It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, February 22, 2024
Study suggests people in urban areas with more green space have better mental health
The first-of-its-kind analysis used a detailed NatureScore database to assess mental health at the neighborhood level.
The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, was conducted by Jay Maddock, Ph.D., Regents Professor of environmental and occupational health at Texas A&M, and colleagues from the Center for Health and Nature, a collaboration between Texas A&M Health, Houston Methodist and Texan by Nature. Maddock also directs the center.
The researchers measured urban greenness with NatureScore, which uses numerous data sets related to factors such as air, noise and light pollution, parks and tree canopies to calculate the amount and quality of natural elements for any known address in the United States and several other countries. Scores range from 0-19 points for Nature Deficient to 80-100 for Nature Utopia.
For addresses, they used data on mental health visits aggregated at the ZIP code level from Texas Hospital Outpatient Public Use Data Files from 2014 to mid-2019. The data contained information about patient encounters, including a patient’s age, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, employment status, poverty level, principal diagnosis and ZIP code, although no patients were identified.
“The association between exposure to nature and better mental health is well established in the United States and elsewhere, but most studies use just one or two measurements of this exposure,” Maddock said. “Our study was the first to use NatureScore, which provides more complex data, to study the correlation between urban nature exposure and mental health.”
A total of 61,391,400 adult outpatient encounters in Texas cities for depression, bipolar disorders, stress and anxiety were selected. The sample included data from 1,169 ZIP codes in urban Texas, with a median NatureScore of 85.8. About half of the sample had high NatureScores (80+), and about 22 percent had NatureScores below 40.
Of these encounters, 63 percent were women, 30 percent were 65 years old or older, 54 percent were non-Hispanic white, and 15 percent were Hispanic. At the ZIP code level, 27 percent of the total population had a bachelor’s degree, 58 percent were employed, 14 percent lived under poverty, and 17 percent lacked health insurance coverage. The percentage of those 65 years old and older, white, Hispanic and employed were higher in areas with a higher NatureScore. In addition, the ZIP codes with a higher NatureScore had lower percentages of people who were Black, living in poverty or without insurance.
The trend for various mental health encounters decreased as the NatureScore of a neighborhood increased, and the rates of mental health encounters were about 50 percent lower in neighborhoods with NatureScores over 60. Those who lived in neighborhoods with the two highest NatureScore categories — Nature Rich and Utopia — had significantly lower rates of mental health encounters compared to neighborhoods with the lowest NatureScore category.
“We found that a NatureScore above 40 — considered Nature Adequate — seems to be the threshold for good mental health,” Maddock said. “People in these neighborhoods have a 51 percent lower likelihood of developing depression and a 63 percent lower likelihood for developing bipolar disorders.”
The study’s lead author, Omar M. Makram, noted that these findings could have important implications for urban planning.
“Increasing green space in cities could promote well-being and mental health, which is critically important given that more than 22 percent of the adult population in the United States with a mental health disorder,” he said.
JOURNAL
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (02/19/2024)—For the first time, researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have demonstrated that it is possible to provide accurate, high-resolution predictions of carbon cycles in agroecosystems, which could help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
The study by scholars from the UMN-led National Artificial Intelligence Institute for Climate-Land Interactions, Mitigation, Adaptation, Tradeoffs and Economy (AI-CLIMATE) and UIUC-led Agroecosystem Sustainability Center was recently published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journal.
The study’s findings are a critical first step in developing a credible Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MMRV) of agricultural emissions that can be used to incentivize the implementation of climate smart practices while boosting rural economies. This follows the national strategy, set by the White House, highlighting the need to quantify greenhouse gas emission across sectors with a goal of net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.
Accurate, scalable, and cost-effective monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions are needed to verify what are called “carbon credits” or permits that offset greenhouse gas emissions. Farmers can be reimbursed for practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture accounts for about 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, but large corporations can be hesitant about purchasing these credits without knowing how much carbon is being stored.
Right now, to accurately gather carbon data, a farmer would need to hire someone to come to their farm, take what is called a soil core (vertical profile of the soil), and send that back to the lab for analysis.
“To gather the amount of data needed at each individual farm, it could cost the farmers time and money that they may not be willing to give,” said Licheng Liu, the lead author and a research scientist in the University of Minnesota Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering.
The emerging field of Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning (KGML), pioneered by researchers at the University of Minnesota, combines the strength of artificial intelligence (AI) and process-based models from physical sciences. With observations in the United States Corn Belt, the KGML-ag framework significantly surpasses both process-based and pure machine learning models in accuracy, especially with limited data. Remarkably, KGML-ag operates over 10,000 times faster than traditional process-based models, delivering high-resolution and high-frequency predictions cost-effectively.
"These knowledge-guided machine learning (KGML) techniques are fundamentally more powerful than standard machine learning approaches and traditional models used by the scientific community to address environmental problems,” said Vipin Kumar, a University of Minnesota Regents Professor and William Norris Endowed Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a researcher in the AI-CLIMATE Institute, whose group has pioneered the development of the KGML framework.
Instead of taking soil cores at every farm, with KGML-ag, researchers can use the power of satellite remote sensing, computational models, and AI to provide an estimate of carbon in each individual field. This allows for compensation to individual farmers that are fair and accurate. The researchers say this is key to fostering trust in carbon markets and supporting the adoption of sustainable practices.
"KGML-ag combines the most advanced understanding of mechanisms in agriculture with the state-of-the-art AI techniques and thus offers a new powerful lens to monitor and manage our agricultural ecosystems," said Zhenong Jin, the corresponding author for this study and assistant professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, who co-leads the KGML special interest group in the AI-CLIMATE.
Now, AI-CLIMATE researchers are investigating the potential of the KGML framework for forestry, leveraging its capabilities to address the pressing challenges in sustainable forestry management and the capturing and storing of carbon. The team is also exploring a KGML-based data assimilation approach to make use of the rapidly growing different kinds of satellite data flexibly.
“The KGML is one of the key research topics of the AI-CLIMATE,” said Shashi Shekhar, a University of Minnesota ADC Chair and Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the lead researcher of the AI-CLIMATE Institute. “These initial results demonstrate the immense potential of AI for developing more accurate and cheaper methods for estimating emissions from agriculture. This may lubricate carbon markets and incentivize adoption of climate-smart practices.”
This collaborative work between researchers at the University of Minnesota and a team led by Kaiyu Guan at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was originally supported by the ARPA-E SMARTFARM program. Now, AI-CLIMATE researchers are taking this work to new heights leveraging richer data, knowledge, methods and use-cases..
To read the entire research paper titled, “Knowledge-guided machine learning can improve carbon cycle quantification in agroecosystems”, visit the Nature Communications website.
THE ERUPTION AND VOLCANIC MATERIAL SEDIMENTATION PROCESSES OF GIANT CALDERA ERUPTIONS ARE NOT WELL UNDERSTOOD, MAKING IT ALSO DIFFICULT TO ESTIMATE THEIR SIZE. KOBE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS USED SEISMIC REFLECTION SURVEYS TO VISUALIZE THE SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURE AND ANALYZED COLLECTED SEDIMENT SAMPLES, ENABLING THEM TO OBTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON THE DISTRIBUTION, VOLUME, AND TRANSPORT MECHANISMS OF THE EJECTA.
A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event’s magnitude. As a result, the Kobe University research team found that the event 7,300 years ago was the largest volcanic eruption in the Holocene by far.
In addition to lava, volcanos eject large amounts of pumice, ashes and gases as a fast-moving flow, known as “pyroclastic flow,” and its sediments are a valuable data source on past eruptions. For volcanoes on land, geologists understand the sedimentation mechanism of pyroclastic flows well, but the sediments themselves get lost easily due to erosion. On the other hand, for volcanoes on oceanic islands or near the coast, the pyroclastic flow deposition process is largely unclear, both because the interaction with water is less well understood and because reliable data is difficult to obtain and therefore sparse. For these reasons, it is difficult to estimate the impact of many past eruptions on the climate and on history.
A Kobe University research team around SEAMA Nobukazu and SHIMIZU Satoshi took to the seas on the Kobe University-owned training vessel Fukae Maru (since replaced by the newly built Kaijin Maru) and conducted seismic imaging as well as sediment sampling around the Kikai caldera, off the south coast of Japan's Kyūshū island. The outstanding detail of the seismic reflection data revealed the sedimentary structure with a vertical resolution of 3 meters and down to a depth of several hundred meters below the seafloor. Shimizu explains: “Due to the fact that volcanic ejecta deposited in the sea preserve well, they record a lot of information at the time of eruption. By using seismic reflection surveys optimized for this target and by identifying the collected sediments, we were able to obtain important information on the distribution, volume, and transport mechanisms of the ejecta.”
In their article published in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, the geoscientists report that an eruption that happened 7,300 years ago ejected a large amount of volcanic products (ash, pumice, etc.) that settled in an area measuring more than 4,500 square kilometers around the eruption site. With a dense-rock equivalent volume of between 133 and 183 cubic kilometers, the event was the largest volcanic eruption to have taken place within the Holocene (the most recent 11,700 years of Earth's history following the end of the last ice age) known to science.
In the process of their analysis, the research team confirmed that the sedimentations on the ocean floor and those deposited on nearby islands have the same origin and from their distribution around the eruption site they could clarify the interaction between the pyroclastic flow and water. They noticed that the underwater portion of the flow could travel vast distances even uphill.
Their findings yield new insights into the elusive dynamics of volcanic mega events that may prove useful in identifying the remains of other events as well as in estimating their size. Seama explains, “Large volcanic eruptions such as those yet to be experienced by modern civilization rely on sedimentary records, but it has been difficult to estimate eruptive volumes with high precision because many of the volcanic ejecta deposited on land have been lost due to erosion. But giant caldera eruptions are an important phenomenon in geoscience, and because we also know that they influenced the global climate and thus human history in the past, understanding this phenomenon has also social significance.” In this light, it is fascinating to think that the event that created a caldera about the size of a modern capital city was in fact the largest volcanic event since humans have spread all over the globe.
This research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan under The Second Earthquake and Volcano Hazards Observation and Research Program (Earthquake and Volcano Hazard Reduction Research) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 20H00199).
The Kobe University research team around SEAMA Nobukazu took to the seas on the Kobe University-owned training vessel Fukae Maru (since replaced by the newly built Kaijin Maru) and conducted seismic imaging as well as sediment sampling around the Kikai caldera, off the south coast of Japan's Kyūshū island.
CREDIT
Kobe University
Satsuma Iwo Jima is part of the rim of the Kikai caldera.
CREDIT
SHIMIZU Satoshi
Kobe University geoscientists report that the eruption ejected between 133 and 183 cubic kilometers dense-rock equivalent of volcanic products (ash, pumice, etc.) that settled in an area measuring more than 4,500 square kilometers around the eruption site, making the event the largest volcanic eruption to have taken place within the Holocene.
CREDIT
SHIMIZU Satoshi
Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.
Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) may increase seniors’ risk of cardiovascular hospitalization, with disproportionate impacts on residents of socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods.
The findings suggest that to protect heart health, there is no safe threshold for chronic PM2.5 exposure, and that the EPA’s newly updated standard for the U.S.’s annual average PM2.5 level isn’t low enough to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease or protect public health overall.
Boston, MA—Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) may increase seniors’ risk of hospitalization for a variety of cardiovascular conditions, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“The timing of our study couldn’t be more critical, and its implications are profound,” said lead author Yaguang Wei, research associate in the Department of Environmental Health. “Our findings quantify the benefits of implementing stricter air pollution control policies—even stricter than the Environmental Protection Agency’s new standards, which are considerably higher than the 5 micrograms per cubic meter standard set by the World Health Organization.” On Feb. 7, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its updated National Ambient Air Quality Standards, lowering the country’s permissible average annual PM2.5 level from 12 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) to 9 μg/m3.
The study will be published online in The BMJ on February 21, 2024.
The researchers examined the hospital records and PM2.5 exposure levels of nearly 60 million Medicare beneficiaries, ages 65 and higher, between 2000 and 2016. Drawing from a variety of air pollution data sources, they developed a predictive map of PM2.5 levels across the contiguous U.S. and linked it to beneficiaries’ residential ZIP codes. The researchers followed each beneficiary each year until their first hospitalization for any of seven major subtypes of cardiovascular disease (CVD): ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, heart failure, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmia, and thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysms. They also looked at the risk of first admission for a composite of the CVD subtypes.
The study found that three-year average exposure to PM2.5 was associated with increased risk of a first hospital admission for all cardiovascular conditions, particularly ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, heart failure, and arrythmia. For composite CVD, the study found that when chronic exposure to PM2.5 was between 7 and 8 μg/m3, representative of the current national average level, on average the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular disease in seniors was 3.04% each year. For comparison, when chronic exposure to PM2.5 met the WHO guideline of below 5 μg/m3, on average the risk of hospitalization for CVD was 2.59% each year. Based on these estimates, researchers calculated that lowering annual average PM2.5 levels from 7-8 μg/m3 to below 5 μg/m3 could decrease overall cardiovascular hospitalizations by 15%.
Even given this improvement, the findings suggest that to protect overall cardiovascular health, there is no safe threshold for chronic exposure to PM2.5, say the researchers. They also observed that the health risks of chronic PM2.5 exposure remain substantial for at least three years, and that they disproportionately impact people with lower educational levels, limited access to health care, and who live in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods.
“Stronger efforts are urgently needed to improve air quality and thereby alleviate the burden of cardiovascular disease—a leading cause of death and a major contributor to health care costs,” said senior author Joel Schwartz, professor of environmental epidemiology. “Our findings indicate that the EPA’s newly updated PM2.5 standard is clearly insufficient for the protection of public health.”
Other Harvard Chan authors included Yijing Feng, Mahdieh Danesh Yazdi, Edgar Castro, Alexandra Shtein, Xinye Qiu, Adjani Peralta, Brent Coull, and Francesca Dominici.
Funding for the study came from the National Institutes of Health (grants R01ES032418, R01MD012769, R01ES028033, R01AG060232, R01ES030616, R01AG066793, R01MD016054, P30ES000002) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (grant G-2020-13946).
“Exposure-response associations between chronic exposure to fine particulate matter and risks of hospital admission for major cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study,” Yaguang Wei, Yijing Feng, Mahdieh Danesh Yazdi, Kanhua Yin, Edgar Castro, Alexandra Shtein, Xinye Qiu, Adjani A. Peralta, Brent A. Coull, Francesca Dominici, Joel D. Schwartz, The BMJ, online February 21, 2024, doi: 10.1136/ bmj-2023-076939
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health brings together dedicated experts from many disciplines to educate new generations of global health leaders and produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere. As a community of leading scientists, educators, and students, we work together to take innovative ideas from the laboratory to people’s lives—not only making scientific breakthroughs, but also working to change individual behaviors, public policies, and health care practices. Each year, more than 400 faculty members at Harvard Chan School teach 1,000-plus full-time students from around the world and train thousands more through online and executive education courses. Founded in 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School of Health Officers, the School is recognized as America’s oldest professional training program in public health.
Exposure-response associations between chronic exposure to fine particulate matter and risks of hospital admission for major cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
21-Feb-2024
Air pollution hides increases in rainfall
For much of the last century, the drying effect of aerosols has masked increases in rainfall from greenhouse gases – but as aerosol emissions diminish, average and extreme rains may ramp up.
THESE MAPS SHOW HOW AEROSOL AND GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS INFLUENCE EXTREME RAINFALL ACROSS THE SEASONS. GREEN INDICATES AN INCREASE IN RAIN, WHILE BROWN MEANS A DECREASE. GREENHOUSE GASES LARGELY INCREASE RAINFALL ACROSS ALL THE SEASONS, BUT AEROSOLS WORK IN TWO WAYS: THE SLOW IMPACT GENERALLY CAUSES DRYING ACROSS THE SEASONS, WHILE THE FAST IMPACT CAUSES MORE DRYING IN THE WINTER AND SPRING, AND MORE RAIN IN THE SUMMER AND FALL.
We know that greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide should increase rainfall. The emissions heat the atmosphere, causing a one-two punch: warmer oceans make it easier for water to evaporate, and warmer air can hold more water vapor, meaning more moisture is available to fall as rain. But for much of the 20th century, that increase in precipitation didn’t clearly show up in the data.
A new study led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) finds that the expected increase in rain has been largely offset by the drying effect of aerosols – emissions like sulfur dioxide that are produced by burning fossil fuels, and commonly thought of as air pollution or smog. The research is published today in the journal Nature Communications.
“This is the first time that we can really understand what’s causing extreme rainfall to change within the continental U.S.,” said Mark Risser, a research scientist at Berkeley Lab and one of the lead authors for the study. He noted that until the 1970s, the expected increases to extreme rainfall were offset by aerosols. But the Clean Air Act caused a drastic reduction in air pollution in the United States. “The aerosol masking was turned off quite suddenly. That means rainfall might ramp up much more quickly than we would have otherwise predicted.”
Traditional climate models have struggled to confidently predict the human impact on rainfall at scales smaller than a continent – and that regional level is precisely where most climate change adaptations and mitigations take place. By using a new method and relying heavily on measurements from rain gauges from 1900 to 2020, researchers were able to more robustly determine how human activities have influenced rainfall in the United States.
"Prior to our study, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] had concluded that the evidence was mixed and inconclusive for changes in U.S. precipitation due to global warming,” said Bill Collins, associate laboratory director for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Berkeley Lab and co-lead author on the study. “We have now provided conclusive evidence for higher rainfall and also helped explain why past studies assessed by the IPCC reached conflicting conclusions."
Specifically, the study isolates how greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions affect both average and extreme rainfall. Researchers confirmed that increased greenhouse gas emissions, which quickly disperse over the whole planet, cause an increase in rainfall. The impact from aerosols is more nuanced. Over the long term, aerosols cool the planet, which causes a drying effect. But they also have a faster, more local response. That fast impact depends on the season, with aerosols generally reducing rainfall in the winter and spring, and amplifying it in summer and fall over much of the United States.
“The seasonality piece is really important,” Risser said. “For rainfall, the nature of climate change depends on what season you’re talking about, since different kinds of weather systems create precipitation in different parts of the year.”
Some of the conflicting studies looking at precipitation trends of the last century can be explained by how the effect of aerosols offsets the effect of greenhouse gases, and how models and simulations factor in these two driving forces. The researchers noted that tracking aerosols and incorporating them more fully into models and simulations will be important for improving the predictions used for infrastructure design and water resource management.
The United States has already seen examples of recent increases in extreme precipitation, with several intense, record-setting storms in the past few years.
"Thanks to improvements in air quality, the aerosols that shielded us from the worst effects of global warming are declining worldwide,” Collins said. “Our work shows that the increases in extreme precipitation driven by elevated ocean temperatures will become increasingly obvious during this decade."
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to delivering solutions for humankind through research in clean energy, a healthy planet, and discovery science. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Australia can lay claim to two new species of native rodent thanks to a study from The Australian National University (ANU).
The aptly named delicate mouse was previously thought to be a single species spanning a massive stretch of the country from the Pilbara in Western Australia, across parts of the Northern Territory and through Queensland down to the New South Wales border.
But researchers at ANU and CSIRO thought there might be more to the story.
Lead author Dr Emily Roycroft, from ANU, said we now know there are actually three distinct species.
"Thanks to new genetic technology, we’ve confirmed the delicate mouse is three species, not one. Identifying undescribed species and giving them official names goes a long way to making sure they're properly looked after."
Dr Roycroft said while it might be difficult for the untrained eye to tell the species apart, the discovery is significant for the future of the tiny mouse.
"The two new species haven't had any conservation or research attention, because we didn’t know they were there," Dr Roycroft said.
"We don't know, for example, if population declines have gone undetected as a result of all three species being assessed as a single unit.
"The delicate mouse has not been a conservation priority -- but that’s because it was thought to have a distribution three times larger than it actually does. This will allow us to reassess."
Dr Roycroft said the delicate mouse differs from the mice you might come across in your home or backyard in a few important ways.
"House mice, black rats and brown rats are invasive species brought to Australia since European colonisation. They're very different to native rodents, both evolutionary and ecologically. They compete with our native species for resources," she said.
"Delicate mice are part of a group of native rodents that have been evolving in Australia for the last five million years. They’re a crucial part of Australia’s natural environment and ecosystems.
"Delicate mice are our smallest Australian rodent - they can weigh as little as six grams, so they're really tiny."
The study also found delicate mice are excellent adaptors to their environment, whether that be arid desert or forest.
The three species will now go by common names that point to their location: the western delicate mouse or Pilbara delicate mouse, eastern delicate mouse and northern delicate mouse.
The study has been published in Molecular Ecology.
JOURNAL
Molecular Ecology
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Meta-analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Rapid speciation in Australian delicate mice
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
22-Feb-2024
Indian Port Workers Refuse to Load Weapons for Israel’s War
India is a major military partner for Israel, which is why port workers across India are refusing to handle weapons destined for Israel, insisting they want no part in the massacre in Gaza.
On the 135th day of Israel’s relentless onslaught on Gaza, a resolute voice emerged from India’s maritime labor force. The Water Transport Workers Federation (WTWF), representing fourteen thousand workers, including 3,500 stationed at eleven of India’s twelve major ports, heeded the call by Palestinian trade unions. They courageously declared they would refusal to handle weapons destined for Israel.
In a poignant declaration, the union’s general secretary, T. Naraendra Rao, affirmed their stance: “If any vessel or any ship is carrying arms or ammunitions or weapons cargo to Israel, we decided to boycott. We will not cooperate with that.” The union’s statement explained its action as an act of solidarity, condemning a war in which “women and children have been blown to pieces. Parents were unable to recognize their children killed by bombs exploding everywhere.”
The federation’s stand caught many by surprise. India has well-documented arms deals with Israel, as well as an online army of pro-Israel “sanghis,” supporters of far-right Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) parties. However, this reaction underscores a deeper truth: India’s political pluralism, federated structure, and long history of class struggle and anti-imperialism, including steadfast support for the Palestinian cause. India and Palestine
The year 1947 holds profound significance for both India and Palestine. It marks the dawn of India’s independence and the United Nations vote that triggered the mass dispossession of Palestinians, known as the Nakba. Led by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s stance on the issue was shaped by its 1947 vote against the UN partition of the former British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, championing the vision of a single secular state. India refused to recognize Israel upon the state’s creation in 1948, as it saw the Zionist movement as an extension of British imperialism.
India’s solidarity with Palestine traces back earlier, to 1931, when Mahatma Gandhi, in the Jewish Chronicle and later in Harijan in 1938, asserted that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French.” This solidarity was further cemented through India’s leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, culminating in 1974, when India became the first non-Arab country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In 1988, India became the first non-Arab country to formally recognize Palestinian statehood. Even now, India maintains diplomatic missions in both in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, a distinction shared by few nations worldwide.
Despite formally recognizing Israel in 1950, India kept relations at the consular level until 1991, appointing its first ambassador to Israel only in 1992. The 1980s saw the decline of the Third World project; a shift in the geopolitical landscape prompted New Delhi to gradually pivot away from its traditional ties with Palestine in favor of closer relations with Israel.
Collaborating With Israel
While Israel provided weapons to India during its conflicts with China in the 1960s, formal arms deals and intelligence cooperation between the two countries began only in 1998, following the rise of right-wing Hindu forces in Indian politics. This cooperation has significantly expanded since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014. Modi’s 2017 visit to Israel was the first by any Indian premier, and subsequent trips by Netanyahu to India have further solidified bilateral ties.
Today, India is the largest and most reliable arms purchaser from Israel, accounting for 46 percent of Israel’s global sales. Since 2017, India has been designated a “strategic partner,” participating in the coproducing Israeli weapons. The same year saw the commencement of joint military exercises, encompassing police and army training sessions, as well as mutual high-level visits, highlighting the two states’ strengthening defense ties. The growing relationship is part of a broader trend in Indian politics and military spending. Amid escalating tensions with China, India has engaged in an arms race also involving substantial increases in military expenditure, which reached $73.8 billion — the world’s third-largest military spender, after the United States and China. In the few years before the Ukraine war, India, alongside Saudi Arabia, dominated global arms exports, collectively accounting for 22 percent of global arms trade.
This February 2, news leaked that twenty Indian-made medium-altitude lethal drones were delivered to Israel for use in Gaza. The drones, produced in a Hyderabad-based joint venture with a controlling stake held by the Adani Group, are similar to the Hermes drones used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. This partnership reflects Israel’s deepening collaboration with Indian arms suppliers, exemplified by Elbit Systems’ joint venture with Adani Defense and Aerospace, inaugurating a $15 million manufacturing facility in Hyderabad. This is the first instance of Israeli drone manufacturing outside of that country.
Led by India’s wealthiest individual, Gautam Adani, the Adani Group plays a central role in Israel’s arms economy. In addition to drone production, Adani controls both Israel’s Haifa Port and India’s largest port, Mundra, located in the state of Gujarat. Israel’s transport minister, Miri Regev, has lauded this as a means of bypassing Yemen’s Ansar Allah (Houthi) Red Sea blockade, i.e. by shipping goods from Mundra to the United Arab Emirates and then transporting them over land to Israel.
Adani’s nearly vertically integrated supply chain can circumvent the WTWF’s commitment to refuse to handle arms shipments to Mundra and from there to Haifa. However, Adani must also ensure efficient movement of inputs such as raw materials and component parts. The union holds sway at eleven of the twelve major Indian government-run ports, while Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited operates mostly at eleven smaller nonmajor ports and holds small portions in major maritime hubs, handling 23 percent of all cargo handled at Indian ports. However, the twelve central government-controlled ports handle 55 percent of all cargo.
Finished products like drones would travel by land from Hyderabad to Mundra Port, but some parts and raw materials contributing to their production pass through national ports where the WTWF union has real strength. The union’s refusal to handle such goods could significantly disrupt the production of weaponized drones. With further investigation, uncovering this sometimes concealed information about secondary suppliers and components could help to undermine India’s role in the Israeli war machine.
Also worth considering is the fact that India produces critical components for major Israeli arms companies. Public-owned defense giants such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Bharat Electronics Limited, as well as some medium-sized firms, manufacture electrical components or machined parts for Israel’s main military companies, including Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. These component facilities are located in the south Indian city of Bengaluru. While many finished components are transported via Bengaluru airport, some may pass through Kochi, Mangalore, or Mumbai ports, where the WTWF union has a major presence.
As demonstrated by the Suez Canal blockage in 2021, or the current Red Sea blockade, increasingly consolidated shipping companies and megaports can serve as critical choke points and spaces of remarkable leverage in obstructing the production and circulation of goods.
Port Workers’ Union
The WTWF has a radical history — and was inspired by a sense of appalling injustice. Affiliated nationally with the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU) — a group linked to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — and internationally with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the union was motivated to launch the boycott after hearing from Palestinian trade unionists at a recent WFTU meeting in Athens. As the general secretary explained, “We decided then that we would do our bit and not handle any weapon-laden cargo, which will go on to assist Israel to kill more women and children as we are seeing and reading every day in the news.”
This is not new for the port workers. Between 1948 and 1994, seamen and dockers from around the world played a central role in isolating South Africa’s apartheid state. As early as 1962, dockers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) picketed a Dutch ship, Raki, arriving at San Francisco Pier 19, carrying goods from South Africa. This was part of the burgeoning global anti-apartheid movement. In 1984, the Maritime Unions Against Apartheid (MUAA) was formed by seafarers’ unions of Denmark, Britain, and Australia. MUAA focused on stopping oil supplies to South Africa, the country’s key vulnerability.
Working with the Amsterdam-based Shipping Research Bureau (SRB), the unions attempted to prohibit all oil transports to South Africa. By 1985 seafarers from thirty countries would meet in London to call for “worldwide action to embargo oil to South Africa.” A central participant in this effort was India’s WTWF. Speaking to the conference, its vice president M. A. Sayeed highlighted South Africa’s attempts to sidestep the boycott by “sending their oil through tramp carriers or by rerouting it through a third country. We seamen in India call for a boycott of all such shippers.” SRB’s research thus became essential for tracking the movement of primary, secondary, clandestine, and component parts supply chains.
Indian port workers and seamen have a radical history of such actions. In August 1945, as World War II reached its conclusion, a boycott of Dutch shipping in Australian waters was called, in support of the Indonesian declaration of independence. The Indian Seamen’s Union and the Australian seafarers responded to the call. The boycott was kept up for nine months, continuing intermittently for over a further four years, and it delayed an estimated 559 ships. In India, the two major ports, Bombay and Calcutta, had strong union density and a militant leadership. The militancy was a holdover of the strikes of 1939, in which Indian merchant seafarers struck across the British Empire. The strikes, over disparate and racialized wage rates, affected ships in ports as far flung as Britain, Burma, India, South Africa, and Australia. The strike disrupted colonial shipping networks at a strategically pivotal time and set the conditions for cross-border solidarity. This also had dire consequences: indeed, the boycott of Dutch shipping was effectively broken by July 1946, through the combined efforts of Dutch troops and yellow unions. Many members of the Indian Seamen’s Union in Australia were deported and blacklisted from employment.
A Global Movement
Actions around the world have shown solidarity with Palestine. The WTWF — strongest in South India’s Kochi Port in Kerala and Tamil Nadu’s Chennai Port, India’s second largest — has been especially vocal. Kerala, ruled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has supported Palestine since October, with mass rallies of up to two hundred thousand people, some inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vigayan. He criticized Modi for supporting Israel, stating, “Israel is one of the biggest terrorist countries” and calling for an end to India’s military deals and diplomatic ties with Israel.
In response to Israel’s assault on Gaza, Maryan Apparel, a Kerala-based uniform manufacturer, producing one hundred thousand Israeli police uniforms annually, announced that it would cease produce for Israel due to attacks on Palestinian civilians, ending its nearly decade-long relationship with the Israeli state.
Similar actions have been seen globally. In October, Belgium’s three major transport unions announced that their members would no longer handle weapons to Israel, by land, air, or sea. Barcelona’s dockworkers also declared they would refuse to load or unload any military material destined to Israel. The government of Wallonia (the majority French-speaking part of Belgium) suspended two ammunition export licenses to Israel, banning future arms transfers, while Spain instituted an arms ban to Israel. Recently, The Hague Court of Appeals in the Netherlands ordered the Dutch government to stop the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, citing a clear risk of violations of international law.
Even a strategically located union in a country as pivotal to Israel’s war economy as India may not significantly impact the assault on Gaza. It will take other transport and logistics trade unions, especially in countries such as Britain and the United States — which provide the lion’s share of arms to Israel — to refuse to handle weapons for Israel. The union’s statement ends with a call to action: “We declare our solidarity with those who campaign for peace. We call upon the workers of the world and peace-loving people to stand with the demand of free Palestine.”
