Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Goodman, Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, University of Leeds

Once a haven for flamingos, sturgeon and thousands of seals, fast-receding waters are turning the northern coast of the Caspian Sea into barren stretches of dry sand. In some places, the sea has retreated more than 50km. Wetlands are becoming deserts, fishing ports are being left high and dry, and oil companies are dredging ever-longer channels to reach their offshore installations.

Climate change is driving this dramatic decline in the world’s largest landlocked sea. Found at the boundary between Europe and central Asia, the Caspian Sea is surrounded by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, and sustains around 15 million people.

The Caspian is a hub for fishing, shipping, and oil and gas production, and is of rising geopolitical importance as it sits where the interests of global superpowers meet. As the sea shallows, governments face the critical challenge of maintaining industries and livelihoods, while also protecting the unique ecosystems that sustains them.

I’ve been visiting the Caspian for more than 20 years, working with local researchers to study the unique and endangered Caspian seal, and support its conservation. Back in the 2000s, the far north-eastern corner of the sea was a mosaic of reed beds, mudflats and shallow channels that teemed with life, providing habitats for spawning fish, migrating birds, and tens of thousands of seals that gathered there to moult in the spring.

Now these remote wild places we visited to catch seals for satellite tracking studies are dry land, transitioning to desert as the sea retreats, and the same story is playing out for other wetlands around the sea. This experience parallels that of coastal communities, who year by year are seeing the water recede away from their towns, fishing wharves and ports, leaving infrastructure stranded on newly-dry land, and the people fearful for the future.

A sea in retreat

The level of Caspian Sea has always fluctuated, but the scale of recent change is unprecedented. Since the turn of the current century, water levels have declined by around 6cm per year, with drops of up to 30cm per year since 2020. In July 2025, Russian scientists announced the sea had dropped below the previous minimum level recorded during the era of instrumental measurements.

During the 20th century, variations were due to a combination of natural factors and humans diverting water to use for agriculture and industry, but now global warming is the main driver of decline. It might seem inconceivable that a body of water as large as the Caspian could be at risk, but in the hotter climate the rate of water entering the sea from rivers and rainfall is reducing, and is now being outstripped by increased evaporation from the sea surface.

Even if global warming is limited to the Paris agreement target of 2°C, water levels are predicted to fall up to ten metres compared to the 2010 coastline. With the current global trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, the decline could reach 18 metres, which is about the height of a six-storey building.

Because the northern Caspian is shallow – much of it only around five metres deep – small decreases in depth mean huge losses of area. In recent research, colleagues and I showed that even an optimistic ten-metre decline would uncover 112,000 square kilometres of seabed – an area larger than Iceland.

What’s at stake

The ecological consequences would be dramatic. Four out of ten ecosystem types unique to the Caspian Sea would disappear completely. The endangered Caspian seal could lose up to 81% of its current breeding habitat, and Caspian sturgeon would lose access to critical spawning habitat.

As in the Aral Sea disaster, where another massive lake in central Asia almost entirely disappeared, toxic dust from exposed seabed would be released, with serious health risks.

Millions of people are at risk of displacement as the sea recedes, or face highly degraded living conditions. The sea’s only link to the global shipping network is through the delta of the Volga River (which flows into the Caspian) and then via an upstream canal to the Don River for connections to the Black Sea, Mediterranean and other river systems. But the Volga is already struggling with reduced water depth.

Ports like Aktau in Kazakhstan and Baku in Azerbaijan need dredging just to keep operating. Similarly oil and gas companies are having to dredge long channels to their offshore facilities in the north Caspian.

Already the costs of protecting human interests are in the billions of dollars and are only set to grow further. The Caspian is central to the “middle corridor”, a trade route linking China to Europe. As water levels fall, shipping loads must be reduced, costs rise, and settlements and infrastructure risk being stranded tens or even hundreds of kilometres from the sea.

A race against time

Countries around the Caspian are having to adapt, relocating ports, and dredging new shipping lanes. But these measures risk conflicting with conservation goals.

For instance, there are plans to dredge a major new shipping channel across the “Ural saddle” of the north Caspian. But this is an important area for seal breeding, migration and feeding, and will be a vital area for the adaptation of ecosystems as the sea recedes.

Since the rate of change is so rapid, traditional fixed boundary protected areas risk becoming obsolete. What’s needed is an integrated, forward-looking approach to planning across the whole region. If the areas ecosystems will need to adapt to climate change are mapped and protected now, planners and policy makers will be better able to ensure future infrastructure projects avoid or minimise further damage.

To do this Caspian countries will have to invest in biodiversity monitoring and planning expertise, all while coordinating action across five different countries with different priorities.

Caspian countries are already recognising the existential risks, and have begun to form intergovernmental agreements to address the crisis. But the rate of decline may outstrip the pace of political cooperation.

The ecological, climatic and geopolitical importance of the Caspian Sea means its fate ultimately matters far beyond its receding shores. It provides a key case study in how climate change is transforming major inland water bodies across the world, from Lake Titicaca to Lake Chad. The question is whether governments can act fast enough to protect both the people and nature of this rapidly changing sea.

Simon Goodman has provided advice to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on Caspian seal conservation, and in the past has conducted research and advised oil and gas companies in the Caspian on how to minimise their impact on seals. His recent work was not funded by or linked to industry. He is co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) pinniped specialist group.

– ref. Climate change is fast shrinking the world’s largest inland sea – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-fast-shrinking-the-worlds-largest-inland-sea-265239

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robert Simmons, Professor of Economics, Lancaster University

The 2025 summer football transfer window was a record for the English Premier League with teams spending £3.9 billion on transfer fees for new players. That’s more than the top divisions of France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.

The most expensive transfer was Alexander Isak’s drawn out switch from Newcastle United to Liverpool, who forked out £125 million for the forward and will also pay him a salary of around £13 million a year (plus bonuses).

So there is plenty of money being spent at the top end of English football. But it’s a very different story in the tiers below, where the likes of Morecambe FC and Sheffield Wednesday have spent the summer in crisis over financial issues.

In fact, all three divisions below the Premier League (Championship, League One and League Two) make a financial loss every year. The economic chasm between the teams at the top and those at the bottom is only getting wider and there is an ever-increasing chance that some clubs will soon become insolvent.

And though the economic strife affecting teams in the lower leagues might not seem like such a big problem for the Premier League giants and their fans – any fans of any team, in fact – it should be.

The four divisions (92 clubs) of English league football are linked every season by promotion and relegation. Such is the fluidity of this system that Brighton and Hove Albion and Bournemouth are now enjoying life in the Premier League having gradually clawed their way up from the fourth tier.

In the other direction, Luton Town has been relegated twice in the past two years from the Premier League to League One. The jeopardy attached to the hope and dread of going up or going down is part of what makes English football so captivating – and attractive to broadcasters and sponsors.

If clubs are weak financially, and unable to afford to develop or bring in fresh talent, the whole system risks becoming static. In recent years, even promoted sides struggle (all the teams promoted to the Premier League in the last two seasons have been immediately relegated again), often resulting in unappealing fixtures where weaker teams are thrashed by stronger ones. This kind of competitive imbalance could undermine the value of future broadcast rights fees.

Those fees are important part of the football economy, although again, it is the teams at the top of the tree which benefit the most.

Championship, League One and League Two clubs received negligible fee income from broadcast rights until recently, after a new broadcast deal with Sky TV started in 2024 which is worth £935 million over five years. (The current domestic Premier League deal is worth £6.7 billion over four years.)

Sharing is caring

So lower division clubs now have games accessible to viewers and a new income stream that should help offset financial losses. But the real financial win comes from getting as far up the football pyramid as possible

For the lower leagues then, promotion is always the biggest goal. The new celebrity-backed owners of Birmingham City and Wrexham have the explicit ambition of reaching the Premier League. The end of season playoff final between two Championship teams fighting for promotion to the Premier Leagues is estimated to be worth around £200 million, given the increased broadcast incomes that would follow.

For its part, the Premier League has often restated a commitment to keeping the 92-team hierarchical structure of English football intact, and currently supports teams in the lower leagues through a mechanism of “solidarity payments”.

As of the 2024-25 season, these payments were £5.5 million per club for Championship teams (apart from those relegated from EPL which receive much larger “parachute payments” instead), £1 million per club for League One and £0.75 million per club for League Two.

Nevertheless, many EFL clubs still rely on loans and capital injections, often by their owners, to get by. And the gap in economic power remains vast.

In 2023-24, Liverpool’s total revenue was £614 million while Morecambe’s was £4.57 million.

If the EPL is serious about sustaining the 92-team hierarchical structure in England then there is scope for dramatically increasing these solidarity payments – which could be made conditional on sound financial practices by receiving clubs. Like a wealth tax for football, more generous payments would essentially help to reduce economic inequality across English football as a whole, and make for a financially much healthier sport.

Robert Simmons 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. Big-spending Premier League needs to spread more of its wealth to poorer clubs or everyone loses – https://theconversation.com/big-spending-premier-league-needs-to-spread-more-of-its-wealth-to-poorer-clubs-or-everyone-loses-263750

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Naomi Baker, Senior Lecturer in English Renaissance Literature, Manchester University

Women have been describing their experiences of male abuse for centuries – we just haven’t always been ready to listen to them.

In the 17th century, Anne Wentworth (1630-c.1693) spoke out against her abusive husband and the religious institution that protected him. She knew it was risky to reveal the shocking truth about an outwardly charming man who was regarded as a pillar of the community. Yet she felt compelled to tell her story.

Not only was her own life – and that of her daughter – on the line, but William Wentworth’s abusive behaviour was evidence of corruption within the Baptist church of which they were both members. Wentworth believed herself to be on a divinely appointed mission. God was using her as his “battleaxe”, she claimed, the instrument with which he would excise the rottenness at the heart of this religious community.

The remarkable Wentworth, who published accounts of her experience of spousal abuse, is one of a dozen dissenting 17th-century women whose incredible stories I tell in my book, Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century.

Like the other women in the book, Anne prioritised her sense of God’s voice speaking in her conscience above all else – a stance that empowered her to stand up to institutional forms of power and oppression. William and his powerful Baptist allies did everything they could to silence and to discredit her. But no amount of intimidation could divert her from her quest to bring the truth about her husband to light.

Originally from Lincolnshire, Anne married William, probably a glove dealer, in around 1652. They lived in London, where they were members of a “Particular” (or Calvinist) Baptist congregation. For almost 20 years, William “grossly abused” Anne both mentally and physically, being such a “scourge and lash” to her that she “lived in misery”.

By the time she was 40 years old, she was physically and emotionally spent. After so many years of suffering “great oppression and sorrow of heart”, Anne collapsed with a “hectic fever”. Narrowly escaping death, she believed that God had spared her life for a reason. No longer willing to live a lie, she decided that it was time not only to leave her husband but to declare her “testimony” to “the world”.

For years she had suffered in silence but now the truth poured out of her. In just four years she published four searing accounts of her experiences, including A True Account of Anne Wentworth’s Being Cruelly, Unjustly, and Unchristianly Dealt With by Some of Those People Called Anabaptists (1676) and A Vindication of Anne Wentworth (1677).

‘Mad’ women

Anne knew that publishing her story would enrage her husband and would alienate her from the church community that “could not bear the truth to be spoke” about him.

Her story was met with hostility, as she knew it would be. In the eyes of the Baptists, she wrote, she was a “proud, passionate, revengeful, discontented, and mad woman”, one who had “unduly published things to the prejudice and scandal of [her] husband” and had “wickedly left him”. She had given an account of decades of abuse, but it was Anne rather than William who was hauled before the leaders of their church, charged with “rejecting and neglecting their church” and with “dissatisfying” her husband.

Soon afterwards, Anne’s husband locked her out of her home. And then on September 25 1677 he committed what to Anne’s mind was his worst crime to date. Determined to suppress her testimony, William ran off with all her manuscripts, destroying six-years’ worth of writing. So “cruel” and “unchristian” had he become that by the following month Anne and her daughter were in hiding, having been forced to run for their lives. Her only so-called crime, she pointed out, was her writing: “Oh, injustice!”

It was Anne’s spiritual convictions that inspired her to speak out against oppression and injustice. She believed that God had spoken to her personally, calling her to fight not simply against her husband or the Baptist church but against wider forces of evil and oppression. Like many in her era, she believed herself to be living in the end times, when the battle against Antichrist spoken of in the biblical book of Revelation would reach its climax.

As a religious hypocrite, William in Anne’s view embodied the spirit of Antichrist, meaning that her crusade to expose the truth about him became to her mind nothing short of an apocalyptic struggle. It was this sense of the cosmic significance of her “testimony” that empowered her to tell her story.

Anne’s account of her experiences ends on a happy note. A year after being locked out of her home, she managed to regain entry, immediately changing the locks so that her husband no longer had the “power to come and put her out”. Supported by her remaining friends, she was back in the home where she had first put pen to paper, risking her reputation, home and community for the sake of speaking the truth.

Anne faced severe repercussions for telling the unvarnished truth about her life, but her determination to do so means that her story remains available to us today. It stands as testimony to one 17th-century woman’s refusal to be silenced.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org, so if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Naomi Baker 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 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse – https://theconversation.com/the-17th-century-woman-who-wrote-about-surviving-domestic-abuse-260128

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the visit he made six years ago, while Elizabeth II was on the throne.

Although it’s unprecedented for a head of state to visit twice, Trump’s second visit, from September 16 to 18, is consistent with royal protocol. This dictates that a head of state can make one visit to the UK per monarch, so given that Charles III is now the UK’s head of state, the protocol allows for Trump to make a second visit.

Much has changed in the world and in the US president’s approach in the years since Trump’s first visit. From a British perspective the aim will be to gloss over the differences between the two leaders and stress continuity in UK-US relations.

This means underlining the historic relationship between the UK and the US, their common heritage, cultural and political traditions, and their shared values and international outlook. State visits are a pictorial narrative of symbolic connectivity, both cultural and political, a visible link to past visits and relationships.

To achieve this, the Trumps will visit St George’s Chapel at Windsor, inspect the guard of honour and be taken on a tour of the Royal collection in Green Drawing Room of Windsor Castle, where they will be shown objects which relate to British and American shared history.

A joint flypast of British and American air force F-35 aircraft will symbolise both industrial and military collaboration as the embodiment of the “special relationship”. As with last time, the programme has been choreographed to keep Trump a safe distance from protesters and politics.

This – as last time – will be the “heritage and high life” version of Britain. This visit represents a high point in Trump’s journey from the outer boroughs of New York to the heart of what he regards as elite society.

Symbolically, it seems to complete his mother’s journey, after fleeing poverty in Scotland in the 1930s, for her son to now be hosted and feted by the British monarch. Trump’s love of the royal family is well documented; their global fame, celebrity and high regard are aspects of performative public life that he aspires to emulate.

Potential pitfalls

Trump’s visit comes as the UK grapples with a number of issues in which the US has a significant interest. First is the removal of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US.

Mandelson is known to have developed a friendly relationship with the US president, so the subject of his dismissal and its circumstances – over a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein – may be at the front of Trump’s mind as his opponents at home press to discover more about the nature of his own relationship with the disgraced financier.

Another issue is the UK government’s pledge to recognise Palestinian statehood alongside other G7 allies such as France and Canada.

The official US position, repeated recently by the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is that recognition of the state of Palestine would be “disastrous” and “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”. And you’d imagine the UK government will be keen for Trump to avoid references to recent anti-immigration marches.

For Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, the hope must be that Trump and his team will be on their best behaviour during the visit for fear of spoiling the celebratory mood. Perhaps repeatedly stressing the “special relationship” will help insulate the UK from Trumpian criticism.

The real test of this will be after all the royal pageantry of honour guards, flypasts and state banquets, when Trump is due to meet Starmer at Chequers on September 18. Starmer will want the narrative to focus on a new “landmark” deal on building nuclear reactors between the two countries. He will be hoping to negotiate a more favourable tariff regime on UK steel exports.

It’s unlikely, though, that Mandelson’s sacking and Palestinian statehood will not be raised. The potential for the US president to air his views in public is one which must be worrying the UK prime minister and his advisers.

The US president has demonstrated his tendency to try to dominate every news cycle by provocative acts and statements – what’s known as “flooding the zone”. On his first state visit to the UK, he preceded the trip with an interview in The Sun newspaper, in which he intervened in the leadership contest underway in the Conservative party.

He endorsed Boris Johnson, saying he would make an excellent new premier. On Trump’s arrival he immediately engaged in a Twitter exchange with London Major Sadiq Khan, who had opposed his visit, calling him “a stone cold loser”.

A very different president

In his first term of office, Trump’s presidency was largely managed by the so-called “adults in the room”. He was surrounded by establishment advisers who protected the novice president and the wider world from some of his more erratic impulses and wilder instincts.

His second term, however, represents a very different version of Trump in power. Surrounded by loyalists and enablers, Trump has set about dismantling the traditional idea of what American power represents, at home and abroad. From the domestic turmoil as his policies repeatedly challenge US constitutional norms to his erratic and often dangerous trade and foreign policies, the contrast is striking.

Part of the way in which this manifests in foreign policy is a willingness to leverage American power to advance US national interests, apparently without concessions to America’s allies. Trump’s willingness to demand support for the fossil fuel industry, to press for a tougher approach to China, and his championing of an absolutist approach to free speech are all features of this second-term strategy – and may well be on the agenda when he meets Starmer.

With a US president who appears willing to change his foreign policy approach based on how he may feel on any given day, it’s a visit fraught with potential pitfalls.

David Hastings Dunn has previously received funding from the ESRC, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Open Democracy Foundation and has previously been both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellow.

– ref. Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK: the pageantry, politics and pitfalls – https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-second-state-visit-to-the-uk-the-pageantry-politics-and-pitfalls-265295