The UK, wildfires and the technology designed to reduce risk

    

The entire UK’s land area is a little under 25 million hectares. In 2023, globally, 384 million hectares of land fell victim to fires and the devastation caused by them is worsening.

In the last two years alone, we have witnessed devastating fires in countries like Greece, Portugal, and Canada with holiday makers being evacuated and businesses and homes consumed in minutes.

Wildfires are already beginning to appear in the UK as a result of climate change. Our wetter winters are fuelling growth that provides the ideal conditions for summer fires. And it’s not just forests that are at risk. Rare moorland habitats are very susceptible to wildfires too, which is why the National Trust has been trialing early detection methods on Marsden Moor in West Yorkshire.

Impacts of wildfires

Wildfires don’t just threaten human life and livelihoods, they destroy whole communities, consuming homes, hospitals, schools and businesses – basically, anything in their path. They devastate wildlife habitats killing the plants, animals and insects that live there, leading to a drop in available biodiversity.

The fires also pose a life-threatening danger to the firefighters deployed to tackle the blazes. Attempting to control and extinguish wildfires costs billions. To give you an idea of the financial costs, a study by University College London found that California’s 2018 wildfires alone cost the US a whopping $148.5 billion. Capital losses and health costs within the state amounted to an additional $59.9 billion.

Many wildfires start on the wildland urban interface (WUI), in other words they start in places close to human infrastructure and people. A good UK example of this is the 2022 wildfires in Dagenham and Wennington in East London. Fortunately, no lives were lost, but many homes, shops, vehicles and acres of farmland were destroyed.

Detection

It’s clear that tackling a fire once it has taken hold is far harder than catching it while it is still small. Wildfires can spread at a speed of up to 14.27 miles per hour, so it doesn’t take long for a tiny fire to become an uncontrollable monster. This is why early detection is so important.

The traditional forms of detection have been towers, cameras and satellites. Towers are tall structures, usually in a forest, that have views over the canopy of trees. A human, or a camera, in the tower looks for plumes of smoke rising above the trees. Once spotted, fire fighters can be called. However, by the time a fire is large enough for the smoke to have risen above the tree canopy it is already well established and becoming difficult to tackle. Plus, it can be tricky to pinpoint the exact location of the fire and communicate that to the teams on the ground who may have many thousands of hectares to cover before they reach the source. All of this can delay the process of starting to put out the fire, which in turn allows the fire to spread further.

Satellites can also be used to detect wildfires, but they too come with some drawbacks. The fire has to be fairly large before a satellite will ‘see’ it, and unless the satellite is geosynchronous it may not come into range until the fire is already out of control. However, satellites are a very useful tool for detecting the spread of fires and helping fire fighters understand where the fire is going and how fast it is moving – all very useful intelligence when tackling a fire.

Thanks to advances in technology, other options are becoming possible. Sensors have been developed that can be placed in the forest (or other habitats) and can ‘smell’ tiny quantities of smoke, allowing even a small smouldering pile of leaves to be detected well before it turns into a giant fire. The sensors send an alert and can give an exact location helping fire fighters reach the spot as fast as possible. The sensors can even tell the difference between the fumes of a truck driving by and the smoke from a forest fire.

The Internet of Trees

Great as these advances in technology are, they are only practically useful if the data that the sensors and cameras etc. are picking up can be relayed to a human who can then take the necessary action (e.g. call out a fire crew).

Usually, data is sent via the Internet using mobile networks, but there is often scant mobile coverage in large forests or on remote hills covered with rare heathland. Yet, this is exactly where we need it if the early detection methods are to work efficiently. Silvanet is a mobile network for the trees: the Internet of Trees. With solar-powered Gateways placed at regular intervals the sensors can speak to each other and send their data out of the forest to the people who need to receive it and take action. This doesn’t mean you can use your mobile deep within the forest, but it does mean the forest can ‘talk’ to the outside world and let it know if a fire is starting.

Prediction

Advances in technology are already making both detection and mitigation easier, faster and more accurate.  But imagine if you could predict where a fire will start. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help.

Although predicting the exact start location of a wildfire is challenging, calculating the risk can provide reasonable prediction accuracy.

Currently, fire risk is determined through a combination of weather information from satellites and, where available, enhanced with data from local weather stations. Fire risk is then calculated to around 1 km2. This is good, but not perfect.

More advanced calculations are based on VPD (vapour pressure deficit) which is the difference between the amount of moisture that’s in the air and the amount of moisture that air could hold at saturation. From a wildfire perspective, consistently elevated VPD (in other words drier air, holding less moisture than saturation) means that ecosystems can more easily ignite and spread fire, leading to the larger, higher-severity wildfires.

Calculating fire risk levels by considering various sources of information (satellite, weather stations and potentially local sensors) and then mapping the risk is a complex and tedious task. But it can be automated and enhanced in accuracy and resolution with the help of AI. Adding more fine-grained information, such as soil and air moisture levels measured by sensors embedded in the forest, would help to take into account the microclimate of the forest. In the future, we may even be able to measure the fuel moisture (grass, leaves and needles), rather than just the soil moisture. This would make risk calculation, and therefore fire prediction, even more accurate.

Firefighting technology

Once a fire is detected it needs to be extinguished. This usually means firefighters and trucks on the ground, and perhaps helicopters or planes dropping huge quantities of water on the fire from above.

If a fire can be detected sooner, then the number of people and the amount of equipment needed can be reduced considerably. Something the size of a bonfire is easily contained by a single team and one truck, but once you have acres of trees aflame, it can require hundreds of people and dozens of fire trucks, plus aerial support.

This can be compounded by accessibility. Even when a fire is spotted in the very early stages, it can take time for the fire crews to reach it. It could be in a remote location, or in a landscape that is difficult to traverse – perhaps vehicles can’t reach the spot. There are many reasons why a fire, even one we know about, can still get ‘out of hand’.

Drones could provide the solution. Imagine if the sensor could detect and pinpoint the fire, and then send an autonomous drone to the very spot it is needed to extinguish the fire. Fires could be caught quickly, safely and (relatively) cheaply.  Dryad has recently received €3.8million EU grant funding to develop drones with this capability and hopes to have the first working units available in the next 2-3 years. This could mark a genuine game changer in the fight against the destruction of wildfires.

The future

Currently, governments around the world are focusing (and spending millions) on increasing the number of firefighters, trucks and planes available to tackle the fires. In the coming years, I expect to see a gradual movement away from this type of spending and instead we’ll see investment in detection and mitigation technology.

The use of improved prediction modelling enhanced by a variety of environmental sensors including those for early detection, combined with automated firefighting methods, like autonomous drones, could see us begin to win the war against the destruction caused by severe wildfires. 

Photo: Caleb Cook

---

About the author

Carsten Brinkschulte is CEO and co-founder of Dryad Networks. Dryad provides ultra-early detection of wildfires as well as health and growth-monitoring of forests using solar-powered gas sensors in a large-scale IoT sensor network. Dryad aims to reduce unwanted wildfires, which cause up to 20% of global CO2 emissions and have a devastating impact on biodiversity. By 2030, Dryad aims to prevent 3.9m hectares of forest from burning, preventing 1.7bn tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Website:  https://www.dryad.net/

Philippine volcano erupts, 

spews plume of ash, gas

Xinhua

2024-12-09       

The Kanlaon volcano in central Philippines erupted on Monday, spewing a column of ash and gas into the sky, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.

An explosive eruption occurred at the summit vent of the Kanlaon Volcano on Monday afternoon, the institute said in an alert-level bulletin.

"The eruption produced a voluminous plume that rapidly rose to 3,000 meters above the vent and drifted west-southwest," it read.

The bulletin added that the activity means a "magmatic eruption has begun that may progress to further explosive eruptions."

The institute raised the alert level to three on a scale of five.

It also advised villagers within a 6-km radius of the volcano's summit to evacuate, saying that the public "must be prepared for additional evacuation if activity warrants."

The Kanlaon Volcano, which straddles the provinces of Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental on the island of Negros, is one of the country's most active volcanoes, which erupted in June.

Canlaon, Philippines

RECENT ACTIVITY

Location: 10.4N, 123.1E
Elevation: 7,987 feet (2,435 m)

Photo Credit: Jorgen S Aabech Canlaon is a stratovolcano in the north central part of the island of Negros. It has two summit cones, each with a crater. This photo looks west across northern Negros. Silay, a Holocene stratovolcano is the northern most cone on the island (obscured by clouds). Mandalagan, also a Holocene stratovolcano, has a small plume on clouds off its summit to the southeast (to the bottom left). Canlaon is near the center of the north part of the island. Expedia Map of the Canlaon area Canlaon has 19 historic eruptions between 1866 and 1993. The eruptions are small to moderate in size (VEI=1-2) and explosive. Space Shuttle photo STS056-0155-0219. April 15, 1993. Canlaon volcano (also spelled Kanlaon), the most active of the central Philippines, forms the highest point on the island of Negros. The massive 2435-m-high stratovolcano is dotted with fissure-controlled pyroclastic cones and craters, many of which are filled by lakes. The summit of Canlaon contains a broad elongated northern caldera with a crater lake and a smaller, but higher, historically active crater to the south. The largest debris avalanche known in the Philippines traveled 33 km to the SW from Canlaon. Historical eruptions, recorded since 1866, have typically consisted of phreatic explosions of small-to-moderate size that produce minor ashfalls near the volcano. Click HERE for information about climing Mt. Kanlaon (external) Sources of Information: Neumann van Padang, M., 1953, Philippine Islands and Cochin China. Catalogue of the Active Volcanoes of the World, International Association of Volcanology, 2, Rome, Italy, 49 p. Simkin, T., and Siebert, L., 1994, Volcanoes of the World: Geoscience Press, Tucson, Arizona, 349 p.

DEI WIN

Judge upholds Naval Academy's diversity-promoting admissions program


A graduating midshipmen carries his hat while participating in the Naval Academy Graduation and Commissioning Ceremony at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., on May 24. A federal judge on Friday upheld the legality of the academy's race-conscious admissions program. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 6 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Friday upheld the legality of the U.S. Naval Academy's race-conscious admissions program, agreeing it is in the U.S. national security interest to have a racially diverse military officer corps.

U.S. Senior District Judge Richard Bennett sided with the academy's arguments that its narrowly crafted admissions program, which uses a prospective midshipman's race as one of the determining factors, passes legal muster under a Supreme Court decision from last year banning affirmative action in higher education.

In his 179-page decision, he noted that in its Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling from last year, the high court carved out an exception for the nation's military academies.

"Over many years, military and civilian leaders have determined that a racially diverse officer corps is a national security interest," Bennett wrote, adding, "The program survives strict scrutiny because the Naval Academy has established a compelling national security interest in a diverse officer corps in the Navy and Marine Corps.

"Specifically, the academy has tied its use of race to the realization of an officer corps that represents the country it protects and the people it leads."

Students for Fair Admissions, a legal group founded by conservative activist Edward Blum, had sought to extend the reach of the Harvard decision to the nation's military academies in its current case. The ruling overturned a decades-old precedent by barring colleges nationwide from considering race in admissions, but in his opinion Chief Justice John Roberts exempted the country's service academies.

Blum said Friday he was "disappointed" by Bennett's ruling and will appeal the case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"If we are unsuccessful there, then we will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court," he said in a statement issued to media outlets. "It is our hope that the U.S. military academies ultimately will be compelled to follow the Supreme Court's prohibition of race in college admissions."

The Legal Defense Fund, which filed an amicus brief supporting the Naval Academy in the suit along with the American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the decision.

"We are pleased to see the district court affirm the right of the Naval Academy to use an admissions policy designed to identify talented, hard-working students that hail from all parts of the racially diverse country our military serves," LDF Senior Counsel Michaele Turnage Young said in a statement.

"The military is keenly aware that a climate of distrust caused by a lack of equal opportunity along racial lines risks mission failure and loss of life. It is unfortunate that some are willing to undermine the safety of our sailors and risk our country's national security by promoting exclusion," Young said.

Analysis predicts big drop in U.S. global health ranking

AMERICAN EXCETIONALISM; FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE 

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News


Americans are falling farther behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to health and life expectancy, a new study shows. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News


Americans are falling farther behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to health and life expectancy, a new study shows.

Life expectancy in the United States is expected to increase to 79.9 years in 2035 and 80.4 years by 2050, up from 78.3 years in 2022, researchers reported.

That sounds good, but it's actually a modest increase that will lower the nation's global ranking from 49th in 2022 to 66th in 2050 among 204 countries around the world, they found.

"The rapid decline of the U.S. in global rankings from 2022 to 2050 rings the alarm for immediate action," said co-senior study author Dr. Stein Emil Vollset, an affiliate professor with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Related

U.S. seniors struggle to pay medical bills more than peers in other wealthy countries
Many rural U.S. hospitals shutting down maternity wards

"The U.S. must change course and find new and better health strategies and policies that slow down the decline in future health outcomes," Vollset added in a university news release.

The United States is also expected to rank progressively lower than other nations in the average number of years a person can expect to live in good health, researchers reported Thursday in the Lancet journal.

The U.S. ranking in healthy life expectancy will drop from 80th in 2022 to 108th by 2050, results showed.

The comparative health of U.S. women is expected to fare worse than that of men.

Female life expectancy in the U.S. is forecast to drop to 74th in 2050, down from 19th in 1990, while male life expectancy will decrease to 65th in 2050 from 35th in 1990, the study found.

The major drivers of poor health in America include obesity, high blood sugar and high blood pressure, researchers noted.

If those risk factors were eliminated by 2050, 12.4 million deaths could be averted, researchers forecast.

"In spite of modest increases in life expectancy overall, our models forecast health improvements slowing down due to rising rates of obesity, which is a serious risk factor to many chronic diseases and forecasted to leap to levels never before seen," said co-senior study author Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

"The rise in obesity and overweight rates in the U.S., with IHME forecasting over 260 million people affected by 2050, signals a public health crisis of unimaginable scale," Murray added.

Drug-related deaths also are eating into American health.

The United States recorded an 878% increase in the death rate from drug use disorders between 1990 and 2021, rising from 2 deaths to 19.5 deaths per 100,000, researchers noted.

And that rate is expected to climb another 34% by 2050, up to 26.7 deaths per 100,000 -- the highest drug-related mortality rate in the world, more than twice that of the second-highest country, Canada.

"The stark contrast that's forecasted in the next 30 years comes after a concerted effort by federal, state and local government agencies and health systems launched after the opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency in 2017," said lead researcher Ali Mokdad, a professor with IHME.

"The opioid epidemic is far from over, and greater effectiveness and continued expansion of programs to prevent and treat drug use are still needed," Mokdad added.

These trends harm not only individual Americans, but the nation as a whole, researchers said.

"Poor health harms the economy because the nation suffers from a reduced workforce, lower productivity and higher health care costs for companies and their employees," Murray said. "That leads to a lower GDP and a chance for peer countries with a stronger economy to overtake the U.S., creating a ripple effect around the world financially and geopolitically."

Expanding health care access is the most straightforward way to improve America's standing, as such coverage allows doctors to catch and treat disease more effectively, researchers said.

"All Americans must have access to high-quality health care through universal health coverage to prevent illness, stay healthy and be protected from financial hardship, regardless of their income," Mokdad said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about U.S. life expectancy.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

ALCHEMY n'est-ce pas

How the Tunisian sun is turning red algae into food industry gold

In the sheltered waters of northwest Tunisia's Bizerte lagoon, red algae is being transformed into valuable food additives using nothing but sunlight – a natural process that is creating jobs and reviving marine life in the process.

07/12/2024 - 

Red algae grown off the coast of Bizerte, in Tunisia, is hand-washed and dried in the sun. © Lilia Blaise / RFI

Led by Franco-Tunisian company Selt Marine, the project involves turning the algae into plant-based gelatine, offering a sustainable alternative for the global food industry.

It took three decades to launch due to ongoing research and environmental impact studies. Now it spans 80 hectares of marine concessions and is set to grow, with plans to invest €8 million over the next two years.

Inside a small workshop overlooking the lagoon, a group of women meticulously wash the freshly harvested algae in large water tanks.

“I clean them thoroughly, then they are dried. Once that’s done, the fishermen bring us a new batch, and we start over,” said 55-year-old Mongia Thabet, who has performed this task daily for almost seven years.

Sun-bleached algae

The algae is laid out to dry under the Tunisian sun on large tables, a natural process that distinguishes Selt Marine from competitors who use chemical bleaching.

“Most of our rivals, if not all, use peroxide to whiten the algae,” company founder Mounir Boulkout told RFI. “We rely on the Tunisian sun to whiten ours, and that whiteness is a mark of quality for our clients.”

On their vast marine concessions, algae grows on ropes and tubes submerged in the sea, allowing controlled reproduction. The harvested algae – nearly 10,000 tonnes annually – is then processed into plant-based gelatine or emulsifiers, catering to industrial giants worldwide.

"Boulkout in Arabic means 'the one who gives food' so I have a bit of an obligation," joked Boulkout. “In many processed products, you’ll find additives that are neither healthy nor plant-based. We create a product with ecological virtues.”

Impact of climate change

Beyond food production, the algae farms are helping restore marine biodiversity, attracting fish and shellfish to an area that has been badly affected by overfishing and climate change – which has also had an impact on the company's operations.

"When I arrived in 1995, we collected and found enormous amounts of algae in July and August. That's no longer the case. There's nothing left because about three or four years ago, the Mediterranean warmed 5C during summer," said Boulkout.

To adapt, the company now operates mainly from October to June and has expanded to include operations in Mozambique and Zanzibar to ensure year-round production.

Festival shares human stories behind Mediterranean migrant rescues

Maritime rescue charity SOS Méditerranée is hosting an arts festival in Paris to boost support for migrants and asylum seekers navigating the treacherous Mediterranean Sea – the most deadly crossing for those fleeing war, poverty and persecution.

Migrants being rescued by the SOS Mediterranée’s Ocean Viking vessel off the coast of Libya in March, 2024.

 AFP - JOHANNA DE TESSIERES

By: RFI / AFP
Issued on: 08/12/202

The organisation's first Escales Solidaires festival, running until 7 January in Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, aims to show the human faces behind migration statistics through photography, film and performance.

The NGO, which operates rescue ships in the central Mediterranean, has saved more than 40,000 lives since its founding in 2015. It needs €24,000 per day to maintain its rescue operations.


Individual stories

An outdoor exhibition along the Seine features work by some 30 photographers documenting a decade of missions by the organisation’s rescue vessels, Aquarius and Ocean Viking.

"I asked crew members and survivors to share a treasured object and narrate its significance", said photographer Jérémie Lusseau.

Belgian photographer Johanna de Tessières reflected on her poignant portrait of an eight-year-old boy named Ali, saying: "It was shocking to witness that at such a young age, he had already endured imprisonment in Libya and was now attempting the journey alone."

'Ocean Viking' saves over 400 migrants on Mediterranean in two days
Beyond the statistics

At the heart of the festival are the human stories behind the statistics.

“We want to continually emphasise that behind the statistics and the label ‘migrants’ are individual children, women and men,” said Sabine Grenard, head of events for SOS Méditerranée.

“Onboard, the realisation is immediate; it’s about people, not a collective."

The festival comes as Mediterranean crossings grow deadlier. In October 2024, 125 people died or went missing at sea – marking a significant increase from 83 in the same month last year.

The summer of 2023 saw the highest number of casualties since 2016, with 831 lives lost or unaccounted for in June alone.

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EMPIRE - Monoskop

Hardt, Michael. Empire / Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-25121-0 (cloth). ISBN 0-674-00671 ...

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MULTITUDE - Rebel Studies Library

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Arrivederci! Why young Italians are leaving in droves

Rome (AFP) – Billie Fusto is not after a fat pay cheque: he is training to be an archivist and wants nothing more than "a quiet life" at home in Italy.


Issued on: 09/12/2024 

One for the road: Nine times more young people are leaving Italy than are migrating there 

© Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP

But like tens of thousands of other young Italian graduates, the 24-year-old fears he has little choice but to emigrate.

More than a million Italians have left in the past 10 years -- a third of them aged 25 to 34 -- national data shows.

Those leaving blame low salaries and little recognition for their skills. The proportion of graduates leaving in particular is on the rise.

"I'm not looking for wealth... or big responsibilities," said Fusto, who comes from Calabria in southern Italy, and is studying for a masters in Rome.

"I want a quiet life, in which I don't have to worry about whether I have 15 euros to go shopping," he told AFP.

"And currently, in Italy that's not guaranteed."

While migration has become a hot-button issue, for every young foreigner who comes to settle in Italy, nearly nine young Italians leave, according to a report by the Italian North East Foundation.

"It is not normal that our country does not ask itself why, and does not remedy this haemorrhage," Renato Brunetta, president of the National Council for Economics and Labour (CNEL), said during the report's presentation in October.
Real wages falling

Some, particularly from Italy's poorer south, move to the country's wealthy northern regions to try their luck. The share of graduates among them has increased from 18 to 58 percent in the last two decades.

But even in the industrialised north, working conditions can be less than attractive than elsewhere.

Italy is one of the few OECD countries where real wages have decreased compared to 2019.

The youth unemployment rate is also higher than the European average, at 17.7 percent in October, compared to 15.2 percent across the EU.

Workplaces in Italy are seen as unmeritocratic. There is no national minimum wage, and salaries do not rise in line with the number of years spent in higher education.

Elena Picardi returned to Rome after studying political science in France -- but her hopes of finding a job in Italy are fading fast.

"More often than not, when it comes to Italian offers, either the salary is not specified or it is generally lower," the 24-year-old told AFP.

The difference can amount to several hundred euros per month for the same position in other European countries.

"I would like to contribute to the future of my country, and stay close to my family," Picardi said.

"But why should I sacrifice my prospects when... my profile is more valued (abroad)?"
Demographic time bomb

The Italian "brain drain" cost the country an estimated 134 billion euros between 2011 and 2023, according to the North East Foundation.

Of those who do return, many say it is because they want to be closer to their families, their report said.

Others stay at home out of necessity rather than choice.

The average age for leaving the family home in Italy in 2022 was 30, according to Eurostat -- among the oldest in the European Union, with only Spain and Greece

The exodus of youngsters is all the more worrying in view of the ageing Italian population.

The ratio between people in employment and those not working will increase from the current three to two, to around one to one in 2050, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

In a bid to reverse the trend, Italy offers tax incentives for highly qualified or specialist Italian workers living abroad who return home, with even bigger cuts offered to those who bring children with them.

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MULTITUDE - Rebel Studies Library

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Public housing didn’t fail in the US; it was sabotaged.

A brief history of how America’s public housing experiment was designed to fail.


by Abdallah Fayyad

Dec 8, 2024
VO

The deserted Desire Public Housing Project in New Orleans.
Shepard Sherbell/CORBIS SABA/Corbis via Getty Images


The stereotypical image of public housing in America is one of deteriorating buildings, urban blight, and dysfunctional housing authorities in seemingly never-ending crises. Residents routinely deal with bad living conditions, including heat failures, pest infestations, mold, and leaks. And public housing projects are often found in areas with concentrated poverty and in underserved, racially segregated neighborhoods.

By and large, America’s experiment with public housing has been viewed as a failure — so much so that housing authorities have offloaded some of their responsibilities to the private sector.

But the demise of public housing was not an inevitable outcome. As my colleague Rachel Cohen has pointed out, other countries have successfully pulled it off. Governments around the world have shown that they can operate mixed-income housing developments that have reliable maintenance and upkeep and that public housing doesn’t have to segregate poor people away from the middle class.


So why did public housing in the United States age so poorly?

A bold experiment that was designed to fail


The federal government’s plans to build public housing started in the 1930s, as part of the New Deal, in an effort to create jobs during the Great Depression and address the country’s housing shortage.


But efforts to undermine public housing are about as old as the efforts to build it. From the outset, opposition was fierce. Many Americans didn’t like the idea of the government using their tax dollars to subsidize poor people’s housing, and real estate developers were concerned about having to compete with the government.


The Housing Act of 1949, which had a goal of providing “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family,” bolstered America’s public housing plans by heavily investing in the construction of new housing units. But by then, the federal government had already undermined its own stated plans by capping construction costs (which encouraged using cheap materials and discouraged modern appliances) and allowing racial segregation. Congress had also doomed public housing authorities’ ability to raise revenue through rents in 1936 when it passed the George-Healey Act, which established income limits for who can qualify for public housing — making mixed-income public housing models impossible for federally funded projects.


As housing projects started to draw more Black residents, white people who lived in public housing started leaving, especially after the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s banned racial discrimination in housing. This was partly because the Federal Housing Authority pushed for more people to own homes and expanded its loans mostly to white people, helping white families move out of the projects. Black families didn’t receive the same opportunity.


“You saw a change in the racial composition, which simply added to the stigma and the pattern of administrative neglect that characterized many housing authorities,” the historian Ed Goetz told the Atlantic in 2015.


Starting with President Richard Nixon — who declared that the US government had turned into “the biggest slumlord in history” and suspended federal spending on subsidized housing — public housing started facing serious austerity measures and never recovered. Federal investments shifted away from building new public housing units and toward housing vouchers and public-private partnerships.



In the decades that followed, public housing started declining in quality, and Congress funded a program to demolish dilapidated public housing units and replace them with newly constructed or renovated mixed-income developments. But according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, those demolitions were an “overcorrection”; public housing simply needed more funding and better management.

It didn’t have to be this way


America’s public housing was an ambitious program that consistently faced efforts by lawmakers to undermine it. Throughout the program’s history, legislation deliberately limited its potential to house Americans as needed. In addition to the George-Healey Act, laws like the 1998 Faircloth Amendment put a ceiling on the number of homes public housing authorities are allowed to own.


But that doesn’t mean that public housing in the United States is entirely devoid of successes. The general picture of decay and neglect ignores the many positive experiences people have had living in government-run dwellings. As Goetz, a public policy professor at the University of Minnesota, writes, “The story of American public housing is one of quiet successes drowned out by loud failures.”

Related:How state governments are reimagining American public housing


More than 2 million people live in public housing in the United States, and without it, many of them would struggle to find affordable shelter. Indeed, there are countless stories of people whose lives would be tangibly worse without public housing. Mike Connolly, a Massachusetts state representative who has proposed expanding public housing, is one example. “Personally, I view [public housing] as a success. I was raised in a public housing project in Norwood, Massachusetts,” he told me. “Having that stable environment — not being subject to eviction, not being necessarily subject to a particular cost burden around housing — I think was really terrific for me and gave me the opportunity to develop into someone who has been doing a lot of good things in life.”



These bright spots show that there’s a solid foundation that the United States can build on rather than abandon its public housing experiment. “I think of [public housing] as a successful program that has provided low-cost, moderate-quality shelter to millions of people for almost a century across the United States,” Paul E. Williams, the executive director of the Center for Public Enterprise, told Vox. “It has been hampered and limited in its ability to do more by policy mistakes over the past 80 years.”


So if America wants to be a public housing success story, it can. It just has to stop sabotaging its own efforts to get there.


This story was featured in the Within Our Means newsletter. 

Abdallah Fayyad is a correspondent at Vox, where he covers the impacts of social and economic policies. He is the author of “Within Our Means,” a biweekly newsletter on ending poverty in America.

Mexico just put animal welfare into its national constitution

These reforms are a big win for advocates, but what happens next will be crucial for animals rights.

by Sam Delgado

Dec 7, 2024

VOX

President Claudia Sheinbaum a the daily morning briefing at the National Palace on October 14, 2024, in Mexico City, Mexico.
Emiliano Molina/ObturadorMX/Getty Images


This week was a big win for animals across Mexico.


On December 2, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a set of constitutional reforms that will pave the way for a comprehensive federal animal welfare law. The changes represent the first-ever mention of nonhuman animals in the Mexican Constitution, marking a milestone achievement for Mexico’s animal rights movement, which has for years been drawing attention to pervasive animal cruelty and extreme confinement in the country’s growing meat industry.


“This is huge,” says Dulce Ramirez, executive director of Animal Equality Mexico and the vice president of Animal Equality’s Latin American operations. These constitutional changes come after two years of campaigning by animal advocacy organizations, including Igauldad Animal Mexico, Humane Society International/Mexico (HSI/Mexico), and Movimiento Consciencia.


These reforms are internationally unique. While national animal protection laws aren’t uncommon, most countries have no mention of animals in their Constitutions. Constitutions are “a reflection of socially where we are,” Angela Fernandez, a law professor at the University of Toronto, told Vox, making any constitutional reform symbolically a big deal.


Beyond Mexico, nine countries include references to animals in their Constitutions, but those mentions have generally been brief and open to interpretation. “Mexico is different,” Kristen Stilt, faculty director at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program, told Vox. “It’s longer, it’s more specific. It’s in several provisions. It’s not just a general statement.”


Plenty of countries have laws against animal mistreatment, including the US, where all 50 states have an anti-cruelty law, but that doesn’t mean they’ve been particularly effective at stopping violence against animals. Part of the problem is that these laws very often exempt farmed animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens, thereby excluding from protection the overwhelming majority of animals that suffer at human hands. That’s where Mexico’s reforms stand out: They’re intended to protect all animals, including farmed animals and other exploited species.



The reforms in Mexico, the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, represent a major advancement in the status of animals globally. It could set a precedent for other countries in Latin America, where a vibrant animal rights movement has emerged in recent years, said Macarena Montes Franceschini, a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program.


Still, as one of the world’s top producers of beef, chicken, pork, dairy, and eggs, Mexico has an intensive animal agriculture industry much like the US, says Antón Aguilar, Humane Society International/Mexico’s executive director. Business interests will undoubtedly want to influence the writing of animal welfare laws that could impact their bottom lines, as they have in the US and elsewhere. The question now is what changes the constitutional reforms will really bring to animal law in Mexico, and how effective they will be.

What will these reforms do?


The reforms comprise changes to three separate articles of Mexico’s Constitution. The most foundational change amends the Constitution’s Article 73, which dictates what Congress has the authority to legislate on. The article now gives the federal government the power to issue laws on animal welfare and protection.


Previously, animal welfare was largely left up to local and state authorities, and the result has been uneven laws and enforcement across the country. While all states in Mexico have animal protection legislation, just three include farmed animals: Hidalgo, Colima, and as of last month, Oaxaca, following pressure from animal advocates. And though Mexico does have a federal law on animal health that focuses on farmed animals and includes some broad mentions of animal welfare, it was created to protect human health rather than animals. The same goes for Mexico’s federal wildlife law, which was written with a focus on sustainability and conservation, rather than on protecting individual animals from cruelty.


Perhaps the most significant part of the reforms is an amendment to Article 4 of Mexico’s Constitution prohibiting the mistreatment of animals and directing the Mexican state to guarantee the protection, adequate treatment, and conservation and care of animals. The language is broad, Ramirez says, but she sees it as a substantial improvement over existing animal welfare laws. She and other advocates worked to ensure that no animals were excluded, particularly given that farmed animals have historically been left out of animal protection.



“It’s really, really important in Mexico to start with this first step — but a big one — because now it’s all animals” that are covered, Ramirez said.


The changes to Articles 4 and 73 tee up the creation of federal legislation on animal welfare. Under these reforms, Mexico’s Congress has been directed to write a first-of-its-kind General Law of Animal Welfare, Care, and Protection, a comprehensive bill that would address and develop regulations preventing the mistreatment of all types of animals, including farmed animals, wildlife, animals in laboratories, and companion animals, Aguilar said.


This general animal welfare law will need to consider animals’“nature, characteristics and links with people,” according to the reform decree released last week. What does this actually mean? Ramirez gave the example of chickens: Part of the natural behavior of these animals is to be able to spread their wings and move around. But if chickens are stuck in cages, as is standard practice on egg factory farms, they can’t do either of those things. Now, the idea is to develop legal criteria that would consider the ability to express these natural behaviors as part of their welfare. (The language could also be interpreted to prioritize human needs, however — particularly the reference to animals’ “links with people.” Animal Equality said they would interpret this through an animal welfare lens, and with the word “link” invoking what humans owe animals.)


Finally, Article 3 of Mexico’s Constitution, which pertains to the education system, was also amended to require that animal welfare be included in school curricula for grade school and high school students. Aguilar said this change could help “attitudes shift and change in a very enduring, long-term way” for future generations. But the new constitutional language is unspecific, and the devil is in the details.

What’s next for animal welfare in Mexico


Advocates in Mexico have two focuses going forward, Ramirez and Aguilar said: shaping the general animal welfare bill into a strong piece of legislation, and working with the Ministry of Education to get meaningful implementation of animal welfare into the national curriculum.



It will also be important for lawmakers working on the new animal welfare bill to avoid industry capture. Various stakeholders will want a say in what regulations go into the law, including academic experts, animal-related professions such as veterinarians, and powerful corporate interests like animal agriculture producers.


When asked about what concerns she might have about the implementation of the reforms, Fernandez pointed first to the sway of business interests. “Are there going to be generous justifications that maybe are very industry-dictated?” she asked. Animal Equality also told Vox via email that there have been times when Mexican authorities have failed to issue legislation, even in situations like this where they’ve been tasked to do so.


But the animal welfare movement has relationships across the political spectrum that will likely work to its advantage when proposing what goes into this law. Ramirez told Vox that Animal Equality Mexico works with both liberal and conservative parties to find agreement on animal rights. Despite political polarization in Mexico, the animal welfare reforms “went very swiftly” through both chambers of the legislature, Aguilar said, passing unanimously in each.


“Animal issues are issues where political forces can find common ground,” he added.


The left-wing Morena party, of which recently elected President Sheinbaum is a member, also holds a majority of seats in both of Mexico’s legislative chambers. Before signing onto the constitutional reforms, Sheinbaum vocalized her support for them in her first address as the country’s leader.


But there’s an internal challenge, too, according to Aguilar and Ramirez. Animal welfare organizations that cover different species and different aspects of animal welfare will need to work as a united front. Some groups’ work focuses primarily on protections for farmed animals, others focus on banning bullfighting and cockfighting, and some have their sights on companion animals. It may be hard to settle on a proposal that works for everyone.



Ensuring meaningful implementation and enforcement will also be key concerns. “You can undercut obviously good language by poor enforcement,” Stilt said.


“I think the worst thing that could happen is for this to just be a pretty provision in the Constitution and nothing else,” said Montes Franceschini. “Not seeing any change for the government, not to give resources to the agency that has to ensure animal protection, not having funding, not having staff, not teaching police officers how to act in case of animal mistreatment. I think that that would worry me.”


The future of animal welfare will be decided in the Global South, where meat consumption and American-style factory farming are growing rapidly. Animal welfare advocates in Mexico are entering new, more ambitious, potentially much more impactful territory, a testament to the movement’s strength and political savvy. Other nations will be watching.


”It’s going to get pretty interesting,” said Aguilar. “I’m optimistic that we will come up with good compromises that are good for animals.”

Sam Delgado is a Future Perfect fellow writing about labor and food systems, public health, and literacy.

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