Ukraine’s workers are fighting an internal threat, too. They need support

Ukraine’s reconstruction cannot be used to justify transforming the economy in favour of oligarchs and corporations

Hanna Perekhoda
30 April 2023

Trade unions have raised concerns that the war has become a 'window of opportunity' for passing controversial legislation |
(c) Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP via Getty Images. All rights reserved

For nearly 15 months, millions of Ukrainians have been living under the threat of missiles that can reach any part of the country at any time.

Russia has engaged in a deliberate and systematic strategy of terror against civilians. Those who have found themselves under Russian occupation are victims of forced displacement, murder, rape and torture. Tens of thousands of children are thought to have been deported from the occupied territories to Russia, where their national identity is forcibly erased. With every liberation of a Ukrainian village or town, new crimes come to light, showing the whole world what awaits any territory seized by Russia.

This is why, regardless of political disagreements, all of Ukrainian society is united in the view that Ukraine can only survive if it succeeds in expelling the Russian army from its entire territory. Faced with the explicit genocidal intent of the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s civic and political forces are unwavering in their resistance.

The war has pushed Ukraine’s economy into a deep recession. In a single year of war, the country's GDP has fallen by roughly 30%. High inflation has meant falling real incomes. Only 60% of Ukrainians have been able to keep their jobs, of which only 35% were full-time. Not only did many people lose their jobs – they also lost homes and relatives. There have been tens of thousands of civilian casualties and military casualties must surely exceed that.

Despite these difficult conditions, the Ukrainian people refuse to be passive victims. The capacity of ordinary Ukrainians for self-organisation has been, and remains, one of the keys to the country’s resistance to Russian imperialist aggression.

But instead of focusing on adapting the economy to the needs of war, the Ukrainian authorities have launched a vast privatisation programme. Taking advantage of martial law and the restrictions on demonstrations, the government has also dismantled labour legislation and pushed through a series of other unpopular measures.

This is undermining social cohesion at a time that Ukraine needs it most. Unfortunately, Ukrainian workers are facing attacks from their own government even as they defend the country from an external enemy. Meanwhile, the state fails to meet both security and consumption needs of the population.

After the war, Ukraine will face a colossal task. It will have to deal with the massive destruction of infrastructure, relaunch industry and cope with a major demographic crisis: eight million people, most of them women, have left the country. A significant number of refugees may not return from abroad; some because of the deterioration of social rights and working conditions.

We need to ensure that post-war reconstruction is not used to justify the radical transformation of the Ukrainian economy in favour of oligarchs and corporations,

Yet instead of adopting measures that would encourage Ukrainians to return home after the war, the authorities are calling for the commercialisation of healthcare, the total privatisation of state assets and public service cuts in order to attract foreign investment. In the name of neoliberal dogma, the government is undermining the economic and political sovereignty for which ordinary Ukrainians are giving their lives.

Even in these harsh conditions, Ukrainian workers are mobilising against policies that attack their social rights and while left-wing and trade union activists are supporting their efforts to organise. But these people, who are heroically fighting for their sovereignty on every front, need allies. The international left and labour movement can help Ukrainians regain their independence from the Russian aggressor, as well as to defend themselves against neoliberal dependency.

Military, financial and diplomatic support for Ukraine is essential in order that it achieves not just a ceasefire and a peace that doesn’t last, but the immediate withdrawal of Russian occupying troops from all territory.

Yet we also need to ensure that post-war reconstruction is not used to justify the radical transformation of the Ukrainian economy in favour of oligarchs and corporations, rather than the people. The only way to guarantee national security both in wartime and afterwards is to put in place decent labour conditions in accordance with European and international standards. Ukraine also needs to develop an effective policy on the protection of workers’ rights.

Three initiatives are doing a great deal to bring the voices of Ukrainian progressive organisations to the wider world. The European Network of Solidarity with Ukraine, the US Solidarity Network and Elected Left for Ukraine were founded to provide concrete support to Ukrainian popular resistance. Using their links to civic organisations, trade unions and feminists in Ukraine, as well as Belarusian and Russian anti-war organisations, the two initiatives are supporting the Ukrainian resistance by means of international solidarity, funds and aid convoys.

It is the workers who are keeping Ukraine’s factories, hospitals, schools, trains and offices running, often at risk to their own lives. And it is the workers who are fighting on the front line, ensuring the survival of the state. That is why only Ukrainian workers can decide the future of their country. We must ensure their voices are heard.

American gun violence is so bad that countries should warn against US travel


OPINION: The ‘land of the free’ is currently a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ nation. It’s not safe

Chrissy Stroop
25 April 2023,

Protest held on 18 April 2023 in front of US District Court in Kansas City, Missouri on behalf of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, shot by an 84-year-old white homeowner after going to the wrong house to pick up his brother |


Iam tired of writing about gun violence in the United States and the abject failure of our political system to provide a means of effectively addressing the problem.

But here I am revisiting the topic, because horrific recent incidents are generating headlines. And, while mass shooting incidents have skyrocketed since 2018, after which each year has seen more than one such event per day, it’s not just mass shootings Americans have to worry about.

Since two individuals were shot within four days of each other – one fatally – simply for accidentally approaching the wrong house, the US public sphere is currently abuzz with discussion of the so-called ‘stand your ground laws’ that have been passed in more than half of the 50 states since 2005.

Superseding the common law ‘castle doctrine’ that provides wide latitude for the use of deadly force against an intruder inside one’s home, stand your ground laws expand this laxity to public spaces, where, the American legal norm otherwise holds that individuals have a ‘duty to retreat’ from violent confrontation if possible.

The first US state to pass a ‘stand your ground law’ was (not especially surprisingly) Florida. (At this point, all southern states have them.) The issue does not seem to have generated much media buzz, however, until 2012, when George Zimmerman, a light-skinned Latino and neighbourhood watch captain, fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager who was simply trying to walk back to his father’s home in a gated community in Sanford, where he was staying.

Zimmerman’s trial – he was found not guilty for reasons of ‘self-defence’ in what many, myself included, consider an egregious miscarriage of justice – did not ultimately hinge on Florida’s stand your ground law. But this series of events highlighted the racist differential treatment with respect to gun laws that is pervasive in the US legal system, and the potential for stand your ground laws to falsely ‘legitimise’ even more white violence against Black Americans than was already occurring.

On 13 April, Black high school student Ralph Yarl misinterpreted directions about where to pick up his brothers and ended up going to the wrong house in Kansas City, Missouri. After Yarl rang the doorbell, homeowner Andrew Lester, an 84-year old white man, opened the main door and immediately shot Yarl in the head through the glass exterior door. He then shot Yarl a second time, in the arm. Lester reportedly said: “Don’t come around here,” as the 16-year-old Yarl, who is thankfully and remarkably on the road to recovery, attempted to retreat.

Missouri has a stand your ground law and, given the state’s reactionary politics and the facts that Yarl is Black and Lester is white, it is likely that Lester will be acquitted of the felony charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action that he faces. If stand your ground comes into play, Lester will, theoretically, have to convincingly demonstrate he had a “reasonable fear” that Yarl would harm him. From what we know about the shooting, it seems absurd to think that Lester could make such a case, but conservative American juries often do not take much convincing when a white defendant stands accused of violence against an African American person.

On 17 April, a 20-year-old white woman, Kaylin Gillis, turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. Kevin Monahan, the 65-year-old white homeowner who killed her, now faces second-degree murder charges. New York does not have a stand your ground law, so Monahan’s defence presumably faces a higher bar.

What both these shootings have in common – besides the fact that both occurred in conservative areas – is that they could happen to anyone (of course American white supremacy makes it more likely for African Americans in these situations to face violence). Who among us is immune from getting our directions mixed up in confusing or simply unfamiliar neighbourhoods? The thought that such a commonplace mistake could cost us our lives is absolutely chilling. And as it turns out, the two incidents that made recent headlines are far from isolated.

Meanwhile, like mass shootings, road rage shootings have also surged in recent years. According to a disturbing new report by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organisation, incidents have steeply risen year after year since 2018. The report states that one American was “shot and either injured or killed in a road rage incident in 2022 every 16 hours, on average”.

Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, the report notes that road rage shootings occur in every US state, but that there are patterns.

Southern states, which on the whole have particularly lax gun laws, experience “the highest rates of victimisation from road rage shootings” according to the report. By contrast, the north-eastern states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont have the lowest rates of road rage shootings – about half those, per capita, that occur in southern states. These states have much stricter gun laws. Compare, for example, Florida’s rate of 1.64 road rage shootings per million residents to New York’s rate of 0.7 per one million residents.

Another study found similar stark regional differences in all gun homicides as opposed to just road rage incidents. The deep south has by far the highest per capita gun homicide rate, which makes Republicans’ claims that America’s progressive cities are “war zones” absurd.

While other factors may be in play –for example, public intellectual Colin Woodard argues that policy is ”downstream from culture” and attributes regional differences in gun violence to the cultural legacies of distinct groups of colonisers – Everytown for Gun Safety’s report provides clear cut evidence that a serious approach to gun control reduces gun violence rates. Unfortunately, acting on this obvious fact at the national level would require not only a strength of political will too often lacking among Democrats, but also the cooperation of some Republicans.

Frankly, as sad as it is to say this, if I were an official serving in another country’s foreign ministry, I would recommend that that government issue a warning against travel to the United States – and especially its most violent regions. There’s just no avoiding the conclusion that for the time being, the ‘land of the free’ will remain a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ nation.

What will the UK’s Illegal Migration Bill really do to trafficking survivors?


This legislation is going to make some traffickers very happy


Lauren Crosby Medlicott
28 March 2023, 

Rishi Sunak speaks on the Illegal Migration Bill |
Leon Neal/Getty Images. All rights reserved

Today, members of Parliament will debate the trafficking-related changes proposed under the Illegal Migration Bill. The bill was first presented in early March as a way to “prevent and deter unlawful migration”. If passed, it will give the government the power to deny both asylum and protection under the human trafficking and modern slavery system to anyone entering the UK via irregular or “illegal” routes.

Charities and organisations in the asylum sector have condemned the bill as the “Refugee Ban Bill”, and more than 300 academic experts have signed a letter saying the policy is not “evidence-based, workable, or legal under human rights law”. A second letter, signed by nearly 50 NGOs, outlines how the bill’s removal of protection for a large swath of trafficking victims will “cost lives” and “inflict harm on survivors”.

“The [bill’s] primary impact is going to be that modern slavery victims who arrive through routes that the UK government deem as irregular will be banned from accessing support,” Jamie Fookes, of Anti-Slavery International, told openDemocracy.

A flawed system now in danger of breaking

The National Referral Mechanism is the government’s system for formally recognising and supporting trafficking victims in the UK. It is the only way to receive this status. People cannot submit an application to the NRM – they must be referred by so-called first responders, such as the police, Border Force, local authorities, and select charities. In 2022, the NRM received nearly 17,000 referrals.

The current administration has argued that the size of this number demonstrates “an alarming rise of abuse within the modern slavery system”. No evidence of abuse has been made public to support this claim, and many organisations – including the government’s own Office of Statistics Regulation – have called on the Home Office to stop repeating it until it such evidence can be provided. The fact that 90% of trafficking claims receive a positive final decision from the Home Office casts further doubt on the suggestion that the NRM is teeming with false claims.

Traffickers will have the perfect leverage to hold over their victim

If the Illegal Migration Bill passes, it is likely that many genuine victims will be denied support. Say, for example, that someone is picked up by the Border Force shortly after crossing the English Channel by boat. “That person would be immediately detained as far as we can tell,” said Fookes. “They will start processing that person’s removal regardless of if they’ve been trafficked or not.”

This is not only a breach of human rights, Fookes said, but a logistically unworkable plan.

“The UK Government doesn’t have any [relevant] return agreements,” he said. It “People will be detained indefinitely. We’ll end up with some kind of long-term detention system. And right now, we don’t have that level of detention capacity, so there will be widespread destitution of migrants and refugees. Not only is the idea of removal incredibly cruel, but there just isn’t the infrastructure to do it.”
The groundwork for more exploitation

The 50 NGO signatories of the open letter are further worried that this legislation will drive modern slavery underground by removing survivors’ ability to report trafficking and access help. Fookes agreed. “It’s a boon for traffickers,” he said. “They’ll have the perfect leverage to hold over their victim.”

Traffickers, Fookes explained, will from now on be able to threaten victims with detention and deportation if they go to the authorities. “Victims essentially aren’t going to be able to say they are a victim of crime, because if they do, and say they entered the UK irregularly, then immigration enforcement kicks in,” he said. “The government will have a duty to block them from accessing support.”

“[Traffickers] will be able to exploit that position very efficiently,” he said.

We are going to have a lot of missing 17-year-olds

Children are at particular risk. At the moment, any child who arrives in the UK unaccompanied is taken into the care of local authorities, to be looked after in the same way that any other child in care would be. When these children exit care at 18, they are given access to care leavers’ support until the age of 25.

That future could look very different if this bill passes in its current form. “Once a child turns 18, the bill will kick in and apply to them,” Lauren Starkey, an independent social worker working with trafficked, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, told openDemocracy.

“Children’s legislation all says we have a duty and responsibility towards care leavers,” Starkey said. “This bill removes that provision for children who arrived in the country irregularly. Any other child who enters the UK care system will be eligible for leaving care support, but unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive by boats or lorries won’t. They’re creating a two-tiered care system where some children get leaving care support and others don’t. It goes against the principles of social work.”

Starkey predicted that many children who arrive irregularly will find a way to disappear in order to avoid being detained and deported on their 18th birthday. “We are going to have a lot of missing 17-year-olds,” she said. “Those children will be extremely vulnerable to exploitation and modern slavery. Gangs wait for them.”

Starkey said she and her fellow social workers aren’t sure how they are going to proceed on a professional level if this new legislation moves forward. “Our primary responsibility is to make children safe,” she said. “I’m a registered social worker and have made a commitment to the children I work with to safeguard and protect them. But I work in a country where my own government is working against those principles. It’s a difficult position to be in.”

The police, who are responsible for investigating modern slavery and human trafficking claims, will also be put in a difficult position by this legislation.

“Policing has already been struggling because of the complexity of modern slavery,” said Phil Brewer, former head of the Met’s modern slavery unit. “It has always been quite a specialist crime to investigate. It’s about to get more complex. It’s going to disadvantage victims because it is going to make things far more difficult to navigate.”

Under the bill, if an officer were to discover someone had arrived irregularly, they would be required to detain them. “I’d be massively surprised if they made the caveat for people who make an allegation of crime,” said Brewer. “That they would then be treated as a victim before considering their immigration status. It’s just not going to happen in the government’s narrative as it stands.”

Brewer went on to say that he thinks the police will feel torn between adhering to the new rules and following current police guidance on sharing information with immigration enforcement, which says to treat someone who reports a crime first and foremost as a victim.

“You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its most vulnerable,” concluded Fookes. “It’s not a good look for the UK. It’s a dark day for the UK’s claim to be a country which in any way respects human rights. It’s an abandonment of international duty, and an abandonment of being a nation that respects law and rules and human rights.”

What does Nigeria’s new president stand for?


Garhe Osiebe
May 4th, 2023

Despite a long career in politics, many in Nigeria are uncertain about the political intentions of the country’s president-elect. Garhe Osiebe examines why.

Following his victory in Nigeria’s presidential election in February 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is poised to be sworn in as president of Africa’s most populous nation on 29 May. It is important therefore to have a sense of the politics behind the figure. This is even more pressing after the blind side Nigerians received when the outgoing president Muhammadu Buhari assumed power in 2015. The outcome was a cabinet that took over six months to be inaugurated, and to this day, Nigerians are unsure about the political philosophy of their outgoing president.

The current fragile situation of Nigeria and the polarising nature of its recent election makes knowing more about the man slated to become president even more important.

The career

Tinubu was elected senator representing Lagos West in 1992. He last held elected public office as governor of Lagos state between 1999 and 2007. His subsequent position as national leader of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was largely ceremonial, and in the intervening years, people have lost track of what he stands for.

During his time in Lagos, Tinubu tried to lay claim to the political ideology of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Nigerian statesman who played a key role in Nigeria’s independence movement between 1957 and 1960. Awolowo founded the Yoruba nationalist group Egbe Omo Oduduwa, and his political philosophy came to be known as Awoism – a form of social democracy.

A good number of Tinubu’s policies while he was governor of Lagos State were consistent with his Awoist vision. For example, the ‘Jigi Bola’ program offered treatment and free eyeglasses to patients with cataracts and other eye defects. He also initiated the payment of the senior secondary school examination fees for students in Lagos State schools to the West African Examination Council, an examination board in English-speaking West African countries. He also established scholarship schemes at the higher education level. These are a few of the policies by Tinubu as governor of Lagos that are said to have touched the lives of the common man. Despite this, Tinubu remains a polarising figure.

The principles

Some commentators consider labelling Tinubu as an Awoist or social democrat as nonsense. They instead see him as a neo-liberal in the same vein as most politicians in Nigeria. This predominant group of politicians believes the market and the private sector are the solution to all ills in government, economy, and the larger society. Tinubu is also shrouded in much controversy regarding his age, origins, health and constitutional fit for the office of president of Nigeria. A newspaper report from 1998 states that he was 52, but in 2023 Tinubu officially marked his 71st birthday, leaving a six-year gap. Demands for a full health disclosure have been ignored, and investigative journalist David Hundeyin has released files about a background in drug trafficking while Tinubu lived in the US. These stories, together with his possession of Guinean citizenship, have been widely shared on social media.

Tinubu’s much touted symbol is of ‘broken shackles’ – intended as liberation from the woes of colonialism and neo-colonialism – which he wears on his head at public events. Yet, this symbolism now appears lost on the public. His time out of office and establishing a reputation as a wealthy godfather and kingmaker of Nigerian politics has disconnected him from the public. Tinubu’s campaign slogans of “Yoruba lo kan” [It is the turn of the Yorubas] and “Emi lo kan” [It is my turn] almost completely replaced whatever ideological leanings he might have had. The chances of Mr Tinubu running a government to which most of the citizenry would be enthusiastic seem low due to the tribal nature of these slogans.

Tinubu got elected with almost 9 million votes. However, his opponents together amassed over 14 million votes. Mr Tinubu’s mandate is thus not an overly popular one. His presidential style, people-centred programs and populist policies could earn his mandate much needed popularity and legitimacy. During his spell as governor of Lagos state, the president-elect displayed a penchant for selecting very capable hands to build an efficient team. It will be vital he can repeat this trick now he oversees the national government.

That some consider Tinubu to be neoliberal, while others see him through the prism of Awo-ism speaks to the divisions within Nigerian politics and the fragile political environment he inherits. Whatever governing philosophy emerges during his tenure, time will tell whether he can galvanise the Nigerian economy out of its present doldrums and unite the country.

About the author

Garhe Osiebe is with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Hargeisa, Republic of Somaliland. He has researched and written on elections in Africa for over a decade with several publications in journals on the subject.

Meteosat-12: Europe's new weather satellite takes first photos


WATCH: Meteosat-12 takes a picture of the weather systems below it every 10 minutes

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent
@BBCAmos

The first images from Europe's new weather satellite, Meteosat-12, have just been released.

The spacecraft, which sits 36,000km above the equator, was launched in December and is currently in a testing phase that will last most of this year.

When Meteosat-12's data is finally released to meteorological agencies, it's expected to bring about a step-change in forecasting skill.

Warnings of imminent, hazardous conditions should improve greatly.

This is something called "nowcasting" - the ability to say with greater confidence that violent winds, lightning, hail or heavy downpours are about to strike a particular area.

Meteosat-12 should help forecasters identify those places about to experience extreme conditions

Part of this advance will come from the increased resolution of Meteosat-12. For previous generation satellites, a feature in a storm had to be at least 1km across to be detected. The new spacecraft will track features as small as 500m in diameter.

"We can now see very fine structures," said Jochen Grandell from Eumetsat, the intergovernmental agency that manages Europe's weather satellites.

"You may have heard the term 'overshooting top', for example, which is a part of a thunderstorm's cloud development where you might see very strong updrafts and downdrafts. These are very rapidly changing, and they are very small as well. But they are also very powerful," he told BBC News.

Europe has had its own meteorological spacecraft sitting high above the planet since 1977. The new imager is the third iteration in the series.

Meteosat-12 sits in a "stationary" position, keeping a permanent eye on Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

It will return a full picture of the weather systems racing across Earth's surface at a rate of one every 10 minutes, five minutes faster than has been the case up to now. It also views the planet in more wavelengths of light. Sixteen instead of the previously available 12.

The additional bands of light allow for true colour images. In other words, the pictures are much closer to what the human eye might perceive if looking down from the same vantage point.

"The first time we received the data, there were huge emotions because we could see the high quality of the sensor," recalled Eumetsat colleague Alessandro Burini.

"The optical quality of the images, of the radiometry, of the navigation - in other words the accuracy of the position of the individual pixels in an image - is really very good."

1903 storm one of windiest to pummel British Isles
UK also broke its land surface temperature record
UK's rainfall records rescued by volunteer army

IMAGE SOURCE,EUMETSATImage caption,
Artwork: The near-4 tonne satellite sits 36,000km above the equator

The new third-generation system will eventually comprise a trio of spacecraft working in unison.

A second imager will go up in 2026 to acquire more rapid - every 2.5 minutes - pictures of just Europe. Before that, in 2024, a "sounding" spacecraft will launch to sample the temperature and humidity down through the atmosphere.

With replacement satellites already ordered for the first working threesome, Europe is guaranteed coverage well into the 2040s.

The overall cost is expected to be about €4.3bn (£3.7bn).




If that sounds like a lot of money (and it is), it pales next to the value society accrues from accurate weather forecasting - in preventing loss of life, infrastructure damage and economic disruption.

Repeated analyses have judged the benefits to be worth tens of billions every year across Europe as a whole.

National forecasting agencies, such as the UK Met Office, Meteo France and DWD (the German Meteorological Service), should be ingesting Meteosat-12 information into their supercomputers on a routine basis early next year.



Related Topics
Earth observation

Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canada

By Stephanie Pappas

 published 1 day ago

A phallus-shaped iceberg hovered off the coast of Dildo, Newfoundland in Conception Bay before collapsing.

A penis-shaped iceberg floated by the town of Dildo, Canada, which isn't too far from the city of Spread Eagle and the town of Placentia. (Image credit: Ken Pretty)

It doesn't get any more apt than this: A photographer from the Newfoundland town of Dildo has captured images of a penis-shaped iceberg off the Canadian coast. 

The suggestive 'berg consists of a column with a domed head protruding up from two oval rafts of ice. Photographer Ken Pretty captured a shot of the ice formation by drone near the town of Harbour Grace, which sits along — the puns keep adding up — Conception Bay. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the "dickie berg," as locals are calling it, has attracted international attention, with Pretty sharing news stories from as far away as Thailand and Taiwan on his Facebook page. 

"I knew I'd get a lot of comments, but I didn't expect this much," Pretty told the news agency Saltwire

(opens in new tabon Friday (April 28). 

Related: What the heck is the deal with this weird, square iceberg?

Locals are calling the phallic iceberg the "dickie berg." (Image credit: Ken Pretty)

Alas, the iceberg lacked staying power: Pretty photographed the 30-foot (9.1 meter) phallic structure on Thursday, April 27. It collapsed the next day. 

According to the CBC(opens in new tab), it's a strong iceberg season in Newfoundland and Labrador, with more than 200 off the coasts of the two provinces. 

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"Onshore winds brought in both the pack ice and the bergs," Diane Davis, who runs a Facebook group for iceberg hunters, told the CBC. "If the trend holds up, we should see them for May and June, too. Mother Nature only gave us a handful last year."

Mother Nature has provided more than a handful of phallic shapes to giggle about. In 2021, a man went viral for his photographs of a penis-shaped rock tower in Arches National Park(opens in new tab). Cambodian authorities have had to beg people to stop picking the carnivorous plant Nepenthes bokorensis, which just so happens to look like a penis. And don't even ask about California's plague of penis fish, which washed ashore on Drakes Beach in 2019. (They were actually marine worms, which have a long and storied history of looking phallic.)

Photographers dive into fundraising for ocean conservation

Jason Gulley captured this photograph, "Hope," of a manatee mother and her calf lazing in eelgrass, which is an important food source for manatees. Jason Gulley/100 for the Ocean

Published 4th May 2023

Written by  Flo Cornall, CNN

Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex's Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.

Apicture of a manatee and her calf relaxing in Florida's eelgrass and an image of seahorses feasting on plankton late at night are just two of the limited-edition prints that will go on sale this month, as part of an initiative that unites 100 renowned photographers to raise money for ocean conservation.

Set up by photographers Paul Nicklen, Cristina Mittermeier and Chase Teron, 100 for the Ocean will run throughout the month of May, selling prints starting at $100.

The three co-founders believe that art has the unique ability to "bring the world together and give voice to the creatures who depend on the ocean for survival."

"Photography can provide a window into this mysterious world, showcasing the extraordinary diversity of life and habitat that rely on a healthy ocean," Teron said.

He hopes that the sale will raise at least $1 million. "With the 100 photographers we have on our team and our community of ocean lovers, we think this is very doable, but it's not an easy feat," he added.

In this image, captured by 100 for the Ocean co-founder Paul Nicklen, an emperor penguin propels itself out of Antartica's icy waters. Credit: Paul Nicklen/100 for the Ocean

Net proceeds go to Sea Legacy Canada Foundation, which will use the money to expand its own conservation efforts, and support other ocean-focused organizations through media connections and documentary storytelling opportunities, according to a press release. SeaLegacy was started by Nicklen and Mittermeier to use storytelling to protect the ocean.

According to a paper published in 2020, investments of $175 billion per year will be needed to conserve and ensure sustainable use of the ocean, to meet United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 -- "Life Below Water."

"As a small group of photographers, we're just going to raise a drop of that," Mittermeier said in a press release. "The hope, however, is that we're going to shine a spotlight on the ocean."

"Ensuring our own survival"

The ocean faces many problems; more than 17 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2021, a figure that is projected to double or triple by 2040, according to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022. It also faces threats from warming, overfishing, and acidification.

Marine life in the world's oceans can recover to healthy levels by 2050, researchers say
"The health of our ocean determines the health of our planet. When we protect the sea, we are not only safeguarding the countless species that call it home, but we are also ensuring our own survival," said Teron.

Curated by Kathy Moran, former National Geographic deputy director of photography, 100 for the Ocean features prints from world-renowned photographers including Steve McCurry, Jimmy Chin and Joel Sartore.

Teron added that the purpose of 100 for the Ocean resonated with many photographers, who saw it as an opportunity to create a lasting impact through their art.

1 / 10 -

100 For the Ocean was co-founded by photographers Paul Nicklen, Cristina Mittermeier and Chase Teron. The project is a collaboration between 100 renowned photographers to raise money for ocean conservation. 


Five wild animal facts discovered in 2023

Gorillas enjoy feeling dizzy, while moths are more efficient pollinators than bees, scientists have discovered this year

THE WEEK STAFF
4 MAY 2023

New scientific discoveries about animals been made this year, helping scientists understand their behaviour, abilities, and interactions with the environment.

From uncovering the tool-making abilities of Goffin's cockatoos to revealing the fatal consequences of breeding season for male northern quolls, these revelations have expanded our knowledge of the natural world.

Here are some of the most interesting new findings in 2023.

1

Wassilios Aswestopoulos/NurPhoto via Getty Image

Moths work hard at night

Bees tend to be regarded as among the more “hardworking” pollinators, and they have been the focus of much of the research into declining insect populations. But according to a recent study, night-flying moths are the more efficient pollinators. A team from the University of Sussex used camera traps to monitor ten bramble patches in the southeast of England in July 2021. They found that 83% of insect visits to bramble flowers were made during the day, and that in these short summer nights, night-flying moths notched up only 15% of the visits. However, the moths pollinated the flowers more efficiently, and were therefore making a significant contribution in the hours of darkness. “Bees are undoubtedly important, but our work has shown that moths pollinate flowers faster than day-flying insects,” said study co-author Prof Fiona Mathews. “Sadly, many moths are in serious decline in Britain, affecting not just pollination but also food supplies for many other species, ranging from bats to birds.” She added that the study also highlighted the importance of bramble patches – which are often regarded as unsightly and cleared away – as a source of food for moths and as critical for night-time pollinators.


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Are loners more innovative?

Loners could be better at problem solving, a study of animals has suggested. The researchers looked at 13 species of hoofed mammal (or ungulate), including horses, sheep, deer and giraffes, living in captivity in zoos in Europe, and observed each of them to work out their social hierarchies and the levels of integration in the groups. They also gauged their fear of new objects by placing colourful bowls next to their feeding spots. They then left closed containers full of the animals’ favourite foods around their enclosures, and watched to see how they responded. They found that with all the species, it was the animals who were less well-integrated – and less fearful of the new – who were most adept at getting into the boxes to get the treats. The authors of the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, told The New Scientist that there could be two explanations for this. It could be that socially isolated individuals cannot count on others in the group to provide support and assistance, so they have to learn to be more innovative. However, it could also be that loners are not actually outcasts, but have opted to live on the margins because they can figure things out on their own, and so don’t need others.


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Apes whirl around to get ‘high’

Gorillas spin themselves around in circles, because they enjoy feeling dizzy, a study has found. Psychologists at the University of Warwick and University of Birmingham became intrigued by a viral video of an ape spinning around in a pool, and decided to investigate further. It turned out that the behaviour is relatively common: they found numerous videos of apes using ropes or vines to rotate at speeds similar to that of human circus performers. The behaviour is clearly deliberate, and since there is a long history of humans spinning around to achieve an altered mental state, it’s likely that apes do it for the same reason, team leader Dr Adriano Lameira told The Daily Telegraph. Potentially, our prehistoric ancestors also span around to get “high”, he added. If it’s not the original high, then it is “at least one of the oldest that predate substance-induced highs”.


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The cockatoo’s toolkit

Until recently, humans and chimpanzees were thought to be the only species that use “toolsets”: a collection of different tools used to achieve specific tasks. But in 2021, scientists in Indonesia observed wild Goffin’s cockatoos using three types of tools to extract seeds from fruit. Now new research has shown how effectively the birds are able to use toolsets. In the journal Current Biology, scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna describe how they presented to ten Goffin’s cockatoos a box containing a cashew nut that could only be accessed using two different tools: a rigid stick to pierce and tear a membrane between a window and the nut; and a longer, flexible tool to fish the nut out. Seven figured out the need to use both tools, with two solving the task on their first try. The team says that the findings provide the first controlled evidence that Goffin’s cockatoos can spontaneously begin to use a novel toolset, without help from others. The study also provided the first clear evidence that birds can carry a set of tools they will need for a future task: in a more complex trial requiring tools to be brought to a raised platform, four out of the five birds tested learnt to carry both correct tools.


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A marsupial’s fatal attraction

The male northern quoll – an Australian marsupial that is about a foot long – tends only to survive one breeding season, whereas females usually live for four. Now researchers have found out why: in its determination to mate, the animal exhausts itself to death. Using sensors to track northern quolls, the team observed that the males travelled more than six miles in a night in search of a partner, resting for only 8% of the time. The males had more parasites than females, probably because they prioritised seeking a mate over grooming, and were not as vigilant about searching for food and avoiding predators. “By the end of the breeding season, these quolls just look terrible,” said study co-author Dr Christofer Clemente, of the University of the Sunshine Coast.