Eli Sharabi was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 , 2023 and held captive for 491 days.Photo: Blake Ezra
On October 7th 2023, Eli Sharabi was kidnapped by Hamas and held for 491 days.
He and his wife and two daughters were in their home on a kibbutz in Southern Israel when the attack happened.
His next 14 months were spent mostly in tunnels under Gaza – with often cruel, but occasionally kind captors, little food, no sunlight – and most importantly no knowledge that his British wife and teenage daughters had been killed the day he was taken.
It was only after his release in February that he learned that terrible news, and that his brother had also died captive in Gaza.
Sharabi said it was a “devastating moment” when they weren’t there to greet him.
Despite his horrendous ordeal, Eli Sharabi regards himself as lucky and says he does not hate his captors.
“Even when they humiliate me, even they violate … against me from time to time you understand it’s necessary to have this relationship with them if you want to go back to your family.”
He is the first released Israeli hostage to write a book about his experience.
Sharabi shares his story with Nine to Noon’s Kathryn Ryan. Listen live at the top of this page, on the RNZ app or your local RNZ frequency.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Eli Sharabi was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 , 2023 and held captive for 491 days.Photo: Blake Ezra
On October 7th 2023, Eli Sharabi was kidnapped by Hamas and held for 491 days.
He and his wife and two daughters were in their home on a kibbutz in Southern Israel when the attack happened.
His next 14 months were spent mostly in tunnels under Gaza – with often cruel, but occasionally kind captors, little food, no sunlight – and most importantly no knowledge that his British wife and teenage daughters had been killed the day he was taken.
It was only after his release in February that he learned that terrible news, and that his brother had also died captive in Gaza.
Sharabi said it was a “devastating moment” when they weren’t there to greet him.
Despite his horrendous ordeal, Eli Sharabi regards himself as lucky and says he does not hate his captors.
“Even when they humiliate me, even they violate … against me from time to time you understand it’s necessary to have this relationship with them if you want to go back to your family.”
He is the first released Israeli hostage to write a book about his experience.
Sharabi shares his story with Nine to Noon’s Kathryn Ryan. Listen live at the top of this page, on the RNZ app or your local RNZ frequency.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jason Gray, Environmental Attorney, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles
Cattle, the No. 1 cause of tropical deforestation, roam on tropical forest land that was stripped bare in Acre, Brazil.AP Photo/Eraldo Peres
The world is losing vast swaths of forests to agriculture, logging, mining and fires every year — more than 20 million acres in 2024 alone, roughly the size of South Carolina.
Over the years, countries have committed to reverse that forest loss, and many organizations, governments, and Indigenous and local communities have worked hard to advance those goals. Many of their efforts have been at least partly successful.
For instance, Brazil credits stronger law enforcement and better monitoring at the state and national levels for helping reduce illegal land clearing and deforestation in the Amazon. The deforestation rate there fell by 31% from 2023 to 2024.
A forest ranger in Indonesia marks a tree to encourage protecting it in an area where villagers have cleared forest for a coffee plantation. AP Photo/Dita Alangkara
Funding from governments and the private sector is helping communities restore land that has already been cleared. Often this involves planting native tree species that bring additional economic value to communities by providing fruits and nuts.
Other programs protect forests through payments for ecosystem services, such as paying landowners to maintain existing forests and the benefits those forests provide. These programs provide money to a government, community or landowner based on verified results that the forest is being protected over time.
And yet, despite these and many other efforts, the world is falling short on its commitments to protect tropical forests. The planet lost 6.7 million hectares of tropical forest, nearly 26,000 square miles (67,000 square kilometers), in 2024 alone.
Law enforcement is not enough by itself. When enforcement is weakened, as happened in Brazil from 2019 to 2023, illegal land clearing and forest loss ramp back up. Programs that pay landowners to keep forests standing also have drawbacks. Research has shown they might only temporarily reduce deforestation if they don’t continue payments long term.
The problem is that deforestation is often driven by economic factors such as global demand for crops, cattle and minerals such as gold and copper. This demand provides significant incentives to farmers, companies and governments to continue clearing forests.
Simply put, the scale of the deforestation problem is massive, and new efforts are needed to truly reverse the economic drivers or causes of deforestation.
In order to increase the amount of funding to protect tropical forests, Brazil launched a global program on Nov. 6, 2025, ahead of the annual U.N. climate conference, called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, or TFFF. It is an innovative approach that combines money from countries and private investors to compensate countries for preserving tropical forests.
As an environmental law scholar who works in climate policy development, including to protect tropical forests, I believe this program has real promise. But I also see room to improve it by bringing in states and provinces to ensure money reaches programs closer to the ground that will pay off for the environment.
What makes the Tropical Forest Forever Facility different?
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility seeks to tackle the deforestation problem by focusing on the issue of scale – both geographic and economic.
First, it will measure results across entire countries rather than at the smaller landowner level. That can help reduce deforestation more broadly within countries and influence national policies that currently contribute to deforestation.
Second, it seeks to raise billions of dollars. This is important to counter the economic incentives for clearing forests for agriculture, livestock and timber.
The mechanics of raising these funds is intriguing – Brazil is seeking an initial $25 billion from national governments and foundations, and then another $100 billion from investors. These funds would be invested in securities – think the stock and bond markets – and returns on those investments, after a percentage is paid to investors, would be paid to countries that demonstrate successful forest protection.
These countries would be expected to invest their results-based payments into forest conservation initiatives, in particular to support communities doing the protection work on the ground, including ensuring that at least 20% directly supports local communities and Indigenous peoples whose territories often have the lowest rates of deforestation thanks to their efforts.
Where different types of deforestation are most prominent. Shifting agriculture, shown in yellow, reflects land temporarily cleared for agriculture and later allowed to regrow. Project Drawdown, data from Curtis et al., 2018, CC BY-ND
Finally, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility recognizes that, like past efforts, it is not a silver bullet. It is being designed to complement other programs and policies, including carbon market approaches that raise money for forest protection by selling carbon credits to governments and companies that need to lower their emissions.
What has been the reaction so far?
The new forest investment fund is attracting interest because of its size, ambition and design.
Brazil and Indonesia were the first to contribute, committing $1 billion each. Norway added $3 billion on Nov. 7, and several other countries also committed to support it.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility still has a long way to go toward its $125 billion goal, but it will likely draw additional commitments during the U.N. climate conference, COP30, being held Nov. 10-21, 2025, in Brazil. World leaders and negotiators are meeting in the Amazon for the first time.
In Caquetá, Colombia, a mix of training for farmers, expanding their ability to sell the fruit they grow, and a local government program that pays landowners relatively small amounts to restore forests helped reduce local deforestation by 67% from 2021 to 2023. Guillermo Legaria/AFP via Getty Images
How can the Tropical Forest Forever Facility be improved?
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility’s design has drawn some criticism, both for how the money is raised and for routing the money through national governments. While the fund’s design could draw more investors, if its investments don’t have strong returns in a given year, the fund might not receive any money, likely leaving a gap in expected payments for the programs and communities protecting forests.
Many existing international funding programs also provide money solely to national governments, as the Amazon Fund and the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility do. However, a lot of the actual work to reduce deforestation, from policy innovation to implementation and enforcement, takes place at the state and provincial levels.
One way to improve the Tropical Forest Forever Facility’s implementation would be to include state- and provincial-level governments in decisions about how payments will be used and ensure those funds make it to the people taking action in their territories.
The task force developed a Blueprint for a New Forest Economy, which can help connect efforts such as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility to state- and community-level forest protection initiatives so funding reaches projects that can pay off for forest protection.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility is an example of the type of innovative mechanism that could accelerate action globally. But to truly succeed, it will need to be coordinated with state and provincial governments, communities and others doing the work on the ground. The world’s forests – and people – depend on it.
Jason Gray is the Project Director of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, a project of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law. The GCF Task Force receives funding support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harriet Earle, Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Sheffield Hallam University
It has been a major year for Stephen King films. Four of his stories have hit cinemas in 2025: The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk and The Running Man. And two more have graced the small screen – The Institute and the Pennywise origin series It: Welcome to Derry.
Indeed, there was a moment in British cinemas earlier in the year, where you could watch The Life of Chuck and have the film preceded by trailers for the other three cinematic adaptations, making King’s work feel ubiquitous right now.
Both The Long Walk and The Running Man were originally written by King under his pseudonym Richard Bachman – a name he used to try out dark stories that leaned more towards speculative fiction. In his 1982 novella, The Running Man, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) takes part in a reality show that will earn him $1 billion (£750 million), provided he survives 30 days. No one ever has, but Richards’ daughter is gravely ill and his wife has turned to sex work to earn money to try to pay for her treatment.
Apt for its current adaptation, the novella takes place in an alternate 2025 and speaks of a future we recognise from other dystopias. A previous adaptation was released in 1987, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But as critics noted at the time, fidelity to the source material ended with the title. The 80s version was a glitzy action romp complete with gold spandex, but the book is far darker. In our current era of reality television and grasping fame, it has new things to say.
The trailer for The Running Man.
The new adaptation arrives against a backdrop of similar stories, such as the massively popular Netflix drama, Squid Game (2021-2025) and the Hunger Games franchise (2012-present). There have also been similar reality TV shows such as Squid Game: The Challenge (2023-2025), Take the Money and Run (2011), and Hunted (2015-present).
The Running Man ties into a popular survival sub-genre, that can be traced back to films such as The Most Dangerous Game (1936). Literary theorist Terry Thompson describes these films as having not only a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” quality, but also “an exotic setting, stereotypical characters, melodramatic acting, and a preposterous plotline”.
The Bachman books
There are seven books by King’s alter-ego, Richard Bachman. King reportedly came up with the pseudonym because the publishing industry at the time had an unspoken rule about releasing one book per year. He also had a desire to test his fame, and see whether books under a different name would sell as well.
In general, the Bachman books are bleaker than King’s other works. Rage, first published in 1977, concerns a violent and disaffected young man who commits a school shooting in response to his expulsion. Following a rash of similar shootings and, more importantly, copies of Rage being found among a perpetrators’ belongings, King asked his publisher to withdraw it from print.
The third Bachman Book is The Long Walk. It was published in 1978, and adapted into a film this year by Francis Lawrence, who has directed all of the Hunger Games sequels and prequels. Published in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam war, the novella follows an annual event where young men compete in a harrowing contest – a walk that lasts until only one remains. Anyone who stops walking is killed.
It’s dystopian, violent, televised pseudo-entertainment, which contestants see as the only way to guarantee a decent quality of life. This feels like a heavy handed metaphor for the late 1970s when readers were exposed to the nightly televised horrors of the war in Vietnam.
Moreover, it speak to the current political moment, where exploiting oneself for entertainment purposes is seen as a viable (if not desirable) career choice and while huge numbers of people are barely subsisting. King was likely influenced by the 1969 adaptation of Horace McCoy’s novel They Shoot Horses Don’t They? about a lethal dancing competition to be won by the last woman standing.
It remains to be seen if Edgar Wright’s version of The Running Man will hold close to the original, dark novel or whether some glimmers of Arnie’s spandex will creep in – the trailer suggests it’s closer to the former.
The trailer for The Long Walk.
The publication of The Running Man and The Long Walk were contemporaneous with the birth of predatory Capitalism, in which company profits are maximised by any means permissible within a society’s ethical norms, leading to Reaganomics in the 1980s.
This, combined with post-Vietnam atrocities taking place in the US itself, created the environment for King’s books. He combines satire and science fiction to criticise capitalism – showing TV shows where people compete for money even at the cost of humiliation or violence, and societies where people will kill innocents simply because they are told to.
In the present day, with troops in the US occupying cities due to Trumped-up myths about civil disobedience, and game shows inspired by dystopian fiction where contestants are allegedly getting “hypothermia and nerve damage”, these scenarios seem very relevant again.
There have been 57 adaptations of King’s work over the past 40 years, so he’s obviously a reasonable guarantee of healthy profits. And, It: Welcome to Derry even seems to suggest the birth of a King Cinematic Universe, with a character from The Shining also appearing in the series.
While The Running Man and The Long Walk are game show dystopias, this year’s other two King films mix cursed prophecy (predictions of inevitable character deaths to come) and visions of the apocalypse. Squint, and you could make a connection with the terrors facing humanity in general, such as climate change and the resurrection of potential nuclear conflict. However The Monkey treats the apocalypse as black comedy and The Life of Chuck’s world-ending vision (spoiler alert) turns out to be the sleeping fantasy of a dying man, in a film otherwise about the goodness and charm of mankind.
So, in a year that is the second most populous for King’s works on screen (only exceeded in 2017), there’s still something notable about his work. These adaptations hold a mirror up to society’s problems and treat them with horror and disdain. And since a number of these films show resistance to malevolent forces, perhaps they still offer hope for the future.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ryann Donnelly, Assistant Professor in Art History, School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex
Today is the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith’s album, Horses. I feel honoured to reflect on this work, but also a tremendous amount of pressure to capture what it is for the people who love it, and – perhaps even more so – for those who are not yet familiar with Smith’s music.
I desperately want to convince you to listen to this album and to see her perform, as if your life depends on it. I want you to tremble under her spell. I recognise this aim suggests a certain level of bias, but I actually don’t consider myself a “super-fan”.
I have seen Smith several times across a significant amount of time, which should allow me to offer some insights about her work. I first saw her perform in 2000, when I was 14 years old. I saw her again on New Year’s Eve in 2011 at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, and in London in 2015 and 2018. I’ve read her first memoir, Just Kids (her third, Bread of Angels is published this week). But I can’t recount her life story. I just think she’s cool as hell.
I clarify the particular angles of my vantage point to emphasise that the urgency and embrace I’m encouraging here, and indeed the transformation I’m just shy of promising, still feels quite measured. As someone who examines queer and feminist performance for a living, I’ve given it some thought: Patti Smith still cuts to the bone.
This is for a variety of reasons, but in my campaign to compel a new audience to her and perhaps galvanise some shared feelings among her existing appreciators, I’ll elaborate on three.
1. A sense of magic and incantation
Seriously: magic and incantation. I have a friend who immediately chants: “Horses! Horses!” whenever actual horses come up in conversation, regardless of context. The delivery is reminiscent of Smith’s on what I consider to be the title track of Horses (the actual title is the poetic, if longwinded: Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances/La Mer[de]).
The song physically moves me. I nod my head and lift my heel, then drop it on the down beat and it feels good. I’m in it. It’s in me.
These are the aftershocks of possession. These songs have been put in us, along with a heat – I think the literal friction of joy and pleasure being stirred in us as we listen or recite.
What I’m describing relies on Smith’s singular way of building a sonic momentum. The rhythm, dynamics and crooked jangly tones of the guitar at times seem to competitively race the drums.
On Birdland, this black magic swells through pounding eighth notes on a slightly out-of-tune piano that collide with waves and washes of distorted guitar as Smith seems to chase words out of her mouth – poetry that rattles out breathlessly like a cautionary sermon: “White lids, white opals, seeing everything just a little bit too clearly. And he looked around and there was no black ship in sight. No black funeral cars, nothing except him the raven.”
I will acknowledge here her long-time guitarist and co-writer, Lenny Kaye, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, Horses bassist Ivan Král, and the album’s producer, John Cale – formerly of the Velvet Underground. But the brutal thrash of affect comes directly from Smith, and is more potent live than you could ever imagine from listening to the records alone.
I have been so overwhelmed by her spasm, the vibration of her bones, I worried her heart would explode. Through lyrical and rhythmic incantation, her music produces a trance, and she gets there, with you. This feels most dangerous and is most totally levelling when she performs Gloria: In Excelsis Duo.
It is an adaptation of Van Morrison’s Gloria, her best-known song next to her Bruce Springsteen collaboration, Because the Night, and one I couldn’t get past when I first heard Horses 26 years ago. I just kept playing it over and over and over. I still can’t listen to it just once. This song leads me to my second point though – the second reason Horses is so raw and compelling.
2. Sexuality and sensuality
It’s all over. It’s prismatic. It’s her cool masculine dress – her blazers paired with collared shirts or ripped cotton Ts – and her wiry, slinky form. It’s in the enveloping reggae sway of Redondo Beach. It’s the nakedness and aesthetics of her lyrics. It’s in the words – the story – but it’s in the horny, desperate, silky sounds she makes too, and how she signals sex with lewd, obvious motions.
In Gloria, she grunts, hisses, and does these snarling, vocal flips that play at the edges of the ecstatic with a delicate control, before she eventually just completely loses it as she describes the character of Gloria getting physically closer, walking toward the male character whom Smith has occupied, and psychically penetrated and exposed.
As she spells out Gloria’s name, she leans in gutturally to the “O” with an “Ohhhhh” and reduces the “R” to an “Ahhhhh”, slowing everything down to the vowels of sexual moaning, before speeding right back up, repeating in a raging, choral freakout: G-L-O-R-I-A!
3. Showing up
My final point is based on something Smith wailed the first time I saw her. She was getting totally worked up, shaking, freaking out, and started intoning: “I forget the words! I forget the words!”. She seemed totally lost and upset, grumbling in non-word noise for a bit before something emerged: “You better… you better… you better take care of your teeth for when the revolution comes!”
I was absolutely certain that she was having a psychotic episode. But, she said it again when I saw her in 2018, and when asked in a recent TV interview if she had any advice for young people, she repeated: “Take care of your teeth” (along with the self-deprecating: “Don’t listen to me”).
I think she does mean this literally, but also that you have to keep showing up: taking care of yourself, and contributing in small or even mundane ways to bigger things – stay creative, keep making art.
Smith has continued to write music, books and poetry, and tour and perform with the same shocking level of intensity past the peak of her commercial success. She has also continued to collaborate and engage with contemporary music. When I first saw her in 2000 a still-emerging version of the now legendary feminist punk band, Sleater Kinney opened her show, and Smith covered Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana.
Just this week, Rosalía, one of the biggest contemporary pop acts, included a clip of Smith from an interview in 1976 on her new song, La Yugular. Smith speaks about “breaking through” doors, and into levels of heaven, but says you have to keep breaking through: “One door isn’t enough. A million doors aren’t enough.”
This is the spirit that runs through Horses, through Patti Smith’s entire oeuvre, and has made her a lasting, powerful presence.
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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
Ryann Donnelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Education about climate change and sustainability is a vital part of responding to a rapidly changing world, including the negative effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Teachers, including in Brazil and England, help young people live with futures shaped by local and global environmental challenges. However, despite expressing overwhelming concern about issues related to climate change and sustainability, many teachers do not feel equipped to teach it in schools.
Urgent action from policymakers is needed to support them.
Teachers shape how young people understand and respond to environmental crises. Without proper support, students risk leaving school unprepared for some of the most urgent challenges of our time: this is a societal risk, not just an educational issue.
Despite public demand for action in response to climate change, schools often lack the expertise and resources to realise this. Empowering teachers means building stronger communities: when well-equipped teachers foster agency and action, not just knowledge and skills.
Young people can bring ideas home, influence families and drive local change. So climate change and sustainability education becomes a catalyst for resilience and transformation, essential for preparing the next generation to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Leaders from across the world are coming together in Brazil to discuss progress and negotiate actions in response to climate change as part of an annual UN climate summit (Cop30). This provides a vital opportunity to underline for global leaders the support that teachers and schools need.
Over the last few years, we have worked with hundreds of teachers in both England and Brazil to explore their experiences of teaching climate change and sustainability. Teachers have shared with us the barriers they experience related to climate change and sustainability education and the support they need to overcome them. While there is diversity in terms of geographical context, there are many commonalities.
Barriers
Education systems which have a rigid national curriculum with an emphasis on high-stakes examinations create barriers for teachers in both England and Brazil. Existing systems require teachers to prioritise examination content which frequently has limited focus on climate change and sustainability topics.
Teachers in both countries reported challenges in teaching climate change and sustainability in ways that underlined the real-world relevance to the lives of the young people they teach.
Another limitation is the lack of opportunities for professional learning that support teachers in integrating climate change and sustainability into their teaching. This gap exists throughout their careers, such that they frequently share they have insufficient or insecure knowledge and understanding of climate change and sustainability issues. This lowers teachers’ confidence and limits their classroom practices.
Teachers in Brazil and England face similar limitations when it comes to delivering climate change education. J.P. Junior Pereira/Shutterstock
Boosts
Governments can better support teachers by ensuring that climate change and sustainability is explicitly recognised and valued in local, regional and national policies that govern schools. This could include national curricula, professional standards for teachers and school leaders and school-inspection frameworks.
Teachers in both England and Brazil recognise how important it is to have school leaders who value climate change and sustainability and how – when school leaders provide a culture of support across the school community – this is transformational for climate change and sustainability education.
All teachers can benefit from high-quality professional learning focused on climate change and sustainability education from the beginning of their careers and throughout their professional lives. When teachers have the time and support to co-design learning – with each other and with their students – which draws on different ways of understanding climate change and sustainability issues, this builds teacher confidence and provides richer learning experiences for children and young people.
Climate change and sustainability education is essential for preparing young people to navigate and shape a rapidly changing world, but teachers cannot carry this responsibility alone.
By embedding climate change and sustainability in curricula and supporting career-long professional learning for teachers, classrooms can be transformed into sites of agency and local action. This can amplify young people’s influence in their communities and reduce a wider societal risk of leaving a generation unprepared.
Cop30 offers a timely moment for leaders to commit to support for teachers so that policy matches public concern and evidence-based practice translates into real-world resilience.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Nicola Walshe acknowledges the significant input of our co-researcher Lizzie Rushton, Danielle Aparecida Reis Leite for her support with the in-person workshop in Brazil, and the contribution of colleagues based at the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education in the creation and implementation of the Teacher survey. Thanks also go to the teachers in England and Brazil who contributed to the research. This work was supported by funding from UCL Institute of Education’s Strategic Investment Board.
Denise Quiroz Martinez and Luciano Fernandes Silva do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Political Economy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow
The Cop30 climate summit is under way in Brazil under the shadow of US president Donald Trump’s second term. Delegates from around the world have poured into the Amazonian port of Belém for the conference, which promises to focus on economic development and the fight against global poverty, as well as green tech and finance.
And now Trump’s aggressive tariff policy is rippling through the global economy, forcing countries to rethink how they balance trade and climate commitments.
For the UK, the consequences are particularly acute. Post-Brexit, Britain must maintain close regulatory alignment with the European Union on many goods. This effectively means that despite having quit the EU, the UK voluntarily follows its single market rules in some sectors in order to minimise trade friction.
For its part, the bloc has made compliance with European environmental standards a requirement for firms in key sectors looking to export into the EU market. Under this regulation, a foreign company selling products to European consumers must report on the carbon footprint of their factories overseas. Companies are fined per unit of carbon emitted before the product gets to the EU.
To be exempt, companies will have to show that the foreign countries where the good was produced impose an equivalent type of carbon regulation to that in EU law.
These “carbon border” mechanisms are vital for cutting emissions in a globalised economy. The UK has committed to introducing a similar measure to some of the most polluting sectors (such as steel, aluminium, cement and fertiliser) in 2027.
At the same time, the UK government hopes that closer trade with the United States will drive economic growth. But the Trump administration is pressuring its European partners to relax environmental standards, or exempt US companies from complying with them, in exchange for tariff relief. This could leave the UK caught between its two most important allies.
Race to the bottom
The ripple effects extend far beyond Europe. With the carbon border increasing the cost of exports to the EU and Trump’s tariffs doing the same for access to US markets, many countries are seeking new trading routes.
This creates openings for major carbon emitters such as China, Russia and the Gulf states to expand their influence through deals with developing nations that are unable to pay the premium for entry into US or European markets.
The result could be the creation of “sacrifice zones” – regions that become dumping grounds for high-emission products such as electronics or vehicles made with steel or aluminium produced using cheaper, less sustainable production methods. This both damages local environments and deepens global inequality in the transition to a more sustainable economy.
Trump warned delegates at the UN General Assembly in September that what he termed the ‘green scam’ would lead their contries to fail.
Meanwhile, tariffs are expected to slow down global economic growth. Businesses are diverting funds from investment and job creation to cover the extra cost of trade barriers – potentially wiping US$2 trillion (£1.5 trillion) off world GDP over the next two years.
That shortfall could have serious implications for Cop30, where rich countries will be asked to increase financial support for poorer nations so that they can build renewable energy systems and recover from climate-related disasters such as floods and wildfires.
Amid all the uncertainty that Trump is creating with his impulsive and inconsistent approach to trade, governments may feel that they cannot afford to make these commitments right now. But the planet cannot afford for them to wait.
The Conversation and LSE’s International Inequalities Institute have teamed up for a special online event on Tuesday, November 18 from 5pm-6.30pm. Join experts from the worlds of business, taxation and government policy as they discuss the difficult choices facing Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her budget. Sign up for free here
Maha Rafi Atal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gabrielle Samuel, Lecturer in Environmental Justice and Health, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London
Environmental deaths in the UK are primarily attributed to air pollution, which the Royal College of Physicians estimates contributed to around 30,000 deaths in 2025, costing the economy billions each year. Other environmental risks include climate-related events such as extreme heat, which could cause tens of thousands of deaths annually, and pollutants from diesel emissions or home wood-burning stoves.
But environmental harm does not fall evenly. It is shaped by race and social class. The unequal distribution of risk and damage, known as environmental racism, is systemic, not accidental. It is the product of decades of inequity and political neglect.
In many countries, marginalised communities are more likely to live with polluted air, unsafe water and toxic land. In England, for example, data shows people from ethnic minority backgrounds are around three times more likely than white people to live in neighbourhoods with high air pollution.
A joint Greenpeace UK and Runnymede Trust report found that communities of colour are disproportionately affected by waste incinerators, poor housing quality and limited access to green space.
Environmental racism shows up in decisions about where factories are built, whose neighbourhoods get green spaces, whose water systems are upgraded, and who lives next to landfills, toxic waste facilities or heavy-polluting industries. Put bluntly, some communities are forced to carry the weight of environmental damage so others do not have to.
The term gained prominence in the US in the late 20th century when low-income communities of colour mobilised around anti-waste and anti-dumping campaigns. The 1987 toxic wastes and race report by the United Church of Christ showed that hazardous waste facilities were overwhelmingly located in minority and low-income areas.
It helped launch the modern environmental justice movement, which crystallised in 1991 at the first National People of Colour Environmental Leadership Summit, where delegates drafted the seventeen principles of environmental justice.
Since then, evidence of environmental racism has been documented worldwide — from the siting of polluting industries and the dumping of waste in the global south to unequal access to renewable energy and the health impacts of climate change itself.
Where we live is one of the strongest predictors of our health. When environments are unsafe, polluted or neglected, the consequences are devastating. The World Health Organization estimates that environmental factors contribute to nearly one-quarter of all deaths worldwide and almost 20% of cancers. Living with constant exposure to hazards also takes a toll on mental health, fuelling stress, anxiety and despair.
In the UK, air pollution remains the single biggest environmental threat to health. It is linked to asthma, heart disease and respiratory illness.
Yet exposure is not equally distributed. Local emissions from transport, heating and industry are higher on average in more deprived areas. A 2024 study also showed that, even after accounting for deprivation, minoritised ethnic groups in England remain exposed to higher levels of harmful emissions.
These environmental burdens do not just damage lungs; they affect livelihoods. Poor health means missed work or school, deepening financial and educational struggles. Families who want to move to safer areas often cannot afford to, trapping communities in a cycle of disadvantage.
There are, however, signs of progress. Recent data show that ethnic minorities’ exposure to air pollution in England fell from 13% above the national average in 2003 to 6% in 2023.
This narrowing reflects two decades of cleaner-air policies: low-emission zones, stricter vehicle standards and tighter industrial regulation. Yet it also reflects residential shifts, as some families move away from heavily polluted urban centres, rather than the full dismantling of structural inequalities.
So while the trend is encouraging, it does not mean environmental racism has been solved. As the Race Equality Foundation warns, the UK still lacks a coordinated strategy that explicitly addresses race and class disparities in environmental exposure, community consultation and land-use decision-making.
Polluted air, toxic stress and systemic neglect become embodied as disease — quite literally getting “under the skin”, as public health scholar Nancy Krieger puts it. The damage accumulates across lifetimes and generations.
Environmental racism is not just an environmental issue. It is a health issue, a justice issue and a life-or-death issue. That reality places a moral obligation on governments, institutions and industries to act.
But history shows that change rarely comes easily. Too often, action only follows public outrage, and solutions are framed as technical fixes — treating the symptoms rather than the causes. Those causes are about power: who holds it, who benefits from it, and who is left to suffer its consequences.
Dismantling environmental racism requires more than installing air filters or building treatment plants. It demands a reckoning with history and a redistribution of power – giving the communities most affected a real seat at the table when decisions are made. Only then can we begin to talk about health for all.
Gabrielle Samuel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A study presented at the American Heart Association’s scientific meetings has raised concerns about melatonin, one of Britain’s most commonly prescribed sleep aids. The findings suggest that long-term users face a higher risk of heart failure. But the preliminary data demands careful scrutiny before the alarm is sounded.
Melatonin has been prescribed in the UK for nearly two decades, with 2.5 million prescriptions issued in England last year alone. The drug is a synthetic version of the hormone naturally produced in the brain – the so-called “hormone of darkness” that regulates our sleep–wake cycle.
For years, it’s been considered safe for treating short-term sleep problems in adults and, under specialist supervision, for children with learning disabilities or ADHD.
The study, published only as a brief summary, analysed electronic health records of roughly 130,000 adults with sleep difficulties over five years – half of whom took melatonin and half of whom didn’t.
People who took melatonin for at least a year were roughly three times more likely to be hospitalised with heart failure than non-users (19% of people who took melatonin versus 6.6% of people who did not). Long-term users also faced higher rates of heart failure diagnosis and death from any cause.
The researchers attempted to balance their comparison by matching melatonin users with non-users across 40 factors, including age, health conditions and medications. Yet the study found only an association, not causation. This distinction matters. Correlation doesn’t prove that melatonin caused heart failure.
The devil, as ever, lives in the missing details. Only a 300-word summary of the study exists so far, meaning crucial information – melatonin dosage, insomnia severity, lifestyle factors – remains unreported.
The study’s methodology raises questions. It relied on electronic medical records rather than direct patient follow-up or interviews, which can leave gaps in the data. The research drew from TriNetX Global Research Network, a large international database. But healthcare practices and record-keeping vary wildly between hospitals and nations, potentially skewing results.
In the UK, melatonin requires a prescription for specific conditions. But in the US, it’s sold over the counter – purchases that are often not documented in medical records. This means some people categorised as non-users may actually have been taking melatonin, muddying the comparison.
The missing piece of the puzzle
Even assuming both groups were correctly identified and matched, a key question lingers: why did one group receive melatonin while the other didn’t? Perhaps those prescribed the drug suffered more severe or disruptive sleep problems – symptoms that might reflect underlying health issues, including heart problems. If so, melatonin might simply be a marker of existing risk rather than the cause of it.
Intriguingly, previous studies in heart failure patients suggested melatonin may actually protect heart health by improving psychological wellbeing and heart function. Other research indicated it could ease symptoms in people with heart failure and serve as a safe complementary therapy.
Since the study exists only as an abstract, it hasn’t undergone peer review. And information on the study’s methods and results remains limited. While the findings are noteworthy and raise legitimate questions about the long-term risks of using this supplement, they’re far from conclusive. Further studies are needed to determine whether prolonged melatonin use affects heart health, and if so, how.
Doctors face a familiar balancing act: weighing treatment benefits against potential risks. Poor sleep doesn’t just affect the heart; it’s linked to problems with metabolism, mental health and the immune system, among others.
Doctors typically start with lifestyle changes, better sleep habits and talk therapy. But when these fail to improve sleep quality, short-term medication may be necessary to restore healthy patterns and prevent further health complications.
The melatonin story isn’t over. It’s just beginning. Until fuller evidence emerges, panic seems premature.
Heba Ghazal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The world’s most important climate summit – known this year as Cop30 – has begun in the Amazonian port city of Belém, Brazil. It promises to be contentious: key countries haven’t submitted new climate plans, and negotiations are held up by disputes over who should pay for climate action.
We attended a preliminary round of negotiations in June, which ended with very few concrete agreements. Many outcome documents were instead heavily caveated as “not agreed”, “open to revision”, or “without formal status”.
Those fractious pre-summit talks followed a disappointing Cop29 in Azerbaijan last year. This year, here are five key issues to watch – and why they matter.
Are countries keeping their Paris pledges?
Ten years after the Paris agreement, countries are due to submit their third round of national climate plans, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in the jargon. These are refreshed every five years and are supposed to present “best efforts” to scale up climate action.
Yet as of November 2025, only 79 countries – covering 64% of global emissions – have submitted their NDCs. Countries not submitting include some of the highest emitters, such as India, while the US has (once again) left the Paris agreement and will not have high-level representatives at Cop30.
This is a big deal because these plans give us a snapshot of how countries’ planning matches up to global goals, including keeping temperature changes to below 1.5°C, which is looking increasingly unlikely (even if every country fulfilled its pledges, we’re still on course for nearly 3°C).
Who pays for this?
At Cop29 last year, countries agreed to pledge US$300 billion (£227 billion) a year by 2035 to help developing countries. While this was three times higher than the previous goal, it is barely a dent in the US$1.3 trillion developing countries requested – an amount now sidelined as “aspirational”.
Several countries, including India and Nigeria accused the Cop29 host Azerbaijan of forcing through a deal without consensus. Disappointment still lingers, and the fallout delayed agreement on an agenda for Cop30.
The question of who pays for climate change remains unresolved. Without agreement talks risk further breakdown, potentially stalling both adaptation and mitigation efforts worldwide.
What does a ‘just transition’ actually mean?
If the switch from a high to low-emissions world is to be successful it must be fair and inclusive, with no one left behind. This is known as the “just transition”.
Just transition talks have been fraught since Cop28, where richer countries insisted that it focus narrowly on finding new jobs for workers in fossil fuel industries. Various developing and middle-income countries, including China and some of the most climate-vulnerable nations, were more radical and ambitious. In their view, a just transition involves systemic change, arguing that “business as usual” perpetuates inequality.
This would have meant an overhaul of how we approach climate change. However, the wealthier countries eventually got their way in the final agreement, as the text was watered down to focus on the energy and labour sector. The broader ambition was effectively erased. This short-term win for the wealthier countries led to long-term fallout: negotiations collapsed at last year’s Cop29.
At this year’s preliminary meeting in Bonn, Germany, committee chairs enforced strict timekeeping and repeatedly urged delegates to focus on moving forward the text, at one point openly saying, “we already know everyone’s positions, let’s get down to brass tacks, let’s stop with general statements”. This approach seemed to work, as the working group did end up submitting an informal note (rather than a fully-fledged agreement), heavily caveated as not being final.
Unfortunately, as a result, the UN process still lacks agreement on what “just transition” really means or how to achieve it. Without clarity, the term risks becoming empty rhetoric rather than a roadmap for fair and inclusive climate action.
Saving tropical rainforests
The summit’s Amazonian setting has turned attention to tropical forests. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has proposed a bold initiative – the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – that aims to raise US$125 billion to reward countries for preservation efforts. Yet the UK, for instance, has already opted out of contributing to the forest facility, despite reports detailing its alarming global deforestation footprint.
The Amazon stores up to 20 years of global CO₂ emissions, holds 10% of terrestrial biodiversity, and supports billions of dollars
in ecosystem services. Its destruction endangers Indigenous sovereignty and the planet’s climate stability. If Cop30 can meet its aim to protect rainforests, it stands a real chance of making a difference.
Inequity at the negotiations
Cop30 may be turn out to be one of the least equitable climate talks in recent memory. Belém’s astronomical accommodation costs mean many low-income countries and marginalised communities will struggle to attend, exacerbating longstanding UN issues.
Around 3,000 Indigenous representatives are expected, but so are thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists – a record number attended last year. However, as reports continually show, people linked to fossil fuels continue to participate – even in the main formal negotiations – without needing to disclose their affiliation.
If Cop30 could centre Indigenous rights, ensure equitable discussion, and limit lobbyist influence, it could restore some legitimacy to the process. Otherwise, it risks deepening the divide between rhetoric and reality in global climate governance.
The summit is set to be anything but technocratic and boring. We expect to see a tumultuous and controversial set of negotiations that will likely have repercussions well into the future.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
