In 1968, William Anders took what has been described as the greatest environmental photograph of all time while venturing farther than any other human had travelled before aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft. He was orbiting the Moon when a half-illuminated slice of our home planet suddenly emerged beyond the lunar horizon. Grabbing his camera, Anders captured the image that later moved the world to an intimate understanding of both the fragility of our home and the dominion that humanity has come to have over it. They called that photograph Earthrise.

This wasn’t the first time that art had proved to be an important tool for environmentalists. In the 19th century, Tomas Moran’s painting from a little-explored corner of Wyoming helped to inspire US President Ulysses S Grant to create Yosemite National Park. But Anders’ adventure on Apollo 8 transcended national boundaries. His depiction of what Carl Sagan later described as our ‘pale blue dot’, far out there in space, was an artwork that had relevance to everyone. 

Yet, while Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, today enjoys a modicum of protection, our planet is in serious trouble. In the 52 years that have passed since Earthrise was taken, the humans on that little speck in space have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere by almost 30 per cent, wiped out 60 per cent of its mammal, bird, fish and reptile populations, and now teeter on the brink of environmental catastrophe.

 A lot of CO2 was produced when Apollo 8 was launched into orbit. Perhaps the result justified the carbon-intensive means – but what about today’s explorers? What expectations and values should we place on modern-day adventurers as they travel and return, often with stories from our last remaining wildernesses?

Ernest Shackleton (right) and Frank Wild (left) scout for a path through hummocks of ice and snow during the Endurance expedition [RGS-IBG Picture Library]

Things were very different for the explorers of the past. With the planetary poles still up for grabs, Everest un-climbed and the Moon a distant dream – adventure for adventure’s sake was very much in vogue. Context is everything, insists Ernest Shackleton’s biographer, Michael Smith, when evaluating the historic success of such explorers in giving a voice to the silent fragility of the remotest corners of our planet. 

Science, and the inclusion of its practitioners on expeditions, was a necessary means for Shackleton to obtain funding, according to Smith, not something he was particularly interested in himself. The famous explorer once declared: ‘You are either an explorer or you are a scientist.’ Shackleton didn’t interview his prospective scientists on matters of scientific rigour, instead famously asking the University of Bristol student Raymond Priestly, ‘Can you sing?’ Science was done, Smith explains, and our understanding of the natural world expanded on these expeditions, not because of Shackleton, but in spite of him.

Nevertheless, hugely important discoveries were made. Coal was discovered on the Antarctic continent at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres in 1909 during Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition, helping to develop our understanding of continental drift. The expeditions’ work on glaciology, weather and geology in particular, laid the foundation for modern scientific endeavour in the Antarctic. Shackleton’s seemingly spurious criteria for choosing scientists perhaps distracted from what Smith describes as ‘an extraordinary ability to pick people’, with four members of his Nimrod and Endurance expeditions later being knighted for their scientific contributions, including Raymond Priestly, who went on to become president of the Royal Geographical Society. Shackleton’s own single-minded dedication to the physical feat of exploration, Smith ventures, may ultimately have been what kept him alive. Conversely, Scott – who Smith describes as a frustrated scientist – instructed his already starving men to collect 15 kilograms of rock on the Beardmore Glacier on their ultimately fatal return trip from the South Pole. 

According to Smith, the modern concepts of environmentalism and ‘leave no trace’ would have been alien to these men. ‘None of the explorers cleared up their “mess”,’ he writes. They were the last of the great explorers of the Victorian era, a time when derring-do, showcasing the feats of man and the expansion of the Empire in the name of Queen and country were the focus. The study of the planet they travelled across only held a mirror to their accomplishments, rather than being valued for its own intrinsic worth. 

Some 53 years after Shackleton’s Endurance expedition and the year after Earthrise, Neil Armstrong took his small step onto the moon. The giant leap forward for mankind it represented, however, meant that Armstrong, an engineer and test pilot by training, was harangued by questions about its global significance for the rest of his life. For the US astronaut, the challenge of landing this exciting new machine on the lunar surface was the real attraction of the mission and was an immense source of pride, according to Armstrong’s biographer, James Hansen. ‘Everything else,’ he says of actually walking on the Moon ‘was gravy’.

Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley (skinning penguin) at Patience Camp during the Endurance expedition, 1914–16 [RGS-IBG picture library]

After Apollo 11, Armstrong maintained a policy of avoiding overt political statements, explains Hansen, and that included discussion of environmental issues. Restraint emerges as one of the defining characteristics of the astronaut portrayed in Hansen’s book, First Man. ‘It wasn’t that he didn’t have views,’ Hansen says, ‘and wasn’t moved by Earthrise and his own experience on the surface of the moon, looking back at Earth, seeing it as an oasis.’ But he chose not to show it. According to Hansen, many of Armstrong’s friends and family encouraged him to be more expressive of his views and would sometimes come away very frustrated with him. ‘They didn’t get quite as much as they knew was probably there.’ 

Hansen believes that the position Armstrong took following the Apollo 11 mission was born partly out of a natural shyness. He also thinks it stemmed from a fear of being misinterpreted or having his words co-opted for political means. The biographer describes the tension that was building in the environmental movement during the late 1960s and early ’70s, and how Armstrong did make comments in support of this new ecological mindset, highlighting the need to apply the best scientific, engineering and public policy to address the emerging problems. 

‘The very success of the human species over eons of time now threatens our extinction,’ Armstrong told an audience at Ohio State University in June 1971. ‘It is the drive that made for such success that must now be curbed, redirected or released by world expansion into a new world ecology. It is extremely doubtful that mankind can be stabilized and held permanently in check at any given population level, at any given standard of living, in a world of decreasing natural resources. The political clout needed to accomplish this iron control staggers the imagination and credulity.’ However, explicitly environmental comments such as these by the first man on the moon seem to have been the exception rather than the rule. ‘I always want a little more from him,’ the biographer writes of his subject. 

Adventure kayak guide Sal Montgomery [Casey Bryant Jones]

A glance at many modern adventures suggests that individuals today, who may well have a Shackleton- and Armstrong-like desire simply to push themselves, are now motivated to spread their net wider, often responding to a past spent adventuring for the sheer joy of it. Providing a platform for the environmental concerns motivating some modern explorers is now a major focus for the curators of the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF). In one film, Electric Greg, a 43-year-old backcountry skier recognises that his globe-trotting lifestyle comes with a serious carbon price tag. Resolving to live more sustainably, Greg Hill embarks on a mission to climb 100 different summits, reached only by an electric car. This attitude isn’t going to change the world; at only 18 minutes, the documentary doesn’t address the huge privilege inherent in the purchase of a Chevrolet Bolt. But the skier’s discussion with his family about why he can’t fly with them on holiday begins to address the more profound lifestyle changes now deemed necessary by some within the more affluent and highest-polluting segment of society. Hill’s outreach on social media, leading to a follower buying his own Bolt, also touches upon the role modern adventure-influencers have in generating change beyond their own carbon impact. 

Another film, Beyond the Break, documents the grounded lives of three pro surfers turned organic vegetable farmers. ‘I’m learning as much not going anywhere as I ever did going everywhere,’ says Matt Smith about his decision to surf local Irish breaks to reduce his carbon footprint. Daniel Klein, the film’s director, notes that Beyond the Break would never have been made without the focus on food and sustainability. 

‘We wouldn’t have made the film if it was just about a surfer or just a farmer, but the story of professional surfers settling down to care for the land was compelling visually and emotionally,’ Klein says. ‘We are in a time where we can’t just focus on our passion (surfing, filmmaking...), but must also bring the climate crisis into the equation, adjusting our actions to meet the moment.’

Greg Hill, star of Electric Greg, prepares his skis while charging his electric car [Travis Rousseau]

This sense of a widening view is present again in Every Single Street, in which ultrarunner Rickey Gates dedicates five weeks to covering 1,100 miles as he runs each individual road in San Francisco. Gates doesn’t just run – he also provides an empathetic insight into the lives of the city’s homeless community. 

ShAFF has recently introduced a sustainability stamp for films on its 2021 programme, which include elements of what the festival’s director, Matt Heason, describes as the emergent ‘adventure activism’ genre. But it’s a stepped process and Heason is reticent about suddenly judging filmmakers against an incipient standard: ‘People are coming to see an adventure film festival,’ he explains, ‘they’re not expecting an educational lecture.’ 

However, when the story is strong and the adventure compelling, adventure-activism films can be a platform for change. According to Anna Paxton, a mountain runner, film producer and judge for ShAFF, including a clear call to action for the audience is a key aspect of the refocused direction in which the festival is heading. ‘Adventure films are there to inspire,’ she says, ‘but we want to go beyond that and give the audience the tools to act on that inspiration.’ That might include giving festival goers links to websites, recommending specific campaigns or challenging them to reconsider how they travel on their own adventures. This might seem like small beer in the face of the climate and environmental emergencies. But the decision to showcase work from first-time filmmakers, such as the Ala Archa Expedition, in which local University of Sheffield students travelled to Kyrgyzstan to study climate change’s effect on glaciers, provides a platform for talented young scientists to potentially get picked up by professional production companies. ‘All of a sudden,’ Heason says of this scenario, ‘you’ve got the adventure-activism film that gets the million views.’

Sal Montgomery knows all about getting a message to the masses. An adventure kayak guide, she works on television productions for Bristol-based independent company True to Nature and is often found leading TV personalities on first-ever descents of rivers, from the mountains of Bhutan to the wilds of the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. What standard does she think we should hold modern explorers to in the wake of the climate and environmental crises? Montgomery is an advocate of purposeful adventure. Her latest work in Kamchatka, for Expedition with Steve Backshall, out later this year, takes a river-seat view of the life of wild Russian bears. ‘We are using the journey,’ Montgomery explains, ‘to witness and explore what’s happening in the environment.’ Tellingly, not long after filming had finished, an oil spill on nearby Khalaktyrsky beach wiped out a suspected 95 per cent of marine life. 

Montgomery believes that TV is reacting to changing consumer attitudes. ‘In yesterday’s telly, there was a lot of emphasis on particular individuals,’ she says before deepening her voice for comic effect. ‘Here I am, flying across the world, in military style and the programme is all about me and how epic I am!’ This tone, she believes, is changing rapidly. ‘Viewers are starting to step back now, asking of these presenters: “What’s the purpose. What’s the meaning?”’

Montgomery draws meaning not only by highlighting the fragility of the natural world when in the field – but by what she describes as ‘paying my dues once back home.’ After her trip to Bhutan, she took two months off and began a 20-lecture tour of the UK to raise money for the rainforest-conservation charity the World Land Trust. The Bhutan expedition was also the first-ever carbon neutral TV production, accredited by the CarbonNeutral Protocol, and channelled funding to a UN REDD+ forest-conservation project in Indonesia. 

Montgomery is also a Scouts Adventure Ambassador and makes a point of highlighting the importance of inspiring young people. ‘People will only want to protect what they care about,’ she says of her recent work with inner-city school children. ‘But once you remove the barriers to them gaining access to nature, you won’t have to convince people to look after our wild places – they’ll do it on their own.’

Our ability to push into the remote corners of our planet has increased dramatically between Shackleton and ShAFF. Expeditions today are cheaper and more carbon intensive than ever before. As a result, many adventurers are now grappling with the paradox that underpins their lives: these are people who love the planet so dearly that they dedicate their lives to exploring it, but they are often among the biggest carbon emitters as a result.

On the plus side, addressing climate change could give such people what they really crave: unchartered waters. With the world’s unmapped corners now shrunk from continents to obscure mountaintops, being ‘first’ to anywhere or at anything, is pretty difficult. But as Mark Agnew, extreme athlete and editor at the South China Post wrote in 2020: ‘Climate change gives adventurers one last great first. Simply put, the role nowadays is to raise the alarm about climate change. Being in remote regions – the rainforests, a desert, the Arctic or Antarctic – adventurers are on the front line of the climate crisis.’

‘We are using the journey to witness and explore what’s happening in the environment,’ says Montgomery [Casey Bryant Jones]

Adventurers and extreme athletes also have the chance to speak up for places that only they get to see or know intimately. As Adventurers for Climate Change, a non-profit coalition of US advocacy organisations, including the American Canoe Association, International Mountain Bicycling Association and the Surfrider Foundation, write: ‘People who love to get outside are already bearing witness to climate change. We don’t claim to be climate experts and we don’t think you need to be either. Instead, we think that the most important thing right now is to generate energy on climate and use the power of our community to make this a top priority for lawmakers.’

‘I think that adventurers are those that get so much back from nature that they should be stewards to protect what they love most,’ says Greg Hill, star of Electric Greg. ‘Also, adventurers are used to breaking trail into new terrain and should also be willing to break trail into new technologies or ways of living.’

A certain celebrity is still attached to the people who return from our remaining wild places. Yet our judgement of what they achieved there appears to be becoming more discerning. The scientific progress achieved from Antarctic and space exploration provided us with the lens to observe our relentless destruction of the Earth. The upshot seems to be that little bandwidth now remains for explorers who come back from the wilderness with a story about themselves, rather than our planet.

Snakes and alcohol have a surprisingly long and entwined history. The ancient Greeks used snake wine as a cure for retained placentas. In the past, European herbalists and natural healers mixed adders and calamus roots with vodka. In Brazil, snakes are steeped in cachaça (fermented sugar cane juice) and sold in the markets for religious purposes and as a cure for impotence, insect bites and rheumatism. And, in 2008, Texan authorities confiscated 411 bottles of vodka that contained baby rattlesnakes and arrested the man who was selling them because he didn’t have a liquor licence.

While alcoholic medicaments containing snakes have been used in different contexts across continents for centuries, the practice is now most common in Asia, in particular Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. When you walk along the streets or through the markets in Vietnam, it isn’t unusual to find row upon row of bottled snake wine (known locally as ruou ran). Roadside stalls and age-old markets high up in the mountains, traditional pharmacies and modern chemists all sell bottles of snake wine. So do gift shops, bars, cafés, hotels and other outlets geared to tourists. The drink, which is based on traditional medicine, is made by placing a snake into a bottle and pouring in rice wine (although reportedly ethanol and vinegar are sometimes used, and even rubbing alcohol and formaldehyde, which pose serious health risks). Scorpions, geckos, centipedes and various herbs, such as ginseng, are often added for good measure.

Snake wine is variously touted as a cure for rheumatism, arthritis, lumbago, leprosy, excessive sweating, hair loss, dry skin, far-sightedness, exhaustion, flu, fever, pain and migraines, and as a general all-round tonic. Because snakes symbolise ‘heat’ and masculinity in Vietnamese culture, and are often associated with male potency, snake wine is also very popular and much coveted as a reputedly powerful aphrodisiac.

A snake inside a bottle of rice wine for sale in Vietnam. Ginseng has also been added. Image: Shutterstock/TalyaAL

Traditional medicine has often used animals – or animal parts and products – as cures for various ailments, and reptiles are among the most popular sources of ingredients. Throughout the world, at least 284 reptile species are used in traditional folk medicine, and of these, 182 are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, an indication that they are threatened with extinction.

Medicines extracted from local flora and fauna are often the only available remedies for many people who don’t have access to modern drugs and medical care. And it’s true that many traditional medicines have been shown to work well and that important modern drugs have been developed from them.

Snake venoms have been a particularly valuable medical resource, providing compounds for clinical trials and the development of diagnostic tools, as well as drugs used to treat hypertension, strokes, heart attacks and deep vein thrombosis, among others. In fact, millions of people have benefited, and billions of dollars have been made, from medicines arising from research into snake venom alone. In the USA, the FDA approved drugs Captopril, Integrilin and Aggrastat, used to treat heart conditions, are based on snake venom. This doesn’t mean they actually contain venom, but rather a synthesised organic molecule that mimics their behaviour. Captopril is based on an ingredient of the venom of the Brazilian viper; Integrilin is derived from a protein found in the venom of the southeastern pygmy rattlesnake; and Aggrastat is based on the venom of the African saw-scaled viper. The useful proteins in these venoms act as anticoagulants, naturally preventing platelets from sticking together. In addition to these approved drugs, many other snake venom components are now involved in preclinical or clinical trials for a variety of therapeutic applications.

When it comes to more traditional medicine, some Chinese snake oil, made from water snakes that consume fish, is rich in a key omega-3 fatty acid, and so could theoretically have some anti-inflammatory efficacy, either taken orally or applied as a liniment, according to an analysis reported in 1989 by nutrition-oriented physician Richard Kunin. Furthermore, at Japan’s National Food Research Institute, a team of scientists led by Nobuya Shirai fed oil from the black-banded sea krait to mice and found that it promoted swimming endurance in the animals, whereas lard or even fish oil didn’t. But to conclude from such research that there’s value in humans drinking alcohol that contains snakes is surely a leap too far. Like the snake oil hawked by salesmen in the American Wild West as a cure for every ailment, it isn’t likely to live up to the marketing hype.

The traditional assumption is that the value of snake wine as a remedy flows from the essence of the snake and its venomous potency. But venom, which is made up predominantly of proteins, is denatured (loses its characteristic structure and is therefore deactivated) in the presence of alcohol, which disrupts certain hydrogen bonds. What’s more, in many cases, the snakes sold as highly venomous cobras are actually non-lethal common keelbacks that have been stretched out of shape to resemble cobras.

Cobras are commonly used in snake wine, but often they are replaced with non-venomous keelbacks that have been stretched to imitate a cobra’s hood. Image: Shutterstock/Rich Carey

A study on the role of snake-derived remedies in Brazil points out that there is no way to tell how many of these exploited animals are wild-caught, what their conservation status is in each case, who uses the products, where exactly the animals are coming from and whether the animal-derived remedies can be replaced with plant-based ones (without then putting plant species and their environments at risk).

Conservationists such as Alice C Hughes, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believe that a similar situation occurs in Vietnam. As Hughes points out, while the snakes used in Asian snake wine come from both wild populations and snake farms, ‘no official statistics exist on the species identification or numbers involved. Nor have any long-term studies been done on the effect the trade is having on the population dynamics of the various snake species in Vietnam.’ One short-term study, however, conducted by husband and wife team Ruchira and Nilusha Somaweera in 2009, suggested that the snake-wine trade, combined with a growing local population and an increase in tourism, may ultimately make it difficult to maintain viable snake populations. Hughes further suggests ‘that this is especially true as the trade is almost entirely unregulated; making the impacts impossible to gauge, moderate or control.’

That may become economically important, since some reports suggest that the rise in rat numbers and their subsequent destruction of rice crops (Vietnam is the world’s second-largest exporter of rice) could, in part, be due to the poaching and trafficking of snakes. As Gordon Burghardt, a herpetologist and past president of the Animal Behavior Society, suggests: ‘While clearly more research is needed on the role of snakes in controlling rodent populations in agricultural areas, it is likely that they are an important part of a suite of predators.’ In Vietnam, where rice is king, maintaining viable snake populations might just help to save millions of kilos of rice and an untold number of livelihoods.

In July 2020, Vietnam tightened controls against the illegal wildlife trade to reduce the risk of future pandemics. While numerous conservation organisations and media outlets welcomed the new directive, it doesn’t ban wildlife trade or consumption, nor will it stop the export, manufacturing, sale or consumption of snake wine. In response, non-governmental groups are taking matters into their own hands. Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV) recently released ‘Safer with Science’, a video that calls on the Vietnamese public and government to end the trade and consumption of wildlife in Vietnam. ENV is also encouraging traditional Chinese medicine shops to forego animal-based products in favour of plant-based alternatives in order to move toward a future that chooses modern medicine over wildlife products.

While one study on mice did suggest that oil from the black-banded sea krait (shown here swimming in Indonesian waters) could improve endurance, the results have little bearing on the health benefits of consuming snake wine. Image: Shutterstock/underworld

How much of the market depends on local communication and traditional users as opposed to export and tourist thrillseeking isn’t known, but many of the bottles for sale in Vietnam have English-language labels and the product is easily available for sale online. As the Somaweeras observed concerning snake wine: ‘Although the tradition has existed for centuries in Asia, the trade is presumed to have grown at a startling rate since Southeast Asia opened its doors to the West and tourism has bloomed.’

In 2011, an article in the Daily Mail claimed that in Vietnam, many of the wines, infused with the remains of ‘even endangered species included in the distilling process’ supply both a ‘tasty tipple’ and a ‘health tonic’. Many guidebooks and travel sites suggest that snake wine drinking and/or purchasing is one of the ‘must do’ experiences while visiting Vietnam. They appear to promote the practice as a chance to show off one’s bravado, a way to get in touch with the real Vietnamese culture and generate an exotic story with which to impress listeners back home. Unfortunately, the same articles and websites don’t usually explain that many Vietnamese are trying to halt the eating of wildlife, that the preparation of snake wine sometimes involves extreme cruelty and that the killing of endangered species for thrills should never be encouraged. As Nguyen Tam Thanh, the animal welfare department manager for AnimalsAsia, points out, ‘Many tourists come to Vietnam and think that this kind of activity is part of Vietnamese culture. It is not part of modern Vietnam. In fact, it’s largely a marketing strategy by the tourist business and should not be encouraged.’

In May this year, a once-in-17- year event began. All along the US east coast and throughout the Midwest, trillions of cicadas emerged and began to emit a deafening mating song. Known as ‘Brood X’, they are the largest of many generations of these periodical insects, which live for around four to six weeks above ground after spending 17 years in a subterranean burrow.

For some, the burst of life presented an opportunity for culinary experimentation. Cicada-based recipes have been circulating online, prompting a swathe of media attention regarding the prospect of using insects to transform the global food system. Plant-based foods have so far dominated the quest for meat alternatives, but in recent years there have been promising signs for the growth of the insect-based food market. (We wrote about insects as a food source in the February 2020 issue of Geographical.) Cricket-based snacks can now be purchased in Britain, mealworm burgers in Germany and supermarket-branded cricket powder in Canada. Dieticians say such critters are high in protein, antioxidants and trace elements including copper, iron, magnesium and zinc.

Research by the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) estimates that nine million people in the EU ate insect products in 2019 – just two per cent of the population. But by 2030, it estimates that the annual figure will grow to 390 million consumers.

The research notes that Western consumers have now reached a level of awareness about the environmental impact of our food system that could prompt a definite change in diet. Animal feed production is competing for landscapes and resources. One-quarter of the earth’s land surface is used as pastureland; and beef accounts for one-third of the global water footprint of farm animal production. As global poverty is alleviated, the World Resources Institute predict that demand for animal-based food across the world will rise by 80 per cent by 2050; beef, specifically by 95 per cent. Even after accounting for improvements in beef production efficiency, pastureland will have to expand by 400 million hectares, an area the size of India, to meet projected growth in demand.

‘Insect-based foods perform better when it comes to almost every problem identified with the current food system,’ says Wayne State University’s Julie Lesnik, one of the world’s leading academics on entomophagy – the practice of eating insects. The World Resources Institute estimates that chickens, which are the most efficient livestock for converting feed into protein, require nine calories of soy, oats or corn for a one calorie return. ‘With crickets, it’s not one to one, but it’s darn close. We get almost all of the energy we put into them back as nutrients and proteins.’ Up to 80 per cent of insect mass typically produced as foods is edible, versus 55 per cent for chicken and pigs, and 40 per cent for beef. ‘What’s more, the land used for rearing insects is markedly smaller. You don’t need large concentrated feeding operations – crickets are generally farmed in Rubbermaid containers that can be stacked vertically,’ says Lesnik. While minimising space in this way is often deemed cruel to livestock, it presents less of a problem for insects.

‘Insects overcome some of the ethical problems with protein production as they love the cramped conditions that many have campaigned against with livestock,’ adds Deborah Landau, a conservation ecologist at the Nature Conservancy.

Another reason that IPIFF thinks that the industry will experience huge growth is that regulatory hurdles have recently been axed in the EU. Until 2018, insects weren’t considered foodstuffs and weren’t covered by EU regulations. That changed with the EU’s Novel Food Directive, which now allows makers of insect-based foodstuffs to commercialise their products across the EU. Around 290 start-ups now produce a diverse range of insect-based foods. The news isn’t so good in the UK. The EU’s regulation has been retained in UK law but transitional measures haven’t, leaving insect producers in legal limbo and calling for a clearer position.

The elephant in the room, however, is that most Westerners still perceive insects with disgust. Two billion people worldwide, in 80 per cent of the world’s countries, already eat a selection of 2,000 insects, but Lesnik believes that Westerners still associate their consumption with poverty and disease – wrongly. ‘There’s a view that either a country’s population has outstripped resources, or poverty is so high that other foods aren’t an option,’ she says. ‘But in reality, neither population density, the amount of viable land, or a country’s GDP correlate with their insect consumption.’ A 2017 study conducted by Lesnik shows that only latitude correlates with insect consumption: tropical countries have a broader range of edible insects.

Fried insects street food is common in Thailand. In fact, 80 per cent of the world's countries already eat a selection of 2,000 edible insects. Image: Shutterstock/SACHACHATZ

But it’s not all about humans. Even if consumers shun insects, they could prove transformative for animal feed. A fifth of the world’s fish catch currently goes towards livestock feed, contributing to overfishing. Soya production for animal feed drives huge amounts of deforestation each year. Incorporating insects into animal feed is seen as a potential solution. According to Mordor Intelligence, the US market for insects as animal feed was valued at US$687.8 million in 2018. That year, the FDA approved the use of insects in poultry feed and the sector has been growing rapidly since: it’s estimated to reach a value of US$1.4 billion by 2024.

Brood X may have gone largely uneaten in the USA this year, but whether it’s through animal feed, or through direct consumption, insects are already weighing in on the global food system. Many believe that it’s only a matter of time before we see insects on the menu.

Yet interest in hosting this global event has become increasingly lukewarm. With city halls losing interest in the ‘honour’ of hosting future Olympics, bidding processes are increasingly failing to attract the high-profile names that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would wish for, with some cities very publicly withdrawing their bids. The IOC’s decision to assign both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games to Paris and Los Angeles respectively as early as 2017 was widely accepted to be a reaction to these withdrawals; by locking in a decade’s worth of events, the IOC could at least postpone the possibility of the unthinkable: that nobody would volunteer to host the Olympic Games.

It’s a long way from 2005 and the tense, dramatic day that saw London narrowly defeat Paris, Madrid, New York and Moscow to host the 2012 Games, amid scenes of jubilation. Why have many of the world’s cities turned against the Olympics? Beyond the logistical headaches caused by Covid-19, what obstacles does the event need to overcome and how might this be achieved?

Athens, Greece, 31 October 2017. The Olympic flame is handed to organisers of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics during a ceremony in the Panathenaic Stadium

BUSTING BUDGETS

The headline financial figures for recent Olympics make for sober reading. University of Oxford researchers calculated the cost of Games held between 1960 and 2016. For the 19 events for which reliable data were available, every single Olympics in this period ran over budget (even when counting sports-related costs only and not including the construction of additional city infrastructure). The Summer Games ran over budget by an average of 213 per cent; the average overrun for the Winter Games was 142 per cent. 

‘I would say it’s a fairly recent phenomenon,’ says lead author Bent Flyvbjerg, chair of major programme management at Said Business School, University of Oxford. ‘If you go further back, there are Olympics that were so inexpensive – it was just a few million originally – that it wouldn’t have been a big deal, financially. And you still got a huge boost in terms of PR and attention around the world.’

Recent Olympics are certainly accelerating the high-cost trend. The 2012 Summer Games in London cost £9.3 billion (US$15 billion), an overrun of 76 per cent. Four years later, the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro cost US$13.7 billion, more than three-and-a-half times the sum initially budgeted. Between those events was the phenomenally expensive 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, with a final bill of US$21.9 billion. This made it by far the most expensive Olympics to ever take place, more than all the previous Winter Olympics put together (with the addition of infrastructure costs, the final bill has been estimated at more than US$50 billion). 

Flyvbjerg believes that there are six critical factors for why Olympic Games since 1960 have a 100 per cent failure rate at staying under budget. These include: the decision to host the Olympics is almost impossible to reverse, regardless of how much costs rise; there is no flexibility in the timetable – it must be completed at the scheduled time; there is no flexibility in the scale of the final product (with no room for say, shrinking the size of facilities to save money); the seven-to-ten-year timeframes in which these facilities are constructed are long enough that unpredictable events such as economic downturns are increasingly likely to occur; and almost every city approaches the challenge as a newcomer, with minimal past experience to draw upon for the vast logistical challenge that lies ahead.

However, Flyvbjerg believes that the most important reason is that the financial goals of the IOC and the respective host cities aren’t aligned, with the additional costs falling almost entirely upon the host city, meaning the IOC has no incentive to make hosting the Games less expensive. ‘You and I don’t get to go out and pick a house and have somebody else pay for it,’ he explains. ‘Here, the IOC and the athletics organisations are deciding what to build and what to do, and someone else is paying for the lion’s share of what it costs to do that. That is very atypical and very unhealthy.’

The IOC, of course, disputes this. When approached for comment, Christophe Dubi, IOC Olympic Games executive director, rejected the methodology and validity of data used by the Oxford study, arguing that it ‘takes a fundamentally flawed and inconsistent approach’. He was especially critical of the costs of sports infrastructure being included as part of the overall cost of hosting the Games, which he insists should instead be seen as a long-term investment in the city, not serving ‘only the four weeks of Olympic Games competition’. He also rejected criticisms of the IOC’s finances, pointing out that many national sports federations are dependent on IOC funding and on the Olympic Solidarity budget. He added that environmental and social requirements are ‘at the heart of what we do’. 

BUILD, BUILD, BUILD

Traditionally, one compelling reason for cities to bid for the Olympics was the opportunity to invest in new infrastructure. As well as shiny new stadiums and swimming pools, being an Olympic host is an excuse to spend large sums of money on new housing and commercial districts, roads and subways, and hotels and entertainment facilities. With a deadline to meet and the world watching, domestic delays can be swept aside and public purses more easily opened. As former London mayor Ken Livingstone said in 2008: ‘I didn’t bid for the Olympics because I wanted three weeks of sport. I bid for the Olympics because it’s the only way to get billions of pounds out of the government to develop the East End [where the Games were predominantly held], to clean the soil, put in the infrastructure and build the housing’.

‘The London Olympics were seen as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redevelop a whole area in one go,’ explains Stephen Essex, associate professor of geography at the University of Plymouth. ‘Without the Olympics, that probably wouldn’t have happened. You would have had a more piecemeal regeneration over a longer time period, which wouldn’t necessarily all connect up.’

Not all Olympic infrastructure is part of such visionary regeneration. There are monuments to wasteful Olympic spending scattered all over the world. Perhaps most famous from recent years are the crumbling, overgrown baseball stadium, dried-up canoe slalom and other decrepit facilities in Athens, although similar scenes have been documented in Sarajevo, Atlanta and Turin.

The Olympic rings are lit in Tokyo on 24 January 2020 in front of the Rainbow Bridge

‘I think there has been a realisation that the Olympics can be quite a wasteful project,’ says Essex. ‘Obviously, the built environment for the event itself is to accommodate large numbers of spectators and that isn’t necessarily what you need for a vibrant, mixed-use living community. So it’s about having a long-term vision, which enables you to fill in some of those gaps with new neighbourhoods and new housing.’

He compliments events such as the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, which created the Olympiapark München, a space that still functions as a large city park, with accompanying leisure facilities and an international football stadium. The flipside of this is the Olympic Park created for the 2000 Sydney Games. ‘There was all that investment in the transport infrastructure to the Olympic Park, but when I went there a few years ago, there wasn’t really anything to see,’ says Essex. ‘I think that’s slowly beginning to change. In more recent years, they’ve undertaken a lot more development: office-based industry, a university campus and housing.’

Of course, for every Sydney or Athens, where redevelopment came as an afterthought (if it came at all), there’s a Barcelona 1992, where radical regeneration was baked in from the beginning. ‘Barcelona had a plan,’ explains Flyvbjerg. ‘They deliberately decided it wasn’t about the Olympics; they were just using the Olympics as a starting point for a huge urban-renewal project that was going to take 20 years to do... and they did that.’ 

While Stephen Essex argues that this Barcelona narrative is something of a myth – that the city’s transformation was due to many other factors, such as Spain’s joining of the EU – the arrival of the Olympic Games certainly played a key role. ‘It changed the perception of Barcelona itself,’ he says, ‘from a grey industrial city that turned its back on the water, to one that’s a European capital of culture.’

FOLLOW THE MONEY

For many critics of the Olympic movement, this focus on infrastructure, whether in London, Barcelona or elsewhere, is itself a central problem with the Games. Displacement and gentrification are what this event is really about, they claim – just another way to push people out of their homes and create space for developers to move in. Livingstone’s claim that bidding for the Olympics wasn’t about sport at all now sounds like an admission that the entire enterprise was all about money.

‘If we think about the various attempts to open East London to real estate development, the Olympics was the only thing that was able to do it,’ says Christopher Gaffney, clinical associate professor at New York University. ‘It becomes this patriotic quest. Those who are pursuing it have these vested interests – and it tends to be real estate first, but then also security, tourism and all the other businesses that are part and parcel of the Olympic coalition.’ 

Gaffney argues that the entire Olympic movement is at heart a practice of financial extraction, that these mega-events enable wealth to be removed from host countries then taken ‘back to Switzerland and put in a piggy bank’, as he puts it. It’s the core argument of a rallying cry that has helped anti-Olympic organisers in cities around the world campaign against the hosting of the Games in their backyards, all paid for with their tax receipts. Communication between protesters in bidding (or potentially bidding) cities appears to be on the increase.

Barcelona is thought to have done very well out of its hosting of the games in 1992

‘I’ve been to Tokyo to talk to people about how to organise against the Olympics,’ says Gaffney. ‘In the same way that the Olympics are international, you also have people who are seeking out information from others about how they managed to overturn bids. Hamburg [at one stage bidding to host the 2024 Summer Games] was very successful because they brought in a lot of international people with experience to talk about it.’

One of Gaffney’s recent projects draws parallels between Rio de Janeiro, Olympic host city in 2016, and Puerto Rico, an island still dealing with the damage caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017. ‘A hurricane is an event you can plan for, more or less, but it’s a disaster; you don’t know when it’s coming,’ he says. ‘The Olympics are an intentional disaster. And they have similar outcomes. You have this state of emergency, so you have to rule by emergency decree – that’s true in both the hurricane and the Olympics. You have a lot of external contractors coming in. You have a lot of economic leakage from the regeneration money. You have to either destroy or rebuild infrastructure very quickly, so you then overbuild or misbuild. And there’s also a narrative of either preparation or recovery that dominates public consciousness for almost the same amount of time – seven years to recover from a hurricane, seven years to prepare for the Olympics. I think it makes sense to call the Olympics a planned disaster.’

POWER IMBALANCE

Any examination of how to ensure a positive future for the Olympic movement has to start with a look at the IOC itself. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, it’s the grand overseer of each and every Summer, Winter and Youth Games. While technically a not-for-profit organisation, it nevertheless makes considerable revenues, predominantly from selling broadcast rights, but also from various marketing opportunities and other revenue streams that emerge from Olympic events. Between 2013 and 2016 (a period that covers Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016), the IOC pocketed a handsome US$5.7 billion, according to the latest financial statement. It’s a substantial budget and immense power, within relatively few hands. 

‘Private companies don’t get to dominate a market 100 per cent like the Olympics do,’ says Flyvbjerg. ‘I consider the IOC a monopoly and I think it should be regulated as such. But because it’s an NGO, you can’t regulate it, according to what I’ve heard. I actually think that this is something to think about – that in a way, the IOC is hiding under the umbrella of being an NGO.’

The IOC reports that 90 per cent of its revenues were reinvested straight into funding future Olympic Games and assisting athlete development globally, with ten per cent retained for IOC operations. ‘It does give a lot of money to sports, which I’m sure is doing a lot of good,’ continues Flyvbjerg. ‘But still, it’s also a business, very much. And that part of its actions, I believe, should get more attention and possibly be regulated.’

At least prior to the past decade or so, being an Olympic host city has been a prestigious and desirable state of affairs. This gave the IOC considerable power and influence over cities that aspired to become hosts, with mayors and world leaders fighting to get its attention. ‘Until very recently, the power relationship has been almost all located with the IOC,’ explains Mark James, professor of sports law at Manchester Metropolitan University. ‘What it has been able to do then is effectively, as part of the host city contract, force the host nation to pass legislation on its behalf, covering a huge range of issues. So it’s quite a powerful position that the IOC is in, to effectively have law created on its behalf by the host nation.’ These laws cover everything from prohibiting guerrilla marketing and ticket touts to establishing various tax exemptions and special car lanes for athletes and Olympic officials. 

Yet this power hasn’t been leveraged as much as some would like. ‘The IOC very much goes out of its way to protect its commercial rights, but does very little in respect of anything else,’ continues James. ‘It claims within its fundamental principles of Olympism to have environmental and human rights standards as central to its agenda. Yet absolutely no environmental impact assessments are required when building the facilities.’ He highlights examples such as the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, where tens of thousands of trees were reportedly felled to enable the construction of a new ski slope, despite the opposition of local environmentalists. ‘The human rights issue is changing – they are making the hosts undertake human rights impact assessments – and it will start to kick in for Paris 2024,’ he adds. ‘But it means that they have been able to host it in China without pricking their conscience too much.’ 

Dubi of the IOC points out that all Olympic Games will be required to be ‘climate positive’ from 2030 and that the IOC is working on creating a human rights unit within the organisation.

GOLD MEDAL PERFORMANCE

In 2014, the IOC introduced a grand new vision entitled ‘Agenda 2020’. The slogan: ‘Change or be changed’. It contained a wide range of reforms, including new funding for various anti-doping schemes, introducing more opportunities for female athletes and launching a 24/7 TV channel, to keep broadcasting even when the Olympic flame has long since been extinguished.

Perhaps the most significant change, especially for anyone who remembers the dramatic moment in Singapore in 2005 when London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, has been the reform of the bidding process. Now, instead of pouring millions into glossy videos and competing to see who can wheel out the biggest celebrity, a slower, more measured system of invitations is being introduced, in the hope of producing cheaper, more flexible bids and events that leave a positive legacy. 

Known as the ‘New Norm’, the idea is that the IOC will establish a preferred bidding city early on, then work alongside the organisers as part of a joint steering committee to ensure that the Games fit into the long-term vision for the city. ‘So, rather than having a bunch of requirements imposed from above,’ explains Sven Daniel Wolfe, an urban and political geographer at the University of Lausanne, ‘you have more of a discussion, and co-designing, instead of having to invent every Games from the ground up, which is both wasteful and costly, and not terribly intelligent’.

The opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro

Paris 2024 and LA 2028 both hint at how these changes might manifest themselves on the ground. Both events will significantly use existing infrastructure, with multiple sports sharing the same venues. Paris reports that 95 per cent of its facilities already exist, or will be temporary. The IOC also highlights how one of the snowboarding facilities for Beijing 2022 will become a large mixed-use development of housing, offices and leisure facilities after the Games.

In the Agenda 2020 closing report, released earlier this year, the IOC reviewed its own performance with regard to its many goals and awarded itself an 88 per cent ‘achieved’ rating. In the report, Thomas Bach, IOC president, wrote: ‘With Olympic Agenda 2020, we have changed the Olympic Movement, leading it on a path of progress and making it fit for the future.’ 

‘The discourse coming through those documents is very much, “We changed how the Olympics are delivered, problem solved, job done”,’ says Wolfe. ‘And I don’t think that’s true. I think the IOC really did put forth a fair and decent rethink of how the Games are deployed and tried to change the relationship between the IOC and host cities, rather than imposing the Games under a very strict structure onto a host city. Fundamentally, the idea I think, is a good one. The question, of course, is will that actually result in any substantive changes for residents? I’ve not seen any positive changes yet. We might see fewer white elephant stadiums after the Olympics, but so far, we’re seeing the same marginalisation of oppressed groups.’

The group NOlympics LA, for example, continues to oppose the 2028 Games, combining its anti-gentrification campaign with criticism of Airbnb and support for the Black Lives Matter movement. It calls the Los Angeles bid undemocratic, claiming it will result in the militarisation and destruction of local communities, with significant tax dollars still required to upgrade existing facilities. 

‘I don’t think there’s any room within the hardware system of the Olympics for change,’ says Gaffney. ‘They’re trying to change the software, from time to time, but the updates are insufficient to change the damage that the system is organised to produce.’

A GOOD OLYMPICS?

Perhaps the current format is simply out of date. Perhaps the event should only return to cities with existing infrastructure, or be dispersed across more than one city, as we’ll see when the 2026 Winter Games is split between Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, 160 miles apart. In short, without the billion-dollar construction deals and social controversy, could there be a sport-focused ‘good Olympics’?

‘No, I don’t think it’s possible,’ says Gaffney. ‘That doesn’t make a lot of money for anybody. That goes against the fundamental business model: the extraction, the accumulation, the creative destruction, the new stadium constructors. They have this whole ecosystem of Games nomads who roam around the world via intercontinental flights, and all of that ecosystem would have to dissolve.’ He argues that, since most Olympic sports have individual world championships anyway, removing the grand symbolism of the ceremonies and other paraphernalia would eradicate any value in Olympic competition itself.

Sven Daniel Wolfe is less pessimistic. ‘A good Olympics to me would be something where that power of connection and national display, the spirit of togetherness, fellowship and peace, would be maintained.’ He proposes more of a cultural sharing event, separating the ‘host’ of the Olympics from the city where it’s geographically held, rotating between a set number of cities with the necessary facilities. An Olympics officially hosted by, for example, Malawi, but held in, say, Sydney. ‘It has potential to still hold some of the cultural power, but not destroy a country with new and unnecessary infrastructure,’ he argues.

The IOC continues to talk about change and reform, sustainability and credibility. Agenda 2020 has been followed by the recently adopted Agenda 2020+5, a new five-year platform focused on ‘solidarity’, ‘digitalisation’, and ‘resilience’ in a post-pandemic world. Wolfe isn’t convinced that such rhetoric is enough to result in the necessary transformation required to solve the IOC’s ongoing issues. ‘I think what we need to see is some really visionary thinking coming from Lausanne, and whether or not Thomas Bach and the rest of the executives there are capable of that is something that I’m not sure of.’

The IOC operates on long timeframes, so many reforms from Agenda 2020 have yet to show any substantial impact – and possibly won’t for years to come. Earlier this year, Brisbane, Australia, was named as the IOC’s preferred bidder for Summer 2032, ahead of rivals such as Doha and Budapest. It’s the first time the new collaborative bidding mechanism has truly been put to the test. The next decade will reveal to what extent this is an improvement on the past. 

‘I would say that I’m rather in the minority of critical mega-events research, in the sense that I actually am still, I think, naive enough to admit or believe in the fact that these are really fun events,’ continues Wolfe. ‘I cry at opening ceremonies and I think there’s a huge emotive power in that national–international context. I think that it has the potential to be a beautiful coming together of different nations under the banner of peace, just like they say in the propaganda. I hope this is the beginning of substantial improvements, but I need to see more evidence before I start getting my hopes up because, unfortunately, the power of greed is such that maybe as soon as things go back to normal, we’ll go back to those grand entrances on the world stage for a middle-income country that’s going to spend three years worth of GDP on infrastructure that will never get used. My hope is that we never see that again.’

There are more than 100,000 Iranians in the greater Vancouver area, with most of them concentrated on the city’s North Shore. This city, with its proximity to the mountains, sea and lush greenery, first become a magnet for Iranians during the 1980s. It reminded them of both the sought-after neighbourhood of Evin in North Tehran and the resort area near the Caspian Sea.

A small Persian community existed in Vancouver as early as the 1950s, with a post-revolution influx in 1979, but it has really only been since the late 1980s that Iranians have settled here in significant numbers, many of them fleeing post-revolution economic hardship and restrictions on personal freedoms. Today, while not as populous as LA’s Tehrangeles neighbourhoods, post 9/11 and Trumpian restrictions on emigration have seen Vancouver become increasingly popular as a milder climate, West Coast alternative to the East.

In fact, a ten-block strip of an area called Lonsdale, in North Vancouver, feels a bit like a portal into Tehran. Once home to Glaswegians, who arrived during the mid-century to work in the ship-building industry, the area is full of Farsi signage and a plethora of Persian shops, cafés and restaurants.

Eateries with names such as Zeitoun (olive), Yaas, Casbah and Rumi House offer mouth-watering kebabs and Persian delicacies such as cherry beef and fesenjoon (chicken with walnut sauce) beckon hungry shoppers.

A fast-food stand with the bilingual name Grab and Go/Begirobaba feeds those in a hurry. Persian grocers sell food imported from the motherland, from crushed pomegranate seeds to thick yoghurts, cherry juice and pistachios, while speciality butchers and bakers provide fresh meat and sweets. Within three city blocks, the epicentre of Vancouver’s Iranian scene, there’s everything one needs to create a New World Persian feast.

The 18-foot-high Heech in a Cage, installed in the courtyard of a new residential tower in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. Image: John Gordon

‘I get more sabohers than “good mornings”,’ says Alex Morabi, who runs a dollar store on the strip. ‘I’ve been here for 17 years and the numbers just keep growing. We feel this is like a home away from home.’ It’s not just the lure of the mountains, the sea and the greenery, which recall the Caspian Sea or northern Tehran, he says, but also a sense of security.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Renowned Iranian architect and Bahá’í, 79-year-old Hossein Amanat, known for his design of Tehran’s iconic Shahyad Tower (renamed ‘Azadi’ in 1979), has made his home here since 1980. Many prominent members of Iran’s government have also sought refuge here, or have at least bought up houses in the area’s heated real estate market. Such residences offer safe escape options should things go south politically, as they are apt to do in Iran.

Far from his native Tehran in bucolic West Vancouver, Parviz Tanavoli, the 84-year-old ‘father of modern Iranian sculpture’, contemplates the fate of his homeland. ‘My heart breaks when I see what is happening in Iran now,’ says the renowned artist, who divides his time between a life of relative obscurity on Canada’s Pacific coast, and Tehran, where he’s referred to simply as ‘Master Tanavoli’. His career has spanned the fall of empires and the dawn of revolutions, patronage by Empress Farah Diba, and the mentoring of hundreds of students, as well as decades of journeys between the Middle East and the West. ‘But this is the worst time I remember,’ he relates, ‘worse than the eight-year war with Iraq.’

Iran has been devastated, he says, by the twin terrors of Covid-19 and Western sanctions, combined with the dramatic decline in the price of oil. ‘People have lost their jobs,’ he explains. ‘They have no work, no income, and the US sanctions [reimposed by Donald Trump and not yet lifted by Joe Biden] make it worse.’ The government, he says, crippled by endemic corruption, simply doesn’t have the resources to help its citizens.

But as the Iranian people are once again caught in the crossfire of realpolitik and still beleaguered by the pandemic, Tanavoli has found a unique way to assist them through his artwork. Impressed by the stoicism of Iranian health care workers in the face of adversity and moved by the plight of hospitals that lacked equipment to fight the coronavirus, last year Tanavoli designed a limited-edition series of medallions, measuring just over two inches by two inches, in silver and bronze. A way to draw attention to both the sanctions-plagued public healthcare system, which was once robust but has ‘suffered from two years of the worst sanctions under Trump’, and Iranian culture, the medallions sold out in less than a week. Snapped up primarily by members of the Iranian diaspora, they raised more than US$90,000 for medical aid in Iran.

The North Shore skyline. Image: SHUTTERSTOCK/Paul Clarke

Tanavoli, one of the pioneers of Iran’s mid-century neotraditional Saqqakhaneh art movement, which fuses folkloric tradition with contemporary idioms, and famous for his emblematic work around the concept of heech – or ‘nothingness’ – has also left his mark in his adopted homeland. In 2005, his Heech in a Cage became a symbol of protest against the incarceration of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. In 2016, a 15-foot version in steel was installed at the entrance to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Last spring, an even larger version, at 18 feet high, was installed in the plaza of a new residential tower in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. Commissioned by the prominent Iranian Malekyazdi family, once the biggest developers in Iran but who now run the Millennium Development company in Vancouver, this sculpture is now part of the city of Burnaby’s permanent art collection. Not without some irony, considering its name, its unveiling was delayed by the pandemic. It stands alone now in an empty plaza, contemplating beingness and nothingness in a fusion of Sufism and Sartre.

For Tanavoli, whose work has been exhibited at Tate Modern and the British Museum, his anonymity in Vancouver provides a happy balance with the intensity of his life in Tehran. ‘I have a good studio in Tehran,’ he recounts, ‘with many assistants – which I don’t have here. But the peace I have here is impossible in Iran, where life is exciting but turbulent.’

In fact, Master Tanavoli, after having his home in Tehran ransacked and his art stolen under the rule of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and being detained by Iranian authorities during a 2016 visit due to a dispute over the sale of one his sculptures, was subsequently honoured in the summer of 2017, after the election of Hassan Rouhani, with an exhibition of his work at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. At age 84, it’s easy to see why he might prefer the relative calm of his home by the sea, an updated classic by Vancouver’s renowned architect Arthur Erickson.

I experienced this turbulence for myself during a visit to Iran in 1997 to attend the Fajr Film Festival, where, thanks to genes inherited from my Syrian Christian great-grandparents, who fled Ottoman-era oppression for Canada in 1906, I passed for an Iranian. This proved advantageous when it came to getting invited for tea by ladies I met while swimming at a pool in Evin, but not so great when it came to casual flouting of strict Rafsanjani-era hijab regulations. When I was invited for dinner by the head of the Tehran Cinematheque, he asked me to babysit his children at the entrance of the local supermarket while he went to buy some rice and vegetables. As they played contentedly on one of the coin-operated horse rides, a grandmotherly type took it upon herself to come over and scold me. Even with my limited Farsi, her wagging finger and accusatory pointing at the hair slipping out from under my headscarf and then at the children playing on the horses, spoke volumes. I wasn’t only immodest but also a bad mother! I could only reply with a shoulder shrug, a hand to my heart and the words ‘Canada, Canada!’ repeated like some salvatory mantra, until she backed off, shaking her head in disdain.

Parviz Tanavoli stands in front of his painting of heech in his West Vancouver studio. Image: Hadani Ditmars

IRANIAN EXILES
The Iranian-born diaspora has formed significant communities all around the world, from Lahore to Paris and Los Angeles to Vancouver. According to the Stanford Iran 2040 project, an academic initiative that conducts research on issues related to the future of the Iranian economy, data indicate that the total number of Iranian-born emigrants increased from about half a million people prior to the 1979 revolution (which resulted in the toppling of the monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic republic) to 3.1 million in 2019, corresponding to 1.3 per cent and 3.8 per cent of the country’s population respectively. The project, which is also looking at the subsequent brain drain from Iran, notes that there are 130,000 Iranian-born students enrolled in foreign universities and around 110,000 scholars of Iranian descent affiliated with universities and research institutes outside of the country. In rough terms, this figure corresponds to a third of Iran’s total human resources in research as measured by headcount.

Back then, it was something of a relief to return home to the laissez-faire West Coast. But soon, the freedom of being able to expose one’s mane of hair and fleshy bits in public was undermined by the total indifference of passersby and the unsmiling patrons at Starbucks who refused to share communal newspapers, guarding them as if they were state secrets. After a week of this, I almost felt nostalgic for the religious police (then called pasdaran, now called the ‘guidance patrol’) who at the very least actually cared about what I wore and where I went.

In reality, however, it wasn’t the morality squads I longed for, but the indomitable Persian spirit and culture that defied all kinds of odds. Back in the antiseptic safety of Vancouver, I remembered all the ways in which Iran was good. In spite of the excesses of its regime, the people I’d met were kindhearted, generous and fun loving. Even the bearded heavies at the Fajr festival who hassled me about my clumsy hijab had taken it upon themselves to present me with a birthday cake lit with candles. Since it was okay for men to sing in public, they had even enthusiastically, and rather surreally, sung happy birthday to me.

Luckily, that was when I discovered a brave new Persian world in Vancouver. With childhood memories of bullying and racist slurs at the hands of pale, freckle-faced field hockey players at my elementary school (mainly monochromatic during the 1970s) still haunting me, I decided one day to go for a walk on the West Vancouver sea wall. Amazingly, instead of little old ladies in Burberry scowling disapprovingly, I was met with friendly salams by gorgeous young Iranians. Talk about a sea change.

THE NORTH SHORE
Home to North Vancouver and West Vancouver, the North Shore stretches about 30 kilometres from Horseshoe Bay at the far end of West Vancouver to Deep Cove at the eastern edge of North Vancouver. Separated from the City of Vancouver by the Burrard Inlet, it was once a place apart, before the construction of the original Second Narrows Bridge in 1925 linked the two landmasses. Based at the foot of the North Shore Mountains (which have a highest point of 1,788 metres), the region is home to several ski hills and significant mountain biking and hiking trails. The southernmost peaks – Black, Strachan, Hollyburn, Grouse, Fromme and Seymour mountains – are visible from most areas in Vancouver and form its distinctive backdrop. North Shore neighbourhoods have gradually crept up these steep mountains, but the wilderness still remains and black bears and cougars prowl the perimeters of habitation.

SCULPTURE AND MUSIC

Today, Iranians are part of the civic fabric, although Vancouver is certainly not immune to Iranian political fallout. One of the biggest political thorns in Canada’s side resulted from the 2018 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei, in Vancouver, at the request of US authorities, for allegedly violating US sanctions against Iran. Her arrest has led to the direct tit-for-tat imprisonment of two Canadian nationals in China.

And of course, ongoing sanctions and political turmoil continue to affect the lives of many in Vancouver’s Iranian community. There are still protests and vigils concerning the downing by Revolutionary Guards of the passenger jet full of Iranian-Canadians in January 2020 as it took off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport – some five days after the US assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani – killing all 176 on board. Inevitably and poignantly, these protests happen in the same three-block nexus of Upper Lonsdale, where all of the restaurants and grocers serve up food that tastes like home.

But Iranian resilience is legendary, stemming largely from the richness of Persian culture. It’s not only visual artists who are enhancing the local scene. While LA is home to a still-thriving Iranian pop industry that churns out digital versions of once-forbidden cassettes, Vancouver has become a hub for Persian classical music. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, the late, great master of Persian classical singing and outspoken critic of the Iranian regime, whose melodious performances of poems by Hafez and Rumi filled theatres with enraptured fans for decades before his passing last year, had a house here, and his youngest son was born in Vancouver in 1997. Hossein Behroozinia, Iran’s most famous player of the barbat or Persian lute, set up a music school here called Nava Arts Centre, where Iranian and Canadian students can study traditional music, singing and even calligraphy. Amir Koushkani, who also teaches at the school, has composed works for the tar and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, bringing together East and West.

Visual representations of this confluence of cultures abound in the city. Consider the latest installation by young Iranian-Canadian sculptor Kambiz Sharif – who owns a local foundry where Tanavoli has cast many of his works – called Need. Commissioned for the 2020 Vancouver Biennale, the sculpture explores the theme of the immigrant experience and draws connections between different cultures. Weighing 1.2 tonnes and measuring five metres tall, the work is made of 48 cast pieces. Situated at a key downtown site, it sits across from a former First Nations village and in front of seminal Canadian architect Arthur Erickson’s Evergreen Building, a 1975 concrete office tower (and a sculpture in its own right), with cascading green ivy pouring over balconies. Sharif says his work is a ‘re-imaging [of] the untold and unknown desires of myself and other immigrants’. Need (on view until 2022) is the first public work in Vancouver for Sharif, who moved here in 2009.

Kambiz Sharif leans against his sculpture, Need, in front of Erickson’s Evergreen Building. Image: Javier Badillo

Need consists of a luminous globe with sharply angled tentacles reaching out for a sense of belonging, of connection, of home. Sharif chose bronze because, as he explains, ‘it is a hard object with a soft, mirror-like appearance that can – for a moment – register and then turn back into its environment. Anybody, depending on one’s point of view, may experience the reflection of self in their surrounding environment.’

That reflection of self in Vancouver’s environment is growing. Sharif’s wife, Shahrzad Khatami, is now the lead architect for the proposed new 12-storey Biennale Centre in the city’s Olympic Village, and last year, the Vancouver Biennale invited Iranian artist Mamali Shafahi to create a virtual reality work in Vancouver.

I thought about the meaning of Need the other day as I drove by it en route to an osteopathy appointment in Lonsdale, administered by a young Scottish-Canadian practitioner, in an office building owned by an Iranian family in which a Canadian flag fluttered across the street from a kebab shop.

Afterwards, I stopped at a nearby supermarket to buy a huge pot of mint. As I stood in the queue, I noticed the man behind me smiling and speaking to me in a familiar language – a mix of Farsi and Kurdish. In spite of social distancing protocols, he kept walking towards me, smiling and extending his hand. I almost wanted to shout ‘Canada, Canada!’ as I had that night so long ago in Tehran. But then I looked down at my post-treatment outfit: baggy white tunic and linen trousers, topped by a black beret and kefiyyah from Erbil. Who was I trying to kid? Even after I told him in English that I wasn’t Kurdish or Iranian, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally, I just gave up and surrendered to the moment. I put my hand to my heart and said, ‘Salam, my friend, salam’.

The year is 2035 and, with the final removal of all tariffs on Australian meat imports to the UK, the Jones family in Chester sits down to a Sunday roast of beef reared on Anna Creek Station in South Australia. With an area of 15,746 square kilometres it is more than half the size of Belgium (and that’s not taking into account the adjoining ranches owned by the same family). Just a few miles down the A55 in Wales, one of the few remaining Welsh family farms that rear sheep is preparing its highwelfare animals for processing into organic pies, sold at a premium price to a niche market.

Improbable? Follow the logic of the recent free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and Australia, and this could well be where the UK farming sector winds up. Many farmers fear that they’ve been thrown to the wolves in the eager pursuit of post-Brexit trade deals and that the agreement with Australia is just the start of a process that will see similar deals secured with New Zealand and the mighty meat exporters of the USA, Brazil and Argentina.

The outcome is uncertain. The negative view is that farming will wither on the vine. A more optimistic slant suggests that the FTA offers UK farming an unprecedented opportunity to not just export to the world, but to make nature-friendly farming widespread within the UK, to reverse decades of declines in bird and insect populations, and rejuvenate biodiversity more widely. What’s indisputable is that British farming faces its largest upheaval since the end of the Second World War.

TRADE WITH AUSTRALIA

The response of the UK farming sector to the FTA with Australia has been almost universally negative. Trade in meat between the two countries is currently small, with 0.15 per cent of all Australian beef exports going to the UK, to the value of £4.1 million. The deal allows it to grow significantly. The quota for Australian beef allowed into the UK market will rise from 35,000 tonnes to 110,000 tonnes a year and from 25,000 tonnes to 75,000 tonnes for sheep meat. In reality, this allows the Australian meat sector to export as much meat as it possibly can to the UK.

UK farmers fear that they won’t be able to compete on price with Australian livestock farmers. In particular, hill farmers in Wales, the north of England and Scotland would be unable to match the economies of scale applied in Australia, where eight of the world’s ten largest farms are located. Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), described the advantages given to Australia as ‘incredibly significant’ and warned the government not to undermine British farming.

‘A lot of our overheads are down to our long winters and having to feed cattle indoors,’ says Wyn Evans, who farms 89 hectares of upland with 400 breeding ewes and 80 cattle near Aberystwyth. ‘Much is made of Australia’s problems with extreme climate, but a good deal of it is extremely favourable. They can keep their cattle out all year. We can grow grass, but it’s expensive and our farm sizes are so much smaller.’

Another concern for British farmers is that vast land holdings aren’t the only advantage for their Australian counterparts. The RSPCA highlights the fact that Australian pigs are kept in confined sow stalls, which are banned in the UK; sheep are subjected to mulesing, a painful procedure that’s illegal in the UK in which folds of skin and flesh are cut off without anaesthetic to prevent flystrike; and farmers use hormone growth promoters, pesticides and feed additives that are banned in the UK. Similar methods are used in other countries that expect to reach equivalent deals with the UK.

Standards for animal welfare vary significantly around the world, as this map demonstrates via a selection of countries that are also some of the largest meat exporters. As is evident, practices that violate widely accepted international standards on animal welfare are used, or at least not deemed illegal, in numerous countries. These practices include barren battery cages, sow stalls, hormone-fed beef, hot branding and mulesing. The UK has some of the highest welfare standards in the world, while Australia is among the least prohibitive. The data used here were assembled by the RSPCA.

The deal has also attracted the ire of the Soil Association, which is no fan of British intensive farming but fears that the FTA could heap more pressure on wildlife-friendly systems by prompting farmers to simply sell up. ‘The risk is that some farmers will simply go out of business as they won’t be able to compete,’ says Rob Percival, the Soil Association’s head of policy. 

A similar worry is expressed by Martin Lines of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, who adds that ‘there’s a concern that free trade could deliver lower standards and prices and UK farmers are forced to follow that.’

When imports are sourced through equivalent standards, they should be welcomed, suggests Lines, but he questions whether this would be the case. ‘If a product made overseas is cheaper and comes with a lighter carbon footprint and is made to the same or higher standards than ours, then I haven’t got a problem,’ he says. ‘But if the cheaper price is achieved by lower standards and damage to biodiversity, then you can’t defend that.’

For others, a brutal political reality lies behind the FTA. ‘Trade agreements always have winners and losers,’ says Sean Rickard, former chief economist at the NFU. ‘The losses in this deal are laid squarely on agriculture. The government views the UK’s strengths to lie in IT, electronics and other sectors. Agriculture has been sacrificed because the government deems it worth less than other parts of the economy. The significance won’t be seen instantly, but within ten to 15 years, this will lead to a slimmed-down UK farming sector. There just won’t be as many farmers.’

Space is an advantage for Australian farmers, as this ranch in South Australia demonstrates. Image: Australian Camera

As well as economic consequences for UK farmers, there’s the spectre of social shifts, which run deeper than food production alone. Some fear that the FTA may rip the heart and soul from an industry based upon a tradition of family farms. ‘Most people, especially those who aren’t so well off, will buy the cheapest meat,’ says Evans, who is also livestock board chairman at NFU-Cymru. ‘This will undermine our domestic production. It’s not only a threat to farmers and individuals but to the culture and language of Wales. The family farms of Wales are the base of our culture. If we lose our young people – if they go elsewhere – then you lose that deep connection we have here to the land. That goes back 200 years or more, it verges on a tribal feeling.’

PUBLIC MONEY FOR PUBLIC GOOD

But perhaps with change also comes opportunity. While being exposed to the harsh winds of free trade, UK farming is also adjusting to a post-Brexit world in which subsidies based on production and size of land holdings (as per the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP) are being replaced by the concept of ‘public money for public good’. While yet to be clarified, the idea is that state payments will incentivise farmers to farm in ways that secure better air and water quality, higher standards of welfare for animals and implement measures to curb flooding.

It sounds laudable, but Percival from the Soil Association admits that he finds it difficult to reconcile the FTA with the government’s talk of addressing the climate crisis and nature. ‘The government had been making all the right noises about wildlife and farming, but the “Green Brexit” talk has been undercut by this,’ he says.

Evans, the Aberystwyth farmer, is even more blunt: ‘In this new green world we’re supposed to be living in, I don’t see how we’re environmentally friendly if we send food to the other side of the world when we could sell it here or into Europe.’

Like many environmentalists, Percival does welcome the UK’s departure from the CAP. ‘The principle of public money for public good is sound; payment for environmental outcomes is a very good thing,’ he says. Yet he suggests that the UK government remains torn between trade and the environment. ‘There is a clear understanding of the nuances of farming in more naturefriendly ways, but there’s an ideological split [in the government] and it seems the free-trade camp has won for now. If Brexit is based on an ideology of opening up Britain to the world, then it drives you to a place where you sign deals like the one with Australia. There’s been a trend towards intensification in [farming] pigs and chickens in this country and, to a lesser extent, dairy and these FTAs will move us even more in that direction.’

THE WHOLE FARM CONCEPT

Proponents of the concept of ‘public money for public good’ believe that the approach will only work if farmers embrace a whole-farm approach. There’s little point, they argue, in farming in a more nature-friendly way in one field and running along traditional lines in the next. Martin Lines’s farm in south Cambridgeshire may offer a template. Lines has introduced 300 sheep and has plans to establish cattle in the coming years across his holdings of 540 hectares. They will graze around newly planted trees and, in the autumn, eat cover crops such as vetches (which are excellent at fixing, or incorporating, nitrogen into soil), sunflowers and mustard. The vision is of regenerative agriculture. ‘Farming with nature is more profitable; nature gives you free goods,’ says Lines. ‘The cover crops provide nutrients for the soil and do the work of a tiller, so I don’t need to turn the soil over. The livestock are providing the fertiliser from their backsides; the greater insect life includes predatory insects that eat the pests, so I save money on fertilisers and pesticides, and we also get more birdlife. You have to do this across the whole farm – you can’t just create little pockets for wildlife and stay the same in your other fields.’ In short, Lines believes that he will get more value and more production out of the same amount of land without being more intensive; his farm holdings will be more secure and less dependent on the safety net of subsidies.

Others believe that the concept of public money for public good can help boost a market for British food products that compete, if not on price, then on other metrics against global competitors. ‘There’s a great opportunity to farm in a way that shows our quality and welfare standards, and environmental protection,’ says Lines. ‘Welsh lamb can’t compete on the world market by itself, but lamb that’s produced with care and where the environment is enhanced – Welsh lamb burgers, or pies with Highland beef – can. A number of people will value Welsh lamb if it’s processed and promoted in a certain way.’

Evans, too, is alive to the fact that, as he puts it, ‘we do have that card up our sleeves’. Positively, he adds, ‘great improvements have been made in recent years, with more hedgerows planted and the widening of field boundaries. We can sell the story that our food is produced to the highest environmental standards and that it’s a class product.’

The Scottish-whisky model is what Evans and others have in mind. The biggest UK export sector bar none, Scottish whisky’s export values range from £3.8 billion to £5 billion a year. Yet as Evans points out, ‘the basic raw ingredients [barley or rye, water and yeast] don’t have a competitive global market value, but put them together into a product called whisky and you have something you can put a real price on. We need to do that, even if our products are more niche.’

A calf is branded on a farm in Oregon, USA, where the practice is legal. Image: Bob Pool

BEST OF BOTH

Is it really possible for British farming to become both more productive and more nature friendly? Percival says that some land can be farmed more usefully and still be relatively intensive, yet better for nature. He points to the 50 per cent of arable land used to grow animal feed, such as that for chicken, as counter-productive. ‘It’s not about being more intensive, but using our land more wisely,’ he says.

The Nature Friendly Farming Network’s Lines also believes that there’s a need to move away from a grain-fed system of farming. ‘We’re not using our landscapes to feed the nation,’ he says. ‘We need to move away from feed production [for livestock].’

Such a shift implies a need to eat less meat, but Lines emphasises that this doesn’t mean eradicating meat production altogether. Instead, he envisages a subtle shift in the locations where livestock is reared. Typically, but not universally, livestock is reared to the north and west of the Tees-Exe line. This imaginary demarcation between the River Tees in the north-east and the River Exe in Devon roughly separates upland Britain from the arable croplands of lowland Britain to the south and east. Under a more nature-friendly approach to farming, Lines sees sheep and cattle moving from the west and the north to the east, and being reared on land where animal feed was previously exclusively planted. ‘We may even see a small increase in the number of livestock,’ he says.

‘Science can deliver higher food production and better environmental standards; they aren’t mutually exclusive,’ Rickard insists. ‘We can get more production out of smaller areas of land and release other areas for growing trees.’ He points to more productive and sustainable farming methods such as low- or no-till farming. ‘They don’t disturb the soil, they increase nutrients in the soil, prevent erosion, prevent water loss and increase crop yields.’

Lines sees a world where farmers who reduce their carbon footprint, increase bird numbers, slow river flows and improve soil health become classified as farming in a net-zero fashion. He argues that they should be incentivised and rewarded by carbon-trading systems. In effect, Lines would sell his net carbon into a carbon ‘grid’, where businesses that can’t reduce their footprint can buy credits, in the way that the aviation, cement and steel sectors of industry currently do.

Not all farmers will be enticed by such a prelapsarian vision. Farmer Evans finds it difficult to see past the practicalities. ‘If a farmer gets paid to plant trees on his land, what do you think happens? That may be good for nature and he may get payments, but there’s pretty much nothing more to do for 40 years. The farmer’s son isn’t going to hang around – he’ll move elsewhere for a job that’s more enticing. We want an industry to hand over to the next generation. There are some cracking young people in farming and we can’t let them down.’

The issue that will most likely determine whether or not such a scenario unfolds is food affordability. Are more-ethically produced animal products truly marketable at scale in a cost-conscious world, or are they destined only to secure a foothold in a small niche market? ‘We need to communicate to our market the difference in our meat products compared to how they are produced elsewhere in the world,’ says Lines. ‘The supermarkets are looking for regenerative farming products – we know that the supply chain cares.’

Rickard believes that there’s a substantial potential international market for such an approach. ‘The number of middle-class people with an element of disposable income to spend on higher-quality food is projected to rise to more than four billion by 2030,’ he says. ‘They do look for quality in food – and variety.’

Not everyone is middle class, however, and not every middle-class person will be so minded. ‘We know a percentage of the population can’t afford quality food,’ admits Lines. Evans also feels that equitable access to good food is non-negotiable.

‘We have to emphasise our environmental credentials and I don’t have a problem with ideas that benefit the environment,’ he says. ‘We can target more affluent people, but we also need to be able to target the poorest parts of society. They should be able to afford and eat the best food, too.’

Percival is doubtful that the concept of credence attributes will be enough on its own to keep farmers working in a nature-friendly way. ‘Novel export opportunities will provide some farmers with a lifeline,’ he says, ‘but high-quality products remain fairly niche. Across the board, the food market is price driven.’

A more sympathetic way of farming needs to be aligned with wider societal changes according to Vicki Hird, head of sustainable farming at Sustain. ‘The question of affordability is a societal one,’ she says. ‘Many people are badly paid, on zero-hours contracts and are left with little choice but to eat poorly, so of course they’ll go for the 99p processed pie. It’s not about making food cheaper, it’s about making jobs more secure. Investing more in healthier eating and in people’s ability to pay for it saves money in the long term. It leads to better health outcomes, less pressure on the NHS.’ The status quo, Hird argues, is wrong-headed. ‘There needs to be a stronger culture of eating good food. At the moment, that culture is driven by the food industry’s desire to sell us marketable and profitable products, which means more junk, more sugars and oils.’ Meanwhile, she points out with frustration, organics are purposely pushed at the higher end of the market as more exclusive and aspirational.

Soya beans in a trailer, ready for export. Image: Fotokostic

SOYA ALTERNATIVES

The use of soya beans to feed livestock raises some tricky issues. Soya is heavily implicated in rainforest deforestation, so its importation to feed British livestock is often cited as one of the worst examples of environmentally harmful international trade. Yet if grown in the UK, soya is a monoculture that contributes to a lack of field diversity and takes up valuable space.

‘Soya is hard to beat nutritionally. And although it can be grown in the UK in certain areas, it’s unlikely to be in the volumes needed,’ says Jerry Alford, arable and soils advisor at the Soil Association. But there could be alternatives. Farmers have been working with the Organic Research Centre in a field trial run through Innovative Farmers. Rather than feeding livestock with soya, the trials explored the use of sprouting wheat and vetch seeds; saving grain tailings; and increasing the nutritional value of beans through heat treatment and dehulling. Toxins found in vetch seeds affect egg-laying frequency and size in chickens, but the trial found that this can be overcome by allowing the vetch seeds to germinate before feeding them to livestock.

‘As an organic producer, we already receive a premium for our pigs, but if we can produce them free of imported soya and using UK-grown rations, then we can add further value,’ says Sam Wade, an organic pig producer based in Gloucestershire.

SHIFTING MINDSETS

A cultural and educational shift needs to apply to farmers, too, argues Hird. ‘Over the past 50 years, farmers have been so encouraged to farm intensively that a lot of the institutional knowledge has gone when farmers have died. We need to build up that knowledge and understanding of the need to plant woodlands, shrubs, agro-forestry; of the principles of natural predator protection.’ This approach is more nuanced than the ‘either/or’ precepts implied by the FTA with Australia, she suggests. ‘The FTA suggests no middle ground – either farmers push for standards to be lowered here to match those overseas, or they turn their land into a nature reserve. Neither of those scenarios makes for a resilient farming industry.’

Rickard agrees that the practicalities on the ground are nuanced. ‘Every industry has its bad apples, but almost every farmer wants to farm in a way that benefits wildlife. They don’t say, “Give us the money or the blackbird gets it.” It doesn’t need to be so binary. We could be taking action to protect and promote the food and farming industry without in any way impeding the FTA. We can have environmental standards, produce high volumes of food and export. It’s not one or the other.’

However, Percival remains unsure whether this portrayal of farmers is entirely accurate. ‘Unless farmers are encouraged and the right payments are made, it won’t work,’ he asserts. ‘Payments need to cover a whole-farm approach – otherwise, some farmers may put one corner of their land aside but keep farming as normal on the remainder.’

Reducing food production at home to make farms more nature friendly could also have long-term global negative effects, as imports could come from water-stressed countries that are harming their own environment to feed the UK. ‘We can’t simply export our food footprint in the way we’ve done with other sectors,’ says Lines. ‘We buy jeans from Asia that involve huge pollution of rivers by textile chemicals – we can’t have the same approach with farming and import food products with lower standards from abroad just so that we can say that our own industry is environmentally more rigorous. What’s the point of banning caged hens in the UK if we end up importing eggs from countries that use cages?’

It’s a fascinating time for farming in the UK. As Percival says, ‘It’s all to play for.’ However, on balance, he’s optimistic. ‘Even though the Australia deal takes us off at an unlikely tangent, things change, politics changes. There’s a broad consensus that we have to reverse the degradation of soils and the loss of wildlife.’

Ultimately, Lines believes that farmers have to live with the physical and political landscapes they’re given. ‘We need to stop moaning and provide answers,’ he says. ‘Some businesses are just pushing back against change and expecting to be propped up – but if you aren’t delivering a profitable business, then you can’t ask people to prop you up. A system where we don’t need subsidies, where we lead change, has real opportunities.’

A sustainable-farming expert, Hird firmly believes that creative farmers will flourish, but she’s far from certain about the long-term outcome. ‘I do fear the government policy on international trade – it does make me nervous,’ she says. ‘Yet at the same time, I take heart from the number of innovative farmers who are looking at doing things differently.’

Farming has been at such a crossroads before, notes Evans. ‘This isn’t the first time that British farming has been thrown to the global market,’ he says, pointing to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which opened Britain to free trade for cereals. ‘It took farming 80 years to recover from that and the country was later caught out at the start of the Second World War as we had to import two thirds of our food. If we take our eye off the ball, we will leave ourselves vulnerable again. I don’t have an issue with free trade, but it has to be fair. We have to keep banging on the table and asking questions of government.

HOW TO MARKET WELSH MEAT

Since 2002, the Welsh Lamb and Welsh Beef brands have been protected with a PGI (Protected Geographical Indication). In addition, a dedicated body, Hybu Cig Cymru/Meat Promotion Wales, has been tasked with emphasising the distinctiveness of Welsh livestock produce. ‘Our farms and landscapes are not ranches – we don’t have that economy of scale – but that is the gem of the thing,’ says Gwyn Howells, chief executive of Hybu Cig Cymru. ‘We have hedgerows and trees, a wonderful landscape and animals reared within it. These are credentials that can resonate with consumers who are discerning.’

Hybu Cig Cymru is in the middle of a five-year programme that promotes the ethics of the supply chain and focuses on animal health, genetics and meat quality. Ideally, such an approach would be boosted with legislation that requires hotels, pubs and other hospitality operations to label the origin of the meat they sell. ‘The FTA means that cheap meat could be used across that sector,’ says Howells. ‘If you buy steak and chips for £10, you can guarantee that it’s from abroad. Having a requirement to say where it comes from, so you could say the meat is from Wales, would make a difference.’

Electronics form the world’s fastest growing domestic waste stream. Outdated phones, surplus consoles, disused devices – all face the death knell each time a flashier product lights up an advertising billboard.

In 2019, the world generated 54.6 million tonnes of ‘e-waste’; equivalent to 350 cruise ships, or 7.3 kilograms per person. However, just 17.4 per cent of it was formally collected and recycled. Since 2014, the amount of e-waste recycled has grown by 1.8 million tonnes – a relatively small amount, considering that the amount of e-waste generated increased by 9.2 million tonnes in the same period.

Usually, rich countries in Europe and North America export e-waste to landfill sites in developing countries in Africa and Asia. According to the Global e-Waste Monitor – an annual review of e-waste – reports that, if the metals were widely recoverable, ‘e-waste’ would be worth $62.5 billion per year. That figure doesn’t even include the prized lithium from electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

Recovering a greater fraction of that supply would alleviate the strain on virgin natural resources. Global reserves of some elements, such as platinum, are anticipated to be fully depleted within 15 years if the proportion of recycled stocks entering production doesn’t increase. Yet, demand for metals is rising; lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese most acutely, which are needed to produce EV batteries. As Geographical previously covered in the April 2020 edition, most of the world’s lithium sits under South America’s Atacama Desert, but human rights abuses are rife and local ecosystems suffer as new areas are explored and excavated. Recycling more of what’s already out there would reduce the environmental and humanitarian trade-offs of mining operations.

E-waste and EV batteries are currently recycled through processes called pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. However, they involve searing temperatures with a high energy demand and deep carbon footprint, and toxic chemicals, harmful to the environment. Alternatives are therefore being sought.

A copper mine in Rio Tinto, Spain. Extracting copper from e-waste could mean that there is less need to excavate new mines in future. Image: Denis Zhitnik

A team of scientists from the University of Coventry are scaling up one such alternative. They have been using non-toxic bacteria to oxidise and recover the precious metals – a process known as ‘bioleaching’. They’ve shown that copper is widely recoverable from discarded e-waste, and that all metals present in EV batteries can be recovered using microbes. ‘Most of the time we are using very common bacteria that have evolved to oxidise metals as part of their natural metabolism; rarer bacteria that oxidise things like silver, gold and platinum can be readily cultivated,’ says leader of the ‘Bioleaching Research Group’, Sebastien Farnaud. ‘We’re working with methods that have been on Earth for billions of years and mimicking them to solve a modern issue: that’s essentially what all biotech does.’

If scaled-up, bioleaching facilities would mean that manufacturers of EV batteries and other electronic goods would be able to recover metals locally, relying less on costly exports to recycling centres abroad. ‘They would be less reliant on expensive mining operations as well,’ Farnaud says. The group are now the first to collaborate with an industry partner, N2S, which has begun scaling up the technology and is already using bioleaching to extract metals from printed circuitboards.

‘Often, when an industrial innovation sparks from an academic partnership, the industry side sees it as an add-on to resolve a given problem, which then goes away,’ says Farnaud. ‘But the key here is that the whole electronics market needs to change.’ He adds that currently, a key limitation for e-waste recycling is the lack of certification detailing the types and amount of metals contained in electronic goods. But with a robust and efficient recycling process on the horizon, manufacturers have the incentive to use more recycled material in their products, which will change the very design of electronics goods. ‘It’s about closing the loop of a product’s life cycle.’

Ultimately, bioleaching technology is borne from the ideal of creating a truly circular process for the things that we consume. ‘We need to shift from a mindset and economy where we see waste as an end product, to one where there isn’t even a start or an end at all.’

Britain can be an uncanny place, and a clear definition of what life is like here often escapes us. Anyone pushed to characterise life in the country would likely do its vast, unrepeated glory an injustice. That is why photographer Jamie Hawkesworth set out with his camera, not with the intention of creating a portrait of Britain, but simply to explore it.

His new book The British Isles – published by MACK – is an archive of 13 years spent wandering around British towns, villages and remote islands. When making the work, Hawkesworth would amble along to his local train station, and simply pick a new place to venture to. ‘All I wanted to do,’ he says, ‘was to go to a place that I didn’t know about, and see what I came across. The spirit of the book is really to go out and explore the country.’

Image from The British Isles (MACK, 2021). Courtesy of the artist and MACK. Image: Jamie Hawkesworth

Principally an in-demand fashion photographer working for the likes of Vogue, Hawkesworth's long-form work in The British Isles has helped to hone his eye for people’s unique sense of character. While getting used to photographing people, he would take these aimless strolls, soak up an atmosphere, and notice the subtler details of the British public: people’s gestures, the way they held their hands, their clothing. He would ask permission to take their portraits, with a success rate of about 40 per cent. ‘A lot of the people would say no, but I would keep walking until I found the next person that I found interesting. It’s hard to articulate, but sometimes people would just be looking brilliant. Everyone’s got something going on.’

Image from The British Isles (MACK, 2021). Courtesy of the artist and MACK. Image: Jamie Hawkesworth

The images have a celebrated sense of personhood, and flicking through them, every viewer will interpret them differently. Viewers will find their own signifiers that represent Britain today as they experience it: freshly bought fish and chips lathered in ketchup; seaside towns in varied states of construction; no-nonsense slogans on hardware shop windows; or perhaps the awkwardness of youth. We all see and experience Britain differently, and in this sense, Hawkesworth is merely an observer. ‘I almost want to say that finding a definition for British identity isn’t important to the work. It’s just about individual people living here.’

Image from The British Isles (MACK, 2021). Courtesy of the artist and MACK. Image: Jamie Hawkesworth

Yet, unconstrained by a need to define it, Hawkesworth seems to have found a diverse and buoyant Britain. ‘It was simply, “let’s see what Hartlepool is about, or Hastings, or South Shields”,’ he says. ‘The work comes down to everyday things. I think photography gives you an excuse to be in that normality, but to really appreciate it.’

Image from The British Isles (MACK, 2021). Courtesy of the artist and MACK. Image: Jamie Hawkesworth

PURPOSE: Hawkesworth – 'Photography allows you to be curious about things that you might not if you didn’t have a camera. It’s something that gets you out of the front door.'

INSPIRATION: Hawkesworth – 'Photographers like August Sanders, Brendan Dykstra, Nigel Shafran, Jem Southam, Sally Barkos, Ansel Adams are all inspirations to me. Sometimes though I’m a little nervous about looking too much at photobooks – I often think “damn, they’re so bloody nice”, and it can be frustrating, so I also take a lot of inspiration from paintings.'

ADVICE: Hawkesworth – 'My only advice would be to go out and take photos. You can think and talk about it all day, but the best way of starting is to get out there and experiment.'

Until 15 years ago, this place was covered by forests and you’d find wild animals of all sorts,’ recalls Diallo Amidou Hama, a resident of Wemdou, a minuscule village located in the heart of the Sahel in Burkina Faso. As he speaks, his worn-out sandals hit the dry soil, emitting a funny clickety-clack. ‘Today, there’s nothing,’ he says. ‘Due to the shortage of water and the arrival of the internally displaced people three years ago, who uprooted the last remaining trees for firewood, we are really struggling.’ 

Heavy rains, prolonged droughts, wildfires and landslides have all become commonplace throughout the world. But nowhere is quite like the Sahel. In this huge African region, stretched between the Sahara Desert in the north and the Sudanese steppe in the south, climate change has materialised in a brutal and dramatic manner.

The Sahel has always been characterised by strong climatic variations and irregular rainfall, but things have worsened in recent decades. The frequency and severity of both droughts and floods have increased and more than 80 per cent of the region’s land is now degraded, contributing to frequent famine conditions. Various factors are at play on top of climate change, including population growth, deforestation, overgrazing, a lack of coherent environmental policies and misplaced development priorities.

As Hama suddenly widens his arms in a theatrical pose, it inspires a kind of vertigo. It’s difficult to tell whether it comes from the suffocating heat or from the vastness of the expanse of hard soil surrounding us. Some areas here have changed so rapidly in recent years that communities have had to rethink their entire way of life. In some cases, the dry conditions have left people with no option other than to migrate elsewhere to survive. It was with all of this in mind that the extraordinary, but heavily debated, project the Great Green Wall (GGW) was first conceived.

According to Diallo Amidou Hama, who lives in Wemdou, Burkina Faso, the land shown behind him was once covered in trees. Image: Patrick Tombola

Sixteen years have passed since African heads of state first hinted at this new project during a meeting in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, in 2005; 14 years have passed since 2007, when the initiative formally kicked off under the control of the African Union. The stated goal was to create a 15-kilometre-wide, 8,000-kilometre-long green belt of trees and other plants that, by 2030, would span the entire width of the Sahel, from Senegal to Djibouti. Overall, 100 million hectares of land would be restored by 2030. Once completed, it was announced, the wall could end up capturing 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, while its creation and upkeep could create ten million jobs in rural areas.

The GGW is an ecological restoration project meant to slow desertification, but it’s also a project designed by African people for African people – an aspect often overlooked. It’s the only land-restoration initiative under purely African leadership. Pushed by the worrying predictions of many scientists, Sahelian countries (now comprised of Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan) came up with this ambitious, revolutionary idea.

Things haven’t gone entirely smoothly. In Burkina Faso, the situation remains critical. Aged 57, Hassan Amadou Mayga’s lined face says it all. Born in the village of Diomga – a few miles away from Wemdou – he works as both a farmer and a herder. His expertise in techniques typical of the drylands, such as zai (digging pits in the soil during the pre-season to catch water and concentrate compost), along with his natural authority, made him the obvious choice for local coordinator of the GGW. ‘I’m used to recognising when the drought is coming,’ he explains. ‘In the past, we would dig small pits to get water. If you dug a metre one year, you knew you would have to dig two metres the following one.

‘Droughts come in phases,’ he continues. ‘First, it’s the leaves withering, then the trees down to the roots and, finally, as the rain comes down sporadically and with violence, the soil breaks and with the passing of time, carries marks.’ It doesn’t take long to notice that, today, the drought has reached the final stage.

Looking at the project as a whole, there’s still a long way to go. According to a status report unveiled by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in September 2020, about four million hectares of degraded land have been rehabilitated within the initiative’s ‘intervention zones’ – a 154-million-hectare region corresponding to the entire geographical fringe of the Sahara. This is complemented by another 17.8 million hectares of land under restoration within GGW countries, but outside the intervention zones. Ultimately, this means that progress towards the 100 million hectares target stands at just four per cent. The Panafrican Agency for the Great Green Wall (APGMV), which now coordinates the project, has since set a new target of 25 million hectares by 2030. Even taking this as the starting point, progress stands at 16 per cent.

In Tinkaglega, a group of women walk past a bulli – a small water reservoir – built by Tree Aid to provide drinking water year-round. Image: Patrick Tombola

Problems were apparent from the start. Although the project formally began in 2007, it wasn’t until 2011 that the APGMV was established to strengthen coordination among the involved states and it was only then that states such as Burkina Faso began to commit. ‘Before the APGMV was launched, the initiative could only rely on domestic funds,’ explains Elvis Paul Tangem, the African Union’s GGW coordinator. ‘There was scepticism among investors, who didn’t understand the project, but also among the African states themselves, which needed time to figure out if the GGW was a priority.’

‘We had too few funds to push the initiative as much as we wanted to,’ agrees Adama Doulkom, coordinator of the initiative for Burkina Faso. ‘When we started restoring the soil, we realised the area at risk was much wider than we initially thought and we didn’t have enough resources.’

Only once the African partners had produced an integrated strategy that went beyond the idealistic and that mandated the creation of forestry societies did other donors step in. The most prominent today are the World Bank, the EU, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UNCCD and the IUCN. Even then, money remained tight. According to a 2020 UNCCD report, funds from international projects that ‘state explicitly to support the Great Green Wall’, amounted to US$870 million. Taking all funds into account, ‘between 2010 and 2019, donors claim to have invested US$1.8 billion’. In both cases, the sums were considerably less than the US$4 billion promised when the project was announced at the COP22 climate conference in 2016.

Conditions in Burkina Faso have proved particularly challenging. ‘We support the establishment of proper structures around the GGW but working with so many different realities is challenging,’ says Tangem. ‘In Senegal and Gambia, we are moving faster because they are more stable and the government set up a parallel directorate with the same powers as the Ministry of Environment. In Burkina Faso, we wanted to do the same, but… boom. There was a tumultuous change of government in 2014 and then the advent of terrorism in 2018. Priorities changed and the state preferred to form a subordinate unit with limited influence.’

This created confusion among local partners and international donors, who struggled to locate the GGW. ‘They ended up sending money directly to the central authorities, which used it for other purposes, instead of allocating it for our projects,’ explains Georges Bazongo, director of operations at Tree Aid, a British charity that has been involved in the GGW since 2011.

It can be difficult to take certain decisions when, as Tangem points out, ‘the areas that have to cope with the worst security hardship are also those with the most pressing environmental needs.’ He’s referring to Burkina Faso, but also to Mali, Niger and Chad. An incident that occurred in the village of Diomga is a good example. There, FLEUVE, a GGW initiative sponsored by the European Commission that aimed to strengthen the capacities of local communities to help boost investments in land restoration, crashed against the tough reality. ‘They came to Diomga in 2018, promising they would build a bulli [water reservoir], but we’ve never seen it. They handed out tools and carts to eight random people and 200 saplings to another nine,’ Mayga says. ‘None of the moringa trees survived, because without a fence, which they also promised and never realised, animals destroyed everything.’

When questioned about this, Birguy Lamizana, UNCCD’s senior programs officer for the Sahel, replied: ‘Development programmes are not meant to be in intervention zones forever. They only provide a workable framework for the national government in implementing areas to copy and adapt these activities in their respective ministries or agencies to boost governance there.’ The UNCCD also said that it kept away from the region near Diomga due to rising instability.

All of these issues together have contributed to hinder at least part of the work that could have been done. Looking closely at the situation, however, there is some reason for hope. For a start, much more money is now on its way. In January 2021, French president Emmanuel Macron announced at the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity that the GGW would receive US$14.3 billion in new funding. UNCDD noted that the new funds make up 30 per cent of the US$33 billion it calculates is needed to achieve the initiative’s ambitions by 2030.

At a local level, too, both goodwill and determination have never been in short supply. ‘Each of these countries has achieved something and is unique in its own way,’ Tangem says. ‘Nigeria has a strong governmental structure for the GGW and a great energy-transition plan; Niger is number one when it comes to forestry and agroforestry; Senegal is outstanding in biodiversity; and Burkina has a good value chain with shea butter [a fat extracted from the nut of the shea tree], a focal point for the local communities.’

Young women collect water from a well to irrigate small vegetable gardens in an effort to prevent desertification. Image: Patrick Tombola

In fact, most of the countries involved have suffered from a failure to document their success properly. ‘For a long time, we suffered from the lack of coordination in monitoring and evaluating the projects on the ground. Hence, the image that was conveyed outside was that we were good for nothing,’ Bazongo says.

However, some projects have been forging ahead. For example, in 2019–20, Tree Aid successfully planted 2,159,000 native trees in Burkina Faso and has stood out as a remarkable example of the integrated approach for which the GGW is slowly becoming better known, which combines the regeneration of the soil with the battle against poverty.

One of the 150 locations in which Tree Aid operates is Tinkaglega, in the centre-north of Burkina Faso, a tiny place that would have remained unaltered with the passing of time if it wasn’t for the artisanal gold mines that mushroomed there, where once there were forests. In the heart of the village, where until two years ago there was just a flat expanse of land, there is today a large reservoir that provides water for 100,000 trees and a huge number of cattle. It’s also crucial for both fishing and agriculture. ‘We explained to women that from trees you can extract fruits for the family livelihood and you can sell them in the market and get medicines or beauty products such as shea butter,’ says Bazongo. ‘If people get poorer than this, they will cut more trees and, by doing so, they will jeopardise the soil even further, bringing our society to its ultimate collapse. We are trying to break this circle of poverty, diversifying the sources of food and income, and investing in raising awareness and dialogue.’ According to the UNCCD’s 2020 status report, taken as a whole, Burkina Faso has seen almost 30,000 hectares of land restored and 20,000 hectares reforested. Meanwhile 27,000 people have been trained and 45,000 jobs created.

Locals walk among piles of tailings at a gold mine near the town of Yako, northwest of the capital, Ouagadougou. Gold mining is an important part of the country’s economy, but reports of human trafficking and forced labour are common. Image: Patrick Tombola

In places such as Burkina Faso, where 86 per cent of the population relies on natural resources to survive and 60 per cent on firewood for heating and cooking, this approach is the only feasible one. ‘These first ten years have been invested in strengthening national policies in places where they didn’t exist,’ says Tangem, a man of many ideas and a very practical view. ‘Once the bureaucrats who write reports and give seminars surrender their means and leadership to the local communities, the Sahel will change its face within ten, 15 years.’

Many actors have played a part in the situation facing the Sahel today, from Western colonists to corrupt politicians and illegal loggers. Nevertheless, just as the forests were once stripped from this land, sometime soon they could still return.

Sub-Saharan Africa has an electricity problem. While the world as a whole has made great strides when it comes to providing access to electricity (the world average is now 90 per cent with access, up from 83 per cent in 2010), southern and western African states still lag far behind.

According to Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, produced by a consortium of organisations including the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, 759 million people were without electricity in 2019 and threequarters of them were based in sub-Saharan Africa. At just seven per cent, South Sudan had the lowest access figures; Chad, Burundi and Malawi were only marginally higher. What’s more, due to a combination of factors, the situation is getting worse. In total, the region’s access deficit increased from 556 million people in 2010 to 570 million people in 2019.

These days, being without electricity has an impact on every sphere of life. The Covid-19 pandemic only served to put this into sharper relief. Intermittent electricity meant vaccination doses that rely on cold storage were impossible to deliver and, as more than 70 per cent of the health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to reliable electricity, the problem was vast. But even without a global pandemic, having no power stymies opportunity in every field, from education to economics.

French photojournalist Pascal Maitre, who has spent much of his career writing about sub-Saharan Africa, wanted to document the problems faced by people in areas with no electricity. He thought particularly carefully about the location for his project. ‘First, I was thinking I could take images in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,’ he says. ‘But then I thought that if you chose a place that has war, it’s logical that electricity won’t really work. So, instead, I wanted to find a place that is quite stable. I decided to go to Benin, where they have a democracy. It is a good example of a country that’s not in really bad shape but where they still have this problem. Also, I didn’t want to go to a place that is very remote, where it is normal not to have good service. So I decided to go to a place around 50 kilometres from the capital that you can get to by road.’

Maitre visited several villages in the region, as well as making trips to Chad and Senegal, and encountered the full range of limitations engendered by the power shortage. From teachers struggling to conduct lessons in the dark to midwives forced to work with only the weak light from a phone, the situation was clearly unacceptable. ‘People were very, very, very upset,’ he says. ‘I conducted a lot of interviews in different villages and lack of electricity touches education, economy, business, security and also emigration, because people have to move to big cities or maybe to Europe to get jobs.’

Where once the situation might have been accepted as the norm, people today are fully aware of the ways in which they are held back by the lack of power. As Maitre remembers: ‘A guy said to me one day, “Do you think it is normal that last time my wife delivered a baby, the midwife had to hold her phone between her teeth in order to see what she was doing?” You feel very frustrated.’ He adds that the fact that most people now have mobile phones only highlights the hardship. ‘Before, maybe it was not so frustrating. But now, most of these people have cellphones. The cellphone company puts antennae everywhere so the phones work, but people cannot recharge their phones. They have to go to the market, where someone will come with a generator to recharge.’

In Kokahoue village, Benin, a market takes place each night beneath a palavar tree, illuminated by candle light. It’s one of nine nearby villages that are off the electricity grid. Image: Pascal Maitre

Governments and global organisations are very aware of the problem across the world as a whole. Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) – one of the 17 goals set out in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly – was designed to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030. As part of this goal, international financial flows to developing countries in support of clean energy reached US$17 billion in 2018. As a result, some areas have seen huge improvement. According to the Energy Progress Report, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, the advance of electrification has been enough to approach universal access. By 2019, in Western Asia and North Africa, and Central and South Asia, 94 and 95 per cent of the population respectively had access to electricity.

But these statistics only serve to emphasise just how bad the situation is in sub-Saharan Africa. As the report states: ‘While renewable energy has demonstrated remarkable resilience during the pandemic, the unfortunate fact is that gains in energy access throughout Africa are being reversed: the number of people lacking access to electricity is set to increase in 2020, making basic electricity services unaffordable for up to 30 million people who had previously enjoyed access.’

In Allankpon, Benin, the rural health centre is illuminated by oil lamps because it’s off the grid. Image: Pascal Maitre

The small silver lining is that if the situation is dealt with properly, the region could build a renewable-energy system from the ground up, rather than having to undergo the costly and complex transitions underway in developed countries. In rural areas, small-scale or off-grid renewable systems (mostly solar) are expected to play an important role in increasing access. In fact, solar panels are already used in many areas. In 2019, 105 million people had access to off-grid solar solutions, up from 85 million in 2016, and almost half lived in sub-Saharan Africa, with 17 million in Kenya and eight million in Ethiopia.

Rachel Kyte is currently serving as the 14th dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the USA, but her CV is long. She was previously CEO of the UN-affiliated Sustainable Energy for All (SeforALL), as well as the World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, leading the run-up to the Paris Agreement. According to her, a focus on renewables is absolutely essential, both for wider efforts to tackle climate change, but also for the people of sub-Saharan Africa. ‘The fossil fuel industry has said it will just extend the centralised fossil-fuel power systems that we have today to reach these people,’ she says.

People collect water from a public fountain illuminated by a solar-powered street lamp in a village not connected to the main electricity grid. Image: Pascal Maitre

BENIN

Although it’s a relatively stable democracy, Benin ranks among the world’s poorest countries and corruption is reportedly rife. Patrice Talon, the president since 2016, was previously forced to flee to France after being accused of involvement in a plot to poison the previous president, Boni Yayi. A former businessman, Talon is known as the ‘king of cotton’ – appropriate given that Benin is one of Africa’s largest cotton producers.

The country is experiencing rapid population growth. Although the birth rate has been falling since 1980, it still stands at 36 births per 1,000 people, twice as high as the world average.

Benin is probably best known in the West as the original home of the Voodoo or Vodun religion, which was brought to the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas by enslaved Africans during the 16th to 18th centuries. Today, around 12 per cent of Benin’s population are thought to practise voodoo.

‘Well, no. It’s 2021 and it has never happened. And it’s not going to happen now. If it was too expensive before to extend the power line out from a coal-fired power station in the capital city, then why would it change now, without massive government subsidies. We now have the technology and the means to get decentralised, renewable energy to these communities, quite quickly and much more cheaply.’

Off-grid solar systems don’t come without problems. It’s easy to assume that anywhere with plentiful sun is suitable for solar, but the infrastructure requires a lot of upkeep. This is something Maitre witnessed during his time in Benin. ‘Solar takes a lot of work,’ he says. ‘You need to clean the solar pan, you need to take care of them and in the places I visited, it’s not possible because you don’t have large-scale cleaners. When you go to a village where they used to have a big solar programme, you see that after two to three years, nothing is working anymore because of the dust, because of the battery, because the rain is too heavy.’

What’s required is the imposition of regulatory frameworks for such systems (these are increasingly common) and, crucially, innovative funding mechanisms. As the authors of the SDG7 report assert: ‘In this context more than ever, energy service providers – including utilities, mini-grid operators, and off-grid companies – require access to low-cost working capital and project finance with lengthy repayment periods.’

In Selecky, Senegal, women socialise beneath a solar-powered street lamp. Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Togo all provided free electricity to poor households for several months in 2020. Image: Pascal Maitre

‘It means three things,’ says Kyte. ‘One: the development aid and support from developed countries need to be there. Two: African countries, and all countries, need to invest their own resources in this. There are lots of equity funds and debt funds and pension funds in Africa that could be involved in their own energy future. We should allow African countries access to capital markets at a reasonable rate so that they can borrow to invest in their power structures. And then you’ve got to have African leaders who see that as a priority.’

Regarding support from developed countries, she feels that Western leaders have already fallen behind. ‘Over the past ten to 15 years, China has been by far the largest investor in energy infrastructure in Africa. The West needs to put a massive offer on the table to invest in African renewable energy and the systems that go with it. There is no sense in a position of just trying to choke off the burning of coal and then trying to stop methane leakage and other emissions if you’re not going to help countries build the alternative, because otherwise you are condemning them to energy poverty.’

Part of the problem is that the currently available finance isn’t spread evenly. According to SeforALL’s most recent Energizing Finance report, just four countries received 88 per cent of total electricity finance commitments in 2018: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Tanzania. Countries such as Angola, Burkina Faso, DRC, Niger and Sudan received minimal or zero financing. SeforALL also points to the importance of private finance reaching the countries that need it most. This will require donor governments and international development banks to scale up their support to private lenders through risk-mitigation instruments and guarantees.

There are countries that can already be held up as positive examples. According to SeforALL’s report, Rwanda has witnessed a significant transformation of its energy sector in recent years, partly because it has managed to attract additional financial resources. Access has increased from ten per cent of the population in 2010 to 35 per cent in 2018. Crucially, expansion of the national electrification plan to encompass off-grid options was an important part of this success.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that in sub-Saharan Africa, the goal of universal electricity access by 2030 isn’t going to be met. The access rate would have to more than triple between now and 2030 for that to happen. Even where progress has been made, rapidly growing populations have resulted in net increases to those without electricity. But substantially improving the lives of millions of people is still possible if governments and international institutions manage to maintain momentum for SDG7. What’s more, bringing electricity to the people of sub-Saharan Africa can go hand in hand with efforts to curb CO2 emissions.

‘This can be done,’ says Kyte. ‘This is not beyond our capability as a species. But it requires us to focus on delivery a little bit. People don’t want to move, they don’t want to be displaced, they don’t want to have to seek out a better life elsewhere, but as climate change ravages parts of Africa, if we don’t provide reliable, affordable, clean energy, then more and more people will be forced to move.’

Back in 2001, when a complete set of human genes (the genome) was sequenced for the first time, Francis Collins, then director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, predicted that it would be ‘feasible’ within 20 years to use genomic data to produce ‘a kind of report card analysis’ for a newborn baby’s health. ‘Well, here we are 20 years later,’ says Simon Wilde, public engagement director at Genomics England. The organisation is poised to launch a publicly-informed pilot project to sequence the genomes of a large proportion of newborn babies within the NHS.

If it catches on, the practice will transform medicine. Armed with complete maps of babies’ DNA, doctors could screen for a much wider range of genetic diseases than the nine conditions they currently look for. Rare diseases could be identified and diagnosed earlier, helping to find babies that may benefit from early treatment before the damage is done. Moreover, if the genetic information is stored, it would be a powerful tool for doctors to tailor treatment to individuals across their entire lives. That information would also contribute significant data to research studies, enabling clinicians to deepen society’s understanding of health and disease.

In July, Genomics England released the results of a public consultation, which indicated widespread support for newborn screening in the case of diseases for which there are existing treatments or management options. Now, Genomics England’s pilot project, called The Newborn Genomes Programme, is poised to begin enrolling 200,000 newborns over several years. The Newborn Genomes Programme will run an ethics-approved research pilot embedded in the NHS to explore how, and whether, to offer whole genome sequencing (WGS) to all newborns and accelerate diagnosis and access to treatments for rare genetic conditions. Enrolling a large proportion of the 600,000 babies born annually in England, it will screen for up to 600 genetic diseases for which treatment and care is ‘available and actionable’, such as vitamin B6–dependent epilepsy, or familial Diamond-Blackfan anemia – a red blood cell disorder.

‘The focus of the pilot is exclusively on screening for rare diseases that present in early-life,’ says Wilde. However, the genetic data that is harvested is powerful, and could be used in other ways across the patient’s life. Genomic data could aid diagnosis for any diseases that emerge (if they have a genetic component), identify which treatments might be more beneficial, or those that the patient might react badly to.

It could also help other patients in the future. With parents’ consent, Genomics England will de-identify and add babies’ genomes to the National Genomic Research Library, alongside their health information. This could enable researchers to better understand the way that our genes influence health and disease throughout our lives.

There are significant ethical considerations, which are being handled with sensitivity. If the prospect is realised, healthcare bodies will need to safeguard genetic information. It must be kept away from third parties such as insurance or marketing companies. Then, there are broader considerations about what information is appropriate to share with patients and their families, and at what time in their lives.

It gets ethically thornier still, when we consider how the data might be used to assess for diseases that could present later in the babies’ life. By assessing whether the baby has genetic variations commonly associated with bowel or breast cancer, for example, clinicians could paint a predictive picture of lifelong health prospects. ‘There’s still a huge amount of listening to be done. We’re currently evaluating people’s appetites for that kind of information,’ says Henrietta Hopkins, who helped to oversee Genomics England’s public consultation. ‘Later-onset conditions are a tricky ethical area. As a newborn, you’re not the one giving consent for your DNA to be sequenced. Once you reach the age of consent, what if you don’t want to know whether you’re likely to get cancer in your fifties or sixties?’

Genomics England’s consultation identified a spectrum of views here, ‘which ranged from “knowledge is power” to “ignorance is bliss”,’ says Hopkins. Many, knowing that information on their genetic risk for diseases is within reach, will want to empower and inform their healthcare and lifestyle choices. ‘Many people felt that, “actually, this is my health, my future, or my child’s future, and we need to know as much as possible to inform ourselves”. ‘Others simply say “I just don’t want to know”.’

It is complicated by the fact that many genetic variants, even those associated with disease, never actually lead to the condition. In the USA, under a pilot project called BabySeq, a team co-led by Robert Green from Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that across 1,500 genes in 127 healthy and 32 sick babies, 8 per cent of apparently healthy babies had mutations for a childhood genetic disorder, and some 88 per cent were carriers of a genetic disease.

There are also questions around who the information should be shared with. When, for example, should indication of later-life predisposition to disease be shared with the children? ‘People were very clear that we can’t just consider the nuclear family – families come in a variety of structures. And for the later-life aspect, what are the implications if it’s on my record that I am at risk of something that won’t affect me until my 50s? Does that make me less employable for some jobs? Could an employer get hold of that information and see that I’m less genetically suited to becoming a pilot, for example?’ Hopkins asks.

‘Some people were even saying “what if you could analyse your genome and see that you are genetically suited to a particular profession?”,’ adds Wilde. Should that information be accessible? Should it trickle down to steer the way we design our lives?

The considerations go on. Studies show that disease-causing gene variants are not always uniform across ethnic groups, meaning the technique could lead to misdiagnoses if datasets are not broadly representative. Reference genetic databases, used to determine what a ‘healthy’ genome looks like, must therefore incorporate data from a balanced mixture of ethnic groups. ‘There’s a moral imperative here, and a scientific one,’ says Wilde. ‘If you have a variation in your genome, but the reference dataset is skewed toward the White European, diagnostic issues could occur. That’s why it’s so important that we have a diverse data initiative.’

There will also inevitably be questions around global equitability. During Covid-19, there has been many ethical debates around ‘vaccine nationalism’. Do  rich countries have an obligation to assist the developing world? Similar concerns may emerge as whole genome sequencing becomes part of routine newborn care in the developed world – a trend the UK is now at the vanguard of. ‘There’s a pride that the UK is one of the world’s leaders in genomics, but there’s a responsibility that comes with it to share the benefits equitably,’ says Wilde.

The dull thud of machetes marking wet trees grows into a peculiar, trance-inducing melody as we splash through mud up the Waruma River valley. The forest is hot and dark in the last days of August 2019 as we begin our long, strenuous trek, inching towards the northern slopes of a mountain that has haunted my dreams for years. 

Mount Roraima is a gigantic sandstone plateau rising above a sea of pristine rainforest and sun-scorched savannah – a sacred mountain that once fuelled the imaginations of an entire generation of Victorian explorers. Along the way, we’ll locate extraordinary carnivorous plants – the main reason for my presence in this hotspot of South American biodiversity.

I had dreamed of exploring the tepuis (the table-top mountains in the Guiana Highlands of Venezuela and western Guyana) for more than a decade before I got my first chance to visit in January 2017. It was an unorthodox dream. I grew up far from anything that would suggest a deep connection with the natural world. My childhood was spent in Poland’s industrial region of Upper Silesia, among landscapes marked by mining shaft headframes and slag heaps, within a family with long engineering traditions. Yet the moment I learned about the existence of a carnivorous sundew plant, Drosera rotundifolia, as a nine-year-old, I was captivated. I’m not alone in this fascination. It was Charles Darwin himself who, while researching the plant, said, ‘...at the present, I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world’. 

Mateusz Wrazidlo observing epiphytic bromeliads growing high on the tree trunks in the rainforests under Mount Roraima [Maciej Moskwa/TESTIGO]

My childhood passion turned into a lifelong obsession on the day I first saw a picture of a botanical tepui jewel – Heliamphora glabra – an endemic pitcher plant that grows out of Mount Roraima’s cliffs, high above the clouds along the border of Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana. Ever since that moment, I haven’t spent a single day not thinking about this island in the sky. It would take me nearly 15 years of studying cultivated specimens, obtained from botanists and plant nurseries, in my handmade indoor conservatory before I finally got the chance to see and document the plants first-hand.

A cultivated specimen of the carnivorous pitcher plant Heliamphora parva from the massif of Cerro Neblina grown in the author’s conservatory [Mateusz Wrazidlo/EXPLORITY]

When the German botanist Richard Schomburgk published the memoirs of his travels in British Guiana in the first half of the 19th century, he called the upper slopes of Mount Roraima ‘a botanical El Dorado’. He was referring to what we today call the Pantepui – a unique biogeographical province situated 1,500 metres above sea level and covering an area of about 6,000 square kilometres. Due to its montane isolation, this environment has been a true theatre of evolutionary processes whose inhabitants have had to adapt to unsupportive, rugged conditions characterised by a lack of nutrients. Despite, and indeed in some ways because of, these challenges, it has proven to be a perfect habitat for carnivorous plants of all sorts; they are exceptionally plentiful in both the lowland savannah that surrounds the gigantic massifs as well as on their arid, rocky summits. Unfortunately, adaptation to such peculiar conditions comes at a price. Research shows that close to 80 per cent of the Pantepui flora, nearly 1,700 species (about 400 of which are endemic), are threatened with extinction due to the warming climate.

Almost 140 years have passed since the explorer and colonial administrator Everard Im Thurn first ascended Mount Roraima and today the mesa is one of Venezuela’s tourist hotspots. Its remote northern section, situated within the territory of Guyana, on the other hand, remains little explored. 

No outsider can hope to travel in such a place without the guidance and help of the region’s Indigenous people. We meet our hosts and guides on a hot afternoon on 27 August, having flown into the village of Kamarang and then taken a short boat trip up the Mazaruni River to the Indigenous Akawaio community of Kako. Next morning, we set off, a group made up of myself, my Guyanese friends Darrell Carpenay and Orson Hinds, Polish photographer Maciej Moskwa and our guides, Kelly Phillip, his son Ackley and Hondel Hunter. We’re also accompanied by Byron Krammer and Frank Esteen, who will navigate us up the river and take care of the boat while we explore the dense rainforest.

The northern cliff, known as the ‘Prow’ of Roraima. The summit of the gigantic sandstone plateau is often hidden behind a thick layer of clouds [Maciej Moskwa/TESTIGO]

I quickly realise how helpless we are without the knowledge and experience of our Akawaio friends. During the second evening of our trek, we hear a distant thunderstorm rumbling in the south and all of a sudden the river rises dangerously close to our campsite, gaining a few metres in a matter of minutes. While we rush to salvage our supplies and equipment from the raging current, I look at Kelly, only to see him sitting in his hammock, calmly observing the water. And sure enough, after a while, the river slowly starts to recede. ‘My father spent most of his life in those forests. He knows them through and through,’ says Ackley in response to the look of amazement on my face.

It takes a few days for us to struggle through the claustrophobic entanglement of the lowland rainforest, but eventually the scenery begins to change. We’ve finally begun to climb into the foothills of Mount Roraima and the higher we get, the more otherworldly the place seems. Trees become shorter, their trunks covered by moss and the slimy material that drips from plants belonging to the family Rapateaceae. Above our heads, epiphytic orchids and bromeliads strive to catch a glimpse of sunlight from their shady habitats. 

Mud, slime and moisture permeate our clothes, making every step sheer misery. I begin to feel as though we’re unwelcome guests in the domain of some jealous deity shielding its riches from us with a veil of eerie haze. But while my body is exhausted, excitement at the sight of countless carnivorous plants keeps me going. 

Ackley Phillip - one of the Indigenous Akawaio guides posing under the ‘prow’ of Mount Roraima in the upper cloudforest camp Maciej Moskwa/TESTIGO

I’m like a child wandering around a candy store. Here’s a bunch of D. kaieteurensis growing by the side of a stream, luring its victims with sticky, tentacle-like glands that sparkle in the dim sunlight. Over there sits a colony of Utricularia quelchii, with its bladder-like traps burrowed underneath a thin layer of moss. High on the tree branches is a carnivorous bromeliad, Catopsis berteroniana, its leaves covered by a peculiar white powder known to attract prey thanks to its UV-reflective properties. 

Before we set up camp, I decide to spend some time exploring the surroundings by myself while the rest of the team enjoy a nearby waterfall. But Ackley approaches me, his father’s shotgun in his hand. ‘I can’t leave you here alone, Matt,’ he says. ‘The spirits of the bush people are around – can you hear them? They don’t like being disturbed. You should stick with me.’ News of supernatural inhabitants goes against my scientific mindset and at first sounds like an impossibility – but in this place that’s so alien to me, it’s enough to send a chill down my spine. In the upper cloud forest, the medley of tropical sounds becomes bizarrely muted and warped, as if some mischievous being really is playing tricks on your senses. I decide to stick with Ackley. 

When flying over the Roraima-Ilu tepui chain, it’s easy to notice a difference in the landscapes on the Venezuelan and the Guyanese side. The Guyanese side is covered by rainforests, whereas the Venezuelan one is more elevated and comprised mostly of huge savannas known as La Gran Sabana [Maciej Moskwa/TESTIGO]

When we awake the next morning, the atmosphere is far from festive. Our list of regular anxieties, triggered by damp clothes and a constant feeling of isolation, is complemented by a wound on Ackley’s knee – the result of an unfortunate machete accident the previous night. But Ackley’s enthusiasm hasn’t dwindled a bit, so we decide it’s time to crack on and, after a few hours of toil through a slimy labyrinth of roots and branches, we find ourselves looking up at an enormous slope of rock debris. 

The treeless swath of rubble, which looks like a battlefield after heavy shelling, is the result of a sandstone cliff partly collapsing. As I scramble up a pile of mud and rocks, a sudden glimpse above my head makes my heart skip a beat. Standing at the top of the slope, I drink in the sight that has haunted my dreams for most of my life – the gargantuan cliff of Mount Roraima, towering above the surrounding forests like the prow of a colossal shipwreck. A layer of cloud quickly rolls over the mountain, guarding it from our sight, so we set up the last camp – dubbed ‘Mudville’ – and start planning for a morning push towards the cliff.

The camp on the lower slopes of the mountain [Maciej Moskwa/TESTIGO]

The rockfall proves to be a blessing when we begin our ascent. In just an hour, we manage to cross a distance that would have taken us a full day or more to traverse in the rainforest. I feel a sudden rush of excitement when I notice the iridescent, saber-like leaves of Stegolepis guianensis and Bonnetia roraimae shrubs hanging from the edge of the cliff – a clear indication that Heliamphora populations must be nearby. But then we encounter a series of vertical rock slabs and are halted abruptly, a couple of dozen metres from reaching our goal – the top of the balcony-like ‘foot’ of Mount Roraima. ‘So close, yet so far…’ says Orson when I check my GPS for the final elevation reading – 1,630 metres. 

Drosera felix – one of many species of carnivorous sundews native to the Guiana Highlands [Mateusz Wrazidlo/EXPLORITY]

Roraima only allowed us to touch the folds of her emerald gown – but isn’t that enough of a reward? In times such as these, we’re privileged to witness some of the last pristine frontiers of the natural world. ‘So close, yet so far…’ I repeat to myself without regret, knowing that I will do everything I can to return.

Flying back to Georgetown a few days later, admiring the ancient landscapes from the cockpit of a Cessna 206, everything shifts into a new perspective. What immediately draws my attention are the gold mining operations – some professional, some basic and temporary, growing like tumors on pristine land. When the riverbeds here are torn apart in search of the precious metal, the distinctive dark waters quickly turn into cream-coloured currents, poisoned by mining waste. It’s a reminder that natural resources that at first seem to be a blessing can, over time, turn against their wardens. Hundreds of local inhabitants are now forced to make a hard choice between protecting their ancestral lands and putting food on their tables. 

The tepuis and their surroundings are one of South America’s biodiversity hotspots. A dreamland for all sorts of nature aficionados, but not for the faint of heart [Maciej Moskwa/TESTIGO]

When Everard Im Thurn completed the first ascent of Mount Roraima in 1884, he called its landscapes ‘some strange country of nightmares’. Little did he know that the real nightmare was yet to come, largely caused by human hands. But there is hope. A new generation has begun to learn that the true treasure of this land isn’t the gold beneath the ground, but the plants, animals and landscapes, seamlessly combined with the cultural heritage of the local Indigenous people. And although it’s obvious that we’re no longer able to stop climate change and the extinction of certain species, we do possess the means to save at least some of them. As I know from my own work, if a plant is facing the threat of extinction, it can still be cultivated in artificially recreated conditions. 

Our expedition concludes one warm September evening on the sea wall in Georgetown as we celebrate our safe return with a bottle of 15-year-old El Dorado rum. With every sip of the amber liquid, we rejoice, thinking of the privilege we were given and the friendships that came with it. Before the bottle has been emptied, we’re already making plans for our next adventure in the Lost Worlds.

Population (Trentino): 541,098 (2019)

Capital city: Trento (pop. 55,000)

Land area: 6,214 square kilometres

Highest point: 3,769 metres (the southern summit of Monte Cevedale)

Region: Trentino and the neighbouring northern province of Alto Adige (also called South Tyrol) make up what's commonly referred to as Trentino–Alto Adige

On the evening of 29 October 2018, Paolo Kovatsch was sitting at home in the picturesque town of Cavalese, in the northern Italian province of Trentino. Wind howled in the darkness outside and Paolo’s windows were battered by heavy raindrops.

‘It’s an old house, close to a small river,’ he says. ‘Normally, when it’s raining, you hear the noise of small rocks and stones, but that night, it was a super noise – the whole house was trembling – because the stones were not so small! At that moment, you understand that something big is happening.’

Paolo pauses and sips his espresso. His beard is fluffy and white, accompanied by shoulder-length silvery hair and wild eyebrows. If you were asked to pick a man with 30 years experience working in mountain forests out of a crowd, Paolo is the man your finger would immediately gravitate towards.

‘Did you feel scared?’

He takes a second before replying. ‘You feel that you can’t control anything; you feel a bit powerless. I wasn’t scared, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was happening. Nothing is working, it’s dark, the clouds were low, so you couldn’t see anything. And it was dangerous to go outside. So you are just waiting. But, waiting for what?’

MAKING MUSIC

The Italian province of Trentino – which borders Lombardy, Veneto and the northern province of South Tyrol (also called Alto Adige) – is 56 per cent forest, comprising an estimated 500 million trees. These forests have a prestigious heritage. Fourteenth century Venetians, in the midst of imperial delirium, headed to the region in search of enormous tree trunks to turn into trading vessels, warships and the foundations necessary for constructing a city across marshy islands.

Some communities willingly handed over the right to have their forests plundered, in exchange for political favours. Others, such as the community of Paneveggio, resisted. Now a 2,793-hectare forest located about 64 kilometres northeast of the regional capital, Trento, Paneveggio remains important to the local economy, producing timber that’s strong, sturdy and suitable for construction, all obtained by selective cutting. No deliberate planting is required here; trees are cut in such small numbers that the forest simply replenishes itself naturally.

The wood is melodic, too. For centuries, instrument makers have travelled to Paneveggio in search of Norway spruce, which comprise around 85 per cent of the forest (alongside a mix of larch and both red and white fir). These tress possess the perfect resonating qualities for making string instruments – everything from violins, violas and cellos to guitars and lutes.

Renowned Italian master craftsman Antonio Stradivari famously favoured wood from these forests – there are legends of him wandering among the trees, hunting for the perfect timber for his masterpieces (of the estimated 1,200 instruments Stradivari crafted, about 500 are believed to still be in circulation, one of which sold at auction a decade ago for US$15.9 million).

Ciro Doliana demonstrates how to turn simple blocks of wood into musical instruments. Image: Chris Fitch

The reason why both past masters and contemporary artisans are so drawn to Paneveggio involves multiple factors that influence the quality of the wood in a living tree. The trunk must contain fibres that are dead straight and free of defects such as knots that interrupt these straight lines. It also requires tight, dense inner rings, formed by slow-growing trees. Paneveggio, a cool mountain region between 1,500 and 1,900 metres above sea level provides optimal growing conditions. With such a rich history, Paneveggio has become known as la foresta dei violini – the forest of violins.

Of the 4,000 cubic metres of wood retrieved from the carefully controlled tree-cutting process that takes places here every year, less than one per cent is identified as what’s known as ‘resonance wood’ (also ‘resonant’ or ‘resounding’ wood) and set aside to become part of a musical instrument. Cutting takes place in late autumn, when tree growth slows and there’s less sap movement to potentially damage the quality of the wood. The last full moon of the year, when the trees are said to be at their most lethargic, yields the most sought-after resonance wood.

This elite wood is then ‘broken’ along natural fractures into wedge-shaped blocks, before being labelled and dried. These blocks, seemingly unnaturally perfect, straight and smooth, are left in a special storage shed known as a xylotheque, with wooden slats on the windows to allow constant air flow, but no direct sunlight. It will remain here, often for years, awaiting the arrival of sharp-eared perfectionists searching for the ideal material for their instruments.

Wood, specially selected from the very best Norway spruce trees, is broken along natural fractures and stored in wedges, ready for instrument makers to use. Image: Chris Fitch

NOTE PERFECT

In the basement of a picturesque white-and-pink house just off a small square in the town of Tesero, amateur lute maker Ciro Doliana demonstrates how to turn simple blocks of wood into exquisite musical instruments. It’s a time-consuming process, he explains, taking roughly 300 hours per instrument.

One side of Ciro’s workshop contains an assortment of chisels and hand planes covered in sawdust. The other side contains gleaming violins and cellos in a glass display cabinet. The whole room is filled with a soft perfume – the scent of white fir, from the resin within one of the varnishes that are carefully and repeatedly applied to the finished instrument over a ten-day period.

Ciro explains that the most important part of a lute (in common with other similar instruments) is the soundboard, the curved surface that vibrates when the strings are plucked, resonating the desired sound into the surrounding air. While other parts of the instrument can be built from a mix of woods – in the case of the one he’s currently working on, willow and maple, and decorated using ebony and pear – the soundboard must be made from the highly valued resounding wood. Ciro is extremely particular about the quality required to make this component.

‘I want to see the trunk,’ he says. ‘I know what I’m looking for, from outside the bark.’ He describes the characteristics he seeks: north facing, at high altitude, with other healthy trees around, a straight trunk with no leaning or curving and rich, fertile soil. ‘But science can’t predict everything,’ he adds. ‘I’m looking for regular growth... then the heart comes in. Then I fall in love.’

STORM VAIA

The final week of October 2018 saw extremely heavy rainfall across northern Italy as a rare cyclone, given the name Vaia, swept over the western Mediterranean. Storm surges occurred in both the Adriatic and Ligurian seas, either side of the Italian peninsula, with Venice recording one of the worst flooding events in its history. Over three days, 850 millimetres of rain fell across Italy’s Alpine region, triggering numerous floods and landslides.

On the third night, Paolo Kovatsch was at home, in that old house by the river. As technical manager of the Provincial Agency for State Forests in Trentino, he’s responsible for 11,200 hectares of trees spread across nine different state-administered forests, including both Paneveggio and Cadino, the nearest forest to him. It was because of this expertise that many people turned to him with their concerns about the impact of the storm.

‘It had already been raining for three days; the rivers were full of water,’ he recalls. ‘So we were already in a state of emergency. Suddenly, there was a lot of rain, and super-strong wind. Around 8.30pm there was a blackout, no lights.’

Utilising the minimal communication that was possible (mostly radios), Paolo and his colleagues agreed that, despite their worries about the worsening weather, there was nothing they could do that night except hunker down, stay safe and wait for the light to return. When he stepped outside in the morning, Paulo saw the mountains coated in thick, impenetrable fog. Huge numbers of fallen trees, lying strewn across the mountain roads, hinted at significant damage at higher altitudes. However, the debris prevented anyone from driving up to observe the state of the forests. ‘You couldn’t go there to see,’ he says, ‘but you could realise that something had changed.’

Fallen trees are stripped down and piled up as part of the clear-up effort. Image: Chris Fitch

The blackout lasted for 24 hours. Even then, it took two days of waiting before the lingering low clouds finally cleared and the level of devastation became fully apparent. ‘We were all shocked when we saw what had happened,’ says Paolo. ‘Not one of the people here had experienced anything like this before. It was the first experience like this in their life. The feeling was, “Now what should we do?” You know, where do we start? Because everything is destroyed.’

Thanks to Vaia, four million cubic metres of timber was felled in forests across Trentino, equivalent to eight years of normal cutting. Cadino suffered even worse. A region used to carefully removing 11,000 cubic metres of timber per year saw 200,000 cubic metres downed – equivalent to 18 years of cutting.

At its peak, the channelling of Vaia’s strong gales through the tight valleys between the mountains saw wind speeds of more than 200 kilometres per hour recorded – likely the time when the majority of the damage was done.

Trentino had previously seen a large storm in 1966 that caused isolated pockets of damage across the province, but beyond that, there were no recorded incidents of such powerful weather crashing through the landscape in such a devastating way.

STUDYING GLACIERS BEFORE THEY DISAPPEAR

Trentino’s high-altitude glacial environments are warming at twice the rate of the wider world, having added an average of 2°C since the 1970s. Local glaciers have shrunk by an average of 75 per cent since the mid-19th century, leaving the roughly 140 glaciers dotted across the Alpine environment substantially diminished. MUSE, the science museum situated next to the River Adige in the regional capital, Trento, opened in 2013, and concentrates on studying the mountain environments of the Brenta Dolomites in the eastern part of the province, and the 300 million years of history stored within their sedimentary layers. There’s a particular focus on learning more about the impact of warming on local ecosystems. Many mountaintops are becoming more biodiverse, as species fleeing warming temperatures congregate at higher altitudes, but these same species can then become vulnerable to the ‘summit trap’ phenomenon, with nowhere higher (and cooler) to go. Many niche habitats – such as small pools of meltwater – are home to various plants, fungi and insects that have evolved to survive only in these unique conditions. The loss of these species could potentially cascade throughout the rest of the ecosystem.

As technical manager of the Provincial Agency for State Forests in Trentino, Paolo Kovatsch is responsible for 11,200 hectares of trees. Image: Chris Fitch

DAMAGE AND REBIRTH

We climb inside Paolo’s Dacia and drive through Val di Cadino towards the damaged forests. Wispy clouds hang above the tree-covered mountains, the distant Dolomites ripping through larger passing clouds. ‘This is all Vaia,’ explains Paolo, pointing through the windscreen towards various scars in high-altitude treelines, prominently visible across the surrounding mountain slopes. They look like bald patches in the fur of an old dog.

Turning onto a thin gravel road, we slow to a stop. A large clearing appears among the trees, where thick shrubs and vegetation no more than a metre high are growing. ‘This isn’t Vaia, just Storm Paolo,’ Paolo jokes.

This is what the forest looks like after the normal cutting process has taken place. After seven years, the vegetation in this spot is in a healthy process of ecological restoration, helped by the close proximity of the surrounding trees, which are naturally repopulating the sun-drenched clearing.

It’s very different from the scene that confronts us ten minutes later. As the road turns sharply to the left, the car crunches to a stop. Here we find a huge gap in the trees, many times larger than the clearing we’ve just left, like a giant fist has punched a hole in the treecovered mountainside. This is where Vaia left her mark. Even three years later, little more than barren earth – with a few pitiful grasses – fills the space. Aside from a mechanical banging sound that echoes up from distant maintenance, there is utter silence. It feels as if we’re standing in an ecological cemetery.

The circle of utter devastation raises some questions. ‘These trees, only these,’ mutters Paolo, more to himself than to anyone else. ‘Why not these?’ He waves an arm at the twin walls of trees on both sides of the clearing, standing upright as though the storm never happened. It could be that some species, such as red firs, which have shallower roots, were more vulnerable to the storm, while white firs and larches, which have deeper, carrot-like roots, were better able to withstand the powerful winds.

Our final stop is the summit, where we park in the middle of what was once a thick forest. The road up is only a year or so old, built simply so that the necessary machinery to clear the fallen trees could be transported to the top. After lugging fallen tree after fallen tree up the slopes on thick cables, like a reverse zip line, these machines strip them down to the bare trunk and pile them up. Large trucks navigate the winding roads then carry the timber away for export. Paolo estimates that by the time these final fallen trees have been collected and stripped, only ten per cent of the debris created by Vaia will be left behind – in regions of the valley that are essentially inaccessible.

‘Come here! Come here!’ he yells excitedly. I jog over. He kneels down among some fresh grasses and young flowers, and gently cradles a tiny green plant with long, pointed leaves, no more than a couple of inches tall, in the palm of his hand. ‘This, is a new tree,’ he announces, a mixture of pride and joy in his voice. ‘A new tree, growing naturally.’

Young shoots such as this are extremely valuable. As well as helping to rejuvenate the forest, they are critical for stabilising the high-altitude soils, in the process mitigating the risk of future landslides, rockfalls and flash floods in the valley, which could put numerous lives at risk.

TRENTINO TREE AGREEMENT

Unfortunately, this natural regeneration isn’t happening quickly enough, which is why I find myself being led up a long, winding forest path by Paneveggio forest guide Girolamo Scarian. Girolamo wants to demonstrate one positive legacy from the dramatic events of three years earlier. He leads me to a large fence that surrounds a small patch of land, the size of a tennis court or two, with nothing more than some long grass and bits of wooden debris inside.

This construction is part of the Trentino Tree Agreement, a locally organised collaborative effort (managed by the Autonomous Province of Trento, the official name for the region) to restore the damaged forests to health as quickly as possible. Three of Trentino’s iconic forests – Paneveggio, Cadino and also San Martino di Castrozza, farther to the east – are in the process of being actively restored through the intentional planting of seeds. With no natural predators beyond a few wolves, the deer population here is substantial, so deer-proof enclosures are required to stop ravenous herbivores from devouring the soft, delicious new shoots.

Forest guide Girolamo Scarian looks out at the damaged landscape. Image: Chris Fitch

PLUGGING THE 'HORRIBLE' GORGE

As the city of Trento developed over the centuries, it experienced a number of disasters caused by a single river. Over 15,000 years, the River Fersina carved its way through the crumbly limestone and clay of the surrounding landscape, eventually creating a very deep, narrow, dark and gloomy canyon called Orrido, ‘horrible’ in Italian. ‘It’s not really a place where you are relaxed,’ says Roberto Rossati, a local guide. ‘It’s more scary’.

It was certainly scary for the residents of Trento, who, for centuries, would have feared that any intense rainfall or passing storms would cause the river to surge and send large rocks crashing through the canyon. Stories abound of homes, churches, mills and bridges being demolished by enormous stones.

The first dam at the head of the Orrido canyon was built in 1537. Constructed using large logs, it had a very short lifespan – the beginning of a pattern that would repeat time and time again over the next three centuries. Eventually, in 1850, builders began to utilise limestone blocks, constructing a 40-metre-high artificial waterfall, designed to withstand the pressure of any rocks that were washed downstream.

After a large and deadly flooding event in 1882 (which the new dam resisted relatively well), the Austrian government, which administered the region at the time, made substantial investments in flood defences across Trentino. This included the construction of a second dam, 42 metres high, to provide some extra security for the residents of Trento. After it was opened in 1886, the stretch between the two dams began to collect debris and over the following century, enough rocky material accumulated to make it effectively impossible for the first dam to fail, as there was so much pressure pushing on it from both sides. Orrido also functions as a source of hydropower and is a popular tourist attraction, with a secure new viewing platform added in 2017.

‘We didn’t go geometrically – we didn’t plant in lines,’ Girolamo points out. ‘Instead, we took a natural model. We analysed how trees are actually positioned in a forest and we tried to recreate the same dispersion of the trees. One of the best places to plant is next to the tree roots that are still there, because the roots trap humidity and it makes the soil more fertile. It makes a healthy micro environment.’ They are also planting a mix of species together, since post-Vaia analysis showed that monocultures appear to have suffered more than areas with a diversity of species and ages (scheduled future plantings will ensure older and younger trees growing side-by-side).

Of course, all of this work – from obtaining satellite imagery and orchestrating tree clearing to carefully dispersing new tree seeds – costs money. Funding comes via the Trentino Tree Agreement, which works as a giant crowdfunding platform, inviting donations from people both locally and around the globe to pay for the replanting of new trees in the affected areas. In return for their hard-earned pennies, donors receive everything from regular updates to guided tours. Above this fenced-off area, a camera attached to the top of a long pole looks down upon the earth. ‘The people that donate can see with their very own eyes what they’re doing for the forest,’ explains Girolamo. ‘That’s very important. They can come in person with a tour, or they can watch on a webcam.’

Despite the damage wreaked by Vaia, and the emotional trauma caused that night, in the long term there are more-substantial threats to these forests than the impact of one storm. Climate change brings unknown dangers and forest rangers are very worried about the spread of the European spruce bark beetle or bostrico, a tiny, copper-coloured insect that burrows deep into the crevices of weakened trees, feeding upon the internal tissues that supply nutrients from the roots, causing death within a matter of weeks. Even among lush, green forests unharmed by Vaia, it’s not unusual to spot pockets of light brown – the ghostly remains of afflicted trees.

Now that the Vaia clear-up effort is almost complete, and the replanting in conjunction with the Trentino Tree Agreement is well underway, dealing with this secondary threat – which boomed in the years following the storm, with so many weak trees for the beetles to feast upon – has become the focus for conservation efforts.

Gazing wistfully at the surrounding mountains, decorated with a thick blanket of forest, albeit punctured with those pockmarked clearings left behind by Vaia, Paolo is adamant that replanting the forest as quickly as possible is a priority, one that requires a hands-on approach. ‘Nature heals itself. With time, nature is self-healing,’ he says, whimsically. ‘But we need to help nature. We don’t have patience. We don’t have time to wait’.

Trentino Tree Agreement
www.trentinotreeagreement.it/

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When Istanbul-based photographer Bradley Secker heard about a press-trip to a number of ‘halal-friendly’ hotels, opened in recent years along Turkey’s sunny southern coastline, he was intrigued – both by the idea of halal tourism as a business and by the practicalities of operating such spaces. ‘I thought it would be interesting to show how these resorts have developed,’ he says. ‘A lot of them were changed from resorts centred on Russian or European tourists. They made this quick transition because of the lucrative business potential on the halal side.’ It’s a process that has involved a number of architectural changes, most strikingly the sail-like divisions erected between male-only and female-only bathing areas. Halal-friendly hotels also cater to other tenets of Islamic belief. Those that Secker visited do not allow alcohol on site, serve only halal meals and other prayer and mosque facilities.

In photographing these hotels, Secker tapped into a much wider tourism trend, one that goes by many names – halal tourism, Muslim-friendly tourism, to name a few. It is a sector that has grown hugely over the last decade (Covid-19 presenting an obvious blip), moving from niche to mainstream. All-inclusive resorts such as those photographed by Secker are one side of it – appealing largely to families looking for an easy beach holiday with all religious requirements taken care of. But there are many other ways that destinations seek to capitalise on the Muslim pound and it’s not hard to understand why.

A couple from East London with their son at the Wome Deluxe hotel, one of many on Turkey’s southern coastline catering to the halal tourism market. The Wome Deluxe opened in 2015 [Image: Bradley Secker]

According to the Global Muslim Travel Index 2021 (GMTI), produced by Mastercard and the research organisation Crescent Rating, international Muslim traveller arrivals grew from an estimated 108 million in 2013 to 160 million in 2019. With Islam the world’s fastest growing and most youthful religion, this trajectory is expected to continue. Within countries that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – an international grouping founded in 1969, consisting of 57 member states, with a collective population of more than 1.8 billion – the Muslim middle class is growing. Meanwhile, in Western Europe and North America, second and third generation Muslims are entering the workforce in greater numbers with a resultant boost in disposable income. Many countries – whether Islamic or not – are looking to attract these travellers.

THE GROWTH OF A MARKET

Faiza Khan is a marketing lecturer at University College Birmingham who, in 2016, wrote a paper with a colleague titled ‘The Halalification of Tourism’, particularly concerned with addressing the wide range of terminology used in this space. She explains why this market exists at all, and why it has been growing. ‘If you go back 40 or 50 years, the main focus of many Muslims for travelling would be to go to Saudi Arabia for a religious pilgrimage, or it was to go back to their home countries to see their family and friends. For financial reasons, other travelling would have been a waste of time and resources. But then you get this new, younger generation who may not necessarily want to keep going back to their home countries all the time. They’re more exposed to the world, and they want to see more. But they want to do it without compromising on some of their religious values.’

Natasha Ahmed, editor of British Muslim Magazine, a lifestyle publication focusing on travel, food and shopping, agrees. ‘Even when I was young, my holiday was going to my cousins in Pakistan. And that was the be-all and end-all. But now I’ve been to Pakistan four or five times since then, and I’ve explored it for the country, rather than just going to see family and friends. I think a lot of Muslim audiences are now more educated; they have deeper pockets. And they’re looking for other things to do. This market doesn’t drink alcohol, so they’re saving a lot of money and they have started putting their money towards travelling, meeting people, being more educated, more cultural.’

Khan also notes that the September 11th terrorist attacks were a turning point for the industry, one that inadvertently led to new destinations becoming popular with Muslims. ‘In some of the richer countries, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, people would historically have gone to Europe and America, but post September 11th America was very much a no-go zone. There was also a desire after September 11th to reconnect with heritage and culture. You have countries like Malaysia which tapped into this market very early.’

The GMTI produces a yearly ranking of holiday destinations, distinguishing countries based on a range of criteria, including ease of access and the environment (which includes Muslim travellers’ need to feel safe and face few restrictions in practising their faith). In 2021, Malaysia was the top-ranked destination, as it has been ever since the launch of the index in 2015. It was followed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Among non-OIC countries, Singapore maintained the top spot, with the UK second. Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Africa and Japan were also in the top 10. The report notes that ‘these destinations have continued to do some level of passive marketing to the Muslim market even during the pandemic’.

A range of burkinis and swimming costumes on sale in a shop at the Selge Beach resort [Image: Bradley Secker]

BUILDING CONFIDENCE

Tourist boards have embraced a variety of approaches to appeal to Muslims. In Turkey, easy, all-inclusive offerings have proved popular. Elsewhere, the focus is on culture. The GMTI report singled out Uzbekistan for particular mention, noting that during the last few years it has ‘initiated several projects to capitalise on its very rich Islamic heritage to develop what it calls Ziyarah Tourism.’

Gastronomy is another key area, one that particularly appeals to younger, social-media savvy Muslim tourists. The report notes that ‘some destinations leading the way for this Halal Gastronomy landscape include Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.’ In fact it is food, more than anything, that unites Muslim travellers. While there are wide differences in preferences and generational gaps when it comes to alcohol, segregation between the sexes and prayer, most Muslim travellers want to know they can access halal food (which means food that adheres to Islamic law, as defined in the Koran – ‘halal’ means ‘permissible’).

‘It’s one common factor – people have to eat,’ says Elena Nikolova, the founder of Muslim Travel Girl, a hugely successful travel blog aimed at the millennial market. ‘One thing where we are lucky, and I’m hoping in the next ten years we’ll find more of this, is that there’s plenty of halal options of local delicacies. I would like for more travellers to be able to enjoy those local delicacies in a manner that’s okay for them.’ Born to Greek and Bulgarian parents, Nikolova started the blog seven years ago, having converted to Islam three years before. Her aim is to give Muslim people the confidence to travel anywhere. 'My target audience is mostly millennials of a similar age to me. They want to have fun, but within the parameters of their religion.' 

A high wall surrounds the women-only section of the swimming pool at the Selge Beach resort near Alanya [Image: Bradley Secker]

In general, the sense among those writing about this industry is hugely positive. ‘I think a lot of the tourist operators, publishers and the market have merged very nicely into this jigsaw,’ says Ahmed, from British Muslim Magazine. ‘Before, I think people were keen to try and steer the market, but there were just not many key players. Now there are tour operators fully focusing on Muslim tours and Islamic cultural tours.’ Like Nikolova, her goal is to encourage Muslims to travel and feel confident doing so. ‘We try our best to offer a service to make it slightly more smooth and easy for Muslim travellers to access food and activities, as well as alcohol-free resorts. People still need to understand that Muslims can really go anywhere and stay anywhere.’ She adds that many places, once considered off limits, are now open to the Muslim tourist. ‘There was this whole taboo around going to Scotland, Glasgow and the Highlands, because there wasn’t any halal food there. Now, there are charity walks, women’s groups, men’s groups that walk the Highlands, or do Hadrian’s Wall, or walks around the Cotswolds.’

Father and son play in the men-only section of the Adenya Hotel and Resort [Image: Bradley Secker]

A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Destinations haven’t always got it right, particularly non-Muslim countries. Michelle Callanan, a tourism lecturer at University College Birmingham (UCB), notes that ‘there was a degree of tokenism at the beginning, where you'd say: "there's a little prayer room over there, off you go". But things have changed markedly.' 

It’s a change that Muslim travellers have noticed. ‘This is just purely anecdotal experience,’ says Kahn, also at UCB, ‘but over the years when I’ve been to Malaysia, or even to Turkey, I have seen how in the early days, around the year 2000, people were not always open to having Muslim tourists swimming in pools, wearing burkini type clothes [a swimming costume that covers the body and head]. And that’s completely changed – completely changed over the years.’

‘Seven years ago, people were still asking me: “is it okay for me to go through airport security as a hijabi?”’ [a woman who wears the Islamic head-scarf], remembers Nikolova. ‘But now I see a difference when I go to places like Greece, or Bulgaria. Five years ago, when there were not many Muslims exploring, they would have asked me rudely to remove my hijab. Now, they just point me to a side room.’ The questions her readers ask have totally changed too. ‘People don’t ask me now about safety or security. They’re asking: “where can I find halal food? What things can I see, what mosques can I pray at?" That's what I mean by confident Muslim travellers. From when we started seven years ago, we see a difference – these people have matured as travellers themselves.'

That said, finding a destination where Islamic clothing is tolerated and accepted is still a selling point for some people. For the Europeans Secker met in Turkey, holidaying in a safe space was certainly part of the appeal. ‘That’s what all the people I interviewed said – “we’re happy to go on regular package holidays in Turkey but if the woman is wearing the burkini there’s often an issue of staring from the regular public.” And they don’t want an alcohol vibe – those drunken Brits milling about.’

Muhammed (centre) from Bradford, UK, plays with his children at the mixedgender beach of the Wome Deluxe hotel in Alanya [Image: Bradley Secker]

He noticed this attitude particularly among tourists from France, a direct response to the move by three local municipalities in the country to ban the burkini from public pools and beaches. The issue received a lot of attention in the press a few years ago, but even in July of this year EuroNews reported that several female activists were fined for wearing burkinis in a Grenoble swimming pool. ‘Five women entered the city pool to bathe on Wednesday, causing the pool to be evacuated at the request of officials,’ read the article. The ban doesn’t extend to the whole country, but as Callanan suggests: ‘It implies that the whole of France is like this. It builds up a negative narrative for Muslim travellers.’

It seems foolish not to note that for some people, the whole of idea of Muslim-specific holidays rankles. But identity-specific tourism is nothing new, and usually stems from discrimination. LGBT tourism, which, as the story goes, kicked off in 1973 when the first gay only tour of the Grand Canyon was offered by US-based company He Travel, offers an interesting comparison. Like halal tourism, it rose up both as a result of people within the community promoting it and due to companies keen to capitalise on a new market. Both also exist to some extent because travel for these groups is not always easy or straightforward.

It’s a comparison that Secker was surprised to find himself make. ‘It’s obviously different, but as a gay guy I understand gay cruises and gay tourism. It’s just because you want the freedom to be who you are without being judged and stared at.’ He admits that he approached his photography project with mixed feelings, but that the reality on the ground seemed fairly simple. ‘I thought: is this another sort of identity politics, segregating people, dividing this, dividing that? But it’s not harming them and it’s the same sort of premise as gay tourism, or lesbian tourism. It’s just catering to one market and making them feel comfortable and at ease when they go on holiday.’

As Faiza adds: 'They want to explore the world, but is the world welcoming to them?'

Montreuil-sur-Mer 

Population: 2133
Land area: 2,85 sq km
Demographics: 40 deaths and 60 births annually; growth – plus 20
Region: Haute-de-France
Department: Pas de Calais
Mayor: (2020 -2026) Pierre Ducrocq, independent

Nothing about Montreuil-sur-Mer is what you expect.

To begin with, it’s not quite sur mer, but is built on a silted-up river estuary, about 20 miles away from the actual sea. It is also one of the most beautiful and the most ‘French’ towns in France – something that one does not expect to find in the very north of country, with its totally undeserved reputation, both abroad and in the rest of France, of being ‘drab’, ‘poor’ and ‘not French enough’. For many a Brit, ‘real France’ begins much farther to the south – somewhere in Normandy or Brittany, and only a few are aware of the existence of Montreuil-sur-Mer, a little gem of unadulterated ‘Frenchness’ just half a tank of petrol away from London.

‘A quaint, beautiful, characteristic and little-known corner of France, Montreuil preserves better than any place in Great Britain the character of a medieval town,’ wrote Stephen Gwynn, an Irish journalist and MP in his book In Praise of France, 1927.

Brocante, by St Saulve Abbey in Place Gambetta Montreuil [Christine Bohling]

Montreuil is a stereotype breaker, for almost everything in it defies the concept of a small provincial town. It feels much bigger than it is, and I was genuinely surprised when Pierre Ducrocq, Montreuil’s energetic mayor, told me during my last visit that the town’s present-day population is just over 2,000 – a huge drop from its medieval high of 30,000 people.

I first stepped onto the town’s ancient cobbles 18 years ago and fell in love with the place. Faced with the enforced immobility of lockdowns, I had been missing Montreuil almost like a loved one. There was no question of where to go first after at least some of the travel restrictions got lifted. For me, love is a sensation that encompasses all the senses, and so off I went, with eyes and ears open.

Sight

Names can be misleading. I am told by Pierre Ducrocq, the mayor of Montreuil, that some visitors can still be spotted looking for the sea when in town – and complaining when they fail to find it.

What one cannot overlook, however, are the town’s ubiquitous trees (over a thousand get planted every year) and flowers. In some old streets and winding lanes, Montreuil’s famous Louis-XV, neo-Gothic and Baroque townhouses, including the disproportionally large La Mairie mansion, are hardly visible within the camouflage of the surrounding plane trees and the flowers on their facades. With an overabundance of wisteria-covered balconies and window boxes, bursting with petunias and geraniums, Montreuil is an official ville fleurie, the second most beautiful (according to the latest competition) in the whole of France.

Montreuil is an official ‘ville fleurie’ and flowers are well looked after [Christine Bohling]

The Montreuillois regard their town’s appearance as an important matter. Every three years a special ‘jury’ checks the existing ‘flower pattern’ and gives advice on how to improve it. The flowers get sprinkled with recycled water only. All public offices are set energy-saving targets and each resident is entitled to a free private garden allotment. Cattle-owners are encouraged to ‘eco-graze’ their sheep, goats and cows on the historic ramparts. The town’s school children spend one day a week on excursions to the neighbouring marshes nature reserve.

The town has been designated a ‘natural community site’. Many houses have beehives in the gardens, and in the Citadel, they keep colonies of greater mouse-eared and greater horseshoe bats, a protected species.

No wonder the writer Victor Hugo adored Montreuil, visited it often and used the town’s ancient streets as real-life settings for his best-known novel, Les Miserables.

Field Marshall Haig and his statue

Field Marshal Douglas Haig (1861 – 1928), the British Commander-in-Chief during WWI, resided with his entourage at Beaurepaire, a country house on the outskirts of Montreuil-sur-Mer, in 1916-18. A keen horseman, he could often be seen riding through the town and the countryside in the company of his aide-de-camp. When in 1928 the question of erecting a statue in his memory was raised by Montreuil townsfolk, an equestrian version was opted for. The Nazis, who occupied the town in 1940, removed the statue and melted it down. After the war, the people of Montreuil recovered the original mould from the sculptor Paul Landowski and cast a new one. Field Marshal Haig can still be seen on horseback towering above Montreuil’s main Charles de Gaulles Square.

It is the old ramparts that give Monreuil’s townscape a particularly dramatic look – a view which started to be shaped in the year 987 with the construction of the first fortifications on the promontory above the Canche River Valley. Over the next thousand years they were constantly improved and modernised to keep up with technological progress. With the advent of artillery, the medieval defence system was adapted to suit new attack techniques and the archers on top of the towers were replaced with cannons. By 1567, military engineers had made the town a French border stronghold against Spanish forces – which had captured Calais and Amiens – with bastions, earthworks and new fortifications in one weak point, which had a gentle slope to the river.  

In the 17th century, the town’s ramparts were modernised first by Jean Errard, engineer for King Henri IV, and later by the noted military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, who added to the Citadel its distinctive demi-lune (half-moon-shaped) entrance, the arsenal and – in line with his own famous ‘more powder, less blood’ doctrine – a large powder house.

The pillboxes, added to the bastions in 1845, came to good use during the First World War when they housed a telephone exchange for the British Army General Headquarters (GHQ).

La Mairie mansion, one of Montreuil’s famous townhouses [Christine Bohling]

The British GHQ was based in Montreuil from 1916. According to a rare book G.H.Q. Montreuil-sur-Mer, penned by an anonymous author under the nom-de-plume ‘G.S.O.’ (General Staff Officer?), and published in London in 1920: ‘Military convenience alone dictated the choice of Montreuil as the site of the General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force in France as soon as that Force reached to such a strength as to take a full share of the campaign.’

Undoubtedly, the fact that the town had already been heavily fortified played a role, too. To quote the same G.S.O. again: ‘Had it not been for those Rampart walks, the toilsome life of G.H.Q. at Montreuil would have been hardly possible. The road from anywhere to anywhere, if time allowed, was by the Ramparts and most went by the Ramparts unless work was hideously pressing.’

G.S.O. goes on to say that the already existing fortifications of an old fosse were converted into ‘hard tennis courts’, which were not used a lot, because ‘really there was not time to follow tennis or any other sport’.

The Nazis, who occupied Montreuil in 1940, turned the Citadel into the army barracks, and – with all the British WWI infrastructure still in place – into their own military headquarters too.

Walking along the same ramparts today is a fascinating experience for those who do not suffer from acrophobia, for looking down at the valley far below, with birds floating above the tree tops well below your feet, can easily take your breath away.

Rue Pierre Ledent, one of the old cobbled streets of Montreuil [Christine Bohling]

Sound

I wake up in a bright room of the Hermitage hotel to the inimitable sound mix of Montreuil. Through the picture windows I can hear the chirping of birds, blending with the ever-so-gentle, whisper-like whistling of the wind blowing through the ramparts.

I listen too to the tolling of the bells of the Gothic St-Saulve Abbey Church in Place Gambetta. Most of its furnishings were burnt down during the French Revolution in 1793 on the orders of National Convention member Andre Dumon, specially dispatched to Montreuil from Paris to oversee the auto-da-fe. The interior was later restored with paintings, sculptures and other works of art from many other churches in the area which had been destroyed in the Revolution. One masterpiece to escape the destruction was the oil panting Saint Dominic’s Vision by Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet, now hanging in the church’s high altar.

As the bells go silent I am able to discern my favourite Montreuil sound – the shuffling of car tires against the old cobbles, with which most of the old town’s streets are still paved. That highly peculiar and ever-so-soothing sound is hard to describe. It resembles the muffled low-pitch buzzing of a giant, yet friendly, bee.

During our meeting, the mayor told me how much effort was taken by the town council to keep the historic cobbles, some of which are over 500 years old, in good order. And they do look like new. At night, the cobblestones gleam under the light of street lanterns, as if covered with mica.

The chorus is joined occasionally by the distant rattling of train wheels. The old railway tracks, passing though the town, were recently replaced, and one can now travel to Arras, Boulogne and other neighbouring places with speed and comfort. It takes about two hours (with one change) to get to Paris, and about the same time – to London by Eurostar.

The Lumiere Festival

Victor Hugo’s creative time in the town is commemorated each August by the special son et lumière (sound-and-light) show, when the best-​known scenes from Les Miserables and its numerous stage and movie adaptations are re-enacted by the locals in the town’s historic centre and on the ramparts with the help of specially engineered light and sound effects, fireworks and horses.

Smell and taste

My favourite Montreuil smell is that of a log fire of an evening. Many houses and mansions in the old town have large gaping fireplaces which the locals like lighting up all year round, even in summer. The comforting scent wafts gently up the winding streets all the way to the Place de General de Gaulle, formerly the Market Square, where it blends with the joint fragrance of over 150 different cheeses oozing from Fromagerie Caseus, with the dominant one being of the almost aggressively pungent Vieux Lille.

On its journey up the streets the log fire aroma clashes with – and at times gets overwhelmed by – the odours of food being cooked in multiple households: of various aromatic soups (Montreuil’s speciality, always served here with freshly baked breads and tartlets); of another local dish, Ris de Veau (veal sweetbreads); of grilled turbot, and of all kinds of marmites – traditional French casseroles, cooked and served in pots.

They take their food seriously in Montreuil, and one of the best proofs of that is the massive and delicious Jean Valjean loaf from Boulanger Gremont.

The tiny Montreuil is now a popular destination gastronomique, one of the major culinary hubs of Northern France, with eating places ranging from Michelin-starred restaurants to down-to-earth bistros and cafes. Tim Matthews – a local resident and a native Englishman, who owns and runs one of France’s best luxury B&Bs – Maison 76 – believes that the town’s present-day gastronomic excellence is but a continuation of a centuries-long tradition. As proof, he quotes from Gastronomic History of Montreuil, written (in French) by the local historian George Orhant, who claims that: ‘Montreuil was considered a culinary Shangri-La’ as early as the 13^th century.

A view of the Ramparts of Montreuil [Christine Bohling]

Like me, Mathews had his own coup de foudre during his first visit to Monreuil – not 18, but 45 years ago. He eventually chose to live here, having become part of the town’s 50-strong British community, and since then has turned into a local celebrity of sorts. ‘Not a native – as his name suggests – but in every sense a true local,’ the Montreuillois say about him.

We are sitting with Tim near the fireplace in the cosy lounge of his hotel. ‘Montreuil attracted me at first with its unique democratic feel. It is very accessible, very down-to-earth. You don’t have to be a millionaire to enjoy Montreuil. The town has been protected by the ramparts from the rest the world for over 2,000 years. The walls, which at times make it appear a bit isolated, also help to keep away excessive housing development and big supermarket chains.’

‘The people here are northerners,’ he continues. ‘France, like England, also has a distinct North/South divide, with northerners traditionally more open, welcoming and friendly. We do rely on tourism, and there’s a lot of warmth towards the Brits, whose presence has been strongly felt in Montreuil all through its long history.’

Montreuil’s brief culinary history

In 1311 and 1314, the Bishop of Amiens published charters regulating culinary matters in Montreuil, allowing its cooks to make cognots – a kind of brioche with spices and melted sugar which, with time, became the town’s speciality.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Montrellois kept enjoying sumptuous meals in numerous salons and halls featuring decorated silverware, porcelain statuettes from Germany, pyramids of fruit and baskets of flowers. Meals lasted for hours, and if they took place at night, guests would not get up from the tables till morning.

18^th and 19^th century travellers write of the high-standard coaching inns, the Renard d’Or, Hotel Angleterre and the Relay du Roy, serving woodcock, snipe pate, trout, frog legs and excellent seafood (Montreuil was then an important stop on the so-called route-des- poissons from Boulogne to Paris).

Touch

In his beautifully poetic book Venice is a Fish, Italian writer Tiziano Scarpa explains how to explore Venice by touching its pavements and bridges with one’s feet. ‘Feel how your toes turn prehensile on the steps of the bridges, clutching at worn or squared ledges as you climb; your soles brake you on the way down, your heels halt you. Wear light shoes, soft-soled, not post-punk boots or trainers with rubbery air pockets, no spongy inner padding. I suggest this spiritual exercise: become a foot.’

I love walking on the old cobbles of Montreuil at dusk, when cars rarely break the silence of the deserted, dimly-lit streets. Following Terzino’s advice, I become a foot, and touching the cobbles with the soles of my shoes is like connecting directly with the town’s past and with French history itself.

Your table awaits in Montreuil Sur Mer [Christine Bohling]

Since my first visit to Montreuil 18 years ago, I’ve returned almost every year (not counting the recent Covid-related gap), but it had taken me a while to get the true feel of the place. That happened on 13 July 2019, when my wife and I spontaneously joined the local residents’ annual street parade on the eve of Bastille Day. Surrounded on all sides by smiling and friendly Montreuillois, we marched along the ancient cobbles to the sounds of drums. We waved to the onlookers, who waved to us in return. Being unquestionably accepted as part of the festive procession gave me a strong, if momentary, sensation of having finally found home.

From 6am the following morning, the town turned, Cinderella-like, into a flowery market place, the site of one of France’s largest brocantes (flea markets), specialising in antiques and bric-a-brac. With stalls filling all of its streets and squares, Montreuil looked a cross between a somewhat chaotic open-air art fair and a history-of-technology museum.

How could I not fall in love with a place like that?

Our gift ideas for 2021 have been picked for people interested in nature, culture, travel, geopolitics –  in short, anyone who loves geography. We've deliberately chosen a selection of gifts that have been ethically and sustainably made, that are produced by small businesses or that support good causes, alongside a subscription to Geographical which we think would make an excellent gift!

The game lover

There's a whole range of nature and geography-themed board games to choose from – we've even made a list of them here.  

Other table top games include Where on Earth from the Science Museum, which tests your knowledge of travel-trivia, and the RSPB edition of Monopoly,  where you swap property-building for discovering new bird-watching sites.  

There's a growing number of video games exploring environmental issues from climate change to conservation, including Alba: a wildlife adventure where players spend their time protecting and identifying wildlife on a Mediterranean island reserve. The developers have also been busy planting trees for every copy of the game bought so far. 

Budding oceanographers can learn about the challenges facing marine life through the eyes of a deep sea explorer and scientist in Beyond Blue, a game inspired by the BBC's Blue Planet II series and developed with the help of leading ocean experts. 

Our top pick, from the same developers as Beyond Blue, is award-winning Never Alone, made in collaboration with the Iñupiat, an Indigenous Alaskan community. Embodying the character of a young Iñupiat girl, players explore the frozen tundra and ice floes of the Arctic in a reworked version of an old Iñupiaq tale. The game is narrated in the Iñupiaq language and was designed to help preserve and promote Iñupiaq culture and its tradition of oral storytelling. 

The wildlife lover

There are many different organisations that offer animal adoption programmes. One of our favourites is from WWF. A year's adoption starts from £36 and supports one of several species most in need of protection, including: elephants, penguins, snow leopards, orangutans and giant pandas. Find the full list of animals here. 

Included in the adoption welcome pack are an adoption certificate, regular updates about the chosen animal and an optional cuddly toy. 

For wildlife that you can actually visit, or at least have a chance at spotting out in the wild, the Donkey Sanctuary (located in Devon) and the Wildlife Trusts both offer adoption schemes a little closer to home. Choose to sponsor an otter, hedgehog, seal, red squirrel or even an ancient tree or wildflower meadow.

For even more trees, Ecologi offer tree-plantings gifts starting at £13.50 for 36 trees, or for someone really special, you can even plant a forest big enough to see from space!

Finally, if it's a wildlife-watching experience you're looking for, the pioneering rewilding project at Knepp Estate in West Sussex offer a range of guided safaris through their grounds. Autumn tours showcase rutting deer while night tours are best for spotting bats and moths. Or opt for an afternoon tracking experience where visitors will be taught how to identify and use prints and dung to locate different animal species. 

The book lover

From thrilling adventures to thought-provoking exposés, take your pick from our favourite books published this year:

Geographical's top 10 books of 2021

The birdwatcher

For the best in bird-watching gifts, you can't do better than the RSPB which has an online shop that includes everything from British birdsong guides to printed reusable water bottles. Click the FSC button to view products approved by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Avid birders can show off their bird-spotting skills with a scratch-off British garden birds poster, designed by illustrator and ornithologist Matt Sewell, which lets bird-watchers record which species they've seen or heard. For all-weather note taking and sketching out in the field, Rite in the Rain's birder's notebook is made from waterproof, recyclable, FSC-approved paper. 

The map lover

Any Geographical reader is likely to be a fan of maps, and we've got a few recommendations that would make great gifts:

There are lots of scratch-maps out there, but this one from Not On The High Street (made in the UK) can be assembled into a globe to sit on a desk and inspire more wanderlust. 

Splash maps are a UK-based map and clothing company that will print any map of your choice on a range of fabrics and clothes – from duvet covers to face masks. You can also create a custom-made map with the Ordnance Survey’s personalised map service, which lets you create your favourite location as a paper, framed or canvas map. 

In Atlas of the Invisible: Maps & Graphics That Will Change How You See the World, award-winning geographer-designer team James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti have created a series of fascinating maps that visualise the hidden patterns in data, mapping global happiness and anxiety levels, the causes and consequences of climate change, and the invisible scars of geopolitics. 

And finally, don’t forget to check out our guide to the perfect mapping books for geographers!

The foodie

Cookery classes run by Migrateful are led by expert refugee and migrant chefs who teach participants how to make traditional dishes using cooking techniques from their home countries. Participants can learn to make dishes from a range of different countries, including Bangladesh, Eritrea,  Iran, Sri Lanka and Syria, while supporting chefs who are struggling to integrate and access employment due to legal and linguistic barriers. Most in-person classes take place in the southeast (mainly London) and start from £38.32, online classes are £20 per household, and private classes can be booked both online and in person.  

The traveller

If you know someone who's dreaming of travelling next year, we've got lots of great ideas for sustainable and eco-friendly gifts.  

Insulated steel bottles from Jerry Bottle are ideal for long journeys and are built to last a lifetime. Money from every water bottle sold goes towards funding new wells and water pumps in India and Tanzania – you'll find a set of GPS coordinated on the base of each bottle showing where in the world money from your purchase has gone to help provide clean water. 

Small, sustainable travel essentials make great stocking-fillers or smaller gifts, take your pick from plastic free toothpaste tabs, bamboo camping cutlery, reusable coffee cups and solid shampoos. Or choose a selection and pack them all into one of Patagonia’s Black Hole duffle bags, made from recycled plastic bottles, as a larger gift for someone who's made some big travel plans. 

We also like these logbooks from Bear in Mind. The small US-based company makes pre-printed logbooks for hiking, backpacking and road trips – you can even write on them underwater. The logbooks are printed exclusively on stone paper made from waste mining material, so there's a little environmental impact.

The puzzler

We might not be spending as much time indoors but jigsaw puzzles still make great gifts. 

Some of our favourites include the Women in Science puzzle, the beautifully illustrated Fauna puzzle by Cloudberries (who partner with  Eden Reforestation Projects) and the 3D wooden puzzles from environmentally-conscious Touch Wood – we especially like their educational nature puzzles.

The eternally curious

Time for a plug. We’d love it if you would consider buying your loved one a subscription to Geographical!

Geographical is available as a monthly print magazine, delivered straight to your (or your chosen person’s) door. It costs £9.50 for three months, or £38 for a year.

Packed full of stunning photography, maps, infographics and more, our aim is to bring you stories from every corner of the globe, told though the lens of geography – stories that inform, entertain and amaze. Our writers are award-winning journalists, photographers, explorers and adventurers who span the globe covering the most important issues facing the planet today.

As the official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) we also bring readers all the news from the Society, dipping into its phenomenal archives to share stories from the past and to celebrate the explorers who opened the eyes of our ancestors to the magnificence of the Earth.

The geographer

For the serious geographer in your life why not consider the gift of membership to the Royal Geographical Society Society (with IBG). Gift membership unlocks one year of geographical inspiration, professional opportunity, and community connection with the Society. You also get access to Geographical!

Gift membership is available as: 

Ordinary Membership: Includes access to online Monday night lectures and events programme, plus the back-catalogue of events and talks. Members also receive  a subscription to Geographical. Gift membership for an Ordinary Member costs £152 for one year.

Young Geographer membership (for anyone aged 14 – 24): Includes access to the digital edition of Geographical magazine, the Society’s entire range of online academic journals, and a host of educational resources – from podcasts and videos explaining core topics on the geography curriculum, to professional advice for those in their early careers. Also includes access to our member-only events, including live streamed Monday night lectures. Gift membership for a Young Geographer costs £53 for one year.

 This feature was originally published in the August 2021 issue of Geographical

Perhaps it’s something primordial, the unmistakable taste of the oyster. That rush of flavour has matured through the tangled web of oceanic life. Anthropologists who subscribe to the ‘aquatic ape’ theory of human evolution believe that our fascination with shellfish stems from a reliance on omega-3 fatty acids, iodine and zinc – nutrients that quickened the cerebral development of modern humans. In South Africa’s Pinnacle Point cave, where the earliest artifacts of Homo sapiens have been found, lies evidence that about 150,000 years ago, our ancestors shifted from a terrestrial diet to the fish and shellfish of the coast. Perhaps, then, the oyster’s flavour is a reminder of our ancient dependency on the sea. 

Today, they’re being dispatched off the side of a boat at West Mersea, in the Blackwater Estuary in Essex. The waters are still, save for the metronomic splash of shallow waves against the hull. The shrieks of black-headed gulls fill the air, terns swooping to evade their wingbeats overhead. On the deck, the arm of a JCB thrusts into a pile of shells, scooping up tonnes of oysters, scallops and mussels. Tossed overboard, this material plunges downward, coarse shells scuffing together as they descend. 

Since 2011, oyster fishermen, NGOs, marine ecologists and government conservation bodies have joined forces under the Essex Native Oyster Restoration Initiative (ENORI) with the aim of restoring living oyster reefs to Essex waters. So far, they have dropped tens of thousands of mature oysters, along with hundreds of tonnes of empty shells to serve as a settlement substrate, into an experimental restoration plot that forms part of a 284-square-kilometre marine conservation zone – one of the UK’s largest inshore protected areas.

Reefs, Crawling With Life

Scrawled on the mottled pages of historic fishing logs are descriptions of oyster reefs extending tens of kilometres off the shore. The catches recorded in those logs would only have been possible if oysters existed in incredible densities on the UK’s oyster reefs and descriptions of ‘living crusts of shellfish’ and ‘clumps of oysters in the dredges’ attest to this reality. 

One fisherman, James Bertram, wrote of the pre-1840 waters: ‘Then oysters were very plentiful – so plentiful, in fact, that three men in a boat could, with ease, procure 3,000 oysters in a couple of hours.’ Market trading reports log annual sales of more than 700 million native oysters in London markets during the 1860s and by 1875, England had more than 15,000 boats and 50,000 people employed by the oyster industry. 

However, as fishing capacity grew to meet London’s demands, the health of the reefs began to suffer. Declining catches meant higher prices and a once-abundant sustenance food was elevated to delicacy status. By 1948, landings of the UK’s fleet dropped to seven million oysters, down from 26 million in 1918. 

Oyster harvesting at Mersea [Picture courtesy of Mersea Museum]

‘Overfishing had been a massive problem and that reduced the ability of the reefs to survive contemporary stresses,’ says Tom Cameron of the University of Essex, an ecologist collaborating with ENORI. ‘It’s a case of multiple stresses swirling together over time.’ One such stress was introduced during the 1980s – the anti-fouling paint tributyltin, which leached from the underside of boats and poisoned the nearby aquatic life.

‘As a boy, I used to go around picking up little oysters and selling them to the merchants of the Mersea waterfront,’ says local oysterman Allan Bird as he stoops to collect a handful of escaped shells. ‘When I got a job in the Mersea oyster industry, all these old boys gave me information about oyster culture, which I soaked up like a sponge.’ His boots collect fragments of shell, seaweed and shingle, which scrape against the rusted metal decking of the restoration boat. ‘As time went on, the Essex stocks went down. To keep the trade alive, I started to bring oysters in from the Solent and Cornwall.’ Things changed in 1983 with the arrival of bonamiosis, a disease caused by the Bonamia parasite, introduced with re-stocks of imported European and US oysters. After that, many oystermen departed the industry, unable to revive the diseased reefs. 

The waves at the shore ebb into the surrounding marsh, where a lone godwit wades. ‘Mersea oyster culture wasn’t all about the money; it was about the tradition. It was about the quality of this habitat – you had to look after it, that was our way,’ adds Bird. 

Nevertheless, over the years, a local culture of stewardship began to be supplanted by larger commercial operations. With stresses accumulating, many oyster reefs disappeared and the coastal oyster culture began to follow. ‘There were all sorts of things brought into this estuary: American slipper limpets, American tingle [a type of predatory whelk]. It wasn’t quite that same traditional culture,’ says Bird as he rolls a shell between weathered hands. 

Reefs in Decline

Today, oyster reefs are the most severely threatened marine habitat in the world. A global study has estimated that across 144 bays and 44 of the world’s ecoregions, 85 per cent of oyster reefs have been lost. Many regions of the UK claim just one per cent of former abundance. The Blackwater, Crouch, Roach and Thames estuaries; the Solent; the Firths of Forth and Clyde in Scotland; Galway Bay in Ireland; Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay and the estuaries of New Hampshire in the USA; most of the southern Australian coastline – all are examples of areas that have seen oyster numbers plummet. 

As a result, the ecosystem services provided by oysters have been largely forgotten. ‘Oyster and shellfish reefs are ecologically equivalent to coral reefs,’ explains Boze Hancock, a marine biologist at the Nature Conservancy and director of the Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA), which includes ENORI in its network. ‘Corals dominate the clean equatorial waters of the tropics, but as you move further towards the poles, into estuaries and in lower latitudes, the shellfish take over.’ 

‘Oysters build big, three-dimensional reefs that support the marine ecosystem,’ adds Hancock. ‘An average oyster filters 200 litres of water a day and while it’s thought the figure for European native oysters is less than this, hectares of oyster reefs still remove many tonnes of suspended sediment per year, allowing light to penetrate deeper from the surface. This, in turn, allows seagrasses and other organisms to flourish.’

Local oysterman Allan Bird stands on discarded oyster shells at West Mersea [Jacob Dykes]

Take away oysters and these clean-up facilities are diminished. Often, where oyster reefs have been overfished, run-off containing nitrogen-based fertilisers has then fed phytoplankton blooms that occlude oxygen from the water beneath. ‘On the north-east coast of the USA, 60 per cent of bays and estuaries are plagued by eutrophication. Wherever phytoplankton are unchecked, depleted fish stocks and “dead zones” lurk beneath,’ says Hancock. In Chesapeake Bay, where native oyster beds are at an estimated one per cent of former abundance, excess nitrogen has polluted the waters since the 1930s, bringing spiralling losses to local fisheries. 

A similar scenario has occurred in the waters of the Solent – the 20-mile strait between the Isle of Wight and the UK mainland. In the late 1970s, oyster catches there peaked at 840 tonnes. Since then, there has been a continual, catastrophic decline in their numbers; the Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities reported in 2013 that annual harvests had dropped from 200 to 20 tonnes over five years. The harbours and estuaries at Langstone, Chichester, Portsmouth, Pagham, Medina, Newtown, Eastern Yar and Hamble are now all considered by the Environment Agency to be eutrophic or at risk of eutrophication, and many have been designated as ‘polluted waters’ under the Nitrates Directive. Known to facilitate the ‘denitrification’ of coastal sediments, re-establishing oysters could be one way to mitigate excessive nitrogen levels.

ENORI’s restoration boat drops tonnes of shells into the Mersea waters to serve as a substrate for oyster larvae to settle on [Jacob Dykes]

Perhaps the most crucial role of all is the oyster’s provision of habitat for other marine life. ‘Their cryptic surface provides protection for juvenile fish and crustaceans – a critical nursery ground for ocean productivity,’ says Hancock. One 2016 study in the South and mid-Atlantic oceans found that juvenile kingfish, flounder, sea bass, drums and striped bass were all more abundant on oyster habitats relative to the unstructured seabed found in many coastal regions today. Anemones, crabs, queen scallops and clams all contribute to the ‘living crust’ within an oyster bed. A study conducted in the Blackwater Estuary found that European native oysters boosted species richness by 87 per cent. 

No wonder, then, that their loss across the world has coincided with a decline in global ocean productivity. ‘When one species goes down, it takes others with it that in turn affect the animals and plants with which they are connected,’ writes leading fisheries expert and marine biologist Callum Roberts in his book Ocean of Life. ‘The more different stresses we add to the blend, the wider the spectrum of life that is directly affected, so the consequences penetrate further through the tangle of existence.’ 

Shifting Baselines

Many marine biologists believe that the loss of oyster reefs is a prime example of ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ – a term that describes the process by which our standards for healthy, functioning ecosystems wane with each passing generation. 

‘Shifting baseline syndrome applies to so many things that we don’t recognise on a daily basis. People no longer realise how important an oyster reef was and should be,’ says Hancock. ‘Essentially, every time a dredge or trawl net is set, it reduces the capacity of the ocean to provide the next generation of fish. When the habitat is gone, both the oysters and the fish catches collapse.’ 

‘Shifting baseline syndrome is an inter-generational amnesia,’ adds world fisheries expert Daniel Pauly. ‘We forget and mistrust the experiences of those living a few generations ago. We don’t trust accounts as much as our own individual perceptions and experiences; we believe merely in what we have seen, in shorter windows of time and change.’ 

There’s a growing perception among conservationists that the syndrome affects our views of all the world’s ecosystems. Past profusions of butterflies, greater mammal diversity, more abundant woodland birds, seas teeming with fish; the memory of such former abundance erodes with time, and as a result, the conservation goals of contemporary society lose ambition. ‘This means that what we have to do is construct a past where abundance is estimated, using the data and methods of the modern day, with inputs from witness documents, books and available information,’ says Pauly. 

Marine biologist Ruth Thurstan is fascinated by this approach to overcoming shifting baseline syndrome. For much of her career, she has painstakingly sifted through landings reports and disjointed fisheries statistics to construct time series that estimate former coastal abundance. In a study published in Nature, she demonstrated that, due to the damaging effects of dredging and trawling, which remove crucial habitat for juveniles, landings of individual fish species from the North Sea have fallen by an average of 94 per cent since 1889. Today, the UK’s fishing fleet lands just one-17th of 19th-century catches. 

Oysters being cleaned in the shed at West Mersea [Picture courtesy of Mersea Museum]

‘Some of the changes we’ve made to marine ecosystems historically are potentially irreversible, but I don’t see that as a reason not to engage with the historical records and data, and not to use those to become more ambitious in conservation and in fisheries management,’ says Thurstan. ‘In so many places, three-dimensional, living hardshell reefs have been changed to this alternative state dominated by muddy, soft sediment. The knowledge that there were once huge native oyster reefs should enliven our ambition.’

By recognising this former ecosystem abundance, and not dismissing reports as the quixotic ideals of environmentalists, Thurstan, Roberts and Pauly, along with those at ENORI, believe that our expectations of ocean productivity can be raised. ‘These places are forces to consider the scale and ambition at which we, as a society, need to re-examine what marine ecosystems should really look like, and whether we are willing to effect real change,’ says Thurstan. 

The Restoration Antidote

With the cascade of shells drawing to a close, the team of marine biologists and oystermen descend from the restoration boat into nimbler taxi vessels. They haul towards the jetty at West Mersea, weaving between sail boats and barges, evading the shallows of the marsh. 

Mersea has been selected as a prime site for oyster restoration: there is good documentation of how abundant native oyster reefs used to be and fragments of them persist around the marshland today, thanks to the stewardship of some local oystermen. The biologists and oystermen believe that these remaining reefs will export larvae into the water, ready to settle on the shell- substrate habitats now being created. Tom Cameron of the University of Essex grips the helm, buffeted by the day’s downpour. ‘A female oyster can release hundreds of millions of larvae, and can, in theory, recover a whole population,’ he says, stooping to be heard over the roar of the engine. ‘We’re now building back the structure for those larvae to settle on and increase the chances of reproductive success.’ Herein lies a paradigm for ecosystem restoration in a modern, fragmented world. ‘In ecology, it’s the habitat that determines the carrying capacity of the population. That idea applies here in Mersea, in Dornoch, the Solent; it applies to any environment where lost populations are being revived. Even if you’re talking about headline-grabbing wolf or lynx reintroductions, the habitat must be regenerated first.’

ENORI has nine days of this laborious restoration work planned, come rain or shine. The old oyster beds, still visible on the shore at West Mersea, lie as relics of their former abundance. Over the years, countless oystermen have lugged their fishing gear across this remnant raft of shells. Trailed by the biologists, Bird’s boots crunch across the same surface, weary from a day of restoration. ‘For years, I worked on these grounds and realised that if you can look after the seabed you can get really amazing oysters, which do wonders for the waters,’ he says. ‘They’re black and white, these scientists, but there’s a shared vision here and it’s all about the habitat. Us oystermen need to get together with the scientists. Our traditional knowledge – when backed by science – can be really strong.’ 

Ecologist Tom Cameron grips the helm after a day of oyster restoration [Jacob Dykes]

Similar oyster restoration initiatives are now popping up around the world. In Scotland, the DEEP project is restoring the oyster beds of the Dornoch Firth, having reintroduced their first oyster in 2017; the Solent Oyster Restoration Project has been installing cages of oyster shells across 12 restoration sites since 2017, and studies show that 97 species now associate with these ‘oyster larvae pumps’; while the ecological and economic basis for oyster restoration has been carved out by trailblazing projects across the USA. ‘We’re now at the point in Mersea where we’re starting to collect data that can be brought to funding bodies to get other restoration projects off the ground, just as they have done in the USA,’ says Alison Debney of the Zoological Society of London, one of ENORI’s project managers. 

Quantitative studies in Chesapeake Bay show that, by unlocking the nutrients of the sea through waste deposition, restored oyster habitat is worth US$5,342 per hectare annually. In the south-eastern USA, each hectare of restored oyster habitat supports an additional 2.6 tonnes of fish biomass, which is exported out to neighbouring fisheries. ‘Because of the mortality rate of baby fish, if you change the survival rate by just five per cent through the restoration of key habitats such as oyster reefs, you’ve got potentially two or three times the fish at the next life stage,’ says Hancock. Marine biologists believe that by exporting more juvenile fish to neighbouring ‘take zones’, where fishing is allowed, restoration initiatives can quickly pay off any debts incurred. The Chesapeake restoration of 142 hectares of oyster reefs cost US$53 million, yet it generates US$23 million a year in extra fish catch. 

Ecosystem restoration, both marine and terrestrial, is increasingly being seen as a tool for local and national economies. The landmark Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity, commissioned by the UK Treasury and published earlier this year, argued that the ‘flow’ of ecosystem services translates to monetary value. Hence, the authors argued, the economy’s health is inextricably linked to that of the ecosystems that sustain it. When the British seabed thrives, the ecosystem stores more carbon, filters more nitrogen and toxins from the water, unlocks more nutrients and provides more complex habitat for juveniles of commercially harvested fish and crustaceans. 

A New Deal for Marine Ecosystems

Global ocean productivity is in decline. The Sea Around Us Project and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization both report that the number of collapsed fish populations has steadily increased year-on-year, and that by the mid-1990s, 20 per cent of populations that were exploited in the 1950s had collapsed. Across the world, the marine trophic index is declining, indicating that smaller, weaker fish and invertebrates are being caught further down the ocean’s food web. The 2021 Oceana Report states that 28.7 per cent of UK stocks are officially overfished, rising to 33 per cent in the English Channel and 36 per cent in the North Sea.

Given the state of our oceans, many see active habitat restoration and protection as one of the few remaining options to forge a more sustainable relationship with the seas. ‘What we need in times of great planetary stress is a vibrant biosphere,’ writes Roberts in Ocean of Life. 

Those at NORA and ENORI, backed by a growing majority of fisheries scientists, ask that we take stock of past ecosystems and raise our ambitions by setting aside more protected areas and designating more sites for active restoration of habitats. This, they say, is a way to overcome shifting baseline syndrome, to recognise what marine ecosystems should really look like and safeguard the future of fishing for coastal communities.

Back on the shore, a ray of sunlight begins to poke through the veil of cloud, casting a faint glow on the old Mersea oyster beds. The tide will soon clothe this historic beach of shells in water and their vast numbers will be obscured for the night. When morning returns, the team of biologists and oystermen will board their restoration crafts for another day on the water. If their vision of vast, restored reefs is realised, who knows how far these life-giving shells may extend around the coast, and what burst of life may again rise up from the deep.

The sun is still hiding behind weathered stone ramparts high above the old Moroccan port of Essaouira, but already, day-to-day business is well underway at the small city’s bustling Place des Grand Taxis. Drivers are demisting cracked windscreens with filthy wads of old newspaper while oil-covered mechanics attempt to coax weary engines back to life amid clouds of thick, blue smoke. Long-distance travellers are huddled together, waiting in small groups for a ride, their faces concealed from the cold by hooded woollen robes or djellabas.

Everyone is eager to get on the road early and escape the unrelenting heat of the day, which makes sitting in a cramped vehicle – with up to five other passengers, their luggage and driver – unbearable. So most eyes track the chief broker, who busily manages operations from a prominent position next to the entrance of the whitewashed compound, where a fleet of 30-odd sky-blue cars are parked. At regular intervals, he barks orders at both drivers and passengers, skilfully orchestrating proceedings using a rectangular piece of card on which he scores a long list of numbers, controlling every vehicle that comes in and out of this organised chaos.

Just before 8am, a particularly old taxi appears from behind a veil of dust, bouncing off the pot-holed road and mounting the low kerb that leads to the transport hub. After nonchalantly avoiding collision with an orange vendor’s cart and a skinny stray dog, the car crawls past the broker and finds a space at the back of the rank. Behind the wheel sits Hassan Mesfar, a well-known and much-loved character in the neighbourhood, who is instantly recognisable by the car he drives: a

1974 Mercedes ‘Stroke 8’. In the UK, such a vehicle would belong to a motor museum, but in Morocco, it’s just another rolling ruin. Still, this one boasts the dubious honour of being the oldest taxi in Essaouira – although not by much. It shares the tarmac with plenty of other battered and bruised diesel vehicles, all of them long due retirement.

Hassan Mesfar, a well-known and much-loved character in the neighbourhood at wheel of his taxi

In this city, as all over the kingdom, many Mercedes 240Ds from the 1970s and ’80s have spent their twilight years in the sun, having been shipped over when they were deemed too old for the European market. Here they’re woven into the fabric of society, providing an essential long-distance travel link for locals, as well as a colourful snapshot for tourists, much like the old US cars in Cuba. But not for much longer. The Moroccan government is keen to remove them from the country’s roads. In 2014, it launched an incentive scheme that offers grand taxi drivers 80,000 dirhams (around £6,500) to scrap their old vehicles. So far, more than 56 per cent of the 45,000 grand taxis in service have been updated thanks to this programme – something the government aims to increase to 100 per cent by 2022.

‘It’s the end of an era,’ says Mesfar ruefully as he sits down to enjoy a coffee at his regular spot. Last night, he was late getting back from his journey and as is customary with the grand taxis’ first-in first-out system, he won’t be leaving until later in the day. ‘The government is offering us money to update our cars for shiny new Dacias, but for me, they’re not the same as my old Mercedes. It’s the best car I have ever driven – so solid, so reliable, so comfortable – and never lets me down. That’s why around here we call them “Merci dix”.’ In Moroccan French, this phrase literally translates as ‘thanks times ten’, but there’s also a play on words with the local pronunciation of Mercedes. 

A street dedicated to taxi repairs, an example of the ‘hotbed of mechanical resourcefulness’ that people say characterises the whole continent

Hassan, who, like many taxi drivers, is a theatrical conversationalist, says the phrase by pursing his lips, lifting his chin and narrowing his dark eyes as if squinting into bright light. He then draws out the ‘r’ by pulling his face back into a grin, rattling through the other syllables and pushing out the final ‘s’ through near-closed teeth. All the while, jiggling his head and raising his hands in mock praise. It’s quite a performance.

LE GRAND TAXI

To understand the impact of the new scheme on a national scale, it’s important to understand the wider role of taxis in Morocco. In a country of 36 million people, there are only 2.8 million registered cars: so only one car per 11 Moroccans. Nearby Spain, with a population of roughly ten million more, has more than 24 million vehicles on the road. Without rail or buses to provide a well-developed or affordable solution to the masses, grand taxis are the leading long-distance transport solution.

‘Le grand taxi is the backbone of Morocco,’ says Mesfar, proudly emphasising the essential role that he and his co-workers deliver. ‘Public transportation is next to nonexistent; there is only one train line and that’s up north. If you want to get to another city, you can take the bus, but departures are irregular, there are frequent accidents, it’s very slow and it only takes you to the big cities. That’s why people like to take grand taxis – because they’re nice and quick.’

Nearly everything in the city, including these boats, have been painted Essaouria's special shade of blue,  which originally came from crushed seashells

The Place des Grand Taxis is much more than a simple taxi rank – it’s a main transport hub and each city in the country has one. Here in Essaouira, under the watchful eye of the chief broker, travellers on their way to a particular city up north are ushered into one taxi, those going south into another and so forth. Then, when all of the seats in a car have been taken, it can leave on its journey. Generally speaking, the more distant the destination, the earlier the departure. Most drivers prefer to return to their home base each night, despite the fact that they may have to travel upwards of 1,000 kilometres per day, although this isn’t always possible.

‘Look at the green taxi parked over there,’ says Mesfar. ‘That’s stayed overnight from Taroudant [a city to the west of Essaouira]. And that one over there is from Rabat as it’s white. Each city in Morocco has its own taxi colour scheme, which makes it easy to spot.’

Essaouria boasts a unique shade of blue that originally came from crushed seashells. Nearly everything in the city has been painted with it: from horse-drawn carriages to people’s front doors – even the petit taxis. This last point is unusual, as most other Moroccan cities chose different colours to differentiate petit taxis, which are smaller cars (usually French hatchbacks), only allowed to take a maximum of two passengers on much shorter rides within the urban perimeter. 

Outside of Essouria, Grand Taxis take on many other hues

AFRICA: THE WORLD’S SCRAPYARD

The love affair between Mercedes – the German automotive brand – and the North African kingdom dates back to the earliest days of the automobile. In 1892, Sultan Hassan I bought the first car ever made by Daimler (the company that owns Mercedes-Benz) and this royal endorsement has continued ever since. The current king, Mohammed VI, still uses a unique Mercedes Benz 600, passed down from his father, for state functions. 

‘During the 1980s, Africa started to experience an influx of second-hand Mercedes cars,’ says Flavien Neuvy, an economist who specialises in the African automotive industry. ‘Moroccan taxi drivers simply started catching on to what cab owners in Europe had understood: diesel Mercedes were built to last.’

While many drivers may take up the government's offer and change vehicle, Hassan Mesfar feels committed to his Grand Taxi

Mesfar’s Mercedes W114 ‘Stroke 8’ model was a game-changer for the Stuttgart-based manufacturer and 1.9 million rolled off the line during its eight years of production. Its successor, the W123, appeared in 1976 and even more were produced; 2.9 million of the cars were built in the nine years that followed.

Back in the 1970s and ’80s the average age of cars in Europe was less than seven years. The relatively quick turnover meant that millions of robust and reliable Mercedes were being swapped for newer cars by their original owners and sold on the used-car market. Eventually, when they were deemed too old for European buyers, they were picked up at a discount by exporters and shipped off to the developing world, with Africa being the favourite destination. 

Passengers pile in

In 2000, more than 70 per cent of all cars imported into Morocco were more than five years old, including many old Mercedes, which have enjoyed incredible longevity thanks to their robust mechanics, simple maintenance requirements and an abundance of salvaged spare parts. It was estimated that 35,000 W123 240Ds alone were still on Moroccan roads in 2011, more than 30 years after the last of the model rolled off the production line. 

‘Africa is a hotbed of mechanical resourcefulness,’ says Neuvy. ‘Everything has a value, even if we would deem it rubbish in Europe. When things break, people always find a way to fix them. So Moroccan taxi drivers have many tricks up their sleeves to keep their vehicles on the road.’ One popular stratagem involves filling the car’s boot with large stones in order to limp home after breaking a prop shaft. The additional weight on the rear axle stabilises things, allowing the driver to keep the car on the road.

CLEARING THE AIR

The downside of the Mercedes’ longevity is that while European drivers have enjoyed numerous generations of cleaner, more efficient vehicles, Moroccans have been suffering from increasingly bad air pollution. According to the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, mortality due to air pollution in the country has increased by 50 per cent since 1997. Vehicle emissions are the most significant source of air pollution in Moroccan urban centres, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the total.

‘Some developing countries have some pretty hideous pollution problems in their cities,’ says Mike Berners-Lee, a leading expert in carbon footprinting. ‘With old diesel engines, there are two types of pollution: the type of pollution that clogs up your lungs and kills you and passersby with particulates; and then there’s carbon emissions, which affect climate change. In the UK alone, 40,000 people per year die of this first kind of pollution, so it’s definitely something that needs to be taken seriously.’

The chief broker keeps a note of comings and goings

The Moroccan government’s response has been to implement a series of measures. In 2010, it banned the import of all cars more than five years old and increased tax duties on the sale of second-hand vehicles. Then, in 2014, it brought in the first cash-incentive scheme aimed at grand taxi drivers. 

So far, the scheme hasn’t quite had the desired reach, with poor levels of uptake at its launch and multiple deadline extensions for ambitious targets ever since. Critics also point out that the government has other motivations for subsidising new car purchases, namely the fact that in recent years, the country has invested heavily in developing its own automobile production facilities. The North African kingdom is set to become one of the world’s big players in the automotive sector, with its vehicle-production industry poised to be worth about US$14 billion within the next five years. As of 2019, the automotive sector represented nearly 30 per cent of the country’s exports and already, one in five new car imports into Europe comes from Morocco.

French manufacturer Renault has historical links with the territory and benefits from support by the Moroccan government. It operates two plants in the north of the country. Production at these sites includes the seven-seater Dacia Lodgy, which is now the most commonly bought taxi in the country, representing one in every two new sales. 

Grand taxis are often in fairly bad shape, patched-up over many years and by many owners

This sounds like a positive movement, given the heavy pollution associated with old diesel vehicles; however, according to Berners-Lee, it isn’t quite so simple. ‘From an embodied-carbon perspective, keeping these old Mercedes on the road is actually better than replacing them with new ones,’ he argues. ‘People often forget that producing new vehicles generates a lot of unseen carbon emissions, even though the end product spits out less from its tailpipe. So it’s important that we learn a lesson here about our attitude to new, efficient vehicles. The direct savings from the previous model must be significant enough to warrant renewal, otherwise we’re simply offsetting the problem to a different part of the vehicle’s life-cycle.’

There’s a balance to be had, but regardless of how it plays out, back in Essaouira it’s going to take more than a few thousand dirhams and a shiny new car to make Hasan Mesfar change his ways. ‘I’m too old for anything new anyways,’ he says. ‘I’ll be retiring in a few years, so it would be a waste of money to upgrade. I also don’t think my customers would like it. And for me, it wouldn’t be the same job without my Mercedes. We’ve travelled so far, experienced so much and been on unforgettable adventures. It’s only fair that we reach the end of the road together.’

 This feature was originally published in the May 2021 issue of Geographical

Thirty-one years ago, the May 1990 edition of this magazine featured the headline ‘Geography of homosexuality’. The relevant article, written by Lawrence Knopp, then an assistant professor in the department of geography at the University of Minnesota, set out the key themes of a burgeoning field of research, pointing out that there are geographical consequences to the way in which society treats homosexuality. 

Subsequent letters, many published in the following issue, reveal that not all readers deemed this to be an appropriate topic, particularly for a publication that might be read by schoolchildren. Section 28 – the infamous British law that prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ by local authorities – was in force (it wasn’t repealed in England and Wales until 2003) and even an academic article was considered by some to fall within this loose definition. 

‘I probably had hoped for a slightly different reception, but I wasn’t surprised,’ says Knopp, now officially retired but still producing work in the field at the University of Washington. Along with British academics Gill Valentine and David Bell, he now considers himself one of ‘the first people in geography who didn’t pay a high price for doing what we did. There were some folks before us in the 1970s and ’80s who paid very high prices for trying to even talk about this stuff. I’d like to think that my article in Geographical provided some legitimacy.’

Yet the idea that sexuality, and our treatment of it, has geographical consequences is hardly surprising or controversial. Knopp was one of the earliest to look at the phenomenon in an academic context in the USA. Since then, the field has grown enormously. Practitioners all around the world trace the geographical repercussions of sexuality (including heterosexual sexuality), from its impact on migration, refugee status and tourism to street protest and the differences between urban and rural areas. ‘Geography is about people in place and you can’t understand people in our contemporary era without understanding how we’re constructed sexually, as much as through gender, race and ethnicity,’ explains Kath Browne, a professor of geography at University College Dublin whose work has focused strongly on ‘gay Brighton’. ‘Any contemporary city where you have, say, red light districts or areas where certain forms of sexuality are disapproved of and end up in particular spaces – you can’t understand that city without understanding how those spaces are formed. I would actually argue that you can’t really understand the 21st century without understanding the sexual and gendered norms that have shifted so massively.’

Cities and homosexuality

When it comes to sexuality, cities aren’t everything. In fact, a growing body of research focuses on rural experiences. Nevertheless, the metropolis is a logical starting place for any consideration of the geography of sexuality. A glance at most Western cities reveals that gay districts are as ubiquitous as Chinatowns and Irish pubs. In the literature, references to ‘gay meccas’, ‘gay capitals’ and ‘gaybourhoods’ are common. Areas within London, Brighton, Manchester, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Sydney (the ‘gay capital of the South Pacific’), Berlin, Rome, Cape Town and many others have all claimed these titles at some point. 

In fact, the presence of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) people and venues in these locations is often the continuation of a much older, if more hidden, trend. George Chauncey, a professor of history at New York’s Columbia University and the author of Gay New York has demonstrated in his work that a gay–lesbian world with clear spatial characteristics already existed in that city by the end of the 19th century. Much of the academic literature has therefore been concerned with examining these spaces. Most recently, however, the narrative has been one of decline.

Take London, for example. In 2017, a pivotal audit by the Urban Laboratory at University College London revealed that since 2006, the number of venues for LGBTQ Londoners had fallen from 124 to 47, a loss of nearly 60 per cent. According to the report, rent hikes from landlords and construction for London housing and public transport projects were the main reasons for the fall. London Mayor Sadiq Khan was quick to react, saying that urgent action needed to be taken in light of the ‘shocking’ statistics. He pledged to do all he could to protect the capital’s LGBTQ nightlife, a policy that now comes under the remit of his ‘night czar’ Amy Lamé who, appropriately enough, has run the LGBTQ club night Duckie since the mid-1990s.

 Hairdresser Chante Herries prepares backstage for the swimwear category of the LGBT Cape Peninsula pageant, shot by South African photographer Lee-Ann Olwage for her project: The Queens of Cape Town

The situation can be seen across almost all of the cities once deemed LGBTQ hubs (although Berlin remains a notable outlier). In 1973, the number of gay bars in San Francisco peaked at 118; today, there are fewer than 30. Across the board, spaces for queer women have dwindled to almost nothing – there’s only one dedicated lesbian bar in London, for example. The result is a scene in which only the most profitable locations remain open, some of which then become unpleasantly commercialised. Spaces that were once for the most marginalised are taken over by everyone else and no longer fulfil the same purpose. Governments deliberately market them to tourists, making them less useful as a meeting place for locals or for those lacking funds. 

Does any of this matter? In a world where legal rights for LGBTQ people are improving, are separate spaces still necessary? 

What’s in a night?

One of the easiest ways to pinpoint the importance of LGBTQ spaces is to look to the past. The so-called gaybourhoods of the late 20th and early 21st centuries weren’t just important from a social perspective, they were political spaces where people rallied, planned and were moved to act. ‘Everything that has been achieved in terms of LGBT rights started with the communities that were built and the revolution that was started in the bars, pubs and clubs,’ reads a quote on the Twitter page of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, South London’s oldest surviving gay venue, which was designated a listed building following a prominent campaign in 2015.

This surely remains important. Homosexuality is still illegal in 35 per cent of UN member states. Only 28 countries have legalised same-sex marriage. Even in countries that we consider to offer equal rights to LGBTQ people, legal battles are only just being won. It was only last year, in June 2020, that the US Supreme Court held that employers who terminate workers’ employment on account of their sexual orientation or gender identity are in breach of civil rights laws. Until the decision, it was legal in more than half of US states to fire workers for being gay, bisexual or transgender. 

Nor is the path to equality always a linear one. In India, for example, in 2018, following a long battle, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favour of decriminalising homosexuality, overturning the infamous section 377 of the penal code, which outlawed ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’. Section 377 dates back to 1861 and the era of British colonial rule. However, historical studies suggest that before the arrival of the British, homosexuality was more tolerated in India. ‘It is only relatively recently in human history that the heterosexual monogamous relationship has come to be viewed as necessarily a married person’s chief emotional outlet,’ wrote the editors of popular anthology Same-Sex Love in India, a book widely quoted during the fight against Section 377. ‘Our study suggests that at most times and places in pre-19th-century India, love between women and between men, even when disapproved of, was not actively persecuted.’

Two men kiss at the tenth Delhi Queer Pride Parade in November 2017 [SHUTTERSTOCK/INDIAviaMirror]

And even without any political dimension, queer spaces remain vital for social reasons. ‘Our research highlighted how vital these spaces are as part of a “social and cultural infrastructure”, to use the term that is used in policy in London,’ says Ben Campkin who led the 2017 UCL study about the decline of gay bars in the capital. ‘They have various different types of value: value to the economy, value to cultural production, value to people’s wellbeing, value to being able to imagine a sense of community, connecting with the history of different queer populations – all of those things that accumulate to give a sense of place and a sense of identity.’

More than anything, such venues foster a sense of release. ‘Queer space is transformative for people, there’s no two ways about it,’ says musician Laurie Belgrave, who from 2016 to 2019 ran an LBGTQ venue called the Chateau in southeast London. ‘When people walk into these spaces for the first time, or maybe they’re a little bit older and they’re coming into their identity later, it does something, entering a space where you know that you are accepted and that you can be yourself. It sounds sort of cheesy to frame it in that way, but that is what we’re creating. We’re creating space away from the oppression that exists for so many people in our community outside our doors.’ He adds that bars and clubs are also important centres from which other kinds of community events can spin off. ‘There’s still that need for the solid, permanent venues that provide hubs from which there can be a whole galaxy of other events and organisations.’

‘You grow up in minority within your own family,’ adds Jeremy Linn, a writer whose memoir, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, was published in February 2021. ‘This is probably a generational difference, but I’ve been talking with my partner about the fact that we were tacitly encouraged to lie our whole childhood and adolescence. The socially acceptable expectation is that you perform, if not actually deceive and I think one of the responses to that in recent history has been a kind of public exchange and sharing, and a kind of a release of repression.’

The space in southeast London where LGBTQ night the Chateau was held [Tasha Doughty]

This certainly isn’t unique to London. South African photographer Lee-Ann Olwage spent two years before Covid-19 hit documenting a particular drag scene in Cape Town, a place where legal reality and lived reality don’t match. ‘If you look at the South African constitution, we’re the most advanced when it comes to LGBTQ rights in Africa, so on paper, [Cape Town] looks like a fantastic city to be queer in,’ she says. ‘But what I found on the ground was that discrimination and violence were part of everyday life.’ This situation is backed up by Andrew Tucker, deputy director of the African Centre for Cities.‘There’s a disjuncture between what the law says you can and can’t do, and what actually happens on the ground. And the reality is that you’ve got to overlay that law with the legacy of apartheid, the legacy of colonialism,’ he explains. 

Olwage’s work took her to the Miss Gay pageants, performance spaces that operate as places of haven and safety, but just as importantly of liberation and release. ‘Drag queens from the townships [residential areas that during apartheid were used to house mostly poor, black people] travel in taxis or take public transport to the city, but they would never travel in drag, it’s just too dangerous. So they would come to the city, get dressed in drag and then de-drag before going home. These spaces were little pockets within the city where people really felt safe, but also where they were absolutely celebrated for who they are. It’s that feeling of security, of belonging.’ She adds that many of the people she met were experiencing mental health issues, making the spaces even more vital. ‘What we see with queer artists is this very flamboyant personality. That often masks a lot of things that are coming up for a person who may feel like they’ve been outcast by society, or family or within the work environment.’

Radical spaces 

Against this backdrop, the decline of LGBTQ venues seems particularly sad and, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic continues to exacerbate the situation. Geographies of sexuality academics are already studying the impact of the pandemic. Nevertheless, it would be untrue to say that all is lost. Concerted campaigns to protect established venues are having some success. In London, Sadiq Khan recently announced a £225,000 funding package specifically for some of the LGBTQ venues hardest hit by the pandemic.

But, perhaps more importantly, people are also finding new ways of doing things. In the UK, a younger generation of event planners is finding ways to circumvent the problem of high rents to create radical queer spaces. From Queer House Party (a weekly online event held throughout the pandemic in the UK via Zoom) to a whole plethora of pop-up events and collectives aimed at trans people, queer people of colour and many other marginalised groups, these spaces are often markedly radical, confronting some of the issues inherent in older venues, many of which were seen to cater for white men only and which often celebrated a narrow aesthetic. The use of the word ‘queer’ reflects this trend. Reclaimed from its original use as a slur, it now operates as an umbrella term that unlike ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ can encapsulate a huge variety of different identities. 

Both community members and academics still see such radicalism as important. Gavin Brown, now professor of political geography and sexualities at the University of Leicester, pointed to radical spaces in his PhD thesis, arguing that they ‘are important because they provide a constructive and practical attempt to offer a non-hierarchical, participatory alternative to a gay scene that has become saturated by the commodity.’

Noxolo Grootboom prepares for the evening wear section of the Miss Drag South Africa pageant in Port Elizabeth [Lee-Ann Olwage]

‘I’m quite attached to this idea of queerness as quite a radical movement,’ says Johan Anderson, a senior lecturer in human geography at King’s College London. Speaking about the push to preserve venues of historical importance, he admits to being ‘a little bit uncomfortable with the rhetoric. Perhaps you can use heritage rhetorically to try to incorporate new protections in the planning system, which are clearly needed. But I think there’s still room for the queer movement to be radical. I think it should push forward.’

According to Laurie Belgrave, many people are indeed pushing forward. ‘Overall, yes, there has been a decline of venues. And of course, within the queer community, we feel it much more acutely because each of these spaces is so important. But what these figures miss out is all the amazing, transient club nights that are moving between different venues, that are providing incredible space. And actually, what’s happened recently is that a lot of these organisations are around not just nightlife, but workshops and other kinds of events, focused on specific experiences within the community that need attention.’

HIDDEN SPACES

In fact, all over the globe, a more hidden world of queer spaces and nightlife could be said to better reflect the ‘real’ gay scene than the Sohos or Greenwich Villages more commonly associated with gay life. In Delhi, apart from one prominent club in a five-star hotel, there are very few designated gay venues, yet there’s a thriving scene if you know where to look, albeit one dominated by men. ‘I would say there is a range of places where queer nightlife is happening in Delhi,’ says Dhiren Borisa. Now a professor at Jindal Global Law School, he was the first person to complete a PhD at an Indian university on the theme of geographies of sexuality. ‘I researched nightlife in Leicester, Birmingham, Manchester and London, which are the only cities where South Asian gay nights are organised in England,’ says Borisa. ‘All these people who go to them think that they’re blessed because they’re in England, and therefore they’ve got gay liberation. And I say, “No, come to Delhi, I’ll take you out dancing four nights in a row!”’

Polls conducted during the 2018 battle against Section 377 in India suggested that many people would like to see a fixed queer venue in Delhi; however, Borisa is keen to point out that such a space would only ever work for a certain section of society, especially in India, where questions of religion, class and caste intersect with sexuality. ‘Since 2018, some commercial spaces have tried to capitalise on the queer-citizenship bandwagon,’ he says. ‘Especially in South Delhi, where most rich people live, they have, for instance, painted the staircase as a rainbow. These are certain markers through which you’re made to feel welcome. But these spaces are not transacting sexuality through your sexual desires, but your class position.’ Certain people, he suggests, would still not be allowed in. A trans person in a smart black dress – yes. A trans person in a sari – probably not. Such a person, he says, would be deemed a hijra (a grouping peculiar to India that includes transgender and intersex people).

The number of LGBTQ venues in Soho, the historic centre of gay nightlife in London, has fallen dramatically since 2006 [SHUTTERSTOCK/ Willy Barton]

For women, queer life is even less visible in Delhi. ‘I think it was Gill Valentine who said we are everywhere and nowhere,’ says Niharika Banerjea, associate professor at Ambedkar University. ‘For the community, historically speaking, it has been more common to meet in people’s households. So, household spaces were, and still are, a very primary point of gathering, a point of collectivising.’ Queer women, she adds, also tend to locate cafes known to be friendly and make them regular meeting points. 

It’s something that occurs again and again, particularly in the countries where visibility isn’t always desirable from a safety perspective. Even in these places, queer people gather. Andrew Tucker from the African Centre for Cities focuses on LGBTQ spaces across the continent. ‘Outside of South Africa, you don’t really get gay bars, but you get bars that are gay friendly,’ he says. ‘I’ve been to these spaces in Nairobi, I’ve been to these spaces in Kampala – they exist. And you actually do have some sense of solidarity within that space. That’s really important, especially in places that are really homophobic. You need that release. For as long as these cities aren’t overtly gay friendly, you’ll always have that.’ 

Even in South Africa, with its prominent gay neighbourhoods, such as De Waterkant in Cape Town, Tucker has identified a parallel scene that exists primarily because the main gay bars are Western imports. ‘You have similar versions of Western gay spaces in a city such as Cape Town, but those spaces are reflected very much by class and race privilege, so they’re overwhelmingly white and middle class.’ It’s away from these flashy centres, he says, that you find a more ‘authentic’ scene. ‘The idea of social groupings, or safe spaces, in townships is very real. They’ll meet at someone’s house, or they’ll rent a hall somewhere and get someone to cook food. You have these groupings that offer social solidarity, where they talk about health, they talk about relationships. You could argue that is the new gay space.’

THE SHOW GOES ON

The age of the famous gay bar, or the iconic gay village, may be waning, but it would be a mistake to think that queer space is unimportant, or even in decline. The geography of homosexuality in cities seems to be shifting, but it will never be irrelevant. ‘If I were to draw on my intuition, or make an educated guess, I would say that I don’t think that LGBTQ spaces are ever going to disappear,’ concludes Larry Knopp. ‘They may take different forms, they may be defined a little bit differently, they may intersect with other spaces in different kinds of ways, but I don’t see them ever disappearing. And frankly, I’m not sure that they
ever didn’t exist.’

After six years of planning and problem solving, Alexey Tyutin donned sterilised gear and stepped into a chilly pond, plunging into the latest role of his varied career: fish milker. As he gently massaged the slick belly of a sturgeon, the first tiny eggs began to pop out. Then it started to rain Thai gold. As bowls filled with sturgeon eggs, he was elated, but vindication wasn’t on his mind. Everyone thought he was mad, but proving the numerous sceptics wrong wasn’t his aim. ‘I never felt this was impossible,’ he says of his feat, making caviar – a staple from his icy homeland in Siberia – in tropical Thailand.

The first harvest from Thai Sturgeon Farm in July was 22 kilograms. Tyutin expects to quadruple that yield this winter and aims to produce 1.5 tonnes a year. That won’t rival global caviar powers such as China, but certainly puts Thailand on the map. And as well as expanding the boundaries of a booming global caviar-farming industry, Tyutin’s operation aims to be more sustainable. Thai Sturgeon Farm uses a closed-water system, minimising pollution, and eschews chemicals and preservatives. The milking process also means that the fish are kept alive, rather than being killed for their eggs – although many would still question what sort of life it is. Aquaculture will never be able to mimic life in the wild. Nevertheless, Bill Marinelli, a long-time proponent of sustainable seafood in Thailand is a fan. The Covid crisis forced the closure of his Oyster Bar in Bangkok, but he’s an enthusiastic investor in Thai Sturgeon Farm. ‘Farms can kill 100,000 tonnes of sturgeon every year – just one farm. This is a great alternative.’

Caviar has been savoured around the globe for millennia. Its origins are hotly debated, but the Greek scholar Aristotle described the delicacy appearing at banquets in the fourth century BCE. The term comes from the Persian word khav-yar, meaning ‘cake of strength’. Persians harvested fish eggs on the Kura River, and Iranian caviar became among the most prized, and consequently most expensive, in the world.

The farm now has about 1,800 female fish in ten tanks

Thai chef Thitid ëToní Tassanakajon prepares a caviar dish at his new restaurant Lahnyai Nusara in central Bangkok with caviar produced by Thai Sturgeon Farm in Hua Hin

The production of modern-day caviar largely takes place in China, where sturgeon have been a staple throughout history, although the native species are now so threatened that they’re all protected. The Chinese began by salting the roe of carp; technically, caviar applies widely to similarly prepared fish eggs. However, caviar generally refers to sturgeon eggs, one of the world’s most expensive foodstuffs.

Russia popularised and spread production and consumption, which was favoured by royalty and the wealthy across Europe and the Middle East. But Tyutin has memories of caviar being a staple during his childhood in Novosibirsk, in Siberia. He describes being sent to the neighbourhood shop, where a giant mound of caviar glistened in a refrigerator. ‘I’d get a few scoops, spooned into a jar,’ says Tyutin, now aged 53. ‘Caviar was affordable for everyone.’

During the 1980s, he says, the former Soviet Union produced more than 1,000 tonnes – about three times the entire world caviar production nowadays. ‘Only 100 tonnes were exported,’ he says. The rest was consumed across the USSR. ‘Everyone had caviar.’

Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lucrative Caspian Sea sturgeon fishery, which it shared with Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Beluga caviar, the world’s most prized variety, commanded prices of US$10,000 per kilo or more and became popular with chefs cooking in the world’s more ostentatious restaurants – until it was gone. Overfishing and pollution prompted bans on sales of caviar from the Caspian Sea, where a huge clean-up campaign and restocking have been underway for more than a decade.

There are more than two dozen species of sturgeon, which are among the world’s oldest animals, descended from fish that date back to the early Jurassic period, about 200 million years ago. Some are already believed extinct. In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature placed 18 species on its Red List of Threatened Species, making sturgeon among the most endangered known group of species.

As stocks shrank, prices soared, fuelling the spread of farming operations. The largest have sprung up across China. The most famous are in an area southwest of Shanghai around Qiandao Lake, formed by a dam built under Chairman Mao during the 1950s. By far the biggest single producer is Kaluga Queen, which sells 80–100 tonnes annually – about a quarter of the global total.

Kaluga Queen reportedly supplies most of the top Michelin-starred restaurants in France and around the world. Many top caviar houses repackage eggs from China, often without mentioning the fact on the label. Yet, the stigma attached to Chinese caviar is largely a thing of the past, says Richard Ekkebus, director of culinary operations and food and beverage at the Mandarin Oriental Landmark Hotel in Hong Kong. Ekkebus is a lifelong caviar fan. The Mandarin’s Michelin-starred sister restaurant, Amber, has a caviar menu, and Ekkebus serves a well-known dish of sea urchin in lobster gel, topped with a dome of 15 grams of hand-picked caviar. Amber uses more than a kilo a day. ‘China is the world’s largest caviar producer and they have really nailed it,’ he says.

Alexey Tyutin, owner of the farm, stands in the main pond area

Caviar is released by the fish and caught in the bowl below

The ten tanks are kept at the perfect temperature to stimulate egg production in the fish

Thanit Biakaew checks which sturgeon fish are ready for ‘milking’

Kaluga Queen also supplies sturgeon eggs to Caviar House, which in turn supplies most of Thailand’s top restaurants. But Tyutin isn’t concerned about competition as he introduces Thailand’s first locally produced caviar – Caviar House is also his company.

Tyutin became Thailand’s caviar king despite having practically no experience in the field beyond fetching jars of it in Novosibirsk as a boy. A resident of Thailand for 17 years, he first came as a tourist and was instantly smitten with the lush island of Koh Samui.

His background was in mechanical engineering, but he took after his grandfather, Alexey A Tyutin, a versatile engineer. ‘We called him Golden Hands,’ his grandson says. ‘He could fix anything.’ During the Second World War, his grandfather was chief engineer of the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant.

Koh Samui was still a sleepy island when Tyutin arrived in 2004, but a building boom of villas for visitors from Hong Kong and Singapore meant that it was stirring. Tyutin was soon building villas. Later, with Thai partner Noppadon Khamsai, he acquired land, put in roads and infrastructure, and constructed condominiums. Then the global economic crisis in 2008 derailed their growing business. After disposing of the assets, Tyutin was considering what to do next. He remembered an old friend in Moscow, Dr Vasily Krasnoborodko, who had devised an unusual, computer-controlled method of raising sturgeon. Fish lived in ponds and were fed and cared for automatically. A computer system monitored everything, from their growth to their readiness to produce eggs. Even the opportune time to milk the fish was determined by sonogram.

‘I asked him, “Could you build something like this here, in Thailand?”’ Tyutin recalls. Krasnoborodko had built farms in Russia, Latvia and Ukraine, all cold-weather areas. ‘He said he could build it anywhere. We just needed cold and water.’

The former is in short supply in Thailand, especially in Hua Hin, home of the Thai Sturgeon Farm. Hua Hin was once an obscure fishing village, 200 kilometres down the coast from Bangkok. Then, in the early 1900s, Thailand’s king built a palace there, creating a royal retreat. A rail line followed, turning Hua Hin into Thailand’s first seaside resort. A sleepy getaway for the ensuing century, the town is now getting a makeover as the capital of Thailand’s caviar industry. But, it’s hot. Temperatures in Novosibirsk drop to –20°C in winter and often as low as –30°C. During rare summer heatwaves, it may hit 30°C, which is still colder, by a couple of degrees, than the average temperature yearround in steamy Hua Hin. Tyutin solved the heating problem with a huge cooling system that operates across the 32-by 48-metre plant.

In 2016, the farm imported 3,000 fish fry from China. Tyutin chose a hybrid of the Amur sturgeon and the kaluga, the latter being prized in the caviar industry. ‘We’ve chosen this because it grows quickly and produces eggs the same size as beluga and kaluga, but faster,’ he says. As the fish grew and it became possible to determine their sex, males were separated and sold for food – a common practice as only females are required for the eggs. The farm now has about 1,800 female fish in ten tanks. They are kept in temperatures of around 22°C until egg production begins. Selected fish are then moved to a separate pond where the temperature is gradually lowered to wintering conditions of 6-8°C. Egg production is monitored by sonogram and, when ready, the water is gradually heated to spawning levels.

Most sturgeon farms kill the fish to harvest the eggs, but some use something akin to a caesarean section, cutting them open to remove the eggs and then sewing them back up. Thai Sturgeon Farm’s method is more like milking: the eggs are induced from the oviduct and collected in bowls. This involves lifting the fish out of the water on a form of stretcher. A worker then uses a slender metal rod to help move the eggs. Some sturgeon live for hundreds of years, producing eggs their entire lives. A single female can produce more than 100,000 eggs at a time.

Despite the challenges of the tropics, there have been unexpected benefits to operating in a warm climate. Fish mature more rapidly in warm weather than in their native chilly north. Much, much more rapidly. The sturgeon milked in July and November were less than six years old. Tyutin says it would take ten years to reach that level of maturity in China and 12 in Russia. ‘In Novosibirsk, there is snow and ice for five months. The fish don’t grow. They sleep for five months.’

Chefs in Thailand are already keen to start using the product and nobody more so than Thitid Tassanakajohn, or Chef Ton, a rising star of gastronomy in Bangkok. He left a career in finance in New York to return to Thailand, opening Le Du, which just received its second Michelin star and was ranked fourth in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Chef Ton uses caviar to spice up some of the Thai-style dishes at his new Lahnyai Nusara restaurant in Bangkok’s Sathorn District, the saltiness supercharging the traditional curries. Ton’s goal is to showcase traditional Thai recipes and flavours in modern forms. Caviar was common in Old-World palaces, but never made it to the royal kitchens of old Siam. ‘We’re excited,’ Ton says. ‘We’ll definitely be doing more with Thailand caviar.’

The date is 8 October 2018 and a man lies, unmoving, on a hospital bed. The white bed sheet hides his emaciated frame, but his hollowed-out face and sapling-thin wrists tell the story – he is slowly starving to death.

The end of this man’s story is near, but the battle on which he embarked will likely rage for many more years. The man who lies rock still in this Indian hospital bed is called GD Agrawal, or to give him his religious name, Sant Swami Sanand. The reason he’s starving to death isn’t due to famine or poverty – it’s due to choice. GD Agrawal, a former environmental engineer turned religious leader and environmental activist, went on hunger strike in order to draw attention to a cause that he believes is worthy of the ultimate sacrifice. He’s protesting the poisoning and destruction of India’s Ganges River, the Mother Goddess. The following day, he stops drinking water; it’s day 109 of his fast. This is the third fast upon which he has embarked in order to draw the government’s attention to the environmental threats that the Ganges faces – and to spur it into action.

Flowing for just over 2,600 kilometres across northern India, the Ganges is more than just a river. For Hindus, it’s the Mother Goddess Ganga herself and a focus of religious devotion for tens of millions of people across the world. It’s also a vital source of water and life for more than 40 per cent of India’s billion-plus population.

Rowing across the Ganges river towards the bathing ghats in Varanasi

And yet the river is being sullied by the very people who revere her. Every day, around three million litres of sewage is emptied into the Ganges – and only about half of that has undergone any kind of treatment. The river’s waters are so dirty that it’s considered one of the most polluted waterways in the world. But there’s more than just sewage entering this river; waste from tanneries, chemical plants, textile mills, slaughter houses and even hospitals is dumped, untreated, into it. Dams block and alter the river flow throughout its higher reaches. Agriculture sucks out vast quantities of water and uses it to irrigate tens of thousands of fields. Even climate change is out to get the Ganges. The monsoon rains are becoming less predictable and shorter in duration, droughts are increasing and the Himalayan glaciers that nurture the highest points are shrinking rapidly. The result is that the river levels are falling quickly

Even love is killing the river. As the Ganges is a holy place, people come here by the millions to bathe, thereby cleansing themselves of sin. As well as bathing, people make offerings of food and flowers, which are frequently deposited into the water in small cardboard boxes or on bits of plastic. Every day, tens of thousands of flowers are carefully placed into the river in this manner and left to drift downstream. This might seem benign enough, but many of these flowers have been treated with chemicals to keep them bright and fresh for longer. When those flowers enter the water, the chemicals leach out.

Hindus also consider the banks of the Ganges to be one of the most auspicious places to die and be cremated. After cremation, the remains are placed into the river and left to float downstream. Some bodies, such as those of young children, are never even cremated and instead are just wrapped in white cloth and sent on their way. In Varanasi, the holiest city along the banks of the Ganges, it’s estimated that 40,000 bodies are cremated every year. Scientists have discovered ‘super bacteria’ living in the waters that are resistant to most forms of commonly used antibiotics.

Women take a dip in the waters of the Ganges. Bathing in the river is said to cleanse the soul

Night falls upon the Ganges

For decades, cleaning the Ganges has been a political issue. Many politicians have promised to do something about the state of the river but most have failed to live up to those promises. ‘Mother Ganga needs someone to take her out of this dirt,’ Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in 2014, shortly after his first election win, ‘and she’s chosen me for the job’. Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist who is now in his second term as prime minister, pledged US$3 billion in 2015 to clean the river up within five years. But five years later, critics say that there has been little change and that much of the money allocated to the mission has been lost to corruption and mismanagement. In fact, critics say that under Modi, the river, and India’s environmental policy in general, are in worse shape than ever. His premiership has coincided with a marked increase in coal mining and the building of coal-fired power plants, which continue to result in worsening air quality and river pollution.

Nevertheless, GD Agrawal isn’t alone in his determination to see the Ganges cleaned up and respected in the way that he believes a Mother Goddess should be. In towns, cities and villages all along the river, and across India and beyond, other people and groups, tired of hollow promises, are working in less dramatic but no less important ways to clean things up.

Take those devotional flowers used in pujas (offerings) in temples up and down the length of the river. In the past, they were just thrown into the water, but today, small grassroots projects such as Help Us Green are tackling the problem. One such project involves turning used devotional flowers from temples into joss sticks, which are then lit at the temples. It might seem like a mere teardrop in this polluted ocean, but the quantities are staggering. Help Us Green is based in the industrial riverside city of Kanpur (which holds the dubious honour of having the world’s worst air pollution, according to a 2018 WHO report). The organisation’s founder, Karan Rastogi, says that he works with 16 large temples in Kanpur, as well as a number of smaller temples. He adds that since its creation in 2015, Help Us Green has recycled 7,000–8,000 tonnes of chemical-doused flowers and other temple debris that would otherwise have ended up in the Ganges. If scaled up, this could make a huge difference; Rastogi’s best guess is that, taking the river as a whole, something in the region of 1,000 tonnes of temple and puja flowers end up in the river every day and that for every 100 kilograms of flowers, a kilo of pesticide is used.

Other simple but effective projects are springing up. One, run by the Banaras Cultural Foundation, involves planting Indian almond tree seeds along exposed parts of the riverbank around Varanasi. From his home in the city’s heart, the group’s founder, Navneet Raman, says that the idea of the project was simply to regenerate degraded parts of the riverbank and to create a habitat that would encourage birds and other wildlife to return. For the most part, he and his small team of volunteers have concentrated on planting seeds and saplings along a one-kilometre stretch of bank on the opposite side of the river from the city’s famed bathing ghats (steps leading down to the river). This stretch had suffered so badly from environmental destruction that it had become a virtual desert. Raman now estimates that over the past 20 years, he and his team have planted some 12,000 or more seeds and saplings in the area and that today, when he walks along the bank, he does so in the shade of trees, listening to birds warble. An additional effect of the tree planting scheme is that the roots of the trees help to bind the soil and hold the banks in place during the powerful monsoon floods.

Away from the riverbank, Varanasi faces several problems. In this holy city, humanity exists at its most intense . The noise is unceasing, the traffic rages day and night, and pollution sits heavy over the streets. At first, it feels as if there isn’t a single living tree in the city, but Raman and his team have focused their attentions here, too. A 2,500-square metre patch of forest now sits in the city centre, growing in a spot that, 15 years ago, was wasteland used by mechanics. Today, dozens of birds call the forest home. Raman says that when he visits, he feels as if he’s no longer in the city.

Yet more groups are working to tackle the huge quantities of plastic waste that pour out of the mouth of the Ganges and into the Bay of Bengal. Renewology has been installing mobile plastic-waste-to-energy systems along tributaries of the Ganges with the aim of collecting discarded plastic and converting it into fuel. Others are busy installing physical barriers, similar to fences, a short way out into the river to trap waste and prevent it flowing downstream. At the same time, numerous educational programmes teach riverside residents the value of keeping the great river clean.

Ancient religious traditions, too, are being given a green make-over. In recent years, electric crematoria have been constructed next to the ghats in Varanasi and in other holy riverside towns as an alternative to burning the bodies of the deceased on traditional wooden pyres. This helps to reduce river pollution while also reducing the number of trees that need to be chopped down for the funeral pyres.

Every day, tens of thousands of offerings such as this are made to the Ganges. The rubbish left over is causing serious pollution issues

These are all worthy projects and worth highlighting, but given the scale of the issue, they can still feel futile, even to those pursing them. Raman from the Banaras Cultural Foundation sighs when asked whether the Ganges will be a cleaner, healthier river in 20 years’ time. ‘Unfortunately, a dirty Ganges is worth more to India than a clean Ganges. Th ere are so many big projects to clean up the Ganges – World Bank projects, Asian Development Bank projects, big government projects. All of those projects are posting 20 or so people here, 20 or so people there. They all have fancy cars and get well paid. These projects have so much money. A dirty Ganges generates money for the country through all the development projects. If the river was clean, then the projects wouldn’t be needed and the money would disappear. With a clean Ganges, it’s only the poor people, who are completely dependent on the river for their livelihood, who would benefit. So, for the bigger people, a dirty Ganges is a money-making machine.’

Rastogi from Help Us Green is less cynical. ‘In some ways, things will be better,’ he says. ‘People are becoming more conscious of what we’re doing to the river and the next generation is less interested in going to temples and doing puja, so there will be less religious pollution. But, at the same time, the human population is continuing to expand and this will put great pressure on the Ganges. Maybe an even bigger problem is climate change. I think that in the future, the river will be narrower and smaller than it is today.’

During the 16th century, the Mogul emperor Akbar the Great, who at the time was one of the most powerful men on Earth and who did much to turn India into the multicultural society that it remains, served water from the Ganges as drinking water in his court. To him, it represented the ‘water of immortality’. Perhaps, one day, it will once again be clean enough to drink. Sadly, however, GD Agrawal won’t be around to see it happen. On 11 October 2018, two days aft er he stopped taking water, he closed his eyes for the final time. For the Mother Goddess he had paid the ultimate price. 

All around the world, nations are already preparing for, and adapting to, climate change and its impacts, be it extreme-weather events, higher temperatures or sea-level rise.

While reducing emissions remains the most important goal of any climate plan, this type of adaptation is also hugely important given that atmospheric changes are already baked-in; even if we slammed the brakes on emissions tomorrow, we would continue to see the impact of the CO2 already released since industrial times, with scientists predicting that global warming would continue for around 40 years. In the meantime, icecaps would continue to melt and sea levels rise. In any case, emissions are certainly not about to plunge off a cliff. Some countries and regions will suffer more extreme impacts from these changes than others. It’s in these places that innovation is thriving.

In some areas of Miami Beach, roads have been raised to protect against the floods that are bound to come. Image: City of Miami Beach

RAISED ROADS IN MIAMI BEACH
In Miami Beach, an island-city in southern Florida, rising seawater isn’t just breaching the island’s walls, it’s seeping up through the ground beneath its streets. ‘What makes our situation here unique is that the foundation of Florida is actually porous limestone rock,’ says Yanira Pineda, senior sustainability coordinator of the city’s Rising Above stormwater and climate-resilience programmes. Growing problems with groundwater infiltration mean that dams and barriers alone aren’t enough – the only way to save Miami Beach is to lift it up above sea level.

In 2014, the city began to do just that. Starting in the lowest and most vulnerable neighbourhoods, where exceptionally high seasonal tides, or ‘king tides’, were causing floods even on cloudless days, roads have been raised – in areas most at risk, such as Sunset Harbour, by as much as 61 centimetres.

The elevation work was carried out as part of Miami Beach’s ambitious but much-needed stormwater-management programme, which, by 2017, had already become a US$650 million project. In addition to the road adaptations, the city installed new pumps that Pineda says can remove up to 75,000 litres of water per minute. It also implemented new minimum heights for seawalls.

In the face of floods, climate-mitigation strategies have often been overlooked, but Pineda knows that they’re essential and that the work is far from over. ‘We know that in 20, 30, 40 years, we’ll need to go back in there and adjust to the changing environment,’ she says.

Nature-based solutions can often deliver more benefits than traditional infrastructure. Image: Kuswantoro

NATURAL SEAWALLS IN INDONESIA

Seawalls are a staple strategy for many coastal communities, but on the soft, muddy northern shores of Java, Indonesia, they frequently collapse, further exacerbating coastal erosion. In the Demak district, which has already lost three kilometres of land and whole villages to the sea, a different approach has taken shape.

In 2015, Wetlands International and Ecoshape, in collaboration with the Indonesian government and international partners, launched a project to restore the island’s coastal mangrove ecosystems, 78 per cent of which have been cleared to make room for urban development and aquaculture, particularly the shrimp farming that sustains much of the local community. Mangroves can help protect coastal areas from rising seas by trapping sediment in their net-like root systems, elevating the sea bed and dampening the energy of waves and tidal currents. Research by Wetlands International shows that a 100-metre-wide belt of mangrove forest can reduce the height of a wave by half.

Susanna Tol, senior communications and advocacy officer at Wetlands International, says that, while hugely popular, the majority of mangrove-planting projects fail. To combat this, they started out with a different approach, building nine kilometres of semi-permeable sea dams, made from bamboo poles and brushwood, to mimic the role of mangrove roots and create favourable conditions for the trees to grow back naturally.

Within the first year, sediment built up by 45 centimetres and new trees appeared. Coastal erosion stalled and local shrimp farmers, who were taught sustainable aquaculture methods that would support mangrove regeneration, saw their income triple. The results encouraged the Indonesian government to replicate the approach in 13 other districts. However, despite the initial success, some land was later lost again to subsidence, largely caused by groundwater extraction for nearby cities.

Nevertheless, Tol says that the approach works in areas with less subsidence. ‘Unfortunately, traditional infrastructure is often single-solution focused and has caused increasingly devastating impacts on vital natural resources,’ she says. ‘For long-term success it’s critical that we transition towards multifunctional approaches that embed natural processes and that engage and benefit communities and local decision makers.

At a pilot project in Khomani San, South Africa, solar-reflective paint is applied to the roof of a building. Image: PEER Africa

CHEAP COOLING IN SOUTH AFRICA
Houses in ‘informal settlements’, such as the one in !Kheis, a municipality in South Africa’s Northern Cape, are often built using repurposed materials such as corrugated iron. This contributes to extremes: at night, the temperature indoors can be as high as 40°C. ‘People were sleeping in the streets. It was a huge problem,’ says Karen Surridge, project manager at the South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI). In 2013, SANEDI launched a pilot programme to test the application of solar-reflective ‘cool’ paints to the exterior of buildings in !Kheis. The improvement was almost instantaneous, she says.

Cool coatings are increasingly being adopted as a lowtech, low-maintenance method for reducing temperatures in hot countries. They are typically designed to reflect a higher percentage of the sun’s energy than white paint; according to Surridge, the paint currently being used by SANEDI reflects around 94 per cent. Coatings come in other forms, such as tiles, but paints are one of the cheapest and easiest ways to make low-income housing more resilient to heat.

SANEDI has since partnered with the South African Department of Defence to develop a project that would paint 1.3 million square metres of cool coatings, so far with similarly positive results. At the newly painted Department of Defence health training facility in Lephalale, Limpopo, the interior temperature was recorded at 29°C, while outside it was 47°C. Kurt Shickman, executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance, a key partner in the initiative, stresses that this technology also has a place in temperate countries, especially ones that aren’t adapted to heat. ‘Solar-reflective surfaces are optimal in hot climates, but they also have substantial benefits much further north than you might think,’ he says.

An amphibious house floats on a base of flotation blocks. Image: The Buoyant Foundation

AMPHIBIOUS HOUSES IN VIETNAM

As the floodwaters rose in the rice fields of the Mekong Delta in September 2018, four small houses rose with them. Homes in this part of Vietnam are traditionally built on stilts but these ones had been built to float. The modifications were made by the Buoyant Foundation Project, a not-for-profit that has been researching and retrofitting amphibious houses since 2006. ‘When I started this,’ explains founder Elizabeth English, ‘climate change was not on the tip of everybody’s tongue, but this technology is becoming necessary in places that didn’t previously need it.’ 

The Mekong Delta is home to more than 17 million people who have adapted to life near the floodplains. But sea level rise and flooding caused by storms and dam construction means that the current elevation of homes may no longer be enough. English, who came to work in flood mitigation from a background in wind research, says that, after hurricane Katrina, ‘it became clearer to me that the big issue was not the wind, but the water’. Her solution was simple: flotation blocks are placed under the house while a structural frame distributes the uplift they produce on water. Telescopic poles, which English calls the ‘vertical guidance system’, secure the house to the ground and resist the forces from wind and flowing water.

It’s much cheaper than permanently elevating houses, English explains – about a third of what it would cost to completely replace a building’s foundations. It also avoids the problem of taller houses being at greater risk from wind damage. Another plus comes from the fact that amphibious structures, which are much less obtrusive, can be sensitively adapted to meet cultural needs and match the kind of houses that are already common in a community. ‘It allows people to have the house they want,’ says English, ‘I’m just making it flood-resilient.’

Project participants test the salinity of soil. Image: ICCO part of Cordaid/FrameIn Productions

SALT-TOLERANT CROPS IN BANGLADESH
Worldwide, salt is threatening our increasing demand for food. As sea levels rise, so does the salinity in rivers and groundwater. To date, more than one fifth of the world’s agricultural land has been degraded by salt.

Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to climate change. Most of the country is less than a metre above sea level and 80 per cent of its land lies on floodplains. ‘Almost 35 million people living on the coastal belt of Bangladesh are currently affected by soil and water salinity,’ says Raisa Chowdhury, senior regional communications manager at ICCO Cooperation – part of Cordaid, a Netherlands-based international-development organisation.

Salt damages plant tissues and prevents them from taking up the nutrients they need from the soil, decreasing crop yields by as much as a third. Desalination is expensive, energy intensive and a short-term solution in the face of ever more frequent flooding.

Rather than fighting against it, one project is helping communities adapt to salt-affected soils. Since 2017, ICCO Cooperation has been working with 10,000 farmers in Bangladesh to introduce naturally salt-tolerant crop varieties into the region. Certain varieties of carrot, potato, kohlrabi, cabbage and beetroot have all been found to be better suited to the salty soil than the rice and wheat that is typically grown there. 

Chowdhury says that the results are very visible, comparing a barren plot of land to the ‘beautiful, lush green vegetable garden’ sitting beside it, in which he and his team have been working with the farmers. Since the project began, farmers trained in saline agriculture have reported increases of two to three more harvests per year.

Different parts of Bangladesh, even on the same land, have different levels of salinity, ‘so salinity-level tests to select the right crops need to be done to expand this project,’ explains Chowdhury. For now, the project has set itself the goal of ensuring seeds can be made widely accessible to farmers and of transforming a further 5,000 hectares of fallow fields into productive land.

Workers apply a coat of CoolSeal to a road in an LA neighbourhood. Image: StreetsLA

COOL STREETS IN LOS ANGELES

On summer nights in Los Angeles, when the surrounding land has already cooled off , there’s still enough heat radiating from the black asphalt of the city’s roads to make them visible from space. In a study using a thermal infrared sensor on the International Space Station (ISS), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed that, at 4am, the city’s car parks and airport runways were sometimes as warm as 23°C. This urban heat island effect – where cities get hotter, and stay hotter, than rural environments – is a growing problem for places like Los Angeles which is already seeing heat-related health emergencies in the winter.

Urban cooling is literally a matter of life and death for our future in LA,’ says Greg Spotts, chief sustainability officer of the city’s street services department, Streets LA. Since 2019, Spotts has led the Cool Streets LA programme, a series of pilot projects, including tree planting and cool pavement installations, designed to help reach the city’s goal of reducing its average temperature by 1.5°C by 2035. Using a Geographic Information System data mapping tool, the programme identified very hot streets with low tree canopy cover in three of the city’s neighbourhoods and coated them with CoolSeal, a light-grey, light-reflecting asphalt emulsion coating, which had already been shown to reduce road surface temperature in Los Angeles by 6°C. ’ 

Spotts says one of these streets, in the Winnetka neighbourhood of San Fernando Valley, can now be seen as a white-blue crescent on an otherwise red thermal image from the ISS. In September, Cool Streets LA launched its latest phase, an $8 million project to plant 1,900 trees and paint 200 city blocks across eight neighbourhoods. Spotts says that while the thermal image of Winnetka and the data-driven selection of vulnerable neighbourhoods helped to attract most of the funding needed, so did the size and the boldness of the project. Reflecting on a summer of global extreme weather events, he adds, ‘I feel like we’re now going to scale at the right time’. 

One of the darkest parts of Canada’s history has recently been revealed in a visceral way. The grisly discovery of thousands of unmarked graves on the grounds of residential schools this past year, has resulted in a national reckoning with the country’s colonial legacy. 

Glaswegian born Sir John A Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, who served two terms in office in 1867–73 and 1878–91, was the original architect of the residential school programme. Conceived as a combination of the Victorian poorhouse and a religious seminary, it was designed to ‘kill the Indian in the child’.

One hundred and thirty compulsory boarding schools were eventually set up and, between 1863 and 1996, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in them. Run by the federal government and a number of different churches (mostly the Catholic church), they formed part of a wider government policy towards the country’s Indigenous people – one of assimilation and repression that amounted to cultural genocide.

The residential school programme went hand in hand with the quashing of Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices. Many First Nations religious ceremonies, such as the potlach – a traditional feast and ceremonial distribution of property and gifts to affirm social status – were officially banned until 1951. According to Macdonald, the potlach was ‘debauchery of the worst kind, and the departmental officers and all clergymen unite in affirming that it is absolutely necessary to put this practice down.’

In May last year, 215 unmarked graves were uncovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia using ground-penetrating radar. Since then, hundreds more have been revealed at sites across the country. A report by the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission – set up in 2007 to facilitate reconciliation among former students, their families, their communities and all Canadians – estimates that the number of unmarked graves is around 3,200. It goes on to provide a conservative estimate that between 4,000 and 6,000 children died in residential schools, although a lack of proper documentation means that the actual numbers are likely much higher.

Children died due to physical abuse, malnutrition, disease and neglect. Others died by suicide, or while trying to escape the schools. The Canadian government has now earmarked CA$27 million to search for the remains of Indigenous children at the former sites of residential schools, the last of which closed in 1996.

The discoveries of 2021 only confirmed what survivors and activists had been saying for years. Finally, however, they sparked a national and international outcry. Pope Francis, who has yet to offer a formal apology for residential school abuses, has promised to visit Canada in 2022. ‘Our hope is that he does come to Kamloops,’ said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (also known as the Kamloops Band), recently, ‘that he does listen to our elders and our survivors. And, you know, some of the inter-generational trauma that has impacted so many of us – to hear those stories and those truths as well. And to come to a meaningful apology.’

Artist Jim Hart during construction of the Reconciliation Pole. Image: Paul Joseph

Indigenous people gather to observe the raising of the Reconciliation Pole. Image: Paul Joseph

The discoveries have also sparked, or at least coincided with, growing national and international recognition of First Nations art. At the start of November, announcements came that two of the country’s top art prizes were being awarded to Indigenous artists. Jim Hart, the hereditary chief of the Eagle Clan of the Haida Nation (whose people reside in Haida Gwai, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the northwest coast of British Columbia) was awarded the CA$100,000 Audain prize for visual art. The winner of the 2021 Sobey Art Award – a prestigious prize for emerging artists in Canada – was Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, a kalaaleq (Greenlandic Inuk) known for performing uaajeerneq, a Greenlandic mask dance that involves storytelling centred around three elements: fear, humour and sexuality. While the work of the performance artist, poet, actor, storyteller and writer, who is based in Nunavut, doesn’t explicitly reference residential schools, she recognised the unmarked graves in her acceptance speech. In a statement, the artist linked her work to this moment of national awakening, a time when more people than ever are becoming aware of the suffering experienced by Indigenous people. ‘In a time when we recognise that this Canadian soil bears the small bodies of many thousands of Indigenous children, in an era when we work through colonial institutions to keep our families safe in the pandemic and at a moment when the Arctic city I live in does not have potable water coming from the taps, I am proud to be recognised.’

JIM HART

Jim Hart’s iconic Reconciliation Pole, erected in 2017 at the University of British Columbia (UBC), features a stylised replica of the residential school his grandfather attended as its centrepiece and honours the estimated 150,000 Indigenous children forcibly removed from their families and culture. Commissioned by UBC and the Audain Foundation, it was one of the first large-scale works to explicitly reference residential school abuse.

Starting from the bottom, the pole embodies a timeline of pre- and post-contact with Europeans. It is embellished with more than 68,000 copper nails – hammered in by survivors, volunteers and schoolchildren – which represent the thousands of children who died at residential schools. Some of the nails have been hammered into the bottom of the representation of a residential school and, viewed from below, they take on skeletal shapes. Above the school, carvings of children holding hands, produced by a number of First Nations artists, represent survivors from across Canada, including the Inuit, the Musqueam and New Brunswick’s Maliseet. Their school-issued ID numbers are carved into their torsos, and guardian spirits hover protectively above them. At the top sits an eagle, carved by the artist with his late son Carl. It represents a way forward through ‘working together’, says Hart. The pole is at once a moving work of art and a historical monument.

At the time of the pole’s raising in 2017, an event attended by 3,000 people, carver and artist Christian White – Hart’s cousin, who also worked on the pole – shared with me the story of their grandfather Geoffrey White’s escape from the Coqualeetza residential school in Sardis, British Columbia, which is depicted on the totem. ‘There was a Victoria Day parade,’ he recounted, ‘and they had a bunch of Indian kids marching in uniform down Hastings Street. My grandfather, who was then about 12 years old, took the opportunity to keep marching right down to the docks, where there were some Haida men working.’ He stayed there for a few weeks, working alongside them, before being discovered by administrators and taken back to the school. But, according to White, word of his mistreatment soon reached his parents through the Haida dockworkers and they came to rescue him.

Jim Hart’s Reconciliation Pole. The rectangular house represents a residential school. Above it, children in uniform hold hands. They are depicted without feet, to show that they were not grounded at that time

Most others weren’t so lucky. Of the roughly 150,000 children placed in the schools – some 30 per cent of Indigenous children – tens of thousands were victims of what the government has now admitted was ‘widespread abuse’. The Reconciliation Pole, says Hart, is a way to remind people of Canada’s forgotten children. ‘This is also a way,’ he says, ‘to get past the stereotype of the “drunken Indian”.’ Even as the pole is a way to ‘start a conversation about the past,’ he says it’s also ‘a symbol of beauty and culture and hope.’

LAWRENCE PAUL YUXWELUPTUN

‘I want the UN to come and see what has happened here,’ says Vancouver-based Cowichan/Syilx artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, who recently created new work in memory of dead Indigenous children. Like many First Nations people in Canada who’ve spoken out about residential school abuse for decades, Yuxweluptun has documented it through his art. While he was trained by his father in traditional carving and graduated from Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1983, it wasn’t until 2005 that he explicitly articulated his own experience with his powerful Portrait of a Residential School Child. ‘It was just too painful to do anything before then,’ he says.

In his portrait, Yuxweluptun simultaneously subverts and incorporates the Christian halo by fusing gold leaf with traditional images of human guardian spirits and the four compass directions. The painting is a response to the church’s dehumanisation of Indigenous peoples, the artist says, and his intent was to show that ‘the child – given a traditional salmon/trouthead eye – is sacred and that they killed his body but not his spirit’.

Since the discovery of the residential school graves, artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun has taken to wearing a chain around his neck, attached to a copy of the Indian Act with bullet holes in it, a remnant of his 1997 work An Indian Act Shooting the Indian Act. In this performance art work, Yuxweluptun shot a copy of the colonial legislation that allowed the Canadian government overarching political control of Indigenous communities — and which is still in effect with amendments

When Yuxweluptun first heard the news that the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been found in unmarked graves at Kamloops, he felt a familiar pain. ‘We’ve known about it for a long time, from the stories of elders and survivors,’ he tells me during a visit to his studio in East Vancouver. But when these stories were confirmed, it brought back memories of his own experiences at the notorious school, where he spent three years as a student, from kindergarten to second grade.

It was too difficult for him to return to the physical site of the tragedy, where friends were engaged in healing ceremonies. Yuxweluptun instead retreated to his studio for contemplation. ‘I cried and said prayers for their spirits, and I put out bread and water for their journey on a tree stump,’ he says. He also started working on a new painting, entitled Spirit Child Walking Home.

Rendered in Yuxweluptun’s unique style, a blend of traditional Northwest Coast formline design and cosmology, surrealism and political commentary, the painting recalls his 1990 canvas Red Man Watching White Man Trying to Fix Hole in Sky. But in this piece, the colourful central figure is framed by two cedars in brown and green earth tones, depicted as friendly spirit guardians helping the child on his journey. ‘Now that the children’s spirits have spoken to us, it’s time for them to go home,’ says the artist. ‘I hope my painting will help them get there.’

JOHNNY BANDURA

‘I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do, but I felt the need to do something,’ says Johnny Bandura, who also began painting in response to the recent news. The self-taught artist from the Qayqayt First Nation in British Columbia, who grew up in Kamloops, relates that ‘the story made an impact on me as my grandmother attended the school during the 1930s. She never acknowledged her Indigenous heritage and culture. She was ashamed of being First Nations and never told anybody about her background. As a child, my brothers and sister attended programmes at the residential school and you could feel a very large amount of negative energy in the building – it was scary.’

After reading about the mass graves, Bandura, who is also a musician and has worked as a miner, went to the local art-supply store near his current home in Edmonton. He brought home some oil paints, played some music and let his creativity flow.

Bandura’s portraits show what the children could have become, had they been allowed to grow up. Art: Jonny Bandura

Johnny Bandura sits in front of his completed work, made up of portraits of the children who died at Kamloops

What emerged were graphic yet painterly comic-inspired portraits of ‘what these children could have become’. The first was a medicine woman; the second was a hunter. Others soon sprang to life – some dressed as nurses, hockey players and judges, some wearing traditional regalia. They all shared the same open, questioning eyes that dared to demand viewers return their gaze. ‘I wanted them to be simple images that could be easily absorbed together,’ he says, ‘instead of adding a lot of shading and depth to the faces, I wanted each of their individual qualities to be obvious.’

At first, Bandura conceived of them as individual portraits, but he soon realised that they comprised a whole, forming a single large and powerful mural. He says he thought about his own young children as he painted the works, which are all set against a yellow backdrop with features etched in black and white, punctuated by vivid reds and greens. ‘I hope this piece will be able to immortalise the 215 lives lost,’ says Bandura of the work, which has now had three exhibitions, ‘as well as to bring healing and understanding to all people about the devastation that happened at residential schools and during colonisation.’ Speaking from his studio, where the spirits of Indigenous children stare out from his mural, he says, ‘I hope this work will honour all the victims, survivors and their families, and will keep their story alive for future generations.’

In a six-screen video installation at the heart of the National Gallery this winter, Black Londoners play clapping games and trek through an ice-white Norwegian landscape. They’re dressed stylishly, but for an urban environment. ‘In Search of the Miraculous’ is accompanied by five reappropriations of famous Romantic paintings, in which the central European figures have been replaced with contemporary Black protagonists. Blurbs and interviews explain that the artist, Kehinde Wiley, sees the piece as an exploration of European Romanticism and our relationship with nature, climate change, migration, empire and, most importantly, race and what it means to be seen.

Wiley might be from the USA, but these are questions that have been asked in the UK, too, for many decades. In our society, shaped as it is by migration from Commonwealth countries and beyond, different traditions, philosophies and experiences of the natural world have converged. Of late, we’ve become used to asking who can gain access to the natural world, but there’s space, too, for a conversation about what nature and our landscape actually mean to the many minority communities that call Britain home.

WHAT NATURE MEANS TO US

The trailer for the 2018 play Black Men Walking is still available on YouTube. It opens with an empty vista, a very windy Peak District hillside, large boulders and skeletal trees on the horizon, before three Black men in waterproofs and woolly hats stride across the frame. As the film cuts to shots of them cresting a hill, winding through heathered slopes, the play’s opening choral chant echoes over and over, ‘We walk, we walk, we walk...’ A meditation on the Black British relationship with the wild landscape, the play is based on a real hiking group – 100 Black Men Walk For Health – founded in 2004 by Sheffielder Maxwell Ayamba and two friends. The academic and journalist, who grew up in rural Ghana, describes his perspective on the natural world as ‘biocentrist’, one he contrasts with the ideas he believes are dominant in the West.

‘The Western conceptualisation of nature is completely different from the [Global] South or from developing countries, in terms of how nature is perceived,’ says Ayamba. ‘In the developing world, nature is seen as a source of livelihood for sustenance and wellbeing. In the West, nature is perceived as a commodity – for leisure, tradition and for profit.’ In rural Ghana, he says, people saw themselves as part of nature, rather than nature being something apart, and this is a perspective he has carried with him. Of course, today, this view is gaining currency, especially within environmental and naturalist circles.

And yet, this is only one view. Nature means something different to every one of us and for people from ethnic minorities, a huge variety of traditions, cultures and histories feed into that relationship. Philosophies that ‘centre’ humans within nature, or that see the two as separate, also have traditions that inculcate a deep respect for the natural world.

British Muslims are the country’s largest religious minority, close to three million people, originating from all over the world and from many different traditions. Although largely urban, there are many exceptions, such as one Oxfordshire family: the Radwans.

Lufti and Ruby Radwan, an Oxfordshire farming family

I visited the Radwans’ organic farm, Willowbrook, on a hot, still afternoon last summer, joining young families, mostly Muslim, who had come for one of the farm’s regular open days. The audience was smartly dressed, affluent and observant, and listened to Lutfi Radwan explain why he and his wife, Ruby, abandoned suburban life in 2002, the Islamic ethos that drives them and the religious mandates that demand humane animal husbandry and environmental responsibility. Later, families joined a composting workshop led by Lutfi’s son and daughter-in-law. Noisy children with fistfuls of hay swarmed excitedly at the chance to feed some of the family’s goats, receiving a gentle chiding when their exuberance risked scaring the animals.

When I speak to the couple months later, Lutfi explains that, alongside working life on the farm, his family is dedicated to educating the wider Muslim community about Islamic concepts that relate to the natural world. He tells me that he hopes to prompt people to think about the responsibilities God has entrusted to humanity in return for the Earth as a resource and ask questions such as: ‘What is stewardship about? Why does the Quran talk about khilafah [guardianship]? What is the deeper meaning of tayyib [being pure, clean and wholesome] in the Quran?’

In Islamic belief, humans are conditionally preeminent, but nature and humanity form a unity that must be respected; people are responsible as custodians. ‘All of this issue of stewarding, caring, nurturing, looking after, is really important, because we’re now living in societies where we’re systematically poisoning and destroying the Earth,’ says Lutfi.

CLASS AND NATURE

‘We ramblers, after a hard week’s work, in smokey towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation and fresh air. And we find the finest rambling country is closed to us... Our request, or demand, for access to all peaks and uncultivated moorland is nothing unreasonable.’ Those were the words of Benny Rothman, the son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants, spoken before he was jailed for his part in the Kinder Trespass. This year will see the 90th anniversary of the day when more than 400 men and women took to the hills of the Peak District, tramping through the laws that reserved access to the landed gentry. It’s a reminder that the natural landscape has never belonged to everyone and that the right to have a relationship with it has had to be fought for.

Today, according to the Social Metrics Commission’s 2020 report, the rate of poverty is much higher for Black and minority-ethnic families. Nearly half (equating to 900,000 people) of all people living in families where the household head is Black African/Caribbean or Black British are in poverty, compared to just under one in five of those living in families where the head of the household is white. This is significant because class deeply influences relationships with nature, like so much else in this country. Although government statistics show that minority groups visit natural environments (that is parks, the coast and countryside) far less frequently than the white population, what’s most striking about the figures is that, for everyone, engagement clearly wanes along class lines.

Ornithologist and broadcaster David Lindo is known as the Urban Birder. The homepage of his website features a picture of him lying flat on his back on the pavement, dressed in smart denim and trainers, peering into the sky with a pair of binoculars. The city-dwellers walking past appear not to notice him.

David Lindo gives a talk to ornithologists and hobbyist bird-watchers

Obsessed with birding since he was a child, he tells me that he eventually carved out a career as a naturalist despite discouragement at school and having worked for years in sales. Although he has appeared on Springwatch and The One Show, he says broadcasters have been reluctant to work with him because he doesn’t have a degree and so doesn’t fit their idea of an ‘expert’. He sees class and representation as important issues when it comes to learning how to find a connection with nature. ‘[A] reason why I pushed the urban thing was because you reach a lot of people who are working class and they begin to realise that they, too, can be involved,’ he says. ‘The voices you hear on TV are still predominantly quite middle class, but it needs to change. People talk about barriers and they talk about racism, which is obviously important, but it goes back to how it’s sold to us.’

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is also pushing the urban agenda. He has announced major plans for rewilding portions of the city’s royal parks, which DEFRA board member Ben Goldsmith says would involve ‘more wild spaces, more scrub, river rewiggling and species reintroductions’. But research suggests that not everyone favours the same type of natural, or green, environment. In her research into ethnic minority park use in London, architect Bridget Snaith found that it was white university graduates who showed a real desire for ‘wild’ landscapes. That same desire wasn’t at all universal, suggesting that this idealised landscape reflects the taste of the educated and powerful. Her work in London also hints at the many differences within minority communities. When conducting focus groups, she found that park users from Muslim communities felt that parks had a ‘restorative’ effect, whereas Caribbean interviewees saw parks more as places for activity or socialising. British Pakistanis did visit national parks, but British Bangladeshis had little desire to escape to the ‘untouched wild’. Caribbean interviewees held unromanticised views of the countryside, preferring urban life.

It’s also the case that while, for many of us, the outdoors is a place of escape, leisure and reflection, for others it’s a place of risk, drudgery and menial work. Ruby Radwan tells me that some people don’t understand why she would want to labour on a farm or practise traditional crafts such as spinning when food and clothes are easily available. ‘We’ve had older women and men come and say, “No, it’s a bit dirty.” They don’t want to get out of the car and walk along the muddy path – it’s going to make their nice shoes dirty.’ But she’s understanding, observing that in many countries, the move towards industrialisation and urbanised middle-class life puts ‘rural things right at the bottom of the heap. The rural workers get paid nothing – planting, harvesting, the most meaningful things for existence, are so devalued.’

LOST CONNECTIONS

‘Nature’, then, is perhaps less an observed, discreet phenomenon and more a cultural experience, something that one has to conceive – where you make meaning as much as find it. Migration, whether from the country to the city or across the world, inevitably means disruption and a necessary process of reinvention.

Beth Collier is a psychotherapist. Her practice is centred on nature as a medium for psychological healing and development. Also an ethnographer and outdoor leader, she founded Wild in the City, a non-profit that works to reconnect minority groups with nature through hiking, woodland-living skills, natural history and ecotherapy. She says that younger generations feel that they’ve lost many of the intimate relationships with the natural world that were once inherent in their communities. ‘Whether it’s memories of people, grandparents, foraging wild foods and pickling them; whether it’s memories of Somali grandparents as shepherds navigating herds, using the stars, very powerful, deep connections, of nature being a source of food, a source of guidance, part of the rhythm of the social life, in terms of festivals and other celebrations.’ Collier sees the loss of these connections as wrapped up with the legacy of colonialism. The racism faced by communities when they first settled in the UK deterred ventures into unfamiliar landscapes and the consequences are still ongoing.

The insecurities of diasporic life can also create their own legacies. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, who leads the New North London Synagogue, is the cofounder of the Eco-Synagogue project. He tells me of his strong affinity with the natural world, but explains why that isn’t necessarily reflected more widely among Britain’s longest-standing minority community. ‘So the focus in a lot of Jewish life has really been the Shulkhan Arukh – the code of practical law,’ he says. ‘How do I replicate a way of life wherever I find myself? How do I create a community that follows the weekly Sabbath, the yearly festivals, has the resources to conduct lifecycle events, has a cemetery, has somebody who can do the ritual circumcisions and the ritual slaughters – these have been overwhelming preoccupations in the face of a lot of adversity and have taken attention away from, “And what’s my relationship to the land?”, which then can come across as something of a luxury.’ In this telling, the loss of connection to nature is an unavoidable sacrifice of urban migration, of subsequent rebuilding, one common to every diaspora community.

But if some communities have less of a relationship with the natural world than others, is that a problem? Many believe that it is. Rabbi Witttenberg describes a lack of contact with nature as a ‘spiritual impoverishment’. He believes that there’s valuable perspective to be gained – the environment and the seasons ‘frame a sense of time and mortality, and have an influence in mitigating a culture of growth, prosperity and so on with a sense of humility.’ Losing touch with that is a ‘very significant and major loss’.

Maxwell Ayamba describes the outdoors as the ‘natural health service’ and sees it as essential, citing the fact that health problems such as diabetes and depression are prominent in many minority communities. ‘A lot of the people who come on our walks give personal testimonies about how just having that space, that freedom to roam and walk or talk and share their lived experience with their peers has really improved their mental and physical wellbeing.’ He points me towards NHS England’s new Green Social Prescribing scheme, which encourages GPs to refer people for nature-based interventions and activities.

Nature is also a vital component of our emotional development and sense of security, according to Collier. ‘In terms of psychotherapy, we have the concept of a significant other in our life, who are usually our primary caregivers, our parents and also our close siblings and other significant people who are important parts of our lives. And I argue that nature is a significant other – that whether or not we’re aware of the importance of a relationship with nature, having one or not having one will have an impact on our sense of wellbeing.’ She also argues for a ‘quality over quantity approach’ – whether it’s a patch of flowers outside a block of flats or a dense forest, it’s the quality of our relationship to it that counts.

Jini Reddy exploring the Hoanib Desert in Namibia

This relationship with nature is what travel writer Jini Reddy sees as a source of what she calls ‘lifeforce’. The natural world represents an opportunity not just for wellbeing, physical health and learning, but also for exploration, adventure and self-knowledge. Her Wainwright Prize-shortlisted book Wanderland details a year-long quest through the British countryside in search of what she describes as ‘magic’ – the spiritual gifts the natural world can yield beyond the aesthetic or empirical. Through her journey, she finds deeply individual connections to the landscape outside British mythic traditions.

Reddy has a cosmopolitan perspective – born to Indian South African parents, she grew up in Montreal, lives in London and has spent a lifetime exploring the world. She also thinks that there are many ways of finding a deeper connection to this concept of ‘lifeforce’. ‘People experience spiritual connection through lots of things – through art, through creating food that brings communities together,’ she says. Although she finds it easiest to experience that connection in the wild, she says ‘spiritual is just a word, I guess. Some people don’t resonate with the word, but they might experience that feeling, that deep feeling of joy and connection. I don’t think there’s a hierarchy of value – not everybody would say that they need to go into nature.’

BACK TO NATURE

During the 1980s, seminal artists such as Ingrid Pollard examined the relationship between Black Britain and the romantic traditions in nature. Today, Kehinde Wiley and a new generation of creatives are taking up the mantle.

The Willowherb Review publishes writing ‘on nature, place and environment by writers of colour’. Editor Jessica Lee suggests that nature is being seen more honestly and more politically than in the past, and that ‘the push to hear from more writers of colour has clarified that notion that there isn’t just one way of experiencing nature’. She believes that the scope of this new writing ‘extends far beyond these borders, especially as we think about the legacies of migration and potential futures (and presents) wrought by climate change, biodiversity loss and more’.

In their work, Willowbrook farmers Lutfi and Ruby Radwan raise awareness about personal responsibilities and religious duties; psychotherapist Beth Collier’s approach is based on healing and restoration; and Rabbi Wittenberg focuses on offering practical help to improve environmental sustainability. Maxwell Ayamba has founded the Sheffield Environmental Movement, a non-profit that helps ethnic-minority and refugee communities in the city to experience the British countryside and outdoor activities, enlarging access by providing clothing, transport and outdoor guided activities to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them.

David Lindo offers courses and training through the Urban Birder World and says the most important thing is educating young people about the nature on their doorstep, not just in far away places. He passes on enthusiasm first and foremost, encouraging people to not be intimidated by a lack of knowledge. ‘It’s not necessarily a question of me pointing my finger down at the kid saying, “This is what”,’ he says. ‘The kid can teach me as well.’

It’s a message of independence echoed by Reddy, who has sojourned through natural landscapes around the world on her own, without being held back by ideas about the expertise she’s supposed to have. ‘There’s so much joy in following your curiosity,’ she says. ‘I think your world opens up if you can overcome your fears. Sometimes I’m fearful, but I still do it anyway. I’ve done stuff where I’ve been really anxious, but I kind of know that if I stay with that feeling, stay with it, stay with it, and still do it, then I’ll get through that.

‘And just think of the beauty you’ll experience,’ she adds. ‘There’s so much natural beauty in Britain it’s incredible. And, you know, often people are really friendly. I think sometimes we carry things in our heads about how things are going to pan out, and they don’t always pan out that way.’

There’s always a danger when searching for collective narratives among the stories of the millions of individuals who constitute Britain’s varied ethnic and religious communities. But the unseen cultural topography that shapes our relationships with nature, whether in the landscape of town or country, are real enough. When we connect with nature, we’re connecting as much with traditions, world views and values as with the landscapes themselves. Some will do this alone, but ultimately, the connection to the natural world is created together.

Sir Crispin Tickell had a long and varied career, during which he advised four prime ministers on political, environmental and foreign policy matters, took a lead on environmental issues and served as president of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Marine Biological Society. 

It is for his environmental work that he is perhaps best remembered. He wrote Climatic Change and World Affairs in 1977, one of the first books on the climate crisis and what governments should do to prevent it. In it, he argued that mandatory international pollution control would eventually be necessary. Concerned with the bulging world population, he favoured progressive policies to slow the rise, including reproductive health, education for women and poverty alleviation. 

He was also credited with persuading Margaret Thatcher on the importance of climate change, a move which led to her speech to the Royal Society in September 1988, one of the first major speeches on climate change by a world leader.

Sir Crispin pushed for a solutions-based approach to climate change, calling for the formation of a 'World Environment Organisation' during his time as British ambassador to the UN. He is credited with bringing scientific research to the policy world and for linking climate change to politics and business.

In later life he wrote a biography of Mary Anning, the Lyme Regis fossil hunter who was his great-great aunt. During the course of his life he was the recipient of 23 honorary doctorates and was  knighted for his achievements as a diplomat in 1983. He even had a minor planet and a Mexican volcano named after him. 

The wreck of Endurance, the ship that took Sir Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic but sank in 1915 after becoming trapped in pack ice, has finally been found, just over 3km deep in the Weddell Sea.

Footage of the wreck released by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), which organised the Endurance22 mission to find the lost ship, shows that Endurance remains in remarkably good condition, despite having been crushed by ice and sunk more than 107 years ago.

The bow clearly showing the good condition of Endurance’s wooden hull. Image: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust

Mensun Bound, maritime archaeologist and Endurance22’s director of exploration, said the footage of Endurance showed it in such good condition that it is ‘by far the finest wooden shipwreck’ he has seen.

‘We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance,’ said Bound, ‘It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see Endurance arced across the stern, directly below the taffrail. This is a milestone in polar history.’

Bound also paid tribute to the Captain Frank Worsley, saying that his navigational skills and detailed records were ‘invaluable’ in his team’s quest to locate the wreck.

‘However, it is not all about the past,’ said Bound. ‘We hope our discovery will engage young people and inspire them with the pioneering spirit, courage and fortitude of those who sailed Endurance to Antarctica.’

The Endurance wheelhouse is virtually intact. Image: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust

Endurance was a 44m-long three-masted, sail-and-steam-powered barquentine (a ship with three or more masts) launched under the name Polaris by Framnæs shipyards in Sandefjord, Norway in 1912. Originally intended for use as a luxury Arctic tourist and polar bear hunting boat, financial problems and a lack of business led to the owners selling her to Shackleton, who renamed the ship Endurance and transferred her to London in 1914.

After a refit which removed most of the luxury passenger cabins and crew quarters to make way for equipment stores, Endurance set sail from Plymouth in August 1914 on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, with a crew of 28 men under the command of Captain Frank Worsley. The expedition was to be an attempt at the first land crossing of the Antarctic, from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea by way of the South Pole, which had been reached three years earlier by Roald Amundsen’s expedition, in December 1911.

Endurance under full sail, taken by expedition photographer Frank Hurley. Image: State Library of New South Wales

Endurance had been designed for polar exploration, with a solid oak hull designed for breaking through ice, but shortly after leaving the island of South Georgia in December 1914, the expedition encountered thick pack ice and became trapped a few weeks later. Despite the best efforts of her crew – who remained onboard for the next ten months – the ship never saw open water again. Shackleton finally gave up and the crew decamped to the ice in late October 1915. Endurance was slowly crushed over the next month and sank on 21 November, 1915.

The crew of Endurance survived, trekking across the ice with two of the ship’s lifeboats full of supplies, camping on the ice until April 1916, when the ice broke and they were able to escape to the uninhabited Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton, Worsley and four of the fittest members of the crew sailed a gruelling 800 miles to South Georgia, which they reached 16 days later. The rest of the crew were rescued on 30 August 1916, having survived 18 months stranded in the Antarctic.

Endurance sinking, November 1915. Image: Royal Geographic Society

Several expeditions to find the wreck have been planned in the past, however none came to fruition until 2019, when an expedition to find the wreck using an underwater drone failed – rather ironically – after the drone was lost to the ice. Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s expedition located the wreck of Endurance after less than a month at sea, at a depth of 3,008m, approximately 4 miles/6.4km south of its last known location as recorded by Captain Worsley.

Endurance22’s expedition leader, Dr John Shears, said the team had made polar history by discovering ‘the world’s most challenging shipwreck’.

Ernest Shackleton (right) and expedition photographer Frank Hurley (left) camping on the Antarctic Ice after Endurance was lost. Image: State Library of New South Wales

‘We have also conducted an unprecedented educational outreach programme,’ said Dr Shears, ‘with live broadcasting from on board, allowing new generations from around the world to engage with Endurance22 and become inspired by the amazing stories of polar exploration, and what human beings can achieve and the obstacles they can overcome when they work together.’

Shackleton returned to the Antarctic in 1921 but died from a heart attack on 5 January 1922, aged 47, while moored at South Georgia. He was buried on March 5 1922 in the cemetery of Grytvikan, South Georgia, at the request of his wife, Emily.

Dawn breaks at the New Market in Kolkata as men unload plastic boxes full of live chickens from huge trucks. Just as happens every morning, workers from shops and restaurants from all over the city come to stock up. Frantic activity fills the streets next to the red-brick market building. Threading their way between bicycles hung with multiple chickens, piles of empty boxes and a taxi that also joins the party, its boot and rear seats packed full of chickens, come the rickshaws – a kind of cart with two large wooden wheels pulled by a single man. In a matter of minutes they’ve filled every corner, piled high with half-stunned chickens, leaving only part of the handle free to be pulled.

The skinny, scruffy men who pull the rickshaws – many of them working barefoot – are known as wallahs. They’re in charge of supplying most of the shops and restaurants in the area first thing in the morning, taking advantage of the fact that the city is still half asleep and lacking the congestion of vehicles that takes over the market streets during the rest of the day. For each trip, they earn between 60 and 70 rupees (about 60–70p).

It’s impossible to keep up with them and they quickly disappear into the alleys of old Kolkata. We see some do the same operation several times, until the empty trucks move away, leaving behind an unpleasant stench of excrement and feathers crushed on the asphalt, which the cleaning crews will remove later with pressurised water hoses.

Like the Victoria Memorial, the Howrah Bridge and the yellow Ambassador taxis, the rickshaw is one of the most recognisable symbols of Kolkata. They’ve appeared in films and poetry; books have been written about them, such as The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre. Although it was the first city in India to build a metro system, Kolkata is still one of the few in the world to use rickshaws as a means of urban transport. And yet the rickshaw is also a symbol of the colonial past, having been introduced to India by the British Raj during the 19th century.

Today, Kolkata, which like every big city aspires to be seen as a modern metropolis, isn’t comfortable with the sight of these carts being pulled by poor, emaciated men. Nevertheless, they’re diffi cult to get rid of. Many governments in West Bengal have expressed a desire to remove them from the streets, but they’re almost essential in order to move through the narrow lanes of the old city and transport packages to the bazaars; vegetables or chickens from the markets; and even children to and from school. During the monsoon season, when many streets are fl ooded and totally impassable for cars, they come into their own.

A rickshaw passing between two vehicles in the heavy traffic of Kolkata city. Image: Oscar Espinosa

CROWDED LIVING IN THE DERA

In a small street near Mother Teresa of Calcutta House, several old rickshaws are piled up and covered in dust. Parked in front of an old house that seems to be falling apart and is oozing moisture from all sides, they look like they haven’t been used in months. With half its facade covered with sheet metal, this dera is owned by the same man who owns the rickshaws. It serves as a sleeping place for the pullers in exchange for a monthly rent of 100 rupees. It also serves as garage and repair shop.

Halim Akthar, 52, has been living in this dera for 15 years and working for the same owner. He came to Kolkata from Dahka, a small town in the neighbouring state of Bihar, one of the poorest in India, escaping poverty and searching for a livelihood to support his wife and seven children. Apart from the monthly rent for a space in the simple, dark bedroom that he shares with 22 other pullers, he pays the owner 900 rupees a month for the rent of the rickshaw with which he goes out to tour the city every day. ‘I work seven days a week, so between the accommodation and the rent of the rickshaw, I pay 1,000 rupees a month to the owner, and I try to send 5,000 rupees a month to my family in Bihar so that they can live, although not every month I achieve it,’ he tells us without losing his smile.

Like many other migrant workers during the strict Covid-19 lockdown in India, Halim returned to Bihar when he was unable to work in Kolkata. Overnight, he was left without an income. For six months, from April to September 2020, he survived as best he could in his hometown, where at least they had food from his small garden and he had no rental expenses. ‘As soon as they told me that there was movement again in the streets of Kolkata, I returned to get my job back,’ he says as he shows us the bedroom. ‘Many have not returned yet and it is likely that they will take a long time to do so since work has dropped a lot since the pandemic started. Before, 22 people slept here; now we are only six.’ It’s difficult to imagine how this wooden loft full of mattresses, with a floor area of just 20 square metres and hardly any ventilation, could have housed so many men.

A rickshaw puller rests on a makeshift bed in the stairwell of a building in the New Market neighbourhood. Image: Oscar Espinosa

MD Koisar, 53, works for the same owner who rents the rickshaw to Halim, but he lives with his family in a mini-apartment just a few blocks away. ‘I am from Gorakhpur, a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh, and I came to Kolkata very young to look for work to help my family,’ he tells us as we walk together to his house.

Koisar came to Kolkata almost 30 years ago. For the first few years, he did everything from small jobs to repairs, but then about 20 years ago, he started working as a rickshaw puller. ‘At fi rst, I didn’t know how to keep my balance and it was hard for me to brake and regain momentum,’ he remembers, laughing, ‘but aft er 20 years of pulling, it’s as if it is part of my body. I handle it without any problem. We move through the narrow streets of the centre much faster than any other vehicle – that’s why many prefer us to make short trips. Well, because of that and also because we are the cheapest transport in the city.’ For passengers, one ride usually costs between 20 and 50 rupees.

We arrive at a grey, dilapidated building. As we climb the stairs to Koisar’s apartment, for which his family pays 300 rupees per month, we come across several of his neighbours, some sleeping on cots in the stairwell, others sitting on plastic stools in the hallways while chatting quietly over a chai tea, others doing laundry on the rooftop or cooking with small portable stoves in the more open spaces. Once inside, it becomes clear why there’s so much life outside the apartments: Koisar and his family (altogether eight adults and three small children) live in a small space of about four square metres without a kitchen or bathroom. During the day, they clear a space by piling the mattresses up in a corner.

Unlike most of his colleagues, whose families still live in their place of origin, Koisar has formed his family in Kolkata and it has been a long time since he visited Uttar Pradesh, where he has almost no family left . He married Anwari Begam, a woman he met in the Muslim quarter, where they now live, and they now have four children. ‘We have three sons and a daughter, and they have already made us grandparents three times,’ he proudly tells us as he picks up his youngest granddaughter, who was born just a couple of weeks ago. ‘I know that my job is not the best in the world and that many are against it because they say we are treated like pack animals, but nobody forces us to do it. It’s hard work and we earn very little but it has allowed me to support my family until now. I honestly don’t know what I could do if rickshaws were banned for good. We are less and less because the pullers that retire are no longer replaced. I only demand that they let me work with the rickshaw until my body says it’s enough. I don’t hurt anyone and it seems hypocritical to me – those who say it’s an inhuman job and want to ban it. Will they give me work or money to support my family? I don’t think so.’

MD Koisar goes to pick up one of his grandchildren in the home he shares with his family. Image: Oscar Espinosa

Rickshaws are left over from the colonial period and were introduced by the British Raj. Image: Oscar Espinosa

A ban on rickshaws was announced in 2005 in Kolkata, and since then, the number of wallahs has been gradually reduced by more than two-thirds. Today, about 5,800 rickshaw pullers are active, compared to the 18,000 that were working in 2005. The number of owners, on the other hand, has remained unchanged at 2,400.

One of Koisar’s sons has followed in his footsteps and is also a rickshaw puller. Another rides a cycle-rickshaw – vehicles with the same basic structure as the traditional rickshaw but instead of being pulled by a person on foot, are powered by a person riding a bicycle. ‘The one who drives the cycle-rickshaw earns a little more because the rates are a bit higher, but he also has to pay more than double the rent – 70 rupees a day instead of the 30 that are paid for the rickshaw,’ says Koisar. ‘With a bit of luck, my son who pulls the rickshaw will be able to take advantage of the plan to change to an electric model that they have been talking about for years, although who knows if in the end it will be done and how much it will cost him to rent the new model.’

THE ATYPICAL UNION OF RICKSHAWS

Th e All Bengal Rickshaw Union has been negotiating with the government ever since the ban was announced in 2005. Its aim is to fi nd solutions for the owners and the rickshaw pullers, who would be left without a livelihood if they were forbidden to continue to travel through the streets of Kolkata.

‘In 2005, the government banned rickshaws, considering them inhumane. Although from the point of view of this union, what is inhumane is to put a man out of work,’ says Mukthar Ali, 53, secretary of the All Bengal Rickshaw Union for 25 years. ‘Fortunately, the new government that came to power in 2011 did not implement the regulations that prohibit the circulation of rickshaws and have allowed them to continue working. Although no new licenses have been granted since then, still today they haven’t disappeared from the city of Kolkata,’ he tells us, as he rummages through papers on the desk in his office. ‘We have been working for years on a project that will change the model, going from rickshaws pulled by men to electric vehicles.’ He shows us the draft of the project, which includes a rehabilitation programme for rickshaw owners and pullers. It’s dated 2015 but has yet to be implemented.

Under the plan, the new vehicles would be the same battery-powered bicycles that have been used in other cities for years. According to Ali, they cost between 80,000 and 90,000 rupees. The union expects the state of West Bengal to cover 95 per cent of the cost so that the owners of the current rickshaws only have to pay between 4,000 and 4,500 rupees for each new model to replace their fleet. Ali says that this is a sticking point.

If the project is implemented, it’s the rickshaw owners who will benefit most; it will enable them to continue with new vehicles and with minimum investment. For most of the current rickshaw pullers, on the other hand, the definitive withdrawal of their vehicles from the streets of Kolkata will mean the end of their working lives, since only the youngest will have access to the new electric rickshaws. ‘According to the rehabilitation plan, the youngest wallahs will be trained so that they can continue working with the new model, while the older ones will enter a pension scheme,’ explains Ali, but he doesn’t provide any concrete details.

Given this, it’s something of a problem that the All Bengal Rickshaw Union – the only union in the sector, founded in 1934 – represents both employers and employees. To become a member, it’s enough to have just one rickshaw, as is true of the union secretary. But in most cases, members own a large fleet of rickshaws. This is true of the union’s vice president, Ramdeni Sharma, 66, who welcomes us in his dera just a couple of blocks from the office of the union.

Several rickshaws wait for customers on a street near the New Market. Image: Oscar Espinosa

‘I have been in the All Bengal Rickshaw Union for over 40 years, since shortly aft er arriving from Hadjpur, my hometown of Bihar, and starting in the rickshaw business. Things have changed a lot since then,’ he tells us with a certain nostalgia. ‘Today, I have 165 rickshaws; ten years ago, I had twice as many. Th ere are fewer and fewer because they stopped renewing licenses, but also because there is less demand.’

‘I know that sooner or later they will disappear,’ adds Manoj, Sharma’s 35-year-old son, who helps his father with the management of the business, ‘but 20 years ago, my father told me that in 20 years, rickshaws would no longer exist and they still circulate around the city think we are looking at the last generation of rickshaw pullers in Kolkata.’

There is a family atmosphere in Ramdeni Sharma’s dera. Everyone calls him ‘father’, despite many of the residents being the same age, perhaps because, like him, they all come from the state of Bihar. The pullers pay Sharma 30 rupees a day to rent the rickshaw, and a rent of 120 rupees a month to sleep in the dera. Next to the central courtyard, in which the rickshaws are parked, eight tin cubicles of about three square metres have been built where the wallahs live, crowded together. At one end, there are a couple of latrines.

Ramjif Yadv, 50, shows us the small, blue-painted room that he shares with his uncle and nephew. ‘I came 25 years ago looking for work and some neighbours told me about this place,’ he tells us. ‘And since then, I have always lived and worked for the same owner, whom we all consider as a father here in Kolkata’. Like the rest of his companions, Yadv also comes from the neighbouring state of Bihar, where his wife and two daughters still live. He visits them a couple of times a year. ‘For a while, my son lived and worked here with me, but luckily, a couple of years ago, he found a job in a factory in Delhi and was able to quit the rickshaw,’ he says proudly.

A rickshaw puller sips tea before continuing the service of a regular customer who sells papayas at Kolkata’s New Market. Image: Oscar Espinosa

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Amid the cacophony of engines and horns honking for no apparent reason, a handbell attracts attention as it makes its way past cars and passersby down Ripon Street in the heart of Kolkata. Basir, a hunched and extremely thin man, appears from behind a taxi pulling his rickshaw, loaded with an older couple and their groceries.

Basir and three friends, all from the same town in Bihar near the capital, Patna, decided to rent a space outside the dera. Basir, 50; Abdul Glam, 45; Isad Mohamad, 60; and Odir, 40, now live in a small storage room around a metre wide by two metres deep, for which they pay 1,000 rupees a month. ‘We pay more than if we slept in the dera, but we have more independence and we are more relaxed. To live here we have to be thin and get along well,’ Abdul jokes as his friends laugh.

What little they have left after paying 30 rupees a day for the rent of the rickshaw and the 250 rupees a month for the storage-room dormitory, they send to their families in Bihar. ‘What will happen when rickshaws pulled by people are permanently banned in Kolkata? We don’t know,’ says Mohamad, the oldest of the group, his tone serious. ‘I hope that it will take time to approve the rehabilitation plan that they have been talking about for years, and I hope that Odir and Abdul can benefit from the change of model, because Basir and I are already considered older, even though we have the strength to continue pulling the rickshaw for a few more years.’

Like so many other rickshaw pullers, Mohamad and Basir will probably have to return to their native Bihar when rickshaws are permanently banned. But, as if reluctant to believe that one day the inevitable time will come, they continue to get up every day to tour the city in exchange for a few rupees.

No country ever gave aid that was not in some way in its self-interest to do so,’ says Nilima Gulrajani, senior research fellow for the Development and Public Finance Programme at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). ‘The act of giving aid involves one party having more power than the other; one entity has less money than the other.’ Yet it’s also undeniable that international aid has played a huge part in reducing poverty, eradicating disease and boosting infrastructure all around the world.

Today, the picture is ever more complicated and the landscape of international aid is changing in response. Cop26 in Glasgow produced mixed results for tackling climate change, to say the least, but the summit did seek to rejuvenate a pledge of US$100 billion for climate finance. Representing the largest ever post-war pledge on aid, this vast sum – subject to everyone coughing up – is intended to help low-income countries both mitigate climate change through clean technology and become more resilient to those impacts of a warming planet that are already baked in. Yet, whether the money really emerges, and how it will fit within the context of more traditional aid projects, is far from certain.

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF AID

International development aid first emerged as a structured phenomenon at the end of the Second World War and was reinforced by the dismantling of colonial empires that followed in the 1950s. The UN then declared that the 1960s would be the ‘Decade of Development’, a time when countries from what we then called the Third World would shake off colonialism and poverty. ‘It was about doing whatever you could to make people less poor, and that involved investment in education, health and infrastructure,’ says Peter Taylor, director of research at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex. However, as the post-colonial era emerged, he says, ‘the concept developed that the Global North was superior and had all the answers, and that the world should look like a few select countries.’

Today, while the core focus of aid remains that of tackling chronic malnutrition, disease eradication, education and sanitation, as the aid sector evolves it has found itself increasingly entangled in global and local politics, most recently in relation to climate funding and Covid-19 vaccine distribution. So, too, has its very nature changed.

The days of aid being doled out by ‘the men in white shorts’ are largely over, according to Duncan Green, senior strategic adviser at Oxfam. ‘There’s a lot more of an intellectual understanding of the need to root aid among local players,’ he says. ‘If you don’t consult local politicians, civil society and experts, you are just reinforcing colonial trends.’

The shift from out-dated tropes has been driven in part by one of the by-products of long-term development: the greater wealth that has facilitated the travel industry. ‘International travel – both from North to South and South to North – has involved the mixing of people, the ability to see reality on the ground,’ says Taylor. ‘That has led to much more public questioning about what aid can achieve. What we see now is much more local ownership, more expectations of clear accountability, transparency and good governance.’

Crucially, there’s an understanding that the poorest in society need to not just be targeted by aid but involved in what form that aid takes, according to Jillian Popkins, director of policy, advocacy and programmes at ActionAid. ‘The idea of charity based on Victorian ethics is rightly being questioned,’ she says. ‘We are moving away from charity being a question of simply giving money. The view that development should be led by those who are most affected, those who are most marginalised, has become mainstream. That [sentiment] was always there but it was hard to make the case.’

This transition in mentality has been accompanied, to some extent, by a geographical shift. Twenty years ago, ActionAid took the decision to no longer be centred on a global HQ in the UK and be federated in different countries, with an HQ in the Global South. ‘Covid-19 may facilitate this trend, as the difficulty to travel internationally has forced more aid to be delivered by local agencies,’ adds Gulrajani.

The sources of aid are slowly shifting, too, as the growing wealth of many nations has led to more local aid-giving. Some low-income nations are moving into the middle-income bracket. ‘As a country gets richer, you get an emerging middle class and they, in turn, donate money, so you move further away from the North–South dependency,’ says Green.

Levels of aid donations are monitored by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), a branch of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2010, OECD official development assistance amounted to US$128.7 billion; by 2020 it had risen to an all-time high of US$161.2 billion, up 3.5 per cent in real terms from 2019. The latest available data show that the USA was the biggest donor (US$35.47 billion; up from US$30.2 billion in 2010) followed by Germany (US$28.41billion). The UK was the fourth-largest donor (after EU institutions), providing US$18.56 billion to aid projects. However, only four countries exceeded the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on aid in 2020 – Denmark (0.73 per cent), Luxembourg (1.02 per cent), Norway (1.11 per cent) and Sweden (1.14 per cent). The UK invited heavy criticism by cutting its proportion to 0.5 per cent (see box on page 21). France has committed to 0.7 per cent until at least 2025.

In the past, countries such as Portugal, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Qatar were on the DAC’s list of low-income countries that qualified for international aid. More than 60 have left the list since 1970 and in January 2022, Antigua and Barbuda, and Palau were removed. That leaves 46 nations classified as Least Developed Countries (qualifying for maximum aid donations), 34 of them in Africa.

34 African countries are included on the UN’s list of Least Developed countries, including Ethiopia, shown here at the Kule refugee camp. Image: Richard Julliart/Shutterstock

WORK TO BE DONE

What’s clear is that these changes were necessary. When it comes to aid, there have been serious failures along the way. Gulrajani points to the exploitation of power by aid agencies and even UN bodies, such as the sexual exploitation in Haiti by Oxfam staff. ‘Racism may be more subtle, less explicit, but it still happens,’ she says. She notes that only six per cent of staff at UK NGOs are from minority-ethnic backgrounds.

ActionAid’s Popkins is also mindful that aid can still be too targeted on specific goals and outcomes. Governments today have more say on exactly where money is spent and this can shove civil society organisations to the sidelines. In the UK, overseas development aid (ODA) is delivered via two channels: bilateral (sent directly to the countries involved) and multilateral. Bilateral aid, which counts for around 65 per cent of UK aid, is usually spent through aid organisations, such as the World Food Programme, NGOs and civil society organisations, and research institutions and universities. In each instance, the donor has specified where and/or what the ODA is spent on. According to the ODI, only 15 per cent of bilateral aid goes to civil society organisations and only six per cent goes to in-country NGOs. ‘We now tend to work with contracts rather than grants. They show where taxpayer’s money ends up but they can be less flexible,’ says Popkins.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, more transparency can reinforce older approaches of ‘do as we say, we know best’, according to Oxfam’s Green. ‘The demand for greater accountability, to know where exactly aid goes, has led to more wariness of allowing local players to make decisions on spending,’ he says. ‘Donors are wary of ending up in front of the US Congress or a parliamentary committee, so they can be inclined to play safe.’

As for progress in outcomes from aid, the picture is mixed, says Popkins. ‘When you look at who has benefited from aid, there are major gaps,’ she says. ‘It tends not to be those who are in extreme poverty or the chronic poor. Things haven’t changed so much for them.’ The climate crisis, the economic crisis – dating back to 2008 – and the Covid-19 pandemic have exacerbated problems for the most vulnerable and hampered advances in development, she says. ‘It has led to a backlash, of violence, of girls dropping out of school, of forced marriage. Human rights have been rolled back.’

Aid is becoming more gender focussed
Despite more than 60 years of long-term development projects, one reality remains mostly unchanged: rural women remain at the margins of development, particularly regarding access to productive resources and decent work. They bear a disproportionate burden of unpaid-carer work, such as child care, cooking, housework and collecting fuel, water or food. In Bangladesh, women complete nearly eight hours of unpaid care work each day (nearly three times what men do).

To try to address this imbalance, ActionAid is working in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana and Rwanda on a project called POWER. Elements have included establishing day-care centres for young children to enable women to work. Another key move has been to emphasise sustainable agriculture, using fewer pesticides and costly seeds in order to reduce overheads and ties to suppliers, and to plant crops more specific to the local climate and conditions. Other measures include helping women who grow crops to sell any surplus for better prices at markets traditionally dominated by men.

Local facilitators with whom ActionAid has spent decades developing relationships have been used. Following discussions with elders and other stakeholders, men in the community agreed to share more of the labour. Women were given the opportunity to plant crops, which had two benefits: it introduced more nutrition into the household and it enabled the women to sell the surplus at market, thus bringing in additional income.

FUNDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE

Climate change is likely to remain one area where a North–South direction for aid remains, argues Green, who suggests we think of money targeted at the issue as a form of global public good. ‘It’s about collective action,’ he says. ‘Covid-19 has shown us that we can’t get out of the pandemic if we only vaccinate half the world. That same principle says that climate change will still happen if Britain only addresses its own greenhouse gas emissions. You only make a difference by working collectively.

The trouble is, that despite the evidence for climate change being incontestable, the subject gets politicised. ‘This will get really difficult,’ says Green. ‘It’s a lot easier to get funding for stuff you can count – mosquito nets, vaccine doses – less easy for things you can’t: the strength of storms, disabled-children support, gay rights.

‘Climate finance is the most difficult area. It raises the question of the redirection of aid,’ he continues. ‘But it also has to be additional to what else is given. You can’t address the climate and cut funding to female education.’

Popkins is also concerned that climate change aid will displace existing aid streams. ‘We have to make sure that climate funding is additional,’ she says. ‘We already know that most countries have fallen short of their promises and pledges.’ Such funds also need to be grants rather than loans, she says, ‘otherwise you are just putting people further into poverty.’

Green envisages a world where, while great challenges such as sanitation, literacy and malaria are slowly but inexorably chipped away, aid targets both more everyday and intangible elements. ‘There’s now a much broader definition of what poverty means. Aid can also be targeted at areas such as the freedom to be or to do, the freedom to love who you want, gay marriage. NGOs can be part of shifting those social norms. You will run up against pushback but it’s not new. Fifty years ago, it was normal in many countries to beat children; now there aren’t many countries that think it’s fine. Diplomatic skills will be really important. We can’t throw our weight around, not least because we [in the Global North] have less weight nowadays.’

The focus of development aid tends to move in cycles, suggests Gulrajani. ‘The 1960s saw this great economic lift-off, with a lot of construction,’ she says. ‘In the 1970s, the emphasis shifted to poverty alleviation. Politics does now seem aligned to put large infrastructure back at the centre of discussions. The issue is less whether infrastructure receives development aid and more about the motivation behind that decision.’

Climate finance can also support themes that traditional aid has funded, such as major infrastructure projects. Yet hydropower dams – a favourite of many governments and international donors – can come with secondary effects, Popkins warns. ‘It’s often women who can lose out,’ she says. ‘Will the funding for a dam help the woman who grew crops at the bottom of where the dam now is? How will it make sure her life is not decimated?’

When aid comes in the form of infrastructure, it tends to be issued in the form of structured loans. As Taylor drily notes: ‘Development aid has always been portrayed as generosity – largess from rich nations – but there was never a free lunch.’ The donor country tends to want its money back, with interest. Historically, many countries have found themselves spending more on servicing debts to the World Bank, the IMF and other bodies than they were spending on health and education.

In 2005, Gordon Brown persuaded the G7 to wipe off US$55 billion of debt to 18 of the world’s poorest countries. The issue hasn’t gone away. A University of Oxford study published in 2014 argued that large-scale hydroelectric projects are almost always damaging to developing economies, saddling them with debt while offering scant benefit for the populations they displace. A notorious example is the Gibe III dam in Ethiopia, which has been especially contentious since work began in 2006. The African Development Bank, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank all declined to finance the project directly. In the end, the Ethiopian government stumped up the cash with the help of a US$470 million Chinese loan.

Finding an equilibrium between aid funding of infrastructure and public health can be tricky. More authoritarian regimes tend to favour high-profile projects such as dams, bridges or roads, which Taylor suggests means that aid-giving nations may be more inclined to support projects in more democratic countries.

Green is also concerned about authoritarianism, describing populism as ‘antithetical’ to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Seeking positives, however, he points out that, despite the emergence of strong-arm leaders in Brazil, the Philippines and elsewhere, aid budgets in the Global North have generally held up.

A T-11 water tank being installed in Unchiprang
camp, Bangladesh, by Oxfam. The charity is ensuring 250,000 litres of safe drinking water per day. Image: GMB Akash

Overseas development aid
The UK government last year broke its election manifesto pledge and reduced its annual aid budget from 0.7 per cent of gross national income, to 0.5 per cent, a cut of up to £5bn. The cut will be reviewed in 2024. The government said the pandemic had inflicted ‘immense’ damage on the economy and cutting aid spending to 0.5 per cent would help restore public finances.

The bulk of UK aid in 2020 – more than 55 per cent – was spent in Africa and used for bilateral aid. Just under 39 per cent was spent on bilateral aid for Asia. In 2019, the biggest recipients of UK aid were Pakistan (£305m), Ethiopia (£300m) and Afghanistan (£292m).

‘Britain is increasingly saying aid has to promote British interests, rather than supporting poverty reduction,’ says Duncan Green, senior strategic adviser at Oxfam. ‘I’m wary that this will have a damaging effect.’ Immediate impacts included a disproportionate impact on small projects, where experienced specialists lost their jobs and schemes jolted to a halt. The World Health Organization’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative lost nearly all its UK funding, with aid shrinking from £110m in 2019 to £5m in 2021. UNAIDS says it lost 80 per cent of its funding from the UK while Médecins Sans Frontières said cuts affected key programmes and were imposed with immediate effect, with no opportunity to mitigate the impact.

The decision may come back to bite the UK, warns Peter Taylor from the University of Sussex. ‘In the UK, trade and security are very high on the agenda,’ he says. ‘If you have a view that a more secure world is one where prosperity can flourish, then that is what you try to implement. But the risk is that this can break trust that has taken years to build up.’

Nevertheless, Taylor says, the picture might change. ‘It’s possible other countries have front-loaded their aid budgets. Every country is going to be short of money because of Covid-19 and time will tell if other nations cut back at a time when the UK is in a position to reverse its cuts.’

ALTRUISM AND REALISM

One of the most significant developments of recent years has been the emergence of philanthropic aid donors. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been around since 1994 and was preceded a decade earlier by the Open Society Foundation, established by the business magnate George Soros. More recently, new players on the philanthropy stage are emerging. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos may be putting his spare change into space exploration, but his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, is using her substantial divorce settlement and stake in Amazon (the latter put at around US$62.2 billion) to distribute her philanthropy to several hundred organisations.

Other billionaires, such as Warren Buffet, perhaps concluding the world doesn’t need another billionaire with their own foundation, have given their money to the Gates Foundation. Meanwhile, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has established his own giving arm, known as CZI.

By and large, the verdict on philanthropists who invest for the longer term is positive. ‘They bring a business approach, of how you get results in the real world, and that’s enormously important,’ says Taylor. ‘The clout the Gates Foundation has brought to malaria and polio is enormous. That kind of approach is extremely targeted. At Microsoft, Gates had a vision and threw everything at it to beat the opposition. If you target that approach to altruistic goals such as clean water and sanitation, it’s incredibly influential.’

‘The Gates Foundation is fascinating,’ adds Green. ‘Private foundations don’t face the same constraints – they can take more risks. By using the evidence-based approach of business they get results.’

However, not every aid donor is altruistic and for some time, NGOs and democratic countries have looked on as China increasingly funds development projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America, often tied to major infrastructure schemes. China formally adopted its Belt and Road Initiative in 2017 under its Party Constitution as part of a resolution to achieve ‘shared growth through discussion and collaboration’, but its record of providing development aid goes back much further. In 1973, China dedicated two per cent of its GNP to overseas aid projects, with 30 African countries listed as recipients. Yet critics point to how many of its latter-day projects are supported by loans rather than grants. A 2018 Centre for Global Development report identified eight countries, including Sri Lanka and Pakistan, where Chinese aid had the potential for debt-sustainability problems. The report cautioned that ‘the primary concern is that an US$8 trillion initiative will leave countries with debt “overhangs” that will impede sound public investment and economic growth and… that debt problems will create an unfavourable degree of dependency on China as a creditor.’

As well as apparently digging up the mineral-rich soil of many nations and shipping it back home, China is investing in building projects in Asia, Africa and South and Central America that are paid for by recipient nations in the form of long-term loans. The driver of China’s development largesse is its seemingly infinite domestic demand for minerals and other resources. ‘Their main goal is to secure those in the long term,’ says Taylor. ‘They have a clear vision of what they need over the coming decades.’

Yet is China being hard-nosed or is it simply less hypocritical than the Global North? Certainly, the country comes with less historical baggage. It comes to the table without the shadow of colonialism, meaning that it brings a matter-of-fact approach to negotiations. ‘They can point the finger at the West,’ says Taylor. ‘They emphasise a policy of non-interference, saying, “This is what we need; we’ll do our stuff for mutual benefit, just don’t get in the way. Where we can work together, we will.”’

Green is impatient with a narrative that China’s aid has more sinister overtones than that of aid from Western nations. ‘I’ve been struck by the gulf between what international donors say about China and what you hear on the ground, where things tend to be much more positive,’ he says. ‘China gives recipients options. It doesn’t have a colonial discourse, which says, “We are here to fix this or that.”’ However, he does express concern about labour rights, which can reflect standards both in China and the recipient nation, and about knowledge transfer. ‘You do see the Chinese manager telling his African staff what to do,’ he says.

China could still come unstuck. Taylor muses that the country may, in the long term, encounter the same repayment problems as the Global North, which led to the G7 writing off debts. ‘You wonder whether all those African governments that take up debts with China will honour those down the line. China may have to be open-minded about what happens in the future,’ he says. ‘But it may also be that it has so many investments that there will be enough returns for this not to matter.’

Elsa, 39, an activista for Oxfam at a hygiene
kit distribution in Mozambique following Cyclone Idai in 2019. Image: Elena Heatherwick / Oxfam

THE FUTURE OF AID

Looking to the future, it seems likely that aid dynamics will shift further, as a result of both climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘There’s a realisation that we’re all in it together,’ says Taylor. ‘Inequalities of health, education and wealth happen in the UK and North America as well as in Asia and Africa. They’re universal. The time’s passing where wealthy nations could sit back and say, “Look where we’ve got to, here’s some extra cash’’.’

Those two great issues, climate change and Covid-19, have forced Popkins to reassess her outlook. ‘I was optimistic [about the long-term impacts aid could make] until the pandemic came along,’ she says. ‘We are now seeing specific trends, such as increasing authoritarianism and challenges to global co-operation.’ Yet she’s still hopeful that the issue of poverty will slowly be chipped away. Referring to the old adage that ‘the poor will always be with us’, she counters: ‘That may be true, but the resilience of civil society will always be there, too, as will the youth, the next generation.’

For her part, the ODI’s Gulrajani believes that current bumps in the road are likely to be smoothed over. ‘We are seeing a realignment of power in the world,’ she says. ‘The next five to ten years will see geopolitical tensions, but beyond that, we may arrive at a recognition that nation states are no longer divided into the rich world and ex-colonies. I’m optimistic that, ultimately, aid will become obsolete. We’ll be talking less about North– South giving and more about how we are collectively united by globally existential challenges.’

India's hostility to external charities
India has long prided itself on its independence when it comes to dealing with humanitarian crises and, more recently, it has asserted its confidence in administering long-term development gains without external donations or, as the government sees it, outside interference.

At the start of this year, India blocked up to 6,000 NGOs and charities working in the country from accepting overseas funding; 179 civil society organisations had their licences revoked. Other impositions include a spending limit of 20 per cent on administrative costs, such as staff and offices, and a ban on non-profit organisations transferring money to other groups.

Charities affected by the ruling include Oxfam, which has worked in India for 70 years, the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Theresa, and Amnesty International, which had its bank account frozen. Oxfam said that its work in India would be ‘severely affected’ after it lost its licence to receive funds from abroad. Amnesty accused the government of a ‘witch hunt’. ActionAid says it’s essential to move funds between the many smaller partners with which larger NGOs work.

The Indian government has progressively imposed regulations and restrictions on charities since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. The government says that it’s merely requiring charities to adhere to high standards of financial probity and working to improve accountability and transparency in the use of foreign funding.

On Tuesday 5 April, Rose Abramoff drove the seven hours from her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, to Washington DC. She was then arrested, twice. Alongside a handful of others, she had chained herself to the fence in front of the White House, demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency. Later that same week, she joined indigenous activists in blocking a major highway in the country’s capital.

Abramoff was one of 1,000 scientists around the world taking part in disruptive, non-violent acts of civil disobedience that week. The protests were organised by Scientist Rebellion, an international collective of activists from different scientific backgrounds that work within the same framework as Extinction Rebellion. Until recently, Abramoff had remained fairly ‘apolitical’ in her efforts to educate people on the effects and causes of climate change. She has taught in elementary schools and volunteered for climate change advocacy groups, as well as serving as a reviewer for the IPCC 6th Assessment Report and contributing to policy reports.

But moved by a growing sense of urgency in the face of the negligible global response to the climate crisis, Abramoff faced her climate anxiety by taking action. She later posted on Twitter: ‘I was arrested twice this week in climate actions and the unspoken sense I got from climate activists was “Thank you” but also “Where have you been?” and “Where are the rest of you?”’

Starting out as a forest ecologist, where she studied land management and roots and soils, Abramoff has become increasingly interested in carbon sequestration in soil. These days she spends less time out in the field and more time working with large data sets and computer simulation modelling, ‘its lots of crunching numbers on the computer, which I actually find quite cool and interesting. But it's not for everybody.’

Rose Abramoff at a Scientist Rebellion protest outside the White House on 6 April. Image: Scientist Rebellion

Q: What motivated you to take part in the recent climate demonstration in Washington?

RA: What immediately inspired me was seeing other scientists taking direct action and leveraging the authority that they had as scientists. At COP 26 in Glasgow, a group of scientists risked arrest by blockading the King George V Bridge. That was really successful in getting a lot of people mobilised, even though Glasgow itself was a monumental failure in terms of increasing climate pledges or paying countries that are already being affected by climate change.

I’ve been indirectly inching more and more towards activism over time since high school, whether taking part in the odd climate march or in more educational ways, like teaching children's classes and putting together lesson plans about climate change. But those were all fairly apolitical and non-confrontational ways to engage the public and, despite trying nearly everything, I didn't see any progress happening in the world. There’s a long history of nonviolent direct action, from the suffragettes to the civil rights movement, and the success driven by this nonviolent confrontation and resistance really convinced me that there was potentially another way forward. So, psychologically, that’s what brought me to a place where I was ready to take a higher risk.

Q: Have you noticed a similar trend within the science community?

RA: There's certainly a growing unrest and growing frustration that's translating to more action, whether that action be low or high risk – there's a quite broad spectrum of what people are willing to do. But on a global scale you can see that it’s growing quite quickly. Scientist Rebellion started out with two guys in 2020 pasting papers on the doors of The Royal Society in London, and now it's made up of many hundreds of scientists. And I'm always trying to encourage people to contact Scientist Rebellion if they have any interest.

Q: How has your work given you an insight into the climate crisis?

RA: I'm a plant and soil scientist, having started as a forest ecologist studying the seasonality of carbon dioxide uptake by plants and the storage of carbon in the soil. In more recent years I've been much more soil-focused, looking at the maximum capacity of carbon storage and the role of soil in mitigating climate change. 

I’m hugely enthusiastic about my research and there are a lot of interesting, useful technologies and ways of managing land that can help restore degraded lands and recapture some of the carbon dioxide that we've released into the atmosphere. But I always caution people that so-called nature based climate solutions are not a replacement for ending fossil fuel emissions. If anything, we need to do all of them at the same time, one cannot replace the other or else we're still just treading water, and that water is rising.

Q: In terms of nature based solutions, is the role of soil in carbon storage often overlooked?

RA: The focus is often overwhelmingly above ground. We tend to ignore our soils and our roots and our mycorrhizal fungi, which really do play a magnificent role in storing carbon. Soils store over twice the amount of carbon than the atmosphere and all plants combined. I think that's just because we can see the results. When we plant a tree and it grows, that carbon accounting is very simple. Measuring how much carbon has increased in the soil is very difficult, imagine dropping one or two drops of food dye into a massive pool. It might take many years to tell whether or not you've made a difference.

Q: What first attracted you to your career?

RA: In addition to being fascinated by the natural world, I was also concerned about all of the changes that I was seeing around me. It doesn't take an expert to see that the lands we have all around us are not natural lands, that the forests we have are not even primary forests. If you live on the east coast of the US they were cleared around the early 1800s and then abandoned for agriculture around the Industrial Revolution. Although all of those secondary forests are still beautiful and productive and hold a lot of biodiversity, we've really altered almost all of our landscape in irreversible ways. That thought really struck me and made me want to understand what we were doing to our Earth and what the ramifications would be for us as a species.

Q: In the UK, the Department of Education has just announced the launch of a new natural history GCSE, focusing on how pupils can protect the planet and gain a 'deeper knowledge of the natural world around them'. Do you think more school education about our environment is needed?

RA: One of the things that shocked me most, and that shocked the primary school children that I was working with the most, was just how little they knew about our natural history. They had this understanding that the world around them was the natural world - the lawns, parks and the agricultural fields, that those pastoral scenes are nature. They were suprised to learn that those are all highly engineered by us. So I do think it's really important to teach students what the world was before us and what the world after us may look like, or what a world that is better managed by us might look like.

You can join Rose, alongside fellow scientists Peter Kalmus (climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab) and William Livernois (researcher at University of Washington and specialist in carbon sequestration) for a brief analysis of the latest IPCC reports and a panel discussion on Sunday 24 April at 8pm BST, organised by Scientist Rebellion USA. Follow the link here

A humanitarian crisis and economic collapse has brewed since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. By the end of the year, more than 710,000 people were displaced internally within Afghanistan, 500,000 more crossed into Iran; thousands more are seeking asylum and resettled status abroad.

‘Many regional countries have closed their doors to Afghans by restricting visa issuance or shutting their borders. Afghanistan’s neighbours have made asylum claims nearly impossible by imposing strict border controls,’ says Shuja Ahmad, an Afghan refugee now working for the Australian Refugee Council. ‘This speaks of the need for a coordinated international effort to resettle Afghans.’

The exodus has raised alarms that a repeat of the 2015 migrant crisis – the fallout from which continues today – could occur. Then, more than a million people sought asylum in Europe when the conflict in Syria peaked; and from January 2015 to March 2016, around 250,000 refugees from Afghanistan arrived in Greece. On seeing the Taliban seize Afghanistan, Greece warned the world that the EU was ‘not ready’ for a replay of events six years ago. Determined to support and contain migrants within the region, the EU pledged more than US$1 billion in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan and neighbouring countries hosting those who had already fled.

The number of Afghans seeking resettlement abroad is expected to rise as the economic crisis continues. EU commissioner Ylva Johansson announced in December that 15 EU states had agreed to admit 38,000 Afghan refugees, additional to the 28,000 already evacuated. Some 25,000 will go to Germany, 3,100 to the Netherlands, and 2,500 to both Spain and France. The US government has requested funding for the arrival of 95,000 by the end of September this year. Canada intends to resettle 20,000. As part of its Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, the UK government has said that it will resettle more than 5,000 people in 2022 and up to 20,000 over the coming years.

Then there’s Australia. Since Kabul fell, 150,000 Afghans have submitted applications for refugee and humanitarian visas for Australia. But the Refugee Council of Australia says that 140,000 of them will be rejected. In January 2022, the nation’s minister for immigration, Alex Hawke, announced that Australia will offer 10,000 places to Afghans and another 5,000 to those reuniting with family already settled in Australia. But some people think it’s not enough. Claire Higgins, an immigration expert from the University of New South Wales, points out that once places are granted to Afghan nationals evacuated to Australia in 2021, it leaves just 4,500 places over four years. ‘Second, the minister’s announcement pales in comparison to the resettlement efforts of countries such as Canada and the USA.’

Australia has drawn criticism for its hardline policies on asylum seekers. Earlier this year, reports emerged that Australia is currently holding people in immigration detention for an average of 689 days, the highest on record and more than 12 times longer than the USA. ‘For many years, the Australian government has taken a harsh approach to refugees who sought asylum directly by boat, as compared to those who are resettled from abroad through the annual planned humanitarian programme,’ explains Higgins. ‘This includes mandatory detention with no time limit, offshore processing and short-term temporary visas.’ There are an estimated 5,000 Afghan refugees living in Australia on such temporary visas. Until the end of 2021, some were housed offshore in Papua New Guinea; some are still sent to the tiny island nation of Nauru.

Members of the Afghan community in Australia met with Hawke in February this year, urging him to recognise Australia’s ‘moral obligation’ to Afghans by issuing at least 20,000 more humanitarian resettlement places. If the figure was to increase, ‘it could help to ease pressure on front-line states such as Pakistan and Iran, which are hosting hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees,’ says Higgins. The need for international solidarity in times of crisis, she believes, is paramount.