Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lara El Mekaui, Research Fellow, FUTUREMIG — Futures of Migration and Mobility project, Toronto Metropolitan University

I live and work in Toronto, but as a Lebanese‑Ukrainian immigrant in Canada, my attention has been elsewhere since the United States and Israel launched their war with Iran. I refresh my phone constantly, checking in with family in Lebanon, scanning group chats, watching the news, hoping the next alert is not the one I fear most.

For many in diaspora communities, this has become a daily condition. As conflict in the Middle East intensifies, its effects are not contained by borders. They are lived transnationally, folding distant violence into the routines of everyday life.

What emerges is a condition I — a displacement, migration and identity scholar — call “split belonging”, an experience of being physically located in one place while remaining emotionally, cognitively and relationally anchored in another that is under threat.

Unlike more familiar accounts of diaspora and hybrid identities, — which often emphasize continuity or the preservation of an unbroken cultural lineage and the formation of new identities through cultural mixing — “split belonging” is about being pulled by two places at once.

It captures the demand to function in conditions of stability while remaining persistently oriented toward instability elsewhere, especially where loved ones still reside there

This distinction shifts the focus from identity to capacity, asking how people live, work and participate while managing ongoing exposure to crisis.

Living in between stability and instability

My own experience reflects this.

I’ve lived at a distance from conflict in both my home countries: the October 2019 Lebanese uprising; the Beirut explosion in August 2020; the Russian invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022; the Israeli war in Lebanon in 2024; and the current bombardments displacing more than a million people.

Experiencing these events remotely reorganizes daily life. It shows up in the rituals that become instinctive: calling for proof of life, calculating the distance between a bombing site and a relative’s home, then returning, almost automatically, to meetings and deadlines.

This is the emotional architecture of split belonging. It is not a single crisis, but a constant oscillation between urgency and routine.

It is hearing your niece say: “They hit the house next to my school, but we’re OK, we’re used to this,” and realizing she has already learned to normalize fear. And then, because life here keeps moving, it’s also returning to your work inbox as if nothing has happened.

This rhythm is sustained by technological proximity and social expectation. The same tools that enable connection, such as WhatsApp and live news, also ensure that distance no longer protects against exposure.

The hidden strain of transnational stress

Cultural psychology research helps explain why this condition is so consuming. The distress often appears in indirect forms, including fatigue, distraction, irritability or emotional numbing — states that are easily misread in workplaces and classrooms.

This is compounded by what researchers describe as remote conflict stress, the strain experienced by individuals who are physically safe but emotionally embedded in zones of violence. This form of stress disrupts concentration, sleep and decision-making, shaping how people engage with their environments even when those environments are stable.

The concept of split belonging extends this insight by situating remote stress within broader social and relational dynamics.

Migrants are often expected to provide emotional support, financial assistance and real-time co-ordination for family members in crisis. These obligations intensify during periods of conflict, increasing pressure and dependency across borders.

Scholars of migration and diaspora have long argued that belonging is not a fixed state but a negotiation between place, memory and the stories we inherit. Sara Ahmed, a post-colonialism and critical race scholar, writes that emotions “stick” to bodies and histories, shaping how individuals move through the world. This helps explain how attachments to places in conflict are not easily set aside through migration.

Feminist and gender studies academic Judith Butler similarly argues that grief reveals the attachments that constitute who we are. This clarifies why distant violence is experienced as immediate. Under conditions of split belonging, threats to loved ones abroad are not abstract concerns but disruptions to the very relationships that anchor a person’s sense of self.

Together, these frameworks show how global conflict becomes embedded in the everyday lives of diasporic individuals, even though they remaining geographically distant.

Why this isn’t just personal

Digital media plays a central role in this process. It acts as both infrastructure and amplifier.

Continuous immersion in graphic content and live updates extends the reach of violence and makes disengagement difficult. Following it online can trigger anxiety, depression and symptoms resembling PTSD even when people are physically safe. Digital exposures intensify the psychological burden of watching violence unfold from afar.

These dynamics have concrete consequences that remain largely unacknowledged in public discourse. In workplaces, cognitive overload can affect performance, productivity and career progression, contributing to underemployment. In educational settings, disruptions to attention and memory shape participation and outcomes.

Ongoing crises abroad can also deepen social isolation for migrants, which is one of the strongest predictors of poor mental health among newcomers.

Canada’s multiculturalism model recognizes that belonging can extend across local and global contexts, but it often treats these connections as stable rather than crisis-driven. Split belonging highlights this limitation.

Recognizing the feeling of split belonging has important implications for policy and institutional practice. It points to the need for more flexible and responsive systems.

Workplaces need to account for transnational stress. Educational institutions need trauma-informed approaches that recognize ongoing crises. Settlement services need to address not only past trauma but also continuous exposure to instability abroad.

As global conflicts persist, immigrants will continue to meet their obligations to employers, schools and families while navigating forms of strain that remain private. But to meaningfully support diasporic inclusion, Canadian institutions need to understand this reality.

Lara El Mekaui 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. Diaspora communities carry the burden of watching war from afar – https://theconversation.com/diaspora-communities-carry-the-burden-of-watching-war-from-afar-278968

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Sims, Associate Professor of First Nations Studies; Adjunct Professor of Education, University of Northern British Columbia

News recently broke about how the RCMP’s security service infiltrated and surveilled Indigenous rights organizations in the 1970s.

Many of the people whose privacy was violated pointed out how these activities highlight the colonial nature of the Canadian state, but another theme also emerged — they weren’t surprised, and had suspected, that they were being watched.

These perceptions have been repeated as the news has expanded across the country, resulting in calls for an apology and more transparency.

Indigenous Peoples in Canada have been heavily monitored for hundreds of years in ways that non-Indigenous Canadians might find shocking. In fact, the sheer amount of information that exists about Indigenous Peoples due to this surveillance belies the stereotype that when it comes to Indigenous issues, there is not a lot of information available.

Colonial erasure (the removal of Indigenous presence from both past and present) and narrative forgetting (the creation of partial or distorted stories that obscure reality) may help explain this mistaken belief, but it can also reflect a simple unwillingness to engage with the evidence.

If anything, the real issue is how accurate the information is, an important consideration for researchers and investigators when examining any data set.

Missionaries and the fur trade

The first two major sources documenting Indigenous Peoples are private materials produced through missionary and fur trade activities. Neither were created with disinterested motives.

Missionaries, for example, wanted to show how successful they were, especially when it came to raising funds to continue doing their work. This type of information, incidentally — baptismal, marriage and death records — is useful for genealogy purposes, especially when combined with oral history.

The same is true for fur trade records. It’s important to remember that for most of its history, the fur trade functioned on debt. Knowing who someone was, including who their relatives were, could be fundamental to ensuring their debts were paid.

These records provided a wealth of information. If placed on a shelf like a collection of books, the records held by the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg would be more than 1.5 kilometres long. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Oblate records held in the Archives Deschâtelets in Richelieu, Québec, and the Provincial Archives of Alberta in Edmonton would be 710 metres and 275 metres in length respectively.

These are private documents, but the establishment of the Indian Department by the British Crown in 1755 led to the creation of state records.

While initially focused on maintaining good relations with First Nations, two changes in the 1800s greatly expanded the information that was gathered and maintained. The first was the decision to pay treaty annuities for three agreements signed in 1818 rather than provide the First Nations in question a lump-sum payment.

After this point in time, the Indian Department and its successors had a vested interest in knowing who should and should not get a payment. As more and more treaties were signed, more records were created. Today, numerous pay lists can be found in Library and Archives Canada. There’s also information on investigations into First Nations to determine if they should be part of a treaty and/or receive a reserve.

The creation of Indian status in Lower Canada in 1850 resulted in even more information being gathered. One reason most status applicants today only need to identify their parents is the availability of this information.

A similar dynamic exists in Métis citizenship and membership: although determined by Métis governments and organizations rather than the Canadian state, these records contributed to the development of extensive genealogies.

Residential schools, hospitals

The creation of state records didn’t end there.

In addition to the information collected by Canada’s so-called Indian Agents, the federal government’s decision to establish the Indian residential school system in 1883 and the Indian hospital system in 1936 blended private missionary and health-care records with Ottawa’s. Privately run residential schools and hospitals for Indigenous Peoples existed before both government systems.

Notably, because the Canadian government made various churches responsible for running the schools, those institutions kept detailed admission records and submitted quarterly reports to ensure payment for each student.

The government didn’t simply accept this information without scrutiny, and regularly verified it to make sure the churches were not inflating their numbers and claiming payment for students who didn’t attend.

This omits provincial records. Some provinces like British Columbia maintained separate death records for “Indians” well into the 20th century.

No shortage of information

In other words, a vast amount of information exists for those who know where to look. Dismissing it as inherently colonial — and therefore unusable — overlooks the extent to which Indigenous people and nations rely on these records today.

It also helps explain why many Indigenous leaders subjected to surveillance weren’t surprised. The RCMP was, in effect, just another state institution observing and documenting their lives. Many of these individuals likely appear across multiple archives — missionary, fur trade, treaty annuity, Indian status, Indian Affairs, residential school and hospital records.

To be Indigenous in Canada has often meant living under continuous observation.

Daniel Sims currently holds an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to research failed economic developments and concepts of wilderness in Tsek’ehne traditional territory (the Finlay-Parsnip watershed).

– ref. The RCMP’s surveillance of Indigenous groups exposes a centuries-long pattern in Canada – https://theconversation.com/the-rcmps-surveillance-of-indigenous-groups-exposes-a-centuries-long-pattern-in-canada-279543

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Samadhee Kaluarachchi, PhD Student in Forest Hydrology, University of British Columbia

As large floods occur more frequently worldwide, many wonder what led to such devastating events. Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, improper land management and forest removal increase flood frequencies and severity.

Increasingly destructive floods also re-ignite debate on how we can make communities more resilient. Should we rely solely on traditional infrastructure like dikes and dams? In many regions, traditional infrastructure is aging and becoming increasingly insufficient, especially due to climate change.

As a result, some governments are adopting solutions that incorporate or mimic nature. However, while many jurisdictions have expressed interest in nature-based solutions, most have yet to implement them on appreciable scales. Funding is limited and little is known about the effectiveness of nature-based approaches.

The idea that forests help reduce flood risk might seem a given to most people, but scientists who study this (forest hydrologists) remain divided.

Scientific and governmental reports have found that forests prevent small and moderate floods but have little impact on large floods.

Our recent paper challenges this conclusion. It comes from studies that don’t correctly reveal how changing forest cover causes changes in flood frequencies and sizes, leading them to underestimate what forests can do. Our methods that can causally link changes in forest cover to floods suggest that forests can mitigate floods of all sizes.

Flood risk

Floods occur when factors like rainfall, landscape wetness, snowpack and snowmelt combine. These factors vary randomly through time and over the landscape. Today, flood risk is escalating, and the stakes are high in many regions.

A flood event of a certain size and frequency can be generated by an infinite number of combinations of the same factors. Understanding the causes of rising risk means considering all possible flood-generating combinations.

Large floods happen naturally, but adding or removing forests can change their size and frequency. It’s important to consider how changing forest cover alters both factors. The dominant approach doesn’t do this; it only looks at how flood sizes change.

Forest hydrologists, engineers, policymakers, conservationists and industry leaders have long debated the extent to which we should rely on forests to mitigate floods. These debates often reflected competing interests, which in turn influenced policy.

The dominant method underestimates just how strongly even large floods react, giving the impression that degrading forests won’t influence large floods. In reality, floods could be happening much more frequently if not for forests.

Relying on that method can put communities in even more danger when losses of lives and livelihoods, economic damages and lawsuits are already piling up from improper land management and climate change.

It also makes us undervalue nature and miss out on novel opportunities to incorporate nature’s ability to mitigate floods. Our flood management therefore must be guided by strong science.

Healthy forests are integral to flood management

Our study examined the core research questions and methods of both the dominant approach and a less dominant approach to determine which one reveals how changes in forest cover cause changes in flood risk. We stepped back to look at how flood risk is assessed more widely beyond forest influences, and how related disciplines like climate science answer similar questions.

Our study challenges the validity of the dominant non-causal method. Instead, our synthesis advocates for the less dominant causal method, which is in fact standard outside the field of forest hydrology.

The less dominant approach considers how the frequency and size of floods change when we add or remove forests. Accounting for all possible flood-generating combinations can reveal how changes in forest cover cause changes in large floods.

Although less dominant in the field, these studies exist, suggesting that floods of all sizes can be sensitive to changes in forest cover.

Forests return moisture back into the atmosphere, promote infiltration and, in snow environments, promote smaller snowpacks that melt slower. Consequently, forests can reduce the probability of even large floods, making them smaller and much rarer.

When we degrade forests, large floods can react strongly. Their frequency, in particular, can increase dramatically with larger shifts possible for larger floods.

These probability-based approaches are standard throughout science, including in flood-risk analysis and to understand how climate change influences weather extremes.

It’s time for forest hydrology to follow suit. We can no longer afford to justify non-causal work that greatly underestimates risk.

Incorporating strong science means recognizing that forests can reduce the risks of even large floods, making them much less common.

In regions where causal studies are limited, reports should acknowledge this difference among causal and non-causal studies elsewhere and encourage rigorous science.

Planning and management must consider both climatic and landscape drivers. Degraded landscapes, even in uplands thousands of kilometres away, can cause floods downstream. Governments must manage the land carefully, collaborating across jurisdictions to ease downstream risk.

There is concern that nature-based approaches can’t mitigate large floods, especially in forest-based initiatives. Our research, however, indicates that forests and other nature-based initiatives can address flooding and complement traditional infrastructure while providing a range of social and ecological benefits.

By adopting and promoting causal science, we can overcome key barriers for implementation and build a strong case for wider adoption of forests as an integral part of nature-based flood management.

Samadhee Kaluarachchi received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, the Gordon and Nora Bailey Fellowship in Sustainable Forestry, and the Mary and David Macaree Fellowship.

Younes Alila receives funding from Mitacs and the National Science and Engineering Council (NSERC) of Canada.

– ref. New research shows how forests can prevent floods of all sizes – https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-how-forests-can-prevent-floods-of-all-sizes-277967

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alexandre Hudon, Medical psychiatrist, clinician-researcher and clinical assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and addictology, Université de Montréal

Generative AI chatbots are now used by more than 987 million people globally, including around 64 per cent of American teens, according to recent estimates. Increasingly, people are using these chatbots for advice, emotional support, therapy and companionship.

What happens when people rely on AI chatbots during moments of psychological vulnerability? We have seen media scrutiny of a few tragic cases involving allegations that AI chatbots were implicated in wrongful death cases. And a jury in Los Angeles recently found Meta and YouTube liable for addictive design features that led to a user’s mental health distress.

---

Read more:
Neuroscience explains why teens are so vulnerable to Big Tech social media platforms

---

Does media coverage reflect the true risks of generative AI for our mental health?

Our team recently led a study examining how global media are reporting on the impact of generative AI chatbots on mental health. We analyzed 71 news articles describing 36 cases of mental health crises, including severe outcomes such as suicide, psychiatric hospitalization and psychosis-like experiences.

We found that mass media reports of generative AI–related psychiatric harms are heavily concentrated on severe outcomes, particularly suicide and hospitalization. They frequently attribute these events to AI system behaviour despite limited supporting evidence.

Compassion illusions

Generative AI is not just another digital tool. Unlike search engines or static apps, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Perplexity and others produce fluent, personalized conversations that can feel remarkably human.

This creates what researchers call “compassion illusions:” the sense that one is interacting with an entity that understands, empathizes and responds meaningfully.

In mental health contexts, this matters. Especially as a new wave of apps are created with a specific focus on companionship, such as Character.AI, Replika and others.

Studies have shown that generative AI can simulate empathy and provide responses to distress, but lacks true clinical judgment, accountability and duty of care.

In some cases, AI chatbots may offer inconsistent or inappropriate responses to high-risk situations such as suicidal ideation.

This gap — between perceived understanding and actual capability — is where risk can emerge.

What the media is reporting

Across the articles we analyzed, the most frequently reported outcome was suicide. This represented more than half of cases with clearly described severity.

Psychiatric hospitalization was the second-most commonly reported outcome. Notably, reports involving minors were more likely to be about fatal outcomes.

But these numbers do not reflect real-world incidence. They reflect what gets reported. In general, media coverage of stressful events tends to amplify severe and emotionally charged cases, as negative and uncertain information captures attention, elicits stronger emotional responses and sustains cycles of heightened vigilance and repeated exposure. This in turn reinforces perceptions of threat and distress.

For AI-related content, media reports often rely on partial evidence (such as chat transcripts) while rarely including medical documentation. In our data set, only one case referenced formal clinical or police records.

This creates a distorted but influential picture: one that shapes public perception, clinical concern and regulatory debate.

Beyond ‘AI caused it’

One of our most important findings relates to how causality is framed. In many of the articles we reviewed, AI systems were described as having “contributed to” or even “caused” psychiatric deterioration.

However, the underlying evidence was often limited. Alternative explanations — such as pre-existing mental illness, substance use or psycho-social stressors — were inconsistently reported.

In psychiatry, causality is rarely simple. Mental health crises typically arise from multiple interacting factors. AI may play a role, but it is likely part of a broader ecosystem that includes individual vulnerability and context.

A more useful way to think about this is through interaction effects: how technology interacts with human cognition and emotion. For example, conversational AI may reinforce certain beliefs, provide excessive validation or blur boundaries between reality and simulation.

The problem of over-reliance

Another recurring pattern in media reports is intensive use. Many of the cases we reviewed described prolonged, emotionally significant interactions with chatbots — framed as companionship or even romantic relationships. This raises an issue: over-reliance.

Because these systems are always available, non-judgmental and responsive, they can become a primary source of support. But unlike a trained clinician or even a concerned friend, they cannot recognize when someone is getting worse, pause or redirect harmful interactions. They cannot take steps to ensure a person connects with appropriate care in moments of crisis.

In clinical terms, this could lead to what might be described as “maladaptive coping substitution:” replacing complex human support systems with a simplified, algorithmic interaction.

Lack of reliable data

Despite growing concern, we are still at an early stage of understanding the impact of generative AI chatbots on user mental health.

There is currently no reliable estimate of how often AI-related harms occur, or whether they are increasing. We lack reliable data on how many people use these tools safely versus those who experience problems. And most evidence comes from case reports or media narratives, not systematic clinical studies.

This is not unusual. In many areas of medicine, early warning signals emerge outside formal research (through case reports, legal cases or public discourse) before being systematically studied.

One example is the thalidomide tragedy, when initial reports of birth defects in infants preceded formal epidemiological confirmation and ultimately led to the development of modern pharmacovigilance systems.

AI and mental health may be following a similar trajectory.

Moving forward responsibly

The challenge is not to panic, but to respond thoughtfully.

We need better evidence. This includes systematic monitoring of adverse events, clearer reporting standards and research that distinguishes correlation from causation. Safeguards — such as crisis detection, escalation protocols and transparency about limitations — must be strengthened and evaluated.

---

Read more:
Danger was flagged, but not reported: What the Tumbler Ridge tragedy reveals about Canada’s AI governance vacuum

---

Furthermore, clinicians and the public need guidance. Patients are already using these tools. Ignoring this reality risks widening the gap between clinical practice and lived experience.

Finally, we must recognize that generative AI is not just a technological innovation — it is a psychological one. It changes how people think, feel and relate.

Understanding that shift may be one of the most important mental health challenges of the coming decade.

Alexandre Hudon 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. Just how bad are generative AI chatbots for our mental health? – https://theconversation.com/just-how-bad-are-generative-ai-chatbots-for-our-mental-health-279736

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By James Colter, Postdoctoral Scholar in Artificial Intelligence applied to Regenerative Competence, University of Calgary

It can be estimated theoretically that more unique biological interactions exist than stars in our known universe.

The biological foundations of life are built on an unimaginably vast network of interactions, where molecules, cells, systems and organisms are constantly colliding.

For centuries, scientists and doctors have relied on targeted techniques and isolated observations. Through slow, iterative, shared discovery over generations, we have developed our understanding of biology, applying fractional knowledge to enable life-changing approaches in only a subset of disease states and dysfunction.

Humanity is now entering a new era of scientific discovery, using artificial intelligence to learn and reason about complex biological challenges.

Artificial intelligence

Thoughtful implementations are revealing new information to solve significant problems at the intersection of biology and medicine.

Using AI enables us to organize and perceive the complexity of biological interactions at scales greater than the human brain is innately capable.
These frameworks are backed by growing experimental data made possible by rapidly improving analytical technologies.

One widely reported example of AI in biology is the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for AlphaFold, an AI model that predicts protein structures and interactions from statistical regularities in structural and evolutionary data.

Proteins, responsible for an immense proportion of biological interactions, can now be systematically explored virtually in hours or days. This circumvents conventional methodologies that require weeks, months or even years of effort.

AlphaGenome, another of Google DeepMind’s AI-driven models, now allows researchers to quickly and efficiently predict how gene variants contribute to genetic landscapes that drive disease and dysfunction.

These disruptive AI approaches (and others) are already being applied broadly in cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, pandemic response and beyond.

Correlation versus cause and effect

Importantly, the AI field is presently dominated by modelling approaches that are statistical in nature; that is, these models learn correlations, rather than cause and effect.

This distinction is important. Statistical models are limited by the context within which they can be applied.

This leads us to the major overarching question in the field today: how do we capture the cause and effect of every interaction that exists within this nebulous network that we call biology?

Contemporary solutions to this question are explored through hybrid computational frameworks. These are models that combine what limited structured knowledge we have about biological systems and how they function with multi-modal datasets.

But what do I mean by knowledge? From a physical sciences perspective, established causal mechanisms or fundamental laws in physics, chemistry and biology.

From a medical perspective, established mechanisms of disease progression or aging.

And multi-modal datasets? Data obtained to observe biology and medicine from a range of perspectives. These could be:

• Images of biology that inform spatial characteristics of healthy or diseased states.

• Quantitative data that informs expression of metabolites, genes, proteins, epigenetics or other aspects of what makes up biological identity and function.

• Medical data that informs the broad variables that may (or may not) play a role in disease onset and progression.

These are just a few examples. As you might imagine, this isn’t a simple task.

Training AI models

The Arc Institute is one of several groups tackling this by learning biological representations at the cellular level.

Arc Institute researchers train AI to understand how gene networks interact to make up cellular identity across more than 150 million cells from different organs within the body.

Researchers then perform perturbations: making informed disruptions to biology to understand the cause and effects that drive biological changes. These changes have implications for cellular function or identity.

The data obtained from these experiments inform causal mechanisms in biology.

This means informing direct cause and effect, alongside compensatory mechanisms (how biology tries to adapt in response to changes) and biological variance (how one cell may differ in its response from another).

Those results are integrated into the model architecture to optimize how well it learns to predict a statistical-causal representation of cell state. That is, a representation that is causally informed, but that also captures statistical representations of how large numbers of features (input variables) interact.

This approach and those like it are driving the fields of biology and medicine forward at an accelerated pace.

However, biology is very complex. The question remains of how we tie one aspect of biological state of being (such as genes expressed for a given cell identity or function) to the many other aspects that drive identity and function in biological contexts.

Extraordinary complexity

It is undeniable that causal-aware AI systems have the potential to accelerate drug discovery, optimize personalized treatment recommendations, and even offer novel mechanistic solutions across the breadth of biomedical science and medicine.

However, there are substantial challenges to achieving these outcomes. Biological systems are extraordinarily complex.

These systems are highly dimensional, meaning they operate at the intersection of a very large number of variables. They are also confounding, as biological variance makes it difficult to separate important information from noise.

Further, biology is rich in compensatory mechanisms that are ingrained in our evolution, as biology tries to correct or compensate itself when one variable output goes awry.

Even limited causal evidence is difficult to distinguish from correlation in biological systems, experimentally in the lab or medically in the clinic.

There are other challenges as well:

• Insufficient data, or a lack of critical information within existing datasets.

• Inconsistencies and bias in data collection, including but not limited to underrepresentation, and perspective biases in many contexts.

• Ethics in AI, a topic upon which one could write books surrounding health, medicine and everything beyond.

The question yet remains: How can we reliably implement, interpret and translate these systems into solutions, in light of all these obstacles?

Regenerative competence

Our own team, the Biernaskie lab at the University of Calgary, is applying these very approaches.

We’re studying how reindeer regenerate their antlers, both seasonally and following injury. Our work is first to model, predict, then facilitate this regenerative competence in humans.

Our first goal is to regenerate healthy skin in burn survivors, or significantly improve healing outcomes.

Severe burns result in fibrotic scarring, an evolutionary mechanism that preserves life by minimizing risk of bleeding and infection. The result is dysfunctional scar tissue devoid of sweat glands, hair follicles or most of the cell types that co-ordinate healthy skin.

Burns are most common in children, and the physical, social, and psychological effects of severe burns create significant burden across survivors lifespans.

Other labs around the world are committed to using AI to solve complex problems in health and medicine, focusing on a wide range of approaches. These range from deeper integration of data across omics and imaging to improved theoretical and experimental frameworks for validating causal mechanisms, robust cyclical validation to advance predictions using pre-clinical experiments, and transparent, fair and ethical frameworks.

Professionals across the breadth of this trans-disciplinary field may together be on the precipice of a new era of solutions to some of the toughest challenges in health and medicine.

Dr. James Colter receives funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC). He is a Postdoctoral Scholar for The University of Calgary.

– ref. Artificial intelligence and biology: AI’s potential for launching a novel era for health and medicine – https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-and-biology-ais-potential-for-launching-a-novel-era-for-health-and-medicine-275170

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sepideh Borzoo, Postdoctoral Fellow, Toronto Metropolitan University

Canada is facing a well-documented shortage of cybersecurity workers, with estimates suggesting a shortfall of 25,000 to 30,000 qualified professionals — a figure projected to grow to 100,000 by 2035. The persistence of this labour shortage weakens Canada’s capacity to defend itself against cybersecurity threats.

One possible way to address the shortage is to expand the recruitment of skilled foreign workers.

Although Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced in 2025 that the Express Entry system will shift its focus from the technology sector toward fields like health care and francophone immigration, cybersecurity remains one of the few technology occupations still considered in high demand for foreign applicants.

Meanwhile, organizations are developing diversity initiatives to attract a broader workforce, including women and racialized women, to the sector. While racialized immigrants account for the majority of information technology sector workers in Canada, they remain underrepresented in cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity historically originated from the military and has been shaped by national security priorities; as a result, it remains a field predominantly composed of white men. The problem is more acute in the upper echelons of security leadership.

In 2023, non-white men made up only 15 per cent of the global cybersecurity workforce. Racialized women are even less represented. Only two per cent of racialized women are in senior management positions.

As researchers who study the experiences of immigrant tech workers in cybersecurity in Canada, we have found that while racialized immigrant women are vital to the workforce, they continue to encounter barriers that limit their integration and career progression.

Ensuring equity and improving retention will require more than superficial diversity initiatives; the sector must adopt deeper, systemic changes that meaningfully support immigrant employees.

Strong qualifications, constrained careers

To understand how this labour shortage is experienced on the ground, we conducted 55 in-depth interviews between 2023 and 2025 with foreign-born cybersecurity professionals in Canada. Participants represented 13 countries, with most orginating from India, Iran, Brazil and Venezuela. The majority had attained Canadian permanent residency and had at least two years of experience in the Canadian cybersecurity sector.

These interviews help explain how the structural dynamics play out in everyday work.

Most of these cybersecurity professionals came to Canada with strong educational backgrounds in technology and skills that are highly transferable. While high human capital facilitated their entrance into the cybersecurity labour market, their career progression was often constrained by the absence of mentorship and professional networks, by language and cultural adjustment challenges, as well as a disproportionately heavy workload.

These barriers are even more difficult for immigrant women to navigate in an industry shaped by traditionally masculine principles, where competition and aggressive growth have long been celebrated as markers of success. The complexity of all these barriers often keeps immigrants, and racialized immigrant women in particular, in entry-level positions.

Interviewees described daily work experiences structured by systemic barriers and stereotypical expectations.

Many reported struggling to achieve a balance between their professional and personal lives as their roles require working long hours and constant investment in updating their technical knowledge. Experiences of discriminatory behaviour from male colleagues toward women were common. Women with foreign accents, in particular, discussed feeling interrupted or unheard during team meetings.

The layered realities of exclusion

Participants in our study described facing challenges shaped by overlapping forms of discrimination.

Some highlighted that their citizenship status played a role in limiting their access to certain positions. For example, participants on temporary work visas — specifically those from countries experiencing geopolitical tensions with Canada, such as Iran — reported greater difficulty entering the sector.

When they did find work, they were often placed in the most arduous positions, such as incident response and security operations centres, with minimal control over their schedule or tasks. Foreign accents or cultural backgrounds often led to exclusion from non-technical roles that require interaction and relationship-building connections with clients in the cybersecurity sector and contributed to marginalization in day-to-day work interactions.

For women participants, these experiences were often compounded by an industry defined by masculine norms — characterized by heavy workloads, long hours and an implicit requirement to avoid any display of weakness. They described experiencing strain in having to prioritize work over family while navigating workplace relationships in which they were frequently talked over and silenced.

The burden of being a minority in an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated workplace varied depending on the women’s race and ethnic background.

Asian and white immigrant women often felt compelled to speak more assertively and loudly to challenge assumptions that cast them as submissive or unassertive. And Black women described having to carefully manage their frustration and tone of voice to avoid triggering stereotypes that label them as inherently angry.

The weight of stereotypes often left them feeling isolated or uncertain about their place.

Change requires a collaborative approach

Removing the barriers that hinder immigrants in their career progression means addressing both the stereotypical behaviours and the systemic factors holding them back.

This would involve changing the workplace culture and adjusting policies at both immigration and organizational levels. Changing hiring, training and mentoring processes can shift how competency is defined and evaluated within organizations.

Our findings suggest that while diversity programs may reduce overt discrimination and encourage the hiring of women and ethnically diverse employees, this doesn’t guarantee that minority groups will be treated equally or have the same career advancement opportunities as other employees.

---

Read more:
How hiring more women IT experts improves cybersecurity risk management

---

Encouragingly, our findings also show that employees treat one another fairly in workplaces where leaders demonstrate fairness in their behaviour. Women in leadership positions, particularly, play an important role in changing workplace culture and advocating for underrepresented groups.

Enhancing diversity in the top leadership positions may also contribute to a more equitable work environment.

Hiring more gender and racially diverse people, and integrating them in leadership positions, can help create a workplace where every employee has access to mentorship that reflects their identity.

Federal and provincial governments can support these changes by embedding equity goals into immigrant selection and labour standards. Strengthening early and predictable pathways to permanent residence would also reduce immigrants’ vulnerability to precarious work and exploitation.

Together, these measures can help ensure diversity initiatives translate into genuine inclusion rather than merely masking persistent inequities. But without addressing the structural issues, Canada risks relying on immigrant talent to fill labour shortages while systematically limiting their success.

This project receives funding from SSHRC

This project was supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canada Research Chair (CRC) program, Canada First Research Excellence (CFREF) through the Bridging Divides program.

Rupa Banerjee 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. Canada’s cybersecurity sector has a pipeline problem — and a glass ceiling – https://theconversation.com/canadas-cybersecurity-sector-has-a-pipeline-problem-and-a-glass-ceiling-270764

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Amelia M. Kiddle, Professor of History and Associate Dean, Research and Communities, University of Calgary

The people of Cuba are facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis due to the United States government’s embargo of the island nation. Although a Russian oil tanker recently passed through the blockade to deliver much-needed fuel, daily life remains precarious for ordinary Cubans, who are facing unemployment and shortages of food another necessities.

Building upon the historical parallels between Canadian and Mexican relations with Cuba, the federal government should partner with Mexico to expand its commitment towards essential humanitarian aid.

Both Canada and Mexico are hesitant to disturb the proverbial elephant in bed between them whose every “twitch and grunt” has an out-sized impact on both countries.

But providing aid to Cuba in its time of need could help redress past betrayals and serve as a strong foundation for improving Canadian-Mexican relations as both governments must confront the existential threat to the liberal world order posed by their largest shared trading partner.

The fact that Canada and Mexico were the only countries in the Western Hemisphere to defy the U.S. and refuse to cut ties with the country after the 1959 Cuban Revolution occupies a significant place in the national mythology of each country’s foreign policy.

Personal connections

Both Canada and Mexico have significant Cuban diasporas — with nearly 20,000 Cuban-born residents in Canada and more than 42,000 in Mexico, according to 2022 census data. These migrants have left lasting marks on both Canadian and Mexican cultures.

The personal ties between Canadian and Mexican citizens and Cubans have also been strengthened over generations by economic investment by both countries’ companies operating in the vacuum left by the U.S. and by the annual flow of tourists to the island.

Canadian vacationers, in fact, were the largest source of foreign exchange for the Cuban economy until Canadian airlines cancelled flights to the island in the face of the recent fuel shortages.

These shared connections, shaped by past foreign policy decisions, could now support greater co-operation on humanitarian aid.

Mexico’s leading role

In Mexico’s case, relations with Cuba were shaped by the revolutionary nationalism that followed its own revolution in 1910. Under the government of Adolfo López Mateos (1958–64), these ties were viewed through the lens of domestic politics and the Cold War, with the government appeasing domestic constituencies by firmly supporting Cuban sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention.

This led to Mexico spearheading the condemnation of the failed American Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 at the United Nations, and refusing to break relations with the Cuba after the U.S. strong-armed other Latin American countries into ejecting Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1964.

Canada’s objections to the Bay of Pigs invasion were more tepid, and it didn’t become a full member of the OAS until 1990. But nevertheless, the Canadian government also declined to toe the American line.

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, in office from 1957 to 1963, saw that Canadians wanted the country to exhibit foreign policy independence from the U.S. Maintaining relations with Cuba became a feature of Canadian foreign policy supported by many citizens.

But even as the Canadian and Mexican governments publicly proclaimed friendship and constructive engagement with Cuba, subsequent historical investigations have shown both Canada and Mexico co-operated with successive American governments to provide intelligence on the Cuban regime.

This double dealing is well-known to historians, but it has barely registered for most Canadians and Mexicans, who continue to buy into the myths of their countries’ principled difference from the U.S.

Strengthen ties

But today, when popular opinion about the U.S. and its president in both Canada and Mexico are at historic lows, the Canadian and Mexican governments should work together to further strengthen their relations with Cuba.

Private citizens and organizations in both countries have held solidarity rallies and organized private aid missions. Expanding humanitarian aid for the Cuban people who are suffering the consequences of the U.S. government’s blockade would enable Canada and Mexico to fulfil the principled foreign policies many have assumed they’ve upheld since 1959.

Both Mexico and Canada are preoccupied by the upcoming renegotiation of the Canada-US-Mexico (CUSMA) trade agreements.

So far, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has been more vocal in her support for the Cuban people. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney should take Sheinbaum up on her offer to allow foreign airplanes to refuel in Mexico, and should provide more than the $8 million in aid announced given Canada’s ties to Cuba.

Co-operating on providing aid to Cuba would build trust between the Mexican and Canadian governments at a time when both have sought to boost bilateral trade so that both countries are better able to withstand every twitch of their common neighbour.

Amelia M. Kiddle receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Canada and Mexico must work together to help Cuba survive its dire humanitarian crisis – https://theconversation.com/canada-and-mexico-must-work-together-to-help-cuba-survive-its-dire-humanitarian-crisis-279542

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

The language of war has long wrapped itself in the rhetoric of courage and the honour of vengeance, drawing on moral and religious appeals to make violence appear necessary, even just.

Today, that language has returned. As war stretches across Gaza and Lebanon, Ukraine and Iran, the words used to justify it are as brutal, self-assured and distant as ever from the suffering they conceal.

A glaring example are the social media posts of United States President Donald Trump, who in recent days warned “a whole civilization will die tonight” as his deadline for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz loomed.

He’s also threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and called Iranians “crazy bastards” in a demand that they open the strait.

The conflict with Iran, in fact, has been portrayed by Israel and the U.S. as an existential struggle between good and evil.

This is not the messaging of strategy or international law — it’s the renewed language of the Crusades, driven by ideological fervour and staged as a performance of power in which, in Trump’s world view, “might makes right.”

Biblical references

The tone is even more pronounced within segments of Trump’s political orbit, where the conflict is interpreted through apocalyptic and biblical narratives.

References to divine purpose and destiny, including Trump’s claim that he was “saved by God,” draw on a broader evangelical language that frames political conflict in theological terms.

In this environment, war is no longer a tragic necessity but a sacred obligation. This reflects a dangerous fusion of militarism, religious fundamentalism, spectacle and authoritarian politics that is redefining how military power is justified, experienced and normalized.

Religious fundamentalism doesn’t just accompany this violence; it sanctifies it. It functions as an alibi for power, cloaking destruction in the language of destiny while rendering its victims invisible. It turns domination into virtue and makes the machinery of death appear necessary, even divinely ordained.

War as sacred

This isn’t unintentional. It signals a shift in which war becomes a sacred imperative. Trump’s inner circle and his supporters often invoke scripture and religious imagery to cast violence as part of a divine plan. Some of them, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, have described the ongoing war in Iran as a civilizational or even religious war.

Pete Hegeseth, Trump’s defense secretary, expresses this world view most chillingly. He has declared that the mission of the U.S. military is “to unleash death and destruction from the sky all day long,” and has called for “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” as its guiding principle.

This reveals a policy of stripping war of restraint or law and openly aiming for annihilation. Hegseth has also invoked Crusader imagery and claimed that Trump has been ordained by God to wield military power. In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth writes that those who value western civilization, freedom and equal justice should “thank a crusader.”

Domestic militarism

The same language that sanctifies violence abroad, like in Gaza and Ukraine, is similar to Trump’s calls for aggression at home — against protesters, immigrants and political enemies.

He has targeted political opponents, including James Comey and Letitia James, revoked visas for international students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, and dismissed critics, including his Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris, as “radical left lunatics.”

Retribution and regarding opponents as mortal enemies are treated as justified, even necessary, blurring the lines between war-making and domestic repression.

In this environment, it’s easy for the lines between politics and theology to dissolve as well, weakening ethical restraint and defining conflict as sanctioned, even righteous, violence.

Beyond simply justifying war, the U.S. is once again framing itself as a white Christian nation, which normalizes exclusion, disposability, historical erasure and racialized violence.

Nonetheless, this fusion of faith and force is not universally accepted. As Pope Leo XIV said in his first Palm Sunday address, God is the “king of peace,” rejecting any claim that war can be divinely sanctioned.

War as entertainment

The religious framing of the war in Iran is converging with another shift: the transformation of war into spectacle.

Under Trump, violence is not only being justified; it’s being staged, estheticized and consumed, as White House promotional videos blend action-movie imagery with real footage of Iran bombings. This renders the war a stylized performance designed to excite, entertain and showcase technological power.

In this spectacle, human suffering recedes. Targets become co-ordinates, destruction appears cinematic and violence is stripped of its moral weight. What remains is the seductive image of power — war emptied of judgment.

When these efforts fuse with religious fundamentalism, the consequences can be profound. The theatrics of destruction become a sacred drama and the capacity to kill is defined as evidence of both national strength and divine purpose.

Under such conditions, war is no longer constrained by law, reason or democratic accountability. It is propelled by belief, emotion and spectacle.

Trump provides the script as his rhetoric intensifies this convergence. His suggestion that war might end when he “feels it in his bones” or his remark about bombing Iran “just for fun” shows how ignorance can become governance.

Making fascism possible

The human costs of the war in Iran are devastating. Bombing campaigns have inflicted widespread destruction across the country, with civilian casualties mounting steadily. Yet this death toll is increasingly obscured by the spectacle of war itself, reduced to background noise beneath the American celebration of military power.

The economic costs of the war to Americans are also staggering, estimated at roughly $1 billion per day, resources that could support social needs. Yet in a culture steeped in militarism, concentrated power and inequality, such considerations recede.

History offers stark warnings about such moments. The horrors of the past — from the Holocaust to the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, the Pinochet dictatorship and the Iraq war — reveal how societies can be mobilized through propaganda, fear and the erosion of critical thought.

---

Read more:
War sent America off the rails 19 years ago. Could another one bring it back?

---

They remind us what happens when violence is normalized, power is unchecked and human life is stripped of its value. Those conditions are visible again. But authoritarianism can only endure in a culture that enables it — where war, both at home and abroad, becomes a permanent feature of social life.

What’s at stake is not only the violence unleashed abroad but the political culture it legitimizes at home. When war is staged as entertainment and justified as a moral duty, its human costs disappear from view.

A society that embraces cruelty as virtue, ignorance as governance and violence as destiny risks losing its capacity for judgment. Under such conditions, democracy does not simply erode. It is obliterated, giving way to forces that make fascism possible.

Henry Giroux 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. Donald Trump’s apocalyptic and profane threats against Iran expose the unhinged language of war – https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-apocalyptic-and-profane-threats-against-iran-expose-the-unhinged-language-of-war-279801

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Gordon Osinski, Professor in Earth and Planetary Science, Western University

The Artemis II crew has now broken the record — previously held by Apollo 13 — for the farthest distance any humans have ever travelled from Earth. The crew also completed a flyby of the moon’s far side and sent back some amazing images of the lunar surface.

I am a professor, an explorer and a planetary geologist, specializing in the study of meteorite impact structures. I am also a member of the First Artemis Lunar Surface Science Team and have been supporting NASA in developing the geology training for Artemis astronauts.

The flyby was particularly exciting as it offered a stunning new perspective of the lunar surface. It also provided the first operational test of a new science team and evaluation room at Mission Control in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

And it was fantastic to see the Artemis II crew conduct observations and take photographs of geological landforms on the moon’s surface — putting their training with me at the Kamestastin Lake impact structure, on the territory of the Mushuau Innu First Nation in northern Labrador, into practice.

A new view of the moon

Unlike the Apollo missions, that orbited at approximately 110 kilometres above the surface of the moon, Artemis II was at a much higher altitude — around 6,545 kilometres above the lunar surface.

This greater distance allowed the crew to view the moon as a full disk, including regions near both the North Pole and South Pole.

The crew was also able to take targeted photographs of various geological landforms on the lunar surface as part of the Artemis II science program. One of the primary goals of these investigations is to inform future missions, including the planned first journey back to the lunar surface with Artemis IV as soon as 2028.

A new science team

One of the highlights of NASA’s livestream during the mission has been the direct conversations between two good friends: Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and science officer Kelsey Young.

Science officers are the senior flight controllers responsible for lunar science and geology objectives during Artemis missions.

They act as the main interface between the wider Mission Control team and the Artemis II science team, which is located in a totally separate room called the Science Evaluation Room (SER).

Both science officers and the evaluation room are brand new for NASA’s Artemis program; they did not exist during the Apollo program.

We have been developing the structure and defining roles in the SER for the first Artemis mission to the moon’s surface. But there is nothing like a real mission to test and refine how the science team should work.

A crash course in lunar geology

If you listened in to NASA’s livestream and heard any of the geological descriptions the astronauts were giving, I hope you were impressed — I certainly was!

Their knowledge is a testament to the geology training that NASA has provided the crew in the months and years since they were selected for the Artemis program.

First, the crew participated in a crash course in lunar geology called “Lunar Fundamentals.” This weeklong, classroom-based training offered them the basics to understand lunar geology and the processes that shape the moon’s surface — primarily impact cratering and volcanism.

However, as somebody who has been teaching for more than 20 years, I know the best place to learn about geology is in the field. That’s why NASA also took the Artemis astronauts to a series of field sites in the United States, Iceland and Canada.

Early in their training, in September 2023, three of the crew members — Hansen, Christina Koch and back-up crew Jenni Gibbons — undertook geology training at the Kamestastin Lake impact structure in northern Labrador. Then the entire crew travelled to Iceland in August 2024.

Kamestastin Lake training expedition

I was honoured to play a leading role in the Kamestastin Lake training. This location was chosen because it offers a similar landscape to the surface of the moon.

The Kamestastin Lake crater was formed approximately 35 million years ago by the impact of an asteroid between one and two kilometres in diameter. Not only are rocks like breccias and impact melt rocks produced by the asteroid’s impact well preserved here, but the crater also formed in a rock called anorthosite — the exact same rock that makes up the lunar highlands.

In addition to participating in the geology training itself, I was largely responsible for the logistics for this expedition.

Kamestastin is in a remote part of northern Labrador, so we flew in via Twin Otter aircraft and established a temporary base camp. From tents to pots and pans and food for 16 people, there was a lot to take care of. We then used zodiac boats to travel around the crater.

Sacred Innu stories of the moon

Kamestastin Lake and the surrounding region are on the territory of the Mushuau Innu First Nation. A key part of my role in the training was liaising with the First Nation, which has been following Hansen on this historic mission.

A highlight for me was sitting around the fire on one of our last nights with Innu Guardians from Natuashish and hearing about how sacred the moon is to them — as it is to many Indigenous Peoples around the world.

They also told us the story of Tshakepesh, an Innu hero who teaches that with courage, hard work and perseverance, one can always overcome difficulties.

As the Artemis II crew return from its journey, I am struck by the parallels. The crew has shown the world what can happen if we work together towards a common goal with courage, hard work, perseverance and humility.

Gordon Osinski founded the company Interplanetary Exploration Odyssey Inc. He receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.

– ref. How the Artemis II crew trained to observe and photograph the moon: A NASA science team geologist explains – https://theconversation.com/how-the-artemis-ii-crew-trained-to-observe-and-photograph-the-moon-a-nasa-science-team-geologist-explains-279829

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kate Congreves, Associate Professor, Jarislowsky & BMO Research Chair in Regenerative Agriculture, University of Saskatchewan

Sustainability has become something of a buzzword over the years. From the clothes we wear and the energy that powers our homes to the way we live our lives, the idea of sustainable production and consumption has become commonplace.

That is also true about the way we grow and consume food. Recently, however, another term has come to the fore: regenerative agriculture. It sounds attractive, somehow better than sustainable, but what does it really mean?

Regenerative agriculture began as a grassroots approach to farming led by farmers. It has been described in many different ways, but a common thread is a set of values.

People might be drawn to the word “regenerative” because it evokes a sense of improvement rather than just maintaining the status quo — for example, efforts to rebuild a system and our values. That last bit — rebuilding not only the system but our values — is really important.

Values often include care for the environment, a responsibility to nature and cultivation of good food. Just like there are many ways to grow food, there are also many languages, voices and histories that express the ways that food can be cultivated in alignment with values.

---

Read more:
‘Regenerative agriculture’ is all the rage – but it’s not going to fix our food system

---

The need for an agricultural ethic

It easier to standardize and market a simple list of practices than a philosophically sound ethical framework, but that doesn’t mean ethical frameworks are irrelevant. Ethics is a branch of philosophy that examines concepts of good and bad, right and wrong and our values.

Ethics might be the one thing that agricultural science has been missing but needs the most. Agriculture has been rudderless when it comes to collectively deciding what is or isn’t good for humans and the environment.

Cornerstone ethical frameworks have provided reasons for taking care of the environment, such as the land ethic and deep ecology.

These laid the foundation for important movements supporting nature preservation and conservation, and the United Nations 30 by 30 goal to set aside 30 per cent of the planet for conservation areas by 2030.

These frameworks, however, are easier to apply outside of agriculture rather than to inform agricultural practice within environments. They might often involve protecting land from agricultural use.

Yet agriculture is a part of the environment, not separate from it. We need an environmental ethic that works for agriculture, one that centrally grounds it as part of the environment. This is where regenerative agriculture might help.

A better approach

In my work, I define regenerative agriculture as an ecological approach and ethic for our agricultural system that involves reciprocity with the land, to support ecosystems with the goal of nurturing the environment.

Ecosystem processes and environmental components such as land, soil, water, air, flora and fauna are all viewed as morally worthy of consideration due to their roles in giving life.

A regenerative agriculture ethic would allow for natural shifts in ecological stability due to cultivation, but would draw the line when the ecosystem processes are damaged, degraded or severed. In this approach, regeneration is valued.

Regenerative agriculture can help other movements like agroecology, as opposed to threatening them. Agroecology is a larger science, practice and social movement to build an inclusive food system with political, social, environmental aspects of sustainability. Bringing in an agricultural environmental ethic will help advance this goal.

However, focusing on a “one-size-fits-all” standard for regenerative agriculture and marketing it for profits has left the concept a hollowed version of itself. It has been reduced to a simple list of agricultural practices or outcomes, like ticking off a grocery list.

Generic practices like diversification and soil health management are frequently cited, without specifying the degree of diversification or whether soil health indicators actually improve.

This oversimplification, and convenient marketing use by agrifood corporations, has caused expert panels and researchers to warn the concept has been co-opted. In its narrowed version, the underlying values have been left out.

If regenerative agriculture becomes just another marketable list of practices, then its potential for real transformation evaporates. However, if we pause and prioritize a truly regenerative agriculture ethic, it may lead us to a prosperous and healthy environment and society.

Kate Congreves receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Jarislowsky Foundation and the Bank of Montreal.

– ref. From ‘sustainable’ to ‘regenerative’ agriculture: What’s in a name? – https://theconversation.com/from-sustainable-to-regenerative-agriculture-whats-in-a-name-275209