Why We’re Involved in a Project in Africa to Promote Edible Insects

There is a wealth of indigenous knowledge about capturing and eating insects in sub-Saharan Africa. But the development of edible insects as a food industry has been very slow, despite its many potential benefits.

Sustainability is one. Insects have a small carbon and water footprint. Studies show that insect farming emits less carbon and methane gas than large livestock like cattle and pigs. Much less water is needed to produce the same amount of protein. Insects use feed more efficiently than other sources of animal protein. Farming them could be a new source of jobs and income.

There should be more awareness and promotion of insects as food for humans and as feed for animals, especially at the policy, legislative and business level. In most African nations, edible insects are still viewed as an insignificant source of food and even, in some instances, as food for the poor. There are very few success stories of large-scale insect farming and industrial use in Africa.

We have been involved in a project to promote the integrated use of insects as food in urban areas in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our project works on the edible insect value chain and discovered that the seasonal supply of insects and poor hygiene standards made the market unstable and unattractive to consumers. Traders sold insects in an informal setting and had little interaction with farmers.

We carried out training among farmers, traders, municipalities and others with an interest in this emerging industry. The training included how to handle and process insects after they were harvested, food safety along the value chain and farming crickets (Acheta domesticus and Gryllus bumaculatus).

The trainees have learnt how to rear and sell insects better and have become more aware of what a sustainable value chain should look like. For example, market facilities have to be clean and there must be a steady supply of insects. The training also created awareness of the need to farm insects rather than catching them in the wild. Catching insects can reduce insect populations dramatically when consumption increases. And there are no food safety standards for wild insects.

Together with the urban council in the town of Chinhoyi in Zimbabwe we built a model market structure where traders are selling their insects. Traders are selling some of the most popular edible insects; wild harvested mopane worms (Gonimbrasia belina), termites (Macrotermes natalensis) and wild harvested crickets. Farmers are still building stocks of farmed crickets, but the plan is to sell farmed crickets in the near future. It is still too early to see the impact but one notable improvement is hygiene. The market has also helped women traders, who are the main group selling insects there. They have become more organised about their business.

We hope this will lead to an increase in consumer willingness to buy edible insects, and demonstrate best practice to other regions of Zimbabwe and beyond. Through our project, we have also helped insect traders and farmers to form industry associations.

Why insects are valuable

Insects are highly nutritious and contain protein, fat and energy in proportions similar to grains, vegetables and seeds. They are rich in macro minerals like calcium, sodium and magnesium and micro minerals like zinc, manganese, iron and copper, all of which should be part of a healthy diet. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, these minerals come from fruits and vegetables, most of which are farmed seasonally. Edible insects could supply these minerals during seasons where there is less fruit and vegetable production.

They contain essential amino acids such as threonine, cysteine, valine, methionine and isoleucine. The recommended daily minimum intake of amino acids can be consumed by eating just 100 grams of the edible stink bug (Encosternum delegorguei), for example.

Earlier this year, parts of eastern and southern Africa were ravaged by Cyclone Idai. The cyclone destroyed crops and livestock, causing severe food shortages. We believe that in disaster-struck areas, edible insects can build resilience by being a food resource in recovery programmes and an alternative to traditional smallholder farming. There is an excellent example of that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where orphanages have started insect farms to grow their own protein. The farms have helped decrease hunger and improve health among the orphans.

Read more: Economic chaos is causing a food security and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe

What needs to happen?

We were involved in setting up an international conference in Zimbabwe to discuss ways to foster the edible insects industry.

Research is required so that policy makers and those involved in the sector – farmers, processes, marketers and consumers – can make evidence-based decisions. This must happen across disciplines. Researchers should work with farmers and people in business to foster skills, innovation and enterprise. For example, they could develop business cases and scenarios.

Policy makers must understand that the sector is unique. Edible insects have not been categorised under any agricultural sub-sector such as crop or animal farming. On the African continent, they have not previously been farmed and treated as a commodity. That is why it would be helpful to establish and coordinate platforms such as meetings, workshops, exhibitions, magazines and websites.

Policy should also allow innovation and investment to happen at national, regional and international levels. Industry participants will need access to markets and credit.

Farmers, food and feed processors, traders and marketers must seize opportunities to invest and enter niche markets. They can also contribute to policy development and share knowledge about traditional ways of producing and eating insects.

There is momentum generated by several research and business initiatives that have been ignited in sub-Saharan Africa. And there is growing enthusiasm for using edible insects as alternative sources of protein and to build resilience against climatic shocks. It’s an essential step towards improving food security in the region.

Robert Musundire is a Associate Professor of Entomology in the Department of Crop Science and Post-Harvest Technology, Chinhoyi University of Technology

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How New Media Can Be Used to Spark Interest in Elections Among Young Ghanaians

There has been growing evidence around the world that young people are increasingly becoming apathetic about taking part in events such as elections, according to Ceron in a study conducted in 2015. Given that university students are also increasingly using social media, scholars have started to look at how it can be used to invigorate their diminishing interest in governance as well as in elections.

We conducted research  on how students in Ghana used new media. The aim was to understand the motivations and political information needs that influenced them to use new media technologies for elections.

We found that young people were drawn to use new media technologies to have conversations on elections. Posts going viral gave them a sense of relevance and empowerment. Another reason was that it gave them the opportunity to engage in the comfort of their private spaces – offline.

The findings should enable more strategic targeting of university students by political actors and institutions. This could be in terms of turn out efforts, political messaging, communication as well as political campaigning. This has already been done successfully in a number of countries.

How it’s been done elsewhere

New media technologies have been used in a myriad of ways to mobilise people to vote in various countries. For example, in Italy in 2014, Sweden in 2010 and in the 2010 British elections.

Astute use of technologies was also evident in Barack Obama’s campaigns for the US presidency in 2008 and 2012.

In Africa, social media was used during the mass protests of 2011 in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. In all three cases, people uploaded photographs of the protests which then went viral. This reinforced global appreciation of the need for democratic change in the countries.

Social media has also been used to monitor elections and disseminate results. For instance in Nigeria, young Nigerians embarked on the “Enough is Enough” campaign on election vigilance to hold politically elected leaders accountable.

In Ghana, some civil society groups launched the “the Voter Decides” campaign in 2012. This sought to track the process of voting, monitor collation of results and ensure that the right results were announced.

But the deployment of various new media technologies by political actors for elections and other civil engagements hasn’t necessarily translated into reversing the dwindling interest in politics. This is clear from research by communication scholars like Christian Vaccari.

It raises the question: what motivates the young new media user to deploy the technologies from an informational and communications perspective?

Why Ghanaian Students use new media technologies

In our research on Ghanaian students, our main findings were that:

• Students are drawn to deploying new media technologies for the currency and breadth of information they can access.

• They are both consumers and producers of media content.

• They are able to navigate their way around the gatekeeping or filtration process conducted by editors.

• The opportunity to go viral or become virtual celebrities in seconds when they click the “enter” or “send” button is an experience they relish.

• The virtual space is a safe haven for many.

• They spend a great deal of time on social media. This is attested to when a student asserts: “my world is on the mobile phone.”

The potency of social media

Our findings reinforce the view that social media is a viable resource that can be relied on for voter mobilisation, campaigning and voting. Students suggest that political candidates must find ways to woo Ghanaian students into conversations before election fever catches on. If the candidates delay, their efforts will be perceived by the youth as self-serving.

Practically, many young people want to be part of the process of constructing political narratives offline rather than on campaign platforms. They want to be in their safe haven – online and anonymous – where they can’t be reproached for their youthful exuberance.

These kinds of conversations have the potential of reducing apathy and getting young people involved in the political process.

Political actors and candidates should seriously look at how media technologies can be used for effective reciprocal political communication with university students. If they understand what motivates and influences students to use new media technologies for conversations on the elections, political actors are much more likely to be able to count on the involvement of young people in conversations on the elections and participation in the electoral process.

Adwoa Sikayena Amankwah is a Senior Lecturer of Communication Studies, University of Professional Studies Accra

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During Floods, Floating Schools Bring the Classroom to Students

Each year, over one-fifth of Bangladesh suffers from flooding. And when water overtakes already struggling roads, much of life is put on hold—including kids’ education. But if children can’t travel to the classroom, architect and entrepreneur Mohammed Rezwan thought, why not have it travel to them? Welcome aboard the Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha floating school—a network of boats that’s both school bus and schoolhouse for students ages six to ten in Northern Bangladesh.

Putting Kenya’s Slums on the Map

These days, the Internet makes it possible to travel much of the world with a simple click of a mouse. But not every place where life gets lived is cartographically represented. This leaves entire communities, particularly slums and other “informal settlements,” invisible from state actors who could implement vital infrastructure like electricity and clean water. Using their feet, GPS technology and a lot of dedication, Primož Kovačič, Isaac Motisiamosa and their teams are collaborating to put Mathare, Kenya’s second largest slum, and its people on the map.

In India’s Assam, a Solidarity Network Has Emerged to Help Those at Risk of Becoming Stateless

The state of Assam in India is currently burning with violent protests against a new citizenship law passed by both houses of the Indian parliament in early December.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will ease the Indian citizenship process for undocumented migrants in India who come from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – but only for those who are not Muslim, undermining the promise of equality by the Indian Constitution. The international community criticised the new law, with the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights calling it “fundamentally discriminatory”.

Since its parliamentary approval on December 12, the law has triggered massive protests across India including in the capital Delhi.

Concerns in Assam

Assam is directly affected by the new law. It significantly undermines the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a listing process that has been underway in Assam since 2015 through which residents have to prove their claim to citizenship based on documentary evidence. The NRC is designed to update a first list conducted as an all-India exercise in 1951 to combat illegal immigration flows, primarily from neighbouring Bangladesh.

More than 1.9 million people in Assam – many of whom are Muslim – have failed to make it onto the NRC’s final list which was published on August 31. They now face the risk of statelessness. But at the same time, the large numbers of Hindus who were excluded in the NRC system can now become Indian citizens under the CAA.

The way the CAA is written makes way for Indian citizenship of all non-Muslims who lived in certain areas of Assam, such as the Brahmaputra Valley, before or on December 31 2014, even if they don’t have documentary evidence, and while rendering Muslims stateless. It contradicts the cut-off date for inclusion used by the NRC, which was midnight on March 24 1971.

For the protesters on Assam’s streets, the CAA gives legal rights to the large numbers of undocumented Bengali-speaking Hindus who have migrated from Bangladesh since 1971 and also those currently excluded by the NRC.

Their fear is twofold. First, indigenous Assamese feel that with the inclusion of the Bengali speaking Hindus by the CAA, the composite number of Bengali speaking people (both Hindus and Muslims) will outnumber the Assamese speaking people in the state. Census data shows that the Assamese-speaking people in the state declined from 58% of the population in 1991 to 48% in 2011. Second, the Muslims both excluded by NRC and those who have migrated later, risk becoming stateless.

A journey to the Pampara Char

I’ve seen up close the damage the NRC process has had on communities in Assam. In mid-November, I visited the state with the Indian peace activist Harsh Mandar and several others as part of an initiative called Karwan e Mohabbat, a human caravan of peace, justice, solidarity and consciousness as part of my research on citizenship in the Indian borderlands.

We visited the homes of people who have been excluded from the NRC, particularly from the Muslim community in Lower Assam districts. We listened and learned about their experiences of trauma, suffering and hopelessness with the filing of their documents and how they are coping with their exclusion.

Among the people we met in the Barpeta district of Lower Assam were inhabitants of the Chars, low-lying temporary sand islands formed by silt deposition and erosion. These sand bars, which emerge and submerge in the river beds of Assam’s Brahmaputra river, are uniquely vulnerable to disasters such as floods and cyclones.

Pampara Char, one of the silt islands on the Brahmaputra river, Barpeta district, Lower Assam. Google Maps

Wild grass, thatched huts and distressed residents

The Pampara Char is a barren wasteland, with wild grass growing all over the place and houses that looked like temporary huts. The only brick building, which was freshly painted in white and blue, was the primary school. It stood distinct from the other houses and seemed sparingly used. The people, toughened by poverty and harsh ecology, were left distraught by their experience of the NRC and gathered around Harsh Mandar and other social activists to share their suffering and tales of horror about the registration process. Many had to go through repeated verification across different drafts of the list.

View of the fields in one of the village visited in Pampara Char. Anuradha S.Mookerjee, Author provided

I observed deep anxiety among the people we met, such as the aggrieved 54-year-old Khaled Ali. Illiterate and landless, Ali is a river fisherman who sometimes also works as a daily wage labourer. Like many others he received a notice in early August that he and his 18 other family members needed to submit more documents or they would be excluded from the final NRC list. Their names had been included in two previous versions.

A reverification hearing was scheduled for the next day in the distant town of Golaghat, which is 460km away from the Pamapara Char. Overnight, Ali raised a loan of 30,000 Indian rupees (US$424 or €383) to travel to Golaghat, with all his family members and two witnesses in a hired bus. After an 18-hour trip, they reached Golaghat and were received by local civil society activists who arranged for them to camp at a community centre and also helped them to submit their documents.

After their reverification hearing, Ali and his family members found themselves excluded in the final NRC list. While they have 120 days to appeal against their exclusion, his wife lamented that they lack the money to produce more documents from paralegals to support their cases before the appeal deadline on December 29. Meanwhile, a distraught Ali told us that he still has a loan of 14,000 rupees (US$198 or €178) to repay.

Complex documentation process

Harsh Mander and other social activists listening to the plea of the Char villagers. Anuradha S.Mookerjee, Author provided

For marginal and illiterate residents of the Chars such as Ali, the NRC and the process of proving citizenship has become a very stressful and expensive burden. As we found out during our home visits, a new parallel economy of document production has flourished. Paralegals charged anywhere between 500 to 1,000 Rupees for each document, a very large sum for these poor people.

The highly complex documentation process, which includes requirement for family trees and residency documents dating back to before March 24 1971, is also to blame for the exclusion of large numbers of people from the final NRC register. The process is extremely insensitive to the difficulties of the large mass of illiterate and poverty-stricken populations who are finding it very difficult to make sense of how to navigate registration on their own.

Processes of verification and reverification have been implemented in a way that firmly establish a hierarchical relation between the state and its citizens, with the complete domination by bureaucrats and public office holders over the rights of the citizens and residents.

‘Citizen-making’ humanitarians of Assam

Many of the marginalised populations in Lower Assam, such as Ali and his family, have needed constant support to be able to file their documents and fight their cases.

Local activists are playing a significant role in helping people deal with the burden of proving their citizenship, understanding the terminology and filling in the application forms and claims. They are also offering guidance about attending case hearings, support in procuring documents for submission from paralegals and also offering psycho-social counselling.

In Barpeta, volunteer Shahjahan Ali Ahmed receives an award from social activist Uma Shankari in recognition of his work helping people left out of the NRC. Anuradha S.Mookerjee, Author provided

Volunteers and human rights groups of Lower Assam have also connected with civil society actors in Upper Assam to help residents commute from Lower to Upper Assam for hearings and verification, and on some occasion even raise money, creating a solidarity network.

Such a humanitarian network is crucial at a time when marginalised people feel threatened with the changing legal regime which seeks to redefine the basis of Indian citizenship. These networks of solidarity in India’s north-eastern borderlands attempt to draw out the real Indian body politic, reinforcing the plural fabric of the Indian constitution.

Anuradha Sen Mookerjee is a Research fellow, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)

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Reinventing Electronic Music With Dubai’s Cellist DJ

When classical cellist Aaron Kim was diagnosed with critical hearing loss, he had two choices: to keep creating music or to stop altogether. Kim chose the former and has since discovered a passion for electronic music. Combining his classical training with new sounds, Kim produces unconventional electronic beats for the emerging underground music scene in Dubai. The freedom to create music on his own terms, without any rules or structures, has helped Kim break and overcome barriers that once held him back.

How Curious George Escaped Nazi Germany

Curious George is the mischievous child that still lives inside us all, a swinging catastrophe with an envious joie de vivre. But everyone’s favorite chimp almost didn’t make it to the page. The story goes way back to 1940 as Nazi forces prepared to invade France. German-Jewish artists H.A. and Margret Rey fled Paris by bicycle, carrying the original manuscript that would later become “Curious George.” From there George traveled the globe, trekking down to Lisbon, sailing across the pond to Rio de Janeiro, finally making his home in New York. The rest, of course, is history, as our primate protagonist climbed his way into our hearts and onto the world’s stage.

Battle Rap’s First LGBTQ League

Bronx-born Sara Kana is a child of hip-hop and the mother of Prism Battle League. First launched in 2016, Prism is a platform for emcees in the LGBTQ community to compete in a battle of words, wise and wit. Painfully familiar with homophobia in and beyond hip-hop, Sara hopes for Prism to be a safe, inclusive space that allows battle rap talent to flourish—so much so, she funds it herself.

World’s Youngest Prime Minister Will Head Women-Led Government in Finland

FINLAND IS GETTING a new prime minister, and she’s about to become the world’s youngest leader. Not only that, but she will also head a coalition government of five parties, all of them led by women. Sanna Marin, 34, was nominated by her party on Sunday and will be sworn as prime minister later this week.

Finland’s previous government resigned last week after the Centre Party lost confidence in then-Prime Minister Antti Rinne’s handling of a postal strike.“I myself have never thought about my age or gender,” said Marin, “but rather about the issues for which I took on politics and about the reasons for which we were trusted in the elections.”

For many countries, like the US, electing its first female leader would be a historic occasion. For Finland, however, this isn’t exactly news — the first Finnish female prime minister was elected in 2003 and after elections this year, women make up 47 percent of its parliament. 

Eben Diskin is a staff writer for Matador Network

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MATADOR NETWORK

Pope Affirms Catholic Church’s Duty to Indigenous Amazonians Hurt by Climate Change

The Catholic Church “hears the cry” of the Amazon and its peoples. That’s the message Pope Francis hopes to send at the Synod of the Amazon, a three-week meeting at the Vatican that ends Oct. 27.

Images from Rome show tribal leaders in traditional feather headdresses alongside Vatican officials in their regalia. They are gathered with hundreds of bishops, priests, religious sisters and missionaries to discuss the pastoral, cultural and ecological struggles of the Amazon.

The densely forested region spans nine South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Its more than 23 million inhabitants include 3 million indigenous people.

The Amazon meeting is part of Pope Francis’s efforts to build a “Church which listens.” Since taking office in 2013, Francis has revitalized the Catholic Church’s practice of “synods” – a Greek word meaning “council” – expanding decision-making in the church beyond the Vatican bureaucracy to gather input from the entire church, including from laypeople.

Voting on synod decisions, however, remains restricted to bishops and some male clergy.

The Amazon synod is the first such meeting to be organized for a specific ecological region. Media coverage of this event has emphasized its more controversial debates – such as the possibility of easing celibacy requirements in the rural Amazon, where priests are in extremely short supply.

But its focus is much broader: listening to the suffering of the Amazon – particularly the environmental challenges facing the region – and discerning how to respond as a global church.

Amazon in crisis

After more than a decade of environmental policies that successfully slowed deforestation in the Amazon, logging and agricultural clearing have begun to increase rapidly again. The fires in the Brazilian rainforest that captured headlines in early September are symptoms of much broader destruction.

Up to 17% of the Amazon rainforest has already been eliminated – dangerously close to the 20% to 40% tipping point that experts say would lead the entire ecosystem to collapse.

Deforestation of the Amazon is rapidly approaching the tipping point that, experts say, could lead to total collapse of the rainforest ecosystem. AP Photo/Leo Correa

Stories of deforestation can seem insignificant against the vastness of the Amazon, a region two-thirds the size of the lower 48 United States.

But for the 390 indigenous ethnic groups who inhabit the region, each burned forest grove, polluted stream or flooded dam site may mark the end of a way of life that’s survived for thousands of years.

Deprived of their land, many indigenous Amazonians are forced into an exposed life on the edge of frontier towns, where they are prey to sex trafficking, slave labor and violence. In Brazil alone, at least 1,119 indigenous people have been killed defending their land since 2003.

The Catholic Church recognizes that it still has to address the “open wound” of its own role in the colonial-era violence that first terrorized the indigenous peoples of the Americas, according to the synod’s working document. The church legitimated the colonial confiscation of lands occupied by indigenous peoples and its missionaries often suppressed indigenous cultures and religions.

For this reason, according to the Vatican, organizers of the synod have sought input through 260 listening events held in the region that reached nearly 87,000 people over the past two years. Indigenous leaders have been invited as observer participants in the meeting itself.

Learning from indigenous peoples

As a theologian who studies religious responses to the environmental crisis, I find the pope’s effort to learn from the indigenous people of the Amazon noteworthy.

The Vatican sees that the Amazon’s traditional residents know something much of humanity has long forgotten: how to live in ecological harmony with the environment.

“To the aboriginal communities we owe their thousands of years of care and cultivation of the Amazon,” the 58-page synod working document reads. “In their ancestral wisdom they have nurtured the conviction that all of creation is connected, and this deserves our respect and responsibility.”

Pope Francis has expressed his respect for indigenous peoples before.

At a meeting of indigenous leaders in Peru in January 2018 he said, “Your lives cry out against a style of life that is oblivious to its own real cost. You are a living memory of the mission that God has entrusted to us all: the protection of our common home.”

Global problems, local solutions

Environmental destruction isn’t the synod’s only concern.

Catholicism – long the dominant religion in Latin America – is rapidly losing members to evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicals are projected to eclipse Catholics in Brazil by 2032.

One advantage evangelical churches have in Amazonian countries is that they can appoint local indigenous pastors to minister to their communities. Meanwhile, with less than one priest per 8,000 Catholics in the Amazon, some isolated communities might see a priest only once a year.

Catholic churches are in short supply in rural Brazil, where many people will go a year without seeing a priest. AP Photo/Fernando Vergara

The scarcity of priests in rural Latin America is behind a proposal to the synod to ordain older married men as priests in isolated Amazonian communities.

In the the U.S., the celibacy question is easily mapped onto a familiar divide. Progressive Catholics argue that clerical celibacy should be optional, while conservative Catholics insist this discipline is fundamental to the faith.

The issue is far less politicized in the Amazon, where, in the words of one bishop, the Catholic Church remains a “visiting church” with limited day-to-day presence in indigenous communities.

Some might dismiss this synod as just a meeting. But, in my judgment, it is an attempt to apply Francis’ vision of a “listening Church” to the environmental crisis. The Synod of the Amazon marks a significant shift from high-minded papal exhortations about taking climate action to a global religious community that gives voice to those living on the front lines of ecological destruction.

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Vincent J. Miller is a Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

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The Eco-Friendly Genius of 'Earthships' | That's Amazing

The New Mexico desert is a landscape of harsh extremes: brutally hot in the summer, frigid in the winter. It was the perfect testing ground for architect Mike Reynolds' "earthships"—houses of unconventional design material and utility that are completely self-sustained. They're built with used tires and empty glass bottles and produce their own electricity, water and food. For Reynolds, sustainable houses are the key to making a home in a better future—and now, the rest of the world is catching on to Reynolds' eco-friendly designs.

The Dangers of Depicting Greta Thunberg as a Prophet

She came from obscurity and ignited a global movement. Beginning with a small but persistent act of protest outside the Swedish parliament, she inspired millions to join her. Her fiery speech to the United Nations in September 2019 warned of the end of the world. Her unfailing determination and passion makes her appear otherworldly, even uncanny, an affect largely attributed to her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.

So it’s no surprise that many people – along with media outlets like The Irish Times, The Telegraph and The Washington Times – have cast Greta Thunberg as a prophet.

When Time announced her as “Person of the Year,” it continued the trope, using an evocative photograph of Thunberg standing on a rocky shoreline, staring at the heavens, for the cover.

As a researcher on the history of childhood, I’ve been disturbed to see Thunberg described and depicted as a prophet. To me, it risks distorting her message. And it can easily be exploited by climate deniers seeking to counter the appeal of her activism.

Is a climate messiah even necessary?

To some, Thunberg resembles Joan of Arc, the teenage visionary who led the French army into battle in the 15th century and was later canonized as a saint.

To others, Thunberg exemplifies the Judeo-Christian tradition of prophets who speak truth to power; according to one Christian blogger, she offers “a prophetic voice to shake us out of our complacency.”

Yet presenting Thunberg as a prophet is deeply misleading. Classically, prophets are messengers who communicate the voice of God. They convey divine revelation that was previously unknown or misunderstood. Ezekiel predicted the destruction and restoration of Jerusalem. Moses received the Ten Commandments. Muhammad revealed the Quran. Prophets, in other words, see truths that others cannot. They bring us messages that often defy human comprehension.

Thunberg, on the other hand, is simply telling us what we already know. Within the scientific community, there is an overwhelming consensus – going back decades – that humans are causing global warming.

Framing her as a prophet has opened the floodgates to all sorts of messianic theories. This recently took a bizarre turn when a 120-year-old photo with a girl resembling Thunberg surfaced. Now conspiracy theorists are calling Thunberg “a time traveler sent to save us.”

Depictions like this are fodder for her opponents who dismiss what they call her “doomsday activism.” To them, she is a false prophet, and they can portray the people inspired by her as brainwashed cult followers. David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians who died alongside his followers in Waco, Texas in 1993, after all, called himself a prophet. So did Jim Jones, the founder of the Peoples Temple and orchestrator of the 1978 Jonestown Massacre.

To Thurnberg’s credit, even she recoils at the idea that she should be viewed as some sort of savior.

“I don’t want you to listen to me,” she told Congress in September. “I want you to listen to the scientists.”

Being a kid carries enough weight

I would argue that the best way to think of Thunberg is to simply think of her as a child.

This is not demeaning. Far from it. In recent years, young people have offered numerous examples of their ability to exercise independent thought, visionary thinking and leadership. Melati and Isabel Wijsen were 10 and 12 when they began a successful campaign to ban single-use plastics in their native Bali. Malala Yousafzai was 11 when she began to advocate against the Taliban for girls’ right to education. The list goes on: Jazz Jennings, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the Parkland activists. Like Thunberg, they challenge our culture’s view of children as powerless and dependent.

Thunberg memorably began her September 2019 UN speech with the words, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.” As Thunberg well knows, the fact that a child needs to scold grown-ups to act on an issue that threatens all of humanity is a powerful example of a political system gone horribly wrong.

Even more critically, focusing on Thunberg’s youth highlights a central tenet of her message: fairness. As any parent can tell you, children tend to view the world in terms of moral absolutes – good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair. Indeed, researchers have recently shown that expectations of fairness are deeply ingrained in children, appearing in infants as young as 12 months old.

Ideas of fairness underlie many aspects of Thunberg’s message, from her emphasis on how climate change will affect the poor and marginalized, to her comments about how unjust it is to expect young people to fix a catastrophe caused by generations of political inertia. Her forceful call – “How dare you!” – is not the enraged cry of a petulant child. It is the determined statement of a girl who has not yet developed the moral flexibility that is so often the refuge of adult inaction.

Thunberg is not unraveling the mysteries of our era, or a time traveler sent to stop climate change. Rather, she is a child admonishing selfishness and pleading for fairness.

That’s not prophetic. It’s common sense.

Ellen Boucher is an Associate Professor of History, Amherst College

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How This Women's Biker Club is Helping Babies in Need

The Sirens Women's Motorcycle Club in New York City is more than a group of women riding choppers. And that's a really good thing for nursing babies who need donated breast milk to survive. The club, which focuses on women's health issues, teamed up with The New York Milk Bank to deliver donor milk to mothers and babies who need it — all for free.

Soaring Over Dubai With a Paralyzed Skydiver

The best way to take in the spectacular Dubai landscape is from 10,000 feet in the air—at least, according to skydiver Jarrett Martin. With over 1,000 jumps in the city under his belt, he should know. After an accident left him without use of his legs, Jarrett didn’t let his love of skydiving wane. Thanks to adaptations made to his landing style and modified equipment, Jarrett is still able to fly high and free.

Sylbo, The Last Speakers of the Lost Whistling Language

In the age of mobile phones, the remaining "speakers" of a dying whistling language try to preserve a vital means of communication over vast distances.

The Environmental Cost of Entertainment

We often look forward to when we can slip from reality into the atmosphere provided by a movie, concert, or football game. But what is the real cost behind the $60 ticket?

As the COP25 summit comes to an inconclusive close and the number of scientific reports being released on the urgency behind climate change continue to increase, action is necessary or disaster is imminent. Some activities are more glaringly environmentally unfriendly. You know driving your car releases pollutants, you can even see it leaving your vehicle. But there is a whole industry built around letting us all escape, being entertained through sports, or movies and music, so we don’t have to think about our problems for a moment. Only these activities have a huge environmental cost.

 Hollywood is an obvious place to start. Movies not only cost millions of dollars to make but are extremely resource dependent. A study found that a single hour of television produced in the UK emits 13 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That is just carbon emissions, separate from food waste from catering, large energy uses on generators, resources used in building sets, and environmental degradation from filming in remote locations. For example, sets are often made out of lauan, a lightweight plywood that is harvested from rainforests. A UCLA study in 2006 found that a single sound stage results in the destruction of 4000 hectares of rainforest. In the US, over 1200 films and television series are produced in a single year. Solutions exist. Non-resources intensive options could be redistributing waste though donations, recycling, and composting. Reducing energy use or finding alternatives, minimizing transportation, and reusing wastewater. Even getting rid of plastic water bottles on film sets would decrease the environmental footprint.

 The music and sport industries do little better. Events that revolve around stadiums, world-class concerts, super bowls, even your average Saturday afternoon college football game, leave wakes of endless energy use, transportation fumes, and trash cans full of uneaten hotdogs and coke cans. A study done by Julie’s Bicycle found that 43% of the music industry’s environmental impact is from audience transportation to the venue. This is even more true at music festivals or sporting events that span multiple days or even weeks. Estimations say that average numbers for a well-attended music festival produce 212,000 pounds of waste per day, use upwards of 16,000 gallons of fuel just to power generators, and over 78,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions just in attendee travel (could be doubled if included staff, artist, vendors, engineering etc.).  For sports, the Olympics are a major environmental question. Not only do more than a half million people travel to one location from every corner over the world, cities take on major reconstruction projects for one event. In Rio, the 2016 Olympics emitted over 3.5 million tons of C02, not including the 7 years of construction, and had major issues with water pollution.

 Even entertainment in our own homes can have a negative environmental effect. Studies show that watching 30 minutes of Netflix is equivalent to driving almost 4 miles. That might not seem like a lot, but if you binge watch all of Harry Potter, that is almost 20 hours of screen time or 160 miles. Maybe on average you stream an hour of television every day that is almost 3000 miles in one year or the equivalent of driving all the way across the US. Spotify is not much better. Transmitting music to streaming sites is thought to generate between 200 to 350 million kilograms of greenhouse gases.  A large portion of Spotify’s carbon footprint comes from data centers, basically the energy that powers the internet. They have recently reduced their emissions by relocating servers to the Google Cloud which uses more renewable energy and buys carbon offsets. Even so, data centers as a whole account for 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

 The entertainment industry is only growing. The increase in access to movies and music through streaming services has dramatically changed the culture surrounding live events. Let’s be conscious about how we choose to consume entertainment. 

DEVIN O’DONNELL’s interest in travel was cemented by a multi-month trip to East Africa when she was 19. Since then, she has continued to have immersive experiences on multiple continents. Devin has written for a start-up news site and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Neuroscience.

Why Food Waste is a Major Issue

And what you can do about it.

Produce is commonly wasted as there is a high preference to purchase based on aesthetics. David Schofield. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Globally, one-third of all food that is produced goes to waste. That is equivalent to 1.3 billion tons of food a year. This is food that is still edible yet is disposed at many points in the supply chain. Food can be commonly lost during harvesting due to lack of infrastructure, poor storage, or unfavorable weather. This is more common in developing countries. In most Western countries the opposite is true, with a higher percentage of losses at the consumer and retail level.

 Consumer losses in the US are often due to inconsistencies in food labeling, improper storage or over-purchasing. The dates placed on food products, often accompanied by a “best by” or a “use by” label, are not regulated by the FDA and vary greatly between states. Often these dates are promoting a level of food quality not food safety, meaning that the food is still safe to eat after the date; it just won’t be at its peak quality. A study done by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic found that more than a third of people always dispose of food by the date and up to 84% occasionally do. A different study estimates that having a standardized food labeling system could reduce food waste in the US by 400,000 tons a year. Additionally, about half of states have restrictions or completely prevent food donations after the “best by” date leading to even more waste from grocery stores with no choice but to discard food. A federal bill first introduced in 2016 would change both of these, if it could get passed into law.

 Another major area of waste in the US is the prepared food industry. This spans past restaurants to include other institutions such as hotels, college cafeterias, and hospitals. A single restaurant makes between 25,000 to 75,000 pounds of waste in a year. 84% of this waste ends up in landfills instead of composting or food donations. In addition, $57 billion is lost by consumer-facing businesses due to food waste.  

 A goal introduced by the UN to cut food waste in half by 2030 would help carbon emissions considerably. Food waste globally contributes to 8% of GHG emissions, putting it on par with road transportation. Cereals, vegetables, and meat have the highest potential for change on a consumer level based on the combined value of carbon footprint and waste percentage. This is especially true in high-income countries. The US has the second highest GHG emissions in the world. Putting in an effort to buy less food, cook less food, and compost waste is an easy way to make a difference on an individual level. As well as supporting organizations that work to redistribute food and restaurants that follow more sustainable practices.

 Food waste is a problem on many levels. It is not just left-over food, but also the accumulation of all the energy, labor, and emissions that went into the product. It is wasted money and lack-of-profit for businesses and the economy. It is food that is not reaching those that need it and it is a major contributor to climate change, but it doesn’t have to be. 

DEVIN O’DONNELL’s interest in travel was cemented by a multi-month trip to East Africa when she was 19. Since then, she has continued to have immersive experiences on multiple continents. Devin has written for a start-up news site and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Neuroscience.

Ethiopia Is Making Maps to Help Improve Soil Health

Healthy soils are vital to human survival. They play a pivotal role in feeding global populations – after all, food is grown in soil. Healthy soils grow more crops and allow for nutrients to be better absorbed by the crops. That’s why it’s important to understand exactly when there might be a problem with the soil of a particular area, and what’s causing it. Without a precise diagnosis, soil can’t be successfully treated.

Soil health is a matter of striking the right combination of chemical, physical and biological properties. Soil is made up of mineral particles including sand, silt and clay; organic matter – such as plant and animal residue – air and water. By looking at these we can determine how healthy, or unhealthy, soil is – for example whether it is able to retain water, store carbon and resist erosion.

In Ethiopia, poor soil health is making it difficult for farmers to grow staple food such as teff, wheat, maize, sorghum, and barley and eke out a living.

This declining soil health has been caused by unsustainable farming practices – such as the use of too much fertiliser or farming on slopes – overgrazing and erosion caused by deforestation, meaning tree roots aren’t holding soil in place. In addition, state ownership of all land in Ethiopia means that farmers are insecure about their tenure and less inclined to invest in the land’s health.

Fortunately, if soils are degraded or starved, they can be treated to restore their balance. But to treat soils, it’s important to first diagnose the soil’s health to ascertain what’s lacking.

To better understand what it would take to increase crop yields in Ethiopia, my colleagues and I set out to get to know the country’s soil. This is part of the Ethiopia Soil Information Service, established with support from World Agroforestry and the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems.

Since its inception in 2012, the project has gathered and catalogued over 100,000 soil samples. From our findings we are able to put together maps which show where there are soil fertility issues and whether (and which) nutrients are missing. This means we have information that better informs land management practices and what fertilisers are needed to fill nutrient gaps.

Healthy, more nutritious soil means that farmers can grow a greater variety of crops. It also puts an end to over-use and degradation: when soil is healthy, farmers no longer need to expand onto previously untouched land when their original plots become exhausted.

Diagnosing soil health

The first step towards diagnosing soil health is understanding what’s wrong.

Soil spectroscopy – a new, light-based technology – makes it easy, fast and cheap to analyse very large numbers of soil samples. By measuring how infrared light, at different frequencies, is absorbed by a soil sample, we get a snapshot of the soil’s organic and mineral contents.

From our analyses we found that the health and fertility of soil varies greatly across the country.

We now know that 96% of Ethiopian soils are either acidic or alkaline – this affects the nutrient levels in soils because a neutral pH is desirable. Acidic or alkaline soils are caused by human factors such as the of the wrong type of fertilisers, and natural processes – some soils are naturally acidic and need to be amended.

The data has also corrected some misconceptions. For example, analyses have shown that soils in some parts of the country are lacking potassium, despite previous beliefs that this nutrient was generally abundant. Potassium encourages plants to grow healthily. It’s associated with the regulation of water within the plant and with the control of water loss from the leaves. It is particularly important in plants that store large amounts of sugar and starch – such as potatoes.

Soil data maps

Our soil data is used to create soil property maps, which show where soil fertility issues exist and whether (and which) nutrients are missing. With this information, decision makers – such as extension officers – can help farmers decide where to restore and better manage soil as well as where, what kind and how much fertiliser to use.

So far, soil fertility status and fertiliser recommendation atlases have been published and handed over to the Amhara, Harari, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region, Tigray regions and Dire Dawa administration. Maps for 300 woredas (districts) of Oromia regional state and the Benishangul-Gumuz and Gambella regions were also completed. The Afar and Somali regional state maps are under production.

Ethiopia is not the only African country building up a picture of its soil. It’s part a continent-wide effort to gather and analyse soil data under what we call the Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS). Under this, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda have all worked to develop their soil information systems, conducting nationwide soil health surveys and developing digital soil resource maps for targeted interventions like sustainable land management practices.

More African countries could do it, but they lack resources, notably manpower. Capital investment in this technology is also a constraint, so is how to make decisions based on data coming out of this technology.

But it’s worth the investment. Governments can use the maps to better target sustainable land management interventions, and smallholder farmers can consult them to make informed decisions on improving their soils.

The ultimate aim is to arm thousands of African farmers with the exact insights that will help them fight soil and land degradation.

Ermias Betemariam is a Land health scientist , World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION