Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Joseph J. Gonzalez, Associate Professor of Global Studies, Appalachian State University

The lights went out in Cuba again.

For the fifth time in a year, all of Cuba plunged into darkness on Sept. 10, 2025. Even critical emergency services like hospitals suffered during the nearly 24-hour power outage.

That’s because Cuba’s power grid is old and hard to maintain, and the country cannot afford to import all the oil it needs to keep the lights on.

As a scholar of Cuban society and politics, I believe that the ongoing blackouts point to larger economic problems facing the country. While much of that is due to the continuing effects of the U.S. embargo, which since 1960 has obstructed American trade and tourism with the Caribbean island, Cuba’s leaders also deserve a share of the blame for their economic mismanagement.

Indeed, while other nominally communist countries, such as Vietnam and China, have facilitated the development of a private sphere in their economies in the past several decades, officials in Havana have in practice restricted such growth so as not to threaten state enterprises.

The result has been a less vibrant, less productive network of private enterprises unable to provide the economic growth that Cuba so desperately needs. All the while, Cuba’s communist government faces an existential threat as it struggles to maintain power in the face of popular discontent.

The external factors of the crisis

Since 2020, Cuba’s gross domestic product has shrunk by almost 11%, with economists forecasting a further decline of 1%-2% in 2025.

There are a number of reasons for this decline.

Tourism, Cuba’s lifeblood, has not rebounded since the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Venezuela, which subsidized Cuba for a decade in the 2000s, particularly with oil exports, no longer has the capacity to do so. Further, persistent energy shortages in Cuba have led to steep declines in agricultural and industrial production.

From a broader perspective, the U.S. embargo also continues to harm the Cuban economy. For more than 60 years, Cubans have been unable to sell their products to the United States – and Americans have been unable to travel to or do business with Cuba outside of very limited categories.

Estimates vary as to what extent the embargo damages the Cuban economy, but it seems certain that the “blockade,” as Cubans call it, deprives the nation of at least hundreds of millions, if not billions, of U.S. dollars in trade every year, most particularly in agriculture and tourism.

Steps toward domestic reform

While external factors have taken a toll, the persistent economic difficulties facing Cubans are also self-inflicted by the government.

Cuba’s leaders have pursued a slow, narrow and sometimes arbitrary path toward economic privatization – especially when contrasted with other officially communist countries in Asia.

Following Fidel Castro’s departure from public life in 2008, Cuba’s subsequent leader, and Fidel’s brother, Raul Castro, announced a series of gradual steps intended to encourage private enterprise that had long been curtailed by the government.

Under Raul, the state allowed Cubans to own, buy and sell their homes; they could also create their own businesses, and even employ others to whom they were not related – practices prohibited under Fidel Castro.

The government also allowed more foreigners to invest in Cuba, principally in tourist infrastructure, provided they confined themselves to minority stakes.

Cubans were also permitted for the first time in decades to own their own land, grow food and sell it at markets, setting their own prices within limits. Collective farms, the bane of Soviet agriculture that had once inspired Fidel’s revolutionary visions, were no longer the norm.

By 2017, about 13% of the workforce held licenses to start businesses, while the private sector employed about one-third of all workers.

In the years immediately following these reforms, Cuba posted some gains in industrial and food production and GDP. Indeed, during the mid-2000s, Cuba posted impressive growth rates, sometimes in excess of 10%.

Domestic progress stalled

Unfortunately for Cubans, the upward trend did not continue.

And that is in no small measure due to Cuba’s prosperity in the 2000s being built on Venezuelan subsidies, not by Cuban entrepreneurs.

Venezuela’s late president, and longtime Castro admirer, Hugo Chavez, began to subsidize Fidel Castro’s government shortly after taking power in 1999.

A petrostate, Venezuela provided much-needed oil to Cuba on favorable terms, while also paying the Cuban nation for doctors to work in Venezuela’s hospitals and clinics, providing Cuba with the hard currency it needed to pay for imports.

Researchers estimate that the Venezuelan government subsidized the Cuban economy by as much as US$9 billion per year until 2016.

Venezuelan oil allowed Cuba to paper over a starker reality: Despite reforms, Cuba’s entrepreneurs remained hamstrung by a cumbersome and often corrupt state policy.

Thanks to ever-changing regulations, the majority of private businesses have remained small and dedicated to personal services, such as restaurants, hairdressing, seamstressing and repairs.

On a larger scale, Cuba’s state bureaucrats see competition with government-owned businesses, especially in tourism, as a threat to their power and privileges. Taxes also remain inequitably high for private firms.

Meanwhile, the larger private businesses that are now occasionally permitted are almost always, according to a number of my Cuban-based sources, connected to friends or family members of the political elite, not average Cubans.

There have been successes, to be sure. The private sector now accounts for more retail sales by volume than state enterprises.

But the percentage of the workforce employed by the private sector remains about what it was in 2019, while private enterprise accounts for only about 15% of Cuba’s GDP.

The unsustainable present

Confronting multiple crises, Cuba’s leaders continue to blame the U.S. embargo and policy from Washington that has become only more bellicose under President Donald Trump. No doubt drawing optimism from having weathered severe crises before, the Cuban government seems committed to a state of defiance.

But the evidence this time around suggests Havana’s leaders should be less sanguine.

Despite increasing costs, Cubans enjoy widespread access to [the internet] and they know just how bad and how inequitable things are.

For all the government’s rhetoric and commitment to a decades-old revolution, Cubans see a much-vaunted medical system that is failing, unable to provide drugs, procedures — or even electricity. They know that crime is on the rise, while inflation reduces the value of the Cuban peso relative to the dollar every week

Cubans see and hear of their well-connected countrymen, with links to state enterprises, flaunting their wealth. Cubans may also know that their military holds as much as US$18 billion abroad — about 16% of Cuba’s GDP in 2024.

What they certainly know and experience is the reality of being forced to live without power, with no possibility of improvement in sight.

Limited choices going forward

Historically, Cuba has been pulled from crises by foreign patrons willing to subsidize its revolution.

But Russia’s strategic position, China’s global priorities and Venezuela’s hardships all make that unlikely right now. And with the U.S. now pursuing a policy of maximum pressure against noncompliant governments in Latin America, Havana can rest assured that it will see little breathing room from its powerful neighbor and long-time antagonist.

That leaves the Cuban government with only a few options.

It could choose to continue trying to restrict its citizens’ access to the internet. Unfortunately for the state, the internet is the lifeblood of the private sector.

Cuba’s leaders could also choose to rely on the loyalty of its security forces and their ability to intimidate and abuse their fellow Cubans. That has worked in the past, but given Havana’s scarce resources and its limited capacity to reward its henchmen, it is not clear that the government can afford to adopt this approach indefinitely.

Of course, Cuba’s leaders could take steps toward further reform the private sector and eliminate the waste and corruption that have increasingly defined the Cuban state.

Such a course would require the government to permit all Cubans, not just a well-connected few, to compete with state enterprises. It would also mean allowing for a greater degree of foreign investment, which has remained stunted due to government policy.

If the past offers any guide, however, Havana will instead continue to rely on its formidable security apparatus to repress is citizens, while privatizing in ways that do not threaten the power and privileges of the elite.

Joseph J. Gonzalez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Cuba’s leaders see their options dim amid blackouts and a shrinking economy – https://theconversation.com/cubas-leaders-see-their-options-dim-amid-blackouts-and-a-shrinking-economy-266203

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Andonea Jon Dickson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh

Under President Donald Trump, the United States is expanding its efforts to detain and deport non-citizens at an alarming rate. In recent months, the Trump administration made deals with a number of third states to receive deported non-citizens.

In Australia, the Labor government has similarly established new powers to deport non-citizens to third states. The government signed a secretive deal with Nauru in September, guaranteeing the small Micronesian island A$2.5 billion over the next three decades to accommodate the first cohort of deportees.

In both countries, migrants can now be banished to states to which they have no prior connection.

Last year in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party promised that the previous Conservative government’s plan to deport people to Rwanda was “dead and buried”. Yet, Labour removed close to 35,000 people in 2024, an increase of 25% over the previous year.

Starmer has also proposed establishing “return hubs” in third countries for people with rejected asylum claims.

Meanwhile, the far-right Reform Party has put forward a “mass deportation” plan involving the use of military bases to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of people, if it wins power in the next general election.

Similar policies may soon come to Europe, too. In May, the European Commission published a proposal that would allow EU member states to deport people seeking asylum to third countries where they have no previous connection.

The deportation of populations deemed problematic is not a new practice. For centuries, states have used forms of deportation to forcibly remove people, as Australia’s own history as a British penal colony illustrates.

Today, deportations are a staple of migration governance around the world. However, the recent expansion of detention and deportations reflects an accelerated criminalisation and punishment of non-citizens, tied to a rising authoritarianism across purportedly liberal Western countries.

Criminalising movement

The expansion and outsourcing of deportation is underpinned by long histories of criminalising migration.

Over the past three decades, legal obstacles and securitised borders have increasingly forced those fleeing war, persecution and insecurity to rely on unauthorised routes to seek refuge.

Governments have simultaneously reframed the act of seeking asylum from a human right to a criminal act, brandishing those on the move as “illegal” as a way of justifying onshore and offshore immigration detention.

Racialised people living in the community have also been subject to increased policing, regardless of their migration status.

In the US, UK and Australia, this criminalising language, once the preserve of the right-wing press, is now echoed by politicians across the political spectrum and enshrined in legislation. This has accelerated what migration expert Alison Mountz has termed “the death of asylum”, and normalising deportations.

In Australia, for example, the government lowered the threshold for visa cancellations in 2014, resulting in people with minor offences being detained and scheduled for deportation. Those who could not be returned to their home countries continued to languish in detention until a 2023 high court ruling mandated their release.

Despite having served their sentences, in addition to protracted periods in immigration detention, a media frenzy framed these people as a major threat to the community. The Labor government then legislated to deport them, in addition to thousands of others on precarious visas, to a third country.

Deportations have also been a central facet of US immigration enforcement for many years.

Former President Barack Obama was branded “Deporter in Chief” for achieving a record three million deportations while in office.

While Obama focused on “felons not families”, Trump has equated migration itself with crime and insecurity. His administration has cast a much wider net, rounding up those with and without criminal convictions, including citizens.

Detentions and deportations have also been used to suppress political dissent on issues, such as the genocide in Gaza.

To expedite his pledge to deport one million people in his first year, the Trump administration hastily set up detention centres in former prisons and military bases, including at Guantánamo Bay.

Reports suggest the government has also approached 58 third countries to accept deported non-nationals. Countries that have agreed, or already received people, are shown in the map below.

In many cases, people are then re-detained on arrival in hotels, prisons and camps, with some subject to further deportation.

Rising authoritarianism

These recent developments reveal an explicit authoritarianism in which deportations are achieved through the elimination of procedural fairness. Reducing notice periods, the ability to appeal decisions, and access to legal counsel allows for rushed and opaque procedures.

In June, eight people were deported from the US to South Sudan without the chance to contest their removal. After a failed court intervention, the three liberal US Supreme Court justices stated:

The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone, anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.

In the UK, the Labour party expanded the “Deport Now Appeal Later” scheme in August, extending the countries to which people can be deported without appeal rights from eight to 23.

And this month in Australia, the Migration Act was amended to expunge the rules of natural justice for people scheduled for deportation.

Across all three countries, the rapid expansion of detention and deportation practices terrorise those targeted, leaving whole communities living in fear. Australian human rights lawyer Alison Battisson described deportation as “a creeping death to the individuals and their families”.

These policies have also legitimised and emboldened far-right, neo-Nazi groups, who have taken to the streets in both the UK and Australia in recent weeks calling for an end to migration. In both countries, the effects of decades of neoliberal policies, such as a lack of affordable housing, jobs, and health care, are redefined as a problem of migration.

How communities are responding

Communities are now organising and making the case for a different sort of politics.

In Los Angeles, for example, grassroots organisations mobilised earlier this year to counter escalating raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Networks also began providing information and support to those targeted by ICE arrests. In July, Detention Watch Network relaunched the Communities Not Cages coalition of grassroots campaigns against detention.

In the UK, far-right rallies at asylum hotels have been met by counter demonstrations, with people insisting on a politics of welcome and unity.

But the challenge remains how to turn local and national opposition into a coalition capable of confronting this rise in authoritarian politics of exclusion and expulsion.

Ċetta Mainwaring is currently funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

Andonea Jon Dickson and Thom Tyerman 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.

– ref. Around the world, migrants are being deported at alarming rates – how did this become normalised? – https://theconversation.com/around-the-world-migrants-are-being-deported-at-alarming-rates-how-did-this-become-normalised-264790

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Emily Brayshaw, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

The iconic feathered showgirl was born amid the chaos of the first world war, when the wealthy, global French superstar Gaby Deslys entertained Parisians and Allied soldiers in a 1917 show called Laissez-les tombe! (Let Them Fall), a dazzling spectacle of ostrich feathers, rhinestones and beauty.

Although showgirls first appeared in late-19th century music halls, the red, white and blue feathered costumes in Deslys’ revue offered Paris something new and triumphal. The massed plumes, wild dancing and bodily displays celebrated French aesthetics and extravagance and communicated that France and her allies would not bow to Germany.

Prior to 1914 Deslys’s expensive jewellery, haute couture and expansive feathered hats – along with her affairs with powerful men such as department store magnate Harry Selfridge and King Manuel II of Portugal – created countless headlines.

But she was also outspoken about a woman’s right to support herself financially and worked tirelessly during the war raising funds for the Allies. Deslys was so passionate about aiding the devastated Parisian nightlife that she paid for all the costumes in Laissez-les tombe! herself.

Deslys’s cultural impact has inextricably linked feathers, high fashion, celebrity and showgirls ever since.

From France to Broadway

Feathered showgirl revues were so popular that they quickly went global. In 1920s New York, impresarios such as Florenz Ziegfeld staged luxurious Broadway productions that glorified the American showgirl.

But he made exceptions to American women. One of Ziegfeld’s most famous showgirls, Dolores, was born into poverty in London’s East End as Kathleen Mary Rose. She rose to become a supermodel who walked for the couturier Lady Duff-Gordon, known professionally as Lucile.

Ziegfeld considered Dolores one of the world’s most beautiful women. Tall, slender and graceful, she drove audiences wild when she glided across Ziegfeld’s stage and posed in opulent costumes.

On becoming a showgirl, Dolores used her modelling ability to make her fortune, earning today’s equivalent of US$10,000 a week by 1923.

Other performers harnessed the feathered showgirl aesthetic, including the celebrated twins Jenny and Rosie Dolly, who came from humble origins and used their beauty, talent and hard work to dominate American and European stages in the 1910s and 1920s.

Ziegfeld paid the Dollys the equivalent of US$64,000 weekly in 1915. Like Deslys, they became notorious for their consumption of fashion and affairs with famous men.

However, stage revues became unpopular around 1930 due to their vast expense and the rise of cinema – so the showgirl travelled to Hollywood.

There, she was celebrated in biopics such as The Great Ziegfeld (1936) with its glittering, feathered costumes by the designer Adrian.

In the second world war, showgirls boosted troop morale, like Deslys did in 1917.

Hollywood made feel-good films including the biopic The Dolly Sisters (1945), which reimagined the brunette twins as all-American blondes by casting 1940s pinup stars Betty Grable and June Haver.

From Hollywood to Vegas

From there, the American showgirl arrived in Las Vegas, performing in every hotel and casino on the strip during the 1950s and 1960s.

Like the showgirls of yore, these performers’ allure was their grace, beauty, and extravagant, expensive costumes, produced by the world’s leading designers.

Showgirls remained a fixture of Las Vegas entertainment throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Choreographers including Donn Arden and Madame Bluebell (who also worked in the Parisian revues) created hallmark, visual spectacles featuring costumes by Bob Mackie.

Jubilee!, which opened at the old MGM Grand casino in 1981, was one such revue. In addition to the vast volume of plumes, it was claimed the show had caused a global shortage of Swarovski crystals because the costumes had used them all.

In 1986 the old MGM Grand became Bally’s Casino, but Jubilee! stayed. The costumes, some of which cost more than US$7,000 each (roughly US$25,000 today), were used six nights a year for 35 years and maintained by 18 wardrobe staffers.

Jubilee! closed in 2016, but its costumes live on as valuable cultural artefacts that celebrities borrow to reinterpret the American showgirl for 21st-century audiences.

This includes demonstrating that showgirls are independent, hardworking and talented women.

From Vegas to Taylor Swift

Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese draws on the American showgirls’ legacy by wearing costumes from Jubilee! in her Las Vegas cabaret, and called the 1945 Dolly Sisters film one of her inspirations.

Pamela Anderson wore Jubilee! costumes in The Last Showgirl (2024), a film that highlights the sacrifices female performers often have to make to pursue their dreams.

Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to harness showgirl iconography.
Photographs from her new album show Swift wearing the Jubilee! “Diamond” and “Disco” costumes by Mackie.

Another photograph shows Swift in a cloud of ostrich plumes and rhinestones wearing a dark, bobbed wig: a direct reference to 1920s American showgirls and performers such as the Dolly Sisters.

Swift’s stage costumes are by the world’s leading fashion designers, while her songs often reference historical celebrities to critique how the entertainment and media industry treat female performers.

Choosing Mackie’s Jubilee! costumes allows Swift to become the American showgirl (Taylor’s Version), by tapping into a century of glamour and signalling that she too has worked hard and made sacrifices to reach the top.

Emily Brayshaw 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.

– ref. Taylor Swift has branded herself a showgirl. These hardworking women have a long and bejewelled history – https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-has-branded-herself-a-showgirl-these-hardworking-women-have-a-long-and-bejewelled-history-263188

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

On Sunday, a gunman launched a horrifying attack on people at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan.

Thomas Jacob Sanford allegedly rammed his pickup truck, adorned with American flags, into the doors of the chapel as a service was taking place. Authorities stated he shot at worshippers with an assault weapon, then set fire to the building. Four people died, and police killed Sanford at the scene shortly afterwards.

Media reports and government spokespeople suggest Sanford was motivated by a pronounced hatred of followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), widely known as Mormons.

According to a childhood friend, Peter Tersigni, Sanford became fixated with the church when he started dating one of its members while living in Utah:

He started dating this girl and then investigated and learned about Mormons because she was a Mormon. And I know that also, he got into meth really hardcore. It messed his life up and it messed his head up. And it just happened to be at the time he was around Mormons.

The language Sanford is reported to have used to describe Mormons – calling them “the antichrist” and saying “they are going to take over the world” – taps into a conspiracist suspicion of Mormons that has existed in America since the LDS church was founded in 1830, and which is still widespread in some subcultures today.

Anti-Mormonism in American history

Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, had enemies from the beginning. New Christian sects were proliferating in America, but Smith went further than most. He declared himself a “prophet” and claimed to have a new religious scripture that was equal to the Bible.

Many denounced Smith as a fraud, and his neighbours feared the political power he wielded over his growing community of followers. After the Mormons were forced out of Missouri by a state Extermination Order and a subsequent massacre, Smith was assassinated by an anti-Mormon militia in Illinois in 1844.

The Mormons fled to Utah in 1847 under the leadership of Brigham Young. There they endured decades of federal government pressure to abandon the practice of polygamy and submit to the authority of the United States, which sometimes brought in armed forces.

This may seem like remote history, but to this day many evangelical Christians fear the fast-growing but “false religion” of Mormonism will lure people away from true Christianity. There is a cottage industry of YouTubers, some of them ex-Mormons, dedicated to disproving the teachings of Joseph Smith.

Nor has the violent past been forgotten. Earlier this year Netflix released a series depicting the Mountain Meadows Massacre, perpetrated by a Mormon militia in 1857.

Jon Krakauer’s 2003 bestselling book, Under the Banner of Heaven, also made into a streaming series, explored 1980s murders in a Mormon splinter sect. The book emphasised the prevalence of violence in early LDS history.

Anti-Mormonism today

Anti-Mormon violence is relatively rare in America today, but aversion to Mormons is not.

A 2022 YouGov poll of Americans found 39% of respondents held unfavourable views of Mormons, compared to just 17% with favourable views. This net negative approval was comparable to American attitudes towards Muslims, and more negative than American attitudes towards atheists.

I argued in a 2014 study that Mormons face hostility from both sides of America’s culture wars. Many conservative Christians believe Mormons are not real Christians. At the same time, many liberal and secular-minded people associate Mormons with the Christian-right.

In 2012, the high-profile Mormon Mitt Romney became the Republican candidate for the presidential election. The number of liberal and non-religious people who said they would not vote for a Mormon for president increased significantly between 2007 and 2012, despite the fact Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was also a Mormon.

The LDS church was also prominent in campaigns against same-sex marriage in western states in the late 2000s. This led to protests and some acts of vandalism at LDS houses of worship, prompting expressions of solidarity by other conservative religious groups.

The bipartisan nature of anti-Mormonism arguably makes it one of the more socially acceptable biases in the US. But there is a world of difference between not wanting a Mormon president, or enjoying such mockery as the Book of Mormon musical, and physically attacking Mormons.

From prejudice to violence

Between 2015 and 2024, the FBI counted 160 hate crimes reported against LDS victims. These included 63 acts of vandalism and property destruction and 29 assaults. The states with the most incidents were Utah (25), California (23), Washington (14), Tennessee (12), Georgia (10) and Nevada (10).

A 2019 report in the LDS-owned Deseret News expressed concern over rising anti-Mormon hate crimes. But it pointed out this was part of a larger trend of rising hate crime in the US, and that anti-LDS incidents were dwarfed by hate crimes targeting Jews and Muslims during the same period.

Immediately after the Grand Blanc killings, President Donald Trump called the incident “yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America”.

This fits his culture-war framing of Christians being under constant attack. But it glosses over the specific animus Mormons face in American society, often from other Christians and conservatives (the alleged Grand Blanc shooter wore a Trump 2020 shirt in a social media post).

Since 2000, there have been nearly 500 homicides in American places of worship, three quarters of them by firearm. This is a bigger problem than the violence facing any one religious group.

David Smith 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.

– ref. The Michigan church shooting sits within a long history of hatred against Mormons in America – https://theconversation.com/the-michigan-church-shooting-sits-within-a-long-history-of-hatred-against-mormons-in-america-266481

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

With the passing of Dr Jane Goodall, the world has lost a conservation giant. But her extraordinary achievements leave a profound legacy.

Goodall was a world-leading expert in animal behaviour and a globally recognised environmental and conservation advocate. She achieved all this at a time when women were commonly sidelined or ignored in science.

Her work with chimpanzees showed it was wrong to assume only humans used tools. She showed us the animals expressed emotions such as love and grief and have individual personalities.

Goodall showed us scientists can express their emotions and values and that we can be respected researchers as well as passionate advocates and science communicators. After learning about how chimpanzees were being used in medical research, she spoke out: “I went to the conference as a scientist, and I left as an activist.”

As childhood rights activist Marian Wright Edelman has eloquently put it, “You can’t be what you can’t see”.

Goodall showed what it was possible to be.

Forging her own path

Goodall took a nontraditional path into science. The brave step of going into the field at the age of 26 to make observations was supported by her mother.

Despite making world-first discoveries such as tool use by non-humans, people didn’t take her seriously because she hadn’t yet gone to university. Nowadays, people who contribute wildlife observations are celebrated under the banner of citizen science.

Goodall was a beacon at a time when science was largely dominated by men – especially remote fieldwork. But she changed that narrative. She convinced famous paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey to give her a chance. He first employed her as a secretary. But it wasn’t long until he asked her to go to Tanzania’s remote Gombe Stream National Park. In 1960, she arrived.

This was not easy. It took real courage to work in a remote area with limited support alongside chimpanzees, a species thought to be peaceful but now known to be far stronger than humans and capable of killing animals and humans.

Goodall is believed to be the only person accepted into chimpanzee society. Through calm but determined persistence she won their trust. These qualities served Goodall well – not just with chimps, but throughout her entire career advocating for conservation and societal change.

At Gombe, she showed for the first time that animals could fashion and use tools, had individual personalities, expressed emotions and had a higher intelligence and understanding than they were credited with.

Goodall was always an animal person and her love of chimps was in part inspired by her toy Jubilee, gifted by her father. She had close bonds with her pets and extended these bonds to wildlife. Goodall gave her study subjects names such as “David Greybeard”, the first chimp to accept her at Gombe.

Some argue we shouldn’t place a human persona on animals by naming them. But Goodall showed it was not only acceptable to see animals as individuals with different behaviours, but it greatly aids connection with and care for wildlife.

Goodall became an international voice for wildlife. She used her profile to encourage a focus on animal welfare in conservation, caring for both individuals and species.

A pioneer for women in science

With Goodall’s passing, the world has lost one of the three great “nonagenarian environmental luminaries”, to use co-author Vanessa Pirotta’s phrase. The other two are the naturalist documentary maker, Sir David Attenborough, 99, and famed marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle, who is 90.

Goodall showed us women can be pioneering scientists and renowned communicators as well as mothers.

She shared her work in ways accessible to all generations, from National Geographic documentaries to hip podcasts.

Her visibility encouraged girls and women around the world to be bold and follow our own paths.

Goodall’s story directly inspired several authors of this article.

Co-author Marissa Parrott was privileged to have spoken to Goodall several times during her visits to Melbourne Zoo and on her world tours. Goodall’s story was a direct inspiration for Parrott’s own remote and international fieldwork, supported by her mother just as Goodall’s mother had supported her. They both survived malaria, which also kills chimpanzees and gorillas. Goodall long championed a One Health approach, recognising the health of communities, wildlife and the environment are all interconnected.

Co-author Zara Bending worked and toured alongside Goodall. The experience demonstrated how conservationists could be powerful advocates through storytelling, and how our actions reveal who we are. As Goodall once said:

every single one of us matters, every single one of us has a role to play, and every single one of us makes a difference every single day.

From the forest floor to global icon

Goodall knew conservation is as much about people as it is about wildlife and wild places.

Seventeen years after beginning her groundbreaking research in Gombe, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute with the mission of protecting wildlife and habitat by engaging local communities.

Her institute’s global network now spans five continents and continues her legacy of community-centred conservation. Researchers have now been studying the chimps at Gombe for 65 years.

Goodall moved from fieldwork to being a global conservation icon who regularly travelled more than 300 days a year. She observed many young people across cultures and creeds who had lost hope for their future amid environmental and climate destruction. In response, she founded a second organisation, Roots & Shoots, in 1991. Her goal was:

to foster respect and compassion for all living things, to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and to inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, other animals, and the environment.

Last year, Roots & Shoots groups were active in 75 countries. Their work is a testament to Goodall’s mantra: find hope in action.

Protecting nature close to home

One of Goodall’s most remarkable attributes was her drive to give people the power to take action where they were. No matter where people lived or what they did, she helped them realise they could be part of the solution.

In a busy, urbanised world, it’s easier than ever to feel disconnected from nature. Rather than presenting nature as a distant concept, Goodall made it something for everyone to experience, care for and cherish.

She showed we didn’t have to leave our normal lives behind to protect nature – we could make just as much difference in our own communities.

One of her most famous quotes rings just as true today as when she first said it:

only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.

Let’s honour her world-changing legacy by committing to understand, care and help save all species with whom we share this world. For Jane Goodall.

Euan Ritchie is a Councillor with the Biodiversity Council, a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society, and President of the Australian Mammal Society.

Marissa Parrott works for Zoos Victoria, a not-for-profit conservation organisation. Zoos Victoria and partner zoos raise funds to help support the Jane Goodall Institute Australia, Gorilla Doctors and others organisations.

Zara Bending is affiliated with the Jane Goodall Institute as a resident expert on wildlife crime and international law.

Kylie Soanes and Marissa Parrott 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.

– ref. ‘Only if we help shall all be saved’: Jane Goodall showed we can all be part of the solution – https://theconversation.com/only-if-we-help-shall-all-be-saved-jane-goodall-showed-we-can-all-be-part-of-the-solution-266572