Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mathieu Duval, Adjunct Senior Researcher at Griffith University and La Trobe University, and Ramón y Cajal (Senior) Research Fellow, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)
Fossils are invaluable archives of the past. They preserve details about living things from a few thousand to hundreds of millions of years ago.
Studying fossils can help us understand the evolution of species over time, and glimpse snapshots of past environments and climates. Fossils can also reveal the diets or migration patterns of long-gone species – including our own ancestors.
But when living things turn to rock, discerning those details is no easy feat. One common technique for studying fossils is micro-computerised tomography or micro-CT. It’s been used to find the earliest evidence of bone cancer in humans, to study brain imprints and inner ears in early hominins, and to study the teeth of the oldest human modern remains outside Africa, among many other examples.
However, our new study, published today in Radiocarbon, shows that despite being widely regarded as non-destructive, micro-CT may actually affect fossil preservation and erase some crucial information held inside.
Preserving precious specimens
Fossils are rare and fragile by nature. Scientists are constantly evaluating how to balance their impact on fossils with the need to study them.
When palaeontologists and palaeoanthropologists (who work on human fossils) analyse fossils, they want to minimise any potential damage. We want to preserve fossils for future generations as much as possible – and technology can be a huge help here.
Micro-CT works like the medical CT scans doctors use to peek inside the human body. However, it does so at a much smaller scale and at a greater resolution.
This is perfect for studying small objects such as fossils. With micro-CT, scientists can take high-resolution 3D images and access the inner structure of fossils without the need to cut them open.
These scans also allow for virtual copies of the fossils, which other scientists can then access from anywhere in the world. This significantly reduces the risk of damage, since the scanned fossils can safely remain in a museum collection, for example.
Micro-CT is popular and routinely used. The scientific community widely regards it as “non-destructive” because it doesn’t cause any visual damage – but it could still affect the fossil.
Jaw bone of the human fossil species Homo antecessor from Spain. Left: micro-CT scan with a cutting plane to visualise the inner structures, bone and teeth; right: 3D reconstruction based on the high-resolution micro-CT images. Laura Martín-Francés
How does micro-CT imaging work?
Micro-CT scanning uses X-rays and computer software to produce high-resolution images and reconstruct the fossil specimens in detail. Typically, palaeontologists use commercial scanners for this, but more advanced investigations may use powerful X-ray beams generated at a synchrotron.
The X-rays go through the specimen and are captured by a detector on the other end. This allows for a very fine-grained understanding of the matter they’ve passed through – especially density, which then provides clues about the shape of the internal structures, the composition of the tissues, or any contamination.
The scan produces a succession of 2D images from all angles. Computer software is then used to “clean up” these high-resolution images and assemble them into a 3D shape – a virtual copy of the fossil and its inner structures.
Example of micro-CT results on a hominin fossil known as Little Foot, from southern Africa.
But X-rays are not harmless
X-rays are a type of ionising radiation. This means they have a high level of energy and can break electrons away from atoms (this is called ionisation).
However, despite what we know about the impact of X-rays on living cells, the potential impact of X-rays on fossils through micro-CT imaging has never been deeply investigated.
What did our study find?
Using standard settings on a typical micro-CT scanner, we scanned several modern and fossil bones and teeth from animals. We also measured their collagen content before and after scanning.
Collagen is useful for many analytical purposes, such as finding out the age of the fossils using radiocarbon dating, or for stable isotope analysis – a method used to infer the diet of the extinct species, for example. The collagen content in fossils is usually much lower than in modern specimens because it slowly breaks down over time.
After comparing our measurements with unscanned samples taken from the same specimens, we found two things.
First, the radiocarbon age remained unchanged. In other words, micro-CT scanning doesn’t affect radiocarbon dating. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that we did observe a significant decrease in the amount of collagen present. In other words, the micro-CT scanned samples had about 35% less collagen than the samples before scanning.
This shows micro-CT imaging has a non-negligible impact on fossils that contain collagen traces. While this was to be expected, the impact hasn’t been experimentally confirmed before.
It’s possible some fossil samples won’t have enough collagen left after micro-CT scanning. This would make them unsuitable for a range of analytical techniques, including radiocarbon dating.
What now?
In a previous study, we showed micro-CT can artificially “age” fossils later dated with a method called electron spin resonance. It’s commonly used to date fossils older than 50,000 years – beyond what the radiocarbon method can discern.
This previous study and our new work show that micro-CT scanning may significantly and irreversibly change the fossil and the information it holds.
Despite causing no visible damage to the fossil, we argue that in this context the technique should no longer be regarded as non-destructive.
Micro-CT imaging is highly valuable in palaeontology and palaeoanthropology, no doubt about that. But our results suggest it should be used sparingly to minimise how much fossils are exposed to X-rays. There are guidelines scientists can use to minimise damage. Freely sharing data to avoid repeated scans of the same specimen will be helpful, too.
Mathieu Duval receives funding from the Spanish State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación). He is currently the recipient of a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2018-025221-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ‘‘ESF Investing in your future”. This work is also part of Spanish Grant PID2021-123092NB-C22 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE, and by ‘‘ERDF A way of making Europe”.
Laura Martín-Francés receives funding from Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions of the EU Ninth programme (2021-2027) under the HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01-Project: 101060482.
The kettle is a household staple practically everywhere – how else would we make our hot drinks?
But is it okay to re-boil water that’s already in the kettle from last time? While bringing water to a boil disinfects it, you may have heard that boiling water more than once will somehow make the water harmful and therefore you should empty the kettle each time.
Such claims are often accompanied by the argument that re-boiled water leads to the accumulation of allegedly hazardous substances including metals such as arsenic, or salts such as nitrates and fluoride.
This isn’t true. To understand why, let’s look at what is in our tap water and what really happens when we boil it.
What’s in our tap water?
Let’s take the example of tap water supplied by Sydney Water, Australia’s largest water utility which supplies water to Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra region.
From the publicly available data for the January to March 2025 quarter for the Illawarra region, these were the average water quality results:
pH was slightly alkaline
total dissolved solids were low enough to avoid causing scaling in pipes or appliances
fluoride content was appropriate to improve dental health, and
it was “soft” water with a total hardness value below 40mg of calcium carbonate per litre.
The water contained trace amounts of metals such as iron and lead, low enough magnesium levels that it can’t be tasted, and sodium levels substantially lower than those in popular soft drinks.
These and all other monitored quality parameters were well within the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines during that period. If you were to make tea with this water, re-boiling would not cause a health problem. Here’s why.
It’s difficult to concentrate such low levels of chemicals
To concentrate substances in the water, you’d need to evaporate some of the liquid while the chemicals stay behind. Water evaporates at any temperature, but the vast majority of evaporation happens at the boiling point – when water turns into steam.
During boiling, some volatile organic compounds might escape into the air, but the amount of the inorganic compounds (such as metals and salts) remains unchanged.
While the concentration of inorganic compounds might increase as drinking water evaporates when boiled, evidence shows it doesn’t happen to such an extent that it would be hazardous.
Let’s say you boil one litre of tap water in a kettle in the morning, and your tap water has a fluoride content of 1mg per litre, which is within the limits of Australian guidelines.
You make a cup of tea taking 200ml of the boiled water. You then make another cup of tea in the afternoon by re-boiling the remaining water.
On both occasions, if heating was stopped soon after boiling started, the loss of water by evaporation would be small, and the fluoride content in each cup of tea would be similar.
But let’s assume that when making the second cup, you let the water keep boiling until 100ml of what’s in the kettle evaporates. Even then, the amount of fluoride you would consume with the second cup (0.23mg) would not be significantly higher than the fluoride you consumed with the first cup of tea (0.20mg).
The same applies to any other minerals or organics the supplied water may have contained. Let’s take lead: the water supplied in the Illawarra region as mentioned above, had a lead concentration of less than 0.0001mg per litre. To reach an unsafe lead concentration (0.01mg per litre, according to Australian guidelines) in a cup of water, you’d need to boil down roughly 20 litres of tap water to just that cup of 200ml.
Practically that is unlikely to happen – most electric kettles are designed to boil briefly before automatically shutting off. As long as the water you’re using is within the guidelines for drinking water, you can’t really concentrate it to harmful levels within your kettle.
But what about taste?
Whether re-boiled water actually affects the taste of your drinks will depend entirely on the specifics of your local water supply and your personal preferences.
The slight change in mineral concentration, or the loss of dissolved oxygen from water during boiling may affect the taste for some people – although there are a lot of other factors that contribute to the taste of your tap water.
The bottom line is that as long as the water in your kettle was originally compliant with guidelines for safe drinking water, it will remain safe and potable even after repeated boiling.
Faisal Hai 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.
In the thrilling finale of the TV series The Americans, set during the Reagan administration, deep-cover KGB operatives Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are faced with a difficult decision. Posing as an ordinary American married couple, for decades they have raised children, filed tax returns and slipped effortlessly into the rhythms and routines of everyday suburban existence in Washington, D.C.
All the while, they’ve been spying – gathering intelligence and surreptitiously feeding it to their communist masters in Soviet Moscow. Now, with the FBI closing in and their cover on the brink of collapse, they must decide whether to stay and face arrest or flee the country they’ve come to call home. There’s also their teenage children to consider.
The story seemed too incredible to be true – but in fact it was based in part on Donald Heathfield and Ann Foley, subsequently outed as Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, a Russian couple who had spent more than 20 years masquerading as Canadians. At the time of their unmasking, they were living quietly in the United States with Tim and Alex, their two sons.
Review: The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West – Shaun Walker (Profile)
A new book, The Illegals, tells of a network of Russian agents operating across the US, during the late 20th and early 21st centuries – including Bezrukov and Vavilova. It opens with their dramatic 2010 arrest, part of ten Russian spies (mostly illegals like them) detained by the FBI.
Author Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, draws on declassified archival material and first-hand interviews. The result is an engrossing, eye-opening account of the secret world of the Soviet “illegals programme”: embedded spies who lived surreptitiously in the West without the safety blanket of diplomatic protection.
As Walker explains, “legals” were Russian operatives working under official cover – as diplomats or embassy staff, privy to diplomatic immunity. By contrast, “illegals” operated off the grid. They crept silently into Western countries under false identities, often stolen from the dead. This made them harder to detect, but left them far more vulnerable if exposed.
One of the most high-profile figures in the 2010 spy bust was Anna Chapman. Unlike many other illegals, Chapman didn’t even bother to disguise her Russian identity. Instead, as Walker recounts, she entered America using a British passport – acquired through a brief marriage to a UK citizen – and worked as a New York real estate broker.
Her photogenic looks and media-friendly persona made her the public face of the scandal. After being deported, Chapman reinvented herself as a television host, runway model and pro-Kremlin influencer.
The real Americans
Walker outlines how Bezrukov and Vavilova first met in the early 1980s, as history students in Siberia. There, KGB “spotters” identified them for potential recruitment. Later, he adds,
they progressed to an arduous training programme lasting several years, moulding their language, mannerisms and identities into those of an ordinary couple. They left the Soviet Union separately in 1987, staged a meeting in Canada, and began a relationship as if they had just met.
Having married under their assumed names, Andrei and Elena adopted the habits and customs of an ordinary middle-class life. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the couple were cut off from Moscow, but by the end of the decade they were reactivated by the SVR, Russia’s new foreign intelligence agency. Around this time, Andrei won a place at Harvard’s Kennedy School, allowing the family to move to Massachusetts and integrate further into American society.
As Andrei networked in academic and policy circles, Elena maintained the illusion of domestic normality, fashioning herself as a doting “soccer mom”, raising the kids and keeping house. Meanwhile, she was secretly decoding encrypted radio messages in the back room.
This went on for years. Then, one day, an unexpected knock on the door as they celebrated their son Tim’s 20th birthday brought the charade crashing down. FBI agents burst in, handcuffed the couple in front of their sons and marched them out into the street.
Soon after their arrest, Andrei and Elena were deported to Russia in a high-profile spy swap. They were awarded state honours by Vladimir Putin and briefly became minor celebrities in Moscow. Their sons, both born in Canada, were left reeling.
In 2016, Walker tracked the sons down for a piece he was writing for The Guardian: they were in the process of suing the Canadian government to have their citizenship reinstated, having been stripped of it when everything kicked off. In 2019, a court ruled Tim and Alex (who was 16 when the FBI arrested his parents) could keep their citizenship. Both insisted they had known nothing about their parents’ espionage work.
Alex Valivov, son of Russian ‘illegal’ spies disguised as Americans, talked to the media after he won a court bid to keep his Canadian citizenship.
Putin ‘beside himself’
As Walker recounts, the raid had been coordinated by then-FBI director Robert Mueller. It had been timed to avoid derailing a carefully planned diplomatic summit.
In 2009, Barack Obama launched a high-profile “reset” of relations with Russia. Obama wanted to woo Dmitry Medvedev – a moderate political figurehead standing in for Putin, who remained the real power behind the scenes in Russia.
A planned summit in Washington intended to cement the spirit of renewed cooperation. But as the scale of Russia’s covert operation became apparent, the White House was faced with a dilemma: how to respond without jeopardising the reset.
According to Walker, Obama was irked by the whole situation. He quipped that it felt like something out of a John Le Carré novel. Eventually, a compromise was reached: the arrests would happen, but only after Medvedev’s visit, so as not to cause undue embarrassment.
Colonel Aleksandr Poteyev, deputy head of Directorate “S” of the SVR, was the man overseeing the illegals scheme. After the arrests were made, he quietly walked out of the agency headquarters in Yasenevo for the last time. He was the mole who had tipped off the Americans. From there, he made his way to Ukraine, where the CIA could safely extricate him to the US. On hearing the news, Putin was reportedly beside himself with rage, Walker writes.
Intrigued by this “twisted family story”, Walker started to look into the illegals venture in greater depth. He quickly realised “there was nothing quite like it in the history of espionage”. At times, various intelligence agencies had deployed operatives as foreign nationals, “but never with the scope or scale of the KGB programme”.
A century of dramatic, bloody history
The illegals were, in Walker’s reckoning, something uniquely Russian, rooted in the country’s complex historical experience. The more he read, the more he came to view the programme as a lens through which he could “tell a much bigger story, of the whole Soviet experiment and its ultimate failure, a century of dramatic and bloody history”.
To understand how the illegals project came about, Walker winds the clock all the way back to 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power – and espionage became a cornerstone of the nascent Soviet state. He reminds us while Lenin and his comrades had won formal control of the nation, “they still faced the colossal task of implementing and retaining it across the vast Russian landmass”.
Lenin was sure that state institutions would eventually wither away, the evolving worker’s paradise rendering them meaningless. However, to achieve this happy end point, he believed an interim period of ruthless state violence was required.
The Cheka: precursor to the KGB
This helps to explain why he established the Cheka, a secret police force tasked with crushing counterrevolutionary activity and enforcing Bolshevik rule. At its head was Feliks Dzerzhinsky, a fanatical Polish ideologue who had spent years in Siberian exile. Far from a temporary measure, the Cheka “quickly grew to a huge fighting force that could be unleashed on political and class enemies”, Walker writes.
Feliks Dzierzynski was the head of the Cheka, the Russian secret police force that preceded the KGB. Wikimedia Commons
The Cheka was an important player in the Russian Civil War, which pitted Lenin’s Reds against the Whites – a loose alliance of pro-tsarist regiments and foreign mercenaries, often united by little more than their implacable hatred of Bolshevism. The situation on the ground was chaotic and unpredictable; both sides engaged in ruthless violence.
Here, in this blood-drenched crucible, the Bolsheviks honed their clandestine methods – konspiratsiya (subterfuge) – perfecting the use of disguises, false identities and underground communication. In areas where the Whites gained a territorial foothold, agents were ordered to stay behind and coordinate resistance, laying the groundwork for what would become the illegals programme.
When the Bolsheviks emerged victorious in 1921, the Cheka was not disbanded – but repurposed. The practice of planting operatives deep inside enemy lines survived the war and expanded in scope. Lenin’s idea of combining legal diplomatic work with illegal undercover infiltration became a defining feature of how the Soviet Union would run its intelligence services for the next 70 years.
Stalin’s secret police
Under Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, the secret police was transformed into an all-encompassing instrument of surveillance, repression and domination.
Purges consumed the party. Ideological fervour curdled into show trials and murderous terror. And paranoia became an organising principle of Soviet political life. The demand for vigilance intensified – not just at home, where informants and denunciations became routine, but also abroad. Real and purported enemies were seen lurking in the democratic institutions of the West.
Ironies abound here. The very methods that helped to sustain the early Soviet state – secrecy, trickery, duplicity – soon became grounds for suspicion on Stalin’s watch. The generation of illegals trained and embedded during the 1920s and early 1930s were among those earmarked for liquidation, Walker writes. Stalin, ever wary of plots against him, came to view his own spies as potential traitors.
He ignored – or wilfully dismissed – much of the intelligence they had risked their lives to gather, often with disastrous consequences. When advance warnings of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s secret plan to betray Stalin and launch a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, landed on his desk in 1941, for instance, they were waved away as provocation or outright fabrication. In some cases, he had his spies tortured or shot. Loyalty was no protector against paranoia.
Dmitry Bystrolyotov was a legend in Soviet intelligence circles. Alchetron
Among the casualties was Dmitry Bystrolyotov, who Walker describes as “perhaps the most talented illegal in the history of the programme”. A truly chameleonic figure, Bystrolyotov was a dashing and multilingual agent whose exploits in Western Europe made him a legend in Soviet intelligence circles. “His speciality was the recruitment of agents who had access to diplomatic codes and ciphers,” the Russian scholar Emil Draitser attests, “and his modus operandi involved women”.
Through a series of painstakingly crafted affairs, Bystrolyotov gained access to confidential dispatches, internal memos and state secrets. His work offered Stalin a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Europe’s ruling elite. But when The Great Terror rolled around in 1937, none of it mattered. He was arrested, sentenced and dispatched to the Gulag, callously tossed aside by the system he had served with such distinction.
Walker emphasises:
the history of the illegals offers a neat reflection of the story of Russia itself. The early programme, with its soaring ambition, its obsession with subterfuge, and its disregard for the well-being of individuals, holds up a mirror to the fiery utopianism of the early Soviet Union.
Did the Cold War really end?
These were people expected to vanish into enemy territory, sacrifice their identifies and live double lives, all in service of a revolutionary vision. But by the time the Soviet Union spluttered to an ignominious halt in 1991, that dream had long since died.
As Walker shows, most of the operatives who followed in the footsteps of Bystrolyotov were not darkly romantic infiltrators scaling embassy walls or charming secrets out of countesses. They were “sleepers” – often efficient, occasionally incompetent – blending quietly into Western cities and suburbs, awaiting a call to action that, in many cases, never came. The glitz had given way to the grind.
The Americans ends with Phillip and Elizabeth, the couple based on Bezrukov and Vavilova, gazing out across the Moscow skyline. Two weary spies coming in from the cold, they have returned to a rapidly unravelling motherland that may not understand – let alone appreciate – the sacrifices they have made in the service of its ideology.
As Walker discovered, Berzukov, when he isn’t being paid handsomely by an oil company, now lectures in international relations at one of Russia’s most prestigious universities. Vavilova, fittingly enough, now writes spy fiction.
Yet in real life, the story doesn’t end quite there. Under Putin, a former KGB officer who cut his teeth in the culture of espionage, Russia’s intelligence services have returned to the illegals programme with a renewed sense of purpose (though stripped of the ideological zeal that once propelled it).
Walker is careful not to indulge in idle speculation, but he points to compelling evidence suggesting the illegals programme has evolved rather than vanished. High-profile attacks on UK soil – including the poisoning of form spy Sergei Skripal – suggest Russian intelligence agencies remain willing to operate far beyond their national borders.
In the same breath, Walker describes what might be termed the digital turn of the illegals programme. In the place of suburban sleepers decoding radio signals, Russia has backed teams of online operatives – “troll illegals” – tasked with wrecking havoc across Western social media platforms.
These paid agents don’t gather intelligence so much as sow discord. They stoke culture wars, amplify political divisions and undermine trust in democratic institutions. Walker offers Russia’s meddling in the rancorous 2016 American election as an illustrative case in point.
In Putin’s merciless autocracy, secrecy has once again became a virtue – and the spy, far from being a dusty relic of the 20th century, is once again a symbol of national strength.
In that sense, The Illegals is not just a history of espionage. It is a timely reminder that, at least for some, the Cold War never really ended. It just burrowed deeper underground.
Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Rachel Fitzgerald, Associate Professor and Deputy Associate Dean (Academic), Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, The University of Queensland
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming an everyday part of lives. Many of us use it without even realising, whether it be writing emails, finding a new TV show or managing smart devices in our homes.
But apart from a handful of computing-focused and other STEM programs, most Australian university students do not receive formal tuition in how to use AI critically, ethically or responsibly.
Here’s why this is a problem and what we can do instead.
But this does not teach students how these tools work or what responsible use involves.
Using AI is not as simple as typing questions into a chat function. There are widely recognised ethical issues around its use including bias and misinformation. Understanding these is essential for students to use AI responsibly in their working lives.
So all students should graduate with a basic understanding of AI, its limitations, the role of human judgement and what responsible use looks like in their particular field.
We need students to be aware of bias in AI systems. This includes how their own biases could shape how they use the AI (the questions they ask and how they interpret its output), alongside an understanding of the broader ethical implications of AI use.
For example, does the data and the AI tool protect people’s privacy? Has the AI made a mistake? And if so, whose responsibility is that?
What about AI ethics?
The technical side of AI is covered in many STEM degrees. These degrees, along with philosophy and psychology disciplines, may also examine ethical questions around AI. But these issues are not a part of mainstream university education.
This is a concern. When future lawyers use predictive AI to draft contracts, or business graduates use AI for hiring or marketing, they will need skills in ethical reasoning.
Ethical issues in these scenarios could include unfair bias, like AI recommending candidates based on gender or race. It could include issues relating to a lack of transparency, such as not knowing how an AI system made a legal decision. Students need to be able to spot and question these risks before they cause harm.
In healthcare, AI tools are already supporting diagnosis, patient triage and treatment decisions.
For example, if a teacher relies on AI carelessly to draft a lesson plan, students might learn a version of history that is biased or just plain wrong. A lawyer who over-relies on AI could submit a flawed court document, putting their client’s case at risk.
How can we do this?
There are international examples we can follow. The University of Texas at Austin and University of Edinburgh both offer programs in ethics and AI. However, both of these are currently targeted at graduate students. The University of Texas program is focused on teaching STEM students about AI ethics, whereas the University of Edinburgh’s program has a broader, interdiscplinary focus.
Implementing AI ethics in Australian universities will require thoughtful curriculum reform. That means building interdisciplinary teaching teams that combine expertise from technology, law, ethics and the social sciences. It also means thinking seriously about how we engage students with this content through core modules, graduate capabilities or even mandatory training.
It will also require investment in academic staff development and new teaching resources that make these concepts accessible and relevant to different disciplines.
Government support is essential. Targeted grants, clear national policy direction, and nationally shared teaching resources could accelerate the shift. Policymakers could consider positioning universities as “ethical AI hubs”. This aligns with the government-commissioned 2024 Australian University Accord report, which called for building capacity to meet the demands of the digital era.
Today’s students are tomorrow’s decision-makers. If they don’t understand the risks of AI and its potential for error, bias or threats to privacy, we will all bear the consequences. Universities have a public responsibility to ensure graduates know how to use AI responsibly and understand why their choices matter.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
I once leapt out of a train carriage because two strangers were loudly discussing the ending of the last Harry Potter book. Okay – I didn’t leap, but I did plug my ears and flee to another carriage.
Recently, I found myself in a similar predicament, trapped on a bus, entirely at the mercy of two passengers dissecting the Severance season two finale.
But not everyone shares my spoiler anxiety. I have friends who flip to the last page of a book before they’ve read the first one, or who look up the ending before hitting play. According to them, they simply need to know.
So why do some of us crave surprise and suspense, while others find comfort in instant resolution?
What’s in a spoiler?
Spoilers have become a cultural flashpoint in the age of streaming, social media and shared fandoms.
Researchers define “spoiler” as undesired information about how a narrative’s arc will conclude. I often hear “spoilers!” interjected mid-sentence, a desperate protest to protect narrative ignorance.
Hitchcock’s twist-heavy Psycho elevated spoiler sensitivity. Its release came with an anti-spoilers policy including strict viewing times, lobby warnings recorded by the auteur himself, and even real policemen urging “total enjoyment”. A bold ad campaign implored audiences against “cheating yourselves”.
The twists were fiercely protected.
Even the Star Wars cast didn’t know Darth Vader’s paternity twist until premiere night. Avenger’s Endgame filmed multiple endings and used fake scripting to mislead its stars. And Andrew Garfield flat-out lied about his return to Spider-Man: No Way Home – a performance worthy of an Oscar – all for the sake of fan surprise and enjoyment.
But do spoilers actually ruin the fun, or just shift how we experience it?
The satisfaction of a good ending
In 2014, a Dutch study found that viewers of unspoiled stories experienced greater emotional arousal and enjoyment. Spoilers may complete our “mental models” of the plot, making us less driven to engage, process events, or savour the unfolding story.
But we are also likely to overestimate the negative effect of a spoiler on our enjoyment. In 2016, a series of studies involving short stories, mystery fiction and films found that spoiled participants still reported high levels of enjoyment – because once we’re immersed, emotional connection tends to eclipse what we already know.
But suspense and enjoyment are complex bedfellows.
American media psychology trailblazer Dolf Zillmann said that suspense builds tension and excitement, but we only enjoy that tension once the ending lands well.
The thrill isn’t fun while we’re hanging in uncertainty – it’s the satisfying resolution that retroactively makes it feel good.
That could be why we scramble for an “ending explained” when a film or show drops the ball on closure. We’re trying to resolve uncertainty and settle our emotions.
Spoilers can also take the pressure off. A 2009 study of Lost fans found those who looked up how an episode would end actually enjoyed it more. The researchers found it reduced cognitive pressure, and gave them more room to reflect and soak in the story.
Spoilers put the audience back in the driver’s seat – even if filmmakers would rather keep hold of the wheel. People may seek spoilers out of curiosity or impatience, but sometimes it’s a quiet rebellion: a way to push back against the control creators hold over when and how things unfold.
That’s why spoilers are fertile ground for power dynamics. Ethicists even liken being spoiled to kind of moral trespass: how dare someone else make that decision for me?!
But whether you avoid spoilers or seek them out, the motive is often the same: a need to feel in control.
Shaping your emotions
Spoiler avoiders crave affect: they want emotional transportation.
When suspense is part of the pleasure, control means choosing when and how that knowledge lands. There’s a mental challenge to be had in riding the story as it unfolds, and a joy in seeing it click into place.
That’s why people get protective, and even chatter about long-aired shows can spark outrage. It’s an attempt to police the commentary and preserve the experience for those still waiting to be transported.
Spoiler seekers want control too, just a different kind. They’re not avoiding emotion, they’re just managing it. A spoiler affords control over our negative emotions, but also softens the blow, and inoculates us against anxiety.
Psychologists dub this a “non-cognitive desensitisation strategy” to manage surprise, a kind of “emotional spoiler shield” to protect our attachments to shows and characters, and remind us that TV, film and book narratives are not real when storylines hit close to home.
Knowing what happens turns into a subtle form of self-regulation.
So, what did I do when Severance spoilers floated by? Did I get off the bus? Nope, I stayed put and faced the beast. As I tried to make sense of the unfamiliar plot points (The macrodata means what? Mark stays where?), I found the unexpected chance to dive deeper.
Maybe surprise is not the sum of what makes something entertaining and worth engaging with. Spoiler alert! It’s good to have an end to journey towards, but it’s the journey that matters, in the end.
Anjum Naweed 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.
Tourists in Kathmandu are tempted everywhere by advertisements for trekking expeditions to Everest Base Camp. If you didn’t know better, you might think it’s just a nice hike in the Nepalese countryside.
Typically the lower staging post for attempts on the summit, the camp is still 5,364 metres above sea level and a destination in its own right. Travel agencies say no prior experience is required, and all equipment will be provided. Social media, too, is filled with posts enticing potential trekkers to make the iconic journey.
But there is a real risk of creating a false sense of security. An exciting adventure can quickly turn into a struggle for survival, especially for novice mountaineers.
Nevertheless, Sagarmatha National Park is deservedly popular for its natural beauty and the allure of the world’s highest peak, Chomolungma (Mount Everest). It is also home to the ethnically distinctive Sherpa community.
Consequently, the routes to Everest Base Camp are among the busiest in the Himalayas, with nearly 60,000 tourists visiting the area each year. There are two distinct trekking seasons: spring (March to May) and autumn (September to October).
High mountains require everyone to be properly prepared. Events which under normal conditions might be a minor inconvenience can be magnified in such an environment and pose a serious risk.
Even at the start of the trek in Lukla (2,860m), one is exposed to factors that can directly or indirectly affect one’s health, especially altitude mountain sickness or unfamiliar bacteria.
We interviewed 24 trekkers in May this year, as well as 60 residents and business owners in May 2023, to explore some of the safety issues anyone considering heading to base camp should be aware of.
Life at high altitude
First, it’s vital to choose goals within one’s technical and physical capabilities. While the human body can adapt to altitudes of up to 5,300m, the potential risk of altitude mountain sickness can occur at only 2,500m – lower than Lukla.
Proper acclimatisation above 3,000m means ascending no more than 500m a day and resting every two to three days at the same altitude. The optimal (though rarely followed) approach is the “saw tooth system” of climbing during the day but descending to sleep at a lower level.
Residents of the Khumbu region (on the Nepalese side of Everest) are familiar with the problem of tourists not acclimatising, or not paying attention to their surroundings. As one hotel owner said, pointing to a trekker setting out:
He’s going uphill and it’s already late. It’s going to get dark and cold soon. He won’t make it to the next settlement. We have to report this to the authorities or go after him ourselves.
Inexperienced trekkers should hire a local guide. Several we interviewed had needed medical evacuation, including a woman in her mid-20s who had to leave base camp after one night. She found her guides – not locals – online. But they never checked her vital signs during the trek:
[The doctors] said that I had high-altitude pulmonary edema […] it was just really important to come down the elevation. And if I had tried to go higher, it probably would have been really bad.
Health checks throughout the trek are imperative. This includes assessing the four main symptoms of altitude mountain sickness: headache, nausea, dizziness and fatigue. If they appear, the trekker shouldn’t go higher and might even need to descend.
A Sherpa woman at the market in Namche Bazar, Nepal: respect the culture, eat local food. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Take time to adapt
Using a reputable local trekking agency might be more expensive, but it will help ensure safety and also familiarise the visitor with the local culture, helping avoid negative impacts on the host community.
Too often, the primary goal of trekkers is a photo on the famous rock at base camp. Once obtained, many simply take a helicopter back to Kathmandu. As a helicopter tour agency owner said:
They don’t want to get back on their feet. The goal, after all, has been achieved. In general, tourists used to be much better prepared. Now they know they can return by helicopter.
Helicopter travel can be dangerous on its own, of course. But this tendency to view the trek as a one-way trip also affects host-guest relations and can irritate local communities.
It’s also important to monitor your food and drink intake and watch for signs of food poisoning. Diarrhoea at high altitudes is particularly dangerous because it leads to rapid dehydration – hard to combat in mountain conditions.
Low air pressure and reduced oxygen exacerbate the condition, weakening the body’s ability to recover. Also, the symptoms of dehydration can resemble altitude mountain sickness.
When travelling in other climate zones or countries with different sanitary standards, there is inevitable contact with strains of bacteria not present in one’s natural microbiome.
A good solution is to spend a few days naturally adapting to bacterial flora at a lower altitude in Nepal before heading to the mountains. Also, try to eat the local food, such as daal bhat, Nepal’s national dish. According to one hotel owner in Pangboche:
Tourists demand strange food from us – pizza, spaghetti, Caesar salad – and then are angry that it doesn’t taste the way they want. This is not our food. You should probably eat local food.
Most of the trekkers we interviewed during this spring season reported experiencing gastrointestinal issues, often for several days.
In the end, the commonest cause of failure or accident in the mountains is overestimating one’s abilities – what has been called “bad judgement syndrome” – when the route is too hard, the pace too fast, or there’s been too little time spent acclimatising.
A simple solution: walk slowly and enjoy the views.
Michal Apollo receives funding from the National Science Centre NCN Poland, the small-scale project awarded by the Institute of Earth Sciences, and the Research Excellence Initiative of the University of Silesia in Katowice. He is affiliated with the Global Justice Program, Yale University, and Academics Stand Against Poverty.
Heike Schanzel 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.
Breakups hurt. Emotional and psychological distress are common when intimate relationships break down. For some people, this distress can be so overwhelming that it leads to suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
This problem seems especially the case for men. Intimate partner problems including breakups, separation and divorce feature in the paths to suicide among one in three Australian men aged 25 to 44 who end their lives.
Men account for three in every four suicides in many nations worldwide, including Australia. So improving our understanding of links between relationship breakdown and men’s suicide risk has life-saving potential.
Our research, published today, is the first large-scale review of the evidence to focus on understanding men’s risk of suicide after a breakup. We found separated men were nearly five times more likely to die by suicide compared to married men.
What did we find?
We brought together findings from 75 studies across 30 countries worldwide, involving more than 106 million men.
We focused on understanding why relationship breakdown can lead to suicide in men, and which men are most at risk. We might not be able to prevent breakups from happening, but we can promote healthy adjustment to the stress of relationship breakdown to try and prevent suicide.
Overall, we found divorced men were 2.8 times more likely to take their lives than married men.
For separated men, the risk was much higher. We found that separated men were 4.8 times more likely to die by suicide than married men.
Most strikingly, we found separated men under 35 years of age had nearly nine times greater odds of suicide than married men of the same age.
Some men’s difficulties regulating the intense emotional stress of relationship breakdown can play a role in their suicide risk. For some men, the emotional pain tied to separation – deep sadness, shame, guilt, anxiety and loss – can be so intense it feels never-ending.
Overall, our research found relationship breakdown may lead to suicide for some men because of the complex interaction between the individual (emotional distress) and interpersonal (changes in their social network and availability of support) impacts of a breakup.
Many of these impacts don’t seem to feature in the paths to suicide after a breakup for women in the same way.
Breakups also impact social networks
As intimate relationships become more serious, we tend to spend less time investing in our friendships, especially if juggling the demands of a career and family.
This can create a risky situation if relationships break down, as it seems many men are left with little support to turn to. This rang true in our research, as men’s social disconnection and loneliness seemed to increase their suicide risk following relationship breakdown.
We also know people can struggle to know how to support men after a breakup. Research has found some men who ask for support are told to just “get back on the horse”. Such a response invalidates men’s pain and reinforces masculine stereotypes that relationship breakdown doesn’t affect them.
So, what can we do?
There is no simple answer to preventing suicide following relationship breakdown, but a range of opportunities exist.
We can embed support groups and other opportunities for connection and peer support in relationship services that are regularly in contact with those navigating separation, to help combat loneliness.
We can ensure mental health practitioners are equipped with the skills necessary to engage and respond effectively to men who seek help following a breakup, to help keep them safe until they can get back on their feet.
Most importantly, if men come to any of us seeking support after a breakup, we can remember that time is often a great healer. The best we can do is sit with men in their pain, rather than try and get them to stop feeling it. This connection could be life-saving.
Support and information is available at Relationships Australia and MensLine Australia. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Michael Wilson works for The University of Melbourne and consults to Movember. He receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, provided by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the University of Melbourne.
Jacqui Macdonald receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Medical Research Future Fund and the Australian Research Council. She convenes the Australian Fatherhood Research Consortium and she is on the Movember Global Men’s Health Advisory Committee.
Zac Seidler has been awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant. He is also the Global Director of Research with the Movember Institute of Men’s Health. He advises government on men’s suicide, masculinities, violence prevention and social media policy.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Amelia Scott, Honorary Affiliate and Clinical Psychologist at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, and Macquarie University Research Fellow, Macquarie University
If you spend any time in the wellness corners of TikTok or Instagram, you’ll see claims women need one to two hours more sleep than men.
But what does the research actually say? And how does this relate to what’s going on in real life?
As we’ll see, who gets to sleep, and for how long, is a complex mix of biology, psychology and societal expectations. It also depends on how you measure sleep.
What does the evidence say?
Researchers usually measure sleep in two ways:
by asking people how much they sleep (known as self-reporting). But people are surprisingly inaccurate at estimating how much sleep they get
using objective tools, such as research-grade, wearable sleep trackers or the gold-standard polysomnography, which records brain waves, breathing and movement while you sleep during a sleep study in a lab or clinic.
Looking at the objective data, well-conducted studies usually show women sleep about 20 minutes more than men.
One global study of nearly 70,000 people who wore wearable sleep trackers found a consistent, small difference between men and women across age groups. For example, the sleep difference between men and women aged 40–44 was about 23–29 minutes.
Another large study using polysomnography found women slept about 19 minutes longer than men. In this study, women also spent more time in deep sleep: about 23% of the night compared to about 14% for men. The study also found only men’s quality of sleep declined with age.
The key caveat to these findings is that our individual sleep needs vary considerably. Women may sleep slightly more on average, just as they are slightly shorter on average. But there is no one-size-fits-all sleep duration, just as there is no universal height.
Suggesting every woman needs 20 extra minutes (let alone two hours) misses the point. It’s the same as insisting all women should be shorter than all men.
Even though women tend to sleep a little longer and deeper, they consistently report poorer sleep quality. They’re also about 40% more likely to be diagnosed with insomnia.
This mismatch between lab findings and the real world is a well-known puzzle in sleep research, and there are many reasons for it.
For instance, many research studies don’t consider mental health problems, medications, alcohol use and hormonal fluctuations. This filters out the very factors that shape sleep in the real world.
This mismatch between the lab and the bedroom also reminds us sleep doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Women’s sleep is shaped by a complex mix of biological, psychological and social factors, and this complexity is hard to capture in individual studies.
Let’s start with biology
Sleep problems begin to diverge between the sexes around puberty. They spike again during pregnancy, after birth and during perimenopause.
Fluctuating levels of ovarian hormones, particularly oestrogen and progesterone, seem to explain some of these sex differences in sleep.
For example, many girls and women report poorer sleep during the premenstrual phase just before their periods, when oestrogen and progesterone begin to fall.
Perhaps the most well-documented hormonal influence on our sleep is the decline in oestrogen during perimenopause. This is linked to increased sleep disturbances, particularly waking at 3am and struggling to get back to sleep.
Caregiving and emotional labour still fall disproportionately on women. Government data released this year suggests Australian women perform an average nine more hours of unpaid care and work each week than men.
While many women manage to put enough time aside for sleep, their opportunities for daytime rest are often scarce. This puts a lot of pressure on sleep to deliver all the restoration women need.
In my work with patients, we often untangle the threads woven into their experience of fatigue. While poor sleep is the obvious culprit, fatigue can also signal something deeper, such as underlying health issues, emotional strain, or too-high expectations of themselves. Sleep is certainly part of the picture, but it’s rarely the whole story.
For instance, rates of iron deficiency (which we know is more common in women and linked to sleep problems) are also higher in the reproductive years. This is just as many women are raising children and grappling with the “juggle” and the “mental load”.
Women in perimenopause are often navigating full-time work, teenagers, ageing parents and 3am hot flashes. These women may have adequate or even high-quality sleep (according to objective measures), but that doesn’t mean they wake feeling restored.
Most existing research also ignores gender-diverse populations. This limits our understanding of how sleep is shaped not just by biology, but by things such as identity and social context.
So where does this leave us?
While women sleep longer and better in the lab, they face more barriers to feeling rested in everyday life.
So, do women need more sleep than men? On average, yes, a little. But more importantly, women need more support and opportunity to recharge and recover across the day, and at night.
Amelia Scott is a member of the psychology education subcommittee of the Australasian Sleep Association. She receives funding from Macquarie University.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Garret Martin, Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International Service
Iran Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, right, attends a news conference with EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell in Tehran on June 25, 2022.Atta KenareAFP via Getty Images
The U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025, sent shock waves around the world. It marked a dramatic reversal for the Trump administration, which had just initiated negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program. Dispensing with diplomacy, the U.S. opted for the first time for direct military involvement in the then-ongoing Israeli-Iranian conflict.
European governments have long pushed for a diplomatic solution to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Yet, the reaction in the capitals of Europe to the U.S. bombing of the nuclear facilities was surprisingly subdued.
But the timid reaction also underscored Europe’s bystander role, contrasting with its past approach on that topic. Iran’s nuclear program had been a key focal point of European diplomacy for years. The E3 nations initiated negotiations with Tehran back in 2003. They also helped to facilitate the signing of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which also included Russia, the European Union, China, the U.S. and Iran. And the Europeans sought to preserve the agreement, even after the unilateral U.S. withdrawal in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term.
As a scholar of transatlantic relations and security, I believe Europe faces long odds to once again play an impactful role in strengthening the cause of nuclear nonproliferation with Iran. Indeed, contributing to a new nuclear agreement with Iran would require Europe to fix a major rift with Tehran, overcome its internal divisions over the Middle East and manage a Trump administration that seems less intent on being a reliable ally for Europe.
Growing rift between Iran and Europe
For European diplomats, the 2015 deal was built on very pragmatic assumptions. It only covered the nuclear dossier, as opposed to including other areas of contention such as human rights or Iran’s ballistic missile program. And it offered a clear bargain: In exchange for greater restrictions on its nuclear program, Iran could expect the lifting of some existing sanctions and a reintegration into the world economy.
As a result, the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018 posed a fundamental challenge to the status quo. Besides exiting, the Trump White House reimposed heavy secondary sanctions on Iran, which effectively forced foreign companies to choose between investing in the U.S. and Iranian markets. European efforts to mitigate the impact of these U.S. sanctions failed, thus undermining the key benefit of the deal for Iran: helping its battered economy. It also weakened Tehran’s faith in the value of Europe as a partner, as it revealed an inability to carve real independence from the U.S.
U.S. President Donald Trump walks past French President Emmanuel Macron, center, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. Christian Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images
These deep tensions remain a significant impediment to constructive negotiations on the nuclear front. Neither side currently has much to offer to the other, nor can Europe count on any meaningful leverage to influence Iran. And Europe’s wider challenges in its Middle East policy only compound this problem.
Internal divisions
In 2015, Europe could present a united front on the Iranian nuclear deal in part because of its limited nature. But with the nonproliferation regime now in tatters amid Trump’s unilateral actions and the spread of war across the region, it is now far harder for European diplomats to put the genie back in the bottle. That is particularly true given the present fissures over increasingly divisive Middle East policy questions and the nature of EU diplomacy.
Unless Europe can develop a common approach toward the Middle East, it is hard to see it having enough regional influence to matter in future negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. This, in turn, would also affect how it manages its crucial, but thorny, relations with the U.S.
Europe in the shadow of Trump
The EU was particularly proud of the 2015 nuclear deal because it represented a strong symbol of multilateral diplomacy. It brought together great powers in the spirit of bolstering the cause of nuclear nonproliferation.
Ten years on, the prospects of replicating such international cooperation seem rather remote. Europe’s relations with China and Russia – two key signers of the original nuclear deal – have soured dramatically in recent years. And ties with the United States under Trump have also been particularly challenging.
Dealing with Washington, in the context of the Iran nuclear program, presents a very sharp dilemma for Europe.
And pursuing an independent path could easily provoke the ire of Trump, which Europeans are keen to avoid. There has already been a long list of transatlantic disputes, whether over trade, Ukraine or defense spending. European policymakers would be understandably reticent to invest time and resources in any deal that Trump could again scuttle at a moment’s notice.
Trump, too, is scornful of what European diplomacy could achieve, declaring recently that Iran doesn’t want to talk to Europe. He has instead prioritized bilateral negotiations with Tehran. Alignment with the U.S., therefore, may not translate into any great influence. Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, after all, happened without forewarning for his allies.
Thus, Europe will continue to pay close attention to Iran’s nuclear program. But, constrained by poor relations with Tehran and its internal divisions on the Middle East, it is unlikely that it will carve out a major role on the nuclear dossier as long as Trump is in office.
Garret Martin receives funding from the European Union for the organization, the Transatlantic Policy Center, that he co-directs.
With the future of a crucial water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan up in the air, one outside party is looking on with keen interest: China.
For 65 years, the Indus Waters Treaty has seen the two South Asian rivals share access and use of the Indus Basin, a vast area covered by the Indus River and its tributaries that also stretches into Afghanistan and China.
For much of that history, there has been widespread praise for the agreement as a successful demonstration of cooperation between adversarial states over a key shared resource. But experts have noted the treaty has long held the potential for conflict. Drafters failed to factor in the effects of climate change, and the Himalayan glaciers that feed the rivers are now melting at record rates, ultimately putting at risk the long-term sustainability of water supply. Meanwhile, the ongoing conflict over Kashmir, where much of the basin is situated, puts cooperation at risk.
With treaty on ice, China steps in
That latest provocation threatening the treaty was a terrorist attack in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025. In response to that attack, which India blamed on Pakistan and precipitated a four-day confrontation, New Delhi temporarily suspended the treaty.
But even before that attack, India and Pakistan had been locked in negotiation over the future of the treaty – the status of which has been in the hands of international arbitrators since 2016. In the latest development, on June 27, 2025, the Permanent Court of Arbitration issued a supplementary award in favor of Pakistan, arguing that India’s holding of the treaty in abeyance did not affect its jurisdiction over the case. Moreover, the treaty does not allow for either party to unilaterally suspend the treaty, the ruling suggested.
Amid the wrangling over the treaty’s future, Pakistan has turned to China for diplomatic and strategic support. Such support was evident during the conflict that took place following April’s terrorist attack, during which Pakistan employed Chinese-made fighter jets and other military equipment against its neighbor.
Meanwhile, in an apparent move to counter India’s suspension of the treaty, China and Pakistan have ramped up construction of a major dam project that would provide water supply and electricity to parts of Pakistan.
But as an expert in hydro politics, I believe Beijing’s involvement raises concerns: China is not a neutral observer in the dispute. Rather, Beijing has long harbored a desire to increase its influence in the region and to counter an India long seen as a rival. Given the at-times fraught relationship between China and India – the two countries went to war in 1962 and continue to engage in sporadic border skirmishes – there are concerns in New Delhi that Beijing may respond by disrupting the flow of rivers in its territory that feed into India.
In short, any intervention by Beijing over the Indus Waters Treaty risks stirring up regional tensions.
Wrangling over waters
The Indus Waters Treaty has already endured three armed conflicts between Pakistan and India, and until recently it served as an exemplar of how to forge a successful bilateral agreement between two rival neighbors.
Under the initial terms of the treaty, which each country signed in 1960, India was granted control over three eastern rivers the countries share – Ravi, Beas and Satluj – with an average annual flow of 40.4 billion cubic meters. Meanwhile, Pakistan was given access to almost 167.2 billion cubic meters of water from the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
In India, the relatively smaller distribution has long been the source of contention, with many believing the treaty’s terms are overly generous to Pakistan. India’s initial demand was for 25% of the Indus waters.
For Pakistan, the terms of the division of the Indus Waters Treaty are painful because they concretized unresolved land disputes tied to the partition of India in 1947. In particular, the division of the rivers is framed within the broader political context of Kashmir. The three major rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – flow through Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir before entering the Pakistan-controlled western part of the Kashmir region.
But the instability of the Kashmir region – disputes around the Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistan-controlled areas are common – underscores Pakistan’s water vulnerability.
Since Pakistan’s economy relies heavily on agriculture and the water needed to maintain agricultural land, the fate of the Indus Waters Treaty is of the utmost importance to Pakistan’s leaders.
Such conditions have driven Islamabad to be a willing partner with China in a bid to shore up its water supply.
China provides technical expertise and financial support to Pakistan for numerous hydropower projects in Pakistan, including the Diamer Bhasha Dam and Kohala Hydropower Project. These projects play a significant role in addressing Pakistan’s energy requirements and have been a key aspect of the transboundary water relationship between the two nations.
Doing so fits Beijing’ s greater strategic presence in South Asian politics. After the terrorist attack, China Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed China’s support for Pakistan, showcasing the relationship as an “all-weather strategic” partnership and referring to Pakistan as an “ironclad friend.”
And in response to India’s suspension of the treaty, China announced it was to accelerate work on the significant Mohmand hydropower project on the tributary of the Indus River in Pakistan.
Chinese investment in Pakistan’s hydropower sector presents substantial opportunities for both countries in regards to energy security and promoting economic growth.
The Indus cascade project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative, for example, promises to provide cumulative hydropower generation capacity of around 22,000 megawatts. Yet the fact that project broke ground in Gilgit-Baltistan, a disputed area in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, underscores the delicacy of the situation.
Beijing’s backing of Pakistan is largely motivated by a mix of economic and geopolitical interests, particularly in legitimizing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But it comes at the cost of stirring up regional tensions.
As such, the alignment of Chinese and Pakistani interests in developing hydro projects can pose a further challenge to the stability of South Asia’s water-sharing agreements, especially in the Indus Basin. Recently, the chief minister of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, warned that Beijing’s hydro projects in the Western Tibet region amount to a ticking “water bomb.”
To diffuse such tensions – and to get the Indus Waters Treaty back on track – it behooves India, China and Pakistan to engage in diplomacy and dialogue. Such engagement is, I believe, essential in addressing the ongoing water-related challenges in South Asia.
Pintu Kumar Mahla is affiliated with the Water Resources Research Center, the University of Arizona. He is also a member of the International Association of Water Law (AIDA).
Pintu Kumar Mahla has not received funding related to this article.
