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Earth is crossing the threshold of 1.5°C of global warming, according to two major global studies which together suggest the planet’s climate has likely entered a frightening new phase.

Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, humanity is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep planetary heating to no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. In 2024, temperatures on Earth surpassed that limit.

This was not enough to declare the Paris threshold had been crossed, because the temperature goals under the agreement are measured over several decades, rather than short excursions over the 1.5°C mark.

But the two papers just released use a different measure. Both examined historical climate data to determine whether very hot years in the recent past were a sign that a future, long-term warming threshold would be breached.

The answer, alarmingly, was yes. The researchers say the record-hot 2024 indicates Earth is passing the 1.5°C limit, beyond which scientists predict catastrophic harm to the natural systems that support life on Earth.

2024: the first year of many above 1.5°C

Climate organisations around the world agree last year was the hottest on record. The global average temperature in 2024 was about 1.6°C above the average temperatures in the late-19th century, before humans started burning fossil fuels at large scale.

Earth has also recently experienced individual days and months above the 1.5°C warming mark.

But the global temperature varies from one year to the next. For example, the 2024 temperature spike, while in large part due to climate change, was also driven by a natural El Niño pattern early in the year. That pattern has dissipated for now, and 2025 is forecast to be a little cooler.

These year-to-year fluctuations mean climate scientists don’t view a single year exceeding the 1.5°C mark as a failure to meet the Paris Agreement.

However, the new studies published today in Nature Climate Change suggest even a single month or year at 1.5°C global warming may signify Earth is entering a long-term breach of that vital threshold.

What the studies found

The studies were conducted independently by researchers in Europe and Canada. They tackled the same basic question: is a year above 1.5°C global warming a warning sign that we’re already crossing the Paris Agreement threshold?

Both studies used observations and climate model simulations to address this question, with slightly different approaches.

In the European paper, the researchers looked at historical warming trends. They found when Earth’s average temperature reached a certain threshold, the following 20-year period also reached that threshold.

This pattern suggests that, given Earth reached 1.5°C warming last year, we may have entered a 20-year warming period when average temperatures will also reach 1.5°C.

The Canadian paper involved month-to-month data. June last year was the 12th consecutive month of temperatures above the 1.5°C warming level. The researcher found 12 consecutive months above a climate threshold indicates the threshold will be reached over the long term.

Both studies also demonstrate that even if stringent emissions reduction begins now, Earth is still likely to be crossing the 1.5°C threshold.

Heading in the wrong direction

Given these findings, what humanity does next is crucial.

For decades, climate scientists have warned burning fossil fuels for energy releases carbon dioxide and other gases that are warming the planet.

But humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase. Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first report in 1990, the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 50%.

Put simply, we are not even moving in the right direction, let alone at the required pace.

The science shows greenhouse gas emissions must reach net-zero to end global warming. Even then, some aspects of the climate will continue to change for many centuries, because some regional warming, especially in the oceans, is already locked in and irreversible.

If Earth has indeed already crossed the 1.5°C mark, and humanity wants to get below the threshold again, we will need to cool the planet by reaching “net-negative emissions” – removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we emit. This would be a highly challenging task.

Feeling the heat

The damaging effects of climate change are already being felt across the globe. The harm will be even worse for future generations.

Australia has already experienced 1.5°C of warming, on average, since 1910.

Our unique ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, are already suffering because of this warming. Our oceans are hotter and seas are rising, hammering our coastlines and threatening marine life.

Bushfires and extreme weather, especially heatwaves, are becoming more frequent and severe. This puts pressure on nature, society and our economy.

But amid the gloom, there are signs of progress.

Across the world, renewable electricity generation is growing. Fossil fuel use has dropped in many countries. Technological developments are slowing emissions growth in polluting industries such as aviation and construction.

But clearly, there is much more work to be done.

Humanity can turn the tide

These studies are a sobering reminder of how far short humanity is falling in tackling climate change.

They show we must urgently adapt to further global warming. Among the suite of changes needed, richer nations must support the poorer countries set to bear the most severe climate harms. While some progress has been made in this regard, far more is needed.

A major shift is also needed to decarbonise our societies and economies. There is still room for hope, but we must not delay action. Otherwise, humanity will keep warming the planet and causing further damage.

Andrew King, Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne and Liam Cassidy, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Water is now a contested resource around the world. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fight playing out over the Northern Territory’s Roper River – one of the last free-flowing rivers in Australia, nurtured by the enduring presence of First Nations custodians.

The territory government recently doubled water extraction allowances from the aquifer that feeds the Roper River, making billions of litres available to irrigators, for free. The change risks permanent damage not just to the river but to world-famous springs and sacred sites fundamentally important to Traditional Owners.

Australia has a very poor track record on maintaining healthy river systems, and on respecting First Nations rights to access and use water.

The Roper River represents a chance to change course on decades of water policy failure. It also shows we must transform how Australia’s water is valued, who uses it, and who decides how vital rivers should be managed.

What’s happening on the Roper River?

The Roper River runs east for 400 kilometres from the Katherine region to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

First Nations people comprise 73% of the population in the Roper River area. Amid socioeconomic challenges, Country sustains them as it has done for 65,000 years. It is integral to maintaining cultural knowledge, as well as ceremonial practices, environmental care and traditional food systems. Traditional Owners’ rights are recognised through Aboriginal freehold land and native title across the area.

Irrigated crops including melons, mangoes and cotton are grown over a small part of the river catchment.

In a string of recent decisions – mainly the designation of regional “water allocation plans” – the territory government has vastly increased potential extraction from underground aquifers. This could allow agriculture and other industries to expand.

The Mataranka plan, which applies to the Roper River, now allows irrigators to double the amount of water extracted from an underground aquifer crucial to the river’s dry-season flows. These new extraction amounts would fill 25,000 Olympic swimming pools a year. The groundwater also feeds thermal springs at Mataranka – a sacred site and tourism drawcard.

The decision came despite staunch opposition from Traditional Owners. As Northern Land Council chair Matthew Ryan told SBS:

Both the previous and the current NT Government have ignored the voices of Traditional Owners, who have repeatedly said that the health and viability of the Roper River and the springs at Mataranka are at great risk.

Water is life. It is our most valuable resource and Traditional Owners have an obligation to take care of the land and areas of cultural significance.

The Baaka: a sad story of degradation

Sadly, this story is not new to Australia. We need only look to the Baaka (Lower Darling River) in New South Wales as a cautionary tale.

More than a century of water extraction has left the river and its wetlands degraded. This was demonstrated in 2023 when up to 30 million fish died due to low levels of dissolved oxygen, caused by, among other factors, too much water extracted upstream.

The ecological damage has harmed the health and wellbeing of river communities – especially Traditional Owners such as the Barkandji people, who have long relied on the river for sustenance.

The problem is getting worse. As research late last year showed, an investment of more than A$8 billion to date has failed to prevent a stark decline in the health of the Murray-Darling Basin river system.

Martuwarra: another river in peril

Martuwarra, or the Fitzroy River, runs through Western Australia’s Kimberley region. It is the state’s largest Aboriginal Cultural Heritage site and is on the national heritage list. Evidence indicates human occupation along the Martuwarra for at least 35,000  years.

Traditional knowledge indicates climate change – among other harms – is threatening the Martuwarra. Ecological and ground water systems are drying up, making traditional food and medicine harder to find.

This harms Indigenous custodians reliant on the Martuwarra for their lifeways and livelihoods.

But there is hope. The Indigenous-led Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council has united West Kimberley people, First Peoples and others, along with stakeholders. It seeks to foster joint decision-making on planning and management to take full account of the social, cultural, spiritual and environmental impacts of water allocation across the catchment.

This world-leading example shows what can be achieved when Traditional Owners and their partners unite to defend nature, water and Country as sources of life, not just resources to be exploited.

Finding answers

Many of the world’s largest rivers are suffering from neglect and destruction. Last month, on the world’s inaugural Water Justice Day, people around the globe fighting for water justice came together in Canberra.

Community members, researchers, Elders, advocates and decision-makers gathered to share stories from Argentina, Australia, India, Kenya, Brazil and Mexico.

Each tale described people working together to push back against water injustice, whether it involved unequal access, theft, dispossession, pollution or post-truth claims about water.

Participants also watched the premiere screening of the short film EveryOne, EveryWhere, EveryWhen. It highlights what is at stake for Australia’s living rivers – Baaka, Roper and Martuwarra – and tells of the struggle to bring justice to these rivers and their people.

A fork in the river

Clearly, the time for water reform is now. So what does this mean in practice?

First, the precautionary principle must be deeply embedded in all government decisions. This means the potential for serious environmental damage must be properly considered, and actions taken to avoid it, even when science is not certain.

Second, permission from First Peoples should be obtained for any activity affecting their land or waters, following the principles of “free, prior and informed consent”.

And finally, both Indigenous knowledge and Western science must be brought together to plan, monitor and regulate all water extraction, to ensure our precious rivers are managed for both the present and the future.

Australians face a stark choice.

We can keep gifting valuable water resources to powerful commercial interests, while ignoring the warning signs our rivers are sending.

Or we can follow First Nations leaders and listen to what Country is telling us: to safeguard water for everyone, including non-human kin, to secure a liveable and thriving future for all.

In response to issues raised in this article, the NT’s Minister for Lands, Planning and Environment, Joshua Burgoyne, said the Mataranka water allocation plan provides certainty to the environment and the community and supports regional economic development.

He said the plan was “precautionary, evidenced based, and developed with considered involvement from local community representatives” including Traditional Owners, and preserves more than 90% of dry season flows to the Roper River.

Quentin Grafton, Australian Laureate Professor of Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; Anne Poelina, Professor and Chair Indigenous Knowledges & Senior Research Fellow Nulungu Institute of Research University of Notre Dame & Chair Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, University of Notre Dame Australia, and Sarah Milne, Associate Professor, Head of Resources, Environment and Development Department, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Golf courses are sometimes seen as harmful to the environment. According to the popular notion, the grass soaks up too much water, is cut too short and sprayed with dangerous chemicals. But in reality, golf courses can act as safe havens for native wildlife, especially in cities.

Cities are home to a wide range of plants and animals, including 30% of Australia’s threatened species. But ongoing population growth and urban development threatens this biodiversity. We’re still losing green space and tree cover, leaving less habitat and resources for native birds, bats, possums, lizards, frogs, beetles and butterflies.

This is where golf courses can play a role. Australia is one of the golfing capitals of the world, with more than 1,800 active courses. These courses represent large, continuous green spaces often with native vegetation, mature trees, lakes and wetlands. Given their ubiquity, golf courses could help conserve urban biodiversity.

This week, the annual LIV Golf tournament returns to Grange Golf Club in South Australia. Grange is known for its commitment to natural habitats and wildlife. So what makes a golf course good or bad for biodiversity?

The gold in the rough

From a biodiversity perspective, the most valuable part of a golf course is the area all golfers seek to avoid: the “rough”. These spaces between the green, manicured fairways can include remnant or restored bushland with dense leaf litter, long grass, thick shrubs, and both living and dead trees. This vegetation is often native and features a diversity of plant species.

Collectively, this can provide a range of resources for native wildlife including food, shelter and tree hollows for nesting. In Melbourne, research found golf courses provided better habitat for wildlife than nearby suburban streets and parklands. They were also home to a greater diversity of birds and bats.

Golf courses also have relatively little human activity. Golfers are only allowed on the course during certain hours of the day. Courses usually do not allow dogs. And there are few cars and roads, so there’s less noise and light pollution than in other urban areas. This makes golf courses pretty attractive to native animals looking for somewhere to live.

Many golf courses are heavily irrigated to ensure high-quality playing surfaces. This ample water supply (typically from recycled sources) is fantastic for wildlife, especially in warmer and drier climates. Birds are known to flock to water resources during drought – a behaviour likely to become more common under future climate change.

Much-feared water hazards for golfers, such as lakes and ponds, actually provide valuable habitat for aquatic birds, frogs, fish and insects. These water bodies are particularly important in cities where wetlands are regularly cleared to make way for new houses, shops and roads.

Importantly, once constructed, golf courses are rarely threatened by clearing or development. In Perth, research found golf courses helped protect native vegetation as development spread through surrounding suburbs. The mere existence of a golf course can help secure a home for native species for many decades to come.

Golf courses are not a perfect solution

However, not all land on golf courses is valuable for wildlife. Large open areas such as fairways typically only benefit species adapted to life in cities such as the aggressive noisy miner.

Golf courses can also harbour pests such as cane toads, rats and common mynas. These undesirable species may pose a threat to native biodiversity.

The use of pesticides and fertilisers can affect soil quality, contaminate water sources, and make frogs sick.

Frequent lawn mowing can reduce insect diversity, particularly among bugs, bees, wasps and ants. This is likely to have flow-on effects for animals that feed on insects, and for flowering plants that depend on insects for pollination and seed dispersal.

Some urban golf courses may also be physically isolated from other suitable habitats, making it hard for wildlife to safely move around to find food, water and a mate. To get in and out, animals may need to cross busy roads or move through dangerous areas where they are exposed to predators such as cats and foxes.

So, how can we best manage golf courses for biodiversity?

In an ideal world, golf courses should only be constructed in developed areas. That’s because constructing courses in natural, undisturbed areas is likely to involve clearing vegetation for fairways, greens, car parks and club houses.

As a result, the biodiversity value of a golf course increases the closer it is to a city.

Existing golf courses can help protect biodiversity by retaining and restoring diverse bushland patches in the rough. Important conservation areas can also be fenced off and deemed “out of bounds” to golfers.

The use of harsh chemicals should be reduced to minimise risks to soil, water and wildlife. “Organic golf courses” overseas are already making progress in this space, but they are far from mainstream.

Finally, efforts must be made to connect golf courses to nearby parks and reserves through wildlife corridors, road underpasses, and special crossing structures such as rope bridges. This will enable animals to safely move around the urban landscape.

Many golf courses now have biodiversity management plans and are working hard to make their practices more sustainable. In other cases, disused golf courses are even being converted into conservation reserves, such as the Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve in Elsternwick, Melbourne.

While golf courses cannot replace natural habitats, they can provide a useful alternative for many species that call our cities home.

Jacinta Humphrey, Research Fellow in Urban Ecology, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fire broke out in the Grampians National Park (Gariwerd) in December and raged for weeks. Then lightning strikes ignited fresh blazes late last month, which merged to form a mega-fire that’s not out yet.

This 168,000-hectare reserve, about 200km west of Melbourne, is a significant ecological and cultural landscape. Its ancient sandstone mountains and valleys maintain eucalypt woodlands and heathlands that support a rich diversity of plants and animals, making it a key conservation asset in Victoria.

Since 2008, our team has been monitoring mammal species annually in the Grampians. This long-term effort has allowed us to learn how species respond to wildfires, droughts and floods.

We commenced our research just two years after big fires swept through the park in 2006. We also witnessed the changes following more fires in 2013 and 2014.

So while many animals have lost much of their habitat to fire this summer, we know recovery is possible. But some may need help to cope with challenges ahead.

A terrible summer as multiple fires rage

The massive December wildfire in the park’s east burned for weeks, forcing evacuations in towns such as Halls Gap, and upending Christmas for many residents. By early January, that fire was contained – but only after burning about 76,000 hectares of the park and surrounding areas.

Then, on January 27, lightning strikes in the west ignited four fires that eventually merged, burning through the entire Victoria Range and some rural properties.

The full extent of damage is not yet known. But it’s already clear the fires have been devastating. They burned much of the same areas affected by the 2006 wildfires in the east and 2013 fires in the west, as well as long-unburned areas.

Combined, fires this big have not been observed in this landscape in the past 50 years.

What is the extent of the damage to the environment?

It’s difficult to determine how much of the park has burned so far this summer, because the shaded area on the state emergency map extends beyond the park’s borders. But a rough, conservative estimate suggests at least 110,000 hectares of the 168,000 hectare park has burned since December. This is a deeply troubling scenario.

The Grampians is an isolated landscape – an “island” of native vegetation surrounded by a sea of agricultural land. So animals can’t easily migrate from other parts of Victoria to repopulate the area. Recovery largely depends on the landscape’s own ability to regenerate after fire.

Populations of small carnivorous marsupials often peak in areas that haven’t burned for 10–20 years.

So for many species, most of their habitat has been lost to fire. This includes endangered mammals such as the smoky mouse, heath mouse, brush-tailed rock wallaby, southern brown bandicoot and long-nosed potoroo. These species in particular will need considerable help for the next few years.

Recovery will happen over time

Many animals likely perished in the blaze and more will die in coming months.

Unfortunately, most native small mammals struggle to survive in freshly burned habitats. Fire depletes their food sources and strips away the vegetation that provides cover and protection from predators.

But there is hope. Our previous research shows some animals do survive. These survivors can eventually breed, sparking the slow recovery of the landscape and helping reestablish populations over the next decade or two.

The rate of recovery will be driven by rainfall. So if drought hits, recovery will be slow. But if we have wet years, recovery will accelerate.

Many native plants in the national park are more resilient to fire than the animals, so recover faster. Native heathland plants such as Australian grass trees have evolved in the presence of fire and often reshoot pretty quickly. Seeds also germinate after fires. But it takes a few years after the plants come back before many native animal species fully recover.

So the first few years after fire are usually tough for native species. From a conservation perspective this is manageable in a patchy landscape — where some areas burned recently and others haven’t burned in decades. However, the current situation is different. This year, most of the landscape burned and almost no long-unburned habitat remains.

What are the threats?

The main challenge to recovery in the coming months and years is introduced species, especially foxes and cats. Foxes are particularly problematic, because they are drawn to recently burned areas where hunting is much easier.

To give native mammals a fighting chance, it is essential to ramp up fox management efforts for at least the next year. This will allow surviving native mammals time to recover and for vegetation to regrow, providing necessary cover.

In addition, Parks Victoria and the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action are erecting artificial shelters in ecologically sensitive areas. These provide temporary refuge for animals, giving them a better chance to evade predators.

What about the role of climate change?

In recent decades, the Grampians have experienced a general decline in rainfall, coupled with a significant increase in wildfires since the early 2000s.

We’re now witnessing a cycle where large fires are followed by droughts, and then wet periods such as the recent La Niña years.

During these wetter periods, vegetation flourishes. But when the inevitable dry spells return, that vegetation dries out, creating ideal conditions for wildfires. So the good years, while offering relief to the landscape, are setting the stage for the next fire. This leaves the landscape constantly vulnerable.

What can people do to help?

Fire is a natural process – albeit one increasingly driven by climate change. As climate change worsens, landscapes like the Grampians will face more frequent, large wildfires.

We should approach our natural landscapes with care, acknowledging climate change is fundamentally altering how these ecosystems function.

The best action we can take is to pressure governments to seriously address climate change and implement meaningful solutions.

John White, Associate Professor in Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Victorian government decision to allow dingo culling in the state’s east until 2028 has reignited debate over what has been dubbed Australia’s most controversial animal.

Animals Australia, an animal welfare group, has filed proceedings in the Supreme Court of Victoria, challenging the decision. The case is due to be heard this year.

Announcing the legal action, the group said the eradication program targeted a unique native animal at risk of extinction, and ignored pleas from Traditional Owners who “treasure the dingo as a totem species”.

The controversy raises a few thorny questions. Are dingoes an important native species or an agricultural pest? And what is the right balance between protecting the species, and protecting the interests of farmers?

What’s this all about?

Dingoes are listed as vulnerable in Victoria. This means the species faces a high risk of extinction in the wild over the medium term.

Dingoes are also protected under Victoria’s Wildlife Act – unless a special order is made to declare them “unprotected”. To date, these unprotection orders have been made when authorities deem it necessary to prevent dingoes from killing livestock.

An unprotection order means a person can legally kill dingoes in certain areas of private and public land, by trapping, poisoning or shooting.

Since around 2010, a succession of unprotection orders have allowed dingoes to be killed in various parts of Victoria. The unprotection order now being challenged came into effect on October 1 last year and will continue until January 1, 2028.

Announcing the decision, Victoria’s Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos says the government was:

striking the right balance between protecting our vulnerable dingo populations while giving farmers the ability to protect their livestock, and we will regularly engage to ensure settings continue to achieve this balance.

Dingoes are not ‘wild dogs’

DNA studies suggest dingoes have been in Australia for between 4,600 and 18,000 years. Often wrongly described as “wild dogs”, they are actually descended from south Asian wolves.

Adding to the complications, it can be hard to distinguish between a wild dog and a dingo without DNA testing.

Dingoes were once widespread across Victoria but are now extinct across most of the state, save for two populations in the state’s north and east.

Conservationists and scientists fear the extended order in eastern Victoria may push dingoes to local extinction

The experience in north-west Victoria offers a cautionary tale. There, under a dingo unprotection order, the population dropped to as few as 40 individuals. The local dingo population was deemed “critically low and at risk of extinction”, prompting the government to reinstate dingo protections.

In eastern Victoria, the dingo population is estimated at between 2,640 and 8,800.

However in September last year, before the unprotection order in eastern Victoria came into effect, Nationals Member for Gippsland, Tim Bull, claimed 1,500 dingoes were already being killed in the region each year by farmers and others.

If those figures are correct, it suggests extending the unprotection order until 2028 will devastate the dingo population in eastern Victoria.

A decline in dingo populations is not just a concern for the species itself – it will have knock-on effects.

Dingoes are apex predators and research shows they are central to how ecosystems function. They can help control introduced predators such as foxes, feral cats and rabbits. This benefits native animals and plants.

Is the balance right?

Given the risks to dingo populations and the broader environment, it’s pertinent to ask if the government decision swings too far towards protecting agricultural production.

One report suggests within Victoria’s 16 “wild dog management zones” in the 2022–23 financial year, there were more than 1.7 million head of livestock. Of these, 1,455 were confirmed killed by dingoes. While understandably of concern to farmers, this nonetheless represents a tiny proportion of total stock numbers.

The number of sheep killed by dingoes is also only a fraction of the 14.6 million currently farmed in Victoria. Sheep are not at risk of extinction.

These numbers suggest the government has not struck the right balance between protecting livestock and ensuring dingo populations survive.

Considering the rights of Traditional Owners

When weighing up an unprotection order, a minister must consider how it affects the rights of Traditional Owners.

In 2023, when deliberating over whether to make an unprotection order in eastern Victoria, the Victorian government stated that for Aboriginal people:

• dingoes are part of their living cultural heritage

• the loss of a dingo is akin to the loss of a family member

• the dingo helps maintain connection to Country

• some have a totemic and kinship relationship with the dingo.

The government said while the order would limit Aboriginal people’s rights, this was justified when taking other factors into account.

The court will decide

Animal protection group Animals Australia has filed proceedings in the Supreme Court of Victoria, challenging the lawfulness and validity of the unprotection order. Court documents are not yet publicly available.

Australia does not have a single and consistent animal welfare and protection regime. Instead, protections are fractured between the states. That is why the current challenge to dingo culling is limited to Victoria, even though culling takes place in other states. This illustrates the difficulty in using the law to protect animals at a national level.

This challenge is part of a broader push to redefine the relationship between humans and animals through what’s known as animal law. In recent years, animal advocates have used various aspects of the law to challenge the gassing of pigs before they are slaughtered, and recreational duck shooting.

The current case is an important test for how the law balances the needs of humans and animals – and in particular, how much harm is deemed “necessary” at law to protect commercial profit and livelihood.

Danielle Ireland-Piper, Associate Professor, ANU National Security College, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Our cars sit unused most of the time. If you have an electric vehicle, you might leave it charging at home or work after driving it. But there’s another step you could take. If you have a bidirectional charger, you can set it to sell power back to the grid when demand is high.

Fewer than ten people across Australia actually do this, because the technology – known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) – is very new. To date, it only works with a single car model (Nissan LEAF) and a single charger (Wallbox Quasar 1). We’ve estimated the number of users based on sales of this charger. The chargers are expensive and there’s a thicket of regulations to navigate.

But that could soon change. Last year, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen announced new Australian standards and communications protocols for bidirectional chargers in a bid to make it mainstream. Cheaper EVs and bidirectional chargers will make this more appealing.

If it takes off, V2G could become extremely useful to the power grid as a way to release power as required and stabilise the grid against fluctuations.

This week, Australia’s renewable energy agency released a V2G roadmap, which notes widespread uptake could “materially reduce electricity costs for consumers and accelerate national emissions reduction”.

To understand why people are using the technology and the challenges to do so, we interviewed five early adopters from New South Wales and South Australia. Our findings are released today.

Setting up V2G isn’t easy

Our interviewees reported a long, complex journey to set up V2G. These early adopters had no playbook to follow, so the process was one of trial and error.

Some relied on professional networks or social media groups to gather information. They spent significant time and energy finding electricians, installers and charger manufacturers to set up their systems. Strata approvals were required. They also had to negotiate with power retailers and distributors.

Delays were common, especially when seeking approval from the energy distributor. Some interviewees reported delays of months to years.

Most interviewees had experience in a technical field such as engineering or technology. Some reported a significant learning curve, while others using new software from their retailer reported a smoother “set and forget” process.

So why do it? Our interviewees had several reasons, ranging from getting the most out of expensive assets (solar and the EV) to offsetting power bills entirely.

Four out of five interviewees reported making a small profit of about A$1,000 annually instead of a bill. Many wanted to be able to reduce dependence on the grid and reduce their environmental impact.

As one told us:

you originally think of it as a car you can also use to power your house. [But actually] it’s a house battery you can drive around.

Maximising savings

Typically, our interviewees plugged their car in at home during the day to charge from their rooftop solar. In the evenings when power prices peaked, they used an app to sell power back to the grid. This maximised their cost savings for charging the car battery and their earnings from the grid.

For instance, a V2G user was alerted by their energy retailer that power prices had spiked to over $20 per kilowatt hour – far above normal rates of 25–45 cents. They immediately set their car and home battery to sell power back to the grid. In two hours, they sold 28 kilowatt hours of power to the grid and made more than $560. As they told us: “I look forward to more such events.”

Our interviewees often monitored energy prices, solar output and car battery levels to optimise their output. To avoid their EV battery getting too low, they set a lower limit – say 30% of charge – after which their car would stop exporting power.

Is there a downside?

One of the main reasons people are sceptical of V2G is due to concern about accelerated degradation of the battery.

This is a common concern. But to date, there’s no consensus showing V2G shortens the battery life of EVs significantly. One recent study shows it increases degradation by 0.3% a year. But another showed V2G might actually extend battery life in some scenarios.

Last year, we surveyed more than 1,300 members of a motoring organisation about their view of V2G technology. We found battery warranty was a bigger concern than battery life. This is because most EV manufacturers other than Nissan don’t mention V2G in their battery warranties, leading drivers to believe they might void their warranty by using V2G.

Awareness of V2G technology is growing. The survey also found almost 40% of respondents were very or somewhat familiar with V2G, a jump from the 17% who reported familiarity in 2022. Among EV owners, almost 90% reported knowledge of the concept.

Moving beyond early adopters

For V2G to go mainstream, the process must be much simpler, cheaper and easier to set up.

To accelerate uptake, reliable, accessible information is essential.

Expanding government incentive programs to include bidirectional chargers would cut the upfront cost and make it more accessible.

Even within the EV supply chain, knowledge of V2G is limited. Car dealerships will need to know which models work with V2G.

Electricians may need specific training to install and maintain these chargers.

EVs are falling in price as manufacturers vie for market share and cheaper options become available. V2G capabilities might help boost sales for competing car companies.

As more motorists switch to EVs, interest in V2G will increase. While V2G can boost the appeal of EVs, there are others, such as Vehicle-to-Home (using your car to power your home during blackouts or to save money) and Vehicle-to-Load (using your EV to run power tools or appliances).

Each of these can help consumers get more value from the vehicles parked in driveways and garages.

Scott Dwyer, Research Director, Energy Futures, University of Technology Sydney; Jaime Comber, Senior Research Consultant in Energy Futures, University of Technology Sydney, and Kriti Nagrath, Research Principal in Energy Futures, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jumping spiders – one of the largest spider families – get their name from the extraordinary jumps they make to hunt prey, to navigate and also to evade predators.

Male jumping spiders also jump to escape from cannibalistic females and competing males. So they are under tremendous pressure to jump efficiently and rapidly.

We studied the jumping abilities of miniature male and female Australian peacock spiders. We found that the males – incredibly light creatures, weighing just 2 milligrams – have the highest acceleration among any known jumping spider.

Our study is the first to explore and identify differences in how male and female jumping spiders undertake their impressive jumps. It’s now published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Unique hydraulics

Jumping is an energetically “expensive” movement strategy. To perform it, animals have to launch themselves from a surface by coordinating the movement of numerous body parts.

Some invertebrates, like ants, jump with the help of their muscles. Others, like fleas, use energy stored in internal structures that are rapidly released to trigger a leap.

Jumping spiders are different – they use a unique semi-hydraulic system. They don’t have muscles to extend their legs and power the jumps. Instead, they extend their legs by increasing the pressure of the haemolymph (fluid analogous to blood in invertebrates) in their legs, which triggers the jump.

Peacock spiders are well known for the elaborate courtship display males carry out to court females. It has captured the attention of biologists and non-scientific audiences alike. The display includes extending and waving their third pair of legs and opening the colourful flap-like extensions on the abdomen.

The quantitative description of jumping movements, known as jump kinematics, has only been conducted for four of the 6,000+ jumping spider species known worldwide. On top of this, scientists have never investigated differences in jump dynamics in male and female spiders.

Because male and female peacock spiders differ strongly in size from each other, they present a unique opportunity to identify sex-specific differences in jump kinematics.

Spiders on campus

We studied the Australian splendid peacock spider (Maratus splendens) found both on the Macquarie University campus in Sydney and in the surrounding area.

The females weighed more than twice as much as males, and the heaviest female was 6.6 times heavier than the lightest male. We scanned male and female specimens using micro-computed tomography and carried out a 3D reconstruction to determine the centre of mass of each sex.

We then filmed the jumps of male and female spiders using a high-speed camera, and tracked the animals’ centre of mass during each jump. From this, we measured a suite of kinematic measures, including jump take-off angle, acceleration, and g-force.

We found that these lighter male peacock spiders have a distinct jump choreography and kinematics compared to the heavier females.

High, fast and steep

We discovered that the splendid peacock spiders accelerated at 127.8 m/s² – more than twice as fast as the previous highest known acceleration in jumping spiders.

This rapid acceleration may have evolved to escape from predators or to track and capture fast-moving prey in their natural environments.

Though the lighter males accelerated faster, after controlling for body mass we found that acceleration in males was slower compared to females. Males and females experienced accelerations equivalent to 13.03 times and 12.5 times the force of gravity, respectively.

Interestingly, the jumps of males were at a steeper angle than those of females, which is likely an adaptation to rapidly escape from females and other males.

A question that remained was which of the four pairs of legs powered this rapid jump. To figure this out, we tracked multiple joints on all of the spiders’ legs throughout the jump.

We found that the joint on the third pair of legs had an extremely acute angle before jumping, and rapidly changed to something like a straight angle after attaining maximum acceleration. Our results show that it’s the third pair of legs that propels the splendid peacock spider into its impressive jumps.

Ajay Narendra, Associate Professor of Insect Neuroethology, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For a long time, it seemed refugee law had little relevance to people fleeing the impacts of climate change and disasters.

Nearly 30 years ago, the High Court of Australia, for instance, remarked that people fleeing a “natural disaster” or “natural catastrophes” could not be refugees.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada had said “victims of natural disasters” couldn’t be refugees “even when the home state is unable to provide assistance”.

It was back in 2007 that I first started considering whether international refugee law could apply to people escaping the impacts of drought, floods or sea-level rise. At the time, I also thought refugee law had limited application. For a start, most people seeking to escape natural hazards move within their own country and don’t cross an international border. That fact alone makes refugee law inapplicable.

Refugee law defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.

So one challenge was in classifying supposedly “natural” events as “persecution”, which requires an identifiable human actor.

It was also widely thought such events were indiscriminate and couldn’t target people on account of their race, religion or one of the other five grounds. This is partly why some advocates called for an overhaul of the Refugee Convention to protect so-called “climate refugees”.

However, we have learned a lot in the intervening years.

A new approach

It’s become clear the impacts of climate change and disasters interact with other social, economic and political drivers of displacement to create risks for people.

This is what some legal experts have called the “hazard-scape”.

And the impacts of climate change and disasters are not indiscriminate – they affect people in different ways. Factors such as age, gender, disability and health can intersect to create particular risk of persecution for particular individuals or communities.

For example, a person who is a member of a minority may find their government is withholding disaster relief from them. Or, climate or disaster impacts may end up exacerbating inter-communal conflicts, putting certain people at heightened risk of persecution.

Now, we have a much more nuanced understanding of things. Refugee law (and complementary protection under human rights law) do have a role to play in assessing the claims of people affected by climate change.

No such thing as a ‘climate refugee’ under the law

There isn’t a legal category of “climate refugee” – a popular label that has caused confusion. However, there are certainly people facing heightened risks because of the impacts of climate change or disasters. These impacts can generate or exacerbate a risk of persecution or other serious harm.

This means that when it comes to the law, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Instead, by applying existing legal principles and approaches, it’s clear some people impacted by climate change already qualify for refugee status or complementary protection (under human rights law).

One instructive case, heard in New Zealand, involved a deaf and mute man from Tuvalu who was seeking to avoid deportation on humanitarian grounds. He was found to be at heightened risk if a disaster struck because he could not hear evacuation or other warnings. He also didn’t have anyone who could sign for him or ensure his safety.

In another case, an older couple from Eritrea were found to be especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of “their elderly status and lack of family support”, in circumstances where they would be exposed to “conditions of abject poverty, underdevelopment and likely displacement”. This, in addition to other conditions in Eritrea, meant that there was “a real chance they would suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by way of starvation and destitution”. They were granted complementary protection.

A practical way forward

New Zealand has led the way on showing how existing international refugee and human rights law can provide protection in the context of climate change and disasters. It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up.

With colleagues from Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, I’ve helped create a practical toolkit on international protection for people displaced across borders in the context of climate change and disasters.

This is a detailed resource for legal practitioners and decision-makers tasked with assessing international protection claims involving the impacts of climate change and disasters.

It shows when, why and how existing law can apply to claims where climate change or disasters play a role.

Inaccurate but popular labels aren’t helpful

Inaccurate but popular labels – such as “climate refugee” – have caused confusion and arguably hampered a consistent, principled approach.

Some judges and decision-makers assessing refugee claims may be spooked by “climate change”. They may think they need specialist scientific expertise to grapple with it.

The new toolkit shows why international protection claims arising in the context of climate change and disasters should be assessed in the same way as all other international protection claims. That is, by applying conventional legal principles and considering the facts of each case.

The toolkit stresses that it’s important to assess the impacts of climate change and disasters within a broader social context.

That includes examining underlying systemic issues of discrimination or inequity that may impact on how particular people experience harm.

The toolkit also shows why a cumulative assessment of risk is necessary, especially since risks may emerge over time, rather than as the result of a single, extreme event.

And it emphasises the need to look at the “hazard-scape” as a whole in assessing the future risk of harm to a person.

We hope the toolkit helps to debunk some common misunderstandings and charts a clear way forward. Our ultimate ambition is that people seeking international protection in the context of climate change and disasters will have their claims assessed in a consistent, fair and principled way.

Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

About 400 kilometres northwest of Sydney, just south of Dubbo, lies a large and interesting body of rock formed around 215 million years ago by erupting volcanoes.

Known as the Toongi deposit, this site is rich in so-called rare earths: a collection of 16 metallic elements essential for modern technologies from electric cars to solar panels and mobile phones.

Efforts are under way to mine this deposit, but the demand for rare earths in the coming decades is likely to be enormous.

To find more, we need to understand how and why these deposits form. Our latest research on Australian volcanoes, published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, shows how tiny crystals formed inside volcanoes offer clues about the formation of rare earth deposits – and how we can find more of them.

Rare earths and the melting mantle

The formation of rare earth element deposits begins with partial melting of Earth’s mantle which lies deep below the crust.

Earth’s mantle is dominated by minerals that are rich in iron and magnesium. These minerals also contain small amounts of other elements, including the rare earth elements.

When the mantle melts to form magma, the rare earth elements move easily into the magma. If the amount of melting is small, the magma has a higher proportion of rare earth elements than if the amount of melting is large – for example, at a mid-ocean ridge where vast amounts of magma rush to the surface and form new oceanic crust.

As this magma migrates towards Earth’s surface, it cools down and new minerals begin to form. These minerals are mostly composed of oxygen, silicon, calcium, aluminium, magnesium and iron.

This means the leftover magma contains a higher concentration of rare earth elements. This residual liquid will continue to ascend through the crust until it solidifies or erupts at the surface.

From Greenland to central New South Wales

If the magma cools and crystallises in the crust, it can form rocks containing high levels of critical metals. One place where this has happened is the Gardar Igneous Complex in Southern Greenland, which contains several rare earth element deposits.

In central New South Wales in Australia, magmas enriched in rare earth elements erupted at the surface. They are collectively given the geological name Benolong Volcanic Suite.

Within this suite is the Toongi deposit – a part of the ancient volcanic plumbing system. This is an “intrusion” of congealed magma containing very high levels of critical metals.

Magmas enriched in rare earth elements are uncommon, and those that are enriched enough to be productively mined are rarer still, with only a few known examples worldwide. Even with all we know about how magmas form, there is much more work to be done to better understand and predict where magmas enriched in critical metals can be found.

Crystals record volcanic history

You may have wondered how scientists know so much about what happens kilometres (sometimes tens of kilometres) below our feet. We learn a lot about the interior of the Earth from studying rocks which make their way to the surface.

The processes that occur in a magma as it rises from Earth’s interior leave clues in the chemical composition of minerals which crystallise along the way. One mineral in particular – clinopyroxene – is particularly effective at preserving these clues, like a tiny crystal ball.

Fortunately, there are crystals of clinopyroxene within many of the rocks in the Benolong Volcanic Suite. This allowed us to examine the history of the non-mineralised rocks and compare it with the mineralised Toongi intrusion.

What’s different about the rocks at Toongi

We found that the Toongi rocks have two important differences.

First, the clinopyroxenes in the non-mineralised volcanic suite contain a lot of rare earth elements. This tells us that for most rocks in the volcanic suite, critical metals were “locked up” within clinopyroxene, rather than remaining in the residual melt.

In contrast, clinopyroxene crystals from Toongi show low levels of rare earth elements. Here, these elements are contained in a different mineral, eudialyte, which can be mined for rare earth elements.

Second, and most interesting, the clinopyroxenes from Toongi have an internal crystal structure that resembles an hourglass shape. This is caused by different elements residing in some parts of the crystal. It’s an exciting observation because it suggests rapid crystallisation occurred due the release of gas while the crystals were forming.

In contrast, we found no evidence of rapid crystallisation in the rocks without high levels of rare earths.

Our work means we can now track the composition and zoning of clinopyroxene in other extinct volcanoes in Australia and beyond to find out which ones may accumulate relevant rare earth element deposits.

This study adds another piece of the puzzle for understanding how critical metals accumulate, and how we can find them to power green, renewable energy sources for a sustainable future.

Brenainn Simpson, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland; Carl Spandler, Associate Professor, University of Adelaide, and Teresa Ubide, ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Igneous Petrology/Volcanology, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

January 2025 was the hottest on record – a whole 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels. If many climate-watchers expected the world to cool slightly this year thanks to the natural “La Niña” phenomena, the climate itself didn’t seem to get the memo. In fact, January 2025’s record heat highlights how human-driven ocean warming is increasingly overwhelming these natural climate patterns.

La Niña is a part of the El Niño southern oscillation, a climate fluctuation that slowly sloshes vast bodies of water and heat between different ocean basins and disrupts weather patterns around the world. El Niño was first identified and christened by Peruvian fishermen who noticed a dismal drop in their catch of sardines that coincided with much warmer than usual coastal waters.

El Niño is now well known to be part of a grander climate reorganisation that also has a reverse cool phase, La Niña. As vast swathes of the eastern Pacific cool down during La Niña, this has knock on effects for atmospheric weather patterns, shifting the most vigorous storms from the central Pacific to the west and disrupting the prevailing winds across the globe.

This atmospheric reaction also helps to amplify the sea surface temperature changes. Typically, La Niña will lower the global temperature by a couple of tenths of a degree Celsius.

In 2024 the Pacific swung from moderate El Niño conditions to a weak La Niña. However, this time around, it’s apparently not enough to stop the world warming – even temporarily. So what’s different this time?

Each La Niña cycle is unique

Scientists aren’t entirely surprised. Each El Niño and La Niña cycle is unique. Following a surprisingly lengthy “triple dip” La Niña starting in 2020, the El Niño that developed in 2023 was also unusual, struggling to stand out against globally warm seas. The switch to a weak La Niña has only slightly cooled a narrow band along the equatorial Pacific, while surrounding waters have remained unusually hot.

Recent research shows human caused warming of the ocean is accelerating – so a year on year rise in temperature is itself getting bigger – and this is dominating to an ever greater extent over El Niño and other natural oscillations in the climate. This means that even during La Niña – when equatorial eastern Pacific waters are cooler than normal – the rest of the world’s oceans have remained remarkably warm.

More carbon, less reflection

There is also a sense of inevitability as greenhouse gas levels continue to grow, even despite the demise of El Niño. During El Niño years, the land tends to absorb less carbon from the atmosphere as large continental areas, such as parts of South America, temporarily dry out causing less plant growth and more carbon-emitting plant decay.

La Niña tends to have the opposite effect. In the strong La Niña of 2011, so much extra rain fell on the normally dry lands of Australia and parts of South America and southeast Asia that sea levels dropped as the land held on to this excess moisture borrowed temporarily from the ocean. This meant more carbon was taken from the atmosphere to feed extra plant growth. But despite the switch to La Niña, the rate of rise in atmospheric carbon in 2024 and January 2025 remains above the already high levels of previous years.

To this we can also add the diminishing effects of particle pollution from industry, big ships and other sources of “aerosols”, which in some regions had added a reflective haze in the atmosphere meaning the world absorbed less sunlight. Clean air policies introduced over time have made the world less smoggy, but they also seem to have caused clouds to reflect less sunlight back to space, adding to global heating.

As industrial activity continues to spew greenhouse gases into the air, while air cleansed of particle pollution causes more sunlight to reach the ground, this growing heating effect is beginning to drown out natural fluctuations, tipping the balance toward record warmth and worsening hot, dry and wet extremes.

The long-term trend is clear

But, just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, a single month is not reflective of the overall trajectory of climate change. Changing weather patterns from week to week can rapidly shift temperatures especially over big landmasses, which warm up and cool down more quickly than the oceans (it takes a long time to boil up water for your vegetables but not long to super heat an empty pan).

Large areas of Europe, Canada and Siberia experienced much less cold weather than is normal for January (by up to about 7°C). Parts of South America, Africa, Australia and Antarctica also experienced above average temperatures. Along with the balmy oceans, this all contributed to an unexpectedly warm start to 2025.

While this particular warm January isn’t necessarily cause for immediate alarm, it suggests natural cooling phases may become less effective at temporarily offsetting the impact of rising greenhouse gas levels on global temperatures. And to limit the scale of the inevitable, ensuing climate change, there is a clear, urgent need to rapidly and massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and to properly account for the true cost of our lifestyles on societies and the ecosystems that underpin them.

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Richard P. Allan, Professor of Climate Science, University of Reading

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has described so-called sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as a “game changer”. As she announced government support for a series of airport expansions, she said that the fuel “can reduce carbon emissions from flying by 70%”.

This number is misleading. Optimistic estimates do suggest that fully replacing fossil jet fuel with its sustainable alternative could lead to total savings of around 70%. But it will be hard to produce enough SAF to make a difference on that sort of scale. Even if the UK meets its ambitious targets, an annual saving of 7% by 2030 is more plausible.

SAF is synthetic liquid fuel derived from something other than fossil fuels. These inputs have to be processed into a liquid that can be burned safely while also storing a lot of energy for its weight, since minimising weight is crucial. This is why long-haul electric battery-powered planes are unlikely to take off any time soon.

The UK classifies three major pathways for creating sustainable aviation fuel. It can be derived from oils or fats, including used cooking oil or tallow. It can come from other sorts of material, such as municipal solid waste, agricultural residues, or sewage. Or it can be made from hydrogen and captured carbon using renewable electricity.

SAF can also be produced from bioenergy crops, and products such as palm oil. However the UK won’t certify it as sustainable, due to concerns about land use and impacts on wildlife.

Emissions that would have occurred anyway

Burning SAF actually emits a similar amount of CO₂ to fossil jet fuel. Instead, most savings come from how we account for the waste and renewable energy that is used to produce it.

SAF fundamentally relies on assumptions that if waste or energy crops were not used to make this fuel, they would be incinerated, would degrade, or would in some way release their embodied carbon anyway. In the case of fuel derived from renewable energy and captured carbon, it assumes that carbon came from the atmosphere in the first place. This allows these emissions to be deducted from the total impact of SAF, leading to lower emissions than conventional aviation fuel.

Is sustainable aviation fuel even sustainable?

Estimates of how much greenhouse gas SAF could cut vary greatly due to the many different ways it can be produced, and the complexities of accounting for emissions across the entire life cycle from waste, to fuel production, to plane engine. A 2023 review by the Royal Society illustrates this nicely. It found SAF could at best produce effectively negative emissions (a 111% reduction), while at worst it could be more carbon intensive than fossil kerosene jet fuel (a 69% increase).

While policy incentives are likely to encourage increased production, there remain serious concerns that will need to be addressed before SAF can become a serious competitor for conventional jet fuel. There are hard limits to the amount of used cooking oil available for instance, and the use of other feedstocks is still in its infancy.

Meanwhile any renewable energy used to make the fuel will have to compete with growing demand from electric vehicles, AI data centres and more. And there are big worries the industry simply won’t be profitable enough to attract initial capital investment, let alone take on its well-established rival.

UK SAF production

Coming into effect in January, the UK’s SAF mandate sets legal obligations for aviation fuel suppliers in the UK to progressively increase proportions of sustainable fuel, from 2% of total jet fuel in 2025 to 10% in 2030, and 22% in 2040.

This is one of a growing number of commitments globally, including RefuelEU, and the US SAF grand challenge, which seek to increase demand and encourage more investment in production.

As of 2023, 97% of the UK’s supply is derived from used cooking oil, with the rest from food waste. Only 8% of this cooking oil is sourced from the UK, with most being imported from China and Malaysia. The UK also comprises 16% of the global SAF market, despite representing only 1% of total passengers.

Currently, the only commercial producer of SAF in the UK is the Phillips 66 Humber Refinery which processes used cooking oil. The previous government allocated £135 million of funding to nine projects, aiming to have five plants under construction by 2025. Despite several projects selecting sites, at the time of writing none appear to be under construction.

In an industry with razor-thin profit margins, SAF remains considerably more expensive than conventional aviation fuel. With potential producers filing for bankruptcy and companies including Shell pulling out due to profitability concerns, the market is looking rocky.

A 7% saving is more plausible

Let us assume that Rachel Reeves’ 70% saving is deliverable if fossil jet fuel was fully replaced with SAF. That’s optimistic in itself, but not beyond the realms of possibility.

Getting hold of that much sustainable fuel is less plausible, however – the total demand for jet fuel in the UK is more than ten times the current global production of SAF. But let’s assume that the rocky global market can deliver the UK’s ambitious demand of 10% SAF use by 2030.

Reeves’ figure then becomes an optimistic value of 7% savings across the UK industry. If we then correct for anticipated growth of passenger numbers, assuming plans for airport expansion, those savings are likely to vanish.

While SAF has a role to play in decarbonisation, growth sits in clear opposition to its impacts and potential. If the UK has any hope of meeting its climate targets, it should instead be seeking alternatives to flying where possible.

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Ben Purvis, Research Associate, Sustainability Assessment, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Some long-haul flights connecting Europe and Asia are emitting 40% more CO₂ since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, my new study shows. The spike is largely due to airspace closures above conflict zones which are forcing airlines to seek alternative routes, significantly increasing flight times. Longer flights consume more fuel and increase the operating costs for airlines, quite apart from their contribution to climate change.

The research I led with colleagues highlights how conflicts contribute to climate change in unexpected ways. Understanding this is crucial for tackling aviation’s environmental footprint.

The war in Ukraine closed the country’s airspace and limited access to the airspace of the Russian Federation and Belarus. This amounts to the biggest closure of airspace since the cold war, spanning 18 million km².

Airlines that previously flew in Russian or Ukrainian airspace on routes between Europe and Asia, North America and Asia, and North America and the Middle East now take significant detours. For example, Finnair’s flight AY73 from Helsinki to Tokyo now covers an additional 3,131 kilometres, extending flight times by up to 3.5 hours. North American flights to Asia have been rerouted over the Arctic and Central Asia.

Safety concerns and geopolitical sanctions have forced airlines to carefully navigate around restricted zones.

The situation is further complicated by restrictions in other conflict regions – including the Middle East, where the airspaces of Syria, Yemen and Iraq are also considered no-fly zones for many airlines. The global aviation map has been redrawn, forcing airlines to adapt quickly to a new and challenging reality.

This has been accompanied by significant costs, both financially and to the climate. We analysed 14 long-haul routes between Europe and Asia that were affected by airspace restrictions and operated by three European airlines: Finnair, LOT Polish and Lufthansa.

The findings are striking: rerouted flights burn an additional 23 to 28.5 tonnes of fuel per journey, releasing an extra 72 to 90 metric tonnes of CO₂. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of several cars for a single flight.

Airlines have also reported significant operating cost increases due to the extra flight hours, including higher fuel consumption, air navigation charges and crew salary increases. Our analysis showed that on certain routes between Europe and Asia, costs have risen by between 19% and 39%, while emissions have increased by between 18% and 40%, depending on the airline.

On routes from Warsaw to Beijing, Warsaw to Tokyo and Warsaw to Seoul, LOT Polish Airlines has reported an increase of 23% in average aircraft operating costs following flight restrictions. CO₂ emissions on these routes have increased by 24% and ticket prices have also risen.

Finnair, which historically relied on Russian airspace for efficient Europe-Asia connections, appears to be the most affected carrier. Following flight restrictions, aircraft operating costs on the routes from Helsinki to Shanghai, Helsinki to Tokyo and Helsinki to Seoul have risen by 39%, while average CO₂ emissions on these routes have increased by 40%.

Our findings shed new light on the massive carbon footprint of war, which is often overlooked in climate policy. Using a forecasting model with specialised software, we found that continued avoidance of the airspaces of Russia and Ukraine could increase all aviation-related CO₂ emissions globally by up to 29% in 2025, compared with 2022.

Aviation already accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions, and this figure is expected to grow as air travel expands.

Our findings demonstrate that the need to decarbonise transport cannot be separated from broader geopolitical issues. As wars and conflicts reshape airspace availability, they also worsen aviation’s carbon footprint. It’s not just the airline industry that bears these costs – we all do, in the form of rising temperatures and a changing climate.

What action needs to be taken?

While the challenges are significant, there are solutions.

Upgrading airline fleets with more fuel-efficient aircraft, such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787, can help to reduce CO₂ emissions by roughly 20%–25% compared with older aircraft models, such as the Boeing 777-200ER or Airbus A330-200.

Optimising flight paths using advanced air traffic management systems could help too. These systems, allow aircraft to choose the shortest and most efficient paths and can reduce unnecessary detours.

International agreements to manage airspace collectively during times of conflict can keep essential flight corridors open and ensure airlines avoid inefficient rerouting.

Airlines are investing in sustainable aviation fuels, which emits less than traditional kerosene – but insufficient supplies, high costs and other challenges make this an expensive and partial solution. With no viable low-carbon alternatives for aircraft, reducing air travel should be the priority.

As researchers, we see our findings as a call to action. By understanding the environmental consequences of conflict, we can work towards a more sustainable future for aviation and the planet.

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Viktoriia Ivannikova, Assistant Professor in Aviation Management, Dublin City University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Water bills are going up in England and Wales, even after the series of scandals around water companies. Last year water firms paid £158 million in fines following a record-breaking number of sewage dumps in rivers and seas.

Severn Trent Water and United Utilities alone reportedly made 1,374 illegal sewage spills over two years. (Both companies took issue with the analysis that led to this figure but acknowledged concerns about sewage discharges.)

There have been other notable incidents. Whistleblowers have told of water companies that fail to treat legally required amounts of sewage and divert that sewage to public waterways. To add to the disgrace, water companies have generally failed to invest enough in the UK’s water infrastructure.

Research suggests that governments have been pressured to become more “business-like”. This has given rise to the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) to run important public services, such as water, transport and even prisons. Water companies in England and Wales are private companies that bid for their contracts, while in Scotland, the water provider is a public organisation.

While other findings show that PPPs can support important public service needs, such as public health, research by my colleagues and I examines a consistent pattern in UK PPP scandals and wrongdoing. Over the past decade and a half, billions of pounds of taxpayers’ funds are unaccounted for. This appears to be largely because private interests have been prioritised over public needs.

As a researcher of PPP wrongdoing, the reasons for many of the scandals seem obvious. My colleagues and I studied parliamentary inquiries and reports that have scrutinised PPP wrongdoing. This research can tell us a great deal about the UK’s predicament with regard to the failings in the water industry.

The first lesson is that, in general, many PPPs are motivated actually to reduce the quality of the services they deliver. One parliamentary inquiry found that contracting services out from the public to the private sector had become a “transactional process” where cost-cutting is favoured and the “knock-on cost” to users results in a lower-quality public service.

Other findings showed that companies regularly reduced the quality of a service to maximise profits. One way was to bid for a public service at a low price. A Public Accounts Committee member observed that companies coming in with low quotes for contracts can end up damaging services by under-investing in them.

Another example is Sodexo – a private prison management provider. It cut employee numbers by around 200 and a subsequent BBC Panorama documentary detailed escapes and widespread drug use in the prisons they managed and also criticised a lack of safety for both prisoners and prison officers. Sodexo acknowledged the programme had highlighted problems and said it would investigate, but added that there had been “positive actions and improvements” already.

Similar practices were observed at a children’s prison run by security firm G4S, where an officer was left with brain damage after an attack by inmates. G4S admitted liability for the officer’s injuries and agreed a settlement with him.

Pay the fine, it’s cheaper

The second lesson is it can be cost-effective to breach contracts and pay fines. Companies sometimes breach the terms of their public-private contracts because it’s in their economic interest. This even has a name – economists call it “efficiency breach”.

For instance, a parliamentary report found that between 2010 and 2016 G4S was fined 100 times for breaching contracts – paying out roughly £3 million. As one MP suggested, these fines compared to its profits are a “slap on the wrist”. The same has been said of water companies.

When observing the fines in comparison to the profitable contracts, it’s easy to posit what the motivations of many in the UK’s public service system are. In 2017, despite previous indictments of wrongdoing, G4S won £25 million of government contracts.

In 2020 the firm won another £300 million contract to run Wellingborough “mega-prison” in England. Despite some raised eyebrows, G4S said at the time it aimed to make the site a blueprint for “innovation, rehabilitation and modernisation” in the prison service.

Pay the shareholders, invest later

The third lesson is that shareholders are more important than long-term investments in a service. This is perhaps the most notable feature of the UK’s public service system, where a vast array of shareholders benefit from the profits made by PPPs. In one of the parliamentary reports we analysed, which details the collapse of the facilities management firm Carillion, it was clear that shareholders’ interests trumped good management and long-term investment.

As was noted in the report, despite Carillion’s collapse, the firm paid out £333 million more to shareholders than it generated in cash between 2012 and 2017. Often, this shareholder primacy can even go against a firm’s own employees rather than just the state and taxpayers. One MP noted that despite its pension scheme being in deficit, shareholders were still receiving dividends.

Often, shareholders are prioritised because of short-term thinking. These processes can lead to firms passing these bad practices down their supply chains.

The behaviour of water companies is suggestive of these dynamics. Since water companies have been privatised, they have loaded themselves up with debt (£64 billion) but paid out £78 billion to shareholders. Some 70% of these shareholders are “foreign investment firms, private equity, pension funds and businesses lodged in tax havens”.

So what should be done? There are plenty of ways to enhance and improve the UK’s PPP problems. The most obvious may be to renationalise public services and renew the quality of public services through New Deal-style investments. After all, this is what what most of the UK electorate wants.

There are other options. An innovative and exciting frontier is opening for businesses to recognise their environmental responsibilities – initiatives in New Zealand, India and Ecuador are giving the status of personhood to rivers and ecosystems, for example.

Outdoor fashion brand Patagonia has “the Earth” as its only shareholder, and hair and skincare brand Faith in Nature has appointed nature to its board. Imagine if the UK’s water companies had the rivers and seas represented.

In the end, only time will tell how water companies will be held accountable. But for the moment it’s the UK taxpayer and consumer paying the price.

G4S was approached about this article but declined to comment.

Daniel Fisher, Assistant Professor in Management, University of Sussex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Earth must have experienced something exceptional 10 million years ago. Our study of rock samples from the floor of the Pacific Ocean has found a strange increase in the radioactive isotope beryllium-10 during that time.

This finding, now published in Nature Communications, opens new pathways for geologists to date past events gleaned from deep within the oceans.

But the cause of the beryllium-10 anomaly remains unknown. Could it have been major shifts in global ocean currents, a dying star, or an interstellar collision?

Extremely slow rocks deep in the ocean

I am on a hunt for stardust on Earth. Previously, I’ve sifted through snow in Antarctica. This time, it was the depths of the ocean.

At a depth of about 5,000 metres, the abyssal zone of the Pacific Ocean has never seen light, yet something does still grow there.

Ferromanganese crusts – metallic underwater rocks – grow from minerals dissolved in the water slowly coming together and solidifying over extremely long time scales, as little as a few millimetres in a million years. (Stalactites and stalagmites in caves grow in a similar way, but thousands of times faster.)

This makes ferromanganese crusts ideal archives for capturing stardust over millions of years.

The age of these crusts can be determined by radiometric dating using the radioactive isotope beryllium-10. This isotope is continuously produced in the upper atmosphere when highly energetic cosmic rays strike air molecules. The strikes break apart the main components of our air – nitrogen and oxygen – into smaller fragments.

Both stardust and beryllium-10 eventually find their way into Earth’s oceans where they become incorporated into the growing ferromanganese crust.

One of the largest ferromanganese crusts was recovered in 1976 from the Central Pacific. Stored for decades at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hanover, Germany, a 3.7kg section of it became the subject of my analysis.

Much like tree rings reveal a tree’s age, ferromanganese crusts record their growth in layers over millions of years. Beryllium-10 undergoes radioactive decay really slowly, meaning it gradually breaks down over millions of years as it sits in the rocks.

As beryllium-10 decays over time, its concentration decreases in deeper, older sediment layers. Because the rate of decay is steady, we can use radioactive isotopes as natural stopwatches to discern the age and history of rocks – this is called radioactive dating.

A puzzling anomaly

After extensive chemical processing, my colleagues and I used accelerator mass spectrometry – an ultra-sensitive analytical technique for longer-lived radioactive isotopes – to measure beryllium-10 concentrations in the crust.

This time, my research took me from Canberra, Australia to Dresden, Germany, where the setup at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf was optimised for beryllium-10 measurements.

The results showed that the crust had grown only 3.5 centimetres over the past 10 million years and was more than 20 million years old.

However, before I could return to my search for stardust, I encountered an anomaly.

Initially, as I searched back in time, the beryllium-10 concentration declined as expected, following its natural decay pattern – until about 10 million years ago. At that point, the expected decrease halted before resuming its normal pattern around 12 million years ago.

This was puzzling: radioactive decay follows strict laws, meaning something must have introduced extra beryllium-10 into the crust at that time.

Scepticism is crucial in science. To rule out errors, I repeated the chemical preparation and measurements multiple times – yet the anomaly persisted. The analysis of different crusts from locations nearly 3,000km away gave the same result, a beryllium-10 anomaly around 10 million years ago. This confirmed that the anomaly was a real event rather than a local irregularity.

Ocean currents or exploding stars?

What could have happened on Earth to cause this anomaly 10 million years ago? We’re not sure, but there are a few options.

Last year, an international study revealed that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current – the main driver of global ocean circulation – intensified around 12 million years ago, influencing Antarctic ocean current patterns.

Could this beryllium-10 anomaly in the Pacific mark the beginning of the modern global ocean circulation? If ocean currents were responsible, beryllium-10 would be distributed unevenly on Earth with some samples even showing a lack of beryllium-10. New samples from all major oceans and both hemispheres would allow us to answer this question.

Another possibility emerged early last year. Astrophysicists demonstrated that a collision with a dense interstellar cloud could compress the heliosphere – the Sun’s protective shield against cosmic radiation – back to the orbit of Mercury. Without this barrier, Earth would be exposed to an increased cosmic ray flux, leading to an elevated global beryllium-10 production rate.

A near-Earth supernova explosion could also cause an increased cosmic ray flux leading to a beryllium-10 anomaly. Future research will explore these possibilities.

The discovery of such an anomaly is a windfall for geological dating. Various archives are used to investigate Earth’s climate, habitability and environmental conditions over different timescales.

To compare ice cores with sediments, ferromanganese crusts, speleothems (stalagmites and stalactites) and others, their timescales need to be synchronous. Independent time markers, such as Miyake events or the Laschamp excursion, are invaluable for aligning records thousands of years old. Now, we may have a corresponding time marker for millions of years.

Meanwhile, my search for stardust continues, but now keeping an eye out for new 10-million-year-old samples to further pin down the beryllium-10 anomaly. Stay tuned.

Dominik Koll, Honorary Lecturer, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We have a natural fascination with time – how landscapes have been carved over millennia, how our bodies grow and sag with age, how the stars traverse the sky each night. Scientists probe the layers beneath our feet to understand the secrets of our past. Geologists and palaeontologists sample ice, rock and fossils to reconstruct past climates and species and archaeologists pick through ancient “dustbins” (middens) in excavation sites to reimagine our historical dinner time.

Similarly, most living things produce records of their own existence in layered body tissues – often in the form of daily or yearly growth bands. The most familiar of these so-called biochronologies are tree rings, which form every year in response to seasonal cycles in temperature and rainfall.

Dendrochronology – the art of tree-ring counting – allows us to precisely date trees. Based on the rings in its trunk, a bristlecone pine in eastern California known as Methuselah is said to be the world’s oldest living thing at 4,856 years old.

It’s not just the number of rings, either – their width tells us whether the tree was thriving in a particular year, or suffering due to drought. Chemical compounds locked into the wood offer clues about atmospheric changes, including those produced by volcanic eruptions.

Let’s not not stop at trees – your own tooth cement, nails and hair are forming chemical and visual records of your own life experience right now, storing traces of food, drink and drugs you have consumed. They can also produce “stress marks” during trauma or pregnancy, when a mother literally breaks her own body tissues to grow and nourish her baby.

Elsewhere in the natural world, some of the more surprising examples of biochronologies include whale earwax, narwhal tusks, bird feathers and the bony plates (scutes) on turtle shells.

Recent studies, for instance, have applied forensic analyses of whale earwax to explore their stress levels during historic whaling days. Narwhal tusks, meanwhile, have helped explain how declining Arctic sea ice has affected their diet and exposure to pollution.

The importance of otoliths

In my lab, we work with aquatic animals – from fish scales and ear bones to squid eyes and beaks. Like decoding a biological black box, we analyse chemical constituents in the growth layers to reconstruct a detailed picture of the individual’s prior health, diet and movements.

Some biochronologies are more “fickle”, forming layers at unpredictable rates, including the eye lenses of fish and turtle scutes. Others, such as bird feathers, are shorter lived due to periodic moulting. Yet they all share the important feature of serial growth, producing valuable archives that we can probe to build a picture of the animal’s life.

Probably the best known biochronometer in the animal world – and my own personal obsession – is the fish otolith, or ear bone (Ancient Greek: oto is ear and líthos is stone). We humans have tiny ear stones (otoconia), whose primary function is to maintain balance, but fish otoliths are also crucial for hearing, as well as featuring specific properties that make them particularly valuable markers of biochronology.

Unlike “normal” bones, fish otoliths are composed of calcium carbonate crystals and are metabolically inert, meaning they never get broken down and rebuilt. Instead they keep growing – even during periods of starvation – producing daily and annual growth bands.

These beautiful crystalline structures are also highly resistant to degradation and vary in shape between species. This enables scientists to use a combination of “otolith atlases” and artificial intelligence to identify popular choices of fish from otoliths left behind in ancient human middens, as well as in the contemporary stomach contents or poop of predators such as seals, albatrosses and squid.

Otoliths have driven my research for almost two decades. I’ve been fascinated by animal migration and the ecological and evolutionary processes underpinning these long and dangerous journeys ever since taking a “movement ecology” class at the University of Edinburgh with the brilliant Professor Victoria Braithwaite in 2003.

I decided I wanted to track marine animals myself, and my lab now primarily uses otolith and eye lens chemistry to reconstruct fish habitat use and growth rates, and the temperatures they experienced through their lives. We are now also investigating how well these same structures track reproductive events, chronic stress and exposure to pollution.

And we are working with international teams to understand how hypoxia (low oxygen zones or “dead zones”) affect fish growth and reproduction. Ultimately, this data allows us to connect stressful events in a fish’s past to its lifetime health and survival, which is important for predicting a species’ persistence.

For example, a recent study used otolith-derived metabolic rates of Atlantic bluefin tuna to show their vulnerability to future climate change. Meanwhile in California, we used otolith chemistry to understand the impact of dams on salmon migration and survival, revealing that – on many rivers - dams have made it impossible for salmon to escape into the mountains during summer, which is essential for enabling them to resist the increasingly severe droughts afflicting the region.

Conservation

Fisheries managers read the rings on millions of otoliths each year to track individual cohorts and look for warning signs of overfishing, but I would argue that biochronologies are still underused in this field. For example, fisheries managers could use otoliths to track the movements of juveniles too small to be tagged (those under 4cm long), since chemical markers make it possible to identify where they grew up. This would allow these managers to earmark productive or struggling “nursery habitats” for protection or improvement, respectively.

We consistently find that rivers and estuaries play a critical role in the survival and growth of valuable species such as salmon, sea bass and anchovies. Juvenile fish often have such high natural mortality rates – often only 1% survive to their first birthday – that even small improvements to their survival can result in large boosts in abundance and make wild fisheries more sustainable.

As such, let’s keep up the momentum to clean and restore our rivers and beaches, and to embrace monitoring tools such as biochronologies to learn which actions produce the biggest benefits. Next time you think about banging the glass at an aquarium, just remember that the fish inside are listening – and recording you too.

Anna Sturrock, Senior Lecturer, School of Life Sciences, University of Essex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shelved the proposed reforms to Australia’s 25-year-old environment laws, citing a lack of parliamentary support for the changes.

The decision breaks Labor’s 2022 election commitment to overhaul the protections. The Albanese government is now the latest in a string of governments that have tried and failed to reform the law known formally as the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

This is despite two major independent reviews calling for wholesale change.

Labor’s capitulation does not, however, change the facts. Australia’s natural environment is deteriorating rapidly. Laws are urgently needed to protect our nation’s valuable natural assets.

Establishing effective laws is an investment that will benefit Australia’s biodiversity, economy, cultural values, health and wellbeing. Nature is now a key 2025 election issue.

How did we get here?

An independent review of the EPBC Act, known as the Samuel Review, was completed in 2020 under the former Coalition government. It found that without urgent changes, most of Australia’s threatened plants, animals and ecosystems will become extinct.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek promised to act on the review’s recommendations, via a plan Labor badged as “Nature Positive”.

The centrepiece of reform is to set national environmental standards that would be overseen by an independent regulator and watchdog called Environmental Protection Australia (EPA). But reform was split into three stages.

Stage one legislated for national markets in nature repair and expanded the requirement to assess potential impacts on water resources under the EPBC Act. The so-called “water trigger” now captures “unconventional gas” projects such as shale gas recovery in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin. The law passed in December 2023, but the markets are not yet functioning.

Stage two of the reforms, including establishing a federal EPA, came before the Senate in late 2024. Plibersek had reportedly made a deal with the crossbench to secure passage. But this deal was scuttled by Albanese at the eleventh hour.

Stage two was relisted for discussion in the upcoming first parliamentary sitting week of 2025, this week. But on Saturday, Albanese told The Conversation the government would, again, not be proceeding with the reform this term.

The reforms have been delayed for so long that we are now closer to the next statutory review of the laws, due in 2029, than to the last one.

Stage three, which covers the bulk of substantive reform recommended in the Samuel Review, is yet to be seen publicly.

What will happen after the next election?

Albanese must go to the polls by May 17, but there is speculation the election may be as early as March. So what is the likely fate of these environmental reforms in the next term?

A Roy Morgan poll on Monday found if a federal election were held now, the result would be a hung parliament. So the result is looking tight.

Government control of the Senate is rare. So whoever is in power after the election is very likely to rely on crossbench support for any reforms.

Albanese has ruled out forming a coalition with the Greens or crossbenchers in the event of a hung parliament. However, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he would negotiate with independents to form government.

A returned Albanese majority government would probably revisit the scuttled deal on stage two. With elections in the rear-view mirror, Albanese may be prepared to wear some political pain early in the next term to secure a deal. He would also still need to roll out the bulk of the Nature Positive reforms, the detail of which remains hidden behind a vague “stage three” banner.

A minority Albanese government may face a tougher ask: demands from an environmentally progressive crossbench for major commitments to environmental reform in return for promises of support on budget and confidence.

A Coalition government would be coming from a very different angle. Dutton has painted Nature Positive as a “disaster” for the economy, expressing particular concern about impacts on the mining sector.

The Coalition’s environmental agenda is increasingly focused on “cutting green tape” – in other words, reducing bureaucratic hurdles for developers – and repealing bans on nuclear power stations. Finding crossbench support in the Senate for this agenda could be challenging.

The Greens have vowed to make environmental protection a key election issue, urging voters to cast their ballot for nature this election.

A recent poll published by the Biodiversity Council shows 75% of Australians support strengthening national environmental law to protect nature. Only 4% are opposed and the rest are undecided.

But converting a high level of broad support into votes is another thing altogether – especially during a cost-of-living crisis.

Crystal clear consequences

The political crystal ball remains cloudy. But when it comes to the state of Australia’s environment, the picture is clear.

The environment continues to decline and the consequences are increasingly serious. These consequences extend beyond further irreversible loss and the increasing cost of environmental repair, to include the economic and social consequences of losing more of the natural assets on which our quality of life depends.

The building blocks of successful reform are all on the table, where the Samuel Review put them in 2020.

When will governments accept that kicking the can down the road is selling us all down the drain?

Peter Burnett, Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National University; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, and Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow in Biodiversity, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s sea surface temperatures were the warmest on record last year, according to a snapshot of the nation’s climate which underscores the perilous state of the world’s oceans.

The Bureau of Meteorology on Thursday released its annual climate statement for 2024 – the official record of temperature, rainfall, water resources, oceans, atmosphere and notable weather.

Among its many alarming findings were that sea surface temperatures were hotter than ever around the continent last year: a whopping 0.89°C above average.

Oceans cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface, and their warming is gravely concerning. It causes sea levels to rise, coral to bleach and Earth’s ice sheets to melt faster. Hotter oceans also makes weather on land more extreme and damages the marine life which underpins vital ocean ecosystems.

What the snapshot showed

Australia’s climate varies from year to year. That’s due to natural phenomena such as the El Niño and La Niña climate drivers, as well as human-induced climate change.

The bureau confirmed 2024 was Australia’s second-warmest year since national records began in 1910. The national annual average temperature was 1.46°C warmer than the long-term average (1961–90). Heatwaves struck large parts of Australia early in the year, and from September to December.

Average rainfall in Australia was 596 millimetres, 28% above the 30-year average, making last year the eighth-wettest since records began.

And annual sea surface temperatures for the Australian region were the warmest on record. Global sea surface temperatures in 2024 were also the warmest on record.

According to the bureau, Antarctic sea-ice extent was far below average, or close to record-lows, for much of the year but returned to average in December.

What caused the hot oceans?

It’s too early to officially attribute the ocean warming to climate change. But we do know greenhouse gas emissions are heating the Earth’s atmosphere, and oceans absorb 90% of this heat.

So we can expect human-induced climate change played a big role in warming the oceans last year. But shorter-term forces are at play, too.

The rare triple-dip La Niña Australia experienced from 2020 to 2023 brought cooler water from deep in the ocean up to the surface. It was like turning on the ocean’s air-conditioner.

But that pattern ended and Australia entered an El Niño in September 2023. It lasted about seven months, when the oscillation between El Niño and La Niña entered a neutral phase.

The absence of a La Niña meant cool water was no longer being churned up from the deep. Once that masking effect disappeared, the long-term warming trend of the oceans became apparent once more.

Water can store a lot more heat than air. In fact, just the top few metres of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere. Oceans take a long time to heat up and a long time to cool.

Heat at the ocean’s surface eventually gets pushed deeper into the water column and spreads across Earth’s surface in currents. The below chart shows how the world’s oceans have heated over the past 70 years.

Why should we care about ocean warming?

Rapid warming of Earth’s oceans is setting off a raft of worrying changes.

It can lead to less nutrients in surface waters, which in turn leads to fewer fish. Warmer water can also cause species to move elsewhere. This threatens the food security and livelihoods of millions of people around the world.

Just last week, it was reported that tens of thousands of fish died off northwestern Australia due to a large and prolonged marine heatwave.

Warm water causes coral bleaching, as experienced on the Great Barrier Reef in recent decades. It also makes oceans more acidic, reducing the amount of calcium carbonate available for organisms to build shells and skeletons.

Warming oceans trigger sea level rise – both due to melt water from glaciers and ice sheets, and the fact seawater expands as it warms.

Hotter oceans are also linked to weather extremes, such as more intense cyclones and heavier rainfall. It’s likely the high annual rainfall Australia experienced in 2024 was in part due to warmer ocean temperatures.

What now?

As long as humans keep burning fossil fuels and pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the oceans will keep warming.

Unfortunately, the world is not doing a good job of shifting its emissions trajectory. As the bureau pointed out in its statement, concentrations of all major long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increased last year, including carbon dioxide and methane.

Prolonged ocean warming is driving changes in weather patterns and more frequent and intense marine heatwaves. This threatens ecosystems and human livelihoods. To protect our oceans and our way of life, we must transition to clean energy sources and cut carbon emissions.

At the same time, we must urgently expand ocean observing below the ocean’s surface, especially in under-studied regions, to establish crucial baseline data for measuring climate change impacts.

The time to act is now: to reduce emissions, support ocean research and help safeguard the future of our blue planet.

Moninya Roughan, Professor in Oceanography, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dumped – for the second time – the government’s controversial “Nature Positive” legislation, which had run into strong opposition from the Western Australian Labor government.

Albanese, speaking on The Conversation’s Politics podcast ahead of a fortnight parliamentary sitting starting next week, said there was not enough support for the legislation, which had been on the draft list of bills for next week, circulated by the government.

This is the second time the Prime Minister has pulled back from the legislation. Late last year he also said it did not have enough support, despite Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek believing she had a deal with the Greens and crossbench for its passage.

The legislation would set up a federal Environment Protection Agency, which has riled miners who claim it would add to bureaucracy and delay approvals.

In recent days WA premier Roger Cook, who was instrumental in heading off the legislation last year, has been lobbying the federal government again. WA faces an election on March 8.

In an interview on Saturday, Albanese told The Conversation: “I can’t see that it has a path to success. So at this stage, I can say that we won’t be proceeding with it this term. There simply isn’t a [Senate] majority, as there wasn’t last year.

"The Greens Party on one hand have changed their views”, making another demand during the week, he said. While the Liberals – who began the review of the present Environment Protection Act – “have chosen an obstructionist path,” he said.

Albanese said the government would continue to discuss the issue with stakeholders in the next term of parliament.

“Does the environment and protection act need revision from where it was last century? Quite clearly it does. Everyone says that that’s the case. It’s a matter of working to, in a practical way, a commonsense reform that delivers something that supports industry.

"I want to see faster approvals. We in fact have speeded up approvals substantially.

"But we also want proper sustainability as well.”

Albanese also flagged the government might cut back its legislation to reform rules covering electoral donations and spending in order to get a deal to pass it.

Special Minister of State Don Farrell and the Liberals had been on the brink of a deal in the final week of parliament last year, but negotiations imploded at the eleventh hour.

Albanese told The Conversation he hoped the legislation could still be passed. “I spoke with [Farrell] today, he is consulting with people across the parliament.

"What I would say is that we are looking to get reform through. Now whether that is a bigger, broader reform or whether it needs to be narrowed down, we’ll wait and see.

"But we’re very serious about the reform which would lower the donation declarations, that would put a cap on donations, a cap on expenditure, that would lead to more transparency as well. It’s an important part of supporting our democracy.

"We see overseas and we’ve seen people like Clive Palmer here spend over $100 million on a campaign. That’s a distortion of democracy – if one person can spend that much money to try to influence an election and we don’t find out all of that information till much later on.”

The reforms would not start operating until the next term of parliament.

Albanese said he thought the reform would have “overwhelming support” with the public “and I hope that it receives overwhelming support in the Senate as well”.

Podcast E&OE TRANSCRIPT

MICHELLE GRATTAN, HOST: The date for the election isn’t announced yet, but the contestants have been running at full tilt for months. Many voters, however, hard pressed by the cost of living, are just starting to tune in, and their mood is often sour and certainly impatient. The polls at present are showing the election battle is finally balanced, with observers speculating on a hung parliament. But there’s a lot to play out in coming weeks before the result is decided. Today, in our first podcast for 2025, we sit down with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to talk about current issues and his pitch for a second term. Prime Minister, thank you for joining the podcast. Let’s start with the antisemitism wave that we’re seeing. Now, I know that you won’t comment on the recent incident involving the caravan full of explosives, about which, reportedly, you weren’t told initially. But more generally, are you satisfied with the performance of federal and state agencies in dealing with this wave generally, and are you satisfied that your Government and the states are doing everything they can to try to bring this under control?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: I am satisfied that we are doing everything within our powers, and that every single request by the Australian Federal Police or by state jurisdictions or by the intelligence agencies, including ASIO, is met with one word: yes. So they are being provided with all of the resources and support. My focus is two things. The first focus is on safety. The second is on providing those intelligence and police agencies with support so that people can be rounded up, and I want to see people hunted down. I want to see them jailed.

GRATTAN: This whole wave, though, seems quite extraordinary, to me, at least. Have you any explanation or theory about how this could be happening? So much violence, so many incidents.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, the police have outlined, themselves, some of their views about what the motivation is, and one of those is that some of the perpetrators of these violent acts have been paid to do so. Now, they are engaged in an operation to not just find the perpetrators, but find who’s paying them. Who are the actors behind this? Which is why some of the calls for more of that information to be out there, whilst understandable from one perspective, what you can’t do is undermine an investigation. And I’m about outcomes here, I want to make sure that that the people responsible, not just up front, but behind this, are held to account.

GRATTAN: But are you surprised that we’ve seen this enormous outbreak?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, of course, I was surprised as well by last week the vision of up to 30 men in black gear from head to toe, marching through Adelaide and Adelaide Park – trying to march through – and Adelaide city, to disrupt Australia Day festivities. That’s not who Australia – it’s not what we are. We’re a tolerant, multicultural, harmonious nation, and some of clearly the motivation of some of this is about causing social division. Is about disruption. And it is – it is shocking. It has caused enormous distress in particularly, of course, in the Jewish community, who’ve been targeted. But more broadly, it’s caused distress as well.

GRATTAN: Obviously, over its history, since the 1970s, multiculturalism has come under pressure at times. Do you think it is now seriously under pressure because of what’s happened in the wake of the Middle East conflict, and do you think more action has to be taken by governments, by organisations, by community leaders, to really put more glue in our multiculturalism?

PRIME MINISTER: We can’t take our social cohesion for granted. It needs to be nurtured, it needs to be cherished. That’s why I’ve appointed Peter Khalil as the Special Envoy on Social Cohesion to work with communities to that end. So I think quite clearly with some of the challenges that are there – and this isn’t just an Australian phenomenon. We see this in the United States, the United Kingdom, in other nations as well. We need to make sure that we do what we can to, as you put it, provide that glue that brings us together. I’ve always thought that Australia can be a microcosm for the world that can show people of different faiths, different backgrounds, can come together, living in harmony, strengthened by our diversity. And it certainly is one of the things that I find fantastic about living in Australia, is that diversity that’s there. I’ve just been celebrating the Year of the Snake in the Lunar New Year, with tens of thousands of people in the Chinese community gathered at Box Hill. They’re expecting today, over the day, over 150,000 people to participate there in Melbourne, and that’s a great privilege. It’s one of the great things about being Australian.

GRATTAN: Let’s turn to cost of living, which, of course, will be at the heart of the election battle. We’ve been in a per capita recession for some time now. And you told the Fin Review a day or so ago that Australians will be better off in three years’ time than they are now. How soon do you anticipate we might be out of this per capita recession?

PRIME MINISTER: We can see already from the figures that inflation is down to 2.4 per cent, the headline rate. Underlying down to 3.2 per cent from 3.6 per cent. So it’s been heading in the right direction. It peaked above seven. When we came to office, it had a six in front of it, so it’s almost a third. So that’s part of the equation. The second part, of course, is the inputs, which is people’s wages and real wages have risen four quarters in a row. Unemployment is low, relatively. It’s at 4 per cent and indeed the average unemployment rate during my Government is lower than any government in the last 50 years, and that’s a remarkable achievement given global inflationary pressures. So we want to see living standards rise. We see the purpose of an economy being working for people, not the other way around. And there are positive signs there. If you look at consumer confidence, those figures have been heading in the right direction as well. So I am very hopeful that what we’ve managed to do – I say, it’s like landing a 747 on a helicopter pad – to try to land lower inflation, whilst providing cost of living, relief and support, whilst making sure you don’t have a negative impact in which there’s spike in unemployment. That’s been our task, and the figures show that it has been the right strategy going forward, compared with New Zealand which is in a significant recession. Unemployment has hit double digits amongst many of our competitors, and we have the fastest employment growth, faster than any G7 country.

GRATTAN: So could we get out of this per capita recession this calendar year, do you think?

PRIME MINISTER: Look, things are heading positive, and when you have real wages increasing and you have inflation heading in the right direction down to 2.4 per cent. So the Reserve Bank band that they seek is between two and three, so it’s in the bottom half. Now the Reserve Bank will make independent decisions, but obviously interest rates have a major impact on people’s quality of life as well, and so I am positive that what we have done is to come through some of the hardest economic times that we’ve seen globally, which was a product, in part, of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But also, people can’t underestimate the impact that the tail of COVID, which is still with us, has had.

GRATTAN: So without pre-empting the Reserve Bank, do you think we can expect interest rates will come down in the next few months?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, all of the economic commentators are saying that that is the most likely prediction of markets. It’s not up to me as Prime Minister to tell the independent Reserve Bank what to do, but I’m certain that we’ve created the conditions through, as well, our responsible economic management. Producing two Budget surpluses, the massive turnaround that we have seen, compared with what the March 2022 Budget handed down by the Coalition by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, was predicting. That turnaround is around $200 billion. That is a big turnaround, the biggest ever fiscal turnaround, in any term of government.

GRATTAN: I’m sure you’ll have your fingers crossed mid-month when the Bank meets.

PRIME MINISTER: February 18 is the meeting, and I’m certainly conscious of that date.

GRATTAN: Incidentally, in the interview that I referred to, I noticed you said the election date is fluid. That is your position? No final decision on that?

PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, no, we make decisions when we finalise them and I’ll consult. But I’ve always said, I’ve been asked this now for some time. One of the problems with three year terms is they are too short, and this time last year, Peter Dutton was calling for an election to stop tax cuts going forward, it’s important to remember. And then various publications were predicting an election in August. Then it was September, October, etc. I think three years is too short, so we’ll make an assessment at an appropriate time. But Parliament will be sitting next week, as I said last year that it would.

GRATTAN: Maybe you really do want that Budget in March?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, we certainly are working to hand down a budget in March. The ERC will be meeting this week as it met last week, and we’ve done a lot of work, obviously, with the March Budget proposed, a lot of work is done in advance in MYEFO, more so than if it was a May budget. So a lot of work has been done.

GRATTAN: You often say that you don’t want people held back or people left behind. At this point, who is left behind? In other words, who do you see as the most, as the people most needing urgent help?

PRIME MINISTER: One of the issues that brings up, I think, is intergenerational equity. I think that young people feel like they’ve got the rough end of the pineapple compared with previous generations. So something I’m really conscious of, that’s one of the reasons why we’ll cancel 20 per cent of student debt on top of the $3 billion we’ve already cancelled. That’s one of the reasons why we’re concentrating so hard on housing and on making sure that we increase supply. That’s one of the reasons why, as well, I’ve done so much hard work with Jason Clare, not just on early childhood education that we’ve done with Anne Aly, but on school education at the moment, trying to finally deliver on David Gonski’s vision of 14 years ago. We’ve now got six of the states and territories signed up to that. But while also we’re delivering Free TAFE, more than 600,000 Australians, largely young people, have benefited from that, as well as the Universities Accord. So all the way through, we think education is really important. Housing is important and giving people that opportunity.

GRATTAN: So do you want to do more in the way of promises and so on this term for young people? Or do you think you’ve reached the limit of what you can do?

PRIME MINISTER: We’ll have more policies being announced for them and and in other areas as well. I mean Labor will always want to do more to strengthen the economy and for that to create the conditions to do more in education and health and creating opportunity. And what I mean by no one left behind is that during these difficult economic times, we’ve provided substantial income support for people who’ve needed it. We changed the Single Parenting Payment. We’ve increased Rental Assistance by 45 per cent with two consecutive support increases, the first time that’s ever happened. So we’ve done that to target particularly disadvantaged groups. We’re reforming the NDIS to make sure that it’s sustainable in the long term. We’ve got aged care reform to make sure that older Australians get the dignity and respect they deserve in their later years. Now, all of that is designed by making sure that people aren’t left behind. But no one held back is about opportunity as well, seizing the opportunity that’s there from new industries with the shift to net zero, seizing the opportunity to train Australians for those jobs of the future. That is what I mean by those two phrases, and that, I think, is a pretty useful frame I have found for government as well. Are we achieving either of those objectives with what we’re putting forward?

GRATTAN: Now, looking abroad, Donald Trump is set to have a major influence way beyond the United States. What do you think the implications will be for Australia? Firstly, in terms of the economy, do you think will be hit with tariffs? And secondly, in terms of the region, and thirdly, in terms of climate change policy internationally?

PRIME MINISTER: On the former, the direct impact on us, I can say that the first discussion I had with President Trump to congratulate him on his election was very positive. That when it comes to decisions about tariffs, I believe that the world benefits from free trade. We do have a free trade agreement with the United States. The United States has a trade surplus with us, so it is in their interest for that relationship to continue.

GRATTAN: You think they’ll see that?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, we will put our arguments forward very clearly. With regard to the impact of a Trump Administration on the region, part of what we will be saying and doing is there’s a recognition that Australia punches above our weight in this region. We are a significant power when it comes to the Pacific, and we exercise that in a range of ways – soft power, diplomatic power, economic influence, support for infrastructure and programs in the Pacific, but also ASEAN. I hosted last year every ASEAN leader in Melbourne, that was extremely successful. And that relationship with the growing economies in our region, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and more is very important, and we play that role. We’re important alliance partners with the United States, but we’re also important partners in the Quad together with Japan and India in this region. So we play an important role going forward. I think that is very much recognised.

GRATTAN: And you would be stressing that. And what about climate change?

PRIME MINISTER: Climate change – we believe very firmly that climate change action isn’t just about the environment. It’s also about strengthening our economy. That we have an economic advantage by developing green aluminium, green steel, these new industries. So, largely, the impact of the US and their relationship to the Paris Accord shouldn’t be overemphasised, the impact on what we do domestically. And I also think that some of what occurs in the United States – the Inflation Reduction Act – Members of Congress and the Senate, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, will be, I think, reluctant to unwind some of the support for industry which is there because it’s about jobs in their local constituency, and it’s that same motivation that we have of jobs and where does future economic growth come from. I truly believe that action taken this decade can set Australia up for the many decades ahead.

GRATTAN: Do you have any idea, incidentally, when you might have your first face to face meeting with the new President?

PRIME MINISTER: The President, at this stage, hasn’t had international visitors, bilaterals, and that’s understandable. The Administration is being established. The Quad meeting is expected to take place in the second quarter of this year, perhaps around about June, so perhaps then, if not beforehand. But we will wait and see. We’ll certainly continue to have engagement. And it’s been very positive the engagement that ministers have had, I think the fact that Penny Wong, as our Foreign Minister, was one of the few international guests at the inauguration was a very positive sign.

GRATTAN: Now coming back closer to home, I know you’re pitching for majority government, but are you confident that if the election delivered you minority government, you could still deliver your program effectively? Now you do have, of course, experience in this area from the previous Labor Government.

PRIME MINISTER: I’m confident that we can achieve an ongoing majority government at this election. I think there are seats that we currently hold that we have good prospects in and indeed in recent days, today, I was in Menzies. Yesterday, I was in Deakin. I think there are seats where Labor can win –

GRATTAN: Menzies and Deakin?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, Menzies, absolutely we can win and Deakin, we have the same candidate that we had last time, Mr Gregg. So that that’s an advantage when you have a second crack. In Gabriel Ng in Menzies, he’s an outstanding candidate as well. And on the pendulum with the redistribution it has, I think it’s slightly in our corner, but basically 50/50, but it’s slightly towards us. And we’ll be campaigning hard across seats to retain seats that we currently hold, but to win seats off the Coalition and in a range of areas they have particular problems with sitting or former sitting Liberal members who’ve defected, or National Party members who are running as independents. You have as well, the opportunity for us to succeed in seats that are held in Queensland by the Greens party, and we certainly have fantastic candidates in seats, like Renee Coffey in Griffith is campaigning very hard. As is Rebecca Hack in Ryan and Madonna Jarrett in Brisbane.

GRATTAN: Talking about independents, do you think you could get Fowler back?

PRIME MINISTER: We certainly have a fantastic candidate in Tu Le in Fowler, she’s an accomplished lawyer. She is the daughter of quite prominent people who came to Australia by boat as refugees. She’s articulate, she’s smart, she’s accomplished. She’s from that area. She has lived there her whole life, and she’s having a real crack.

GRATTAN: And you think you can?

PRIME MINISTER: I think we are certainly in with a big opportunity, because it has historically been a Labor seat, and clearly there was backlash last time round by a perception that Kristina Keneally was not from the area. Tu Le is a great candidate, and she’s campaigning very hard.

GRATTAN: The Government this term didn’t introduce what was expected or hoped for, legislation on restricting gambling advertising, and many people were disappointed at that. Do you commit to doing this if you’re re-elected?

PRIME MINISTER: We are going to do more, but we’ve already done a lot. We’ve done more than any government since Federation on problem gambling. The BetStop Register was an important reform, banning credit cards from use, making sure that we get much stronger regulation. And one of the things that has also happened as a result of pressure from the Government as well, there’s been a reduction, a bit of self-regulation, if you like, as well, from some of the betting companies in terms of advertising. We also are very conscious that when it comes to problem gambling, it’s not just about betting on football, indeed, overwhelmingly, it’s poker machines is where most losses occur, with problem gamblers. But there are other forms as well, and so we want to make sure – one of the things we did as well was to change the ads from the benign ‘gamble responsibly’ that didn’t really say anything, to have very direct messages to people who are adults, to say, if you bet you will lose, to make that very clear as well. But we acknowledge that there’s more to do, and we’ll continue –

GRATTAN: And so you’ll do something on the advertising?

PRIME MINISTER: We will continue to consult with stakeholders and continue to take measures.

GRATTAN: Now the Parliament is about to meet for a fortnight, and I just want to ask you about a couple of important pieces of legislation that will go to the Senate. Do you think we will see the passage of the legislation for the changes in political donations and election spending, and how important are these changes?

PRIME MINISTER: I hope so. And Don Farrell, I spoke with today, as I speak to regularly. He is consulting with people across the Parliament to try to get reforms through –

GRATTAN: Is he confident?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, the Parliament, we spoke before about the prospect of getting legislation through. Labor has 25 out of 76 senators. So we need a large group of people, either the Coalition or the minor parties – a whole section of them, not just one or two – to support legislation. What I would say is that we are looking to get reform through now, whether that is a bigger, broader reform, or whether it needs to be narrowed down, we’ll wait and see. But we’re very serious about the reforms, which would lower the donation declaration, that would put a cap on donations, a cap on expenditure that would lead to more transparency as well. It’s an important part of supporting our democracy. We see overseas, and we’ve seen people like Clive Palmer here spend over $100 million on a campaign. That’s a distortion of democracy, if one person can spend that much money to try to influence an election, and we don’t find out all that information until much later on. So I want to see greater transparency. This term we said we would have a NACC – a National Anti-Corruption Commission. We’ve delivered that. It’s up and running. It’s operating, and I would like to see this. It wouldn’t begin, of course, until the next election, because of time factors of where we’re at with the Electoral Commission. But I think this would have overwhelming support, and I hope that it receives overwhelming support in the Senate as well.

GRATTAN: Now what about the nature positive legislation? It’s also listed. But the Western Australian Government, which is facing an election very soon, is very much against this legislation which sets up a new environmental watchdog. Are you – what is your position on this now? You did pull back from the bill late last year.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I can’t see that it has a path to success. So at this stage, I can say that we won’t be proceeding with it this term. There simply isn’t a majority as there wasn’t last year. The Greens Party, on one hand, have changed their views with a series of demands. They had another one during the week. Said they wouldn’t without linking it to native forestry and linking it to other things. The Liberal Party that, of course, this process began under them. They are the ones who commissioned the Samuel Report that showed that for neither industry or for environmental groups, the current legislation was working. But they have chosen an obstructionist path, which is what they have tended to do on a range of things. So at this point in time, given there is no prospect of it passing, we’ll continue to discuss with stakeholders in the next term, but at this –

GRATTAN: It will remain your policy?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we’ve got, of course, it will be, does the Environment and Protection Act need revision from where it was last century? Quite clearly, it does. Everyone says that that’s the case. It’s a matter of working to, in a practical way, a common sense reform that delivers something that supports industry. I want to see faster approvals. We, in fact, have speeded up approvals substantially, under my Government compared with what was there. But we also want proper sustainability as well.

GRATTAN: Now, looking at the polls, you do better with female voters than with male voters. Why do you think your polling with men is lagging, and how will you try and change that?

PRIME MINISTER: We know that this is a reversal of what historically has occurred. You wrote a piece on this, Michelle, that I read just a while ago. I think there’s a range of factors to it. One, I think, is a concern that many women have, that the Coalition don’t represent them. They certainly, if you look at the Parliament, they don’t reflect the general population. My Government is now majority women in the Caucus, and that plays through to a policy focus as well. So the gender pay gap is the lowest it’s ever been. We want to do even more, Paid Parental Leave, Single Parenting Payment, superannuation on Paid Parental Leave, the child care policy and women’s workforce participation. All of these measures are important, I think, for some men, there is the impact of social media is a major impact. One of the things, though, that we will be really campaigning very hard on is the impact on blue collar workers of the Coalition promises to get rid of Same Job, Same Pay. The definition of casual in employment, their plan to essentially go back to wages going backwards, not forwards, and that, I think, will have an impact as well.

GRATTAN: Now you hoped, of course, that the Voice would be your legacy achievement for this term, but that didn’t come to pass. So what would you nominate as your number one achievement?

PRIME MINISTER: Turning around the economy when people were under real pressure on cost of living. If we had followed the path that Peter Dutton’s actions suggest – that is, no tax cuts for every taxpayer, no Energy Bill Relief, no Cheaper Child Care, no Cheaper Medicines, no Free TAFE, you would have seen in a $78 billion deficit rather than what we produced, a $22 billion surplus. Then having those economic circumstances would have meant that you couldn’t do the measures that we wanted to put in place. You would have been under real pressure to do Paid Parental Leave, to do child care reform as we have. Now, we know there is more to do, but I said before the last election that a long term Labor government builds foundations, and one of the things that we’ve done – child care is a good example. I said before the last election, we’d have a change to the child care subsidy. We know that the average family has benefited by around about $2,700 as a result of that subsidy. Now, next term, we’re saying, if you like, phase two is three days guaranteed child care and a billion dollar fund for child care infrastructure. Particularly that we want to link up with schools, so you have that seamless – avoid the double drop off, all of that. And we know that this is good for productivity, workforce participation and population, the three Ps of economic growth. So this is good economic policy, but it’s also good equity policy as well. But it takes time. Had you tried to do all of that measure in one step, I’m sure it would not be successful. So we’re phasing in that reform, as I said, first tranche done. Second tranche committed to in December last year. But we continue to work on reform. Taking climate change seriously. We have turned that around. Not just having a target of 43 per cent but a mechanism to get there, through the Safeguard Mechanism. The Capacity Investment Scheme is about what you need to do, and doing it in partnership with industry, unions and mainstream conservation groups as well, all on one page with that announcement. That’s a significant achievement, given the climate wars that have occurred over a period of time. Now Peter Dutton wants to reconnect them by stopping all of that and going down this nuclear fantasy road. But we have, I think, set up the process with the mechanisms in place to drive that through the economy.

GRATTAN: So when you’ve got these foundations in, can you be more radical in the second term, and more adventurous, if you like, on issues such as tax or other economic reforms or some other front?

PRIME MINISTER: I think what you can do, the job of reform, of course, is never done. And mine has been a busy Government across economic, social and environmental policy, but we do want to do more. But the economic transformation that the transition to net zero represents is a very significant one. Essentially, we’re seeing globally a transition that is as significant as the Industrial Revolution. This is a new shift in the whole way that the economy functions. And connected up with that, of course, is how do we produce new energy that drives the industries for the future? Be it data centres, for example. I met with Microsoft at their headquarters in Sydney just this week. The prospect that’s there for Australia to be a hub throughout the Indo-Pacific Asian region, is enormous. The prospect that we have when – just a couple weeks ago, we were at Tomago in Newcastle in the Hunter for green aluminium – is exciting for Australia. We are positioned better than anywhere else in the world to benefit, in my view, from this transition that’s occurring. We can be a renewable energy superpower that can be about making more things here, the Future Made in Australia agenda is really significant for us, and if we don’t do that, the alternative isn’t standing still and staying the same, because we’ll go backwards. And it’s significant that Peter Dutton, the first word of his slogan, is ‘back’, and that’s exactly right. He’s promising a smaller economy. His energy plan is for 40 per cent less energy use in 2050. That means making less things here, less industry, less jobs. It’s a myopic vision for Australia, making us smaller. I want Australia to be more successful, to be enlarged in our optimism and our vision, and I want to lead a Government that does that, and I believe I’ve got the capacity, by the amazing talents of people in my Ministry. We’ve had to rebuild the public service during this term. Frankly, they were in a spot of bother, I think. They hadn’t been listened to. Cabinet processes been abandoned. My predecessor, appointed to multiple ministries, and the chaos that was ensuing, there weren’t proper Cabinet processes. You had a Cabinet committee with one member – himself. That that sort of dysfunction that occurred needs to never be returned to.

GRATTAN: So just finally, would we see if you are re-elected, any differences in your own style, your own way of governing? Is there anything that you’ve learned that would bring changes in the way you go about things?

PRIME MINISTER: One of the things that my mentor, Tom Uren, who you knew well, used to say to me was ‘you’ve got to learn something new every day, and you’ve got to get better every day.’ Better, not just professionally, but as a person grow. And I believe that I do learn something new every day, and I continue to analyse how things are going. How can we do things better? And of course, you can. One of the things that we’ve done is, as I say, value the public service, that takes time to bring that forward. There were billions of dollars being spent on outsourcing government roles. We had to turn that around. Aged care was in crisis. The NDIS was headed for real issues which would have undermined support for it. We, I think, had government processes that had effectively broken down. Our relations with the world, not just with China, obviously with the $20 billion of disruption to trade, but with the Pacific, our Pacific neighbours, had broken down. We were in the naughty corner when we attended climate change conferences around the world as well. We have rebuilt those relationships internationally, but we’ve rebuilt relationships domestically as well. There are things that we will do.

GRATTAN: What about your own work style, though? Will you make any changes from what you’ve learned over this last two and a half years?

PRIME MINISTER: I make changes as I’m going as well. The idea that you’re just static over a term –

GRATTAN: What sort of changes have you made?

PRIME MINISTER: I think in some of the processes that we’ve established, continue to work on getting better and better in terms of the office. People that –

GRATTAN: Your office, you mean?

PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, the people that we’ve brought in, the way that we engage with the community, the way that we function and make decisions as well is important. I think some of the advice that we get as well. Robodebt had an impact on the public service as well that needs to be addressed. Governments need to function and need to be able to make decisions as well.

GRATTAN: Is it a harder job than you expected? Because, after all, for a long time, you were close to the top job, as it were, in various roles. But have you found it something of a shock when you actually experienced it over these past two and a half years?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think preparing for the job, the fact that I’d served as Acting Prime Minister in 2013 and served as Deputy Prime Minister –

GRATTAN: Not the same, though.

PRIME MINISTER: No, it’s not. But also, being Leader of the House and chairing the Parliamentary Business Committee meant you have access and oversight of every single piece of legislation that’s before the Parliament, every single one. And particularly in the minority Parliament, of course, that was more acute. But I think people underestimate the time that is involved. The international conversations that you have to have. Australia has to be represented at the G20, at the Pacific Island Forum, at ASEAN, at the Quad meetings, at APEC.

GRATTAN: You mean the time that the job that takes up?

PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, yeah. And that, though, is an incredible honour and a privilege. I mean, I am enjoying the job each and every day –

GRATTAN: Do you get exhausted, sometimes?

PRIME MINISTER: Oh, of course you do. You’re human. But one of the things I’ve got – you spoke about what I would do differently. I’ve got much better, I’ve always been pretty good, I think, at time management. But I think I’ve got even better than I was as a Minister or Leader of the Opposition, because you have to. So you get better at knowing you have to make a decision. And you also, though – every day when the car drops me off here, we’re speaking here in my Parliament House office, it’s an incredible privilege that I don’t take for granted on any day. Every time I drive through into that courtyard, I feel lifted up and enthused, and the adrenaline kicks in. I think it can keep you going. My staff sometimes say to me, I don’t know how you do it when they see the diary and how busy you can be. But you know, this opportunity to serve and to make a difference to people’s lives is an incredible one, and I feel honoured to have it. I feel humbled that someone who, when I came into this Parliament, and would have been when we first met a long time ago now. You know, I didn’t come here to be Prime Minister with any expectation at all. But I’m here, and I’m very much enjoying it, and I really will be working each and every day as well to make sure that we’re in a position to continue to build in a second term. Not because of wanting to sit in this office, but because of what you can do for people in this office. And I get as well, some fuel in the tank, if you like, by when I’m out and about, like this morning in Box Hill, or last night at a function, people coming up and just saying, “thank you, you did this decision that made a difference to me,” and that to me, is really important.

GRATTAN: Well, there’ll be plenty of adrenaline flowing through you and through Peter Dutton in the weeks to come. Prime Minister, thank you very much for talking with us today.

PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, Michelle.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Like ferns and the tides, community conservation groups come and go. Many achieve their goal. Volunteers restore a local wetland or protect a patch of urban bush and then hang up the gardening gloves with a warm inner glow. Some groups peter out while others endure, tackling the ecological problems facing today’s Australia.

One of those problems is fragmentation. Let’s say you have a national park in one spot and another large tract of habitat ten kilometres away. It’s too hard for many wildlife species to make it across open ground to get there. Over time, this means wild areas can effectively become islands.

This is where habitat corridors come in. Potentially, if you restore habitat between two isolated areas, wildlife can begin to safely move between the two. Over time, these corridors allow seeds, pollen, native birds and animals to disperse across today’s landscapes.

In my work as a restoration ecologist, I’ve come across many of Australia’s community groups devoted to the job. Three of these are LUCI – Lockyer Upland Catchments Inc, which began in 2015, the Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy, founded in 1993 and TREAT – Trees for the Evelyn and Atherton Tablelands Inc, which began in 1982. Each of these has gone the distance. Here are some reasons why.

Where are wildlife corridors most needed?

Australia’s Wet Tropics are especially threatened by fragmentation. This region is World Heritage listed due to its remarkable biodiversity. Tropical forests have grown here for at least 130 million years. Fragmentation directly threatens this.

In the tropical uplands of the Atherton Tablelands, there are three popular national parks – the Crater Lakes of Eacham and Barrine and the Curtain Fig Tree. But while visitors might see them as pristine, each is an island surrounded by pasture and settlement. Over time, this will take its toll on the species within.

Staying the course

For a volunteer group to reverse the effects of fragmentation, and embark on a long term project such as this, it needs three things.

First the group has leaders committed to a long term cause, usually scientists or naturalists as well as locals with knowledge and drive. Leaders have to be able to work with governments and group members of all persuasions.

Second, the group has to be guided by science. You need current information on local plants, animals and habitats to make sure on-ground work has direct conservation benefits.

And third, networking skills. Harnessing the technical expertise of other groups, government and experts in project planning, execution and monitoring is vital.

Each of these three groups has these traits, even though they take different approaches to the challenge.

LUCI is an alliance of private landholders in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, who work to protect remnant vegetation and expand habitat. Their work on threatened species monitoring, protection of remnant vegetation on private land and community engagement reflects their emphasis on education.

Before European settlement, lowland subtropical rainforest covered 75,000 hectares of land in what is now Byron Bay’s hinterland. But 99% was cut down. In response, Big Scrub members have replanted around 600 hectares – doubling the size of what was left – and established an innovative genetics program to assist in maintaining and enhancing the gene pool of trees planted.

TREAT is based on the Atherton Tablelands in far north Queensland. This region has long been prized for agriculture, which comes at a cost to habitat. In response, TREAT has worked to reconnect isolated tracts of rainforest. The group collaborates with Queensland Parks and Wildlife to grow many thousands of native rainforest tree seedlings for planting each year.

All three groups recognise the importance of countering habitat fragmentation. This slicing and dicing forests into smaller and isolated patches severely threatens Australia’s biodiversity.

Wildlife corridors are deceptively simple in theory. But as I know from long experience restoring habitat, it’s harder than it seems.

Does it work?

Planting corridors sounds like a sure thing. But success is not guaranteed. For one thing, it takes work and time. You need baseline surveys, expert analysis of data and monitoring, ideally over decades. Given these challenges, it’s unsurprising that wildlife corridor restoration is little-studied.

In the 1990s, TREAT volunteers planted 17,000 trees to reconnect a 498 hectare fragment around Lake Barrine to the 80,000ha Wooroonooran National Park 1.2 kilometres away. This corridor is now more than 20 years old. It’s known as the Donaghy’s Corridor Nature Refuge, after the Donaghy family who donated the land for corridor restoration.

My research has found this corridor is proving successful, using good data collected before, during and after establishment. Ground mammals are moving along the corridor, and breeding has taken place. We could see this in the exchange of genes between two previously separated populations of the native bush rat (Rattus fuscipes).

More recent studies have shown the corridor has been colonised by many species, ranging from threatened and endemic plants to birds, ground mammals, reptiles, amphibians and microbats. While promising, this is just one corridor. Much more data would be needed to prove this approach is broadly effective.

As habitat fragmentation continues and the effects of climate change ramp up, more and more species will need to move. The work of volunteer groups such as LUCI, Big Scrub and TREAT in reconnecting scattered pieces of habitat is only going to get more important.

Nigel Tucker, Research Associate in Environment and Sustainability, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do you feel powerless?

You probably aren’t responsible for the investment decisions of an energy company, nor do you have a hand in government policy. But still, you are reading about climate change – a problem that can easily seem intractable to most people.

The Veganuary campaign reported record participation this year: 25.8 million people worldwide tried a lighter lifestyle without meat and dairy in January, knowing that enormous emission sources sit beyond their immediate control. If such resolve to fix our planet exists, how can people exercise it?

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage comes from our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter. 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.

You might be used to thinking of climate change in terms of your carbon footprint. That’s no accident, says science communicator Sam Illingworth (Edinburgh Napier). A public relations firm, hired by oil giant BP, invented the concept in 2004 as part of a deliberate effort to shift attention from corporate culpability, he says.

“In my research into climate communication, I see how stories of guilt resonate with communities already facing misplaced blame,” Illingworth adds.

You’re not alone

“Net zero heroes” are set up to fail, Illingworth says. But realising this only makes collective action more important, and shows the futility of trying to bear the weight of the problem on your own.

Your choices do not exist in a vacuum. Earth is an interconnected community of living and non-living things says ethicist Patrick Effiong Ben of the University of Manchester. African philosophers like Jonathan Chimakonam and Aïda Terblanché-Greeff have a helpful concept for thinking through the weightiness of your decisions: complementarity.

“Complementarity holds that the relationships that unite individual things can extend to prove the value of every contribution, no matter its size,” Ben says.

You can test this notion by choosing to eat a plant-based diet or forgo flying and observing your influence on others. If you’re sceptical, just think how many of your habits or turns of phrase are borrowed from loved ones. Steve Westlake, a behavioural psychologist at Cardiff University, says that your pro-environment choices can ultimately alter what other people consider “normal”.

“In a survey I conducted, half of the respondents who knew someone who has given up flying because of climate change said they fly less because of this example. That alone seemed pretty impressive to me,” he says.

“They explained that the bold and unusual position to give up flying had: conveyed the seriousness of climate change and flying’s contribution to it; crystallised the link between values and actions; and even reduced feelings of isolation that flying less was a valid and sensible response to climate change.”

What’s stopping us?

Often, is is not apathy that holds us back, but a seeming lack of options. In the UK, where I live, a train is by far the better travel choice emissions-wise but it is usually much more expensive than a flight that covers the same distance.

Environmental psychologists Christina Demski (University of Bath) and Stuart Capstick (Cardiff University) criticise the laissez-faire approach of successive governments that have “[gone] with the grain of consumer choice” while failing to recognise that many people would gladly choose the green option if they could afford or access it.

This desire to do something meaningful is continually frustrated, they say, but it will not vanish as the crisis worsens. Everyone alive and yet to live needs a liveable climate. Securing it is within our technical and material means.

Just listen to this from sustainability researcher Joel Millward-Hopkins (Université de Lausanne, previously University of Leeds):

“Fortunately, in new research we found that using 60% less energy than today, decent living standards could be provided to a global population of 10 billion by 2050. That’s 75% less energy than the world is currently forecast to consume by 2050 on our present trajectory – or as much energy as the world used in the 1960s.”

Instead of seeing your new vegan diet as a personal choice, think of it as a political act taken in solidarity with people and other species bearing the brunt of climate change say political philosophers Alasdair Cochrane (University of Sheffield) and Mara-Daria Cojocaru (Munich School of Philosophy).

And remember that it isn’t all sacrifice. The joy that is possible with more expensive and more energy-hungry lifestyles is fleeting says Capstick, but contentment, he argues, is low-carbon. 

Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Months out from a federal election, the industry lobby is gearing up in opposition to the Albanese government’s renewable energy targets. In a salvo on Monday, food distributors urged the government to increase fossil fuel production, as a way to purportedly tackle high energy prices.

It was followed by comments on Tuesday by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which also called for fast-tracking of gas expansion to avoid price spikes and blackouts.

Unfortunately, however, these approaches miss the point. They are a short-sighted response to what is, in large part, a climate-induced problem.

In fact, evidence suggests burning more coal and gas will only make things worse for many industries, including the food sector.

More fossil fuels = more industry disruption

The industry group Independent Food Distributors Australia claims Labor’s energy policies are driving up costs for businesses and, in turn, consumers.

In comments published in The Australian, the group’s chief executive Richard Forbes said the phase-out of coal-fired energy was too fast and the government’s renewable energy target was too ambitious. The newspaper claimed business owners instead want Labor to support new gas plants and support upgrades to existing coal plants.

The group represents food manufacturers, suppliers and distributors supporting the food service industry. Its members largely comprise food distribution warehouses operating large refrigerators and freezers.

First, it’s important to ask whether a focus on renewable energy can be blamed for Australia’s high energy prices. The answer is largely no.

That aside, would expanding fossil fuel production ultimately be a boon to food distributors? Evidence suggests it would not.

A study published in 2022, led by my colleagues at the University of Sydney, found that almost one-fifth of total emissions from global food systems were produced by transport and supporting services, such as distribution warehouses. This was equivalent to about 6% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, greenhouse gas emissions are warming the climate and leading to worse and more frequent natural disasters. And, as another University of Sydney study showed, these disasters have extensive repercussions for the food industry.

It found the disruptions would be hardest felt by the fruit, vegetable and livestock sectors, however effects flowed to other sectors such as transport services. Overall, people in rural areas and those from a low-socioeconomic background were most vulnerable, both to food and nutrition impacts, as well as losses in employment and income.

What’s more, research I led into the economic impact of Australia’s 2019–20 bushfires also reveals the vulnerability of the food ecosystem. The 2024 study, which focused on tourism, found employment and income losses were greatest in the hospitality and transport sectors respectively. Restaurants, cafes and accommodation providers were disproportionately hit by job losses resulting from reduced consumption, including less food being consumed out of home.

So what does all this mean? Clearly, expanding polluting energy generation to reduce food distribution costs in the short term will not, ultimately, secure the sector’s future.

Making food distribution more sustainable

Having said all this, Australia’s high energy prices are undoubtedly a stress point for many Australian businesses. So how can the food sector tackle the problem?

Energy requirements (and therefore costs and emissions) differ according to the type of food. Fruits and vegetables, for example, are likely to require a temperature-controlled environment. This generates about double the emissions produced by growing the crops themselves.

Growing and distributing crops that can be transported at ambient temperatures would reduce energy use. This is particularly important given refrigeration needs are likely to increase as the planet warms.

In terms of broader food movements, 94% of domestic transport happens by road. So, there is a strong case for investing in electric trucks to help guard against energy price hikes.

The weight of food freight has also been correlated with energy use. Cereals – along with fruit and vegetables, flour and sugar beet/cane – are among the food types transported at high tonnages.

As my colleagues have noted, there are huge energy savings to be gained if the global population ate more locally produced food, and if food businesses used cleaner production and distribution methods, such as natural refrigerants.

Looking ahead

Global food systems are crucial to human wellbeing. It’s in everyone’s interests to keep them functioning well and protected from climate-fuelled hazards.

The choices now facing the food-distribution sector represent one of many tradeoffs Australia must make during its transition to a low-carbon future.

Will we continue the polluting, business-as-usual approach or will we embrace Australia’s natural advantages in renewable energy, and protect the planet that supports us?

When it comes to food distribution, will Australia expand gas and coal production as a purported answer to lower energy costs in the short term – or will we move swiftly to decarbonise the sector and buy more local, sustainable food?

Vivienne Reiner, PhD Candidate, Integrated Sustainability Analysis group, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A virulent strain of bird flu continues to spread across the world. Australia, New Zealand and Pacific nations are the only countries free from the infection, but this will no doubt change.

Known as “Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza” or H5N1, the bird flu strain had killed more than 300 million birds worldwide as of December last year, including both poultry and wild bird populations.

Birds have always been part of the cultures and livelihoods of Australia Indigenous people. They feature in songs and dance, and are used for food and customary practices such as ceremonies and craft. Many of these practices continue today.

To date however, Indigenous peoples have not been adequately included in federal government planning for the arrival of H5N1.

So what is the likely result? Agencies and organisations will be ill-prepared to support Indigenous people experiencing intense social and cultural shock. And the opportunity to draw from the strengths of Indigenous organisations to tackle this impending disaster will have been squandered.

What is H5N1?

First identified in Hong Kong in 1997, H5N1 has since spread globally.

H5N1 is a viral infection primarily affecting birds – both poultry and wildlife. As overseas experience has shown, it can lead to population declines in wild birds and disrupt local ecosystems. Infected birds may exhibit symptoms such as lethargy, respiratory distress and neurological signs such as paralysis, seizures and tremors, and sudden death.

The virus also affects mammals including humans. Since November 2003, more than 900 human cases have been reported across 24 countries. About half these people died.

While Australia has suffered several severe avian influenza epidemics since the 1970s, the H5N1 strain has not yet affected birds in Australia. But when it does, the damage may be profound.

Birds are vital to Indigenous culture

Australia’s diverse, unique bird population comprises about 850 species, 45% of which exist only in Australia.

Birds are highly significant to many Indigenous groups.

The adult magpie goose and its eggs, for example, are an important food source for groups in the Kakadu region.

In Tasmania, Indigenous groups are revitalising customary practices by harvesting mutton birds. And bird feathers are used by Indigenous artisans in fashion and jewellery-making.

If H5N1 makes birds sick and diminishes their populations, Indigenous people’s livelihoods and wellbeing – social, emotional, and spiritual – will be severely affected.

Many birds are already struggling

Of greatest concern are the fate of threatened and endangered bird species. Indeed, Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner, Dr Fiona Fraser, has warned the forthcoming H5N1 event may be more ecologically devastating than the 2019–20 bushfires.

Migratory birds, such as waders that travel from Siberia to lake systems throughout Australia, may take years or decades to return – if they return at all.

Even relatively healthy bird populations, such as emus, may be at risk in areas where local populations are dwindling.

The challenge has become more pronounced following the 2019–20 bushfires that affected vast areas of Australia’s southeast. Biodiversity in these burnt forests was later found to have declined, especially in bird populations.

These challenges mean Australia’s native bird populations may struggle to remain healthy and sustainable, and their availability to Indigenous groups is likely to diminish.

Mobilising Indigenous know-how

Indigenous people are deeply engaged in caring for Country and caring for their communities. This makes them a strategic asset when planning for the arrival of H5N1.

For example, Indigenous rangers are deeply engaged in land and water management including habitat restoration and biodiversity surveys. So, they are well placed to protect and monitor native species.

Traditional Owners and Indigenous rangers manage 87 dedicated “Indigenous Protected Areas” covering 90 million hectares of land and six million hectares of sea.

Indigenous health organisations will also be crucial to identifying human illness, should rare animal-to-human transmissions occur.

Shire councils and land councils are also well-placed to identify and monitor the impacts of bird flu.

It’s time for Indigenous inclusion

Indigenous inclusion in the federal government’s response to the threat H5N1 has been late and inadequate

This means Australia is already behind in supporting Indigenous groups to understand the threat and how to respond if they observe it – including how to deal with sick or dead birds.

To fill these gaps in public information, National Indigenous Disaster Resilience at Monash University has produced a bird flu fact sheet.

Indigenous community organisations demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for leadership during COVID-19. The muscle memory to mobilise in response to another outbreak remains strong.

Indigenous groups must be centred in preparing and responding to H5N1. What’s more, Indigenous culture needs to be foregrounded when considering how the virus might affect the social, psychological, spiritual, and economic wellbeing of communities.

In response to concerns raised in this article, a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said the federal government was “working to engage with First Nations communities to ensure we meet community needs” before and during an outbreak of H5N1.

The department’s Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy was surveilling for avian influenza in northern Australia, including working with Indigenous Rangers. Indigenous engagement has also included presentations delivered virtually and on-country.

“By fostering close partnerships with First Nations communities and Indigenous rangers, and leveraging access to a broad collaborative network, NAQS is able to facilitate trusted avenues for First Nations communities and Indigenous rangers to report concerns about wild bird health across northern Australia,” the spokesperson said.

States and territories were planning local responses, and nationally coordinated, culturally appropriate communication activities were being developed. The spokesperson said Parks Australia was also working with Traditional Owners at jointly managed national parks, and with the Indigenous Protected Areas network, in developing plans to prepare and respond to any H5N1 detection.

Nell Reidy, Research Fellow, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University; Bhiamie Williamson, Research Fellow in Disaster Resilience, Monash University, and Vinod Balasubramaniam, Associate Professor (Molecular Virology), Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Polluted runoff is still smothering the Great Barrier Reef, our first national assessment of water quality trends in Australian rivers has revealed. The problem on the reef is getting worse, not better, despite efforts to improve farming practices and billions of dollars committed by governments to water-quality improvements.

But in good news, there are signs of improvement in the Murray-Darling Basin, where less salt, sediment and phosphorous were detected in the water.

Our latest research quantifies, for the first time, how water quality in Australian rivers has changed over the past two decades. Around half our 287 monitoring sites experienced significant changes in water quality between 2000 and 2019 on every measure we analysed. But the results for the reef and the basin stood out.

In particular, freshwater flows into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon contained increasing levels of sediment and phosphorous. If the trend continues, we have serious concerns for the health of the Great Barrier Reef and the tourist industry it supports.

Understanding river water quality

We studied water quality monitoring data from 287 river sites across Australia. The relevant agency in each state and territory collects this information and makes it available online. The data covers the following:

• salinity: too much makes water unsuitable for drinking or irrigation
• dissolved oxygen: when the level is too low it can kill aquatic life
• nitrogen and phosphorous: high levels of either can cause excessive algae growth and consumes oxygen
• sediment: too much reduces light penetration and disrupts ecosystems

We focused on sites with records of all five water quality indicators from 2000 to 2019.

River flows can vary enormously from year to year and this affects water quality. So we used statistics to account for this and identify underlying long-term trends.

In the catchments that exhibited significant changes between 2000 and 2019, about half showed improvements in dissolved oxygen, salinity and phosphorus, while the other half deteriorated. Sediment levels mostly improved (86% of catchments) over time. The story was not so good when it came to nitrogen levels, which went up in 60% of catchments.

Two regions experienced the greatest large-scale changes in water quality over that time: the North East Coast basin and the Murray-Darling Basin.

More polluted water flowing to the reef

In the North East Coast basin, many rivers capture water from inland areas, including farming regions, and carry it to the ocean near the Great Barrier Reef. So, any pollution in these rivers are carried to the reef.

Suspended sediments make the water cloudy or “turbid”. This can reduce the growth of seagrass and disrupt the growth and reproductive cycles of coral and some fish.

Phosphorous and nitrogen are essential minerals or nutrients, which is why they are used on farms as fertiliser. But too much of either can lower coral diversity, and reduce resilience of coral to bleaching and disease.

We found water quality in rivers flowing to the reef – one of the world’s seven natural wonders – had declined over the past two decades. In particular, levels of phosphorus and sediments had increased at around 5% per year on average across catchments.

This may be a hangover from intensifying land use and clearing in the 1960s and ‘70s. Land clearing can lead to more erosion of sediment and phosphorus attached to soils. Similarly, intensive agriculture can lead to increased phosphorus in rivers, due to fertiliser use.

Substantial investment has been made to improve water quality over many years. This includes almost A$1.8 billion committed by the federal and Queensland governments between 2014 and 2030. But it appears greater effort is needed to turn things around.

It can take a long time for management strategies to start having an effect on water quality. So efforts to date may not yet be showing up. Or perhaps the scale of these changes has not been enough to shift the long-term trend in water quality.

Regardless, declining water quality over the past two decades has direct implications for the future of the world heritage listed site.

Cleaning up the basin

In contrast, we found water quality in the Murray-Darling Basin was improving. Salinity levels declined, along with phosphorus and suspended sediment.

Managing salinity in the basin is a long-term issue. Much of the basin’s groundwater is naturally saline to begin with. Land clearing and agricultural activities since European colonisation have further exacerbated the problem.

But our results suggest salinity levels in the Murray-Darling Basin rivers are improving. This may be due to large-scale management actions such as improving irrigation efficiency, reducing drainage, installing salt interception, and drainage diversion schemes to divert saline groundwater away from entering the Murray River.

These changes in water quality could also be due to declines in rainfall during the Millennium drought period over the late 1990s and early 2000s. The dry conditions might have altered processes controlling flushing of salt, sediments and phosphorus into waterways. As such, the drought has likely had more complicated and long-lasting impacts on water quality than the year-to-year variation in river flow.

While our research shows water quality in the Murray-Darling Basin has improved, this does not mean funding in this area should reduce or cease. Scientists and policymakers must continue monitoring and working towards a healthy basin for future generations.

Keeping watch over water quality

Unfortunately, insufficient long-term water quality monitoring limits our understanding of water quality trends across large parts of the country.

This includes a large proportion of the western, northern and central parts of Australia. Filling these data gaps will require new and ongoing investment into water quality monitoring.

Australian water authorities need to keep checking the health of our rivers.

A national program to harness this data from states and territories, to monitor and track river water quality, is needed to continue similar Australia-wide assessments of water quality.

Such assessments are vital for providing an evidence base for federal policy and identifying future needs in river water quality protection.

Anna Lintern, Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering, specialising in water quality, Monash University and Danlu Guo, Senior lecturer of Environmental Engineering, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Observing Greenland from a helicopter, the main problem is one of comprehending scale. I have thought we were skimming low over the waves of a fjord, before noticing the tiny shadow of a seabird far below and realising what I suspected were floating shards of ice were in fact icebergs the size of office blocks. I have thought we were hovering high in the sky over a featureless icy plane below, before bumping down gently onto ice only a few metres below us.

Crevasses – cracks in the surface of glaciers – are the epitome of this baffling range of scales. Formed by stresses at the surface, their direction and size tell us how the ice sheet is flowing towards the ocean. Inland, far away from the fast-flowing glaciers that discharge hundreds of gigatonnes of icebergs a year into fjords, crevasses can be tiny cracks only millimetres wide.

As the ice speeds up, they can be metres in diameter, sometimes covered by deceptive snow bridges that require suitable safety equipment and rescue training to traverse. Finally, where the ice meets the ocean and no scientist would ever dare to stand, they can be monsters over 100 metres from wall to wall. And across Greenland, they are growing.

It shouldn’t be particularly surprising to scientists that crevasses are getting larger across Greenland. As the ocean warms, the ice sheet has sped up in response, increasing the stresses acting upon its surface. However, observations from satellites and in-person fieldwork are so poor that to date, we had no idea how extensively or quickly this process has been occurring.

Mapping cracks

In a new study, my colleagues and I mapped crevasses across the entirety of the Greenland ice sheet in 2016 and 2021. To do this, we used the “ArcticDEM”: three-dimensional surface maps of the polar regions based on high resolution satellite images. By applying image-processing techniques to over 8,000 maps, we could estimate how much water, snow or air would be needed to “fill” each crevasse across the ice sheet. This enabled us to calculate their depth and volume, and examine how they evolved.

We found that from 2016 to 2021, there were significant increases in crevasse volume across fast-flowing sectors of the Greenland ice sheet. In the southeast of the ice sheet, an area that has been particularly vulnerable to ocean-induced acceleration and retreat in the past few years, crevasse volume increased by over 25%.

However, against our expectations, crevasse volume across the whole ice sheet increased by only 4.3%. That’s much closer to an overall balance than the extremes observed in certain sectors. What had happened? In fact, the significant increases elsewhere were being offset by a single source: an outlet glacier known as Sermeq Kujalleq (Danish: Jakobshavn Isbræ).

Sermeq Kujalleq is the fastest-flowing glacier on the planet, reaching speeds of nearly 50 metres a day and providing an outsized proportion of Greenland’s total sea-level rise contribution. In 2016, responding to an influx of cold water from the north Atlantic ocean, the glacier slowed and thickened. As it did this, the crevasses on the surface began to close – offsetting increases across the rest of the ice sheet.

This slowdown was short-lived. Since 2018, Sermeq Kujalleq has once again reverted to acceleration and thinning in response to ongoing warming. We won’t be able to rely on it to offset ice-sheet-wide increases in crevassing in the future.

Cracks grow into icebergs

Crevasses play an integral part in the life cycle of glaciers, and as they grow they hold the potential to further accelerate ice-sheet loss. They deliver surface meltwater into the belly of the ice sheet: once inside, water can act to warm the ice or lubricate the bed that the glacier slides over, both of which can make the ice sheet flow faster into the ocean. Meanwhile, where the ice meets the sea, crevasses form the initial fractures from which icebergs can break off, increasing the output of icebergs into the ocean.

In short, crevasses underpin the dynamic processes that occur across Greenland and Antarctica. However, these processes are very poorly understood, and their future evolution is the single largest uncertainty in our predictions of sea-level rise. Together, the increased discharge of ice holds the potential to add up to 10 metres of additional sea-level rise by 2300 (75% of all cities with more than 5 million inhabitants exist less than 10m above sea level). We need to better understand these processes – including crevasses – so that informed sea-level projections can form the basis of our responses to the global challenges that climate change presents.

Since 2023, an international coalition of polar scientists has been urging the world to limit warming to 1.5˚C to avoid the most catastrophic melt scenarios for global glaciers and ice sheets. Last month, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that 2024 was the first year in which average global temperatures exceeded this threshold.

Every fraction of a degree matters. We may still be able to save ourselves from the worst of the damage the climate change will bring – but we are desperately running out of time.

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Tom Chudley, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of Geography, Durham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In early December 2024, hopes for a landmark global treaty to curb plastic pollution were dashed as negotiations in South Korea stalled. Leading the campaign against the deal were major oil-producing nations, especially Saudi Arabia and Russia, who argued for a more flexible approach to any legally binding limits on plastic manufacturing.

The collapse of any agreement came despite scientific research delivering ever more alarming warnings about the dangers of plastic pollution. Over the last two years, an avalanche of studies have revealed the pervasive presence of tiny plastic particles in human blood, brains, and even placental tissue.

These particles, which stem from the breakdown of larger plastic waste, have been linked to everything from inflammation to hormonal disruption, and potential long-term health risks such as cancer. Aside from their effects on human health, plastics are wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems, with microplastics now found in Arctic ice and in the bodies of fish and birds.

Behind these alarming studies stands a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of plastic production. The annual global production of plastics reportedly grew nearly two hundredfold between 1950 (two million tonnes) and 2015 (381 million tonnes), and the pace of growth is accelerating.

Over half of all plastics ever made were produced in the past 25 years, and production levels are estimated to double or triple again by 2050. And more production brings more waste.

Less than 10% of all plastics ever produced have been recycled. And the volume of “mismanaged plastics” – those which are not recycled, incinerated, or sealed in landfills – is also estimated to double by 2050.

It seems as if humans have become the organic detritus within a plastic world of our own creation.

Plastic elephants

But despite growing awareness around the problems associated with plastic, there is a fundamental flaw in how we tend to think about it as a product.

For there is a tendency to frame plastic as a problem of pollution and recycling, rather than as an integral part of our fossil fuel-driven world. This narrative is also promoted by major oil companies, such as the American giant, ExxonMobil, which stated in the lead up to the South Korean summit: “The issue is pollution. The issue is not plastic.”

The problem with this perspective is that it obscures the fact that plastics are petrochemical products: substances which are ultimately derived from oil and gas.

Indeed, the future of fossil fuels is increasingly tied to the future of plastics. It has been estimated that by 2040, plastics will account for as much as 95% of net growth in oil demand.

This is perhaps why 220 fossil fuel lobbyists attended those recent treaty discussions, outnumbering all other delegations. It could also explain why Saudi Arabia, home to one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies, led the opposition to any global limits on plastic production.

At the core of capitalism

The problem we confront is not simply the presence of an oil lobby, it is the systemic role that plastics play within capitalism.

Plastics, and the wider petrochemical industry, played a crucial part in the transformation of global capitalism from the mid-20th century onwards.

As I explore in my book, Crude Capitalism, the things we used to need to build and make things previously relied on sourcing naturally occurring, labour-intensive goods like timber, cotton or metals. But the invention of plastics and other synthetic materials separated commodity production from nature.

Oil became more than a fuel – it was the substance that came to dominate our lives. A petrochemical shift to the rise of an oil-dominated world. With capitalism untethered from natural cycles, there was a radical reduction in the time taken to produce commodities and an end to any limits on the quantity and diversity of goods produced.

Along with this, consumption habits became centred around notions of disposability and obsolescence. Plastics made the essential features of contemporary capitalism possible: a drive to limitless growth, continual acceleration of production and consumption, and the frenzied expansion of markets.

The emergence of fast fashion is just one example. Alongside poorly paid garment workers in countries such as Bangladesh, really cheap clothing was only made possible through the massive expansion of polyester production (a kind of plastic), which freed the industry from its dependence on supplies of wool and cotton.

The consumption of plastics looms large in today’s ecological crisis. And having become so accustomed to thinking about oil and gas as primarily an issue of energy and fuel choice, perhaps we have lost sight of how much of our lives depend upon the products of petroleum.

These synthetic materials drove a post-war revolution in productivity, bringing labour-saving technology and mass consumption. It is now almost impossible to identify an area of life that has not been radically transformed by the presence of plastics and other petrochemicals.

Plastic products have become normalised as natural parts of our daily existence. And it is this paradox which must be fully confronted if we are to move beyond fossil fuels.

Adam Hanieh, Professor of Political Economy and Global Development, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

All known human languages display a surprising pattern: the most frequent word in a language is twice as frequent as the second most frequent, three times as frequent as the third, and so on. This is known as Zipf’s law.

Researchers have hunted for evidence of this pattern in communication among other species, but until now no other examples have been found.

In new research published today in Science, our team of experts in whale song, linguistics and developmental psychology analysed eight years’ of song recordings from humpback whales in New Caledonia. Led by Inbal Arnon from the Hebrew University, Ellen Garland from the University of St Andrews, and Simon Kirby from the University of Edinburgh, We used techniques inspired by the way human infants learn language to analyse humpback whale song.

We discovered that the same Zipfian pattern universally found across human languages also occurs in whale song. This complex signalling system, like human language, is culturally learned by each individual from others.

Learning like an infant

When infant humans are learning, they have to somehow discover where words start and end. Speech is continuous and does not come with gaps between words that they can use. So how do they break into language?

Thirty years of research has revealed that they do this by listening for sounds that are surprising in context: sounds within words are relatively predictable, but between words are relatively unpredictable. We analysed the whale song data using the same procedure.

Unexpectedly, using this technique revealed in whale song the same statistical properties that are found in all languages. It turns out both human language and whale song have statistically coherent parts.

In other words, they both contain recurring parts where the transitions between elements are more predictable within the part. Moreover, these recurring sub-sequences we detected follow the Zipfian frequency distribution found across all human languages, and not found before in other species.

How do the same statistical properties arise in two evolutionarily distant species that differ from one another in so many ways? We suggest we found these similarities because humans and whales share a learning mechanism: culture.

A cultural origin

Our findings raise an exciting question: why would such different systems in such incredibly distant species have common structures? We suggest the reason behind this is that both are culturally learned.

Cultural evolution inevitably leads to the emergence of properties that make learning easier. If a system is hard to learn, it will not survive to the next generation of learners.

There is growing evidence from experiments with humans that having statistically coherent parts, and having them follow a Zipfian distribution, makes learning easier. This suggests that learning and transmission play an important role in how these properties emerged in both human language and whale song.

So can we talk to whales now?

Finding parallel structures between whale song and human language may also lead to another question: can we talk to whales now? The short answer is no, not at all.

Our study does not examine the meaning behind whale song sequences. We have no idea what these segments might mean to the whales, if they mean anything at all.

It might help to think about it like instrumental music, as music also contains similar structures. A melody can be learned, repeated, and spread – but that doesn’t give meaning to the musical notes in the same way that individual words have meaning.

Next up: birdsong

Our work also makes a bold prediction: we should find this Zipfian distribution wherever complex communication is transmitted culturally. Humans and whales are not the only species that do this.

We find what is known as “vocal production learning” in an unusual range of species across the animal kingdom. Song birds in particular may provide the best place to look as many bird species culturally learn their songs, and unlike in whales, we know a lot about precisely how birds learn song.

Equally, we expect not to find these statistical properties in the communication of species that don’t transmit complex communication by learning. This will help to reveal whether cultural evolution is the common driver of these properties between humans and whales.

Jenny Allen, Postdoctoral research associate, Griffith University; Ellen Garland, Royal Society University Research Fellow, School of Biology, University of St Andrews; Inbal Arnon, Professor of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Simon Kirby, Professor of Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Imagine one morning, you are deciding whether to drive to work or catch the train. Eventually, you decide to drive. On your way to the office, a squirrel crosses the road leaving you no time to react, and you run it over. Did you do anything wrong by deciding to drive instead of taking the train?

Ethical debates about the morality of driving tend to stop at the possible harm to humans. This is surprising, considering the decades of work in animal ethics and the fact that around 223 million birds and mammals are killed on Europe’s roads each year.

Researchers in moral philosophy like myself analyse the extent to which our actions are right or wrong. One way to evaluate actions like driving is to ask whether it is morally justified to subject others to a certain risk. Driving fits this kind of reasoning because when we decide to drive, we are not certain that we will kill someone (human or non-human), but we know our action will put others at some risk of harm.

So, how much risk is permissible? There are two factors moral philosophers often use to assess this. The first is the extent to which the action that puts others at risk is part of a fair social system of risk-taking – in other words, a social arrangement in which people exchange risks but also benefits that everyone can access. The second concerns whether such a system works to the advantage of all those who participate in it.

Driving can be considered a social system of risk-taking, and it would be considered morally acceptable if everyone can drive or be driven by other people, and if the system of driving ultimately benefits those who are put at risk by it.

Some philosophers believe that in the case of humans, this line of reasoning makes driving morally acceptable. But what if we extend it to include animals?

A car through a deer’s eyes

Cats, dogs and other domestic animals may ride in cars but most wild animals will not, so they do not meet the first factor. The sheer number of animals that end their lives as roadkill indicates that driving does not work to their advantage. For most animals, cars are a threat rather than a benefit.

Driving, in this case, would not be morally acceptable according to the ethical test we set for our fellow humans.

This may lead us to consider our risk of killing animals before we drive – including the road we will use, the season, or the speed we will drive at. It may even tell us that driving is morally impermissible.

One way to deny this would be to say that to forgo driving is too costly. For many people, driving is not an activity they can choose to do or not, but a basic need on which people depend for going to (or finding) a job, buying groceries, or visiting friends and family.

But even if we think these costs are important, what about the serious costs to animals? When we consider both of these factors, some tentative conclusions emerge.

Situations in which driving imposes a high risk of harm to animals, while not driving causes little cost to humans, probably make driving unacceptable. Take this scenario: your route to work during summer crosses congregations of house sparrows during the season in which they breed. Luckily, there is a convenient alternative.

Then there are situations in which driving imposes almost no risk to animals, but not being able to drive deeply affects people – such as a drive to the other side of a city to buy food, during which few wild animals are likely to cross your path. In such cases, driving is probably permissible.

But what about the various situations that sit between these two scenarios? In a lot of cases, driving is not necessary but may be more convenient than using public transport. Also, much of our driving is not done for essential activities but for things we generally enjoy.

Finding clear criteria that determine when it is morally acceptable to drive is the matter that ethicists should try to elucidate. All I can say is that all sets of costs and risks need assessing, and driving must be viewed as an activity subject to ethical reflection.

Drivers will need to decide, balancing the risk of harm they might impose on others by driving with the disadvantages of choosing not to drive. It should not come as a surprise, however, if we find that much of our driving is morally unjustified.

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Diego Exposito, PhD researcher in Politics, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever bought a souvenir from a local market on holiday? Or tried to travel overseas with a guitar? If so, you may have been stopped at the airport if your item contains animal or plant parts. This is because most countries, and also the EU, implement Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Cites is the main global agreement regulating international wildlife trade to ensure the protection of the 41,000 species covered by the convention. Under Cites, trade measures are established for species to ensure that international trade is legal and ecologically sustainable. For most species (96%), this comprises close regulation of trade. For more threatened species (3%), commercial international trade in wild animals and plants is banned (the remaining 1% refers to a third category of species protected in at least one country).

Under Cites, countries must prohibit international trade in violation of the convention. They are also encouraged to restrict or prohibit the collection of – and domestic trade in – Indigenous species included under Cites. Crucially, countries must enact laws to implement the convention. By design, Cites relies mainly on state-led law-enforcement to achieve its goals.

This year, as Cites marks its 50th anniversary, our new study evaluates the convention’s effectiveness. It asks whether it solves the problem for which it was designed, as well as outlining how it could be more effective.

Taking stock

Cites has had several successes. It can boast an effective system of international cooperation among 184 countries and the EU. Much international trade in Cites-listed species is legally permitted and has been determined to be sustainable. The convention has helped raise the profile of, and catalysed conservation action for, species threatened by international trade, such as pangolins and seahorses.

The convention has also supported the recovery of species, such as crocodiles and vicuña, a member of the camel family that lives in South America. Since 2010, Cites has generated awareness of, and coordinated action to address, illegal wildlife trade, most notably through the establishment of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime.

However, there are some major problems with the Cites approach. Illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade involving thousands of Cites-listed species occurred in at least 162 signatory countries from 2015 to 2021. This includes countries such as the US that are well resourced to deter it. A predominant focus on state-led law enforcement is therefore proving ineffective in many instances.

We find that many law enforcement agencies are not well enough resourced to deter illegal collection and trade of species. Simply creating laws does not necessarily mean that people or businesses will comply with them.

Also, regulating or prohibiting international wildlife trade does not necessarily reduce the threat to the species concerned. These measures may signal scarcity and lead to price increases, which could accelerate over-exploitation by incentivising speculative collection and stockpiling. In this context, there is much room for improvement.

What needs to change

Deciding on appropriate Cites trade measures for species relies primarily on biological criteria, such as population size. Typically, that process does not involve consultation with the people extracting or trading wildlife. Nor does it really consider insights from the social sciences, including economics, on the likely impact of trade measures on wildlife and people. Decisions by the world’s governments to establish these measures are therefore highly uncertain.

To better prevent species from being overexploited for international trade through Cites, countries need to have a greater understanding of how different species are traded. This would enable them to identify the most appropriate combination of rights, rules and decision-making procedures along supply chains, and then pre-test and implement interventions specific to these systems.

Countries therefore need to analyse how species are traded. This would include looking at the relevant property rights and other laws that affect people involved in the trade, as well as understanding factors such as incentives for people to harvest species, the extent to which trade contributes to peoples’ income, and market size for traded species and products.

Countries could then reconfigure rights and rules so that they are aligned along supply chains. This is needed to avoid creating loopholes and facilitating illegal trade. Where trade (both within countries and between countries) is taking place, these arrangements should support it to be legal and sustainable. That’s the ultimate aim of Cites. The relevant actors, including collectors and traders should also be consulted – or better yet involved in co-designing regulations – so that the rules are legitimate to them.

The most appropriate interventions will depend on each country’s analysis of its own trading situation and their role in the trade of given species. They may include devolving land or use rights to Indigenous peoples so that they manage and can benefit from the species. Or interventions may be programmes to reduce consumer demand or develop responsible markets for wildlife products as appropriate.

The approach we propose in our study has the potential to reduce reliance on state-led law enforcement along international supply chains. Pluralist regulatory approaches, including self-regulation, community monitoring or the engagement of appropriate third parties, could be used to support compliance with new rules at each stage of supply chains. Where property rights are appropriately assigned, clear and enforceable, this could mean less reliance on state law-enforcement. This is because local people with a sense of ownership of wildlife are more likely to help protect it rather than overexploit it.

How could Cites be more effective? By understanding the dynamic trade systems for species in greater detail. Then, identifying the most appropriate combination of rights, rules and decision-making procedures to achieve sustainability throughout supply chains. And, finally, integrating Cites trade measures within these broader systems.

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Dan Challender, Senior Research Fellow, Conservation Science and Policy, University of Oxford and Michael 't Sas-Rolfes, Oxford Martin Fellow, Research Associate, Illegal Wildlife Trade, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Heatwaves are among the world’s deadliest weather hazards. Every year, vast numbers of people are killed by heat stress and it can worsen health problems such as diabetes, asthma and heart disease.

Unfortunately, the bitumen roads, brick and concrete structures and roofing tiles in cities can absorb and retain vast amounts of heat, much of which is released after the sun has set. This creates what’s known as the urban heat island effect. In fact, temperatures can be significantly higher in cities than in surrounding or rural areas.

Trees and greenspace can drive down urban temperatures – but they must be able to draw water from the soil to achieve these massive cooling effects.

In other words, it can sometimes be helpful to water your trees during a heatwave.

How trees keep us cool (and no, it’s not just about shade)

Trees reduce urban temperatures in two significant ways. One is by the shade they provides and the other is through their cooling effect – and no, they’re not the same thing.

Water is taken up via a plant’s roots, moves through the stems or trunks and is then misted into the air from the leaves through little holes called stomata. This is called transpiration, and it helps cool the air around leaves.

Water can also evaporate from soil and other surfaces. The combined loss of water from plants and soil is called evapotranspiration.

The cooling effects of evapotranspiration vary but are up to 4°C, depending on other environmental factors.

Watering your trees

If heatwaves occur in generally hot, dry weather, then trees will provide shade – but some may struggle with transpiration if the soil is too dry.

This can reduce the cooling effect of trees. Keeping soil moist and plants irrigated, however, can change that.

The best time to irrigate is early in the morning, as the water is less likely to evaporate quickly before transpiration can occur.

You don’t need to do a deep water; most absorbing roots are close to the surface, so a bit of brief irrigation will often do the trick. You could also recycle water from your shower. Using mulch helps trap the water in the soil, giving the roots time to absorb it before it evaporates.

All transpiring plants have a cooling effect on the air surrounding them, so you might wonder if trees have anything special to offer in terms of the urban heat island effect and heatwaves.

Their great size means that they provide much larger areas of shade than other plants and if they are transpiring then there are greater cooling effects.

The surface area of tree leaves, which is crucial to the evaporative cooling that takes place on their surfaces, is also much greater than many other plants.

Another advantage is that trees can be very long lived. They provide shade, cooling and other benefits over a very long time and at relatively low cost.

Not all trees

All that said, I don’t want to overstate the role of urban trees in heatwaves when soils are dry.

Some trees cease transpiring early as soils dry, but others will persist until they wilt.

Careful tree selection can help maximise the cooling effects of the urban forest. Trees that suit the local soil and can cope with some drying while maintaining transpiration can provide greater cooling

And, of course, it is important to follow any water restriction rules or guidelines that may be operating in your area at the time.

Trees keep us cool

Despite the clear benefits trees can provide in curbing heat, tree numbers and canopy cover are declining annually in many Australian cities and towns.

Housing development still occurs without proper consideration of how trees and greenspace improve residents’ quality of life.

It is not an either/or argument. With proper planning, you can have both new housing and good tree canopy cover.

We should also be cautious of over-pruning urban trees.

Trees cannot eliminate the effects of a heatwave but can mitigate some of them.

Anything that we can do to mitigate the urban heat island effect and keep our cities and towns cooler will reduce heat-related illness and associated medical costs.

Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bennett’s tree kangaroos, one of Australia’s most mysterious marsupials, have long eluded researchers. Our new study, published in Australian Mammalogy today, has achieved a breakthrough: using thermal drones to detect these rare animals with unprecedented efficiency.

Tree kangaroos are found only in the tropical rainforests of Australia and New Guinea. Unlike their ground-dwelling relatives, they spend their lives in treetops, feeding on leaves and vines. Their dependence on rainforest trees makes them vulnerable to deforestation and climate change.

Alarmingly, 12 of the 14 species of tree kangaroos are listed as threatened. Yet we know little about their numbers or habits due to difficulties studying them in dense rainforest.

Our new findings mark a significant step forward, offering hope for improved conservation of these elusive, near-mythical creatures. Thermal drones, which detect animals by their body heat, may help to unravel the mysteries of tree kangaroos and guide efforts to protect them.

Rugged, dense rainforests

Bennett’s tree kangaroos inhabit Australia’s most rugged and densely vegetated rainforests north of the Daintree River in Far North Queensland. They rarely descend from their vine-covered treetop roosts, which can be up to 40 metres high.

Traditional survey methods like spotlighting (that is, methodically using flashlights) or handheld thermal cameras (using infrared sensors to detect warm bodies) often fail to detect tree kangaroos, as these tools are limited to what can be seen from the ground.

As a result, there have been no systematic surveys of Bennett’s tree kangaroos. Population estimates rely on outdated observations and anecdotal evidence, leaving their conservation status unclear.

We need robust population estimates to detect shifting population trends and prevent population declines. This requires new monitoring methods to help us find these elusive animals.

Hotspots in the treetops

Thermal drones are just what they sound like – drones equipped with infrared cameras that detect heat signatures from the air.

Warm-blooded animals like tree kangaroos stand out against the cooler rainforest background, even when partially hidden by foliage. This technology offers a powerful advantage over traditional methods, allowing researchers to scan large areas from above and see past vegetation.

In our study, we conducted three drone flights at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory, Cape Tribulation, during the morning and evening.

To our surprise, we detected six Bennett’s tree kangaroos in under an hour of flight time – an unprecedented result. These included a solitary animal, a pair, and a group of three, all consistent with known home range sizes for the species.

By comparison, traditional ground surveys often require several nights of survey effort to spot a single animal. The drones not only made detection easier but also allowed us to closely observe the animals’ behaviour, such as feeding on specific plant species, without disturbing them.

Shedding light on a hidden species

Our findings suggest Bennett’s tree kangaroos are thriving in Cape Tribulation’s lowland rainforest.

While this is encouraging, further systematic surveys are needed to assess how population density varies with forest type, elevation and other factors.

Another intriguing discovery was the tree kangaroos’ diet. Using the drone’s colour zoom camera, we identified the vines and leaves they were eating. Mile-a-minute vine (Decalobanthus peltatus) and fire vine (Tetracera daemeliana) were popular choices on the menu.

These observations deepen our understanding of the species’ habitat needs and could inform future conservation efforts.

Conservation research methods must prioritise minimising stress on wildlife. The tree kangaroos showed no signs of disturbance, continuing to forage after briefly pausing to look at the drone.

This non-invasive approach is a promising alternative to traditional methods, like radio tracking (where a tag is attached to the animal), which can disrupt natural behaviours.

Craning for a better view

Despite showing promise, drone-based wildlife monitoring has its challenges. Regulations require drone operators to maintain visual line of sight with their drone. This can be difficult in a rainforest due to the height and density of the canopy.

To overcome this, we remotely operated our drone from a 47-metre-high canopy crane designed for research. This extra height allowed us to maintain a clear view while surveying a larger area.

However, canopy cranes are rare – there’s only one in tropical Australia. Expanding this approach will require alternative strategies, such as using mountaintops or canopy walkways as vantage points.

Our study is just the beginning. The next step is designing methods to estimate population densities more accurately – not only for Bennett’s tree kangaroos but also other tree kangaroo species in the remote mountains of New Guinea. By identifying individual tree kangaroos based on their unique fur markings, we aim to also study their social structure and sex ratios.

Thermal drones have the potential to revolutionise conservation efforts for hard-to-study wildlife. They offer a powerful tool to monitor populations and guide management decisions.

For the rare and remarkable Bennett’s tree kangaroo, this technology could make the difference between obscurity and security.

Emmeline Norris, PhD Candidate, Conservation Biology, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The economic cost of food waste in Australia is staggering. It’s estimated $36.6 billion is lost to the economy every year. Much of our fresh produce never even makes it to stores, rejected at the farm gate due to cosmetic reasons, such as its appearance, size or ripeness.

We’ve known about this problem for a long time, which has given rise to the “ugly” food movement. Once-rejected produce has been rebranded as “wonky” in the UK, “inglorious” in France, “naturally imperfect” in Canada or an “odd bunch” in Australia.

While the existence of these campaigns is commendable, there’s another major marketing challenge if we want to reduce food waste - acceptance of climate-affected produce.

Broadly speaking, this refers to produce affected by extreme or moderate weather events. Droughts are an example of such climate events, predicted to become more intense and frequent as a result of global climate change.

Climate-affected produce resembles “ugly” food as it is often smaller, misshapen or has surface imperfections.

But in contrast to “ugly” food, the taste and texture of climate-affected produce can be quite different.

Under the effects of drought, apples may become sweeter and more granular, chillies hotter and onions more pungent. In the case of mild or moderate droughts, such produce is still edible.

Our recent research points to some uncomfortable truths. Many consumers prefer to avoid climate-affected produce altogether. And when price is a factor, they won’t choose it without a discount.

But our research also offers suggestions on how purchases of such produce could be encouraged – including marketing messages that highlight the “resilience” of climate-affected produce.

Our research

We carried out two discrete choice experiments with consumers who buy fresh fruit and vegetables. One sample was drawn from among Australian students, the other from members of the wider Australian population.

Participants were shown eight different apple options simulating a shopping environment, which were described with a range of different attributes including firmness, sweetness, appearance and size.

The apples were also labelled with a price tag and information on whether they were sold at a supermarket or farmers’ market. All climate-affected apples were presented with a “resilience” message: “resilient apple – survived the drought”.

We sought to examine how produce’s “organoleptic” properties – the way it impacts our different senses – as well as levels of empathy toward the farmers impact consumers’ willingness to choose climate-affected produce, and how much they’d pay for it.

A preference for perfect

We found when an apple’s firmness, size and aesthetics were important and empathy towards farmers was low, consumers tended to avoid climate-affected produce. They instead chose unaffected alternatives at higher prices (no such effect was observed for sweetness).

This finding might not be surprising, but it’s still cause for concern. If farmers cannot repurpose climate-affected produce into spreads, jams, smoothies or animal feed, it can’t enter supply chains and may end up as waste.

Previous campaigns for “ugly” fruit and vegetables may not offer much help with this problem, either. These campaigns emphasise the unaffected taste and texture of the produce. Marketing climate-affected produce needs a different approach.

Otherwise, we expect a discount

When price was important to consumers, they chose climate-affected produce, regardless of their levels of empathy toward farmers. But they were only willing to pay discounted prices for it.

That might seem like a more positive outcome. But consumer expectations that climate-affected produce will always be discounted may disadvantage farmers with lower profit margins and diminish its value as a still-usable resource.

The power of “resilience” messaging

Importantly, we found when the “resilience” message resonated with consumers, they were more inclined to consider climate-affected apples. This was true even when their empathy towards farmers was low.

This suggests that when empathy fails, leveraging marketing messages that highlight “resilience” could be another avenue worth exploring.

Our research team is now exploring what types of “resilience” messages can encourage purchases of climate-affected produce.

Australians have been conditioned for many years to expect only aesthetically pleasing fruit and vegetables.

Given extreme weather events are unlikely to become less frequent in the future, climate-affected produce is likely here to stay. If we want consumers to embrace it, we need to have uncomfortable conversations around its different taste and texture, and rethink what we’re willing to accept.

Liudmila Tarabashkina, Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia; Kenneth Kaysan Khayr (Fu Xian) Ho, University Lecturer in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Edith Cowan University, and Rajesh Rajaguru, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Toxic substances used in flea and tick treatments pet owners give to their dogs and cats have been detected in birds’ nests, according to new UK research.

Fipronil and imidacloprid, two common insecticides distributed by vets in pipettes to kill or stunt fleas, were previously found in nearly all English rivers. These chemicals are known to harm aquatic insects, which has repercussions for the species that eat them. Birds are also known to ingest these insecticides in their food and water.

Our study now raises the risk of direct skin contact, as veterinary drugs were the most common insecticides colleagues and I found in bird nests. How do they get there – and what are they doing?

Many birds, including garden visitors such as blue tits and great tits, nest in tree hollows and nest boxes. To keep their eggs and chicks warm, these birds line their nests with soft materials such as fur. In fact, around 74% of European bird species use fur as nest insulation.

Across the UK, pet owners and wildlife enthusiasts leave brushed pet fur outside for birds to collect. But with around 80% of the country’s 22 million cats and dogs receiving regular flea and tick treatments, this well-meaning act can inadvertently expose birds to harm.

A previous study in the Netherlands found that insecticides used in flea treatment were appearing in birds’ nests. The study I led with colleagues is the first to identify the problem in the UK.

Banned on farms, used in homes

We examined 103 nests of blue tits and great tits and found the residue of 17 out of 20 insecticides commonly used as flea treatments in the UK. The most prevalent were fipronil, which we found in every single nest, imidacloprid and permethrin, which were both detected in 89% of nests.

All three of these chemicals are banned for use as pest control on EU farms due to their harmful effects on wildlife. Studies have shown that these insecticides can damage the nervous and reproductive systems of birds, and threaten their overall health. Yet they remain widely used in veterinary medicine.

We collected nests months after the breeding season, and so the concentrations of chemicals we found are likely to be lower than what was present in the nests during spring, when birds gather material for nests. This suggests that eggs and chicks were exposed during the whole breeding season.

The nests we found with higher concentrations of insecticides contained more unhatched eggs and dead chicks. Other factors could explain these deaths, such as predation. But the known dangers of these chemicals should make us question their wider impact on the environment. While more research is needed to fully understand their risks, the evidence already suggests that exposure could be harming nestlings, which are at a critical stage of development.

Scientists and conservation groups are urging the UK government to conduct a more thorough environmental risk assessment of veterinary treatments, particularly those used on dogs and cats.

Public awareness will also be key to addressing the problem. Many pet owners do not know that their routine flea treatments affect wildlife. Small changes could help reduce this impact. For example, year-round flea treatment is not necessary, particularly in winter when fleas and ticks are less active.

If treatment is required then tablets could be a better choice as they do not involve direct skin contact for birds and would not wash away every time a pet swims or is bathed either. They may be excreted in faeces and contaminate the soil, however – that’s why a thorough environmental risk assessment is necessary.

Pet owners who enjoy helping birds can still leave out fur as nesting material, perhaps by saving the brushed fur from untreated pets during winter and putting it out the following spring.

As awareness of this issue grows, pet owners, scientists and policymakers can ensure that veterinary treatments do not come at the cost of the UK’s wildlife.

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Cannelle Tassin de Montaigu, Research Fellow, Ecology & Evolution, University of Sussex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Citizen science is a powerful tool for involving more people in research. By influencing policy, it is transforming conservation at global, national and local levels.

Citizen science actively encourages non-scientists to be a part of the scientific research process. Sometimes the terminology gets confusing. We say “non-scientists” but through taking part in citizen science projects, people become scientists – they’re just not professionally involved in the research.

It’s also worth noting that the “citizen” in citizen science is completely unrelated to ideas of national citizenship. Put simply, it’s science by the people for the people.

Citizen scientists can take part in every stage of the research process. Depending on the project, participants can write the research questions, choose the methods, collect the data, analyse and interpret the results, and share the research as widely as possible. By broadening people’s understanding of scientific problems and solutions, citizen science can act as a powerful catalyst for change.

It is already making an impact across lots of disciplines, including conservation, by addressing barriers to policy change such as lack of evidence and low levels of public engagement and input. While it’s not yet common for citizen science to directly influence policy, in our research we’ve seen how citizen science can shape policy at every scale: through promoting policy, monitoring progress towards policy or advocating for policy enforcement.

At a local level, citizen science can influence policy and transform conservation science. The clean air coalition of western New York is a group of citizens concerned about smells and smoke, and their connection to chronic health problems in the community. The group collected samples in 2004 to determine what was in the air and presented this data to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

In response, the DEC monitored air pollutants in four locations in the city of Tonawanda for a year between 2007 and 2008 – an investigation which formed the basis for compliance monitoring and regulatory actions. As a direct result of citizen science, the Tonawanda Coke Corporation agreed to improve its operations, monitor for leaks and upgrade pollution controls. By December 2019, levels of carcinogenic benzene had dropped 92% since the end of DEC’s sampling in 2008.

Citizen science can also run at the national level. For example, the annual Big Butterfly Count, run by the Butterfly Conservation charity, encourages people in the UK to advocate for conservation policy by counting butterflies.

Over 25 days in July and August 2024, 85,000 volunteers recorded their sightings, with alarming results. Average butterfly numbers were at their lowest in the survey’s 14-year history.

The charity and its citizen scientists called on the UK government to ban pesticides that can harm butterflies and bees. And on January 23 2025, the government confirmed that, for the first time in five years, an emergency application for the use of a neonicotinoid pesticide on sugar beet in England will not be granted.

The government highlighted that the decision was “based on robust assessments of environmental, health and economic risks and benefits” and, although not explicitly stated, it is clear that citizen scientists contributed to those assessments.

Going global

Citizen science also contributes data to international conservation policies. For example, the UN incorporates citizen science data into two of its largest environmental policy frameworks: the sustainable development goals (SDGs) – a set of targets to end poverty, protect the environment, and promote prosperity for all people – and the Kunming-Montreal agreement, which aims to halt and reverse biodiversity decline.

As part of our work at the European branch of the Earthwatch Institute research organisation, we’re involved with a global water quality monitoring project called FreshWater Watch. This project has successfully engaged communities and governments in Sierra Leone and Zambia to collect data on the proportion of rivers and lakes with good water quality within a country. Over time, this indicator can be used to measure progress towards the SDG for clean water and sanitation.

Currently, only five of the 231 indicators used to measure progress for the SDGs include citizen science data. But recent research suggests such projects could contribute to up to 33% of these indicators and over half of the 365 indicators for the global biodiversity framework.

And even where citizen science data is not used in official monitoring towards policy, it can still transform conservation science by educating people and empowering them to advocate for change.

The Great UK WaterBlitz is a national example of this. WaterBlitzes are four-day campaigns in which volunteers assess the water quality of local rivers, ponds and lakes, using simple-but-reliable testing kits for nitrates and phosphates.

Nitrates and phosphates occur naturally in the environment and are essential for plant growth. But high concentrations found in sewage and agricultural runoff trigger a process called eutrophication: an overgrowth of algae which leads to increased levels of bacteria and, therefore, decreased oxygen concentrations, which harms aquatic plants and animals.

Our team has used such testing kits in river catchments for over 10 years, but recently expanded to a UK-wide campaign. In September 2024, we ran our largest event to date, with 4,500 participants investigating 2,300 locations. This created a national snapshot of freshwater health at a granular scale, which we have used to highlight pollution hotspots to the Environment Agency (EA).

Although this data is not yet used for official monitoring or the development of conservation policy, its contribution to improving water ecosystems is increasingly acknowledged. As the EA’s deputy director for monitoring, insight and innovation told the Guardian: “The Environment Agency values the contribution of England’s growing network of citizen scientists and welcomes the Great UK WaterBlitz and other initiatives that complement our own research, monitoring and assessment work.”

Despite demonstrating valuable contributions to research – particularly by providing robust datasets – citizen science still faces multiple challenges. The engagement, motivation and retention of volunteers is resource-intensive, and citizen science is not particularly well funded.

And even though citizen science methods are frequently validated by laboratory scientists, policymakers can still be hesitant to integrate this into their monitoring frameworks, due to often unfounded concerns about the data’s quality and reliability.

But citizen science is already influencing conservation. This will only increase as policymakers recognise it as a legitimate and valuable scientific approach. And because there are citizen science projects all over the world, anyone can be a part of this positive change.

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Sasha Woods, Director of Science and Policy, Earthwatch Institute (Europe) and Stephen Parkinson, PhD Candidate, Circular Economy, University of Nottingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When we see “tested under laboratory conditions”, we often assume real-world conditions will lead to faster degradation of a product.

But experts from Stanford University have found the opposite is true for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Their new research shows traditional laboratory testing leads to faster degradation, while real-world use gives substantially more battery life, extending the lifespan of the entire EV. Researchers found the stop-start way we drive and the variable rate the battery discharges power actually prolongs battery life by up to 38% compared to traditional tests.

This is good news for EV drivers – and for efforts to electrify transport. This extra battery life would translate to more than 300,000 more kilometres an EV could drive before needing battery replacement, the researchers say.

Longer-lasting batteries would reduce the total cost of EV ownership – and benefit the environment by getting more use out of each battery.

How do we usually test battery degradation?

Common battery chemistries such as lithium-ion will degrade over time. As lithium ions shuttle back and forth across the electrode, some will be diverted or trapped. As batteries age, they don’t hold as much charge.

So how do you measure this?

When you make an EV battery, you don’t want to spend 20 years testing its longevity before release. To test batteries more quickly, researchers have tended to estimate battery degradation rates by using a constant rate of battery discharge. Studies of EV battery degradation are normally done in a laboratory environment under controlled conditions.

In the lab, researchers subject the battery to rapidly repeated charge-discharge cycles. Power is discharged at a constant rate. Observing the gradual drop in capacity gives us the degradation levels over time. This is how we get estimates such as “retains 80% capacity in ten years time”.

But while this method is widely used, it has limitations. Discharging power at a constant rate is not how we really drive. We might accelerate fast to get onto the freeway, spend lots of time accelerating and braking in stop-start traffic, or do a quick run to several shops. Plus, much of the time the battery is not being used. Instead of a constant drain on the battery, it’s a mix.

What the Stanford researchers have done is test EV batteries in realistic ways, imitating the way we actually drive. This is known as “dynamic cycle testing”.

Mimicking real world use

To replicate real-world usage and driving patterns, the Stanford team designed different discharge patterns for EV batteries, some based on real driving data. The researchers then tested 92 commercial lithium-ion batteries for more than two years across the different profiles.

The results showed batteries tested using real life scenarios degraded substantially slower than expected and had higher battery expectancy than those tested under lab conditions. Even better, the more realistic the battery use, the slower the battery degraded.

Battery researchers have long assumed rapid acceleration is bad for battery life. But this isn’t the case. Short acceleration and regenerative braking – where EVs charge their batteries during braking – were actually associated with slower battery degradation rates.

Is this backed up in practice?

A number of other recent studies have looked at how batteries perform in practice using data from EVs in operation, including commercial vehicles. These studies also found correlations between real-world use and lower battery degradation rates.

A 2024 report by GEOTAB researchers used telematic remote monitoring to get data from 10,000 EVs. The study found improved battery technology is leading to slower degradation. Newer EVs lose about 1.8% of their health per year – a sharp drop compared to the 2.3% degradation rate in 2019.

Several factors influenced battery longevity other than use patterns. One of these is worth noting – frequent use of DC fast chargers by high-use vehicles is linked to faster battery degradation. The effect is more notable in hot climates. By contrast, slower “level 2” charging is better for battery longevity. Overall, the researchers found the best way to prolong battery life was to keep charge between 20% and 80%, reduce exposure to extreme temperatures and limit fast charging.

Another 2024 report analysed the batteries of 7,000 EVs used intensively over 3-5 years. The report found lower degradation rates than expected.

This report found most batteries still had had good capacity (more than 80%) even after propelling vehicles more than 200,000 km. Factors such as use patterns, advances in cell chemistry and optimised battery management were also found to influence battery ageing.

What does this mean for the EV transition?

These results suggest EV owners may not need to replace expensive battery packs for several additional years. Over the lifetime of an EV, this means lower operating costs.

The findings are also encouraging for fleet operators. Batteries in high-mileage commercial EVs should remain reliable even after heavy use.

Car manufacturers and technology providers can benefit by updating their EV battery management software to take these findings into account. This would help to increase battery longevity under real-world conditions.

Fewer battery replacements will mean fewer batteries to recycle. Once removed from the vehicle, EV batteries can be used to store energy for homes or businesses for years. These findings suggest a longer and more reliable second life for the batteries.

In recent years, the electric vehicle transition has hit a couple of speedbumps. Cost-of-living pressures and uncertainty about charging have seen more Australians take up hybrids than pure electric vehicles.

These findings may help reassure drivers interested in electric vehicles but unsure about battery lifespan.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Future Urban Mobility, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The more plants you include in your diet, the more health benefits you’ll notice. This is why public health guidelines have long encouraged people to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

But the 30-plants-a-week challenge circulating online suggests that, instead of only aiming to eat five servings a day, we should instead aim to eat 30 different plant foods per week to improve our health. Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, wholegrains, herbs and spices would all count as a plant serving.

Some advocates of the approach have even created some ground rules and have generated a points system that gives a point to each different type of plant you consume. However, not every plant counts as a full point. For instance, herbs and spices only count as one-quarter of a plant point. Refined plant products, such as fruit juices or processed wholegrains (such as white bread), don’t count at all.

Current NHS dietary recommendations around fruits and vegetables (such as the five-a-day message) place the emphasis on quantity – ensuring people eat enough fruit, vegetables and wholegrains to get all the essential nutrients and fibre their body needs. But, the 30 plants approach shifts the focus to diversity – arguing that eating a wide variety of plant foods provides greater health benefits than eating the recommended amount of only a few select fruits and vegetables.

So does eating 30 plants a week offer any additional health benefits over eating five servings a day?

Exploring the science

The 30 plants a week challenge is based on the American Gut Project – a citizen science study of 10,000 participants from across the US, UK and Australia. The findings suggest that people who eat a greater variety of plant-based foods each week have a more diverse gut microbiome compared to those who eat fewer plants. The gut microbiome refers to the trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and microorganisms that live in our digestive tract.

Research shows a more diverse microbiome is associated with a lower risk of chronic disease, better immune function and even improved mental health.

So in simple terms, it looks like the more plant diversity we eat, the more diverse the population of microbes living in our gut are. This leads to better overall health.

But does eating 30 plants really provide a greater number of benefits compared to current public health messages? These recommend we eat at least five portions of fruit and veg daily, choose wholegrain carbohydrates and limit refined sugar, processed meats and foods as much as possible.

Incidentally, research shows that following these recommendations also leads to a more diverse gut microbiome and better health outcomes compared to those who do not meet recommendations.

So, it looks like following either current public health recommendations or the 30 plants diet will improve microbial diversity and have benefits for health. While 30 is a meaningful and realistic target, it’s important to recognise that small, sustainable changes can also have a lasting health impact.

Diet changes

Like any trend, the 30 plants message isn’t without its drawbacks. One major concern is accessibility. Buying 30 different plant foods each week can be expensive – which could exacerbate existing health inequalities.

There are ways around these limitations, such as buying in bulk and freezing portions, using canned and frozen fruits, veggies, pulses and lentils and meal planning to reduce food waste.

However, these solutions often require extra resources such as storage, cooking space and time – which may not be possible for everyone.

There’s also a risk that the message could oversimplify the complexity of public health guidance – potentially overlooking the importance of individual nutrients and overall dietary balance.

On the other hand, there’s a strong argument that the 30 plants per week challenge is simply the same, old public health advice packaged in a slightly different, more engaging way. As a dietitian, I quite like that.

Current public health messages around food, nutrition and lifestyle are not landing. Despite the evidence for these guidelines, rates of lifestyle-related health problems are increasing. It’s not that these recommendations don’t work – it’s that as a population we struggle to follow them.

The 30-plants-a-week challenge is a positive message that encourages adding more variety – rather than restricting foods. If people are encouraged to eat more plant-based foods, they may naturally displace less nutritious choices – which is a win for health.

If you’re thinking of trying the 30-plants-a-week challenge, here are some easy ways to increase variety in your diet:

1. Swap your carbs: Swap white bread, rice or pasta for wholegrain bread, rice or pasta. You can also consider alternative wholegrain carbohydrates such as quinoa or wholegrain couscous.
2. Include nuts and seeds: Easily overlooked, but an effortless way to add diversity. A small handful is a portion.
3. Add pulses and lentils: Add lentils to a meat dish (such as spaghetti bolognese) for extra protein and more plant points.
4. Buy tinned and frozen foods: Stock up on frozen berries, mixed vegetables, canned beans and chickpeas to make plant variety easier to achieve and more affordable.

The challenge to eat 30 different plants is an exciting and positive way to potentially encourage nutritious choices. However, we don’t yet fully understand its acceptability or impact on food choices in real-world settings. While the scientific evidence strongly supports the benefits of plant diversity for health, it would be valuable to gather more research on its practical effectiveness before incorporating it into public health messaging.

Aisling Pigott, Lecturer, Dietetics, Cardiff Metropolitan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tens of thousands of fish have died off northwestern Australia, as a large and long-lasting marine heatwave intensifies.

The fish kill at Gnoorea Beach near Karratha is concerning our team of scientists, as the hot mass of water heads south towards Ningaloo Reef and the seagrass gardens in Shark Bay. That’s because we’ve seen this before. An enormous marine heatwave in 2010-11 devastated fisheries and ecosystems further down the WA coast.

This marine heatwave began in September, with temperatures up to 3°C warmer than usual off Broome. There’s no end in sight.

The heatwave comes as oceans worldwide experience recordbreaking heat, driven by climate change. More than 90% of all heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.

The fish kill is a visible way to glimpse a disaster often out of sight and out of mind. But these marine heatwaves do much more, from wiping out seagrass meadows and kelp beds to trashing fisheries.

How bad is this marine heatwave?

Marine heatwaves are periods of at least five consecutive days when ocean temperatures are significantly higher than the long-term average for the region and season.

Since September 2024, temperatures off Australia’s northwest coast have been high enough to be considered a heatwave.

In late December, the area of hotter water expanded southward along the Pilbara coast and became more intense. Temperatures hit 4–5°C above normal at the surface. Our research group has gathered data from satellite measurements, which tells us it’s hotter than usual. Data from autonomous ocean gliders also show unusual levels of heat as far down as 200 metres.

In January, this heatwave has become bad enough to be classified in some areas as a severe marine heatwave.

There’s no relief in sight yet. The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts marine heatwave conditions to continue through February.

Will it be worse than the 2010 heatwave?

The current marine heatwave is, so far, the second-worst in Western Australia’s recorded history.

Over the 2010–11 summer, a severe marine heatwave devastated seas off the state. Temperatures hit up to 5°C above average, peaking in February and March.

The worst-hit areas were seas off the central West Australian coastline, leaving those to the north largely unaffected. But the heatwave stretched 2,000 kilometres, from the Pilbara all the way down to Denmark in the southwest.

The reason the 2010 heatwave spread so far south was due to the Leeuwin Current, which was stronger than usual due to weak southerly winds linked to a low pressure system off the coast.

The heat led to local extinction of kelp species along a 100km stretch of coastline. Scallop and blue swimmer crab fisheries had to close. Seagrass meadows in Shark Bay collapsed. Tropical species were sighted in new areas. And coral bleached at Ningaloo.

By contrast, this current marine heatwave has concentrated on the northern coastline, but may spread south in coming weeks.

Unfortunately, there are strong similarities between the 2010–11 heatwave and this one. Both occurred during a La Niña year.

A similar low pressure system in December 2024 weakened southerly winds during this heatwave, though not as pronounced as in 2010-11. We can expect to see the Leeuwin Current intensify and carry more warm water than usual south, but perhaps not as far as in 2010–11.

Weather systems at present are developing slightly differently to 2010–11, but they could still lead to weaker southerly winds and produce a stronger current channelling heat.

What does this mean for ocean life?

Marine heatwaves at this size and intensity can profoundly damage marine ecosystems and fisheries. The Karratha fish kill is the most visible sign of ecosystem distress.

We have already seen signs of bleaching in the coral reefs of the Kimberley region, while corals are experiencing heat stress at world-famous Ningaloo Reef.

The heat is now affecting the Gascoyne region between Carnarvon and Exmouth, and is likely to head further south.

Damage from the heatwave could threaten valuable industries such as the rock lobster fishery and marine tourism on the Coral Coast.

More heatwaves will come

As the climate changes, modelling indicates marine heatwaves will hit more often and to intensify.

Worldwide, marine heatwaves have devastated ecosystems. One of the worst, the Pacific “blob” heatwave of 2014-2016, killed an estimated 100 million Pacific cod and four million birds from a single seabird species, as well as contributing to the starvation of about 7,000 humpback whales. The intense heat killed off cold-loving species and paved the way for tropical species to enter and even thrive.

Right now, 28% of the world’s oceans are in heatwave conditions, based on surface temperatures.

While there is a clear link between the 2010-11 marine heatwave and climate change, we cannot conclusively say this current heatwave off Western Australia is linked to climate change.

That’s because we don’t have enough data about what’s happening under the surface. Temperatures in the ocean vary greatly by depth, and a hot surface doesn’t always mean heat has reached deeper water.

So while we know a marine heatwave is in progress, we don’t know how bad it is or how far down the heat has reached in different regions. We need better ways to measure temperatures at depth, to be able to gauge how bad a heatwave is. Installing more temperature sensors along the WA coastline would allow us to better monitor and respond to temperature extremes.

The earlier we know about a heatwave, the more we can do to prepare. The 2010-2011 heatwave made many people aware of what damage heat can do to an ocean, as fishing boats sat idle and tourists steered clear of dying coral.

More, and worse, is likely to come. Better conservation and management of our oceans can help. But tackling the root cause of intensifying heat – unchecked greenhouse gas emissions – is still far and away the most important challenge.

Sina Pinter, PhD Candidate in Ocean Dynamics, The University of Western Australia; Matt Rayson, Senior Research Fellow in Oceanography, The University of Western Australia, and Nicole L. Jones, Professor of Physical Oceanography, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the 2019-2020 megafires took hold across eastern Australia, many of us reeled at the sight of animals trying and often failing to flee. Our screens filled up with images of koalas with burned paws and possums in firefighter helmets.

The death toll was staggering, estimated at up to three billion wild animals killed or displaced. Millions more were severely injured. Tens of thousands of domesticated animals were killed or had to be euthanised.

In fighting these fires, authorities focused almost entirely on protecting human lives and property, other than targeted rescue efforts for the last remaining wild stand of Wollemi pine. The role of rescuing and caring for domesticated and wild animals fell almost entirely to community groups and individual carers, who stepped up to fill the gap at significant cost to themselves – financially, emotionally and sometimes even at a risk to their safety.

Our new research draws on more than 60 interviews with wildlife carers and groups in the Shoalhaven region south of Wollongong in New South Wales. These people spontaneously organised themselves to care for thousands of domesticated, farm and wild animals, from evacuating them from fire zones to giving them shelter, food, water and healthcare.

The lengths our interviewees went to were extraordinary. But these rescue efforts were largely invisible to authorities – and, as our interviewees told us, sometimes even condemned as irresponsible.

What did our interviews tell us?

The standard view in Australia is that only humans matter in the face of bushfires. But the way affected communities reached out to save as many animals as they could shows many people think we ought to be acting differently.

One interviewee told about screaming for “her babies” as Rural Fire Service firefighters evacuated her. In response, the firies searched the house for human babies to no avail. When they found out she meant her wombat joeys, they laughed in relief. But to our interviewee, the joeys were like her babies. The joeys were safe inside her house.

People cared for a wide range of species, from horses, chickens, bees and cows to native birds, possums, wombats and wallabies. Despite this, we found common themes.

Many people felt the system had let them down when it came to protecting animals. This is why many of them felt they had to take matters into their own hands to ensure that animals survived.

As one interviewee told us:

one thing that you have to realise, is people’s animals are their children, and they are their life. If you let someone think that their animal isn’t safe, they will put themselves in danger to try and get to that animal or save that animal […] That’s one thing the firies — you know, if they’re not an animal compassionate person, they don’t get that.

While some guidance on disaster preparation talks about how to protect pets such as cats and dogs, wildlife carers, farmers and horse owners often found themselves facing incoming fires with little or no information or support.

People also told us about a lack of information on how to care for different types of animals during disasters. Information was often nonexistent or hard to locate, making decision-making during the crisis very difficult.

As one farmer told us:

there’s not any information on realistically what you do with your animals in a case of […] a massive disaster. I mean, it’s like someone said about cutting the fences. But now you’ve got stocking cattle running through the bush and they don’t know where the fire’s going to turn or what’s going to happen.

The needs of animals differ significantly. It’s harder to find shelter for a horse than a smaller animal, for instance. Wildlife being cared for already need assistance, due to being orphaned, injured or ill. It’s harder to evacuate injured animals or joeys who need regular feeding than it is to evacuate healthy adult animals.

Our interviewees reported price spikes for transport, food, temporary fencing and medicines during the 2019-2020 emergency season. Caring for animals always comes with costs, but the cost burden intensified over the Black Summer and afterwards.

Caring for animals came with another cost too, to mental health. Many of our interviewees told us they still felt traumatised, even though our interviews were two or three years after the fires.

As one interviewee told us:

the people at Lake Conjola […] said it was like an apocalypse. They said there was dead birds dropping out of the sky. Kangaroos would come hopping out of the bush on fire […] I know it really heavily affected most people on the beach, the horrific things that they saw.

Despite facing a lack of formal support and with limited information, people organised themselves very quickly into networks to share access to safe land, transport, food, labour and information. Dedicated people set up social media groups to allocate tasks, call for help and so on. This unsung animal rescue effort was almost entirely driven by volunteers.

What should we do before the next megafires?

Australia will inevitably be hit by more megafires, as climate change brings more hot, dry fire weather and humidity falls over land.

What would it mean to include animals in our planning? To start with, more and better information for wildlife carers, farmers, pet owners and the wider community. It would mean directing more funds to animal care, both during and after disasters, and including animal care in local, state and federal disaster planning. It would mean improving communication networks so people know where to go.

To this end, we developed a new guide for communities wanting to be better prepared to help animals in the next disaster. We prototyped an app designed to help communities organise themselves in order to help animals during disasters.

The scale of the Black Summer fires found governments and communities largely unprepared. But we are now in a position to learn from what happened.

As authorities prepare for the next fires, they should broaden how they think about disaster preparation. Our research suggests disaster planning needs to take place at a community level, rather than a focus on individual households. And vitally, authorities need to think of communities as made up of both humans and animals, rather than just humans.

Danielle Celermajer, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney; Anna Sturman, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Sydney; Blanche Verlie, Horizon Research Fellow and Lecturer in Social Science, University of Sydney; Freya MacDonald, Phd student in Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, and Natasha Heenan, Casual Lecturer, Political Economy and Climate Policy, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Before species go extinct, their populations often shrink and become isolated. Healthy populations tend to have a large gene pool with many genetic variants circulating. But the path to extinction erodes genetic diversity, because a species’ gene pool shrinks as the population declines. Losing genetic diversity limits the ability of populations to adapt to threats such as disease and climate change.

So, what is the state of genetic diversity in animals, plants, fungi and algae worldwide? And how could focusing on this crucial level of biodiversity help build resilience in the face of global change? We explore these questions in our new study, published today in Nature.

Our team of 57 scientists from 20 countries trawled through more than 80,000 scientific articles across three decades to summarise evidence of genetic change in populations in 141 countries.

Alarmingly, we found genetic diversity is being lost globally across many species, especially birds and mammals. This loss was most severe in studies reporting changes in habitat, new diseases, natural disasters, and human activities such as hunting or logging.

But there’s hope. Our study suggests conservation strategies can help maintain or even increase genetic diversity.

What is genetic diversity and why does it matter?

At the core of every cell lies a copy of the instruction manual for living things. This is the genetic code, made up of DNA molecules. But its sequence varies enormously, separating a moth from a tree from a bacterium. Even within a species, we see distinct genetic differences between individuals. These genetic differences contribute to differences in their traits, which is why we get individuals who are taller or shorter, faster or slower, bolder or more cautious.

This genetic diversity stems from mutations. Often, these mutations are not helpful. But at times, they can enable populations to adapt to change.

For example, golden kelp (Ecklonia radiata) likes colder water. But in a population, some individuals will have mutations suited for warm water. When a devastating marine heatwave hit the West Australian coast in 2011, individuals with warm-water mutations were more likely to survive and reproduce. This genetic diversity enabled the kelp population to adapt to the warmer conditions.

This is why genetic diversity is so important – it gives species more resilience in a rapidly changing world. This priority has been recognised in Australia’s Strategy for Nature, and in goals and targets discussed at the United Nations biodiversity summit COP16.

How can we safeguard or restore genetic diversity for threatened species?

To answer this question, we used a technique called meta-analysis to look for patterns. From more than 80,000 published articles, we identified 882 studies which measured changes in genetic diversity over time. These studies came from right around the globe and across the entire “tree of life”.

They show there are many ways to conserve genetic diversity. Here are five promising strategies to help keep species resilient.

Action 1: Adding individuals

Adding individuals to an existing population is known as supplementation. Our research found supplementation was the only action linked to a significant increase in genetic diversity, especially in birds.

Supplementation can help reduce the harmful effects of inbreeding, which is common in small, isolated populations. For example, conservationists working to safeguard New Zealand’s South Island robins (Petroica australis) moved female birds between isolated islands. The offspring of parents from different islands had stronger immune systems, higher survival rates, and improved reproductive health compared to their inbred counterparts.

Supplementation is key for boosting genetic diversity, improving population health and building resilience.

Action 2: Population control

Doing the opposite – removing individuals – can actually improve outcomes for the population as a whole in some circumstances, by, for instance, reducing competition.

But genetic diversity results varied a lot in studies using population control. So how can this strategy be used effectively?

In one case, conservationists in the United States used population control of coaster brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) in a hatchery to prevent any single family from breeding too much. This meant multiple genetic lineages were maintained, increasing genetic diversity.

Action 3: Restoration

Ecosystem restoration can include planting trees, rehabilitating wetlands or restoring natural patterns of fire and water. We found genetic diversity was often maintained over time when ecological restoration was used.

Restoration efforts, alongside supplementation, are important to the survival of the greater prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido), which had lost much habitat. Researchers report restoring and expanding suitable habitat is proving crucial to sustain genetic diversity and achieving long-term recovery.

Action 4: Control of other species

Feral, pest or overabundant species can outcompete, eat, or graze on species under threat. Controlling these species was linked to maintenance of genetic diversity in the studies we analysed overall.

For example, control of red fox numbers helped the Arctic fox(Vulpes lagopu) recover in Sweden. The technique reduced competition over resources such as food while new foxes from Norway were added to the wild population. Inbreeding was reduced, and survival improved.

Action 5: Conservation introductions and reintroductions

Establishing new populations at new sites is known as a conservation introduction, while a reintroduction means restoring populations where they previously existed.

We found mixed results for genetic diversity when these actions were reported. So, what factors contribute to success?

In Western Australia, a large number of golden bandicoots (Isoodon auratus) from a robust island population were reintroduced to three sites. After six generations, genetic diversity at these sites remained similar to the original source population. Success came from careful planning to ensure the new populations had a large gene pool to start from.

Overall, our study revealed many cases of genetic diversity loss. But we also found evidence that conservation action – especially supplementation – can improve the genetic health of a species.

What can you do?

Supporting genetic diversity can be done at home.

If you have a garden, you can plant native species to support habitat connectivity.

Growing heirloom vegetables and rare fruit trees, or breeding heritage chooks can maintain genetic diversity in our food system.

Join community or botanic garden groups, or work with conservation groups to improve habitat or bolster numbers of threatened species.

While enjoying nature, avoid accidentally moving plants, seeds, or soil to new areas to reduce the spread of pests and diseases.

These small actions add up, helping to safeguard biodiversity at all levels – including genetic diversity.

Robyn Shaw, Research Fellow in Conservation Genomics, University of Canberra; Catherine Grueber, Associate Professor in Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, and Katherine Farquharson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Bioinformatics, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s a cold, drizzly night in a forest west of Melbourne. I’m sitting on a damp log, clutching a thermos of lukewarm tea and watching a koala snooze on a branch above me. Suddenly, it lifts its head. I sit up straight, pen poised to record what happens. But the koala simply yawns and resumes the blob position. I sigh and take another sip of tea.

Why am I doing this? To research the social behaviour of koalas and hopefully learn more about what they do at night, when they are most active.

After many nights, and many sips of tea, I witness something truly unexpected: male koalas engaging in affectionate behaviours with each other, such as play and grooming. I was shocked. Adult koalas are normally solitary, so observations such as this are exceedingly rare.

My new research paper presents these findings. It provides the most detailed account of these behaviours to date, and offers a unique glimpse into how social dynamics between koalas may change when they are forced to live in close quarters.

Why are these behaviours so surprising?

Most animals exhibit some type of social behaviour. These can include mating, vocalising to communicate, or defending their territory. But some highly social, group-living animals – such as wolves, primates and dolphins – will also display friendly and peaceful acts between individuals, such as grooming each other and playing.

These are known as “affiliative” behaviours, and they are key to social relationships between animals, and to maintaining complex social hierarchies.

Adult koalas, though, are generally solitary (except, obviously, when mating). They are usually widely spread over an area and rarely come face-to-face, instead interacting over long distances by vocalising and leaving their scent.

And when male koalas do physically interact, it is usually a violent affair. More than once, I’ve seen male koalas scratched and bloodied — missing chunks of fur and even a claw — after fighting with a rival male.

That’s why my observations of affection between young male koalas were so surprising.

What I saw after dark

Over three painstaking weeks, I studied a koala population in the woodlands of Cape Otway, southern Victoria. Each night, I went out between 9pm and 2am to track and observe the males. I used a red-light spotlight to avoid disturbing them. If I saw something interesting, I filmed it. You can watch the video below.

After two weeks, I observed three males engaging in unexpected “affiliative” behaviours. They were grooming each other, sniffing each other’s genitals and vocalising to each other in soft, high-pitched calls, similar to the sounds baby koalas make.

They also appeared to be playing. They would gently — but perhaps provocatively — bite one another on the arm and ear, a bit like cheeky puppies do.

These interactions weren’t brief, either. I watched the koalas for two hours before finally giving in to sleep. When I went back at lunchtime the next day, they were still at it.

What’s behind these affectionate behaviours?

This type of social interaction between wild koalas had only been observed once before, more than 30 years ago, in a high-density koala population on French Island off Victoria.

Like that earlier observation, the koalas I recorded were young adult males, roughly aged between three and five years. Hormonal activity can surge at this life stage, leading to an increase in social behaviours such as play and boldness.

But if the affectionate behaviours were solely the result of teenage hormones, you’d expect it to be observed more often in many koalas in this age group. But that’s not the case.

Instead, these behaviours are most likely a result of the large koala populations.

Typically, fewer than two koalas are found per hectare. At Cape Otway, there were 15 koalas per hectare. This number can reach up to 20 in parts of South Australia and Victoria.

This high density means the home ranges of koalas are more likely to overlap and their interactions will be more frequent. It also means competition for food, space and mates can be especially high.

So young males might use affectionate behaviours — such as grooming and playing — to reduce conflict and manage stress. It may help individuals become familiar with their neighbours, establish hierarchies and avoid aggressive encounters.

Genetics may also play a role. Like many high-density koala populations, this population had low genetic diversity, meaning there was a high degree of relatedness among individuals.

Low genetic diversity can be a big problem for species overall. But it does mean some animals might identify their relatives, and tolerate being close to them.

The causes of low genetic diversity in high-density koala populations are complex. The species was almost hunted to extinction. This meant a vastly reduced number of koalas could pass on their genes to the next generation. To make matters worse, habitat destruction can prevent koalas from dispersing over a wide area.

The complex reality of koala conservation

Koalas are listed as endangered in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT. But high-density koala populations, such as the one I observed in Cape Otway, also present major conservation challenges.

Too many koalas feeding in an area puts pressure on preferred tree species. This can result in mass tree death, and habitat loss for koalas and other species. In some cases, koalas can starve.

Unfortunately, there are no quick and easy solutions to this issue. Moving koalas from crowded areas to places where they are endangered often isn’t possible, due to differences in climate and the unique gut bacteria koalas need for their local food trees.

Other interventions, such as fertility control, can be effective. But this takes many years of intensive effort and significant funding, making it vulnerable to budget cuts and shifting priorities.

Some experts say culling could be used to control koala numbers and conserve the surrounding habitat, as it is for kangaroos. However, this is likely to draw widespread public opposition.

These complex challenges offer an unexpected silver lining, however. As my experience shows, high-density koala populations provide unique opportunities to observe rare social behaviours in this iconic species. All you need is curiosity, a big cup of tea, and patience.

Darcy Watchorn, Threatened Species Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science Department, Zoos Victoria, and Visiting Scholar, School of Life & Environmental Science, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When people think of wildlife trade, they often picture smugglers sneaking in rare and endangered species from far-off countries. Yet most wildlife trade is actually legal, and the United States is one of the world’s biggest wildlife importers.

New research that we and a team of colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that, over the last 22 years, people in the U.S. legally imported nearly 2.85 billion individual animals representing almost 30,000 species.

Some of these wild animals become pets, such as reptiles, spiders, clownfish, chimpanzees and even tigers. Thousands end up in zoos and aquariums, where many species on display come directly from the wild.

Medical research uses macaque monkeys and imports up to 39,000 of them every year. The fashion trade imports around 1 million to 2 million crocodile skins every year. Hunting trophies are also included in wildlife.

The largest number of imported species are birds – 4,985 different species are imported each year, led by Muscovy ducks, with over 6 million imported. Reptiles are next, with 3,048 species, led by iguanas and royal pythons. These largely become pets.

Not all wildlife are wild

We found that just over half of the animals imported into the U.S. come from the wild.

Capturing wildlife to sell to exporters can be an important income source for rural communities around the world, especially in Africa. However, wild imported species can also spread diseases or parasites or become invasive. In fact, these risks are so worrying that many imported animals are classed as “injurious wildlife” due to their potential role in transmitting diseases to native species.

Captive breeding has played an increasingly dominant role in recent years as a way to limit the impact on wild populations and to try to reduce disease spread.

However over half the individual animals from most groups of species, such as amphibians or mammals, still come from the wild, and there is no data on the impact of the wildlife trade on most wild populations.

Trade may pose a particular risk when species are already rare or have small ranges. Where studies have been done, the wild populations of traded species decreased by an average of 62% across the periods monitored.

Sustainable wildlife trade is possible, but it relies on careful monitoring to balance wild harvest and captive breeding.

Data is thin in many ways

For most species in the wildlife trade, there is still a lot that remains unknown, including even the number of species traded.

With so many species and shipments, wildlife inspectors are overwhelmed. Trade data may not include the full species name for groups like butterflies or fish. The values in many customs databases are reported by companies but never verified.

In our study, we relied on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Law Enforcement Management Information System, a wildlife import-export data collection system. However, few countries collate and release data in such a standardized way; meaning that for the majority of species legally traded around the world there is no available data.

For example, millions of Tokay geckos are imported as pets and for medicine, and are often reported to be bred in captivity. However, investigators cannot confirm that they weren’t actually caught in the wild.

Why tracking the wildlife trade is important

Biodiversity has a great number of economic and ecological benefits. There are also risks to importing wildlife. Understanding the many species and number of animals entering the country, and whether they were once wild or farmed, is important, because imported wildlife can cause health and ecological problems.

Wildlife can spread diseases to humans and to other animals. Wild-caught monkeys imported for medical research may carry diseases, including ones of particular risk to humans. Those with diseases are more likely to be wild than captive-bred.

Species that aren’t native to the U.S. may also escape or be released into the wild. Invasive species can cause billions of dollars in damage by consuming and outcompeting native wildlife and spreading diseases.

We believe better data on the wildlife trade could be used to set management goals, such as harvest quotas or no-take policies for those species in their country of origin.

What’s next

The researchers involved in this study come from institutes around the world and are all interested in improving data systems for wildlife trade.

Some of us focus on how e-commerce platforms such as Etsy and Instagram have become hotspots of wildlife trade and can be challenging to monitor without automation. Esty announced in 2024 that it would remove listings of endangered or threatened species. Others build tools to help wildlife inspectors process the large number of shipments in real time. Many of us examine the problems imported species cause when they become invasive.

In the age of machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data, it’s possible to better understand the wildlife trade. Consumers can help by buying less, and making informed decisions.

Michael Tlusty, Professor of Sustainability and Food Solutions, UMass Boston; Alice Catherine Hughes, Professor of Landscape Ecology, University of Hong Kong, and Andrew Rhyne, Associate Professor of Marine Biology, Roger Williams University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Campaigns and social media often encourage people to make eco-friendly choices like using less plastic or driving less. While these actions are important, focusing so much on what people do can distract from the much larger role that businesses and governments play in causing and solving environmental problems.

For example, some campaigns promote a “net zero hero” narrative that implies that people should take the lead in fighting climate change by changing their behaviour, recycling more, taking fewer flights or eating less meat.

While personal actions can help, there’s a danger this way of thinking can put too much responsibility on consumers. These individual actions are not enough to solve the problem.

By focusing so much on personal responsibility, we risk ignoring the systemic changes needed to address the climate crisis. These include switching to renewable energy on a large scale, enforcing strict industrial regulations and redesigning cities to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Without these bigger steps, taken by governments and large organisations, we can’t make real progress in tackling climate change.

Energy companies and trade groups have been particularly good at shifting blame to consumers. They promote products and habits that claim to lower personal carbon footprints while lobbying against strong environmental laws that would require real emission cuts from industries.

Fossil fuel companies have known about climate change science since the 1950s but funded misinformation campaigns to delay action and shift blame to individuals.

Indeed, the carbon footprint calculator itself was developed in 2004 by a public relations firm working for BP. The tool encouraged individuals to calculate their personal impact on the environment, focusing on activities like driving, energy use, and diet.

According to reports on the campaign’s origins, this approach was part of a deliberate strategy to shift public attention away from the significant environmental harm caused by corporations, particularly the fossil fuel industry.

Despite this narrative, many corporations have failed to address their own emissions. A recent study found that only 60% of companies met their 2020 emissions targets, and 31% failed to report any outcomes.

This lack of accountability highlights how many major companies neglect their responsibilities, raising serious concerns about their commitment to 2030 climate goals.

These tactics maintain the status quo and creates a cycle of guilt and failure for consumers. Many people feel overwhelmed, leading to demotivation and even climate anxiety.

Similar strategies have been used in other industries. For instance, the tobacco industry blamed smokers for health issues, focusing on personal choice while downplaying nicotine addiction and resisting health regulations.

Shifting the focus

In my research into climate communication, I see how stories of guilt resonate with communities already facing misplaced blame. For example, in workshops with groups affected by austerity, people often felt guilty for not helping others more.

Over time, they realised this was due to failures in governance, not personal shortcomings. They saw a similar pattern in the climate crisis, learning to separate personal guilt from the larger roles of corporations and governments.

As a climate researcher and communicator, my job is to help move the conversation from personal guilt to shared responsibility and accountability. This shift empowers people as citizens, not just consumers, to demand action from leaders and industries.

Understanding that while personal responsibility is meaningful, the real power to create change lies with corporations and governments is vital. We need systemic change, not consumer guilt.

To tackle the climate crisis, we must make personal choices that reflect care for the environment. But we must also work together to demand that companies and governments adopt sustainable practices, for example through voting for leaders who prioritise environmental reform. The path to a sustainable future is collective action – not carrying the weight of guilt alone.

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Sam Illingworth, Professor of Creative Pedagogies, Edinburgh Napier University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Indonesia produced nearly four times the amount of nickel in recent years compared to a decade earlier — following the global push for a low-carbon revolution that drives the mining for the mineral essential for electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies, and stainless-steel production.

This boom, however, takes a toll on nickel-rich regions like Sulawesi, threatening a one-of-a-kind biodiversity hotspot, known as ‘Wallacea’.

Our recent study raises questions about the sustainability of nickel mining practices as we highlight its environmental and social impacts in Sulawesi, based on data from 7,721 villages.

Sulawesi’s forests and biodiversity at risk

Our study shows that between 2011 and 2018, villages near nickel mines experienced deforestation at nearly double the rate of non-mining areas. The loss is attributable to land acquisition needed to mine the mineral.

Deforestation will not only worsen global warming but also destroy habitats and threaten wildlife populations. Among the species potentially affected are Sulawesi’s 17 primate species, such as Celebes crested macaque and Peleng tarsier—all of them are endemic to the island. If this trend continues, it could set back efforts to both mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and conserve biodiversity.

The costs and benefits to local communities

Our research reveals that unsustainable nickel mining practices have increased the pollution and the frequency of mining-related disasters, such as landslides and flash floods. They directly impact local communities that rely on agriculture, fishing, and other natural resource-based livelihoods.

The effects of nickel mining, however, are nuanced. Environmental damage and land acquisition have triggered conflicts. But while social well-being declined in areas near nickel mines, the impact varied significantly across regions, and was positive in some areas.

This implies that communities across Sulawesi can experience both positive and negative impacts. In villages with high poverty levels, for example, the environmental and health impacts of mining have been particularly severe. In these villages, adverse health effects are more likely to occur due to limited resources and capacity to cope with pollution associated with mining activities.

However, our study also shows that these poorer regions have also gained the greatest benefits from mining, including improved infrastructure and living conditions. Revenue from mining has likely added to investments into public goods, such as improving water systems and transportation networks.

More information is needed to understand what is driving this variation, but it underscores the precarious balance posed by nickel mining. While it provides vital development opportunities, it also threatens vulnerable ecosystems and exposes communities to significant environmental and health risks. Achieving progress without deepening hardship remains a complex challenge for sustainable development in Indonesia and other nickel producing countries.

Towards sustainable nickel mining

Tackling these challenges requires a just and sustainable approach to nickel mining. If the harm continues, it could undermine efforts to conserve Sulawesi’s unique biodiversity. That’s why protecting its ecosystems is critical.

Several recommendations have been proposed by other academics and actors, three of which we emphasise through our mining evaluation:

1. Strengthening environmental and social standards

Governments and mining companies must follow strict environmental and social standards to minimise harm to ecosystems and communities. This includes strict regulations on deforestation and water management, along with protections for workers and affected communities.

For mining companies, frameworks like the OECD Due Diligence Guidelines can ensure that businesses carry out the necessary protocols to identify, prevent, and account for adverse impacts that result from their mining practices. At the same time, state actors should continue to fulfil their obligations to protect and respect the rights of those affected by mining.

2. Ensuring community participation

Local communities must be central to decision-making around mining projects. Inclusive consultation and consent processes can help mitigate harm and ensure that mining operations do not harm those who rely on the environment for their livelihoods.

Involving communities in decision-making helps mining companies build trust and share benefits. As one case study has shown in Sulawesi, engaging local populations in evaluating the nickel production process can lead to corrective actions. Community feedback can ensure that mining projects not only achieve compliance but also align with the aspirations and well-being of affected communities.

3. Establishing robust monitoring and accountability

Regular monitoring and evaluation of mining operations, from start to finish, is crucial — not just for nickel but other mining commodities too. Companies should be held accountable for environmental damage and social harm, while successful practices should be highlighted to serve as models for the industry. Independent oversight by NGOs and local groups can boost transparency, ensure accountability, and promote best practices.

Time is crucial. With the low-carbon transition speeding up, swift action is needed to prevent environmental and social harm worldwide.

By reforming nickel mining practices, Indonesia can play a vital role in building a just, sustainable, low-carbon future, and provide a model for other countries.

This is a chance to balance economic prosperity, environmental protection, and social equity — ensuring the green energy transition’s benefits outweigh its costs.

Michaela Guo Ying Lo, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environment, Conservation, and Development, University of Kent; Jatna Supriatna, Professor of Conservation Biology, Universitas Indonesia, and Matthew Struebig, Reader in Conservation Science, University of Kent

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do schools and trees mix? You may have memories of shady playing areas and shelter belts by playing fields, but our recent study suggests this is increasingly an exception rather than a rule.

Trees are often seen as a health and safety risk, whether from branches or the whole thing falling, or from children falling out of them. Many schools have banned pupils from climbing trees as a result.

Beyond that, trees are often seen as an optional “nice to have”. New Zealand’s current education minister criticised extensive landscaping and bespoke design when announcing a review of school properties in early 2024.

But the benefits of trees and other vegetation in urban areas are well known, and increasingly important as housing density increases. Schools can play a significant role in encouraging the growth of “urban forests”.

Unfortunately, there are also large differences in tree canopy cover in New Zealand cities (and elsewhere in the world), with low socioeconomic areas often having low tree canopy cover.

This matters because trees and nature in general provide us with enormous health and wellbeing benefits, regardless of socioeconomic standing.

Natural benefits

Very little is known about green spaces on local school grounds. So, our research set out to survey the quantity and quality of green spaces in 64 urban primary schools in Auckland.

We conducted the survey in the context of several known factors about the role and place of nature in education:

• there has been a decline in the time spent outdoors by children since the 1950s

• there is increasing evidence for the emotional and psychological benefits for children of connecting with nature

• greening a school improves children’s appreciation for their daily environment and increases social wellbeing

• highly vegetated schools provide a big opportunity to boost physical and mental health benefits for children, particularly in suburbs with low tree canopy cover

• vegetation on school grounds can provide excellent opportunities for learning, particularly in science, with some evidence that greening increases academic achievement

• trees and other vegetation can improve air quality at school, provide shade and UV protection from the sun.

Because schools are fairly evenly distributed throughout cities, and can have a large spatial footprint, there’s also an opportunity to enhance wider native biodiversity, create ecological corridors and maintain cultural connections.

Fields but few trees

Unfortunately, our survey found the green spaces of most Auckland primary schools are dominated by sports fields.

While it’s good news that children have access to these, adding trees and shrubs around the edges of the fields could provide many benefits without compromising existing play spaces.

Native biodiversity was also lacking. In fact, 33% of school ground contained environmental weeds, such as woolly nightshade. There were also many more introduced plant species than native species, and most schools lacked a shrub layer.

Urban green spaces in general tend to favour single trees with mown lawn underneath. But birds feed in different layers of vegetation and need that shrub layer and some vegetation complexity.

The most common native tree by far was pōhutakawa. But planting a monoculture of pōhutakawa is a big risk if a disease (such as myrtle rust) has a big impact on that species.

Diversity is key. Planting other native species such as pūriri, karaka, rewarewa or tītoki would increase plant diversity, attract native birds and other species, as well as provide sun shade.

Room for improvement

There was some good news, however. Of the 64 schools surveyed, 36% had a forest patch. This gives the children access to an outdoor learning resource that may be lacking from their immediate neighbourhood.

It was heartening to find every school had at least one species associated with weaving, with both harakeke and tī kōuka present at 83% of schools.

We know young Māori in cities are at risk of losing cultural knowledge and opportunities for cultural practices, so the availability of key weaving species is an excellent opportunity for schools and their whānau.

If this was a report card, Auckland’s school green spaces would not be high-achieving. But there are plenty of opportunities to improve. Adding more diversity, more native plants, and planting trees around the edges of sports fields will provide a wealth of benefits to both children and the city’s overall biodiversity.

Using outdoor spaces for learning will increase natural and cultural connections and improve children’s wellbeing. That is much more than a “nice to have”.

Margaret Stanley, Professor of Ecology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau and Abigail Cunninghame, Research Assistant, Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coral reef research has focused on the twin evils birthed by record-high greenhouse gas emissions: warming oceans and increasingly acidic seawater. These global threats are caused by seawater absorbing the excess heat and carbon dioxide that fossil fuel burning has added to the atmosphere. But there is another consequence that is seldom discussed.

Globally, oceanic oxygen is being depleted because seawater holds less oxygen as it heats up. In the warm coastal waters where tropical coral reefs grow, the immediate effects of low oxygen concentrations can be catastrophic. Short-term hypoxia events are increasingly reported in which dissolved oxygen levels suddenly plummet – often triggered or exacerbated by chemical pollution running off the land, like nutrient-rich fertilisers – which can kill entire coral communities and decimate reefs within days.

Corals are animals, and like other aquatic animals, they breathe in oxygen from the water to fuel their metabolism. Thanks to a symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae, corals also turn the Sun’s energy into food – oxygen is the byproduct.

Oxygen levels on coral reefs naturally fluctuate in a daily cycle, with dissolved oxygen peaking around noon and gradually falling as the light fades. At night when photosynthesis stops, corals continue to respire (consume oxygen), and seawater oxygen is depleted.

This cyclic rise and fall in oxygen means that some corals have already evolved strategies to withstand changes in dissolved oxygen. When the amount of oxygen available to corals falls below this natural range, corals can get stressed and their normal biological processes are disrupted, in many cases leading to death.

Just like us, corals need oxygen to survive. But I (Jennifer Mallon) discovered that the effects of low oxygen on corals are not always obvious to the naked eye, and that juvenile corals may be especially vulnerable.

Hard to spot signs

To understand the effects of low oxygen levels on corals I travelled to the Smithsonian Marine Station in Florida, as part of a research project led by the University of Florida’s Andrew Altieri and the Smithsonian’s Maggie Johnson and Valerie Paul.

At the Smithsonian, 24 climate-controlled seawater tanks simulate varying levels of deoxygenation already present on coral reefs around the world, ranging from severe deoxygenation, which our research observed on the Caribbean coast of Panama, to normal conditions, such as those replicated in aquariums around the world.

While some corals, like the Caribbean staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis), died within a few days of severe deoxygenation, other important reef-building species such as the mountainous star coral (Orbicella faveolata) survived, demonstrating that tolerance of low oxygen was different between species.

When we studied the corals that survived deoxygenation, we discovered that hypoxic stress may not always be visible. Even when exposed to deoxygenation for two weeks, some corals showed no signs of bleaching, which is when the colourful algae depart and corals turn a ghostly white. More detailed measurements revealed something worrying: despite outward appearances, low oxygen exposure had impaired coral metabolism, potentially stunting their growth and reef-building abilities.

Existing methods for measuring coral health in the field are mainly visual, and include assessments by trained divers who search for signs of paling or bleaching corals. The hypoxic stress responses we saw in our experiment could be going under the radar.

Baby corals at risk

We also wanted to know how deoxygenation affects a coral’s ability to breed.

Coral sexual reproduction is already a tricky business. Spawning events, when corals release egg bundles into the water, occur just a few nights a year, and the resulting larvae are highly vulnerable. Few survive the multi-day swim to the reef where they settle and metamorphose into juvenile corals.

On modern Caribbean reefs, wild juvenile corals are rare. People involved in restoring reefs help corals to sexually reproduce in the lab and rear the juveniles in order to later transplant them onto the reef.

Juvenile corals often settle in reef crevices where they are exposed to lower oxygen levels for longer than in open water, because less water flows over them. When we incubated coral larvae in deoxygenated water throughout the settlement process, we found that initial rates of larval survival and settlement were not significantly affected.

Things changed once the larvae had settled and begun to form juvenile corals. Early-stage juvenile corals, known as primary polyps, lack symbiotic algae to help them meet their nutritional needs via photosynthesis and so rely on respiration for energy. Without enough oxygen, they cannot respire properly and begin to die off.

Coral conservation in breathless waters

Our research can help those involved in restoring reefs understand the oxygen needs of corals, as well as highlight a previously overlooked threat.

Even corals that survive deoxygenation show signs of a weaker metabolism that will make it harder to conserve healthy reefs, as restoration relies on healthy coral growth to regenerate what is damaged.

As a next step, field measurements of coral metabolism will be carried out on Florida’s barrier reef tract when oxygen levels are predicted to drop during the warm summer months, to capture the real impact of deoxygenation on coral health.

Dissolved oxygen data has not always been collected as part of reef monitoring, even during warm water bleaching events when oxygen is low. As the climate crisis worsens, it will be imperative to do more of this monitoring in tropical coastal waters. Further research into how distinct coral species respond to hypoxia is also essential for targeted conservation strategies.

By confronting the silent threat of deoxygenation head on, we can safeguard the future of coral reefs and the countless marine species that depend on them.

Jennifer Mallon, Postdoctoral research fellow, Nova Southeastern University; Adrian Michael Bass, Associate Professor of Biogeochemistry, University of Glasgow, and Maggie D. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Marine Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever taken the time to stop and listen to nature? Deeply, quietly and patiently?

If not, don’t worry, there’s still time to learn. Deep listening is a skill that can be developed.

There’s much more to it than simply recognising the call or song of a particular species. To listen deeply to nature is to become aware of behaviours, relationships and patterns of interaction between multiple species, and to learn from what we hear.

This is what Indigenous people have been doing for many thousands of years, in Australia and overseas.

Under the supervision and guidance of Indigenous knowledge holders of Karulkiyalu Country, my PhD research, explores ways to embed this Indigenous approach to deep listening in Australia’s education system.

The project builds on previous work showing positive results for student and teacher wellbeing, as well as an increased understanding of and desire to care for the natural world.

What is deep listening?

If you’d like to try deep listening, take some time to visit a natural place and find a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed. Turn off your electronic devices.

Close your eyes, and extend your sense of hearing into the landscape around you. Try focusing your listening in each direction, then above and even below. How far you can hear?

At first you will hear the voices of individual creatures, perhaps one then another. After a while, you may begin to notice interactions and patterns of communication between them. Be curious. Does one respond to another? How, and why?

Hearing all the interconnected activity going on around you in that moment can help you comprehend the living system as a whole.

What can we learn from nature by listening?

People often simplify complex relationships down to perceptions of either cooperation or competition.

But listening to nature affirms that cooperative partnerships play a far greater role than meets the eye. Relationships between species that accommodate each other’s needs are ubiquitous throughout the biosphere.

For instance, multiple species of birds forage efficiently and safely in mixed flocks, by communicating and alerting each other to information about food and threats. This practice of foraging collectively is so worthwhile it’s encountered the world over.

Listening to the animated twittering of these flocks – which continually communicates and affirms each bird’s location – reminds us how beneficial cooperation can be. More importantly, cooperation is most advantageous when it embraces diversity.

Addressing the existential threats facing humanity will require cooperation and collaboration on a massive scale. Many of these threats are interlinked. They tend to resist independent solutions and need to be tackled together.

So there is an urgent need to embrace and celebrate our differences. Listening to mixed-species flocks reminds us that diversity can be a source of great strength.

Lessons about competition

Listening can also tell us about competitive interactions, particularly between members of the same species.

In the morning twilight of the breeding season, songbirds join the dawn chorus – singing with repertoire and behaviours not heard at other times of day or year. It’s also clear they are listening to each other.

At dawn, songbirds use formal vocal interactions to negotiate their most essential relationships. These include defining home ranges, establishing and maintaining pair bonds, acknowledging neighbours and affirming community identities.

In this way, the dawn chorus is a sonic expression of a widespread principle in nature: that while the potential for competition exists, life-threatening aggression is risky, inefficient and costly.

Many animals have developed specialised behaviours to sort out their relationships and status while minimising the risks of serious harm. For instance “boxing” kangaroos engage in scrapping or sparring rather than injurious fighting.

While these physical behaviours are found widely throughout the animal world, songbirds have evolved their own trick: they use song to negotiate their interactions. Listening to them singing at dawn reminds us that competitive behaviours and aggression are not advantageous. Negotiation, mutual acknowledgement and respect are more successful ways of living.

Educational possibilities from listening

Learning through deep listening was integral to the education system in Australia for thousands of years. It allowed First Nations peoples to understand the ecological community around them and how to live with these groups of species.

In this education system, Country and Earth-Kin, (such as plants and animals) were both central knowledge holders and teachers. Humans (primarily grandparents) provided support for childrens’ learning from these knowledge holders. In this way children came to know, understand and care for land.

People and Country flourished through this way of learning. Australia became home to the longest continuing cultures in human history.

Research is demonstrating how this old teaching and learning method can work in modern schooling. More than 120 educators across the ACT are involved in the Country as Teacher project. Cultivating a practice of deep listening to Earth-Kin and Country helped teachers and students develop an improved sense of wellbeing, as well as knowledge and understanding of the places they live.

The research argues that teachers first need to cultivate their own practice of listening. Then they can embed this process in their approach to education. By slowing down, developing nuanced awareness, following curiosity, listening empathically to other beings and opening to being affected emotionally, teachers can cultivate their own deeper sense of care, appreciation and understanding. From their personal listening journey, educators can then facilitate these experiences for their students.

Deep listening to Earth-Kin or Country as Teacher offers an old and new pathway to return to a valuable and important way of being for our schools and society.

This path offers us the chance to come to appreciate and care for the ecological communities of the Earth. Through listening we can learn the ways in which species across the Earth adapt, survive and thrive, providing guidance for our own cultures as we confront increasing social and environmental uncertainty.

This article was written in collaboration with acoustic ecologist Andrew Skeoch. 

Monty Nixon, PhD Student in Education, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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