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With affordability, housing and health care at the top of voters’ minds in British Columbia, they haven’t heard much about climate change with less than a week to go until the provincial election.

In fact, between B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad acknowledging that “man” is impacting the climate and the NDP’s reversal on the carbon tax, casual observers might conclude that the parties have converged on climate.

But a closer look at the platforms and policy announcements of the province’s Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens reveals fundamental differences on almost every climate-related policy.

While there is uncertainty about how much B.C.’s emissions would decline under another NDP government, they would almost certainly increase under a new Conservative one.

Climate action measures

The parties differ on the threat posed by climate change and urgency of action. The NDP and Green platforms both acknowledge the “climate crisis,” and each devotes a chapter on protecting communities from extreme weather, such as flooding, wildfires and heat domes like the one that occurred in 2021.

Read more:
How an ’atmospheric river’ drenched British Columbia and led to floods and mudslides

In contrast, the Conservatives claim climate change is not a crisis and that wildfires are a natural occurrence, without acknowledging how the blazes are amplified by climate change-driven heat and drought. The party favours adaptation technology over a “doom cult” perspective.

The three parties also present very different visions of B.C.’s economic future. Both the NDP and Greens emphasize the province’s comparative advantage in clean energy, and commit to skills training for the renewable energy and clean tech sectors.

B.C. Premier David Eby pauses while speaking during a news conference about short-term skills training grants for post-secondary students outside Douglas College in Coquitlam, B.C., in July 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

In contrast, the Conservative proposal for a “free and prosperous” B.C. does not mention climate change or clean energy, while the party’s “clean energy” announcement embraces natural gas heating and oil-powered vehicles.

The Conservatives propose to scrap “any and all carbon taxes,” which suggests both the consumer and industrial carbon taxes. Although the party indicates it would do so “regardless of what happens in Ottawa,” the current federal government would respond by imposing both federal carbon taxes, as it has in other provinces.

The NDP would repeal only the consumer tax if the federal government does. The Greens would retain both taxes and remove sectoral benchmarks below which industrial polluters don’t pay the tax.

On electricity, the NDP proposes to double renewable electricity capacity by 2050 to substitute for declining consumption of fossil fuels. The party highlights BC Hydro’s recent call for clean power, which yielded proposals for triple the capacity originally sought.

The Greens similarly propose to expand rooftop solar and other renewables. The Conservatives welcome “all power sources,” including renewables, but also natural gas plants and nuclear.

Flood waters cover highway 1 in Abbotsford, B.C., in November 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Managing emissions

Transportation contributes the largest share of B.C.’s emissions at 35 per cent. The Conservatives would repeal the zero-emissions vehicle mandate and low-carbon fuel standard. The other two parties would retain those policies, and both commit to expanding electric vehicle charging networks.

Oil and gas accounts for the next largest share of B.C.’s emissions at 20 per cent. The NDP election platform commits to implement a cap on oil and gas emissions. In addition, the NDP government announced in 2023 that future liquid natural gas (LNG) approvals will be conditional on net-zero operations within the province.

The Conservative Party seeks to double LNG capacity, without mention of either an oil-and-gas cap or net-zero commitment. For their part, the Greens would reject all future LNG development, ban fracking and manage a decline of gas production.

Buildings contribute another 15 per cent of provincial emissions. The NDP government has published documents that propose provincewide adoption of a zero-emission standard for new buildings and high-efficiency heating equipment standards that would significantly reduce gas consumption in existing buildings.

The NDP and Greens both promise financial support for rooftop solar, home retrofits and heat pumps. In contrast, the Conservatives argue, without evidence, that the grid cannot support heat pumps and promise to repeal the voluntary zero-carbon building code and a “ban” on natural gas heating.

Damaged structures are seen in Lytton, B.C. after a wildfire destroyed most of the village on June 30, 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

B.C. has been a climate laggard

B.C. has been slow to act on climate. That will make it very challenging to meet our 2030 emissions target.

But progress will only be made by strengthening climate policies, something both the NDP and Greens commit to do.

In contrast, the Conservatives promise to repeal current climate policies and halt development of others. But with a growing population and plans for LNG expansion, B.C.’s emissions would increase rather than decline under that strategy.

As B.C. voters prepare to cast their ballots this week, they’ve got a lot to contemplate on climate. Läs mer…

For those of a certain age, Coneheads is an iconic 90s film. But for breakdancers, it seems, developing a cone-shaped head can be an occupational hazard.

According to a 2024 medical case report, a breakdancer who’d been performing for 19 years was treated for “headspin hole”, a condition also known as “breakdancer bulge” that’s unique to breakdancers. It entails a cone shaped mass developing on top of the scalp after repetitive head-spinning. Additional symptoms can include hair loss and sometimes pain around the lump.

Approximately 30% of breakdancers report hair loss and inflammation of their scalp from head-spinning. A headspin hole is caused by the body trying to protect itself. The repeated trauma from head-spinning causes the epicranial aponeurosis – a layer of connective tissue similar to a tendon, running from the back of your head to the front – to thicken along with the layer of fat under the skin on top of the head in an attempt to protect the bones of skull from injury.

The body causes a similar protective reaction to friction on the hands and feet, where callouses form to spread the pressure and protect the underlying tissues from damage. Everyday repetitive activities from holding smartphones or heavy weights through to poorly fitting shoes can result in callouses.

But a cone-shaped head isn’t the only injury to which breakdancers are prone, however. Common issues can include wrist, knee, hip, ankle, foot and elbow injuries, and moves such as the “windmill” and the “backspin” can cause bursitis – inflammation of the fluid filled sacs that protect the vertebrae of the spine. A headspin hole isn’t the worst injury you could sustain from breakdancing either. One dancer broke their neck but thankfully they were lucky enough not to have any major complications.

Read more:
How do breakdancers avoid breaking their necks?

Others, such as Ukrainian breakdancer Anna Ponomarenko, have experienced pinched nerves that have left them paralysed. Ponomarenko recovered to represent her country in the Paris 2024 Olympics.

As with other sports, it’s unsurprising to hear that the use of protective equipment results in the reduction of injuries in breakdancing too.

But breakdancers aren’t the only ones to develop cone shaped heads.

Newborns

Some babies are born with a conical head after their pliable skull has been squeezed and squashed during the journey through the vaginal canal and the muscular contractions of mother’s uterus.

A misshapen head can also be caused by caput secundum, where fluid collects under the skin, above the skull bones. Usually, this condition resolves itself within a few days. Babies who’ve been delivered using a vacuum assisted cup (known as a Ventouse) – where the cup is applied to the top of the baby’s head to pull them out – can develop a similar fluid lump called a chignon.

Vacuum assisted delivery can also result in a more significant lump and bruising called a cephalohematoma, where blood vessels in the bones of the skull rupture. This is twice as common in boys than in girls and resolves within two weeks to six months.

If you’ve ever seen newborns wearing tiny hats in the first few hours of their life, then one of these conditions may be the reason.

Some children may also present with “cone-head” due to craniosynostosis, which occurs in about one in every 2,000-2,500 live births.

Newborn skulls are made up of lots of small bony plates that aren’t fused together, which enables babies’ brains to grow without restriction. Usually, once the brain reaches a slower growth pace that the bones can keep up with, the plates fuse together. In craniosynostosis, the plates fuse together too early creating differently shaped heads. Surgery can prevent brain growth restriction but is usually unnecessary if the child hasn’t been identified as having an shaped head by six months of age. Läs mer…

Ken Murphy, CEO of the British multinational supermarket chain Tesco, recently said at a conference that Tesco “could use Clubcard data to nudge customers towards healthier choices”.

So how would this work, and do we want it? Our recent study, published in the Scientific Journal of Research and Reviews, provides an answer.

Loyalty schemes have been around as far back as the 1980s, with the introduction of airlines’ frequent flyer programmes.

Advancements in loyalty schemes have been huge, with some even using gamified approaches, such as leaderboards, trophies and treasure hunts, to keep us engaged. The loyalty principle relies on a form of social exchange, namely reciprocity.

The ongoing reciprocal relationship means that we use a good or service regularly because we trust the service provider, we are satisfied with the service, and we deem the rewards we get as reasonable – be they discounts, vouchers or gifts.

In exchange, we accept that, in many cases, loyalty schemes collect data on us. Our purchasing history, often tied to our demographics, generates improvements in the delivery of the service.

If we accept this, then we continue to benefit from reward schemes, such as promotional offers or other discounts. The effectiveness depends not only on making attractive offers to us for things we are interested in purchasing, but also other discounted items that we hadn’t considered buying.

Does it work?

So is this the future? The first issue is whether we’re happy to have data collected on us. There is a trade-off between the level of personalisation we want, and the amount of data we are willing to give. Research has shown that the more personalised the schemes are, the more alarmed we are about the crossing of privacy boundaries. For example, many of us dislike tailored communication about services through the use of chatbots.

The second, related point is that loyalty scheme data is, and will continue to be, of enormous value to third-party organisations. For instance, market research can use loyalty scheme data to track consumer trends more accurately. Researchers can use the data to make inferences about health-related behaviour.

As valuable as the data from loyalty schemes is for scientific purposes, not all shoppers are happy with having their data shared in this way. In one 2023 survey conducted by Yasemin Hirst from Lancaster University and colleagues of 1,539 people, 39% said they were unwilling to share their personal data with academic institutions, while 56.9% didn’t want to share with private organisations.

What data people were willing to share also varied: for example, people were happier sharing loyalty card data (51.8%) than social media data (30.4%) for research purposes. In general, people worried about privacy as well as misuses of their data.

All of this points to data privacy and permission being needed for sharing personal data with third-party advertisers and data brokers for people shopping online.

Tesco may try to nudge us towards healthier choices.
Steve Travelguide/Shutterstock

The final aspect is what the data reveals. Data from loyalty schemes does not present a complete picture of a shopper. We mix and match where we buy our food because of our budget and our geographical location. And some retailers have greater coverage and delivery in rural areas than others – further influencing our behaviour.

This also means that our degree of loyalty provides only a partial picture of what we end up buying, and how healthy our habits are.

New research

In our recent research, Sarah Jenkins and I conducted a study to look at issues related to what Murphy had in mind. We asked 389 people to evaluate ways their grocery shopping behaviour could be influenced.

We looked at three categories. One included financial incentives and discount offers. The second was classic “nudging” methods, such as labelling healthy or green options, campaigns or education schemes.

Finally, we looked at technological incentives that could be implemented via smart phones or laptops when making online purchases. For example, there could be suggestions as to nutritional choices, or an automated system that would select only healthy food choices. Alternatively, the system could score your shopping choice according to how healthy they were.

People assessed all of these options in terms of whether they could help boost healthy and green choices. Generally, participants preferred the financial methods overall, specifically discounts on healthy food options (44.7%). They also judged taxes on unhealthy food items as effective.

Campaigns for sustainability (6.3%) and automated choices for sustainability (6.5%), such as online shopping algorithms only offering us sustainable options, were least preferred. One possible reason for this might be a lack of understanding of what sustainability actually means.

Behavioural and financial methods were judged to be slightly more ethical than technological methods, though most people found all options fairly ethical.

That said, techniques to nudge people’s behaviour in the right direction don’t always work. People like or dislike them depending on a mix of factors, including whether it seems effective, whether it is ethical and whether they actually have a desire to change their behaviour.

Future options

Across the different ways market researchers study our shopping trends, the same pattern emerges: about 25% of the time, we buy our groceries online. The precise percentage varies by country and by foodstuffs we buy, but in general the forecasts is that it will increase to about 45% in the next 5-10 years.

This will mean further innovations in loyalty schemes, designed both to attract new customers as well as maintain the current base. Retailers therefore need to be aware of the shortcomings of such approaches, including that they don’t work on people who don’t want to change their behaviour, that they only provide limited information, and that there may be a point where services are so personalised that many people become unwilling to share their data.

Some of us will continue to enjoy the benefits of these schemes, so long as we have the chance to exercise choice. Indeed, some want to have suggestions made that ease the selection of healthy or sustainable options, but others don’t. What matters is having a choice. Läs mer…

Celebrities can have huge influence and reach enormous audiences. That’s why Kamala Harris was happy to recently gain the endorsement of musician Taylor Swift.

Due to their media attention and massive fan bases, some Hollywood stars and musicians can appear more powerful than traditional politicians. And these perceptions of influence may also translate into actual impact.

Indeed, some celebrities have taken up causes, using their fame to overtly push for change (for instance, Bob Geldof and Princess Diana). Others endorse politicians, or successfully run for office themselves (for instance, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan).

While it may seem like celebrities who pivot to politics are able to trade on their pre-existing notoriety, few celebrities are well known beyond their fan bases and many people would expect them to lack the gravitas of world leaders.

However, results of our recent exploratory study conducted in the UK shows that at least one celebrity, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, stands out. He achieved public recognition, leadership and trust ratings as high as the most well-known politicians.

Indeed, our study found that The Rock’s recognition was on par with the Nobel prize-winning, two-term US president Barack Obama. He was also considered more trustworthy than many politicians.

In the study, we invited 251 participants to evaluate the faces of 40 seasoned politicians and celebrities to assess their leadership potential and perceived personality traits.

Only six of the faces had close to universal recognition. Former US presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson scored 90% or above. By contrast, US president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin were each recognised by 80%.

Interestingly, The Rock was also judged to be more considerate, competent, credible, intelligent and trustworthy than most politicians.

When asked to indicate how strongly participants felt about each figure’s leadership potential, the results were surprising. Biden scored 64%, higher than Putin’s 56%, which was in turn higher than Trump and Boris Johnson who both received 42%.

But a much larger percentage, 72%, rated The Rock as a strong leader, only bettered by Obama’s score of 87%. In our statistical models, two key personality traits, competency and credibility, predicted The Rock’s perceived potential as a national leader.

The Rock’s fame, stemming from his wrestling career persona, television presence, and Hollywood stardom, seem to demonstrate the impact of a well-maintained media image. His expertise in wrestling’s “kayfabe” style of performance (a dramatic wrestling style that is presented as genuine) has greatly boosted his public persona as an authentic “nice guy”.

This early experience, and a strong screen presence, is likely to have contributed to leadership scores similar to Obama. Here it seems that The Rock’s heavily cultivated media personality has translated into perceptions of effective leadership.

This idea connects with the theory of mediated authenticity , which suggests that positive perceptions arise when audiences view media figures in a favourable light. The Rock’s wrestling persona has allowed him to build a connection to his fans and he seems to have developed this further with his Hollywood roles.

What can Trump and Harris learn?

Politicians must also connect with the public. Boris Johnson, for example, did well in the 2019 UK election because he knew how to connect and leveraged this ability to his advantage.

However, leaders also need to be seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy to make an enduring positive difference.

The Rock was asked about political ambitions.

Some theorists of power argue that social influence derives from being well-liked, not just being famous. Of course, The Rock is famous for his nice guy image, along with his movie catalogue and perpetually perfect physique. His perceived leadership potential could come from being both popular and seen as a good role model.

The Rock’s potential has been spotted by political parties. He describes himself as an independent and back in 2023 he revealed that he had been approached by multiple political parties about possibly running for office.

Can you be a ‘nice’ populist?

The last few years has seen the rise of numerous political leaders around the world, who have been labelled with the term “populist”. Leading figures on this list include Trump, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson. However, these leaders tend not to be highly trusted.

The erosion of trust in politicians and political systems is a significant issue that can lead to decreased engagement with the democratic process, regardless of political level. This ultimately results in a civic structure that fails to represent the people it is meant to serve.

With the US presidential election just weeks away, and still virtually tied, political strategists for both of the major parties must confront a key question: how much trust does each candidate have from the public?

Like it or not, The Rock’s wrestling persona relied on building a genuine connection with fans through his kayfabe-style performance, and his friendly image. The careful cultivation of this has given him enduring popularity and, as an unintended consequence of that performance, leadership appeal on the national stage.

When you are perceived as being a genuinely nice leader, our early research suggests, trust will follow. Something that more politicians clearly need to understand. Läs mer…

Tensions are running high in the Middle East. The murderous attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7 2023 kicked off a spiral of violence in the region. That has culminated, a year later, in Israel mounting a ground invasion of Lebanon. The invasion, which Israel says aims to confront and destroy Hezbollah, follows 12 months of tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Iran, which have gradually escalated in intensity.

Given that Hezbollah is closely associated and supported by Iran, there is mounting concern that this conflict could become a major flashpoint in international relations. The worry is that this war might provide the spark that causes the next global conflict.

To understand how dangerous the situation could be, it’s worth looking at the theory of conflict escalation. In 1997, Austrian economist Friedrich Glasl published his nine-stage model of conflict escalation, which is generally accepted as the most sophisticated study of how conflicts can develop from disputes to all-out conflict (a step he gives the rather ominous name of “Together into the abyss”).

Nine stages of confict escalation.
Graphic by Swinnall, original from Sampi. Derived from: Konflikteskalation nach Glasl.svg, CC BY-NC

The first level is when a conflict is readily or easily resolved, but when a resolution is not achieved, positions on either side of the argument harden and frustration begin to mount. The next step naturally occurs when conflict parties seek to make their case, hoping to gain advantage in the court of global opinion.

Stage three of the model sees the adversaries beginning to take action. Neither side wants to yield advantage to the other, while any sense that discussion might mitigate the conflict has disappeared in mutual antagonism and mistrust. Accordingly at stage four, the conflict parties resort to an “us v them” rhetoric in an attempt to build coalitions and attract support. Stage five, described as “loss of face”, is when one or other of the antagonists feels they have become tarnished in the eyes of the community as a whole. Reputation no longer matters as much as achieving their ends. Sometimes one side or the other commits an act that it feels has isolated it, which only serves to harden it position.

In stage six, threats or ultimatums are issued. This can lead to hostilities spiralling as the conflict parties seek credibility by putting a timescale on a threat, which in turn will heighten the pressure on both sides. This can also bind another of the warring parties to a course of action from where there is little opportunity to retreat. This facilitates the move to stage seven, where the antagonists begin to trade the first limited blows in response to the threats they have made.

iliya Mitskovets / Alamy

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In stage eight, the offensive blows intensify, with the focus on trying to injure – or even destroy – the adversary’s capacity for response or call into question the legitimacy of the other side’s leader. Often this can lead to one or another of the parties fragmenting into warring factions, making the situation increasingly uncontrollable.

As the conflict hurtles into stage nine, the threat to one or another of the parties has become existential, who are now falling “together into the abyss”. All sense of caution is abandoned as the only goal is the total annihilation of the adversary. A state of total war.

What stage are we at?

After years of animosity and denunciation on both sides, the conflict between Israel and Iran has now progressed to the stage that both sides have exchanged limited blows against each other. Reports have linked Iran to the planning of the Hamas attack on October 7. Tehran has recently denied having any part in the massacre. Hezbollah, which is more closely linked to the Islamic Republic, has carried out a year-long barrage of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel. In response, Israel has now directly struck against Iran’s proxy, invading southern Lebanon to engage and attempt to destroy Hezbollah.

Feelings are running high in Iran, where Israel is seen as a proxy for the ‘Great Satan’ in Washington.
EPA-EFE/Abedin Taherkenareh

Both sides clearly want to demonstrate their power and influence in the region. But the stakes could rise if Iran feels an urgent need to protect its proxies. For Israel, its leaders have long argued that its very existence is at stake.

In terms of Glasl’s stages of escalation, the two countries appear to have reached stage seven, where they are launching limited blows against each other while avoiding direct confrontation. Both want to make their adversary consider whether the cost of continuing is worth the potential rewards that can be gained.

Iran’s air attacks on Israel suggest that while Iran can see that its regional position is being threatened and is still seeking to support the non-state actors in Gaza and Lebanon, the way in which they have conducted their attacks suggest that Tehran does not feel itself powerful enough to escalate further than it already has.

The only direct blows the two powers have launched against each other have been from the air. Iran has now launched two (large) barrages of rockets against Israel, one in April this year and again at the end of September. Both bombardments were announced in advance and neither has resulted in Israeli casualties.

Israel responded in April with a targeted strike against an Iranian airbase close to one of the country’s nuclear installations. It has yet to directly respond to the latest Iranian barrage, but Netanyahu has said Israel would target Iran’s military installations “based on Israel’s national security needs”.

Analysts believe that both sides – so far at least – are using these limited strikes to signal their unwillingness to escalate. But there is a great deal at stake. Iran will feel its position as a regional power threatened by Israel’s ground campaign in Lebanon. Meanwhile Israel has repeatedly declared that it is fighting for the security of its people. Neither appears to want a wider conflict – and their allies certainly wouldn’t encourage them if they did.

So it’s clear that – up to now at least – neither Israel nor Iran wants to venture any further down the road to “the abyss” as envisaged by Glasl’s nine-stage model. Läs mer…

When negotiations at Cop15 – the UN’s biodiversity conference – ended in December 2022, many delegates breathed a sigh of relief.

Threatening snowstorms outside the convention centre in Montreal, Canada seemed to lift just as the political weather changed and the long-awaited Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework was agreed. It’s mission: to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 in order to achieve the ultimate goal of a society living in harmony with nature by 2050.

Fast forward two years and governments, businesses, representatives of Indigenous people and local communities, experts from environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and scientists will gather for the follow-up Cop16 meeting in Cali, Colombia, from October 21. Many due to attend, including myself, wonder whether the promise made to “halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030” is achievable.

Initial signs are not promising. For starters, no international targets for biodiversity have ever been met.

Only a handful of countries, including China, Canada and France, have submitted new national biodiversity plans demonstrating how they will implement the promises made two years ago. Most countries, including the UK, (that’s more than 80% in total) haven’t submitted their full plans.

Countries can also submit updates for the 23 targets listed in the framework. The UK and others have submitted targets such as promising to reduce the impact of pollution on nature and ensuring that 30% of land is effectively protected in line with the framework.

But crucial questions remain about how those goals will be reached. To make Cop16 effective, three things need to happen.

1. Decide on a plan

When delegates gather in Cali, questions of implementation will be front and centre of the negotiations. The first challenge is that the approach for monitoring progress on all 23 targets – including issues such as improving access to nature in cities, reducing harmful subsidies and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems – is yet to be agreed.

For some, the approach that has been developed so far lacks ambition in crucial areas. Indicators suggested for monitoring progress on reducing the impacts of consumption on nature remain very weak for example. For others, it may prove too challenging.

For example, countries with limited access to data might not be able to track alien species or assess how critical services provided by nature to make societies more resilient might be affected by climate change. Getting agreement at the Cop16 negotiations will be vital in order to hold countries to account as the 2030 deadline set to achieve all of the targets approaches.

2. Find the funds

Another crucial issue is funding: who will pay for the action required? The global biodiversity framework fund (GBFF) was established in 2023 to provide financial support.

Yet so far, it has only attracted contributions of around US$230 billion (£176 billion) from a small group of countries including Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan and Spain. Leaders gathering in Cali, and especially those from developing countries, are calling for more funding and for greater control over how it is allocated.

The next UN biodiversity conference will be held in Cali, Columbia from October 21 to November 1.
Tudoran Andrei/Shutterstock

3. Make biodiversity matter

A third debate will decide how best to ensure that biodiversity action is mainstreamed across governments, businesses and communities.

In Montreal, countries agreed to make sure that the impacts on nature were considered across different policy areas (such as building new roads or developing new energy sources) and in economic sectors, from fishing to agriculture and mining to tech.

They agreed that groups most likely to be affected by the loss of nature, including Indigenous people and local communities, women and youth, should help make key decisions. While targets such as protecting 30% of the land and sea for nature are crucial, progress will only happen if nature is put on everyone’s bottom line.

Delivering real change

The urgent need for action is not lost on delegates gathering in Cali. There is a real risk that the promise countries made in Montreal to deliver “transformative action by governments, and regional and local authorities, with the involvement of all of society” won’t be met.

But there are some hopeful signs of transformative change to conserve and restore nature and ensure its sustainable use.

Take, for example, the Tree Equity Partnership in Detroit, US. This partnership between the city, US-based charity American Forests and the local non-profit charity Greening of Detroit aims to plant 75,000 trees. This will create places of beauty, biodiversity and climate resilience in underserved neighbourhoods and generate 300 new jobs in the city.

In Pakistan, the Living Indus initiative is an umbrella organisation that has identified 25 projects involving local and regional governments, businesses and communities working together to restore the ecological health of the Indus river.

Businesses are also calling for real change. More than 170 investors have signed a pledge developed by a coalition of financial institutions called the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation to take action for nature across their portfolios.

New science-based standards are being developed to drive the mainstreaming of biodiversity action through their companies and associated supply chains. Cop16 is expected to see increased interest from the private sector and a focus on tackling climate change and biodiversity together.

These projects are successfully tackling the root causes of global biodiversity loss. They integrate solutions and deal with social and environmental issues – poverty and exploitation, climate risks and land use change. Tackling these problems is just as vital as the need for sustainable production and consumption plus investment that works for, not against, nature.

Projects such as these are the ones that give scientists and conservationists like me – and organisations like WWF that I work with – hope. We want to see more projects that take action on nature, climate and social justice together. If Cop16 can make even a small step in this direction, the world will be travelling towards making real progress by the end of this decade.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a 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…

Every year the Spanish ministry of culture awards prizes for different artistic disciplines. From next year onwards, the country’s national bullfighting award will be withdrawn. The current Spanish minister of culture, the Barcelona-born Green politician Ernest Urtasun, supports the prohibition of what has long been known as Spain’s “national fiesta”.

At the awards ceremony held at the Reina Sofia Museum last week, the minister refused to applaud this year’s winner for “sustained excellence in bullfighting”, Julián López El Juli, the recently retired Madrid-born matador. El Juli retorted to the slight by holding out his hand and publicly calling out the minister’s lack of respect as evidence that he was unfit to hold office.

Bullfighting predates football as a form of mass entertainment, and has been a source of inspiration for artists and intellectuals for centuries. It still has its followers in the present day, but young urban Spaniards are increasingly sensitive to the undeniable cruelty involved. Bullfighting was banned in Catalonia in 2011. Bullfights, known as corridas, are still staged in much of the rest of Spain, but it can be career suicide for artists, politicians or intellectuals to be associated with them.

So I, like many in Spain and the Basque Country, didn’t expect the jury of the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival to award its highest accolade, the Concha de Oro (Golden Shell), to a bullfighting documentary. The director of Tardes de Soledad (Afternoons of Solitude) is Albert Serra, an iconoclastic filmmaker from Gerona, a fiercely pro-independence province of Catalonia.

The trailer for Tardes de Soledad.

For five years, Serra and his crew have been following the exploits of two rising stars with the ambition to become figuras, the term for that handful of elite matadors like El Juli, who appear on the most lucrative and prestigious bills.

Bullfighting and the screen arts have history in and beyond Spain. During cinema’s infancy, early filmmakers the Lumière brothers filmed matadors in Madrid. At annual village fairs, Spaniards would pay to enter a tent and watch recordings of professional corridas. The Valencian Vicente Blasco Ibánez’s 1908 novel Blood and Sand has a strong claim to being the earliest literary text to be written with a future film adaptation in mind.

In 1951, Hollywood actress Ava Gardner (a close friend of Ernest Hemingway, author of bullfighting novel Death in the Afternoon) starred alongside Catalan matador Mario Cabré in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, which featured corridas in Gerona (the city’s bullring was demolished in 2006). Spanish television started broadcasting bullfights in 1956. Nearly 70 years later, Movistar Spain shut down its dedicated bullfighting channel in March 2023.

Oscar-winning writer and director Pedro Almodóvar – who received a lifetime achievement award at San Sebastian this year – has his Madrid offices close to the world’s premiere bullring, Las Ventas. In 1986 he portrayed the world of bullfighting in Matador, starring a very young Antonio Banderas, later returning to the subject in Talk to Her (2002).

This film, which won Almodovar the Oscar for best screenplay, contains scenes in which a female matador is gored in the picturesque bullring in Aranjuez. The British Board of Film Censorship insisted on cuts, and Almodóvar faced legal challenges from animal rights groups. According to Spanish law, corridas are permitted and can be filmed. The legal situation becomes thornier if a bull is killed by a professional matador for the sole purposes of the event being captured on film.

The trailer for Talk to Her.

Documenting the glory and the horror

Nothing is staged for Serra’s documentary. He followed the Peruvian Andrés Roca Rey, a box-office phenomenon often dismissed by serious aficionados as a crass populist; and the more refined Pablo Aguado, a native of Seville.

Serra connected better with Roca Rey, capturing his fears and solitude in an often hostile professional environment. Pay-for-view television channel Canal+ set a new gold standard for broadcasting bullfights with technical panache. Serra makes no attempt to replicate this labour. Placing the camera at the eye level of the bull and the matador results in a far more graphic and gruesome spectacle.

The Catalan filmmaker is amongst world cinema’s masters of sound design, and the audience is privy to the bull’s breathing as well as conversations between the matador and his team once the afternoon’s activities in the sand have come to a bloody conclusion.

Tardes de Soledad is likely to anger and unnerve aficionados and abolitionists alike. Industrial farming is arguably crueller than bullfighting, but recognising this fact is not automatically a defence of the “national fiesta”. It might just be that any hypothetical prohibition needs to framed alongside a wider reassessment of our relationship with, and responsibility to, non-human creatures.

Some abolitionists suggest that, even though bulls are sold for meat afterwards, it is death and torture being employed for entertainment that renders corridas so problematic. Psychological desensitisation is a real risk, especially when children are in attendance.

Bullfighting has a long and storied history in Spain, and was an early form of mass entertainment.
Peter Eastland / Alamy

Aficionados claim bullfighting is a rare opportunity to address our own mortality in a society in which death and nature are increasingly kept at a distance. Almodóvar’s pristinely shot bullfighting scenes nevertheless show how ritualised beauty – the vivid stylised outfits, the music, the choreography and the architecture – often divert attention from the blood.

Serra’s harrowing footage might even shake some enthusiasts out of their complacency. Can so much animal and human suffering be justified in the name of an ancestral art? Conversely, Tardes de Soledad registers the poetry, pain and pathos of bullfighting in and beyond the arena. Dialogues between Roca Rey and his entourage establish a new benchmark for depicting the interior world of a matador, more unforgiving and empathetic than anything by Hemingway.

A rallying call at anti-bullfighting demonstrations is: “It’s not culture, it’s torture.” Serra’s documentary warrants the Concha de Oro for showing the terms are not mutually exclusive.

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