Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jenny Hall, Associate Professor in Tourism and Events, York St John University

As soon as you drive over the top of the Peak District and down into Sheffield you can see the light pollution – and it’s horrible, said a participant in a research project into darkness and light pollution.

In the last 100 years, the places where people can experience darkness have reduced dramatically. Now only 10% of the people living in the western hemisphere experience places with dark skies, where there is no artificial light. And the starry skies they can see are limited by artificial light. The number of stars that people can see from most of the western hemisphere is getting fewer and fewer.

Researchers trying to find out about public attitudes to darkness attended events over three days in the North York Moors National Park. Here, in one of the UK’s seven dark sky reserves (where light pollution is limited), the researchers explored how immersive and fun experiences, such as guided night walks and stargazing and silent discos, reshaped public perceptions of natural darkness and sparked ideas of what they might change in their lives.

Working with a professional film-maker, the research team recorded how people responded to taking part in events in darkness. Participants in the research included five tourism businesses, two representatives from the park and 94 visitors.

Darkness disappears

Light pollution is increasing globally by approximately 10% per year (estimated by measuring how many stars can be seen in the sky at night), diminishing night skies and disrupting ecosystems.

But increasing awareness of light pollution has led to an increase in national parks hosting events to explore this issue, according to my recent study.

The study’s findings indicated that participants in the North York Moors Dark Sky Festival events not only started to feel more comfortable in natural darkness but also talked about changing their own lifestyle, including using low-impact lighting in their homes, asking neighbours to switch off lights in their gardens at night, and monitoring neighbourhood light levels.

The research team used filming and walking with visitors to capture not just what people said, but what they did in darkness. During guided walks, participants experimented with moving without head‑torches, cultivating night vision, and tuning into sound, smell and learning how to find their way around without artificial light.

Walking in silence helped visitors build a deeper connection with the nocturnal environment. One visitor said that being in the dark just for that moment of peace, and just to listen and tune in to the environment was a privilege and something to conserve.

One said: “I remember as a child I’d see similar stuff from a city [and that] sort of thing, and now we’re doing whatever we can do to save things like this.”

Visitors reported leaving with new skills, greater awareness and commitment, such as putting their lights at home on timers, and working on bat protection projects. These actions demonstrate that this kind of experience in nocturnal environments can change behaviour far beyond festivals.

Dark Sky activists, such as those in the North York Moors National Park, have learned that the public connect with the issues around light pollution and become more engaged if the activities are fun.

Shared experiences help people understand complex messages about climate, biodiversity, and responsible lighting, and help people feel more confident about walking in the dark. Several participants commented that walking without light was good and wasn’t as bad as they thought. Another said: “I find walking at night with a full moon is really quite a magical experience.”

By the end of the walk, some visitors (when on relatively easy ground) were happy to switch head torches off and enjoy feeling immersed within the nocturnal landscape.

Dark‑sky festivals show how joy and fun can build public awareness and an understanding of why darkness matters.

However, limited public transport to rural night events as well as safety concerns about walking in darkness, and the cost of festivals all restrict participation.

Why light is a problem

Research shows that artificial light at night disrupts circadian rhythms, impairs some species ability to find their way around and is a cause of declining populations of insects, bats and other nocturnal fauna.

There is also evidence that outdoor lighting generates needless emissions and ecological harm that is intensifying at an alarming rate.

To rethink this shift, the study argues that darkness could be considered a shared environmental “good”, requiring collective care to prevent overuse, damage and pollution.

Small changes in lighting shielding (which controls the spread of light), warmer coloured lights, and half lighting (switching street lighting off at midnight) can be significant and less damaging to animal life.

The national park’s next major step has been to establish a Northern England Dark-Sky Alliance to halt the growth of light pollution outside the park boundaries, particularly along the A1 road in northern England, which would help restore natural darkness for nocturnal migratory species, such as birds like Nightjars.

If we can make living with more darkness in our streets, and in our leisure time, feel more normal and more comfortable, then nighttime becomes not something that needs to be fixed, but a shared commons to be restored.

Jenny Hall is a speaker at an upcoming discussion on Cities Under Stars: Tackling Light Pollution in Cities, in conjunction with The Conversation, as part of this year’s Dark Skies Festival. Find out more, and come along.

Jenny Hall 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. Why walking in a national park in the dark prompts people to turn off lights at home – https://theconversation.com/why-walking-in-a-national-park-in-the-dark-prompts-people-to-turn-off-lights-at-home-272321

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Trott, Senior Lecturer in American Studies and History, York St John University

The first lady of the US, a title typically held by the wife of the president, has never been a fixed cultural figure. Instead, she has functioned as a screen on to which the nation projects its ideals, anxieties and evolving ideas about womanhood and power.

With the release of Amazon’s new Melania documentary, which details Melania Trump in the 20 days before her husband’s second presidential inauguration in January 2025, that long tradition of reinterpretation is once again visible. It reminds us that the first lady is as much a cultural symbol as a political presence.

The earliest first ladies largely framed themselves as extensions of domestic virtue. Martha Washington, who became the nation’s inaugural first lady in 1789, set the tone as what some people have called a hostess-in-chief. She established her role as one of duty and moral stability, not ambition, helping prove the US could have national leadership without monarchy.

Throughout the 19th century, first Ladies like Dolley Madison (wife of James Madison) expanded the role subtly. They used social gatherings and personal charm to shape public opinion and support presidential authority. Madison used social spaces like drawing rooms as informal diplomatic zones, making it socially acceptable – and even expected – for political rivals to mingle politely.

These first ladies achieved this while still being publicly understood as guardians of home and civility. Cultural representations – from portraits to newspaper sketches – emphasised grace, femininity and restraint. This reinforced the idea that women’s power should remain indirect.

Embracing advocacy

In the 20th century, Eleanor Roosevelt marked a decisive shift by embracing advocacy. She became an active moral voice during the New Deal era, a period that saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt enact various programmes and reforms to combat the great depression. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke openly about civil and women’s rights, labour and poverty.

Culturally, she was portrayed not as a decorative spouse but as a reformer and the conscience of the nation. This redefinition opened space for later US first ladies to navigate their public roles more openly.

Jackie Kennedy, for instance, professionalised the role of first lady. Kennedy, who spoke multiple languages and adapted her style to different audiences, used her first ladyship as a legitimate political tool of cultural diplomacy. Foreign leaders and the press were disarmed by her charm and elegance, with President John F. Kennedy jokingly introducing himself as “the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris” on an official visit to France in 1961.

She also led a project to restore the White House, turning it into a symbol of American civilisation and not just politics. These efforts led to a televised tour in 1962, in which Kennedy invited Americans into the White House and showcased her work in restoring its history. It also humanised Kennedy and made her the first in the role to truly master television.

By the late 20th century, the role of first lady became a site of ideological debate. Hillary Clinton openly engaged in policy work, especially healthcare reform. She led ultimately unsuccessful efforts to pass the Health Security Act in 1993, which aimed to restructure the American healthcare system to ensure universal coverage.

Cultural responses to Clinton were polarised. She was celebrated as a feminist trailblazer by some and criticised for overstepping an unelected role by others. Satire, late-night television and news commentary increasingly treated the first lady as a political figure subject to scrutiny, not merely a symbolic companion to the president.

Like Clinton, Michelle Obama was a visible policy advocate. She used media and popular culture strategically, promoting causes such as support for military families, healthy eating or higher education through social media challenges and television appearances. Obama also spoke candidly about race and identity, framing her position as an active platform for social change and to inspire future first ladies globally.

She looked to position young people – especially girls – as agents of change through her Reach Higher and Let Girls Learn education initiatives. And Obama’s 2020 documentary, Becoming, offered the American public an expanded insight into what a former first lady’s political influence can look like after the White House.

While holding no formal authority, the US first lady occupies one of the most visible platforms in American public life. This makes the role especially revealing of what Americans expect from women and leadership. First ladies have historically been expected to embody the nation’s moral tone, demonstrate unity above partisanship and act as ceremonial “mother” to the nation.

However, since initially becoming first lady in 2016, Melania Trump has largely maintained distance both from the role and traditional advocacy. Her public image has instead leaned heavily on visual symbolism such as fashion, posture and reserve. She has also been widely seen as partisan. In 2018, for example, she wore a jacket emblazoned with “I really don’t care, do you?” during a trip to a migrant child detention centre on the US-Mexico border.

The behind-the-scenes Amazon documentary, which coincides with two West End plays about former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, comes at a moment of active cultural engagement with how female figures in political spheres are perceived and narrated. It offers the current first lady a chance to shape her own public narrative rather than being defined by the press.

Melania Trump’s editorial control of the documentary suggests she wants the public to see her as a distinct entity from the president, with her own agenda and vision. In the documentary itself, she also hints at having ambitions that extend beyond the traditional ceremonial aspects of the first ladyship.

From references to reinventing the office of first lady to thinking about how lawmakers could do their jobs better, it appears Trump is aiming to cultivate a narrative in which she is seen both as independent and influential enough to shape political culture. Whether she evolves the first lady role in any meaningful way will become clear in the years ahead.

Sarah Trott 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. Melania: how the role of US first lady has changed over the years – https://theconversation.com/melania-how-the-role-of-us-first-lady-has-changed-over-the-years-274662

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol

Some of us remember having more energy in our 20s. We could work late, sleep badly, have a night out, recover quickly and still feel capable the next day. By our 40s, that ease has often gone. Fatigue feels harder to shake. It’s tempting to assume this is simply the ageing process – a one‑way decline.

The truth is that the 40s are often the most exhausting decade, not because we are old, but because several small biological changes converge at exactly the same time that life’s demands often peak. Crucially, and optimistically, there is no reason to assume that energy must continue to decline in the same way into our 60s.

Energetic 20s

In early adulthood, multiple systems peak together.

Muscle mass is at its highest, even without deliberate training. As a metabolically active tissue, muscle helps regulate blood sugar and reduces the effort required for everyday tasks. Research shows that skeletal muscle is metabolically active even at rest and contributes substantially to basal metabolic rate (the energy your body uses just to keep you alive when you’re at rest). When you have more muscle, everything costs less energy.

At the cellular level, mitochondria – the structures that convert food into usable energy – are more numerous and more efficient. They produce energy with less waste and less inflammatory byproduct.

Sleep, too, is deeper. Even when sleep is shortened, the brain produces more slow‑wave sleep, the phase most strongly linked to physical restoration.

Hormonal rhythms are also more stable. Cortisol, often described as the body’s stress hormone, melatonin, growth hormone and sex hormones follow predictable daily patterns, making energy more reliable across the day.

Put simply, energy in your 20s is abundant and forgiving. You can mistreat it and still get away with it.

Exhausting 40s

By midlife, none of these systems has collapsed, but small shifts start to matter.

Muscle mass begins to decline from the late 30s onwards unless you exercise to maintain it. This in itself is a top tip – do strength training. The loss of muscle is gradual, but its effects are not. Less muscle means everyday movement costs more energy, even if you don’t consciously notice it.

Mitochondria still produce energy, but less efficiently. In your 20s, poor sleep or stress could be buffered. In your 40s, inefficiency is exposed. Recovery becomes more “expensive”.

Sleep also changes. Many people still get enough hours, but sleep fragments. Less deep sleep means less repair. Fatigue feels cumulative rather than episodic.

Hormones don’t disappear in midlife – they fluctuate, particularly in women. Variability, not deficiency, disrupts temperature regulation, sleep timing and energy rhythms. The body copes better with low levels than with unpredictable ones.

Then there is the brain. Midlife is a period of maximum cognitive and emotional load: leadership, responsibility, vigilance and caring roles. The prefrontal cortex – responsible for planning, making decisions and inhibition – works harder for the same output. Mental multitasking drains energy as effectively as physical labour.

This is why the 40s feel so punishing. Biological efficiency is beginning to shift at exactly the moment when demand is highest.

Hopeful 60s

Later life is often imagined as a continuation of midlife decline; however, many people report something different.

Hormonal systems often stabilise after periods of transition. Life roles may simplify. Cognitive load can reduce. Experience replaces constant active decision‑making.

Sleep doesn’t automatically worsen with age. When stress is lower and routines are protected, sleep efficiency can improve – even if total sleep time is shorter.

Crucially, muscle and mitochondria still adapt surprisingly well into later life. Strength training in people in their 60s, 70s and beyond can restore strength, improve metabolic health and increase subjective energy within months.

This doesn’t mean later life brings boundless energy, but it often brings something else: predictability.

Good news?

Across adulthood, energy shifts in character rather than simply declining. The mistake we make is assuming that feeling tired in midlife reflects a personal failing, or that it marks the start of an unavoidable decline. Anatomically, it is neither.

Midlife fatigue is best understood as a mismatch between biology and demand: small shifts in efficiency occurring at precisely the point when cognitive, emotional and practical loads are at their highest.

The hopeful message is not that we can reclaim our 20-year-old selves. Rather, it is that energy in later life remains highly modifiable, and that the exhaustion so characteristic of the 40s is not the endpoint of the story. Fatigue at this stage is not a warning of inevitable decline; it is a signal that the rules have changed.

Michelle Spear 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 truth about energy: why your 40s feel harder than your 20s, but there may be a lift later on – https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-energy-why-your-40s-feel-harder-than-your-20s-but-there-may-be-a-lift-later-on-274250

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bobby Smith, Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Warwick

One autumn evening in 2021, I was co-facilitating the first of ten creative sessions with young people in the Daimler Warehouse, Coventry. It’s home to Highly Sprung Physical Performance, a partner in a pilot project called With One Breath. I was there to use theatre, photography and creative writing to explore the climate crisis.

My collaborator, Becky Warnock, a socially engaged artist, ran an exercise to take stock of how the group were feeling about the issue. She asked them to place themselves on a continuum in response to a series of statements – one end of the room meant they agreed with the statement, while the other end meant they disagreed.

It became clear that many young people are incredibly knowledgeable about the climate crisis. However, when Warnock asked them to respond to the statement, “I have a voice in climate change debates”, most of the group huddled on one side of the room, showing that they “disagreed”.

The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.

My research examines what happens when artists engage directly with communities through the co-creation of art. Since 2019, I have worked in collaboration with Rachel Turner-King. We have worked in a range of settings and partnerships including schools, community centres, parks and performance spaces in Coventry, Kampala and Nairobi.

We have called this work Acting on Climate. Underpinning our projects are techniques which engage young people in discussion and act as prompts to explore local environments and share stories. We are also interested in exploring the impact of climate crisis in other parts of the world, and the perspectives of people living in these places.

Young people are often overlooked in discussions about the climate crisis. And yet they stand to be most profoundly affected by it. With One Breath sought to place young people at the heart of this discussion through collaboration across borders.

The project included the use of games and techniques adapted from drama practitioner Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. We tasked young people with using photography and film to document and reflect on the areas they live in. We encouraged them to shape the work and decide what to focus on. Three themes were identified: investigating power and responsibility; reflecting on processes of globalisation; and producing positive visions for alternative futures.

The project prompted dialogue across the two locations. While many young people in the UK felt insulated from the immediate impacts of the climate crisis, hearing from Ugandans already living with and adapting to environmental disruption made those unequal realities impossible to ignore.

Our work highlighted that young people often feel a lack of agency to make change, but also feel simplistically portrayed and tokenised as beacons of hope and change. This tokenisation places responsibility on young people to adapt to, and transform, a problem that they have had little role in creating.

Communities in countries like Uganda are frequently excluded and marginalised when it comes to conversations and action on the climate crisis, so the young people we worked with in that country faced a double bind. They are both marginalised due to their age and where they are from.

As such, this transnational project provided an opportunity to amplify voices not typically heard.

Complexity and collaboration

My research took on new dimensions through Fair Play Kenya 2025, a festival at the National Theatre in Nairobi as part of the British Council’s Kenya 2025 season.

The festival considered relationships between climate crisis, conflict and land justice. One strand involved connecting three groups of young people from Nairobi, Derry/Londonderry and Birmingham through in person and online workshops. To do so, a partnership was formed involving Amani People’s Theatre and ZamaleoACT in Kenya, The Gap Arts Project in Birmingham and The Playhouse in Northern Ireland.

During this short project, young people met online, sharing discoveries and testing ideas. The process is documented in a short film sharing their work and views.

In Derry/Londonderry, participants decided to explore land and ancient Celtic culture and the rights of nature, leading them to focus on the mismanagement of Lough Neagh.

Alternatively, in Birmingham young people were concerned by the lack of access to nature, and how this intersects with the climate crisis. Participants in Nairobi explored land justice and what land means to them in their everyday lives. A particularly striking aspect of this group’s work was the reflection on Carbon Credit deals forcing Kenyans off of their land under unjust terms and conditions.

From projects such as Fair Play, we have come to understand that working creatively across borders is inherently messy, complex work. The choices that we all make on a daily basis implicate us in causing environmental harm, but an individualised approach to climate action is unlikely to succeed on its own.

Through artistic projects like ours, such nuance can be engaged with in fun, open-ended ways. For those of us in countries like the UK, the history of industrialisation and colonialism mean we are entangled in processes of exploitation and resource extraction – these must place the burden of responsibility on such countries.

Meanwhile, our work in Uganda highlighted experiences where young people are having to move away from areas that are no longer able to find jobs and how, in Kenya, climate change is one factor fuelling conflict between communities.

For the young people we have worked with, and for us as researchers, arts projects help to make visible the effects of both of this history and the climate crisis in ways that connect and resonate.

Bobby Smith received funding for With One Breath from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Fair Play Kenya 2025 was funded by the British Council and the University of Warwick’s Arts and Humanities Impact Fund.

– ref. Climate storytelling often ignores young people – arts-based research can change that – https://theconversation.com/climate-storytelling-often-ignores-young-people-arts-based-research-can-change-that-272529

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Joanna Syrda, Assistant Professor in Business Economics, University of Bath

The idea of a “trophy” wife or husband may not sound like a very romantic basis for marriage. It implies one half of a couple brings physical attractiveness to a relationship, while the other half brings status and money.

But the lack of romance in this idea does not mean that attractiveness and wealth don’t both play a part in many real relationships. Sociologists call it “beauty-status exchange”, and it has traditionally reflected the gendered idea that men prioritise physical attractiveness in the search for a spouse, while women opt for wealth or earning potential.

While it might seem like an old-fashioned concept, my research suggests that, after marriage, some heterosexual couples still try to find a balance between money and attractiveness – but now it may be common for this to affect both sexes in more similar ways.

I found that increases in one spouse’s share of household income were strongly linked to reductions in the other spouse’s body mass index (BMI). It appeared that when the share of household income earned by the wives in my sample rose, their husbands tended to exercise more and slim down.

And when the husbands’ income share rose, their wives tended to respond in a similar way. So the beauty-status exchange lives on – only now it appears to be more equal.

My research used 20 years of US data about more than 3,700 dual-earning heterosexual couples, comparing the share of total household income with changes in both partners’ BMI and how often they exercised.

What was once widely thought of as a gendered, one-sided exchange, may have become a mutual process of balance, maintained in part through deliberate changes in fitness routines. These effects are largely symmetrical, holding true for both men and women.

BMI is, of course, an imperfect measure of physical attractiveness. It has many limitations and captures only one dimension of a person’s appearance and fitness.

But it is one of the few measurements consistently available for both partners in large and detailed data sets. It has also been linked with perceptions of attractiveness in previous research, which makes it widely used in studies about couples and relationship dynamics.

Equilibrium

Economists and psychologists have long described relationships as systems that strive for equilibrium. Each partner can compare what they give and receive and adjust when things feel out of balance.

Building on this idea, my study introduces the concepts of “static” and “dynamic” beauty-status exchange.

The static version refers to the one-off trade between attractiveness and status that shapes who marries whom. This is a pattern documented in previous research showing that higher-earning men are, on average, more likely to partner with women with lower BMI – a proxy for “socially defined physical attractiveness”.

The dynamic version captures how this exchange continues within marriage, as couples adjust to shifts in income and resources to maintain balance over time.

Relationships, in other words, evolve. As incomes rise or fall, people respond not just financially but physically, subtly reshaping themselves to preserve what feels like fairness or desirability within the relationship

This search for balance aligns with the fact that in some of the world’s wealthiest countries – including the US, the UK and parts of Europe – the share of households in which wives earn as much as or more than their husbands has increased.

As this financial equality grows, so too does cultural equality in expectations about appearance. The rise of male grooming markets and the normalisation of skincare and body image conversations among men all signal a shift: men now invest far more in how they look than previous generations did.

Dynamic beauty–status exchange captures this broader trend at home. Economic parity between partners is matched by a new form of aesthetic parity, where both men and women feel motivated to maintain attractiveness in response to changes in status or income.

What was once a one-way cultural expectation appears to have quietly become a two-way performance of equality. The beauty–status exchange hasn’t disappeared; it has simply evolved.

Where once men’s income and women’s appearance were traded asymmetrically, today’s dual-earner couples may engage in a more reciprocal form of exchange. Beauty–status exchange is, of course, only one of many ways couples adjust to maintain balance, alongside emotional support, housework and childcare for example.

But it offers a clear window into how economic change can reshape behaviour within marriage.

Overall, shifts in income share are mirrored by shifts in behaviour and body weight. Marriage, it turns out, remains a dynamic marketplace of mutual adjustment.

Joanna Syrda 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. How husbands and wives try to find a balance between beauty and status – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-husbands-and-wives-try-to-find-a-balance-between-beauty-and-status-new-research-269303

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeff Da Costa, PhD Researcher in Hydrometeorology, University of Reading

After major disasters, public debate often treats them as unexpected or unprecedented. This reaction is not necessarily about the absence of warnings. It reflects how societies process shock – and how authorities often explain disruption as unavoidable, rather than the result of earlier choices.

Extreme weather is rarely unpredictable. Days, sometimes weeks, in advance, scientists are able to warn of an increased risk of storms, floods, droughts or other hazards. Yet the cycle repeats.

To understand why this is, colleagues and I reconstructed the scientific warnings and the official responses to major floods in Luxembourg in July 2021 – my home country’s most damaging disaster on record. Those floods caused far more damage than they would have done if early action was taken, but Luxembourg isn’t an outlier: many other countries suffer from the same problems we identify.

As the UN targets “early warning for all” by 2027, it’s worth noting the issue is not that warnings were missing. It is that warning systems are often designed to act on certainty rather than probability – and that’s not how forecasting works. By the time warnings become visible to the public, it is often too late.

Weather forecasts may look definitive on your phone, but they are probabilistic by nature. They are created by running a series of computer simulations of the future weather. The level to which the outcomes of different simulations agree with each other provides the likelihood of hazardous conditions, not guaranteed outcomes. These allow forecasters to identify elevated risk well before impacts occur, even if the precise location of an event and their size remain uncertain.

Crucially, uncertainty is usually greatest further ahead, when preventative action would be most effective. Acting early therefore almost always means acting without certainty. This is not a weakness of science, but an inherent feature of anticipating complex systems under changing conditions. The real challenge lies in how institutions are organised to interpret, trust and act on those probabilities.

Acting on certainty

Most warning systems rely on predefined procedural thresholds: alert levels, activation protocols and emergency plans that kick in once specific criteria are met. Forecasting may indicate that flooding is increasingly likely, for example, but measures such as evacuations or road closures can only be triggered after formal thresholds are crossed.

Before that point, risk information passes through many layers of interpretation and judgment, where early signals are often noted but not acted upon.

Thresholds serve important purposes. They help coordinate response, clarify chains of command and reduce unnecessary disruption. But they also embed a structural preference for certainty. Action is authorised only once risk is framed as imminent, even when credible evidence already points to escalating danger.

This attitude was apparent in the days leading up to the July 2021 floods. Our study shows that multiple forecasts at European and national levels indicated a high probability of extreme rainfall and flooding, in some cases up to a week in advance. This information was available across different parts of the warning system. At that stage, uncertainty about precise impacts remained, as would be expected. What mattered was how the system was designed to handle that uncertainty.

Too early for warning

Because Luxembourg’s response measures were tied to procedural thresholds, early signals could not translate into anticipatory action. The country’s water administration and its national weather service had access to relevant information, but they operated within a framework that did not authorise a collective interpretation of what was happening or encourage action before thresholds were crossed.

This was not a scientific miscalculation, nor was it necessarily an operational mistake by individual agencies. Meteorological and hydrological services most likely did as much as their mandates allowed. The decision to wait for formal triggers was human and institutional rather than technical,
reflecting a system designed to prioritise procedural certainty over sound decision-making.

By the time action was authorised, for many people it was too late. Evacuations or installing flood gates became far more difficult, particularly for communities with limited experience of such severe floods. From the perspective of those affected, warnings appeared late or did not arrive at all – even though the risks had been identified earlier throughout the system.

Luxembourg is a particularly instructive illustration of what can go wrong, because it is a small, wealthy and well-connected country. The issue was not necessarily a lack of resources or scientific capacity, but of institutional design and societal readiness to act on risk.

Learning and resilience

The effectiveness of early warning systems over time depends on their ability to learn from extreme events. This requires open, independent analysis of what worked, what did not work and why. In several neighbouring countries affected in 2021, such as Germany and Belgium, formal inquiries and external reviews were carried out. In Luxembourg, they were not.

When expert critique is discouraged or avoided, learning slows. Questions about system performance remain unresolved and the same structural vulnerabilities are likely to persist. This creates a systemic risk in its own right: societies become less able to adapt warning systems, interpret uncertainty and act earlier on emerging threats.

As someone who has worked within these systems and continues to research disaster risk governance, I have seen how asking difficult questions can be treated as destabilising rather than constructive. Resilience depends on confronting uncomfortable truths, not avoiding them.

The risk of extreme weather is increasing across Europe and beyond. Early warning systems are rightly central to disaster risk reduction. But their effectiveness depends on how societies authorise action under uncertainty. This is a choice, not an inevitability.

Uncertainty cannot be eliminated. The challenge is to decide how much uncertainty is acceptable when lives and livelihoods are at stake. Systems designed to wait for certainty – for procedural, organisational, financial or reputational reasons – are more likely to deliver warnings that arrive too late to feel like warnings at all.

If resilience to future climate risks is to be sustainable, warning systems must be designed to learn, adapt and act earlier on credible risk.

Jeff Da Costa 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. Why do disasters still happen, despite early warnings? Because systems are built to wait for certainty – https://theconversation.com/why-do-disasters-still-happen-despite-early-warnings-because-systems-are-built-to-wait-for-certainty-275021

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chee Meng Tan, Assistant Professor of Business Economics, University of Nottingham

Japan said goodbye to its last two giant pandas on January 27, as twins Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei were returned from their host country to China. Their departure has left Japan without any pandas for the first time since 1972, when Tokyo and Beijing normalised diplomatic ties.

The Chinese government has long pursued a strategy of giving or loaning giant pandas, which are found exclusively in China, to other countries to strengthen international ties and boost its global image. Widely known as “panda diplomacy”, this practice has seen more than 30 pandas sent to – or born in – Japan over the past 50 or so years.

However, relations between Tokyo and Beijing are currently tense. Comments made in November by Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, that her country could respond militarily to a Chinese attack on Taiwan prompted an angry response from officials in Beijing.

And soon after, China announced it would be recalling Japan’s last two pandas from the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo a month ahead of schedule. The Tokyo metropolitan government had been negotiating with China to extend the pandas’ stay or loan new bears in their place. But these talks were put on hold and the pandas have subsequently been returned.

Panda diplomacy

China’s practice of sending pandas to foreign countries can be traced to the 7th century, when Empress Wu Zetian gifted two bears to Japan as a gesture of goodwill. However, modern panda diplomacy is often associated with the 1970s. That decade saw China open up and gift pandas to a number of major economies in an attempt to build ties, including the US and Japan in 1972, France in 1973 and the UK in 1974.

Due to declining wild panda populations, China stopped gifting pandas to other countries by 1984. Pandas were instead sent to foreign zoos on long-term loans, often lasting up to 15 years, with countries paying as much as US$1 million (£738,000) in “conservation fees” per year to keep them.

By the peak of panda diplomacy in 2019, a total of 21 countries or territories outside of China, Macau and Hong Kong had pandas. These were South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Qatar, Russia, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Mexico, Australia, Thailand, Finland, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, US and UK. That number has now dropped to 16.

One reason for this decline is that China has to be careful about which countries it chooses to engage in panda diplomacy with. Many Chinese people regard the giant panda as a national treasure, with the animal carrying deep emotional significance. Because of their status, the perceived mistreatment of pandas abroad can cause Beijing to receive intense backlash from nationalist circles at home.

For instance, when panda Le Le died of natural causes at Memphis Zoo in the US in 2023 and photos of his female companion Ya Ya looking thin and sickly surfaced online, speculation arose on Chinese social media that the US had mishandled the pandas. Some went as far as to accuse Chinese authorities of colluding with the zoo to cover up the incident.

For many of these people, the alleged mistreatment of the pandas was symbolic of what they saw as the US’s bullying of China. As one comment on the Weibo Chinese social media platform put it: “Treating our national treasure with such an attitude is an outright provocation of China”. Despite insistence by the Chinese foreign ministry that both pandas had been “well taken care of” in the US, Ya Ya’s stay was not extended.

The desire to avoid more public backlash may help explain why China recalled Japan’s last two pandas early and did not extend their stay. With tensions between China and Japan running high, it would have been difficult for officials in Beijing to justify why these cherished national symbols should stay in the hands of what many Chinese people see as a belligerent rival.

Panda diplomacy remains an effective tool of soft power for China. This was demonstrated by the 178,000 visitors that flocked to Ueno Zoo to catch a glimpse of Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei in the month after it was announced they would be returned. The public response was so strong that the zoo had to restrict visitor numbers to the panda viewing area to 4,800 people per day, with each visit limited to one minute.

Yet there are limits to using pandas as diplomatic tools, and not just due to the strength of nationalist feeling within China towards them. China’s practice of sending pandas to foreign nations has been heavily criticised by conservationists and animal advocates, who argue the bears are used as pawns in a game of geopolitical chess.

There are also question marks over whether the practice enhances conservation. While foreign zoos that host pandas send China millions of US dollars a year in conservation fees, the species is currently listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Panda diplomacy is a delicate balancing act. While it can help strengthen China’s international relationships, it also exposes Beijing to public backlash whenever its furry ambassadors become entangled in political disputes or welfare controversies.

Chee Meng Tan 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. China’s panda diplomacy is becoming a liability for Beijing – https://theconversation.com/chinas-panda-diplomacy-is-becoming-a-liability-for-beijing-274658

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Barnfield, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London

Since Reform UK took in several high-profile Conservative defectors in the space of a few weeks, a debate has arisen about whether these new recruits benefit or harm Nigel Farage’s party.

Some suggest that the loss of Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, among others, hastens the demise of the Conservative party, to Reform’s benefit. But there’s also the risk that in embracing high-profile Conservatives, Reform is tying its image to the unpopular government they once represented. Apparently there is danger for Farage in becoming “Tory party 2.0” – a new version of the same party the electorate roundly rejected in 2024.

Polling since the defections should indeed give Farage some pause here. Recent figures from YouGov show that significantly fewer people now see Reform and the Conservatives as all that different from each other. The proportion who see the parties as different has fallen by ten percentage points since September.

Polling also shows that 63% of Labour voters 67% of Liberal Democrat voters and 64% of Green voters didn’t like Reform anyway and therefore haven’t changed their opinions about the party since the defections. No surprises there.

Conservatives are the only group for whom this is not a majority position. As a percentage, the group of Conservative voters whose negative opinion of Reform UK remains unchanged is about half that of other parties.

That’s partly because a bigger chunk of Conservative voters are positive about Reform UK in general. Almost a quarter say they were already, and remain, positive about Reform, compared to around 5% for supporters of other parties. But it’s also because the defections have had a much bigger effect on Conservative voters. While the proportion whose opinion has worsened is similar to other parties, over a fifth of Conservatives say they now have a more favourable view of Reform as a result of the defections. Negligible numbers of other parties’ supporters feel that way.

That the Conservatives stand out here matters. If Reform is going to push past its recent plateau in the polls, it will mostly likely be by winning over more Conservative voters. And if “Tory party 2.0” is likely to appeal to anyone, it’s Tory voters.

As political scientists have been arguing for a while, Reform is not going to win over many people who currently intend to vote Labour, Liberal Democrat, or Green. Those voters are in the so-called “left bloc”. Reform and the Conservatives form the “right bloc”. Voters rarely move between blocs; they move within them.

This bloc structure suggests that Reform needs two things to work in its favour. First, it needs to look more viable than the Conservatives. If voters can’t tell which of the two has a better chance of forming a government, it becomes harder to unite behind either. Second, Reform needs enough right-bloc voters’ preference for the Conservatives to be weak enough that they would consider switching to Reform in a pinch.

The defections help on both fronts. High-profile Conservatives moving to Reform make it look like those politicians see Reform as a viable route into government. On the preference side, the defections are improving more Conservatives’ opinions of Reform than they are worsening.

Conservatives are also coming to see the two parties as less different, and that is just as plausibly a good thing as a bad thing for Reform. If Reform looks closer to a party they already like, Conservative voters may have fewer qualms about switching.

But the risk here is that potential Reform voters will be turned off. And indeed, 17% of Reform supporters say the defections have made them more negative about the party – the highest figure for any party’s supporters.

Reform has done especially well at attracting people who did not vote at all in 2024. No surprise there: the arrival of a radical right-wing challenger party has been shown to boost turnout by mobilising voters who feel their views are not represented by the mainstream.

Another risk is that these voters may be more prone to disengaging again if Reform starts to look too much like part of the traditional party system. Both theory and evidence suggest that when parties are too similar, voters are less likely to turn out as the perceived difference made by their vote reduces. Populist parties are especially vulnerable here because their voters tend to share a common disillusionment about democracy with non-voters.

Coming to look ever more like Tory party 2.0 might not dent Reform’s chances of bringing Tory voters on board. But it does risk disenchanting people who were on board before, when they looked like something completely different from the status quo – or those yet to be convinced of voting at all in the next election.

Matthew Barnfield receives funding from The British Academy.

– ref. Reform has been warned that defecting Tories will damage its brand – and the first evidence is in – https://theconversation.com/reform-has-been-warned-that-defecting-tories-will-damage-its-brand-and-the-first-evidence-is-in-275201