Youth unemployment in Europe and US

Posted on April 18, 2014 by tess

Are we consigning a whole generation of young people to insecurity and unemployment?

With youth unemployment ranging from 7.5% in Germany to 54% in Spain, conventional wisdom places the blame for high youth unemployment on changes in the labour market, and employers say young people lack the right skills. It is a desperate situation.

UK think tank IPPR has therefore been looking at what works and what doesn’t work in getting young people into jobs. There is a wide variation of experience across Europe, reflecting not just the economic cycle but also differing institutional set-ups and different policy responses. In order to learn what might make a difference, they have looked at the following features in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the USA and drawn comparisons:

Youth unemployment trends
The labour market
Education, training and workforce development
The social safety net
Job training and employment services for youth

The transition from education to full-time employment is managed in a variety of
ways in different European countries, and no one country has got every aspect of it
right. Drawing comparisons between countries, therefore, is a good way of identifying ways to improve the transition from education to work.

Current youth unemployment rates vary considerably across the five countries analysed in this report. The lowest rate is found in Germany, where youth unemployment is 7.5 per cent and the recession has had no discernible effect on it. This is widely attributed to Germany’s ‘dual system’ of vocational education and training. The US (14 per cent), France (26 per cent) and, most alarmingly, Spain (54 per cent) have far higher rates and there have been considerable and fairly consistent increases over the last six years. The Netherlands, having successfully avoided a rise in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash, has also seen a substantial increase in youth unemployment in the last two years – although the rate there is still relatively low at 11 per cent.

Download the IPPR report,States of transition: Youth unemployment, education and labour market policy in Europe and the US, here

Getting Better Acquainted……

Posted on April 15, 2014 by tess

Hello!

My name’s Dave Pickering and I make the weekly podcast Getting Better Acquainted where I record conversations with people I know,

Part interview show, part oral history project, the show was nominated for a 2012 Radio Production Award, goes out regular on Resonance 104.4 FM and was featured on the Radio 5 Live podcast special, Helen and Olly’s Required Listening.

In GBA 41 I got better acquainted with Chris. He was my one of my lecturers at university but I hadn’t seen him since I’d graduated. We talked about academia, journalism, media, the Iraq War and government cuts. It was recorded on a university campus so it was a trip down memory lane where I faced my past lessons and past prejudices.

It’s a conversation about ideas but also about people. Chris charts his journey from plumber to van driver to academic and critic. And he makes the argument for how, in a world so influenced and controlled by the media, media studies is far from being an irrelevant subject.

If you liked this conversation with Chris you might want to check out some of my other conversations, the other conversations with academics are collected here, and there are conversations with all kinds of people available in the main feed fom iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Britain’s efforts to reduce smoking are becoming a cash cow for big tobacco

Posted on April 9, 2014 by tess

E-cigarette advertising campaigns replicate the promises of the old tobacco advertising. The tobacco industry is snapping up e-cigarette companies. So has big tobacco found another lifelong income stream?

This post, by Gerard Hastings, Professor at the Institute for Social Marketing at University of Stirling and Marisa de Andrade, Impact Fellow Institute for Social Marketing at University of Stirling, first appeared on The Conversation website.

A decade ago a heartfelt concern about the addictiveness of nicotine, and the enormous difficulties this presented for would-be quitters, led to an unprecedented investment in intensive smoking cessation services. Beyond Smoking Kills proudly proclaimed year-on-year increases in funding for stop-smoking services and the establishment of centres throughout the country.

Interestingly the argument for doing this was moral rather than epidemiological. The resource-intensity of the services meant there could never be enough people making use of them tonoticeably reduce prevalence. The argument instead was that, given the addictiveness of nicotine, helping smokers battle against it was an ethical imperative.

Clinics were established across the land staffed by highly trained cessation workers who took smokers through a tight, evidence-based protocol which choreographed every detail of their quit attempt, right down to setting the date they would stop, and provided a drug regimen to help them cope with nicotine withdrawal.

Initially this comprised various forms of nicotine replacement therapy – patches, gum, inhalers. But such is the grip of nicotine, other pharmaceutical weapons were deemed necessary, including anti-depressant Bupropion and nicotine suppressor Varenicline.

Pharma ploughs the furrow

These developments were inevitably of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry, which, as Ben Goldacre reminds us, “penetrates British academia and medicine to its absolute core”. NRT is big business and smoking cessation services have turned government into a lucrative customer: the funding increase lauded in Beyond Smoking Kills includes massive payments(over £60m in 2012) to pharma companies for prescriptions.

From a commercial perspective though, the cessation market is flawed. Consumers only use the product for a limited period and the whole point is to speed the moment when they stop using it. This flies in the face of three decades of business research which has emphasised the profitability of customer retention and relationship marketing, and spawned countless loyalty schemes –from club-cards to air-miles. For pharmaceuticals this translates into chronic use. Statins – taken by increasing numbers of healthy over fifties for ever60367-5/fulltext) – are thegold standard.

So pharma’s marketers began searching for a business model built around long-term nicotine replacement therapy. The first step had to be a break in the exclusive link between therapy and cessation, but the industry couldn’t promote such an idea with any credibility. Harm reduction, with its respectable scientific justification for chronic nicotine replacement therapy use, solved the problem neatly. The marketing opportunity was pinioned with a Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency licence extension application for long-term use to reduce harm, and this was granted. Then the pharma cup ran over: the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence explicitly recommendedthat nictoine replacement therapy was suitable for “lifetime use”. Statin heaven.

Now, inevitably, the tobacco industry has gatecrashed this hitherto select party, thanks to the e-cigarette. This brings us back to the marketers, who long ago recognised the power of consumer choice. Let regulators say what they will, let public health officials pontificate as worthily as they can, a product that does not deliver is still going to lose out to one that does. Unfortunately for pharma, replacement therapy cannot provide the instant nicotine spike which gives tobacco such an advantage.

Light-headed policy

The e-cigarette, though still untried and untested, seems to be both reasonably clean and capable of hitting the nicotine spot. It is certainly promoted as such in campaigns that replicate the heights (or depths) of tobacco advertising – extravagant unproven claims, rich imagery and youthful positioning.

And marketers are neither shy nor retiring: the UK market has exploded in the past year with more than 120 trademark applications, and e-cigarettes have been taken in every conceivable commercial direction. So, as well as the desirable alternative-for-adult-smokers pitch, we also have dangerous beat-the-smoking-ban and dual-use offers, lifestyle accessories such as e-shisha, e-cigarettes with taurine, increased modelling of smoking and blatant targeting of the young.

The tobacco industry, having sniffed out this opportunity, is snapping up e-cigarette companies. The latest example is Lorillard’s acquisition of Skycig, giving the US based conglomerate its first major foothold in the British market.

Undreamed of stakeholder marketing opportunities are emerging. British American Tobacco is even seeking a licence for one of its alternative nicotine delivery devices, and has met the regulator“to discuss the potential budgetary implications of using this type of product”. So smoking cessation services may soon be in the deeply conflicted position of prescribing tobacco industry products, and the tobacco industry’s long-standing “divide-and-conquer strategy against the tobacco control movement” will finally start bearing fruit.

This maelstrom of corporate money-making and manoeuvring seems to have left UK tobacco control lightheaded. What else can explain perverse adjudication that the market needs regulating, but that the regulator will do nothing for at least three years.

Likewise, only profound dizziness explains the about face on nicotine which a decade ago was villainous enough to launch a thousand clinics but is now being rehabilitated with the NHS drug regulator as its cheerleader. But it takes real blindness to consider perpetual nicotine use, with all the dependence, disempowerment and regressive inequalities this presumes, to be sound public health policy.

Can money buy happiness?

Posted on April 6, 2014 by tess

Buying things probably won’t bring you happiness, but seeking out experiences might!

So how important, if at all, is having more money for our happiness and well-being? Unsurprisingly this question stimulates a lot of opinion and debate. But are people accurate in their predictions about the benefits of having money?

A new study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology highlights that people are often mistaken in how spending our money might benefit our lives. People are prone to forecasting errors – that is, they mistakenly predict future events to be better or worse than they actually turn out to be.

This post, by Dr Christopher Boyce, Research Fellow at Stirling Management School at University of Stirling first appeared on The Conversation website.

In this latest study the researchers show that people predict that buying material possessions will be a better use of money than spending instead on life experiences. But once the purchases are had, the experience is what’s perceived to have been a better use of money, resulting in higher well-being. More or less, this confirms findings from other studies. And so it seems that a focus on having as opposed to being may limit human potential.

But what does this new study tell us about the importance of money for both happiness and well-being more generally? On the whole money matters much less than people think and has led some to conclude simply that money doesn’t make us happy because we aren’t spending it right.

My own research has also illustrated that we probably don’t spend our money on the things most beneficial for well-being. For example, we have shown that spending on psychological therapy would be an extremely cost-effective way of raising well-being. But, the message from our research is not that we should just spend our money better and that people underestimate the effect of purchasing certain things, as the authors claim in the latest study. Instead, our work highlights just how relatively unimportant money is at raising individual well-being compared to other more important things.

More to life than money

How to spend our money is not the only choice we have – we also have choices as to how we should live our lives and whether in fact we should spend so much time and energy pursuing money in the first place. Thus when we are trying to understand the importance of money for well-being it is one thing to compare types of spending, but really we should be comparing how important money is in relation to other things.

The reality is that how much someone earns contributes very little to their sense of well-being compared with other things such as social relationships, physical and mental health or how a person relates to the world around them. Focusing directly on these factors would probably do much more for our well-being rather than how we chose to spend our money.

We have demonstrated that personality change, for example, contributes substantially more to changes in well-being than income factors. People who, for example, become more open to new experiences or emotionally more stable, are much more likely to experience larger well-being changes than any change to their income.

Being materialistic is well-known to be detrimental to an individual’s well-being. Those that pursue wealth and possessionsconsistently report lower well-being than those that don’t.

So a better question to address than how we should spend our money is: “Why does more money seem to bring us very little well-being even though we often predict otherwise?”

Money and social standing

One reason is that people don’t care about how much money they have per se, but care more about the social position that their income gives them. But increases in an individual’s income won’t necessarily equate to a growth in social standing. And, while people may think that an income increase will bring greater well-being, this may not factor in that everyone else may experience an income increase at the same time.

It’s also been shown that income losses have a much greater impact on well-being than equivalent income gains. This suggests that any benefit that accrues from an income rise, whether at the individual or national level, may be completely wiped out by much smaller income losses. The importance of income is therefore not in obtaining it, but avoiding losing it. Only once it’s obtained does income become essential to maintain your current level of well-being and this may partly explain why it is believed to be so important for well-being.

The question as to whether more money brings greater happiness comes up time and time again and will no doubt continue to do so. Indeed it is an important question and how we spend our money is of course important – if we have money then of course it makes sense to use it wisely. But it would be a mistake to let the pursuit of money for the sake of happiness distract us away from the things in life that simply matter more.

Wild food essential for food security for a billion people

Posted on March 31, 2014 by tess

The wild food trend in wealthy societies has re-acquainted people with the various edible plants to be found in the countryside. But around the world wild foods are relied on by a billion people as a key part of their diet. For those who farm, fish, hunt and forage for a living, undomesticated or semi-domesticated plants and animals are an important source of food routinely or in hard times.

This post by Dr Zareen Pervez Bharucha, Senior Research Officer at Essex University’s Sustainability Institute and Jules Pretty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor of Environment & Society at University of Essex first appeared on The Conversation website

Many of these wild foods are to some degree effectively cultivated, yet are typically neglected in global analyses of food security. But evidence from across the world suggests that several hundred species contribute significantly, especially to the health and well-being of those most vulnerable to poverty and hunger. There are key lessons to be learnt from our two recent reviews in 2010 and 2014 of the use of wild foods, which can highlight some of the reasons why the use of wild foods may be declining, and how to stop that decline.

What’s ‘wild’ and what’s ‘farmed’?

Historically there has always been a continuum rather than any clear distinction between the farmed and the wild, and this remains the case. Useful plants and animals beyond field margins are stewarded to varying degrees. In this way farming, hunting, gathering and nomadism are complementary, with those living on the land using a wide range of practices to manage all three.

Examples of management of the wild includes the sparing of young animals, collecting and scattering of seeds and roots, providing feed to animals and fish, clearing forest glades to assist hunting, and irrigating areas wild plants. Food and other ecosystem goods and services are managed for immediate and long-term benefits. Where non-agricultural environments are no longer actively stewarded in this way, important sources of food, fibre, fodder, medicine and income are put at risk.

Humans have historically used around 7,000 species of wild plants for food, yet more than half the world’s total protein and calorie requirements are met by just three agricultural crops: rice, wheat and maize (corn). Just 12 species contribute 80% of all the world’s dietary intake. Global agriculture is focused on 150 commercialised species, while by contrast those communities that routinely use wild plants enjoy a startlingly diverse diet.

We collated evidence from 31 studies of wild food use in 20 countries in Asia and Africa, and found an average 92 species were used for food. In 12 indigenous communities this rose to 120 species, with the Karen of Thailand using 252 species of plant and 63 types of animal.

The link between the importance of biodiversity conservation and food security for those relying on wild foods is clear, especially where poverty and hunger is rife. In the Sahel, for example, edible desert plants are a source of iron, zinc, calcium and essential fatty acids. For the Ferlo of Senegal, half of wild plants are at least partly edible, providing a source of vitamins A, B2, and C.

Use it or lose it

The availability and use of wild food runs into a number of social and ecological challenges. The effects of climate change will have an impact on the habitats and distribution of some species, for example. And turning more land over to farming food crops in order to increase food production often leads to loss of biodiversity around farmed areas which, perversely, affects the availability of long-established wild food species.

Many communities across the world are losing the local knowledge necessary to be able to select, manage and use uncultivated species. Groups that historically have lived mostly off the land are having to rely more and more on food purchased from shops. For example, across the circumpolar North researchers have documented the negative impact on healththis has had due to inadequate micronutrients and excessive sugar and fats.

The future of wild foods

Our reviews underline the importance of linking up policies for food, poverty and biodiversity conservation. As 16 of the world’s biodiversity hotspots overlap with areas of hunger and malnutrition, policies need to tackle many issues at once. Those policies designed either to protect biodiversity or increase food production may have unintended perverse consequences for both. One way to address this is effective community-level management of biodiverse areas – between 400,000 and 500,000 community groups were formed between the early 1990s and 2000s to manage watersheds, forests, irrigation, pests and fisheries.

Broadening the focus of agricultural policy away from just production and looking at nutritional security rather than food security would open up the way to promote sustainable intensification of existing farmland which would better preserve a wealth of species biodiversity, on and off the farm. Cultural and agricultural revitalisation projects can focus on reconnecting with traditional food cultures and ecological knowledge.

With wild foods contributing vitally to many agricultural communities, and especially subsistence farmers, conservation and agricultural policies should aim to support objectives in both areas – helping conserve landscapes, improve food security, and promoting sustainable livelihoods.

The picture shows the Palo Verde tree found in Mexico, which has edible beans.

At last! Same sex marriage legal in UK

Posted on March 30, 2014 by tess

Dr Leanne Smith, Senior Lecturer in Law at Cardiff University writes: This weekend the implementation of the Marriage (Same Sex) Couples Act 2014 finally makes gay marriages legal.in the UK. Across newspapers and social networks, the images of happy couples bear a striking resemblance to those published nine years ago. In 2005, the first civil partnerships took place.

This post first appeared on The Conversation website.

Because the language of civil partnerships was never comfortably absorbed into popular consciousness, civil partners and commentators commonly discussed them using terms such as “husband”, “wife”, “wedding” and even “marriage”. Consequently, observers might be forgiven for wondering what has actually changed. The paradoxical answer is: not very much at all – but also a great deal.

In terms of their legal consequences, civil partnerships are almost identical to marriage, so practically speaking, the same-sex marriages will make little difference to most couples. Neither has the advent of same-sex marriage radically altered the institution of marriage.

While the definition of marriage has changed from explicitly heterosexual to gender neutral, this is not revolutionary. The legal definition of marriage has been altered many times in the history of English law; changes have facilitated divorce, introduced separate concepts of civil and religious marriage, and recognised wives as the equals of their husbands. The introduction of gay marriage simply confirms the fact that marriage is an evolving institution, not a static historical or religious concept.

Some argue that their personal religious understanding of marriage is undermined and threatened by the legalisation of gay marriages. It is difficult to understand how this is so. Religious groups ceased to have a monopoly on the meaning of marriage when civil marriages were introduced in 1836, and care has been taken in drafting the same-sex marriage legislation to ensure that no religious group or individual can be compelled to sanction or carry out a same-sex marriage.

So, upon an inspection of its consequences, same-sex marriage looks rather insignificant. Yet for large numbers of people, both gay and straight, its importance cannot be overestimated. For many, the explicitly “separate but equal” relationship recognition scheme represented by civil partnerships was symbolically demeaning. It suggested that gay relationships were not worthy of the institution of marriage, which occupies such a central place in our society.

This was not just a subjective perception: back in 2004, the decision to legislate for civil partnership rather than same-sex marriage was a political expedient devised precisely because many did think gay relationships should not be treated as equivalent to marriage. A same-sex marriage bill would have attracted considerably stronger opposition and might never have passed; civil partnerships were very much a compromise. But it was unrealistic to suppose that they would be the final word in the legal recognition of same-sex relationships – and they have begun to look increasingly anachronistic and unsatisfactory, especially as other countries have legislated for full marriage rights.

I will be delighted to attend my first gay marriage ceremony later this year. I know that symbolically, and perhaps emotionally, the marriage will be worth a great deal more than a civil partnership would have been for the couple and many of the guests. The feeling that “you can’t beat the real thing”, which will bring added joy to many a gay marriage celebration in the coming months, is one I will share.

But I will struggle to empathise with those who bemoan the advent of gay marriage. Ultimately, no institutions, religions, lifestyles or individuals have been harmed with the passing of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act. The advent of gay marriage changes virtually nothing – but by validating gay relationships, it will transform lives and spread happiness. That seems like cause for celebration indeed.

Freedom of Expression Awards 2014

Posted on March 23, 2014 by tess

“Freedom of expression is the ultimate freedom. It means the freedom to live, to think, to love and be loved, to be secure, to be happy….”

So said Pakistani campaigner Shahzad Ahmad accepting the Advocacy Award at this year’s Freedom of Expression Awards in London last week.

Shahzad Ahmad (photo: Alex Brenner)

Index on Censorship annual awards ceremony, honours the bravery, and dogged determination of campaigners, journalists and digital activists around the world who put their passion and commitment to free speech before their own personal safety, who challenge governments, gangs, and corporate interests who threaten freedom of expression.

Our podcast gives you a brief insight into the courage of the nominees, and finishes with a great song from Egyptian hip hop artist Mayam Mahmoud (pictured) who addresses issues such as sexual harassment and women’s rights in Egypt through her music. Mayam won the Arts Award. You’ll find more information on the Awards on the Index website.

Advocacy Award nominees

Colectivo Chuhcan, a mental health pressure group from Mexico
Rommy Mom, Nigeria’s leading human rights lawyer
Generation Wave Institute from Burma who promote democratic engagment in Burma
Shahzad Ahmad, cyber freedom activist from Pakistan (winner)

Journalism Award nominees

Abdulelah Haider Shaye imprisoned for reporting on drone strikes in Yemen
Callum Macrae and C4 News who documented the truth about Sri Lankan Human Rights abuses
Azadliq – one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Azerbaijan (winner)
Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras for their work on the NSA surveillance
Dina Meza and investigative journalist from Honduras

Digital Activism nominees

Edward Snowden who leaked the documents uncovering the mass surveillance by NSA and GCHQ
Free Weibo, the uncensored version of China’s social network, SinaWeibo
Shubhranshu Choudhary who set up a mobile phone news service in rural India (winner)
Tails, a free open source encryption tool that protects journalists and sources in any country

Arts Award nominees (this section was introduced by playwright Howard Brenton, who you can hear on the podcast)

David Cecil, imprisoned in Uganda for producing a ‘pro-gay’ play
Meltem Arikan, playwright, whose play ‘Mi Minor’ enraged the Turkish Government
Lucien Bourjeily, Lebanese playwright who confronted the Lebanese Censorship Bureau
Mayam Mahmoud, Egyptian hip artist and women’s right campaigner (winner)

Photo of Mayam Mahmoud by Alex Brenner

Mayam’s song

Girls in our society are divided
Into those who wear the niqab, those who wear the veil
And those who are in between
There are a lot of cases that depend on the girl
How she dresses
And how she looks
But this is not the rule
How can you judge me
By my hair or by my veil?
If one day you look at me
I am not going to be the one
Hiding her/my embarrassment
You cat call and you harass
Thinking this is right not wrong
Even if these are words
This is not the kind of treatment
These are stones
It is not her clothing that is inappropriate or wrong
It’s this way of thinking which is
Sometimes the clothing is too much
But you are the one to blame
One look can be could hurt
And it is not right of you to be staring
You deserve to be slapped twice on the face
Femininity in Egypt is divided into two parts
There is a difference between what men and women consider
And both are wrong
Who said that femininity is about dresses
Femininity is about intelligence and intellect
It is also about the way she was raised
And her religiosity
Girls have lost confidence in themselves
Now she puts in makeup
And dresses in different colours on top of each other
The problem is not with the girl
The problem is with the society that influences the girl every second
If you ask girls if they have good taste in dressing
They will say yes we have
But our lives can not be described
Our lives have become very materialistic
And everyone wants something that would endure
You get what you pay for
The expensive things are better than the cheap.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Conservation: rewilding and habitat restoration

Posted on March 20, 2014 by tess

Is ‘rewilding’ a crazy idea involving re-introducing woolly mammoths or other species that have long since disappeared? Or is it a way of managing our wildernesses into the future? And what about rewilding in the global south?

This post, by Meredith Root-Bernstein, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford first appeared on The Conversation on 19 March 2014

______________________________

Rewilding is considered one of the crazier ideas in contemporary conservation. The idea of resurrecting woolly mammoths and setting them loose in Siberia and the American Great Plains or lions roaming through central Europe is pretty mad. Mostly though, rewilding is much less barmy to the point of being conventional.

Rewilding projects tend to have some features in common that distinguish them from your typical conservation programme. These include, reintroducing a species (such as elephants) or introducing a proxy species (such as elephants in the place of extinct woolly mammoths). They also often seek to restore the ecology of the location (such as by creating a new habitat type or by improving the existing one) and tend to have a significant social impact as a result of the species reintroduction and habitat restoration.

To a large degree, we already know how to do habitat restoration and species reintroductions. The interesting challenge and innovative potential of rewilding comes from combining these three elements of restoring and reintroducing a species, and closely interacting with society in the process.

There are many approaches to rewilding, each drawing on the regional problems and conservation specialities of different places. In Europe, megaherbivores such as deer, horses and bison have commonly been used to create and maintain certain habitats in abandoned or reclaimed land. In the US, rewilding has focused on reintroducing threatened and iconic species such as wolves. Rewilding commonly uses species that play into cultural legacies and landscapes of the region.

North-South divide

Interestingly, there has been almost no discussion to date of what rewilding would look like in the global South. We tend to think that the South still has plenty of primary forest and pristine wilderness, constituting conservation priorities: why “re-” wild when it is already “genuinely” wild? In many cases, of course, these “pristine” habitats formed relatively recently after human activity or natural disasters.

It is also not the case that all conservation priority areas in developing countries are being well conserved under current approaches. Places that are not scenic or that host human activity are less likely to be designated as parks and reserves. For example the semi-arid caatinga forest in northern Brazil is highly threatened, but little effort is made to protect it.

This is also the case with the espinal savanna in central Chile. The three-pronged approach of rewilding can provide an innovative method of conservation in some of these overlooked habitats of the Southern Hemisphere.

Guanacos in the Chilean espinal

In collaboration with researchers at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Universidad de Chile, I am working on one of the first rewilding projects in South America. We started with the question of how to better manage and adequately conserve the espinal, a common savanna of central Chile.

The Chilean Espinal is dominated by a South American acacia called “espino” (“thorn tree”) and is traditionally used to pasture sheep, goats and cattle. Chileans think of the espinal as lacking wildlife and other natural values, often describing it as “empty.” However, from a biological point of view, central Chile is a hotspot of unique native species, and the only mediterranean-type habitat in South America.

If well-managed, espinals can have abundant biodiversity of flowers, birds, small mammals and other species. Being semi-arid, it is important that shade from trees is maximised to improve productivity. We know that the espino is stimulated to grow more when it is pruned, which creates more shade.

Guanacos restore the espinal. Meredith Root-Bernstein

This trait, called compensatory growth, is likely to be an adaptation to it having been pruned (eaten) by a megaherbivore in the past – one that is no longer present in espinal. We think that this missing species is the guanaco.

Guanacos are a relative of llamas and were hunted out of central Chile 500 years ago. Our project will return them from Southern Chile to espinal to study their foraging on the trees, how the trees grow in response and how the ecosystem responds.

Restoring espinals will have wider effects on the area too. They should increase the productivity of sheep, goat and cattle ranching. Guanaco wool is also a valuable comodity and can betraded internationally under the CITES convention. Plus, our research so far shows that guanacos are well-liked and their presence in espinal landscapes would increase the Chilean public’s appreciation of and interest in visiting espinals to see endemic wildlife.

The goal of guanaco rewilding in the espinal is to establish a new conservation strategy in central Chile – where wild animals and sustainable, high-quality agriculture can coexist. We aim to provoke a re-evaluation of the area, by working within local values and preferences. We hope that the guanaco will become the flagship for conservation action in central Chile. And perhaps also the flagship for new visions of rewilding around the world.

Mubarak’s Egypt: nexus of criminality

Posted on March 19, 2014 by tess

The revolution which began in Egypt in January 2011 may be a unique example
worldwide of popular engagement in political action. For month after month
millions of people have participated in street protests, strikes, occupations,
community mobilizations and electoral campaigns. When archives of the revolution
are finally examined it seems likely that the scale, range and continuity of these
initiatives will show the Egyptian upheaval to be unmatched in modern history….

We are publishing this blog as a companion piece for our podcast by Ahdaf Souief, Egypt: the ongoing revolution. It is an extract from an article by Professor Philip Marfleet, of the School of Law and Social Sciences (LSS), University of East London which analyses how, with the encouragement of international financial institutions and Western governments, the Egyptian state of Hosnei Mubarak became a means of channeling public resources into private hands, using complex relations of privilege among officials and oligarchs.

The article, Mubarak’s Egypt – Nexus of Criminality, was first published in the State Crime Journal published by Pluto Press, which is administered by the International State Crime Initiative at Kings College London.

Here is the extract from Phil Marfleet’s paper, the full text of which is in the State Crime Journal. You can find the rest of the article here.

_________________

….Many untimely obituaries have declared the [Egyptian] revolution to be over, the peoples’ energies exhausted and their aspirations unfulfilled.

But drawing on a deep reservoir of resources including anger, hope, confidence and creativity, activists have defied all expectations. At the time of writing, in July 2013, there was no sign that the process was coming to an end: indeed, the unprecedentedly large demonstrations of 30 June 2013, said to have involved some 17 million people in protests against the presidency of Mohamed Mursi, suggested that the movement of the streets was continuing with vigour.2

This article considers a motivating force for the Egyptian upheaval: the struggle for justice after decades of rule by a
state synonymous with crime. Above all, the Egyptian revolution is a contestation
of state deviancy in all its forms, in which the mass of the people have applied
their own sanctions to dictatorship, terror, corruption, dispossession and theft. The
article focuses on networked criminality characteristic of the Mubarak regime –
the nexus of deviant practices centred on the state and its domestic agendas but
which have also embraced governments and agencies worldwide.
Egypt is one of many states in which public institutions have been used
increasingly openly against the population at large. Since the colonial era a series
of Egyptian regimes has monopolized power, inhibited development of civil
society and violated human rights, including basic rights to which the Egyptian
state is formally committed. Egypt’s rulers have had much in common with their
peers across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and with the practices of some
states of the Global North. What makes Egypt distinct, however, is the emergence
since the 1970s of networks of criminality centred on the state, and which have
been endorsed and sustained continuously by international bodies with full
knowledge of their impact on the mass of the population. Here, deviant practices
of the Mubarak state are part of an agenda for global development supervised
by transnational financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the World Bank. Egypt was among the first post-colonial states to
adopt neo-liberal policies introduced by these agencies during the 1970s: 40
years later the regime that emerged with their support was widely seen as a
criminal enterprise which required removal by means of direct intervention by
the people.“uprising against Crime”

Writing in 2012, the independent film-maker Philip Rizk argued that Egypt’s
revolution was “an uprising against crime… This crime was structural and
legalised – made legal by the political leadership of Egypt and their friends and
business partners that practise it” (Rizk 2012). Husni Mubarak came to power in
1981, inheriting a regime that was already centralized, elitist and authoritarian,
and tied to commercial interests focused on speculative activity and short-term
business gains – the “fat cat” associates of his predecessor as president, Anwar
Sadat (Hirst and Beeson 1981). Mubarak confirmed and strengthened these
links; he also launched a programme of economic reform that abandoned public
ownership of much of the economy and dismantled the welfare state. By the 1990s,
Egypt had become a laboratory for neo-liberal policies promoted by governments
of the Global North and by transnational financial agencies including the IMF and
the World Bank. Mubarak and his collaborators embraced these approaches with
enthusiasm: the president shortly became one of the agencies’ global exemplars
and Egypt “an IMF poster child” (Mabrouk and El-Bakry 2004). In 2008 the World
Bank’s International Finance Corporation declared Egypt its global “top reformer”
(Doing Business 2008). A minority of Egyptians associated with Mubarak and his
networks of patronage were rapidly enriched while an unprecedented proportion
of the population fell below official poverty lines, as social inequality became
more and more marked (Marfleet 2009).

Mubarak’s reforms met with resistance. Countless local struggles in industry,
on the land, on campuses and at the community level gave expression to their
impact on the mass of people. The regime responded with increasing aggression.
Using Emergency Laws introduced in 1981 it targeted all those who challenged
the reforms, so that Mubarak’s economic agenda was imbricated with the political
practice of the state itself. For the majority of people, the state in its many forms
– known as al-nizam (“the order”) – was experienced as an intrusion into all areas
of life. Backed by a largely compliant judiciary and by military courts, the police
and security networks operated with extreme violence – in the streets, workplaces,
campuses and every area of formal and informal political life. As Rizk (2012)
asserts, the state itself had become a crime – one “made legal” by those who
directed it at home and those who supported and encouraged it among powerful
institutions abroad.

The revolution which began on 25 January 2011 was remarkable for both the
scale of mobilization and the expressiveness of those involved. A striking feature
of public protests was the range of banners, placards, leaflets, chants, poems,
songs, graffiti, street paintings and installations, among which the twin themes of
criminality and of justice featured prominently in words and images. Numerous
home-made notices declared against Mubarak “the thief”, against corruption and
“mafia”. The uprising was not only, however, a means of removing a dictator: it
was also an attempt to settle accounts with the regime as a whole and to summon
publicly new means of political engagement. Gribbon and Hawas (2012: 113)
note that, “Demands for ‘justice’ and ‘dignity’ were therefore central to the
revolution.” The search for justice has been expressed in widespread campaigns
of tathir – “cleansing” – with efforts to remove local officials, police chiefs,
managers of industrial and commercial enterprises, and trade union leaders linked
to the Mubarak regime. Numerous demonstrations have targeted police stations
and security headquarters associated with torture and abuse, with the aim of
securing records which can be used to bring perpetrators to justice. Thousands of
prosecutions have been brought against leading figures of the former regime and
against feloul – those said to be “remnants” of the Mubarak order. Egyptians have
challenged “the very notion of the ‘state’ and what it means to be a citizen and to
call for government accountability” (Gribbon and Hawas 2012: 112).

The Arabic term most often used since 2011 to describe the former president
and his order is baatil – false, invalid, worthless. In hundreds of protests across
Egypt the Mubarak state has been declared illegitimate. Green and Ward (2000:
76) observe that when states are considered in the context of popular legitimacy,
their conduct – including violations of domestic and international law – comes into
focus. They comment: “A state’s legitimacy must be considered in terms of the
state’s relationship to civil society and to other states, as well as of class relations
within the state” (Green and Ward 2000: 76). In the case of Egypt the uprising
of 2011 gave striking evidence of the absence of legitimacy; at the same time
it created public space within which policies and practices of the state could be
examined critically. Since the fall of Mubarak there has been a flowering of civil
society, with establishment of a host of political parties, independent trade unions,
student unions, professional associations, human rights bodies and community
groups. Most share a commitment to social justice (Arabic – ‘adala ijtamaia) and
to continuing vigilance vis-à-vis forces of the state, often expressed in the slogan:
“We’re never going back” (to the Mubarak order).

Most maintain an assertively critical stance in relation to the state itself: notwithstanding differences in policy, strategy and tactics, this remains a unifying feature of the popular movement.

It is within the space created by their political agency that the mass of Egyptians
assess the Mubarak order and the regimes which preceded it. It is their agency,
expressed through countless acts of resistance, that brings into focus the conduct ofthe state and prompts enquiry into state power and state practices. Criminologists
have recently recognized the importance of resistance in highlighting institutional
deviance and what Stanley and McCulloch (2013: 2) call “everyday harms and
violence that are embedded within the fabric of society”.6

The present article draws upon these insights and upon recent work in Contemporary History, International
Political Economy and Development Studies. It examines Egypt in the context of
Marxist approaches to the modern state as described by Engels (1968: 577) – as a
“public power” which rests ultimately upon bodies organized to mobilize force and
on “prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds”. In this sense the modern state
– the capitalist nation-state – is never benign. It is an expression of class relations:
of the determination of those who enjoy a disproportionate share of wealth
and who exercise hegemonic influence over the wider society to maintain their
privilege. Not all states, however, are engaged in continuous, systematic activity
to deny human freedoms and general well-being. Many are subject to pressures
from below which constrain the agendas of ruling classes and some conform to
principles – including those identified in international agreements on human rights
– which may modify their conduct (albeit inconsistently) in relation to the wider
society.

In the case of Egypt, the state has been increasingly uninhibited in its
use of violence, transgressing principles of human rights and standards of public
conduct formalized in law locally and internationally. These developments have
taken place as successive regimes embraced policies for economic development
championed by international bodies notionally committed to the same laws and
principles. It is here that the popular verdict on Mubarak – baatil – also raises
questions about the legitimacy of key actors on the world stage, raising challenging
issues about the nature of state crime in an era of global change.

Sound thinking: podcasts of current research

Author Archives: tess