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September 24, 2025

What is leucovorin, the drug the Trump administration says can treat autism?

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Nial Wheate, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

The US government has announced controversial guidance on the prevention and treatment of autism in children.

New health recommendations aim to discourage pregnant women from taking the painkiller paracetamol – also known as acetaminophen and by the brand name Tylenol – to prevent autism.

The recommendations also include using the drug leucovorin to treat speech-related difficulties that children with autism sometimes experience.

So what is leucovorin and what does the science say about its ability to treat autism?

What is leucovorin?

Leucovorin is a form of folic acid, a B vitamin our bodies usually get from foods such as legumes, citrus fruits and fortified grains.

The medication is most often used in cancer treatment. It’s typically used alongside the chemotherapy drug fluorouracil, a cancer treatment that stops cancer cells from making DNA and dividing. Leucovorin enhances the effects of fluorouracil.

Leucovorin is also used to reduce the toxic side effects of methotrexate, another chemotherapy drug.

Methotrexate works by blocking the body’s use of folate, which healthy cells need to make DNA. Leucovorin provides an active form of folate that healthy cells can use to make DNA, thereby “rescuing” them while methotrexate continues to target cancer cells.

Because methotrexate is also used to treat the skin condition psoriasis, leucovorin can also be used as a rescue agent during treatment for this autoimmune condition.

Why is folate important?

Because folate is essential for making DNA and other genetic material, which cells need to grow and repair properly, it’s especially important during pregnancy.

This is because insufficient folate is linked to the development of spina bifida, a condition where a baby’s spine does not develop correctly. For this reason, women are advised to take folic acid supplements before conception and during the early months of pregnancy.

Folate is also important for supporting the production of red blood cells and overall brain function.

Why is it being considered to treat autism?

The recommendation to use leucovorin to treat autism seems to stem from a theory that low levels of folate in the brain can lead to a condition called cerebral folate deficiency.

Children with cerebral folate deficiency don’t usually display symptoms for the first two years. Then they show signs of speech difficulties, seizures and intellectual disability.

As the signs of autism are similar and it usually presents at around the same age, some people have proposed a link between cerebral folate deficiency and autism.

What does the evidence say?

So can giving children folate, in the form of leucovorin, help them to function better with autism? The evidence says maybe yes, and here’s what we know so far.

A review of the evidence in 2021 analysed the results of 21 studies that used leucovorin for autism or cerebral folate deficiency. Children who took the drug generally had improved autism symptoms. But the authors also said more studies were needed to confirm the findings.

Since then, a small 2024 study involved about 80 children aged two to ten years with autism. Half took a daily maximum dose of 50mg of folinic acid (similar to leucovorin), the other half took a placebo. Children given folinic acid showed more pronounced improvement when compared with those who took the placebo.

A similar 2025 study examined the same dose of folinic acid given to Chinese children with autism. Those given folinic acid had greater improvement in a type of social skill known as social reciprocity when compared with children given placebo.

While promising, none of these trials are at the level to change medical practice. We’d need further, larger studies before doctors can make a proper recommendation.

Like all drugs, leucovorin has side effects. The most serious or common are severe allergic reactions, seizures and fits, and nausea and vomiting.

In a nutshell

Overall, the latest health recommendations are not yet backed by sufficient evidence.

While the US Food and Drug Administration will now allow doctors to prescribe leucovorin to treat autism symptoms, the Australian government should not change its prescribing guidance.

Support for people with autism should continue to follow evidence-based best practice until the data from clinical trials of leucovorin is more robust.

Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd (a medical device company) and was previously a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. He is a member of the Haleon Australia Pty Ltd Pain Advisory Board. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design and testing.

Jasmine Lee 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. What is leucovorin, the drug the Trump administration says can treat autism? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-leucovorin-the-drug-the-trump-administration-says-can-treat-autism-265849

September 24, 2025

100 years before quantum mechanics, one scientist glimpsed a link between light and matter

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Robyn Arianrhod, Affiliate, School of Mathematics, Monash University

The Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton, who was born 220 years ago last month, is famous for carving some mathematical graffiti into Dublin’s Broome Bridge in 1843.

But in his lifetime, Hamilton’s reputation rested on work done in the 1820s and early 1830s, when he was still in his twenties. He developed new mathematical tools for studying light rays (or “geometric optics”) and the motion of objects (“mechanics”).

Intriguingly, Hamilton developed his mechanics using an analogy between the path of a light ray and that of a material particle. This is not so surprising if light is a material particle, as Isaac Newton had believed, but what if it were a wave? What would it mean for the equations of waves and particles to be analogous in some way?

The answer would come a century later, when the pioneers of quantum mechanics realised Hamilton’s approach offered more than just an analogy: it was a glimpse of the true nature of the physical world.

The puzzle of light

To understand Hamilton’s place in this story, we need to go back a little further. For ordinary objects or particles, the basic laws (or equations) of motion had been published by Newton in 1687. Over the next 150 years, researchers such as Leonard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange and then Hamilton made more flexible and sophisticated versions of Newton’s ideas.

“Hamiltonian mechanics” proved so useful that it wasn’t until 1925 – almost 100 years later – that anybody stopped to revisit how Hamilton had derived it.

His analogy with light paths worked regardless of light’s true nature, but at the time, there was good evidence that light was a wave. In 1801, British scientist Thomas Young had performed his famous double-slit experiment, in which two light beams produced an “interference” pattern like the overlapping ripples on a pond when two stones are dropped in. Six decades later, James Clerk Maxwell realised light behaved like a rippling wave in the electromagnetic field.

But then, in 1905, Albert Einstein showed some of light’s properties could only be explained if light could also behave as a stream of particle-like “photons” (as they were later dubbed). He linked this idea to a suggestion made by Max Planck in 1900, that atoms could only emit or absorb energy in discrete lumps.

Energy, frequency and mass

In his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, where light dislodges electrons from certain metals, Einstein used Planck’s formula for these energy lumps (or quanta): E = hν. E is the amount of energy, ν (the Greek letter nu) is the photon’s frequency, and h is a number called Planck’s constant.

But in another paper the same year, Einstein introduced a different formula for the energy of a particle: a version of the now-famous E = mc ². E is again the energy, m is the mass of the particle, and c is the speed of light.

So here were two ways of calculating energy: one, associated with light, depended on the light’s frequency (a quantity connected with oscillations or waves); the other, associated with material particles, depended on mass.

Photo of a young Albert Einstein. — In 1905, Albert Einstein published two ways of calculating the energy of a particle: one linked to the frequency of wave, the other to the mass of the particle itself.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Did this suggest a deeper connection between matter and light?

This thread was picked up in 1924 by Louis de Broglie, who proposed that matter, like light, could behave as both a wave and a particle. Subsequent experiments would prove him right, but it was already clear that quantum particles, such as electrons and protons, played by very different rules from everyday objects.

A new kind of mechanics was needed: a “quantum mechanics”.

The wave equation

The year 1925 ushered in not one but two new theories. First was “matrix mechanics”, initiated by Werner Heisenberg and developed by Max Born, Paul Dirac and others.

A few months later, Erwin Schrödinger began work on “wave mechanics”. Which brings us back to Hamilton.

Schrödinger was struck by Hamilton’s analogy between optics and mechanics. With a leap of imagination and much careful thought, he was able to combine de Broglie’s ideas and Hamilton’s equations for a material particle, to produce a “wave equation” for the particle.

An ordinary wave equation shows how a “wave function” varies through time and space. For sound waves, for example, the wave equation shows the displacement of air, due to changes in pressure, in different places over time.

But with Schrödinger’s wave function, it was not clear exactly what was waving. Indeed, whether it represents a physical wave or merely a mathematical convenience is still controversial.

Waves and particles

Nonetheless, the wave-particle duality is at the heart of quantum mechanics, which underpins so much of our modern technology – from computer chips to lasers and fibre-optic communication, from solar cells to MRI scanners, electron microscopes, the atomic clocks used in GPS, and much more.

Indeed, whatever it is that is waving, Schrödinger’s equation can be used to predict accurately the chance of observing a particle – such as an electron in an atom – at a given time and place.

That’s another strange thing about the quantum world: it is probabilistic, so you can’t pin these ever-oscillating electrons down to a definite location in advance, the way the equations of “classical” physics do for everyday particles such as cricket balls and communications satellites.

Schrödinger’s wave equation enabled the first correct analysis of the hydrogen atom, which only has a single electron. In particular, it explained why an atom’s electrons can only occupy specific (quantised) energy levels.

It was eventually shown that Schrödinger’s quantum waves and Heisenberg’s quantum matrices were equivalent in almost all situations. Heisenberg, too, had used Hamiltonian mechanics as a guide.

Today, quantum equations are still often written in terms of their total energy – a quantity called the “Hamiltonian”, based on Hamilton’s expression for the energy of a mechanical system.

Hamilton had hoped the mechanics he developed by analogy with light rays would prove widely applicable. But he surely never imagined how prescient his analogy would be in our understanding of the quantum world.

Robyn Arianrhod 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. 100 years before quantum mechanics, one scientist glimpsed a link between light and matter – https://theconversation.com/100-years-before-quantum-mechanics-one-scientist-glimpsed-a-link-between-light-and-matter-261551

September 23, 2025

Facing a shutdown, budget negotiations are much harder because Congress has given Trump power to cut spending through ‘rescission’

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

Will Congress keep the government running? Phil Roeder/Getty Images

Congress faces a deadline of Oct. 1 to adopt a spending measure to keep the federal government open. Various reporters will be interviewing serious people saying serious things in the basement corridors of the U.S. Capitol. There will also be political posturing, misrepresentation and either braggadocio or evasion. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed congressional expert Charlie Hunt, a political scientist at Boise State University, about the now-perennial drama over spending in Congress and what’s very different about this year’s conflict.

In the past, how did Congress pass budgets so that government could keep operating?

Typically, you would get an actual passage of a full budget for a year. But in the last 20 or 30 years or so, since we’ve become a more polarized country with a polarized Congress, we have a lot of what are called continuing resolutions, or CRs.They’re stopgap measures – not the full budget – and don’t tend to make a lot of changes on a lot of the spending priorities that Congress has.

Continuing resolutions usually just extend current levels of spending for a short time so that the two parties can continue negotiating. But as negotiations over long-term budgets have tended to fail more and more, these CR’s are becoming more common, and Congress almost never passes a full budget on a yearly basis at this point.

A bunch of people in office clothes, crowded around something in a hallway. — You’ll be seeing a lot of this sort of scrum – reporters interviewing members of Congress – as spending gets wrangled over.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

What’s the role of the president here?

The president has the power to veto any piece of legislation, and that includes the federal budget. Essentially, what majorities in Congress need when they are going into a budget fight is either the president’s implicit sign-off on whatever they pass, or they need enough votes to override the president’s veto.

Congress and the presidency right now are both held by Republicans, they’re in pretty deep alignment, so that’s not as much of a concern this time. It’s really just what Trump wants that needs to be a part of this legislation, and if there’s something in it that he really doesn’t like, then Congress needs to go back to the drawing board and the Republicans need to find out a way to get that into the bill.

What is driving each party in these negotiations?

Two different things are at work here. One is that Congress, as I mentioned, is really polarized. The two parties are farther apart from each other than they used to be. So the average Democrat and the average Republican aren’t going to agree as much on policy priorities and funding priorities than they did, say, in the 1980s or 1970s or before that.

The other thing is that Congress in recent decades has been more closely divided than they have been in the recent past, say, the last century. In both chambers, House and Senate, it’s very rare for one party or the other to have some massive majority. You need a majority of 60 in the Senate to have a chance at passing most legislation, for example, and this big a majority hasn’t happened since 2009. That’s something President Obama enjoyed with the Democrats for just a short period of time.

Since then, there have been very closely divided chambers in Congress, and that means that you need, at least in the Senate, some bipartisanship in order to pass that 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster. That’s what’s really gumming up the works right now. Democrats don’t feel like they’re being included in negotiations, and so they’re not likely to agree to a Republican-only budget in the Senate.

A man in a suit and wearing glasses, surrounded by reporters with mobile phones used to record him. — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has been key to rallying House Republicans behind a stopgap funding bill to avert a shutdown.
Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

What is different about the 2025 budget fight than previous ones?

A lot of the dynamics are still the same. You still have partisan fighting. And you still have some divides within the two parties that I think are worth mentioning. One example: There was a Senate vote just the other day on one of these budget resolutions, and a couple of Republicans voted with the Democrats. So for some of these more deficit-hawk Republicans, that concern is still playing a role.

What’s new this time around is this element of rescissions. This is a tool that’s been available since the 1970s in which presidents ask Congress to rescind spending that they had allocated. This is what happened earlier this year with the rescissions on public broadcasting – NPR and PBS – that got a lot of attention, as well as on USAID. Trump said he wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting – the GOP in the Senate and House voted to let him. They didn’t need 60 votes in the Senate for a rescission, either. Just a majority for this move.

So in this case, Democrats are looking at this and thinking, “Why should we negotiate, if you’re just going to rescind that later on without our consent?” That’s a major element that’s changed. While it’s a power that has been in place for a while, Trump and the Republicans have been really willing to wield that.

Do you see this rescission power being exercised with every budget or continuing resolution that Congress passes?

This is a pretty serious breach of what we call Congress’ “power of the purse.” That spending power is set out in Article 1 of the Constitution. It is a key power, maybe their most important power and point of leverage they have in going back and forth with the president and making sure the executive branch doesn’t accrue too much power.

But if this rescission authority is going to be used in this way going forward, where basically any spending priority that the president doesn’t want or doesn’t want to fund is going to be subject to rescission, then Congress doesn’t really have the power of the purse, right? They have a president who is going to veto anything that doesn’t live up to their expectations, or they can just sign it and then ask for these rescissions later.

The key thing here is that President Trump currently has in Congress a set of Republicans in both the House and the Senate who are willing to do virtually anything he wants and are subject to a lot of the political pressures in their districts that put him in office in the first place. So if they don’t go along with rescissions, they’re going to face the wrath of their Republican voters in their district.

That’s one thing that’s really changed in the last 30 years that I think gives the president a lot more authority in these matters, and makes rescission such a powerful tool that did not exist before.

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

– ref. Facing a shutdown, budget negotiations are much harder because Congress has given Trump power to cut spending through ‘rescission’ – https://theconversation.com/facing-a-shutdown-budget-negotiations-are-much-harder-because-congress-has-given-trump-power-to-cut-spending-through-rescission-265827

September 23, 2025

En République centrafricaine, tous les citoyens ne sont pas égaux dans l’isoloir

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Alexandra Lamarche, PhD Candidate | Doctorante, Université de Montréal

En République centrafricaine (RCA), voter devient un outil d’exclusion : les élections en décembre ne visent pas à refléter la volonté populaire, mais à effacer ceux que le régime ne reconnaît pas comme pleinement centrafricains, en particulier les musulmans.

Le 28 décembre, les citoyens de la RCA se rendront aux urnes pour la première élection depuis la réforme de la Constitution, qui a supprimé la limite du nombre de mandats présidentiels.

Avec 2,3 millions d’électeurs inscrits, dont près de 750 000 nouveaux, ce scrutin est présenté par les médias comme un signe d’engagement démocratique renouvelé. Mais derrière les chiffres se dessine une réalité bien plus inquiétante : une élection soigneusement façonnée pour consolider le pouvoir d’un régime nativiste, qui redéfinit la citoyenneté pour mieux exclure.

Sous le couvert d’une procédure démocratique, le gouvernement de Faustin-Archange Touadéra recourt à la répression pour créer un électorat composé uniquement de « vrais » Centrafricains, excluant ceux qu’il considère comme étrangers, en particulier les musulmans. Il en résulte une élection qui n’est ni libre ni représentative, mais plutôt un outil d’exclusion nativiste.

Le nativisme repose sur une distinction entre les « autochtones » supposés légitimes et les « étrangers » perçus comme une menace pour l’identité nationale. Ces conceptions donnent lieu à des hiérarchies d’appartenance, où certains groupes sont considérés comme des membres plus légitimes de la nation que d’autres.

Cette idéologie est bien connue au-delà du continent africain. Aux États-Unis, par exemple, ce réflexe nativiste se traduit non seulement par des politiques anti-immigration de Donald Trump, mais aussi par une hostilité croissante envers les migrants eux-mêmes, présentés comme une menace culturelle et économique. En Inde, sous la direction de Narendra Modi et de son parti nationaliste hindou, le BJP, un nativisme religieux s’est renforcé, redéfinissant l’identité nationale en termes hindous et marginalisant les minorités, notamment musulmanes.

Cet article utilise ces concepts pour démontrer qu’en RCA, le nativisme dépasse la simple construction de hiérarchies d’appartenance pour servir activement de moteur idéologique à la répression étatique. En tant que chercheuse en science politique à l’Université de Montréal, spécialisée sur la République centrafricaine, je m’appuie sur mon expérience récente de terrain auprès de musulmans centrafricains.

Qui est vraiment Centrafricain ? Quand le pouvoir redéfinit l’identité

Malgré les discours nativistes, les musulmans ne sont pas des nouveaux arrivants en RCA. Leur présence dans le pays remonte en effet à deux siècles. Alors que le pays est depuis longtemps polarisé sur le plan ethnique, plus récemment, les discours nativistes mobilisés par l’ancien président François Bozizé ont exacerbé les tensions entre la majorité chrétienne et la minorité musulmane du pays, jouant un rôle important dans le déclenchement de la guerre civile de 2013-2014.

Malgré la fin officielle du conflit, l’instabilité persiste. En continuant à présenter les musulmans comme des invités, souvent liés à leurs origines du Tchad ou du Soudan actuels, les discours nativistes du gouvernement du président Faustin-Archange Touadéra délégitiment la citoyenneté musulmane, tant dans les discours que dans la pratique, et justifient la répression violente et administrative menée par l’État.

Quand voter devient un privilège

Entre janvier et mars 2025, j’ai mené 42 entretiens de terrain avec des musulmans centrafricains au sujet de leurs expériences de répression en RCA. Bien que leurs vécus varient, ces entretiens ont permis de mieux comprendre les obstacles bureaucratiques et les problèmes de sécurité qui limitent et entravent la participation politique des musulmans, réduisant ainsi l’électorat en fonction de l’identité.

Cette exclusion repose sur trois mécanismes : un accès inégal aux cartes d’identité nécessaires pour s’inscrire, des obstacles à la participation le jour du vote, et l’exclusion des réfugiés, majoritairement musulmans.

Peu de musulmans centrafricains ont pu obtenir leur carte d’identité nationale facilement… quand ils y parviennent. Beaucoup se voient exiger des documents supplémentaires pour prouver leur citoyenneté : certificats de naissance, de résidence et de nationalité, souvent remontant jusqu’aux parents et grands-parents. Tous disent avoir payé plus que leurs compatriotes chrétiens pour les mêmes démarches.

Ces paiements sont parfois présentés comme des frais administratifs ; d’autres parlent ouvertement de pots-de-vin. Certains ont même été harcelés par les forces armées centrafricaines (FACA) et leurs alliés russes en tentant de régulariser leur situation. Une femme, venue obtenir les papiers de sa famille à Bangui, raconte avoir été menacée par les FACA et sommée de quitter le pays.

Pour ceux qui ont perdu leurs documents dans les déplacements liés aux conflits, obtenir une carte est quasiment impossible. Face à ces obstacles, beaucoup renoncent. D’autres, refusant de céder, s’accrochent malgré le harcèlement, les coûts et les humiliations, souvent sans succès.

À cela s’ajoute une pratique alarmante : la confiscation des papiers par les FACA. Un homme témoigne :

En 2023, ils m’ont arrêté, volé mes papiers, mon certificat de naissance, ma carte d’identité. Ils m’ont battu et dit que je n’étais pas digne d’avoir des documents centrafricains

Et même parmi ceux qui parviendront à voter, la peur domine. Lors des élections de 2020-2021, plusieurs musulmans disent avoir été forcés à voter pour Touadéra. Une femme se souvient :

Les FACA m’ont suivie jusqu’à l’isoloir et m’ont montré son nom sur le bulletin. Je savais que c’était illégal, mais j’avais trop peur pour dire non.

Les réfugiés centrafricains — qui ont fui pendant la guerre civile ou depuis — n’ont plus le droit de vote. Bien qu’ils aient participé aux premières élections d’après-guerre, le gouvernement les maintient à l’écart depuis, malgré les appels répétés des Nations unies pour leur inclusion.

« Nous sommes exclus à cause de la mentalité que les musulmans ne sont pas centrafricains », résume un homme interrogé.

Un vote qui divise

Ces obstacles et restrictions à l’exercice du droit de vote sont des indicateurs clairs d’une marginalisation systémique. Ils soulignent que lorsque des élections post-guerre civile ont lieu dans des régimes nativistes, elles ne sont pas des signes de progrès, mais des instruments permettant de légitimer l’exclusion et de consolider le pouvoir parmi ceux qui sont considérés comme de « vrais » citoyens.

L’exclusion des musulmans n’est pas une réponse aux troubles persistants dans le pays, mais une stratégie visant à restreindre l’accès à la vie politique et à redéfinir les contours de la citoyenneté. À l’approche des élections en RCA, cette dynamique illustre comment les régimes nativistes peuvent utiliser les élections pour décider à qui appartient — et qui est exclu — de la nation.

Ce cas ne s’inscrit pas seulement dans l’histoire de la République centrafricaine : il reflète une tendance mondiale où le populisme, le nationalisme et les politiques identitaires redéfinissent les frontières de l’appartenance. En RCA comme aux États-Unis, en Europe ou en Inde, les régimes nativistes peuvent transformer les élections en armes d’exclusion.

Alexandra Lamarche est financée par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH) du Canada

– ref. En République centrafricaine, tous les citoyens ne sont pas égaux dans l’isoloir – https://theconversation.com/en-republique-centrafricaine-tous-les-citoyens-ne-sont-pas-egaux-dans-lisoloir-264538

September 23, 2025

Jane Austen’s real and literary worlds weren’t exclusively white – just read her last book, Sanditon

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Olivia Carpenter, Lecturer in Literature, University of York

Jane Austen penned the last sentences of her unfinished manuscript for the novel we know as Sanditon in March 1817 before she died that July. Like me, many Austen fans often stumble upon this work after they have read all six of her completed novels.

At this point, readers of Austen feel like they know her and have sought out Sanditon because they want more of what they loved in her other works. However, they are often surprised by what they find.

In the final months of her life, Austen had moved away from writing about the English country house. The titular Sanditon is instead a seaside health resort, and the novel follows characters who spend a season there trying to get healthy or wealthy.

Austen’s most striking departure from the rest of her work, however, is in her inclusion of the character of Miss Lambe – a young heiress staying at the resort who is of African descent. Sanditon is the only Austen novel to contain an explicitly Black character.

Sanditon’s narrator explains that Miss Lambe is a mixed-race Black heiress of just 17 years old. Austen calls her a “chilly and tender” girl who attracts attention because she requires luxuries such as “a maid of her own”, and “the best room in the lodgings”.

Far from being disadvantaged because of race, Miss Lambe has more privileges than many of her white peers, and they react with interest and envy. The resort’s scheming foundress, Lady Denham, even fantasises about making an advantageous match for her nephew with the girl.

This article is part of a series commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Despite having published only six books, she is one of the best-known authors in history. These articles explore the legacy and life of this incredible writer.

Miss Lambe’s presence in Austen’s novel presents a stark challenge to any assumptions that Austen never wrote about people of colour. Many still assume that authors in Austen’s time simply weren’t writing about Black characters.

However, Miss Lambe is not the only character of this background to appear in books of the period. I am currently finishing up a book on the subject of Black representation in British marriage plots. I research Black characters who are heiresses, escapees, keepers of dark secrets, and participants in all manner of surprise twists and turns.

For example, in the anonymously authored 1808 novel The Woman of Colour, trouble ensues when a young Black woman, Olivia Fairfield, travels to England from Jamaica in order to marry according to her father’s wishes.

There have also been several rich and wonderful research projects demonstrating the enormous variety of Black British history in Jane Austen’s England. The writer and academic Gretchen Gerzina’s book Black England, for example, brings to life a vision of this world that included Black community, activism and intellectualism.

The Mapping Black London project, a stunningly detailed digital resource from Northeastern University, London, provides interactive maps demonstrating evidence of Black life in the city through the records of everyday people. We can see the proof of Black Britons being baptised, getting married, or being buried in London during Austen’s lifetime.

We can also turn to Black writers from the period who tell us their story directly, such as Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano, and Mary Prince. Black British writers like these commented directly on their experience of finding ways to survive the violence of transatlantic chattel slavery.

In contrast to these writers’ real experiences, however, Miss Lambe’s in Austen’s literary take on Regency England is markedly different. As an heiress, she has a lot more in common with real historical figures who were the children of white British enslavers and Afro-Caribbean women.

The scholar of early American and Atlantic history, Daniel Livesay, has written extensively on these figures in his book Children of Uncertain Fortune, detailing the lives of the privileged few who were acknowledged by white fathers, and were either born free or granted their freedom. Such children were often educated on both sides of the Atlantic and might apply for special legal status, giving them similar rights to those of white British subjects.

Austen hints at this background for Miss Lambe in discussions of her wealth. Like the children Livesay discusses, Miss Lambe has left the West Indies and is now growing up in England. She is in the care of Mrs Griffiths, an older lady who treats her as “beyond comparison the most important and precious” client. This is because Miss Lambe “paid in proportion to her fortune”.

A wealthy family member would have needed to set up this arrangement with Mrs Griffiths. The family member also would have helped Miss Lambe gain the special legal status necessary for a Black person to inherit a fortune under colonial law.

While we can celebrate Austen’s inclusion of a Black character, we know that representation alone is not empowerment. As Kerry Sinanan, an academic in pre-1800 literature and culture, has insisted, we need to be careful about an uncritical celebration of Austen’s “radical politics”.

When we think of Black life in Austen’s world we need to think both about the Black wealth and privilege Austen chooses to represent in Miss Lambe as well as the enslavement Austen never addresses. If we long for Austen to be a champion of all women, including Black women, we may be sorely disappointed by Austen’s ten brief sentences mentioning her sole Black character.

Nevertheless, Miss Lambe remains an important reminder as we celebrate Austen’s enduring legacy 250 years on: Black British life and experience have always been part of British literature and history. Remembering this character in Austen’s writing can only help to add urgency to the ongoing re-evaluation of how we teach, learn and understand that literature and history.

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

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Olivia Carpenter 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. Jane Austen’s real and literary worlds weren’t exclusively white – just read her last book, Sanditon – https://theconversation.com/jane-austens-real-and-literary-worlds-werent-exclusively-white-just-read-her-last-book-sanditon-264813

September 23, 2025

Why you don’t have to block roads or glue yourself to buildings to be a climate activist

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bob Walley, Researcher in Climate Change Engagement and Communication, University of Lancashire

A protestor outside Preston New Road Fracking Site in Lancashire. Bob Walley, CC BY-NC-ND

“Get a job!” shouted yet another driver going past me in the sweeping rain outside Preston New Road fracking site, on another bitingly cold winters day. Recipients of these outbursts were mostly retirees like the Nanas of Lancashire (a group of women from the northern shire of England who had become prominent anti-fracking activists).

My mum often joined me and other protesters to oppose the exploratory drilling that throughout 2018 and 2019 caused earthquakes. Local people were worried about the damage this could do to their homes, the water they rely on and the area’s nature and wildlife.

When it got too cold and I could see mum was starting to get the shivers, we would go back to my family home for a nice cup of tea, leaving the die hards to keep guard 24/7, continuing the fight until we could rejoin them next time.

“It’ll never make any difference,” Dad would comment as we put the kettle on. As a reader of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – the 1962 book which exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides – and a school teacher all his life, he knew all too well the threats of the climate and ecological emergency. Especially once I joined the environmental protest movement.

But activism was not for him. “What was the point?” he’d wonder.

I can see why many people might feel like that. Especially when the decision by Lancashire County Council to reject fracking at Preston New Road was overruled by the Conservative government of the time, and the magnitude of permitted earthquakes was raised.

Frontline activism is certainly not for everyone. Especially when some journalists and politicians would have people believe these “eco-zealots” are the “enemies of society”, due to the disruption that can be caused by increasingly desperate and urgent protests and actions.

Stereotypes remain strong in public opinion and news sources often get basic climate change facts wrong. A quick google image search for “environmental activists” shows people with banners blocking roads, shouting into megaphones and looking angry. Perhaps even throwing soup at a painting or gluing themselves to the front of an office building if you scroll down a bit.

people standing around white protest banner about ecocide — Local activists blockade the front gate of Preston New Road Fracking Site in Lancashire, stopping any vehicles coming in and out of the site.
Bob Walley, CC BY-NC-ND

The radical flank frontline

More radical groups know that more disruptive actions lead to greater likelihood of coverage. This can lead to a “radical flank effect”, referring to the comparative outcome that occurs when more radical factions of a social movement like climate activism operate in the same arena as more moderate or less confrontational sections of that movement. The radical flank creates space behind it for others to move into and opportunities for social change can appear.

A vital role it would seem. But this doesn’t tell the whole story of what an activist is.

In a recent research study, I interviewed activists across a range of different ages, circumstances and ideological positions, from Just Stop Oil and Greenpeace to local wildlife trusts and community garden projects. All share concern for the future of life on this planet, trying to do what they can, where they can, to help shape a society we all deserve to live in.

Many express frustration and anger, alongside recognition, that the status quo and current economics are given more importance in political discourse and action than the large‐scale changes required to live sustainably within the natural world. One middle-aged woman who volunteers at the local climate hub (a public space for people involved in climate action) expressed “very little faith in governments. Just massive disappointment.”

The recent changes to protest laws which further vilify environmental activists and mean harsher sentences for attending zoom calls or holding a placard are seen as terrifyingly authoritarian. Yet a young employee of the group Surfers Against Sewage noted they are effective in that they “turn away the people who were kind of on the fence a little bit about it. But … it will also inspire others who are just like, dead against the injustice of it.”

My team’s research indicates a sense of despair due to this political inaction and pushback against those who speak out. Some on the radical flanks are seen by more conservative activists as too radical, and some on the flanks see those more conservative as too “soft” to generate the required changes.

Yet there is recognition of the vital roles everyone can play. A long-term Extinction Rebellion activist who now resides in Calderdale in West Yorkshire, recognised there needed to be “people fighting in different ways on so many different fronts, and I think there’s strength in supporting each other, if we can”.

Fracking was stopped in Lancashire. It was stopped by the Nanas, my mum and the many others on the radical flank frontline. But also by all of those working behind the scenes who put in time to lobby or protest in their own way. It was all these pieces of the puzzle working together that led to victory in Lancashire.

Our research shows you don’t have to be waving a placard shouting into a megaphone, although there is an important place for that too. Crucially, there are many roles for us all and ways we can work towards that future we all deserve to live in.

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Bob Walley receives funding from various internal research institutes and external funding bodies for the research and community projects he coordinates. He is affiliated with the University of Exeter, the University of Lancashire and Envirolution Network.

– ref. Why you don’t have to block roads or glue yourself to buildings to be a climate activist – https://theconversation.com/why-you-dont-have-to-block-roads-or-glue-yourself-to-buildings-to-be-a-climate-activist-260714

September 23, 2025

Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A is a rare opportunity to see what survives of the queen’s closet

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Serena Dyer, Associate Professor, Fashion History, De Montfort University

Marie Antoinette (1755 to 1793) is a cultural icon of monumental proportions. She was the last queen of France before the brutal and bloody French Revolution, and her life was ended by the revolutionaries’ guillotine blade.

Her legacy courses through the visual language of music videos, fashion catwalks and drag shows. Even the shapes and styles behind the current corset trend, popularised by the show Bridgerton, owe more to the era of the French queen than to the Netflix regency romp.

Yet, standing in front of a single, gently worn, and very small shoe at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s latest exhibition, Marie Antoinette Style, the French queen suddenly feels as fragile and little as the brittle silk of her surviving heeled pump.

It is the tender fragility of the teenage queen that first greets visitors. The 16-year-old Dauphine smiles coyly in an animated version of Joseph-Siffred Duplessis’s 1772 portrait of the future queen. She is strikingly innocent, entirely oblivious to the tumultuous years which would define her legacy. It is a poignant moment for all who are aware of her tragic fate.

Joyful and incandescent youthfulness thrums from the first few spaces of the exhibition. A glittering mirrored hall filled with some of the most spectacular gowns of the period pulses with magical energy as a ball in Versailles’s hall of mirrors. The gowns that the visitor encounters, like the wedding ensemble of fellow European royal bride, Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta, are tiny.

This is not, as many visitors may mumble, because everyone in the past was small (they were not), but because this was a court of teenage royals.

The garments chosen are a spectacular array of pastels, representing the diversity and complexity of styles worn at the French court. But these glistening, dazzling garments pale in comparison to the fragments of gowns which possibly once belonged to Marie Antoinette herself. Other than the shoes, a shift (the linen underwear worn closest to the skin) and a smattering of accessories, very few of Marie Antoinette’s own garments survive.

The revolutionaries who oversaw her downfall and execution in 1793 attempted to destroy her vast wardrobe. So fragments like the ivory silk one, encrusted with silver spangles, gems, velvet and metal embroidery are incredibly exciting. The scars of stitching from its former life as a court gown tantalisingly hint at how it might have formed the sweeping front section of a gown’s skirts.

The exhibition confidently places Marie Antoinette not as an exuberant and frivolous monarch, as she is so often seen, but as an intentional, frequently playful, and decidedly modern patron of the arts. Aside from the gowns, there is furniture, porcelain, jewellery, theatre props and some of the most recognisable and iconic portraits of the infamous French queen – many of which have never travelled to the UK before. It is in this section that the fervour of her celebrity becomes apparent.

There is a bowl supposedly modelled after Marie Antoinette’s breast, complete with nipple, and which it is said is the origin of the coupe glass. There are also an astonishing amount of diamonds, including a copy of the jewels from the infamous affair of the diamond necklace. This audacious con saw a cardinal and a self proclaimed Comtesse steal a priceless necklace while posing as Marie Antoinette. Despite the Queen’s innocence, her reputation is ruined.

It is here that the darker side of her reign also begins to trickle into the exhibition. Her expenses were nowhere near as detrimental to the French economy as her husband’s warmongering, but Antoinette’s very visible and enviably luxurious life earned her the moniker of Madame Déficit. She became an easy target for an angry and starving population, who began to vilify her, depicting her as a harpy and falsely accusing her of torrid affairs.

This insidious shift is cleverly woven into the exhibition narrative. For instance, there is an opportunity for visitors to smell samples of the scents from the court by sniffing perfumed busts of the Queen’s head. Visitors enjoying the scents are then suddenly assaulted with the stench of her impending prison cell.

Marie Antoinette was not oblivious to the rising revolutionary tide. That innocent girl that we met at the start had grown into a sympathetic queen. She recycled her garments, gifting them to her staff, she adopted and released enslaved children, she gave endlessly to charities and turned down gifts which she felt were too extravagant.

And while her luxury consumption looked extravagant, her patronage was essential to the success of French industry. When she stopped wearing silks and turned her attention to simple cotton gowns, for instance, the silk weavers rioted. She was never going to win.

Despite these warning signs, it is impossible to prepare for the next space. The dominance of pastel pinks and greens is quickly supplanted by a deep, blood red. A blade from a guillotine dominates the space cut a few words of repetition here. But her death is not the end.

The remaining rooms celebrate her enduring appeal across art, culture and fashion. She was a fancy dress costume within decades of her death, and by the 20th century cinematic portrayals like Norma Shearer’s 1938 portrayal of the Queen cemented her pop culture position. But her legacy, fraught with misogynistic myth-making and uncomfortable stereotypes, gets lost in a celebratory atmosphere.

It is undeniable that her cultural significance is massive. But so many of the visual signals designers nod to are just as false as the fake news generated during her fall from grace. For instance, the tall white wigs are a Hollywood invention. Marie Antoinette always wore her own, natural blonde hair pristinely pomaded and powdered.

It is disappointing that, while the myth-making from her lifetime is robustly challenged in the exhibition, the perpetuation of those myths in artistic responses to her legacy were largely overlooked. In this section, the fashion of John Galliano or costumes from the 2006 Sophia Coppola film or Hulu’s The Great, while wonderful to see, lacked the deeper critical engagement of the early sections of the exhibition.

The exhibition is a visual treat, and the opportunity to see rarely displayed objects make it a must see. But the imagined Marie Antoinette we leave at the end of the exhibition is a far cry from the real young woman that smiled shyly as we entered. Marie Antoinette may be immortalised in the cultural imagination, but I am not convinced she would recognise herself.

Serena Dyer 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. Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A is a rare opportunity to see what survives of the queen’s closet – https://theconversation.com/marie-antoinette-style-at-the-vanda-is-a-rare-opportunity-to-see-what-survives-of-the-queens-closet-265700

September 23, 2025

People with schizophrenia were hit hard by B.C.’s deadly 2021 heat dome

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Liv Yoon, Assistant Professor, School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia

In June 2021, British Columbia experienced an extreme climate event. A heat dome trapped hot air over the province, pushing temperatures to record highs for several days, killing more than 600 people.

A closer look at the numbers revealed something even more startling: people with schizophrenia — just one per cent of the population — made up 15.7 per cent of the deaths. This statistic underscores a troubling truth: climate change does not affect everyone equally.

Research by the BC Centre for Disease Control found that during the heat dome, people with schizophrenia had roughly three times the risk of dying compared to those without schizophrenia, more than any other chronic condition. Even before introducing housing or other critical social determinants of health, this diagnosis alone carried a much higher mortality risk.

Without targeted action, the most marginalized will continue to face the greatest risks. The heat dome revealed how schizophrenia combined with poverty, precarious and poor-quality housing, medication effects, stigma and social isolation led to a uniquely lethal risk.

As heatwaves grow more frequent and intense with climate change, public health and housing policy must shift from expecting people to cope on their own toward ensuring people are able to stay cool enough.

How schizophrenia increases heat risks

In a recent study, we interviewed 35 people with schizophrenia who lived through the 2021 heat dome for a more granular look at what it took to survive. Participants described suffering the physical effects (fainting, heat rash, exhaustion) and worsening symptoms like hallucinations, disrupted sleep and emotional distress.

Symptoms such as paranoia caused many to avoid news coverage, government warnings or even caretakers. This means many never received — or trusted — urgent alerts issued during the heat dome, and knowledge gaps were common.

For many, public cooling centres felt unsafe or unwelcoming due to previous experiences being stigmatized and feared because of their schizophrenia diagnosis. The stigma around schizophrenia also discouraged many individuals from seeking medical care or other public supports.

Homelessness or poor housing quality was another significant factor that compounded vulnerability. Many interviewees lived in older apartments without air conditioning. Others were unhoused and had to cope without shade, water or safe places to rest. For these reasons, staying cool indoors was not an option for many.

The result was a tragic overlap: people with the fewest resources to cope with extreme heat were also the least able to access help.

Why individual advice isn’t enough

Public health advice for heatwaves often focuses on individual actions: seek shade, buy a fan or check in on neighbours. While important, these messages assume equal access to information and resources — but evidence shows that many people with schizophrenia experience significant barriers to accessing them.

This way of thinking reflects a broader societal tendency to treat health as a matter of personal responsibility: that in the heat, each of us is on our own to prepare. But the disproportionate number of deaths among people with schizophrenia illustrates the flaw in this approach.

Our interviews revealed that many indeed internalized their struggles during the heat dome as personal shortcomings, when in reality, the problem was systemic: inadequate housing, limited access to care, widespread and debilitating social stigma and the lack of tailored public health strategies.

A different approach

To prevent the tragedies of 2021 from happening again, policymakers and experts need to view access to cool, safe spaces as a basic right. This means moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach for advice, to one addressing the realities faced by those most at risk.

To be clear, this rights-based approach does not mean abandoning practical individual measures that save lives, such as opening public cooling centres or reminding people to drink water. These remain essential in the short term. But on their own, they are not enough.

To truly protect people with schizophrenia and others at high risk, these responses must unfold within a broader vision that treats access to safe temperatures as a basic right.

That means investing in affordable, climate-resilient housing and ensuring cooling centres are welcoming and accessible for all. It also means addressing stigma around mental health challenges, tailoring health advice to account for anti-psychotic medications and supporting outreach through trusted community networks.

We need both immediate interventions that provide relief during a heatwave and structural changes that address the root causes of vulnerability. Without this dual approach, responses to heatwaves will leave the same people exposed when the next extreme event arrives. Our goal should not be fewer deaths; we should aim for no deaths.

Structural solutions needed

The 2021 heat dome was tragic — more so because deaths were not inevitable. They were the result of overlapping vulnerabilities that our current housing and welfare systems fail to address. People with schizophrenia are not inherently more vulnerable to heat; they are made more vulnerable by the obstacles that shape their lives.

This means that solutions must also be structural. We need to change how we think about extreme heat; it is not just a natural hazard. It is a reflection of how social systems are failing people, especially those on the sharp edges of inequality.

Viewing cooling as a right means investing in societies that are more resilient to heat. This means governments investing in safer and more accessible housing for all, building welcoming public spaces, fostering a society where neighbours know and care for each other and allowing people with lived experience to play a central role in shaping future heat-health planning.

Liv Yoon received funding from Health Canada’s Climate Change and Health Office for the study that informs this article.

Samantha Mew 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. People with schizophrenia were hit hard by B.C.’s deadly 2021 heat dome – https://theconversation.com/people-with-schizophrenia-were-hit-hard-by-b-c-s-deadly-2021-heat-dome-265173

September 23, 2025

The more in favour of welfare you are, the more likely you are to support cycle lanes

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

Public transport infrastructure can be deeply political. A new cycle lane appears in a neighbourhood, and suddenly the letters page of the local paper is full. A plan to pedestrianise a city centre street sparks furious debate. A proposal to expand a bus route is hailed as progress by some and criticised as wasteful by others.

The conversations we have around urban planning reflect deeply held values and priorities. They even pit competing visions for society against each other. This was visible in debates over Ulez (ultra-low emission zones) in London, for example. Each of the two sides appealed to a different set of values: critics to individual choice and economic mobility and supporters to collective wellbeing and environmental responsibility.

In my recent study, I looked at how people’s world views affected their views on various transport infrastructure proposals. I used British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey data to investigate attitudes towards cycle lanes, increasing spending on public transport spending (potentially at the cost of other services), reserving parking spaces for electric car charging points, building car parks to introduce more park and ride routes, narrowing roads to widen pavements, and closing roads to create pedestrian high streets.

In each case, I found that whether people supported the change depended heavily on their political ideologies. But among these ideologies, the biggest predictor of how people felt about green transport projects overall was their attitude towards welfare spending.

Those who believed in generous, redistributive welfare systems, government support for the unemployed and efforts to reduce inequality also tended to support government investment in public transport.

Around 41% of differences in opinion on the six analysed infrastructure projects taken together were explained by differences in views on welfare. Political party preference comes next, accounting for 26%. Where people place themselves on the left–right political spectrum explained only 13% of differences of opinion.

When looked at separately, support for the welfare state is the strongest predictor of support for increasing public transport spending, widening pavements, and creating pedestrian high streets. Meanwhile, political party preference plays the biggest role in shaping opinions on cycle lanes, electric car charging points, and building new car parks.

When all political dimensions are considered together, two policies stand out as the most politically charged: narrowing roads to widen pavements and building new cycle lanes. These findings suggest that sidewalks and cycle lanes don’t just redistribute road space – they expose ideological space too. They challenge entrenched ideas about who the city is for, how mobility should be organised, and what kind of future we should invest in.

Historically, the bicycle has been associated with counterculture and leftwing politics. From the 1960s onward, it gained symbolic value as an alternative to the car – a challenge to dominant norms of consumption, status and mobility. Cars came to represent freedom, autonomy and success. Bicycles, by contrast, were reframed as environmental, communal, and anti-establishment. This symbolic opposition still resonates today.

People who are less positive about welfare often emphasise individual responsibility, self-reliance, and a belief that public support creates dependency. From this perspective, cars are earned through work, independence, and personal choice. Cycle lanes or pavements are seen as government interference, taking space (and status) away from drivers.

Changing minds

My research also shows that interest in politics moderates these effects. People who are highly interested in politics are much more likely to filter their views on green transport investment through their broader ideological and partisan commitments. In contrast, those with little political interest are less likely to have their opinions on transport shaped by their political ideology.

This matters because it means that the loudest voices in public debates tend to be the most politically entrenched. When political interest strengthens the link between ideology and opinion, it can polarise the discussion – turning questions of road design or bus funding into flashpoints for wider ideological battles. As a result, pragmatic compromise becomes harder, and transport policy can get stuck in symbolic conflict rather than being debated on practical or social terms.

An aerial view of a cycle lane next to a row of cars. — Left or right?
Shutterstock/Lenscap Photography

However, if we understand why people oppose green infrastructure projects, we can start to find ways forward. Framing these initiatives purely in terms of collective impacts, such as lowering pollution, rather than private interests may only resonate with people who already support that kind of public investment.

To reach those who are more sceptical of welfare and state intervention, we may need different messaging. Rather than focusing only on social equity or environmental impact, campaigns could highlight individual interests such as how cycle lanes can reduce congestion, cut commuting costs or boost local high streets. These are benefits that don’t necessarily rely on a belief in state intervention to feel relevant or persuasive.

If we want to build broader coalitions of support for green infrastructure, we need to speak to the diverse motivations people have for how they move through their cities.

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

– ref. The more in favour of welfare you are, the more likely you are to support cycle lanes – https://theconversation.com/the-more-in-favour-of-welfare-you-are-the-more-likely-you-are-to-support-cycle-lanes-264246

September 23, 2025

How India’s unplanned hydropower dams and tunnels are disrupting Himalayan landscapes

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Diva Sinha, PhD Candidate, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London

Uttarakhand, referred to as the land of gods, is also known as the energy state of India. It is home to several fast-flowing rivers at high altitudes that serve as the perfect backdrop for harnessing energy from water to produce hydroelectric power.

In this state, the Tehri dam, situated in Garhwal, is the highest dam in India. The amalgamation of rivers and high mountains in this area is ideally suited to producing electricity for rural and urban areas through hydropower and other renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

In the neighbouring state of Ladakh, the Zoji La is one of the highest mountain passes in the world. It’s surrounded by the rugged terrain of Trans-Himalayas, with cold desert slopes, snow-capped peaks and alpine meadows. This biodiverse region is home to snow leopards, Himalayan brown bears, wolves, Pallas cats, yaks and lynx.

Zoji La also serves as a gateway for the movement of Indian military troops, enabling a constant armed force presence at the Indo-Chinese border. The construction of the Zoji La tunnel, poised to become the longest tunnel in Asia, allows India to rapidly deploy troops near the border with China while claiming to promote economic development in rural areas. Existing roads remain blocked by snow for up to six months each year, so without the new tunnel, access is limited.

Its construction, however, uses extensive blasting and carving of the mountain slopes using dynamite, which disrupts fragile geological structures of the already unstable terrain, generating severe noise and air pollution, thereby putting wildlife at risk.

Hydropower harnesses the power of flowing water as it moves from higher to lower elevations. Through a series of turbines and generators, hydroelectric power plants convert the movement of water from rivers and waterfalls into electrical energy. This so-called “kinetic energy” contributes 14.3% of the global renewable energy mix.

However, development of hydropower projects and rapid urbanisation in the Indian Himalayas are actively degrading the environmental and ecological landscape, particularly in the ecologically sensitive, seismically active and fragile regions of Joshimath in Uttarakhand and Zoji La in Ladakh.

The construction of hydropower plants, along with associated railways, all-weather highways and tunnels across the Himalayan mountains, is being undertaken without adequate urban planning, design or implementation.

At an altitude of 1,800m in the Garhwal region, land is subsiding or sinking in the town of Joshimath where more than 850 homes have been deemed as inhabitable due to cracks. Subsidence occurs naturally as a result of flash flooding, for example, but is also being accelerated by human activities, such as the construction of hydropower projects in this fragile, soft-slope area.

Satellite data shows that Joshimath sank by 5.4cm within 12 days between December 27 2022 and January 8 2023. Between April and November 2022, the town experienced a rapid subsidence of 9cm.

One 2024 study analysed land deformation in Joshimath using remote sensing data. The study found significant ground deformation during the year 2022–23, with the maximum subsidence in the north-western part of the town coinciding with the near completion of the Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower project in 2023. Another 2025 study highlights that hydropower projects, particularly the Tapovan Vishnugad plant near Joshimath, play a significant role in destabilising the region.

Dynamite and disaster risk

As part of my PhD research, I’ve been interviewing locals about how this is affecting them. “The subsidence in Joshimath is not solely the result of natural calamities,” said apple farmer Rivya Dimri, who once lived in the town but relocated to Lansdowne due to the inhospitable conditions of her ancestral home. She believes that a significant part of the problem stems from dam construction, frequent tunnelling and blasting, plus the widespread deforestation that has taken place to accommodate infrastructure development.

Farmer Tanzong Le from Leh told me that “the government is prioritising military agendas over the safety and security of local communities and the ecology of Ladakh”. He believes that “the use of dynamite for blasting through mountains not only destabilises the geological foundations of the Trans-Himalayan mountains but also endangers wildlife and the surrounding natural environment, exacerbating vulnerability in these already sensitive mountain regions”.

The twin challenges of haphazard and unplanned infrastructure development in Joshimath and Zoji La represent two sides of the same coin: poorly executed infrastructure projects that prioritise economic, energy, military and geopolitical ambitions over the safeguarding of nature and communities. Hydropower plants, tunnels and highways may bring economic benefits and geopolitical advantages, but without urgent safeguards, India risks undermining the very mountains that protect its people, wildlife, ecosystems and borders.

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

– ref. How India’s unplanned hydropower dams and tunnels are disrupting Himalayan landscapes – https://theconversation.com/how-indias-unplanned-hydropower-dams-and-tunnels-are-disrupting-himalayan-landscapes-261956