Etikett: Theconversation.com

The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new research has found rock art over 4,000 years old that depicts cattle.

In 2018 and 2019, I led a team of archaeologists on the Atbai Survey Project. We discovered 16 new rock art sites east of the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa, in one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara. This area receives almost no yearly rainfall.

Almost all of these rock art sites had one feature in common: the depiction of cattle, either as a lone cow or part of a larger herd.

On face value, this is a puzzling creature to find carved on desert rock walls. Cattle need plenty of water and acres of pasture, and would quickly perish today in such a sand-choked environment.

In modern Sudan, cattle only occur about 600 kilometres to the south, where the northernmost latitudes of the African monsoon create ephemeral summer grasslands suitable for cattle herding.

The theme of cattle in ancient rock art is one of most important pieces of evidence establishing a bygone age of the “green Sahara”.

New sites discovered on surveys in Eastern Sudan.
© The Atbai Survey Project

The ‘green Sahara’

Archaeological and climatic fieldwork across the entire Sahara, from Morocco to Sudan and everywhere in between, has illustrated a comprehensive picture of a region that used to be much wetter.

Climate scientists, archaeologists and geologists call this the “African humid period”. It was a time of increased summer monsoon rainfall across the continent, which began about 15,000 years ago and ended roughly 5,000 years ago.

The wastes of the Atbai Desert, north-east Sudan – a very different landscape to the ‘green Sahara’.
Julien Cooper

This “green Sahara” is a vital period in human history. In North Africa, this was when agriculture began and livestock were domesticated.

In this small “wet gap”, around 8,000–7,000 years ago, local nomads adopted cattle and other livestock such as sheep and goats from their neighbours to the north in Egypt and the Middle East.

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The Sahara Desert used to be a green savannah – new research explains why

A close human-animal connection

When the prehistoric artists painted cattle on their rock canvasses in what is now Sudan, the desert was a grassy savannah. It was brimming with pools, rivers, swamps and waterholes and typical African game such as elephants, rhinos and cheetah – very different to the deserts of today.

Cattle were not just a source of meat and milk. Close inspection of the rock art and in the archaeological record reveals these animals were modified by their owners. Horns were deformed, skin decorated and artificial folds fashioned on their neck, so-called “pendants”.

A strong relationship between human and animal: a cow with a modified ‘neck’ pendant and horns.
Julien Cooper

Cattle were even buried alongside humans in massive cemeteries, signalling an intimate link between person, animal and group identity.

The perils of climate change

At the end of the “humid period”, around 3000 BCE, things began to worsen rapidly. Lakes and rivers dried up and sands swallowed dead pastures. Scientists debate how rapidly conditions worsened, and this seems to have differed greatly across specific subregions.

Local human populations had a choice – leave the desert or adapt to their new dry norms. For those that left the Sahara for wetter parts, the best refuge was the Nile. It is no accident that this rough period also eventuated in the rise of urban agricultural civilisations in Egypt and Sudan.

The most common image in the local rock art was of cattle.
Julien Cooper

Some of the deserts, such as the Atbai Desert around Wadi Halfa where the rock art was discovered, became almost depopulated. Not even the hardiest of livestock could survive in such regions. For those who remained, cattle were abandoned for hardier sheep and goats (the camel would not be domesticated in North Africa for another 2,000–3,000 years).

This abandonment would have major ramifications on all aspects of human life: diet and lack of milk, migratory patterns of herding families and, for nomads so connected to their cattle, their very identity and ideology.

New phases of history

Archaeologists, who spend so much time on the ancient artefacts of the past, often forget our ancestors had emotions. They lived, loved and suffered just like we do. Abandoning an animal that was very much a core part of their identity, and with whom they shared an emotional connection, cannot have been easy for their emotions and sense of place in the world.

For those communities that migrated and lived on the Nile, cattle continued to be a symbol of identity and importance. At the ancient capital of Sudan, Kerma, community leaders were buried in elaborate graves girded by cattle skulls. One burial even had 4,899 skulls.

Today in South Sudan and much of the Horn of Africa, similar practices regarding cattle and their cultural prominence endure to the present. Here, just as in ancient Sahara, cattle are decorated, branded and have an important place in funeral traditions, with cattle skulls marking graves and cattle consumed in feasts.

As we move into a new phase of human history subject to rapid climate oscillations and environmental degradation, we need to ponder just how we will adapt beyond questions of economy and subsistence.

One of the most basic common denominators of culture is our relationship to our shared landscape. Environmental change, whether we like it or not, will force us to create new identities, symbols and meanings.

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Innovations on the Nile over millennia offer lessons in engineering sustainable futures Läs mer…

Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink.

But over the last four years, even as the hole has shrunk it has persisted for an unusually long time. Our new research found that instead of closing up during November it has stayed open well into December. This is early summer – the crucial period of new plant growth in coastal Antarctica and the peak breeding season for penguins and seals.

That’s a worry. When the ozone hole forms, more ultraviolet rays get through the atmosphere. And while penguins and seals have protective covering, their young may be more vulnerable.

Why does ozone matter?

Over the past half century, we damaged the earth’s protective ozone layer by using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related chemicals. Thanks to coordinated global action these chemicals are now banned.

Because CFCs have long lifetimes, it will be decades before they are completely removed from the atmosphere. As a result, we still see the ozone hole forming each year.

The lion’s share of ozone damage happens over Antarctica. When the hole forms, the UV index doubles, reaching extreme levels. We might expect to see UV days over 14 in summers in Australia or California, but not in polar regions.

This figure shows the maximum UV index at Palmer Station in Antarctica each month, in both ozone hole (thick blue line) and normal (thin blue line) conditions. This is compared with an equivalent location in the Arctic (Barrow, Alaska) as well as a Californian location (San Diego). The blue area shows how the UV index has more than doubled in the ozone hole era.
Bernhard et al 2022

Luckily, on land most species are dormant and protected under snow when the ozone hole opens in early spring (September to November). Marine life is protected by sea ice cover and Antarctica’s moss forests are under snow. These protective icy covers have helped to protect most life in Antarctica from ozone depletion – until now.

Read more:
Photos from the field: spying on Antarctic moss using drones, MossCam, smart sensors and AI

Unusually long-lived ozone holes

A series of unusual events between 2020 and 2023 saw the ozone hole persist into December. The record-breaking 2019–2020 Australian bushfires, the huge underwater volcanic eruption off Tonga, and three consecutive years of La Niña. Volcanoes and bushfires can inject ash and smoke into the stratosphere. Chemical reactions occurring on the surface of these tiny particulates can destroy ozone.

Read more:
La Niña is finishing an extremely unusual three-year cycle – here’s how it affected weather around the world

These longer-lasting ozone holes coincided with significant loss of sea ice, which meant many animals and plants would have had fewer places to hide.

You can see how the size of the ozone hole in 2019 (top left) and 2020 (top right) differs from the mean ozone hole area between 1979 and 2018. Maps of ozone area for September to December show how the ozone hole disappeared early in 2019 (November, middle panel) but extended into December in 2020 (lower panel)
NASA Ozone Watch, CC BY-NC-ND

What does stronger UV radiation do to ecosystems?

If ozone holes last longer, summer-breeding animals around Antarctica’s vast coastline will be exposed to high levels of reflected UV radiation. More UV can get through, and ice and snow is highly reflective, bouncing these rays around.

In humans, high UV exposure increases our risk of skin cancer and cataracts. But we don’t have fur or feathers. While penguins and seals have skin protection, their eyes aren’t protected.

Is it doing damage? We don’t know for sure. Very few studies report on what UV radiation does to animals in Antarctica. Most are done in zoos, where researchers study what happens when animals are kept under artificial light.

Even so, it is a concern. More UV radiation in early summer could be particularly damaging to young animals, such as penguin chicks and seal pups who hatch or are born in late spring.

As plants such as Antarctic hairgrass, Deschampsia antarctica, the cushion plant, Colobanthus quitensis and lots of mosses emerge from under snow in late spring, they will be exposed to maximum UV levels.

Antarctic mosses actually produce their own sunscreen to protect themselves from UV radiation, but this comes at the cost of reduced growth.

Trillions of tiny phytoplankton live under the sea ice. These microscopic floating algae also make sunscreen compounds, called microsporine amino acids.

What about marine creatures? Krill will dive deeper into the water column if the UV radiation is too high, while fish eggs usually have melanin, the same protective compound as humans, though not all fish life stages are as well protected.

If the ozone hole peaks in October, most Antarctic wildlife is protected by snow or sea ice cover which helps reflect the UV rays (top panel). But if the ozone hole persists into December (lower panel) the snow and ice will have melted, and more animals and plants are present and exposed to UV.
Global Change Biology

Four of the past five years have seen sea ice extent reduce, a direct consequence of climate change.

Less sea ice means more UV light can penetrate the ocean, where it makes it harder for Antarctic phytoplankton and krill to survive. Much relies on these tiny creatures, who form the base of the food web. If they find it harder to survive, hunger will ripple up the food chain. Antarctica’s waters are also getting warmer and more acidic due to climate change.

An uncertain outlook for Antarctica

We should, by rights, be celebrating the success of banning CFCS – a rare example of fixing an environmental problem. But that might be premature. Climate change may be delaying the recovery of our ozone layer by, for example, making bushfires more common and more severe.

Ozone could also suffer from geoengineering proposals such as spraying sulphates into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, as well as more frequent rocket launches.

If the recent trend continues, and the ozone hole lingers into the summer, we can expect to see more damage done to plants and animals – compounded by other threats.

We don’t know if the longer-lasting ozone hole will continue. But we do know climate change is causing the atmosphere to behave in unprecedented ways. To keep ozone recovery on track, we need to take immediate action to reduce the carbon we emit into the atmosphere.

Read more:
Antarctica’s sea ice hit another low this year – understanding how ocean warming is driving the loss is key Läs mer…

In April 2022, conservative American think tank the Heritage Foundation, working with a broad coalition of 50 conservative organisations, launched Project 2025: a plan for the next conservative president of the United States.

The Project’s flagship publication, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, outlines in plain language and in granular detail, over 900-plus pages, what a second Trump administration (if it occurs) might look like. I’ve read it all, so you don’t have to.

The Mandate’s veneer of exhausting technocratic detail, focused mostly on the federal bureaucracy, sits easily alongside a Trumpian project of revenge and retribution. It is the substance behind the showmanship of the Trump rallies.

Developing transition plans for a presidential candidate is normal practice in the US. What is not normal about Project 2025, with its intertwined domestic and international agenda, are the plans themselves. Those for climate and the global environment, defence and security, the global economic system and the institutions of American democracy more broadly aim for nothing less than the total dismantling and restructure of both American life and the world as we know it.

The unapologetic agenda, according to Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts, is to “defeat the anti-American left – at home and abroad.”

Recommendations include completely abolishing the US Federal Reserve in favour of a system of “free banking”, the total reversal of all the Biden administration’s climate policies, a dramatic increase in fossil fuel extraction and use, ending economic engagement with China, expanding the nuclear arsenal and a “comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of U.S. participation in all international organizations” including the UN and its agencies. And that’s not all.

Australia itself is mentioned just seven times in the substantive text, with vague recommendations that a future administration support “greater spending and collaboration” with regional partners in defence and send a political appointee here as ambassador. But even if only partially implemented, the document’s overarching recommendations would have significant implications for Australia and our region.

Project 2025 is modelled on what the Foundation sees as its greatest historical triumph. The launch of the first Mandate for Leadership coincided with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981. By the following year, according to the Foundation, “more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy”.

Four decades later, Project 2025 is trying to repeat history.

The Project is not directly aligned with the Trump campaign: it has in fact attracted some ire from the campaign for presuming too much. Trump is under no obligation to adopt any of its plans should he return to the White House. But the sheer number of former Trump officials and loyalists involved in the Project, and its particular commitment to supporting a Trump return, suggest we should take its plans very seriously.

Much of what is happening now in the US is unprecedented. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is currently locked in a Manhattan courtroom defending himself from criminal charges. Despite this unedifying spectacle, current polling separates Biden and Trump by a gap of just 2%, according to the latest poll. This year will be an existential test for American democracy.

Read more:
Is America enduring a ’slow civil war’? Jeff Sharlet visits Trump rallies, a celebrity megachurch and the manosphere to find out

The four pillars

Project 2025’s chosen method for engineering its radical reshaping of that democracy takes a startlingly familiar bureaucratic approach. It aims to create a system where any potential chaos is contained by an administration and bureaucracy united by the same conservative vision. The vision rests on four “pillars”.

Pillar one is the 920-page Mandate – the manifesto for the next conservative president (and the major focus of this analysis).

Pillar two is the foundation’s recruitment program: a kind of conservative LinkedIn that aims to build a database of vetted, loyal conservatives ready to serve in the next administration.

The program is specifically designed to “deconstruct the Administrative State”: code for using Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order (since overturned), that would allow an administration to unilaterally re-categorise, fire and replace tens of thousands of independent federal employees with political loyalists.

Pillar three, the “Presidential Administration Academy”, will train those new recruits and existing amenable officials in the nature and use of power within the American political system, so they can effectively and efficiently implement the president’s agenda.

Pillar four consists of a secret “Playbook” – a resources bank of things like draft executive orders and specific transition plans ready for the first 180 days of a new administration.

The four pillars inform each other. The Mandate, for example, doubles as a recruitment tool that educates aspiring officials in the complex structures of the US federal government.

Current polling separates Biden and Trump by just 2%.
Andy Manis/AAP

A response to Trump’s failures

The Mandate doesn’t specify who the next conservative president might be, but it is clearly written with Trump in mind. As it outlines, “one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States”. What the Mandate can’t acknowledge is that the man aiming to be the 47th president was notorious for not reading his briefs when he occupied the Oval Office.

An unspoken aim of Project 2025 is to inject some ideological coherence into Trumpism. It aims to focus if not the leader, then the movement behind him – something that did not happen in the four years between January 2017 and January 2021. The entire project is a response to the perceived failures and weaknesses of the Trump administration.

Project 2025’s vision rests on almost completely gutting and replacing the bureaucracy that (in the view of its authors) thwarted and undermined the Trump presidency. It aims to remodel and reorganise the “blob” of powerful people who cycle through the landscape of American power between think tanks, government and higher education institutions.

It explicitly welcomes conservatives to this “mission” of assembling “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State”. “Conservatives”, in this framing, are not those who would defend and protect the institutions and traditions of the state, but rather right-wing radicals who would fundamentally change them.

The choice of language – “mission”, “army” – is also deliberate. The Mandate repeatedly distinguished between “real people” and what it sees as existential enemies. “America is now divided,” it argues, “between two opposing forces”. Those forces are irreconcilable, and because that fight extends abroad, “there is no margin for error”.

This framing of an America and a world engaged in an existential battle is underpinned by granular, bureaucratic detail – right down to recommendations for low-level appointments, budget allocations and regulatory reform. Effective understanding – and use of – the machinery of American power is, the Heritage Foundation believes, essential to victory.

That is why the Mandate is 920 pages from cover to cover, why it has 30 chapters written by “hundreds of contributors” with input from “more than 400 scholars and policy experts” and why it can now claim the support of 100 organisations.

What follows is a broad analysis of the implications of Project 2025 for the world outside the United States.

Drill baby, drill: climate and the environment

In late 2023, Donald Trump was asked by Fox News anchor Sean Hannity if he would be a “dictator”. Trump responded he would not, “except on day one”. In the flurry of coverage that followed, rightly condemning and outlining Trump’s repeated threats to American democracy, the aspiring president’s stated reasons for a day of dictatorship were overshadowed.

But Trump was explicit: “We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling.” While Trump himself may not be across or even aligned with the specific detail of much of Project 2025’s aims, on “drilling, drilling, drilling,” they are very much in sync.

Trump says he will be a dictator on day one.

The Mandate condemns what it describes as a “radical climate agenda” and “Biden’s war on fossil fuels”, recommending an immediate rollback of all Biden administration programs and reinstatement of Trump-era policies.

One of Biden’s signature legislative achievements, the Inflation Reduction Act, attracts a great deal of attention. Unsurprisingly, the broad recommendation is that the Act be repealed in its entirety. But the recommendations are also specific: repeal “credits and tax breaks for green energy companies”, stop “programs providing grants for environmental science activities” and ensure “the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs”. This would include removing “federal mandates and subsidies of electric vehicles”.

There is, in all, a great deal to “eliminate” – a word that appears in the Mandate over 250 times. In environmental policy, programs on the elimination list include the Clean Energy Corps, energy efficiency standards for appliances, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations in the Department of Energy, and the entire National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But this is not all. The elimination of climate-focused programs, legislation, offices and policies would be accompanied by a dramatic increase in fossil fuel extraction and use – a reversal of Biden’s “war”.

The chapter on the Department of the Interior, which manages federal lands and natural resources, recommends it “conduct offshore oil and natural gas lease sales to the maximum extent permitted” and restart the coal-leasing program.

This should include returning to the first Trump administration’s plans to further open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil fields development. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should, likewise, “not use environmental issues like climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects”.

The Mandate recommends further opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil fields development.
AAP

Given the size and influence of the US economy, these policies would inevitably have global implications. This is not lost on the Mandate’s authors: the fight against the “radical climate agenda” is both local and global.

The chapter on Treasury, for example, recommends that a conservative administration “withdraw from climate change agreements that are inimical to the prosperity of the United States”. This includes, specifically, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement (which Trump withdrew the United States from in 2020, and Biden rejoined in 2021).

Analysis by the Guardian argues that taken together, these plans for rewinding climate action and accelerating fossil fuel extraction and use would be “even more extreme for the environment” than those of the first Trump administration.

This would not be a straightforward case of the US reverting from being a “good” actor on climate to a “bad” one. While the Biden administration has presided over some of the most significant climate legislation and actions in US history, domestic oil production has also hit a record high under Biden’s leadership. The US is already the second highest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.

Several nations, including Australia, might find it convenient to hide behind the much more explicitly destructive policies of a future conservative US administration.

According to modelling by UK-based Carbon Brief, which does not include the increases in fossil fuel extraction and use outlined by the Mandate, a second Trump administration could result in an increase in emissions “equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries”.

That would mean, even without accounting for the opening of new oil reserves in places like Alaska, “a second Trump term […] would likely end any global hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5C”.

Project 2025’s authors are, of course, unapologetic. The Mandate demands that the next conservative administration “go on offense” and assert “America’s energy interests […] around the world” – to the point of establishing “full-spectrum strategic energy dominance”, in order to restore the nation’s global primacy.

A world on fire: security and defence

Restoring that global primacy is the focus of Section 2 of the Mandate. This section argues the Departments of Defense and State are “first among equals” with the executive branch, suggesting international relations should be a major focus for the next conservative presidency. It argues the success of such an administration “will be determined in part by whether [Defence and State] can be significantly improved in short order”.

Why is that improvement so important? Because, according to the Mandate, the US is engaged in an existential battle with its enemies, in “a world on fire”. China is, unsurprisingly, the main game: “America’s most dangerous international enemy”.

The Mandate’s overwhelming focus on China and its assessment that the world is in an era of “great power competition” is not radically different from the position of the current administration – nor the rest of the Western world. But the Mandate’s suggested response is different.

“The next conservative President,” the Mandate claims, “has the opportunity to restructure the making and execution of U.S. defense and foreign policy and reset the nation’s role in the world.”

For Defense, this reset means restoring “warfighting as its sole mission” and making its highest priority “defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party”. It means dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and bringing its remit under Defense. It then recommends the department help with “aggressively building the border wall system on America’s southern border” and deploy “military personnel and hardware to prevent illegal crossings”.

President Donald Trump tours a section of the southern border wall, 2019.
Evan Vucci/AAP

Along with this expanded, more aggressive role for the Pentagon, the Mandate advocates for a dramatic expansion in defence personnel. A reduced force in Europe would be combined with an increase in “the Army force structure by 50,000 to handle two major regional contingencies simultaneously”.

It’s not quite clear how recruitment would be boosted so quickly. But at one point, the Mandate recommends requiring completion of the military entrance examination “by all students in schools that receive federal funding”. This is one of many lines that hints at a radical reshaping of American life.

The “two major contingencies” the department must prepare for appear to be “threats” from both China and Russia. As the long fight over US funding for Ukraine has demonstrated, however, many Trump-aligned conservatives have an ideological affinity with Putin’s Russia. This radical turnaround in the recent history of US–Russia relations marks a clear tension in conservative politics.

The Mandate acknowledges Russia now “starkly divides conservatives”. But it offers no real resolution, suggesting this would be left up to the president. Inevitable contradictions like this run throughout.

Even on China – one of very few issues that unites conservatives and liberals – the Mandate can contradict itself. One chapter, for example, worries about China blocking market access for the United States. Another advocates complete market decoupling.

Modernise, adapt, expand: on the nuclear arsenal

Trump has repeatedly toyed with the possibility of using nuclear weapons. In 2016, the then-candidate was pressed on why he wouldn’t rule out using them. He responded with his own question: “Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?”

As president, Trump repeatedly bragged about the US nuclear arsenal and weapons development, and allegedly illegally removed classified documents concerning nuclear capabilities from the White House. During his presidency, the US also dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb, nicknamed with characteristic misogyny the “mother of all bombs”, on Afghanistan.

Trump alarmed nuclear experts by talking about America’s nuclear weapons.

The Mandate encourages more weapons development. It argues the Department of Energy should refocus on “developing new nuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactors”. Its recommendation that the United States “expand” its nuclear arsenal in order to “deter Russia and China simultaneously” will especially concern advocates of non-proliferation.

The Mandate also recommends the next administration “end ineffective and counterproductive nonproliferation activities like those involving Iran and the United Nations”.

“Friends and adversaries” abroad

This ramping up of American militarism should be accompanied, according to the Mandate, by a radical shakeup of American diplomacy. The next administration should

significantly reorient the U.S. government’s posture toward friends and adversaries alike – which will include much more honest assessments about who are friends and who are not. This reorientation could represent the most significant shift in core foreign policy principles and corresponding action since the end of the Cold War.

In a line that inevitably provokes thoughts of regime change, the Mandate suggests “the time may be right to press harder on the Iranian theocracy […] and take other steps to draw Iran into the community of free and modern nations”. It is, of course, silent on how disastrous regime change has proved to be in the conduct of US foreign policy over the past half century.

The Mandate also suggests a return to the Trump administration’s “tough love” approach to US participation in international organisations, ensuring no foreign aid supports reproductive rights or care, and that USAID, the nation’s major aid agency, “rescind all climate policies”.

All of this would mean installing “political ambassadors with strong personal relationships with the President”, especially in “key strategic posts such as Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)”. In the State Department specifically, “No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day.”

Perhaps most significantly, Roberts argues in the Mandate’s foreword that “Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought.” The chapter on the Department of Commerce similarly argues for “strategic decoupling from China”.

The Mandate recommends ‘economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought’. Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Roman Pilipey/AAP

Given the size and scope of the American and Chinese economies, and smaller nations like Australia’s reliance on stable economic relations with both, such a “decoupling” from China, alongside a ramping up of militarism, would have significant, wide-ranging consequences.

Another recommendation is that the United States “withdraw” from both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and “terminate its financial contribution to both institutions”. The global consequences of even more radical suggestions like a return to the gold standard, or even “abolishing the federal role in money altogether” in favour of a system of “free banking”, are genuinely mind-boggling.

A new, frightening world in the making?

Project 2025 opens a window onto the modern American conservative movement, documenting in minute detail just how much it has reoriented itself around Trump and the ideological incoherence of Trumpism more broadly. The success, or not, of this effort to unify the movement will also have international implications, as those same organisations and individuals cultivate their connections with the far-right globally.

While Trump, as always, is difficult to predict, there are long and deep links between his campaign and supporters and the Project’s supporters and contributors. Nothing is inevitable, but should Trump return to the White House, it is highly likely at least some of Project 2025’s recommendations, policies, authors, and aspiring officials will join him there. These include people like Peter Navarro, a former Trump official, loyalist and Mandate author, who is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress because he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena during the January 6 investigation.

Project 2025’s Mandate is iconoclastic and dystopian, offering a dark vision of a highly militaristic and unapologetically aggressive America ascendant in “a world on fire”. Those who wish to understand Trump and the movement behind him, and the active threat they pose to American democracy, are obliged to take it seriously. Läs mer…

Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing.

One emerging concept focuses on giving legal rights to nature.

Many Indigenous peoples have long emphasised the intrinsic value of nature. In 1972, the late University of Southern California law professor Christopher Stone proposed what then seemed like a whimsical idea: to vest legal rights in natural objects to allow a shift from an anthropocentric to an intrinsic worldview.

Ecuador was the first country to enshrine rights of nature in its 2008 constitution. Since then, a growing number of countries have followed in awarding rights of nature.

This includes Aotearoa New Zealand, where legal personhood was granted to the Whanganui River, the former national park Te Urewera and soon the Taranaki maunga.

At its core, the rights-of-nature movement allows persons to take legal action on behalf of natural ecosystems, as opposed to on behalf of people affected by environmental degradation.

Ecosystems can become separate entities with their own agency, in the same way other non-human entities such as charitable trusts and organisations can exist as separate entities in law.

Read more:
What if whales took us to court? A move to grant them legal personhood would include the right to sue

But can the movement help stem the loss of biodiversity? There is no easy answer. Our new research shows that many rights-of-nature examples have emerged because current systems were not enough to protect nature from continued economic pressure from development.

We find one of the key features of well designed rights-of-nature frameworks lies in defining who is ultimately liable, and what for.

The Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted legal personhood in 2017.
Shutterstock/Gabor Kovacs Photography

Global case studies

The design of rights-of-nature frameworks varies widely in geography, legal status, guardianship and who holds liability.

We investigated 14 global rights-of-nature examples and categorised them by types of guardianship. For example, in 2008, Ecuador enshrined rights of nature in its constitution because of decades of pressure from large mining companies.

This represents a type of public guardianship where every citizen has the right to take legal action on behalf of nature.

In New Zealand on the other hand, the former national park Te Urewera was granted legal personhood with Tūhoe trustees as appointed guardians.

A legal person is defined as an entity which has the capacity to enter into contracts, incur debts, sue and be sued in its own right, and to be accountable for illegal activities. We define rights-of-nature cases with appointed guardians as “environmental legal personhoods”.

Read more:
Rights for nature: How granting a river ’personhood’ could help protect it

We then compared these cases to explore why they emerged and how they are designed. Who advocated on behalf of the environment? What was the exploiting activity putting pressure on the ecosystem? What is the liability status of the guardians?

We found that, overwhelmingly, Indigenous people and local communities acted as advocates. For example, the Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted legal personhood in 2017 as a result of hundreds of years of resistance by Indigenous Māori to aggressive colonisation.

Since 1848, the Crown has introduced a steamer service, cleared forest from river banks, extracted sand and gravel, and diverted water into a power scheme. This led to ongoing conflict with Whanganui iwi who raised concerns about the river’s health and the desire to preserve the resource for future generations.

Response to sustained economic pressure

On the other side of the world, the Mar Menor lagoon in Spain was declared a legal person in 2022 due to strong local community advocacy against pollution from agriculture, mining and sewage.

The evidence from our research points to a fundamental divide between local communities and external economic interests. The rights-of-nature movement has come as a response to sustained pressure from economic (urban, agricultural and industrial) activity. The features of design, however, vary significantly.

For example, the Victorian state government in Australia established the Victorian Environmental Water Holder, an independent statutory body under the state’s Water Act 1989, as a legal person. It manages water entitlements to improve the health of rivers and wetlands. The entity acts indirectly on behalf of the ecosystems, which is not precisely the same as creating legal rights for rivers themselves.

The Whanganui River, on the other hand, was itself declared a legal person. Its appointed guardians have the legal status of a charitable entity. This group includes representatives of Whanganui iwi and the government, supported by members of councils, locals, and recreational and commercial users.

Liability matters

The recent overturning of two rights-of-nature decisions in particular puts the spot light on the importance of liability.

In the US, farming operations challenged the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in 2020, which granted Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish and naturally evolve”. Farmers argued the bill was too vague and would expose them to liability from fertiliser runoff.

The Ganges River no longer has legal personhood status.
Shutterstock/De Visu

In India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers were granted living-person status, where injury to rivers was to be treated equally to injury to human beings. The decision was challenged on the grounds of uncertainty about who the custodians are and who would be liable to pay damage to the families of those who drowned in the rivers.

Both these were legally overturned, meaning these natural entities no longer have rights of nature. This suggests attention to legally defining who is liability for what may be an important building block for the movement to protect biodiversity in the future.

Our recommendation is that future rights-of-nature frameworks need to have well-defined legal rights and include appointed guardians, established as separate legal entities with limited liability, as well as the support of representatives from interest groups.

This research was carried out in collaboration with my colleagues Claire Armstrong and Margrethe Aanesen in Norway. Läs mer…

The Canadian government recently proposed earmarking $325 million in the 2024 federal budget to upgrade federal immigration detention centres to hold more people. The budget also proposes to amend the law to allow federal prisons to be used to detain “high-risk” immigrants.

The government’s decision comes after all Canadian provinces committed to ending their agreements with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to detain migrants in provincial jails. In 2022, British Columbia became the first province to announce it would end its agreement with CBSA, stating the practice conflicts with provincial, national and international human rights commitments.

Human rights organizations have sharply criticized the federal government’s plan, saying it’s “doubling down on its harmful rights-abusing system.”

In the last quarter of 2023, 1,662 migrants were detained in Canada. Most of them were held if a CBSA officer believed the person was unlikely to appear for an examination, hearing or proceeding. Many were held in detention centres and provincial jails, where conditions are often punitive.

In response to critics, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said detained migrants would be housed separately from other prisoners “because they are not criminals.” However, placing migrants in prisons risks serious violations of their human rights and perpetuates narratives about the criminality of immigrants.

Human rights concerns

The CBSA operates federal immigration holding centres (IHCs) and holds contracts with provinces to use their jails to detain immigrants under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Around one-fifth of migrant detainees are currently held in provincial jails.

While provinces ending immigrant detention is cause for celebration, we’ve cautioned that without legislative change, external oversight and accountability over CBSA, human rights concerns are likely to continue.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland presents the federal budget in the House of Commons in Ottawa on April 16, 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Migrant detention, regardless of facility type, violates migrants’ human rights. Canada does not place any limit on how long a migrant can be detained. This is in contrast to citizens, who are entitled to know how long they’re being detained and access procedural justice such as routine reviews of detention and a clear appeals process.

Immigrants facing removal can be detained if a CBSA officer classifies them as high risk. There is no policy or law or specific evidence required, or appeals possible, if a person is deemed high-risk. These often ad-hoc decisions can result in indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial and go against basic principles of fairness, justice and due process.

The government’s plans refer to those people deemed a high-risk. However, critics say the CBSA is exaggerating the extent of public safety concerns. The use of prisons further entrenches narratives that paint migrants as criminals who pose a risk to broader society. Those labelled risky are often detained for posing flight risks, suffering mental health issues or having records of minor criminality in their past.

Read more:
Immigration detention continues in Canada despite the end of provincial agreements

Ebrahim Toure, a stateless refugee claimant, was held in immigration detention by CBSA for six years. Toure was deemed a risk because of a previous conviction for selling pirated DVDs in Atlanta, Ga. Toure said: “The reason I came [to Canada] is to seek refuge, but the punishment I got for that — I never experienced that anywhere else.”

Experts have argued Canada’s use of immigrant detention is a form of penal nationalism. This is defined as a populist strategy that treats migrants as criminal threats to the nation and national identity. Narratives of criminality and risk are largely constructed and based on the idea of “securing” borders from the “other.”

Detention in IHCs and prisons has also been criticized for blurring lines of accountability and transparency. For example, while IHCs are federally operated by CBSA, the day-to-day labour and management of these institutions is provided through private-sector contracts.

Violating Canada’s obligations

Kimora Adetunji with her son outside Federal Court in Toronto in May 2017, where indefinite immigration detention was subject of a court hearing. Her husband was held in immigration detention for almost a year.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Colin Perkel

Canada is a signatory to international treaties designed to uphold the safety, dignity and rights of migrants and asylum-seekers. These include the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees as well as global compacts on migration and refugees.

In 2021, Canada articulated its commitment to promoting balanced public narratives on migrants, including refugees. Yet, the detention of migrants not only perpetuates fear-mongering narratives of migrants and refugees, it also violates the internationally recognized right to claim asylum without fear of punishment.

Read more:
The detention of migrants in Canadian jails is a public health emergency

The government has increased investment in alternatives to detention including electronic monitoring, community case management and voice reporting. Such alternatives do address some of the human rights violations migrants face in detention centres and jails. However, they continue to criminalize migrants who are entitled to make asylum claims in Canada.

The government’s intention to put migrants in federal prisons risks further dehumanizing and criminalizing refugees, asylum-seekers and other immigrants. Canadians should oppose legal amendments that enable the use of federal correctional facilities for immigration detention.

Canada bills itself as a human rights champion, but this record is uneven — and this proposal could become the latest strike against it. Läs mer…

British Columbia’s proposed new police law, Bill 17, has excluded provincial armed environmental law enforcement from its legal definition of “police.” Why does this matter?

At the heart of this issue lies a fundamental legal question. Should environmental police services be treated in the law as regular police and, crucially, subject to the same regulatory oversight?

For many officers, academics and members of the general public alike, the answer is a resounding yes. Especially as a means to curtail the unnecessary use of lethal force on wildlife, the para-militarization of environmental police services and a history of questionable arrests. This is in addition to media scrutiny of investigative practices involving both human deaths and the death of domestic animals.

However, in Bill 17 the B.C. government has so far resisted calls for change.

If armed provincial officers are going to dress like police, carry police weapons and related equipment, drive police-like vehicles and be appointed like police then they should have the same independent oversight as the police. Modern accountability and transparency mechanisms provide a model and structure for individual officer restraint and broader agency accountability for the public.

More transparency and accountability for policing actions and officer conduct could lead to less lethal force on wildlife and a reduction in negative public interactions.

British Columbia Conservation Officer Service

The B.C. Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS) is the province’s formal, and fully armed, frontline environmental police service which specializes in “public safety as it relates to human/wildlife conflict” — with an additional mandate to manage “complex commercial environmental and industrial investigations and compliance and enforcement services”.

Individual officers of the BCCOS are designated as special provincial constables under section 9 of the current Police Act. However, the BCCOS as an agency is not designated as a police service in current law.

This creates a legal conflict between officers acting like police in the public sphere but not held as accountable as other police services because they work for a non-policing agency. I experienced this conflict first-hand during my time as an officer with the BCCOS.

Surrey police officers are seen in Surrey, B.C., in July 2023. The BCCOS operates as a fully armed police-like service without the same degree of oversight as other police services across the province.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The BCCOS was formerly a part of the B.C. Provincial Police Force and provided an armed environmental police service since 1871.

Since 2003, however, the BCCOS has been structured under Section 106 of the Environmental Management Act. This legislation was written primarily for pollution control and waste management and was never intended to take the place of the Police Act or allow a police-like service to operate in the province.

This cumbersome legal arrangement — where a police-like force is controlled by a piece of legislation not intended for policing — has directly inhibited attempts at greater independent oversight, accountability, and review of police actions.

Bill 17 had an opportunity to correct this by properly designating the BCCOS as a provincial police service, as it once was, and as it now should be.

Contentious debates

The record of debate in the B.C. legislature for April 11, 2024 is a revealing insight into the ongoing debates over the future of the province’s environmental police services.

Bill 17 sought to reform municipal policing legislation province-wide and increase accountability for constables, jail guards and police oversight boards. However, the bill glossed over the province’s own armed environmental police services who work as police despite not being recognized as such.

The provincial legislature building in Victoria, B.C.
(Shutterstock)

This loophole was called into question by a member of the legislative assembly, Adam Olsen, who highlighted the similarities between standard police and environmental police services in the province.

Olsen asked why oversight of these armed environmental police services was not included in Bill 17 to which the Deputy Premier — and Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General — Mike Farnworth replied “the work on that oversight is very much part and parcel of phase 2.” No such second phase has currently been agreed upon by the B.C. government and Farnworth’s subsequent responses showed a clear misunderstanding of the role of the BCCOS and the appointments they hold under the Police Act.

This is far too serious an issue to be left in the shadows of ambiguity.

A new model

It is essential that Bill 17 defines the BCCOS as a “police service” within Section 1.1 of the newly proposed police reform law. Bringing the BCCOS within police reform law would help keep environmental policing services in line with the oversight and accountability requirements expected of all police forces under the Police Act.

By historical design and modern operational practice, BCCOS officers are full police officers under provincial law acting on behalf of a body which is not technically a police service. This creates a confusing situation where an armed officer who looks like a police officer, and is acting like a police officer, is then not a police officer if something goes wrong.

This is a problem with a straightforward legislative answer: repeal Section 106 of the Environmental Management Act and designate the BCCOS as a police service in Bill 17.

Read more:
’Fortress’ conservation policies threaten the food security of rural populations

Environmental policing stands at the forefront of wildlife protection, climate change and the intersection of urban expansion and broad social tensions.

The public, the courts, elected officials and individual police officers need unquestionable clarity on the appointments they carry and their authorities to exercise them.

Designating The BCCOS as a police service would provide much needed clarity and realign B.C.’s environmental policing services with modern expectations.

The job officers perform is critical to the conservation and preservation of our environment. Bill 17 should not ignore the BCCOS. Läs mer…

The health and social care visa route was introduced in August 2020 as a response to labour shortages after Brexit and the COVID pandemic. Now, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has found that the Home Office’s “limited understanding of the sector” has put care workers at risk of exploitation.

An independent report, published in March, details the Home Office’s “shocking” mishandling of the visas. It highlights problems in the way that the system to give social care providers the ability to sponsor workers from abroad operates. In one case, “275 certificates of sponsorship [were] granted to a care home that did not exist”.

The Home Office responded that this incident involved “a licence granted in the name of a real care home without their knowledge … obtained using false information/evidence”. It has accepted the chief inspector’s recommendations to improve the system, and said that many of these improvements were already underway.

The report details how the Home Office system has buckled under unforeseen demand for visas. The number of registered sponsors tripled from 30,730 organisations in 2019 to 94,704 by the end of November 2023, putting considerable pressure on the officials responsible for checking compliance with UK employment law and preventing migrants from working illegally. These issues are particularly acute in the care sector due to low pay and poor working conditions.

According to the inspector’s report, these weaknesses have created a scenario that puts large numbers of care workers at risk of exploitation. And the nature of restrictive visas, where your legal immigration status is tied to your role at a specific employer, means that care workers are discouraged from raising concerns about pay and conditions out of fear of losing their status.

Exploitation in the care sector

Exploitation in the care sector, including forced labour (a type of modern slavery), has been a concern for years. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighted these issues in a report more than a decade ago. But figures have spiked alarmingly in recent years, according to the charity Unseen, which runs the UK’s modern slavery helpline.

In 2022, the year that the new health and care visa was added to the UK’s shortage occupation list, Unseen recorded a year-on-year increase of 606% in cases reported by care workers. Calls from potential victims of modern slavery from the care sector rose from 708 potential victims in 2022 to 918 in 2023.

My own research shows that care worker exploitation usually falls into one of four areas: debt bondage, recruitment, pay and substandard working practices. Live-in care workers are particularly vulnerable. Migrants may seek out live-in care jobs because accommodation is included.

Workers may become indebted to a recruitment agency, loan shark or members of their own family to secure a visa, only to then find that this is almost impossible to pay off from their wages. They may be deceived by the sponsoring organisation into paying extortionate visa costs – illegal recruitment fees of between £2,000 and £18,000 have been reported. And when they arrive in the UK, some find the job they expected fails to materialise. At least one local authority has identified a small number of such cases of organised immigration crime.

The visa was introduced to cope with a care worker shortage.
Yuri A/Shutterstock

There have also been reports of “clawback clauses” in care workers’ contracts. Some of these clauses require care workers to forego their final month’s salary and to pay back training and immigration costs to their employer. While proportionate repayments are legal, there is little guidance on the exact amounts that can be reclaimed. There have been reports of exit penalties amounting to between £1,300 and £11,500.

Transparency in supply chains

The Modern Slavery Act requires large commercial organisations to publish details of how they are preventing exploitation. But this does not currently apply to the majority of smaller providers or the local authorities who commission social care. The government has yet to make good on its 2019 promise to extend the transparency in supply chains duty to public authorities.

An encouraging number of local authorities have participated voluntarily, and have added their statements to a repository run by the Local Government Association.

But the government should be doing more to require transparency, given the level of exploitation still in the sector. The introduction of sanctions on all organisations who fail to publish annually could also encourage compliance and, as in other countries, provide valuable compensation funds for survivors.

At Nottingham University’s Rights Lab, I have worked with three English local authorities and the Local Government Association, to publish a set of guidelines for social care commissioners. These guidelines, which build on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Responsible Business Conduct framework, encourage local authorities to shore up worker protection in their social care contracts.

The UK needs social care workers, and visas for them, but even with planned changes to the sponsorship rules, it seems the risk of exploitation among care workers will remain. Läs mer…

Three years after the federal government launched the Canada-wide early learning and child-care plan (CWELCC), our study conducted through the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at the University of Toronto finds mixed results in terms of the plan’s ambitions to improve families’ access to affordable child care. Across the country care is less expensive, but finding it is more difficult.

Early Childhood Education Report highlights

Our Early Childhood Education Report
with detailed profiles for each province and territory, identifies developments in child-care enrolment, affordability, funding, workforce compensation, administration and quality by province and territory.

As researchers on this project, we reviewed all data related to the above
to capture changes to services from March 2020 to March 2023. We then met with directors of early childhood policy in each province or territory to score how each is doing on a 15-point scale.

New Brunswick leads with 13.5 points, a record achievement reflecting its efforts to support child-care operators to add spaces, while supporting program quality. Overall, the provinces east of Ontario rank higher than the rest of the country.

All provinces and territories have met their affordability targets. Parent costs were reduced by 50 per cent by the 2022 deadline. Except for Québec and the Yukon, where parents were already paying below $10 per day, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, and most recently the Northwest Territories, have all dropped child-care fees to an average of $10 per day, well ahead of the 2026 schedule.

Big savings, difficulty finding care

A child plays on a play structure at the YMWCA daycare in Winnipeg, March 3, 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

While parents with access to child care are enjoying savings; those looking for care are frustrated. More than 60 per cent of parents wanting child care reported difficulties finding it, up from 53 per cent in 2019. As a result, roughly one in three respondents said they had to change their work or study schedules, work fewer hours, or delay their return to work.

The CWELCC plan for 250,000 new child-care spaces by 2026 — for children from infancy to five years of age — is also having mixed success. By March 31, 2023, halfway through the plan’s time frame, 97,859 spaces have been added for this age group.

Prince Edward Island, Alberta, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories are on track to exceed the new space targets set out in their child-care agreements. Expansion is curtailed where governments offer insufficient funding to meet the actual cost of new builds and renovations.

Staffing shortages

The major roadblock to opening new spaces, however, is staffing shortages. Difficulties finding and keeping staff directly impact child care availability, stability and quality. Without educators, centres operate with reduced enrolment, impacting their financial viability. Program quality is compromised when government exemptions allow centres to run without the legislative requirements for qualified staff.

The federal government has given one-off infusions to help stem the workforce exodus. Most jurisdictions have used the money to improve educator wages.

In addition, Prince Edward Island has joined Québec and Manitoba in developing a sector pension plan. Prince Edward Island and Québec have benefit plans. Nova Scotia’s pension and benefit plans are in development.

Few topping up federal funds

Provincial and territorial governments complain there is not enough money in the CWELCC agreements to accomplish everything promised. We question the claim when some jurisdictions are not using the federal funding available to them. Governments have added just over $4.5 billion to their child-care spending since 2020, well below the $15 billion available to date through CWELCC.

Read more:
Ontario’s child-care agreement is poised to fail low-income children and families

If concerns about funding is pressing provincial and territorial governments could, of course, add their own funding, but few have done so. Relying on federal funds is now the norm.

Uneven implementation of a new social program isn’t new. The hope is that some jurisdictions will use the Canada-wide opportunity to do child care very well, becoming models to envy and emulate.

This is the fifth edition of the Early Childhood Education Report which has been released every three years since 2011. We meet with government policymakers in between reports to review data, and update the methodology to reflect any policy changes. The next report will be released in 2026. Läs mer…

The discovery of viral fragments of avian flu virus in milk sold in U.S. stores suggests that the H5N1 virus may be more widespread in U.S. dairy cattle than previously realized.

The Food and Drug Administration was quick to stress on April 24, 2024, that it believes the commercial milk supply is safe. However, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus can make cows sick, and the flu virus’s presence in herds in several states and now new federal restrictions on the movement of dairy cows between states are putting economic pressure on farmers.

Five experts in infectious diseases in cattle from the University of California, Davis – Noelia Silva del Rio, Terry Lehenbauer, Richard Pereira, Robert Moeller and Todd Cornish – explain what the test results mean, how bird flu can spread to cattle and the impact on the industry.

What are viral fragments of avian flu, and can they pose risks to people?

It’s crucial to understand that the presence of viral fragments of H5N1 doesn’t indicate the presence of intact virus particles that could cause disease.

The commercial milk supply maintains safety through two critical measures:

First, milk sourced from sick animals is promptly diverted or disposed of, ensuring it does not enter the food chain.
Second, all milk at grocery stores is heat treated to reduce pathogen load to safe levels, mainly by pasteurization. Pasteurization has been shown to effectively inactivate H5N1 in eggs, and that process occurs at a lower temperature than is used for milk.

The viral fragments were detected using quantitative polymerase chain reaction testing, which is known for its exceptional sensitivity in detecting even trace amounts of viral genetic material. These fragments are only evidence that the virus was present in the milk. They aren’t evidence that the virus is biologically active.

To evaluate whether the presence of the viral fragments corresponds to a virus with the capacity to replicate and cause disease, a different testing approach is necessary. Tests such as embryonated egg viability studies allow scientists to assess the virus’s ability to replicate by injecting a sample into an embryonated chicken egg. That type of testing is underway.

On April 24, 2024, the FDA said it had found no reason to change its assessment that the U.S. milk supply is safe. The agency does strongly advise against consuming raw milk and products derived from it because of its inherent risks of contamination with harmful pathogens, including avian flu viruses.

How does an avian flu virus get into cow’s milk?

Currently, cows confirmed to have H5N1 have different symptoms than the typical flu-like symptoms observed in birds.

Abnormal milk and mastitis, an inflammatory response to infection, are common. While there is speculation that other bodily secretions, such as saliva, respiratory fluids, urine or feces, may also harbor the virus, that has yet to be confirmed.

Milking equipment can help viruses spread.
Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images

How waterfowl or other birds transmitted H5N1 to cattle is still under investigation. In 2015, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in commercial poultry farms reached its peak in April and May, the same time birds migrated north. Birds can shed the virus through their oral, nasal, urine and fecal secretions. So the virus could potentially be transmitted through direct contact, ingesting contaminated feed or water, or inhaling the virus.

Infected dairy cows can shed the virus in milk, and they likely can transmit it to other cows, but that still needs to be proven.

Contagious pathogens that cause mastitis can be transmitted through milking equipment or contaminated milker’s gloves. Ongoing research will help determine whether this is also a potential transmission route for H5N1, and if so, what makes the virus thrive on mammary tissue.

If H5N1 is found to be widespread in milk, what risks can that pose for the dairy industry?

For the dairy industry, infection of cattle with H5N1 avian influenza virus creates challenges at two levels.

The overriding concern is always for the safety and healthfulness of milk and dairy products.

Existing state and federal regulations and industry practices require sick cows or cows with abnormal milk to be segregated so that their milk does not enter the food supply. Proper pasteurization should kill the virus so that it cannot cause infection.

The American Association of Bovine Practitioners has also developed biosecurity guidelines for H5N1, focusing on key practices. These include minimizing wild birds’ contact with cattle and their environment, managing the movement of cattle between farms, isolating affected animals, avoiding feeding unpasteurized (raw) colostrum or milk to calves and other mammals, and ensuring the use of protective personal equipment for animal caretakers.

The other major concern is for the health of the dairy herd and the people who take care of the dairy cattle. A farm worker who handled dairy cows contracted H5N1 in Texas in March 2024, but such cases are rare.

No vaccines or specific therapies are available for avian influenza infections in dairy cattle. But following good sanitation and biosecurity practices for both people and cows will help to reduce risk of exposure and spread of the avian influenza virus among dairy cattle.

For cows that get the virus, providing supportive care, including fluids and fever reducers as needed, can help them get through the illness, which can also cause loss of appetite and affect their milk production.

Dairy farms facing an outbreak will have economic losses from caring for sick animals and the temporary reduction in milk sales. Approximately 5% to 20% of the animals in the affected herds have become ill, according to early estimates. Affected animals typically recover within 10 to 20 days.

At least 21 states have restricted importing dairy cattle to prevent the virus’s spread, and the federal government announced it will require that lactating dairy cattle be tested before they can be moved between states starting April 29, 2024. While the overall impact on U.S. milk production is projected to be minor on an annual basis, it could lead to short-lived supply disruptions.

How worried should people be about avian flu?

The federal government’s monitoring and food safety measures, along with pasteurization, provide important safeguards to protect the public from potential exposure to avian influenza virus through the food chain.

Drinking raw milk, however, does represent a risk for exposure to multiple diseases, including H5N1. This is why the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly recommend drinking only pasteurized milk and dairy products. Läs mer…

To work in nature conservation is to battle a headwind of bad news. When the overwhelming picture indicates the natural world is in decline, is there any room for optimism? Well, our new global study has some good news: we provide the strongest evidence to date that nature conservation efforts are not only effective, but that when they do work, they often really work.

Trends in nature conservation tend to be measured in terms of “biodiversity” – that is, the variety among living organisms from genes to ecosystems. We treasure biodiversity not only for how it enriches society and culture, but also its underpinning of resilient, functioning ecosystems that are a foundation of the global economy.

However, it is well known that global biodiversity is decreasing, and has been for some time. Is anything we are doing to reverse this trend effective?

As part of a team of researchers, we conducted the most comprehensive analysis yet of what happened when conservationists intervened in ecosystems. These were interventions of all types, all over the world. We found that conservation action is typically much better than doing nothing at all.

The challenge now is to fund conservation on the scale needed to halt and reverse declines in biodiversity and give these proven methods the best chance of success.

First, the less good news

Globally, biodiversity is being depleted by human activities like habitat clearance, overharvesting, the introduction of invasive species and climate change.

To arrest its decline, people in various places have taken measures including creating protected areas, removing invasive species or restoring habitats, such as forests and wetlands. These efforts are interdependent with traditional stewardship of the world’s richest biodiversity by indigenous people and local communities. And in 2022, governments adopted new global targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

Conservation aims to give nature a helping hand. Here, volunteers shepherd turtle hatchlings to the sea.
Evan Aube/Shutterstock

Our team, led by the conservation organisation Re:wild, the universities of Oxford and Kent, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, analysed the findings of 186 studies covering 665 trials of different conservation interventions globally over the course of a century.

We wanted to understand whether the outcomes of these conservation actions improved on what would have happened without any intervention. Lots of studies have tried to compare the effects of conservation projects this way, but this is the first time such research has been combined in a single analysis to determine if conservation is working overall.

And now, the good news

What we found was extremely encouraging: conservation efforts work, and they work pretty much everywhere.

We found that conservation actions improved the state of biodiversity or slowed its decline in the majority of cases (66%) compared with no action. But more importantly, when conservation interventions work, we found that they are highly effective.

Examples from our far-reaching database included the management of invasive and problematic native predators on two of Florida’s barrier islands, which resulted in an immediate and substantial improvement in the nesting success of loggerhead turtles and least terns. In central African countries across the Congo basin, deforestation was 74% lower in logging estates subject to a forest management plan versus those that weren’t. Protected areas and indigenous lands had significantly less deforestation and smaller fires in the Brazilian Amazon. Breeding Chinook salmon in captivity and releasing them boosted their natural population in the Salmon River basin of central Idaho with minimal side effects.

Even species with complex lifecycles can benefit from conservation.
Danita Delimont/Shutterstock

Where conservation actions did not recover or slow the decline of the species or ecosystems that they were targeting, there is an opportunity to learn why and refine the conservation methods. For example, in India, removing an invasive algae simply caused it to spread elsewhere. Conservationists can now try a different strategy that may be more successful, such as finding ways to halt the drift of fragments of algae.

In other cases, where conservation action did not clearly benefit the target, other native species benefited unintentionally. For example, seahorses were less numerous in protected sites off New South Wales in Australia because these marine protected areas increased the abundance of their predators, such as octopus. So, still a success of sorts.

We also found that more recent conservation interventions tended to have more positive outcomes for biodiversity. This could mean modern conservation is getting more effective over time.

The majority of examples studied showed positive outcomes.
Langhammer et al. (2024)/Science

What comes next

If conservation generally works but biodiversity is still declining, then simply put: we need to do more of it. Much more. While at the same time reducing the pressures we put on nature.

Over half of the world’s GDP, almost US$44 trillion (£35 trillion), is moderately or highly dependent on nature. According to previous studies, a comprehensive global conservation programme would require an investment of between US$178 and US$524 billion. By comparison, in 2022 alone, subsidies for the production and use of fossil fuels – which are ultimately destructive to nature as fossil fuel burning is the leading cause of climate change – totalled US$7 trillion globally. That is 13 times the upper estimate of what is needed annually to fund the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Today, just US$121 billion is invested annually in conservation worldwide.

Potential funding priorities include more and better managed protected areas. Consistent with other studies, we found that protected areas work very well on the whole; studies that highlight where protected areas are not working often cite ineffective management or inadequate resources. More large-scale investment in habitat restoration would also help according to this new research.

Our study provides evidence that optimism for nature’s recovery is not misplaced. Though biodiversity is declining, we have effective tools to conserve it – and they seem to be getting better over time. The world’s governments have committed to nature recovery. Now, we must invest in it.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…