THIRD WORLD USA

Study finds that public housing residents experience higher levels of air pollution

by University of Texas at El Paso

Residents of public housing throughout the United States experience higher levels of air 

pollution, according to an inter-institutional study led by a researcher from The University

 of Texas at El Paso that appeared in Scientific Reports, one of Nature's portfolio

 of journals. Credit: Jayajit Chakraborty.

Residents of public housing throughout the United States experience higher levels of air pollution, according to an inter-institutional study led by a researcher from The University of Texas at El Paso that appeared in Scientific Reports.

Jayajit Chakraborty, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, said the article, "Air pollution exposure disparities in US public housing developments" is the first national-scale study that demonstrated the exposure disparities of fine particulate matter on residents in public housing across the country.

Chakraborty, founding director of UTEP's Socio-Environmental and Geospatial Analysis (SEGA) Lab, has studied social inequalities in the distribution of environmental pollution and health hazards for more than 20 years. He said previous research had not examined if public housing developments were located in areas that experienced higher outdoor air pollution. A high percentage of the nation's public housing residents include minorities, the elderly, people with disabilities or pre-existing health conditions, and others who do not have the resources to address environmental pollution.

The UTEP researcher said that the study showed that public housing in the U.S. is significantly overrepresented in neighborhoods with greater outdoor particulate matter, an inhalable mixture of tiny solids and/or liquid droplets made of various chemicals that are about 3% of the diameter of a human hair. He said their research also found that public housing with high levels of particulate matter had a significantly higher percentage of residents who were Black, Hispanic, disabled and/or extremely low income.

"These findings represent an important starting point for future research and emphasize the urgent need to identify gaps in environmental, public health and housing policies that have contributed to higher air pollution exposures among public housing residents," Chakraborty said.

The UTEP researcher worked with longtime collaborators from the University of Utah, Timothy W. Collins, Ph.D., professor of geology, and Sara E. Grineski, Ph.D., professor of sociology and environmental studies. Both worked at UTEP from 2006 through 2017. The other team member was Jacob J. Aun, a UTEP graduate student in sociology. The team started to collect the data in July 2021, completed the analysis in January 2022, wrote the article this past spring and submitted it to Scientific Reports in April 2022.

Residents of public housing throughout the United States experience higher levels of air

 pollution, according to an inter-institutional study led by a researcher from The University

 of Texas at El Paso that appeared in Scientific Reports, one of Nature's portfolio of

 journals. Credit: Jayajit Chakraborty.

Collins said that exposure to particulate matter can severely affect human health. He said outdoor exposure is responsible for 3% of all deaths and 22% of deaths from environmental causes nationwide.

"Our study is especially relevant today given the fact that the U.S. faces a severe housing crisis, as affordable housing construction has not accommodated a growing financially insecure population," Collins said. "Access to safe shelter is a basic need that remains unmet for many."

Grineski said that she has been concerned with the effects of air pollution on public housing residents for more than 15 years.

"I was excited to pursue this study with Dr. Chakraborty to quantitatively assess this issue at a nationwide scale," Grineski said. "Public housing is an incredibly important and needed public good in the U.S. We need to do better though in terms of improving environmental quality for residents."

Chakraborty said the next step in this research is to investigate the relationship between public housing developments and pollution sources such as Superfund sites and industrial manufacturing facilities. He also wants to investigate how natural disasters affect public housing residents.

"I hope this article will reach a large number of readers and draw attention to environmental problems faced by public housing residents in the U.S.," Chakraborty said

Aun, the student researcher, said that he was excited to have been part of the team. He helped with data downloads and analysis, and helped Chakraborty to edit the article.

"It was a great learning experience," Aun said. "I am very proud of the work that we accomplished and how it contributes to identifying social disparities in air pollution exposure."Puerto Rico to install free internet in all public housing

More information: Jayajit Chakraborty et al, Air pollution exposure disparities in US public housing developments, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13942-

Journal information: Scientific Reports 

Provided by University of Texas at El Paso 

RENTIER CAPITALI$M

How stock market inefficiencies can affect the real economy

by University of Luxembourg

How the dynamic flow-based investment strategy outperforms the market portfolio. 

Credit: The author

Mutual fund investors are known to be vulnerable to fluctuating market conditions. What is less well understood is how corporate managers are affected by waves of investor optimism. A researcher has published a study in the journal Financial Innovation, where he argues that corporate managers and investors are jointly caught up in market euphoria. Using a long time series of aggregate flows in and out of bond and equity mutual funds as a proxy for investor sentiment, the study's author, Thorsten Lehnert, professor at the University of Luxembourg's Department of Finance shows that the joint "moodiness" of managers and investors can predict the performance of an investment strategy that relies on differences in corporate managers' investment behavior.

Prof. Lehnert focused on the so-called investment factor, an investment strategies that is long in a conservative investment portfolio and short in an aggressive investment portfolio. He explains that "stock prices of high- and low-investment firms are differentially affected by market-level euphoria. For example, the observed mispricing during periods of euphoria and the subsequent correction is particularly pronounced for a high investment portfolio compared to a low investment portfolio. As a result, the performance of an investment factor can be predicted using information about retail investors' optimism and pessimism."

Interestingly, the relationship between past flows and the investment factor is not only statistically significant, but also economically significant. The study shows that, overall, a related trading strategy consistently and significantly outperforms static strategies and generates significant annual alphas of 7% after accounting for well-known risk factors. Interestingly, the flow measure, which serves as a proxy for market-level euphoria, dominates other well-known indicators of investor sentiment.

"So far, the common view is that retail investors are 'moody' and exhibit irrational trading behavior. My explanation that corporate managers and investors are jointly caught up in market euphoria offers a novel perspective on how financial markets can affect the real economy," Prof. Lehnert explains. "It appears that stock market inefficiencies matter even for real decisions of firms," he concludes.Price noise proves the key to high performing 'bets against beta' investment strategies

More information: Thorsten Lehnert, Corporate managers, price noise and the investment factor, Financial Innovation (2022). DOI: 10.1186/s40854-022-00365-2

Provided by University of Luxembourg 

Spanish citizens are more supportive of climate action after COVID-19, but more pessimistic in their expectations

by Autonomous University of Barcelona

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Most of the Spanish population is pessimistic about the future climate actions by the government and citizens after the impact of COVID-19. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by researchers at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which seeks to determine how the COVID-19 crisis has affected society's attitude toward climate change.

Over the past two years, speculations about how COVID-19 will affect climate action have abounded. While the most optimistic voices point to a favorable change in individuals' behavior towards the environment, the more critical voices point out that environmental concerns have taken a back seat to economic recovery programs.

A team of ICTA-UAB researchers led by economist Jeroen van den Bergh has analyzed public expectations about future climate action using textual responses obtained from an online survey and analyzing them with methods from computational linguistics. The results of the study, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE, indicate that people have more negative than positive expectations about how the pandemic will affect both the government policies and citizen action on climate change.

The majority of identified public opinions regarding governmental action reflect negative perceptions. In general, they relate to reduced attention given to climate change, to budgetary constraints due to COVID-19 and the associated economic and health crises, as well as to an increase of waste due to the use of disposable protective measures such as masks and gloves. A small number of people (8.2%) see little to no connection between COVID-19 and climate action. Only two topics covering about 15% of responses are of a more positive nature: they consider COVID-19 an environmental wake-up call or point at positive changes in consumption habits and telework.

Regarding people's expectations of the actions of their fellow citizens, around 31% of respondents have positive opinions on the situation and believe that COVID-19 has led to higher environmental awareness and more responsible consumption. Nevertheless, most respondents still express negative views, suggesting for example that people have already too many other problems to be concerned about climate action or will shift quickly back to old routines once the pandemic is over.

According to researchers, additional findings emerge through measuring positive and negative expectations. "We found that expectations of future climate actions by the government and the people tend to strongly correlate. Also, those most optimistic about future climate action tend to be younger, male, better educated, with a stronger perception of climate change as a serious threat and a more positive experience with COVID-19 confinement," explains Ivan Savin, ICTA-UAB researcher and lead author of the study.

These generally pessimistic expectations contrast with the findings of a complementary study, recently published in the journal Ecological Economics, by the same group of researchers. This second study, led by ICTA-UAB researcher Stefan Drews, analyzed how citizens' engagement with climate change has changed over time. For this, they compared survey data of the same group of respondents from months before and after COVID-19. They found that public support for climate policy tended to be slightly higher after COVID-19. Even respondents who had negative health or economic experiences due to COVID-19 were not less supportive of climate policy. "This suggests that public expectations about other citizens (shown in the first study) may be more negative than current reality since (as the second study demonstrates) positive changes in public opinion have taken place," Stefan Drews says.

The scientists suggest that policymakers could exploit this perceived link between COVID-19 and the environmental crisis to introduce more ambitious climate policy measures. Thus, understanding people's expectations is important for policy makers to propose policy instruments which are not only effective but also supported by majority of the population.

Australians intend to vote on climate action at election

More information: Ivan Savin et al, Public expectations about the impact of COVID-19 on climate action by citizens and government, PLOS ONE (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.026697

Journal information: PLoS ONE 

Provided by Autonomous University of Barcelona 

REAL CRITICAL RACE THEORY

How historical racism influences modern poverty and racial inequality

by Michele W. Berger, University of Pennsylvania

Penn sociologist Regina Baker. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

To understand modern racial inequalities, historical context is crucial. That's according to new research from Penn sociologist Regina Baker published in the American Journal of Sociology.

Baker found that in Southern states with a strong historical racial regime—a notion she conceptualized and then measured using a scale she created—Black populations today experience worse poverty. These states also have a wider poverty gap between Black and white populations.

"In general, Black people are more likely to be poor than white people," says Baker, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. "Living in a state that has a stronger historical racial context exacerbates that poverty."

'I was meant to dig deeper'

Baker grew up in Georgia, and both her parents came from South Carolina. "The South has always been of interest to me," she says. In graduate school, she knew she wanted to research poverty and inequality, but she didn't home in on what would eventually become this research until one particular news article got her thinking.

The piece ranked states in many categories, from poverty to child well-being and health care. "For nearly every category, so many of the states at the bottom were in the South," she says.

She wondered why, yet looking through the previous literature got her nowhere; little sociological research existed on poverty in the contemporary South. She happened upon a paper from respected sociologist Ronald C. Wimberley making a plea to colleagues to do more research about the South and to use their expertise to better understand social problems like impoverishment through a Southern lens.

"Here I am reading this article. I had all these questions in my mind about why the Southern states were coming up in indicators as being worse off. There was this call for work on the South and for sociologists from the South to do more of this work. It just seemed like I was meant to dig deeper," Baker says. "That's what really got me interested in focusing on this topic specifically."

Building an empirical study

Given the dearth of previous research, Baker opted to take a novel approach, conceptualizing and constructing a measure of what she called the "historical racial regime," or HRR. It built on the commonly held sociological notion of the "U.S. racial regime," which Baker describes in the paper as "a system of rule based on race that essentially functions to sustain racial inequality."

The HRR concept went a step beyond. In particular, Baker developed the HRR scale to measure past manifestations of the U.S. racial regime across time. She incorporated various historical state-facilitated institutions that shaped the lives of people who lived there, starting with slavery.

"Slavery itself is one institution, a crucial one, but there are also others that states put into place, mechanisms of inequality that contributed to racial inequality," Baker says. Here, she mentions facets of Jim Crow like sharecropping, disenfranchisement, and segregation. Using historical state-level data around each of these, plus slavery, she built the HRR scale.

"Scholars have said that history matters but rarely test it or show it," she says. "For instance, they may theorize about the role of racism in America or about white supremacy in racial inequality, but then they're not able to test it." Baker decided to change that.

Because Southern states vary in their level of such institutional state mechanisms—which could have implications for their legacy and racial inequality in poverty—Baker set out to assess the relationship between HRR, poverty, and racial inequality in poverty in the contemporary American South.

She incorporated 15 states into her study: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. For each, she tabulated a score using the HRR scale.

To ensure she was focused on modern-day poverty, she selected the time frame from 2010 to 2018. Then she looked at U.S. Census Current Population Survey data for more than 525,000 individuals from the Luxembourg Income Study database. From there, she plotted poverty data and HRR data together to examine the relationship between a state's HRR score, poverty levels, and gaps for people living there today.

What she found, and the implications

Baker says she noticed a link almost immediately. "Plotting those data was telling in and of itself, suggesting there's an association there," she says. "This historical manifestation of a racial regime seemed to matter much more for Black people than white people and especially for the poverty gap between them."

Further, more advanced statistical analysis confirmed the preliminary findings, even after accounting for several individual-level variables like family structure, employment status, and education level. "After controlling for those, some that plausibly mediate the relationship between HRR and poverty, I still found this significance of HRR, where the likelihood of poverty for Black people today and Black-white inequalities in poverty are exacerbated," Baker says.

These results challenge the enduring racial inequality narrative "that it's all about the individual, especially family structure and single motherhood," she says. They also suggest that the steps previously taken to ameliorate poverty that focus primarily on the individual aren't very effective; if they had been, she says, this racial inequality would not endure.

In the future, Baker says she hopes to use the HRR concept to understand the role of historical racism for other outcomes, as well as broaden it to other populations and parts of the country. Ultimately, she envisions such information could help reshape how the United States confronts poverty and racial inequality.

"We can't fully understand the context of modern-day poverty or inequality if we don't consider the role that history played. We can't act like the past doesn't matter if we want to move forward," Baker says. "We can't just think about the individual in a vacuum; we must think about the broader context in which individuals live, not just the micro but also the macro and how they help inform each other. Only then can we think more purposefully and creatively to address these enduring issues."Few Americans see race as key factor in environmental inequality

More information: Regina S. Baker, The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South, American Journal of Sociology (2022). DOI: 10.1086/719653

Journal information: American Journal of Sociology 

Provided by University of Pennsylvania 

Pollution from California's 2020 wildfires likely offset decades of air quality gains

by Tony Briscoe

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

It was a nightmare fire season that California won't soon forget.

As more than 9,000 wildfires raged across the landscape, a canopy of smoke shrouded much of the state and drifted as far away as Boston.

All told, more than 4.3 million acres would be incinerated and more than 30 people killed. Economic losses would total more than $19 billion.

But the damage caused by California's 2020 wildfire season is still coming into focus in some respects, particularly when it comes to the air pollution it generated.

In an analysis published this week in the annual Air Quality Life Index, researchers found that wildfire smoke likely offset decades of state and federal antipollution efforts, at least temporarily.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic took cars off the road and temporarily halted some industries, particulate pollution—widely considered one of the greatest threats to life expectancy—spiked to some of the highest levels in decades in parts of California in 2020, according to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which produces the report estimating how air pollution may reduce life expectancy.

Nationally, 29 of the top 30 counties with the highest level of particulate pollution that year were in California, researchers found.

The report is the latest to highlight the dangerous health effects of wildfire smoke at a time when drought and climate change are fueling extreme wildfire behavior. Now, as the state enters what is expected to be another serious wildfire season, researchers say the toll these natural disasters can take on human health is striking.

"Places that are experiencing frequent or more frequent wildfires are going to experience higher air pollution levels, not just for a couple of days or weeks, but it could impact the annual level of exposure," said Christa Hasenkopf, director of air quality programs at the University of Chicago institute. "It can bump up that average to unsafe and unhealthy levels that really do have an impact on people's health. When we think of wildfires, we think of short-term events—and hopefully they are—but they can have long-term consequences (considering) your overall air pollution exposure."

Mariposa County, a sparsely populated county seated in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, typically enjoys cleaner air than much of the state. But in 2020 it led the nation in annual average concentrations of fine particulate at 22.6 micrograms per cubic meter—more than four times the World Health Organization recommended guidelines. Likewise, more than half of all counties in California experienced their worst air pollution since satellite measurements began collecting data in 1998.

If the particulate concentrations Mariposa County experienced in 2020 were sustained, the average resident's life would be shortened by 1.7 years, according to the report. That's compared to if residents were permanently breathing air in line with widely accepted international health guidelines.

In Tulare County, levels of fine particulate were twice the national average in 2020, as satellite imagery captured a giant gyre of smoke from the KNP Complex and Windy fires encircling the cities of Visalia and Porterville.

Donelda Moberg, a longtime resident of Lindsay who has emphysema, has grown accustomed to enduring air pollution that drifts to her corner of the San Joaquin Valley from nearby Bakersfield and Fresno. However, in 2020, with many people housebound due to the pandemic, she remembers the skies were much clearer than normal.

By autumn, conditions had taken a dramatic turn with the wildfires.

Moberg, 67, recalls the haze being so thick she couldn't see the hill six blocks from her home. The pall of smoke above the valley obscured the stars at night and made the sun appear blood-orange during the day. And the abundance of ash falling from the sky regularly coated cars along the street.

For weeks, she didn't leave the house except to go grocery shopping, or for church services and doctor appointments.

"The sky was a clay color and it made the sun a funny color—it didn't look normal," Moberg said. "You could always tell whether it was safe to go out or not by just looking at the way the sun shined."

Between 1970 and 2020, five decades since the Clean Air Act was passed, the United States has witnessed tremendous progress in curtailing air pollution, including a 66.9% reduction in fine particulate—the pollutant that increases chances of lung disease, heart attack and stroke, according to the report.

These reductions have prolonged the lives of most Americans, including those in Los Angeles County, where levels of particle pollution have been halved, extending the average Angeleno's lifespan by 1.3 years, according to a University of Chicago analysis.

In recent years however, wildfire smoke has accounted for up to half of all fine-particle pollution in the Western U.S.

Fine particulate matter has been viewed as one of the preeminent threats to public health. When inhaled, these microscopic particles—30 times smaller than a human hair—can venture deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream, increasing the chance of lung disease and potentially triggering a heart attack or stroke.

Recent research suggests the fine particulate generated by wildfires to be much more dangerous than other sources of combustion, like vehicle exhaust or gas-fired power plants.

"When you have a wildfire, they burn everything," said Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. "They burn cars, they burn buildings, they burn plastic. So it's not only the level of (particulate pollution) that gets really high, but the type of (this pollution) that you're breathing."

The pollution emanating from the 2020 wildfires likely resulted in 1,200 to 3,000 premature deaths for seniors over 65 years old, according to estimates from Stanford University.

In September 2021, the World Health Organization lowered its recommended guideline from 10 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter to 5, a revision scientists say signals that lower levels are detrimental to human health. According to the updated guidelines, nearly 93% of people in the United States lived in counties with unhealthy levels of pollution in 2020, including the entire population of California.

In addition to wildfires, fine particulate is also produced by car tailpipe emissions and smokestacks of fossil fuel power plants. Issues with this pollution are compounded by California's mountainous terrain, which traps air pollution and allows it to linger, especially within inland valleys that are beyond the reach of ocean breezes.

But the rising threat of wildfires remains on the minds of many.

Amid a third year of drought, much of the San Joaquin Valley is primed for wildfires. All it takes is a bolt of lightning, a spark from a transmission line or a negligently discarded cigarette.

Moberg, who lives in the shadow of hills covered in dry brush, is aware of the delicate balance. But there's not much she can do besides pray fires and smoke don't return.

"We're always like, 'Please, don't catch fire, hills.'"Wildfire smoke exposure negatively impacts dairy cow health

2022 Los Angeles Times.

How debates over LGBTQ+ rights impact kids

by Daniel Strain, University of Colorado at Boulder

Credit: Elizabeth Meyer

In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill, often dubbed by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill. The move underscored how the rights of LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools have become one of the most prominent and divisive issues in midterm elections around the country.

Elizabeth Meyer, an associate professor in the School of Education at CU Boulder, has spent decades examining the challenges facing LGBTQ+ students and teachers in the classroom. In March, she co-authored a report for the CU Boulder-based National Education Policy Center about how school policies can have real impacts on the health and education of young people—and what school districts across the United States can do to keep kids safe.

To mark Pride Month, she sat down with CU Boulder Today to talk about bathrooms, school sports and why she believes kids should get the chance to read books about LGBTQ+ history in class.

You wrote in a recent blog post that these sorts of laws aren't new—that there have been regulations discriminating against LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools for decades. What is new about the current political landscape?

What is new is the fact that we have increasing numbers of young people who are embracing identities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and who are finding community and affirmation, either locally or online. In the past five years, for example, the estimates of young people who identify as transgender or nonbinary have gone from 0.7% to 1.4%. They're rallying, marching and demonstrating their existence.

How can school policies help, or hurt, these students?

There's a national organization called GLSEN that has been doing surveys on these questions every two years since 1999. They ask things like: Do you have affirming adults in your school? Do you have curricula that include LGBTQ+ people in your school?

Those results show, for example, that when LGBTQ+ students report having more affirming adults in their schools, they have better educational outcomes. If your state has strong nondiscrimination laws that include gender identity and sexual orientation, students feel safer and more protected. Just the presence of a gay-straight alliance—or what is now called a gender and sexuality alliance (GSA)—has a strong relationship with students feeling safer and reporting fewer incidents of harassment at school.

At the same time, what impacts can discriminatory policies have?

Those sorts of policies can erode your willingness to attend school. The more students report experiencing anti-gay and anti-trans harassment, the more they report higher levels of absenteeism, higher dropout rates, and lower GPAs. We also see higher reported rates of negative health behaviors, such as drug and alcohol abuse and really dangerous self-harm, including attempted suicide.

You can't talk about LGBTQ+ kids in school without also talking about bathrooms. In your report, you and your colleagues argue that transgender or nonbinary students need to have access to safe and appropriate bathrooms. Why?

We know that when students don't feel safe using the bathroom at school, they will dehydrate themselves. They will hold it until they get home and can end up developing urinary tract and kidney infections. We also know that young people experience higher rates of sexual assault and violence at school if they don't have access to proper washroom facilities. All-gender, or "gender-neutral," bathrooms are one inclusive answer to address these challenges.

You also make the point that transgender girls should be able to participate on girls' sports teams, which has become a touch point in many places around the country. Why is that important?

In K-12 public schools, sports are primarily there to give students a space for physical fitness, school pride and belonging. Only a very small group of students take part in elite athletic competition and earn collegiate scholarships and prestigious awards.

We want all youth to be able to have those benefits. The NCAA and the International Olympic Committee all have trans-inclusive policies. I don't know why K-12 schools wouldn't also have inclusive policies when they're not at the same level of elite competition.

Do you think it's important for school curricula to address the lives and contributions of LGBTQ+ people?

Yes. Seeing yourself in the curriculum really, really matters. There are stories of kindergarteners and first-graders who have never seen their family structure talked about in school. When they finally get to read a book like "And Tango Makes Three," which is about two male penguins raising a chick together, it becomes their favorite book. They say things like, "That family is like mine. I have two dads." High school students who experience an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum also report less harassment, missing fewer days at school and have higher educational aspirations.

What can Colorado and other states do to keep transgender and nonbinary students safe, and learning, in school?

At the very minimum, we need to make sure we have statewide non-discrimination policies that are understood and implemented. For example, in Colorado, we have the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which protects students against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. We have those statewide protections, but they're not necessarily fully understood or fully implemented.

In the end, do you think it's a good thing that so many people are talking about issues facing transgender and nonbinary kids in schools?

I'm excited about it because, finally, the rights of these students are becoming part of the public discourse. Even though the tensions and the controversies are frustrating, it's a sign of advancement. Again, that's because we have youth who are visible and comfortable in their identities, and they're refusing to accept the current conditions.

Youths with diverse gender identities bullied up to three times more than peers

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder 

 Transgender athletes: Balancing the debate between science, performance and human rights

by Seema Patel, Nottingham Trent University

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The world governing body for swimming, FINA, have announced their eligibility policy for trans athletes and 46 XY DSD athletes. Following extensive consultation with athletes, scientists and lawmakers, they have voted to prohibit those gender diverse athletes from competing in the female category if they have experienced any part of male puberty. The policy states that those who are ineligible to compete may participate in the open categories that FINA plan to develop in the future.

This policy is released at a highly polarized and political time for the participation of gender diverse athletes. In November 2021, the IOC introduced their Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations which seeks to shift the attention onto gender equality, non-discrimination and inclusion. For the first time, the IOC ensures that everyone can participate in sport irrespective of their gender identity or sex variations. However, the impact of the IOC Framework remains to be seen, with criticisms from international medical associations and sports bodies for failing to consider science. The UCI recently banned a trans female cyclist from competing which fueled further tensions and led to the British Prime Minister offering uninformed views on the matter.

During the FINA consultation, it was positive to see the arrangement of three working groups—athletes, science and legal/human rights. This is a step forward for a more balanced approach to inclusion. It is hoped that these were not discrete groups and instead the experts collectively consulted on these matters. In the report the legal/human rights group provide limited specific points about the core principles of gender rights that require recognition and protection when establishing eligibility policies.

Ultimately, the scientific aspects continue to dominate the policy but as previously argued, there is simply insufficient evidence and information on performance advantage and testosterone impact to accurately develop policy in this area. Grouping trans athletes and DSD athletes in the policy complicates this further and ignores the differences between those gender diverse groups.

Furthermore, athletes are required to certify their chromosomal sex in order to be eligible under the policy. This is reflective of previous sex testing methods which were abandoned because of their inaccuracy. The reference to gender diverse athletes as biologically male is potentially harmful and inaccurate because it dismisses the complexity and diversity of trans and DSD people.

Any legal challenge to this ban is still limited given the exclusive authority of CAS within the sport policies. This is part of a much wider concern regarding the adequacy of the sport regulatory structure for dealing with discrimination issues and the ability of an athlete to assert their legal rights. To put it simply for the public, if you feel you were treated unfairly in the workplace, you could seek legal advice and the law is in place to offer protection. It does not work in the same way for athletes, and they are often restricted from this right.

Such policies are placing too many conditions on gender diverse athletes and almost trying too hard to define the binary female, when the tides are changing and the meaning of gender identity is evolving.The Olympics shifts away from testosterone tests and toward human rights

Provided by Nottingham Trent University 

The world's affluent must start eating local food to tackle the climate crisis, new research shows

by Arunima Malik and Mengyu Li, The Conversation

Low-income countries contribute far less to the problem of emissions from food 

transport.  Credit: Shutterstock

The desire by people in richer countries for a diverse range of out-of-season produce imported from overseas is driving up global greenhouse gas emissions, our new research has found.

It reveals how transporting food across and between countries generates almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector—and affluent countries make a disproportionately large contribution to the problem.

Although carbon emissions associated with food production are well documented, this is the most detailed study of its kind. We estimated the carbon footprint of the global trade of food, tracking a range of food commodities along millions of supply chains.

Since 1995, worldwide agricultural and food trade has more than doubled and internationally traded food provides 19% of calories consumed globally. It's never been clearer that eating local produce is a powerful way to take action on climate change.

A web of food journeys

The concept of "food miles" is used to measure the distance a food item travels from where it's produced to where it's consumed. From that, we can assess the associated environmental impact or "carbon footprint."

Globally, food is responsible for about 16 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year—or about 30% of total human-produced carbon emissions. The sources of food emissions include transport, land-use change (such as cutting down trees) and the production process.

Our study used an accounting framework we devised in an innovative platform called the FoodLab. It involved an unprecedented level of detail, spanning:

• 74 countries or regions
• 37 economic sectors
• four transport modes—water, rail, road and air
• more than 30 million trade connections: journeys of a single food from one place to another.

Our results

We found global food miles emissions were about 3 billion tons each year, or 19% of total food emissions. This is up to 7.5 times higher than previous estimates.

Some 36% of food transport emissions were caused by the global freight of fruit and vegetables—almost twice the emissions released during their production. Vegetables and fruit require temperature-controlled transport which pushes their food miles emissions higher.

Overall, high-income countries were disproportionate contributors to food miles emissions. They constitute 12.5% of the world's population yet generate 46% of international food miles emissions.

A number of large and emerging economies dominate the world food trade. China, Japan, the United States and Eastern Europe are large net importers of food miles and emissions—showing food demand there is noticeably higher than what's produced domestically.

The largest net exporter of food miles was Brazil, followed by Australia, India and Argentina. Australia is a primary producer of a range of fruits and vegetables that are exported to the rest of the world.

In contrast, low-income countries with about half the global population cause only 20% of food transport emissions.

Where to now?

To date, sustainable food research has largely focused on the emissions associated with meat and other animal-derived foods compared with plant-based foods. But our results indicate that eating food grown and produced locally is also important for mitigating emissions associated with food transport.

Eating locally is generally taken to mean eating food grown within a 161km radius of one's home.

We acknowledge that some parts of the world cannot be self-sufficient in food supply. International trade can play an important role in providing access to nutritious food and mitigating food insecurity for vulnerable people in low-income countries.

And food miles should not be considered the only indicator of environmental impact. For example, an imported food produced sustainably may have a lower environmental impact than an emissions-intensive local food.

But there is much scope to reduce food transport emissions, especially in richer countries. Potential measures include:

• carbon pricing and import duties
• investing in less-polluting vehicles
• encouraging businesses to cut emissions in their production and distribution chains
• planning laws that allow more urban agriculture projects.

Consumers also have the power to reduce food transport emissions by adopting a more sustainable diet. For instance, next time you go to buy fruit out of season—which may have been grown overseas or on the other side of the country—perhaps consider whether a local alternative might do.

The problem of food transport emissions will only worsen as the global population grows. Governments, corporations and everyday people must work together to ensure the production and consumption of food does not make climate change worse.Fifth of global food-related emissions due to transport, research finds

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.