tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/development-372/articlesDevelopment – The Conversation2024-03-08T13:38:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219392024-03-08T13:38:13Z2024-03-08T13:38:13ZTeenagers often know when their parents are having money problems − and that knowledge is linked to mental health challenges, new research finds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576103/original/file-20240216-28-neuioj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C77%2C5609%2C3736&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teens are more clued in to family finances than many people think.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/single-working-mother-and-her-teenage-girl-talking-royalty-free-image/1457103190">Olga Rolenko/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When parents try to shield their kids from financial hardship, they may be doing them a favor: Teens’ views about their families’ economic challenges are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579423001451">connected to their mental health and behavior</a>.</p>
<p>That’s the main finding of a study into household income and child development that I recently conducted with my colleagues.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&oi=ao&user=--zcHSQAAAAJ">professor of psychology</a>, I know there’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01210-4">a good deal of research</a> showing that young people who experience more household economic hardship <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00833-y">tend to have more behavioral problems</a>.</p>
<p>But most studies on this issue rely heavily on caregiver reports – that is, what adults say about their kids. Fewer researchers have asked young people themselves. </p>
<p>To fill this gap, my colleagues and I asked more than 100 Pittsburgh-area teenagers, as well as their parents, about their family income, their views about their financial challenges, and their mental health. We checked in with them multiple times over nine months. </p>
<p>Doing this, we found a few important things. First, we found that many families’ economic situations varied over time – they were doing fine with money in some months and struggling during others. And second, we found that when teenagers said they and their family were experiencing hardship, those teens had more behavioral problems.</p>
<p>For example, many teens said that they couldn’t afford school supplies or that their caregivers worried because they lacked money for necessities. In the months when teens reported experiencing these hardships, they were more likely to feel depressed and get in trouble at school.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Other researchers have found that economic hardship is related to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.00986.x">differences in parenting</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/children9070981">academic achievement</a> and many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106400">other developmental outcomes</a> – but prior studies haven’t always captured the complexities and challenges that struggling families face. </p>
<p>For example, researchers studying links between economic hardship and youth behavioral development have historically looked at family income on a yearly basis. But bills come due weekly or monthly. Our work shows that looking at the annual data alone risks missing an important part of the story: Many families experience brief spells of financial instability.</p>
<p>Our work also shows that teens are acutely affected by economic conditions in their daily lives and understand their families’ circumstances. This has important implications for research. Given that adolescence is a time of major emotional and cognitive changes, our team believes that researchers should center on the perspectives of young people directly affected by economic challenges. For example, we have previously found that how young people view stress and support in their lives may have <a href="https://theconversation.com/positive-parenting-can-help-protect-against-the-effects-of-stress-in-childhood-and-adolescence-new-study-shows-208268">implications for their brain development</a>.</p>
<p>This work also has important implications for public policy. For example, lawmakers assume that economic hardship is fairly stable and set anti-poverty policies accordingly. Our research offers fresh evidence that many people see <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/31/business/31-volatility.html">large income swings throughout the year</a>. This kind of economic instability has been found to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0181-5">affect child development</a>, especially when families <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579419001494">lose large amounts of income</a>. To lessen the impact of poverty, policymakers may need to think about economic hardship more dynamically.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Our research team wants to continue putting young people’s voices front and center. We’re also interested in more complex ways to make sense of socioeconomic status. While we know that income matters for families, we’re increasingly focused on household wealth, which is a household’s assets minus its debts. Wealth may influence child development in ways that are different from income. We’re just starting to collect data for a new project examining how both of these factors <a href="https://sanford.duke.edu/story/nichd-awards-grant-sanford-partnership-focused-adolescent-wellness-factors/">affect teen mental health</a>.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take on interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Hanson and his colleagues receive funding from the National Institutes of Health. Hanson is also a board member of the Pittsburgh Non-Profit, Project Destiny.</span></em></p>A study of more than 100 teens and their caregivers showed a unique link between hardship and behavior problems.Jamie Hanson, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232652024-02-15T13:33:22Z2024-02-15T13:33:22ZFor graffiti artists, abandoned skyscrapers in Miami and Los Angeles become a canvas for regular people to be seen and heard<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575115/original/file-20240212-16-xnfgow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C6000%2C4068&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Construction of Oceanwide Plaza in downtown Los Angeles stalled in 2019 after the China-based developer ran out of funding.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-aerial-view-of-graffiti-spray-painted-by-taggers-on-at-news-photo/1981900572?adppopup=true">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The three qualities that matter most in real estate also matter the most to graffiti artists: location, location, location. </p>
<p>In Miami and Los Angeles, cities that contain <a href="https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/most-expensive-places-to-live">some of the most expensive real estate in the U.S.</a>, graffiti artists have recently made sure their voices can be heard and seen, even from the sky. </p>
<p>In what’s known as “graffiti bombing,” artists in both cities swiftly and extensively tagged downtown skyscrapers that had been abandoned. The efforts took place over the course of a few nights in December 2023 and late January 2024, with the results generating a mix of <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/870121/artists-make-los-angeles-graffiti-history-by-painting-on-abandoned-high-rises/">admiration</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vLnXWZqv2I">condemnation</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6vLnXWZqv2I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">KTLA 5 news highlights public outrage over a graffitied skyscraper in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2024.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As someone who has <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gu-Z75sAAAAJ&hl=en">researched the intersection of graffiti and activism</a>, I see these works as major milestones – and not just because the artists’ tags are perhaps more prominent than they’ve ever been, high above street level and visible from blocks away. </p>
<p>They also get to the heart of how money and politics can make individuals feel powerless – and how art can reclaim some of that power.</p>
<h2>Two cities, two graffiti bombings</h2>
<p>Since late 2019, Los Angeles’ billion-dollar Oceanwide Plaza – a mixed-use residential and retail complex consisting of three towers – has stood unfinished. The Beijing-based developer <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oceanwide-project-stalled-20190223-story.html">was unable to pay contractors</a>, and ongoing financing challenges forced the company to put the project on pause. It’s located in one of the priciest parts of the city, right across the street from Crypto.com Arena, where the 2024 Grammy Awards were held. </p>
<p>Hundreds of taggers were involved in the Los Angeles graffiti bombing. It may never be publicly known how the idea was formed and by whom. But it seemed to have been inspired by a similar project that took place in Miami during <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach?lang=en">Art Basel</a>, the city’s annual international art fair.</p>
<p>In November 2023, the city of Miami announced that a permit to demolish <a href="https://floridayimby.com/2023/11/florida-east-coast-realty-seeks-demolition-permit-for-19-story-building-paving-path-for-one-bayfront-plaza-supertall.html">One Bayfront Plaza site</a>, an abandoned former VITAS Healthcare building, had been filed.</p>
<p>Miami is known for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/arts/design/miami-murals-wynwood.html">its elaborate spray-painted murals</a>. There’s also <a href="https://shop.bombingscience.com/miami-graffiti-art.html">a rich tradition of graffiti in the city</a>. So Miami was a natural gathering place for graffiti artists during Art Basel in December 2023, and One Bayfront Plaza became the canvas for taggers from around the world.</p>
<p>Over the course of a few days, graffiti artists – some of whom rappelled down the side of the building – <a href="https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/brutalist-architecture-101">tagged the brutalist</a>, concrete structure with colorful bubble letters spelling their graffiti names: “EDBOX,” “SAUTE” and “1UP,” and hundreds more. </p>
<p>The response to the Miami bombing was more <a href="https://www.complex.com/style/a/lei-takanashi/best-of-art-basel-miami-2023">awe than outrage</a>, perhaps because the building will soon be torn down. It elicited comparisons <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-5pointz-ruling-means-for-street-artists-91799">to 5Pointz</a>, a collection of former factory buildings in the Queens borough of New York City that was covered with graffiti and became a landmark before being demolished in 2014.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@vandalnine/video/7320253132431297825"}"></div></p>
<h2>Meaning and motivation</h2>
<p>In the early 2000s, when I started researching street graffiti, I learned that there are different names for different graffiti types.</p>
<p>“Tags” are pseudonyms written in marker, sometimes with flourishes. “<a href="https://upmag.com/graffiti-terminology/">Fill-ins</a>” or “throw-ups” are quickly painted fat letters or bubble letters, usually outlined. “<a href="https://museumofgraffiti.com/products/subway-art">Pieces</a>” involve more colorful, complicated and stylized spray-painted letters. </p>
<p>The tradition of painting ornate graffiti names made me think of <a href="https://www.nga.gov/learn/teachers/lessons-activities/sense-of-place-france/cezanne.html">Paul Cézanne</a>, who painted the same bowl of fruit over and over. The carefully chosen names and their letters become the subject that writers use to practice their craft. </p>
<p>But I also wanted to know why people graffitied.</p>
<p>Many graffiti writers tagged spaces to declare their existence, especially in a place like New York City, where it is easy to feel invisible. Some writers who became well known in the early 1970s, like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/arts/design/early-graffiti-artist-taki-183-still-lives.html">Taki 183</a>, scrawled <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/07/21/79680118.html?pageNumber=37">their names and street numbers all over the city</a>.</p>
<p>During my research, I spoke with one New York graffiti artist whose work had garnered a lot of attention in the 1980s. He explained that his writing had no concrete political messages. </p>
<p>“But,” he added, “the act of writing graffiti is always political.” </p>
<p>Another graffiti artist I interviewed, “PEN1,” stood with me on a street in lower Manhattan, pointing out one of his many works. It was a fill-in – huge letters near the top of a three- or four-story building, very visible from the street.</p>
<p>“Those people have paid so much money to put their message up there,” he said, pointing to nearby billboards, “and I get to put my name up there for free.” </p>
<p>Through my project, which I ended up titling “Unofficial Communication,” I came to understand that writing graffiti on walls, billboards and subway cars was a way of disrupting ideas of private ownership in public, outdoor spaces. </p>
<p>It involved three different sets of players. There were the taggers, who represented people defying the status quo. There were the public and private owners of the spaces. And there was the municipal government, which regularly cleaned graffiti from outdoor surfaces and tried to arrest taggers. </p>
<p>In cities across the U.S., then and now, it’s easy to see whose interests are the priority, whose mistakes governments are willing to overlook, and which people they aggressively police and penalize.</p>
<h2>Loud and clear</h2>
<p>The names painted on the Los Angeles skyscrapers are the faster and easier-to-complete <a href="https://www.theartblog.org/2023/01/tags-fill-ins-and-kobe-a-short-appreciation-of-graffiti-in-baltimore-and-everywhere/">fill-ins</a>, since time is at a premium and the artists risk arrest.</p>
<p>These vertical graffiti bombing projects on failed skyscrapers, deliberately or not, call attention to the millions of dollars that are absorbed by taxpayers when private developers make bad investments. </p>
<p>Because the names painted on the buildings are fill-ins, they’re not especially artistic. But they did, in fact, make a political statement. </p>
<p>A former graffiti artist who goes by “ACTUAL” told The Washington Post that he’d come out of retirement to contribute to the Los Angeles project. </p>
<p>“The money invested in [the buildings] could have done so much for this city,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2024/02/08/los-angeles-graffiti-building/">he added</a>. </p>
<p>Some of the graffiti artists in Los Angeles were arrested, and the Los Angeles City Council <a href="https://www.costar.com/article/896685651/los-angeles-officials-start-process-that-may-lead-to-takeover-of-graffitied-skyscraper">is demanding that the owners of Oceanwide Plaza</a> remove the graffiti, described as the work of “criminals” acting “recklessly.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the developers of buildings that have sat, unfinished, for years, in the middle of a housing crisis, have broken no laws.</p>
<p>Some reckless acts, apparently, are more criminal than others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colette Gaiter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The colorful bubble letters have attracted praise and condemnation, with taggers seeing their work as a gift to the city, while others decry it as rampant vandalism.Colette Gaiter, Professor of Art and Design, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2184442023-11-29T16:28:12Z2023-11-29T16:28:12ZChina is already paying substantial climate finance, while US is global laggard – new analysis<p>Finance is poisoning international cooperation on the climate crisis. </p>
<p>There is no longer any credible debate about the need to act on climate change, but tensions are flaring around the question of who should make the immense investments necessary to phase out fossil fuels and adapt to a more hostile climate.</p>
<p>The rift between richer and poorer countries has consequently revived and the negotiations have once more descended into acrimony. How can the finance fight be resolved?</p>
<p>Back in 2009, developed countries at the Copenhagen summit committed to provide developing countries with US$100 billion (£78.9 billion) of climate finance a year from 2020.</p>
<p>US$100 billion a year is just a fraction of the <a href="https://www.g20.org/content/dam/gtwenty/gtwenty_new/document/Strengthening-MDBs-The-Triple-Agenda_G20-IEG-Report-Volume.pdf">US$1.8 trillion</a> that low- and middle-income countries need each year to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. </p>
<p>But it is symbolic: it represents redress for the <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/settling-the-climate-debt-clements-gupta-liu">outsized share of the global carbon budget</a> that developed countries have gobbled up, leaving the rest of the world both battered by climate disasters and constrained in terms of the carbon that they can emit as they pursue a better quality of life.</p>
<p>Despite the political importance of the US$100 billion pledge, developed countries did not deliver it in 2020 or 2021. They may <a href="https://www.oecd.org/environment/growth-accelerated-in-the-climate-finance-provided-and-mobilised-in-2021-but-developed-countries-remain-short.htm">meet the goal in 2022</a>, but the self-reported data has not yet been verified.</p>
<p>The broken promise of climate finance has stoked <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/africa/roots-global-souths-new-resentment">resentment in developing countries</a>, compounded by vaccine hoarding and debt hangovers.</p>
<p>Many of these countries insist that the US$100 billion a year must be met before other aspects of the climate negotiations can continue in good faith.</p>
<p>Yet many developed countries look askance at these demands from some of the increasingly wealthy and polluting economies – like <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/energy/2023/05/23/dr-sultan-al-jaber-calls-for-boost-to-public-and-private-climate-finance-for-africa/">the Gulf states</a> or <a href="https://english.news.cn/20221109/730597e4642b46648d7a93fa6a4d6b62/c.html">China</a> – that sit within the developing country bloc. This bloc has no obligation to provide climate finance under the international regime.</p>
<p>Posturing by both sides overlooks the huge amount of climate finance that many developing countries already contribute.</p>
<h2>Unsung heroes?</h2>
<p>Most countries pay into multilateral development banks, which are set up by governments to help poorer countries access cheaper finance and advisory services.</p>
<p>While fighting climate change is rarely a country’s primary motivation for investing in these banks, their contributions nonetheless help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. For example, the banks might provide a low-cost loan to countries looking to enhance their wastewater systems to cope with more rainfall, or to build a public transport network that avoids emissions from private cars. </p>
<p>Developing countries do not seek or receive credit for this climate finance, as they are not obliged to report their contributions to the UN climate convention. In a first of its kind <a href="https://odi.org/en/publications/the-new-collective-quantified-goal-and-its-sources-of-funding-operationalising-a-collective-effort/">analysis</a>, the global affairs thinktank ODI has revealed that developing countries already provide large amounts of climate finance through these banks. </p>
<p>China is the 11th largest provider of all countries, contributing US$1.2 billion a year. India (17th), Brazil (19th) and Russia (20th) are also notable donors.</p>
<p>Even these figures understate developing country contributions, as they do not include climate finance channelled bilaterally between countries, rather than through multilateral development banks or UN agencies, and are only available for a handful of developing countries, including China.</p>
<p>Drawing on these databases, we calculated that China provides an estimated US$1.4 billion of public finance bilaterally. If we combine this figure with the US$1.2 billion of climate finance that it channels through multilateral development banks, China is the seventh largest provider of climate finance between Italy (sixth) and Canada (eigth).</p>
<p>These figures make a mockery of <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1595">US</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/26/eu-climate-chief-china-fund-rescue-poorer-nations-cop28">EU</a> demands that China begin contributing climate finance – particularly given the track record of the US to date.</p>
<h2>Unfair share</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://odi.org/en/publications/a-fair-share-of-climate-finance-the-adaptation-edition/">annual “fair share” report</a> attributes responsibility for the US$100 billion target among developed countries based on their historical emissions (which continue to fuel global warming), income and population size.</p>
<p>Based on these metrics, we found that the US is overwhelmingly responsible for the climate finance shortfall. The world’s largest economy should be providing US$43.5 billion of climate finance a year. In 2021, it gave just US$9.3 billion – a meagre 21% of its fair share.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1701960098292125799"}"></div></p>
<p>For context, the US accounts for around <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/">a fifth of historical emissions</a> but just 4% of the global population. Its economy is four times larger than Japan’s, five times larger than Germany’s and eight times larger than that of France, yet it provides less climate finance than any of them.</p>
<p>Although China has 17% of the global population, it is responsible for <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/">just 11% of cumulative emissions</a>. China is also much poorer per person than the US – or indeed, any of the developed countries expected to provide climate finance. Nonetheless, China gives US$2.6 billion of climate finance a year.</p>
<h2>If not China, who?</h2>
<p>Countries are assembling in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the next round of climate negotiations. The new climate finance goal, which will replace the current target of US$100 billion a year, and the new loss and damage fund, will both be under the spotlight.</p>
<p><a href="https://odi.org/en/publications/the-new-collective-quantified-goal-and-its-sources-of-funding-operationalising-a-collective-effort/">We propose two criteria</a> to determine when countries should be obliged to provide climate finance: that they are at least as rich per person as the average developed country at the start of the 1990s, when international climate negotiations began, and that they have produced as many historical emissions per person.</p>
<p>Six countries meet our criteria: Brunei Darussalam, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. The Czech Republic, Estonia and Qatar already voluntarily provide additional climate finance on top of their contributions to multilateral development banks. Brunei Darussalam, Kuwait and the UAE – which is presiding over this round of climate negotiations – do not.</p>
<h2>Closing the climate finance gap</h2>
<p>So, how can the deadlock be broken?</p>
<p>The fastest way to restore trust in the international climate regime would be for the US to step up with its fair share of climate finance. Without it, the Europeans are on track to <a href="https://odi.org/en/publications/a-fair-share-of-climate-finance-the-adaptation-edition/">close the gap</a> by meeting and exceeding their fair share of the US$100 billion.</p>
<p>Only once the developed countries have fulfilled their longstanding promise does a conversation about new climate finance contributors become politically possible.</p>
<p>The world has just endured the <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/last-12-months-hottest-record-climate">hottest 12 months</a> on record. Let us hope that these extreme temperatures light a fire under diplomats and negotiators, igniting a joint commitment to finding the finance to avert climate catastrophe.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
<br><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeTop">Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.</a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeBottom">Join the 20,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.</a></em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The ODI research presented in this article was funded by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance and the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.</span></em></p>Climate finance can help developing countries adapt to climate change and phase out their emissions.Sarah Colenbrander, Guest Lecturer, Climate Change Economics, University of Oxford & Director, Climate and Sustainability Programme, Overseas Development InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181232023-11-21T04:53:44Z2023-11-21T04:53:44ZA year after Pakistan’s floods, 44% of children have stunted growth. What can be done about it?<p>The extensive <a href="https://www.unicef.org/emergencies/devastating-floods-pakistan-2022">flooding in Pakistan</a> in August 2022 submerged one-third of the country. This affected 33 million people, half of them children. Some <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2023/09/19/pakistan-flood-victims-emerging-hunger-hotspots#:%7E:text=More%20than%201%2C700%20people%20died%2C%2033%20million%20were,a%20key%20crop%2C%20resumed%20in%20much%20of%20Sindh.">9.4 million acres of crops</a> were destroyed, and more than 1.1 million farm animals perished. </p>
<p>One year later, the rate of <a href="https://www.rescue.org/uk/press-release/one-year-devastating-flooding-pakistan-irc-calls-crisis-affected-countries-be-centre">child undernutrition</a> has increased by 50% and an estimated <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj.p1818">44% of children</a> under five are now stunted, meaning they have a low height for their age.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1156396/?iso3=PAK">recent assessment</a> of 43 rural districts in the three provinces most affected by floods found 29% of the population was experiencing high levels of hunger and weren’t consuming enough energy.</p>
<p>Food prices remain high in both urban and rural areas of Pakistan and achieving food security will remain a challenge for many families. So what’s being done to address this crisis?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pakistans-floods-are-a-disaster-but-they-didnt-have-to-be-190027">Pakistan’s floods are a disaster – but they didn't have to be</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is undernutrition?</h2>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malnutrition">three types</a> of child undernutrition: wasting, which reflects recent weight loss and greatly increases the risk of early death; stunting, which reflects long-term food deprivation; and underweight, which is a combination of the two. The type most common in Pakistan is stunting.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/19-11-2015-stunting-in-a-nutshell">Stunting</a> is irreversible – you cannot regain lost height. It leads to more illness, premature death, poor school outcomes, lower employment opportunities and may increase the risk of chronic diseases. </p>
<p>A girl who is stunted is also more likely to give birth to a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817059/">low birth weight baby</a> when she grows into an adult.</p>
<h2>How big is the problem, worldwide?</h2>
<p>In 2022, <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/world/state-food-security-and-nutrition-world-report-2023-urbanization-agrifood-systems-transformation-and-healthy-diets-across-rural-urban-continuum#:%7E:text=Global%20hunger%2C%20measured%20by%20the,with%207.9%20percent%20in%202019">9.2% of the world’s population</a> experienced what is called undernourishment, or low energy intake, compared to 7.9% in 2019. </p>
<p>Almost 600 million people are <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/19-11-2015-stunting-in-a-nutshell">projected</a> to be chronically undernourished in 2030. </p>
<p>Worldwide, food insecurity is more likely to affect women and people living in rural areas. Food insecurity affected 33.3% of adults living in rural areas in 2022 compared with 26% in urban areas. </p>
<p>Globally in 2022, an estimated 148.1 million children under five years of age (22.3%) were stunted and 45 million (6.8%) were wasted. </p>
<p>The stunting rate has <a href="https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/malnutrition/">declined</a> from 33% in 2000 but the pace of decline has slowed. </p>
<p>Only about one-third of all countries are on track to halve the number of children affected by stunting by 2030, a goal of the <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">Sustainable Development Goals</a>. </p>
<h2>Who is most at risk?</h2>
<p>A large <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953615302227">population study in India</a> looked at the contribution of 15 known risk factors. The five leading factors were: the mother’s short stature, the mother having no education, the household being in the lowest wealth quintile, poor dietary diversity, and the mother being underweight. These five were causal factors in two-thirds of stunted children.</p>
<p>Other studies have found the <a href="https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/childhood-stunting-context-causes-and-consequences-framework">critical age of vulnerability</a> to stunting is six to 24 months and is associated with poor breastfeeding practices, nutritionally poor food (given in addition to breast milk after the age of six months) and repeated infections, which may be due to poor water quality and sanitation. </p>
<h2>What’s being done to address undernutrition?</h2>
<p>The main global initiative to address child undernutrition is the <a href="https://www.ennonline.net/page/renderforpdf/4225">Scaling Up Nutrition</a> movement, which was launched in 2010 and has 66 member countries, including Australia. </p>
<p>The Scaling Up Nutrition movement strategy and roadmap is the product of a collaborative dialogue between member countries, the UN and donor agencies and other international and national non-governmental organisations and businesses. It promotes a focus on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life when they are most likely to develop stunting. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/malnutrition-stunting-and-the-importance-of-a-childs-first-1000-days-43379">Malnutrition, stunting and the importance of a child's first 1000 days</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It also encourages a dual approach of nutrition-specific interventions (which address the immediate causes of undernutrition) and nutrition-sensitive interventions, such as agriculture, water and sanitation, and gender equality.</p>
<p>Australia was initially an <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/-/media/02_Parliamentary_Business/24_Committees/244_Joint_Committees/JFADT/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/Development_Agriculture/chapter5.pdf?la=en&hash=57874F32131A56DAA526ABA068749A7AACA1BDA6">enthusiastic supporter</a> of Scaling Up Nutrition and during the previous decade (2010-2019) made nutrition a priority in its international aid program. The Australian government’s 2014 development policy <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/operational-guidance-note-nutrition-sensitive-agriculture.pdf">identified</a> early childhood nutrition as “a critical driver of better development outcomes”.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/nutrition-and-health-in-australias-aid-program.pdf">nutrition strategy</a> was developed in 2015 and a broad-ranging <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/a-window-of-opportunity-australian-aid-and-child-undernutrition-2015-ode-brief.pdf">evaluation</a> of the aid program’s impact on nutrition was commissioned by the now-defunct Office of Development Effectiveness. </p>
<p>However, that enthusiasm has disappeared since 2020. </p>
<h2>How can Australia help?</h2>
<p>So far in 2023, <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/photos-extreme-weather-events-2023-climate-change">record floods</a> have been recorded in Libya, Somalia, Kenya, India, Italy, Rwanda and South Sudan. Deadly storms have raged in western Europe. We’ve seen cyclones in Myanmar and southern Africa, devastating landslides in Cameroon and a powerful hurricane in Mexico. <a href="https://www.rescue.org/uk/press-release/one-year-devastating-flooding-pakistan-irc-calls-crisis-affected-countries-be-centre">Wildfires</a> have spread in Greece, Argentina, Canada and Hawaii, and Asia has experienced a stifling heatwave.</p>
<p><a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/influence-climate-change-extreme-environmental-events/">Computer modelling of real data</a> shows the frequency and intensity of these events are influenced by climate change. </p>
<p>The most obvious long-term strategy is to accelerate efforts to control carbon emissions and decelerate the momentum towards global warming. </p>
<p>In the short-term, the government must reinstate nutrition as a priority in the Australian aid program.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pakistan-floods-ancient-grains-like-millet-could-be-key-to-rebuilding-food-systems-190184">Pakistan floods: ancient grains like millet could be key to rebuilding food systems</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218123/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Toole receives grant funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.</span></em></p>Food prices remain high in both urban and rural areas of Pakistan and achieving food security will remain a challenge for many families.Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165312023-11-17T03:12:35Z2023-11-17T03:12:35ZUrban planning has long ignored women’s experiences. Here are 5 ways we can make our cities safer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557955/original/file-20231107-267416-33aa34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C6%2C4473%2C3004&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/back-view-young-brunette-woman-going-759316678">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women consistently raise <a href="https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/handle/10072/425309">concerns about their safety</a> when moving through their cities and communities.</p>
<p>Women <a href="https://www.standup-international.com/au/en/facts">often experience harassment</a> in the street, which can lead them to avoid areas and adjust their lifestyles to feel safe. </p>
<p>Based on our research, here are five ways we can make cities safer for women.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-lighting-alone-does-not-create-safer-cities-look-at-what-research-with-young-women-tells-us-113359">More lighting alone does not create safer cities. Look at what research with young women tells us</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>1. Don’t just invest in lighting and surveillance</h2>
<p>Underlying the desire for lighting and surveillance is women’s concern about the inappropriate (real or anticipated) <a href="https://theconversation.com/catcalls-homophobia-and-racism-we-studied-why-people-and-especially-men-engage-in-street-harassment-183717">behaviour of men</a> and young people in public places. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-lighting-alone-does-not-create-safer-cities-look-at-what-research-with-young-women-tells-us-113359">emerging studies</a> reveal that strategies solely concerned with improved lighting or surveillance are not the only pathways to reducing worry or fear for women. </p>
<p>In fact, the public investment in CCTV with regard to women’s safety may do <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-cctv-footage-help-or-hinder-the-reduction-of-violence-against-women-67137">more harm than good</a>.</p>
<p>The women we surveyed recognised that young people have a right to use public places, but they also said antisocial behaviour from young men, particularly in groups, created significant apprehension, fear and avoidance of places, especially at night.</p>
<p>One participant told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it’s mainly that drug-affected type of people. And they hang around in a bunch. And people who are affected by alcohol […] they’ll be boisterous.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two streetlights light up a dark, misty night" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558203/original/file-20231108-19-yek2cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Increased street lighting is not the be all and end all for making women feel safer in cities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/street-lights-misty-evening-glowing-dark-2014774082">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While CCTV can reduce property crime, it does not appear effective in addressing women’s safety or for preventing violence and assault.</p>
<p>It may also <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-create-safer-cities-for-everyone-we-need-to-avoid-security-that-threatens-93421">further exclude some members of the communtiy</a> – particularly women from diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>Instead, <a href="https://www.monash.edu/mada/research/project/safe-spaces-understanding-and-enhancing-safety-and-inclusion-for-diverse-women">studies suggest</a> that improving safety for women requires a shift in overall strategy, moving away from short-term hardware fixes such as installing CCTV and more lighting. </p>
<h2>2. Consider the role of technology</h2>
<p>Women are keen to see digital interventions across both day and night-time. </p>
<p>They see <a href="https://theconversation.com/transport-apps-are-being-hailed-as-a-sustainable-alternative-to-driving-but-theyre-not-female-friendly-181972">real-time information for public transport</a> as vital for their confidence in public spaces. </p>
<p>When combined with well-designed <a href="https://wayfoundvictoria.vic.gov.au/what-is-wayfinding/">wayfinding</a> – such as lighting, footpaths, landscaping and signage – women said they would feel safer. </p>
<p>Increasingly, lighting and digital interactivity are being <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-28/we-need-more-public-space-for-teen-girls?utm_content=citylab&utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic">combined in public placemaking</a> to enhance women’s safety.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-create-cities-for-slowing-down-75689">We should create cities for slowing down</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Design spaces with women, for women</h2>
<p>Women have been denied a say in their own communities for too long.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.monash.edu/mada/research/project/safe-spaces-understanding-and-enhancing-safety-and-inclusion-for-diverse-women">co-design workshop</a> is an approach that aims to engage stakeholders with the people that will benefit from the design outcomes. In this case, it’s women.</p>
<p>Most often a co-design workshop will include high-level decision-makers, planners, designers and various user groups. </p>
<p>If done from the outset, co-design ensures the lived experiences of community members and with the issues faced by communities are factored in. </p>
<p>It’s also an inclusive, collaborative and creative method. </p>
<p>One of our survey participants said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My favourite experience in the workshop was just being able to meet all the different women who I probably wouldn’t have met without the workshop. I think just having a space like – creating a space like that is one of the first steps so that women can gather and meet.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman stands in front of a passing train" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560102/original/file-20231117-15-rfgwi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women value live tracking of public transport to make them feel safer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-girl-passenger-longboard-standing-on-2027228648">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Use ‘walking interviews’</h2>
<p>A walking interview, as opposed to a regular sit-down interview or focus group, can help communities understand what makes women feel safe.</p>
<p>This helps us develop an understanding not only of the physical nature of public places evoking concern, but also of the ways in which different women, and indeed different user groups, engage with each other in a physical place.</p>
<p>The development of <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-create-cities-for-slowing-down-75689">place-based strategies</a> – collaborative design to help build a sense of place – can encourage inclusion and safety for women from different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, life stages and abilities.</p>
<p>By accompanying women on foot and discussing specific locations, we get a holistic understanding about how women move through these public places, or avoid them, and why.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-1-3-billion-for-womens-safety-in-the-budget-and-its-nowhere-near-enough-180256">There's $1.3 billion for women's safety in the budget and it's nowhere near enough</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>5. Survey the right people, with the right questions</h2>
<p>Understanding the way women perceive their communities is key to creating safer spaces.</p>
<p>Community safety surveys are particularly useful for understanding the prevalence of attitudes, sentiments and feelings at one point in time. They can then be repeated each year to track changes over time. </p>
<p>If designed well, community safety surveys can be an effective tool to understand perceptions and experiences of safety and inclusion for women from all backgrounds. </p>
<p>But the survey must be diverse and inclusive.</p>
<p>Our research, the <a href="https://www.monash.edu/mada/research/project/safe-spaces-understanding-and-enhancing-safety-and-inclusion-for-diverse-women">Safe Spaces Project</a>, set out to do just that. We surveyed more than 200 women from a variety of backgrounds.</p>
<p>By figuring out the best ways to engage with women in the research process, we can then empower councils and other community organisations to do the same. </p>
<p>We’ve done that in the form of <a href="https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/handle/10072/425310">toolkits</a>. </p>
<p>In the past couple of weeks we have had more than 400 registrations at the launch and more than 1000 downloads of the toolkits from across urban, regional and rural councils in Australia, North America, the United Kingdom, Italy and New Zealand. </p>
<p><a href="https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/handle/10072/425309">This research</a> has identified effective ways to engage with a diverse range of women. </p>
<p>To make our cities safer, we just have to listen to them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216531/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research project was funded by the Department of Justice and Community Safety, Victorian Government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Wickes has received funding from the Australian Research Council, The Department of Justice and Community Safety and Wyndham City Council. </span></em></p>Women are most likely to feel unsafe in their cities or towns, but planning authorities have rarely listened to them. Here’s what we can do to change that.Nicole Kalms, Director, XYX Lab, and Associate Professor, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash UniversityCharishma Ratnam, Research Fellow, Deakin UniversityGill Matthewson, Lecturer, Department of Design, Monash UniversityMurray Lee, Professor of Criminology, University of SydneyRebecca Wickes, Professor of Criminology, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138202023-11-15T13:23:03Z2023-11-15T13:23:03ZPoor men south of Richmond? Why much of the rural South is in economic crisis<p>For a brief moment in the summer of 2023, the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/artist/oliver-anthony-music/chart-history/hsi/">surprise No. 1 song</a> “Rich Men North of Richmond” focused the country’s attention on a region that often gets overlooked in discussions of the U.S. economy. Although the U.S. media sometimes pays attention to the rural South — often concentrating on guns, religion and opioid overdoses — it has too often neglected the broad scope and root causes of the region’s current problems.</p>
<p>As economic historians <a href="https://history.unc.edu/faculty-members/peter-a-coclanis/">based in North Carolina</a> <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/faculty/louis-m-kyriakoudes">and Tennessee</a>, we want a fuller version of the story to be told. Various parts of the rural South are struggling, but here we want to focus on the forlorn areas that the U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to as “<a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/october/rural-manufacturing-survival-and-its-role-in-the-rural-economy/">rural manufacturing counties”</a> — places where manufacturing is, or traditionally was, the main economic activity.</p>
<p>You can find such counties in every Southern state, although they were historically clustered in Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. And they are suffering terribly.</p>
<h2>Yes, the South is actually in crisis</h2>
<p>First, let’s back up. One might be tempted to ask: Are things really that bad? Hasn’t the Sun Belt <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-become-a-nation-of-suburbs-101501">been booming</a>? But in fact, by a range of economic indicators — <a href="https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/stgdppi4q22-a2022.pdf">personal income per capita</a> and the proportion of the population <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-being/">living in poverty</a>, for starters – large parts of the South, and particularly the rural South, are struggling.</p>
<p>Gross domestic product per capita in the region has been <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807873359/a-way-forward">stuck at about 90%</a> of the national average for decades, with average income even lower in rural areas. About 1 in 5 counties in the South is marked by “<a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2023/comm/persistent-poverty.pdf">persistent poverty</a>” — a poverty rate that has stayed above 20% for three decades running. Indeed, <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/acs/acs-51%20persistent%20poverty.pdf">fully 80%</a> of all persistently poor counties in the U.S. are in the South.</p>
<p>Persistent poverty is, of course, linked to a host of other problems. The South’s rural counties are marked by <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?eid=391444&rid=330">low levels of educational attainment</a>, measured both by high school and college graduation rates. Meanwhile, labor-force participation rates in the South are <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?eid=784070&rid=446">far lower</a> than in the nation as a whole.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, these issues stifle economic growth.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, financial institutions have fled the region: The South as a whole <a href="https://banks.data.fdic.gov/explore/historical/">lost 62% of its banks</a> between 1980 and 2020, with the decline sharpest in rural areas. At the same time, local hospitals and medical facilities <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12655">have been shuttering</a>, while funding for everything from emergency services to wellness programs has been cut. </p>
<h2>Less wealth, less health</h2>
<p>Relatedly, the rural South is ground zero for poor health in the U.S., with <a href="https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/life-expectancy-and-inequality">life expectancy far lower</a> than the national average. So-called “<a href="http://deathsofdespair.princeton.edu">deaths of despair</a>” such as suicides and accidental overdoses are common, and rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and stroke are high – much higher than in rural areas in other parts of the U.S. and <a href="https://www.countyhealthrankings.org">in the U.S. as a whole</a>.</p>
<p>Manufacturing counties in the rural South are particularly unhealthy. Residents there die about <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/deaths.htm">two and a half years younger</a> than the average American, which to demographers is a staggeringly high differential.</p>
<p>These things, of course, didn’t happen in a vacuum. The Obama-era Affordable Care Act encouraged states to expand Medicaid coverage, but Southern states largely refused to do so. That left <a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2021-07/rural-health-rr.pdf">large portions</a> of the low- and lower-middle-income population in the rural South uninsured. This has pushed many medical facilities in the region into a death spiral, as their business models — predicated on governmental insurance of one kind or another — became untenable.</p>
<p>Given all this, is it any wonder that rates of upward mobility in the rural South are among <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/path-rural-resilience-america/">the lowest in the country</a>? Alas, probably not — certainly not to residents of rural North Carolina, a state where more than half of its counties <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/databases/article253546964.html">lost population</a> between 2010 and 2020. </p>
<h2>It wasn’t always this way</h2>
<p>Although some people think that these areas have <a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/2015/11/what-went-wrong-with-the-south.html">forever been in crisis</a>, this isn’t the case. While the South’s agricultural sector had fallen into long-term decline in the decades following the Civil War — essentially collapsing by the Great Depression — the onset of World War II led to <a href="https://lsupress.org/9780807121221/the-new-south-1945-1980/">an impressive economic growth spurt</a>.</p>
<p>War-related jobs opening up in urban areas pulled labor out of rural areas, leading to a long-delayed push to mechanize agriculture. Workers rendered redundant by such technology came to constitute a large pool of cheap labor that industrialists seized upon to deploy in low-wage processing and assembly operations, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05775132.2018.1543070">generally in rural areas and small towns</a>. </p>
<p>Such operations surged between 1945 and the early 1980s, playing a huge role in the region’s economic rise. However humble they may have been, in the South — as in China since the late 1970s — the shift out of a backward agricultural sector into low-wage, low-skill manufacturing was an opportunity for significant productivity and efficiency gains.</p>
<p>This helped the South steadily <a href="https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807872895_gitterman.6">catch up to national norms</a> in terms of per-capita income: to 75% by 1950, 80% by the mid-1960s, over 85% by 1970, and to almost 90% by the early 1980s.</p>
<p>Although today the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2008.tb00856.x">rise of the Sun Belt</a> is often associated with, if not attributed to, climate, low housing costs and the growth of the South’s booming metropolitan areas, all those rural sweatshops and humble-looking processing sheds opening up in the early postwar era mattered a lot. They elevated the living standards of countless once-desperate and impoverished farmers.</p>
<h2>The origins of the rural crisis</h2>
<p>By the early 1980s, however, the gains made possible by the shift out of agriculture began to play themselves out. The growth of the rural manufacturing sector slowed, and the South’s convergence upon national per capita income norms stopped, remaining <a href="https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/stgdppi4q22-a2022.pdf">stuck at about 90%</a> from then on. </p>
<p>Two factors were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05775132.2018.1543070">largely responsible</a>: new technologies, which reduced the number of workers needed in manufacturing, and globalization, which greatly increased competition. This latter point became increasingly important, since the South, a low-cost manufacturing region in the U.S., is a high-cost manufacturing region when compared to, say, Mexico.</p>
<p>Like Mike Campbell’s bankruptcy in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” the rural South’s collapse came gradually, then suddenly: gradually during the 1980s and 1990s, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05775132.2018.1543070">and suddenly</a> after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001.</p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2010, for example, manufacturing employment in North Carolina, one of the South’s leading manufacturing states, fell by about 44%. Starting a bit earlier — in 1998, when the Asian currency crisis squeezed Southern manufacturers — we find that the Tar Heel State <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05775132.2018.1543070">lost 70% of its manufacturing jobs</a> in textiles and 60% in furniture between then and 2010.</p>
<p>Other states in the South’s “manufacturing belt,” such as South Carolina and Tennessee, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05775132.2018.1543070">lost about 40% of their manufacturing jobs</a> between 2000 and 2010. Although they have recouped some jobs since then, not one Southern state has as many manufacturing jobs as it did a generation ago. And most of the job growth in the southern manufacturing sector in recent decades has taken place in or near big cities. </p>
<p>The proportion of craftsmen and factory workers in the rural Southern labor force fell from <a href="https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V10.0">38% in 1980 to a little over 25% by 2020</a> — a trend that was particularly striking in rural manufacturing counties.</p>
<p>Factory jobs there increasingly gave way to low-level service-sector gigs, which generally paid less. As a result, median income per capita in rural manufacturing counties in the South has stagnated and is much lower than in rural manufacturing counties elsewhere in the U.S. </p>
<h2>The first step is recognizing there’s a problem</h2>
<p>Those parts of the rural and small-town South that were once heavily involved in manufacturing are in economic crisis today.</p>
<p>One might argue that the current mess is a legacy effect of the South’s historical dependence on a low-skill, low-cost growth “strategy” — beginning with slavery — that privileged short-term economic gains over patient investment in human capital and long-term development. That’s a big claim about a larger, more complex story. </p>
<p>For now, our aim is simply to call attention to the problem. One must first acknowledge it before there can be any hope of a remedy. Until then, the inhabitants of such areas will remain feeling, as the Southern writer Linda Flowers vividly put it, “<a href="https://utpress.org/title/throwed-away/">throwed away</a>.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After a 20th-century manufacturing boom, the region has been in a decadeslong decline. Rural factory towns can blame technology and globalization for their woes.Peter A. Coclanis, Professor of History; Director of the Global Research Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLouis M. Kyriakoudes, Director, Albert Gore Research Center and Professor of History, Middle Tennessee State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153722023-11-06T15:16:12Z2023-11-06T15:16:12ZMy parents are from two different African countries: study shows how this shapes identity<p>More than a <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/062/2016/009/article-A001-en.xml">third of migration</a> in sub-Saharan Africa happens within the continent. This mixing of people means that some children have parents of different national origins. Yet not enough is known about the lives of these children: how they form their identity and what impact migration has on them. </p>
<p>The majority of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kassahun-Kebede/publication/329950963_The_African_second_generation_in_the_United_States_-_identity_and_transnationalism_an_introduction/links/5c76fdca92851c69504669e9/The-African-second-generation-in-the-United-States-identity-and-transnationalism-an-introduction.pdf">research</a> on second generation African immigrants focuses on understanding their experiences in the global north. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2018.1484503">research</a> looked at the less studied African context, where the majority of African migration occurs.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://www.ug.edu.gh/sociology/staff/geraldine-asiwome-ampah">sociologists</a> who study <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-97322-3_7">migration</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/imig.12644">identity</a> and we have seen that studies tend to take the <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d93fe8bf-5987-40ea-98d2-e9c6cbbe61f0/download_file?safe_filename=TDI%2Brevised%2Bsubmission%2Bto%2BERS%2BAugust%2B2015.pdf&file_format=application%2Fpdf&type_of_work=Journal+article">perspective</a> of the <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253000828/migrants-and-strangers-in-an-african-city/">parents</a> in the African context. The voices of the children are missing. </p>
<p>To fill this gap we <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2023.2222670">asked</a> children who have two African-born parents – but from different countries on the continent – about their experiences. </p>
<p>Our aim was to understand how children with binational parentage formed their identity. We wanted to know if they aligned with either or both of their parents’ identities and which individual or structural factors shaped that. This could be useful to know in contexts where ethnic, religious, political and national identities are salient markers of difference and influence people’s lives and opportunities.</p>
<h2>Questions of identity</h2>
<p>We conducted 54 interviews but drew on the experiences of 32 of the research participants for our paper. Their ages ranged from the lower 20s to the lower 60s. Participants came from Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa. Our sample was middle class and therefore our findings are limited to binational identity among middle class Africans. </p>
<p>A key criterion for participation was that participants should have lived in the African country of one of their parents’ birth or both during their formative years. This is because formative years (from birth up to the end of secondary education) shape who you are. And the experiences you have in a place leave an indelible impression and influence your sense of who you are.</p>
<p>We asked them questions such as: Who are you? What is your identity? Where are you from? How do others perceive you? What relationship do you have with your parents’ home country or home town? To what extent has your identity created opportunities for you and to what extent has it created challenges for you? </p>
<h2>Primary and secondary identities</h2>
<p>A person’s primary identity is how they see themselves principally. Their secondary identity comes after those core or foundational aspects.</p>
<p>We learnt that the participants’ primary identity was shaped predominantly by the closeness of family ties during their formative years. Family ties were evident in communication, visits and presence at rites of passage.</p>
<p>The case of three sisters whose mother was from Botswana and father from Ghana highlighted the importance of the closeness of family ties for identity formation even among siblings.</p>
<p>Maru, the eldest, was born when her parents were settling into adult life. She was raised by her maternal grandmother in rural Botswana because her parents were trying to find jobs in Gaborone, the capital. She felt a close bond with her maternal grandmother and thought of herself as Kalanga (an ethnic group) with a very weak link to Ghana. </p>
<p>Her two sisters were born almost a decade later in Gaborone and raised by their parents, who had settled into their lives in the capital. They described themselves differently. Seliwe described herself as Ghanaian. When she was growing up, the family spent holidays (sometimes several months) in Ghana and she thoroughly enjoyed those visits. She was close to the Ghanaian side of her family and spent much time during our interview talking about her paternal uncle, who lived in her father’s home town, and the jollof rice at a popular fast-food restaurant in Accra. She identified chiefly as Ghanaian and insisted that identity be recognised, for example by ensuring that her name, which is Ghanaian, be pronounced correctly.</p>
<p>The family plays a crucial role in identity formation. If parents want their children to identify with both sides of the family, they need to ensure that the children spend time with both sides of the family. </p>
<p>Another influence is the extent to which children are accepted by the extended family members. Meghan, who had a Ghanaian father and a Nigerian mother, noted that her mother’s family embraced her far more than the Ghanaian side of the family. Although she was living in Ghana, she barely had any contact with them. She explained, “I find that I relate more to my Nigerian side than the Ghanaian side.” </p>
<p>Fluency in a particular African language was not an important marker of identity for the study participants.</p>
<p>Our study also found that binational individuals drew upon their secondary identity either explicitly to achieve some purpose or implicitly for its intrinsic value.</p>
<p>About half of the sample had drawn on their secondary identity to access something practical, like tertiary education or employment. In simple terms, even if they didn’t feel strongly Nigerian (for example) they might use that identity to get a place at a university. </p>
<p>The other half of the sample drew on their secondary identity for non-essential – more cultural – purposes. Usually this was in making choices about things like food, clothing and music. Another purpose was more personal – such as the name the individual chose to use.</p>
<h2>Why the insights are useful</h2>
<p>Identities are fluid and people weave in and out of them. If you feel Nigerian at your core then you embrace all aspects of “Nigerianness”, including music, food and so on. If being Nigerian is your secondary identity, you see value in claiming it sometimes even if it is for instrumental reasons.</p>
<p>We found individuals with binational identity were able to shift between their primary and secondary identity quite frequently, sometimes daily. </p>
<p>A society’s culture informs identity – but so do individuals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215372/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Primary identities are foundational and serve as the core part of an individual’s identity.Akosua Keseboa Darkwah, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of GhanaGeraldine Asiwome Ampah, Senior Lecturer of Sociology, University of GhanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114822023-10-05T12:33:47Z2023-10-05T12:33:47ZClimate change is a fiscal disaster for local governments − our study shows how it’s testing communities in Florida<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551841/original/file-20231003-27-j5xxho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C4%2C2977%2C2079&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Crews clear lots of destroyed homes in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., in February 2022, four months after Hurricane Ian.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-aerial-view-construction-crews-clear-lots-of-homes-news-photo/1459509524">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change is <a href="https://theconversation.com/looking-for-a-us-climate-haven-away-from-disaster-risks-good-luck-finding-one-211990">affecting communities nationwide</a>, but Florida often seems like ground zero. In September 2022, Hurricane Ian <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/hurricane-ian-florida-damage.html">devastated southwest Florida</a>, killing at least 156 people and causing <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092022_Ian.pdf">an estimated US$113 billion</a> in damages. Then Hurricane Idalia <a href="https://apnews.com/article/florida-hurricane-idalia-2136985ceea53f5deb600c43aeea1138">shut down the Florida Panhandle</a> in September 2023, augmented by a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/science/blue-supermoon.html">blue supermoon</a> that also increased <a href="https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2023/08/31/hurricane-idalia-super-blue-moon-unusual-post-landfall-storm-surge-into-wakulla-county/70726049007/">tidal flooding</a> in southeast Florida. </p>
<p>Communities can adapt to some of these effects, or at least <a href="https://floridaclimateinstitute.org/docs/climatebook/Ch11-Bloetscher.pdf">buy time</a>, by taking steps such as upgrading stormwater systems and raising roads and sidewalks. But climate disasters and sea-level rise also harm local governments financially by increasing costs and undercutting their property tax bases. Local reliance on property taxes also can discourage cities from steering development out of flood zones, which is essential for reducing long-term risks.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2023.2249866">newly published study</a> and supporting <a href="https://cugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=754b615fa5db4bbea0ed393a2c730163">online StoryMap</a>, we present the first-ever municipal fiscal impact assessment of sea-level rise in Florida and combine it with a statewide survey of coastal planners and managers. We wanted to know how sea-level rise would affect municipal tax revenues and whether coastal planners and managers are accounting for these fiscal impacts.</p>
<p>Our study finds that over half of Florida’s 410 municipalities will be affected by 6.6 feet of sea-level rise. Almost 30% of all local revenues currently generated by these 211 municipalities come from buildings in areas that will become chronically flooded, potentially by the <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html">end of the century</a>. Yet, planners and managers remain largely unaware of how much climate change will affect local fiscal health. Some communities with the most at risk are doing the least to prepare.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6vTW7SOWp2Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A year after Hurricane Ian, destruction is still widespread in Fort Myers Beach, Fla.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Property tax and climate change: A Catch-22</h2>
<p>Property taxes are critically important for municipal governments. Nationwide, they provide <a href="https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-and-local-backgrounders/property-taxes">30% of local revenues</a>. They are one of the few funding sources that local governments control, and climate change directly threatens them.</p>
<p>As climate change warms ocean waters, it <a href="https://theconversation.com/hurricane-ian-capped-2-weeks-of-extreme-storms-around-the-globe-heres-whats-known-about-how-climate-change-fuels-tropical-cyclones-191583">fuels hurricanes and increases their reach and intensity</a>. Climate change also is <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level#">raising sea levels</a>, which increases coastal flooding during both storms and high tides, often referred to as <a href="https://www.wusf.org/environment/2021-07-15/sunny-day-high-tide-flooding-may-soon-affect-much-of-floridas-coast">sunny-day flooding</a>. Unlike storms, sea-level rise doesn’t recede, so it threatens to permanently inundate coastal lands over time. </p>
<p>Property tax revenues may decline as <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/R45999.pdf">insurance companies</a> and <a href="https://floodcoalition.org/2020/05/how-could-rising-floodwaters-impact-your-homes-value/">property markets</a> downgrade property values to reflect climate impacts, such as increasing flood risks and wildfires. Already, a growing number of insurance companies have decided to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/03/natural-disaster-climate-insurance/">stop covering some regions and types of weather events</a>, raise premiums and deductibles and drop existing policies as payouts rise in the wake of natural disasters. Growing costs of insuring or repairing homes may further hurt property values and increase home abandonment. </p>
<p>Climate change also makes it more expensive to provide municipal services like water, sewage and road maintenance. For example, high heat buckles roads, rising water tables wash out their substructure, and heavier rains stress stormwater systems. If cities don’t adapt, increasing damage from climate-driven disasters and sea-level rise will create a vicious fiscal cycle, eroding local tax bases and driving up services costs – which in turn leaves less money for adaptation. </p>
<p>However, if cities reduce development in vulnerable areas, their property taxes and other revenues will take a hit. And if they build more seawalls and homes fortified to withstand hurricanes and storms, they will induce more people to live in harm’s way. </p>
<p>In Florida, we found that these theoretical dynamics are already occurring.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwA3vzEIlF6","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Florida’s local revenues at risk</h2>
<p>Our analysis shows that sea-level rise could flood properties that have a combined assessed value of $619 billion and currently generate $2.36 billion in annual property taxes. Five million Floridians live in towns where at least 10% of local revenues comes from properties at risk of chronic and permanent flooding. For 64 municipalities, 50% of their revenues come from these risk zones. </p>
<p>Actual fiscal effects would likely be worse after accounting for other lost revenues, rising expenditures and the impacts of multiple climate hazards, such as hotter weather and more intense hurricanes.</p>
<p>These impacts are not evenly distributed. Municipalities with the greatest fiscal risks are geographically and demographically smaller, denser, wealthier and whiter. Lower-risk municipalities tend to be more populous, more diverse, lower-income and have larger land areas. </p>
<p>For instance, the 6,800 residents of the city of Treasure Island in southwest Florida are 95% white and have a median household income of $75,000. The town occupies 3 square miles of land on a barrier island. In our model, its potential lost revenues due to sea-level rise equal its entire municipal revenue stream. </p>
<p>In contrast, St. Petersburg, the nearest big city, has a population of 246,000 residents that is 69% white and a median household income of $53,800. It covers 72 square miles, with only 12% of its property tax revenues at risk from flooding.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwjuLrJt4Uz","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Heads in the sand</h2>
<p>We see our findings as a wake-up call for state and local governments. Without urgent action to adapt to climate change, dozens of municipalities could end up fiscally underwater. </p>
<p>Instead, many Florida cities are pursuing continued growth through infrastructure expansion. Even after devastating events like Hurricane Ian, administrative boundaries, service obligations and budgetary responsibilities make it hard for municipal leaders to make room for water or retreat onto higher ground. </p>
<p>Treasure Island, for instance, is <a href="https://www.tbnweekly.com/beach_beacon/article_348defb2-0934-11e9-a4a4-eb7ed7651e85.html">allocating property taxes</a> to upgrade the town’s causeway bridge. This protects against modest climate impacts in the short term but will eventually be overwhelmed by bigger storm surges, rising water tables and <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level#">accelerating sea-level rise</a>. </p>
<p>These dynamics can worsen <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-miami-keeps-building-rising-seas-deepen-its-social-divide">displacement and gentrification</a>. In Miami, developers are already buying and consolidating properties in longtime Black and lower-income neighborhoods like <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/33d28b4ae86840b5b27ea8ba4b4bcc4d">Little Haiti</a>, <a href="https://nextcity.org/features/miami-underdeck-overtown-black-community-gentrification-displacement">Overtown</a> and <a href="https://www.equaltimes.org/welcome-to-miami-speculation?lang=en">Liberty City</a> that are slightly more elevated than areas along the shore.</p>
<p>If this pattern continues, we expect that inland and upland areas of cities like St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami will attract more resilient, high-end development, while displaced low-income and minority residents are forced to move either out of the region or to coastal zones with declining resources. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PB_sVUXg4Lc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Wealthy people in Miami are moving inland to avoid flooding, displacing lower-income residents and people of color.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Charting a different future</h2>
<p>We don’t see this outcome as inevitable, in Florida or elsewhere. There are ways for municipalities to manage and govern land that promote fiscally sound, equitable and sustainable ways of adapting to climate change. The key is recognizing and addressing the property tax Catch-22. </p>
<p>As a first step, governments could assess how climate change will affect their fiscal health. Second, state governments could enact legislation that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/09/14/the-case-against-property-taxes-and-two-alternative-taxes-that-work/">expands local revenue sources</a>, such as sales or consumption taxes, vacancy taxes, stormwater impact fees and resilience bonds or fees.</p>
<p>Regional sharing of land and taxes is another way for small, cash-strapped communities to reduce development in vulnerable places while maintaining services for their residents. For example, New Hampshire passed a bill in 2019 to <a href="https://legiscan.com/NH/text/SB285/2019">allow coastal municipalities to merge</a> in response to sea-level rise. </p>
<p>Finally, state governments could pass legislation to help low-income neighborhoods gain more control over land and housing. Tested tools include <a href="https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/a-lifeline-for-preserving-limited-equity-co-ops-in-new-york">limited equity cooperatives</a>, where residents buy an affordable share in a development and later resell at below-market prices to maintain affordability; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/realestate/community-land-trusts-gentrification.html">community land trusts</a>, where a nonprofit buys and holds land title to keep land costs down; and <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/04/08/residents-buying-mobile-home-parks-preserving-affordable-housing-option-low-income-americans/">resident-owned mobile home parks</a>, where residents jointly buy the land. All of these strategies help communities keep housing affordable and avoid displacement. </p>
<p>Shifting away from a business-as-usual development model won’t be easy. But our study shows that Florida, with its flat topography and thousands of miles of coastline, faces cascading fiscal impacts if it continues down its current path.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda Shi receives funding from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tisha Joseph Holmes received funding from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Center for Disease Control and Provention. She is affiliated with REfire Culinary. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Butler received funding from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in support of this research. </span></em></p>A new study of Florida’s fiscal vulnerability to climate change finds that flooding directly threatens many local tax bases.Linda Shi, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning, Cornell UniversityTisha Joseph Holmes, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State UniversityWilliam Butler, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138692023-09-21T04:34:46Z2023-09-21T04:34:46ZExcessive screen time can affect young people’s emotional development<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549484/original/file-20230921-25-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C269%2C4268%2C2574&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-negative-surprised-face-looking-something-771061159">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent Beyond Blue <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-18/mental-health-depression-anxiety-support-coming-for-schools/102831464?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=twitter">survey of more than 2,000 teachers</a> identified mental ill-health and excessive screen time as the biggest problems facing their students. </p>
<p>Comments from teachers revealed a perceived lack of social skill development in children and teens. As one wellbeing specialist said, young people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>are not learning social awareness. They’re not learning how to read emotions. They’re not learning body language. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1703543298231611623"}"></div></p>
<p>There’s <a href="https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-Watching-TV-054.aspx">no definitive measure</a> of what constitutes “excessive” screen-time, although research is <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30908423/">beginning to suggest</a> four hours per day or more is potentially risky.</p>
<p>Although COVID lockdowns played a role in disrupting normal social learning processes, concerns about social and emotional development in our teens has been bubbling away for some time across cultures that have easy access to screen-based technologies and social media. COVID may have thrown petrol on the flames, but it did not light this fire.</p>
<p>So what is going on? Does overexposure to screens lead to social impairments, and if so, how?</p>
<h2>Displacing children’s development</h2>
<p>The developing brain wires itself to the environment in which it finds itself. The skills you use most often will become almost automatic, such as driving a car. But skills you use infrequently need more concentration and effort, especially if you didn’t practice them much when your brain was still developing. </p>
<p>Important social experiences such as emotion recognition, reciprocal play and perspective-taking are potentially being sidelined by screen-time. In other words: when children are preoccupied with their screens, what are they <em>not</em> learning?</p>
<p>“Theory of Mind” is a brain function that allows people to understand the mental states of others. Theory of Mind starts with the realisation that everyone has different perspectives, mental states and understandings of our own. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-others-feelings-what-is-empathy-and-why-do-we-need-it-68494">Understanding others' feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Developmentally, Theory of Mind explains quite a lot about child and adolescent behaviours. </p>
<p>Most parents recall, with some horror, their toddlers’ “terrible twos” stage. One of the reasons for these tantrums is a lack of Theory of Mind, which doesn’t kick in until the age of three or four. Toddlers just can’t understand why their carers don’t have the same perspective as them. “I feel thirsty – why is mum not getting me a drink?” Cue tantrum. </p>
<p>This intense frustration is one factor that drives the development of language, as the toddler finally realises other people don’t intuit their every thought or feeling and they need to learn to communicate. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6SniaiSbx7o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Theory of mind develops at around age three or four.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As children grow and develop, Theory of Mind underpins the development of all sorts of social skills, such as recognising others’ emotional state and developing empathy. This is crucial to developing friendships, romantic partnerships and other kinds of social relationships as we move through life. </p>
<p>By adolescence, Theory of Mind gets really sophisticated. Teenagers are good at understanding socially complex processes such as lying, masking or amplifying true emotions, socially appropriate behaviours such as when not to take a joke too far, and nuanced language expression. </p>
<h2>How does this affect mental health?</h2>
<p>A child or teenager without age-appropriate social skills will have difficulty developing and maintaining friendships. Given human beings are, by their nature, social creatures, this <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-021-02066-3">may lead to</a> isolation, loneliness and mental health issues. </p>
<p>Social media further inhibits perspective-taking by operating as an echo chamber, where a teen’s beliefs, interests and ideas are assessed via algorithms and parroted back to them. Rarely is an alternative idea or perspective presented, and, when it is, a teen with already impaired social-communication skills may react with anxiety instead of interest and curiosity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/teens-with-at-least-one-close-friend-can-better-cope-with-stress-than-those-without-126769">Teens with at least one close friend can better cope with stress than those without</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The time young people spend on screens has been <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25657166/">linked with</a> an array of mental health issues. Longitudinal research is beginning to demonstrate higher screen time is associated with a raft of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35099540/">social-skill impairments</a> at increasingly <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32310265/">early ages</a>. </p>
<p>Brain-imaging research shows higher screen use is <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2754101">associated with</a> lower white matter tracts (the information superhighways of the brain) that underpin language and cognitive skills. In contrast, spending a great deal of time in the outdoors is associated with <a href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp1876">higher grey matter</a> in regions associated with working memory and attention. </p>
<h2>So what can parents and teachers do to help?</h2>
<p>In the early years, parents and educators can focus on reciprocal play with lots of turn-taking and emotional engagement. When reading books or discussing everyday social interactions, talk about what you or another person was thinking or feeling and how that was expressed.</p>
<p>Delay any form of social media engagement for as long as possible. Encourage your child to critically think about people’s agendas when posting online: what are they really trying to get across, what is their motivation, what are they selling? Focus on building in-real-life friendships at school, your local community or sporting club, and within families. </p>
<p>Overall, limiting screen time and encouraging in-real-life play and an array of social engagement opportunities is the best way to improve a child’s prospects of developing good social-emotional skills.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Sharman and Michael Nagel have written a book covering these issues.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Nagel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Teachers are reporting a perceived lack of social skill development in children and teens. How might excessive screen time affect this development?Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of the Sunshine CoastMichael Nagel, Associate Professor - Child Development and Learning, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2054712023-09-20T04:12:14Z2023-09-20T04:12:14ZGovernments are pouring money into housing but materials, land and labour are still in short supply<p>As Australia’s housing affordability crisis worsens, governments are spending more on housing.</p>
<p>Victoria’s Andrews government has <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/housing-statement">announced</a> a suite of <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/kingswood-golf-course-rezoning-among-five-projects-suddenly-approved-by-government-20230920-p5e64c.html">reforms</a> (such as boosting social housing and making planning processes faster) in an effort to get 800,000 extra homes in Victoria over the next decade.</p>
<p>Federally, the Albanese government’s A$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, or HAFF, has <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greens-were-right-to-pass-australias-housing-future-fund-bill-the-case-for-further-delay-was-weak-213255">passed the Senate</a> with the help of the Greens, who supported the bill in exchange for another A$1 billion for social housing.</p>
<p>And this year’s federal budget has expanded eligibility for the <a href="https://ministers.dss.gov.au/media-releases/11161#:%7E:text=Helping%20Australians%20with%20the%20cost,%242.7%20billion%20over%20five%20years">Home Guarantee Scheme</a> so more people can buy a home with a smaller deposit. </p>
<p>But is Australia ready for a house construction boom? </p>
<p>Supply chain constraints say no. Ballooning construction costs and labour shortages have already claimed well-known building firms across the country. Delivering thousands of extra new homes in the coming years will not be easy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Houses like half-constructed in the lanscape." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549027/original/file-20230919-25-o18tcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is Australia ready for a house construction boom?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greens-were-right-to-pass-australias-housing-future-fund-bill-the-case-for-further-delay-was-weak-213255">The Greens were right to pass Australia's Housing Future Fund bill – the case for further delay was weak</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Materials are hard to get</h2>
<p>Building a home requires the right materials at the right time. But many building materials are in short supply.</p>
<p>Timber is a good example. The Master Builders Association <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/timber-shortages-ease-but-reliance-on-overseas-suppliers-leaves-industry-exposed/news-story/50f6012ebbd48d2749a9309b7f9c6f1b">highlights</a> there are still pressures on timber and wood supplies.</p>
<p>This imbalance between supply and demand for construction materials can be traced back to the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/new-homebuilder-package-aims-to-safeguard-jobs-of-a-million-tradies-20200603-p54z7w.html">HomeBuilder</a> program, which saw over 138,000 Australians applying for a <a href="https://treasury.gov.au/coronavirus/homebuilder">grant</a> to build or renovate. </p>
<p>The number of new dwellings commenced went from 41,855 in September 2020 to a <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-activity-australia/mar-2023">peak</a> of 67,306 in July 2021 – an increase of 60% in less than a year. </p>
<p>Typically, a spike in demand is met by imports. But soaring <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/03/28/how-soaring-shipping-costs-raise-prices-around-the-world">shipping costs</a> during the pandemic conspired with <a href="https://www.timberbiz.com.au/conflict-timber-comes-into-australia-with-false-origin-labels/#:%7E:text=Australia%20has%20not%20banned%20timber,conflict%20timber%20and%20its%20sustainability">restrictions</a> to timber imports from Russia to send global markets into disarray. </p>
<p>Tim Reardon, Chief Economist for the Housing Industry Association <a href="https://hia.com.au/our-industry/newsroom/economic-research-and-forecasting/2023/04/housing-supply-worsens-as-demand-increases">reckons</a> housing supply issues will not get any better soon. The federal government’s National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation <a href="https://www.nhfic.gov.au/research/state-nations-housing-report-2022-23">expects</a> housing supply will only recover by 2025-26.</p>
<p>Demand pressures will continue. As it is, there are lots of <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-activity-australia/mar-2023">unfinished homes</a> around the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Building frames of houses are seen against an urban background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549029/original/file-20230919-17-d1u576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You need materials and energy to build a house.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Labour and land are also in short supply</h2>
<p>Building a home is labour intensive. Finding roofers, bricklayers, carpenters, tilers, landscapers and other construction workers has <a href="https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/download/2289/skills-shortage-quarterly-march-2023/1448/skills-shortage-quarterly-report-march-2023/docx">not been easy</a>. </p>
<p>Australia’s record low unemployment <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/unemployment-rate-falls-34">rates</a> and a global rise in <a href="https://www.oecd.org/publications/the-post-covid-19-rise-in-labour-shortages-e60c2d1c-en.htm">labour shortages</a> have made it hard for builders to find the workers they need to finish jobs. <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/construction-delays-perth-customers-waiting-up-to-four-years-for-new-homes-to-be-built-by-states-largest-builder/fa6334f3-64f9-47c1-9d5a-e0898e9a4a4e">Delays</a> are common.</p>
<p>Some skill sets are in even higher demand, as workers flock to oil and gas, mining, and infrastructure projects. In Western Australia, for example, <a href="https://bcec.edu.au/publications/housing-affordability-in-western-australia-2023-building-for-the-future/">research</a> has shown a shortage of construction managers, handy persons, and civil engineering professionals.</p>
<p>Then, there is the question of land. Greenfield projects (new developments on the city fringes) typically see fast approvals, fast sales, and good profit.</p>
<p>But suburbs alone cannot deliver the demand that is coming, thanks to the Housing Australia Future Fund and the other government initiatives.</p>
<p>There is a growing consensus more has to be done to increase <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-01/four-unique-ways-tokyo-approaches-housing/102784020">urban density</a> (in other words, apartments) next to <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-make-housing-more-affordable-this-is-what-state-governments-need-to-do-105050">mass transit hubs</a>.</p>
<p>But this isn’t easy either. Not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) critics abound and demand for standalone houses remains strong as people pursue the “great Australian dream” of a <a href="https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/amep-subsite/Files/intermediate-housing-housing-worksheet-1-the-great-australian-dream.pdf">large house</a> on a large block of land.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Construction workers look on as a crane moves a heavy object for a building project." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549030/original/file-20230919-20-iklfa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labour is in short supply.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>So how can we strengthen supply?</h2>
<p>These issues in materials, labour, and land will not solve themselves. Pouring more money into the housing market without addressing supply shortages will only increase prices. </p>
<p>So, what initiatives can really address the housing supply crisis? Options include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>reducing import taxes on materials like construction timber and steel frames to boost short-term supply (while adhering to long-term strategies to address future demand) </p></li>
<li><p>supporting new technologies in the construction industry (the federal government’s <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/about/news/grants-open-for-wood-processing-facilities">Accelerate Adoption of Wood Processing Innovation</a> program, which enables the use of innovative technology for timber production, is one example)</p></li>
<li><p>increasing skilled migration to boost labour supply (Western Australia’s <a href="https://migration.wa.gov.au/news/boosting-was-building-construction-industry-through-skilled-migration">Construction Visa Subsidy Program</a>, which targets skilled migrants to the construction sector, shows what’s possible)</p></li>
<li><p>embracing manufactured homes (<a href="https://www.sbt-durabi.org/articles/article/M9R2/#Information">modular construction</a>, for example, can increase labour productivity, reduce costs and mitigate the effects of weather delays)</p></li>
<li><p>making it easier to release land for development, especially in urban areas (for example, the Victoria government is investing <a href="https://www.budget.vic.gov.au/homes-for-victorians">$40 million in red-tape busting measures</a>).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The housing crisis in Australia is far from over. Without coordinated action to increase supply, government grants will have little practical effect on house affordability anytime soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is Australia ready for a house construction boom? Supply chain constraints say no.Flavio Macau, Associate Dean - School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan UniversityDeepa Bannigidadmath, Lecturer, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2126272023-09-14T13:36:49Z2023-09-14T13:36:49ZKenya: Ongata Rongai boom town destroyed two vital rivers – new study flags a major health risk<p>Over the past 10 years, Ongata Rongai, a satellite town on the edge of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has experienced uncontrolled development and exponential population growth. Because of its appealing location close to the city, it’s <a href="http://www.citypopulation.de/en/kenya/riftvalley/kajiado/3414__ongata_rongai/">jumped from</a> just under 40,000 residents in 2009 to a population of over 172,000 in 2019. The most recent <a href="http://www.citypopulation.de/en/kenya/riftvalley/kajiado/3414__ongata_rongai/">census data</a> showed a high annual population growth rate of 16%. </p>
<p>The rapid increase in population, and accompanying development of residential buildings, has led to huge pressure on the environment, including its waterways.</p>
<p>There are two main rivers flowing through Ongata Rongai: the Mbagathi River and the Kandisi-Kiserian River. These rivers are important historically and, to an extent, today. People fish in them, use them to wash their clothes and collect water from them to use at home. Children and adults swim and bathe in them. Pastoralists water their livestock here and graze animals along the riverbanks. They were also the place where neighbouring clans would meet or where the Agikuyu community would come to pray at the towering <em>mugumo</em> (fig) trees. Indigenous plants growing on the riverbanks were harvested to make medicines. </p>
<p>I carried out <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1164881/full">a study</a> which examined how Rongai’s growth has affected the riparian (river) environment and surrounding communities. </p>
<p>What I found was a severely degraded riparian environment and frustrated residents. Ongata Rongai is not special. It can be seen as a microcosm of a wider issue: that of rapid urban development at the expense of the environment. </p>
<p>Environments like this are <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30778691/">common</a> wherever urban populations are growing faster than resources and plans can keep up. The municipality has a responsibility to act on what’s known about the health of its land, people and animals.</p>
<h2>Drivers of pollution</h2>
<p>I carried out my study using archival materials, interviews and focus group discussions. </p>
<p>Ongata Rongai was, until fairly recently, a savannah with few or no permanent structures. It is now a densely populated urban area, no longer peripheral to but a part of the Nairobi metropolitan area. </p>
<p>This rapid development has happened without services keeping pace, including mains sewerage, solid waste disposal, piped safe water, or any sewage treatment plant. The main problem of the rivers today, cited by everyone I spoke to, was that of sewage. Untreated sewage is pumped into or flows into the rivers daily, primarily from low-cost and poorly constructed apartment buildings belonging to wealthy business people.</p>
<p>Another cause of degradation is people’s disconnection from the environment. Interviewees discussed how the proliferation of Christianity had a disconnecting effect, and traditional knowledge was forgotten. Few people retain knowledge about plants. And if the environment holds no meaning, people don’t see the consequences of throwing trash into the river.</p>
<h2>Impacts of the pollution</h2>
<p>The pollution makes the rivers almost unusable and hazardous. But there’s a lack of alternatives. </p>
<p>People use the river water for farming, laundry, bathing and other purposes, out of necessity or convenience. Climate change has reduced rainfall and created unpredictability, forcing livestock herders to depend on the polluted rivers – which are sometimes just trickles. </p>
<p>The poor state of the rivers and their surrounding environment leads to health challenges for both people and animals. Livestock often refuse to drink the river water. Children playing and swimming in it get ill and crops wither and die. </p>
<p>People are very aware of water safety and are wary of using river water. As one farmer in Rongai told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The problem with this river is, it is filthy. You see, if you use it to water your vegetables in your garden, even you are eating that filth. If you harvest these vegetables right now, you go and cook them, you are eating that filth. And it’s not even just us, it’s the animals too who have to drink that water. So those who are pouring the raw sewage into the river, can they just think about it and stop?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another farmer told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These days if you wash in the river you find your skin dries up … as if you have an illness … and if you keep washing there, you’ll get typhoid.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What happens now?</h2>
<p>There was extreme frustration with structural-level actors including local government and agencies. The residents I spoke to lamented corrupt government bodies and the lack of enforcement of existing environmental regulations. They felt hopeless as individuals without functioning institutions for environmental protection. </p>
<p>The situation is a typical example of how the health of people, animals and the environment is connected. Wildlife, livestock and a surge in human population have come together, putting pressure on a fragile ecosystem and environment. Without healthy rivers, there will be a dangerous knock-on effect on human and animal health. </p>
<p>The Rongai Rivers are one example of the rapid destruction of urban rivers globally. There’s been much <a href="https://scienceafrica.co.ke/2023/02/24/kenya-new-commission-to-spearhead-cleanliness-of-nairobi-rivers-launched/">talk</a> of regenerating riparian and green spaces in Nairobi and in other African cities. But the time for talking is over. People and governments must act to save these vital spaces.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Howland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rongai’s rapid development has happened without services keeping pace, and the rivers have paid the price.Olivia Howland, Research Fellow in Social Science and Geography, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2129672023-09-10T20:05:32Z2023-09-10T20:05:32Z‘That’s getting a bit wild, kids!’ Why children love to play-fight and why it is good for them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546588/original/file-20230906-15-kbyfn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C5535%2C3657&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/kids-playing-wrestling-in-the-bed-6684671/">Cottonbro Studio/Pexels </a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>That’s getting a bit wild, kids! Why don’t you play something quieter?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How often have you found yourself saying something like this to your children as they’re rolling around on the lounge room floor? </p>
<p>Even if they are smiling and clearly having fun, as parents, we often worry that someone will get hurt or it will turn into aggression, and ultimately, tears.</p>
<p>As a family and child psychology researcher, parents often ask me why children engage in this type of rough-and-tumble play. What is it? Is it good for them? Should I be stopping it? </p>
<p>The short answers are: it’s fun, it’s good for their development and you can encourage a good quality rough play session with a few boundaries. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-your-squabbling-kids-driving-you-mad-the-good-bad-news-is-sibling-rivalry-is-developmentally-normal-186300">Are your squabbling kids driving you mad? The good/bad news is, sibling rivalry is 'developmentally normal'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is rough-and-tumble play?</h2>
<p>Rough-and-tumble play is a type of energetic physical play that involves wrestling and chasing in a playful manner. </p>
<p>Parents often refer to it as “roughhousing”, “rumbling” or “play-fighting”. </p>
<p>An interesting thing about rough-and-tumble play is it is not unique to humans. In fact, it’s seen in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-022-03260-z">almost all mammals</a>, from <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.1033999/full">rodents</a>, to wolves, to bears and non-human primates.</p>
<p>Have you ever sat and watched a litter of puppies in their first four to six weeks of life? All they do is eat, sleep and rough-and-tumble play. When a behaviour is seen across numerous species, it suggests the behaviour plays a functional role in development.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lS1V1U6lJ6Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Puppies wrestle in a similar way to children and other mammals, such as baby pandas or kittens.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>There are developmental benefits</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious benefit of this type of play is physical development. </p>
<p>Children develop <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507902/">balance, coordination, strength and agility</a> through play fighting, wrestling and rolling around on the floor together or with a parent. </p>
<p>This style of play provides opportunities for children to explore and understand their bodies’ capabilities and limitations. One of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2014.1000888?journalCode=gecd20">our studies</a> on father-child rough-and-tumble play showed children who engaged more frequently in this style of play had a lower injury risk than children who didn’t play like this often. This supports the idea that rough-and-tumble play helps teach children about their physical limits.</p>
<p>Rough-and-tumble play also helps children to develop their social and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2012.723439">nonverbal communication skills</a>. In a good bout of roughhousing, children engage in negotiation and cooperation with each other – they learn how to initiate the play, set boundaries and respect the boundaries of their play partner. </p>
<p>Most of this is done nonverbally. Children learn to read their play partner’s signals, such as their facial expressions and body language – are they leaning into the play or pulling away from it? Are they smiling or grimacing?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kids-learn-valuable-life-skills-through-rough-and-tumble-play-with-their-dads-119241">Kids learn valuable life skills through rough-and-tumble play with their dads</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Managing emotions</h2>
<p>Children also learn how to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/imhj.21676">manage their emotions and self-regulate</a> through this type of play. Think about all the emotions a child may go through while wrestling with their sibling. There might be: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>excitement at the thought of winning and the opportunity to be loud and boisterous</p></li>
<li><p>frustration their sibling is stronger and it’s hard to pin them down or wriggle out from under them</p></li>
<li><p>enjoyment of the bond they are sharing with their sibling</p></li>
<li><p>and maybe a little bit of fear if they get a bit too wild and Mum or Dad breaks it up, or they accidentally knock something over. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Experiencing all these emotions and learning how to navigate them helps children develop emotional resilience.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two children fight with pillows." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kids can experience a wide range of emotions, from excitement to frustration and fear when play fighting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/teens-playing-pillow-fight-7693132/">Karolina Grabowska/Pexels</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Helping cognition</h2>
<p>Rough-and-tumble play is also related to cognitive development. In <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/9/7/962">one of our recent studies</a>, we showed children who do more rough-and-tumble play have better working memory ability and fewer working memory problems.</p>
<p>Working memory is a cognitive function that allows us to hold and manipulate a small amount of relevant information. </p>
<p>If I gave you a maths problem (such as 4 + 6 - 2) and asked you to solve it in your head, you would be using your working memory (the answer is 8, by the way!). Similarly, if I told you the rules of a rough-and-tumble game, like “<a href="https://kids.kiddle.co/Sock_wrestling">sock wrestle</a>”, you would have to keep those rules in mind while playing the game and at the same time trying to win.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F0no07_eJKU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How to play ‘sock wrestle’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How can you encourage good play?</h2>
<p>Given all these benefits, how should you encourage good quality rough-and-tumble play?</p>
<p>Most importantly, you want to keep it safe. </p>
<p>Ideally, rough-and-tumble play should happen in large open spaces. Having a designated playmat is a good idea, as is moving the coffee table out of the way if you get a chance before the play starts.</p>
<p>You should also make sure all players actually want to play. Setting some rules around what types of contact are off-limits – no hitting, kicking or biting is a good place to start.</p>
<p>You also want to allow enough time so everyone wears themselves out. </p>
<p>It’s a nice idea to have a signal the kids use to indicate the play is over and which helps build a warm and loving connection – a handshake, high-five or hug, whatever works in your house.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Freeman receives funding from the Hunter Medical Resarch Institute, Department of Health and Aged Care, and the University of Newcastle. </span></em></p>Play fighting can help children’s development in many ways, from their balance, to their nonverbal skills and cognition.Emily Freeman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102632023-08-30T12:15:57Z2023-08-30T12:15:57ZGiraffes range across diverse African habitats − we’re using GPS, satellites and statistics to track and protect them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544746/original/file-20230825-17-am7gat.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C3768%2C2345&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An average giraffe has a home range almost as large as Philadelphia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Brown</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 6,000 years ago, our ancestors climbed arid rocky outcrops in what is now the Nigerian Sahara and carved spectacularly intricate, larger-than-life renditions of giraffes into the exposed sandstone. The remarkably detailed Dabous giraffe rock art petroglyphs are among <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA00382353_1067">many ancient petroglyphs featuring giraffes across Africa</a> – a testament to early humans’ fascination with these unique creatures. </p>
<p>We are still <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199149">captivated by giraffes today</a>, but many of these animals are at risk, largely due to habitat loss and illegal hunting. Some <a href="https://giraffeconservation.org/programmes/giraffe-conservation-status-assessment/">are critically endangered</a>. </p>
<p>To understand how giraffes are faring across Africa, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=f3D2QOcAAAAJ&hl=en">conservation ecologists like me</a> are studying how they interact with their habitats across vast geographic scales. We use space-age technology and advanced statistical approaches that our ancient ancestors could have scarcely imagined to understand how giraffes can better coexist with people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Image of a giraffe carved in red rock." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542627/original/file-20230814-22-vdxtbu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giraffes are featured prominently in ancient petroglyphs across Africa, such as this one in Twyfelfontein, Namibia, which dates back thousands of years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Brown</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Many habitats and challenges</h2>
<p>Giraffes may all look similar to the casual viewer, but in fact there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.033">four distinct species</a>. By our best estimates, there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-821139-7.00139-2">roughly 117,000 giraffes remaining in the wild</a>, living in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12165">21 African countries</a>. </p>
<p>Across this huge expanse, giraffes make their homes in many different environments with varied levels of human influence. For example, in the relatively arid Sahel region of Niger, they live among communal farmers entirely outside of formally protected areas. In contrast, along the Nile in Uganda’s national parks, they browse through lush savannas that are formally protected by dedicated rangers. </p>
<p>Each of these areas has unique bioclimatic conditions and conservation philosophies. There is <a href="https://giraffeconservation.org/programmes/conservation-strategies/">no one-size-fits-all approach</a> for protecting giraffe habitats and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1885768">promoting coexistence with people</a>. </p>
<p>Researchers are taking advantage of these diverse conditions to learn how giraffes move throughout this range. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0912">In a recently published paper</a>, I worked with colleagues from academia and conservation organizations to conduct the largest ever tracking study to better understand how and why giraffes move at large scales. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four images of giraffes in diverse African settings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542628/original/file-20230814-24-pw6hay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The four species of giraffes inhabit remarkably different habitats across Africa, from lush savannas to desert.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Brown</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tracking wide-ranging animals</h2>
<p>Over the past decade, our collaborative conservation research team, spearheaded by the <a href="https://giraffeconservation.org/">Giraffe Conservation Foundation</a>, has embarked on an ambitious pan-African giraffe-tracking study to better understand giraffes’ movements across these diverse landscapes. </p>
<p>Each tracking operation contributes to local studies by telling us something interesting about giraffe behavior. For example, we published the first description of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2019.00524">partial migration in a Ugandan giraffe population</a>, showing that giraffes can have complicated seasonal movements. </p>
<p>These studies also are important for guiding local management of giraffes. Partnering with organizations like <a href="https://www.earthranger.com/">EarthRanger</a>, which develops software to support conservation initiatives, we have pioneered the use of animal movement data to inform active conservation management. </p>
<p>We share giraffe location data in real time with rangers in protected areas to guide day-to-day conservation actions. As an example, we run continuous analytics on the giraffe data that alert teams on the ground when a giraffe stops moving or leaves the boundaries of a national park. With this information, teams can follow up quickly and address risks, such as when giraffes might be straying into dangerous areas.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bry-gJU-cis?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In October 2021, conservation scientists and local wildlife officials translocated 10 South African giraffes over 1,600 miles (2,600 kilometers) from South Africa to Malawi. There they joined 13 giraffes already in Majete Wildlife Reserve, helping to expand the group into a sustainable population.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To look at these patterns at a larger scale in our recent study, we analyzed GPS tracking data from 148 giraffes, representing all four species from across 10 countries. We wanted to understand how giraffes may change their movements in response to human pressures and the availability of vegetation.</p>
<p>We used environmental data from satellite imagery, linking the giraffes’ locations to the exact conditions that the animals were moving through. Since the work drew from information collected across Africa through different GPS devices, we developed statistical techniques to harmonize the datasets and make the results directly comparable across ecosystems. </p>
<p>Overall, we found that giraffes cover impressively large areas. On average, each animal has a home range of about 140 square miles (360 square kilometers) – <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/philadelphiacitypennsylvania/PST045222">nearly equivalent to the surface area of Philadelphia</a> – and travels about 8.5 miles (14 kilometers) every day. One of the biggest movers in our study, a female northern giraffe in Niger that navigated among communities raising livestock in the dry Sahel, covered a home range of nearly 1,500 square miles (3,860 square kilometers) – larger than the <a href="https://www.ri.gov/facts/history.php">land area of Rhode Island</a>. </p>
<p>Giraffes’ movements changed significantly based on the availability of woody vegetation and the level of human presence. Those in areas with plenty of woody vegetation didn’t cover as much ground as their counterparts in more barren zones, since the former had most of the resources they needed close by. Giraffes also tended to move less in places with significant human development – probably because of man-made barriers to their movements, like settlements, fences and roads.</p>
<p>In mixed areas with some development and some open spaces, we observed that giraffes covered more ground as they navigated these patchy environments. They traveled faster and covered larger areas when they were moving between resource-rich zones and more heavily developed areas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two giraffes at the edge of a road watch a car pass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540456/original/file-20230801-21-xj7o8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Across their range, giraffes are navigating increasingly developed landscapes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Brown, GCF</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Giraffe movements inform conservation</h2>
<p>Understanding how giraffes respond to changes in environmental conditions is critical for their conservation. Climate change is making the availability of vegetation less predictable, and human populations in these areas are continuing to grow. Conservation strategies will need to account for giraffes’ changing movements as the animals respond to these shifts. </p>
<p>It also is important to develop principles for giraffe movement so that we can better predict how they might move in new environments. Conservation groups and governments are increasingly using <a href="https://giraffeconservation.org/programmes/conservation-translocations/">conservation translocations</a> – capturing wild giraffes and moving them to new habitats – as a tool to reestablish populations in areas where giraffes had previously become extinct. </p>
<p>Our movement data from giraffes across Africa is casting new light on their responses to different conditions and providing important information for conserving these iconic animals in a rapidly changing world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Brown works for the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and is an affiliated researcher for the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. He receives funding from the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and its many supporters and is affiliated with the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.</span></em></p>The largest ever giraffe tracking study shows how these massive animals are responding to human pressures across many different habitats throughout Africa.Michael Brown, Conservation Science Fellow, Smithsonian InstitutionLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2111292023-08-08T15:09:37Z2023-08-08T15:09:37ZKenya’s political dialogue is a welcome sign of democracy at work – if both sides understand their roles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541515/original/file-20230807-26-bhua21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Raila Odinga, the leader of the Azimio la Umoja coalition in Kenya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since Kenya’s presidential <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/15/william-ruto-declared-winner-of-kenya-presidential-election-amid-dispute">election in August 2022</a>, the new government has been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-62631193#:%7E:text=Argues%20that%20he%20did%20not,questions%20about%20the%20tallying%20process">in conflict</a> with the opposition. </p>
<p>In democratic systems, such conflict is healthy; it can enhance governance. But it <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2023/07/20/kenyas-violent-protests-sabotaging-economy-president-ruto-says/">must not interfere with</a> the government’s ability to perform its constitutional functions.</p>
<p>In Kenya, the friction between the government and opposition led to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/21/death-toll-rises-as-kenyas-cost-of-living-protests-continue">mass protests</a> in March 2023. The <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230320-kenyan-opposition-leader-raila-odinga-calls-for-weekly-rallies-over-cost-of-living-crisis">opposition</a> organised them <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/20/africa/kenya-cost-of-living-protests-explainer-intl/index.html#:%7E:text=A%20wave%20of%20deadly%20protests,businesses%20attacked%20and%20schools%20closed.">around</a> rising taxes and the high cost of living. </p>
<p>If carried out peacefully, political protests can <a href="https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/06/10/are-peaceful-protests-more-effective-than-violent-ones/">deepen democracy</a>. Kenya’s have often <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/7/13/deadly-anti-government-protests-roil-kenya">deteriorated into violence</a>, however. <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/police-have-killed-30-protesters-since-march-2023-amnesty-international-4309868">Heavy-handed government interventions</a> have then created even more violence. This threatens the sustainability of the country’s democratic institutions. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mass-protests-in-kenya-have-a-long-and-rich-history-but-have-been-hijacked-by-the-elites-202979">Mass protests in Kenya have a long and rich history – but have been hijacked by the elites</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The opposition recently <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/29/kenya-government-and-opposition-agree-to-talks-after-protests">called off street protests</a> to engage the government in dialogue. I have <a href="https://www.weber.edu/goddard/John_Mbaku.html">studied democratisation and political economy in Africa</a> for more than two decades, and in my view, these talks are an opportunity to strengthen Kenya’s democratic systems.</p>
<p>Both the government and the opposition have a duty to work towards creating a Kenya in which all citizens can live peacefully, by the values that are important to them, and elect who they want.</p>
<p>But for this to happen, each party to the talks must understand its constitutional role. It must play its part constructively and within the law. The opposition should be a check on the exercise of government power, but it must not obstruct governance. The opposition should evaluate public policy and offer alternatives, but allow the government to formulate the national agenda. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the government must recognise the important role the opposition plays in a democratic system. An effective opposition provides the government with feedback that advances national objectives. It contributes positively to peaceful coexistence, the protection of human rights and national development.</p>
<h2>The importance of the talks</h2>
<p>The opposition suspended its call for mass protests in July 2023 to engage in <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/kalonzo-lead-azimio-team-in-talks-with-kenya-kwanza-4322554">dialogue</a> with the government. The talks will be facilitated by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. Opposition leader Raila Odinga wants the talks concluded in <a href="https://www.pd.co.ke/inside-politics/raila-issues-demands-to-ruto-194622/">just over seven weeks</a>.</p>
<p>Odinga’s team of five has tabled <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2023-08-03-azimio-invites-ruto-team-for-first-meeting-lists-5-issues-to-be-discussed/">five issues</a>. It wants the government to:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>address the cost of living</p></li>
<li><p>reconstitute the elections agency</p></li>
<li><p>audit the 2022 poll</p></li>
<li><p>prevent state interference with political parties</p></li>
<li><p>resolve outstanding constitutional issues. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The government also brings a <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2023-08-07-ruto-sets-tone-for-kenya-kwanza-azimio-dialogue-at-bomas/">five-member team</a>. Its list includes establishing the offices of the leader of opposition and prime cabinet secretary, as well as implementing <a href="https://www.klrc.go.ke/index.php/constitution-of-kenya/112-chapter-four-the-bill-of-rights/part-2-rights-and-fundamental-freedoms/193-27-equality-and-freedom-from-discrimination#:%7E:text=(8)%20In%20addition%20to%20the,be%20of%20the%20same%20gender.">gender diversity laws</a>. President William Ruto has said he has <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2023-08-07-ruto-sets-tone-for-kenya-kwanza-azimio-dialogue-at-bomas/">no interest</a> in reopening debate on the results of the 2022 election. </p>
<p>These talks are a welcome sign of Kenya’s democracy maturing. But as the ruling party, Kenya Kwanza, <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/kalonzo-lead-azimio-team-in-talks-with-kenya-kwanza-4322554">has reminded</a> the opposition coalition, Azimio la Umoja, that the opposition’s job is to analyse government policies and offer alternatives. It is not to force its economic and political agenda on the government.</p>
<p>Regardless of what is <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/kalonzo-lead-azimio-team-in-talks-with-kenya-kwanza-4322554">on the table for discussion</a>, the dialogue should enhance governance and promote national development. </p>
<p>Parties to the talks should:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>consider ways to enhance government efficiency, accountability and productivity </p></li>
<li><p>concentrate on creating jobs, fighting inflation and helping Kenyans deal with climate change and other development challenges </p></li>
<li><p>help Kenya strengthen its democratic institutions, and promote their growth and maturity </p></li>
<li><p>provide an institutional environment within which all Kenyans, regardless of their ethnic affiliation, can live together peacefully. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Understanding the roles</h2>
<p>In emerging democracies, such as Kenya’s, a key source of conflict is the failure or inability of the government, the opposition and their supporters to understand and appreciate the roles that the constitution gives them. </p>
<p>In a functioning democratic system, the opposition is part of the governance architecture. It makes sure that the government is open, transparent and accountable to both the people and the constitution. However, it must not <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/18/kenya-braces-for-3-days-of-anti-govt-protest-all-the-details">frustrate</a> or interfere with government. </p>
<p>The government must consult and interact peacefully with all stakeholders, not just its supporters. This is critical in a country like Kenya which has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/kenyas-politicians-continue-to-use-ethnicity-to-divide-and-rule-60-years-after-independence-207930">significant diversity</a> of people, cultures, values, languages and economic and social aspirations.</p>
<p>A misunderstanding of roles could paralyse the government and make it non-functional. </p>
<h2>Way forward</h2>
<p>The present dialogue’s function must be:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>to strengthen the government, not cripple it</p></li>
<li><p>to advance the interests of all Kenyans, not just of specific politicians or ethnic groups</p></li>
<li><p>to improve the rule of law, not to open up political spaces for the benefit of opposition leaders</p></li>
<li><p>to build the country’s democracy, not to tear it down </p></li>
<li><p>to unite Kenyans, not to divide them</p></li>
<li><p>to ensure the advancement of a peaceful and productive Kenya.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Kenya’s national leaders – both in government and opposition – must build a political system in the country that advances inclusive development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Mukum Mbaku does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government and opposition have a duty to work towards creating a Kenya in which all citizens can live peacefully.John Mukum Mbaku, Professor, Weber State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109762023-08-08T08:16:19Z2023-08-08T08:16:19ZAustralia’s new development aid policy provides clear vision and strategic sense<p>Why does Australia provide development assistance to other countries? Is it charity or geostrategic self-interest?</p>
<p>Today the government released a <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/development/australias-international-development-policy">new international development policy</a> to answer these questions.</p>
<p>The case the new policy makes is a simple but powerful one: if Australians want our region to be peaceful, stable and prosperous, we have to lift people out of poverty through sustainable development. It’s a bold document that puts development at the heart of Australia’s response to a challenging world.</p>
<p>Politically, the new international development policy is a <a href="https://www.devintelligencelab.com/analyses/international-development-policy-first-impressions">brave statement</a>. It outlines a strong and unapologetic argument for development aid, even at a time when many Australians are feeling cost of living pressures. Crucially, it makes the case in terms everyone can understand.</p>
<p>We live in a time of interconnected and compounding challenges, including escalating disasters, rising costs and insecurity some have dubbed the “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33">polycrisis</a>”. </p>
<p>If Australians want to live peaceful lives in a globalised world, they need to care about the stability of our 26 neighbours, 22 of which are developing countries. The success of the region is <a href="https://idcc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/IDCC-New-International-Development-Policy-Submission.pdf">also our success</a>. In difficult times, Australia needs to contribute to global cooperation.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688678916654092291"}"></div></p>
<h2>Listening to the region</h2>
<p>Released at Parliament House today, the new international development policy is the result of extensive consultation with more than 300 people across the region and in Australia, informed by an <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/development/new-international-development-policy/external-advisory-group-eag-members">expert advisory group</a>. Given it’s been a decade since the last development policy was released, it was keenly anticipated, with more than 200 submissions received.</p>
<p>The focus of the policy is on the Indo-Pacific. A key message of the policy is the importance of listening to Australia’s neighbours and concentrating resources on the issues that matter most to them. It frames the development relationship as one where Australia is not domineering but is a partner of choice. This is achieved by “genuine partnerships based on respect, listening, and learning from each other” – not by a transactional approach.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-should-not-overstate-the-threat-of-china-in-the-pacific-and-mend-relationships-in-the-region-185293">Australia should not overstate the threat of China in the Pacific, and mend relationships in the region</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Given the desire to be responsive to the region’s priorities, there’s no surprise it focuses on climate as a major driver of instability. This is presented as responding to the calls of our region and evidence of the accelerating climate crisis by increasing our climate investments and better addressing climate risks.</p>
<p>The policy also prioritises local leadership, and commits to support local solutions and accountability, including by channelling funding to local actors. </p>
<p>At the same time, it aims for “a development program that reflects who we are”. Australians’ desire for fairness is reflected in a focus on gender equality and equity for people with disabilities, while the commitment to embed the perspectives of First Nations Australians into development efforts showcases one of Australia’s strengths.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688725186261241856"}"></div></p>
<h2>Key focus areas for a whole-of-nation approach</h2>
<p>The policy sets out four focus areas for development support: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>helping partners to build effective, accountable states</p></li>
<li><p>enhancing their resilience to external shocks</p></li>
<li><p>supporting regional structures such as the Pacific Islands Forum and Association of Southeast Asian Nations</p></li>
<li><p>generating collective action on global challenges such as humanitarian crises and economic resilience.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The overarching message is of the importance of development as a <a href="https://asiapacific4d.com/idea/all-tools-of-statecraft/">tool of statecraft</a>. This is in line with previous government messaging, including the Defence Strategic Review’s <a href="https://www.defence.gov.au/about/reviews-inquiries/defence-strategic-review">focus</a> on a “whole-of-government statecraft effort”.</p>
<p>In the new policy, the importance of a whole-of-government approach is also stressed. This highlights the need for coherence and for coordination across the different departments and agencies that contribute to international engagement. </p>
<p>Beyond this, the new policy moves into a whole-of-nation approach to development that encompasses “all Australian entities engaging with the region”. This includes civil society organisations, diaspora communities, businesses, education, religious and cultural institutions, trade unions, philanthropic organisations, youth organisations, the arts and the media. It’s new for government to focus on working with the wider society in international affairs.</p>
<p>The policy explicitly seeks to articulate a galvanising vision for these non-government actors, stating it </p>
<blockquote>
<p>will serve as a signpost to our institutions and entities operating in the region to guide engagement that supports positive development impact. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the policy offers additional finance to support partnerships with local civil society organisations through a new Civil Society Partnerships Fund to support local civil society organisations.</p>
<p>The challenge now will be in <a href="https://acfid.asn.au/new-development-policy-reframes-program/">implementation</a> and in sufficient funding to make its commitments a reality. This is why making the case for development aid is so crucial. </p>
<h2>Aid is not charity</h2>
<p>Contributing to our neighbours’ development is not a form of charity Australians should put up with by virtue of being a developed country. Rather, it’s an investment in our own future and something we should actively value. </p>
<p>In the new policy, both Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong and Minister for International Development Pat Conroy express their desire that Australians be “proud” of the development program.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-years-of-decline-the-budget-gives-more-money-for-diplomacy-and-development-capability-what-does-this-mean-in-practice-205224">After years of decline, the budget gives more money for diplomacy and development capability. What does this mean in practice?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>To help achieve this, there’s a focus on transparency -– including annual performance reports and a new online portal -– so Australians can be confident the development program is producing real results. </p>
<p>There is also a focus on implementation. In line with the central idea of partnerships, this focuses on country and region strategies, and will establish senior responsible officers in each of Australia’s embassies to be guided by Pacific and Southeast Asian priorities.</p>
<p>When he became international development minister, Conroy laid out <a href="https://ministers.dfat.gov.au/minister/pat-conroy/speech/micah-australian-women-leaders-network-parliament-house-canberra">four arguments for development aid</a>: security, economics, international relations and morality.</p>
<p>Which should we find compelling? All of them.</p>
<p>Credit is due to the government for providing a clear and galvanising vision of why development aid is crucial if Australia wants to <a href="https://enlighten.griffith.edu.au/penny-wong/">influence the world around it for the better</a>. The new international development policy deserves to be widely read.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Conley Tyler is Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D), a platform for collaboration between the development, diplomacy and defence communities. It receives funding from the Australian Civil-Military Centre and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and is hosted by the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID).</span></em></p>The federal government’s long awaited new aid and development policy offers a clear and galvanising vision of how Australia should deal with the complex issue.Melissa Conley Tyler, Honorary Fellow, Asia Institute, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082452023-06-21T15:11:19Z2023-06-21T15:11:19ZParis hosts summit to secure debt relief and climate cash for developing countries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533214/original/file-20230621-14551-utzvta.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C1914%2C1302&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The rise in extreme weather events dent into developing countries' budget and raise their debt interest rates.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/various-currencies-from-several-different-countries-4695995/">Pexels/Karthikeyan Perumal</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 22 and 23 June, Paris is hosting a summit for a “New Global Financing Pact” at the Palais Brogniart. Heads of state, international organisations and representatives of civil society will be gathering to discuss ways to boost solidarity toward the Global South. The aim is also to contribute to the international agenda on <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/climate-finance-23005">development and climate financing</a>, a few months after the UN climate summit, COP27, left a mixed record.</p>
<p>The summit comes at a time when the budgetary margins and debt sustainability in a number of countries have been undermined by a succession of crises: pandemics, Russia’s war on Ukraine, inflation, rising global interest rates, etc. Yet the need for funds that promote low-carbon development, as well as adaptation to increasing climate disruption, is as pressing as ever. Many developing countries are having to reckon with an ever-growing number of natural hazards, at a time of acute socio-economic vulnerability.</p>
<p>However, the financial situations of developing countries vary: some, such as Sri Lanka, Ghana and Suriname, already have unsustainable public debt that needs to be restructured. Others can still access cash without compromising their sustainability, such as Egypt.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photo of the Palais Brogniart, in Paris" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532883/original/file-20230620-23-veiebv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paris’ Palais Brogniart is hosting the summit for a ‘New Global Financing Pact’ on 22 and 23 June 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ancienne_Bourse_%C3%A0_Paris.JPG">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2022/08/11/Debt-for-Climate-Swaps-Analysis-Design-and-Implementation-522184">study</a> carried out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2022 on 128 low- and middle-income countries revealed a strong correlation between exposure to climate risks and limited budgetary capacity. The climate crisis and the budget crisis have a habit of feeding each other: coping with a crisis puts a strain on public finances, and new funding is needed to adapt to climate change. Taking on more debt also means taking on more debt at higher costs. Developing countries are therefore in danger of entering into a <a href="https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/26007;jsessionid=B66C42EF4406FCFDC228C1BB61EBE218">vicious circle</a>.</p>
<h2>Increasingly complex debt restructuring</h2>
<p>On top of ad hoc restructuring for countries facing particular constraints, several debt restructuring or suspension initiatives were launched in 2000 in response to more widespread debt situations. The <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2023/Debt-relief-under-the-heavily-indebted-poor-countries-initiative-HIPC">Heavily Indebted Poor Countries</a> (HIPC) initiative, established in 1996 by the IMF and World Bank, and the 2005 <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/mdri/eng/index.htm">Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative</a> (MDRI) are notable examples. Broadly speaking, these schemes aim to cancel a share of public debt in return for a commitment that the sums released will go toward beneficiaries’ development goals, in areas such as health, education and poverty reduction.</p>
<p>During the Covid-19 pandemic, the G20 countries also adopted the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/debt/brief/debt-service-suspension-initiative-qas">Debt Suspension Initiative</a> (DSI), which sets out to suspend the debt repayments of 73 of the world’s poorest countries.</p>
<p>At the origin of the HIPC initiative and the DSI was the <a href="https://clubdeparis.org/en/communications/page/who-are-the-members-of-the-paris-club">Paris Club</a> (CDP). Composed of 22 bilateral creditors, mainly from developed countries, the informal group worked with the IMF and World Bank to establish rules to renegotiate the external public debt of over-indebted countries. However, CDP creditors are no longer the most important players, dwarfed by “new”, non-member bilateral creditors, such as China and India.</p>
<p>Beyond budgetary capacity, it is developing countries’ <a href="https://www.afd.fr/fr/ressources/pays-emergents-et-en-developpement-letau-se-resserre">public debt structure that has gradually changed</a>. By doubling over the last decade, the debts of developing countries have also opened up to new creditors from the private sector and emerging countries such as China, India, Russia, Turkey and the countries of the Middle East. The restructuring process has thus become even more complex.</p>
<p>In response to this new international context, the G20 countries have set up a <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2021/12/02/blog120221the-g20-common-framework-for-debt-treatments-must-be-stepped-up">“Common Framework for Debt Treatment”</a>, enabling countries eligible for the DSI to request a restructuring of their debt in case of persistent financing deficits. This new body paves the way for better coordination between bilateral creditors who are members and non-members of the CDP.</p>
<p>However, the global framework for debt restructuring has so far had little impact on climate issues, with climate investment often an afterthought.</p>
<h2>Vulnerable countries in demand</h2>
<p>Innovative financial instruments for combining finance and climate change are on the rise. Debt-for-climate swaps (such as <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/12/14/swapping-debt-for-climate-or-nature-pledges-can-help-fund-resilience"><em>Debt for Climate Swap</em></a> have been back in the spotlight in recent years, focusing not only on the fight against global heating, but also on protecting nature. The idea is that the government of the debtor country undertakes to spend the equivalent of the cancelled debt on projects to fight climate change, under conditions agreed between the creditors and the debtor country. A growing number of research groups, civil society groups and, to a lesser extent, international institutions, are advocating similar solutions to combat both climate change and rising public debt.</p>
<p>Recent global shocks have led to a certain consensus that the international financial system may no longer be equipped to handle current global challenges. Many are unimpressed by efforts to finance the decarbonisation of the economy and climate adaptation. As a result, several countries called for <a href="https://www.eurodad.org/un_general_assembly_2021_debt_highlights">reform of this financial architecture</a> at the UN General Assembly in 2021, in particular by asking for debt restructuring to be linked to climate objectives.</p>
<p>This call was echoed at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, notably by the <a href="https://drgr.org/statement/v20/">V20 countries</a> (<em>vulnerable twenty group</em>). Now comprising <a href="https://www.v-20.org/members">58 nations</a>, the group accounts for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and yet are at the receiving end of climate change. They have called for large-scale debt relief.</p>
<p>The prime minister of Barbados has also presented the <a href="https://www.foreign.gov.bb/the-2022-barbados-agenda/">Bridgetown Agenda for Reform of the Global Financial Architecture</a>, with a view to directing global funds toward low-carbon, climate-resilient development, in a way that would also tackle developing countries’ sovereign debt.</p>
<h2>Even more complexity?</h2>
<p>The richest countries have also proposed ideas. At the end of the <a href="https://live.worldbank.org/annual-meetings-2022">76th annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF</a> in October 2022, the G7, joined by Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland, set out its proposals for reforming the World Bank.</p>
<p>Much indicates 2023 will be a year of reform for development finance, with many events slated to reflect on these issues.</p>
<p>Calls for reform of the global framework have been around since the globalisation of financial markets, however – no single institution is responsible for global financial movements. Institutions, both international (IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, etc.) and regional (OECD, European Commission, Bank for International Settlements, etc.), are numerous, while the private sector is expanding.</p>
<p>Beyond the debate over the role these institutions should play and whether or not it is useful to introduce international standards and controls, it would be wise to bear in mind that any new development finance initiative will remain vulnerable to changes in the international financial architecture, which is forever subject to negotiation and regulation. The challenge is also to ensure that the introduction of new instruments does not add yet more complexity to the management of developing countries’ debts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>This week’s summit for a “New Global Financing Pact” will look to secure some much-needed climate cash for developing countries, while ensuring their debt remains manageable.Emmanuelle Mansart-Monat, Économiste risque pays, Agence française de développement (AFD)Djedjiga Kachenoura, Coordinatrice du projet de recherche sur la finance et le climat, Agence française de développement (AFD)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068502023-06-21T12:30:46Z2023-06-21T12:30:46ZMission trips are an evangelical rite of passage for US teens – but why?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532329/original/file-20230616-15-pgf7sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C3%2C2092%2C1415&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where to?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/the-great-commission-royalty-free-image/500535572?phrase=missionary&adppopup=true">georgemuresan/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As tourists head to airports this summer, American travelers are likely to see groups of young people in matching T-shirts awaiting flights to Latin America or further afield. Their T-shirts sport biblical verses or phrases like “<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+6&version=KJV">Here I am, send me</a>” or “Called to serve,” and the teens may gather for prayer before boarding.</p>
<p>These young people are heading off to be short-term missionaries: an experience that has become a rite of passage in some corners of Protestant Christianity as overseas travel has become more affordable for Americans. According to some estimates, as many as 2 million youth and adults per year <a href="https://missionguide.global/articles/mission-trip-research">participated in Christian mission trips</a> before the pandemic, including overseas trips and trips to poor communities at home.</p>
<p>While it is difficult to confirm these numbers, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shortterm-mission-trips-a_b_866197?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAdTC-GDAXE0A6srZ0YFruX-Kd80Z5b_Yx_3mPyiMCVyUXTH1MaINavVbvjU2HEYUoS2lyAp-cnecpEpBqVHmMCoZC2Gb5_Fc5GOYKES2N8mW605weSjAdi3cS3a0jSW2uylVujFKbY68egtEjPZm_DD67w_AMK96cZBMUgJVtyH">mission trips</a> are now especially commonplace within evangelical churches, with larger and more affluent churches offering multiple trips throughout the year. Some congregations plan their mission trips in-house. Others enlist the services of mission companies with names like World Race, He Said Go and World Gospel Mission. Typically, these companies combine humanitarian service, development projects and faith. They promise participants adventure, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0223">spiritual growth</a> and an opportunity to serve as Jesus’ hands and feet in the world.</p>
<p>I have been studying short-term missionaries for the past six years. I have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1529666">interviewed dozens of pastors</a>, trip leaders and young missionaries, and I have had the opportunity to participate in a mission trip in Central America. Through this research, I have learned about why so many young Christians want to go on mission trips and have been struck by their desire to “serve.” Yet, as <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/geography/our_people/our_people_directory/nagel_caroline.php">a geographer</a>, I am concerned by their lack of knowledge about the people and places they visit.</p>
<h2>‘White man’s burden’</h2>
<p>The missionary impulse within Christianity comes from <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-great-commission-and-why-is-it-so-controversial-111138">the Great Commission</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+28%3A16-20&version=NIV">a Gospel verse</a> in which Jesus instructs his disciples “to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” </p>
<p>The spirit of evangelism <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.389">thrived among European and American Christians in the 19th century</a>, fueled by frontier expansion and colonization. Protestant missionaries spread throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific, seeking to win souls for Christ. Also important, in many of these men’s and women’s eyes, was something often referred to as <a href="https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/">the “white man’s burden</a>”: the imperialist idea that they had a duty to introduce Western civilization to supposedly “backward” people.</p>
<p>Missionaries had mixed success in converting so-called natives to Christianity. But <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/fmmovement.htm">they left lasting impacts</a> through the many institutions they established around the world, including schools, universities and hospitals.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sepia-toned old photograph of a woman in full skirts seated before a row of Chinese boys." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532331/original/file-20230616-16655-ttuksg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A teacher and students at a Christian missionary school in Shanghai around 1855.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/miss-fay-and-her-pupils-at-a-christian-missionary-school-in-news-photo/3231527?adppopup=true">William Jocelyn/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Missions 2.0</h2>
<p>Contemporary missionaries are the inheritors of these earlier waves. Yet they also have some distinctive characteristics. </p>
<p>Historically, mission work was a lifelong calling and profession, one that often meant never coming home. Career missionaries continue to have a role in missions today, sometimes financially supported by denominational organizations like the Southern Baptist Convention’s <a href="https://www.imb.org/southern-baptist-convention/">International Missions Board</a> or by donations from individual churches.</p>
<p>But the movement is now dominated by short-termers who are in the “mission field” for a couple of weeks or months. Some trips go to destinations where Christians are a minority, such as the Middle East, India or Southeast Asia. More commonly, they take place in countries with a sizable Christian population and partner with local evangelical organizations and churches “planted” by long-term missionaries. Trip organizers I interviewed emphasized that the mission teams are there to serve and to take direction from their local partners.</p>
<p>Another distinctive feature of short-term missions is their approach to faith. Rather than push “conversion” as a goal, today’s mission leaders emphasize “relationship building” in hopes that connections will gradually lead people closer to Christian beliefs.</p>
<p>Trips are oriented not just around the spiritual transformation of the local community but also the spiritual transformation of missionaries themselves. Pastors and organizers say that trips are meant to teach young American Christians what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus, to share the gospel and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1529666">to love people who are not like them</a>. Organizers talk about young people learning to “live missionally” and to see opportunities to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.06.007">build God’s kingdom in their ordinary lives</a>.</p>
<h2>Sacred and secular</h2>
<p>Short-term missions, however, also appeal to young people’s desire to see the world and to be adventurous. The language used to describe and promote trips is remarkably similar to secular overseas volunteering or “voluntourism,” as well as <a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/what-a-gap-year-is-and-how-it-prepares-students-for-college#:%7E:text=The%20Gap%20Year%20Association%2C%20an,gap%20year%20each%20academic%20year.">gap-year programs</a> before college.</p>
<p>Both experiences are built around the idea of getting out of your comfort zone and experiencing cultural differences in the name of self-improvement, preparing for <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Cosmopolitan_Journey/cDtzAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=gap+year+experiences+cosmopolitanism+youth+identity+globalization&pg=PP8&printsec=frontcover">life in a globalized, diverse world</a>.</p>
<p>Another similarity is that both Christian and secular programs usually involve some kind of service project: building a house, digging a well or leading recreational activities for children. Such activities are meant to give young people confidence in their ability to “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1529666">make a difference” in the world</a>, while developing resilience and gratitude.</p>
<h2>‘Walk with the poor’</h2>
<p>Not all evangelicals <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/still-cancel-short-term-mission-trip/">see the value of mission trips</a>. Critics have argued that American short-term mission teams dump unwanted goods on host communities, are culturally insensitive and commonly assume that locals need American “expertise.” Construction projects push out local workers and often result in shoddily built structures – suggesting the enormous sums of money spent on mission trips <a href="https://calvin.edu/offices-services/service-learning-center/resources/publications/files/readings/vanengen-short_term.pdf">might be better spent</a> if donated directly to local organizations. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three people wearing blue shirts with 'Volunteer' written on the back look at a house being built." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532333/original/file-20230616-17-kqcxpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helping or, ultimately, hurting?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/volunteers-helping-to-build-homes-for-the-needy-royalty-free-image/533998987?phrase=missionary&adppopup=true">kali9/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Books like “<a href="https://chalmers.org/resources/books/when-helping-hurts/">When Helping Hurts</a>,” by evangelical authors <a href="https://covenant.edu/academics/ecd/faculty/fikkert.html">Brian Fikkert</a> and <a href="https://covenant.edu/academics/ecd/faculty/corbett.html">Steve Corbett</a>, aim to explain how leaders can make mission trips more effective, both in terms of alleviating poverty and in terms of evangelism. </p>
<p>Warning against <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-white-saviourism-harms-international-development-199392">a “white savior” attitude</a>, they suggest that the purpose of short-term missions is to “walk with the poor” and build lasting relationships that will lead people to Christ. </p>
<h2>Beyond the bubble</h2>
<p>In my research, I have met mission trip leaders who are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.06.007">trying to put these ideas into practice</a> without harming the communities they visit. But troubling elements persist. </p>
<p>Trip organizers want to open American Christians’ eyes to realities of the world outside of their bubbles. Yet their messages tends to imply the effects of poverty can be overcome through personal faith in Christ. Short-term missionaries I interviewed did not blame people for being poor but were reluctant to describe the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.06.007">hardship they witnessed in terms of social injustice</a>.</p>
<p>The mission teams I studied learned almost nothing about the impacts of corruption, violence and social inequality on the communities they believed they were there to help. Trip leaders felt that such information would bore participants and detract from the spiritual aims of the trip. In effect, what mattered to the volunteers and organizers was simply that places were poor and foreign rather than the reasons poverty was so entrenched. </p>
<p>Many of the short-term missionaries I interviewed described feeling changed by their trip and becoming more aware of their own privilege. But the focus on spiritual fulfillment means that these young people may be missing out on opportunities to deepen their understandings of the world and to build solidarity with the communities they visit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline R. Nagel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today’s short-term missionaries continue a long legacy, but in a very different way.Caroline R. Nagel, Professor of Geography, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2058962023-05-26T12:27:40Z2023-05-26T12:27:40ZThe Supreme Court just shriveled federal protection for wetlands, leaving many of these valuable ecosystems at risk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528434/original/file-20230525-17-782ull.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C15%2C3409%2C2571&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many ecologically important wetlands, like these in Kulm, N.D., lack surface connections to navigable waterways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/kgatnj">USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/598/21-454/">Sackett v. EPA</a> that federal protection of wetlands encompasses only those wetlands that directly adjoin rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. This is an extremely narrow interpretation of the Clean Water Act that could expose many wetlands across the U.S. to filling and development.</p>
<p>Under this keystone environmental law, federal agencies take the lead in regulating water pollution, while state and local governments regulate land use. Wetlands are areas where <a href="https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/what-wetland">land is wet for all or part of the year</a>, so they straddle this division of authority.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/classification-and-types-wetlands#undefined">Swamps, bogs, marshes and other wetlands</a> provide valuable ecological services, such as filtering pollutants and soaking up floodwaters. Landowners must obtain permits to discharge <a href="https://www.fedcenter.gov/assistance/facilitytour/construction/dredging/">dredged or fill material</a>, such as dirt, sand or rock, in a protected wetland. </p>
<p>This can be time-consuming and expensive, which is why the Supreme Court’s ruling on May 25, 2023, will be of keen interest to developers, farmers and ranchers, along with conservationists and the agencies that administer the Clean Water Act – namely, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. </p>
<p>For the last 45 years – and under eight different presidential administrations – the EPA and the Corps have required discharge permits in wetlands “adjacent” to water bodies, even if a dune, levee or other barrier separated the two. The Sackett decision upends that approach, <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20160427_RL33263_e0b1d527d85d13721eb7f29d3e1446c517900c45.pdf">leaving tens of millions of acres of wetlands at risk</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bFGMoFIjKRM?wmode=transparent&start=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. has lost more than half of its original wetlands, mainly due to development and pollution.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Sackett case</h2>
<p>Idaho residents Chantell and Mike Sackett own a parcel of land located 300 feet from Priest Lake, <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/idaho-couple-returns-to-supreme-court-to-wage-new-wotus-war/">one of the state’s largest lakes</a>. The parcel once was part of a large wetland complex. Today, even after <a href="https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/nov/06/private-land-public-battle/">the Sacketts cleared the lot</a>, it still has some wetland characteristics, such as saturation and ponding in areas where soil was removed. Indeed, it is still hydrologically connected to the lake and neighboring wetlands by water that flows at a shallow depth underground. </p>
<p>In preparation to build a house, the Sacketts had fill material placed on the site without obtaining a Clean Water Act permit. The EPA issued an order in 2007 stating that the land contained wetlands subject to the law and requiring the Sacketts to restore the site. The Sacketts sued, <a href="https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/nov/06/private-land-public-battle/">arguing that their property was not a wetland</a>. </p>
<p>In 2012, the Supreme Court held that the Sacketts had the right to challenge EPA’s order and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1062.pdf">sent the case back to the lower courts</a>. After <a href="https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/08/16/19-35469.pdf">losing below on the merits</a>, they returned to the Supreme Court with a suit asserting that their property was not federally protected. This claim in turn raised a broader question: What is the scope of federal regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Homes line the edges of a river." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528437/original/file-20230525-22692-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Housing encroaches on Caloosahatchee River wetlands in Fort Myers, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fort-myers-florida-palm-acres-housing-development-news-photo/1428541733">Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What are ‘waters of the United States’?</h2>
<p>The Clean Water Act regulates <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2020-title33/pdf/USCODE-2020-title33-chap26-subchapIII-sec1311.pdf">discharges of pollutants</a> into “<a href="https://www.epa.gov/wotus/about-waters-united-states">waters of the United States</a>.” Lawful discharges may occur if a pollution source obtains a permit under either <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title33/pdf/USCODE-2011-title33-chap26-subchapIV-sec1344.pdf">Section 404 of the act</a> for dredged or fill material, or <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-1994-title33/pdf/USCODE-1994-title33-chap25-subchapIV-sec1342.pdf">Section 402</a> for other pollutants. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court has previously recognized that the “waters of the United States” include not only navigable rivers and lakes, but also wetlands and waterways that are connected to navigable bodies of water. But many wetlands are not wet year-round, or are not connected at the surface to larger water systems. Still, they can have <a href="https://theconversation.com/small-streams-and-wetlands-are-key-parts-of-river-networks-heres-why-they-need-protection-110342">important ecological connections</a> to larger water bodies.</p>
<p>In 2006, when the court last took up this issue, no majority was able to agree on how to define “waters of the United States.” Writing for a plurality of four justices in U.S. v. Rapanos, Justice Antonin Scalia <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2005/04-1034">defined the term narrowly</a> to include only relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water such as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes. Waters of the U.S., he contended, should not include “ordinarily dry channels through which water occasionally or intermittently flows.” </p>
<p>Acknowledging that wetlands present a tricky line-drawing problem, Scalia proposed that the Clean Water Act should reach “only those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own right.” </p>
<p>In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy took a very different approach. “Waters of the U.S.,” he wrote, should be interpreted in light of the Clean Water Act’s objective of “restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” </p>
<p>Accordingly, Kennedy argued, the Clean Water Act should cover wetlands that have a “significant nexus” with navigable waters – “if the wetlands, either alone or in combination with similarly situated lands in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of other covered waters more readily understood as ‘navigable.’” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CsmaAv2LpR6/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\u0026igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Neither Scalia’s nor Kennedy’s opinion attracted a majority, so lower courts were left to sort out which approach to follow. Most applied Kennedy’s significant nexus standard, while a few held that the Clean Water Act applies if <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46927">either Kennedy’s standard or Scalia’s is satisfied</a>.</p>
<p>Regulators have also struggled with this question. The Obama administration incorporated Kennedy’s “significant nexus” approach into a <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2015-06-29/pdf/2015-13435.pdf">2015 rule</a> that followed an extensive rulemaking process and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/epas-clean-water-rule-whats-at-stake-and-what-comes-next-42466">comprehensive peer-reviewed scientific assessment</a>. The Trump administration then replaced the 2015 rule with <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-04-21/pdf/2020-02500.pdf">a rule of its own</a> that <a href="https://theconversation.com/repealing-the-clean-water-rule-will-swamp-the-trump-administration-in-wetland-litigation-123565">largely adopted the Scalia approach</a>. </p>
<p>The Biden administration <a href="https://www.epa.gov/wotus">responded with its own rule</a> defining waters of the United States in terms of the presence of either a significant nexus or continuous surface connection. However, this rule was <a href="https://www.epa.gov/wotus/definition-waters-united-states-rule-status-and-litigation-update">promptly embroiled in litigation</a> and will require reconsideration in light of Sackett v. EPA.</p>
<h2>The Sackett decision and its ramifications</h2>
<p>The Sackett decision adopts Scalia’s approach from the 2006 Rapanos case. Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Samuel Alito declared that “waters of the United States” includes only relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, such as streams, oceans, rivers, lakes – and wetlands that have a continuous surface connection with and are indistinguishably part of such water bodies. </p>
<p>None of the nine justices adopted Kennedy’s 2006 “significant nexus” standard. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the three liberal justices disagreed with the majority’s “continuous surface connection” test. That test, Kavanaugh <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/598/21-454/">wrote in a concurrence</a>, is inconsistent with the text of the Clean Water Act, which extends coverage to “adjacent” wetlands – including those that are near or close to larger water bodies. </p>
<p>“Natural barriers such as berms and dunes do not block all water flow and are in fact evidence of a regular connection between a water and a wetland,” Kavanaugh explained. “By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1661746924482080768"}"></div></p>
<p>The majority’s ruling leaves little room for the EPA or the Army Corps of Engineers to issue new regulations that could protect wetlands more broadly. </p>
<p>The court’s requirement of a continuous surface connection means that federal protection may no longer apply to many areas that critically affect the water quality of U.S. rivers, lakes and oceans – including seasonal streams and wetlands that are near or intermittently connected to larger water bodies. It might also mean that construction of a road, levee or other barrier separating a wetland from other nearby waters could remove an area from federal protection. </p>
<p>Congress could amend the Clean Water Act to expressly provide that “waters of the United States” includes wetlands that the court has now stripped of federal protection. However, <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43943.pdf">past efforts to legislate a definition have fizzled</a>, and today’s closely divided Congress is unlikely to fare any better.</p>
<p>Whether states will fill the breach is questionable. Many states have not adopted regulatory protections for waters that are <a href="https://www.eli.org/sites/default/files/files-pdf/52.10679.pdf">outside the scope of “waters of the United States</a>.” In many instances, new legislation – and perhaps entirely new regulatory programs – will be needed. </p>
<p>Finally, a concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas hints at potential future targets for the court’s conservative supermajority. Joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Thomas suggested that the Clean Water Act, as well as other federal environmental statutes, lies beyond Congress’ authority to regulate activities that affect interstate commerce, and could be vulnerable to constitutional challenges. In my view, Sackett v. EPA might be just one step toward the teardown of federal environmental law. </p>
<p><em>This is an update of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/which-wetlands-should-receive-federal-protection-the-supreme-court-revisits-a-question-it-has-struggled-in-the-past-to-answer-185282">article</a> originally published on Sept. 26, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Albert C. Lin was a trial attorney for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998 to 2003. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to the Honorable James Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.</span></em></p>In Sackett v. EPA, a suit filed by two homeowners who filled in wetlands on their property, the Supreme Court has drastically narrowed the definition of which wetlands qualify for federal protection.Albert C. Lin, Professor of Law, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040602023-05-21T10:11:03Z2023-05-21T10:11:03ZGrand infrastructure projects aren’t a magic bullet for industrial development – insights from Ghana and Kenya<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522146/original/file-20230420-201-3jeqjy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kenya Lamu Port Project</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The African Union’s flagship <a href="https://au.int/en/agenda2063/overview">Agenda 2063</a> initiative prioritises <a href="https://au.int/en/infrastructure-energy-development">large-scale infrastructure development</a> and promises to “link the continent by rail, road, sea and air”. </p>
<p>This is being undertaken in parallel with efforts to improve economic integration. In 2021, the 54 countries on the continent made history when they began trading within the <a href="https://au-afcfta.org/about/">African Continental Free Trade Area</a>. It is the largest free trade area in the world.</p>
<p>Proponents of an approach to development that focuses on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00343404.2019.1661984">infrastructure</a> claim that improving connectivity will foster industrialisation and planned urbanisation. It gives policy makers tools to create well-planned urban regions that can compete in the global economy and attract foreign direct investment. These, in turn, will foster industrial growth. </p>
<p>The argument goes that setting up <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21622671.2022.2092205">development corridors</a>, <a href="https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/978-0-8213-8638-5">special economic zones</a>, ‘<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098018793032">new cities</a>,’ and drawing up <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X18763370">city master plans</a> will lead to the development of urban spaces that can be ‘plugged in’ to global production networks. This will boost the productivity and competitiveness of African industry. Ultimately African countries will export more high-value manufactured goods rather than natural resources and unprocessed agriculture commodities.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2023.2171284">Our research</a> calls these claims into question. We assessed the impact of transnational development corridor projects in Kenya and Ghana. We found that in both cases, improved connectivity failed to catalyse industrialisation. Instead, it encouraged land speculation as it opened up new spaces to real estate investment.</p>
<p>This is a problem. Failure to trigger industrial growth risks locking Africa into the global economy as an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2015.1084911">exporter of raw materials</a>. On top of this, cities without industry have <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-015-9121-4">higher levels of inequality</a> than their more industrialised counterparts. </p>
<p>We concluded that infrastructure that links mines to ports isn’t enough. It needs to be accompanied by policies that discourage speculation in land, and encourage productive investment in factories that can process raw materials and provide jobs to the continent’s young urban workforce.</p>
<h2>Infrastructure-led development in Africa</h2>
<p>Poor quality infrastructure is a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00343404.2019.1661984">legacy of neoliberal structural adjustment </a> programmes imposed on African countries by the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s and 1990s. Governments that received these loans were largely prohibited from investing in infrastructure. But private investors showed little interest in building large-scale transnational logistics and energy infrastructure.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/2008-2009-global-financial-crisis/">2008 financial crisis</a> changed everything. Many governments responded by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X19300713">reintroducing national development planning</a>. These included <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2022.2091534">large-scale infrastructure projects</a>. These projects could be financed because low interest rates in advanced-industrial countries meant that borrowing was cheap. </p>
<p>By 2018 <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718517303299?via%3Dihub">more than 50 development corridors</a> were in various stages of construction across Africa. Many governments were fully committed to infrastructure-led development. Transportation networks and energy grids were expanded at break-neck speed in a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23792949.2022.2115933">continental competition</a>.</p>
<h2>Case study 1: Ghana</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://highwayabb.ecowas.int/about-the-project/">Abidjan–Lagos Corridor</a> is a project to build a transnational six-lane highway connecting Ghana’s capital, Accra, to Abidjan, Lome, Cotonou and Lagos. </p>
<p>The project was launched in 2014 by the <a href="https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/Multinational_-_Approved_-_Study_for_the_Abidjan-_Lagos_Corridor_Highway_Development_Project.pdf">Economic Community of West African States</a> with the support of the African Development Bank and African Union. More than 50% of the corridor traverses Ghanaian territory.</p>
<p>The initiative enjoys broad political support in Ghana. Through his <a href="https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/ghana-one-district-one-factor-1d1f-initiative">One District One Factory policy</a>, President Nana Akufo-Addo of the National Patriotic Party has sought to support industrialisation across a range of economic sectors, from textiles to pharmaceuticals. He has <a href="https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/Establish-a-management-authority-to-fast-track-implementation-of-Abidjan-Lagos-Corridor-Dev-t-Project-Akufo-Addo-790926">fast-tracked the Corridor project</a> and lobbied to host the management authority of the project. </p>
<p>The highway is the cornerstone of a rapidly urbanising West African ‘<a href="https://www.elgaronline.com/display/edcoll/9781788972697/9781788972697.00021.xml">megacity region</a>’. Real estate projects range from a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563475.2019.1664896">planned new city 50km from Accra</a> to unplanned <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098019851949">urban sprawl</a> that extends throughout the corridor.</p>
<p>The corridor has not significantly boosted Ghanaian industrial capacity. <a href="https://stat.unido.org/sdg/GHA">According to UNIDO data</a>, manufacturing accounted for 14% of Ghana’s GDP in 2008. By 2022 this figure had shrunk to a mere 11.8%. It has, however, created opportunities for real estate speculation.</p>
<h2>Case study 2: Kenya</h2>
<p>We found similar results in Kenya. In 2008 the government launched <a href="https://vision2030.go.ke/">Kenya Vision 2030</a>. This targeted a number of key <a href="https://www.tralac.org/images/docs/8097/kenyas-industrial-transformation-programme-2015.pdf">economic sectors</a>. Agro-processing, textiles, leather and construction materials are some of these. The hope was that it would nearly double manufacturing’s share of gross domestic product.</p>
<p>The Kenyan Government went on an infrastructure spending spree. By 2019 Kenya was undertaking more large-scale infrastructure projects than almost <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/za/en/pages/energy-and-resources/articles/africa-construction-trends.html">any other country in Africa</a>.</p>
<p>Many of these projects are included in the <a href="https://www.lapsset.go.ke/">Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport Corridor</a>. This is designed to integrate northern Kenya and its surrounding borderlands into a transnational region that boasts world class logistics infrastructure. In addition, the <a href="http://ke.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zxyw/201910/t20191028_6817952.htm">Standard Gauge Railway</a> was built to link Mombasa and Nairobi, while a series of road projects around Nairobi were designed to decongest the city centre.</p>
<p>But Kenya’s manufacturing sector has generally disappointed. <a href="https://stat.unido.org/sdg/KEN">According to UNIDO</a> manufacturing value added as a proportion of GDP decreased from 11.8% in 2008 to a 8.9% in 2022.</p>
<p>The infrastructure boom has, however, accelerated urban sprawl and speculation. Investors have rushed in to secure land adjacent to new projects in <a href="https://dlci-hoa.org/assets/upload/investment-in-the-dry-lands-documents/20200804041053648.pdf">Isiolo and Lamu</a>. North of Nairobi, the Thika Superhighway has catalysed a peri-urban real estate boom. For example, international developer Rendeavour is building a <a href="https://www.rendeavour.com/projects/tatu-city/">new city</a> with state-of-the-art amenities for 150,000 residents. </p>
<p>Elsewhere along the highway local landlords have built high-rise tenements to capitalise on the <a href="https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/10876IIED.pdf">booming low-end rental market</a>.</p>
<h2>What must be done?</h2>
<p>Our findings do not rule out the possibility that infrastructure-led development could drive industrialisation in the future. But they suggest that it must be accompanied by policy that discourages speculation in land and real estate.</p>
<p>Currently, property in many African cities is not taxed, so many elites consider it the ‘<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-2427.12550">safest bet</a>.’ Levying taxes on property would discourage speculation and generate revenue that could be used for public spending. This approach has <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Urban+Land+Rent%3A+Singapore+as+a+Property+State-p-9781118827659">worked in East Asian countries</a> that have successfully achieved industrial transformation. </p>
<p>Without this, infrastructure-led development is likely to contribute to further <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-015-9121-4">urbanisation without industrialisation</a>. African governments will be unlikely to achieve their industrial objectives, and remain dependent on exporting natural resources and agricultural goods.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Seth Schindler received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Gillespie received funding from a University of Manchester Hallsworth Research Fellowship and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office-funded African Cities Research Consortium. </span></em></p>Infrastructure that links mines to ports isn’t enough – it needs to be accompanied by policies that encourage productive investment in factories.Seth Schindler, Senior Lecturer in Urban Development & Transformation, University of ManchesterTom Gillespie, Lecturer in Global Urban Development, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040042023-05-10T13:21:45Z2023-05-10T13:21:45ZChina’s population has peaked and is now falling – opportunities and risks for Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523175/original/file-20230427-14-z7x5fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oleg Elkov/GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>China will no longer be the world’s most populous nation. India’s population <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/World-Population-Prospects-2022.">will overtake it</a> this year at an <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief-no-153-india-overtakes-china-as-the-worlds-most-populous-country/">estimated population</a> of 1.42 billion. </p>
<p>It’s an epochal transition which speaks to other underlying demographic changes across the world, including the fact that China’s population <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-population-decline-not-yet-crisis-beijings-response-could-make-it-one">has peaked</a> and is now falling. Meanwhile, the region with the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population">fastest-rising population</a> – from a current base of <a href="https://www.un.org/annualreport/files/2022/09/SG-Annual-Report-2022_E_3.pdf#page=2">around 1.4 billion</a> – is Africa. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://saiia.org.za/people/lauren-johnston/">researched</a> the economics of China, and China-Africa relations, for nearly two decades. I’ve also specifically analysed the political economy of demographic change in China. </p>
<p>On the surface, China losing the “world’s most populous country” crown means nothing for African countries. However, as I outline in <a href="https://saiia.org.za/research/chinas-demographic-peak-lessons-and-prospects-for-africa/">my new paper</a>, the transition embodies a number of opportunities and risks for many African countries. </p>
<p>China has been a leading economic partner to the continent for most of this century. Demand for China’s manufactured goods <a href="http://www.sais-cari.org/data-china-africa-trade">is consistent</a> across the continent. It is an especially important import partner for some of Africa’s resource-rich countries, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260598975_The_Gravity_of_China's_African_Export_Promise#page=7">such as</a> Angola, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. A slow-down in China’s economy – or a shift away from commodity-intensive manufacturing and infrastructure construction – could especially challenge African commodity exporters whose main buyer is China, such as <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/08/18/mounting-economic-challenges-threaten-basis-of-mpla-rule-in-angola-pub-87698">Angola</a>.</p>
<p>So, as China’s population declines and ages, there’ll be direct and indirect repercussions for many African countries. Here are some of the possible implications. </p>
<h2>Opportunities</h2>
<p><strong>End of labour-richness</strong></p>
<p>African countries with a large working-age population can theoretically benefit from the end of China’s period of labour-abundance. China had <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17538963.2018.1509529">a massive number of low-wage workers from the 1980s until the 2000s</a>. The broad passing of this abundance – in terms of both price and quantity – theoretically opens a window for other “younger” and low-wage economies. Labour-rich countries already banging on China’s door include Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam. </p>
<p>African countries wanting to take advantage of this will need relevant policies. They will need enough qualified workers to take part in manufacturing opportunities; affordable and reliable energy; and competitive labour productivity. Ethiopia, for instance, has been attracting <a href="https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/109166/1/MPRA_paper_109166.pdf#page=5">Chinese foreign direct investment</a> in recent decades with more than 70% going into manufacturing.</p>
<p><strong>Increased service demand</strong></p>
<p>For a decade or more, China has also been pushing, if very incrementally, for <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8462.12247?casa_token=yqEHlPqYPM4AAAAA%3AGXlw3tsDktNGDX2QVQ6gkdq-xfQzeQg8i7TU31eGrg1SrnY_CSbM01idwkjGZS2ZvUPOPL3HplSvzxk">services</a> – such as financial services, healthcare and tourism – to drive its domestic growth. This presents new opportunities for African goods and services providers too. </p>
<p>Things are already in the works. The official 2035 China-Africa Vision – which defines the overall framework of China-Africa cooperation – <a href="http://www.focac.org/eng/zywx_1/zywj/202201/t20220124_10632442.htm">includes</a> finance, tourism, media, and culture and sports. Some of these links, like the <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498593977/Chinese-Media-in-Africa-Perception-Performance-and-Paradox">media industry</a>, are relatively advanced already. Some countries, for example <a href="http://fta.mofcom.gov.cn/topic/enmauritius.shtml">Mauritius</a>, have already signed trade agreements which include <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/why-china-mauritius-trade-deal-matters/">financial services</a>. And, more recently, Kenya Airways and China Southern Airlines <a href="https://aviationmetric.com/kenya-airways-china-southern-expand-access-to-china-sign-interline-agreement-southern-airlines/">signed an agreement</a> to expand Nairobi’s role as a regional aviation hub for Chinese destinations.</p>
<p><strong>China’s pensioner boom</strong></p>
<p>The pensioner population is expected to peak mid-century when China is <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02410-2/fulltext">forecast</a> to be home to some 400 million pensioners – a massive target market. Cambodia, for example, <a href="https://opendevelopmentcambodia.net/news/cambodia-looks-to-draw-more-elderly-tourists/">already has</a> an official strategy for attracting elderly tourists. </p>
<p>African countries could tap into this demographic, for instance to support tourism industries. East African countries are looking for <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/business/east-african-countries-plans-to-spur-tourism-post-covid-4147438">emerging tourist markets</a> and also looking to expand offerings to include activities such as cruises – these would be <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9731214/">ideal</a> for an older demographic.</p>
<h2>Risks</h2>
<p><strong>Slowdown in China’s economy</strong></p>
<p>A big risk is that as China’s population declines and ages it will cause China’s economic development engine to falter. </p>
<p>As it’s one of the world’s largest economies, a stagnation would <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/how-chinas-economic-slowdown-could-hurt-world?gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwu-KiBhCsARIsAPztUF3Eo_QrRrmbxYFEhyVFvM5Af4ySoKX2zmXFadrKvLEFaPN8IiLkcdgaAsEFEALw_wcB">cause ripples</a> across the world. It would slow China’s potential to trade with and invest in Africa. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="http://www.sais-cari.org/data-china-africa-trade">China is South Africa’s largest export market</a>. Nigeria, Angola, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Congo are also major exporters of goods to China. Nigeria is the leading importer from China, followed by South Africa, Egypt and Ghana.</p>
<p>Some countries are relatively China-dependent for growth and development. These include <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/35414/chapter-abstract/303161337?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Zimbabwe</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X16300995">Guinea</a>. </p>
<p>China could become more risk-averse in lending to African countries, and conservative in foreign aid allocations. Leading Chinese companies might also have less revenue to re-invest in other markets, and less reason to do so given lower growth. This could challenge African government budgets and leave many in poverty and unable to find formal jobs in their working-age prime.</p>
<p><strong>Keeping production at home</strong></p>
<p>There is also <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_764445.pdf">the risk that automation will directly replace labour in China</a>, instead of shifting production to another country with a younger workforce. And foreign investors in China might seek to secure their own supply chains – at home – rather than shift production to a new labour-rich location after China.</p>
<p><strong>Regulatory challenges</strong></p>
<p>Africa could face new regulatory challenges as China’s population ages. Products demanded by an older Chinese population, with inputs sourced in Africa, may elevate existing regulatory challenges. </p>
<p>For instance, a Chinese traditional medicine known as <em>ejiao</em> uses collagen from donkey hides. It is believed to support sleep, blood vitality and those ageing in general. This has led to a trade in African donkeys that <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-demand-for-africas-donkeys-is-rising-why-its-time-to-control-the-trade-198597">has harmed</a> Africa’s own poor . </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-demand-for-africas-donkeys-is-rising-why-its-time-to-control-the-trade-198597">China's demand for Africa's donkeys is rising. Why it's time to control the trade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>In my opinion a probable scenario is that China’s economy lumbers forward at a slower pace than in the past, but fast enough to stave off a crisis at home. </p>
<p>On the surface this may reduce the scale of opportunity for Africa. But, since China’s economy is many times larger than any economy in Africa, there’ll still be enough growth volume to tap for trade, investment and specific projects. Slower growth in China may even compel Chinese investors to turn to faster-growing African economies.</p>
<p>Africa is the world’s youngest continent, and fast-ageing population-declining China is the continent’s most important trade partner and economic partner. African governments must keep a close eye on what happens next to tap into all potential opportunities – and mitigate any risks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Johnston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s population decline and intensive ageing will offer opportunities and risks to African countries.Lauren Johnston, Senior Researcher, South African Institute of International Affairs and Associate Professor at the China Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1973002023-02-13T13:12:31Z2023-02-13T13:12:31ZDakar’s clandestine taxis are essential for daily travel - but they’re illegal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506827/original/file-20230127-14-aiscwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A clando taxi stand in downtown Rufisque, Dakar metropolitan area.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">G. Lesteven, 2021</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Africa’s major cities are growing <a href="https://unhabitat.org/global-state-of-metropolis-2020-%E2%80%93-population-data-booklet">at a rapid pace</a>. In Dakar, Senegal’s capital, for instance, the population has almost doubled in 20 years, reaching <a href="https://www.ansd.sn/">4 million inhabitants</a> today. </p>
<p>But in most metropolises, like Dakar, planning isn’t keeping up with the expansion. One example of this is the city’s transport system. Public transport plays a fundamental role in providing access to any city. However, in many cities, it’s lacking, particularly in areas of urban sprawl. This worsens the quality of life for people living in these areas, where there is a shortage of jobs and amenities.</p>
<p>Meeting essential needs – such as employment, social interaction, healthcare, education and food – depends on mobility. In a context where incomes are low and public services and facilities are scarce, daily travel is necessary but difficult.</p>
<p>Dakar is attempting to better organise its transport system to meet growing travel demand. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and suburban railway lines are constructed or under way. But public transport remains insufficient. Various forms of informal transport fill this gap and account for a significant proportion of motorised trips. Among them are taxis which people share, commonly called “clandestine taxis” or “clandos.” But they’re illegal because they operate without a licence. </p>
<p>Clandos are typically old, unmarked sedan cars which carry four to six passengers. Many clandos operate in the Dakar region. There is no official figure, because clandos aren’t registered. However, according to our estimates, there are well over 5,000 operating regularly. People know them as they run along fixed routes, leaving the taxi stand when they are full. Most of the time, the stands are well located, close to main roads or main buildings. They also serve remote areas. They are more expensive than buses but provide a better quality of service.</p>
<p>We carried out <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6769">research</a> on how people move around Dakar and found that clandos play a vital role, particularly in the city’s outskirts. Even if bus operators consider them as competitors, in most situations clandos are complementary to them and should be better integrated into transport and planning strategies for the peripheral areas.</p>
<h2>How to move around in the peripheries</h2>
<p>Our research – based on the <a href="https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01346869/">2015 Dakar household travel survey</a> and a survey we carried out in 2021 and 2022 – found that residents in Dakar’s peripheral areas are on average poorer than the city’s other residents. Because of this, they mainly travel on foot and their access to public transport is limited. When they use motorised transport, a significant proportion of their trips are made by clandos.</p>
<p>People generally use clandos for two types of trip: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>long commutes from the peripheries to the centre. They generally use the clando for a part of the trip, to get to or from bus stops. Clandos help people to avoid long trips on foot and actually contribute to increase the number of people taking buses. Most of these commuters are men.</p></li>
<li><p>short, local trips within the outskirts. These trips are shorter, and less expensive, than the long commutes. They account for almost two out of three trips made by clandos. The users are a fairly diverse group: housewives, schoolchildren, informal workers. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Clandos are sought out for their speed and comfort. Our surveys show that they are relatively expensive for households. That explains why the use of clandos may be irregular and limited to certain types of trips, like visiting relatives, going to the clinic or coming back from the market.</p>
<h2>Urban planning and clandos</h2>
<p>Currently, decision-makers are focusing on organising public transport around mass transit. This means that informal modes, like clandos, are doomed to vanish on the grounds that they compete with high-capacity transport; or at best will be used only as a feeder mode to buses and mass transit. </p>
<p>The role clandos play - as a complementary mode, for both feeder services to public transport stops and, more importantly yet, for internal trips in peripheries - offsets their contribution to unnecessary competition and congestion. </p>
<p>Better recognition would make it possible to take better advantage of their unique strengths and capabilities and enable them to play a full role in supporting mobility and daily life. In practice, this means better consolidation of the operation and of the distribution of stands in the public space, less police harassment, access to credit for drivers who own their vehicle and for owner-investors to renew the vehicles.</p>
<p>These considerations must be incorporated into a more comprehensive analysis of the urbanisation of peripheral areas and the need for public action to address transport and urban planning in an integrated way. Considering clandos in planning could initiate a bottom-up development of the transport system. It may also offer job opportunities in the context of a very tight labour market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The field surveys are funded by ENTPE (Taxis-Clandos Grant)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The field surveys are funded by ENTPE (Taxis-Clandos Grant). </span></em></p>Urban expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa and the need for daily mobilityPape Sakho, Maître de conférences CAMES, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de DakarGaele Lesteven, Researcher, LAET, École nationale des travaux publics de l'ÉtatMomar Diongue, Lecturer and Researcher, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de DakarPascal Pochet, Researcher, LAET, École nationale des travaux publics de l'ÉtatLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1932042023-01-25T13:24:55Z2023-01-25T13:24:55ZAtlanta’s BeltLine shows how urban parks can drive ‘green gentrification’ if cities don’t think about affordable housing at the start<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505972/original/file-20230123-3880-1m5d4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5409%2C3187&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A pedestrian walking along the BeltLine in Atlanta on Feb. 17, 2016, passes townhomes under construction. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MortgageRates/85b0bf9c6bc94185a45205a672d7e70c/photo">AP Photo/David Goldman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is Atlanta a good place to live? Recent rankings certainly say so. In September 2022, Money magazine rated Atlanta the <a href="https://money.com/atlanta-georgia-best-places-to-live-2022/">best place to live in the U.S.</a>, based on its strong labor market and job growth. The National Association of Realtors calls it the <a href="https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/10-housing-markets-expected-to-lead-the-nation-in-2023">top housing market to watch in 2023</a>, noting that Atlanta’s housing prices are lower than those in comparable cities and that it has a rapidly growing population. </p>
<p>But this is only part of the story. My new book, “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520387645/red-hot-city">Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First Century Atlanta</a>,” takes a deep dive into the last three decades of housing, race and development in metropolitan Atlanta. As it shows, planning and policy decisions here have promoted a heavily racialized version of gentrification that has excluded lower-income, predominantly Black residents from sharing in the city’s growth.</p>
<p>One key driver of this division is the <a href="https://beltline.org/">Atlanta BeltLine</a>, a 22-mile (35-kilometer) loop of multiuse trails with nearby apartments, restaurants and retail stores, built on a former railway corridor around Atlanta’s core. Although the BeltLine was designed to connect Atlantans and improve their quality of life, it has driven up housing costs on nearby land and pushed low-income households out to suburbs with fewer services than downtown neighborhoods. </p>
<p>The BeltLine has become a prime example of what urban scholars call “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31572-1">green gentrification</a>” – a process in which restoring degraded urban areas by adding green features drives up housing prices and pushes out working-class residents. If cities fail to prepare for these effects, gentrification and displacement can transform lower-income neighborhoods into areas of concentrated affluence rather than thriving, diverse communities. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aT3tizUXQsY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">This promotional video from Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. describes the project’s emphasis on increasing Atlantans’ access to green spaces.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The U.S. currently faces a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/realestate/housing-market-prices-interest-rates.html">nationwide housing affordabilty crisis</a>. Many factors have contributed to it, but as an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YpAWsOMAAAAJ&hl=en">urban studies scholar</a>, I believe it is important to learn from Atlanta’s experience. </p>
<h2>No more Black majority</h2>
<p>U.S. cities generally are diverse places, and many of them are becoming more so. But the city of Atlanta is going <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-01-22/measuring-racial-and-ethnic-diversity-in-americas-cities">in the opposite direction</a>: It’s becoming wealthier and more white. </p>
<p>In 1990, 67% of the city’s residents were Black; by 2019, that share had fallen to 48%. At the same time, the share of adults with a college degree rose from 27% to more than 56%. Median income in the city increased from 60% of the median income of the <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/population-in-atlanta-how-large-is-metro-atlanta/DMC7A3RM7JCPRK57GBTOI5RBII/">much larger Atlanta metropolitan area</a> to 110%. Median family income in the city in 2021 dollars nearly doubled, rising from approximately $50,000 to $96,000. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing the BeltLine's position within the City of Atlanta." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506140/original/file-20230124-24-b9m9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Atlanta’s BeltLine surrounds the city’s downtown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Immergluck</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most rapid gentrification occurred from 2011 onward, after the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/foreclosure-crisis.asp">2008-2010 foreclosure crisis</a>. Globally, urban scholars call this period one of “<a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/metro-policy/upload/contextualizing-gentrification-chaos.pdf">fifth-wave” gentrification</a>, in which a large increase in rental demand triggered speculation in rental real estate that drove up housing costs. </p>
<p>In Atlanta, this was when the BeltLine really hit its stride after being proposed in the early 2000s and formally adopted as a <a href="https://beltline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Redevelopment-Area-and-Tax-Allocation-District-Creation-Legislation.pdf">tax increment financing district</a>, or TIF, in 2005. In these districts, anticipated increases in property tax revenues are used to front-fund development projects. No urban development project in metro Atlanta – and perhaps in the entire country – has been more transformative.</p>
<h2>Driving gentrification and displacement</h2>
<p>Even before the BeltLine TIF district was adopted, boosters, developers, consultants and many city officials began touting the benefits of a proposed public-private partnership that could remake large parts of the city. Shortly after the special taxing district for the project was formally adopted, the city of Atlanta created an affiliated nonprofit, <a href="https://beltline.org/organizer/atlanta-beltline-inc/">Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.</a>, to implement and manage the BeltLine. </p>
<p>In 2004, Yale architect <a href="https://www.architecture.yale.edu/about-the-school/news/in-memoriam-alexander-garvin">Alexander Garvin</a> published a report called “<a href="https://beltline.org/wp-content/uploads/2004/12/The-BeltLine-Emerald-Necklace-Study_Alex-Garvin-Associates-Inc..pdf">The BeltLine Emerald Necklace: Atlanta’s New Public Realm</a>.” “The BeltLine’s future users are an attractive market,” Garvin wrote. “Early word of the project has already accelerated real estate values.” In 2005, one developer called the BeltLine the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2O19EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=the+%E2%80%9Cmost+exciting+real+estate+project+since+Sherman+burned+Atlanta.%E2%80%9D">most exciting real estate project since Sherman burned Atlanta</a>.” </p>
<p>Many neighborhoods that the BeltLine runs through, especially on the south and west sides of the city, had experienced decades of disinvestment and were predominantly Black and lower-income. But boosters weren’t worried about investors and speculators buying up land near the BeltLine, and didn’t prepare for displacement and exclusion. Garvin’s report did not mention the terms “affordable,” “gentrification,” “lower-income” or “low-income.” </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://saportakinsta.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/immergluck-2007.pdf">2007 study</a> for the community group <a href="https://www.georgiastandup.org/">Georgia Stand-Up</a>, I found that property values were increasing much faster near the BeltLine than in areas farther from it. This meant that property taxes rose for many lower-income homeowners, and landlords of rental properties were likely to raise rents in response. This process directly displaced lower-income families and made many areas around the BeltLine unaffordable for them.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1182440058466340864"}"></div></p>
<p>The BeltLine TIF ordinance included some provisions for funding affordable housing, but as I show in my book, they were fundamentally insufficient and flawed. The BeltLine was the work of a coalition, including core members of Atlanta’s traditional “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bEITAAAAYAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Stone+Atlanta+Urban+Regime&ots=mg2iyVlGu4&sig=vICy3M8GI88SfGLDUCQgSZH82u4#v=onepage&q=Stone%20Atlanta%20Urban%20Regime&f=false">urban regime</a>” – elected officials and the downtown business elite. Their vision produced a wealthier, whiter city population. </p>
<h2>Noninclusive growth</h2>
<p>Rather than focusing on securing land for affordable housing when values were low, Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. prioritized building trails and parks. These features helped boost property values, accelerating gentrification and displacement.</p>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/subprime-mortgage-crisis">subprime mortgage crisis</a> in 2007-2010, foreclosures put pressure on housing markets. Atlanta lost about 7,000 low-cost rental units from 2010 to 2019. Meanwhile, construction of new, pricier apartments boomed: Permits were issued for more than 37,000 units over roughly the same period. </p>
<p>By my calculation, Atlanta’s job market exploded from 330,000 jobs in 2011 to over 437,000 jobs by 2019. Companies like Google, Honeywell and Microsoft moved in, often with city and state subsidies. Many new jobs paid over $100,000 per year and went to young, highly skilled workers, driving up housing demand. </p>
<p>In 2017 the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a high-profile <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/local/how-the-atlanta-beltline-broke-its-promise-affordable-housing/0VXnu1BlYC0IbA9U4u2CEM/">investigative series</a> documenting that the BeltLine had produced just 600 units of affordable housing in 11 years – far off the pace required to meet its target of 5,600 by 2030. Some of these units had been resold to high-income households. Soon afterward, <a href="https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2017/08/23/atlanta-beltline-ceo-stepping/">the CEO of Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. resigned</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"885569564259516416"}"></div></p>
<p>That year, a student and I redid my 2007 study on home values around the BeltLine. Once again, we found that during the years we examined – this time, from 2011 to 2015 – home prices near the BeltLine <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1360041">rose much faster than in areas farther from it</a>. The BeltLine was certainly not the only cause of gentrification and racial exclusion in Atlanta, but it was a key contributor. </p>
<p>Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. has increased its affordable housing activity in recent years, and in late 2020, it initiated a program to pay the increased property taxes of legacy residents. However, by this point in the BeltLine’s existence, displacement prevention efforts may be too little, too late. By May 2021, only 128 homeowners had applied for the program. <a href="https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/the-atlanta-beltline-wants-to-prevent-displacement-of-longtime-residents">Just 21 had received assistance</a>.</p>
<h2>Putting affordability first</h2>
<p>What can other cities learn from Atlanta’s experience? In my view, the most important takeaway is the importance of <a href="https://shelterforce.org/2017/09/01/sustainable-large-scale-sustainable-urban-development-projects-environmental-gentrification/">front-loading affordable housing efforts</a> in connection with major redevelopment projects.</p>
<p>This means assembling and banking nearby land as early as possible to be used later for affordable housing. Cities also should limit property tax increases for low-income homeowners and for property owners who agree to keep a substantial portion of their rental units affordable. They might offer low-cost, long-term financing to existing lower-cost rental properties – again, in exchange for keeping rent affordable. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CnmdW01MPTG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/09/headway/anacostia-bridge.html">Some large-scale urban redevelopment projects</a>, such as the 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington, seem to be making serious efforts to <a href="https://create.umn.edu/toolkit/">anticipate and mitigate gentrification and displacement</a>. I hope that more cities will follow this lead before undertaking “transformative” projects.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193204/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Immergluck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A longtime critic of Atlanta’s BeltLine explains how the popular network of parks has increased inequality in the city and driven out lower-income residents.Dan Immergluck, Professor of Urban Studies, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1973552023-01-17T14:14:46Z2023-01-17T14:14:46ZTechnology and sustainable development: a hamlet in rural South Africa shows how one can power the other<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503447/original/file-20230106-18-wafnlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A family cooking with firewood in Qunu, the rural village where former South African President Nelson Mandela grew up. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carl De Souza/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s hard to imagine that the <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">sustainable development goals (SDGs)</a> and the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/">fourth industrial revolution</a> can be part of the same conversation. </p>
<p>But, as a briefing paper by the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/">World Economic Forum</a> in collaboration with <a href="https://www.pwc.co.uk/">PricewaterhouseCoopers</a> (PwC) points out: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Over <a href="https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harnessing_Technology_for_the_Global_Goals_2021.pdf">70%</a> of the 136 SDG targets could be enabled by technology applications already in deployment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To be achieved, both ideas – sustainable development and the fourth industrial revolution – require innovative thinking and a change of attitude. </p>
<p>The fourth industrial revolution is defined by many as a period of rapid evolution caused by digitalisation, globalisation and technological innovation. It has been happening over the last decade and people are finally starting to take notice, because of its massive global impact. </p>
<p>The United Nations’ development goals present an ambitious roadmap for a sustainable future for everyone on the planet. Some of the 17 goals include ending extreme poverty, ensuring free and quality education, and providing equal universal access to safe drinking water by 2030. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-74693-3_9">argue</a> that achieving the development goals will require a fundamental rethink of how people produce and consume goods and services. We argue that bringing together education, the fourth industrial revolution, innovative thinking, strategic resourcing and partnerships increases the prospects of doing this.</p>
<p>To illustrate our argument we have used the example of a small hamlet in South Africa’s Limpopo province. The changes that have been introduced in the area over the past ten years are remarkable. </p>
<p>In particular they speak to achieving the goals of building resilient infrastructure which includes not only access to electricity but also increasing access to information and communications technology.</p>
<h2>The context</h2>
<p>We argue that advancing sustainable development goals through the fourth industrial revolution starts by prioritising two goals in particular – <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal17">SDG17</a> (which is about partnerships) and <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal9">SDG9</a> (industry, innovation and infrastructure).</p>
<p>Goal 17 aims to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise global partnerships for sustainable development. It has five components: finance, capacity building, systemic issues, technology, and trade.</p>
<p>But cross-sector and cross-country collaboration is key. And individuals, non-profit organisations, governments, higher education, and the business sector need to use their resources to jointly solve these global societal challenges and achieve shared goals. </p>
<p>Partnerships must be built on principles and values while placing people at the forefront, especially those in developing countries. </p>
<p>Goal 9 seeks to build resilient infrastructure. It also seeks to promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation. It’s made up of three important aspects: infrastructure, industrialisation and innovation.</p>
<p>Infrastructure provides the basic physical systems. Industrialisation drives economic growth and creates job opportunities. Innovation advances technological capabilities and prompts the development of new skills. </p>
<p>Increased access to information and communications technology is an important part of the picture. Universal and affordable internet is therefore key. </p>
<p>Access to reliable internet and infrastructure such as electrical power are some of the first and most important components towards realising technologies powered by the fourth industrial revolution. </p>
<h2>First smart rural village</h2>
<p>One real-life example is South Africa’s <a href="https://universityofjohannesburg.us/4ir/beyond-imagining-issue-3/gwakwani-south-africas-first-smart-rural-village/">first smart rural village: Gwakwani</a>.
Populated by about 70 to 100 villagers, Gwakwani is in the northern part of the Limpopo province in South Africa. </p>
<iframe title="" aria-label="Locator maps" id="datawrapper-chart-QMmnN" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QMmnN/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="600" data-external="1" width="100%"></iframe>
<p>A decade ago, Gwakwani had no running water or electricity. Internet access was non-existent. </p>
<p>In 2014, the <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/engineering-the-built-environment/departments-2/department-of-electrical-and-electronic-engineering-science/">University of Johannesburg’s School of Electrical Engineering</a> started working with the village chief and local council. The goal was to introduce critical improvements to the village:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Diesel borehole pumps were replaced with solar borehole pumps.</p></li>
<li><p>A network of taps and tanks was installed.</p></li>
<li><p>Solar lights were installed in villagers’ homes and solar streetlights were installed.</p></li>
<li><p>A solar bakery was built, where bread and other baked goods are made and sold.</p></li>
<li><p>Large cold storage units were installed.</p></li>
<li><p>A solar-powered crèche was built for the village’s youngest residents.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Sensors have been put in place all over the village, and data is fed back to a system that can be monitored from the university. This contributes to engineering education. </p>
<p>This remote monitoring system is made possible through the “internet of things” network connection that the university developed in partnership with global communications provider <a href="https://www.sigfox.com/en">Sigfox</a>.</p>
<p>The internet of things allows data collection and exchange between devices and systems. It can include interactions between humans and machines. This data exchange uses identification, data capture and communications technologies. </p>
<p>The internet of things is expected to have a significant impact on the economy and society, with estimates of up to <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/in-the-news/by-2025-internet-of-things-applications-could-have-11-trillion-impact">$11.1 trillion</a> per year in economic value by 2025.</p>
<p>We can observe a few things here: </p>
<p>A transdisciplinary partnership between the University of Johannesburg’s School of Electrical Engineering, the village chief, and the local council was established. </p>
<p>A cross-sector partnership between the university, Schneider Electric and Sigfox was also established. Fourth industrial revolution technology was then installed in an area that previously had no access to any form of technology. </p>
<p>The population of Gwakwani is only about 100 people. Imagine what would happen if many other villages like Gwakwani were given the same technological resources to help them improve their lives.</p>
<h2>Future benefits</h2>
<p>The work co-created in Gwakwani shows that by bringing together education, the fourth industrial revolution, innovative thinking, strategic resourcing and partnerships, the prospect of achieving the development goals will improve.</p>
<p>Achieving them will have a positive ripple effect on all aspects of society. This is because they provide an opportunity to address the root causes of many development challenges faced by Africa. </p>
<p>The continent is home to many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and achieving the SDGs would go a long way in improving their lives. It would also help to ensure that Africa’s natural resources were sustainably managed, and that the continent’s wildlife and ecosystems were protected.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saurabh Sinha is co-sponsored by the U.S. Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program. For this visit, he is hosted by the Integrated Microsystems Research Lab, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), Princeton University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mduduzi Mbiza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The essential ingredients in achieving the development goals are partnerships combined with smart thinking about how to deploy 21st century technologies.Saurabh Sinha, Professor and Executive Dean: Engineering, University of CanterburyMduduzi Mbiza, Research Associate, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1955472022-12-08T13:33:58Z2022-12-08T13:33:58ZChina’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects could help or hurt oceans and coasts worldwide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499597/original/file-20221207-4529-5h8xps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C0%2C4913%2C3155&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Construction in the Chinese-financed Port City complex in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Oct. 19, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-a-chinese-funded-project-for-the-port-city-news-photo/1244077947">Pradeep Dambarage/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ocean-fact-sheet-package.pdf">one-third</a> of all people in the world live in cities, towns and villages on coasts. They rely on healthy oceans for many things, including food, income, a stable climate and ready connections to nature. </p>
<p>But as coastal populations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118571">continue to grow</a>, governments are under increasing pressure to ramp up development for transportation, power generation and economic growth. Projects like these can have heavy impacts on lands, waters and wildlife.</p>
<p>World leaders are gathering in Montreal this week for the long-awaited <a href="https://www.cbd.int/conferences/2021-2022">Conference of Parties</a> to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15. This treaty, which was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is designed to protect biodiversity – the variety of life on Earth, from genes to entire ecosystems. </p>
<p>At the two-week conference, nations are expected to officially adopt the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/abb5/591f/2e46096d3f0330b08ce87a45/wg2020-03-03-en.pdf">Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework</a>, which will guide global conservation efforts over the next decade. China is this year’s COP president and chair, which will spotlight its own impacts on the environment.</p>
<p>We study <a href="https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=tAYhLjUAAAAJ&hl=en">natural resource management</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Rebecca-Ray-2135726495">global development</a>, and have analyzed how China’s support for development around the world is affecting <a href="https://theconversation.com/china-is-financing-infrastructure-projects-around-the-world-many-could-harm-nature-and-indigenous-communities-168060">nature and Indigenous communities</a>. In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.11.002">newly published study</a>, we explore the risks that China’s development finance projects pose to coastal and marine ecosystems, and to Indigenous communities that depend on healthy oceans. </p>
<p>We find that the risks are low in some places but high in others, particularly West Africa and the Caribbean. As China presides over global conservation talks, we believe it is important to look at China’s own potential impacts on biodiversity through its lending for global development.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1008726099076046848"}"></div></p>
<h2>Belt and Road brings benefit and harm</h2>
<p>In 2013, China’s president, Xi Jinping, launched the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2018/jul/30/what-china-belt-road-initiative-silk-road-explainer">Belt and Road Initiative</a>, China’s ambitious push to coordinate hundreds of billions of dollars in finance, investment and trade to better connect its economic partners. </p>
<p>Today, China is the world’s <a href="https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2021/09/20/geolocated-dataset-of-chinese-overseas-development-finance/">largest bilateral creditor</a>. Since 2008, it has lent nearly half a trillion dollars to finance more than 800 overseas development projects. Its highlights include networks of roads, railways, ports and power plants across Latin America, Africa and Asia. Argentina’s massive <a href="https://chinadialogue.net/en/energy/11117-china-builds-latin-america-s-largest-solar-plant/">Cauchari solar farm</a>, Kenya’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/kenya-standard-gauge-railway-contracts-what-released-documents-say-and-what-they-dont-194354">single-gauge railway</a>, and the Central Asia-China <a href="https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One-Road/gasPipeline.html">pipeline</a>, which is designed to carry natural gas from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan into China, are examples. </p>
<p>Belt and Road projects are intended to help emerging economies grow, but they also can have negative impacts – including environmental damage that hurts local communities or livelihoods. In Mauritania, for example, a Chinese-financed port brought a fishing deal with a Chinese fishing fleet. The fleet <a href="https://reuters.screenocean.com/record/609279">out-competed</a> traditional small-scale fishermen, <a href="https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-china-fishing-deal-disaster-in-mauritania">raising alarm</a> amid allegations of <a href="https://www.asso-sherpa.org/mauritania-china-fisheries-agreement-civil-society-appeals-eu-mauritanian-government">unsustainable overfishing</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_JJSImnF03o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">China has built 11 hydropower dams on Asia’s Mekong River as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Critics say the dams are altering river flow and reducing fish catches.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mapping risks to biodiversity and people</h2>
<p>To analyze how the Belt and Road Initiative could affect oceans and coasts, we located 114 development projects across 39 low- and middle-income countries financed by China’s two most active development finance institutions – China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China. Collectively, these loans constitute nearly US$65 billion in financing commitments from Chinese development lenders between 2008 and 2019. The projects include many different types of coastal infrastructure, such as ports, roads, bridges, power plants and airports.</p>
<p>Different types of infrastructure projects pose varying risks to marine habitats and species. Ports create the most serious threats, including habitat destruction, pollution and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14634988.2015.1027129">spread of invasive species</a> from ships that pass through.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men wearing masks bump elbows on a pier" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499605/original/file-20221207-11795-dex00z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, left, greets China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi during an inspection tour of the New Kipevu Oil Terminal at Mombasa Port on Jan. 6, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kenyan-president-uhuru-kenyatta-greets-chinas-foreign-news-photo/1237565793">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bridges, roads, power plants and other facilities also threaten nearby coastal waters. These projects can stress aquatic species and habitats with bright lights, loud noises or vibrations, and discharges of toxic heavy metals from <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/nps_urban-facts_final.pdf">urban runoff</a>. These risks are mostly concentrated in small areas around development sites.</p>
<p>In total, we identified 324 <a href="https://www.iucn.org/resources/conservation-tool/iucn-red-list-threatened-species">threatened species</a> of fish, marine mammals, marine reptiles, sea birds and sharks and rays that could be affected by Chinese coastal development projects. The size of the risk depends on exposure levels and different species’ vulnerabilities. For example, power lines present low risk to marine habitats – but if they are accompanied by bright lights, they threaten sea birds, which are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1890/130281">highly sensitive to light pollution</a>. </p>
<p>Overall, we found that Africa and the Caribbean constitute the greatest risk hot spots. Countries with the largest expanses of territorial waters at risk include Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Cameroon, Mozambique and Sri Lanka. </p>
<p>We estimate that risks may encroach upon important seas for at least 55 coastal Indigenous communities around the world, particularly in Western and Central Africa. For example, marine habitats adjacent to several Indigenous communities in Ivory Coast that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166681">consume more than 1,000 tons of seafood yearly</a> face relatively high risks from nearby development projects.</p>
<h2>Sustainable ‘blue’ development</h2>
<p>Experts widely agree that the Earth is <a href="https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/news/spotlight-nature-and-biodiversity">losing species at an alarming rate</a> and that habitat loss and pollution from development are major drivers of this decline. If China is serious about <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-china-ready-to-lead-on-protecting-nature-at-the-upcoming-un-biodiversity-conference-it-will-preside-and-set-the-tone-193681">taking a leadership role in conservation efforts</a>, we believe the Belt and Road Initiative is the place to start.</p>
<p>Sustainable development will define the future of society and the environment, but planning models often struggle to address how development on land <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13331">affects the oceans</a>. The United Nations aims to bridge this gap by changing humans’ relationship with the ocean during what it has designated the <a href="https://www.oceandecade.org/">Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development</a>. And we see reason for hope.</p>
<p>Our study shows that many development risks to coastal and marine ecosystems could be tackled at the local level if communities and governments work to prioritize their own development and investment needs and scrutinize how proposed projects will affect the environment. Even seemingly small changes in the siting of ports, coastal highways and other projects can protect ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mangrove trees with roots extending into tropical seawater" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499608/original/file-20221207-16-1mfs67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mangrove forests like this one in the Bahamas provide natural protection against tropical storms and flooding, but they often are destroyed for development projects.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/SZHorA">Sterling College/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>China is starting to address some of these concerns. In 2021, its Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Ecology and Environment <a href="http://en.brigc.net/Media_Center/BRI_Green_Review/2021/202107/P020210729465376906569.pdf">issued joint guidance</a> urging Chinese investors and lenders to take a “whole lifecycle” approach to project management, beginning with early considerations such as where to site a project. </p>
<p>In 2022, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission instructed lenders to <a href="http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2022-06/03/content_5693849.htm">develop complaint mechanisms</a> for addressing local environmental concerns and minimizing environmental risks. An important test will come in the next few years, as the World Trade Organization will begin <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/wto-finally-nets-deal-curbing-fisheries-subsidies-but-tables-key-bits-for-later/">negotiating</a> specific rules to curb overfishing. If China <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news22_e/fish_23nov22_e.htm">shows leadership</a> on this issue through transparency and knowledge sharing, it can limit environmental and economic damage from the development of future ports in countries like Mauritania. </p>
<p>As COP15 spotlights global biodiversity, we believe it is important to note that even the world’s largest bilateral creditor needs the cooperation of local governments in order to get projects approved and built. In our view, transparency and public participation can help make global investment both green and blue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Ray received funding for this work from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Climate and Land Use Alliance, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blake Alexander Simmons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s international lending projects have big potential impacts on oceans and coasts. By cooperating more closely with host countries, Beijing can make those projects more sustainable.Blake Alexander Simmons, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State UniversityRebecca Ray, Senior Academic Researcher in Global Development Policy, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1933162022-11-03T13:47:26Z2022-11-03T13:47:26ZCOP27 must work out how to cut carbon and still develop African economies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492718/original/file-20221101-18-iqric5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Averting a climate disaster without compromising economic growth and development is a key issue for African countries. Energy production and use is the single biggest contributor to global warming, <a href="https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/energy">accounting for</a> roughly two-thirds of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, electricity use and access are <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7jb0015q">strongly correlated</a> with economic development.</p>
<p>Many African countries are lagging behind in electricity generation and access. According to the <a href="https://trackingsdg7.esmap.org/">Energy Progress Report</a>, in 2020 the 20 countries with the lowest rates of access to electricity were all in sub-Saharan Africa. For example, just 7% of the population in South Sudan and 11% of the population in Chad have access to electricity. Even among the most populous countries in Africa, access to electricity is still limited – 55.4% and 51.1% of the populations of Nigeria and Ethiopia, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS?locations=ZG-NG">respectively</a>, have access to electricity.</p>
<p>To close these gaps, energy demand on the continent is <a href="https://www.undp.org/africa/news/africas-just-energy-transition-priority-world-moves-toward-decarbonization">expected to grow</a> by 60% by 2040. </p>
<p>Sufficient energy <a href="https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Modern-Energy-Minimum-Sept30.pdf">is essential</a> for most economic activities. Coal, petroleum and natural gas made a significant amount of productive energy available during the industrial revolution. This led to human health and welfare improvements. Cost effective and abundant energy is a key driver for economic growth. </p>
<p>African countries will find it hard to grow their economies and pull their people out of poverty if they can’t take advantage of their abundant energy resources. For example, Africa <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/africa-energy-outlook-2019">holds</a> 13% of the world’s remaining recoverable gas resources. </p>
<p>So the global effort to cut the use of these resources presents a barrier to Africa’s growth, unless sufficient financing is available to fully transition to renewable and sustainable fuels at a scale needed to support economic growth. </p>
<h2>Africa’s challenges</h2>
<p><a href="https://grist.org/politics/the-u-s-has-officially-stopped-financing-new-coal-plants-abroad/">Over the past few years</a>, the West has been taking a rather coercive approach to Africa’s decarbonisation – the removal or reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) output into the atmospher. They’ve cut back financing for gas and coal energy projects in Africa, while still pursuing their own new gas and coal deals. In addition, an analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency <a href="https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Jan/Renewable-Energy-Market-Analysis-Africa">showed</a> minimum global renewable energy investments in Africa (only 2% out of all the renewable energy investments in the world) over the last two decades. </p>
<p>Without the West’s backing, Africa’s energy decisions might solely rely on resource abundance and cost efficiency. This could lead to further dependence on fossil fuels. </p>
<p>Global environmental problems such as climate change require cooperation at the local, national and international level. The West’s support for Africa is essential to align global decarbonisation targets with regional realities. </p>
<p>Without support to maximise the available resources, economies of scale, cost efficiencies, capacity building, and the potential to electrify large numbers of the population, a focus on renewables alone becomes unjust and unrealistic for Africa. </p>
<h2>Just electrification in a net-zero world</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=U7pa2O0AAAAJ&hl=en">research</a> interests focus on energy production and sustainable development. The need to invest in alternative, sustainable fuels to meet the projected demand is critical. </p>
<p>One of the main challenges at COP27 – the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference – will be agreeing on who decides when and how countries ought to transition to net-zero emissions. Put simply, net zero <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition">means</a> cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible.</p>
<p>Conversations at COP27 should centre on Africa’s interests in order to advance a “just transition” for all. A just transition is one in which social and economic opportunities of climate action are maximised, while challenges – such as inequitable distribution of benefits and costs – are minimised. </p>
<p>Africa <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/111.444/000180.v1">bears</a> the brunt of climate change impacts without being responsible for them. This <a href="https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Earth4All_Deep_Dive_Ghosh.pdf">undermines</a> the opportunity to create a just energy transition for all with fair assignment of climate responsibility. </p>
<p>Negotiations must find pathways for Africa to deliver electricity for economic empowerment, while depending less on harmful fuels.</p>
<h2>Governance</h2>
<p>Deep decarbonisation and net-zero world goals are paramount to combating the climate crisis. However, the pace and methods of achieving them might come at the cost of leaving millions in the dark with little access to electricity. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-9302.2010.00226.x">new polycentric model of international climate governance</a> is needed. The old one resembled an era of hierarchy and power concentration in fewer countries. This led to a lack of cooperation at the international level. </p>
<p>The polycentric model could help facilitate the understanding on the need to advance access to electricity while mitigating the climate crisis. This cooperative governance model could correct the past inequitable distribution of benefits and costs by implementing the following three main principles:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Let those affected by climate change decide when and how to transition to net-zero emissions.</p></li>
<li><p>Replace hierarchical (or “double-standard”) principles with cooperative and polycentric approaches.</p></li>
<li><p>Make autonomy and partnerships pillars of decentralised international cooperation.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>COP27 should embrace the notion that the decisions that shape the lives of Africans should be shaped by Africans. </p>
<p>The people affected by climate change should decide when and how to transition to net-zero emissions. Autonomy and partnerships should characterise international cooperation.</p>
<h2>Energy solutions</h2>
<p>Renewable energy – such as solar, wind and hydro power – is an attractive option. In Africa, women and children <a href="https://cleancooking.org/the-issues/health/">die from</a> household air pollution due to the reliance on wood, charcoal, or coal as energy sources. Citizens are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620302140">further affected</a> by forced displacements that occur to accommodate large fossil-based energy infrastructure, like power stations. </p>
<p>A shift away from these practices would allow for a more people-centred clean energy future. There’s an opportunity to bypass a centralised energy system based on fossil fuel. It could be based on renewable energy instead, distributed through mini grids. If done right, this could provide full electrification without the cost of creating coal or natural gas power plants. Some of these power stations will be stranded anyway in the move away from fossil fuels.</p>
<h2>The path to just electrification</h2>
<p>Working together to balance clean energy and electrification in Africa will be a gradual process. The key enabling factor in this process is financing. Financing is needed for new technologies, resilient infrastructure and building people’s capacity. </p>
<p>COP27 is Africa’s turn to map this path.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bethel Tarekegne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A key issue for African countries is: how to contribute towards averting a climate disaster without compromising economic growth and development.Bethel Tarekegne, Research Engineer, Pacific Northwest National LaboratoryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.