategic dialogue as well as joint nuclear exercises between European partners. Five years later, Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, responded to this call, advocating an extension of the French nuclear umbrella to Germany – while a US led by President Donald Trump no longer appears to be a reliable partner for protecting Europe.
But does France have the capacity to defend Europe? Would the deployment of the French nuclear umbrella in Eastern Europe make Europe strategically autonomous, giving it the means to defend itself independently?
French nuclear deterrence against the Russian threat
France originally developed its nuclear arsenal in response to the threat of Soviet invasion and to avoid any dependence on the US. According to a stable doctrine that political leaders regularly reaffirmed, the state [would use] its strategic arsenal by air and submarine in the event of an attack against its vital interests.
Certainly, the explosive power of thermonuclear warheads, combined with the range of the French M51 strategic sea-to-land ballistic missile, would make it possible to destroy the main Russian cities, including Moscow.
These scenarios recall the spectre of adversaries destroying enemy cities in a piecemeal atomic exchange, in which Russia could rely on its vastness to win through attrition. This potential for reciprocity must be kept in mind amid the mutual bet of nuclear deterrence.
To boost the impact of French nuclear deterrence, a partnership could be envisaged with the United Kingdom. A nuclear power since 1952, London now only has ballistic missiles launched by submarine and has decided, since Brexit, to increase its arsenal to 260 warheads. But although they share common interests, these two European nuclear powers are not equivalent.
Unlike the UK, which is a member of NATO’s nuclear planning group and whose warheads are designed in the US, France produces its weapons on its own territory and is not subject to any NATO obligations. This gives Paris a great deal of leeway in defining its doctrine. France can also speak on behalf of the European Union, of which it has been a part since its creation.
French nuclear power: an alternative to US deterrence
France officially became an atomic power in 1960 by relying on its own resources, with US support fluctuating according to events. The emergence of an independent French strategic force long annoyed Washington, which sought to restrict it by means of international accords such as the 1963 treaty limiting atmospheric nuclear tests and the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since 1974, the French nuclear force has officially had a specific dissuasive role within NATO, contributing to the overall security of the transatlantic alliance by complicating the calculations of potential adversaries.
Almost 60 years ago, US president Lyndon Johnson reinforced doubts about the White House’s determination to fully commit to the defence of Europe. Today, Trump’s desire to end US support for Ukraine confirms these suspicions. Consequently, increasingly insistent voices are calling for the acceptance of a French nuclear force that would extend to the European level.
A French nuclear umbrella in Eastern Europe
Merz’s call for the French nuclear umbrella to extend to Germany aligns with Paris’s proposal to establish a dialogue involving Europeans in a common approach. As France’s defence minister has pointed out, the precise definition of vital interest is up to its president. However, the use of nuclear weapons to protect Europe requires a strategic discussion to define the power to be acquired, the interests to be defended and the method of nuclear fire command.
Moving toward a Europeanisation of nuclear force means increasing deterrent capabilities and, therefore, expanding the French arsenal so it can respond to threats affecting all 27 EU member states. This would require the creation of additional stocks of fissile material and the reactivation of production plants in Pierrelatte and Marcoule, which were dismantled in the late 1990s.
Dogma about what constitutes a sufficient arsenal must also be questioned. If 290 nuclear warheads represent the value that France places on defending its existence, this price seems to neglect the scale of the European continent, and logic confirms it: continent-sized nuclear powers such as the US and Russia – and soon, China – are deploying an arsenal of around 1,000 thermonuclear warheads.
Ramping up power would take time and require a budgetary effort to increase the number of missiles and carrier aircraft. In addition to the construction of new infrastructure in European partner countries, the cost could exceed €10 billion per year, not including indirect costs related to maintenance and logistics. This is a lot to take into account, especially since the political and strategic offer of extended nuclear protection evolves according to circumstances.
Until now, Germany preferred that France assume a role that was simply complementary to the extended deterrence of the US, but Washington’s threatened abandonment of Ukraine increases the Russian threat. As Macron has indicated, France could respond by proposing the pre-positioning of its nuclear forces in Eastern European countries with the idea of eventually replacing the US.
This French nuclear umbrella would give concrete form to European strategic autonomy through the deployment of nuclear-capable combat aircraft, a sign of European political solidarity that would make Moscow’s calculations more difficult.
The visible presence of these aircraft in Eastern Europe could prevent Russia from attacking countries in the region with conventional means, as such an attack could provoke a French nuclear response on behalf of Europe.
Benoît Grémare ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
For students who are learning to speak English, art can empower a shift of focus away from rote memorization to creative and meaningful inquiry(Shutterstock)
Most English-language learning classrooms use conventional teaching methods that focus on grammar drills, vocabulary memorization, reading comprehension and structured writing tasks — all with the emphasis on language accuracy. Unfortunately, these teaching methods don’t address newcomers’ needs or build on their strengths.
This manner of teaching also fails to acknowledge students’ diverse experiences, skills and talents — including their knowledge of other languages. These experiences and skills can be important resources in their learning.
Our recent study suggests there’s a better way of teaching and learning English. We found that English-language learners developed confidence, a sense of belonging and deeper language skills when the arts were incorporated into teaching and learning practices.
To develop a new way of teaching English using the arts, we used the arts-integrated Parallaxic Praxis model. This is a research framework that celebrates and values diverse perspectives. The model was developed by Pauline Sameshima, one of the authors of this story, and her colleagues.
Creative inquiry
According to the Parallaxic Praxis model, engaging with different modes of creative communication — such as photography and drawing — can empower students to shift their focus from rote memorization to creative and meaningful inquiry. This helps students connect their personal experiences with language learning.
The model has three phases for learning: The data collection phase, the analysis phase (where what a person has learned is transformed into something new — such as making a painting from a text description) and the rendering phase (where knowledge is produced). The model celebrates and values diverse perspectives, ensuring that the unique experiences of English-language learners are valued and acknowledged.
In our study, adult English-language learners in southwestern Ontario were encouraged to connect with their community through photography — recording meaningful moments and writing descriptions that explained the personal significance of each image.
The photographs served as data. Written reflections served as translations and analysis of the data. The photos and analyses they created (their renderings) served to produce new knowledge.
The use of photographs
For instance, Ning (pseudonym), a graduate student from China who participated in the study, faced a significant decision: to either stay in Canada or to return home.
Rather than writing a standard essay, she instead photographed an intersection of roads — using the image as a metaphor for her uncertainty and being at a crossroad in her life. Ning said the arts integrated activity helped “express my feelings in English, making the language more personal and meaningful.”
A different student, Jack (pseudonym) from Saudi Arabia, photographed houses on a quiet, snowy street. The buildings were connected with each other — but the people inside were noted to be isolated from one another. Reflecting on this, Jack wrote: “Though the houses are connected; the people inside are not connected. If people do not help each other, that will be a disaster.”
Jack said that art made him more willing to communicate in English, stating: “Art is a powerful tool that helps us express many things. I feel more comfortable sharing in English when engaging in artistic activities.” This exercise helped him express complicated emotions in English while strengthening his critical thinking and narrative skills.
Both Ning’s and Jack’s experiences highlight one underlying premise: that making and analyzing art helps students learn English on a more personal and emotional level than traditional approaches do.
Challenging conventional learning approaches
Using the Parallaxic Praxis model is more than an alternative approach in teaching English. It’s a challenge to conventional thinking and the way language education is understood.
Many English-language learning programs are still mired in a deficit model that positions non-English-speaking students as outsiders who need to quickly “catch up”. Language learning should be an empowering process — not one where students are overly concerned with correcting small technicalities.
Most English-language learning programs focus on memorization and correcting technicalities. (Shutterstock)
Instead of the language-learning approach of rote memorization, this arts-integrated approach celebrates how all students bring their diverse perspectives and cultural and linguistic knowledge to the classroom. The Parallaxic Praxis model allows for different modes of creative expression to be used in the process of language learning — such as visual storytelling and creative writing.
This concept echoes the idea of West-East Reciprocal Learning, the mutual learning of cultures across both sides, rather than a unilateral assimilation process, where the dominant culture often expects the other to conform. Teaching within a reciprocal learning paradigm emphasizes strengths, rather than weaknesses — and teachers view students as contributors with valuable personal experiences to offer and learn from.
The arts-integrated Parallaxic Praxis model welcomes students to be their full selves, while becoming adept English language speakers. Other research has also shown that using arts in English language learning classes can lead to higher levels of analysis and challenge students.
There are many ways in which the arts can be incorporated into English-language classrooms, such as:
Using artistic activities: Rather than doing more grammar drills, ask students to take photos and write about their photos.
Encourage many types of creativity: Students can translate their knowledge into English using stories, poems, scripts or narratives from illustrations.
Foster collaboration: Create group storytelling projects, peer feedback sessions and digital showcases for student work.
Focus on strengths, not deficits: Value students’ diverse cultural backgrounds, skills and talents — alongside their multilingual skills. These are all important resources to their learning, rather than barriers. Encourage students to use other languages they already know together with English in order to better express themselves — a strategy known as translanguaging.
Make learning real-world and personal: Give students reflective projects, such as writing letters to their future selves.
Language is not simply literal words and rigid rules. Recognizing how words facilitate culture, meaning, identity and human connection can deepen learning engagement and experience. Incorporating the arts into English-language learning does this — and creates a collaborative learning space that’s engaging and meaningful.
Chenkai Chi receives funding from SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and Ontario Graduate Scholarship.
Mehdia Hassan receives funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship.
Pauline Sameshima has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Nigeria recently rebased its consumer price index (CPI) from 2009 to 2024, leading to a significant drop in the reported inflation rate from 34.80% to 24.48%.
This change has sparked discussions on the likely impact on economic planning, policy decisions, and public perception of inflation. Taiwo Odugbemi, an economist, unpacks what it means for a country to rebase its inflation rate and its implications for citizens.
What is inflation rate rebasing and how is it done?
Inflation rate rebasing follows a structured approach led by the National Bureau of Statistics to improve the accuracy of inflation measurements. Essentially what it means is that the National Bureau of Statistics expanded its data collection efforts to include a broader range of states, local government areas, and rural communities.
The recent inflation revision involved:
Updating the consumer price index basket
The bureau reviewed and changed the composition of goods and services in the consumer price index basket. The index tracks the rate at which prices change over time, monthly or annually.
These changes align the measurement of price changes with shifts in consumer spending habits.
The changes to the basket are based on the household expenditure surveys which collect information on what households consume and spend.
Categories such as telecommunications and technology were given greater weight. Less relevant items such as food and non-alcoholic beverages received reduced weighting to ensure the consumer price index accurately represents present-day household spending.
Rebasing the inflation index
The changes to the composition of the consumer price index basket require a change in the reference (base) year. The bureau has changed the consumer price index base year from 2009 to 2024.
This adjustment aligns inflation measurements with current economic realities, reducing distortions caused by outdated reference periods. To achieve this, the National Bureau of Statistics has implemented high-frequency data collection methods, such as the National Longitudinal Phone Survey, which allows for more timely assessments of economic indicators.
Adjusting weights of consumer price index components
Each part of the consumer price index was given a new weight based on updated national consumption data. Spending categories with increased significance, such as transport and digital services, were given higher weights, while categories with declining relevance such as gas and other fuels were adjusted downward.
Expanding data collection coverage
The National Bureau of Statistics improved price data collection by:
increasing the sample size and geographical coverage
increasing the frequency of data collection
incorporating price variations from informal markets.
The informal sector significantly contributes to Nigeria’s economy, accounting for approximately 58% of the gross domestic product (GDP).
The rebase is a revision in the way inflation is measured. It reflects an effort to represent price movements and economic conditions more accurately.
Inflation readjustment is not uncommon among economies striving for better data accuracy. Countries such as Ghana and Kenya have undertaken similar revisions in recent years.
Ghana’s consumer price index rebasing in 2019 led to a lower reported inflation rate as it was calculated on newer spending habits.
Inflation in Nigeria reached 29.90% in January 2024. Revising how it is measured could be an attempt to capture structural economic changes more precisely.
Concerns over outdated consumer price index weights might have driven the move. The rebase could also have been done because of shifts in consumer spending, or improvements in statistical methodologies to enhance policy-making and economic planning.
The National Bureau of Statistics said the rebasing was necessary in order to reflect changes in consumption patterns.
If inflation is perceived as declining, consumer confidence may improve, leading to increased spending and investment.
However, many Nigerians may still feel that the cost of living remains high, particularly as food inflation remains a major concern.
For workers and businesses, the adjustment could influence wage negotiations and pricing strategies. If inflation is officially lower, employers may resist wage increases, arguing that the real cost of living has not risen as sharply as previously thought.
Similarly, businesses may reassess pricing decisions based on the revised inflation outlook.
A lower reported inflation rate might reduce pressure on policymakers to expand social safety nets, even if citizens still struggle with economic hardship.
This adjustment can alter the way monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policies are formulated.
Monetary policy adjustments
With a lower inflation rate, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) may reconsider its aggressive tightening stance, which is reflected in the level it sets interest rates at.
Previously, high inflation prompted the central bank to raise the monetary policy rate to 22.75% in a bid to curb inflation. Raising the rate makes it more expensive to borrow money, so demand for goods is lower and this reduces price increases.
The revised inflation figure could justify a more measured approach to interest rate adjustments, potentially easing borrowing costs for businesses and households. This could support economic growth but must be carefully managed.
In the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting after the inflation rebasing, the committee decided for the first time in three years to pause interest rate hikes.
Fiscal policy considerations
The government may use the revised inflation data to reassess budgetary projections, wage policies, and what it spends on subsidy programmes.
A lower inflation rate could reduce the urgency for drastic public sector wage increases, though real income concerns remain.
Additionally, it might influence subsidy policies, particularly in energy and agriculture. Lower inflation could be used to justify gradual subsidy phaseouts without significant backlash.
Exchange rate management
A lower inflation rate could improve investor confidence and reduce pressure on the naira. The central bank may use this as a basis to re-calibrate foreign exchange interventions, aiming for greater currency stability.
If inflation is perceived as more controlled, capital inflows may increase, supporting the exchange rate and easing forex liquidity challenges.
Taiwo Hassan Odugbemi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Madagascar is an island that’s no stranger to natural disasters, in particular cyclones. This is because it’s located in the south-west Indian Ocean cyclone basin, a region of the Indian Ocean where tropical cyclones typically form and develop.
Madagascar has experienced 69 cyclones between 1912 and 2022, although cyclones have been a pressure on the island for much longer – estimates range from hundreds to more than thousands of years. This regular exposure has resulted in a uniquely harsh and unpredictable environment.
Madagascar is also the only place in the entire world where lemurs, a group of primates, are naturally found. It’s home to over 100 species of lemurs.
Due to ongoing threats of disaster impacts, hunting and deforestation, lemurs are the most endangered group of mammals in the world. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 98% of lemur species are threatened with extinction, 31% of which are critically endangered.
It is therefore important to understand future threats to lemurs so as to protect them.
Lemurs are unusual among primates. They show a higher degree of traits associated with resilience to living in a disaster-prone environment. For example, very few species rely on a diet of fruit, which is one of the first food items to disappear after a cyclone. Over half of lemur species rely on leaves as their main food item.
They also exhibit a high degree of energy conserving behaviours, including hibernation and torpor – a shorter period of inactivity characterised by a lower body temperature and metabolic rate.
It has long been believed that these behaviours are a result of Madagascar’s frequent cyclones. Living in an unpredictable environment over multiple generations could lead to different features being beneficial for survival. Some evolutionary adaptations may happen within a few decades, others could form over thousands of years.
However, there is variation among species in these traits and, to date, no one has tested whether the unique behavioural features of lemurs actually occur more frequently in species that have experienced more cyclones, or if there may be a different explanation. Our research wanted to clear this up.
In our study, my colleagues and I found no association between cyclone impact and how resilient lemurs are. We did however find a positive association between cyclone impact and body size. This suggests that the more a lemur species is affected by cyclones, the smaller they are.
Given the increase globally in disasters, this type of work allows us to better understand the most and least resilient species to prepare for conservation efforts into the future.
How resilient are lemurs?
My research focuses on how animals, particularly primates, respond to the threat of climate change and disaster exposure. Previous work my colleagues and I did with howler monkeys showed that historical hurricane exposure was significantly linked to the evolution of behavioural adaptations, like small group size and energy conserving behaviours.
We set out to design a specific study for lemurs. We wanted to determine whether the variation in behavioural traits in lemurs could be accounted for by the variation in cyclone exposure across the island.
To carry out this research, we first made a map showing how cyclones affect different parts of Madagascar. We used weather patterns, past cyclone paths, how strong the cyclones were, and how much rain they brought. Data used for this came from the past 58 years, which is the data that was available, although Madagascar has been hit by cyclones over a much longer time period.
We then placed a map of where lemurs live on top of our cyclone map to see how much cyclones affect each lemur species’ home. Our study covered the 26 species for which enough data was published to be able to determine their overall behavioural traits.
For each of these species, we created a “resilience score”. To create this score, each species got one point for each behavioural trait they exhibited that is associated with living in a cyclone-prone area. For example, a species that shows hibernation got one point and a species that does not got 0 points. The resilience traits we used included: energy conserving behaviours; habitat use; group size; fruit in the diet; home range size; geographic range; and body size.
We then added up the score across all resilience traits and compared the resilience score of each species with their habitat range cyclone score. This helped us see if species in high-impact areas had higher resilience. If so, it would strongly suggest that resilience traits evolved as an adaptation to frequent cyclones.
Our results found no relationship between cyclone impact and overall resilience score. This may be because the historical cyclone data we had access to covered only the past 58 years. This may not be an accurate proxy for longer term cyclone activity associated with evolutionary adaptations.
It could also be that the traits linked to cyclone resilience may have already existed in the last common ancestor of lemurs due to rapid environmental change on the African continent. Recent research suggests this ancestor rafted to Madagascar from Africa on floating vegetation. These traits could have helped it survive the journey. They’re also seen in other wildlife believed to have rafted to their island habitats and that may have been crucial for island colonisation.
While overall resilience scores were not associated with cyclone impact, we did find that lemur species with smaller bodies experienced greater cyclone impacts. The north-east of the island was found to experience higher cyclone activity compared to the south-west. This aligns with previous research suggesting that larger primates, which require more food and space and reproduce more slowly, are less resilient and more likely to die after habitat disturbance.
Importance for conservation
Ours was the first study to try to find a quantitative link between cyclone exposure and the evolution of behavioural adaptations in lemurs and only the second to do so in primates.
While results did not show a link to overall resilience, they did provide a template for future studies to explore the concept on other primates at a global scale. The study also provides a cyclone impact grid that could be used to assess impacts on other wildlife in Madagascar.
In addition, our work has highlighted the importance of body size as a factor associated with less resilience to disaster.
This research helps us to understand more about how species responded to cyclones in the past, which improves our understanding of the sorts of behavioural flexibility needed to survive severe environmental change. This then improves our ability to predict the effects of future events and mitigate impacts through more effective and targeted conservation. This is particularly true in island ecosystems, such as Madagascar, where endemic species are confined.
Amnesty International recently released a report criticizing Canada for labour migration policies and farm inspections that enable migrant farm worker exploitation. The report urges the Canadian government to abolish closed-work permits that tie migrant workers to a single employer.
While we await much-needed policy reforms, farm certification could fill this gap. Farm certification offers a potential strategy to improve labour standards, uphold rights and amplify migrants’ voices.
Agricultural workers, whether migrants or citizens, are excluded from employment laws that protect workers in other industries. For example, overtime provisions, collective bargaining rights and sick pay vary by province. This leaves migrant workers — who are restricted to agricultural jobs — with fewer rights to claim. Compounding these challenges are ineffective farm inspections, which are mostly reactive and triggered by worker complaints.
Studies show that fear of job loss and subsequent deportation or being blacklisted from immigration programs discourages migrants from filing complaints. Additionally, deterrents like fines for employers are rarely enforced, leaving violations unchecked.
Farm certification as a creative strategy
Farm certification recognizes farms with fair working conditions and enforces higher standards. This approach encourages retailers to prioritize certified producers, with compliance driven by market and consumer demand.
However, some argue that relying solely on consumer choice — where people “vote with their dollar” by purchasing ethically certified products — is not enough. They’re right.
We focused on two U.S.-based strategies, the Equitable Food Initiative and the Fair Food Program, which emphasize collaboration among diverse stakeholders. These models offer insights into how they may be replicated in Canada while avoiding the commodification of migrants.
U.S. farm certification models
The Fair Food Program, initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), ensures fair wages and improved working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields.
Compliance is enforced through contractual agreements between fast-food chains, retailers, growers and the CIW, all of whom commit to higher standards and responsible purchasing practices. Migrant workers played a central role in developing the program’s standards and remain involved in compliance and worker education.
The Fair Food Program grew from grassroots campaigns that included hunger strikes and protests against low wages and extremely poor work conditions on farms. Campaigns later targeted major food corporations, arguing that if these companies could drive down farm wages, they could also demand better conditions from growers.
The CIW organized a successful five-year boycott of Taco Bell, which ultimately joined the Fair Food Program, committing to source tomatoes only from growers who met the program’s standards. The boycott was successful due to sustained farm worker-student alliances. Other companies have since followed suit.
The Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) is a certification model that integrates social and food safety standards. A selected group of workers at a certified farm, known as the Leadership Team, receive training on EFI’s standards and skills, such as communication and conflict resolution.
The team functions as an internal grievance mechanism, allowing all workers to report concerns to designated members. Retailers participating in this initiative require growers to obtain EFI certification, replacing individual retailer audits.
EFI emerged in California following the 2008 E. coli crisis. While industry leaders and retailers prioritized improving food safety standards on farms, migrant rights groups saw an opportunity to address poor working conditions for farm workers. Costco, Oxfam America and the United Farm Workers devised a strategy that ensures all stakeholders — retailers, growers and workers — to have an “equal seat at the table.”
Some Canadian growers have become EFI-certified, primarily to meet demands of American retailers importing their produce. However, tariffs and the trade war between the U.S. and Canada could complicate the expansion of EFI in Canada.
Replicating farm certification in Canada
For farm certification to succeed in Canada, cross-movement collaboration is essential. The success of the Fair Food Program was driven by strong alliances between migrant rights and consumer movements. A similar coalition of food justice, migrant rights and consumer groups could pressure Canadian retailers to commit to ethical sourcing practices.
EFI’s cross-sector collaboration model offers valuable lessons for Canada. Though it demands concessions, this approach fosters broad support from all stakeholders.
Farm certification cannot replace essential policy reforms. Migrant workers need more secure legal status and greater labour rights, and non-compliant employers must face sanctions. However, certification can support education, empowerment and participation for workers, serving as an important complement to policy. If shaped and enforced by the workers it aims to protect, farm certification can be a meaningful tool for change.
Erika Borrelli receives funding from the Mariam Assefa Fund and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Miss Huang is, in many ways, capitalism’s ideal child.Apple TV+
In the second season of “Severance,” there’s an unexpected character: a child supervisor named Miss Huang, who matter-of-factly explains she’s a child “because of when I was born.”
Miss Huang’s deadpan response is more than just a clever quip. Like so much in the Apple TV+ series, which has broken viewership records for the streaming service, I think it reveals a devastating truth about the role of work in the 21st century.
As a scholar of childhood studies, I also see historical echoes: What constitutes a “child” – and whether one gets to claim childhood at all – has always depended on when and where a person is born.
An age of innocence?
Americans are deeply invested in the idea of childhood as a time of innocence, with kids protected by doting adults from the harsh realities of work and making ends meet.
However, French historian Philippe Ariès famously argued that childhood, as many understand it today, simply did not exist in the past.
The 14th-century painting ‘Madonna of Veveri’ depicts a young child with adultlike proportions. The Print Collector/Getty Images
Using medieval art as one resource, Ariès pointed out that children were often portrayed as miniature adults, without special attributes, such as plump features or silly behaviors, that might mark them as fundamentally different from their older counterparts.
Looking at baptism records, Ariès also discovered that many parents gave siblings the same name, and he explained this phenomenon by suggesting that devastatingly high child mortality rates prevented parents from investing the sort of love and affection in their children that’s now considered a core component of parenthood.
While historians have debated many of Ariès’ specific claims, his central insight remains powerful: Our modern understanding of childhood as a distinct life stage characterized by play, protection and freedom from adult responsibilities is a relatively recent historical development. Ariès argued that children didn’t emerge as a focus of unconditional love until the 17th century.
Kids at work
The belief that a child deserves a life free from the stress of the workplace came along still later.
After all, if Miss Huang had been born in the 19th century, few people would question her presence in the workplace. The Industrial Revolution yielded accounts of children working 16-hour days and accorded no special protection because of their tender age and emotional vulnerability. Well into the 20th century, children younger than Miss Huang routinely worked in factories, mines and other dangerous environments.
To today’s viewers of “Severance,” the presence of a child supervisor in the sterile, oppressive workplace of the show’s fictional Lumon Industries feels jarring precisely because it violates the deeply held belief that children are occupants of a separate sphere, their innocenceshielding them from the dog-eat-dog environs of competitive workplaces.
Lewis Hine’s 1908 photograph of girls working at Newberry Mills in Newberry, S.C. Library of Congress
Childhood under threat
As a child worker, Miss Huang might seem like an uncanny ghost of a bygone era of childhood. But I think she’s closer to a prophet: Her role as child-boss warns viewers about what a work-obsessed future holds.
As politicians and policymakers insist that children are the future, many of them refuse to support the intensive caregiving required to transform newborns into functioning adults. As philosopher Nancy Fraser has argued, capitalism relies on someone doing that work, while assigning it little to no monetized value.
Child-rearing in the 21st century exists within a troubling paradox: Mothers provide unpaid child care for their own children, while those who professionally care for others’ children – predominantly women of color and immigrants – receive meager compensation for this essential work.
In other words, economic elites and the politicians they support say they want to cultivate future workers. But they don’t want to fund the messy, inefficient, time-consuming process that raising modern children requires.
The show’s name comes from a “severance” procedure that workers undergo to separate their work memories from their personal ones. It offers a darkly comic version of work-life balance, with Lumon office workers able to completely disconnect their work selves from their personalities off the clock. Each is distinct: A character’s “innie” is the person they are at the job, and their “outtie” is who they are at home.
I see this as an apt metaphor for how market capitalism seeks to separate the slow, patient work required to raise children and care for other loved ones from the cold-eyed pursuit of economic efficiency. Parents are expected to work as if they don’t have children and raise children as if they don’t work.
The result is a system that makes traditional notions of childhood – with its unwieldy dependencies, its inefficient play and its demands for attention and care – increasingly untenable.
Capitalism’s ideal child
Plummeting global fertility rates around the world speak to this crisis in child care, with the U.S., Europe, South Korea and China falling well below the birth rate required to replace the existing population.
Even as Elon Musk frets about women choosing not to have children, he seems eager to restrict any government aid that would provide the time or resources that raising children requires.
In the midst of this dilemma, Miss Huang offers a surreal solution to the problems children pose in 2025.
She is, in many ways, capitalism’s ideal child. Already a productive worker as a tween, she requires no parent’s time, no teacher’s patience and no community’s resources. Like other workers and executives at Lumon, she seems to have shed the inefficient entanglements of family, love and play.
In this light, Miss Huang’s clever insistence that she is a child “because of when I was born” is darkly prophetic. In a world where every moment must be productive, where caregiving is systematically devalued and where human relationships are subordinated to market logic, Miss Huang represents a future where childhood survives only as a date on a birth certificate. All the other attributes are economically impractical.
Viewers don’t yet know if she’s severed. But at least from the perspective of the other workers in the show, Miss Huang works ceaselessly and, in doing so, proves that she is no child at all.
Or rather, she is the only kind of child that America’s economic system allows to thrive.
Anna Mae Duane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
Title of course:
Ethics in the MCU
What prompted the idea for the course?
As a die-hard fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I rewatch the movies and series on a regular basis. As an ethicist, I can’t help but notice that the MCU raises some really tough moral questions.
Yes, the movies are about monsters and magic and things exploding, but they are also about racial prejudice, power and obligation, artificial intelligence, biotechnological enhancement and colonization. They center complicated questions about right and wrong, moral character and unintended consequences.
The more I rewatched them, the more I was convinced that this would be a great way to introduce students to the study of ethics. So when my time came again to offer a first-year seminar, I constructed one around watching superheroes at work. Leading new college students through an ethical analysis of Marvel movies seemed like an opportunity to work on useful intellectual skills in a low-pressure environment. Not a bad way to start college!
What does the course explore?
I structured the course around specific moral questions and then used an MCU film or series to get the students thinking about those questions.
The antagonist in “Black Panther” takes over the African country of Wakanda in order to ignite a global anticolonial uprising, and we used his perspective to think about the ethics of racial oppression, reparations and violent resistance.
Captain America’s best friend, Bucky Barnes, who was captured and brainwashed into serving as a covert assassin for decades, has to deal with the consequences of his actions once he recovers his true self. Bucky’s situation invited us to talk about the relationship between intention and complicity in our moral judgments.
And the most fascinating conversation I had in the entire semester was about the utilitarian calculus of the supervillain Thanos, who appears in the “Infinity War” and “Endgame” films. Overpopulation led to the destruction of Thanos’ home planet, and his fear that the whole cosmos could meet a similar fate drives him to wipe out half of all life in the universe.
Was he justified? Our discussions explored the ethical limits of utilitarian calculations. To my shock, half of the class eventually came to the conclusion that Thanos may have had a moral point.
Why is this course relevant now?
While it is helpful to talk about moral responsibility theoretically, or with reference to real headlines, narrative is another useful way to get students to think about the ethical choices people make and how we make them. This is one way the arts and humanities can serve the liberal arts project, preparing young people for democratic citizenship.
Stories serve as fictional but concrete “case studies” through which students can think about themselves and others as moral actors. By focusing on other characters, stories encourage our moral imagination and empathy. Rather than reducing ethical issues to abstraction, stories remind us that moral choices are made within particular circumstances and relationships.
What materials does the course feature?
Our main “texts” for the semester were movies and series we watched and discussed with certain moral questions in mind. In conjunction, we read short pieces on ethical theory to give students a tool kit for analyzing those issues. Authors ranged from classical writers such as Aristotle and 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill to more modern perspectives such as Martin Luther King Jr., theologian James Cone and philosopher Martha Nussbaum.
I hope the course provides students a fun chance to develop capacities for ethical thinking at the beginning of their college career. Public discourse in the United States, which is the focus of my teaching and scholarship, could use more citizens with greater skill in moral discernment, and these days we all could use more fun. Why not do something that is entertaining but also has intellectual integrity and social usefulness?
James Calvin Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If influencer Jimmy Darts got any of this outdoor furniture for free, the IRS would probably see it as income.AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
The Internal Revenue Service hasn’t issued comprehensive guidance on how the estimated 27 million Americans earning income as influencers should report their income and expenses on their tax returns. That’s leaving people who either make a living or supplement their income by endorsing products and services on social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube – and their accountants – unsure about the tax consequences of their income and expenses, or what kinds of deductions are legitimate for people in their line of work.
We found that the tax treatment of the free products many influencers get in the course of doing their job is especially ambiguous, leaving them unaware of how to correctly file their tax returns.
While some tax experts argue that freebies, whether they’re objects such as running shoes and headphones or services such as a luxury hotel stay, should be treated as taxable income. Other tax professionals say free goods and services are typically gifts, not income.
For our research we analyzed tax laws, researched various accounting firms specializing in influencer clients and examined IRS guidance that offers tax advice to accountants and influencers. While specific audits of social media influencers for nondeductible lifestyle expenses are not publicly documented due to confidentiality, there are common areas where influencers may face scrutiny from tax authorities.
The IRS issued its most relevant guidance in 2006, when it advised entertainers and celebrities who receive “swag bags” containing pricey gifts at the Oscars and other high-profile award ceremonies. Other guidance is based on commonly accepted tax rules for business deductions and income recognition.
The IRS confirmed that items received this way constitute taxable income that must be reported based on their fair value. This advice offered a starting point for influencer tax rules. In our view, that guidance does not clear up a growing area of uncertainty that affects millions of people and countless companies.
A CPA offers some advice for influencers who get stuff from brands.
Ideally, all influencers would sign contracts with their business partners outlining the terms of their compensation. In reality, companies send stuff or provide free services to influencers without agreeing with them about anything in advance.
While the IRS allows gifts to be excluded from income, many influencers receive unsolicited items that generally don’t qualify as gifts. That’s because a true gift requires nothing expected in return.
In contrast, when influencers get freebies, they’re often expected to promote or acknowledge those products or services on social media. When influencers get things they don’t use, returning them is their best course of action in terms of their possible tax liability.
In influencer marketing, this guideline allows influencers to exclude low-cost products or services from their income if their value is too small to track. Frequently receiving many low-value goods or services from the same business, however, could constitute taxable income.
Influencers’ expenses are also hard to assess because they use many purchases for both personal and business purposes. And business expenses can be deducted on a tax return but not personal ones.
The tax code is especially strict when it comes to apparel, unless it’s used exclusively for business purposes. This leaves influencers unsure about what they should do when they purchase, say, a cashmere scarf that they promote on TikTok but also wear when they go on errands without any promotional activities. Would that scarf be partially deductible? Not deductible at all? The IRS hasn’t said enough for us – or anyone else – to answer this question.
Influencers must track everything they get for free and all their work-related expenses paid during the year. Creating a simple record-keeping system tracking for all goods and services received will simplify tax filing. There are some apps for that.
What still isn’t known
Neither the IRS nor Congress has indicated whether any guidelines, regulations or laws that would clarify the rules governing influencer taxation are in the works. It’s also unclear when IRS audits of influencers or relevant tax court cases are underway.
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The University of Dayton is a partner organization with The Conversation.
Kaitlin Newkirk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has limited how flexible the Environmental Protection Agency and states can be in regulating water pollution under the Clean Water Act in a ruling issued March 4, 2025. However, the justices kept the decision relatively narrow.
The ruling only prohibits federal and state permitting agencies from issuing permits that are effectively broad orders not to violate water quality standards. In this case, the city and county of San Francisco argued successfully that the EPA’s requirements were not clear enough.
My research focuses on water issues, including the Clean Water Act and the Supreme Court’s interpretations of it. In my view, regulators still will have multiple options for limiting the pollutants that factories, sewage treatment plants and other sources can release into protected water bodies.
While this court has not been friendly to regulation in recent years, I believe the practical impact of this decision remains to be seen, and that it is not the major blow to clean water protection that some observers feared the court would inflict. In particular, the court affirmed that permitting agencies can still impose nonnumeric requirements, such as prohibitions on polluting at a certain time or under certain weather conditions like rain or high heat.
Standards for treating sewage
The 1972 Clean Water Act prohibits any “discharge of a pollutant” without a permit into bodies of water, such as rivers, lakes and bays, that are subject to federal regulation. San Francisco has a combined sewage treatment plant and stormwater control system, the Oceanside plant, which discharges treated sewage and stormwater into the Pacific Ocean through eight pipes, or outfalls.
San Francisco’s Oceanside water treatment plant is built into a hollowed-out hill in the southwest corner of the city and discharges to the Pacific Ocean. Pi.1415926535/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The California State Water Resources Control Board is in charge of seven outfalls that release treated water close to shore, in state waters. But the facility’s main pipe discharges into federal waters more than 3 miles out to sea, so it is regulated by the EPA.
To comply with the law, polluters must obtain permits through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. The city and county of San Francisco have held a permit for the Oceanside facility since 1997.
Discharge permit requirements can be both quantitative and qualitative. For example, the EPA establishes standard effluent limitations that dictate how clean the discharger’s waste stream must be. The agency sets these technology-based limitations according to the methods available in the relevant industry to clean up polluted wastewater.
Numeric targets tell the discharger clearly how to comply with the law. For example, sewage treatment plants must keep the pH value of their wastewater discharges between 6.0 and 9.0. As long as the plant meets that standard and other effluent limitations, it is in compliance.
San Francisco monitors beach water quality year-round and issues alerts when bacteria levels make water contact unsafe. This can happen after the city’s water treatment system is overwhelmed during major storms. San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
What counts as ‘clean’?
A second approach focuses not on the specific content of the discharge but rather on setting standards for what counts as a “clean” water body.
Under the Clean Water Act, Congress gives states authority to establish water quality standards for each water body within their territory. First, the state identifies the uses it wants the ocean, river, lake or bay to support, such as swimming, providing habitat for fish or supplying drinking water.
Next, state regulators determine what characteristics the water has to have to support those uses. For example, to support cold-water fish such as perch and pike, the water may need to remain below a certain temperature. These characteristics become the water quality criteria for that water body.
Sometimes technology-based effluent limitations in a polluter’s permit aren’t stringent enough to ensure that a water body meets its water quality standards. When that happens, the Clean Water Act requires the permitting agency to adjust its permit requirements to ensure that water quality standards are met.
That’s what happened with the Oceanside plant. During rainstorms, runoff sometimes overwhelms the plant’s sewage treatment system, dumping a mixture of sewage and storm runoff directly into the Pacific Ocean – an event known as a combined sewer overflow. These episodes can cause violations of water quality standards. Area beaches sometimes are closed to swimming when bacterial counts in the water are high.
In combined sewer systems, during dry weather and small storms, all flows are handled by the publicly owned treatment works. During large storms, the relief structure allows some of the combined stormwater and sewage to be discharged untreated to an adjacent water body. USEPA
These aren’t small-scale releases. In a separate legal action, the federal government and the state of California are suing San Francisco for discharging more than 1.8 billion gallons of sewage on average every year since 2016 into creeks, San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
Can regulators say ‘Don’t violate water quality standards’?
When the EPA and California issued the Oceanside plant’s current permit in 2019, they included two general standards. The first requires that Oceanside’s “[d]ischarge shall not cause or contribute to a violation of any applicable water quality standard.” The second states that “[n]either the treatment nor the discharge of pollutants shall create pollution, contamination, or nuisance” as defined under California law.
The city and county of San Francisco argued that their permit terms weren’t fair because they couldn’t tell how to comply. For its part, the EPA invoked Section 1311(b)(1)(C) of the Clean Water Act, which allows permit writers to insert “any more stringent limitation, including those necessary to meet water quality standards,” into the permit. The agency argued that this phrase allows for narrative permit terms – a position that was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
In a 5-4 decision, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, with Justice Neil Gorsuch concurring, agreed with San Francisco that the EPA did not have the authority to issue permits that made the city and county responsible for overall water quality. Rather, they held, EPA should set limits on the quantities of various pollutants that San Francisco was allowed to discharge.
“Determining what steps a permittee must take to ensure that water quality standards are met is the EPA’s responsibility, and Congress has given it the tools needed to make that determination,” the majority stated.
Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “When the technology-based effluent limitations are insufficient to ensure that the water quality standards are met, EPA has supplemental authority to impose further limitations,” they argued in an opinion authored by Barrett.
There’s an important angle that neither the majority opinion nor the dissent addressed. Under Section 1312 of the Clean Water Act, when standard industry-wide effluent limitations are not stringent enough to protect the quality of a particular water body, regulatory agencies are required to come up with more stringent limits, which are known as water quality-based effluent limitations. For example, if a sewage treatment plant is discharging into a pristine mountain lake, it might be subject to these more stringent limitations to keep the lake pristine.
Going forward, the EPA and states to which it has delegated authority will have to revise all Clean Water Act permits that contain the offending “don’t violate water quality standards” directive. These fixes will probably happen as those permits are renewed, which the law requires every five years.
What if water pollution remains a serious problem, as it has in San Francisco? Regulators could choose to generate water quality-based effluent limitations, impose more stringent numeric requirements, or simply ignore potential violations of water quality standards. Their actions will likely vary depending on each agency’s resources and on how seriously pollution discharges threaten relevant water bodies and the humans and wildlife that use them.
This is an updated version of an article originally published Oct. 11, 2024.
Robin Kundis Craig has been a member of three National Research Council committees on the Clean Water Act and is a member of the American College of Environmental Law and the Environmental Law Institute, for whom she occasionally provides Clean Water Act analyses.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christian Ruth, America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Florida
Volunteers at a camp for internally displaced people in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, carry wheat flour donated by USAID in December 2021. J. Countess/Getty Images
The Trump administration’s sudden dismantling of nearly all foreign aid, including the work carried out by the U.S. Agency for International Development, has upended the government agency’s longtime strategic role in implementing American foreign policy.
The Trump administration said at the end of February 2025 that it is freezing 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts, leaving few projects intact. It has also recalled nearly 10,000 USAID staff from countries around the world.
USAID is a government agency that, for more than 63 years, has led the United States’ foreign aid work on disaster recovery, poverty reduction and democratic reforms in many developing and middle-income countries.
Reuters reported that a senior USAID official wrote in a March 2 internal memo that a yearlong pause in USAID’s work on health, food and agriculture in the world’s poorest countries would raise malaria deaths by 40%, to between 71,000 and 166,000 annually. It would also result in an increase of between 28% and 32% in tuberculosis cases, among other negative effects.
As a historian of USAID, I know well that the agency has long faced a surprisingly high degree of scrutiny for its relatively tiny portion of the national budget.
From a foreign policy standpoint, USAID’s greatest contribution to American influence abroad has always been its intangible soft-power effects. It helps to create an image of the U.S. as a positive, helpful world power worth partnering with.
A poster for USAID in Beirut marks the U.S. donation for rebuilding lighting infrastructure near a destroyed city port in August 2023. Scott Peterson/Getty Images
Responding to a Soviet threat in the 1960s
USAID dates back to 1961, born from Cold War confrontations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Kennedy, like other American presidents in the early years of the Cold War, fretted over the spread of communism.
A well-known development economist, Walt Rostow, who served in Kennedy’s administration, was among the experts who argued that the Soviet Union could easily influence poor countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It was possible, Rostow argued, to help these countries grow their economies and become more modern.
This possibility pushed Kennedy in 1961 to sign the Foreign Assistance Act, creating USAID that November.
USAID immediately began to oversee U.S. foreign aid programs to develop farming, irrigation and dam construction projects throughout Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, taking over the existing projects of the various other aid departments that were now defunct.
USAID was also responsible for public works projects in Cold War conflict zones, particularly Vietnam. There, USAID struggled in its efforts to build dams, improve rural agriculture techniques and construct South Vietnamese infrastructure. There were various environmental challenges working in the dense jungles, the physical threats caused by the ongoing Vietnam War and the realities of rural poverty.
For example, USAID introduced new farming technologies to Vietnam, including modern fertilizers and tractors. This helped some farmers produce more crops, faster. But it also created disparities between wealthy and poor farmers, as modern fertilizer and other improvements were expensive. A growing number of poor farmers simply gave up and moved to nearby cities.
Throughout the 1960s, USAID also funded the construction of hydropower water dams in Asia and Africa. This led to higher energy production in those regions, but also resulted in environmental degradation, as recklessly dammed rivers flooded forests and arable fields.
Rostow and other development experts had unrealistically high goals for helping poor countries grow their economies. By the end of the decade, across the board, USAID beneficiary countries in Asia and Africa fell short of the economic growth expectations the U.S. set at the beginning of the 1960s.
But that progress had limits and did not magically turn these economies into modern, Western-style capitalist democracies.
With the help of a USAID grant, people lay pipework to bring water from a mountain spring to a town called Korem in Ethiopia in 1968. Paul Conklin/Getty Images
Mixed results and focus
As a result of USAID’s uneven progress in modernizing poor countries, the agency’s approach shifted in the 1970s and ‘80s.
In the early 1970s, Congress and development experts pushed USAID away from grand, gross domestic product-focused modernization projects like dams, which they ostracized for their high costs and lack of tangible results.
Instead, with the support of the Carter administration, USAID began to work more on meeting poor people’s basic human needs, including food, shelter and education, so they could lift themselves out of poverty.
The agency shifted priorities once again in 1981, after President Ronald Reagan took office. His administration created programs meant to advertise American businesses and draw developing countries into the global marketplace.
Rather than USAID giving money to a local government to build a well in a rural village, for example, the agency increasingly started contracting local or American businesses to do so. The U.S., in other words, began outsourcing its foreign aid.
U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Stapleton Roy, right, presents Indonesia’s food and agriculture minister, A.M. Saefuddin, with food donated by USAID in Bandar Lampung, South Sumatra, in July 1998. Bernard Estrade/AFP via Getty Images
USAID’s next phase
At the end of the Cold War in 1991, the United States’ interest in spending money on helping poorer countries develop and modernize declined around the world.
USAID shifted priorities once again.
Without the threat of the Soviet Union, USAID’s mission throughout the 1990s became increasingly focused on new issues. These included democracy promotion in former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe. Sustainable development – a broad term that means promoting economic growth while respecting environmental concerns and long-term natural resource usage – was another focus in different regions.
After the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, USAID struggled to fulfill its existing international projects while also rebuilding critical infrastructure to resurrect the Iraqi and Afghani economies during wartime.
China’s aid work in South America has expanded rapidly over the past several years, and it is now the region’s top trading partner and also a major contributor to investment, energy and infrastructure projects. China’s aid and investment work in Africa has also grown considerably over the past few decades.
Now, with USAID’s dissolution, Chinese influence throughout poor and middle-income countries is expected to grow.
A lasting mark
Despite its limitations and frustrations, in my view, USAID has had an undeniable, and often massive, positive impact on the world.
USAID’s efforts to promote American businesses and exports abroad have resulted in the creation of thousands of jobs, both domestically and abroad, in a wide variety of industries, ranging from farming to medical sciences.
The tens of thousands of water wells and other forms of critical rural infrastructure the agency has funded, or created itself, have provided clean, safe drinking water for millions in Africa. The agency’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance has provided decades of critical disaster assistance during famines, earthquakes and hurricanes around the world.
These humanitarian efforts cost money, however. Some Republicans, including politicians and voters, say they have found the idea of American tax dollars being sent abroad, whether during the Cold War or today, wasteful, and others have worried over how aid funds may have been [abused].
USAID has always straddled a difficult line, as development is a messy field. But ending U.S. foreign aid will be much messier, and it could also cost millions of people who are reliant on USAID their health or lives.
Christian Ruth receives funding from America in the World Consortium.
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed over the past five years from a catastrophic threat that has killed over 7 million people to what most people regard today as a tolerable annoyance that doesn’t require precaution. Nonetheless, COVID-19 continues to kill over 2,000 people per month globally and cause severe illness in the infirm or elderly.
The evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic – from devastation, to optimism for eradication, to persistent, uneven spread of disease – may seem unprecedented. As an infectious disease doctor and medical historian, however, I see similarities to other epidemics, including syphilis, AIDS and tuberculosis.
Vaccines, medications and other biomedical breakthroughs are necessary to eliminate epidemic diseases. But as I explore in my book, “Persisting Pandemics,” social, economic and political factors are equally important. On its own, medical science is not enough.
Syphilis, AIDS and TB have stuck around
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease first identified in 1495. It causes skin rashes and may progress to causing paralysis, blindness or both. For centuries, syphilis weakened nations by disabling parents, workers and soldiers in the prime of their lives. Innovative drugs – first Salvarsan (1909), then penicillin (1943) – offered a path toward eradication when used together with widespread testing.
One challenge has been persistent stigma around getting tested for the disease and tracing sexual partners. Poverty is another; it can force women into commercial sex activities and prevent people from learning how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections. Population migration due to commerce or war can cause high-risk behaviors such as sexual promiscuity. Women in some cultures lack authority to negotiate for condom use. And governments have not consistently prioritized the sustained funding needed to support efforts to eliminate the disease.
But these programs, for reasons like with syphilis, are not meeting their treatment targets across all countries, especially among low-income populations and racial minorities. Sustaining funding for health care infrastructure and the multidrug regimens for 39 million people living with HIV poses an added challenge. Today, despite a cavalier public attitude toward the disease, AIDS causes over 630,000 deaths globally. That number will likely increase substantially given the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for United States Agency for International Development programs.
Tuberculosis is a third disease that also depleted workforces and weakened nations, particularly in postindustrial revolution 19th-century cities. The disease spread widely because poverty placed people in poorly ventilated working conditions and crowded tenement dwellings. The development of new combination antimicrobial drug regimens offered an avenue for disease eradication in the 1960s.
Nonetheless, the inability to sustain funding to complete complex treatment courses, problems isolating people who could not afford suitable homes, and poor adherence due to homelessness, incarceration or migration during war or trade have compromised public health campaigns. Despite societal nonchalance, tuberculosis today kills up to 1.6 million globally yearly.
The trajectories of these epidemics show how campaigns based solely on biomedical approaches that target pathogens are not enough to eliminate disease.
COVID-19 provides the latest example. In the U.S., the pandemic and its lockdowns disproportionately affected low-income people and racial minorities, especially those employed in front-line jobs that did not allow remote work from home. These groups were more likely to reside in crowded residences with poor ventilation or no space for isolation.
Vaccine hesitancy due to mistrust in science, along with sentiment that vaccine mandates violated individual freedoms, also prevented people from getting the shot. Similar attitudes reduced rates of mask-wearing and isolation.
Consequently, surges that could have been avoided took more lives.
Drugs and vaccines can’t do it alone
Modern medical science is unmatched in treating pathogens and disease symptoms. But to stop disease, it’s also critical to address the social, economic and political conditions that enable its spread.
Public health officials have started to implement a variety of structural solutions:
Stigma reduction programs to reduce the shame of having a disease and increase the number of people tested.
Cash transfers to provide sex workers with capital to invest in less risky, alternative businesses.
Early 20th-century public health officials had hoped that efficient scientific solutions alone could take the place of 19th-century, pre-germ-theory environmental sanitation efforts. COVID-19, syphilis, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis show that while biomedical breakthroughs are necessary to eliminate epidemic diseases, sustained focus and resources aimed at helping the most socially and economically vulnerable are essential.
Powel H. Kazanjian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julia Toppin, Senior Lecturer, Music Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, University of Westminster
At this year’s Brit Awards, the annual showcase for the UK music industry, there were five nominees in the British hip-hop, grime and rap act category: Central Cee, Dave, Ghetts, Little Simz and Stormzy. It’s an award voted for by the general public, rather than the 1,200 music industry figures who make up the Brits’ voting academy.
When Stormzy was announced as the winner, he took to the stage to claim the award should instead have gone to Central Cee (real name Oakley Caesar-Su). It was a move reminiscent of Adele’s 2017 Grammy’s acceptance speech. Adele won the album of the year award for her record, 30, but said the gong should have gone to the “artist of my life” Beyoncé, for Lemonade.
Stormzy’s acceptance speech.
Music genres, whether used by musicians, writers keen to describe an exciting new sound or marketing departments promoting a song, have movable boundaries. Award ceremonies (and the public response to them) frequently showcase the struggle to categorise music by genre. This was exemplified by the decoupling of the best act for pop and RnB at the Brits after a public debate around the 2023 awards.
Stormzy has transcended the boundaries of the grime genre that he came up through. He now has international profile and can sell out arenas around the globe. Last August, his feature collaboration with Chase and Status, Backbone, provided the veteran jungle drum and bass duo with their first number one single. It was Stormzy’s fifth.
The song was Stormzy’s only release of 2024 and, sonically, it belongs more to the Brits’ dance category than hip-hop, grime or rap. So it’s easy to see why Stormzy would seek to champion rising star Central Cee, who released two singles that firmly belong in the category in 2024. I Will climbed to number 19 in the UK national charts, and BAND4BAND, featuring American rapper Lil Baby, peaked at number four.
For those immersed in the Black music scenes which include hip hop, grime, rap and UK drill, Central Cee has been one of the most prolific artists of the last year. Last month at the Mobo (Music Of Black Origin) awards, the artist matched Stormzy’s record as the most decorated rapper in the award’s 29-year history.
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Central Cee also became the first artist to win the Mobos’ best male act three times. After two successful mix tapes, his album Can’t Rush Greatness was released on January 31 2025 and went straight to number one in the UK and multiple charts overseas. As such it would qualify for next year’s Brit Awards in the album category.
Breaking America
The very recent success of Can’t Rush Greatness inevitably makes Stormzy’s award feel dated. His shout out to Central Cee as the more deserving rap artist of the year, and acknowledgement that award shows can sometimes deny people their “moments”, was very much on brand for a rap artist known for his compassionate and reflective spirit.
It is also perhaps an acknowledgement that Can’t Rush Greatness has penetrated the US market, debuting at number nine on the Billboard 200 album chart. Central Cee seems poised to have a level of success overseas that has previously eluded Stormzy. (Although other UK artists such as Monie Love, Cookie Crew, M.I.A., Skepta, London Posse and the London-born but Atlanta-raised 21 Savage, have achieved crossover success.)
Central Cee has managed to take the sound of UK drill (a style of rap built on lyrics about the artist’s day-to-day existence that is mostly narrated by Britain’s Black and institutionally underprivileged youth) to a mainstream audience. His music features tight production, alternating ear-worm and emotive lyrics and – like Stormzy – a charismatic persona that screams global pop star.
I Will by Central Cee.
Questioning Cee’s success
At this level of success, popular music stars are positioned and made. Anyone versed in the abject anti-Black racism of the UK music industry could legitimately query why this particular rapper is being given a multi-million pound marketing push from major label Columbia Records.
Any suggestion that Central Cee is an “industry plant” can be swatted away with video evidence that he has been honing his craft since secondary school. But the issue of colourism is harder to get away from. Central Cee has a light skin tone, from his white English and mixed Guyanese and Chinese parentage. This could be seen by the record industry as making him more marketable to white majority audiences in Europe and North America than his darker skinned peers.
Additionally, I would argue that the music industry’s obsession of rallying behind one individual from each scene at any one time damages the health of all music. Focusing on the most popular artist of each moment is not a true reflection of the strength of music in the UK.
There are so many artists releasing incredible projects and singles in the genre, such as Bashy, Jordy, Chy Cartier and BXKS. They would really benefit from the platforms like the Brits who typically only champion the most popular artists.
All that said, one look at Central Cee’s TikTok account shows the outstanding work rate, discography, a commitment to developing a community across Europe, creativity, and ambition of this talented young man from Ladbroke Grove.
As usual, Stormzy’s considered thoughts are spot on.
Julia Toppin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Sand underpins everything from skyscrapers to smartphones. Sharp sand (as opposed to rounded desert sand) is the key ingredient in concrete, while high-purity silica sand is essential for making the silicon chips that power our digital devices.
Yet the relentless extraction of this seemingly abundant resource is pushing river systems to the brink of collapse, displacing communities and fuelling a billion-dollar black market.
Despite its critical role in modern society and urban development, the environmental and social effects of sand mining remain largely hidden from public scrutiny. The UN’s environment programme (Unep) warns that global sand consumption now exceeds 50 billion tonnes annually.
That’s way beyond estimated natural replenishment rates of 15 billion to 20 billion tonnes annually. Despite this, sand mining remains largely unregulated, with devastating ecological and social consequences.
Rivers are the lifeblood of ecosystems and communities. They transport sediment, shape landscapes and sustain wildlife.
But our team’s research on the Lower Mekong river reveals that sand mining is depleting sediment stocks at an alarming pace, causing riverbeds to lower and banks to erode. However, new hi-tech surveillance could improve the enforcement of sand mining regulations and improve resilience for these riverbed communities.
A site of bank erosion on the Mekong River at Rokar Koang, Kandal Province due to intensive mining for sand. Despite some remediation efforts, some homes close to the failure site have been completely destroyed since this photo was taken in February 2022. Andy Ball/University of Southampton, CC BY-NC-ND
As sea levels rise and riverbeds are lowered due to sand mining in the Mekong delta, saltwater spreads further upstream into freshwater areas. This threatens agricultural productivity in the “rice bowl” of south-east Asia. Sand mining also undermines the delicate balance of ecosystems like the Tonle Sap lake – a critical fish nursery and food source for millions.
The Mekong river in Asia flows through six countries, supporting more than 60 million people. In Cambodia, sand mining has become a multi-million-dollar industry, driven by a construction boom fuelled by Chinese investment.
Along the Mekong river, my team has documented sites of severe bank erosion using hi-tech equipment. Voi Thy, a 43-year-old resident of Roka Koang commune, has had to move her house multiple times since 2016 due to collapsing riverbanks – a direct consequence of sand mining.
Although existing research focuses exclusively on the physical damage, sand mining also erodes cultural and communal ties. Rivers are not just sources of water and food. They can be spiritual and cultural anchors.
Julian Leyland explains how sand mining threatens river ecosystems.
In Cambodia, traditional fishing practices and sacred sites are disappearing as rivers are stripped of their sediment. For communities that have lived alongside these waterways for generations, the loss is profound, severing connections to their heritage and identity.
The loss of livelihoods is equally devastating. Fishers and farmers, once reliant on the river’s bounty, are seeing their incomes vanish.
Many, like Vanna, a local fisherman who features in our Lost Lands documentary, are forced to leave their rural homes for cities, where they often find precarious work in poorly regulated industries. This migration fractures communities and places additional strain on urban infrastructure, creating a ripple effect of social and economic challenges.
Tayang Sam, a bricklayer from Cambodia’s remote Ratanakiri orovince, casts his net on sand pumped from the Mekong into the wetlands. Four years ago, he could catch 50-60kg of fish each day, but now he says there’s Andy Ball/University of Southampton, CC BY-NC-ND
The Cambodian government denies that dredging is responsible for the erosion, claiming it stabilises riverbanks – a claim disputed by our team. Strengthening cross-border governance and enforcing extraction limits are critical to addressing this crisis. But time is running out.
The global sand trade is valued at over US$2.3 billion (£1.8 billion) annually, with demand predicted to double by 2060. Much of this economic gain is concentrated in wealthy cities, while the costs are disproportionately borne by local communities in extraction regions. In many sand-rich areas, people face displacement as their riverbanks erode and homes collapse into the water.
The high value and ease of sand extraction have led to the rise of illicit mining networks. In some areas, so-called “sand mafias” control extraction sites, using intimidation and violence to secure their dominance. The lack of legal oversight fosters corruption, with mining permits often being issued through opaque processes. That can further marginalise local communities.
Given the clandestine nature of illegal sand mining, monitoring extraction rates has historically been difficult. However, recent advances in remote sensing and deep learning technology offer new opportunities for surveillance.
As part of our new Hidden Sands project, we are using high-resolution satellite imagery and ground-based cameras to map riverbed sand mining across the Mekong delta. With more accurate real-time insights into the volumes of sand being extracted, policies can be more effectively enforced.
Houses rumoured to belong to Cambodia’s elite are built on a filled-in section of the Boeung Tumpun, Phnom Penh’s largest wetlands. This diverse ecosystem stores 70% of the rain and wastewater from Phnom Penh, helping to prevent flooding. CC BY-NC-ND
Sustainable sand use
A growing body of organisations, such as the conservation charity World Wide Fund for Nature and Unep, are calling for urgent regulatory intervention and alternative sourcing strategies. Building on the conclusions of previous work, sustainable sand management in the Mekong needs to drastically change.
Stricter regulations, and enforcement of those laws, would ensure more sustainable sourcing of sand and help curb illegal mining activities. The development of alternative recycled construction materials, such as manufactured sand from industrial byproducts, could reduce the pressure on river sources of sand.
Once extracted or manufactured, fairer distribution of those resources can be better achieved through community-led conservation and employment initiatives, for example, that can build resilience and protect cultural heritage of traditional practices.
Without intervention, the unchecked exploitation of river sand will continue to degrade ecosystems, threaten wildlife and exacerbate social and economic inequalities. Governments, industry leaders and researchers must collaborate to ensure sand extraction is sustainable and equitably managed. Until then, global demand for sand shows no signs of abating.
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In Latin America, deeply ingrained cultural beliefs about gender roles – what women and men should and shouldn’t do – persist. This is despite increased involvement by women in traditionally male spheres, such as business and politics.
And these ideas are held among young people, too. A studyin 2020 found that only 32% of adolescents in Latin America fully support gender equality. My past research has found that in Mexico, 63.6% of teenagers believe women should not be involved in politics.
In Chile and Colombia, however, teens’ support for gender equality is much higher. This disparity suggests that gender attitudes are shaped by broader social and political contexts.
My recent research with colleagues suggests that schools have the power to shape students’ beliefs about gender equality.
We found that there is a link between classes in which open discussion takes place and students with a strong grasp of civic topics and support for gender equality. We also found that schools with supportive and inclusive environments are linked with more positive attitudes among students towards gender equality.
The influence of inequality
The economic and political landscape of Latin America plays a role in restricting gender equality. Latin America is one of the most economically divided regions in the world, with extreme concentrations of wealth at the top and poverty at the bottom. This extends to education. Children from wealthier backgrounds have access to better education, further reinforcing inequality. Studies show that lower levels of education are linked to prejudices such as sexism.
And economic inequality is not the only challenge. Despite the fact that most Latin American countries transitioned to democracy over 40 years ago, political instability remains widespread. Alarmingly, many people still see authoritarianism as a solution to social issues.
This belief is particularly strong among young people. A 2016 study found that 69% of secondary students in five Latin American countries thought a dictatorship would be justified if it solved security problems. Authoritarian mindsets are strong predictors of sexism.
This means it is challenging to achieve gender equality in a society where authoritarianism and inequality remain deeply rooted.
Our research analysed data from a large-scale study of 25,319 eighth graders (aged 13-14) in 888 schools in Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Peru.
We explored the relationships between the socioeconomic background of students, the promotion of open classroom discussions by teachers, the level of civic knowledge, the ideological climate that schools have and the attitudes toward gender equality held by students. We wanted to explore how far education can be associated with these views.
We found that educational practices account for 19% of the variation in students’ support for gender equality. In other words, what happens inside the classroom matters.
Open discussions
Schools that foster open classroom discussions about political and social issues help students develop critical thinking skills and tolerance. This kind of open dialogue counteracts authoritarian beliefs. It creates a space where students can challenge traditional gender roles.
Inclusive educational practices are not confined to wealthier schools. They can be embraced by any school committed to enhancing educational equity and embracing diverse student needs. But research suggests that students from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to endorse gender equality. This reflects their access to better education and civic knowledge.
Students with higher civic knowledge are more likely to support gender equity. Understanding rights, democracy, and social structures gives students the tools to question inequality and advocate for change.
However, the challenge is that many students are still exposed to authoritarian ideologies – both at home and in school.
Our research revealed a concerning trend. Schools with authoritarian climates tend to reinforce gender biases rather than challenge them. This suggests that if we move students with lower personal support for authoritarianism to an environment where authoritarianism is dominant, those students are susceptible to adopting sexist attitudes. Students are not just shaped by their own beliefs but by the ideological views of their peers.
This means that while schools have the potential to promote gender equity, they can also reinforce inequality if authoritarian ideas dominate the school culture.
Latin America’s structural inequalities and political instability create significant barriers to gender equality. Schools, particularly in underprivileged areas, can counterbalance this by encouraging open discussion and civic education, even in societies resistant to change. Education systems have the potential to play a key role in setting the trajectory of gender equality in Latin America.
Natalia López-Hornickel receives funding from the South West Doctoral Training Partnership (SWDTP).
Cities can be deeply unwelcoming places for wildlife. They are noisy, difficult to get around, full of people and heavily reliant on artificial lighting. Yet some species do better in urban areas than in rural ones.
Research is showing that animals of the same species that live in cities and the countryside are behaving differently. These disparities will probably grow since
over half of people worldwide now live in urban areas, and cities and towns are getting bigger.
A recent study from Tel Aviv University found that Egyptian fruit bats living in urban parts of Israel gave birth two and a half weeks earlier than rural populations. This gives them an advantage as they are more likely to reproduce twice per year.
In the urban areas in the study there was a higher abundance and diversity of fruit trees. In Tel Aviv, for instance, the trees are watered. This means there is fruit for a longer period across the year, meaning more reliable food supplies for the bats.
They may also be benefiting from the urban heat island effect, with warmer temperatures reducing the harshness of the winters felt by their rural neighbours.
Most species perceive humans as predators, so our presence disturbs and distracts them from feeding and breeding. To survive in human-dominated cities, animals must therefore be bold.
This is something researchers have studied for a while in wildlife like foxes. Urban foxes are often more confident in their response to new food when it is presented in a novel object like a puzzle box.
Urban birds, from robins to feral pigeons, are also bolder. In a 2008 study scientists found that urban birds are more tolerant of human disturbance than rural ones), allowing humans to approach them closely.
The birds that reacted less to approaching humans were descended from a large number of generations since urbanisation, showing a long history of adaptation. This behavioural change helps these animals to adjust their stress responses when they are exposed to new situations. If they did not do this, they would suffer with chronic stress.
To test whether this boldness in birds is due to evolutionary adaptations, one 2006 experimental study in Germany hand-raised blackbird chicks taken from both an urban centre and a nearby forest.
They kept all the birds in the same environment until they were adults and then tested their acute stress responses when the birds were caught and handled. The birds from the city had a lower stress response, suggesting that this difference was genetically determined.
However, urban birds tend to be less successful in raising chicks than those in more natural areas. Although birds can take advantage of food provided by people in many cities and towns across the world – whether directly in bird feeders, or by scavenging on our discarded food – urban areas do not provide enough of the invertebrate prey that many nestlings need.
Many of these changes in urban species are difficult for people to detect, but one in particular becomes clear when you spend time in cities across the world. Have you noticed that whichever city you visit there seem to be many animals of the same species?
Scientists call this biotic homogenisation. It happens when places start to become increasingly similar over time with the species that you can find there.
This process begins with the exodus of species that cannot tolerate living alongside humans. Large mammals, often predators, are the first to go as an area becomes increasingly urbanised.
Then the non-native species begin to move in. Feral pigeons, rats, starlings and many other species are introduced by people over time, whether accidentally or deliberately, until a point is reached when the biodiversity found in one city, say in the US, starts to resemble another in Europe.
Urbanisation is continually changing our relationship with animals and how we perceive nature. Although scientists debate whether we have entered the Anthropocene (a new geological age based on significant planetary changes caused by humans) it is undeniable that humans have and still are moulding landscapes to suit our needs.
The growth of cities and other urban areas is set to continue, with future urban expansion predicted to swallow 11-33 million hectares of natural habitat by 2100, an area the size of Norway. Indeed, humans are becoming the largest driving force in the evolution of wildlife.
Becky Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The following story is the winner of The Conversation Prize for writers, a competition run in partnership with Faber and Curtis Brown. Read more about the competition here.
A young man called David Lace sits in a windowless interrogation room in a Portsmouth police station. He has just been arrested over a spate of burglaries across the city. Out of the blue, in the middle of the interview he tells the detectives something extraordinary. He’s killed someone, he says. A young woman.
He can’t live with himself anymore. The guilt is driving him mad. In the bleak little room he confesses everything. But Lace is never charged with murder. Never put on trial. Never jailed. Instead, all that happens to another man. An innocent man called Sean Hodgson. The Lace confession, along with all the forensic evidence with Lace’s DNA goes missing. Hodgson serves 27 years in prison.
When five police officers turn up at his mother’s flat on October 20 2004, Sam Hallam knows they have made a mistake. A few days earlier a 21-year-old was stabbed to death in a street brawl. Hallam had heard about it but wasn’t there. He explains all of this to the police officers who arrest and later charge him. He explains it to the jury during his trial. No one listens. Hallam is jailed for life. He is 17 years old.
But wasn’t all of this sorted out years ago? Aren’t miscarriages of justice a bit … 1980s?
While millions might have once tuned into Rough Justice and Trial and Error to watch investigations into miscarriage of justice cases, those shows are now long gone, cancelled due to lack of interest. Even legendary investigative journalists like David Jessel packed up and moved on, admitting that the game had changed.
They may have gone under the radar for a while but these types of cases never went away, and it now seems we’ve entered a period where there are more than ever. Perhaps the reason no one noticed is because of a relentless campaign to turn the clock back, to a time when the innocent were fair game.
When the Birmingham Six were trying to overturn their convictions they were thwarted again and again over 16 years by a stubborn and dismissive establishment. The attitude was epitomised in the iconic judgment by Lord Denning. He refused to countenance the idea of them being innocent because that would damage the integrity of the system – and in his opinion the system needed to be protected at all costs. In his judgment Denning said:
If the six men win, it will mean that the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were involuntary and were improperly admitted in evidence and that the convictions were erroneous. That would mean the Home Secretary would either have to recommend they be pardoned or he would have to remit the case to the Court of Appeal. This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: It cannot be right these actions should go any further.
For decades the “appalling vista” approach held while the injustices grew and grew. But on a bright spring morning in 1991 the whole thing exploded in a visceral, cathartic dam-burst.
Amid chaotic scenes outside the Old Bailey the Birmingham Six were released and one of them, Paddy Hill, grabbed a microphone and unleashed a savage attack on the institutions that had taken his freedom:
For 16 and a half years we have been used as political scapegoats. The police told us from the start they knew we hadn’t done it. They told us they didn’t care who had done it. They told us that we were selected and they were going to frame us. Justice, I don’t think the people in there have got the intelligence nor the honestly to spell the word, never mind dispense it. They’re rotten.
A crisis was erupting that threatened the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system. Swift action was needed and so on the very day that the Birmingham Six convictions were quashed, the government established the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice.
Nothing it appeared, would ever be the same again.
Out of the Royal Commission sprung a new body – the Criminal Cases Review Commission – given the sole task of investigating miscarriages of justice. The message was sent out loud and clear: the innocence crisis had now been solved and the media, the criminal justice system and the politicians needed to move on to more pressing issues.
But while no one was looking, a silent counter-revolution was happening.
The great rebranding
Stealthily and relentlessly a hostile environment for victims of miscarriages was being created. The first target was to undermine the actual term “miscarriage of justice” itself. In a seminal speech in 2002 Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that “the biggest miscarriage of justice in today’s system is when the guilty walk away unpunished”.
Blair was calling for a reappraisal of what we considered an injustice. Essentially what was being assumed was that the “innocence crisis” had been dealt with and energies should now be focused on other areas where the criminal justice system was misfiring; namely, in the effective punishment of the guilty. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
The right wing press gleefully embraced this reframing. Newspapers like The Sun and Express, who had not concerned themselves with miscarriages of justice before Blair’s intervention, were now falling over themselves to expose these new injustices. Two headlines in the Express read: “Rapist who was free to strike again: This is a travesty, a real miscarriage of justice,” and “Don’t let them get away with murder: Proposals that would see murderers spend less time in jail are the biggest miscarriage of justice we have seen”.
The rebranding of “miscarriage of justice” was so successful that in 2006 when The Sun asked its readers: “Do you know about a miscarriage of justice? Call us on 020 7782 4104”, it did not need to explain to anyone what it was talking about – its readers knew exactly what the paper meant. They knew it was looking for tales of “evil perverts” and “crooks” who got “soft sentences” so that it could use its “Justice Campaign to have lenient judges turfed out”.
But the creation of a hostile environment for the innocent still had a long way to go. It was one thing to convict people – and sentence them to longer terms – the next thing was to ensure they stayed there.
And so a concerted campaign began to strengthen the finality of convictions – essentially making it near impossible to challenge guilty verdicts. Technology helped. Since 2011, most court transcripts have been recorded digitally. But without fanfare the decision was taken to routinely delete them.
It means that while it is possible to access full records of Victorian court cases, modern court transcripts vanish after seven years and they are eye-wateringly expensive. An MP was recently quoted £100,000 for a Lucy Letby court transcript. In the US, defendants automatically get a copy of their court records – in the UK the records are destroyed, and no one has ever really explained why.
So if you are trying to challenge your conviction you may not have access to – or cannot afford – your court records. But what about the evidence that convicted you? We are all familiar with the US movies and documentaries that show lawyers saving prisoners from death row or prison sentences thanks to new DNA evidence. Why doesn’t that happen in the UK? Because in 2014 the Supreme Court decided that a defendant no longer has the right to access any of this evidence. It ruled:
What is essentially sought by the claimant is access to material to enable the case to be re-investigated and re-examined. The time for that investigation and examination was the trial.
All police forces now have a template letter in which they explain that due to this judgment they will not grant access to any evidence after conviction, and every appeal lawyer in the country has enough of these letters to wallpaper their offices.
The commission that was once lauded as an example for the rest of the world is now such a shambles that when the scandal broke about the handling of the Andrew Malkinson case, who had been wrongfully imprisoned for rape, the chair of the CCRC was in Montenegro, promoting her property business. Helen Pitcher told her social media followers that she was “having an amazing time at Milos Mussels bar”. The CCRC said Pitcher was on a lunch break while working remotely from Montenegro that day and that she did not manage her own social media. Pitcher said: “The CCRC is a remote-working organisation, and I sometimes work from a property I own abroad.”
In January, Pitcher resigned saying she had been made a scapegoat for the Malkinson affair. Those involved in criminal appeals used to laugh at how hapless the CCRC was – they are now in open despair.
The handful of cases that make it through the CCRC and to the Court of Appeal face another fight against the odds – the court normally rejects at least a third of these cases.
Victims of injustice such as members of the Birmingham Six say they would never have been freed if the CCRC had investigated their case. And if you do somehow manage to beat all the odds and overturn your conviction – like Victor Nealon – you will leave the Court of Appeal with a grand total of £89 in your pocket. It does not matter if you have unfairly spent decades in prison, if imprisonment has destroyed your physical and mental health and laid waste to your relationships and reputation. It’s still £89. There is no compensation for the stolen years, for the outrageous injustices you have suffered.
Nealon and Sam Hallam took their claims for compensation all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and lost. But the judges said the current UK system for compensation was “a hurdle which is virtually insurmountable”. The hostile environment against the innocent was now complete.
They also know that there will be no comeback if things go wrong – no officer in any of the major miscarriages of justice cases has ever been convicted of anything. The attempt to prosecute officers in the Cardiff Three case collapsed – due to disclosure problems.
Once someone is convicted their court records will be deleted or made unaffordable, their legal aid will be slashed and they will be denied access to any of the evidence that convicted them. Their only option will be to apply to a crumbling and aimless institution which even the legal system views as a joke.
This is how they system wins and how the victims of injustice are betrayed. This is how you convict the innocent.
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Brian Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Congratulations to Brian Thornton from Winchester University who is the 2025 winner of The Conversation Prize for writers, for his story Convicting the Innocent, a look at the systemic barriers facing people wrongly convicted of a crime.
We asked academics to submit a 2,000-word article and book pitch for the competition, run in partnership with Faber and Curtis Brown, and were overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of submissions we received. It was very difficult to pick just one winner from across countless themes and styles.
Brian’s article and book idea was shortlisted by the teams at The Conversation, Curtis Brown and Faber for its strong storytelling, exploring systematic failings in the legal system, and the strong use of case studies that brought colour to this subject.
The judges said: “The research on the current failings of the legal system would be of great interest to the general public, especially following the fallout from the Post Office scandal. The essay is well written and punchy, if shocking and unnerving. The use of case studies to tell the story works really very well, and makes the piece immediately emotionally gripping – with great potential to work as a non-fiction book.”
Brian said: “I’m delighted and honoured to have won the Conversation Prize for writers. My article focuses on miscarriages of justice and how the system fails innocent people. It’s an important topic but one that is so often ignored by media organisations because of the complexity of the cases and the opacity of the legal system.”
I think that’s why The Conversation is different – it provides a platform for writers to tackle complex and challenging topics and allows them the time and space to do them justice. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to highlight this important issue – hopefully it may get people talking and thinking about how to solve it!“
Brian is a senior lecturer and programme leader for the BA (Hons) Journalism course at the University of Winchester, and a former producer for BBC Newsnight. He is also one of the founders of the Winchester University’s Crime and Justice Research Centre, which specialises in issues related to miscarriages of justice, and is founder and director of the Winchester Innocence Project.
Brian wins £1,000 and mentorship from both Faber and Curtis Brown. You can read his winning story here.
Close runners up in the competition were Yvonne Reddick for Fire on Winter Hill and Nicholas Carter for Living Stone.
Fire on Winter Hill blended nature writing, memoir, family obsessions and the politics of climate change and made an impression throughout the shortlisting process for both the style of the essay and thoughtfulness of the proposal, which showcased a great talent for storytelling. Written as a personal account following in the footsteps of the author’s father, who worked on oil frontiers from the North Sea to Oman, the judges said Fire on Winter Hill was an “affecting memoir” that “beautifully and originally explores the link between mountains and oil.”
Living Stone gave a glimpse into a world we don’t ordinarily think about – turning the story of lichens and their relationship with stone into a highly original piece of writing. The judges said: “We’d also like to make a special mention of Living Stone, which explores how lichens bring stone to life – blurring the boundary between the living and the non-living. This topic has great potential to work as a book, arguing that western, narrow scientific definitions means lichens are ultimately understudied and undervalued.”
A big thank you to our judges, Miriam Frankel, senior science editor at The Conversation UK, Priya Atwal, historian, broadcaster and community history fellow at the University of Oxford, and Alice Hunt, professor of early modern literature and history at the University of Southampton. The Conversation Insights team Paul Keaveny and Mike Herd. And to Fiona Crosby, senior commissioning editor for non-fiction at Faber, and Elliot Prior, associate agent at Curtis Brown.
The Marshall Islands marked 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tests ever conducted were unleashed over the weekend.
The Micronesian nation experienced 67 known atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.
The country’s President Hilda Heine says her people continue to face the impacts of US nuclear weapons testing seven decades after the last bomb was detonated.
The Pacific Islands have a complex history of nuclear weapons testing, but the impacts are very much a present-day challenge, Heine said at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Tonga last year.
She said that the consequences of nuclear weapons testing “in our own home” are “expensive” and “cross-cutting”.
“When I was just a young girl, our islands were turned into a big laboratory to test the capabilities of weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare agents, and unexploded ordinance,” she said.
“The impacts are not just historical facts, but contemporary challenges,” she added, noting that “the health consequences for the Marshallese people are severe and persistent through generations.”
“We are now working to reshape the narrative from that of being victims to one of active agencies in helping to shape our own future and that of the world around us,” she told Pacific leaders, where the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres was a special guest.
President Hilda Heine and UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, in August 2024 Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
She said the displacement of communities from ancestral lands has resulted in grave cultural impacts, hindering traditional knowledge from being passed down to younger generations.
“As well as certain traditional practices, customs, ceremonies and even a navigational school once defining our very identity and become a distant memory, memorialised through chance and storytelling,” President Heine said.
“The environmental legacy is contamination and destruction: craters, radiation, toxic remnants, and a dome containing radioactive waste with a half-life of 24,000 years have rendered significant areas uninhabitable.
“Key ecosystems, once full of life and providing sustenance to our people, are now compromised.”
Heine said cancer and thyroid diseases were among a list of presumed radiation-induced medical conditions that were particularly prevalent in the Marshallese community.
Displacement, loss of land, and psychological trauma were also contributing factors to high rates of non-communicable diseases, she said.
Runit Dome, also known as “The Tomb”, in the Marshall Islands . . , controversial nuclear waste storage. Image: RNZ Pacific
“Despite these immense challenges, the Marshallese people have shown remarkable resilience and strength. Our journey has been one of survival, advocacy, and an unyielding pursuit of justice.
“We have fought tirelessly to have our voices heard on the international stage, seeking recognition.”
In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address testing impacts.
“We are a unique and important moral compass in the global movement for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” Heine said.
Kurt Campbell at the Pacific Islands Forum . . . “I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration Kurt Cambell said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damage and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.
“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he said.
“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment,” he told reporters in Nuku’alofa.
A shared nuclear legacy The National Nuclear Commission chairperson Ariana Tibon-Kilma, a direct descendant of survivors of the nuclear weapons testing programme Project 4.1 — which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies — told RNZ Pacific that what occured in Marshall Islands should not happen to any country.
“This programme was conducted without consent from any of the Marshallese people,” she said.
“For a number of years, they were studied and monitored, and sometimes even flown out to the US and displayed as a showcase.
“The history and trauma associated with what happened to my family, as well as many other families in the Marshall Islands, was barely spoken of.
“What happened to the Marshallese people is something that we would not wish upon any other Pacific island country or any other person in humanity.”
She said the nuclear legacy was a shared one.
“We all share one Pacific Ocean and what happened to the Marshall Islands, I am, sure resonates throughout the Pacific,” Tibon-Kilma said.
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head Heike Alefsen at the Pacific Islands Forum . . . “I think compensation for survivors is key.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Billions in compensation The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head, Heike Alefsen, told RNZ Pacific in Nuku’alofa that “we understand that there are communities that have been displaced for a long time to other islands”.
“I think compensation for survivors is key,” she said.
“It is part of a transitional justice approach. I can’t really speak to the breadth and the depth of the compensation that would need to be provided, but it is certainly an ongoing issue for discussion.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
