The post Whaling activities have resumed in Iceland and Japan, and the world speaks out. Does it? appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>Introduction
Whaling in 2023 still constitutes an activity of utmost controversy. While the 88-member state International Whaling Commission (IWC) has put in place a ban on commercial whaling in 1982 that came into force in the Antarctic whaling season 1985/86, this does not mean that whaling per se is illegal throughout the world. First of all, the so-called ‘moratorium’ is only relevant for those states that are members of the IWC and, amongst those, binding only for those that have not lodged an objection to it. In practice, that means that both Norway and Iceland — the latter left the Commission in the early 1990s, but rejoined it in 2002 with a reservation towards the moratorium — still conduct commercial whaling, despite being IWC members. In four IWC member states, IWC-regulated Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW) is still conducted for subsistence purposes: in the United States (Alaska), Greenland, Russia (Chukotka) and St Vincent & the Grenadines (Bequia).
Since the moratorium has come into force, it has been one of the most controversial decisions ever taken by the IWC and has led to antagonistic positions within the Commission: on the one side are countries that oppose commercial whaling vehemently; on the other side are states either directly whale or that support the principle of sustainable (lethal) use of whales for principal reasons, also as a potential source of food in the future. The spearhead of the latter group has been Japan, which has fought for a resumption of commercial whaling for decades. Since Japan’s initiatives have been fruitless, the country left the Commission on 1 July 2019 and is now able to conduct commercial whaling within its 200nm Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) outside of the control of the IWC.
Although whaling is no longer as industrial an activity as compared to the past, it still faces major resistance within the Commission, but also in media discourse. For instance, the dramatic hunt of approximately 1,400 Atlantic white-sided dolphins in the Faroe Islands in 2021 made headlines all over the world (Sellheim, 2021). While legal (the IWC only regulates whaling of ‘great whales’, excluding small cetaceans such as dolphins), it is often portrayed as inherently cruel, unsustainable and, depending on the source of information, illegal.
At the end of August 2023, several media sources reported that whaling has resumed in Iceland after a hiatus of two years between 2019—2022 and a suspension of licences in 2023 over animal welfare concerns; commercial whaling for fin whales has now resumed. In Japan, in the small village of Taiji, the whaling season has also begun. Here, it is especially small cetaceans that are hunted outside the ambit of the IWC, but under the watchful eye of the public: along with several anti-whaling protestors, activist Ric O’Barry travelled to Taiji in August 2023 to protest whaling. O’Barry has gained fame by starring in the (documentary) film The Cove in 2008, which portrayed Taiji whaling as cruel and unnecessary, and which came to be an Academy Award winner (Psihoyos, 2008).
Recent media coverage of Icelandic and Taiji whaling
Icelandic whaling
While not overly prominent, several international news outlets have reported about the resumed hunts in Iceland and Taiji. The Guardian, France24, BBC, Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, MTVUutiset, Aftenposten and Der Spiegel report that despite a whaling ban that lasted for approximately two months in the summer of 2023, whaling has now resumed ‘under strict rules’ with regulations in place that improve animal welfare standards in whaling (Aftenposten, 2023; Der Spiegel, 2023a; Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 2023; France24, 2023; Kirby, 2023; McVeigh, 2023; MTVUutiset, 2023). In all articles, Iceland’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, is cited as not seeing a reason to further suspend whaling given that the licences were issued before she started her tenure and that whaling practices are now following stricter animal welfare rules.
When Svarvarsdóttir issued the suspension of whaling in June 2022, several news outlets reported about this decision, hailing it as a (partial) victory for animal welfare and rights groups (Euronews, 2023), especially since the Minister remarked that whaling has no future in Iceland (if animal welfare standards are not met). It is especially the way this statement was interpreted by news outlets, which is interesting to consider: While in Euronews (2023) Svarvarsdóttir is quoted has having said that “whaling has no future”, in AlJazeera (2023), the full quotation is presented: “If the government and licensees cannot guarantee welfare requirements, these activities do not have a future.”
Most of the reports about Icelandic whaling cite animal rights and welfare groups who express their disappointment over the recent resumption of whaling. Der Spiegel quotes a representative of the organisation Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) (Der Spiegel, 2023a); France24 and Aftenposten mirror the disappointment of the head of the Humane Society International (HSI), Ruud Tombrock; The Guardian includes the views of representatives of the WDS, HSI and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), while the BBC reflects the foresight of a representative of IFAW that “this year will be the final year of whaling in Iceland” (Kirby, 2023).
The latter statement is rooted in a recent poll carried out by the Icelandic Maskina Institute that showed that opposition to whaling has grown from 42% to 51% over the last four years (RFI, 2023). Even though the survey does not seem to be publicly available, and despite the fact that the result means that 49% of Icelanders are still in favour of (or at least indifferent to) whaling, the news outlets under scrutiny here value the results as proof that also within Iceland, whaling no longer finds support. Indeed, one of the most prominent Icelandic celebrities, the singer Björk, has also started to campaign against Icelandic whaling on Facebook, going further to lead a protest against whaling in Reykjavík in June 2023.
Whether or not public and/or political pressure on Icelandic whaling will increase in the future remains to be seen. Celebrities such as Björk and actor Leonardo DiCaprio (Der Spiegel, 2023a) act as conduits for an anti-whaling voice, BBC notes, quoting Katrin Oddsdottir of the Icelandic Nature Conservation Association that “there was a genuine risk of a Hollywood boycott of Iceland now that the practice was being allowed to resume” (Kirby, 2023). A Hollywood boycott is consequently used as a threat towards Iceland’s decision-makers to end whaling.
A similar mechanism was used in the past, albeit from the highest US government level: in 2014, for instance, Barack Obama issued a Memorandum in which he supported Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell’s certification of Iceland under the so-called ‘Pelly Amendment’ of the Fisherman’s Protective Act of 1967, which allows the Secretary to certify nationals of a foreign country who are engaging in trade which diminishes the effectiveness of any international program for endangered or threatened species. This certification allows the President to move Congress for any concrete action to ensure the conservation of the species. After Iceland had resumed fin whaling in 2014, such a certification occurred over the diminishing of the effectiveness of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since Iceland started to engage in international trade in whale meat. In the Memorandum, Obama instructed his Cabinet and the different ministries to take soft action, thereby putting pressure on Iceland to rethink its decision (Obama, 2014).
What several of the articles wrongly state is that Iceland, along with Norway and Japan, is the only country in the world in which whaling is still conducted (AlJazeera, 2023; Kirby, 2023; MTVUutiset, 2023; Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 2023; RFI, 2023). Merely Der Spiegel (Der Spiegel, 2023a) and Aftenposten (Aftenposten, 2023) correctly note that these countries are the only ones in which whaling is still commercially conducted. The introduction to this article already shows that ASW is conducted in four regions of the world. Beyond that, however, whaling still occurs in Canada and Indonesia (Bock Clark, 2019).
Taiji whaling
The start of the whaling season in Taiji in 2023 has found significantly less media coverage than the resumption of whaling in Iceland. Der Spiegel notes that “Japan slaughters dolphins again” (“Japan metzelt wieder Delfine”; Der Spiegel, 2023b), while the same narrative can be found in Teller Report (2023). In fact, the newspaper reports about the Taiji whale drive every two years on average. This year, Taiji whaling has found almost no media reflection outside of Japan. In early 2023, several news outlets reported about Taiji: Newsweek presented a commonly found overview of the hunt (Whyte, 2023), while The Guardian reported about a complaint by an Australian animal welfare group, Action for Dolphins, about the level of mercury in dolphin meat and that it be removed from sale (McCurry, 2023). Also, non-governmental organisations still working to end the Taiji whale drive have published and distributed articles underlining their opposition to the practice (Matthes, 2023; Rosenberg, 2023). Compared to the media coverage of the years before and to the coverage on Icelandic whaling, Taiji is covered relatively a little in current media coverage.
The Taiji whale drive © Nikolas Sellheim, 2018.
Research carried out in Taiji by the author in 2017 revealed that the ‘most significant change’ — a method developed by Rick Davies in 1994 and applied during fieldwork — that occurred in the village was the moratorium on commercial whaling and the release of The Cove. Both events affected the community significantly: the former, because villagers were not able to process and consume meat from ‘great whales’ anymore. While the consumption was not high, humpback whale meat nevertheless played an important role in the diet of the region. However, the moratorium also affected the village in such a way in so far as Taiji whalers were very experienced. Since the Japanese government initiated the JARPA research whaling programme in 1987, whalers were needed on the vessels in the Southern Ocean. To this end, many Taiji whalers were recruited who then spent several months away from their families. Inevitably, the socio-economic dynamics within the community changed quite fundamentally.
The Cove affected the community by putting it on the world map and by sparking controversy and outrage amongst outsiders. Because of protesters, the community started to shield itself from outside influence, and every foreigner — including the author — is met with suspicion. Also, the small police station that can be found next to ‘the cove’ was built solely to keep foreign protesters under control. The main grocery store in the community is monitored, and photos are prohibited. While protests were soaring shortly after The Cove, these ebbed down over time, but recently have seen a resurgence. While the Sea Shepherd-run ‘Cove Guardians’ do not appear to exist anymore, the constant resurfacing of the hunt in the media point towards a still existing interest in the whalers and their activities.
What is hardly understood is that Japanese ethics towards animals differ from ‘Western’ ethics. On the one hand, animals such as whales are killed. On the other hand, they are worshipped as contributing to a community’s sustenance (Itoh, 2018). In Taiji, whales play even a different role. Virtually in every corner of the community, images or sculptures of whales are found, and the lighthouse has a whale-shaped wind rose at its top. The long whaling history is probably best shown in the different shrines that worship whales in the entire Wakayama region, as well as by the carved rock that can be found on the beach, done by a mason who was tasked to carve the rock by a whaling captain for unknown reasons.
At the centre of Taiji’s whaling history stands the Taiji Whale Museum. While showing the rich history of whaling in the region and providing information about whales themselves, it also holds a sea park and an aquarium. In both, small cetaceans such as false killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens), common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) or different species of pilot whales (Globicephala) can be found — an albino short-finned pilot whale was a special attraction during fieldwork in 2017. The whale trainers of Taiji are all young men and women in their early-20s, engaging in the activity with much enthusiasm. Indeed, the whale museum and sea park are also well frequented. In the author’s three visits to Taiji, the visitors’ benches were always full. The interviews with the whale trainers, the profession of whom can hardly be understood from a Western perspective, revealed that it is inherent (national) pride that drives them. Since they contribute to the entertainment and thereby to the increased well-being of the Japanese people, they take immense pride in being able to do their job.
Whale show at the Taiji Whale Museum © Nikolas Sellheim, 2018
The perspective of well-being, therefore, does not rest on the animals, but rather on the ‘greater good’ of the Japanese people. A similar, more utilitarian approach can also be found in the different pet (or even petting) stores all over Japan, where visitors are able to pet small dogs that live their lives in cages for this very purpose. Also, Japan’s overall environmental and conservation policies are driven by utilitarian discourses (Kagawa-Fox, 2012).
The approach towards Taiji’s whaling from a purely Western perspective therefore neglects important normative elements of Japanese culture. This underlines the need for a socio-economic presentation of the hunt in non-Japanese media beyond narratives of cruelty and lack of need.
Summary and conclusion
Whaling still constitutes an activity that can be found in several places all over the world. Even though Iceland, Japan and Norway conduct commercial whaling, this cannot be compared to the uncontrolled commercial whaling of the past that decimated the numbers of the great whales dramatically. Instead, in all commercially whaling countries, the activity is strictly regulated — at least from an ecological perspective. From an animal welfare perspective, Iceland has tightened its rules after a hiatus of two months that the Minister imposed over welfare concerns. The hiatus and the subsequent resumption of whaling made waves in the international media. On the one hand, the end of Icelandic whaling was hoped for, but then, it was resumed nevertheless. For all media sources under scrutiny here, this was a major step backwards, especially from the perspective of animal welfare organisations.
The case of Taiji is somewhat different. While having gained significant media attention in the past, it is now still present, but not to a comparable degree as Iceland’s whaling. With the series published in Asahi Shimbun on the role of whaling for the community, it becomes ever more important to present these findings to a larger international audience in order for it to find some recognition as a type of hunting for food. Moreover, the socio-cultural aspects and in particular the overall utilitarian approach to animals, which constitutes a significantly different ethical narrative, should not be swept under the rug. For without taking these aspects into account, from the outside, Taiji whaling will never be comprehensible.
References – Other:
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]]>The post From a Northern Hub: Interview with Mayor of Yellowknife Rebecca Alty appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>Justin Barnes, Canada Fellow at Polar Research and Policy Initiative, interviews Rebecca Alty, Mayor of Yellowknife, about the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for the capital of Canada’s Northwestern Territories.
Justin: What are some of the key challenges that Yellowknife shares with other northern communities in Canada and around the globe? What are some that might set it apart?
Rebecca: I think housing, and that’s also not unique to the north — we’re seeing it across Canada — but some of the challenges and differences I would say is we’re quite a bit smaller than the rest of the mayors that I’ve been talking to internationally. Yellowknife’s population is 20,000 but another Arctic mayor I have spoken to was from a city of 100,000. Once you get to the 100,000+ scale, there’s some economies of scale that Yellowknife just doesn’t have. But issues like electricity, power, and heating are shared issues. Particularly in the North American Arctic, we’re still on diesel. How can we get to more green electricity and heating that we’re seeing in the other circumpolar areas?
I would also say that a lot of it is about infrastructure, and employee and resident attraction. I was speaking with the mayor of Luleå, Sweden, and we discussed how we share some of the same challenges related to people thinking we’re so remote and such a hinterland. People often say things like, “oh, I don’t know if I can move from either the southern part of Sweden or the southern part of Canada. You are just so rugged and hardy up there”. You just have to dress for the weather and get good clothes. But once people come to Yellowknife, I know they’re like, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting such a diverse population or how urban it is.” I know that we have tall buildings but lots of it is still trying to take advantage of nature.
A related challenge is climate change and its impact on our infrastructure. It’s a pretty big theme and topic in the North. Yellowknife is what we call an Arctic desert. We don’t have a lot of precipitation, so we don’t get the snow storms that the Maritimes of Canada would get. But now we’re getting cloudier conditions. As a tourist hub, the increasingly cloudy conditions we’re experiencing is an issue for tourists coming here to see the Aurora. This is because if you stay for three days, you have a 90% chance of seeing the northern lights. But with cloudier conditions, warmer conditions, tourists are coming in and not seeing the northern lights. That’s not good for our tourism brands.
I would say the other the big theme is a lot of northern cities are resource cities. So, for example, Luleå too has a focus on mining. Communities from Greenland have been talking a lot about mining. How can we have more diverse economies? Mining is great, it provides employment. But it’s impacted by a lot of external factors. If the mining companies have to reduce their costs, then you want to make sure that you’ve got a good tourism, agriculture and post-secondary sector.
I think there’s so many similarities and a few differences, and on any of the differences, how do we scale it or how modify it to our situation? There was a session I went to at a conference that was talking about how well the other circumpolar countries do for investments in their northern municipalities and areas versus Canada. In Canada, investment tends to come through when it’s a military-focused government. Instead, let’s invest in our whole country because here in the Northwest Territories, we’re leaps and bounds ahead when it comes to Indigenous relations, when it comes to self-government, when it comes to the four governments — federal, territorial, municipal and Indigenous governments — working together. There’s lots of stuff that the world could learn.
The David Suzuki Foundation released a report about how Canada could be carbon neutral by 2030, but then there’s this big footnote: this does not include the territories. You can’t say the whole country is going to be carbon neutral except this difficult part that’s fully on diesel, that’s a speck of the population. But if you actually want to be a carbon neutral country, let’s dive into the hard part: how do we make the North carbon neutral? I think, looking to what the Scandinavian countries are doing, it’s: what can be done? Again, it’s those economies of scale. When I look at waste energy, it tends to require a certain mass to be able to make the business case. We’ve got a smaller 20,000-person population, but I was talking to the mayor of Rovaniemi in Finland and I asked them about their district heating and how they’ve gone about it. It started in the 1960s, but when you rip a road up to replace the water and sewer, that’s when you put the district heating in. So, for Yellowknife, we can’t rip up every road and do it right away. It would be incremental. That’s one thing we’re looking at here in Yellowknife. When we build our next subdivision, let’s actually look at what would be required. It would require a lot of land for the district heating system, but let’s put the pipes in the ground to the houses. Let’s get the houses designed so that they’re designed for the system.
Justin: What opportunities do you see as most promising for transitioning away from diesel? Have Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) come up as a possibility?
Rebecca: There have been some side conversations by council, but that’s where I think the territorial and federal governments should be looking at these options. As a small municipality, we don’t have the expertise to delve into that but it would be good for the Ottawa folks to be based here in the North and to actually understand what’s happening. Geothermal is another one that’s huge in Iceland, and they’ve tried to look at it in the Northwest Territories but haven’t really moved on it. We have looked at a lot of options over the years, but as business cases change and once you add the carbon tax in, all of a sudden something could have a good business case now.
Justin: What opportunities does being a northern city present? What kinds of economic opportunities do you see as the most promising for the future?
Rebecca: Cold weather testing is one thing we’ve been getting into. Aviation companies will come to Yellowknife because we’ve got the clear blue sky. It’s -40 as we’re talking today, so they’re more likely to have good flying conditions versus St John’s, Newfoundland where you get a lot of cloud cover and you can’t fly.
With Aurora College turning into the Polytechnic University, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. It’s not only creating employment with the professors, as well as the students coming, but there’s the spill over of things like coffee shops that the students are going to, the hotels that parents are staying in when they are coming to visit their kids. We also have a lot of research done in the North, but right now it’s all done by southern universities. So those positions are all located down south. if we’ve got that university here, those positions are located here. I see research applications come across my desk, so I know how much research is happening here in the North and how many dollars we’re losing. We talk a lot about the lost dollars related to not having all the diamond mind employees living in the North. There’s also a lot of lost dollars from a research perspective.
Then there’s the Aurora tourism. COVID was tough because our borders were closed, but it also gave us a bit of an opportunity to kind of get the house in order. In 2019, we saw a record-breaking year. With all of these tourists coming, we also had a lot of tourist operators that were just fly in, fly out from Toronto. In some cases, they were not creating a good experience for tourists and we want to make sure people are safe and having a good experience. So, the territorial government was able to get a few processes in place. Tourism is an area where that can definitely expand.
Yellowknife is a great community and it’s small, it’s walkable, it’s diverse. It’s got a bit of the Wild West feel still — residents take stuff on and just run with it. For example, we’ve got a big snow castle that gets built and it opens in March for the whole month, and on Fridays and Saturdays they have bands and parties all under the Northern Lights. That was started by a guy who was building a fort for his kids and it took off from there. Now 25, 30 years later, it’s this iconic thing that tourists come for. That’s just one example. I think it’s a small enough community that you’ve got that flexibility. People are willing to roll up their sleeves and get it done. I think it’s also because we don’t have much of a commute time. My walk from work to home is 7 minutes. Instead of spending 2 hours commuting, I’ve got an hour and 53 minutes to be involved in my community.
Justin: what are the main economic challenges facing Yellowknife?
Rebecca: One of the biggest ones, of course, would be the diamond mines coming to a close. For people that aren’t aware of the diamond mining business, eventually they just come to the end of their supply and they close down. There’s three operating right now and one is set to close basically next year, and then it goes into the remediation phase. That will have an impact. That’s 350 Yellowknifers who work there. But then there’s also the remediation economy. Giant Mine is a mine that shut down in the early 2000s and as it went into receivership the federal government had to take over and now the cleanup is happening. That’s going to create employment.
A challenge from an economic development perspective would be the cost and reliability of power and Internet. This cold weather could be great for data farms, but we don’t have the electricity for that. We don’t have the reliability for that. In Luleå, they haven’t had a power outage since Reagan was in office. That’s what you need. In the fall we had six power outages in one day, and that means businesses aren’t open. And at the same time, we had the Internet cut by somebody. That was our one pipeline to the South. It doesn’t happen on a regular basis but it does happen and it causes challenges.
Another challenge that’s not unique to just the North, but it’s housing. Businesses struggle to hire because there’s little housing, and the cost of housing is expensive, too. So, the challenge of getting and retaining your employees, that’s what we’re all going to be facing in the North. It’s becoming more challenging to recruit and retain.
Justin: What has Yellowknife’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic been like, and how did the community respond?
Rebecca: The Territorial government was the lead on that, and they had pretty strict protocols. If you left the territory, you knew when you came back you had to isolate for 14 days. It’s because our health care system is pretty fragile. We saw that in January 2022 with Omicron. We all have these contingency plans, but for the city, if too many people are sick for road crews, we call in a contractor to help. But all the contractors were sick, too. We managed it, but it definitely opened our eyes to how an illness can really whip through the community and cripple services. On the other hand, I think we had a lot of flexibility when it came to opening facilities up and having community events compared to the South. It was strict if you left the territory but then once you got into the territory, there was a bit more flexibility. Of course, it wasn’t fully open. We’re also still facing a lot of the mental health challenges now that came from that.
We saw a lot of young families, if they had family down south, the fact that they couldn’t readily leave and go visit family, that was a challenge. Some people decided to move home and to make sure that they’re closer to grandma and grandpa to help raise the kids or take care of a sick parent. That was definitely a challenge. I think one of the other big ones is the fact that from an immigration perspective, with borders being closed, we saw some businesses really struggling and reducing their hours just because they couldn’t get employees. It was definitely tough for employers and for small businesses. There was also lots of government jobs added and so people were leaving their small business to go get those government wages, which were temporary. There was a shake up from an employment perspective.
Justin: Were there any lessons have been learned from the experience?
Rebecca: I think it has made everybody think about their contingency plans. It’s gotten the various orders of government working together. I think we’re human, and we’ve got a short memory, we’ve got to stay on top of this. We’ve got to make sure that we’re keeping our business continuity plans and our emergency plans up to date. When people switch positions, we need to make sure that we’re making the proper introduction so that if or when something happens again, it’s not a scramble of determining who to you talk to in certain situations. That is something that we’ve got to keep in front of mind.
Justin: As Mayor of one of the largest cities and hubs in Canada’s North, and the capital of the NWT, I’m interested in your perspective about how the rest of Canada and the world might view Yellowknife. Do you feel global media reports about your region accurately?
Rebecca: Not necessarily, and not that it’s necessarily global media, but I’ll go to that. When it comes to how people know us, it’s through reality TV, and it’s often hearty shows like Ice Road Truckers and Ice Lake Rebels. I think the media portrays Yellowknife like it’s still that rugged northern exploration frontier, and then you come up and you realize it’s just a little city. I always say we have the best Ethiopian restaurant in the world, and you can go to yoga at lunch and go for a ski out on the lake after work. It’s tricky. It’s a very romantic perspective that is given. From a branding perspective, from a tourism perspective, if that’s what gets you up here, that’s great. But I think from an employment, recruitment and retention perspective, I think that could be the challenge of people thinking “oh, I’m not hardcore enough to make it there.” It’s more like, “hey, here’s some good boots to buy, here’s a good pair of snow pants and here’s a jacket. You’re going to be fine.”
Justin: What are the topics you think should be reported or discussed, but maybe aren’t as much as they should be in the Canadian or global media?
Rebecca: For the Northwest Territories and Yellowknife, it’s what’s happening in the space of Indigenous governance and things like First Nation and Metis self-government agreements and the Inuvialuit agreements. There are some court challenges right now, but the Indigenous governments are actually leading the child and family protection services and health care and similar issues. I think there’s a lot in that space that could be reported on. And of course, we always appreciate when they’re talking about our great tourism and stuff like the more rugged activities. But I think the Indigenous governance should be one of the big topics.
Justin: What do you see as some of the biggest challenges to reporting on stories in Yellowknife and the community there?
Rebecca: That it can be fly-in, fly-out journalism, and that they’re going for what’s going to get clicks. This can lead to trauma tourism. They come in and they report on the mental health and addictions from intergenerational trauma without talking about the initiatives that are underway to address that. Is there enough that’s underway? No, so you could touch on that. But I think just coming in and taking photos of boarded up houses and photos of people on the streets, it’s just not the full picture. I think it’s important to get that other side: what are people doing? What have people done in the past? Why did it stop? Should it come back? I think there’s a lot of stuff that can be discussed in that way.
Justin: Are there any big developments or events coming up that would warrant some media coverage?
Rebecca: Yeah, I’m hoping that that Akaitcho self-government and land claim gets settled soon. I think it’s still a couple of years off, but that would be a big one particularly because in the Akaitcho land claim there’s a lot of land selected within Yellowknife. We’re already working with Yellowknives Dene First Nation on how they want their land to be zoned, and what they want to be built or not. It’s their land and we want to make sure that the land regulations match what they’re hoping to do with the land, whether it is land that was selected from an economic perspective, and determine how they want to develop that. They’ve selected other land because it’s culturally important, and so I think it’ll be, from a municipal perspective, some really interesting zoning and reconciliation discussions.
Justin: I just have some final questions about yourself. This is your second term as mayor, and you’ve been on council since 2012. What are some of the most notable changes you’ve seen over the past decade since you’ve been on council?
Rebecca: One of the things I’m proudest about, I would say, would be that we approved a new zoning bylaw last March and did away with the single family and restricted zoning in residential areas. We have a housing crunch here in Yellowknife and across Canada. So, this is allowing people to build a duplex or to have a secondary suite on their property, or go up to triplex or even a six-plex. We’re not talking about being able to take your single-family house and turn it into a 15-story apartment building, but it’s allowing for more homes for people in residential areas. It’s one thing to do the zoning, it’s another for people to actually use it. That’s what this next term is going to be about: how can we incentivise and identify further barriers that we can remove?
Over the ten years I would say I’ve really been working to get our house in order. We don’t want to lose that “Wild West” feeling — residents like being able to do stuff on their own initiative. But at the same time, having policies in place so that we’re not reinventing the wheel for every new project. Part of that is closely looking at our asset management and the condition of our assets, and making sure that we’re being as fiscally responsible as possible. The city’s working well because every morning they turn on the taps, get drinking water, flush the toilet, throw out their Kleenex, we pick it all up. But there’s a lot behind the scenes to make it that smooth and that’s what we’re really focused on: making sure that our assets are in good condition, that we’re not replacing them too early or too late. This includes having more consistent taxes. That’s not to say that it’s zero every year, but to avoid zero percent of a tax increase on an election year and then have double digit increase the next year. We’ve got to plan more holistically.
Our last budget was where we were able to get the data on, for example, fleet management — our fleet being all of the machines and equipment that we own. We took a 50-year view to think about how much it’s going to cost per year. There’s a giant spike every time you have to buy a new fire truck. It’s important to make sure that you don’t buy the fire truck and another big piece of equipment the same year. Can we move one forward? Can we move one back? Could we save a bit more one year to balance out the next year? It’s been good visual for people to be able to comprehend why we just continuously save for something.
Justin: You mentioned before the interview that you’re involved in a variety of different groups and associations as mayor of Yellowknife. What kind of roles do you have outside of the city representing Yellowknife?
Rebecca: I’m the president of the Northwest Territories Association of Communities, and so that’s our advocacy and lobby group for all mayors and chiefs and councils across the Northwest Territories. I’m also on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, so I am able to engage with federal ministers and staff at the federal level to help influence programs and policies that come out. For example, Rapid Housing is a program that the feds released, and we all appreciate the spirit and intent of it. However, how it was rolled out wouldn’t benefit the North because you had to use the money within a year. If you’re a community like Paulatuk, which is on the coast, it’s got no road access. They’ve got to know a year ahead so they can order the supplies and get it on the barge and then get shipped up. We want to use the money as fast as possible, however, as fast as possible in the North means about a year and a half. We were able to communicate that and they granted us an extension, and then in future iterations of that, they took it into consideration. There’s still a lot to do. Policy and program people change and there’s a need for re-educating folks on the reality of the North so that they appreciate what you want to do. The way federal policy programs are designed, it’s not always going to meet the intended outcomes. So, I do lots of that outside of the day to day of running Yellowknife.
Justin: Final question, what do you love about Yellowknife? Why is it a great place to live?
Rebecca: I love it because it’s so walkable. I love the community spirit. The fact that I’m a mayor was just a case of a friend asking me to help with her campaign. So, I went to this campaign school for women that was being run one weekend, and all of a sudden, I thought, “hey, I think I want to do this.” I then put my name forward as a candidate for council. There’s lots of ways to be involved in our community. If you see something that’s missing, you just have to find a few more people that also feel the same way and all of a sudden, they can make anything can happen. I also like how walkable it is. I like how much you can do one day because you don’t have that commute time. I also like the 24-hour daylight in the summer. It’s amazing being able to go for a walk at 11:00 pm. Or when you’re going for a paddle or when you’re on a camping, you don’t have to bring a lamp or anything. So, yeah, it’s great.
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]]>The post Silencing the screaming — The discovery of rare earth metals in Sweden appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>Introduction
The beginning of the year 2023 was marked by a ‘spectacular find’ (Der Spiegel, 2023) in Northern Sweden: rare earth metals. This find made headlines all over the world (Aftonbladet, 2023; Bye, 2023; Chatterjee, 2023; Die Zeit, 2023; Donges, 2023; Frost, 2023; Hivert, 2023; Masih, 2023; Nielsen, 2023; Petrequin, 2023; Reid, 2023: Reuters, 2023; Sternlund, 2023; Sullivan, 2023; Sunazes, 2023), which, as we will see, is considered as a major step to gaining resource-independence from China. What is largely missing from the reports is a long-lasting problem that has accompanied resource extraction, especially mining and tourism, for decades in Arctic Scandinavia: clashes with the indigenous Sámi who have lived on, used and owned these lands for thousands of years.
In this contribution, I will present the framing of the find as presented in widely accessible news outlets from all over the world, bearing particular attention to the major foci of the articles. What is notable is the fact that neither in English-speaking media outlets from Russia and China, i.e. TASS, The Moscow Times and Global Times, nor in Japanese outlets, any mention of the find can be found. It consequently appears that this is primarily a Western, if not European, issue.
The find
On 12 January 2023, Swedish state-owned mining company LKAB announced that it had discovered one million tonnes of mineable rare earth metal oxides in the Kiruna area, far above the Arctic Circle. The so-called Per Geijer Deposit is therefore the largest deposit of rare earths in Europe, which, according to LKAB’s CEO Jan Moström, “are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition” since “[w]ithout mines, there can be no electric vehicles” (LKAB, 2023).
Rare earth metals are a group of 17 elements from the periodic table which, due to their unique characteristics, are primarily used for the production of high quality magnets, alloys, ceramics and other parts crucial for electronics, such as smartphones. Moström’s statement, however, refers to their uses in the production of magnets for electronic vehicles and wind turbines, both of which are considered elementary for the green transition. In Germany, especially the latter has become a major issue for the generation of energy after the country has taken its last three remaining nuclear power plants off the grid on 15 April 2023 (Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, 2023).
The rare earths deposit consequently allows for the conclusion that Sweden and Europe now possess free access to a key element for the green transition, a cure for rising temperatures resulting from anthropogenic climate change and providing future generations with a path to a greener future. Numerous news outlets have taken up this narrative by LKAB’s CEO or reproduced his statement verbatim (Bye, 2023; Masih, 2023; Reuters, 2023; Sullivan, 2023; Petrequin, 2023; Reid, 2023).
Indeed, also the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, remarked in her 2022 State of the Union address that “Lithium and rare earths are already replacing gas and oil at the heart of our economy” (von der Leyen, 2022) – a statement which also politically, not only economically, increases the role of rare earths in Europe.
From a political and furthermore geopolitical perspective, the discovery of the Per Geijer rare earths is indeed a rather huge step. After all, the de facto monopoly on the production of and international trade in rare earths rests on China, which factually uses its international standing for geopolitical purposes (Kalantzakos, 2017). While, of course, also the abundance of oil and gas is geographically limited with significant geopolitical and economic implications (the best example probably being the exploding energy prices in Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), there are nevertheless alternatives and the more diversified the energy sector is, the better it can absorb shocks. This is not the case with rare earths.
Geopolitics and free trade
Rare earth metals play a crucial role in the world’s societies and have catapulted China to the top of their global distribution within the last 20 years or so. But only towards 2011, the geopolitical implications of rare earths have entered public discourse when China opted for a tightening of rare earth exports, leading to skyrocketing prices. Of course, this did not go unnoticed (Fan et al., 2022). Quite generally, however, a higher geopolitical risk translates into high prices for rare earths, making them consequently very susceptible to the developments worldwide (ibid.).
When taking into account the currently stable, but not necessarily solid, relationship between the West (or the European Union) and China, it is not surprising that the find in Kiruna is considered a major step towards resource independence from China and a contributor to Western/European economic stability, given that Europe consumes around 30% of the world’s rare earth metals. Production, it seems, is coming home. This narrative is transported by virtually all articles under scrutiny. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the (English-language) Chinese media do not report about the find since it has the potential to strip China of some of its geopolitical and economic power. Given China’s rise over the last two decades or so, it indeed silences a screaming superpower to some degree.
In this regard, however, merely one article, which includes a short interview with Finland’s former prime minister Alexander Stubb, presents a somewhat critical view on the matter. As Stubb’s remarks show, the find could also lead to more tensions between the EU, China and the USA, given that it has the potential to decrease Sweden’s and the EU’s ability to engage in open trade. Stubb, therefore, remarks that “we need export and we need open trade” [“vi behöver export och vi behöver öppen handel”] — something that the current find undermines (Sternlund, 2023).
At present, it still remains to be seen what kind of geopolitical implications the find will have. After all, the exploitation of the discovered rare earth metals will not be done in the near future, but will still take another 10—15 years. As Russia’s rather sudden invasion of Ukraine has shown, much can happen within this time span.
The longest screams by the indigenous Sámi
A major blind spot in most of the articles under scrutiny are the implications of the find on the livelihoods of the indigenous Sámi, whose traditional lands span over northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. For decades, they have fought for a recognition of their rights and culture(s). Norway is the only country which has ratified the legally-binding ILO Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169, while Sweden, Finland and Russia have merely signed the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Leaving the situation of the Russian Sámi aside — after all, the conditions are significantly different to the Nordic countries — in Sweden and Norway, reindeer herding, an important marker for Sámi culture, is an exclusive right of the Sámi, whereas in Finland it is not.
Reindeer herding has been subject of various legal cases before national and international tribunals. One of the most prominent cases in Sweden is Kitok v Sweden (1985) before the Human Rights Committee, overseeing the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), dealing with the interpretation of the ICCPR’s Article 27 on the rights of minorities. Without the need to delve into more detail here, suffice it to say that in the Nordic countries land use has been a major element of conflict between reindeer herders and other economies for decades, having generated a huge body of academic literature (for a recent contribution, see Cambou et al., 2022).
In Sweden, reindeer herding is regulated using the concept of samebyar (Sámi villages), which essentially follow the traditional migratory routes of the animals. They also constitute administrative boundaries within which reindeer herders conduct their husbandry. Since reindeer require large spaces, a reduction in this space and changing ecosystems due to climate change inevitably lead to problems for the reindeer and thus the herders. And this is where the new find comes in.
Amongst the scrutinised articles, merely three (Frost, 2023; Hivert, 2023; Nielsen, 2023) refer to the threat the mine poses for the Sámi, and especially the Gabna Sámi village (leaving aside several articles in the Swedish media). Given that the town of Kiruna, associated urban development and the large mine have already taken up significant swathes of land in a section of the Sámi village which is already quite narrow, the Per Geijer deposit furthermore decreases this corridor, making it difficult for the reindeer to migrate through — essentially dividing Gabna Sámi village into two parts, as its spokesperson Karin Qvarfordt Niia laments (SVT Nyheter, 2023). Not surprisingly, the mining operations are considered a major threat to the Sámi village and sustainable reindeer herding. In an interview as part of a short report on the find in the German Europamagazin, Anders Lindberg, a spokesperson of LKAB, however, dismisses these concerns and stresses the need for sacrifices everybody has to make in order to tackle climate change (Europamagazin, 2023).
While there are some media sources which do take note of the concerns of the Sámi, most do not. Those that do largely fail to recognise the decade-long struggle of the Sámi over their traditional lands. The long screams of the Sámi for their rights is consequently silenced by the way the rare earths find in Northern Sweden is communicated.
Conclusion
The above has shown that the primary narrative of the articles under scrutiny circles around resource independence from China. While no direct evaluation is given, the reproduction of LKAB’s views makes it difficult to form different opinions, as that presented in Sternlund (2023). In so far, I dare to say that a rather one-sided picture is generated that is infused with political underpinnings as the State of the Union by Ursula von der Leyen demonstrates.
With regard to the Sámi, it is almost impossible to find references to their struggles in the majority of news sources. This shows how little their concerns have found their way into mainstream reporting — an issue that should raise eyebrows amongst the general public and decision-makers. Arguably, this indicates that their concerns are not considered important enough to be reported about, but that, especially in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, geopolitical and economic issues, which also concern ‘us’ trump those issues which only concern ‘them’ (the Sámi).
Especially the latter demonstrates that we are still a long way from a mainstream recognition of European colonial past and present, which also extend into the northernmost reaches of the European continent. Whether this will change eventually remains in the realm of speculation.
Media articles
Other sources
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]]>The post The BBNJ Agreement – The cure against marine biodiversity loss? appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>Introduction
4 March 2023 allegedly marked a turning point in human history: for during the late of the night of that historic Saturday, the United Nations finally agreed on a text for a treaty which aims to protect and sustainably use marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, commonly known as the high seas, with the agreement called the ‘High Seas Treaty’ or BBNJ Agreement. The Guardian, for example, refers to this treaty as an ‘historic deal to protect international waters’ (McVeigh, 2023), being crucial “for enforcing the 30×30 pledge […] to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030” (ibid.). The German Die Zeit even referred to the adoption of the BBNJ Agreement as “the miracle of New York” (“Das Wunder von New York”, Böhm, 2023), which constitutes the third success for the protection of the natural environment after the consensuses found at the climate meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh in November 2022 and the Biodiversity Conference in December 2022.
These are but two examples of the international media response to the adopted text of the treaty. In this article, I critically examine the way media sources consider the treaty, gauged against the available draft text of the BBNJ Agreement, which is available at the United Nations website (UN, 2023).
What is the issue at hand?
Before delving into the medial reflection of the treaty, it is important to understand what the topic at hand really is. Obviously, the treaty deals with the ‘high seas’, those marine areas beyond national jurisdiction, i.e. beyond the reaches of the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). The EEZs were established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which was adopted in 1982. Based on the provisions of the UNCLOS, the coastal state has exclusive rights to the conservation and use of resources within these marine regions, for instance with regard to fisheries, subsurface resources and the subsoil. While the freedom of navigation takes hold within the EEZs, meaning that other states can make use of respective UNCLOS provisions as to the use of the resources, these are also subject to the interests of the coastal state. This means, it is the coastal state which still exercises some degree of sovereignty over the EEZ (Churchill & Lowe, 1999, pp. 165-174).
While as such, EEZs can also be considered ‘international waters’, it is the waters beyond the EEZ which are of relevance for the BBNJ Agreement. These waters constitute around 60% of the world’s surface and are not governed by any international treaty. Although the UNCLOS, which is also considered the ‘constitution of the oceans’ does contain some provisions on the high seas, or which are at least relevant for the high seas, fisheries or other uses of the marine, subsurface and subsoil resources are not fully regulated. This is to say, as per the UNCLOS, it is the flag state, i.e. the state under whose flag a ship sails the high seas, which exercises its jurisdiction. The only exception is the international sea bed area, also referred to as ‘the Area’, which is considered a ‘common heritage of mankind’ and the exploitation of resources of which are under the umbrella of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica.
Apart from the competences of the ISA, no other international body has similar competences over the high seas. Concerning fishing, the world’s oceans are partitioned by a large number of regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs), each with its own terms of reference and liable only to the parties to the respective agreement under which it was established.
Also the International Whaling Commission (IWC) or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) are relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of (certain) species occurring in the high seas, while other bodies, such as the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) or the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) concern issues relevant for marine traffic, pollution or conservation. What these bodies do not address are other issues that are relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, such as benefit-sharing, the use of genetic resources or a comprehensive system of marine protected areas, all overseen by one authority. And this is where the BBNJ Agreement comes into play.
What is the BBNJ Agreement for the media?
In the international media landscape, the 70-article BBNJ Agreement is first and foremost labelled as ‘historic’, ‘landmark’ agreement or a ‘ once-in-a-generation opportunity’ for the protection of marine biodiversity (e.g. Einhorn, 2023; Planelles, 2023; NatureNews 2023; SpiegelOnline, 2023; European Times, 2023; Stallard, 2023). While some characterise the agreement in the respective heading, most cite representatives of environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs). Especially Greenpeace and the WWF are often cited in this regard.
The second major point refers to the implementation of the 30×30 Target. This target is integral to the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and aims to protect 30% of the world’s surface – terrestrial and marine – by 2030. As shown elsewhere, the scientific basis for this target is far from clear (Sellheim Environmental, 2023, pp. 25-33) and in terms of marine areas, the aspired putting in place of more marine protected areas (MPAs) and their effectiveness depends on a wide array of social and ecological factors (Ban et al., 2017). Despite these uncertainties, many news outlets consider the BBNJ Agreement to be the cure for continuing biodiversity loss in so far as it is a main tool for the implementation of the 30×30 target (e.g. Stallard, 2023; SpiegelOnline, 2023). While this does not necessarily occur directly, the quotations of representatives of ENGOs have this effect, further underlining the historicity of the text’s adoption. The quintessence of the articles essentially is: “If the oceans die, we die” – a phrase by Sea Shepherd’s founder Paul Watson – and the BBNJ Agreement is a major step to prevent this from happening.
Several articles (Einhorn, 2023; NatureNews, 2023; Stallard, 2023) note, however, that the mere adoption of the treaty text is not enough, but that it needs to be ratified. While from a legal perspective, this is a given, readers may easily be inclined to think that the adoption of the text equals the coming-into-force of the treaty. According to the text of the available draft, the treaty only comes into force after its ratification of the 60th Party. And this might take some time. In the case of the UNCLOS, for instance, this took 12 years! And with the treaty being in force, this does not mean that parties comply with it, especially if there is no overseeing body that may impose sanctions. In the case of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), for example, it is not even clear what the term ‘wildlife’ really means for each party, in addition to parties not even fulfilling their obligations to report to the secretariat (Wyatt, 2021). And CITES has been widely hailed as one of the most successful conservation treaties in the world.
What the media hardly says or doesn’t say
The overall gist of the international media landscape is marked by a very positive and optimistic perception of the BBNJ Agreement. While I am not in the position to comment on whether this is good or bad, particularly with regard to the Agreement’s effectiveness, if it ever comes into force, what I can comment on is the nature of reporting vis-à-vis the actual text of the Agreement (as available at the time of writing).
As such, the text does not contain any reference to the 30×30 Target. Altogether, the Agreement is highly technical and contains provisions which are of relevance for its proper and equitable implementation. Arguably, one of the major challenges for marine biodiversity is the fishing industry. As a response, many international regimes now address overfishing in one way or another (Young, 2016), but overfishing still constitutes one of the main causes for marine biodiversity loss (e.g. Yan et al., 2021). A logical assumption would therefore be that the BBNJ Agreement addresses fishing issues.
According to Article 8 (Application), however, the relevant provisions of the Agreement “shall not apply to:
(a) Fishing regulated under relevant international law and fishing-related activities; or
(b) Fish or other living marine resources known to have been taken in fishing and fishing-related activities from areas beyond national jurisdiction, except where such fish or other living marine resources are regulated as utilization under this Part.”
In other words, fishing is not affected by the Agreement, nor are military vessels or other vessels owned by parties engaged in non-commercial activities. The dominance of a scattered system for fisheries – subject to the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, other relevant international agreements, and RFMOs – remains unaffected.
While the overall objective of the Agreement is “to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction” (Article 3), the prevalence of the Agreement rests on the equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of marine genetic resources, the establishment of MPAs, and the conduct of environmental impact assessments (EIA) by the state aiming to conduct an activity in the oceans. Especially concerning the latter, the Agreement refers to potential future pollution that is to be prevented, but does not address the status quo. Concerning benefit-sharing, it is commercial stakeholders which are by and large responsible for this.
Generally, large parts of the text refer to the ‘hows’ of conducting EIAs, of proposing the establishment of MPAs, of capacity-building and technology transfer, and of ensuring that developing states benefit equally from the use of marine genetic resources. Quite interestingly, the text underlines the principle of lex inferior, which means that the treaty, once adopted, needs to subdue to already existing agreements and conventions. This provisions is contained in Article 4(b) of the text, which notes that “the Agreement shall be interpreted and applied in a manner that does not undermine relevant legal instruments and frameworks and relevant global, regional, subregional and sectoral bodies and that promotes coherence and coordination with those instruments, frameworks and bodies.” In other words, the application of the BBNJ Agreement is to occur in a way that is coherent with the policies of other bodies that are of relevance. What this could mean in practice is that an RFMO could overrule the decisions of the BBNJ Agreement, if this RFMO considers the Agreement to undermine its operations. Whether this is the intended vision of the Agreement is truly uncertain.
What is not mentioned at all in the media articles referred to in this contribution is the fact that despite the Agreement concerning the high seas, it is set to pay due regard to the interests of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). Already the Preamble notes that “nothing in this Agreement shall be construed as diminishing or extinguishing the existing rights of Indigenous Peoples […] or of, as appropriate, local communities”. On numerous occasions, the draft text refers to IPLCs and the provisions of the Agreement must be read against the backdrop of the protection of their rights.
This is especially relevant in the context of the establishment of area-based management tools (ABMTs), which also include marine protected areas (MPAs). It is especially the link between indigenous rights and the establishment of MPAs which has found rather little attention in the scholarly literature, but which could be crucial for the advancement of effective biodiversity conservation as well as indigenous rights (Ban & Frid, 2018). The BBNJ Agreement therefore provides a legal avenue through which indigenous peoples have the possibility to make their voices heard in conservation and management.
Apart from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which makes the knowledge of IPLCs an important element for in-situ conservation, the BBNJ Agreement gives them significant leverage, also with regard to the implementation of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), a fundamental indigenous rights. This is especially so since the Agreement provides clear requirements for the conduct of EIA, as mentioned above. One of these requirements is the consultation of IPLCs, where appropriate (probably meaning where IPLCs are geographically located), before proposals for a specific ABMT is tabled. Unfortunately, this crucial element of the BBNJ Agreement is not referred to in media outlets.
Despite the fact that decisions are to be made by consensus, parties to the Agreement also have the possibility to lodge objections. Meaning: just because the Conference of the Parties (CoP) makes a decision, not all parties are necessarily bound to it – also one of the common misunderstandings concerning decision-making in international bodies. This is quite frequently referred to as a ‘loophole’. One of the best examples in this regard is probably the Whaling Convention (ICRW) under which, first, scientific whaling operations, first and foremost conducted by Japan as long as it was party to the ICRW, or, second, Norwegian whaling operations based on an objection to the moratorium are/were labelled illegal or as said ‘loophole’ (e.g. Diehn, 2016). Both scientific whaling and Norwegian whaling are, however, legally perfectly valid as they are enshrined in the text of the convention itself – the latter in so far as nations are legally entitled to lodge objections.
In the case of the BBNJ Agreement, this is also the case. If one were to apply the same terminology, the ‘loophole’ within the Agreement is enshrined in Article 19 bis4.-10 (‘bis’ indicating that it is still subject to editorial review). Here, three elements are highlighted, which allow the lodging of an objection: first, when the decision is inconsistent with the Agreement; second, when the decision is discriminatory towards the party; and third, when the part cannot practically comply with the decision. While there are other requirements to ensure that the objection is lodged properly, this certainly allows for parties to hamper the potential effectiveness of the Agreement, in case they are not content with the CoP’s decisions. From an ENGO perspective, this should indeed raise some eyebrows.
Conclusion
The available text of the BBNJ Agreement is a comprehensive and very technical document which contains a lot of information as to how parties are to implement its provisions. While one of its main foci are ABMTs, the term ’30×30′ never occurs throughout the document. In fact, as one attendant of the negotiations told me, it never occurred throughout the entire negotiations. In light of the possibility for parties to object, it remains to be seen in how far it will factually implement the target for the high seas.
That, of course, presupposes that it ever comes into force. As in the case of the UNCLOS, also the BBNJ Agreement requires 60 parties to become legally effective. This very high number of required parties make it difficult to imagine that its coming-into-force will occur within the next few years. In so far, the ‘historic’ high seas treaty may be yet another slow-swimming giant, which may take a long time to reach its destination.
If it does enter into force, it is unfortunate that the media depiction leaves out important parts, such as the due respect which is being paid to indigenous peoples and local communities. After all, the BBNJ Agreement is legally binding, and it is an example for the successful lobbying of IPLCs to insert their rights into international agreements. This, I dare to say, is truly newsworthy!
If one relies merely on one news source, it is likely that one might get a fully tilted picture of the BBNJ Agreement. But if one is interested, it is possible to find more detailed and more nuanced depictions of the contents of the treaty. Whether or not it is indeed a landmark, however, remains to be seen. First, it needs to come into force. Second, it needs to be implemented. And despite the creation of an Implementation and Compliance Committee, it remains unclear what its Terms of Reference will be.
Before all this, however, the available text needs to be edited and its final version adopted. And let’s see how long this will take again.
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]]>The post The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: What’s Historic? appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>Introduction
With the conclusion of the 15th Conference of the Parties (CoP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on 19 December 2022, a breath of relief seemed to sweep through the international media landscape. After all, this ‘crucial’ meeting (Weston & Greenfield, 2022) led to the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), named after the split way CoP15 was held (in Kunming, China, online, and in Montreal, Canada, in person). In the international media, the list of which can be found below this article, the GBF was indeed hailed as ‘historic’ (Gilbert, 2022; Greenfield & Weston, 2022; Schauenberg, 2022; NTB-AP, 2022; Flemmich & Dönsberg, 2022; Euronews, 2022a), especially since a major and controversial element within the framework is the so-called ’30 by 30’ (or ‘30×30’) target. This target aims to place 30% of all land and sea areas under a managed framework of protected areas or other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) by the year 2030.
In this article, I examine what is indeed ‘historic’ about the GBF and the associated 30×30 target and whether the perception of a ‘deal for nature’ might not actually be misleading.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)
The GBF is a major attempt by the Parties to the CBD to halt the loss in biodiversity, which has been identified by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as dramatic (IPBES, 2019). The GBF can be considered an updated, more ambitious and more thought-through document than its predecessor — the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (CBD, 2020)— which have, by and large, not been met for various reasons by its ‘deadline’ 2020 (Xu et al., 2021). In essence, the GBF is divided into two major parts: first, the listing of four long-term goals which should be reached by the year 2050. These goals encompass the protection and increase of ecosystems (Goal A), the sustainable use of biodiversity and a potential increase in its use for the benefit of humankind (Goal B), the sustainable use of genetic resources and their equitable sharing (Goal C), and adequate implementation of the GBF through technology transfer, financial resources or capacity-building (Goal D).
While these goals are held very broadly, the GBF, furthermore, includes 23 targets which are to be reached by 2030, e.g.: to ensure that the management and use of wild species are sustainable, thereby providing social, economic and environmental benefits for people (Target 9); Ensure the full integration of biodiversity and its multiple values into policies, regulations, planning and development processes, poverty eradication strategies, strategic environmental assessments, environmental impact assessments (Target 14); or ensure the full, equitable, inclusive, effective and gender-responsive representation and participation in decision-making, and access to justice and information related to biodiversity by indigenous peoples and local communities (Target 22).
One of these, Target 3, is crucial in the medial depiction of the GBF as being historic. As mentioned in the Introduction, this target aims to protect 30% of all land, sea and inland water areas by the year 2030 through a network of protected areas as well as other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). Target 3 is even more ambitious than Aichi Target 11, which — unsuccessfully — aimed to protect 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of all marine and coastal areas by the year 2020 (see Carr et al., 2020). As shown in various media sources, the putting in place a network of protected areas in their various forms is considered to be the remedy against increasing biodiversity loss.
What is ‘historic’ about the GBF?
While the different media outlets frame the ‘historicity’ of the GBF as being related to the 30×30 target and the ambition that underlies it, its significance lies, at least in my view, somewhere else. For while it is indeed ambitious, there is no way to tell whether or not it will actually work — especially in light of the failed Aichi Targets. So, when looking at this ‘historic’ framework, particularly compared to Aichi, two elements come to the fore: finances, and the role of indigenous peoples and local communities.
Financial aspects of the GBF
While the Aichi Targets very broadly refer to the “the mobilization of financial resources for effectively implementing the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020” (Target 22), no closer stipulation of this point can be found. This is fundamentally different in the GBF. Here, concrete numbers can be found. First, Goal D refers to “progressively closing the biodiversity finance gap of 700 billion dollars per year”, thereby aiming to address the biodiversity funding gap of USD 285—700 billion that has been identified by UNEP (UNEP, 2022) and others (e.g. Paulson Institute, 2020). This means that by 2050, the required investments into nature conservation are linked to a concrete number that allows to be a guide, particularly for developed countries, i.e. G20.
But the GBF goes further. Financial issues are also addressed in Targets 18 and 19, both of which are therefore to be implemented by 2030. Target 18 aims to “eliminate, phase out or reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity” by the year 2025 by USD 500 billion per year. In other words, national governments are urged to financially limit funding for those industries or businesses which may cause harm to the environment. While the target does not exclusively urge them to eliminate all funding, it nevertheless calls for a reform of this funding. How or in what way this reform or elimination is to occur (except for being “proportionate, just, fair, effective and equitable”), it aims to “substantially and progressively” reduce this funding by 2030. This target can be interpreted as being a major step towards the ‘greening’ of harmful industries and businesses by turning off the money tap in the long run. Since Section E of the document stresses the ‘Theory of change’ which “recognizes that urgent policy action is required globally, regionally and nationally to achieve sustainable development so that the drivers of undesirable change that have exacerbated biodiversity loss will be reduced and/or reversed”, this element is well in line with the underlying premise of CoP15’s vision of effective biodiversity conservation.
Target 19, however, goes much more into detail. Here, the national governments are, in addition to Target 18, urged to invest in biodiversity conservation. They are to “significantly and progressively increase the level of financial resources[…] to implement national biodiversity strategies and action plans, by 2030 mobilizing at least 200 billion United States dollars per year.” While this number still ranges well below the identified biodiversity investment gap (see UNEP, 2022; Paulson Institute 2020), it should be considered in parallel with Target 18, which essentially marks an investment as well by reducing funding.
Be that as it may, Target 19(a) places the burden of investments on the developed states. By 2025, they are thus to increase their funding for biodiversity-related investments to USD 20 billion “in particular the least developed countries and small island developing States, and to at least US$ 30 billion per year by 2030.” This consequently means that the GBF is finding new ways to implement to principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ — a key principle in the 1992 Rio Declaration, which maintains that all states are responsible in addressing environmental harm, but not all are equally responsible in doing so. This refers to developed states who now have the means to develop ‘green’ technology, but have caused severe environmental damage in the past. The GBF therefore puts more responsibility on the shoulders of developed states in supporting developing countries to reach a higher economic level, but by doing so in an environmentally less harmful way.
The recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities
Before the GBF was even adopted, indigenous organisations called for resistance against its adoption. Survival International, a lobby group for the advancement of indigenous rights, for instance, called the planned 30×30 goal ‘The Big Green Lie’ (Survival International, Undated), fearing that its adoption would lead to a justification for so-called ‘fortress conservation’, expelling indigenous peoples and local communities from the lands they have traditionally inhabited in the name of nature conservation. This fear is far from being alarmist or unrealistic, as for instance the violence against the Batwa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has painfully demonstrated (Sellheim Environmental, 2022) or concerning forced relocation of Maasai in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania — an issue the German Zeit recently reported on (Böhm, 2023).
It seems, however, as if the long negotiations of the GBF have led to a document that — at least on paper — recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. Already the Decision that adopts the GBF in paragraph 4 urges governments and other actors to foster “the full and effective contributions of women, youth, indigenous peoples and local communities, civil society organizations, the private and financial sectors, and stakeholders from all other sectors” and in paragraph 6 “Reaffirms its expectation that Parties and other Governments will ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities are respected and given effect to” (original emphasis).
Section C of the GBF on implementation contains a subsection dealing with the ‘Contribution and rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.’ This subsection, first, recognises the importance of IPLCs as custodians of biodiversity; second, it aims to ensure that indigenous rights, practices and traditional knowledge are respected, documented and preserved; third, aims to do so with their free, prior and informed consent (which is also stipulated in Target 21); fourth, aims to ensure their full participation; and lastly, fifth, in reference to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, establishes that the GBF is to be implemented without diminishing or extinguishing the rights of indigenous peoples.
This is further underlined throughout the different targets that are to be implemented by 2030. Especially the 30×30 target, i.e. Target 3, makes reference to the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities — as a response to the resistance its adoption had faced before. The target therefore aims to “recognize indigenous and traditional territories” and to recognise and respect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, “including over their traditional territories.” Indeed, also the customary use of biodiversity is respected and protected in Target 5 and further encouraged in Target 9.
Based on the recurring recognition of indigenous rights throughout the document, one might argue that, especially in comparison with the Aichi Targets, the GBF is indeed ‘historic’ as no other biodiversity-related document adopted under any other biodiversity agreement makes such frequent and rights-based reference to indigenous peoples and local communities. Consequently, the loud voices of indigenous organisations appear to have paid off in so far as their rights are recognised and they are to be active actors within biodiversity conservation initiatives.
The blind spot
In the media outlets that have covered the CBD negotiations and the respective outcomes, the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities are traditionally (or let’s rather say historically) unreflected. This is to say that hardly any mention is made of their concerns. Instead, most articles refer to the fact that the rights of indigenous peoples are to be respected and/or that their role in biodiversity conservation might change (positively) (Schauenberg, 2022; Flemmich & Dönsberg, 2022; Gilbert, 2022; Greenfield & Weston, 2022; Weston & Greenfield, 2022). One media article I found explicitly dealt with indigenous concerns (Euronews, 2022b), albeit not in the way one might expect. In this article, the concerns of Latin American indigenous peoples over potential deforestation is addressed in response to a planned regulation by the European Union which aims to guarantee consumers that the products they buy do not contribute to deforestation (European Commission, 2022). While they welcome the law, the article stresses, it is not sufficient to effectively protect species. Merely one sentence notes that indigenous peoples are demanding that their voices be heard at COP15 in Montreal, even though their territories are home to 80% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity.
While indeed the role of indigenous peoples and local communities appears to be strengthened in the GBF, this role oftentimes comes with several limitations in formulation: “where applicable” or “as appropriate.” These words weaken the seemingly rights-based approach to conservation in so far as there is no clear mechanism to determine where this is applicable or when it is appropriate. It is consequently in the eye of the respective nation state to determine whether or not the protection of rights and lands is either applicable or appropriate. This is also what Cultural Survival, another lobby group for indigenous rights, has lamented after the adoption of the GBF (Cultural Survival, 2022).
What stands out in the GBF — factually making it historical and not historic — is the blind spot of the rights of local communities. While the GBF refers to the indigenous peoples and local communities on numerous occasions (in fact, the term ‘local communities’ occurs 16 times throughout the document), rather vague formulations in terms of human rights can be found while on one occasion reference is made to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The recently adopted UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) is missing entirely from the document. UNDROP is a groundbreaking document, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018, for the rights of indigenous and non-indigenous rural people(s) (see Gradoni & Pasquet, 2022; for a German overview of the declaration, see Sellheim, 2022). A truly rights-based approach would have required reference to this declaration as well. However, as seen in CITES, for example, this declaration has not been widely recognised as solidifying the rights of local communities (Sellheim, 2020).
Conclusion
While the 30×30 Target within the GBF is indeed ambitious, to me it does not seem to be entirely clear why international media outlets have used this target to label the framework as ‘historic’. Other elements stand out much more, such as clear financial guidelines or the rights of indigenous peoples. What would have made the framework truly ‘historic’ would have been the absence of any leeway concerning the rights of indigenous peoples and a true recognition of their role as wardens of biodiversity.
What is concerning in this regard is the fact that easily-accessible medial outlets — at least the ones that I have consulted — make no reference to the problems associated with the 30×30 target in relation to indigenous peoples. Instead, the focus lies on the territorial approach to conservation with a complete disregard of other approaches. Headlines count, not diverse and reflective content.
In addition, a truly historic approach of the GBF would have been to emphasise the rights of local communities as well. While they are mentioned in line with indigenous peoples (and therefore in line with Article 8 (j) of the CBD itself), it remains unclear what rights, other than those enshrined under general human rights law, they are to hold. While there is a UN declaration that provides them with a large number of rights, the UNDROP, this document is fully absent from the GBF, making it yet another example for a blind spot which is all so common in discourses on conservation.
The above deliberations leave me to conclude that most media outlets when reporting about CoP15 seem to have forgotten the ‘-al’ in their respective headings: The GBF is not ‘historic’, it’s ‘historical’.
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]]>The post The Stereotype is Dead? No! – A Review of Avatar: The Way of Water appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>Attention! Many spoilers included.
In 2009, director James Cameron released a movie which was one of a kind at that time: Avatar. Not only was the visualisation of this epic science fiction movie something very new, something aesthetic and simply impressive, it also depicted a science fiction version of indigenous resistance against ruthless, reckless and resource-hungry intruders.
In Avatar 1, the indigenous inhabitants of the jungle moon Pandora, the Na’vi, successfully defended their home against humans, who, with the help of avatars, aimed to undermine the Na’vi and gain access to the resources of Pandora. One of these avatars is paralysed Corporal Jake Sully (portrayed by Sam Worthington), who becomes an avatar, thereby gaining back his fully movement. Throughout the film, Sully as his own avatar becomes attached to the Na’vi and ends up fighting with them against the human intruders.
Avatar: The Way of Water (henceforth Avatar 2) is the sequel to 2009’s box office success. In this movie, Sully’s Avatar 1-sweetheart, Na’vi woman Neytiri te Tskaha Mo’at’ite (portrayed by Zoe Zaldaña) and Jake Sully have founded a family with two sons (Neteyam and Lo’ak), one daughter (Tuktirey) and one adopted daughter (Kiri), who happened to be the biological daughter of exobiologist Dr. Grace Augustine (portrayed by Sigourney Weaver), who died in Avatar 1. In addition to these, the Sully family — whose motto is “the Sullys stick together” — also quite opportunistically look after a parentless child, Miles “Spider” Socorro, who grew up on Pandora amongst remaining humans and the Na’vi after the human invasion, but who himself does not have a family and is the son of the evil mercenary invader (Miles Quaritch, portrayed by Stephen Lang) who got killed in Avatar 1.
The story of the 03:10 hours long movie can be summarised as follows: Sully and his family have had a period of peace after the invasion. When the older kids are somewhere in their teens, human ships reappear, aiming to exploit Pandora again. On board is the avatar of Miles Quaritch, whose memories were preserved before he was killed. With a group of marines, avatar-Quaritch aims to be like the Na’vi in order to fulfil his quest to find and kill Sully. In order to protect the forest Na’vi, with whom the Sully family live, the Sullys leave the forest and find refuge amongst the sea Na’vi. Amidst some teenager conflicts between the Sully teens and sea Na’vi teens, Sully’s younger rebellious problem-son Lo’ak befriends an outcast whale-like creature, a Tulkun, who himself is not liked by the sea Na’vi for being an outcast from his own Tulkun clan/family/group. Solidarity amongst outcasts, it seems. Alas, Quaritch and his lot succeed in finding Sully and start to spread terror to kill him. In a final battle, Quaritch is defeated with the help of the outcast Tulkun and almost killed (by choking underwater) by Sully. Unfortunately for Sully, Spider shows a loyalty conflict since he sees a father figure in Quaritch and rescues him from certain death. During the battle, Sully loses his older poster son Neteyam, and over his dead body, he indicates massive resistance against impending human colonisation of Pandora. With this — a close-up of Sully opening his eyes, looking very determined — the film ends.
While sitting in the movie theatre, my eyeballs started hurting from all the eyeballing throughout the movie. Because the film is the most stereotypical depiction of so many different things that it starts hurting. But let’s start one step at a time. The marines (or mercenaries) in the movie are, of course, tough guys (and a woman): Tattooed, muscular, iroquois haircuts, “boo-yahs”, semper fis, and, of course, bloodthirsty — with an inherent lust to kill Sully. The marines are all avatars, too, and aim to live like, to be, the Na’vi in order to find Sully. Paired with this mimicry and the seemingly supreme military skills, they are optimistic, if not certain, that they will catch and kill their former team member. In the end, however, their military skills are reduced to taking hostages — Sully’s kids and Spider who happen to discover them and, naive as they are, get captured by them — who are used to draw Sully and Neytiri close. In this first encounter, several of the marines get killed by the Sullys despite their military training and machine guns. Neither of the Sullys receives any scratch, of course.
Moving on to the Na’vi. The Na’vi are significantly larger than humans, and they are exotically blue. The forest Na’vi live similar to the Ewoks in Star Wars and worship Eywa, the entity that keeps all life on Pandora together, allowing the Na’vi (and the avatars) to connect to all species on Pandora, both in terms of their braid (for lack of a better word) and thereby their souls. The one-ness between Na’vi and nature is the underlying narrative of the movie, stereotypically depicting indigenousness as inherently living sustainably with and within the natural environment. Not surprisingly, the Na’vi are not shown to kill any animal, apart from a fish, which Jake’s poster-son Neteyam kills. In fact, no species is shown to kill any other species for food (more on that later). But back to the Na’vi. The forest Na’vi appear to be a patriarchy since it is especially Jake Sully — in the end, not a Na’vi, but a Na’vi avatar — who rules his family in a military fashion, aiming for discipline and obedience by his kids (“Yes, sir” is a commonly heard expression by his kids throughout the film). When the mercenaries are getting close to the settlement, Neytiri is eager to fight them in order to protect her people. Jake, on the other hand, persuades her that it is better to leave the forest for the sea Na’vi in order to avert military aggression. Neytiri, who seems to be responsible for the kitchen as she is several times shown cutting fruits (not meat), of course, concurs, despite her having received a bow from her father to protect her people. Jake’s word seems to weigh more than her own will — or purpose — to protect her people. Whether or not the other Na’vi wish to fight the intruders does not play any role. Jake Sully’s decision to leave is what it is.
When the Sullys arrive at the sea Na’vi settlement, they are greeted by their chieftain and his wife. Contrary to the forest Na’vi, the sea Na’vi have stronger tails and wider hands, allowing them to swim better. This evolutionary trait is somewhat odd, since this would allow for the assumption that the forest Na’vi have some special evolutionary traits as well, allowing them to climb better (which they don’t). Of course, this evolutionary adjustment to the marine environment simply underlines the narrative of the Na’vi being one with nature. They are not just living in it, they are even evolutionary adjusted to, they are part of it.
The sea Na’vi are an appropriated version of Aotearoa New Zealand Māori. They are covered in tattoos reminiscent of Ta Moko tattoos while their hair is again fashioned Māori-style. And when the sea Na’vi get angry, they also stick out their tongues, similar to the way it is done in a haka (traditional dance). The dance, however, is not seen in the movie. Be that as it may, when the sea Na’vi learn of Quaritch spreading terror to find Sully, instead of throwing the Sullys out or delivering them to Quaritch (after all, they are not “true” Na’vi) to avert aggression, they are lusting to fight the “sky people”. Luckily for them, they don’t run into the trap of a full-scale confrontation, but of course it needs a Jake Sully to explain to them how the sky people think. And only because of Sully, this drama is seemingly avoided. In the end, however, when the Tulkun attacks the invaders, the sea Na’vi also start their full-scale attack, and it remains completely in the dark what they have now done differently than they initially intended. What is clear is that they are seemingly unable to make their own decisions since this apparently unknown enemy requires somebody who has been involved with them (Sully). As before, Sully’s word counts more than the indigenous Na’vi. This patronising view seems to be a red thread in the movie. The indigenous Na’vi obviously need an outside leader who tells them how to protect themselves. While I am myself not indigenous, I find this utterly insulting. The ‘noble savage’ is not only stereotypically presented, but also presented as too naive — or even too stupid — to make her own decisions. These decisions are shared between the chieftain and his wife, who, like Neytiri, apparently is much more prone to aggression than her husband. Like Neytiri, she needs to be somewhat tamed by her husband in order to follow Sully’s request to find shelter. Although she is pregnant (or maybe because?), she still participates in the battle against the invaders, leaving the viewer to wonder whether she is naive or utterly determined. After all, she endangers not only herself, but also her unborn child, standing in stark contrast to the no-killing romanticisation of Eywa and Pandora. This misogynistic depiction of women is yet another example for the outdated discourses that underlie the entire story of Avatar 2.
But let’s get back to killing and the one-ness of Pandora. As mentioned earlier, killing does not appear to play a big role on the moon. While the Na’vi kill fish, they are not seen killing anything else. I’m not entirely sure whether the film mentioned conflict amongst the Na’vi. But either way, it is clear that it is absolutely in line with Na’vi morality to kill intruders, i.e. humans. Instead of negotiation or diplomacy, the Na’vi only know violence as a response to Quaritch’s actions. Again, a condescending depiction of the indigenous. The whale-like Tulkun are, of course, soulmates of the sea Na’vi, and they are poets, songwriters and even more intelligent than the Na’vi. They don’t kill and are inherently peaceful. But if one of their group kills a Na’vi (as the outcast has been suspected of having done), it is alright to ostracise him for the rest of his life. And they are hunted by humans for a fluid that eradicates ageing in humans. But those who kill them also kill part of the Na’vi and are, therefore. their arch enemies. This anthropomorphised whale corresponds to a romanticised discourse on whales, first initiated in the 1970s – for instance, by Robert Payne’s ‘Songs of the Humpback Whale,’ removing whales from the food web for humans (or in this case Na’vi) and elevating them to a level of the sacred.
Those that hunt them — for instance, a morally troubled scientist and a reckless money-loving whaler — are depicted as ruthless and plain evil characters. “Let’s make some money” probably stands representative for the way these ‘whalers’ are depicted. The equation is simple: whales = good, whalers = evil. And since they are evil, it is fine that they are killed. Of course, they are also used by Quaritch to lure Sully and the sea Na’vi into the open by hunting Tulkun close to Na’vi settlements so that they see what they cause if they don’t deliver Sully. And to what do we owe the surprise that one of the hunted Tulkun is the outcast one? To the ingenious scriptwriters of the movie, who so eloquently spin a story that one is not able to predict. Sarcasm off.
This part of the movie is yet again so hard to understand… first, the notion of hiding amongst the sea Na’vi obviously fails, and they are found very easily. Second, it is a single Tulkun which is hunted by the whalers even though hunting larger schools makes much more sense (if one considers the economics of whaling). Third, without the solidarity between the problem-boy and the problem-Tulkun, all would have been lost. And, of course, it is the seemingly adopted Spider, who ruins it all by saving Quaritch in the end, yet hissing at him like a cat (he obviously is as ‘wild’ as the Na’vi despite him being human) and returning to the Sullys. And this last point is very surprising, to say the least. Prior to the final one-on-one fight between Sully and Quaritch, Quaritch takes Sully’s daughter hostage (again) and threatens to kill her. At the same time, Neytiri takes Spider hostage and threatens to kill him by cutting his throat if Quaritch doesn’t release her daughter. I wonder whether the authorities would appreciate a death threat of a quasi-foster mother. She obviously considers Spider as very low on the hierarchical ladder. So low that he is on the same level as a fish that one is able to kill to support one’s own. In spite of this, Spider returns to the Sullys. This does not make sense at all and again depicts the woman as uncontrolled, in need to be tamed. Misogyny at its best.
As a last point, the character of the Sully’s adopted daughter Kiri is noteworthy. Kiri is a teenage girl who is close friends with Spider and the other Sully boys. Of course, she also gets captured time and again, but apparently also has a special gift to communicate with or hear Eywa’s/Pandora’s heart beat. While spending time with the sea Na’vi, she gets some sort of seizure that requires medical help. This help occurs in the form of a helicopter that takes humans from the forest to the sea Na’vi settlement to help her. How this helicopter was called remains in the dark, but it is this helicopter that provides Quaritch and his lot with a hint as to the whereabouts of the Sullys. Either way, despite the fact that modern medical equipment is used, it is in the end the indigenous medicine, performed by the sea Na’vi’s chieftain’s furious wife, that saves Kiri from certain death. Kiri is then able to connect to Pandora in much more depth and even control fish and other subsea species, which leads to her saving her family from drowning at the end of the movie. She is the weird but special one with unknown capabilities that prove to be crucial. Is this aiming to foster the inclusion of disabled people? I don’t know, but again a cliché is served that only allows for eyeballing.
Avatar 2 is a movie that is visually impressive, especially in 3D. But as the above has shown, it is filled with issues that are worth criticising, making me wonder how in the 21st century indigenous cultures, women and gender roles can be depicted as they are in the movie. Of course, it is women who want to fight, thereby the movie seemingly empowers them. But this will is always apparently misplaced, in need of a man to tell them what is right. In light of the way indigenousness is portrayed and Maōri traits commercially appropriated, it does not come as a surprise that indigenous groups call for a boycott of the movie (here). The clichés and stereotypes the movie fosters and disseminates make it indeed worth boycotting. For me, it is absolutely clear that I will not spend a single cent on the Avatar franchise again. When Avatar 3 enters the movie, I will be unable to write a review.
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]]>The post The Sidelining of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in CITES Media Coverage appeared first on The Polar Connection.
]]>The fall and winter of 2022 hosted five of the most relevant and prominent international meetings for the protection of biodiversity and the climate: The 68th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), 17—21 October in Portorož, Slovenia; the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP) of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, 5—13 November in Geneva, Switzerland (in-person) and Wuhan, China (online); the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 6—20 November in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt; the 19th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), 14—25 November in Panama City, Panama; and the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 7—19 December in Montréal, Canada.
While from a conservation perspective, all of these meetings play a significant role, not all of them have been represented in the international (i.e. English- and German-speaking) media landscape. While the UNFCCC and CBD meetings made significant headlines, the Ramsar meeting did not. While in the past, IWC meetings were widely covered, it can now hardly be found. CITES ranges somewhere in the middle.
What most of the media articles have in common is the fact that a focus on people is generally speaking missing, particularly with regard to CITES. This is quite significant since although CITES deals with the international trade in endangered species, long-lasting discussions on the effects of CITES-listings on livelihoods, food security and culture lead to a growing divide between CITES Parties concerning this issue.
In this contribution, I analyse several articles found through a Google search with the search terms “CITES Panama 2022”, “Wildlife conference 2022”, “CITES meeting 2022” and “CITES CoP19”. The result yielded a surprisingly low number of articles, the majority of which refers to the proposed and adopted regulation the global shark (fin) trade. The list of the articles can be found at the end of this analysis. In addition, two German articles from SpiegelOnline and the publicly funded Tagesschau were also taken into account. The primary result of this Google search, however, yielded contributions from environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs).
What is CITES (in and for the media)?
While widely being hailed as one of the most successful conservation regimes in the world, the purpose of CITES appears to be relatively unknown. Starting with the terminology applied, for instance, the widely used term ‘wildlife conference’ for the 19th Conference of the Parties of CITES (CoP19) in Panama is misleading, since, of course, the Convention deals with wildlife, but merely with the international trade in wildlife, which, as per the purpose of the Convention, is endangered. In German, CITES is furthermore known as the ‘Artenschutzkonvention’ (‘species protection convention’), which does not reflect its sole focus on international trade. Both terms imply that CITES is a convention whose purpose it is to protect wildlife through means other than necessarily trade.
Adopted in 1973 and in force since 1975, CITES functions through the inclusion of species in its three Appendices: Appendix I lists species which are threatened with extinction and the international trade in which is to be prohibited (unless for very specific purposes). Currently, 1082 species and 36 subspecies are listed here. Appendix II lists species the trade in which is to be regulated in order to prevent them to become endangered. 37,420 species and 15 subspecies are included in this Appendix. Appendix III lists species which are nationally protected and for which a Party seeks international support. 211 species, 14 subspecies and 1 species variation are included here. At present, the Convention has a membership of 184 Parties.
Against this backdrop, it is important to consider how CITES is presented in the media coverage concerning CoP19, inevitably shaping public knowledge of the Convention.
A wordcruncher through the software Atlas.ti yielded that the word ‘sharks’ appears 51 times and the word ‘shark’ 50 times throughout these articles, after ‘trade’ (98 times), ‘species’ (85 times) and ‘CITES’ (68 times). The term ‘indigener’ (‘indigenous’) occurs one time (see below).
The ‘historic’ agreement to protect sharks
Sharks consequently stand at the core of media coverage concerning the most recent CITES meeting. Sharks and in fact marine species have been subject to intense CITES discussions for a long time. At CoP19, Panama, along with several other Parties including the European Union, tabled a proposal to list the entire family of requiem sharks (Carcharhinidae spp.) in Appendix II, which was adopted by the CoP and which has been hailed as ‘historic’ by conservation organisations and several media articles. The family Carcharhinidae spp. includes more than 50 different species. While 19 of these were mentioned individually, the others were referred to as entire genera under the so-called ‘lookalike’ provision under the Convention. This provision enables trade regulation of species that are not endangered, but which, due to their similar appearance, should be regulated in order to protect threatened species.
The FAO’s Advisory Expert Panel on Fisheries, which evaluated the proposal, recommended not to adopt the proposal since merely three species were in fact endangered (in so far as they meet CITES’ own criteria to include species in Appendix II), 12 species do not meet criteria and four are data deficient. It is noteworthy to mention here that the CITES Secretariat and the Advisory Panel have an MoU in place, seeking the Panel’s advice on proposals concerning marine fisheries.
Irrespective of the Panel’s advice, the proposal was adopted by a vast majority of Parties (requiring a 2/3 majority): 88 voted in favour, 29 against and 17 abstained. While an implementation of this new listing was postponed by one year, from then on, trade in any species belonging to the Carcharhinidae family is subject to CITES regulation.
Where are the world’s indigenous peoples and local communities?
While Tanya Wyatt has shown that more and more CITES listings may cause compliance issues (Wyatt, 2016), especially for developing countries, the articles’ focus on sharks leaves out important discussions that took place during the CoP concerning indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). Already the discussions surrounding the Appendix II listing of the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), which some Parties aimed to include even in Appendix I at CoP18 in 2019, showed that it is the livelihoods of IPLCs which are directly affected by Appendix listings. Since CITES has no mechanism in place to strategically include IPLCs in the decision-making process, to consider livelihoods (Cooney & Abensperg-Traun, 2013) and the fact any Party can table a proposal for a CITES listing of any species, resistance against this modus operandi has grown amongst indigenous and local resource users.
To this end, especially developing states have again tabled motions to, first, establish a Rural Communities Advisory Committee (a softened version of the 2019-proposed and rejected Rural Communities Committee) that includes the voices of IPLCs when the strategic reviews of CITES species are conduced by the Plants and Animals Committees. This motion was again rejected. Another motion was tabled to change the criteria by which the Appendices of the Convention are to be amended. While currently primarily biological and also trade criteria play a role, the motion aimed to also include the effects on livelihoods and food security while international trade being a key driver when a proposal to amend the Appendices is tabled. Also this motion was rejected.
Media sources do not address this issue. Merely SpiegelOnline notes in reference to a WWF-representative that CITES needs to “keep up on the role of indigenous communities” (original: “[…] oder der Rolle lokaler und indigener Gemeinschaften müsse die Konvention Schritt halten”) while Martínez (2022) quotes CITES Secretary-General Ivonne Higuero as noting that “Trade underpins human well-being, but we need to mend our relationship with nature.” Also Mohan (2022) refers to “artisans” benefitting from India’s successful work for a relief of trade restrictions of rosewood.
The vast majority, however, focus on charismatic species without due consideration of the human implications of CITES listings. This finding is rather surprising as the only way by which species can be protected through CITES is considered to be an inclusion in the Appendices. However, social sciences research has found that without the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities, conservation outcomes are indeed less satisfactory (e.g. Cooney et al., 2021).
By ignoring these discussions, media sources appear not to be on par with the international conservation discourse. This is especially so since under other agreements, first and foremost the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), IPLCs are considered important stakeholders in order to achieve in situ conservation. The CBD’s article 8 (j) thus aims to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities”, while also the 2009 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the 2018 UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) clearly stipulate the rights to participation of IPLCs.
What does this mean for (the Arctic’s) indigenous peoples?
Compared to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), CITES has lesser Arctic implications. While the former recognises Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW) in Alaska, Greenland and Chukotka (as well as Bequia in St Vincent & the Grenadines), a direct CITES connection relates to the polar bear, as mentioned above. Under CITES, the polar bear has been listed in Appendix II since 1976. Since then, several attempts have been made to include polar bears in Appendix I, all of which have thus far failed. The last attempt to motivate CITES Parties to uplist the polar bear were made by the German conservation organisation NABU International at CoP18 (Sellheim Environmental, 2019). Also, at CoP19, the same organisation aimed to hold a side event with the same purpose. This side event did not take place for unknown reasons, however.
As the analysed articles have shown, a primary focus of media coverage on CITES relates to the species. While, given the purpose of the Convention, this is understandable to some degree, a complete blind spot concerning people within the media leads a disproportionate disregard of local interests. The polar bear serves as a good example in this regard: since it is endangered, CITES should protect it through prohibiting international trade. This simple narrative, which is advanced by some — not all — ENGOs ultimately shapes public opinion and therefore creates political pressure. CITES decision-makers may consequently be held by their governments to bow to this pressure and eventually place the polar bear on Appendix I — much to the detriment of Arctic indigenous peoples who depend on revenue derived from international polar bear trade.
In practice, an Appendix I-placing would mean that any international trade in polar bear skins and other specimens is no longer possible. While polar bears are by and large not hunted for their skins, but rather for subsistence purposes, the ‘side-income’ from international trade contributes to the economic development of small Arctic communities. In addition, if media outlets don’t consider the interests of IPLCs, they run into the trap of a colonialist narrative about conservation. Ignoring the polar bear in the room thus means that media are complicit in an ecocentric discourse which deprives Arctic and other indigenous peoples of their rights to actively engage in conservation and sustainable use. It is not just sharks or polar bears or elephants which are affected by a CITES listing, it is also those that live closest with these species which have to undergo significant changes in order to compensate for losses occurring because of such listing.
This is especially relevant in the Arctic where remoteness, harsh climate and associated sparse livelihood alternatives do not allow for much variation. A new discourse is therefore necessary that considers conservation and sustainable use in one breath. Especially with regard to the polar bear, the equation ‘endangerment justifies Appendix I’ is not that simple. As, for instance, the most recent report of the IUCN’s Polar Bear Specialist Group has shown, polar bear ecology is complex and an assessment of the 19 (!) different polar bear populations does not necessarily allow for a one-size-fits-all discourse about polar bear decline (PBSG, 2021).
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]]>The post Are We Psychologically Ready for Power Outages? appeared first on The Polar Connection.
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On 21 October 2014, electricity in areas of Providence, Rhode Island, was knocked out for almost two hours. Media reported that a squirrel had entered a power station and did not survive when it damaged electricity transmission equipment. Are we psychologically ready for such situations? After all, even with localised or entirely off-grid systems, everyone’s home will likely lose power at some point, whether for minutes or weeks.
Mentally preparing for power outages
Research on psychological responses to blackouts provides clear lessons. In line with decades of previous disaster research, panic and looting are exceptions rather than norms, and people respond selflessly more commonly than selfishly or criminally. From spontaneously directing traffic to offering sanctuary to strangers, we tend to want to help more than harm each other during times of darkness.
To reduce exceptions and outliers, preparedness is paramount, notably improving our mental readiness and gearing up to help ourselves and others. Some people with medical and mental health difficulties are especially vulnerable. Do they depend on electricity to keep them alive? And what backups are ready? Do they respond adversely to not having power? And what could prepare them or carers for it?
Without power, cell phone towers might not provide a signal, and the internet will not typically function. Unless we have a satellite phone, a battery-operated satellite internet terminal, or a generator—and then be wary of carbon monoxide poisoning—we will be out of contact with each other and news sources. Do we have a plan for meeting up with family in the absence of communications and verifying information? Will we obsessively check our phones every minute, just in case a signal appears? Or can we just get on with needed tasks?
Have we stored (assuming it is all affordable) two weeks’ worth of non-perishable food (and a manual can opener, if relying on cans), bottled water, hygiene, and medical products, a wind-up or battery-operated radio, and a wind-up or battery-operated flashlight? Spare batteries help, too. Candles and matches are a possibility, yet pose a fire risk. Similarly, people with fireplaces could use them for heat and light as long as they are operated safely.
In cold and hot weather, the lack of indoor temperature control can be life-threatening. If we have a car, should we warm up or cool down in it while charging our phones? Or does that waste gas and possibly hurt us from an idling vehicle’s emissions?
And, after we have made it through, does post-traumatic stress emerge? Who is most susceptible, and how could it be averted?
The time to act on these questions and answers is now. If we wait until the electricity is out, then it is too late. We are not likely to be psychologically ready.
Preventing blackouts
Being well-prepared for losses of power does not avert errant critters from powerful impacts (pun intended). Disaster-prevention tasks remain, aiming to minimise power disruptions from happening, rather than just minimise their impacts after they have happened.
Scientists model blackout frequency, duration, and severity. Business continuity plans have power interruption as a key instance. Many home insurance policies cover frozen food lost in a thaw.
Solar storms—when large amounts of charged particles from the Sun reach the Earth—are a core fear for those running electricity grids. A slew of past outages range from telegraph communications disrupted in 1859 through to electricity blackouts starting in the 1940s and radio outages in 2022.
Mechanical failures and poor maintenance are culprits. Transformer explosions in Toronto, Canada, left people in the dark in 2018 and 2019. A series of design faults, equipment problems, human errors, software mistakes, and cascading load re-distribution led to entirely separate blackouts in 2003 in northeastern North America, London in the UK, Scandinavia, Italy, and Switzerland.
Terrorism and other violent conflicts remain threats. Last month, from North Carolina to Washington, power stations were disrupted from gunfire-related sabotage. Ukraine continues to suffer from unreliable electricity due to bombardments by Russia. Cyber-attacks are an ever-present worry.
Demand exceeding supply and inadequate infrastructure produce electricity interruptions. Load shedding continues in South Africa while California dodged expected rolling blackouts last year. Environmental hazards regularly induce damage—and the grids themselves can start a fire, as in 2009 in Victoria, Australia, which killed 119 people (with 173 fire-related deaths total on that day).
Balancing physical and psychological preparedness
Amid all these menaces, whither pesky rodents? How much are animals considered in readiness and prevention? How do animal-related outages compare with other reasons for power cuts at the household or continental scale?
Squirrels are sometimes implicated as the animal causing the most power outages, followed by birds. Mice and rats are mentioned, too. Large mammals, such as elephants, blunder into sagging electricity lines, often dying and periodically causing a blackout. Mussels clog pipes and other power plant equipment. Insects harm trees that then fall across power lines.
How prominently should our mental models and probabilistic models place these animal impacts? Do we accept “the squirrel factor” as a regular cause of power outages, or do we consider it be anomalous or as impossible-to-calculate randomness? Fundamentally, how should we balance physical and psychological preparedness?
We could design electricity generation and supply systems that are far more robust when animals encounter our vexing-for-them infrastructure—also helping to save the critters’ lives—and for other challenges. Costs would skyrocket and might not necessarily address all provocateurs of power cuts.
What are we doing now to prepare our home and workplace for no electricity? Especially regarding psychological preparedness for ourselves?
Grineski, S.E., T.W. Collins, and J. Chakraborty. 2022. Cascading disasters and mental health inequities: Winter Storm Uri, COVID-19 and post-traumatic stress in Texas. Social Science & Medicine, vol. 315, article 115523.
National Research Council. 2012. Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System. The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
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]]>The post Will $100 Billion Per Year Tackle Climate Change? appeared first on The Polar Connection.
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$100 billion per year seems like a lot of money. It isn’t, especially for climate change, although this amount has been pledged (but not yet delivered) by richer countries to help poorer countries. Even if it were provided, it would be ineffective in achieving its goals.
The idea of the $100 billion per year was raised through the international climate change negotiations organised by the United Nations. UNFCCC is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an agreement signed in 1992 and steered by the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn. In 2009, the UNFCCC negotiations promised by 2020 to reach $100 billion per year from richer countries for poorer countries.
It did not happen. A decade of trying for this target expended extensive time and energy—and continued to do so as the world looked to the next round of negotiations last November, hosted by the UK. Even if this money became available, would it achieve what is needed?
Spending to Create Climate Change
A huge contribution to human-caused climate change is from the burning of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency (IEA) tracks fossil fuel subsidies. Since it started in 2007, the lowest yearly amount appeared in 2020 at $180 billion, due to falling prices and consumption. This compares to over $400 billion just two years earlier.
Due to the complexity of defining “subsidy,” and since countries calculate them differently, the numbers are not straightforward. They could potentially cover a huge range of actions, such as direct cash payments, governments owning companies or part of them, tax breaks, loopholes, trade support, or governments providing personnel, goods, and services. IEA is careful with its definitions, basing them on scientific analyses and aiming for clarity and consistency.
From these numbers, the subsidies for creating climate change—coming from the tax we pay—far exceed the money sought to address climate change. And this calculation is for only direct subsidies.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) details what they consider to be all subsidies. These numbers incorporate estimated health and environmental costs from using fossil fuels. For 2017, their report projected these subsidies to be $5.2 trillion, which is over fifty times the ask for addressing climate change in poorer countries.
All methods are limited, all data have errors, and all calculations can be improved. Even if the subsidy values are grossly overstated, the amount of our tax money supporting the creation of climate change still far outweighs the expectation of donations to tackle it.
Spending Beyond Climate Change
Other expenditures offer similar perspectives. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has tracked countries’ declared military spending since 1949. In 2020, SIPRI declared that military spending reached nearly $2 trillion. 39 percent of that came from a single country, the USA.
Meanwhile, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), among others, assess and examine ways of stopping the illegal movement of money into and out of poorer countries. Examples of illicit financial flows are bribes, trade misinvoicing, tax evasion, and money laundering. As with most other figures, defining, calculating, and estimating require numerous assumptions, provisos, and ranges. Irrespective, the suggestions for total illicit financial flows easily match total military spending, that is, trillions of dollars each year. Until recently, even the richest person in the world had far less than $200 billion in total.
We Have The Money
In other words, humanity is awash in money for tackling climate change—far more than the requested $100 billion per year—without requiring extra donations. Humanity is trapped in a mental state where, apparently, this situation is not obvious. Instead, we must simply decide to spend it to help ourselves and each other, rather than hurting everyone. This money is being mismanaged by poorer countries rather than being used to help themselves, with all their actions emulated, endorsed, and abetted by the richer countries (who, in many ways, pioneered financial and environmental mismanagement).
Everyone is complicit. Concern about climate change has pushed our thinking into a realm of throwing money at a single issue, rather than changing our behavior more widely for connecting climate change beyond a silo. It is the classic need to think beyond our usual boundaries, which in this case is “boxing-in” human-caused climate change.
Psychology is, at its basis, a study of mental states, processes, and behavior. What we spend money on, and the mental state of thinking we need the $100 billion per year, is thus fundamentally psychological.
As such, $100 billion per year more is irrelevant. This amount is easily available. If it were re-distributed from dangerous disbursement, then far more cash would still be going into creating problems than solving them. Instead, let’s develop our mindset to advocate for re-allocating harmful spending.
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]]>The post Will Climate Change Increase Suicide Rates? appeared first on The Polar Connection.
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Extensive concerns exist about human-caused climate change impacting mental health and well-being. Today, we published new research in the journal Scientific Reports examining heat–humidity and self-harm rates, one of the first studies to account for relative humidity rather than heat alone.
Considering Humidity
Our results show the importance of considering humidity as the world warms, rather than just air temperature. In fact, increasing relative humidity correlated better with reported suicide rates than heatwaves alone. Women are affected more than men, and people aged 5 to 14 years and 15 to 24 years are the most affected out of all age groups.
We used as much country-level data as we could find for heatwaves, relative humidity, population, and recorded incidents of suicide or of fatal intentional self-harm. The best combined data set overall covered 60 countries from 1979 to 2016, all via publicly available data from organizations such as the World Health Organization, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and the United Kingdom’s Met Office Hadley Centre.
Suicide vs. Fatal Intentional Self-Harm
Difficulties always emerge in defining, understanding, and analysing such numbers, as well as in linking specific calculations to wider contexts. One major challenge here is identifying and differentiating between suicide and fatal intentional self-harm. Suicide is highly stigmatised and is not always admitted to be reported and recorded.
Meanwhile, the International Classification of Diseases has been moving toward “intentional self-harm” as a category, which can then be divided into “fatal” and “nonfatal.” Intentionality, though, is not easy to tabulate consistently, because survivors might not admit it, and people who kill themselves might not always indicate, or even have been clear about, their intention. Then, connections between self-harm and mental health and well-being are not always clear or straightforward.
Debates continue within clinical and theoretical psychology and psychiatry, disease classifiers, general medicine and health practitioners, and global mental health specialists, among others. We did not, and could not, set out to provide insight into these disagreements or discussions, instead deliberately choosing to focus on the numbers as reported in the public data.
Differences Between Men and Women
The calculated differences between men and women might be as much cultural as physiological. In many places, men are reluctant to seek mental health care, reducing their diagnosis rate. Women’s diagnosis rates can also be undercalculated when they are deemed to be hysterical or irrational rather than given needed mental health support. Other differences in rates exist because temperature responses of men’s and women’s bodies differ.
In addition, no standard definition is accepted for “heatwave,” while humidity has numerous measurements. Again, we had no scope for resolving debates among meteorologists, climatologists, statisticians, and many others. Our heatwave definition is “four or more days of temperature that exceed the 99th percentile of temperature” within our data set. Relative humidity is directly measured as the amount of water vapour in the air compared to the maximum possible for the air’s temperature.
Major confounders beyond definitions interfere with connecting the data sets. Heat–humidity combinations might not affect people immediately, instead producing a time lag between experiencing environmental conditions and implementing self-harm. Cumulative effects are hard to determine, such as trying self-harm after several successive heatwaves within a timeframe, rather than a single experience.
And an individual can only die once. They might have intended to attempt suicide, but beforehand died from heat–humidity during the heatwave.
These difficulties require detailed further investigation, particularly as the results are mixed. Some countries show increasing rates of suicide with worse heat–humidity, some show decreasing rates, and some show no significant correlation. We could not discern definitive patterns in the countries falling into each category.
These results confirm that factors beyond simple increases in heat–humidity impact suicide and fatal intentional self-harm, so climate change should never be considered in isolation. A major concern in climate change and health research has long been assuming that climate change is the dominant impact on health, an approach related to “environmental determinism.” Presuming that a specific environmental change must lead to a specific health outcome has significant problems, affirmed by our work.
Certainly, killing oneself and various modes of self-harm occur due to many, complicated, underlying factors. Attribution to a single issue — or even a single class of determinants such as neurological biochemistry, clinical diagnoses, or social circumstances — is unlikely to withstand scrutiny.
Role of Health Systems
Health systems have a huge role to play in prevention and interventions. Where training for mental health and well-being is poor, where self-harm and suicide attempts lead to ostracization, or where health resources are inadequate, fewer people are likely to receive help. These situations affect both averting problems and reporting incidences.
Finally, increasing evidence indicates that doom and gloom about climate change — narratives of hopelessness and unavoidable destruction — are negatively affecting mental health and well-being. Terms such as solastalgia, eco-anxiety, eco-grief, climate anxiety, and climate grief might implicate doomsday storylines about climate change more than climate change’s actual impacts.
We hope that our study provides a small step forward in science with a giant impetus toward refining and improving the data and analyses. We need realistic understandings of mental health and well-being, especially preventing self-harm, under all circumstances, not just with respect to those linked to climate change.
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