July 2020 set heat records for many U.S. states

by John Bateman, NOAA Headquarters

Credit: NOAA Headquarters

It was an unusually steamy month for the country—even for July. Some states recorded their hottest July ever as others tied with previous years.


The month's precipitation was also higher than average and ranked in the wettest third of the 126-year period of record, according to scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

Not to be outdone, tropical activity in the Atlantic revved up, producing three tropical storms and two hurricanes in just July alone. They were the earliest fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth named storms on record in the Atlantic Basin.

Here's a climate snapshot of the month of July and the year to date:

Climate by the numbers

July 2020

The average temperature last month across the contiguous U.S. was 75.7 degrees F (2.1 degrees above average), making July the 11th-warmest in the 126-year record.

Seven states—Connecticut (tie), Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (tie), and Virginia (tie)—reported their hottest July on record. Fourteen more states across the South and East reported a top-10 hottest July.

The average precipitation for July was 2.93 inches (0.15 of an inch above average), which ranked in the wettest third of the record. Above-average precipitation fell across much of the northern and central Plains, as well as the Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.

Year to date/January through July 2020

The year-to-date (YTD) average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 53.6 degrees F, which is 2.4 degrees above the 20th-century average and the seventh warmest YTD on record.

In keeping with the warm trend noted in June's report, Florida saw its hottest YTD on record by July's end.

Precipitation was plentiful across the U.S. with a total of 19.29 inches—1.20 inches above average. The YTD ranked in the wettest third of the 126-year record, with both Tennessee and West Virginia marking their fifth-wettest.

More notable climate events
Hanna hit Texas: The first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Hanna, struck Padre Island, Texas, on July 25, causing significant damage. Hanna was the earliest named "H storm" on record to form in the Atlantic.

Alaska was cool, with a few hot spots: The state had its coolest July since 2014, with an average temperature of 53.3 degrees F. Meanwhile, Kodiak had its third-warmest July since 1915, and Sitka Airport tied its all-time high temperature of 88 degrees on July 31.

Drought intensified across the U.S.: Approximately 33% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought by the end of July, up 7% from June, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor report. Drought expanded or intensified across parts of the parts of the West, South, central Plains, central Rockies, Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and Northeast.


Explore further July warmer than average, year to date 3rd warmest for Lower 48
More information: Assessing the U.S. Climate in July 2020. www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-202007

Indonesia's Mt. Sinabung blasts tower of smoke and ash into sky




Indonesia's Mount Sinabung erupted Monday, belching a massive column of ash and smoke 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) into the air and plunging local communities into darkness with a thick layer of debris.


The volcano on Sumatra island has been rumbling since 2010 and saw a deadly eruption in 2016.

Activity had picked up in recent days, including a pair of smaller eruptions at the weekend.

There were no reports of injuries or deaths from Monday morning's blast, but authorities warned of possible lava flows and more eruptions.

"This is an alert for all of us to avoid red-zone areas near Sinabung," said Armen Putera, a local official with Indonesia's Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre.

However, the crater's alert status remained at its second-highest level.

No one lives inside a previously announced no-go zone around the volcano.

Small communities nearby were coated in a layer of thick ash as at least one village went from day to night in a matter of minutes.

"It was like magic—when the ash came it went from being very bright to dark as night," said Rencana Sitepu, the head of Namanteran village, adding that some of the community's crops were destroyed by the fallout.

"The village went dark for about 20 minutes."

Mount Sinabung emits ash and smoke into the air

The coronavirus pandemic complicated matters as scared residents violated safety rules.

"Locals were gathering after the eruption without using face masks because they were all panicking," said local disaster agency chief Natanael Perangin-angin.

Sinabung had roared back to life in 2010 for the first time in 400 years. After another period of inactivity, it erupted once more in 2013, and has remained highly active since.

In 2016, seven people died in one of the eruptions, while another in 2014 killed 16.

In late 2018, a volcano in the strait between Java and Sumatra islands erupted, causing an underwater landslide and tsunami which killed more than 400 people.

Indonesia is home to about 130 active volcanoes due to its position on the "Ring of Fire", a belt of tectonic plate boundaries circling the Pacific Ocean where frequent seismic activity occurs.

Explore further Indonesia's Mt. Sinabung shoots column of smoke and ash into sky

© 2020 AFP

New global study shows 'best of the last' tropical forests urgently need protection

by Northern Arizona University
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The world's 'best of the last' tropical forests are at significant risk of being lost, according to a paper released today in Nature Ecology and Evolution. Of these pristine forests that provide key services—including carbon storage, prevention of disease transmission and water provision—only a mere 6.5 percent are formally protected.

In the study, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Wildlife Conservation Society and scientists from eight leading research institutions—including professor Scott Goetz, research professor Patrick Jantz and research associate Pat Burns of Northern Arizona University' School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems—identified significant omissions in international forest conservation strategies. Current global targets focus solely on forest extent and fail to acknowledge the importance of forest intactness, or structural condition, creating a critical gap in action to safeguard ecosystems essential for human and planetary well-being.

New targets that recognize forest quality are urgently needed to safeguard the Earth's precious humid tropical forests. Of the 1.9 million hectares of humid tropical forests globally, the study advocated for new protections in 41 percent of these areas, active restoration in 7 percent and reduction of human pressure in 19 percent to promote coordinated strategies to sustain forests of high ecological value.

"By serving as a convener to bring together the world's best scientists with governments, UNDP plays a critical role in ensuring that cutting-edge research is relevant for the development of key international agreements and implementation at the national level," commented Haoliang Xu, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director of Bureau for Policy and Programme Support.

Collaborating with UNDP Country Offices and key stakeholders in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru, and Viet Nam, researchers mapped the location of high-quality forests using recently developed high-resolution maps of forest structure and human pressure across the global humid tropics.

The paper reveals that the Earth's humid tropical forests, only half of which have high ecological integrity, are largely limited to the Amazon and Congo Basins. The vast majority of these forests have no formal protection and, given recent rates of loss, are at significant risk.


With the rapid disappearance of these 'best of the last' forests at stake, the paper provides a policy-driven framework for their conservation and restoration, recommending locations to maintain protections, add new protections, restore forest structure, and mitigate human pressure.

The coming year is a so-called 'super year' for biodiversity, in which the world will agree on a new deal for nature that will shape global action for the next 30 years. Countries will also have a final chance to revise their contributions to reduce carbon emissions before the Paris Climate Agreement goes into effect. Both these milestones will impact efforts to advance the nature-based Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

"The work reported in this paper is the result of a long process assessing the condition of the world's tropical forests," said Goetz, a co-author of the paper. "The breakthrough here was being able to use spaceborne satellite data to provide the first robust estimates of the structural condition of forests in three dimensions, not just forest canopy cover."

"Advances in earth observation instruments and methodologies developed by NASA and partner institutions, coupled with the use of incredibly powerful computing systems like NAU's Monsoon and Google Earth Engine, enabled a near-global mapping of tropical forest quality. We synthesized the best available earth observation datasets to map the changing condition of the Earth's tropical forests, finding that only 6.5 percent of the highest quality tropical forests are formally protected. We hope that the conservation strategies proposed as part of this international effort will be a step towards conserving high quality forests and restoring those that have been degraded," said Burns.

"Every year, research reveals new ways that old, structurally complex forests contribute to biodiversity, carbon storage, water resources, and many other ecosystem services. That we can now map such forests in great detail is an important step forward in efforts to conserve them," said Jantz.


Explore further Saving Africa's biggest trees to help Earth breathe

More information: Hansen, A.J., Burns, P., Ervin, J. et al. A policy-driven framework for conserving the best of Earth's remaining moist tropical forests. Nat Ecol Evol (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1274-7

Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution 


Provided by Northern Arizona University

Creative block of molecular evolution: Adaptive mutations repeat themselves in tiny crustaceans of Lake Baikal

by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

Credit: Pavel Odinev / Skoltech

A group of scientists from Skoltech and the Institute for Information Transmission Problems of RAS (IITP RAS) showed, using Lake Baikal amphipods as an example, that parallel evolution driven by adaptations can be detected at the whole-genome level. The research was published in the Genome Biology and Evolution journal.

Similar adaptations are sometimes known to result from exactly the same mutations that occurred independently. The phenomenon is commonly termed "parallel evolution" to describe evolution that keeps repeating itself. It is usually hard to prove that such "parallel" mutations did not occur by pure accident but actually help organisms to adapt to their environment. Thus far, adaptive parallel mutations have been found in some individual genes or small groups of interrelated genes only.

A team of Skoltech and IITP RAS researchers led by Georgii Bazykin, an evolutionary biologist and a professor at Skoltech, undertook extensive bioinformatics analysis of protein-coding sequences of 46 amphipod species from Lake Baikal. The scientists were eager to see whether closely related amphipods from a Baikalian species flock displayed an elevated rate of adaptive parallel evolution.

The research suggests that adaptive parallel mutations are more common than random parallel mutations in protein-coding sequences of Lake Baikal amphipods and actually affect several thousand genes. Drawing on basic laws of molecular evolution, the scientists showed that the mutations they discovered were indeed caused by the species' need to adapt to the environment. However, the exact adaptations behind parallel evolution still remain a mystery.

"Lake Baikal is home to hundreds of species of endemic amphipods that evolved from several species in their distant ancestry and embrace a variety of ecological niches from predators to planktonic forms and parasites. Parallels were found even between forms with totally different lifestyles," says Valentina Burskaia, the first author of the study and a Skoltech Ph.D. student.

Explore furtherFoot feathering birds flock genetically together

More information: Valentina Burskaia et al. Excessive parallelism in protein evolution of Lake Baikal amphipod species flock, Genome Biology and Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evaa138

Provided by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

Captive beluga whales released into Iceland sea sanctuary

'AFTER FREEDOM OF THE SEA A SANCTUARY IS JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR PRISON'

MIKE FOUCAULT 

The beluga whales have moved to a sea sanctuary in Iceland after being released from a Shanghai aquarium

Two beluga whales from a Shanghai aquarium have returned to the sea in an Icelandic sanctuary, conservationists said Monday, expressing hopes of creating a model for rehoming some 300 belugas currently in captivity.

Little White and Little Grey, two 13-year-old females, left behind their previous lives entertaining visitors at the Changfeng Ocean World in June 2019 when they were flown to Iceland's Klettsvik Bay in the Westman Islands, in specially tailored containers.

On Friday, they were moved from their landbased facility to care pools in the sea at Klettsvik Bay—the first time the two belugas have been in the sea since they were taken from a Russian whale research centre in 2011, the conservation charity Sea Life Trust said in a statement on Monday.

They will stay in the care pools "for a few weeks" before they are released into the bigger sanctuary, a 32,000-square-metre (344,445-square-foot) sea pen that will become their home, organisers said.

Little Grey and Little White "will need a short period of time to acclimatise to their new natural environment and all the outdoor elements before they are released into the wider sanctuary in Klettsvik Bay," the statement said.

After having been cared for by humans for so many years, it is unlikely the belugas would survive in the wild.

The pen is thus sealed off by nets that still allow sea life, such as fish, to swim through.

The conservationists hope to create a model for rehoming some 300 beluga whales currently in captivity

'Ambassadors'

Andy Bool, the head of Sea Life Trust, said the belugas' release "was as smooth as we had hoped and planned for."

"We are carefully monitoring Little Grey and Little White with our expert care team and veterinarians," he said.

Bool said the whales were "ambassadors for the 300 other belugas that are in human care across the world."

"We hope to show that Little White and Little Grey thrive in this bay, and we're conducting a research study ... that will hopefully show that there's a welfare benefit to being in a natural environment like this.

"We hope that can then persuade others that maybe their beluga whales might be better off in a different environment," Bool said.

Ahead of their sea transfer, the whales were trained to hold their breath longer, become physically stronger to cope with tides and currents, and put on blubber to help them cope with colder water temperatures.

Ahead of their sea transfer, the whales were trained to hold their breath longer, become physically stronger to cope with tides and put on blubber to help them in colder water

The whales each weigh 900 kilogrammes (2,000 pounds) and measure four metres (13 feet).

Originally from Russian Arctic waters, it is thought they were two or three years old when captured.

Belugas typically live for 40 to 60 years.

According to Sea Life Trust, Klettsvik Bay is the world's first open water beluga sanctuary.

Klettsvik is also where Keiko, the killer whale in the 1993 film "Free Willy", was flown in 1998. The orca was fully released in 2002 but did not manage to adapt to life in the wild and died 18 months later in a Norwegian fjord.

Explore further

Captive beluga whales make epic journey from China to Iceland sanctuary

© 2020 AFP

Third breakthrough demonstrates photosynthetic hacks can boost yield, conserve water
HACK=GMO/GEby University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A team of scientists from the University of Essex has boosted crop productivity by 27 percent by resolving two bottlenecks in photosynthesis--the process whereby plants fix carbon dioxide into the sugars that fuel crop growth. Chidi Afamefule (left) holds an unmodified control plant while Kenny Brown (center) holds a plant modified to resolve one bottleneck, and Patricia Lopez-Calcagno (right) holds a plant modified to resolve two bottlenecks. Credit: RIPE Project/Claire Benjamin

Plants are factories that manufacture yield from light and carbon dioxide—but parts of this complex process, called photosynthesis, are hindered by a lack of raw materials and machinery. To optimize production, scientists from the University of Essex have resolved two major photosynthetic bottlenecks to boost plant productivity by 27 percent in real-world field conditions, according to a new study published in Nature Plants. This is the third breakthrough for the research project Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE); however, this photosynthetic hack has also been shown to conserve water.


"Like a factory line, plants are only as fast as their slowest machines," said Patricia Lopez-Calcagno, a postdoctoral researcher at Essex, who led this work for the RIPE project. "We have identified some steps that are slower, and what we're doing is enabling these plants to build more machines to speed up these slower steps in photosynthesis."

The RIPE project is an international effort led by the University of Illinois to develop more productive crops by improving photosynthesis—the natural, sunlight-powered process that all plants use to fix carbon dioxide into sugars that fuel growth, development, and ultimately yield. RIPE is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), and the U.K. Government's Department for International Development (DFID).
A factory's productivity decreases when supplies, transportation channels, and reliable machinery are limited. To find out what limits photosynthesis, researchers have modeled each of the 170 steps of this process to identify how plants could manufacture sugars more efficiently.

In this study, the team increased crop growth by 27 percent by resolving two constraints: one in the first part of photosynthesis where plants transform light energy into chemical energy and one in the second part where carbon dioxide is fixed into sugars.

Inside two photosystems, sunlight is captured and turned into chemical energy that can be used for other processes in photosynthesis. A transport protein called plastocyanin moves electrons into the photosystem to fuel this process. But plastocyanin has a high affinity for its acceptor protein in the photosystem so it hangs around, failing to shuttle electrons back and forth efficiently.

The team addressed this first bottleneck by helping plastocyanin share the load with the addition of cytochrome c6—a more efficient transport protein that has a similar function in algae. Plastocyanin requires copper and cytochrome requires iron to function. Depending on the availability of these nutrients, algae can choose between these two transport proteins.

At the same time, the team has improved a photosynthetic bottleneck in the Calvin-Benson Cycle—wherein carbon dioxide is fixed into sugars—by bulking up the amount of a key enzyme called SBPase, borrowing the additional cellular machinery from another plant species and cyanobacteria.

In a recent study, published in Nature Plants a team of scientists from the University of Essex boosted crop growth by 27 percent over two years of field experiments by resolving two bottlenecks in photosynthesis--the process whereby plants fix carbon dioxide into sugars that fuel crop growth and yields. This GIF shows a plant modified to resolve both bottlenecks (double), a plant modified to resolve one bottleneck (single), and an unmodified control plant. Credit: RIPE project

By adding "cellular forklifts" to shuttle electrons into the photosystems and "cellular machinery" for the Calvin Cycle, the team also improved the crop's water-use efficiency, or the ratio of biomass produced to water lost by the plant.

"In our field trials, we discovered that these plants are using less water to make more biomass," said principal investigator Christine Raines, a professor in the School of Life Sciences at Essex where she also serves as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research. "The mechanism responsible for this additional improvement is not yet clear, but we are continuing to explore this to help us understand why and how this works."

These two improvements, when combined, have been shown to increase crop productivity by 52 percent in the greenhouse. More importantly, this study showed up to a 27 percent increase in crop growth in field trials, which is the true test of any crop improvement—demonstrating that these photosynthetic hacks can boost crop production in real-world growing conditions.

"This study provides the exciting opportunity to potentially combine three confirmed and independent methods of achieving 20 percent increases in crop productivity," said RIPE Director Stephen Long, Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois. "Our modeling suggests that stacking this breakthrough with two previous discoveries from the RIPE project could result in additive yield gains totaling as much as 50 to 60 percent in food crops."

RIPE's first discovery, published in Science, helped plants adapt to changing light conditions to increase yields by as much as 20 percent. The project's second breakthrough, also published in Science, created a shortcut in how plants deal with a glitch in photosynthesis to boost productivity by 20 to 40 percent.

Next, the team plans to translate these discoveries from tobacco—a model crop used in this study as a test-bed for genetic improvements because it is easy to engineer, grow, and test—to staple food crops such as cassava, cowpea, maize, soybean and rice that are needed to feed our growing population this century. The RIPE project and its sponsors are committed to ensuring Global Access and making the project's technologies available to the farmers who need them the most.


Explore further

Boost soybean yields by adapting photosynthesis to fleeting shadows, according to model

More information: Johannes Kromdijk et al, Improving photosynthesis and crop productivity by accelerating recovery from photoprotection, Science (2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aai8878
Journal information: Science , Nature Plants


Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Mathematical patterns developed by Alan Turing help researchers understand bird behavior

by University of Sheffield

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Scientists from the University of Sheffield have used mathematical modelling to understand why flocks of long-tailed tits segregate themselves into different parts of the landscape.

The team tracked the birds around Sheffield's Rivelin Valley which eventually produced a pattern across the landscape, using maths helped the team to reveal the behaviors causing these patterns.

The findings, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, show that flocks of long-tailed tits are less likely to avoid places where they have interacted with relatives and more likely to avoid larger flocks, whilst preferring the center of woodland.

It was previously unknown why flocks of long-tailed tits live in separate parts of the same area, despite there being plenty of food to sustain multiple flocks and the birds not showing territorial behavior.

The equations used to understand the birds are similar to those developed by Alan Turing to describe how animals get their spotted and striped patterns. Turing's famous mathematics indicates if patterns will appear as an animal grows in the womb, here it's used to find out which behaviors lead to the patterns across the landscape.

Territorial animals often live in segregated areas that they aggressively defend and stay close to their den. Before this study, these mathematical ideas had been used to understand the patterns made by territorial animals such as coyotes, meerkats and even human gangs. However, this study was the first to use the ideas on non-territorial animals with no den pinning them in place.

Natasha Ellison, Ph.D. student at the University of Sheffield who led the study, said: "Mathematical models help us understand nature in an extraordinary amount of ways and our study is a fantastic example of this."

"Long-tailed tits are too small to be fitted with GPS trackers like larger animals, so researchers follow these tiny birds on foot, listening for bird calls and identifying birds with binoculars. The field work is extremely time consuming and without the help of these mathematical models these behaviors wouldn't have been discovered."


Explore further  Long-tailed tits avoid incest by recognising the calls of relatives

AUSTRALIA
Why most Aboriginal & INDIGENOUS people have little say over clean energy projects planned for their land

by Lily O'neill, Brad Riley, Ganur Maynard, Janet Hunt, The Conversation

Wind turbines will be built across 6,500 square kilometres in the Pilbara. Credit: Shutterstock

Huge clean energy projects, such as the Asian Renewable Energy Hub in the Pilbara, Western Australia, are set to produce gigawatts of electricity over vast expanses of land in the near future.


The Asian Renewable Energy Hub is planning to erect wind turbines and solar arrays across 6,500 square kilometers of land. But, like with other renewable energy mega projects, this land is subject to Aboriginal rights and interests—known as the Indigenous Estate.

While renewable energy projects are essential for transitioning Australia to a zero-carbon economy, they come with a caveat: most traditional owners in Australia have little legal say over them.

Projects on the Indigenous Estate

How much say Aboriginal people have over mining and renewable energy projects depends on the legal regime their land is under.

In the Northern Territory, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) (ALRA) allows traditional owners to say no to developments proposed for their land. While the commonwealth can override this veto, they never have as far as we know.

In comparison, the dominant Aboriginal land tenure in Western Australia (and nationwide) is native title.

Native title—as recognized in the 1992 Mabo decision and later codified in the Native Title Act 1993—recognizes that Aboriginal peoples' rights to land and waters still exist under certain circumstances despite British colonization.

But unlike the ALRA, the Native Title Act does not allow traditional owners to veto developments proposed for their land.

Both the Native Title Act and the the ALRA are federal laws, but the ALRA only applies in the NT. The Native Title Act applies nationwide, including in some parts of the NT.

Shortcomings in the Native Title Act

Native title holders can enter into a voluntary agreement with a company, known as an Indigenous Land Use Agreement, when a development is proposed for their land. This allows both parties to negotiate how the land and waters would be used, among other things.


If this is not negotiated, then native title holders have only certain, limited safeguards.

The strongest of these safeguards is known as the "right to negotiate." This says resource companies must negotiate in good faith for at least six months with native title holders, and aim to reach an agreement.

But it is not a veto right. The company can fail to get the agreement of native title holders and still be granted access to the land by government.

For example, Fortescue Metals Group controversially built their Solomon iron ore mine in the Pilbara, despite not getting the agreement of the Yindjibarndi people who hold native title to the area.

In fact, the National Native Title Tribunal—which rules on disputes between native title holders and companies—has sided with native title holders only three times, and with companies 126 times (of which 55 had conditions attached).

There are also lesser safeguards in the act, which stipulate that native title holders should be consulted, or notified, about proposed developments, and may have certain objection rights.

Negotiating fair agreements

So how does the Native Title Act treat large-scale renewable energy developments?

The answer is complicated because a renewable energy development likely contains different aspects (for example: wind turbines, roads and HVDC cables), and the act may treat each differently.

Broadly speaking, these huge developments don't fall under the right to negotiate, but under lesser safeguards.

Does this matter? Yes, it does. We know from experience in the mining industry that while some companies negotiate fair agreements with Aboriginal landowners, some do not.

For example, two very similar LNG projects—one in Western Australia and the other in Queensland—resulted in land access and benefit sharing agreements that were poles apart. The WA project's agreements with traditional owners were worth A$1.5 billion, while the Queensland project's agreements were worth just A$10 million.

Likewise, Rio Tinto's agreement for the area including Juukan Gorge reportedly "gagged" traditional owners from objecting to any activities by the company, which then destroyed the 46,000-year-old rock shelters.

A matter of leverage

We also know the likelihood of a new development having positive impacts for Aboriginal communities depends in part on the leverage they have to negotiate a strong agreement.

And the best leverage is political power. This comes from the ability to wage community campaigns against companies to force politicians to listen, or galvanize nation-wide protests that prevent work on a development continuing.

Legal rights are also very effective: the stronger your legal rights are, the better your negotiation position. And the strongest legal position to be in is if you can say no to the development.

For land under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, this ability to say no means traditional owners are in a good position to negotiate strong environmental, cultural heritage and economic benefits.

For land under the Native Title Act, traditional owners are in a weaker legal position. It is not a level playing field.

A just transition

To remedy this imbalance, the federal government must give native title holders the same rights for renewable energy projects as traditional owners have under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in the NT.

Or, at the very least, extend the right to negotiate to cover the types of large-scale renewable energy projects likely to be proposed for native title land in coming decades.

We must ensure the transition to a zero-carbon economy is a just transition for First Nations.


Explore further 1 in 10 children affected by bushfires is Indigenous. We've been ignoring them for too long

Reforming 'dad leave' is a baby step towards greater gender equality

THE STRUGGLE FOR DAYCARE AND OTHER CHILDCARE IS CLASS STRUGGLE

AND NEEDS TO BE SEEN AS THAT  

by Owain Emslie, Danielle Wood, Kate Griffiths, The Conversation

Credit: Shutterstock

Grattan Institute research published today shows the average 25-year-old woman who goes on to have a child can expect to earn A$2 million less by the time she is 70 than the average 25-year-old man who becomes a father. For childless women and men, the lifetime gap is about A$300,000.

This earnings gap leaves mothers particularly vulnerable if their relationship breaks down.

Unpaid work still falls largely on women

The income gap between mothers and fathers is typically due to women reducing their paid work to take on most of the caring and household work.

Even before COVID-19, Australian women were doing 2.2 fewer hours of paid work on average but 2.3 more hours of unpaid work than men every day.

The following chart shows how women's and men's time use diverges after the birth of their first child. Mothers typically reduce their paid work to take on the lion's share of caring and household work. The change for fathers is less dramatic. They continue their paid work and take on some extra caring.

But habits stick. Even a decade after the birth of the first child, the average mother does more caring and twice as much household work as the average father.

When one parent does most of the caring, they become more confident in looking after the child. They know how to change the nappies, what food the child likes, and when nap time is. This knowledge tends to compound, leaving one parent with most of the parenting load.

Dad leave can help

Policy change can help different habits to form. Evidence from around the world—including North America, Iceland, Germany, Britain and Australia – shows fathers who take a significant period of parental leave when their baby is born are more likely to be more involved in caring and other housework years later.

Credit: Grattan Institute, CC BY-ND

But the Australian government's paid parental leave scheme encourages a single "primary carer" model. The primary carer is eligible for 18 weeks of Parental Leave Pay at minimum wage (as well as any employer entitlements).


In 99.5% of cases that leave is taken by mothers. Secondary carer leave, called "Dad and Partner Pay," is two weeks at minimum wage.

Many other countries provide much longer periods of parental leave for fathers and partners, sometimes referred to as "daddy leave," as the following table shows.

Iceland, for example, provides three months' paid leave to each parent and a further three months for them to divide as they wish. Sweden's scheme entitles each parent to three months of parental leave, plus ten months parents can divide as they wish.

The schemes with the highest take-up typically pay 70% or more of the recipient's normal earnings, as opposed to the minimum wage Australia's scheme pays.

But a generous scheme is still no guarantee of success.

Social expectations about different roles for men and women at work and home can still be a barrier. This appears evident in Japan and South Korea. Despite generous schemes offering 52 weeks of leave for fathers, paid at more than two-thirds of normal earnings, just 6% of Japanese fathers and 13% of Korean fathers take parental leave.

A modest policy proposal

For a "daddy leave" scheme to have the best chance of success in Australia, the government would need to spend a lot of money and political capital.

Emulating a best-practice parental leave scheme like Iceland's would cost at least A$7 billion a year.

Credit: Grattan Institute, CC BY-ND

A scheme where government payments are linked to an individual's normal salary would encourage take-up. But the cost would dwarf the A$2.3 billion the federal government currently spends on parental leave, and the biggest benefits would go to wealthy families. Almost all Australian government payments are strictly means-tested, so payments proportional to salary would be a radical policy departure.

One option is a paid parental leave scheme that gives parents more flexibility to share leave. Six weeks reserved for each parent plus 12 weeks to share between them would allow mothers to still choose to take the 18 weeks now provided to primary carers. But families could also make other choices, and fathers would get more time early on to bond with their child and develop their parenting skills.

This would be a relatively cheap reform. If paid at minimum wage like the existing scheme, it would cost at most an extra A$600 million a year.

Baby steps to equality

Reforming Australia's paid parental leave is not the first and best option to increase women's workforce participation. Our research shows changes such as making child care more affordable are likely to deliver more bang for buck.

But there is still a case for modest reforms to parental leave. Though it might not be a game-changer for women's workforce participation, if constructed properly it will have some effect.

This is supported by evidence from Quebec's parental leave scheme. Introduced in 2006, it included five non-transferable weeks for fathers, paid at about 70% of their usual salary. A 2014 study found it led to mothers, on average, doing an extra hour of paid work a day, earning an extra US$5,000 a year.

More fathers taking parental leave is also worthwhile in its own right, promoting greater sharing of the unpaid workload within families and giving fathers more time with their kids.

Think of it as a baby step towards greater time and earnings equality between women and men in Australia.


Explore furtherIncreasing the 'daddy quota' in parental leave makes everyone happier
Provided by The Conversation 

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

BABEL23
When English becomes the global language of education we risk losing other, often better, ways of learning

by Stephen Dobson, Muhammad Zuhdi, The Conversation
Schoolgirls in Sulawesi, Indonesia: is the language divide also a class divide? Credit: Shutterstock

The English language in education today is all-pervasive. "Hear more English, speak more English and become more successful" has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.


Some say it's already a universal language, ahead of other mother tongues such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish or French. In reality, of course, this has been centuries in the making. Colonial conquest and global trade routes won the hearts and minds of foreign education systems.

These days, the power of English (or the versions of English spoken in different countries) has become accepted wisdom, used to justify the globalization of education at the cost of existing systems in non-English-speaking countries.

The British Council exemplifies this, with its global presence and approving references to the "English effect" on educational and employment prospects.

English as a passport to success

In non-English countries the packaging of English and its promise of success takes many forms. Instead of being integrated into (or added to) national teaching curricula, English language learning institutes, language courses and international education standards can dominate whole systems.

Among the most visible examples are Cambridge Assessment International Education and the International Baccalaureate (which is truly international and, to be fair, also offered in French and Spanish).

Schools in non-English-speaking countries attract globally ambitious parents and their children with a mix of national and international curricula, such as the courses offered by the Singapore Intercultural School across South-East Asia.

Language and the class divide

The love of all things English begins at a young age in non-English-speaking countries, promoted by pop culture, Hollywood movies, fast-food brands, sports events and TV shows.

Later, with English skills and international education qualifications from high school, the path is laid to prestigious international universities in the English-speaking world and employment opportunities at home and abroad.


But those opportunities aren't distributed equally across socioeconomic groups. Global education in English is largely reserved for middle-class students.

This is creating a divide between those inside the global English proficiency ecosystem and those relegated to parts of the education system where such opportunities don't exist.

For the latter there is only the national education curriculum and the lesson that social mobility is a largely unattainable goal.

The Indonesian experience

Indonesia presents a good case study. With a population of 268 million, access to English language curricula has mostly been limited to urban areas and middle-class parents who can afford to pay for private schools.

At the turn of this century, all Indonesian districts were mandated to have at least one public school offering a globally recognized curriculum in English to an international standard. But in 2013 this was deemed unconstitutional because equal educational opportunity should exist across all public schools.

Nevertheless, today there are 219 private schools offering at least some part of the curriculum through Cambridge International, and 38 that identify as Muslim private schools. Western international curricula remain influential in setting the standard for what constitutes quality education.

In Muslim schools that have adopted globally recognized curricula in English, there is a tendency to over-focus on academic performance. Consequently, the important Muslim value of تَرْبِيَة (Tarbiya) is downplayed.

Encompassing the flourishing of the whole child and the realization of their potential, Tarbiya is a central pillar in Muslim education. Viewed like this, schooling that concentrates solely on academic performance fails in terms of both culture and faith.

Learning is about more than academic performance

Academic performance measured by knowledge and skill is, of course, still important and a source of personal fulfillment. But without that cultural balance and the nurturing of positive character traits, we argue it lacks deeper meaning.

A regulation issued by the Indonesian minister of education in 2018 underlined this. It listed a set of values and virtues that school education should foster: faith, honesty, tolerance, discipline, hard work, creativity, independence, democracy, curiosity, nationalism, patriotism, appreciation, communication, peace, a love of reading, environmental awareness, social awareness and responsibility.

These have been simplified to five basic elements of character education: religion, nationalism, Gotong Royong (collective voluntary work), independence and integrity.

These are not necessarily measurable by conventional, Western, English-speaking and empirical means. Is it time, then, to reconsider the internationalizing of education (and not just in South-East Asia)? Has it gone too far, at least in its English form?

Isn't it time to look closely at other forms of education in societies where English is not the mother tongue? These education systems are based on different values and they understand success in different ways.

It's unfortunate so many schools view an English-speaking model as the gold standard and overlook their own local or regional wisdoms. We need to remember that encouraging young people to join a privileged English-speaking élite educated in foreign universities is only one of many possible educational options.


Explore further

NYU scholar makes recommendations to end disparities in stem for English learners

Provided by The Conversation

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