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This week, Australia hosts the inaugural Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney. It comes at a crucial time: biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse is one of the biggest risks the world faces in the next decade.

The event, which begins tomorrow, brings together leaders from government, business, academia, environment groups and Indigenous Peoples. Together, they will seek ways to drive investment in nature and improve its protection and repair.

More than half the world’s economy directly depends on nature. Biodiversity loss threatens global financial stability, putting at least US$44 trillion (A$64 trillion) of economic value at risk.

Industries such as agriculture, fishing, forestry, tourism, water and resources rely heavily on nature. But ultimately, all of humanity depends on the natural world – for clean air, water, food, and a liveable climate.

In Australia significant investment is needed to reverse the decline in our natural environment. It will require action from governments, landholders and the private sector.

That’s why this week’s summit is so important. Nature conservation and restoration is expensive and often difficult. The task is beyond the capacity of governments alone.

What’s going on at the summit?

According to the World Economic Forum, “nature positive” is an economic worldview that goes beyond limiting environmental damage and aims to actually improve ecosystems.

Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to which almost 200 countries have signed up, at least 30% of land and waters must be protected or restored by 2030. The summit is exploring ways to realise this global commitment, which is also known as the 30×30 target.

The federal and New South Wales governments are co-hosting the event.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will address the summit on day one, outlining her government’s Nature Positive Plan. It commits to the 30×30 target as well as “zero new extinctions”. Achieving these commitments involves environmental law reform, setting up a Nature Repair Market and establishing a national Environment Protection Agency.

Delegates are expected to demonstrate their commitment and progress towards the 30×30 goal. They will then turn to the main point of the summit: building consensus on the economic settings needed to increase private investment in nature.

Finance models and corporate partnerships are on the agenda, along with how to make this work, including how to measure, monitor and report on progress and manage risk.

Sessions will focus on specific sectors of the environment such as agriculture and farming, cities, oceans and forests. On Thursday, delegates will visit nature sites around Sydney.

Creating a market to incentivise biodiversity investment | 7.30.

Investing in a market for nature repair

Substantial co-investment from the private sector, including landholders, will be required to repair and protect nature at the scale required.

Market-based approaches can drive private investment in natural resources. But most existing environmental markets focus on water and carbon. A more holistic approach, including nature repair, is needed.

Australia’s Nature Positive Plan includes building a nature repair market. This world-first measure is a legislated, national, voluntary biodiversity market in which individuals and organisations undertake nature repair projects to generate a tradeable certificate. The certificate can be sold to generate income. Demand for certificates is expected to grow over time.

But the role the government will take remains unclear. For example, will the government both regulate market prices and decide what, in a scientific sense, amounts to repairing nature?

On day two, the summit explores how nature markets can unlock new sources of finance. We can expect this discussion to include ways carbon and biodiversity markets can work together: so-called “carbon-plus” outcomes.

For example, when landholders conserve vegetation, the plants can both draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide habitat for animals, preventing biodiversity loss. Markets could be designed so landholders are rewarded for achieving these dual results.

Significant economic returns

Under optimistic estimates, the global nature-positive transition will unlock business opportunities worth an estimated US$10 trillion (almost A$15 trillion) a year and create 395 million jobs by 2030.

The potential benefits for Australia are also substantial. They include benefits to nature such as restoring habitat for wildlife, while storing carbon. It can also provide returns for agriculture, by improving land value, yield and quality.

A strong nature-positive stance from Australia will also help safeguard our access to global markets. For example, the European Union has already established trade barriers to imports that damage forests. This could have serious consequences for the Australian beef industry.

So the potential benefits have to be weighed against the risks of not doing anything. The summit is a chance to get a wide range of people on board, working towards a shared vision of a more positive future.

It’s time for a nature-positive mindset

The Albanese Labor government came to power promising to overhaul Australia’s national environment laws, following a scathing independent review.

When the summit was conceived, the government may have envisaged having cause for celebration by now. But some proposed reforms stalled in the Senate.

Nonetheless, the Nature Repair Market, a significant government win, is taking shape.

This week’s summit offers Australia an opportunity to show the world we have embraced the nature-positive mindset. There really is no time to waste.

Australia, the sixth most biodiverse country in the world, has listed 2,224 species and ecological communities as threatened with extinction. These losses are predicted to escalate if we continue business as usual and allow continued decline of ecosystems.

Despite having pledged to end deforestation by 2030, Australia is the only deforestation hotspot among developed nations. Land clearing continues apace in northern Australia, often without being assessed under national environmental laws.

We desperately need to reverse the decline in nature, once and for all. Läs mer…

Medical experts recommend antivirals for people aged 70 and older who get COVID, and for other groups at risk of severe illness and hospitalisation from COVID.

But many older Australians have missed out on antivirals after getting sick with COVID. It is yet another way the health system is failing the most vulnerable.

Who missed out?

We analysed COVID antiviral uptake between March 2022 and September 2023. We found some groups were more likely to miss out on antivirals including Indigenous people, people from disadvantaged areas, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Some of the differences will be due to different rates of infection. But across this 18-month period, many older Australians were infected at least once, and rates of infection were higher in some disadvantaged communities.

How stark are the differences?

Compared to the national average, Indigenous Australians were nearly 25% less likely to get antivirals, older people living in disadvantaged areas were 20% less likely to get them, and people with a culturally or linguistically diverse background were 13% less likely to get a script.

People in remote areas were 37% less likely to get antivirals than people living in major cities. People in outer regional areas were 25% less likely.

Dispensing rates by group.
Grattan Institute

Even within the same city, the differences are stark. In Sydney, people older than 70 in the affluent eastern suburbs (including Vaucluse, Point Piper and Bondi) were nearly twice as likely to have had an antiviral as those in Fairfield, in Sydney’s south-west.

Older people in leafy inner-eastern Melbourne (including Canterbury, Hawthorn and Kew) were 1.8 times more likely to have had an antiviral as those in Brimbank (which includes Sunshine) in the city’s west.

Antiviral dispensing by geography.
Grattan Institute

Why are people missing out?

COVID antivirals should be taken when symptoms first appear. While awareness of COVID antivirals is generally strong, people often don’t realise they would benefit from the medication. They wait until symptoms get worse and it is too late.

Frequent GP visits make a big difference. Our analysis found people 70 and older who see a GP more frequently were much more likely to be dispensed a COVID antiviral.

Regular visits give an opportunity for preventive care and patient education. For example, GPs can provide high-risk patients with “COVID treatment plans” as a reminder to get tested and seek treatment as soon as they are unwell.

Difficulty seeing a GP could help explain low antiviral use in rural areas. Compared to people in major cities, people in small rural towns have about 35% fewer GPs, see their GP about half as often, and are 30% more likely to report waiting too long for an appointment.

Just like for vaccination, a GP’s focus on antivirals probably matters, as does providing care that is accessible to people from different cultural backgrounds.

Care should go those who need it

Since the period we looked at, evidence has emerged that raises doubts about how effective antivirals are, particularly for people at lower risk of severe illness. That means getting vaccinated is more important than getting antivirals.

But all Australians who are eligible for antivirals should have the same chance of getting them.

These drugs have cost more than A$1.7 billion, with the vast majority of that money coming from the federal government. While dispensing rates have fallen, more than 30,000 packs of COVID antivirals were dispensed in August, costing about $35 million.

Such a huge investment shouldn’t be leaving so many people behind. Getting treatment shouldn’t depend on your income, cultural background or where you live. Instead, care should go to those who need it the most.

Getting antivirals shouldn’t depend on who your GP is.
National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

People born overseas have been 40% more likely to die from COVID than those born here. Indigenous Australians have been 60% more likely to die from COVID than non-Indigenous people. And the most disadvantaged people have been 2.8 times more likely to die from COVID than those in the wealthiest areas.

All those at-risk groups have been more likely to miss out on antivirals.

It’s not just a problem with antivirals. The same groups are also disproportionately missing out on COVID vaccination, compounding their risk of severe illness. The pattern is repeated for other important preventive health care, such as cancer screening.

A 3-step plan to meet patients’ needs

The federal government should do three things to close these gaps in preventive care.

First, the government should make Primary Health Networks (PHNs) responsible for reducing them. PHNs, the regional bodies responsible for improving primary care, should share data with GPs and step in to boost uptake in communities that are missing out.

Second, the government should extend its MyMedicare reforms. MyMedicare gives general practices flexible funding to care for patients who live in residential aged care or who visit hospital frequently. That approach should be expanded to all patients, with more funding for poorer and sicker patients. That will give GP clinics time to advise patients about preventive health, including COVID vaccines and antivirals, before they get sick.

Third, team-based pharmacist prescribing should be introduced. Then pharmacists could quickly dispense antivirals for patients if they have a prior agreement with the patient’s GP. It’s an approach that would also work for medications for chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.

COVID antivirals, unlike vaccines, have been keeping up with new variants without the need for updates. If a new and more harmful variant emerges, or when a new pandemic hits, governments should have these systems in place to make sure everyone who needs treatment can get it fast.

In the meantime, fairer access to care will help close the big and persistent gaps in health between different groups of Australians. Läs mer…

While there’s little relief in sight for Australia’s housing crisis, with new projects years away from completion, there appear to be as many as 13 million unused spare bedrooms across the country.

In a new briefing paper for the QUT Centre for Justice I suggest that, at least in the interim, these spare rooms ought to be part of the solution.

Here’s where you find them. The census says about 3.2 million Australian homes have one spare bedroom, another 3 million have two spare rooms and 1.2 million have three spare bedrooms or more.

They are more common in the homes of older than younger Australians.

A survey by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute found that more than three-quarters of homeowners aged 74 and older had spare rooms compared to less than two-thirds of homeowners aged 55 and younger.

These older owners are often “asset rich and income poor”. Most rely at least in part on the age pension and could do with the income that would come from renting out a room, so long as it didn’t cut into their pension or present them with a capital gains tax bill when their home is eventually sold.

My work suggests these fears are largely unfounded, even though it’s hard to convince many older Australians of that.

Rent needn’t mean income tax

The Tax Office has long provided for “domestic arrangements” and other arrangements where board and lodging provided at non-commercial rates is not considered assessable income for taxation purposes.

The downside is that expenses are not tax deductible.

These arrangements are said to occur when all residents including the owner bear an appropriate proportion of the costs actually incurred on food, electricity, heating and other costs of running the home.

“Homestay” for international students is an example. Homestay hosts can receive about $350 per week for providing a fully furnished room, main meals and utilities in an arrangement the Tax Office has ruled need not be taxable.

Rent needn’t cut off the pension

All pensioners are currently eligible for the work bonus scheme that allows additional earnings of up to $504 a fortnight for singles and $660 per fortnight for couples without loss of any pension.

It ought to be easy enough to apply the scheme to rent as well as income from work, as it arguably already does given that renting out spare bedrooms is a form of self-employment and hence “work”.

As important would be making pensioners aware of any changes or clarifications to the rules in a way that normalised “taking in boarders”.

Rent needn’t mean capital gains tax

Anecdotal evidence suggests homeowners fear that renting out a spare bedroom will make their home liable for the capital gains tax that applies to rented properties when they are eventually sold.

While this may be true in some situations, it is somewhat of an urban myth, and the amounts of tax involved can be small.

According to the Tax Office

capital gains tax only applies to properties bought after September 20 1985
any gain is taxed only at the marginal rate in the year the property is sold
only half of each gain is taxed
gains can be offset against capital losses
only the net gain is taxed after costs.

And capital gains tax only applies for the portion of the home that is rented out, and for the portion of time it is rented out.

In my paper I explain how an apparent capital gain of $100,000 is taxed less where a room is only let for one year in five and is one of three bedrooms in the home, cutting the taxable capital gain to just $3,333.

If the very concept of the calculation remains a barrier, it might be possible to offer homeowners who let out rooms a short-term “capital gains tax holiday” for the next three to five years while new housing stock is being built.

Rules for safety and boarder matching essential

Taking in boarders used to be an Australian tradition.
Shutterstock

Another barrier is concern about safety, both personal and financial for older homeowners. Surprisingly, there are few rules governing boarding, with tenancy legislation saying little, forcing homeowners and tenants to rely on common law.

Australians letting out rooms need legislated protections from elder abuse and spurious claims of cohabitation and other rights.

Tenant matching and management systems could make the process simpler.

Imagine being able to walk into your local real estate agency and list your spare room to rent. If the agency offered boarder management services you could outline your preferences and ask it to put forward a list of candidates to interview.

Good matches would provide benefits for both older Australians and younger companions. Boarder management could become a new business model for real estate agents as well as non-profits.

Please note: This article does not provide tax or financial advice. It is general in nature and should not be relied on for taxation or financial purposes. Läs mer…

Since last Oct. 7, the world has seen mass death catalyzed by terrorist attacks in Israel, Israel’s mission to recover hostages still being detained and retaliation in Gaza — and now a long-dreaded war erupting through the Middle East.

As a scholar of Jewish and Holocaust literature, in the past year following Oct. 7, I have been aware that how students engage with the history of the Holocaust has been impacted.

Eighty thousand Israelis remain displaced from their homes in the north. Over 40,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Gaza, and and following a United Nations expert accusing Israel of acts of genocide, UN delegates have amplified calls for an immediate ceasefire.

Others assert Israel’s actions are a defensive response. While all Israeli citizens have been affected by violence in Israel, Israel is a Jewish state, and the kind of violence and hate directed at Israel is being felt by Jews globally. For many Jews the Oct. 7 attacks themselves resonated hauntingly of Kristallnacht, with the Jewish people again put in a position of needing to defend their right to exist.

Read more:
Holocaust comparisons are overused — but in the case of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel they may reflect more than just the emotional response of a traumatized people

The definition of genocide acknowledged in the international Genocide Convention drew on the term coined by Polish-born lawyer Raphael Lemkin who fled persecution of the meticulously orchestrated genocide against European Jewry during the Second World War.

Globally, we are seeing a time of re-aligning geopolitics, including both the Global South and West becoming increasingly aware of pro-Palestinian perspectives. Many Gen Zs have been quick to rally against Zionism.

At the same time, Holocaust denialism, antisemitic hate acts and terrorist threats have accompanied a rise in anti-Israel sentiment — with frightening effects on Jews globally, sometimes fanned by propagandists seeking to exploit and augment conflict and polarization.

Even before events of the past year, as the 1940s recede in time, fewer and fewer Gen Zs have identified themselves as feeling knowledgeable about the Holocaust. The way knowledge is transmitted must adapt with the times.

A white rose is placed at the Gleis 17, Track 17, the memorial site for the train transportation from Berlin to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Berlin, Germany, on Jan. 27, 2024.
(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Memory through time

In 2019 I was the faculty fellow for a partnership between the Auschwitz Jewish Center and the Museum of Jewish Heritage (MJH). As a scholar I have had the benefit of meeting with Holocaust survivors to learn about their experiences.

During my fellowship, the ongoing question rattling in my brain was how to safeguard the lived testimonies of survivors as their numbers dwindle.

When I teach literature of the Holocaust and second-generation efforts to preserve memory, I have noticed students’ limited knowledge of the Holocaust when I do an informal poll of what they know already. Many students admit an awareness limited exclusively to Hollywood films.

Six-part documentary

Director Joe Berlinger’s recent documentary Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial is conscious of deficits in Gen Z education and seeks to remedy this.

‘Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,’ documentary by Joe Berlinger.

Berlinger’s six-part Netflix documentary takes a unique approach to examining and exploring Hitler’s rise to power and the lasting global impact.

He frames this analysis by using the writings and broadcasts of journalist and foreign corespondent William L. Shirer, who authored the iconic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), in concert with narration from Shirer’s granddaughter, Deirdre van Dyk.

Within the context of her grandfather’s historically significant coverage of the European political landscape throughout the 1930s and 40s, van Dyk is able to offer insights regarding how Shirer spoke about this period going beyond his public writings.

Preserving history

On an online discussion panel organized by the MJH in July 2024, Berlinger acknowledged the plethora of documentaries examining the Second World War, but explained that this work is a targeted effort to preserve history while connecting and resonating with Gen Z viewers.

Van Dyk’s participation plays a key role in bridging the present with the lived experience of Shirer, a witness of Nazi corruption and totalitarianism.

Similarly second- and third-generation Holocaust survivors are instrumental in ensuring that their parents and grandparents’ suffering and trauma can be used to caution current learners who will be the politicians, jurists and educators of the future about dangers of antisemitism.

Online discussion with director Joe Berlinger with Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Alberta initiative

An initiative in Alberta, the Second Voices Project is working to help Gen Z students understand the Holocaust in a way that feels authentic and less like distant history.

The initiative, with the support of the Government of Alberta, uses video testimony given by survivors, and pairs this with discussion, commentary and observations provided by their children and grandchildren.

Robert Jackson, chief counsel of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, noted in his opening statement at the Nuremberg Trial in 1945:

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

Jackson’s remarks now seem prophetic as society reexamines how best to impart this vital knowledge.

Increased consciousness

When the Second Voices Project travels to secondary and post-secondary institutions it is with the hope that seeds for increased tolerance and social consciousness be planted.

‘The Pages In Between’ by Erin Einhorn.
(Simon and Schuster)

During the winter 2024 semester, in a Jewish literature course I taught, I saw the Second Voices Project in action. The course sees students examine the search for resolution in untenable situations, with reporter Erin Einhorn’s The Pages In Between.

They grapple with depictions of trauma and extreme loss in Cynthia Ozick’s short story The Shawl and examine how American-born Jews negotiated feelings of misplaced guilt following learning about the extent of the Holocaust.

Accompanied by a Holocaust education specialist from the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, my students met second-generation survivor and retired physician Dr. Francie Cyngiser.

Cyngiser’s parents survived the Nazi concentration camps, and she brought her father, Sidney Cyngiser’s, recorded Shoah Foundation testimony, narrated by her son and nephew, to my class.

Sidney Cyngiser was dedicated to combating Holocaust denial by sharing his story. Instead of simply watching a video of Cyngiser testifying, the documentary was contextualized for students by inter-generational survivors not much younger than their parents.

Addressing trauma fatigue

Although Berlinger’s viewers cannot speak directly with van Dyk the way my students did with Dr. Cyngiser, his documentary is an important innovation to engage Gen Z learners.

To appeal to this targeted viewership, the Shirer family consented to use AI voice approximations of William Shirer’s writings to help narrate Berlinger’s documentary. Although original recordings from his news broadcasts also feature prominently, many of his diaries, smuggled out of Nazi Germany at great risk, needed vocalization for the film.

By adapting, Holocaust educators can also combat trauma fatigue which can impair capacity for awareness, recognition and response. In Germany, where Holocaust education is mandatory, feelings of frustration over inherited guilt for the Holocaust can breed apathy and resentment.

Both pro-Zionist and Zionist-critical Jews have highlighted that such sentiments are dangerous in the current global climate.

Apathy fails to serve any humanitarian function and dangerously anaesthetises all sides to the pain of others.

Read more:
Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I’ve learned about making conversation possible

The German term Vergangenheitsbewältigung describes the process of ongoing reconciliation with a troubled history. The past is a reality that humanity as whole must contend with, but a lack of understanding is fertile ground for denial, revisionism and antisemitism.

I cannot help but wonder if greater awareness of Holocaust history, and political and cultural histories of how to safeguard human rights, would promote more tolerance and compassion universally. Läs mer…

Over the summer as Israel continued to bombard Gaza, representatives from 14 Palestinian factions, including the two main parties – Hamas and Fatah – met in China. Following the most inclusive talks in years, all the parties agreed to a future unity government and to hold national elections.

Such talk of “day after” governance may seem fanciful as the current war marks its first anniversary. The idea of holding Palestinian elections seems a long way off given the current destruction and humanitarian crisis, especially in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, any democratic process including Hamas – whose leadership Israeli forces have spent a year trying to eliminate following the the group’s attack of Oct. 7, 2023 – would be vehemently opposed by Israel. As such, it should come as little surprise that 72% of Palestinians recently polled said they saw no hope of the provisions agreed to in China being implemented any time soon.

But the alternative “day after” plan for Gaza reconstruction being pushed by the United States – “revitilzing” the Palestinian Authority, the Fatah-led body that semi-governs parts of the West Bank – also seems like a non-starter. Critics of that plan warn that a simple reshuffling of existing figures would further delegitimize the deeply unpopular authority.

As a scholar of Palestinian history and politics, I see talk of reforming existing bodies or propping up a unity government made up of the same players as missing a larger point: Palestinians are increasingly frustrated by their political representation; they want the opportunity to choose their own leaders.

Even before the attack of Oct. 7, surveys showed that Palestinians were dissatisfied with governance they viewed as corrupt and dysfunctional. And as the war drags into a second year, the latest polls indicate that support for Hamas has dropped moderately; yet support for its main rival, Fatah, has risen only slightly. More than a third of those polled do not support either party.

Divided leadership

Despite talk of a unity government, Palestinian leadership is as bitterly divided as it has been for decades.

Following a brief conflict in 2007, the Palestinian Authority split into two. The secular Fatah party, led by Mahmoud Abbas, controlled the authority in the West Bank, while its Islamist rival, Hamas, governed in Gaza.

Since then, Palestinian representatives have held over a dozen reconciliation talks to try to bridge the divide, the last taking place in Beijing in July 2024. While several of these meetings have yielded joint agreements, such as the recent “Beijing Declaration,” none have led to the different factions working more closely together.

A generation of Palestinians have never experienced a national vote.
Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images

The current Palestinian Authority president, 88-year-old Abbas, is especially unpopular. First elected in 2005 to a four-year term, he unilaterally extended his term in 2009, declaring he would remain in office until the next election. But he has not allowed elections to be held since then. Summing up the views of many, analyst Khaled Elgindy described Abbas today as “an erratic and small-minded authoritarian with a virtually unbroken record of failure.”

That helps explain why, according to a September 2024 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 84% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip want Abbas to resign.

When asked about a hypothetical presidential election between the leaders of both Hamas and Fatah, 45% of Palestinians reported they would rather just sit out the election. The question had to be hypothetical – elections are not even on the horizon. In fact, Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza have not voted in presidential or legislative elections since 2006. And three-quarters of Palestinians see no prospect of elections taking place any time soon.

Absence of elections

That pessimism among Palestinians over having a democratic say in how they are governed has grown in recent years. It has no doubt been knocked further by a year of relentless Israeli bombardment and internal political dysfunction.

A glimmer of hope for greater democratic representation had appeared in January 2021, when Abbas announced that legislative elections would be held later that year.

Many on the candidate lists then were third-party figures and independents. Young Palestinians were especially excited – half of all eligible voters would have been aged 18 to 33, and it would have been their first opportunity to chose leaders who could claim to speak for them.

But with less than one month before election day, Abbas postponed the vote indefinitely. While he blamed Israel for the postponement, other Palestinians also pointed to interference from Egypt and Jordan.

Palestinian men cast ballots in 2006, the last time Palestinians were able to vote in national elections.
Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

With no elections in sight, Palestinians have undertaken several grassroots initiatives to try to enact democratic reforms from the ground up.

For example, in November 2022, a Palestinian Popular Conference was held in several cities. It called for reforming Palestinian institutions to be more democratically representative of the 14 million Palestinians living around the world. Meetings were held in Gaza and Haifa, and Palestinians from around the world joined in person and virtually.

But Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank violently cracked down on the gathering in Ramallah and detained several conference leaders. The harsh repression signaled to many that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority were scared of an alternative, democratically elected Palestinian leadership emerging.

Maintaining the occupation

Many Palestinians see Abbas and his government as a “puppet authority,” propped up by Israel and the United States.

Despite its name, the body does not have the “authority” that governments typically have. It cannot collect its own taxes, control its own border or protect its own citizens. Rather, Israel collects taxes in the West Bank and decides when – and whether – to hand them over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel has to authorize what enters and exits the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And, as has been evident throughout the current war, the Israeli military has pretty much free rein to invade “Area A”, the parts of the West Bank that are supposed to be under full Palestinian Authority security control.

Yet Palestinians in the West Bank are not even able to express their opposition to these measures. In recent years, the Palestinian Authority has grown increasingly repressive, arresting a growing number of Palestinians on political grounds.

Moreover, in the year since the Oct. 7 attacks, the Palestinian Authority has allowed Israel to arrest and detain over 7,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. Many are held for months without charge or trial and subjected to widespread torture and sexual abuse, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

As such, the Palestinian Authority is viewed by many Palestinians as little more than a “subcontractor” of the Israeli occupation.

Looking ahead

So what does the the “day after” the conflict look like for Palestinians, and their hopes for democratic political representation?

The International Court of Justice’s recent ruling that Israel’s occupation is illegal and that settlers must withdraw from the West Bank has given added legitimacy to Palestinians’ demand to end the occupation once and for all.

But a future Palestinian government will only be credible if it represents the will of the people.

Mussa Abu Marzuk, a senior member of Hamas, signs the Beijing Declaration as China Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud al-Aloul look on.
Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

To be sure, holding Palestinian elections to achieve this aim would be difficult given the ongoing Israeli occupation and the widespread destruction in Gaza. But it is clear that elections are what Palestinians want. When elections were last touted in 2021, 93.3% of eligible voters registered – only to have their hopes later dashed.

At the reconciliation talks held in Beijing, all 14 Palestinian parties agreed to “prepare for the holding of general elections under the supervision of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee as soon as possible.”

While Israel, the U.S. and regional actors worry that elections could legitimize Hamas’ rule over the Gaza Strip, that would not necessarily be the case. The latest polls show that only 36% of respondents in Gaza said they would prefer that outcome.

For now, many Palestinians believe the first step should be the formation of a national reconciliation government that can negotiate reconstruction.

But to have any chance of succeeding, such a body would need to be Palestinian-led. A government consisting of the same old actors forced upon Palestinians by the U.S. or Israel would suffer from crippling legitimacy problems.

One thing is certain: The death and destruction of the past year have shown that the old approaches to Palestinian politics have not worked. Perhaps it is time for a new approach, one that centers Palestinian representation. Läs mer…

In west Africa, it’s common for families to foster children informally. This helps ease the burden on parents and can give children from poorer families a chance to improve their lives.

An estimated 20% to 40% of mothers in the region have sent at least one child to live with another household for an extended period. That household acts as a “social parent”.

Education is one of the leading reasons for the practice: children can be in households with more resources for schooling or closer to schools.

Whether this fostering is beneficial or harmful depends on how much the host families are willing to support and invest in the fostered children.

The practice of child fostering differs from the formal foster care systems that are common in many parts of the world. Fostering arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa are typically informal and unregulated. Without legal or economic incentives, there’s a risk that host households may not be as invested in the welfare of fostered children, including their education, as they are in their own.

My research studied the relationship between fostering and school attendance. I looked at how this has changed over time and whether it is affected by how wealthy a fostering household is.

I found that in some west African countries, fostered children were less likely to attend school than children who were not fostered. And children fostered by wealthier households were the least likely to attend school compared to their non-fostered counterparts.

The findings highlight the need to set up or improve systems to monitor how fostered children are doing. They also suggest more research is needed to understand fostering in wealthier families.

Comparing change over time

The research used data from five countries that conducted similar surveys about a decade apart, in 2005/06 and 2017/18. The countries were The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Togo.

The sample comprised 86,803 children aged 6 to 12 whose biological parents were alive. The analysis compared school enrolment of fostered children with children who were not fostered over the two periods.

In 2005/06, 16.7% of the children in the sample were fostered. In 2017/18, 19.4% were fostered.

I expected to find that fostered children would be less likely to attend school than children who were not fostered. This is because it is possible that the purposes for which parents send their children away may not align exactly with the reasons the host households agree to have them.

I also expected that the difference in school attendance between fostered and non-fostered children would decrease over time, because free primary education policies were being introduced.

But instead, the findings showed that in 2017/18, children who were fostered were much less likely to have ever attended school than was the case in 2005/06. In 2017/18, fostered children were 0.49 times as likely to have ever attended school compared to children who were not fostered. In 2005/06, there was no difference between fostered and non-fostered children.

I also expected that wealthier households would be able to invest more in children – both fostered and their own.

However, this was not the case. It was only in the poorest hosting households that foster children were more likely to attend school in 2005/06 and in 2017/18 compared to children who were not fostered. In wealthier households, foster children faced greater disadvantages in school attendance as the household’s wealth increased.

Worrying inequalities

The findings are worrying because they suggest that wealthier families might take in children not necessarily to improve their welfare, but to use them for household chores. There is some research suggesting that households’ decisions to foster in children are driven by demand for child labour. This could prevent foster children from attending school regularly.

It is also possible that poor parents might not have the power to step in if the wealthier hosting households are disrupting their children’s education.

The results indicate that there has been an increase in the proportion of children who have ever attended school over the two periods. However, the finding that more than one-tenth of children in the sample have never attended school in the most recent period is suggestive of challenges in the implementation of free education policies.

The challenges include:

competing demands for children’s time in households where child labour is required
the inability of households to pay for transport, books and uniforms.

The observed disparity in school attendance by foster status, particularly for richer households, highlights inequality in education. This has implications for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4, which targets equitable education. The African Union declared 2024 the Year of Education, further highlighting the importance of ensuring all children on the continent attend school. Läs mer…

A recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 8 million people die annually from smoking related complications. Despite efforts by governments and various organisations to create awareness about the dangers, around 1.3 billion people still use some form of tobacco and 80% of them live in low to middle income countries.

There is no safe level of smoking. Even second-hand smoke can lead to serious complications such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

The mouth (oral cavity) is the first port of entry to the rest of the body and is home to a complex and diverse community of microorganisms, known as the oral microbiome. These organisms live in harmony with one another. They protect the normal oral environment, aid digestion, regulate the immune system and promote health.

If this balance is disturbed however, it can lead to the development of periodontitis (gum infections), inflammation and serious diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, liver and renal disease.

Changes to the bacterial composition of the mouth can be caused by several factors, such as bad oral hygiene, diet, alcohol and smoking.

We’ve looked into exactly what types of bacteria are affected. Our research did this by examining the oral health of 128 individuals who had participated in a 2014/2016 study of vascular and metabolic health.

We found clear differences in the bacteria present in the mouths of smokers compared to non-smokers.

Smokers had higher levels of harmful bacteria – like Fusobacterium, Campylobacter and Tannerella forsythia – in their mouths.

These bacteria can cause gum disease and may increase the risk of heart disease because they can trigger inflammation and other harmful effects in the body.

How smoking affects the oral biome

Tobacco and cigarettes contain several toxic substances which include nicotine, tar, radioactive chemicals, lead and ammonia. Many of these are formed from burning the tobacco. As a cigarette is smoked, these chemicals enter the oral cavity and change the surrounding environment by reducing oxygen levels, changing the pH (level of acidity) and preventing adequate production of saliva.

Saliva not only keeps the mouth moist and helps digestion, but also has important antibacterial properties which assist in destroying dangerous germs and keeping the oral cavity healthy.

A dry mouth together with low oxygen levels in the mouth allows harmful bacteria to multiply.

The overgrowth of these organisms destroys the balance of the healthy bacteria normally found on the surfaces of the teeth, tongue and palate.

Nicotine

One common chemical found in cigarettes is nicotine. This toxin can increase the number of proteins on the surface of certain harmful bacteria such as P. gingivalis.

These proteins or receptors give the bacteria an advantage over the normal microorganisms and allows them to attach firmly to surfaces where they multiply into colonies and form biofilms. Dental biofilms are a complex community of microorganisms which can form on the teeth and other hard surfaces. If not controlled, they can lead to plaque formation, periodontitis, gum disease and tooth decay.

Smoking and serious diseases

These abnormal colonies can influence the immune system, leading to slow healing, inflammation and even antibiotic resistance. The chronic inflammation caused by gum disease can lead to tooth loss and the destruction of gum tissue, which has been linked to systemic diseases such as cardiovascular disease.

Another bacterium, Streptococcus mutans, can also become abundant in people who smoke heavily. This organism is often present in healthy conditions but when the environment is disrupted, it can multiply and form part of dental biofilms,
leading to tooth decay and oral cancer.

Vaping and e-cigarettes

Electronic cigarettes or vapes operate with a battery and heating element which heats up a liquid. This produces an aerosol which is inhaled by the user. The liquid contains different flavourings as well as harmful chemicals such as nicotine and lead.

Early research seems to suggest that e-cigarettes are not a good alternative to smoking tobacco. Although their effects on the oral microbiota have not been well studied, the increased growth of bacteria such as Fusobacterium and Bacteroidales has been observed in people who vape.

Both of these bacteria can cause periodontitis (gum disease).

Can these changes be reversed?

It is clear that the harmful chemicals in cigarettes and other forms of tobacco can lead to serious diseases which often begin in the oral cavity. The good news is that these can be prevented and the risk reduced.

Although it may take time, the healthy diversity of the oral biome can be restored by quitting smoking. This reduces the risk of gum disease, promotes the production of saliva and improves health.

Prevention is better than cure and governments and organisations such as the WHO need to continue to create awareness around the dangers of smoking, particularly among the youth. Läs mer…

A year of conflict has ushered in a new era of mass displacement in the Middle East.

Since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent sustained Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Israel has expanded its operations on multiple fronts to include the West Bank, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.

With fighting continuing unabated and the prospects for a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel rising, the region is now in a new period of internal and cross-border displacement that has already uprooted millions.

As scholars of migration, we fear that the results of such displacement will affect the region for years to come – and is likely to further hamper the ability of the region’s people to live safe and secure lives.

Displaced and trapped in Gaza

Israel’s ongoing attacks have forced nearly 2 million Palestinians to flee their homes in Gaza over the past year, amounting to 9 in 10 inhabitants of the densely populated strip.

What is unique about the scale of the displacement in Gaza is that nearly all internally displaced persons remain trapped, unable to leave the territory amid Israel’s ongoing border closure and bombardment.

This has intensified cascading humanitarian crises, including famine and the spread of disease, along with countless other hardships that make normal life nearly impossible.

For many Palestinians in Gaza, the yearlong bombardment has meant repeated displacement as Israeli attacks shift from area to area, amid shrinking humanitarian spaces.

And although there are complex historical and geopolitical reasons regarding the border closures, international law experts argue that Egypt and Israel have violated international refugee law by refusing to allow Palestinians in Gaza to cross the Rafah border to seek asylum.

The situation in Gaza is structurally different from previous displacement crises in the region – even in civil war-torn Syria, where cross-border aid operations have constantly been on the brink of collapse. That’s because Israel continues to limit and block aid into the territory, and humanitarian workers struggle to provide the bare minimum of food, shelter and medical care during bombing campaigns that have rarely stopped.

Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in the Gaza Strip.
AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana

To make matters worse, the experience of the past year has shown that refugee camps, civilian apartment buildings, U.N. schools, and hospitals serving civilians and refugees are not safe spaces. Israel frequently justifies its attacks on such locations by saying they are used by Hamas or Hezbollah, despite formal U.N. disputes of many of these accusations. At least 220 U.N. workers have also been killed in these targeted Israeli attacks in the past year – more than any other crisis ever recorded.

This contributes to humanitarian workers struggling to access populations in need, especially displaced individuals. For its part, the United States continues to be the top donor to the the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), as well as the top supplier of weapons to Israel.

Beyond Gaza, into Lebanon

In Lebanon, massive displacement has also resulted from Israel’s developing war with Hezbollah.

Even before the September escalation of conflict across the Lebanon-Israel border, nearly 100,000 Lebanese had been displaced from their homes in the country’s south due to Israeli shelling. Meanwhile, approximately 63,000 Israelis were internally displaced from the country’s north due to Hezbollah’s rocket attacks.

But starting in late September 2024, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and Palestinian targets in Beirut and across Lebanon killed hundreds of civilians and exponentially increased internal and cross-border displacement. More than 1 million Lebanese have now fled their homes in a matter of days amid Israel’s invasion and bombardment.

In addition, Syrian refugees and the large migrant worker population in Lebanon were also displaced, with many sleeping on the streets or in makeshift tents, unable to access buildings that were converted into shelters for Lebanese.

In a separate stark example of reverse migration, about 230,000 people – both Lebanese and Syrians – have fled across the border into Syria.

Hezbollah rocket strikes in northern Israel have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate.
Amir Levy/Getty Images

Bringing the recent regional conflicts full circle with post-2011 Arab uprising displacement and crisis, returning home is an unsafe option for many Syrians who still fear repression under the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s ongoing invasion of Lebanon is likely to only amplify these trends, as the country ordered numerous villages and towns in the country’s south – miles above the U.N.-recognized buffer zone – to evacuate.

Layers of regional displacement

Over several decades, the Middle East has experienced many large-scale, cross-border displacements for myriad reasons. The original forced displacement of Palestinians surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948 and subsequent conflicts created the world’s longest-standing refugee situation, with approximately 6 million Palestinians living across the Levant. The first Gulf War, sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq produced millions of refugees, with long-standing political repercussions for the region.

More recently, the 2011 Arab uprisings and the wars that followed in Syria, Yemen and Libya created millions of refugees, as well as internally displaced peoples, with nearly 6 million Syrians still living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and another 6 million displaced inside Syria. Because Syrians have largely not returned home, international organizations have become a semipermanent safety net to provide basic services to refugees and host communities.

New layers of displacement in Lebanon – nationals, refugees and migrant workers – as well as cross-border movement into Syria will put further strain on the underfunded system of humanitarian assistance.

Further, the current Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon is not the first time conflict between the state and its neighbor to the north has preceded large-scale displacement. In an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. Israel’s 1982 invasion led to the Sabra and Shatila massacres of between 1,500-3000 Palestinian civilians – carried out by Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies – showing that military operations that do not distinguish between militants and civilians can lead to devastating impacts for displaced populations.

Civilians bearing the brunt

Between 600,000 and 900,000 Lebanese fled abroad during the entire course of the country’s civil war from 1975 to 1990.

Two decades later, Israel again invaded Lebanon in 2006 in an attempt to stamp out Hezbollah, leading approximately 900,000 Lebanese to flee the south – both internally and across the border into Syria.

While the speed and volume of Lebanese displacement in 2006 was unprecedented at the time, the number of people forced to flee in late September and early October 2024 has quickly surpassed that record.

So, the region is well versed with the consequences of mass displacement. But what is clear a year into the current conflict is that the Middle East is now in a new era of displacement – in terms of scale and kind.

And the number of families’ lives disrupted by this new era of displacement looks set only to increase. Tensions in the region have escalated further with fresh missile attacks against Israel from Iran and threats of retaliation by Israel.

The experience of decades of conflict in the region is that civilians are most likely to bear the brunt of fighting – whether through forced displacement, an inability to access food or medical care, or death.

Only by way of a cessation of current hostilities and a lasting cease-fire across the region can the conditions be set for at-risk populations to begin to return and rebuild. This is particularly true for those displaced in Gaza who have been repeatedly forced from their homes, but have no borders over which they can cross to safety, and for whom a political solution remains elusive. Läs mer…

A dockworkers strike that froze operations at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports for 2½ days was paused on Oct. 3. The Conversation U.S. asked Anna Nagurney, a scholar of supply chains, to assess the extent of disruptions that likely occurred and how the swift return of 45,000 workers who had been on strike may stave off further problems down the road.

Why was the strike suspended?

Aided by intense pressure from senior Biden administration officials, the shipping companies, represented by the U.S. Maritime Alliance, significantly increased the raise they were offering the dockworkers to 62% from their previous offer of a 50% boost in pay. The International Longshoremen’s Association, the dockworkers’ union, were seeking a 77% raise, but it accepted the new offer, which will be phased in over six years.

The agreement labor leaders and management reached will suspend the strike until at least Jan. 15, 2025, allowing more time for additional collective bargaining and negotiations.

Talks over other contested conditions, including the adoption of more automation, will continue until then.

President Joe Biden applauded both sides. He thanked the union and management “for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.”

How has this strike affected the economy?

About half of the products that the U.S. imports are handled by the ports that were paralyzed during this brief strike. About 1 million shipping containers arrive at these ports every month.

Imports include vast quantities of bananas and other fresh produce, coffee, pharmaceuticals, liquor, toys, apparel, furniture, machinery and vehicles. Exports include meats, commodities, machinery, chemicals, vehicles and vehicle parts.

The strike’s impact was immediate. More than 50 ships laden with hundreds of thousands of containers created a logjam at East Coast ports. Major retailers, such as Walmart, Costco, Lowes and Home Depot, were among the companies stuck waiting for the release of their stranded cargo.

It may take two to three weeks to relieve this logjam. Prices for some products, including coffee, were already rising before the negotiators reached their breakthrough.

Workers are critical to the functioning of each link in supply chains. When the dockworkers were on strike, other workers, such as truckers, rail employees and warehouse workers, were concerned about being affected, as well as all the businesses that rely on them, such as restaurants.

Dockworkers protest outside the Port of Newark on Oct. 1, 2024, in a strike with highly coordinated messaging.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Why is the new time frame significant?

Shipping tied to the holiday season typically runs from July through early November. Members of the National Retail Federation, the largest U.S. retail trade group, have already been dealing with significant supply disruptions due to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and Suez Canal. The attacks have forced shipping companies to take longer routes, delaying cargo delivery and increasing costs due to the need for more fuel and labor.

A prolonged dockworkers strike would put stress on the economy. According to J.P. Morgan, a lengthy dockworkers strike could have cost the U.S. economy US$5 billion per day.

The temporary agreement pushes the strike past the U.S. elections in November and the conclusion of the upcoming holiday season. That gives both sides a chance to return to the bargaining table to continue to negotiate and to reach an agreement on the issues that haven’t been resolved yet – notably the use of automation.

Having a shorter strike will reduce the risk of shortages of everything from mangos to Maseratis and the price increases that typically occur when products are scarce and in high demand.

Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su played a pivotal role in the negotiation of a temporary agreement that staved off a lengthy work stoppage by striking dockworkers in October 2024.
Shannon Finney/Getty Images for Care Can’t Wait Action

What did the Biden administration do?

The Biden administration was eager for a settlement, especially with the ports serving as channels for recovery supplies after the massive damage seen in Florida, western North Carolina and other areas near the East Coast from Hurricane Helene.

Senior government officials made notable progress when they met with representatives of shipping companies before daybreak on Oct. 3 over Zoom.

Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, had been working hard to help the two sides settle their differences. She emphasized over Zoom that she could get the International Longshoremen’s Association to the bargaining table to extend the contract. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also stayed in touch with labor and management, and used that Zoom meeting to tell the shipping companies that they would need to offer the dockworkers a higher wage.

White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the shipping companies on Zoom that they should make an offer to the union quickly so that the strike wouldn’t further exacerbate the effects of Hurricane Helene.

It seems clear to me that the pressure worked – helped, perhaps, by a bit of patriotism. Läs mer…