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The treatment of sexual minority and gender-diverse youth in Canadian schools continues to be a contentious issue among parents and political parties, particularly in provinces like Alberta and British Columbia.

In the run-up to the upcoming B.C. election, discussions around a sexual minority framework for schools and the SOGI 123 initiative are prominent.

What is SOGI 123?

Introduced into B.C.’s public schools in 2016, SOGI 123 aims to make schools safer and more inclusive for students of all gender identities and sexual orientations. The initiative provides resources to help educators combat and address discrimination and bullying, and foster supportive and inclusive environments for 2SLGBTQ+ students.

The push for SOGI 123 was informed by a 2014 study which included data from the McCreary Centre Society’s 2013 BC Adolescent Health Survey. That study showed that schools with an established Gay Straight Alliance or Gender Sexuality Alliance, along with anti-homophobic policies, lowered the odds of sexual minority students reporting discrimination, mental health issues and suicide attempts compared to students in schools without such initiatives. Notably, heterosexual students also benefited from these inclusive settings.

In 2018, a subsequent BC Adolescent Health Survey of more than 38,000 youth aged 12-19 — including almost 1,000 children who identified as gender diverse — revealed that gender-diverse youth, including those identifying as transgender or non-binary, faced high rates of bullying, both in-person and online. The findings highlighted the importance of strong school and family relationships, which were linked to better mental health and lower rates of substance use and suicidal thoughts.

Despite hopes that SOGI 123 would bridge the health and well-being disparity gap for gender-diverse and cisgender youth, recent events may be undermining those efforts. Over the past two years, there has been a notable rise in vocal opposition to the rights of trans and non-binary students across the country, with schools becoming a backdrop for protests and counter-protests.

In response to these challenges, researchers at the University of British Columbia teamed up again with McCreary Centre Society to analyze the BC Adolescent Health Survey data from 2023 to see what, if anything, has changed for trans, non-binary, and questioning young people in B.C. since 2018.

Protestors gather at the legislature during a rally for trans rights in Edmonton, Feb. 4, 2024 after Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the most restrictive policy for trans and non-binary youth in Canada, that critics say will increase the risk of abuse and self-harm.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken

Key findings from the 2024 report

Improved family support: Some positive findings from the 2024 report include improved family support for gender-diverse youth with a noted reduction over time in these young people running away or getting kicked out of home.

Decreased feelings of safety: Results for students’ experiences at school were less positive, with decreases in feeling safe at school for both gender-diverse and cisgender youth. Gender-diverse young people were the least likely to report feeling safe in different parts of their school, and particularly in less supervised locations such as changing rooms and washrooms.

Increased reports of bullying: The majority of gender-diverse youth had experienced at least one type of in-person or online bullying in the past year, and rates of experiencing online bullying were at least twice those of cisgender boys.

Rising discrimination: Compared to five years earlier, there was an increase in gender-diverse youth reporting they had experienced discrimination, and the majority had experienced at least one form of discrimination in the past year. The most common location where discrimination occurred was at school: 32 per cent of trans girls and 57 per cent of trans boys reported they had experienced discrimination at school, compared to 29 per cent of cisgender girls and 20 per cent of cisgender boys.

School connectedness is crucial for mental well-being: Similar to past studies, strong school connections remained a strong protective factor for health and well-being, linked to reduced suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. For example, trans boys with the highest school connectedness were 99 per cent less likely to report seriously considering suicide in the past year compared to those with lower school connections. Likewise, trans girls with strong connections were 8.7 times more likely to report good or excellent mental health compared to other trans girls with low school connections.

B.C. election issue

As the debate about SOGI 123 continues during this election cycle, the recent data from more than 76,000 Grade 7-12 students serves as a crucial and timely reminder.

It highlights the importance of considering the experiences and perspectives of B.C.’s youth in discussions about how to create safe and inclusive school environments for all. Läs mer…

Google Street View has fast become a tool for people trying to get the feel for a community, look at real estate – and sometimes prank the tech giant when its mapping car drives by. But it also has the potential to help prevent falls and injuries in New Zealand’s urban environments.

Falls are a leading cause of injury and accidental death among older adults, but identifying the location of risks outside is labour and time intensive.

In our new research, we have created a tool using Google Street View to audit the places where people walk.

The goal of our new tool – Fall-SAFE – is to identify the risks in New Zealand’s built environments and create a database for local councils and community groups to understand where an older person might fall – and why.

A costly risk

Annually, one-in-three people over 65 are injured in a fall. This figure rises to one-in-two for people over 80.

In 2023 alone, ACC received 236,985 new claims for falls from people over the age of 60. Many of these falls resulted in serious injury, such as a hip fracture, hospitalisation or even death.

It’s not just older people who are at risk of falling – though they are, by far, the largest group. Last year, ACC paid out NZ$2.15 billion to cover claims for falls.

The flow-on effect from falls extends further than just medical recovery. Older people who have fallen outside, or who fear falling due to perceived risks, may be less willing to go for walks. They then miss out on the physical, mental and social benefits of this sort of activity.

Google Street View has become increasingly popular. But it can also be used as a tool to assess fall risk on footpaths and other outside areas.
Smith Collection/Getty Images

Assessing the environment

Using data from ambulance service Hato Hone St John, we identified 2,117 falls between July 2016 and June 2018 in urban areas involving adults aged 65 and over. Wellington was excluded as the city uses a different ambulance service.

Auditors then used Google Street View to assess the locations of these falls and identify risks in the built environment that might have contributed. These risks included trip hazards, uneven foot paths, obstructions (such as overgrown bushes) and slopes.

Auditors used a “drop-and-spin” approach to their assessment, where they completed a 360° audit of the fall location. The Google Maps imagery was set to be as close to the date of the accident as possible.

Drop-and-spin virtual audits are quicker than physical audits, but similarly reliable. Furthermore, drop-and-spin virtual audits enable assessment over large geographic areas that would be difficult to examine in person.

Understanding New Zealand’s streets

After examining the different fall sites, we gained a better understanding of where falls happened and the hazards that could have contributed to the falls.

Half of all the falls had occurred in residential locations (49.1%) and one quarter occurred in commercial locations (22.4%). A further 16.2% of the falls had occurred in “other” locations (such as rural or industrial areas).

Over 60% of fall sites had at least one trip hazard due to poorly maintained footpaths. The most common obstructions were manholes, service covers or grates (71.5 %), poles (65.4%), utility boxes (46.6%) and overhanging vegetation (39.5%). Other obstructions such as bus shelters, chairs and tables, or drains were noted at 64.5% of the sites.

Three-quarters of the falls had occurred in locations that had a flat or gentle slope (76.3%). Only 15.5% of the falls had occurred on a moderate slope, while 8.2% had occurred on a steep slope.

Most (95.6%) of the fall locations had a normal kerb height (ten centimetres). Few locations had no kerbs (2.3%) or storm drains (2%). Streetlights were present in most fall locations, either on one side of the street (including partial or very sparse locations) (54%) or on both sides (44%). Streetlights were not visible in 0.9% of sites.

Of all the locations we assessed, just under 6% had no obvious risk whatsoever. This seems to indicate that external hazards were a contributing factor to the vast majority of falls – though without information from the person who fell, it is hard to know for sure.

A cheaper and faster option

The current approach to assessing the safety of urban environments – sending people out to physically look at a footpath to identify issues – can be time consuming and costly.

And the money to do the work is simply unavailable. Several councils, including Hamilton and Masterton, have announced significant cuts in funding from the New Zealand Transport Agency to maintain and repair footpaths and cycle lanes.

Another problem is that these assessors may not fully understand the experiences of older people in these locations. A hazard for someone aged 65+ may not seem like one for someone in their 30s or 40s.

Understanding the factors that contribute to a fall for older people – such as obstructions and trip hazards – allows city planners to address problems in the built environment.

Our free auditing tool provides a way for councils and advocacy groups to look at environments to understand the risks. Our research applied this to places where we know people had fallen, but the tool can be used to assess the risk of any environment.

Investing the time and effort now to address these fall risks early could save money – and lives – further down the track. Läs mer…

Today the perilous state of the environment is often in the news. Many stories describe how Earth is being damaged by human beings and discuss ways to prevent this.

These concerns are not new. Millennia ago, people in ancient Greece and Rome already knew humans were damaging the natural world. Literature from these ancient times contains many references to the environment and the harms it suffers.

Many of these insights ring true today. Polluting the soil we farm, air we breathe and water we drink has clear repercussions. We can only degrade the environment for so long before it will come back to haunt us.

So let’s explore what the ancient Greeks and Romans can teach us about nature and our place in the world.

An agent of destruction

The ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century AD, was concerned about the way human beings were abusing Earth. In his work titled Natural History, he wrote:

We taint the rivers and the elements of nature, and the air itself, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life.

He thought of the planet as something humanity ought to protect rather than harm, because we owe our existence to mother Earth:

It is my pleasant duty first of all to champion Earth’s cause and to support her as the parent of all things.

Two millennia later, Pliny’s words seem directly relevant to us.

In the modern world, concerns about the health of the environment have become one of the hottest political topics.

For example, a survey last year of almost 20,000 young people in Australia showed 44% think the environment is the most important issue of our time.

A 19th century imaginary portrait of Pliny the Elder. Artist unknown.
Wikimedia Commons

A growing understanding

Roman writers noted their soldiers eventually poisoned the water and the air around their camps. The military writer Flavius Renatus Vegetius, who lived around the fourth and fifth centuries AD, observed:

if a numerous army continues long in one place in the summer or in the autumn, the waters become corrupt, and the air infected, from whence proceed malignant and fatal distempers, which nothing but frequent change of encampments can prevent.

Roman writers also had a lot to say about the pollution of the river Tiber, which runs through Rome.

The biographer Suetonius, who was born around 70AD, tells us the river had been “filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting buildings” before emperor Augustus (63BC-14AD) took action to clean it up.

Bad policies had polluted the river’s waters. For example, the emperor Nero (37–68AD) dumped huge amounts of rotten grain into the river.

The Roman poet Juvenal (of the first and second centuries AD) referred to the Tiber as a “gushing sewer”. And the physician Galen (129–216AD) said the Tiber was so polluted that fish caught there were not safe to eat.

Measures to protect the environment

The Greeks and Romans introduced various measures to prevent or reduce environmental harm.

In 420BC, for example, the Athenians introduced a law to protect the river Ilissus:

It is forbidden to soak the coats [of animals] in the Ilissus above the sanctuary of Heracles and to tan them. It is forbidden to throw the residue of the laundering into the river.

Modern researchers think this measure might have helped the Ilissus stay clean. That’s because authors writing in the fourth century BC (after the law was introduced) describe the Ilissus as a pure and beautiful river.

The Ilissus river was a picture of health in the 19th century.
Edward Dodwell, Wikimedia Commons

Other measures to reduce pollution included banning public defecation and urination. Bans on washing clothes or throwing rubbish into rivers were also common. But it’s unlikely the public adhered to these restrictions all the time.

Some rulers also tried to do public works such as building sewers and aqueducts to clean up pollution.

For example, the emperor Nerva, who ruled 96–98AD, undertook a series of construction projects to make Rome cleaner and healthier.

Sextus Julius Frontinus (35–103AD), manager of Rome’s aqueducts, tells us that thanks to Nerva:

the appearance of the city is clean and altered; the air is purer; and the causes of the unwholesome atmosphere, which gave the air of the city so bad a name in former times, are now removed.

Damaging the environment harms our health

Sometime in the late first or early second century AD, the Roman aristocrat and lawyer Pliny the Younger (61/62–112AD) wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan, who ruled 98–117AD. He complained about a public health issue in the city of Amastris, in modern Turkey:

Among the chief features of Amastris, Sir, is a long street of great beauty. Throughout the length of this, however, there runs what is called a stream, but is in fact a filthy sewer, a disgusting eyesore which gives off a noxious stench. The health and appearance alike of the city will benefit if it is covered in, and with your permission this shall be done.

The emperor replied that he was happy for this to be done:

There is every reason, my dear Pliny, to cover the water which you say flows through the city of Amastris, if it is a danger to health while it remains uncovered.

This story shows the ancients were aware that the health of the land, air and water is intertwined with human health. So when the environment is in an unhealthy state, this is also damaging for our health and wellbeing.

The modern world can learn from antiquity

The message from the ancient Greeks and Romans is as true today for us as it was for them. As humanity grapples with multiple environmental crises, it’s worth reflecting on this age-old knowledge.

The bottom line is, keeping the planet in a healthy state is good not just for the environment, but also for ourselves.

In a modern world where stories about pollution and related environmental problems frequently appear in the news, this message of the ancients is well worth remembering. Läs mer…

Young children’s lives are increasingly spent indoors. They have less access to green spaces, their parents are concerned about safety, and there’s also the draw of digital entertainment. This shift away from the natural world has been evocatively named “the extinction of experience”.

By being in green spaces, children benefit in many ways, including greater physical activity and improved concentration and self-control. The outdoors is also good for children’s learning. Benefits such as these have fuelled the rise of forest schools and the integration of nature play in early childhood education.

The things that play the biggest role in limiting children’s time in nature are urbanisation and parental attitudes. Despite this, digital devices are often blamed for keeping kids indoors.

Digital entertainment is widely perceived as addictive and detrimental. While the concept of screen time is contested, most Australian children are exceeding the current recommended guidelines.

Our research took a different approach, asking: could digital technologies be designed to foster nature connection? After looking at studies of digital technologies used by children aged eight years and under, we found a wide range of ways technology can help children find their way back into the great outdoors.

Being in nature

The ways children connect to nature go through several phases: “being in nature, being with nature, and being for nature”. Key experiences that boost this connection include free time in nature, seeing others like oneself in natural settings, recording nature experiences, and gaining confidence and a sense of agency outdoors.

We found technologies that help children to

have social and playful experiences outdoors
discover nature
show their care for and learn about other species and the environment, and
focus their creative and artistic abilities on the world around them.

The most commonly used technology were digital cameras in various forms: handheld, GoPros, or built into smartphones or prototype devices.

Case studies from all around the world show how digital imagery opens doors into the natural world. In São Paulo, Brazil, photography helped children notice urban nature they had overlooked. In the United States, it allowed them to collect images of species to learn about.

In Australia, children took photos in parks for creative manipulation later, while in Finland, an augmented reality “forest elf” encouraged imaginative nature exploration that children could photograph. In Italy, the ABBOT prototype used a screenless camera device linked to a tablet application, enabling nature exploration without the distraction of screens.

Julle, the augmented reality ‘forest elf’ used in the Finnish study.
Kumpulainen et al. (2020), CC BY

Young citizen scientists

Nature photography is also a gateway to citizen science. Apps like QuestaGame, though not a subject of our research, bridge the appeal of photography and the game design of Pokémon Go. The goal of the game is to collect images of species for science.

Our study found one citizen science project with seven- and eight-year-old children text logging seashore species they found. While the youngest children needed parental support to do this, they were reportedly the most enthusiastic.

Sound technologies can also help connect kids with nature. The Ambient Birdhouse plays nature videos in the home so that children are sensitised to bird sounds when outside. Another tool, the Eko nature sound collector, pairs with an app to let children manipulate sounds they’ve collected outdoors.

Like photography, sound technologies are an entry point to noticing the natural world. And children can use these even if they can’t yet read.

How can we use tech to connect children with nature?

There are many ways to appropriate existing technologies and make new ones to help children connect with nature. Parents and educators can use accessible technologies like cameras, and applications such as QuestaGame, including their schools-oriented challenge.

To add mystery and excitement by having to look at the images later – much like with film cameras – parents can cover up the screen of a smartphone or digital camera. (A few inches of painter’s masking tape can do the trick.)

Going out to check an automatic nature camera can also be exciting. It can even turn into a daily ritual. These cameras are available both commercially and DIY. To find the best places to put them, children can engage in backyard experimentation, adding another dimension to this activity.

To further encourage their children’s creative and scientific learning, parents can help children make digital stories out of nature photos, or learn about species together.

Finally, tech developers can use all this evidence to design dedicated tech tools for children to use in nature. These designs should be easy for young children to use, engage more senses than sight, and encourage outdoor play, wonder and care for nature.

If such technologies are designed in collaboration with children, families and educators, they have the chance to be widely embraced, both at home and in the classroom.

Our work shows there are ways to use technology to build kids’ interest in the outdoors. By listening to parents’ concerns about addiction to smart devices and children’s safety, we can ensure a world where children play outdoors freely, without veering towards surveillance. Läs mer…

Firstly, let’s revisit the question: why are they remaking The Office?

Just over ten years after the United States version of the British series ended, Australia has decided to make its own version. It follows franchises in Canada, Greece, India, Sweden and Poland, to name a few.

But we all have offices to go to, we all have our particular office cultures, co-workers and complaints. Post-pandemic, office life is becoming routine again. The more things change, the less things change, and that could be the theme of The Office Australia.

In fact, this is probably the perfect timing for this remake: post work-from-home, when large corporations are demanding workers return (often unwillingly) to shared workplaces. That’s the premise of the pilot episode of The Office Australia – everyone stops working remotely and reunites at the office. It’s timely and a good way of updating the concept to make it relatable.

‘A riddle, swallowed by an idiot …’

Modern nods, same old business

A few more nods to contemporary office culture are included, such as Zoom meetings and standing desks. But apart from that, the Australian Office could be set anytime from the 1990s onwards in terms of the look, practices and low-fi tech of the office itself.

The remake mirrors closely the US version: a romance storyline, tensions between office and warehouse, an old-school boss who loves, craves and needs camaraderie, and a staff for whom work life comes second to what they’d rather be doing.

The original United Kingdom series of The Office, by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, only had 12 episodes, which is still surprising to realise given how much it defined television sitcom in the decades following. Parks and Recreation (2009–2015) owes a huge debt to The Office. Whether we would have had Utopia (2014–present) without it is debatable. The late, great John Clarke broke in Australia with The Games (1998–2000) and Australia has long done this sort of observational comedy very well.

Will Australia’s version capture local flavour? It does feature the Melbourne Cup.
Amazon

Despite a deep vein of experience and success to draw on, The Office Australia sticks closely to The Office format in terms of stories, characters, tone, look and laughs.

This might be because the show – made by Amazon and BBC Australia – is launching into around 240 countries and territories. It needs to find a line between being Australian and being international. That said, it has probably veered more into the international end of the scale, with enough Australiana (venomous snakes, barbecues) to ground it here, but still universal enough to be widely relatable and understandable.

The US version had 201 episodes, giving it scope to develop the characters and the storylines and make it a massively popular and frequently rewatched series. (There’s a follow up series in the works called The Paper.) So it’s no wonder writers Julie De Fina and Jackie van Beek looked to the this version for guidance for the Australian series. This is less an adaptation than a remake with a different accent.

Familiar and new faces

Hannah Howard (Felicity Ward) is the devoted office manager who loves her job too much and runs an under-performing, dysfunctional workplace of uninterested staff.

The show centres on her, with the familiar mockumentary style. Like David Brent and Michael Scott before her, Hannah Howard is optimistic, naive, relentless and terrible at staff management. She forces pyjama days and bus trips on her employees, who are clearly unwilling yet never actively rebel. There is plenty of comedy in the awkwardness and small moments.

Felicity Ward plays the boss (sort of) of this particular office.
Amazon

Her devoted assistant and receptionist Lizzie (Edith Poor), a former Scout, wears a grey suit and will pursue any idea no matter how ill-conceived or illegal to make Hannah’s plans come to fruition.

Long-suffering human resources manager Martin (Josh Thomson) tries to keep them from actually breaking laws, while Nick (Steen Raskopoulos) and Greta (Shari Sebbens) gaze awkwardly across their workstation divider at each other in a slow-burning love story. There are the usual office roles which offer story beats: accounting, IT, sales.

The first Australian season of The Office might not be anything new, but I kept watching. It felt safe, even comforting. Perhaps in a similar way going to someone else’s family for Christmas lunch can feel familiar: recognisable foods, decorations, known characters – but with the frisson that maybe something different will happen this time.

This remake knows what it is. It’s been made to satisfy an audience wanting to be in a world that reflects their own experiences, but takes it just that bit too far. It’s not setting out to break moulds, but to bring the mould up to date and give it an Australian voice for the world to hear.

The Office premieres on October 18 on Prime. Läs mer…

The third section of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is Truth. Without knowing the truth of the history of Australia’s Indigenous people, and how the European invasion continues to impact on them, it is hard to understand the pain behind the loss of The Voice referendum and the ongoing need for treaties.

Marcia Langton and Judith Ryan are truth tellers. Their book 65,000 years: A Short History of Australian Art, should be in every library in the country. The truths they tell are compelling, enticing – sometimes appalling – and unless they are known, the country cannot heal.

Review: 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, edited by Marcia Langton and Judith Ryan (Thames & Hudson)

For much of the 20th century, there was tension between anthropologists and art curators on the status of what we now call Indigenous art. While anthropologists focused on what they saw as visual evidence for culture and custom, art curators and historians marvelled at what the first history of Australian art, William Moore’s The Story of Australian Art (1934), called a “fine sense of design”. It took many years for all concerned to see that both are true.

Billy Benn Perrurle (Alyawarr, 1943–2012) Artetyerre, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri / Canberra.
Thames & Hudson

A visual embodiment of knowledge

65,000 Years includes essays by anthropologists, art historians, art curators, artists, astronomers and historians. As one of the contributors, astronomer Duane Hamacher writes, “Art is often focused on aesthetics, but more importantly it is a visual embodiment of knowledge.”

The book is focused on the University of Melbourne for two reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that it is published to support an exhibition of the same name, which will open the university’s Ian Potter Museum of Art next year. The second, more potent reason is that this university was both a participant in some of the more shocking crimes against Indigenous Australians and the keeper of works that tell the slow tale of redemption.

As Langton writes, artists “have a special relationship with the world. They can tell the truth where others cannot or will not because they can represent the truth visually.”

Historian Ross L. Jones’s documentation of the great crime of the university’s medical faculty is harrowing reading. Over many years, bodies were “harvested” en masse – sacrificed, as he writes, “to the Western gods of progress and learning”. “Racial anatomy”, supporting theories of eugenics, became a specialty of the School of Anatomy.

Judith Ryan, former senior curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, notes that pastoralist George Murray Black plundered many sacred burial sites for human remains, which were placed “numbered but unconsidered in metal storage boxes”. Artist Brook Andrew’s response to the abuse of the remains of 52 Tasmanians led to him honouring the dead in Vox beyond Tasmania (2013).

Abuse of Indigenous Australians for “research” was not confined to Victoria. Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce has produced Weak in Colour but Strong in Blood, a chilling but exquisite installation of blown glass that critiques the activities of anthropologist and ethnologist Norman Tindale and the South Australian Museum. Scarce’s own relatives were among those whose details were recorded by Tindale.

Yhonnie Scarce’s Weak in Colour but strong in Blood critiques the activities of anthropologist and ethnologist Norman Tindale.
Quentin Jones/AAP

Waanyi artist Judy Watson’s A Preponderance of Aboriginal Blood, a book of 15 etchings showing bloodstained facsimiles of official communications, is heartbreaking. She demonstrates the pettiness of the cruel administration of laws passed by the Queensland government to deny the humanity of Indigenous Australians.

One of the strengths of 65,000 Years is the way it interlaces Indigenous art with work by some of the early European visitors and settlers. Empathetic portraits by artists on the crew of French explorer Nicolas Baudin’s expedition to southern Australia are contrasted with less sympathetic portraits by artists from Britain.

65,000 Years interperses Indigenous art with work by early European visitors or settlers, like Joseph Lycett, Corroboree at Newcastle, c. 1818.
Thames & Hudson

As art curator Alisa Bunbury notes in her essay, “the French travelled with an expansive philosophical belief”. The British were more concerned with property. The disconnect between Indigenous cultures and those of the newcomers is seen in convict artist Charles Rodius’s lithographs of ten “Aboriginal Kings and Queens”. The colonists did not have the language to describe a non-feudal culture.

Approximately two centuries after the arrival of the Europeans, a new generation of Indigenous artists began to incorporate elements of early colonial works in a critique of the arrogance and cruelty of the invaders.

Some of the most effective of these works are by Gordon Bennett, an artist of Anglo-Celtic and Indigenous descent who often adopted the persona “John Citizen” to confront the rhetoric of identity and the politics of categorisation.

His 1993 Death of the Ahistorical Subject (Up Rode the Troopers, ABC), is a riff on an 1850s lithograph that celebrated a massacre. His Big Romantic Painting (Apotheosis of Captain Cook) shows Cook ascending into the clouds after causing destruction throughout the land.

Gordon Bennett critiques the rhetoric of identity and politics of categorisation in his work. Possession Island Abstraction hangs in London’s Tate.
Vickie Flores/AAP

European cultural limitations

The cultural limitations of the Europeans who claimed to have discovered Australia is evident from the explorer Sir George Grey’s response in 1838, when he came to Western Australia and saw the great rock art galleries and their paintings of Wanjina.

Almost a century later, when he wrote his history of Australian art, William Moore accepted as truth Grey’s opinion that such beautiful and powerful works could not be painted by Indigenous Australians, so assumed they had been painted by visitors to the land.

If the newcomers had looked and listened, they would have discovered the complexity and variety of Indigenous cultures that surrounded them. If they were less arrogant, they would also have discovered that many Indigenous people were attempting to educate them. Those few who listened, like explorer Matthew Flinders, benefited.

Bungaree, painted by Augustus Earle.
NLA

Bungaree, a Darug man who accompanied Flinders on his first circumnavigation of the continent, was able to mediate to prevent disputes when Flinders’ crew landed to take on water. This was despite him not sharing the language of the many different people whose lands they visited. My favourite painting of Bungaree, by Augustus Earle, shows him resplendent in a red coat, waving his hat as though welcoming visitors to his land.

Nineteenth-century drawings by Tommy McRae, Wurundjeri artist William Barak and Dhurga artist Mickey of Ulladulla created records using an amalgam of Indigenous traditions and western visual tools.

Oscar of Cooktown, an Aboriginal man who was kidnapped as a child and sent to work on a station in the distant Barkly Tableland, made a sketchbook record of the harsh life of men conscripted to join the native police. It took many years for his works to be properly valued.

Works by William Barak both record the traditions that were under attack by the newcomers to Narrm (Melbourne), and serve as a document to advocate for the rights of those displaced.

William Barak’s Corroboree.
Sothebys Australia/AAP

Sharing knowledge and culture

One advantage the people of northern Australia had over those living in the far south is that they were long aware of the existence of other cultures, other races and the need to interpret. Long before the arrival of the Europeans, they had traded with the Macassans from what we now call Indonesia.

Yolŋu people shared knowledge and culture with the outside world. They taught the Methodist missionaries, who told them different stories in return, and also taught anthropologists what they were permitted to know.

Body paintings were put onto bark for the benefit of anthropologists from down south, including Donald Thomson from the University of Melbourne. Because of their intellectual generosity, Yolŋu art and artefacts are in collections around the world, dominating what many think of as Australian Indigenous art.

These artefacts are held in the University of Melbourne’s Donald Thomson collection.
Thames & Hudson

The first European Australian to fully appreciate the beauty of Indigenous art was another anthropologist, Sir Baldwin Spencer. In the early years of the 20th century, he also collected paintings by Australian Impressionists. As “chief protector of Aborigines”, he so admired the drawings made on rock and bark shelters that he commissioned Bininj artists to paint work on portable bark, which he later donated to the Museum of Victoria.

Many years later, in 1972, Yolŋu people gave Justice Edward Woodward of the Aboriginal Land Rights Royal Commission paintings that proved their connections to country.

The iconography of each artist showed their personal ancestral connection to the land from time immemorial. It was one of the reasons for The Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976. These works are now in the University of Melbourne Art Collection.

Activist artists effecting change

Not all campaigns end well. In 1971, the Yolŋu people lost a case in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory when they tried to stop bauxite mining at Nhulunbuy. The saddest thing I have ever heard is a recording of the didgeridoo lament on the destruction of the sacred lands.

People involved in both that case and the earlier Yirrkala Bark Petitions later became well known as artists and national leaders, leading the movement that saw international recognition of Australian Indigenous visual culture.

In May 1973, the Whitlam Government created the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council. All the members were Indigenous. The board had full control of its budget and as a result, made the unusual decision not to award grants to individual artists, but rather to buy completed works of art. It was this art, exhibited both in Australia and internationally, that lifted the profile of Indigenous artists.

Thanks to their efforts, Indigenous art, especially paintings from Papunya, soon became better known in Europe and America than it was in Australia. Purchases by the Aboriginal Arts Board led to the Art Gallery of South Australia buying Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri’s Man’s Love Story in 1980, the first acquisition of a Papunya painting by a public collection.

Artwork by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, whose Man’s Love Story was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1980.
Lloyds Auctioneers/AAP

The following year, Bernice Murphy included paintings by Papunya artists in the groundbreaking Australian Perspecta exhibition of new Australian art. A minor criticism of the book is that there is only a passing reference to the significance of support by the Australia Council.

Urban art activism

The complex landscape of Indigenous art is typified by Koori Art ‘84, the first exhibition to include emerging urban Aboriginal artists, which took place in Sydney’s Artspace.

Its many participants included students from Redfern’s Eora Centre and Tranby at Glebe. But it also brought together Indigenous artists from around the country, including Yolŋu artist Banduk Marika, Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus and Ngarrindjeri artist Trevor Nickolls.

They found common cause with the Sydney artists Tracey Moffatt, Michael Riley, Fiona Foley and many more.

Ryan notes the connection between this exhibition, when many of these artists discovered each other for the first time, and the flowering of urban Indigenous art.

One of the collaborations that occurred in the aftermath of this exhibition was Boomalli, which opened in Redfern in 1987, but is still going strong today in Leichhardt. Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey, who saw Boomalli’s opening exhibition when he was a student at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts, later moved to Brisbane. There, he found a similar community at ProppaNOW, founded by Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd and Vernon Ah Kee.

Bell is best known for his cynical commentary on racism in contemporary Australia and the exploiters of the industry now surrounding Indigenous art.

Aboriginal artist Richard Bell, known for his cynical commentary on the exploiters of Indigenous art, with his works Big Brush Stroke (left) and Australian Art Its An Aboriginal Thing, at the National Gallery.
Alan Porritt/AAP

While they have a common purpose, this generation of activist artists did not share a common aesthetic. As Ryan notes, what they did have is “a similar sense of outrage at the politics of colonialism and their experiences of institutionalised racism and intergenerational trauma”.

But the art they have made is remarkable. Trevor Nickolls’ Deaths in Custody, Gordon Hookey’s King Hit for Queen and Country, Robert Campbell Jnr’s Roped Off at the Picture Show II all express justifiable rage at ongoing discrimination.

‘Amazing women’ in the zeitgeist

Coby Edgar, a Larrakia, Jingili and Anglo curator, notes in her essay, titled “Turn to the river”, that for many years, most of the anthropologists who researched Australian Indigenous culture were men. Their own cultural blindness, as well as not being privy to women’s lore, led to them seeing it as being of less importance.

She asks: “Why are there so many amazing female artists in our current art market?” Her answer? It’s the “zeitgeist”. This is true, but I wish she had named some of the agents abetting that spirit of the times.

In 1991, Arrernte and Kalkadoon curator and writer Hetti Perkins, then curator at Boomalli, persuaded the Art Gallery of New South Wales to mount the Aboriginal Women Artists Exhibition.

That exhibition included work by many of the women artists who came to prominence in the following years. In 1997, Perkins, along with Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra curator and artist Brenda L. Croft and Victoria Lynn, mounted fluent, an exhibition of three Indigenous women artists at the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Yvonne Koolmatrie and Judy Watson were thrust into the limelight as a result – and there they stayed.

Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Earth’s Creation 1.
Little Hero/AAP

Dominating Australian culture

In this 21st century, Indigenous art has come to dominate perceptions of Australian culture.

Crimes of the past are painted in heartrending detail by Badimaya artist and activist Julie Dowling. Joyous abstract paintings by the late Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori are yet another reminder that wise old women have much to say.

Artist Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori’s 2008 painting Dibirdibi Country, displayed at the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art.
QAG Photography/AAP

Torres Strait Islander artist Brian Robinson’s intricate linocut prints map the magic of the night sky. And Yankunytjatjara artist Kaylene Whisky brings joy, synthesising popular culture icons like Cher and Dolly Parton with her daily life in Indulkana, roughly 1,200 kilometres northwest of Adelaide.

All these artists and more are discussed in 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art. Read it. Buy it. It is one for the pool room. Läs mer…

It’s long been assumed the Queensland election of October 26 – to elect the state’s 58th (and second fixed, four-year) parliament – would be a tough ask for a tired-looking Labor government seeking a rare fourth term.

Having won the 2020 COVID-19 election with primary and two-party-preferred swings to it – and with a net gain in seats – Labor was always likely to suffer a major correction in 2024.

But few then could have anticipated just how large that correction would be. A Freshwater Strategy poll, the most recently released, has pegged Labor’s primary vote at just 30% (down 9.6 points from 2020). The Liberal-National Party (LNP) opposition is on 43% (up 7.1), the Greens (poised to seize between two and five seats in inner Brisbane) on 12% (up 2.5), Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (PHON) on 8% (up 0.9) and others on 7% (up 1.3).

Labor, with just 44% of the two-party-preferred (2PP) vote, trails the LNP, on 56%, by 12 points. This represents a 9.2% swing since 2020. It would see Labor lose 22 seats (17 in the regions and five in Greater Brisbane) to the LNP, and at least two more in inner Brisbane to the Greens.

The 93-seat Queensland parliament would then be home to just 27 Labor MPs. The LNP would easily form government with 57 seats. The Greens and Katter’s Australian Party would each have four, and there would be one independent. For the first time in a decade, this election might see PHON with no representation.

So what went wrong for Labor?

Having been largely untroubled by the moderate and softly spoken LNP leader David Crisafulli throughout 2021, Labor suffered the first of a series of crises in early 2022 when integrity questions were asked of a Palaszczuk government accused of being too close to lobbyists and trade unions.

The LNP then launched a personal assault on the then premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk. She was accused of being a “part-time” and “red carpet” premier more interested in attending gala events than managing Queensland. In a state where the political culture esteems strong leaders but resents pampered “elites”, the LNP attacks were astonishingly successful.

By 2023, cost-of-living and youth crime crises only further burdened a premier hampered by hospital ramping and a seemingly shambolic rollout of Olympic Games infrastructure. By December 2023, a Resolve Strategic poll had found Palaszczuk – whose “next-door-neighbour” humility was once Labor’s best asset – trailing Crisafulli as preferred premier, 34 to 39%. Worse, a YouGov poll found Palaszczuk suffered a net approval rating of minus 20. Crisafulli enjoyed a plus-11-point position.

It was therefore inevitable the then deputy premier, Steven Miles – a PhD-qualified trade unionist from the Left now presenting as humble hubby and “daggy dad” – should topple (with support from Left-aligned unions) Palaszczuk last December.

While Miles’s honeymoon allowed Labor to briefly reset its fortunes – and, according to a UComms poll, attract 50% of the two-party preferred vote – the polls since February have been consistent in their forecast of a looming Labor decimation.

Despite this, nobody could accuse Miles or his government of giving up the ghost. Despite conceding an LNP victory was the “most likely” outcome, Miles has thrown everything into his bid for re-election. His promises include 50 cent public transport fares as part of a generous state budget (now matched by the LNP), a crackdown on youth crime, ambitious carbon emission and clean energy targets, state-owned electricity retailers and petrol stations, and even free lunches for all state primary school children.

By contrast, the LNP – enjoying a dream run since early 2022 and now campaigning heavily on youth crime and health – has met its first hurdles in recent weeks.

First, many, including conservative news media, are demanding Crisafulli provide much more policy detail. After long-trumpeting an “adult crime, adult time” slogan, for example, the LNP has only recently released vague details of an early intervention program to address youth crime.

Second – and potentially far more damaging – is the hand grenade Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) leader Robbie Katter lobbed at the LNP’s feet last week. Some time during the next parliament, Katter says, KAP will introduce a private member’s bill to repeal Labor’s popular 2018 reforms that removed abortion from the state’s Criminal Code.

While Crisafulli has ruled out any change to abortion law, there are fears conservative LNP MPs, if granted a “conscience vote”, could support Katter’s bill and recriminalise abortion. While such a move would hardly thwart LNP gains in the regions, it could prevent Crisafulli from making the necessary inroads into more progressive Brisbane seats.

While an LNP state victory is all but certain, federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton can take little comfort from a local Labor loss. In short, Queensland isn’t Australia, and Australia isn’t Queensland. Labor, holding just four of the state’s 30 federal seats north of the Tweed, has little to lose. Even a 10-point swing to the state LNP in Queensland means little in terms of the 6.3% swing Dutton needs nationally to form majority government next May.

Facing certain defeat, Labor’s strategy is now to “save the furniture” in Greater Brisbane, including its seat of Waterford, held by high-profile Health Minister Shannon Fentiman, who could easily become Labor’s next leader. If Labor holds much of Brisbane, a relatively inexperienced LNP frontbench still burdened by the 2032 Olympics, the cost of living and youth crime will likely find its first term hard going.

Another single-term LNP government, like Campbell Newman’s between 2012 and 2015, is therefore hardly out of the question. Läs mer…

The new Northern Territory government is planning a swathe of changes to alcohol policy.

If implemented, these changes fly in the face of what evidence shows works to reduce alcohol-related harms. Some are also out of step with the rest of Australia.

Among our concerns are plans that would lead to harmful alcohol products becoming cheaper, alcohol becoming more easily available, criminalising public drunkenness, and a particularly worrying type of mandatory alcohol treatment – all of which evidence suggests will cause more harms.

No one is downplaying the magnitude and complexities of alcohol-related issues in the NT. But we hope the territory government will pay more heed to the evidence and voices of those most impacted.

Alcohol-related harm in the NT is complex

Alcohol-related harms in the NT are significantly higher (for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people) than elsewhere in Australia.

In the territory, these harms contribute to health and social outcomes costing at least A$1.4 billion a year. Alcohol harms result in costs related to health care, deaths, crime, policing and child protection.

Aboriginal communities in the NT have for decades cried out for solutions and services that effectively respond to alcohol-related harm. Instead, they found their lives made part of a political football match on law and order. Policies have been reactive and mostly ineffective. They’ve been overturned at each election.

Now, the new NT government is discussing changes that promise to exacerbate the very issues it aims to address.

1. Cheap alcohol that contributes most harm would be on the market

The World Health Organization recognises that raising the price of alcohol is one of the most effective ways for governments to reduce alcohol-related harm.

So some governments around the world, including in the NT, have set a price below which alcohol cannot be sold, known as the minimum or “floor price”. This targets cheap, high-strength alcohol associated with patterns of drinking that cause the most harm.

The new NT government plans to repeal this, despite evidence showing this works to reduce harms.

Since the NT alcohol floor price was set at $1.30 per standard drink in 2018, there has been a:

14% reduction in alcohol-related assaults in Darwin and Palmerston
11% reduction in domestic and family violence assaults
21% reduction in domestic and family violence assaults involving alcohol
19% reduction in alcohol-related emergency department attendances.

Originally, experts recommended a $1.50 floor price but this was reduced to $1.30 after a backlash from alcohol industry lobbyists. Had the policy not been watered down, evidence suggests the impacts above would likely have been greater.

The floor price has likely also lost some of its initial impact as it has never been indexed for inflation.

The best available research shows the floor price has reduced alcohol-related harms with no evidence of unintended consequences or negative impacts on the alcohol industry, despite claims otherwise.

Researchers and experts from around the world have been writing to NT ministers urging them to reconsider repealing this effective policy.

This includes researchers from the United Kingdom and Canada, who have coauthored this article. In these countries, evidence on the effectiveness of minimum pricing has been used to increase the floor price by 30%, not abolish it.

2. Bottle shops could be open longer

There are also proposals to repeal current restrictions on bottle shop trading hours. Such restrictions are highly effective in reducing alcohol harms, including violence.

Our paper from earlier this year found that in the town of Tennant Creek, restrictions to reduce trading hours and introduce purchase limits at bottle shops resulted in a 92% reduction in alcohol-involved domestic and family violence assaults.

Preliminary analyses of the reduced trading hours introduced in Alice Springs following Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit in early 2023 also suggest a clear reduction on violence rates.

Bottle shops would be open for longer, making alcohol more easily available.
AustralianCamera/Shutterstock

3. New public drunkenness offence

Ministers were also set to pass laws to create a new offence for “nuisance” public intoxication (also known as public drunkenness). This would allow police officers to arrest people and fine them up to $925, in addition to current powers to seize and tip out alcohol from people drinking in prohibited areas.

This is at the time when nearly every other jurisdiction in Australia is in the process of decriminalising public drunkenness, making the NT out of step with the rest of the nation.

The NT’s proposed new laws on public drunkenness would criminalise more people who are already locked out from our society, placing them at risk of the negative, intergenerational and preventable impacts that often arise from contact with the justice system.

4. Mandatory rehab

Mandatory alcohol treatment was also an election commitment.

In its previous term of government, mandatory alcohol treatment was focused on people with a public intoxication offence rather than providing quality care to people with alcohol dependence in life-saving circumstances. If the same model is reintroduced, this is potentially harmful and at best ineffective.

In the NT, this model of mandatory alcohol treatment had no better outcomes than for those who may not have received any treatment at all. But it cost the taxpayer three times as much.

Where to from here?

Researchers, health professionals and partner organisations have urged the NT government to reconsider these decisions, as we have well-founded concerns these may worsen the very issues the government aims to address.

There’s no need to guess the outcomes of changing, repealing or introducing alcohol policies. We can draw on robust evidence, including extensive research from the NT, on what works in our communities. Läs mer…

Health and physical education is one of the key subjects students learn at school. In Australia it is mandatory for students from the first year of school to Year 10.

It involves theory and practical components to help students manage their health and wellbeing. This includes healthy eating habits, sexual health, cyber safety and mental health. It also incorporates fundamental movement skills (such as throwing and catching), sports (such as swimming, gymnastics and football) and team-building.

Because it is a core, compulsory part of the curriculum it is supposed to be free for students at government schools. But our research shows some students are being asked to pay – and those who cannot are missing out.

Our research

In our recent study, we looked at the staffing and delivery of health and physical education in New South Wales government schools.

We surveyed 556 schools, which make up about 30% of public schools in the state. This included primary and high schools with a mix of locations and levels of advantage.

We used an online survey, which was completed by the teacher in charge of health and physical education.

Many schools are outsourcing lessons

We asked survey respondents who was teaching health and physical education to students at their schools. Some schools were using more than one option.

For all schools: 67% were using external provider, 44.5% were using a specialist teacher and 55.4% were using another teacher.
For primary schools: 78.4% were using an external provider, 17.9% were using a specialist teacher and 48% were using another teacher.
For high schools: 44.8% were using an external provider, 95.9% were using a specialist teacher and 69.2% were using another teacher.

Previous research has shown how schools outsource to external providers to “fill the gap” of teachers lacking confidence and competence to provide quality health and physical education lessons.

This study did not measure how frequent outsourcing was, however, comments from respondents suggests it is regular. For example, one teacher said: “a typical [outsourced] class would have one lesson a week for a term”.

Another teacher similarly said

one 40 min[ute] lesson per week. Company comes in with equipment and young university students to run different activities. They also assess our students for us.

Another teacher told us:

We use [company name], they offer different sports/programs that run for one lesson a week per term.

Families are being asked to pay

Of the schools who were outsourcing lessons, 78% of the schools outsourcing lessons said they were asking parents to help pay for these lessons.

One respondent told us, the costs were “A$45 for one term, $80 for two”.

Of this group, 64% reported students who did not pay did other school work (either for health and physical education or another core subject). About one fifth of schools said students that don’t pay just had to “sit and watch”.

This suggests some students are missing out on basic learning opportunities at school for financial reasons. As one teacher told us:

the school uses some off-campus sporting/gaming facilities that students can choose to pay extra for instead of free on-campus teacher run [activities].

Some students are just made to ‘sit and watch’ if they can’t pay.
nannycz/Shutterstock

Why is this a problem?

The outsourcing of health and physical education lessons comes in the middle of an ongoing teacher shortage in Australia and around the world.

A 2024 UN report estimates a global shortage of more than 44 million teachers, with many teachers teaching outside of their areas of expertise.

Specific shortages of health and physical education teachers have been noted for more than a decade.

However, outsourcing lessons away from qualified teachers, is a significant concern. Little is known about the external providers’ qualifications or quality. Unlike teachers, they are not subject to registration requirements or professional standards.

Even more concerning is some students are missing out on lessons or some components of lessons because their families have not been able to pay.

This links to wider concerns about unequal access to sport in the school system. This includes some private schools with new Olympic pools and boat ramps when other public schools don’t have access to council playing fields.

More research is needed

Our study suggests more research is needed. We need further information on staffing, outsourcing and lesson delivery in other areas of the country and in other subjects.

We need to be sure all students are being taught the core curriculum, free of charge and by qualified teachers – ideally specialists. Läs mer…

Fires have long been a natural part of forest ecosystems, but something is changing. Our new study shows that forest fires have become more widespread and severe amid global heating, particularly in the high northern latitudes such as Canada and Siberia where fires are most sensitive to hotter, drier conditions.

The implications of this are alarming, not just for the ecosystems affected or the cities engulfed by smoke downwind, but for the planet’s ability to store carbon and regulate the climate. The trend we discovered contrasts with declining fire extent in savannah grasslands, which may reflect the expansion of farming and changing rainfall patterns.

We established the leading causes of forest fires in different parts of the world using an AI algorithm. It grouped forest regions into distinct zones with similar fire patterns and underlying causes, uncovering the worrying extent to which climate change is fuelling the expansion of forest fires in Earth’s high northern latitudes.

More fires in ‘extratropical’ forests

Since 2001, emissions from fires in forests outside of the tropics, like parts of the boreal forest in the far north of North America and Eurasia, have nearly tripled. This rise is largely the result of hotter, drier weather occurring more frequently, combined with forests growing more efficiently in places where the cold once stunted their growth.

Climate change is creating ideal conditions for larger, more intense fires, which accelerate climate change in turn by releasing more carbon to the atmosphere. In fact, we found that global carbon emissions from forest fires have increased by 60% over the past two decades. The largest contributions come from fires in Siberia and western North America.

A conifer forest in north-western Canada after the 2023 fire season in which more than 6,000 fires burned through 15 million hectares.
Stefan Doerr

This trend shifts the focus of forest fire emissions from tropical forests, where fires set to make room for farmland have long contributed carbon to the atmosphere. Conservation policies have reduced deforestation rates since the early 2000s in some regions, particularly Amazonia. By contrast, increasing fires in northern forests, such as the taiga – the forest of the cold sub-arctic region – are driven by changing climate conditions and generally started by lightning, which makes them harder to prevent.

Not only is the area affected by fires expanding but the fires themselves are growing more severe and releasing more carbon, according to our new findings. This corresponds with an earlier study that found fires are doing more damage to ecosystems globally than in the past. Fires are burning through drier and more flammable vegetation as global temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent.

In northern forests, more severe fires can burn deep into the soil and release carbon that has accumulated over centuries. Forests can remain net carbon emitters for decades after burning and the more severe fires become, the longer it takes forests to rebound and recapture carbon lost during the fire.

What does this mean for the planet?

The steep rise in fire emissions from forests outside the tropics is a clear signal that the capacity of Earth’s forest to store carbon is at increasing risk.

Forests, particularly in northern regions, absorb and store CO₂ from the atmosphere. But as fires expand and become more severe, these vital carbon sinks are weakened. This undermines the global effort to tackle climate change as forests offset emissions from human activities that burn fossil fuels.

Forest fires, long considered part of the natural carbon cycle, are increasingly driven by human-caused climate change. Yet, international reporting standards don’t differentiate between “natural” levels of forest fire emissions and the higher emissions we’re seeing due to climate change.

This allows excess fire emissions caused by humans to fall outside the scope of national carbon budgets tracked by organisations like the United Nations. Gaps emerge between the carbon emissions we think we’re managing and the actual amount that’s passing between the land and the atmosphere.

What drives fires in different regions varies, so addressing this growing threat requires tailored approaches. Outside of the tropics, proactive forest management is essential. Carefully managed fires and thinning out vegetation can mean fires ultimately cause less damage when they do ignite. Monitoring vegetation growth, alongside fire-favourable weather conditions, can help identify and prioritise areas for intervention.

In tropical forests, reducing ignitions (especially during droughts) and preventing forest fragmentation is key to protecting these ecosystems and their carbon stocks. This may help prevent the more extreme fires that turn tropical forests from carbon sinks into sources.

The Amazon basin endured a historic drought in 2023.
EPA-EFE/Raphael Alves

Increasing fires are a symptom of climate change

Limiting the burning of fossil fuels is central to minimising future fire risk. Without drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, more severe and widespread forest fires are likely, with increasing damage to ecosystems, biodiversity and the climate.

Our study also highlighted the importance of updating international reporting standards on carbon emissions. As forest fires become more closely linked to human-driven climate change, it’s crucial that fire emissions be included in national carbon budgets to provide a more accurate picture of the planet’s carbon fluxes.

There is also a risk of overestimating how much carbon is stored by reforesting areas, especially outside the tropics. Many carbon offset schemes rely on planting new trees or delaying the harvest of existing ones to absorb CO₂, but if the growing threat of forest fires isn’t properly accounted for, these projects could fail to deliver the carbon savings they promise.

Forest fires are no longer just a natural occurrence. As they shift north and intensify, these fires are a clear symptom of human-caused climate change.

It’s essential to recognise the growing role that fires play in the carbon cycle. By doing so, we can better manage fire risks, safeguard forests and ensure a more resilient future for the planet.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get our award-winning weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 35,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…