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The resignation of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury has returned the spotlight to the permacrisis of abuse in religious communities. Welby resigned after an independent review found the Church of England had covered up serial abuse by John Smyth QC.

The review described Smyth’s abuse of more than 100 young boys as “prolific, brutal and horrific. His victims were subjected to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks.” The report found that this was not just a case of Smyth as a “bad apple”, but of systemic institutional failings in the church. Similar themes were found in a 2020 report into safeguarding in the Anglican Church.

As noted by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, this problem is not limited just to the Church of England but affects other religious institutions in the UK, and beyond.

The church can be seen as a form of “closed community”. These take on different forms. Some are geographically isolated from the wider world, for example convents and monasteries. Others, like the Church of England, may be public facing, but can harbour attitudes about how to police and respond to harm that differ from those in wider society.

For those who research child sexual abuse in religious communities, Smyth’s crimes and the subsequent coverup are as unsurprising as they are galling. Narratives of morality and virtuousness associated with religion shape an institutional culture that stops victims from seeking support, for fear of being shunned or not believed. This culture of silence allows sexual abuse to continue unchecked for long periods.

But it is not exclusive to religious communities. Sports clubs and youth groups such as the Scouts, for example, can also be seen as closed communities. This is because in both cases, norms and values within an organisation can be out of kilter with wider society.

Sporting communities can create conditions for grooming and abuse.
Shutterstock

The volume of sexual abuse in any closed community is difficult to know. In one study, one in 250 Australians was found to have been abused by adults in religious organisations. In sporting communities, estimates vary from 2% to 49% of people experiencing abuse depending on the sport, age and gender. Among UK Scout groups, 166 cases – including historic ones – have been settled in the past 10 years. There have been over 60,000 known cases among the Boy Scouts of America.

Read more:
Bradley Wiggins alleges he was sexually groomed by a coach when he was about 13: expert explains safeguarding in sport and what more needs to be done

There are a number of reasons that abuse occurs in closed communities. The outsize roles of trust, power and authority in organisational leaders can give way to grooming processes. This can create a sense of disbelief – firstly by the victim that they’ve been abused – and then by others in the wider community.

This in turn can lead to the stigmatisation, shunning and exclusion of those who do raise concerns, leading to further isolation. Combined, these elements act as significant barriers to reporting and accountability. In some cases, abuse might be trivialised or downplayed to protect the reputation of an organisation and ensure its survival.

Influence and change

The knock-on effects of abuse in closed communities can be profound for victims and their families. While cases are covered up to protect reputations, their emergence can result in precisely the opposite occurring. As researchers in sport communities have found, organisations may face a loss in public confidence and support, and a drop in financial investment as others seek to distance themselves from the toxicity of the brand.

Given the societal reach and influence of the Church of England, it is unlikely that this case presents an existential threat to the organisation. However, with the significant decline in people describing themselves as Christian between 2011 and 2021, the institution already faces a challenge in making a case for its ongoing contemporary relevance, role and influence within society.

There have been calls for independent external scrutiny and revised safeguarding systems and practices in the Church of England, and more senior members of the clergy may need to resign.

This process of redemption will undoubtedly be a long and arduous one, and will need to be accompanied by significant root and branch reform. The church will likely follow the lead of other closed communities in opening itself up to greater external scrutiny while rapidly implementing new safeguarding policies, practices and training. This can in turn help to improve transparency and safeguarding.

Much more work is needed to support closed communities in preventing abuse, and in supporting victims and whistleblowers of such communities should allegations of abuse emerge. Läs mer…

Clothes tumble out of skyscrapers, pile up in stairwells, and clog pavements and streets. A voice instructs viewers to “visualise 190,000 garments produced each minute”. The cityscape drowning in textiles is just one of the dystopian scenes generated in Netflix’s new documentary Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy, which critiques contemporary retailers for their buy more (waste more) business models.

Most of us know that contemporary consumption patterns are unsustainable. In Scotland – where we authors live – it is estimated that 80% of our carbon emissions come from “things we make, buy, use and ultimately throw away”. And we are throwing away more than ever before. The World Bank estimates that by 2050 global annual waste generation will reach 3.88 billion tonnes, an increase of 73% on 2020 waste levels.

We need a more circular economy where we extend the lives of products and resources already in circulation.

But shopping more ethically is difficult, especially at this time of year when digital offers crowd our screens. In Buy Now, Netflix exposes the covert marketing techniques that digital retailers use, designed to encourage us to keep purchasing. Bombarded with choice and opportunity, seasonal shopping can be hard work, especially when trying to make ethical choices as an individual consumer.

Buying secondhand is more circular but it is not always an easy solution. Many consumers still find secondhand shopping problematic. It is associated with more social stigma than buying new – and buying pre-loved goods is perceived to be less convenient and reliable than digital retail models.

And yet secondhand consumption is on the increase. So how do shoppers who want to embrace secondhand overcome the temptation to buy new and buy now?

The secret is ensuring secondhand shoppers are supported to shop ethically by others. In our recent research paper, we asked consumers what factors encouraged them to shop secondhand.

Many participants told us of their moral struggles to become more ethical consumers, admitting that it felt good not to “feed the beast of fast fashion”, as one interviewee put it. But they still experienced aversions to secondhand shopping through not knowing where clothes have come from, and if they have been cleaned.

Read more:
Secondhand clothes can be swimming in germs – what vintage shoppers need to know

This tension fits with Aristotle’s theory of virtue ethics, which stresses how an individual’s moral decision-making is a process propelled by pleasure and pain. That is, people are attracted to behaviour that makes them feel good and avoid actions that give rise to guilt.

However, our research revealed that part of the pleasure is not individual, but social. We found that consumers were supported in their ethical decision-making by actions from secondhand retail sites, such as charity shops, and from friends and family in their wider community.

The shoppers in our study found that they could be seduced to shop secondhand if the aesthetics and experience of the retail environment were right. They told us that they enjoyed shopping in spaces that were “laid out nicely” and were “light, spacious, not much smell” – much like other high street stores and in contrast to the stereotype of the cluttered and disorganised charity shop.

Perhaps more interestingly, others enjoyed the thrill of “looking, finding and searching”, as well as “diverse styles” that contrast with the usual convenience-focused retail experience. Consumers, we found, are after the treasure-hunting experience of secondhand shopping but in light and airy surroundings.

Buy Now, the planet pays later.

Committed shoppers were not just seduced by attractive surroundings, they were also converted to secondhand shopping when their enjoyment of the experience was shared with others. Consumers told us how they had been encouraged to shop with family members and friends who shared “good finds and bargains” and had learned to shop secondhand with their older family members.

For many, charity shopping had become a hobby to participate in with others, where shoppers make a day of visiting cafes and exploring secondhand shops along the high street.

Others also recognise the collective value generated by a more circular approach to consumption, including on the high street. Our research found the same; people visit charity shops not just to buy clothes but also “for a blether” (chat) and “local information”.

Consumers are bolstered by this community of charity shop and secondhand site workers, knowing that their decision to shop secondhand is not only better for the environment but is also helping people in their community.

At the end of Buy Now, experts offer advice as to how consumers can work together to overcome the wasteful business models of retailers. This festive season, we have some tips for sharing the joy of secondhand shopping.

Selling secondhand goods? Learn how to maximise the shopper’s experience by registering for Revolve Reuse Knowledge Hub
Still got presents to buy? Make Christmas shopping an event by going secondhand treasure-hunting with friends fuelled by festive refreshments
Already got the perfect present? Share your finds on social media to celebrate secondhand gifts Läs mer…

Extensive flooding of the River Thames and its tributaries across south-east England in February 2014 was caused by extraordinary weather conditions. Very heavy rain had fallen on ground already saturated by multiple storms since the previous December. Hundreds of residents were evacuated and the flooding damaged thousands of homes and businesses.

One family, whose home was near an old landfill in Chertsey, Surrey, suffered a particularly devastating loss. Their seven-year-old son, Zane Gbangbola, died on the night of the floods. A coroner ruled that the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning from the petrol pump used to clear floodwater from their home.

But the family have long contested that when the River Thames burst its banks and flooded a nearby old landfill, toxic hydrogen cyanide gas was released, causing their son’s death.

Flooding does have the potential to stir up long-forgotten sources of pollution – and climate change is exacerbating that. Over the last century, we’ve buried millions of tonnes of our household, industrial and hazardous waste, often in old quarries, or dumped on saltmarshes and floodplains.

In the case of Gbangbola, the concerns related to a number of old, abandoned and worked-out gravel pits in the Thames floodplain that were landfilled with household, industrial and even military wastes during the 1950s and 1960s.

A landfill eroding by the mouth of the Thames estuary, Essex.
Kate Spencer, Author provided (no reuse)

Modern, highly engineered landfills are lined and sealed with strong, impermeable materials like clay to stop liquid wastes or gases escaping into the environment. But these old sites weren’t lined. So, when they flooded in the winter of 2013-2014, pollutants, including hydrogen cyanide, could have leaked into the floodwaters that entered peoples’ homes.

While there is still significant debate about what exactly happened in Chertsey, hydrogen cyanide was allegedly detected in the Gbangbola family home on the night of the floods.

The concerns around Gbangbola relate to a small handful of old dumps, but there are at least 20,000 “historic landfills” across the UK. Historic landfills are defined by the Environment Agency as “sites where there is no environmental permit in force”. They generally predate the 1994 waste management licensing regulations.

They also predate other environmental laws such as the landfill regulations introduced in 2002 that require landfills to be lined to control the release of gases and leachates and protect the surrounding environment. Gases, such as methane, hydrogen sulphide or hydrogen cyanide are produced by the breakdown of food and animal waste. Leachates are liquid pollutant mixtures created by breakdown and chemical reactions between wastes.

Thousands of historic landfills have been mapped across England.
Author provided (no reuse)

These historic landfills can contain heavy metals, persistent organic chemicals such as pesticides, “forever” chemicals or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceuticals, medical waste and plastics.

They probably also contain materials that are now banned or restricted because of their harmful effects on the environment and human health, such as asbestos (fibrous, naturally occurring minerals known to harm human health) and polychlorinated biphenyls (synthetic industrial chemicals which were banned in the 1980s).

Landfilling was considered a long-term solution as waste gradually breaks down to become inert and harmless. But historic landfills were constructed with little understanding of climate change.

Analysis by my research team shows that in England alone, 4,000 historic landfills are in areas where there is greater than 1% annual probability of river flooding or 0.5% or greater annual probability of flooding from the sea. Those locations do not have flood defences.

Thousands more landfills are in areas known as groundwater source protection zones where modern environmental regulations would not permit their construction because of the potential risk of contaminating groundwater and drinking water sources.

Past pollution, future threats

I’ve been studying historic landfills for more than a decade, during which time there has been little movement from government or the landfill sector to address the issue of historic landfills. This is possibly because both the potential scale of the problem and the cost of implementing sustainable solutions are just overwhelming. But the problem of our waste legacy is not going to go away and with climate change will become even more pressing.

More severe and more frequent floods will increase the chance that historic landfills are inundated with water. That will release more toxic chemicals into surface and groundwaters. This is even more problematic in coastal areas where sodium and chloride in seawater can combine with some chemicals to make them more mobile.

Extreme flood and coastal storm events could erode historic landfills releasing solid waste materials such as plastics, old batteries and asbestos into our rivers and seas. Drought could dry and weaken landfill structures making them more vulnerable to failure and potential release of pollutants. While, increasing temperatures can increase the volatility of some chemicals so they can escape more easily as gases or degrade quickly into toxic byproducts.

Our rivers are already heavily polluted from road runoff, sewage, industry and agriculture. Release of pollutants from old landfill sites will make this worse.

We test drinking water to ensure that it is safe to drink. But, additional release of chemicals, particularly forever chemicals that are harmful at very low concentrations and are problematic to remove from landfill leachate may affect our drinking water. This could increase the need to monitor or require expensive upgrades to our drinking water treatment facilities.

A sweet wrapper Kate Spencer found while working on an eroding coastal landfill in the Thames Estuary.
Kate Spencer

When I visit eroding coastal landfills, I recognise discarded objects from the time of my own childhood – a spirograph, 1970s fabric, a sweet wrapper – carefully thrown away, but still here. Our waste legacy will be a burden for future generations for decades, if not centuries. Right now, we need to learn to live with the consequences of climate change, while trying to protect our waterways and human health from the potential harm associated with these old landfills sites.

The task is monumental.

The first step is to understand the scale of the problem and know which of the thousands of historic landfill sites pose the greatest risk to human and environmental health. Then, pollution from the highest-priority landfills can be cleaned up, waste could be removed – perhaps even mined for precious resources – or better protected from flooding and erosion. That all requires political will, huge investment and substantial technological innovation.

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It is a common refrain to say that geopolitics gets in the way of climate action. From the war in Ukraine to trade tensions, each year seems to bring another immediate priority that diverts focus from the imperative to act on climate change.

This dynamic was on show at the recent UN climate conference – Cop29 – in Azerbaijan. Many world leaders stayed at home, busy handling political crises and conflict. A coalition of nations dependent on fossil fuel exports blocked any mention of phasing out fossil fuels in the final agreement. Long-held divisions between wealthy and climate vulnerable countries were on show in arguments over the final finance agreement.

In many ways, this is business as usual. Climate change is an international problem requiring international cooperation, the possibilities for which are determined by geopolitics. But this year, something more unsettling is emerging: climate change is itself beginning to impact geopolitics.

This is a vicious circle. Climate change is making geopolitics less stable, which harms climate action. This will worsen climate change, meaning more geopolitical instability, and so on. The risk is that this “doom loop” runs faster and faster and ultimately derails our ability to phase out fossil fuels fast enough to avoid the worst climate consequences.

Climate-flation

The recent election of Donald Trump offers a potential case study of how this doom loop could be beginning to emerge.

Eight years ago – the first time Trump was elected – delegates at Cop22 wandered in shock around Marrakech, Morocco. Trump soon initiated the process of leaving the Paris climate agreement and his administration weakened environmental protections. While Trump damaged climate diplomacy, it would have been a stretch to argue that climate change itself played a role in his victory.

This time is different. While all the potential drivers of Trump’s 2016 victory were on show this time – inequality, misinformation, racism, and so on – they were joined by another factor: inflation.

In the years leading to the election, the US experienced its highest rates of inflation in over four decades. While inflation eventually fell, many Americans couldn’t cope with far higher prices. Trump made inflation a major focus of his campaign and it’s clear it played a role in his victory. What he didn’t mention was how climate change is increasingly a factor driving inflation.

Climate-driven inflation is usually bad news for incumbents.
dlbillings_photography / shutterstock

This is most obvious in the case of food. In 2022, drought hit the Californian rice belt, halving the amount of rice that could be planted, while a 2023 drought in the midwest hit soybean production. Similar impacts rained globally, from Argentina – which lost half its soy crop to drought – to Europe, where poor olive oil harvests sent prices spiking.

In all, extreme weather in 2022 alone is estimated to have added nearly 1% to food inflation in Europe, while as much as a third of recent UK food inflation is estimated to come from climate impacts. In turn, higher food prices directly contribute to headline inflation rates. The global interconnection of food systems means that no country is fully insulated from these effects.

Meanwhile, climate change can drive inflation in other ways, like how hotter weather is reducing labour productivity and drought is drying riverbeds and waterways, affecting waterborne freight and disrupting globalised supply chains.

Derailment risk

At the moment, the link between climate change, inflation, and politics is a “weak signal” of how the consequences of climate change can frustrate our collective ability to tackle the causes of climate change. In a recent academic paper, we called this “derailment risk”, the risk that the world ultimately cannot stick to a path that rapidly phases out fossil fuels and avoids the worst climate outcomes.

There are other examples. Economists have identified a “climate-debt doom loop”, in which worsening climate impacts divert resources away from decarbonisation and adaptation. Climate vulnerable countries experience this from two angles.

Growing climate risk increases the cost of servicing already-high debts, while climate shocks require emergency responses and recovery that sap scarce resources. So, these countries are increasingly locked in a spiral of responding to the last climate disaster at the cost of being better prepared for the next.

Many hurricane-damaged island states are being saddled with loans they cannot afford.
Multiverse / shutterstock

As warming continues – and the 1.5°C global warming target slips further from sight – the impact of climate change will grow, the world will be made even less stable, and a variety of derailment risks will escalate.

There is another way. It starts by facing up to the new climate reality. Globally dangerous climate change has not been avoided, and the consequences are mounting.

This does not mean that we have “lost” the climate struggle. The world doesn’t suddenly end beyond 1.5°C, but it does become more dangerous. The fallout from the devastating flooding in Valencia, Spain, where huge crowds have demanded resignations, is the latest example that politicians who ignore the severity of escalating climate risks do so at their peril.

Fertile ground for change

Meanwhile, history shows that periods of instability and crisis can provide fertile ground for rapid, positive change. This is the other side to derailment risk.

The conditions for doom loops also provide opportunities to accelerate virtuous circles. For example, out of the crises of the interwar period and the devastation of the second world war came legal protections for human rights, universal welfare systems and decolonisation. More recently, the first Trump administration spurred new waves of climate activism.

Read more:
Climate ’tipping points’ can be positive too – our report sets out how to engineer a domino effect of rapid changes

But for this to happen, the inequality at the heart of the climate crisis must be tackled head on. Those that did little to cause the problem disproportionately suffer the consequences, while the costs and benefits of decarbonisation are not shared equally.

The case for tackling these inequalities is often made in moral terms. But there is also another rationale. The failure to protect vulnerable communities and recognise the unfairness of their predicament may push them into the arms of nativist parties and other political forces that often seek to block climate action. A derailment risk.

Instead, if communities and countries are better protected from climate impacts and can feel the benefits of climate action, then they might be more likely to support a fossil fuel phase out even when the going gets tough.

Escalating climate shocks mean we need to do much more to adapt to climate change and protect people and places. We also need to remember this adaptation enables us to better mitigate climate change itself. This will be essential to avoiding the doom loop of derailment.

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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…

The number of people who read for fun appears to be steadily dropping. Fifty percent of UK adults say they don’t read regularly (down from 58% in 2015) and almost one in four young people aged 16-24 say they’ve never been readers, according to research by The Reading Agency.

But what are the implications? Will people’s preference for video over text affect our brains or our evolution as a species? What kind of brain structure do good readers actually have? My new study, published in Neuroimage, has found out.

I analysed open-source data from more than 1,000 participants to discover that readers of varying abilities had distinct traits in brain anatomy.

The structure of two regions in the left hemisphere, which are crucial for language, were different in people who were good at reading.

One was the anterior part of the temporal lobe. The left temporal pole helps associate and categorise different types of meaningful information. To assemble the meaning of a word such as leg, this brain region associates the visual, sensory and motor information conveying how legs look, feel and move.

The other was Heschl’s gyrus, a fold on the upper temporal lobe which hosts the auditory cortex (the cortex is the outermost layer of the brain). Better reading ability was linked to a larger anterior part of the temporal lobe in the left hemisphere compared to the right. It makes sense that having a larger brain area dedicated to meaning makes it easier to understand words and, therefore, to read.

What might seem less intuitive is that the auditory cortex would be related to reading. Isn’t reading mainly a visual skill? Not only. To pair letters with speech sounds, we first need to be aware of the sounds of the language. This phonological awareness is a well-established precursor to children’s reading development.

A thinner left Heschl’s gyrus has previously been related to dyslexia, which involves severe reading difficulties. My research shows that this variation in cortical thickness does not draw a simple dividing line between people with or without dyslexia. Instead, it spans the larger population, in which a thicker auditory cortex correlates with more adept reading.

Why size matters

Is thicker always better? When it comes to cortical structure, no, not necessarily. We know the auditory cortex has more myelin in the left hemisphere of most people. Myelin is a fatty substance that acts as an insulator for nerve fibres. It increases neural communication speed and can also insulate columns of brain cells from each other. Neural columns are believed to function as small processing units.

Their increased isolation and rapid communication in the left hemisphere can be thought to enable the fast, categorical processing necessary for language. We need to know if a speaker uses the category d or t when saying dear or tear rather than detecting the exact point where the vocal folds start vibrating.

According to the “balloon model” of cortical growth, the larger amount of myelin squeezes out left-hemispheric cortical areas, making them flatter but more extended. So while the left auditory cortex may be thicker in good readers, it is still thinner (but much more extended) than the corresponding right cortex.

This hypothesis was corroborated in the recent research. The left hemisphere had generally larger but thinner cortical areas with a higher degree of myelin.

So is thinner better, then? Again, the answer is no, not necessarily. Complex abilities that require integrating information tend to benefit from a thicker cortex. The anterior temporal lobe with its complex way of integrating information is indeed the thickest structure of all cortical areas. An underlying mechanism might be the existence of more overlapping, interacting neurons which process information more holistically.

Phonology is a highly complex skill, where different sound and motor features are integrated into speech sounds. It appears to correlate with a thicker cortex in an area near the left Heschl’s gyrus. While it is unclear to what extent phonology is processed in Heschl’s gyrus, the fact that phoneticians often have multiple left Heschl’s gyri suggests it is linked to speech sounds.

The temporal lobe is involved in reading.
Shutterstock

Clearly, brain structure can tell us a lot about reading skills. Importantly, though, the brain is malleable — it changes when we learn a new skill or practice an already acquired one.

For instance, young adults who studied language intensively increased their cortical thickness in language areas. Similarly, reading is likely to shape the structure of the left Heschl’s gyrus and temporal pole. So, if you want to keep your Heschl’s thick and thriving, pick up a good book and start reading.

Finally, it’s worth considering what might happen to us as a species if skills like reading become less prioritised. Our capacity to interpret the world around us and understand the minds of others would surely diminish. In other words, that cosy moment with a book in your armchair isn’t just personal – it’s a service to humanity. Läs mer…

In 2016, the Colombian government and the guerrilla group FARC-EP ended their five decade-long war. As part of the peace agreement, FARC-EP’s weapons had to be collected, a process known as disarmament. By 2017, UN observers had received and removed over 8,112 guns, 1.3 million rounds of ammunition, 22 tons of explosives, 3,000 grenades and 1,000 landmines.

While impressive, not all weapons were surrendered, and getting new guns is still relatively straightforward in Colombia. So what difference did the disarmament make? My colleague Nicholas Marsh and I researched the symbolic power of weapons – rifles in particular – to reveal how, despite incomplete weapons collection, disarmament in Colombia still contributes to peacebuilding, and sets an example for the rest of the world.

Weapons create brotherhood

For an armed group to function as a cohesive unit and to be able to fight together, individuals need to leave behind their civilian identities and take on a collective military identity. To create brothers in arms, armed groups use a variety of strategies, chief amongst them rituals involving marching, drills, singing, or participating in cultural education, all which often feature weapons.

In these rituals, weapons become symbols of freedom, emancipation, status, and power. For women, they can also symbolise a radical break with patriarchal structures. Such rituals fuse individuals and group identities, and research shows that once individuals are bonded in this way, they are more willing to fight and die for their group.

Weapons are therefore more than mere instruments of violence, and taking them away can evoke strong emotional responses from combatants. This means that disarmament goes far beyond simply confiscating tools – it transforms the rituals and symbols that sustained an armed group. This is what we call “symbolic inversion”, and, if done carefully, it is what makes disarmament an effective tool in peacebuilding.

Disarmament, but not defeat

Convincing combatants to lay down their arms is not an easy thing. The FARC-EP started with language, as the way weapons collection was phrased in the 2016 peace agreement was no accident. The term “dejación de armas” (laying down arms) was used by the FARC-EP instead of “disarmament” to signal the voluntary transformation of the guerilla groups, as opposed to their defeat or surrender.

Peace signing ceremony between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) in 2016.
Gobierno de Chile/Flickr, CC BY

Research shows that several other armed groups reject the term disarmament, and have come up with their own phrasing. In Northern Ireland the IRA used the word “decommissioning”, the Communist Party of Nepal chose “management of arms and ammunition”, and the Bangsamoro peace process in the Philippines has used “normalisation”.

After decades of conflict, combatants can form strong emotional bonds with their guns, often referring to them as a mother. Personifying weapons is not unique to guerrilla groups either – the Rifleman’s Creed formerly recited by US Marine Corps recruits refers to a soldier’s rifle as their “best friend” and “brother”.

Transforming weapons into art

Once a peace agreement is concluded, then comes the difficult stage of implementation. Communities that have endured decades of conflict need visible, tangible signs that their life is about to change. In Colombia, the meaning of weapons was changed through several acts, such as turning FARC-EP ammunition into pens that were used to sign the peace accord. The pens bore the inscription “Bullets wrote our past. Education, our future”.

Visitors can walk on the metal tiles that make up Salcedo’s ‘countermonument’ Fragmentos.
Anfecaro/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Art also has a key role to play. In Bogotá, sculptor Doris Salcedo, with help from the Colombian Army’s foundry, melted down 37 tonnes of surrendered FARC-EP weapons to create an art piece entitled Fragmentos, a floor made of hammered metal tiles. Survivors of conflict-related sexual violence participated in the hammering of the tiles, symbolically reclaiming agency by reshaping tools of violence into symbols of resilience.

Other projects, like converting rifles into guitars or sculpting them into shovels, illustrated how weapons’ destructive power can be turned into construction of post-war opportunities. These creative acts turned disarmament into a public ritual, engaging citizens in the peace process and communicating that the FARC-EP was ready to leave behind armed struggle and move into the political realm.

On the left, the old FARC-EP guerrilla flag, on the right, the new flag of the FARC political party.

Disarmament also required FARC-EP members to relinquish the symbols of their military past. Flags once adorned with rifles were replaced by a red rose. Music, which had long been a tool of FARC-EP’s communication strategy, now celebrated reconciliation. Songs previously glorifying rifles began to envision them as swings for children, or tools for building a better society.

Disarmament can transform the meaning of weapons

Juan Manuel Santos Calderón (right), President of Colombia, gives Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a pen similar to the ones used to sign the Colombian Peace Agreement. The pens are made from recycled bullets.
UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

The Colombian experience underscores that disarmament is both a practical and a deeply symbolic process. While disarmament may not always eliminate violence or weapons entirely, its symbolism and emotional impact can be critical in fostering trust and solidarity in post-conflict societies.

As other countries grapple with peacebuilding, Colombia’s approach offers valuable lessons. It is not enough to confiscate weapons – peace requires the transformation of these potent war-time symbols. Läs mer…

In South Africa, the new 2024 Climate Change Act requires local governments to plan responses to global warming. These local authorities should find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions where possible, such as from their bus services, and reduce their use of electricity that is produced by burning coal. They also need to green buildings and urban areas. These are all examples of climate change mitigation.

South Africa’s government is structured into national, provincial and local (municipal) levels. South Africa has 257 municipalities – cities, towns and districts. They are responsible for reducing the impacts of climate change in their areas and must also assist the national government in achieving its goal of balancing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted and removed by 2050 (net zero).

We are a research team of geographers with interests in sustainability transitions and climate change governance. We set out to examine how climate change mitigation was being applied in the West Rand District Municipality. This is a peri-urban municipality in western Gauteng where the economy is firmly rooted in the mining sector. Almost 900,000 people live in the area.

We reviewed the publicly available greenhouse gas emissions data, and the municipality’s policies and regulations. We also interviewed government officials to understand the municipality’s climate action efforts.

Our research found huge gaps in this municipality’s ability to deliver on climate mitigation.

Read more:
Cape Town’s climate strategy isn’t perfect, but every African city should have one

First, the West Rand municipality did not record all greenhouse gas emissions, creating gaps in the data. Without accurate data, it is impossible to make plans to manage the emissions causing climate change. This data needs to show the sources of emissions and track progress in curbing these, so that local government can set goals and see if they are on track to meeting them.

Second, the municipality lacked sufficient funding and personnel to carry out comprehensive climate action plans. Third, it did not make climate-related initiatives a priority.

We found that these weaknesses mean that the West Rand District Municipality is not in a position to reach net zero by 2050.

Based on our findings, we recommend that municipalities must become much more influential in mitigating climate change. The South African government should also identify areas of high emissions or high national importance, such as mining. Support should be given to municipalities to reduce emissions in hotspots where the problem is worst. This would be a good start.

No plans to battle climate change

The West Rand District Municipality is made up of Merafong and Rand West cities, and Mogale City, home of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. A multitude of greenhouse gas-emitting activities are based there, with mining operations and transport the main sources of carbon emissions.

Despite this, we found no action targeting the mining or transport sector. The only evidence of climate action we found was in the Mogale City Local Municipality, where energy-efficient lighting and smart electricity meters have been installed in the municipal buildings.

Our research found that these aspects of climate mitigation were missing:

no greenhouse gas reduction emission targets
no records of the amount of greenhouse gas emitted
unfulfilled plans to convert waste in landfill sites to energy
no public transport plan to switch to electric buses.

For example, Mogale City, one of the district’s local municipalities, had a draft climate mitigation plan dating back to 2014. It wasn’t finalised because of a lack of political will and because there wasn’t any funding for the municipality to implement it. For it to become legally binding, it has to be formally adopted by the municipal council and integrated into local by-laws.

Until then, its proposed waste gas-to-energy project at the municipality’s landfill, and other climate change mitigation projects, are unlikely to materialise.

Neither the district nor the local municipalities compile their own greenhouse gas emission inventories. When we compiled a greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the West Rand using publicly available data, we found that data on emissions from open quarries and mines was missing. Incomplete data prevented us from doing precise greenhouse gas emission accounting.

Another problem was that the municipality has an Integrated Transport Plan for 2022-2027, but this had not been finalised and was not accessible to the public. So we were unable to determine if it included steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from public transport.

Read more:
Green policies are in place for South Africa’s major port city: but a key piece is missing

When we talked to local government officials, they explained that national laws require action. But limited funds and lack of training mean they cannot make significant changes at the local level. One official said, “We just don’t have the resources to deal with these problems.” There was no specific mention in the available documents of a formal request to the National Treasury for funds specifically to implement a climate project.

We also found that the West Rand municipality had not aligned its climate action plans with provincial and national policies. This undermined national government efforts to achieve South Africa’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 31% by 2025.

There were also no staff dedicated to climate mitigation. The Mogale City Local Municipality official we interviewed said that “there is not enough staff nor support for the climate function”.

Local government needs to be empowered to act

The primary hurdle in local climate action within West Rand District Municipality lies in the absence of targeted, enforceable policies. The municipality is supposed to make sure that local climate action policies support national climate goals. To do this, they need clear, measurable emissions targets and a comprehensive climate action plan.

Local municipalities in South Africa have the powers to develop and support renewable energy projects, improve public transport systems, and implement energy-saving measures in municipal buildings. This is part of their local economic development mandate.

They also have authority to compile inventories of greenhouse gas emissions in their area as part of environmental management. Companies report on their greenhouse gas emissions to national government. There is no legal reason why local government should not have access to this data. Some large metropolitan areas, such as eThekwini (Durban) and Cape Town, have already developed comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories that are available to the public online.

Effective climate action requires strong local governance. The solutions lie in capacity building, implementing strong policies, and a closer alignment of local efforts with national and international climate commitments. Läs mer…

Some record labels create huge market and financial clout. Some stay much smaller, but punch way above their weight in terms of their impact on the spirit of a country’s music. For South Africa, one such label is As-Shams/The Sun, whose founder, Rashid Vally, passed away on 7 December aged 85.

In the era of intensely repressive white minority rule, Vally became the first South African of colour to establish his own independent record label. His releases gave a platform to musically experimental and often politically outspoken artists, including pianist Abdullah Ibrahim. Their work implicitly and explicitly challenged the regime’s cultural segregation and its dismissal of Black culture as simplistic and unchanging.

Read more:
South Africa’s hidden jazz history is being restored album by album

Vally gave a voice to the new Black jazz of the 1970s on a shoestring, at first just from a corner shelf in his father’s store. He sustained his project of identifying and releasing new jazz talent right up until his death. In my work as a researcher documenting South African jazz, his name and output have been an essential thread holding the story together.

Who was Rashid Vally?

Born in Johannesburg in 1939, Vally was a child of South Africa’s Indian-heritage Muslim community. His father owned a modest downtown general trading store, Koh-i-Noor; the schoolboy Vally sometimes waited tables at a neighbouring restaurant and was captivated by the music on their jukebox. He told jazz historian Denis-Constant Martin:

It all started in my father’s shop. It was a grocery, but there was a small shelf of records where he sold Indian music. At that time I was listening to (US jazz artists) Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, that sort of music. I would bring the records to the shop to play them for my own pleasure, but people would come in and want to buy them. So I started selling some so as to be able to buy new ones. By the time I left school, in 1956-7, I suppose you could say I had started in the record business.

Three or four years later, Vally was hiring recording facilities to cut langarm (long arm) discs. This was dance-band music, popular with the mixed-heritage community, which apartheid classified “coloured”. Aware of the growing popularity of American soul music with all South Africa’s communities of colour, he extended his recording stable to include township soul bands and the Soultown imprint was established in 1970 to accommodate both genres.

As-Shams Records

Jazz came slightly later. Vally was avidly attending jam sessions in Johannesburg convened by city jazzmen at places such as Dorkay House and Club Pelican in Soweto. He was impressed by the quality of musicianship he encountered from musicians such as pianist Gideon Nxumalo and drummer Early Mabuza.

Cape Town-born pianist Dollar Brand (later Abdullah Ibrahim), at that time working in New York, got word of the label and was excited. Nxumalo’s 1970 Early Mart and three albums from Dollar Brand (Peace, Dollar Brand + 3 and Underground in Africa) were the first jazz recordings Vally released.

A global hit

On one of Dollar Brand’s brief trips home, in 1974, he worked with saxophonist Basil Coetzee and recorded what was to be his first massive national hit. Mannenberg was also the first hit for Vally’s new jazz imprint, As-Shams/The Sun. With a jangling, deliberately retro piano line, and defiantly South African character – including a hypnotic groove well suited to the dance fashion of the time, “bump jive” – Mannenberg sold more than 50,000 copies.

Vally had offered its distribution to major South African labels, but they refused to pay a (very modest) advance for South African musicians of colour. So he initially took the task on himself.

It was Dollar Brand who suggested a new record imprint was needed, to reflect the turbulent times preceding the 1976 Soweto Uprising. The new name, As-Shams (“the sun” in Arabic), spoke of both a shared Islamic faith and the aspiration that the sun would one day rise on a liberated nation.

Vally’s brother-in-law created the distinctive red sun logo. Mannenberg began to be played at the rallies of the United Democratic Front and an “unofficial anthem for the anti-apartheid struggle” had been born.

Rebel music

The As-Shams catalogue of that period could serve equally well as a catalogue for South Africa’s musical fashions and political currents of the day. From the radical pan-Africanist pop of Harari/The Beaters through the avant-garde explorations of Batsumi to the rebel music of Movement in the City and the occasional international collaboration such as the Kippie Moeketsi/Hal Singer Blues Stompin’.

The Beaters was another outfit turned away by a major label who instantly turned to As-Shams. Vally recalled the occasion when I interviewed him for the sleeve notes of the Beaters reissue:

The three young lads were enthusiastic and brash. I think it was Selby (Ntuli) who first asked that I should record them, as Gallo had insisted the (already successful young stars) first pass through a talent scout. Talent scout! Apparently they marched straight out of the Gallo offices on President Street and came to us.

That, in turn, led to collaborations between the young pop stars of Harari and established jazzmen who worked with As-Shams such as Kippie Moeketsi.

Breaking boundaries

Such breaching of boundaries – of generation, genre and race – was part of the As-Shams ethos. Multi-instrumentalist Pops Mohamed, when I interviewed him for the reissue of his own Black Disco album (a collaboration including musicians from Black and Coloured communities), said it had been very important “not to stay inside the [racial] classification”.

As-Shams Records

At the time, apartheid and its state broadcaster, the SABC, wanted only music that apartheid ideology could classify as the “pure” product of a single ethnic group.

Vally also commissioned daring young Black visual artists such as Hargreaves Ntukwana to create cover art for his jazz albums. That open-mindedness was something the label boss retained into his senior years.

He worked with Cape Town label Sharp-Flat on both a programme of extensive archival research to support reissuing better documented versions of historic albums, and plans for new As-Shams releases.

As-Shams Records

The first, in 2020, was Imvuselelo, from dynamic young trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni with a team of north European musical collaborators. And, again, artwork from a rising Black artist, Baba Tjeko.

There was no visionary-minded record executive quite like Vally, and no label quite like As Shams/The Sun on the South African music scene, then or now. It’s vital that its work of exploration – of both the archive and the new – does not end with his passing. It told and continues to tell a vital part of the story of who South Africans are. Läs mer…

I wish I could say that Mary, mother of God, riding a horse through a wall of fire was the worst thing about Netflix’s Mary. As an unrepentant fan of some truly unrealistic films, I can forgive a lot of entertaining embellishment in a movie. But, watching the film, the cinematic choices felt more like promotion for a conservative Christian nationalist agenda.

As a biblical scholar who has published widely on the representation of the New Testament on film, and on Christian antisemitism, I was looking forward to watching Mary. I felt hopeful that it would avoid many of the pitfalls of previous films.

In its favour, the film draws on some underrepresented sources for Mary’s birth, childhood and early life. Director D.J. Caruso has said that along with the canonical gospels and the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, he relied on a text called the Proto-Gospel of James for much of Mary’s backstory.

The trailer for Mary on Netflix.

That text, composed in the 2nd century BC, contains an account of Mary’s own immaculate conception and describes how her parents dedicated her to serve in the Jerusalem temple.

While this account describes Mary living in the temple from the age of three and weaving the temple curtain, there is no clear evidence that anyone actually lived inside the temple — let alone, as the film depicts, a crowd of Handmaid’s Tale-esque young women.

My critiques of Mary centre around two themes. One is the way it perpetuates conservative ideals around women and gender. The other is its misrepresentations of Jews and Judaism.

Patriarchal values

Throughout the film, motherhood is venerated in ways that align with conservative values. In a TV interview with Christian Channel, Caruso said that he wanted to present Mary as a role model for young women today and to applaud her choice to accept God’s annunciation of her pregnancy.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898).
Wikimedia Commons

However, neither Luke’s gospel nor the film present Mary with a meaningful choice in this. The angel Gabriel’s pronouncement cannot be resisted, as the biblical Mary recognises with her admission of being the slave of God, and therefore subject to his will.

The trope of an unwed teenager (the film presents Mary as a teen, despite the Bible itself not giving her age) carrying an unexpected pregnancy to term, certainly aligns with right-wing Christian anti-choice rhetoric.

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Depictions of Jewish people

Mary also features problematic representations of Jewish people. Aside from the over-the-top hats worn by the temple priests, the film insists on Christian exceptionalism – that Jesus and his family were radically different from Jews of their time.

Like many films about Jesus’s life, Mary misrepresents Jews as focused on the wrong things. For example, only Mary, played by Noa Cohen, thinks to share the temple’s wealth with the poor. And only Joseph (Ido Tako) comes to her defence against those Jewish characters who would uphold “the law”.

One especially problematic scene shows a pregnant Mary being chased through the streets by a Jewish mob yelling “zonah” (prostitute). At this and several other points, characters note how according to “the law” Mary should be stoned to death.

Anthony Hopkins as King Herod in Mary.
Christopher Raphael/MM FILM LLC

This idea of Jewish law as cruel and violent is an age-old stereotype. In reality, those applying the law often went to extreme lengths to avoid a death penalty. But what makes this scene worse is that the would-be murderers yell in Hebrew.

The language is hardly used elsewhere in the film and so sets the crowd apart as distinctly Jewish. The murderous Jewish mob is a dangerous trope with a long history in Christian antisemitism. The mob foreshadows the Jewish crowd calling for Jesus’s execution in front of Pilate and the antisemitic charge of deicide – killing God in the form of Jesus – against the Jews.

Right-wing funding

Joel Osteen, a mega-church pastor and televangelist renowned for promoting a prosperity gospel (the belief that financial blessings and physical wellbeing reflect the favour of God), is an executive producer of the film. Mary also claims input from faith leaders across a range of Christian denominations, as well as other religions.

However, only one religious expert is listed on the film’s credits. Adam W. Schindler is listed as the consultant “biblical scholar,” but describes himself on his website as a pastor and digital strategy consultant.

Schindler also holds a leadership position in the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). AFPI is a right-wing thinktank launched in 2021 by former Trump administrators in order to promote Trump’s policies.

Several AFPI members have now accepted leadership positions in president-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. It is this organisation, perhaps more than the infamous Project 2025, that seems to be providing policy input for Trump.

(L-R) Hilla Vidor as Anne, Ido Tako as Joseph, Keren Tzur as Elizabeth and Noa Cohen as Mary.
Christopher Raphael/MM FILM LLC

As part of this, AFPI has published an 80-page booklet outlining the ten biblical pillars to restore America to its so-called Judeo-Christian foundations. This includes opposing abortion and comparing abortion to infanticide, declaring unconditional support for the state of Israel, promoting conservative understandings of gender as a binary and repeating the tired myth about Christians being widely persecuted in America. It is no wonder, then, that Mary leans in to many of these conservative talking points.

The story of a Palestinian mother who gave birth in a ruined building, on the run from murderous soldiers, could have been timely and important. Instead, Mary reinforces many dangerous stereotypes that have historically led to violence against to Jews, while avoiding showing the holy family’s embrace of Jewish practices. For Netflix to have so clearly missed the mark is disappointing.

D.J. Caruso, Adam W. Schindler and Netflix did not respond to a request for comment. Läs mer…

Antarctica, the world’s most remote, harsh and pristine continent, is not free from marine pollution. Where human activity goes, plastic debris inevitably follows.

What might the early explorers of this icy wilderness think today, upon discovering a continent transformed by permanent fishing activities, research stations, military presence, tourism, and all their environmental impacts? Among these, plastic pollution stands out, as it has created a unique new ecological niche in the ocean.

Once it gets into the water, plastic debris provides surfaces that can be quickly colonised by microbial communities, forming a biofilm. This plastic-borne community is known as the plastisphere, and it poses a serious threat to marine ecosystems, particularly in the cold, understudied waters of the Southern Ocean.

The plastisphere: an emerging threat

As plastic debris drifts through the ocean, the plastisphere develops through typical ecological succession, eventually becoming a complex and specialised microbial community. Plastics not only provide shelter for these microorganisms but also act as a vector, allowing potentially harmful pathogens like Vibrio spp., Escherichia coli, and bacteria carrying antibiotic resistance genes, to spread across marine environments, even reaching remote, untouched areas.

Beyond being a home for microbes, the plastisphere can disrupt the natural balance of ocean life at the microscopic level. These changes don’t stay in the water, as they can spread outward, potentially affecting how the ocean absorbs carbon and produces greenhouse gases. This has consequences for the air we breathe around the world.

However, it’s not all bad news, as bacteria known for their potential to degrade plastics or hydrocarbons – such as Alcanivorax sp., Aestuariicella sp., Marinobacter sp. and Alteromonas sp. – are frequently identified on plastics.

The Antarctic plastisphere under the microscope: bacteria colonizing polystyrene.
Author’s own

A hostile research environment

We currently know very little about the plastisphere, especially in the Southern Ocean, where uncovering its dynamics is key to understanding its impacts on one of the planet’s most remote and vulnerable marine environments. For this reason, our recent study sought to investigate the abundance and diversity of microbial communities in the Southern Ocean plastisphere, particularly following the initial colonisation of plastic debris.

Working in Antarctica is not an easy task. Just reaching this continent is a challenge, and once there, scientists have to contend with harsh environmental conditions: freezing temperatures, powerful winds, icebergs, and the constant pressure of limited time to carry out their work. These challenges make every moment in the field both demanding and invaluable.

This is why we approached our study with a controlled and manageable experiment. We set up aquariums filled with seawater collected near the Spanish research station on Livingston Island, South Shetlands. Inside, we placed small, rounded pellets of the three most common types of plastic polluting the sea – polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. We left them at environmental conditions (around 0 ºC and between 13 – 18 h of sunlight) for 5 weeks, aiming to recreate the most plausible outcomes in the field.

We compared the colonisation of plastics with glass, an inert surface. Samples of plastics and glass were collected periodically to track bacterial colonisation.

Plastisphere dynamics in Antarctica

Studying bacteria means making the invisible visible, so we combined several techniques to get a better picture of the plastisphere. Using scanning electron microscopy, we obtained biofilm images. We combined flow cytometry and bacterial culture to count total cells and colonies, and we sequenced the 16S rRNA gene to identify the succession of bacterial settlers.

This meticulous approach revealed that time was the key driver of change. Microbes quickly colonised the plastic, and within less than two days, bacteria like genus Colwellia were already fixed in the surface, showing a clear progression from initial settlers to a mature diverse biofilm including other genera like Sulfitobacter, Glaciecola or Lewinella.

These species, although also detected in water, show a clear preference for the social life of a biofilm community. Moreover, we did not detect clear differences between the bacterial communities from plastics and glass, suggesting that any stable surface can host these communities.

While similar processes happen in the other oceans, in Antarctica the process seems slower. The region’s lower temperatures slow bacterial development.

Plastic-eating bacteria?

One key discovery was the presence of Oleispira sp. on polypropylene. This bacteria is hydrocarbon-degrading, meaning it belongs to a group of microorganisms that can break down oil and other pollutants.

Their role within the Antarctic plastisphere raises important questions, like whether these kinds of bacteria could mitigate the impacts of plastic pollution. If so, they could be key to the future of Antartica and our oceans.

However, there is still much to be discovered, particularly regarding their potential for bioremediation in extreme environments. Understanding these processes could pave the way for innovative strategies to address the growing challenge of plastic waste in marine ecosystems. Läs mer…