tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/panama-5186/articlesPanama – The Conversation2024-03-13T12:41:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2254222024-03-13T12:41:26Z2024-03-13T12:41:26ZWhat is the Darien Gap? And why are more migrants risking this Latin American route to get to the US?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581331/original/file-20240312-22-hvlt6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C140%2C3347%2C2084&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Migrants wade through the Tuquesa River as they traverse the Darien Gap.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PanamaMigrants/2c51a3fc202e44459d50d668897f80eb/photo?Query=Darien%20Gap&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=288&currentItemNo=62">AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Much of the discussion over illegal immigration to the U.S. has in recent weeks <a href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-latin-america-venezuela-ukraine-mexico-712d00c90114568fe8a1b5c9e26fdadd">moved its focus south to the Darien Gap</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>This treacherous route that spans parts of Central and South America has seen an increasing number of people attempting to pass on their way to claiming asylum in the U.S.</em></p>
<p><em>To explore the reasons why, The Conversation turned to Sara McKinnon, an <a href="https://commarts.wisc.edu/staff/mckinnon-sara/">immigration scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison</a>, who knows the region well and has interviewed people who have traversed the jungle crossing.</em></p>
<h2>Where is the Darien Gap?</h2>
<p>The Darien Gap is a stretch of densely forested jungle across northern Colombia and southern Panama. Roughly 60 miles (97 kilometers) across, the terrain is muddy, wet and unstable.</p>
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<p>No paved roads exist in the Darien Gap. Yet despite this, it has become a major route for global human migration.</p>
<p>Depending on how much they can pay, people must walk anywhere from <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/dari%C3%A9n-gap-migration-crossroads">four to 10 days</a> up and down mountains, over fast-flowing rivers and through mud, carrying everything they have – and often carrying children who are too young to walk – to make it through the pass. Those who make it through then take buses through most of Central America and make their way north through Mexico to the U.S. border zone.</p>
<p>Cellphone service stops once people enter the dense forest; migrants rely on the paid “guides” and fellow migrants to make it through. </p>
<p>In the decade prior to 2021, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/dari%C3%A9n-gap-migration-crossroads">10,000 people annually</a> took this route on their way north to seek residence in the United States and Canada. </p>
<p>Then, in 2021, the Panamanian government documented <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/number-migrants-who-embarked-dangerous-darien-gap-route-nearly-doubled-2022">133,000 crossings</a>, a dramatic increase in human movement in such a volatile stretch of land. In 2023, more than <a href="https://www.datosabiertos.gob.pa/dataset/migracion-irregulares-en-transito-por-darien-por-pais-2023">half a million people</a> transited through this part of the Isthmus of Panama.</p>
<h2>Why is it so dangerous?</h2>
<p>The route, and really the entire trajectory that people take when they migrate from South America to North America, is controlled by criminal organizations that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/immigration-crisis-migrant-smuggling-darien-gap-cfb40940">make millions, if not billions of dollars</a>, annually in the human migration economy.</p>
<p>It is impossible to cross this stretch of land without the help of a smuggler, or guide, because the criminal organizations who control the territory demand payment for passage.</p>
<p>Payment does not, however, assure safe passage. Sometimes the very people paid to facilitate the journey extort migrants for more money. There are also <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/colombia-central-america/102-bottleneck-americas-crime-and-migration">reports of armed groups</a> ambushing those in transit to seize their belongings and steal what money they may have stowed away and sewn into clothing seams.</p>
<p>Extortion and kidnapping are common occurrences, and the medical aid charity Doctors Without Borders recently reported a surge in instances of <a href="https://www.msf.org/lack-action-sees-sharp-rise-sexual-violence-people-transiting-darien-gap-panama">mass sexual assault</a> in which hundreds of people have been captured, assaulted and raped – often in front of family members. In December 2023, one person was sexually assaulted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/05/darien-gap-sexual-attacks-panama-colombia-migrants">every 3½ hours</a> while crossing, according to Doctors Without Borders.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/crossing-darien-gap-migrants-risk-death-journey-us">extreme nature of the swamplike jungle</a> also makes the journey dangerous.</p>
<p>The paths can be very muddy, especially in the rainy season. In mountainous sections, it is often necessary to climb over steep rocks, or cling to a rope to not slip and fall off a cliff. </p>
<p>The Missing Migrant Project reported <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl601/files/publication/file/MMP%20Americas%20briefing%202022%20-%20ES_3.pdf">141 known deaths</a> in the Darien Gap in 2023, which is likely a fraction of the actual number due to the challenges in reporting and recovering bodies.</p>
<p>Many of the people I interviewed who had made the journey talked about seeing bodies along the path covered in mud, likely the result of slipping or falling to their death. </p>
<p>Fellow migrants left markers close to the bodies, such as pieces of fabric tied to a tree, and took photos of the dead in the hopes that this evidence might someday help recover the bodies.</p>
<p>The rivers are also dangerous. Flash floods and rushing rapids mean that many people are swept away and drown in the muddy waters. Bruises, cuts, animal bites and fractures are common. The high humidity and heat each day, combined with a lack of clean drinking water, mean that many fall sick with symptoms of severe dehydration. </p>
<p>Vector-borne, water-borne and fungal-related illnesses are <a href="https://www.unocha.org/news/migration-through-darien-jungle-7-things-know-about-perilous-trek">also quite common</a>.</p>
<h2>What is behind the recent surge in crossings?</h2>
<p>Violence, insecurity and instability in their home countries cause many people to move. They may move to elsewhere in their region. But when the level of violence and insecurity is similar in that country, they keep moving to find a safer place to live.</p>
<p>Options for legally allowed immigration are increasingly limited for those in low-income countries. For example, when governments implement travel visa restrictions for certain nationalities, it impacts the options available to the people of that country for movement. </p>
<p>In 2021, with pressure from the United States, Mexico started requiring <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/mexico-restrictive-visa-policy-limits-venezuelans-ability-flee-us/">Venezuelans traveling to Mexico to carry travel visas</a>. This meant that Venezuelans hoping to seek asylum in the United States could no longer first fly to Mexico as a tourist and then present themselves at the border to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent to express their fear of returning to their home country.</p>
<p>Venezuelans had to find another route to move, and for many, that was and continues to be irregular transit through the Darien Gap without travel documents. </p>
<h2>Who is making the journey?</h2>
<p>In 2023, of the 520,085 people who moved through the region, <a href="https://www.migracion.gob.pa/images/img2023/pdf/IRREGULARES_X_DARIEN_2023.pdf">Venezuelans counted for over half at 328,650</a>. But the total also included 56,422 Haitians, 25,565 Chinese, 4,267 Afghans, 2,252 Nepali, 1,636 Cameroonians and 1,124 Angolans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A child is hoisted onto an adult's shoulders as a woman and man wade through water." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.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">Haitian migrants wade through water as they cross the Darien Gap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/YEMigration/4294f14f09a24ca0beeba0b14dc0120f/photo?Query=Darien%20Gap&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=288&currentItemNo=95">AP Photo/Ivan Valencia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Human migration in the Americas is a global phenomenon.</p>
<p>It is also increasingly gender and age diverse, as <a href="https://www.migracion.gob.pa/images/img2023/pdf/IRREGULARES_X_DARIEN_2023.pdf">figures from the Panamanian government</a> show. Adult men made up just over half of those moving through the Darien Gap in 2023, and adult women counted for 26% of the population. </p>
<p>Children under 18 constituted 20% of those crossing, with half of those children under the age of 5. Parents may be carrying children for long stretches of the journey, or children may have to walk even though they are tired. The stress and fatigue add to the likelihood of injury along the way. </p>
<h2>How have authorities responded?</h2>
<p>The travel visa restrictions of many governments has only pushed more people to attempt this dangerous route. Governments have also been lukewarm to the presence of humanitarian groups who assist migrants in transit. On March 7, 2024, <a href="https://www.msf.org/msf-forced-suspend-medical-care-people-move-panama">Doctors Without Borders reported</a> that the Panamanian government would no longer permit the organization to provide medical support to those in transit through the Darien Gap. This reduced access to health care will certainly mean a more dangerous passage.</p>
<p>In May 2022, countries across the Americas jointly announced the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/10/fact-sheet-the-los-angeles-declaration-on-migration-and-protection-u-s-government-and-foreign-partner-deliverables/">Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection </a> to improve regional coordination to manage migration.</p>
<p>Through this, the U.S. government implemented a series of <a href="https://migrationamericas.commarts.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2087/2023/09/MIAP-Policy-Report-0923-1.pdf">new legal programs to move to the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/04/27/fact-sheet-us-government-announces-sweeping-new-actions-manage-regional-migration">application processing offices</a> in South American and Central American countries that give people the opportunity to apply for U.S. refugee resettlement, humanitarian parole and family reunification, and have the visas processed while waiting abroad. </p>
<p>But these programs are not available to people of all nationalities. And some of the programs also require official documents like passports, a requirement that excludes many of those who make their way through the Darien Gap.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara McKinnon 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>More than half a million people made the treacherous crossing in 2023 – far higher than in previous years.Sara McKinnon, Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2198942023-12-15T19:26:46Z2023-12-15T19:26:46ZPaying people to replant tropical forests − and letting them harvest the timber − can pay off for climate, justice and environment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565848/original/file-20231214-23-sya0my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C14%2C3300%2C2183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Planting trees on deforested lands in Panama.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://stri.si.edu/facility/agua-salud">Jorge Aleman/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tropical forest landscapes are home to millions of <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/worlds-transformed-indigenous-peoples-health-changing">Indigenous peoples</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0905455107">small-scale farmers</a>. Just about <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9698574/africa-diversity-map">every square meter of land</a> is spoken for, even if claims are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00847-w">not formally recognized by governments</a>.</p>
<p>These local landholders hold the key to a valuable solution as the world tries to slow climate change – restoring deforested tropical landscapes for a healthier future.</p>
<p>Tropical forests are <a href="https://eos.org/editors-vox/why-tropical-forests-are-important-for-our-well-being">vital to Earth’s climate and biodiversity</a>, <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-06-football-pitch-tropical-forest-lost.html">but a soccer field-size area</a> of mature tropical forest is burned or cut down about every 5 seconds to clear space for crops and cattle today.</p>
<p>While those trees may be lost, the land still has potential. Tropical forests’ combination of year-round sunshine and high rainfall can lead to high growth rates, suggesting that areas where tropical forests once grew could be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1501639">valuable sites for reforestation</a>. In fact, a host of <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement">international agreements</a> and <a href="https://www.bonnchallenge.org/">declarations</a> envision just this.</p>
<p>For reforestation projects to make a dent in climate change, however, they have to work with and for the people who live there.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=t3-IBx0AAAAJ&hl=en">forest</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6fq4FOEAAAAJ&hl=en">ecologists</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5SejyLsAAAAJ&hl=en">involved in</a> tropical forest restoration, we have been studying effective ways to compensate people for the ecosystem services flowing from their land. In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43861-4">new study</a>, we show how compensation that also allows landholders to harvest and sell some of the trees could provide powerful incentives and ultimately benefit everyone.</p>
<h2>The extraordinary value of ecosystem services</h2>
<p>Tropical forests are celebrated for their extraordinary biodiversity, with their preservation seen as <a href="https://eos.org/editors-vox/why-tropical-forests-are-important-for-our-well-being">essential for protecting life on Earth</a>. They are reservoirs of vast carbon stocks, slowing down climate change. However, when tropical forests are cleared and burned, they release <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1354">copious amounts of carbon dioxide</a>, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change.</p>
<p>Programs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705503104">offering payments</a> for <a href="https://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.html">ecosystem services</a> are designed to help keep those forests and other ecosystems healthy by compensating landholders for goods and services produced by nature that are often taken for granted. For example, forests <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/2013WR013956">moderate stream flows and reduce flood risks</a>, support <a href="https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en?details=ca9433en#">bees and other pollinators</a> that benefit neighboring croplands, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155121">help regulate climate</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Deforested hills seen from the air, with the light green coloring of newly planted saplings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565819/original/file-20231214-21-2o4y9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tropical forests burned or clear-cut can be restored, like these newly planted (upper left) and naturally regrowing (lower right) watersheds at Agua Salud in Panama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marcos Guerra/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent years, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.958879">cottage industry</a> has grown up around paying people to reforest land for the carbon it can hold. It has been driven in part by corporations and other institutions looking for ways to meet their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by paying projects to reduce or prevent emissions elsewhere.</p>
<p>Early iterations of projects that pay landholders for ecosystem services <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.06.001">have been criticized</a> for focusing too much on economic efficiency, sometimes at the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biu146">expense of social and environmental concerns</a>.</p>
<p>Win-win solutions – where environmental and social concerns are both accounted for – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/701698">may not be the most economically efficient</a> in the short term, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/nrm.12219">they can lead to longer-term sustainability</a> as participants feel a sense of pride and responsibility for the project’s success. </p>
<p>That longer-term sustainability is essential for trees’ carbon storage, because many decades of growth is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-023-01598-y">required to build up stored carbon</a> and combat climate change. </p>
<h2>Why timber can be a triple win</h2>
<p>In the study, we looked at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43861-4">ways to maximize all three priorities</a> – environmental, economic and social benefits – in forest restoration, focusing on infertile land.</p>
<p>It may come as a surprise, but most soils in the tropics are <a href="https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-7-1515-2010">extraordinarily infertile</a>, with concentrations of phosphorus and other essential nutrients an order of magnitude or more lower than in crop-producing areas of the northern hemisphere. This makes restoring tropical forests through reforestation <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting-climate-change">more complex</a> than simply planting trees – these areas also require maintenance.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Looking up from the base of a tall tree toward its crown and the sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565865/original/file-20231214-29-d2seiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Species like <em>Terminalia amazonia</em>, valuable for commercial logging, can grow quickly, storing carbon in their wood as they grow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://stri.si.edu/facility/agua-salud">Andres Hernandez/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our study we used some 1.4 million tree measurements taken over 15 years at the <a href="https://stri.si.edu/">Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute</a>’s <a href="https://stri.si.edu/facility/agua-salud">Agua Salud</a> site in Panama to project carbon sequestration and potential timber revenues. We looked at naturally regrowing forests, native tree species plantations and an effort to rehabilitate a failed teak plantation by planting high-value native trees known to grow on low-fertility soils <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2022.925877">to test routes to profitability</a>.</p>
<p>One set of solutions stood out: We found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/701698">giving landholders</a> both payments for carbon storage and the ability to generate revenue through timber production on the land could lead to vibrant forests and financial gains for the landholder.</p>
<p>It may seem counterintuitive to suggest timber harvesting when the goal is to restore forests, but allowing landholders to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11056-022-09906-0">generate timber revenue</a> can give them an incentive to protect and manage planted forests over time.</p>
<p>Regrowing trees on a deforested landscape, whether natural regrowth or plantations, is a net win for climate change, as trees take <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01379-4">vast amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere</a>. New forests that are selectively logged or plantations that are harvested in 30 to 80 years can help slow climate change while the world cuts emissions and expands carbon capture technologies.</p>
<h2>Reliable payments matter</h2>
<p>The structure of the payments is also important. We found that reliable annual carbon payments to rural landlords to regrow forests could match or surpass the income they might otherwise get from clearing land for cattle, thus making the transition to raising trees possible.</p>
<p>When cash payments are based instead on measurements of tree growth, they can vary widely year to year and among planting strategies. With the costs involved, that can stand in the way of effective land management to combat climate change.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three charts, all rising swiftly in the first 10 years but then declining." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565623/original/file-20231213-15-x4pbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A chart of three different types of forest restoration shows how variable payments for carbon storage would be if they were based on measured growth rather than average growth over 30 years. When payments decline over time, the incentive to nurture and protect those forests disappears. The blue line represents a flat payment of US$130 per hectare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43861-4">Agua Salud/Smithsonian Institution</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Using flat annual payments instead guarantees a stable income and will help encourage more landholders to enroll. We are now using that method in Panama’s Indigenous <a href="https://stri.si.edu/story/indigenous-reforestation">Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca</a>. The project pays residents to plant and nurture native trees over 20 years.</p>
<h2>Shifting risk to buyers of carbon offsets</h2>
<p>From a practical perspective, flat annual carbon payments and other cost-sharing strategies to plant trees shift the burden of risk from participants to carbon buyers, often companies in wealthy countries.</p>
<p>The landholders get paid even if actual growth of the trees falls short, and everyone benefits from the ecosystem services provided.</p>
<p>While win-win solutions may not initially appear to be economically efficient, our work helps to illustrate a viable path forward – where environmental, social and economic objectives can be met.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219894/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jefferson S. Hall receives funding from the US government via the Smithsonian Institution, Stanly Motta, Frank and Kristin Levinson, the Hoch family, U-Trust, and the Mark and Rachel Rohr Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Sinacore receives funding from the Mark and Rachel Rohr Foundation, Stanly Motta, Frank and Kristin Levinson, the Hoch family, and the Smithsonian.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michiel van Breugel receives funding from Singapore’s Ministry of Education and the Future Cities Lab Global Program of the ETH-Singapore Centre, which is funded by National Research Foundation Singapore.</span></em></p>It might seem counterintuitive to suggest timber harvesting when the goal is to restore forests, but that gives landholders the economic incentive to protect and manage forests over time.Jefferson S. Hall, Staff Scientist and Director, Agua Salud Project, Smithsonian InstitutionKatherine Sinacore, Postdoctoral Fellow, Agua Salud Project, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Smithsonian InstitutionMichiel van Breugel, Associate Professor of Environmental Science, National University of SingaporeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2155202023-10-30T19:03:52Z2023-10-30T19:03:52ZDarien Gap: As migrants take deadly risks for better lives, Canada and the U.S. must do much more<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/darien-gap-as-migrants-take-deadly-risks-for-better-lives-canada-and-the-us-must-do-much-more" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller recently announced that as many as 15,000 displaced people with extended family connections in Canada — most of them from Colombia, Haiti and Venezuela and located in Central or South America or the Caribbean — <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2023/10/statement-from-minister-miller-on-canadas-commitment-to-support-migrants-in-the-americas.html">are now eligible to apply to immigrate to Canada</a> on a humanitarian basis. </p>
<p>By announcing this measure, Canada affirmed its commitment to <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/04/27/fact-sheet-us-government-announces-sweeping-new-actions-manage-regional-migration">a joint initiative, known as Safe Mobility</a>, launched by the United States in April 2023 to stem the irregular crossings of hundreds of thousands of people into the U.S. by offering alternatives.</p>
<p>These 15,000 people represent a small number of as many as <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/americas-migration-crisis-panama-texas-1.6982215">400,000 displaced people</a> expected to cross the Darien Gap, a 100-kilometre stretch of treacherous jungle shared by Colombia and Panama, in 2023 in search of safety, security and protection.</p>
<p>Forced to migrate by political instability, repression and other hardships, people from Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Haiti represent most of the displaced people who have crossed the Darien Gap in the last few years. </p>
<p>As many migrants told us when <a href="http://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2441">we interviewed </a> them in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12701">Tijuana</a> in northern Mexico and Tapachula in the south of Mexico between 2018 and 2022, crossing the continent is not for the faint of heart. </p>
<p>They may experience harassment, extortion or detention by migration authorities, violence perpetrated by criminals and abuse by deceitful unscrupulous smugglers. The number of lives lost in the Darien Gap, including children and adolescents, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)01635-5">is increasing</a>. </p>
<h2>Cracking down in Costa Rica</h2>
<p>In the past, at least for Venezuelans, it was not necessary to cross the jungle. They were able to travel to Costa Rica, for instance, by air. As many as 12,533 Venezuelans <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/costa-rican-migration-immigrant-integration-policy">applied for refugee status</a> in Costa Rica between 2015 and August 2021. </p>
<p>But to curtail this flow, the Costa Rican government introduced a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2023.100151">visa requirement</a> in 2022 for Venezuelans, forcing people who wished to travel to the country to undertake the dangerous journey through the Darien Gap.</p>
<p>But the problems for Venezuelan asylum-seekers don’t end there. As the migrants and NGO representatives in our study told us, the current wait time for the first eligibility interview with Costa Rican immigration officials is 10 years. The Costa Rican refugee unit is <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/costa-rican-migration-immigrant-integration-policy">severely under-resourced and heavily reliant on international assistance</a>. </p>
<p>Further curtailing refugee rights, Costa Rica introduced <a href="https://www.pgrweb.go.cr/scij/Busqueda/Normativa/Normas/nrm_texto_completo.aspx?param1=NRTC&param2=1&nValor1=1&nValor2=98356&nValor3=133735&strTipM=TC&lResultado=2&nValor4=1&strSelect=sel">reforms in late 2022</a> that prevent asylum-seekers who have travelled through third countries from making refugee claims.</p>
<h2>Nicaraguan refugees</h2>
<p>Ironically, the vast majority of the refugee applications Costa Rica receives today are not from people who cross the Darien Gap. The <a href="https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2023/03/17/nicaragua-on-the-brink-protests-elections-and-mass-atrocity/">political violence and repression in Nicaragua since 2018</a> have propelled many to flee to Costa Rica. </p>
<p>As of June 2022, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/record-emigration-nicaragua-crisis#:%7E:text=The%20erosion%20of%20democracy%20and,of%20the%20Cold%20War%20era.">Costa Rica hosted</a> 205,000 asylum seekers — 89 per cent of them from Nicaragua. </p>
<p>To deter new arrivals from Nicaragua from presenting refugee claims or obtaining the status, the Costa Rican reforms announced on December 2022 changed certain rules and regulations. These measures were criticized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and NGO representatives we interviewed in Costa Rica in 2023. In fact, the <a href="https://delfino.cr/2023/02/sala-iv-condena-al-estado-por-decreto-de-chaves-que-limita-libertad-de-transito-de-refugiados">Costa Rican Supreme Court</a> found some provisions of these reforms unconstitutional.</p>
<h2>The scene in Mexico</h2>
<p>Unlike Costa Rica, Mexico, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/02/02/executive-order-creating-a-comprehensive-regional-framework-to-address-the-causes-of-migration-to-manage-migration-throughout-north-and-central-america-and-to-provide-safe-and-orderly-processing/">under pressure from the U.S.</a>, encourages migrants in transit toward the U.S. border to seek asylum in Mexico. </p>
<p>By the end of 2022, the <a href="https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/792337/Cierre_Diciembre-2022__31-Dic.__1.pdf">number of refugee claimants</a> in Mexico from other Central American countries, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba had reached 120,000. </p>
<p>However, they were forced to remain in the southern state of Chiapas while their claims were reviewed, and the migrants we interviewed reported harassment by official authorities and destitution.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FINAL-Struggling-to-Survive-Asylum-Seekers-in-Tapachula.pdf">Other studies</a> support their claims. Furthermore, most migrants we interviewed in Mexico told us they had no intention of staying in Mexico even if recognized as refugees because they did not consider the country safe.</p>
<h2>U.S., Canada, must step up</h2>
<p>In April 2023, the U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security announced new measures to deport all migrants and asylum-seekers who crossed the southern U.S. border by irregular means. The U.S. also introduced the <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/04/27/fact-sheet-us-government-announces-sweeping-new-actions-manage-regional-migration">Safe Mobility initiative</a> to process applications for admissions submitted in offices set up in Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala.</p>
<p>The U.S. promised to admit up to <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/CHNV">30,000 people</a> a month from <a href="https://movilidadsegura.org/en/">Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba and Haiti</a>. Not only is this protection status temporary — a two-year <a href="https://helpspanish.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1639?language=en_US#:%7E:text=Humanitarian%20Parole%20is%20granted%20to,reason%20or%20significant%20public%20benefit.">humanitarian parole</a> rather than permanent residency — but it’s conditional upon a “supporter” present in the U.S. </p>
<p>Canada’s <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2023/10/statement-from-minister-miller-on-canadas-commitment-to-support-migrants-in-the-americas.html">recent announcement</a> fails to make it clear whether admitting 15,000 displaced people is a one-off measure or whether Canada is setting an annual target.</p>
<p>Regardless, it doesn’t come anywhere close to meeting the needs of the displaced people in the Americas. Canada should consider expanding its refugee resettlement program to assist more asylum-seekers in desperate conditions in this region, not only those with family ties in Canada.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya Basok receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guillermo Candiz receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Migrants who cross the treacherous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia often experience violence and abuse, extortion or detention by migration authorities.Tanya Basok, Professor, Sociology, University of WindsorGuillermo Candiz, Assistant Professor, Human Plurality, Université de l'Ontario françaisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2158502023-10-18T11:22:53Z2023-10-18T11:22:53ZBiden’s Middle East trip has messages for both global and domestic audiences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554537/original/file-20231018-15-5inc0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=89%2C224%2C5901%2C3763&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Biden meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on arriving in Tel Aviv on Oct. 18.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenIsraelPalestinians/a064192aa42449e697f8a41bd2b318eb/photo?Query=biden%20israel&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1416&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to travel to an active war zone and the scene of an unfolding humanitarian crisis spoke volumes, even before his arrival.</p>
<p>The White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/16/statement-from-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-on-president-bidens-travel-to-israel-and-jordan/">has stated</a> that Biden’s purpose is to “demonstrate his steadfast support for Israel” after Hamas’ “brutal terrorist attack” on Oct. 7, 2023. But Israel wasn’t meant to be his only stop. </p>
<p>The president was also scheduled to travel to Amman, Jordan, to meet with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. However, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-jordan-meeting-arab-leaders-cancelled/">the meeting was canceled</a> with Biden already en route to Israel.</p>
<p>The trip is a bold but risky move, a carefully orchestrated display of Biden’s belief that the United States should take an active leadership role in global affairs. It is a strategy Biden has used before, most notably in his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/02/20/world/russia-ukraine-war#heres-how-bidens-visit-to-kyiv-unfolded">February 2023 surprise visit to Ukraine</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Wrt5_qIAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of U.S. presidential rhetoric and political communication</a>, I have spent the past decade studying how chief executives use their international travels to reach audiences at home and abroad. I see clear parallels between Biden’s trip and similar actions by other presidents to extend American influence on the world stage.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Roosevelt sits in the cab of a large steam shovel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Theodore Roosevelt, center, is seated on a steam shovel in the Panama Canal Zone during the first trip abroad by a U.S. chief executive, in November 1906.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Roosevelt_and_the_Canal.JPG">New York Times photo archive/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A paramount duty</h2>
<p>Prior to 1906, no U.S. president had ever traveled abroad while in office. A <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700615803/">long-standing tradition</a> held that the U.S. had left the trappings of monarchy behind, and that it was much more appropriate for chief executives to travel domestically, where Americans lived and worked.</p>
<p>President Theodore Roosevelt, who had an expansive view of presidential power, bemoaned what he called <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/off-for-the-ditch">this “ironclad custom</a>” and ultimately bucked it. In November 1906, Roosevelt visited the Panama Canal Zone and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tr-panama/">posed at the controls of a giant steam shovel</a> to shore up public support for constructing the canal. Beyond pushing this megaproject forward, the trip enabled Roosevelt to see and be seen on the international stage.</p>
<p>Other presidents followed suit as the U.S. began to take a more active role in global affairs. Just before Woodrow Wilson departed for the 1919 Paris Peace Conference at Versailles, where world leaders convened to set the terms for peace after World War I, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/sixth-annual-message-6">he stated in his annual message to Congress</a> that it was his “paramount duty to go” and participate in negotiations that were of “transcendent importance both to us and to the rest of the world.” </p>
<p>During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced this idea of bearing a moral responsibility to speak to, and for, both U.S. citizens and a global audience. Images of FDR seated between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin at <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/96522736/">Tehran</a> and <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a10098/">Yalta</a> symbolized global leadership – a robust vision that endured after the U.S. president’s untimely death.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three world leaders seated side on the porch of a building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soviet leader Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the portico of the Russian Embassy in Tehran, Iran, during their conference, Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a33351/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Embodying US foreign policy</h2>
<p>Going global quickly became <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo186006093.html">a deliberate rhetorical strategy during the Cold War</a>, as presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan used trips abroad to symbolize American commitment to important places and regions. By choosing to visit certain destinations, presidents made clear that these places were important to the U.S. </p>
<p>This is exactly what Biden no doubt hopes to accomplish through his visit to Israel. When he <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-israel-2/">condemned the Hamas attack on Israel</a> as “an act of sheer evil,” he also declared: “We stand with Israel.” Traveling to an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-travel-israel-wednesday-war-hamas-rcna120729">active war zone</a> embodies this pledge far more clearly than words alone.</p>
<p>And this is how Israelis have interpreted the visit. Tzachi Hanegbi, the leader of Israel’s National Security Council, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/17/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza/#link-CDUZASQRRFDMZBBPHUASW47B4I">described the visit</a> as “a bear hug, a large rapid bear hug to the Israelis in the south, to all Israelis, and to every Jew.”</p>
<h2>Addressing both sides</h2>
<p>But Biden must also acknowledge the very real plight of Palestinians who are trapped <a href="https://theconversation.com/decades-of-underfunding-blockade-have-weakened-gazas-health-system-the-siege-has-pushed-it-into-abject-crisis-215679">in dire conditions</a> in Gaza as Israel prepares for a ground invasion. This is no doubt the reason his team sought a face-to-face meeting with Abbas. </p>
<p>I expect that Biden will demonstrate U.S. support for Israel while also drawing a clear distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. And Biden will likely draw on his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/09/20/remarks-by-president-biden-and-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-of-israel-before-bilateral-meeting-new-york-ny/">friendship of many years</a> with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge moderation in Israel’s military response.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wXhf2aYzGbw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden’s trip will embody U.S. commitment to Israel while giving the president an opportunity to moderate its actions.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The home audience</h2>
<p>Biden’s trip also has important meaning for U.S. electoral politics. A former <a href="https://wsp.wharton.upenn.edu/book_author/joe-biden/">chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee</a>, Biden has long maintained that the U.S. must take an active role in the world. In the 2020 presidential campaign, he argued that Donald Trump’s policy of “America First” had <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/11/10/933556440/biden-tells-world-leaders-its-not-america-alone-anymore">left “America alone</a>” by undercutting relationships with critical U.S. allies.</p>
<p>For Jewish voters, the president’s visit offers tangible evidence of an enduring U.S. commitment to Israel, especially after some far-left Democratic lawmakers <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/squad-democrats-israel-hamas-tensions">refused to criticize</a> the Hamas attack. And Biden’s willingness to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-israel-2/">condemn Hamas</a> as a “terrorist organization” may also speak to Republican voters, who are <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/partisan-gap-support-israel-seems-permanent">much more likely</a> to back Israel. </p>
<p>Defining an appropriate role for the U.S. in world affairs is certain to be an important issue in the 2024 presidential election, especially with active conflicts in Ukraine and now in the Middle East. Biden has consistently called for U.S. engagement abroad – not only in words, but by showing up in places like Kiev and Tel Aviv.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allison M. Prasch 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>Until 1906, no US president had ever traveled abroad in office. Then Teddy Roosevelt demonstrated the power of showing up.Allison M. Prasch, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Politics and Culture, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2002402023-02-24T13:12:56Z2023-02-24T13:12:56ZI assisted Carter’s work encouraging democracy – and saw how his experience, persistence and engineer’s mindset helped build a freer Latin America over decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511514/original/file-20230221-28-xfcklt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2048%2C1272&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jimmy Carter answered reporters' election-monitoring questions in Caracas, Venezuela, May 29, 2004. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-answers-questions-during-a-news-photo/481972699?adppopup=true">Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter founded the nonprofit <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/">Carter Center</a> in 1982, one of their goals was to help Latin American countries – many of which were emerging from decades of military dictatorship – transition to democracies.</p>
<p>Already a hero to many in the region for promoting human rights and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/pmextra/dec99/14/panama.htm">giving up U.S. control of the Panama Canal</a> during his presidency, Carter pioneered the center’s international election monitoring and conflict mediation with the work he did in Latin America.</p>
<p>I was on staff of The Carter Center from 1987 to 2015, first as a senior adviser and then as <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/current_qa/jennifer_mccoy_aug2005.html">director of its Americas Program</a>. In those roles, I worked closely with him, often accompanying the former president on trips to Latin America, where he tried to strengthen democracies and achieve peace.</p>
<p>I saw a man with great determination and self-discipline, driven by his faith and confidence that he could make a difference. He was always willing to take risks to tackle seemingly intractable problems.</p>
<p>The Jimmy Carter I remember was results-oriented rather than process-driven. He brought an engineer’s mind to every problem and was ready with possible solutions. He could be stubborn. But he was always willing to make principled decisions, even if they cost him politically.</p>
<p>For example, when – as president in 1977 – he signed the <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/the-panama-canal-treaties-jimmy-carter">Panama Canal Treaties</a> to turn over control of the canal to Panama by 1999, he was heavily criticized by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/08/18/house-opponents-mount-attack-on-panama-treaties/bd42bdad-62e6-4b82-a737-b52bc3845bdf/">many members of Congress</a>. But with the treaties, Carter ended an arrangement that, from 1903, had allowed the U.S. to control the canal and was viewed as colonialism by many Latin Americans.</p>
<p>Since taking over the canal, Panama <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/an-expanded-panama-canal-opens-for-giant-ships/2016/06/26/11a93574-37d1-11e6-af02-1df55f0c77ff_story.html">has expanded its capacity</a>. </p>
<h2>Democracy first</h2>
<p>Carter always believed that negotiation was more fruitful than force. As president, he leaned into this philosophy with the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2151620">Israeli-Egyptian peace accords</a> and did the same thing to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/166260">help Haiti reestablish democracy</a> as leader of The Carter Center.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A gray-haired white man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt shakes the hand of a Black man, who is wearing glasses and a short-sleeved white shirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511516/original/file-20230221-28-ixe603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter greets Haitian presidential candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide on the eve of the Haitian presidential elections in 1990. Carter led an international team of observers that monitored the election process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-greets-haitian-news-photo/481997355?phrase=jimmy%20carter%20in%20haiti&adppopup=true">Thony Belizaire/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In 1994, the U.S. was set to invade Haiti on a <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/haiti">United Nations-approved mission</a> to reinstall the country’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Carter had monitored voting there in 1990, when Haitians elected Aristide. The Haitian leader was ousted in a military coup soon after, though.</p>
<p>When Carter informed President Bill Clinton that Haitian military general <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc218.html">Raoul Cedras had asked for Carter’s help</a> in mediating the crisis and avoiding a U.S. invasion, Clinton allowed for a last-ditch diplomatic effort to seek a solution.</p>
<p>Carter led a team, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, to Haiti on a very short timeline <a href="https://greensboro.com/carter-hailed-for-peace-intervention/article_77ed2622-c529-554b-b352-4d814b8ea07c.html">to negotiate a peaceful end</a> to the situation. With the U.S. forces already en route, the men managed to persuade the generals to accept amnesty and exile to avoid a potentially deadly U.S. invasion. </p>
<h2>The Carter art of mediation</h2>
<p>In my view, Carter’s genius as a mediator is his belief that there is some innate goodness in every person, no matter the harm they may perpetrate. He strove to develop a connection with even the most detestable dictators because he knew their decisions could change the future of a society. Once he had a relationship with those leaders, he presented them with the hard choices they needed to make. And he always kept his compass. He focused on the well-being of the people in the countries he was helping, not his personal successes or failures.</p>
<p>His approach opened him to criticism that he <a href="https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19940926&slug=1932656">cozied up to dictators</a>. But, to me, he just exercised realism and persistence. </p>
<p>The Sandinista revolutionary government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, came to power during the Carter presidency, when a broad coalition overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza. </p>
<p>The Reagan administration responded to Ortega’s Sandinista government by imposing an <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993096">economic embargo and supporting a counterinsurgency</a> from rebel forces known as the Contras. President Ortega needed help to end that conflict and believed that he could gain international legitimacy and pressure the U.S. to change its policy if he held internationally monitored elections. So, Ortega invited The Carter Center, the U.N. and the Organization of American States to mount an <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1153.pdf">unprecedented election-monitoring mission</a> that ended up terminating the Sandinista revolution.</p>
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<span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter and Jennifer Lynn McCoy, to his left, speak with members of the signature’s checking board, May 29, 2004, in Caracas. Carter served as an observer as Venezuelans sought a referendum to recall President Hugo Chavez.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-speaks-with-members-of-the-news-photo/50909679?adppopup=true">Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>I was The Carter Center’s field representative in Managua at the time. The former president had developed his relationship with Ortega over the course of five trips to Nicaragua during the election campaign in 1989 to 1990, mediating disputes along the way. But election night was the most important moment. The initial vote count reports mysteriously stopped, and around midnight Carter went to see Ortega, along with the U.N. and OAS representatives. Carter told him that our data indicated the Sandinista-backed candidate had lost and that Ortega should acknowledge the loss and take credit for the democratic elections and everything the Sandinista revolution had accomplished.</p>
<p>Ortega acceded and the next day we accompanied him as he visited <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=k8hWsuZNb-YC&oi=fnd&pg=PP13&dq=violeta+chamorro+president&ots=_2eCRJqBxb&sig=QWqlOs-d8UVF2__KtvdwN0bXrXM#v=onepage&q=violeta%20chamorro%20president&f=false">President-elect Violeta Chamorro’s house</a> to congratulate her on her victory.</p>
<h2>He was persistent</h2>
<p>But Carter didn’t stop there, knowing the transition would be rocky. He gathered the two sides together in my little house in Managua and, sitting on rocking chairs on the patio, he negotiated a three-point agreement to frame the transition’s most difficult points – confiscated property and land reform, the integrity of the security forces and demobilization of the Contras. </p>
<p>Another time Carter’s persistence paid off was <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2023.html">in Venezuela</a>. That country’s democracy became unmoored with plummeting oil prices and hyperinflation in the 1990s, and The Carter Center was <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-12-15-1998349030-story.html">invited to monitor the 1998 elections</a>, which populist outsider <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Venezuela/The-Hugo-Chavez-presidency">Hugo Chávez</a> won.</p>
<p>After a failed military coup attempted to oust him in 2002, a shaken Chávez asked Carter to mediate between him and his political opposition. We partnered with the U.N. and OAS to form a tripartite mediating group – the OAS secretary general, trusted by the opposition; Carter, trusted by Chávez; and the U.N. as a neutral party providing background support.</p>
<p>Although the opposition was initially skeptical of Carter, given that he was invited by Chávez, it came to value Carter’s entree with Chávez and held high expectations he could hold Chávez to any commitments.</p>
<p>When an eventual agreement led to a recall referendum petition process, Carter forcefully pushed a stalling Chávez and his team to acknowledge that the opposition had gathered sufficient signatures to hold the referendum to decide whether to end Chávez’s term early.</p>
<p>But when the vote finally happened in August 2004, Chávez had managed to <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177518">turn the tide in his favor</a> in the opinion polls by spending on social programs. He won the vote decisively. The opposition alleged the vote count was fraudulent, while the <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2023.html">OAS and The Carter Center audits of the count did not detect fraud</a>. I received many messages from irate Venezuelans blaming Carter and me for ignoring fraud and allowing Chávez to continue in power in Venezuela. </p>
<p>I learned then what a thick skin a public figure must have to withstand the fury of severely disappointed people.</p>
<p>I have always admired Carter for the countless controversial decisions he made over the years. And I believe he will be remembered for his vision of a free and peaceful world and his willingness to tackle seemingly insurmountable problems with high risk of failure.</p>
<p>His interventions at key moments helped save lives – and encouraged Latin American democracy, at least for a time. And his center’s ongoing, lower-profile programs that promote citizens’ <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/ati/index.html">rights to information</a>, <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/democracy/index.html">election integrity</a>, <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/health/index.html">mental and public health</a> and media freedom have made life better for people in many countries in the hemisphere.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A suited, smiling gray-haired man walks on stage, with his left hand raised high, as he waves to the audience before him. Behind him, a large video screen captures his actions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter takes the stage during the Democratic National Convention in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-u-s-president-jimmy-carter-walks-on-stage-during-day-news-photo/82547453?adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Lynn McCoy is professor of political science at Georgia State University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was Associate Director and Senior Associate from 1987-1998 and Director of the Carter Center's Americas Program from 1998-2015.</span></em></p>A former staffer with The Carter Center saw how Jimmy Carter’s efforts to bring democracy to Latin America improved conditions, prevented bloodshed and saved lives.Jennifer Lynn McCoy, Professor of Political Science, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1691922021-10-04T14:21:14Z2021-10-04T14:21:14ZPandora papers: ‘it’s time to pursue lawyers and accountants who enable tax evasion’ – offshore tax expert Q&A<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425536/original/file-20211008-22-10i6w5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C15%2C2499%2C1468&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's inside the box?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/greek-mythology-pandora-opening-box-1858047022">delcarmat/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Many of the world’s richest and most powerful people are in the spotlight once more for using secretive tax havens and corporate structures to hide wealth and avoid paying taxes. The Pandora papers is the third in a series of huge leaks of documents to the media following the <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/">Panama papers</a> in 2016 and the <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/">Paradise papers</a> in 2017 – and little seems to have changed in the interim.</em> </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-biggest-ever-leak-of-offshore-data-exposes-financial-secrets-of-rich-and-powerful">Those included</a> so far in the new revelations include the leaders of the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Jordan and Ukraine, plus members of the ruling family in Azerbaijan and figures close to Vladimir Putin. In all, more than 100 billionaires are reportedly involved in the revelations, with transactions ranging from properties worth millions of pounds to slush funds and superyachts.</em></p>
<p><em>We asked Professor Ronen Palan, a specialist in offshore tax havens at City, University of London, about the story so far.</em></p>
<p><strong>What are your initial thoughts?</strong></p>
<p>I’m afraid I’m not surprised by these papers. There’s no evidence to suggest that the volume of transactions taking place through these offshore centres is declining, so the same financial structures that we heard about in the Panama and Paradise papers are still clearly being used. </p>
<p>It’s fascinating that so many of these people in the public eye must have known that eventually their activities would become common knowledge, and yet they opted for offshore secrecy anyway. I suppose any concerns may be overcome perhaps by greed and the knowledge that they will not be prevented from doing it. </p>
<p>In some cases we are talking about (illegal) tax evasion and in some cases it’s (legal) tax avoidance: the difference comes down to whether the people in question had fully notified the authorities in their home countries about the offshore structures they are using. In instances when I read that they are asked by the media to comment and they decline to respond, it creates the appearance that we are talking about evasion – although this remains unproven. </p>
<p><strong>Why does the situation not appear to be improving?</strong></p>
<p>Over the past 20 or 30 years, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/tax/beps/">international regulation</a> has <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/common-consolidated-corporate-tax-base-ccctb_en">focused on</a> creating tools <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-tax-compliance-act-fatca">that allow</a> tax authorities to ensure that taxpayers are not evading taxation. Systems were introduced that focus on “know your customer” or KYC – requiring people transacting in particular jurisdictions to fully identify themselves so that this information can be shared with other jurisdictions. </p>
<p>This essentially creates transparency so that you know who has money where, so that tax authorities can use this information to make sure that their citizens are not evading taxation. But while that can be effective in countries where the tax authority is operating independently of the government and politics, it’s not going to work in Russia or China or many other developing countries. It’s therefore not surprising to me that many of the revelations are about activities outside of the developed world.</p>
<p><strong>But why hasn’t transparency forced tax havens to change?</strong></p>
<p>It has brought about change, but some jurisdictions comply more than others. So you have got some British jurisdictions such as Jersey or the Cayman Islands that are much more transparent than they used to be. On the face of it, they can claim to be more regulated than, say, Denmark or Sweden. </p>
<p>But the professionals who have the expertise to create structures that enable tax evasion are still often based in these places, and they create structures with different layers that will be partly registered in these jurisdictions but partly in those with looser transparency rules such as the British Virgin Islands or Panama – following the letter but not the spirit of the law. This makes it very difficult to see what is happening and whose money is involved. </p>
<p><strong>How do we improve the current situation?</strong></p>
<p>The Pandora papers show we are reaching the limits of what can be done with data transparency. Unless we find ways to tighten the net, this won’t be the last leak of its kind. This <a href="https://www.oecd.org/tax/crime/ending-the-shell-game-cracking-down-on-the-professionals-who-enable-tax-and-white-collar-crimes.htm">is recognised</a> at least implicitly by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development) and <a href="https://coffers.eu/">other international bodies</a> in their increasing interest in going after the enablers, rather than just focusing on the tax evaders themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Professionals in the dusk with the sun behind them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424482/original/file-20211004-13-nu2mv7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Meet the enablers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/business-people-travel-beach-trip-airport-245944036">RawPixel.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Maybe it’s time to create something similar to what applies in medicine, so that, if enablers contravene certain standards, they can be prosecuted – even in countries who are not directly affected by their activities. If they went to such a country, they could be arrested on arrival. </p>
<p><strong>Should we create a new international institution dedicated to stamping out tax evasion?</strong></p>
<p>In practical terms, the three places that matter when it comes to creating international regulations are the US, EU and China. Unfortunately they are not agreeing with one another on much right now, so it will be difficult to reach an agreement about such an institution. Even if they did agree, they would be accused of imperialism by smaller countries, or of acting as dictators. </p>
<p>Of course, these three players would still need to agree on an initiative to really go after enablers, so you can make the same criticism of this strategy, but it is at least more modest in its scope and therefore potentially more realistic. </p>
<p><strong>Are all these revelations actually helpful?</strong></p>
<p>There’s certainly a danger of media saturation, in which the public knows about these kinds of activities and may be less interested by now. But we need to emphasise that the consequences are not going away: to run a modern state, it’s very expensive. To pay for a good education system, a good health system, properly functioning infrastructure and so forth, somebody has to pay for it. </p>
<p>If the rich are avoiding paying their share, somebody else is picking up the tab, and that’s either the poor or the squeezed middle classes. So if the public are tired of all this scandal, it doesn’t change the fact that they are suffering because of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronen Palan receives funding from the European Commission's Horizon 2020 fund, European Research Council Advanced Grant, and the OECD. Ronen Palan is a senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network</span></em></p>The latest instalment of leaks about the super-rich using offshore tax havens to hide their wealth has been published.Ronen Palan, Professor of International Politics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1474832020-10-06T15:29:30Z2020-10-06T15:29:30ZSouth America is filled with mammals of North American origin but not vice versa – and scientists have figured out why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361893/original/file-20201006-22-14f4yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1217%2C655&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sabre-tooth tiger _Smilodon_ meets the South American marsupial, _Thylacosmilus_. This is a classic image of supposedly 'superior northerners' outcompeting 'inferior southerners', but such meetings actually rarely happened as many of the southern species had already gone extinct.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.deviantart.com/hodarinundu/art/Rise-of-Smilodon-857030784?ga_submit_new=10%3A1601778829">'The rise of Smilodon', Hodari Nundu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We think of today’s South American mammals as being very different from North America’s. But almost half of the southern mammals actually have ancestors of relatively recent North American origin, including such familiar beasts as llamas or tapirs. In contrast, only a paltry few southerners made it past the Central American tropics and into the rest of North America, including armadillos, porcupines and opossums.</p>
<p>This mysterious asymmetry has been newly addressed by an international team of scientists, headed by Juan Carrillo of the French Museum of Natural History, using sophisticated statistics and a database of around 20,000 fossils. Their findings, now published in the journal <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009397117">PNAS</a>, are illuminating and unexpected. </p>
<p>First, some history of the science. For most of the past 200 million years North and South America were separated by an ocean and housed their own distinct and separately evolving faunas. However, as tectonic plates shifted and underwater volcanoes erupted, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-events-in-panama-created-the-modern-world-millions-of-years-ago-58357">Isthmus of Panama emerged</a> from the sea around 3 million years ago. This formed a land bridge that allowed for animal migration in both directions: this was the Great American Biotic Interchange, one of the classic examples of intercontinental exchange in evolutionary history.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing the Great American Biotic Interchange." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361877/original/file-20201006-22-19yd99d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Camels, pigs and cats moved south, while armadillos and sloths moved north – with less success.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/89812.php?from=293350">Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before the interchange mammals on the two continents were very different. North American mammals were not too dissimilar to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, but the South American ones were more distinct. Unique to that continent were xenarthrans (tree sloths, anteaters and armadillos), indigenous types of ungulates (hoofed mammals), and marsupial carnivores (sparassodonts). Today, only some smaller forms survive among the original natives – opossums (marsupials) and xenarthrans – along with monkeys and certain rodents (ancestors of forms like capybaras) that migrated there from Africa some 40 million years ago.</p>
<p>The migrating mammals included many that are now extinct such as giant ground sloths, and the immigrants diversified profusely on both continents. But the interchange eventually favoured the northerners who moved south and came to dominate the South American fauna. So why did the southerners falter?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four llamas pose for the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361719/original/file-20201005-20-ew0v44.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">Llamas are descended from now-extinct camelids that lived on the plains of North America.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Noe Besso / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A century or more ago this asymmetry was seen as an example of “superior northerners” outcompeting “inferior southerners”, a relic of the dubious history of human colonialism. Since then, science has become more civilised and four main explanatory hypotheses (not necessarily mutually exclusive) have been proposed. Each has found support in previous, less comprehensive, studies.</p>
<p>Two hypotheses consider the issue to be a greater movement of mammals from north to south than vice versa – either a greater rate of dispersal, or a larger pool of northern mammals to make the journey. Two other hypotheses propose different fates of the immigrants – either the northerners diversified more in the south, or the southerners eventually suffered more extinctions on both continents.</p>
<p>When the Carrillo-led team used their new data and techniques to test the different hypotheses, they found that only one could be supported: the greater extinction of the originally South American mammals. But their results had a surprising twist. While scientists had previously focused on the extinctions at the end of the last ice age – such as the elephant-sized <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04/29/you-just-missed-the-last-ground-sloths/">giant ground sloths</a> that only went extinct as recently as 10,000 years ago – the new analysis targeted a much earlier wave of extinctions, one starting millions of years earlier. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Large sloth skeleton." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361885/original/file-20201006-22-1hci36u.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">Giant ground sloths could weigh up to 4 tonnes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/95903385@N03/32930387563">jimbohne / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Climatic change over the past 12 million years or so, from a warmer world to the cooler, ice-age world of the relatively recent past, affected mammals across the world. But it seems that South American mammals were particularly badly affected by around 5 million years ago. Thus, when the possibility to migrate to and from North America presented itself, extinctions had already reduced the pool of available travellers from south to north. </p>
<p>The sparassodonts and native ungulates were already largely gone. Their extinction was originally blamed on competition with the newly-arriving northerners, but better data and analyses inform us that the supposed competitors probably never even met. The abundance of South American carnivores today, including the fox-on-stilts maned wolf, the otter-cat jaguarundi and the lemur-like kinkajou, is not testament to placental carnivores being superior to marsupial counterparts: rather, their ancestors invaded essentially virgin territory, which the previous occupants had already vacated, and then diversified into wonderous new forms.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Orange fox-like animal with long legs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361685/original/file-20201005-22-trd6uz.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">Fox-on-stilts: the maned wolf isn’t actually a wolf or even a fox.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vladislav T. Jirousek / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This new study provides a better understanding of the dynamics of the Great American Biotic Interchange. It gives us an explanation for the predominance of originally northern mammals in present-day South America, and it aids our understanding of biodiversity and species distributions. But, like all good science, it leaves us with further questions: why were the earlier mammal extinctions in South America so devastating? Hopefully Carrillo and co. will next turn their plethora of fossil data and analytical wizardry to this intriguing issue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Janis 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>Why were mammals travelling south through newly-formed Panama so much more successful than those heading north?Christine Janis, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1447692020-09-24T13:15:07Z2020-09-24T13:15:07ZHow US disease control shaped colonial power politics in the Caribbean<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357951/original/file-20200914-20-1lm7f26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C58%2C2959%2C2110&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A yellow fever ward in Havana in 1899. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mens-ward-yellow-fever-hospital-havana-787303600">Everett Collection/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A year ago, it would have seemed bizarre to suggest that a virus could reorder the global balance of power. But today, many are wondering whether the US failure to manage COVID-19 and the aggressive moves of the Chinese in the wake of their relative success in controlling the disease, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-03-18/coronavirus-could-reshape-global-order">marks a turning point in international relations</a>.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t be the first time that epidemics shaped geopolitics. When the US first emerged as an international power at the start of the 20th century, expanding into the Caribbean and Central America, disease control played a crucial part in its rise. Epidemics pulled the US into the region and weakened the European powers they were displacing. </p>
<p>In the late 19th century, outbreaks of yellow fever spread across the southern states of the US with devastating regularity, causing havoc and destruction. A particularly vicious case in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44450733">1878 in the Mississippi delta</a> caused mass flight from cities, economic destruction and tens of thousands of deaths. </p>
<p>Many Americans believed these epidemics originated in the black waters and unplumbed streets of Spanish-controlled Havana, closely connected through steamship commerce to the southern US, although the weakness of American sanitation at the time was also partly to blame. Efforts to quarantine US ports and disinfect vessels from Cuba failed to control the spread.</p>
<h2>Spanish plight</h2>
<p>Epidemic diseases, including yellow fever and malaria, were also weakening the Spanish grip on its Caribbean colonies. In 1895, Cuban rebels rose up against the Spanish crown and for three years fought a bitter struggle for independence. Spanish soldiers <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mosquito_Empires.html?id=rr7YuYU7ZZ8C&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">lacked the immunity built up by local inhabitants</a> and by 1898 over 90% of their military deaths were due to disease rather than combat. Around half of Spain’s soldiers on the island were incapacitated.</p>
<p>Observing this, the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo8056086.html">US government concluded</a> that only putting an end to Spanish colonial rule would resolve the threat of tropical disease – and so it declared war on Spain. In the Spanish-American War of 1898 that followed, the Spanish forces, progressively weakened from fighting the Cuban insurgency, were quickly defeated, and the US seized Spain’s colonies in the Caribbean and Asia: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.</p>
<p>During the subsequent occupation of Cuba, the US put disease control front and centre. As well as hoping to reduce the spread of yellow fever within the US, this was also a response to their soldiers’ experiences during the Spanish-American war. Within weeks of landing, the expeditionary force had been nearly crippled by tropical disease, just as the Spanish had been. Disease control was also a vital tool for international propaganda, suggesting that the US could deliver a healthier future than European imperialism.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1172526528959320064"}"></div></p>
<h2>Panama canal</h2>
<p>Epidemiology and international relations also intersected in Panama, which in 1903 the US <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uVaeIXMxJpQC">successfully conspired to separate from Colombia</a>. </p>
<p>Panama was a major international trading route, but also notoriously unhealthy. The French had attempted to build a canal there in the 1880s, but couldn’t cope with <a href="http://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/panama-canal/french-panama-canal-failure.html">the hundreds of workers</a> dying a month from yellow fever, malaria and other diseases. News of the carnage travelled back to Europe and made it harder to recruit new workers.</p>
<p>In particular, French doctors and officials did not fully understand the role of mosquitoes in disease transmission. Unable to combat the spread, the project collapsed. When the Americans arrived in 1904 to begin their own canal-building effort, they found the rusting hulks of French machinery scattered across the country, the might of modern industry laid low by some of the tiniest organisms in nature.</p>
<p>At first, the US suffered from the same problems as the French, losing thousands of workers. However, it threw huge amounts of economic, scientific and human capital at the problem. Work conducted by both Cuban and US scientists, including Major Walter Reed, after whom the US Army’s <a href="https://tricare.mil/mtf/walterreed">flagship medical centre</a> is today named, began to improve understanding of the mechanics of disease transmission. This led to new models of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/529265">disease control for Panama</a>.</p>
<h2>Targeting mosquitoes</h2>
<p>The scale of this enterprise made America’s rivals sit up. The US targeted muddy ditches, stagnant pools of water, railroad sidings and other places where mosquito larvae were laid, spraying them with oil and chemicals. It also cut back huge areas of brush around living areas along the canal zone.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man spraying grass by a tree for mosquitoes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357948/original/file-20200914-16-1ydmlz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mosquito exterminator in the Panama Canal zone around 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Panama_Canal_Zone,_mosquito_exterminator_LOC_14798766631.jpg">Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The effort was far from perfect. In typical military fashion, the quartermaster’s department was more interested in maintaining perfectly crew-cut, manicured lawns around the officers’ buildings than cutting back the longer and more dangerous grasslands around the residences of lower-status American workers. In line with the racist beliefs of the time, Afro-Caribbean workers, who had been brought over in their thousands to work on the canal, were left to fend for themselves.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, improved scientific understanding of disease transmission helped the US succeed where the French had failed. When the canal opened in 1914, their triumph was as much an epidemiological success as a technological and organisational achievement.</p>
<p>In Cuba and Panama, disease control was a crucial theatre in the struggle for geopolitical supremacy. Then, as now, epidemics turned the microscope on the health of nations. Time will tell whether we will look back on our current time as a similar moment of transition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144769/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Goodall 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>Will the COVID-19 pandemic change the global balance of power? It wouldn’t be the first time.Alex Goodall, Senior Lecturer in International History, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1090572018-12-19T15:42:57Z2018-12-19T15:42:57ZThe animal world is still awesome: 3 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251356/original/file-20181218-27752-b81gpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some tropical frogs may be developing resistance to a fungus that has devastated species like _Atelopus varius_, the variable harlequin frog.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelopus_varius#/media/File:Atelopus_varius_1.jpg">Brian Gratwicke/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: As we come to the end of the year, Conversation editors take a look back at the stories that – for them – exemplified 2018.</em> </p>
<p>As the effects of climate change become more apparent and widespread, it’s easy to feel that our species is the biggest threat to life on Earth. Indeed, one recent study warned that extreme environmental change could cause an “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35068-1">extinction domino effect</a>,” in which one species dies out, then another species that depends on it, and so on. </p>
<p>When headlines like this seem overwhelming, I remind myself that scholars are still learning about all kinds of amazing life forms. Here are three 2018 stories that remind us how awesome the animal world is.</p>
<h2>1. Madagascar’s ultra-elusive fossa</h2>
<p>If Americans have even heard of fossa (<em>Cryptoprocta ferox</em>), a catlike carnivore found only on Madagascar, it’s usually from the animated <em>Madagascar</em> movies. Fossa are the island’s real-life apex predator, but are so rare and hard to track that scientists know very little about them – even how many there are. </p>
<p>Penn State University doctoral candidate <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1sKwZagAAAAJ&hl=en">Asia Murphy</a> was part of a seven-year project that <a href="https://theconversation.com/caught-on-camera-the-fossa-madagascars-elusive-top-predator-99172">documented fossa numbers with camera traps</a>. By focusing on features like scars, ear nicks, and tail width and kinkiness, scientists could pick out certain fossa from the population and “follow” them from one camera to another. Their survey data and population density estimates will support habitat protection efforts. </p>
<p>“In all of this time, I never personally saw a fossa, but two local field assistants saw fossa in the trees once or twice,” Murphy writes. She’d like to see these animals get more attention from the conservation world, and suggests that it’s time for #FossaFriday.</p>
<h2>2. Forests at the bottom of the sea</h2>
<p>Scientists go to many extremes to find life forms. In August, a research expedition off the coast of South Carolina found a huge series of coldwater coral “forests,” covering about 85 miles, in water more than three miles deep. </p>
<p>Coldwater corals “are <a href="https://theconversation.com/deepwater-corals-thrive-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-but-cant-escape-human-impacts-104211">just as ecologically important as their shallow water counterparts</a>,” writes Florida State University research scientist <a href="https://www.marinelab.fsu.edu/people/faculty/sandra-brooke">Sandra Brooke</a>, who was on the cruise and went down in the <a href="http://www.whoi.edu/main/hov-alvin">Alvin submersible</a> to see coral formations on the ocean floor. </p>
<p>Unlike shallow-water corals, which get much of their energy from sunlight, deepwater corals feed on organic material and zooplankton that drift to them on ocean currents. They grow extremely slowly: One black coral is estimated to be more than 4,200 years old. Industrial fishing, offshore drilling and seabed mining could damage deepsea reefs before they’re even mapped – all the more reason, Brooke asserts, to get out and find them now.</p>
<h2>3. Fending off frog plague?</h2>
<p>In recent years a chytrid pathogen abbreviated as Bd has caused mass dieoffs of frog populations around the world. But in a study published in March 2018, Vanderbilt University biologist <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu/biosci/bio/louise-rollins-smith">Louise Rollins-Smith</a> and others reported that some tropical frogs in Panama appeared to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-tropical-frogs-may-be-developing-resistance-to-a-deadly-fungal-disease-but-now-salamanders-are-at-risk-95706">developing improved skin defenses</a> against Bd – big news for amphibian researchers. </p>
<p>“Many amphibians have granular glands in their skin that synthesize and sequester antimicrobial peptides and other defensive molecules,” Rollins-Smith explains. “When the animal is alarmed or injured, the defensive molecules are released to cleanse and protect the skin.” Scientists don’t know how, but these defenses seemed to improve after Bd entered some frog communities. </p>
<p>Alarmingly, a second chytrid fungus, abbreviated as Bsal, has emerged in Europe and is thought to seriously threaten salamanders. Scholars are urging the U.S. government to suspend all imports of frogs and salamanders until this new threat is better understood. Yet more reason to keep learning about wild species, seen and unseen, all around us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A look at new research published in 2018 on fossa, deepsea corals and tropical frogs developing resistance to a deadly fungus.Jennifer Weeks, Senior Environment + Cities Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935362018-04-16T22:37:52Z2018-04-16T22:37:52ZThe Panama Canal’s forgotten casualties<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214820/original/file-20180413-46652-qfl5wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Panama Canal construction in 1913 showing workers drilling holes for dynamite in bedrock, as they cut through the mountains of the Isthmus. Steam shovels in the background move the rubble to railroad cars. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Everett Historical/Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was the greatest infrastructure project the world had ever seen. When the 77 kilometre-long Panama Canal officially opened in 1914, after 10 years of construction, it fulfilled a vision that had tempted people for centuries, but had long seemed impossible. </p>
<p>“Never before has man dreamed of taking such liberties with nature,” <a href="https://archive.org/stream/panamacanalcount00bulluoft#page/46/">wrote journalist Arthur Bullard</a> in awe.</p>
<p>But the project, which employed more than 40,000 labourers, also took immense liberties with human life. Thousands of workers were killed. <a href="https://www.pancanal.com/eng/general/canal-faqs/index.html">The official number is 5,609</a>, but many historians think the real toll was several times higher. Hundreds, if not thousands, more were permanently injured.</p>
<p>How did the United States government, which was responsible for the project, reconcile this tremendous achievement with the staggering cost to human lives and livelihoods? </p>
<p>They handled it the same way governments still do today: They doled out a combination of triumphant rhetoric and just enough philanthropy to keep critics at bay. </p>
<h2>U.S. engineering might</h2>
<p>From the outset, the Canal project was supposed to cash in on the exceptionalism of American power and ability. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214818/original/file-20180413-543-1cddkub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Work crew drilling through solid rock to create the Panama Canal, Panama, 1906.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Everett Historical/Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The French had tried — and failed — to build a canal in the 1880s, finally giving in after years of fighting a recalcitrant landscape, ferocious disease, the deaths of some 20,000 workers and spiralling costs. But the U.S., which purchased the French company’s equipment, promised they would do it differently. </p>
<p>First, the U.S. government tried to broker a deal with Colombia, which controlled the land they needed for construction. When that didn’t work, the U.S. backed Panama’s separatist rebellion and quickly signed an agreement with the new country, allowing the Americans to take full control of a 16 kilometre-wide Canal Zone.</p>
<p>The Isthmian Canal Commission, which managed the project, started by working aggressively to discipline the landscape and its inhabitants. They drained swamps, killed mosquitoes and initiated a whole-scale sanitation project. A new police force, schools and hospitals would also bring the region to what English geographer Vaughan Cornish celebrated as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1777369">“marvellous respectability</a>.” </p>
<h2>A path of destruction</h2>
<p>But this was just the beginning. The world’s largest dam had to be built to control the temperamental Chagres river and furnish power for the Canal’s lock system. It would also create massive Gatún Lake, which would provide transit for more a third of the distance between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. </p>
<p>The destruction was devastating. Whole villages and forests were flooded, and a railway constructed in the 1850s had to be relocated.</p>
<p>The greatest challenge of all was the Culebra Cut, now known as the Gaillard Cut, an artificial valley excavated through some 13 kilometres of mountainous terrain. </p>
<p>More than <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=AN4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA806">100 million cubic metres</a> of dirt had to be moved; the work consumed more than <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41807/41807-h/41807-h.htm">eight million kilograms</a> of dynamite in three years alone.</p>
<p>Imagine digging a trench more than 90 metres wide, and 10 storeys deep, over the length of something like 130 football fields. In temperatures that were often well over 30 degrees Celsius, with sometimes torrential rains. And with equipment from 1910: Dynamite, picks and coal-fired steam shovels.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214817/original/file-20180413-577-1lp4p5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Loading shot holes with dynamite to blast a slide of rock in the west bank of the Culebra Cut, February 1912.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2015/01/27/part-i-how-to-use-panama-canal-personnel-records-at-the-national-archives-my-grandfather-worked-on-the-panama-canal/">(National Archives at St. Louis/local Identifier 185-G-154)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Expendable labour</h2>
<p>The celebratory rhetoric masked horrifying conditions. </p>
<p>The Panama Canal was built by thousands of contract workers, mostly from the Caribbean. To them, the Culebra Cut was “Hell’s Gorge.”</p>
<p>They lived like second-class citizens, subject to a Jim Crow-like regime, with bad food, long hours and low pay. And constant danger.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, filmmaker Roman Foster went looking for these workers; most of the survivors were in their 90s.</p>
<p>Only a few copies of Fosters’s film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4353328/?ref_=nv_sr_5">Diggers (1984)</a> can be found in libraries around the world today. But it contains some of the only first-hand testimony of what it was like to dig through the spiny backbone of Panama in the name of the U.S. empire.</p>
<p>Constantine Parkinson was one of the workers who told his story to Foster, his voice firm but his face barely able to look at the camera. </p>
<p>He started work on the canal at 15 years old; like many, he may have lied about his age. He was soon a brakeman, probably on a train carrying rocks to a breakwater. On July 16, 1913, a day he would never forget, he lost his right leg, and his left heel was crushed. </p>
<p>Parkinson explains that his grandmother went to the Canal’s chief engineer, George Goethals, to ask for some sort of assistance. As Parkinson tells it, Goethals’s response was simple: “My dear lady, Congress did not pass any law … to get compensation when [the workers] [lose limbs]. However, not to fret. Your grandson will be taken care of as soon as he [is able to work], even in a wheelchair.”</p>
<p>Goethals was only partly right. </p>
<p>At the outset, the U.S. government had essentially no legislation in place to protect the tens of thousands of foreign workers from Barbados, Jamaica, Spain and elsewhere. Administrators like Goethals were confident that the labourers’ economic desperation would prevent excessive agitation. </p>
<p>For the most part, their gamble worked. Though there were scandals over living conditions, injuries seem to have been accepted as a matter of course, and the administration’s charity expanded only slowly, providing the minimum necessary to get men back to work.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214816/original/file-20180413-560-d6nlc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Placing granite in the hollow quoin. Dry Dock No. 1, Balboa, June 21, 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2015/01/27/part-i-how-to-use-panama-canal-personnel-records-at-the-national-archives-my-grandfather-worked-on-the-panama-canal/">(National Archives at St. Louis/local Identifier 185-HR-4-26J164)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cold comfort</h2>
<p>In 1908, after several years of construction, the Isthmian Canal Commission finally began to apply more specific compensation policies. They also contracted New York manufacturer A.A. Marks to supply artificial limbs to men injured while on duty, supposedly <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BD67cpjqK_cC&pg=PA425">“irrespective of colour, nationality, or character of work engaged in.”</a> </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214782/original/file-20180413-570-187oqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A. A. Marks advertising card, showing a customer holding and wearing his artificial legs, late 1800s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/lifeandlimb/honorablescars.html">U.S. National Library of Medicine/courtesy Warshaw Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were, however, caveats to this administrative largesse: the labourer could not be to blame for his injury, and the interpretation of <a href="https://archive.org/stream/panamacanalrecor02isth#page/224">“in the performance of … duty”</a> was usually strict, excluding the many injuries incurred on the labour trains that were essential to moving employees to and from their work sites. </p>
<p>Despite all of these restrictions, by 1912, A.A. Marks had supplied more than <a href="https://archive.org/stream/historyofthepana028652mbp#page/n613">200 artificial limbs</a>. The company had aggressively courted the Canal Commission’s business, and they were delighted with the payoff. </p>
<p>A.A. Marks even took out a full-page ad for their products in <em>The New York Sun</em>, celebrating, in strangely cheerful tones, how their limbs helped the many men who met with “accidents, premature blasts, railroad cars.” They also placed similar advertisements in medical journals. </p>
<p>But this compensation was still woefully inadequate, and many men fell through its deliberately wide cracks. Their stories are hard to find, but the National Archives in College Park, Md., hold a handful. </p>
<p>Wilfred McDonald, who was probably from Jamaica or Barbados, told his story in a letter to the Canal administrators on May 25, 1913:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have ben Serveing the ICC [Isthmian Canal Commission] and the PRR [Panama Railroad] in the caypasoity as Train man From the yea 1906 until my misfawchin wich is 1912. Sir without eny Fear i am Speaking Nothing But the Truth to you, I have no claim comeing to me. But for mercy Sake I am Beging you To have mercy on me By Granting me a Pair of legs for I have lost both of my Natrals. I has a Mother wich is a Whido, and too motherless childrens which During The Time when i was working I was the only help to the familys.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can still hear McDonald’s voice through his writing. He signed his letter “Truley Sobadenated Clyante,” testifying all too accurately to his position in the face of the Canal Zone’s imposing bureaucracy and unforgiving policies.</p>
<p>With a drop in sugar prices, much of the Caribbean was in the middle of a deep economic depression in the early 1900s, with many workers struggling even to reach subsistence; families like McDonald’s relied on remittances. But his most profound “misfortune” may have been that his injury was deemed to be his own fault. </p>
<p>Legally, McDonald was entitled to nothing. The Canal Commission eventually decided that he was likely to become a public charge without some sort of help, so they provided him with the limbs he requested, but they were also clear that his case was not to set a precedent. </p>
<p>Other men were not so lucky. Many were deported, and some ended up working on a charity farm attached to the insane asylum. A few of the old men in Foster’s film wipe away tears, almost unable to believe that they survived at all. </p>
<p>Their blood and bodies paid mightily for the dream of moving profitable goods and military might through a reluctant landscape. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dnfz8e0ij7U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Construction of the Panama Canal [1913-1914], 1937 (Reel 1-5 of 5), Office of the Chief Signal Officer, National Archives and Records Administration.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93536/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Lieffers receives funding from Yale University, SSHRC, and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.</span></em></p>The Panama Canal was a tremendous achievement by the U.S. and a display of their power and abilities. However, the health costs to the mostly Caribbean contract workers was enormous.Caroline Lieffers, PhD Candidate, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/738992017-03-29T01:44:38Z2017-03-29T01:44:38ZThe rise of anti-immigrant attitudes, violence and nationalism in Costa Rica<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163011/original/image-20170328-3819-u1inbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Workers wash freshly harvested bananas on a banana plantation near Parrita, Costa Rica.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Kent Gilbert</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Costa Rica is often thought of as the “Switzerland of the Americas.” </p>
<p>With a stable democracy and no standing army, the small Central American country of 4.8 million is often referred to as the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569320701682542">“exception”</a> to the conflict, violence and poverty faced in other Latin American countries. In particular, Costa Ricans pride themselves on their strong health care and education systems.</p>
<p>But Costa Ricans have increasingly faced social and economic challenges that threaten their exceptional status. In response, many Costa Ricans have projected their anxieties onto immigrants. </p>
<p>In 2005, a Costa Rican congressman named Ricardo Toledo gave <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.12073/full">a passionate speech</a> criticizing immigrants who “come to kill our women; many of them come to rob our banks; to rob our sons and daughters in the streets.” </p>
<p>He called on Costa Rica to close its borders to Nicaraguan immigrants.</p>
<p>In response to this kind of anti-immigrant attitude, the National Assembly passed a <a href="http://www.pgrweb.go.cr/scij/Busqueda/Normativa/Normas/nrm_texto_completo.aspx?param1=NRTC&nValor1=1&nValor2=56050&nValor3=79756&param2=1&strTipM=TC&lResultado=3&strSim=simp">law</a> that restricted residency, increased enforcement and limited immigrants’ opportunities for integration.</p>
<p>That same year, a 25-year-old Nicaraguan immigrant named Natividad Canda was mauled to death by two <a href="http://wvw.aldia.cr/ad_ee/2005/noviembre/11/sucesos0.html">Rottweilers</a>. According to some reports, several onlookers who witnessed the attack <a href="http://www.ticotimes.net/2006/01/27/probe-says-police-could-have-stopped-fatal-dog-attack">did nothing to help him</a>. Many Costa Ricans praised the dogs and condemned the victim as an alleged criminal and “illegal” immigrant.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163012/original/image-20170328-3782-9ociz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Approximately 1,000 mostly Nicaraguan families were being evicted from land they have been squatting on, 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Kent Gilbert</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Costa Rica has since stepped back from the worst of its explicitly xenophobic legislation, the discriminatory spirit that led to that law being passed still continues today. </p>
<p>In my <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/plar.12136/abstract">research</a> with Nicaraguan immigrants in San Jose, Costa Rica, I find that Nicaraguans continue to face widespread discrimination and major barriers to legal status and access to social services. <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/international-migration/glossary/xenophobia/">Attitudes and behaviors</a> that reject, vilify and exclude immigrants often solidify national identity when that identity is in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.1997.9993946">crisis</a>.</p>
<h2>Decades of ‘us versus them’</h2>
<p>In Costa Rica, Nicaraguans make up <a href="http://www.inec.go.cr/censos/censos-2011">75 percent</a> of immigrants and represent around 7 percent of the total population. They often work in agriculture, construction and service sectors. </p>
<p>Nicaraguan migration to Costa Rica is not new, but attitudes toward Nicaraguans have become more prejudiced since the mid-20th century. Where Nicaraguans are seen as inherently violent, Costa Ricans see themselves as peace-loving. Where Nicaraguans are seen as poor, illiterate and uncultured, Costa Ricans see themselves as middle-class and educated. Where Nicaraguans are mestizo and dark-skinned, Costa Ricans are “white.” </p>
<p>The sense of difference and superiority felt by many Costa Ricans has been reinforced by stereotypes of Nicaraguans developed over decades of migration.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d7929305.717903751!2d-88.67147164556586!3d13.974592506838244!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x8f92e56221acc925%3A0x6254f72535819a2b!2sCosta+Rica!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1490722424255" width="100%" height="450" frameborder="0" style="border:0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>Nicaraguan migration to Costa Rica goes all the way back to colonial and 19th-century regional economic <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EPyPSrFkO0YC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=patricia+alvarenga+costa+rica&ots=R48ot-zORU&sig=SLd7bZ8AXvJ718gRXUfiE_6ljvU#v=onepage&q=patricia%20alvarenga%20costa%20rica&f=false">developments</a>. Nicaraguan workers were instrumental to the rise of the Costa Rican coffee industry, the construction of its railroad and the establishment of the multinational banana industry. Later, during the Sandinista Revolution and Contra war in the 1980s, Nicaraguans <a href="https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/timeline-nicaragua.php">fled</a> to Costa Rica for both political and economic reasons.</p>
<p>After the Fall of the Sandinistas in 1990, economic migration to Costa Rica increased dramatically. In 1998, <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/mitch/mitch.html">Hurricane Mitch</a> devastated Nicaragua, leaving millions homeless and destroying infrastructure and the harvest.</p>
<p>As Nicaraguan migration increased in the ‘90’s, Costa Rica’s exceptional welfare system was weakened by cuts in public funding. <a href="http://www.nacion.com/nacional/educacion/">Crowded classrooms</a> and long waits for <a href="http://www.nacion.com/nacional/salud-publica/Caja-lleva-resolver-listas-espera_0_1508649137.html">health services</a> were compounded by <a href="http://www.latinobarometro.org/latNewsShow.jsp">perceptions</a> of rising crime and economic downturns. As Costa Ricans began to feel their privileges as citizens decline, they <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1387.2009.01074.x/abstract">projected</a> their anxieties onto <a href="http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Threatening+Others">Nicaraguan immigrants</a>.</p>
<p>Nicaraguan migration began to represent a demographic, cultural and racial threat to Costa Rican exceptionalism.</p>
<h2>Barriers in everyday life</h2>
<p>Although Costa Rica has stepped back from the most xenophobic of its immigration policies, legal restrictions and widespread attitudes of rejection continue. Nicaraguans still face discrimination and barriers to services and legal status.</p>
<p>For example, my colleague <a href="https://repub.eur.nl/pub/94392/">Koen Voorend</a> and I have found that Nicaraguan immigrants report being sent extra paperwork or conflicting directions to access <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/plar.12136/abstract">health care</a> or enroll children in school. Young people report hiding their Nicaraguan origins from classmates because of fear of being teased or bullied.</p>
<p>In health clinics, Nicaraguans say they are often treated as ignorant or stupid by <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13648470.2015.1004503">doctors and nurses</a>. Clinic staff ask for extra documentation or refuse them care.</p>
<p>They also face discrimination, if not outright violence, on the streets. Nicaraguan immigrants often avoid speaking in public to avoid revealing their accent. They worry about being harassed on the bus. They stick close to home or work to avoid attracting the attention of immigration authorities. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, civil society organizations, academics and activists are working to create change. For example, “What Unites Us” is a <a href="https://loquenosune.org/category/campana-en-accion/costa-rica/">campaign</a> against xenophobia in Latin America and the Caribbean led by <a href="http://theret.org">RET International</a>, an organization that works to protect vulnerable young people through education. </p>
<p>The campaign is enlisting young people to discuss what brings immigrants and citizens together. In emphasizing what unites foreigners and nationals, the campaign breaks down the dividing line between deserving and undeserving, citizens and immigrants.</p>
<p>However, seeing what unites citizens and immigrants will not eliminate xenophobia. Citizens still feel that their way of life is under threat. When prized institutions fail to address people’s real social and economic problems, blaming immigrants serves as a useful distraction – one that may gain traction in the U.S. too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Fouratt received funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Institute of International Education.</span></em></p>While Costa Ricans pride their country for being an oasis of stability in Latin America, the nation has struggled with restrictive laws and social attitudes toward immigrants from Nicaragua.Caitlin Fouratt, Professor of International Studies, California State University, Long BeachLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/663552016-10-06T20:14:01Z2016-10-06T20:14:01ZSouth Africa needs to fix its dangerously wide wealth gap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140466/original/image-20161005-14246-49ben7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wealth inequality is a bigger challenge than income inequality in South Africa</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is known for its extreme <a href="http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2016/07/south-africa-income-inequality-and-unemployment-highest-in-world/#.V_Mc-PD5jIU">income inequality</a>, which is one of the highest in the world. Ten percent of the population earn around 55%–60% of all income, compared to only 20-35% in the advanced economies. </p>
<p>But while the top income share is high in its own right, it pales in comparison to those for wealth; such as real estate, pension funds and shares of listed companies. New tax and survey <a href="http://www.redi3x3.org/sites/default/files/Orthofer%202016%20REDI3x3%20Working%20Paper%2015%20-%20Wealth%20inequality.pdf">data</a> suggest that 10% of the South African population owns at least 90–95% of all assets. This share is much higher than in the advanced economies, where the richest 10% own “only” around 50-75% of all assets. </p>
<p>Why does wealth matter? First, the level and distribution of wealth in a country are important indicators of its citizens’ long-term welfare. Whereas income and consumption tell us something about a household’s current living standards, information on wealth is important in assessing whether the household can sustain these living standards during spells of unemployment or throughout retirement.</p>
<p>But wealth is also of particular concern for long-term inequality. This is because wealth can generate its own income (such as interest, dividends, rents, and capital gains), and can be passed on between generations. Over time, small differences in assets can therefore grow larger and larger. As Thomas Piketty argues in his influential book on wealth and inequality (<a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains">Capital in the 21st Century</a>), this tendency has been one of the biggest drivers of growing inequality in both advanced and developing countries. </p>
<p>A growing number of studies have suggested that high inequality can have unfavourable political and economic <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf">consequences</a>, which is why South African policymakers are increasingly concerned about it. Currently, most initiatives focus on inequality of income and consumption, since these variables are closely linked to poverty and exclusion. </p>
<p>But based on my own research I argue that narrowing the wealth gap also deserves close attention.</p>
<h2>Why wealth is difficult to measure</h2>
<p>We know that South Africa’s wealth distribution is highly unequal. It is, however, very hard to measure precisely how unequal it is. This is because our usual tools are well suited to measuring income and consumption, but not very good at measuring wealth.</p>
<p>The most widely used data on living standards come from household surveys. Their main limitation when it comes to measuring wealth is that participation is voluntary and that richer households tend to be less likely than others to participate. In addition, many people are not aware of the current value of their assets or feel uncomfortable talking about wealth. </p>
<p>Because of these limitations, researchers have started to use data from tax records. Since tax filings are mandatory, tax data do not run the risk of under-representing individuals at the top of the distribution.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, tax data have their own limitations. First, they tell us nothing about the population whose income is too low to require income tax filing. In South Africa this group comprises more than 80% of the population. Secondly, they do not allow us to measure wealth directly since only investment incomes are taxed in South Africa. </p>
<p>While this approximation introduces an element of uncertainty, it is currently the only way to get data on the top of the wealth distribution.</p>
<h2>Extreme wealth inequality</h2>
<p>In my <a href="http://www.redi3x3.org/sites/default/files/Orthofer%202016%20REDI3x3%20Working%20Paper%2015%20-%20Wealth%20inequality.pdf">research</a> I combine tax and survey data. Three main findings stand out: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The wealthiest 10% of the population own at least 90–95% of all wealth, whereas the highest-earning 10% receive “only” 55–60% of income.</p></li>
<li><p>The next 40% of the population – the group that is often considered to be the middle class – earn about 30-35% of all income, but only own 5-10% of all wealth.</p></li>
<li><p>The poorest 50% of the population, who still earn about 10% of all income, own no measurable wealth at all.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The fact that the bottom half has very little wealth is not unique to South Africa. What is striking, however, is the small wealth share of the middle of the distribution. Income- or consumption-based studies find that around 20% to 30% of South Africans belong to the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0376835X.2013.797224">middle class</a>. </p>
<p>But my analysis suggests that a “propertied middle class” is largely nonexistent. This differentiates South Africa from the advanced economies, where a much larger share of the population owns significant financial and non-financial wealth.</p>
<p>The data also show that race plays a role in inequality, as average wealth still differs strongly between groups. Nevertheless, they suggest that wealth inequality within the majority black population far exceeds overall inequality. This is consistent with the findings of a study on <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46457107_Trends_in_South_African_Income_Distribution_and_Poverty_Since_the_Fall_of_Apartheid">income inequality</a>, which shows that the income distribution is increasingly shaped by growing inequality within race groups rather than inequality between race groups.</p>
<h2>Implications for policymakers</h2>
<p>In theory, the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a few can be addressed from two sides: redistributing wealth held at the top or building wealth at the bottom. </p>
<p>In reality, however, these two approaches should be balanced by combining taxation of top wealth holders with policies to encourage middle-class wealth formation. This is because South Africa has a relatively low level of <a href="http://www.econrsa.org/publications/research-briefs/pikettys-capital-and-private-wealth-south-africa">private wealth</a> and should not risk reducing overall private saving and investment. </p>
<p>The most common tools for redistributing wealth are taxes on investment incomes and inheritances. Currently these taxes constitute only a tiny share of total <a href="http://www.sars.gov.za/About/SATaxSystem/Pages/Tax-Statistics.aspx">tax revenue</a>. Taxes on investment income makes up about 1% of total tax revenue while inheritance tax makes up 0.1%. The current proposals of the <a href="http://www.taxcom.org.za/">Davis Tax Committee</a> aim to increase these shares by closing loopholes in the estate duty. </p>
<p>More effective inheritance taxes can be very effective to counter the tendency of growing wealth concentration. But there are practical challenges when it comes to taxing the wealthy effectively. Wealth can easily be shifted between asset classes, ownership structures and tax jurisdictions to avoid being subject to taxation. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/1-700-south-africans-named-in-panama-papers-2026164">Panama Papers</a> showed the extent to which the efficacy of wealth taxes is limited by the fact that large fortunes are moved out of the reach of national tax authorities.</p>
<p>Helping lower- and middle-class households build wealth may therefore be a more effective way to promote a more equitable wealth structure. Since pension assets are the single most important form of wealth in South Africa, a more comprehensive pension system would be particularly effective in reducing wealth inequality. The current <a href="http://actuarialsocietyconvention.org.za/convention2014/assets/pdf/papers/2014%20ASSA%20Chamburuka.pdf">proposals</a> by the National Treasury, which aim to increase the coverage of occupational pension systems and reduce pre-retirement withdrawals, are promising.</p>
<p>The new figures on the extreme extent of wealth inequality should provide some tailwind to these proposals, which could jointly lead to a more equitable wealth structure in South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Orthofer received funding from REDI3x3 for this research. </span></em></p>When South African inequality is discussed, the focus tends to be on income brackets. But the main problem is wealth inequalityAnna Orthofer, Economics PhD Candidate, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/617292016-09-12T12:54:47Z2016-09-12T12:54:47ZFour things you should know about the Panama Canal’s turbulent past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135640/original/image-20160826-17854-1m8a275.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bridge_of_the_Americas.jpg">Stan Shebs//wikimedia commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ing-jorge-l-quijano/the-great-connection-the-_b_11527776.html">recent expansion</a> of the Panama Canal marks the latest chapter of a project which has had a profound impact on the country. For over a century, the canal has formed the central axis of politics, economics and social relations in Panama. The project was first launched in 1904, when the US began work on a canal that would connect the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the canal has been the focus of controversy ever since. </p>
<p>But to understand why the Panama Canal remains so important to this day, it pays to take a look at some of the key moments in the project’s history. </p>
<h2>1. Rooted in racism</h2>
<p>Although <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20456595?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">the racism</a> felt throughout much of Panama today does not originate in the birth of the canal, it was certainly supported by it. Racism could be found from the very start of the project – while the American and European construction workers were paid in gold, for example, the West Indian and Latino workers received their wages in the less valuable local silver currency. Even when the same work was performed, the worker’s place of origin translated into a significant pay and benefits gap between the silver and the gold “roll”. </p>
<p>The construction of the canal also <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/review/Oshinsky-t.html?ref=review">institutionalised racial segregation</a> by implementing a Jim Crow system, where white American or European managers oversaw racially mixed foremen, who would then supervise West Indian black and mixed race workers.</p>
<p>The canal was built at the height of US racism and imperialism, and it would take the coming of World War II for segregation and discrimination in the Canal Zone – the area including the canal and a few miles either side, which was legally US territory, and so policed and administered by separate authorities – to be questioned. </p>
<p>The US, responding to pressures from the civil rights movement and wanting to improve its relationship with Latin America, abolished the gold-silver system, and racially integrated schools in the Canal Zone. Nevertheless, authorities upheld the segregation between Americans and Panamanians in a system akin to apartheid.</p>
<h2>2. First flickers of nationalism</h2>
<p>The canal remained under US control for much of the 20th century, and was only fully recognised as Panamanian <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-12/15/097r-121599-idx.html">in 1999</a>. The Panamanians’ struggle for sovereignty can be traced back as far as the immediate post-World War II era. Peaceful student-led protests began around this time and continued for two decades until tensions finally boiled over.</p>
<p>On January 9, 1964, news that an emblematic Panamanian flag had been damaged in a tussle between Canal Zone police and student protesters sparked outrage across Panama City. The students were quickly joined by thousands of Panamanians from the areas surrounding the Zone. </p>
<p>Riots ensued and lasted for two days, by the end of which over 20 Panamanians were dead. This confrontation is considered the first true flare of Panamanian <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/585562.stm">nationalism</a>, where US ownership of the Canal Zone was contested. It was also this event which led Zone authorities to agree to fly the Panamanian flag alongside the US flag in areas of civic interest.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135636/original/image-20160826-17872-161zdhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters fly the Panamanian flag on the Canal Zone boundary in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_Demonstration_2.jpg">University of Florida Digital Collections//wikimedia commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Claiming ownership</h2>
<p>The next pivotal moment for the canal came while the country was under the leadership of military dictator Omar Torrijos, following a coup d'etat in 1968. Torrijos was committed to wresting control of the canal out of US hands, and is considered one of Panama’s founding fathers for doing so. </p>
<p>After more than four years of negotiations, the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, signed by Torrijos and then-US president Jimmy Carter in 1977, committed the US to placing the canal in Panamanian hands by <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/panama-canal">2000</a>. The Canal Zone was abolished two years later, and the area remained under joint Panama-US control until it was finally handed over to Panama on New Year’s Eve, 1999.</p>
<p>Despite the rampant nationalism of these years, clauses that allowed the US to take military action to protect the canal even after the handover were strongly opposed by civil society organisations. These groups’ leaders were subjected to targeted repression by the military regime that promoted the treaty. The enforced disappearance of student leader <a href="http://www.newsroompanama.com/news/panama/family-of-disappeared-schoolgirl-points-finger-at-noriega">Rita Wald</a> – a case which Panama settled before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2012 – is one of many examples of persecution. </p>
<h2>4. US invasion</h2>
<p>The treaties allowed for military bases to stay open in the Canal Zone, for the stated aim that the canal stayed open, accessible and neutral. The feared <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/opinion/school-of-the-dictators.html">School of the Americas</a> – a site where countless Latin American death squad leaders and coup makers had trained – operated on one of these bases. </p>
<p>US intervention into Panamanian internal affairs was not part of the deal. But on the morning of December 20 1989, Panama City awoke to a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/01/truth-operation-panama-160131085323562.html">US invasion</a> led by President George H. W. Bush. </p>
<p>The American code name for the invasion was “Operation Just Cause”, and it was justified as a safeguard to the lives of US citizens in Panama in the wake of <a href="https://books.google.com.co/books?id=MxHqD3V0zTYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+U.S.+Invasion+of+Panama&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN15i6ierOAhUC4CYKHVCNCpAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">the death of a US marine</a>, who was killed a few days earlier in an altercation, as well as to protect of the canal in line with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135638/original/image-20160826-17872-o633ft.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands were displaced from their homes following the US invasion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Panama_clashes_1989.JPEG">SPEC. MORLAND//wikimedia commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Operation Just Cause unseated a military regime that had lasted for more than two decades, by removing the de facto head of state <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/01/truth-operation-panama-160131085323562.html">Manuel A. Noriega</a>. Yet the invasion and subsequent US occupation left an uncertain number of dead and wounded civilians throughout Panama, the majority of whom were concentrated in the working class neighbourhood of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/us-invasion-of-panama_b_6356232.html">El Chorrillo</a>, which adjoined the Canal Zone. </p>
<p>Panama would not be the country it is today without the canal; these snapshots are just four instances which show the deep social and political impressions it has left on the nation. While the long-disputed issue of sovereignty has been resolved, it’s not yet clear who will gain from the recent expansion of the Panama Canal, and who will lose out. The history of the Panama Canal is one of conflict and division – but the latest chapter is yet to be written, and there’s still an opportunity to learn from the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61729/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adriana Rudling receives funding from the University of Sheffield.</span></em></p>The canal was under US control for nearly a century and was only recognised as Panamanian on New Year’s Eve 1999.Adriana Rudling, PhD candidate in Politics, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/614902016-06-27T01:31:42Z2016-06-27T01:31:42ZExplainer: how Panama Canal expansion will transform shipping once again<p>World shipping changed forever when the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/panama-canal">Panama Canal</a> opened on August 15, 1914. It was an <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Path-Between-the-Seas/David-McCullough/9780743262132">engineering marvel</a> of its day, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/Panama-Canal">cutting the distance required</a> to get from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic by as much as 8,000 nautical miles.</p>
<p>The shipping industry is changing once again as 70 heads of state gathered in Panama City recently to <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/26/483598692/watch-inauguration-of-the-5-billion-panama-canal-expansion">celebrate the canal’s expansion</a> to handle the super-sized ships that now dominate global trade. They were there to witness a Chinese container ship become the first commercial vessel to take advantage of the new, larger locks to pass pass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. </p>
<p>As a civil engineer and native of the Panama Canal Zone, I’ve <a href="https://vimeo.com/79721965">long marveled</a> at the feats of the original and am impressed by its expansion. So what prompted the Panama government to finally expand it after more than a century? What makes it innovative and what challenges remain? </p>
<h2>Wonder of the modern world</h2>
<p>The U.S. government built the original, 50-mile <a href="https://www.pancanal.com/eng/">Panama Canal</a> after a failed effort by the French in the late 19th century. </p>
<p>The American Society of Civil Engineers <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/seven-wonders-of-the-modern-world/alby-thompson">named</a> it one of the seven wonders of the modern world in 1994. </p>
<p>When the canal first opened, it was the size of U.S. Navy ships that dictated the width of the locks: 110 feet across and 42 feet deep. Before it opened, ships had to journey all the way down to the Strait of Magellan near the tip of South America to cross from New York to San Francisco. </p>
<p>Ships enter the canal through a series of three chambers, which lift the vessels up to the higher level of Gatun lake through which they will glide, and subsequently lower them to sea level. In addition, tides on the Atlantic side are much lower than the Pacific.</p>
<p>The upgrade, which cost $5.25 billion and was built alongside the old locks, was <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-panama-canal-20160624-snap-story.html">designed</a> to support the contemporary needs of global commerce from Asia. Modern so-called neo-Panamax ships can be more than 150 feet wide, extend three football fields in length and have a draft of 50 feet. (Draft is how deep into the water a ship goes below the surface.)</p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/60LQT/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<h2>New locks’ innovative engineering</h2>
<p>When designing the new locks, engineers knew they needed constant access to plenty of water to flood the locks and ensure the ships don’t hit bottom. </p>
<p>Having enough water has been a problem with the current locks, such as during a recent drought when shippers <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas/panama-canal.html?_r=0">had to lighten their loads</a> to make it through. So with the new ones, they created water-saving basins, which capture and recycle water as ships step down from chamber to chamber. Consequently, even though the new locks are 3.3 times larger than the 1914 ones, they use 7 percent less water. </p>
<p>Another enhancement is the expansion locks’ use of <a href="http://micanaldepanama.com/expansion/videos/">rolling gates</a> to close each lock, a significant upgrade from the old ones. The rolling gates allow maintenance to be performed without having to temporarily close the lock, saving lots of time and money.</p>
<p>And whereas the 1914 locks used electric towing locomotives (known as mules) to guide ships through the locks, the expansion locks will rely on two positioning tugboats (fore and aft) to position vessels during transit, which is more efficient – though there are some concerns, as noted below. </p>
<h2>East Coast ports prepare</h2>
<p>The impending arrival of new Panamax ships with a required draft of 50 feet has sent East Coast ports and businesses in the U.S. scrambling to benefit from this increased cargo. </p>
<p>Currently, only Baltimore, Norfolk and Miami are ready to accommodate these larger ships and containers. Shipping channel deepening and widening dredging projects are underway in Savannah (which currently allows draft of up to 47 feet) and Charleston. </p>
<p>And in New York, the Bayonne Bridge, which spans the channel between Bayonne, New Jersey and Staten Island, currently restricts both states’ biggest ports from accepting these super-sized vessels. The project to raise the bridge <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-expanded-panama-canal-prepares-to-open-new-york-isnt-ready-1466587807">has been delayed</a> until the end of 2017 because of engineering miscalculations and construction work slowed by inclement weather.</p>
<h2>Expansion project challenges</h2>
<p>Besides which U.S. ports are ready for the canal, the project <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas/panama-canal.html?_r=0">has encountered other difficulties</a>, as is typical with many projects of this magnitude. </p>
<p>Most notable of these been the cost and time overruns (two years longer than expected), leaks within the concrete lock walls and <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-panama-canal-expands-1466378348">concerns</a> about the use of tugboats instead of electric towing locomotives. The main worry on the tugboats is that they won’t have sufficient control of the vessel, particularly during the dry season when trade winds blow hard. </p>
<p>Mixed in with these challenges is the drop in demand for global trade and <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-panama-canal-expands-1466378348">one of the worst shipping industry slumps ever</a> thanks in part to the slowdown in China, which has diminished the expansion’s economic viability. </p>
<p>However, history reminds us that the construction of the original canal was also fraught with obstacles. The French company that started the project in the 1880s went bankrupt and severe landslides necessitated an additional excavation of 25 percent more soil than originally planned. </p>
<p>But these challenges were overcome, and the U.S. completed the canal in 1914, although just one year later, it was closed for seven months after another landslide. </p>
<p>So certainly there will be more “hiccups,” as there always are, but I expect they will also be surmounted, and we will be able to celebrate Panama’s marvelous engineering achievement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Townsend has received funding from Florida Department of Transportation before retirement in 2005. He is affiliated with Panama Canal Society, and on the Executive Council of the Friends of the Panama Canal Museum Collection at the University of Florida. </span></em></p>The Panama Canal just celebrated the opening of its new expansion, which incorporates several engineering marvels to allow it to finally support the super-sized cargo ships that dominate shipping.Frank Townsend, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/595762016-06-23T10:04:36Z2016-06-23T10:04:36ZIs Panama on the verge of a scientific brain drain?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126169/original/image-20160610-17209-1cyn17x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Panama City, Panama. The gleaming metropolis reflects a rapid economic growth with a marginal national investment in research and development.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carlos A. Donado Morcillo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Government support for research into new scientific learning and new technologies is crucial – and difficult to get. What little money is available is hotly contested among researchers. They fight to justify investing taxpayer dollars in projects that at times appear risky, but offer significant returns if they are successful – solving global problems, advancing human knowledge and improving economic development.</p>
<p>In developed nations, national research and development expenditure is at most <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS">four percent of gross domestic product (GDP)</a>, including funding for industrial, military and commercial work. Israel, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Finland, Austria and the United States <a href="http://www.oecd.org/innovation/inno/researchanddevelopmentstatisticsrds.htm">lead the pack</a>. </p>
<p>Even so, scientists’ struggle for funding is commonplace. In France, <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/top-french-scientists-slam-surprise-budget-cut">massive research budget cuts</a> have the scientific community <a href="https://theconversation.com/la-recherche-francaise-est-elle-en-crise-61233">raising its voice in disapproval</a>. Research results and funding are two sides of the same coin: To get <a href="http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/2015/03/science-a-major-contributor-to-the-economy/">political backing for funding</a>, researchers need <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/533S20a">patents and publications</a>.</p>
<p>In developing nations, scientists have an even more difficult task. Scientists working in countries without <a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/technology/news/developing-nations-urged-spend-on-science-UN.html">advanced manufacturing infrastructure</a> and <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-journal-of-innovation-economics-2013-2-page-13.htm">strong military programs</a> have fewer opportunities to offer local benefits. And their cultures of science, technology and innovation are often <a href="http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/tech%205-eng.pdf">not as developed</a>. That leaves just one major incentive for government to invest in science and technology: improving scores in <a href="http://rieoei.org/rie30a03.htm">international competitiveness comparisons</a>, like those <a href="https://www.oecd.org/development/WP319%20AE.pdf">published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)</a>.</p>
<p>In Panama, where we work, there is a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2016/05/10/the-real-story-about-panama/">thriving service economy</a> and <a href="http://www.tradingeconomics.com/panama/gdp-growth-annual">sustained GDP growth</a>. But since 2001, government expenditure for science has been a <a href="http://www.tradingeconomics.com/panama/research-and-development-expenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html">decreasing share of GDP</a>. This research funding crisis may have dire consequences for <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/469462a">Panama’s lofty ambitions</a> to develop a sustainable scientific ecosystem.</p>
<h2>The Panamanian reality</h2>
<p>National investment in research has remained below 0.4 percent <a href="http://www.senacyt.gob.pa/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Resolucion_Plan-y-Politicas.pdf">since 1991</a>. In the late 1990s, scientific and political pressure pushed Panama to create SENACYT (the Spanish-language acronym for the National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation). The agency’s search for funding began internationally, seeking loans from <a href="http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=460887">the Inter-American Development Bank</a> for money to fund research grants, scholarships and other science programs. The goal was to strengthen the local scientific system and to lure Panamanians with science experience back from abroad to build their careers at home. </p>
<p>In the mid-2000s, the country’s investment expanded to include an ambitious scholarship program helping Panamanians pursue graduate studies at <a href="http://www.senacyt.gob.pa/transparencia/descargas/103/2012_inf.pdf">top universities abroad</a>. Most of them went to study in the U.S. and Spain, in areas related to biology, engineering and information technology.</p>
<p>Since 2010, more than 200 newly minted Ph.D. graduates have returned to find little improvement to the country’s extremely limited infrastructure and funding. Rather than boosting a growing academic community, this new generation of scholars has increased competition for the scarce funding that is available to keep Panamanian science afloat.</p>
<p>SENACYT had projected an increase of government funding <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110126/full/469462a.html">to 0.6 percent of GDP would be needed by 2014 to support the returning talent</a>. But today, it’s only <a href="http://www.senacyt.gob.pa/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Resolucion_Plan-y-Politicas.pdf">0.2 percent</a> of GDP. In fact, the share of GDP dedicated to SENACYT science funding has <a href="http://www.prensa.com/sociedad/ciencia-dinero-limitado_0_4478552228.html">shrunk since 2014</a>. And in 2017, SENACYT’s budget will be no higher than it is <a href="http://www.prensa.com/sociedad/ciencia-dinero-limitado_0_4478552228.html">this year</a> – about US$33 million.</p>
<p>Julio Escobar, head of SENACYT from 2004 to 2009, told us this effort has been equivalent to “moving the machinery, materials and building a bridge, but once built, leaving it without access to any main roads, thus not solving any real traffic problems.”</p>
<h2>Across Central America</h2>
<p>The story is quite different in Costa Rica, a country with slightly larger population and GDP than Panama. Investment in science is around 0.5 percent of the GDP – still far lower than in developed nations, but much closer than Panama to the OECD Latin American average of 0.7 percent. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127776/original/image-20160622-7181-1nrpife.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">Pacific entrance of The Panama Canal. The predominant service based economy, fueled by the Panama Canal and the porting industry, seeks immediate profit rather than the long-term returns offered by research programs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carlos A. Donado Morcillo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Panama, Costa Rica does not have a defense program. But Costa Rica’s active manufacturing industry is a key driver of the country’s science spending. In contrast,
the <a href="http://www.senacyt.gob.pa/transparencia/descargas/93/Resolucion_Plan-y-Politica.pdf">Panamanian National Plan for Science, Technology and Innovation for 2015-2019</a> forecasts virtually no private-sector research investment – at most 0.3 percent of the total amount spent. Panamanian government efforts to encourage private investment have not succeeded, because of the predominantly <a href="http://www.senacyt.gob.pa/transparencia/descargas/93/Resolucion_Plan-y-Politica.pdf">low-tech, service business culture</a>, which seeks immediate profit rather than the long-term returns offered by research programs.</p>
<p>Other Central American governments are even farther behind in backing science. For instance, research and development investment in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua is still <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS">below 0.05 percent</a> of their respective GDPs. However, support from international agencies in <a href="https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/north_and_central_america.html">Germany</a>, <a href="http://www.jica.go.jp/project/english/area/america.html">Japan</a> and the <a href="http://eeas.europa.eu/ca/index_en.htm">European Union</a> has helped provide funding. The EU also <a href="http://eranet-lac.eu/index.php">offers specific grants</a> <a href="http://eulachealth.eu/description/">to Latin America</a>, and a <a href="http://www.enlace-project.eu">Central America-specific program</a> as well.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>Panamanian leaders have struggled to understand the importance of science and technology in a country where economic growth has been steady with only minute investments in research. Today, however, the potential benefits of the investment already made in developing scientific talent are at risk. With scarce resources, scientists are forced to seek opportunities abroad – which could escalate into a national brain drain problem.</p>
<p>Weak science investment forces returning scholars to become entrepreneurs and politicians, which not all researchers enjoy. In addition to doing scientific work, they must find ways to promote research in a country that has no definite political commitment to its long-term scientific development plan.</p>
<p>A solution to this crisis will not be found in science. Building a truly viable science and technology sector in Panama – and across Central America – will require continuous political lobbying, cohesive planning and research spending increases proportional to economic growth. </p>
<p>Beyond academic institutions, the promotion of a culture that embraces research and science will have to permeate industry, government, and the general public. The new generation of scientists is up for the task, but will they be heard?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Javier Sanchez-Galan received funding from SENACYT for pursuing his masters and doctoral studies.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlos A. Donado Morcillo 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>In the midst of a rapidly growing economy, research budget shortcomings threaten a young scientific community that struggles to stay afloat.Javier E. Sanchez-Galan, Associate research scientist, Universidad Tecnológica de PanamáCarlos A. Donado Morcillo, Adjunct Researcher, Universidad Católica Santa María La AntiguaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/583572016-05-20T13:04:36Z2016-05-20T13:04:36ZHow events in Panama created the modern world (millions of years ago)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121773/original/image-20160509-20590-eb381q.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">stockmdm / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Panama has been in the news for <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/panama-papers">other reasons</a> recently, but paleoclimatologists have long known of its significance. In fact, the formation of this thin strip of land between North and South America may be one of the key events in Earth’s history.</p>
<p>Today, the Panama Canal is one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, allowing large ships to go straight between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans while avoiding longer and often more dangerous routes around the tip of South America. </p>
<p>But this isn’t the first time there has been an equatorial connection between our two largest oceans. More than 20m years ago, Panama and much of Central America was under water or, more accurately, much of this land mass was yet to form, and water flowed freely between these two climatically important ocean basins.</p>
<p>Once you zoom out to geological timescales of millions of years, it becomes apparent that plate tectonics – continents drifting around the Earth’s surface – have a huge impact on the climate. The position of continents naturally affects the shape and size of the oceans, and crucially, the currents that flow within them that transport energy (in the form of heat) to different parts of the globe.</p>
<p>In this case, the shallowing and eventual closure of the Panama “gateway” and creation of the Isthmus of Panama, where both continents become connected by land, strengthened what we call the “<a href="http://people.oregonstate.edu/%7Eschmita2/pdf/S/schmittner07agu_intro.pdf">Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation</a>”, a current that transports warm equatorial waters north and is responsible for Europe’s mild winters. This played a crucial role in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17791515">shaping our modern climate system</a>. </p>
<h2>How Panama closed</h2>
<p>None of this happened overnight. What’s now Panama lies on the boundaries of the South and North American, Caribbean and Cocos plates, and collisions between these huge masses around <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/19/6110.full">23-25m years ago</a> led to rises in the seafloor and the formation of underwater volcanoes. Over time, these eventually emerged above the water line. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123367/original/image-20160520-4481-125e2da.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Volcán Barú is Panama’s highest point.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arkeldiary/25555317046/">Edwin Rios</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By 7m to 11m years ago, the volcanoes had grown, and the sea had become shallow enough that deep water exchange between the Pacific and Atlantic is thought to have ceased, leading to a reorganisation of oceanic currents. Finally, around 3m years ago, a land bridge emerged, connecting both North and South America. Or so the story goes … </p>
<h2>Why timing matters</h2>
<p>Establishing the timeline is crucial in piecing together the Panama gateway’s climatic role, yet new evidence suggests the closure was earlier than previously thought.</p>
<p>Fossils of both terrestrial and marine species suggest closure may now even date back to around 20m years ago, when there were periods of land chains above sea level, although likely not fully connected. This is <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/19/6110.full">17m years earlier</a> than first suggested. Although land species were moving between the continents as far back as around 20m years ago, it wasn’t significant until 6m years ago, implying that there must have still been inhibitors to mass migration of species between these land masses before then. </p>
<p>The recent removal of sediment for the new expansion of the Panama Canal unearthed <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258646051_Evidence_for_middle_Eocene_and_younger_land_emergence_in_Central_Panama_Implications_for_Isthmus_closure">20m year old fossilised trees</a>, adding further weight to an earlier closure hypothesis. The same study also suggests that the isthmus may have even formed an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258646051_Evidence_for_middle_Eocene_and_younger_land_emergence_in_Central_Panama_Implications_for_Isthmus_closure">uninterrupted chain of land</a> between the Late Eocene (20m-30m years ago) to the Late Miocene (11m-5m years ago), further compounding the long and complex history of this climate-altering event.</p>
<h2>Changing oceans, changing climates</h2>
<p>The shoaling and eventual closure of the Panama gateway was a key reason for <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-007-0265-6#/page-1">glaciation in the northern hemisphere</a>. As winds in the atmosphere often respond to what is occurring in the ocean below, changes in ocean circulation that developed with the shallowing and closure of the Panama seaway led to <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12252">warm, moist winds blowing northwards</a>. This fresh water held in the atmosphere was deposited at high latitudes where glaciers and ice sheets could form.</p>
<p>Analysis of geological data has shown that despite an open Panama gateway (no isthmus) the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12252">was unaffected</a> during the Pliocene (around 2-5m years ago). This casts doubt on the key importance of complete isolation between the Atlantic and Pacific.</p>
<p>Indeed, conventional geologic theory on the role of the Panama seaway <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/19/6110.full">is being</a> <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-007-0265-6#/page-1">challenged</a>. Some argue that greater heat transport towards the poles (in the form of a stronger gulf stream) may have actually <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12252">hindered ice growth</a> and delayed glaciation in the northern hemisphere. One <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-007-0265-6#/page-1">climate modelling study</a> suggested though that the increased moisture transport outweighs the increase in temperature, supporting the hypothesis that the closure intensified northern hemisphere glaciations through changes in oceanic circulation.</p>
<p>The closure of Panama, and the end of deep water currents flowing between oceans, is not solely responsible for kicking off the ice ages. Other primary factors include decreasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, changes in the Earth’s axis, and long-term “wobbles” which meant the poles received less sun. </p>
<p>However, we can say the transformation of Panama from seaway to isthmus played a crucial role in shaping our present day climate. It’s a great example of how geography and climate are linked: one small strip of newly-created land changed the planet forever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Farnsworth receives funding from NERC and EPSRC. This article does not reflect the views of the research councils.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Stone receives funding from the European Research Council. </span></em></p>Closing the passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans strengthened the gulf stream and helped kick off ice ages.Alex Farnsworth, Postdoctoral Research Associate in meteorology, University of BristolEmma Stone, Research Associate in Climatology, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/579312016-05-17T10:24:09Z2016-05-17T10:24:09ZHow Panama almost forgot its decades of military dictatorship<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121564/original/image-20160506-32037-11i6lbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lest we forget: Omar Torrijos's mausoleum.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Mausoleo_al_General_Omar_Torrijos_Herrera_y_%C3%A1rea_circundante_2.jpg">Hector Alcibiades via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By Latin American standards, Panama’s years under a military regime are something of a mystery. While the world is well aware of how it ended, not many know how it began or what it entailed for the people who lived under it. And strangely enough, a similar sort of amnesia holds sway in Panama itself.</p>
<p>The military regime came to power in 1968, when the National Police lost patience with what they considered undue interference in their internal affairs by the newly elected president, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/11/obituaries/arnulfo-arias-87-panamanian-who-was-president-3-times.html">Arnulfo Arias</a>. On October 11 that year, Arias was <a href="http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1968/10/12/page/15/article/guard-coup-in-panama-arias-flees">unseated in a coup</a> led by Major Boris Martínez and Lieutenant Colonel Omar Torrijos. </p>
<p>Once in control, Martinez and Torrijos discovered that they had no shared government project, and they could not agree on a date when they would turn over control to the civilian authorities – and yet the ensuing regime lasted for more than two decades. More than 100 people are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/opinion/the-bodies-in-panama.html">thought</a> to have been killed and disappeared during its reign, while countless more suffered torture and arbitrary detention. </p>
<p>There were two clear peaks of violent repression, one at the start of the regime and then another starting in the mid-1980s under <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15853540">Manuel Noriega</a>. In its violent early years, the regime fought to eliminate the pro-Arias guerrillas in the provinces of Chiriqui and Cocle, and struggled with in-fighting inside the security forces. </p>
<p>After relative stability was achieved in the early 1970s, the regime managed to gradually co-opt a large part of the commercial elite. It won the sympathies of civil servants and government advisors, and with the help of subsidised housing and expansive government assistance programs, brought in parts of the lower and middle class too. </p>
<p>But whenever this incentive-based style of political control failed, selected opponents were arbitrarily detained or forcefully exiled. The regime returned to the business of raw repression around 1984, and its support duly eroded. It was only brought down on <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/20/newsid_4054000/4054951.stm">December 20 1989</a>, when US troops finally invaded the country and removed Noriega from office.</p>
<h2>Forgotten plight</h2>
<p>Despite the work of a state-sanctioned <a href="http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-panama">truth commission</a>, Panamanians themselves are largely unaware of the intricacies of the regime. Instead, a sort of amnesia has set in – and along with it, a sort of revisionist nostalgia. During my first visit in 2011, a cabbie told me that as many Panamanians see it, “Torrijos was a cool guy” – and in reference to Noriega, everybody’s favourite bad guy, “not like Pineapple Face.” </p>
<p>Because Panama’s military government made extensive use of carrots as well as sticks, it claimed relatively few victims compared to the juntas that controlled other Latin American countries. That, in turn, means that what victims there were are more easily forgotten. The regime also expanded the state’s role in the economy, becoming not only the largest employer in the country, but also the largest sponsor of social and development projects. To this day, many view the Torrijos era in particular as an era of progressive <em><a href="http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405124331_chunk_g97814051243319_ss1-12">caudillismo</a></em>, and regard its victims with suspicion.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121566/original/image-20160506-32040-1il9ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Manuel Noriega after he surrendered to US forces in 1990.</span>
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</figure>
<p>The lack of interest in the past also owes something to the survival of the political party which the military founded in 1978 to safeguard its power, the Partido Democrático Revolucionario (PRD). Touting a logo of a circled white number 11, the day of the coup, the PRD has over the years tried to distance itself from Noriega and whitewash what it calls the “revolutionary process”. </p>
<p>Far from dealing with the regime’s legacy, several of Panama’s post-dictatorship administrations were forced to strike political pacts with the PRD just to be able to govern. And until the late 1990s, Panama only had two nationally viable political parties, both of which were associated with the regime era: on the one hand the PRD, and on the other the Partido Panameñista, heir to Arias’ deposed Partido Arnulfista. </p>
<p>The birth of the centre-right Cambio Democrático (Democratic Change) party in 1998 somewhat alleviated this situation, but despite a return to full democracy, a genuine examination of the country’s painful recent past has not yet been forthcoming.</p>
<h2>Under pressure</h2>
<p>Whatever small gains have been made since the dictatorship fell were not part of a commitment to address the past, but the result of spasmodic reactions by governments under pressure. </p>
<p>The truth commission was little more than a forced compromise for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/opinion/the-bodies-in-panama.html">the president who established it, Mireya Moscoso</a>. She knew that mounting a full judicial process to examine the dictatorship’s crimes would have been impossible, but the unearthing of human remains bearing visible signs of torture on the site of a former military base meant something had to be done. </p>
<p>Fraught with internal problems, the truth commission was underfunded and constantly harassed by the judiciary. In 2004, its first report was turned into a handbook to be included in the mandatory history curriculum, but once Torrijos’ son, Martin, was <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/05/2008410132740924740.html">elected president</a> that same year, the handbook promptly disappeared from the repositories of the Ministry of Education. </p>
<p>Yet funnily enough, the younger Torrijos also opened the door to meaningful forms of resolution. He appointed one of the legal advisors to the Truth Commission, Ana Matilde Gomez, to be his attorney general. Once in office, she appointed a Special Investigating Agent to follow up on cases of forced disappearance, and designed a policy that equated the crimes of the military regime to crimes against humanity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122588/original/image-20160515-10670-v9aphb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A demonstration by victims of Panama’s dictatorship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Still, as far as the victims’ rights are concerned, the most important work has been done outside Panama. In 2008, the <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/">Inter-American Court on Human Rights</a> Court forced the state to apologise for the forced disappearance and extrajudicial execution of <a href="http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_186_ing.pdf">Heliodoro Portugal</a> and typify the crime of enforced disappearance. In 2012, the family of <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2011/117A.asp">Rita Irene Wald Jaramillo</a> reached a friendly settlement with the state before the commission, and Panama has slowly been paying its dues to the surviving relatives. </p>
<p>And most recently, in April 2016, the commission took a historic step and declared a <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/decisions/2015/PNAD882-03EN.pdf">petition</a> by victims of the military dictatorship admissible after almost 13 years of campaigning. The original document asked that the state acknowledge that, among other things, their rights to life, liberty and personal security had been violated, along with their rights to due process. Given that 109 of the regime’s victims were included in this package, this means a lot to many Panamanians. </p>
<p>Many surviving relatives are unlikely to see their cases legally resolved inside Panama because of their old age and the difficulty of obtaining evidence. Yet, as they have both been involved in negotiations with the representatives of the victims, the Martinelli and, more recently, Varela administrations seem to be taking real steps towards acknowledging the suffering caused by the regime.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Between October 2012 and September 2015, I received funding from the University of Sheffield in the form of a Faculty grant in order to be able to carry out my PhD research.</span></em></p>The junta that governed Panama from 1968 to 1989 was hardly Latin America’s deadliest. But that doesn’t mean it was benign.Adriana Rudling, PhD candidate in Politics, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/574412016-04-11T10:07:24Z2016-04-11T10:07:24ZScotland’s Darien disaster: the first great financial scandal in Panama<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118053/original/image-20160410-23668-1oe0gxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The failed Darien venture is regarded as one of the greatest catastrophes in Scottish history</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/scubabix/9340464338/in/photolist-feojCA-nHSU19-39xx1m-4vH1Az-okm5Fx-eUkCB8-5qB8K8-pBsn7g-4G2dwm-nXzX1r-7rCmB4-5Tvnbo-4KSJRe-eUx1bL-F8L9ms-Fy2KjW-fr9Bzf-nhZner-FCBjS6-nab8tD-FwXMJQ-bMJDKM-wFB5DW-art97a-fe97U6-feopDq-4L8X8M-FxwFbt-n6o2N1-feoey7-g5SU63-4KSJN6-eUx17A-9SnRso-4KSJM4-7d62pM-pw2HdM-5SgB1t-jsFHb-mY6MU-hthJR-d4WXH-4KWYem-xj62D8-7NFNJE-6xdeuN-ckGris-8EaNyg-eUx13S-4fFXu3">Rob Blxby/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The leak of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/panama-papers-remarkable-global-media-operation-holds-rich-and-powerful-to-account-57196">Panama Papers</a> has brought to light elite tax avoidance and evasion on an unprecedented scale and has had important <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-camerons-panama-nightmare-cuts-to-the-core-of-his-image-problem-as-eu-referendum-looms-57508">political ramifications</a>. But this is not the first time that Panama has been at the heart of financial shenanigans on a global scale.</p>
<p>At the end of the 17th century, Panama became the focal point of Scottish imperial ambitions in a venture often described as the <a href="http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/may2005.html">“Darien Scheme”</a>. The failure of Darien was so catastrophic that it remains one of the <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/library/collections/virtualdisplays/collectionhighlights/spencer/">greatest calamities in Scottish history</a>. Its consequences have long been debated by historians, although none can doubt that it cost Scotland dearly. Some even see it as a decisive factor in compelling the Scottish parliament, along with the scheme’s bankrupted investors, to enter into <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100020733/scottish-independence-the-darien-disaster-and-financial-warnings-from-history/">union with England in 1707</a>. </p>
<h2>A 17th-century vision</h2>
<p>A cynical reading of this venture could certainly see this as the first great Panamanian scam. As Douglas Watt relates in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Price-Scotland-Darien-Nations/dp/1906307091">The Price of Scotland</a>, <a href="http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/p/williampaterson.html">William Paterson</a>, on whom the Darien vision depended, was the 17th-century equivalent to a modern-day investment banker and stockbroker. He convinced men and women from the Scottish elite and professional classes to invest £400,000 in a scheme that had no guarantee of success. While this may seem like a relatively meagre figure in today’s money, it was a remarkable achievement for a small nation, especially when compared with similar stock schemes of the period. The total raised equated to about [25% of Scottish national wealth](<a>http://scholar.harvard.edu/armitage/files/paterson.pdf</a>, and nearly <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotlands-Empire-Origins-Global-Diaspora/dp/0718193199">two-and-a-half times</a> the estimated value of Scotland’s annual exports.</p>
<p>Paterson was well-qualified for encouraging people to part with their money. In the 1690s, he worked as a [director of the Bank of England](<a>http://scholar.harvard.edu/armitage/files/paterson.pdf</a> and had been responsible for selling shares to fund William III’s war effort on the continent. As an experienced trader in both Europe and the Americas, he had also tried for a number of years to sell his vision of “Darien” as a great opportunity for overseas investment. </p>
<p>His ideals for Darien were founded on mercantilist tenets. It was theorised that a kingdom, no matter how small, could build a successful global empire by taking key strategic territories to advance trade. The Isthmus of Panama became central to Paterson’s scheme. It had been controlled by the <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Spanish_Empire">Spanish Empire</a> from the 1510s, but it was now the weak link in what was a declining international superpower. He aimed to establish a permanent settlement in Panama that would link the trade of Europe and the Americas with the markets in China, India and Japan. He called it <a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/gdi01/gall04.html">“the door of the seas, and key of the universe”</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rjhIzemLdos?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">When Spain ruled the world.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was certainly a convincing argument. But many had warned of settling in a territory at the heart of the Spanish Empire. It was also likely to antagonise England, which was fighting a war against the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France">French King Louis XIV</a> in Europe – this depended on both Scottish taxes and a peaceful alliance with the Spanish. </p>
<p>But this was not enough to deter either the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/scotland_darien_01.shtml">Company of Scotland</a>, who led the colonisation effort, nor its 1,500 investors drawn from across Scottish society. In contrast to the controversy of today, however, having a financial stake in a Panamanian scheme was not then cloaked in secrecy. The Scottish investors were proud to put their names to the scheme because they were convinced by Paterson’s rhetoric. </p>
<h2>A taxing issue</h2>
<p>Just as today, tax was a motivating factor for those investing in Panama. The Scottish nation had been deeply affected by the high taxes raised by <a href="http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensoftheUnitedKingdom/TheStuarts/MaryIIWilliamIIIandTheActofSettlement/MaryIIWilliamIII.aspx">William</a> to pay for his wars on the continent, which most Scots opposed. They were also affected by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Acts">protectionist trade barriers</a> brought in across Europe and the North American colonies, which made it harder to vend Scottish goods abroad. Darien therefore became an opportunity for Scotland to assert its independence from England, to restore its national pride and to raise its prestige on the global stage. It had the potential to unite a politically and religiously divided kingdom around a single ambition. It would also give a famine-ridden, declining nation the opportunity to assert itself as a global trading power. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118052/original/image-20160410-23634-1bcurtu.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">Deatination glory? Darien in Panama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rietje/2367377150/in/photolist-4BcqKq-4AGGEK-4AGiCP-4AGMqs-4ALNd3-4ALKQd-ekgsGc-4AGPMk-8Qfv45-4Auzyj-4AGKRR-4B85H2-4AGXwi-4ALU4Y-4AGiik-e6UtxE-4Avj5Y-4Bcj35-4AqobZ-4AYNju-4B7T2c-4AGSBt-4AuG9G-4ALMuh-4AUzRX-4AM2A3-4B819P-4ACCmD-4AGz3K-4AUAhK-4B83CF-4B7UVx-4Bc9yh-4ASjwX-4B7Sh2-4AGhV8-4AGMTZ-4AGNuE-4AUzqn-4AGiTD-4ALA8A-4B8598-4AYQsb-4AuCqf-4B84kK-4BcnRw-4AH6j6-4AWK39-4AGy9M-4AuAh1">Rita Willaert/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And so, in July 1698, a fleet of merchant ships, transporting around 1,200 men, women and children sailed across the Atlantic to build a new life at Darien. But Paterson’s vision and the financial backing of a wide section of the Scottish nation was not enough to ensure success. </p>
<p>The venture was cut short after only seven months, when the second group of colonists arrived to find the grisly effects of a fever epidemic, food shortages and attacks by native peoples and foreign powers. <a href="http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/may2005.html">Hundreds of people</a> are believed to have died within the space of a year, among the casualties was Paterson’s wife and son. T.M Devine, in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotlands-Empire-Origins-Global-Diaspora/dp/0718193199">Scotland’s Empire</a>, states that only three of the 13 company ships that landed at Darien returned to Scotland.</p>
<p>The catastrophic failure of the scheme placed the Scottish economy in a precarious situation and bankrupted many of those who had so willingly placed their trust in Paterson’s vision. The Scottish seizure of Spanish territory at Darien also flouted international agreements and soured English attitudes toward Scotland, as it directly contravened English imperial ambitions in Europe. As Tony Claydon and A.M Claydon report in their book William III, the king declared shortly after hearing about the scheme that he had been <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Z1zJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=tony+claydon+william+III+I+have+been+ill-served+by+Scotland&source=bl&ots=xUCCDss8A-&sig=oMkd5ztN9QTmf60Ewe9d3bYXrjk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK0fbKiobMAhXLBZoKHZONDzIQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=tony%20claydon%20william%20III%20I%20have%20been%20ill-served%20by%20Scotland&f=false">“ill-served” in Scotland</a>. </p>
<h2>The fallout</h2>
<p>Much like the Panama controversy brought about by the papers, the significance of Darien was not for the most part financial or economic, but rather political. Above all else, the scheme seriously affected Scottish national pride. For some Scottish MPs, its failure suggested that Scotland could not survive on its own and that the nation would be in a stronger economic and political position if they united with their English neighbour. </p>
<p>While the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/act-of-union-1707/">1707 Act of Union</a> was by no means a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotlands-Empire-Origins-Global-Diaspora/dp/0718193199">foregone conclusion</a> after the collapse of Darien, the prospect of compensation under the terms of the union to cover the money lost at Darien must have been an appealing prospect. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118111/original/image-20160411-21956-rcquku.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">Partly thanks to Darien?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/dl2_lim.mhtml?src=u8dbtNdXSlV5aAIaj6-uTg-1-8&clicksrc=download_btn_inline&id=140922238&size=medium_jpg&submit_jpg=">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Traditionally, historians and commentators took their cues from William III when he described Paterson and his company as <a href="http://scottishreviewofbooks.org/index.php/back-issues/vol11/volume-eleven-issue-three/774-panama-hell-rosemary-goring">“raging madmen”</a>, deeming it a subject not worthy of serious historical attention. But the response to Darien on a national and international scale proves that it was taken very seriously at the time. As the revelations of the Panama controversy unfold and its political consequences remain to be determined, Darien may continue to prove a lesson from which we can all learn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naomi Pullin 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>Panama is no stranger to financial shenanigans … even in the 17th century.Naomi Pullin, Teaching Fellow in Early Modern British History, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/571962016-04-03T20:42:02Z2016-04-03T20:42:02ZPanama Papers: remarkable global media operation holds rich and powerful to account<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117214/original/image-20160403-6827-r1xnet.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Panama City.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lala Rebelo</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the <a href="https://panamapapers.icij.org/">Panama Papers</a> exposé perhaps we can now say the fortress walls of offshore secrecy are finally cracking. Such havens allow corruption and tax avoidance to take place on a massive international scale by some of the richest and most powerful people on Earth. Meanwhile, the poor get poorer. </p>
<p>Western politicians have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10067378/David-Camerons-call-to-tackle-tax-avoidance.html">huffed and puffed about clamping down on offshore havens</a> but in reality their collective breath would not have knocked over a little piggie’s straw house let alone bastions of vested interest. It is thanks to investigative reporters, whistleblowers and unprecedented international media collaboration that the matter is being forced.</p>
<p>The advocacy group <a href="http://www.icij.org/blog/2013/04/release-offshore-records-draws-worldwide-response">Global Financial Integrity</a> reports that illegal channelling of profits offshore cost developing countries <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-funds-global-illicit-idUSBRE8BH00220121218">nearly US$6 trillion between 2001 and 2010</a>. As Facebook posters like to remind us, 1% of the world’s population owns half the wealth and they like to hoard it.</p>
<p>But finally things may be changing. We are being treated to the third major offshore data leak in as many years. The first was the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/03/offshore-secrets-offshore-tax-haven">Cayman Islands tax leak in 2013</a> that exposed a huge number of major figures worldwide as holding accounts in the tiny island – a British dependency – in secrecy. </p>
<p>Then there was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31248913">the great HSBC leak</a> which revealed that the company’s Swiss private bank had helped wealthy account holders from other nations to dodge huge sums of due tax. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35918844">Now it is the turn of Panama</a> – an excellent place to park large sums of money.</p>
<p>The Panama investigation has again featured a network of like-minded journalists in a range of countries. The network has been built up over a series of multinational collaborations. Among the organisations involved are The Guardian and BBC TV’s Panorama programme, which have a longstanding relationship with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which is at the heart of this operation. The material is reported to have been leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung from the database of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/mossack-fonsecas-response-to-the-panama-papers">Mossack Fonseca</a>, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117212/original/image-20160403-6806-1c684pa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the ICIJ reported the story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ICIJ</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the cracks appear in the once invincible wall of tax haven secrecy, it must be dawning on the rich and powerful that their privacy is no longer guaranteed. The opening reports of the Panama Papers focus on a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore">US$2bn trail to Vladimir Putin</a>, the president of Russia. But we can expect coming days to bring revelations about many more people. The last thing the rich and powerful who have offshore bank accounts want is publicity about them. Their questions must be “where next” and “which havens remain safe”?</p>
<h2>Secret banking paradise</h2>
<p>What is important about Panama’s financial services industry? If you tap “Panama offshore” into Google you get a long list of adverts offering to set up a Panama offshore (secret) bank account for you. </p>
<p>For those wanting to establish a really secret tax avoidance scheme it is not good enough just to pick one offshore tax haven – say the British Virgin Islands or the Cayman Islands. You need a series of interlocking offshore accounts in different jurisdictions to guarantee anonymity. <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/how-i-learned-to-avoid-the-taxman-in-the-british-virgin-islands/article567793/?page=all">British Virgin Islands is good for setting up companies</a> and the Caymans provides extremely discreet bank accounts. Meanwhile <a href="https://internationalliving.com/countries/panama/taxes/">Panama is tax exempt</a> and stonewalls requests for company information from investigators in the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Offshore companies incorporated in Panama – and the owners of the companies – are exempt from any corporate taxes, withholding taxes, income tax, capital gains tax, local taxes, and estate or inheritance taxes, including gift taxes.</p>
<p>Panama has <a href="http://www.taxjustice.net/2016/03/30/panama-the-making-of-a-tax-haven-and-rogue-state/">more than 350,000</a> secretive International Business Companies (IBCs) registered: the third largest number in the world after Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands. Alongside incorporation of IBCs, Panamanian financial services are proactive in forming tax-avoiding foundations and trusts, insurance, and boat and shipping registration. Violation of financial secrecy is punishable by prison. </p>
<p>Panama ranks at 14th position on the <a href="http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/introduction/fsi-2015-results">2015 Financial Secrecy Index</a>. But it remains <a href="http://www.taxjustice.net/2016/03/30/panama-the-making-of-a-tax-haven-and-rogue-state/">a jurisdiction of particular concern</a>. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Pascal Saint Amans <a href="http://www.taxjustice.net/2016/03/30/panama-the-making-of-a-tax-haven-and-rogue-state/">summed up the problem recently</a>: “From the standpoint of reputation, Panama is still the only place where people still believe they can hide their money.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.taxjustice.net/">Tax Justice Network</a> says that “until now Panama has been fairly indifferent to reputational issues, but the increased attention that Panama receives will inevitably raise concerns among the punters that Panama is no longer able to effectively protect the identity of the crooks and scammers attracted by its dodgy laws and equally dodgy law firms”. </p>
<p>TJN says Panama has long been the recipient of drugs money from Latin America, plus ample other sources of dirty money from the US and elsewhere – it is one of the oldest and best known tax havens in the Americas. In recent years it has adopted a hard-line position as a jurisdiction that refuses to cooperate with international transparency initiatives.</p>
<p>In Jeffrey Robinson’s 2003 examination of tax havens: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/13/highereducation.news1">The Sink</a>: Terror, Crime and Dirty Money in the Offshore World, a US Customs official is quoted as saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The country is filled with dishonest lawyers, dishonest bankers, dishonest company formation agents and dishonest companies registered there by those dishonest lawyers so that they can deposit dirty money into their dishonest banks. The Free Trade Zone is the black hole through which Panama has become one of the filthiest money laundering sinks in the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The investigators</h2>
<p>The emergence of a multinational network of journalists prepared to take on these secret havens has at its heart the investigative journalist <a href="http://www.walkleys.com/walkleys-winners/gerard-ryle/">Gerard Ryle</a>, who spent 26 years working as a reporter and editor in Australia and Ireland, including many years at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117204/original/image-20160403-6809-1tj0qtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Investigative journalist, Gerard Ryle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ICIJ</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A quietly spoken man, he uncovered some of the biggest stories in Australian journalism, winning four prestigious Walkley Awards including the Gold Walkley, Australia’s highest award for journalism.</p>
<p>While working for the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, Ryle was told by a source he would receive an significant package which could be the biggest story of his career.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I still remember the day it arrived, there was just the office manager there, I just hugged her and thanked her and walked back to my office. I pulled the package open and there was a hard drive inside.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first he did not know what it all meant but it became clear that it was an enormous cache of details of confidential emails, documents and files from the offshore world. From what could be made of the scattered and vastly disorganised material, Ryle later recalled his thoughts. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know it is a potential goldmine but I don’t actually know what I’m looking at, I’m not sure how valuable it is.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N8mFjrIDRHA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Ryle knew it was information from the secretive offshore world, was authentic and that the next step was to organise extracting the data in some kind of meaningful format. A chance to have access to the resources needed for this type of operation became available when Ryle was offered a job heading the International Consortium of Investigative journalists (ICIJ) in Washington DC.</p>
<p>Founded in 1997, ICIJ was launched as a project of the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org">Centre for Public Integrity</a> to extend the centre’s style of watchdog journalism, focusing on <a href="http://www.icij.org/blog/2012/08/essential-elements-powerful-global-investigative-reporting">issues that do not stop at national frontiers</a>: cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power. </p>
<h2>Teamwork</h2>
<p>With the consortium’s resources available to him, Ryle started to organise an international effort to structure the information so that journalists worldwide could analyse and find big names and stories from the data on a safe and secure platform in an efficient and ordered way.</p>
<p>Within 24 hours of publication of details of Cayman Island tax havens in April 2013, the Guardian was filled with stories from a collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative journalists (ICIJ). The tie-up also included the BBC in the UK, Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other international media partners. </p>
<p>According to the ICIJ, 86 journalists from 46 countries used both hi-tech data crunching and traditional reporting to sift through emails and account ledgers covering nearly 30 years. One of the biggest hits for the ICIJ was on <a href="https://www.icij.org/offshore/offshore-companies-provide-link-between-corporate-mogul-and-azerbaijans-president">Azerbijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev</a>, after he and members of his family were revealed as shareholders in at least four offshore companies. It is against Azerbaijani law to be involved in business while in power. By September 2013, journalists from 190 countries had produced stories from the database about prominent citizens who had hidden offshore accounts.</p>
<h2>HSBC leak</h2>
<p>Then in February 2015 a team of journalists from 45 countries opened to public scrutiny secret bank accounts maintained for criminals, traffickers, tax dodgers, politicians and celebrities. Secret documents in the data batch revealed that <a href="https://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/banking-giant-hsbc-sheltered-murky-cash-linked-dictators-and-arms-dealers">global banking giant HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers</a>, the ICIJ reported. The leaked files, based on the inner workings of a Swiss private banking arm of HSBC, related to accounts holding more than $100 billion. They provided a rare glimpse inside the super-secret Swiss banking system.</p>
<p>The documents, obtained by the ICIJ <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/evasion-fiscale/article/2015/02/08/swissleaks-the-backstory-of-a-worldwide-investigation_4572334_4862750.html">via the French newspaper Le Monde</a>, showed the private banking arm had dealt with clients who were engaged in illegal behaviour.</p>
<p>In February 2015, after being informed of the full extent of the reporting team’s findings, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-responds-revelations-misconduct-swiss-bank">HSBC gave a conciliatory response</a>, telling ICIJ: “We acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC’s Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today.”</p>
<p>Later that year ICIJ was given access to the largest data haul so far – some 11m documents covering accounts held by the rich across the globe. The follow-up stories are now breaking now and will fill news bulletins for months – maybe years. It is proof – if any were needed – of the need for investigative journalists to hold the powerful to account.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar is part of a research group that is funded by ESRC and have been part of a research team that received a grant from Innovate UK (2014) but not on a subject area related to this article.</span></em></p>A global collaboration of journalists has revealed massive offshoring of funds linked to some of the world’s most powerful people, including Vladimir Putin.Paul Lashmar, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/444182015-08-23T19:51:23Z2015-08-23T19:51:23ZPreventing violence: maybe communities know better<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89286/original/image-20150722-31195-q5vlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A boy contemplates the guns handed in during an amnesty for gang members in Panama City. How do communities respond to violence?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/panama-amnesty-no-lasting-solution-to-gang-problem">InSight Crime </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A child in Rivera Hernandez is <a href="http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/status_report/2014/en/">85 times more likely</a> to be murdered than a child in Australia. Rivera Hernandez is a community in Honduras. It is just an example of the many communities around the world where crime, domestic violence and child maltreatment are killing millions.</p>
<p>International organisations like the <a href="http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01306/web/interpersonal-violence-prevention.html">World Bank</a> and the <a href="http://www.who.int/violenceprevention/en/">World Health Organisation</a> invest millions of dollars in violence prevention. All these organisations have good intentions. They also have big plans for quantifying the problem and for expensive and sophisticated solutions. </p>
<p>In the early 1980s, Manfred Max-Neef described his journey falling out of love with economics. He said <a href="http://www.daghammarskjold.se/publication/outside-looking-experiences-barefoot-economics/">in one of his books</a> that “economics had an obsession with abstract measurement and quantifiers”. He lamented that it had:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a tendency to oversimplify, as reflected by efforts to assume technical objectivity at the expense of losing a sense of history and a feeling for social complexity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Needs are created and articulated in fancy terms. Real people in communities are not part of this process.</p>
<h2>Meeting the real experts</h2>
<p>For the last six years I have immersed myself in the field of violence prevention. I met renowned experts from international organisations and universities. I participated in beautiful and costly seminars and conferences, which were opportunities for face-to-face discussions with investors and scholars. </p>
<p>I was also lucky enough to spend a lot of my time talking with families and children in San Joaquin, a <a href="http://courcyint.com/component/k2/item/64382-panama-more-arrests-no-trials-more-gangs.html">“dangerous” community</a> in Panama City. Gangs in <a href="http://laestrella.com.pa/panama/nacional/realiza-operativos-joaquin/23841433">San Joaquin</a> are among the cruellest in the region. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o1VA3RJaZM0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">This documentary focuses on the life and resilience of the women in the high-risk Panamanian neighbourhood of San Joaquin.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though most members in this community have not finished secondary school, our conversations immediately captured my attention. They talked like the real experts. They were full of energy and motivation for designing simple solutions, if only they were given the opportunity. </p>
<p>Some mothers, for example, said they needed to have their children with them while they were working. One of them provided for her family by selling mangoes outside the school. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People say I am a bad mother because I have my child by my side while I work. He is good. He sits quietly and does his homework. If I leave him by himself at home, he will go to the park and meet older men who are a very bad influence for him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Can we help mothers from this community get organised to design an after-school program?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89266/original/image-20150722-31241-14bkacx.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children in Honduras are 85 times more likely to be murdered than children in Australia, according to the World Health Organisation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mission_honduras/3324369729/">Mission Honduras/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Community-based participatory research (<a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2009.184036">CBPR</a>), action research and bottom-up approaches – as known in the academic jargon – are not new. They are very popular in many fields. However, the way CBPR is practised still faces ethical challenges.</p>
<p>In most examples of CBPR, solutions are still <a href="http://heb.sagepub.com/content/31/6/684.short">driven by “outsiders”</a>. They are the initiators of ideas and they use their own methods for building “inside capacity” – as if capacity didn’t already exist. Some might argue this is a form of microscopic recolonisation in which powerful experts make decisions that will ultimately affect communities. </p>
<p>Tensions between outsiders and insiders are common, which is reflected in low engagement and solutions with limited sustainability.</p>
<p>Would it be easier to prevent violence if we catalysed change from inside communities? Only if we talk in communities’ own language and learn to establish horizontal rather than top-down dialogues will this be possible. It is crucial that we remove “technicisms” that don’t allow true collaboration between outsiders and insiders.</p>
<h2>Community projects are proven but all too rare</h2>
<p>Projects truly driven by communities are rare. Could this be the reason, after all these decades of research and public investment, that we haven’t had much success in preventing community violence?</p>
<p>One successful example is the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J125v10n04_06#.Va7JFfmqpBc">Hmong Women Project</a>, conducted in the late 1990s in a large Midwestern city of the US. The overall aim was to explore the impacts of gender, race and class on the experience of domestic violence of women of colour in the US. </p>
<p>After encounters with different communities in this city, researchers discovered that the Hmong were the only sizeable group in the target area at risk for domestic violence. This was due to their history of displacement after the Vietnam War. Yet no services were available to them. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LxkHSJQYbB4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino features members of the US Midwest’s Hmong community.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As they approached the community and consulted members, researchers recognised that domestic violence could trigger memories of traumatic experiences in the Vietnam conflict. They became aware that the discussion of domestic violence was considered threatening to women and that their “outsider” status added significantly to this threat. </p>
<p>As a consequence, the specific issues targeted by the project were negotiated with communities. Objectives quickly changed from “domestic violence support” to designing support for street safety and emotional well-being.</p>
<p>This process catalysed community action. A group of Hmong women designed a support workshop for other members of the community. The workshop used <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoice">Photovoice</a> to help participants whose first language was not English. This helped them to easily document their daily lives through photography. </p>
<p>A year later, several Hmong women expressed an interest in establishing a non-profit organisation to respond to the multiple needs of women in the community. This example was reported 12 years ago. In the paper, the authors do not say what happened to this “insider idea”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89299/original/image-20150722-31230-hotl64.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">The Hmong people of Minnesota have rebuilt a community that was struggling after being displaced by the Vietnam War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40960220@N04/5595477741">flickr/Ramsey County Minnesota</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Apply inside knowledge to local problems</h2>
<p>I don’t know exactly where the project took place, but I suspect it was Detroit because of the authors’ academic affiliation. Does anybody in closer touch with this community know the evolution of women organisations in Detroit in the last 12 years? A quick online search of Hmong women in the Midwest also shows great achievements by one community in <a href="http://www.mnhs.org/hmong/hmong-women-timeline">Minnesota</a>. </p>
<p>I like to believe that these achievements were driven by similar efforts to increase community empowerment.</p>
<p>In order to have impact, solutions do not necessarily need to be evaluated with sophisticated quantitative designs or disseminated in the academic world in fancy conferences. Each community is unique. Solutions should not be diffused globally and imposed in other, different communities just for the sake of having a “worldwide expert” in the field. </p>
<p>Solutions that are driven by communities are collaborative and horizontal, and use sound methodologies that are accessible to those inside. Researchers are just instruments for feeding back results to communities. This process needs to happen in communities’ own language so that it leads naturally to inside action. </p>
<p>The real experts are therefore communities themselves. Shall we listen and invest in them?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anilena Mejia is an employee of the Parenting and Family Support Centre (PFSC) at The University of Queensland (UQ). </span></em></p>Many communities struggle with crime, violence and abuse, but they are not all the same. Those that look to local expertise for solutions offer hope in a world where success in preventing violence is rare.Anilena Mejia, Research Fellow, Parenting and Family Support Centre, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.