The ocean's fish are on the move in response to climate change. What happens when "your" fish move to someone else's territorial waters? This article from The Independent (UK) looks at new research about fish movement and the impact these movements may have on international fishing agreements. www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/fish-stocks-climate-crisis-disputes-b1996157.html

Europe's record-shattering heat has been in the news, but "Qatar is heating faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, the consequence of being a peninsula surrounded by overheating seas in one of the hottest corners of the world." This article from Geographical (UK) looks at what climate change means for Qatar and how the country is responding: geographical.co.uk/climate-change/climate-and-qatar?

This article from The Wall Street Journal considers what happens when climate change meets the bond market, which in the U.S. alone currently amounts to $4 trillion in municipal bonds plus another $12 trillion in mortgage-backed bonds.

"For centuries, bond investing has boiled down to forecasting two things: which way interest rates are going to move and how likely a borrower is to repay its debts. A handful of startups are betting that to predict repayments in the future, bond analysts will need better data on something they’ve long overlooked—climate risk. The new firms are competing to design algorithms that can predict the likelihood of natural disasters hitting specific towns, industrial parks, even individual buildings, and how much damage they could do. That could become more relevant if wildfires, floods, storms and drought strike more frequently and with greater severity, creating potential new losses for holders of municipal, corporate and mortgage-backed debt. ... 'Eventually this chicken is going to come home to roost,' says the firm’s [risQ's] 34-year-old Chief Executive Evan Kodra.... Paradise, Calif., which was ravaged by the 2018 Camp Fire, disclosed in a March regulatory filing that one of its agencies may default on a $4.8 million bond next year. The town received $219 million from a settlement in 2020 but said it plans to use those funds to rebuild infrastructure instead. ... Over and over, risQ’s model showed that bond markets weren’t discriminating between municipalities with very different climate risk. A school district near California’s wine country has five times the wildfire property-damage risk of a school district a few hours north of Sacramento, for example, but their bonds trade at identical yields, according to risQ research." 
www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-weathermen-forecast-climate-risks-for-bond-markets-11657461236

How much more are you, personally, willing to pay in higher food prices to tackle climate change? That is the essence of the question farmers, governments, and agribusiness are wrangling with in trying to figure out who should bear the costs of changes to farming practices that might rein in greenhouse gas emissions. www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/business/farmers-climate-change.html

This article from MIT Technology Review profiles Hikvision, "the world's biggest surveillance company you've never heard of," and why the U.S. Department of Treasury may be adding it to a very small list of companies everyone, everywhere, is banned from doing business with. Cameras from this Chinese company are currently used in at least 4.8 million networks in 191 countries outside of China, from baby monitors and grocery stores to state-run surveillance systems. www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/22/1054586/hikvision-worlds-biggest-surveillance-company

When lives are on the line, who should be making decisions: artificial intelligence, with its lightning-fast ability to weigh options, or humans? This question is ever-less theoretical, with AI being built into health care systems, criminal justice systems, and, increasingly, weapons systems. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, recently launched its "In the Moment" program, designed to develop defense technology that pairs AI with expert systems to "build trusted algorithmic decision-makers for mission-critical Department of Defense (DoD) operations." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/29/darpa-artificial-intelligence-battlefield-medical-decisions/ (Quote from  www.darpa.mil/news-events/2022-03-03.)

In some ways, the violent re-ordering of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs that flowed from Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947 has overshadowed the violent re-ordering of Jews, Muslims, and Christians that flowed from Israeli independence the following year. Concerned about denialism and "memoricide" of the latter event, the Middle East Institute, a broad-based nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC, has published a new paper based on diplomatic documents in the U.S. archives about what U.S. diplomats knew was happening on the ground in Israel/Palestine in 1948:  www.mei.edu/publications/five-things-united-states-knew-about-nakba-it-unfolded

Reporters Without Borders has released its 2022 assessment of press freedom in 180 countries and territories. Notably, Central and South America saw serious declines in press freedoms over the last year, with Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela all dropping at least 11 (and as many as 39) positions in global rankings. Users can mouse over the map for details or click on the "Analyses 2022" for details: rsf.org/en/index

This recent article by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt about the influence of social media -- described as a "universal solvent, breaking down bonds and weakening institutions everywhere it reached" -- is long but worth a read:

"Historically, civilizations have relied on shared blood, gods, and enemies to counteract the tendency to split apart as they grow. But what is it that holds together large and diverse secular democracies such as the United States and India, or, for that matter, modern Britain and France? Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following 2009. ... But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together. ... A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly 1 billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since. ... First, the dart guns of social media give more power to trolls and provocateurs while silencing good citizens. ... Second, the dart guns of social media give more power and voice to the political extremes while reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority. ... In other words, political extremists don’t just shoot darts at their enemies; they spend a lot of their ammunition targeting dissenters or nuanced thinkers on their own team. In this way, social media makes a political system based on compromise grind to a halt. Finally, by giving everyone a dart gun, social media deputizes everyone to administer justice with no due process. ... When our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we don’t get justice and inclusion; we get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth. ... [Many of America’s key institutions] got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. ... We can never return to the way things were in the pre-digital age. ... And yet American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis."
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369

According to a recent investigative report by The Washington Post, "The pattern is clear: First, the forest is razed. Then the cattle are moved in. If the Amazon is to die, it will be beef that kills it. And America will be an accomplice. Cattle ranching, responsible for the great majority of deforestation in the Amazon, is pushing the forest to the edge of what scientists warn could be a vast and irreversible dieback that claims much of the biome." This map, based on satellite data, shows Brazil's portion of the Amazon River basin and where rainforest has been converted, often illegally, to pastureland: www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2022/05/01/PDTN/a9baa492-b47e-4da0-aa3f-c32911150f4c-2022-04-30_23_24_31-pasture-vs-deforestion.png (from the print edition of www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/amazon-beef-deforestation-brazil/).

The war in Ukraine is bottling up wheat exports and, especially in the southern and eastern parts of the country, damaging winter wheat fields planted last fall and interfering with spring planting. This geo-graphic from Statista highlights the countries most dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat: www.statista.com/chart/27181/least-developed-countries-dependent-on-wheat-from-russia-ukraine

Trying to fill a void in national infectious-disease forecasting in the U.S., the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has launched its new Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics "to develop faster, richer evidence to predict trends and guide decision-making during emergencies." www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0419-forecasting-center.html (The CDC's announcement will probably be greeted with a mixture of relief and skepticism by those who read The Premonition, Michael Lewis's recent nonfiction book about the coronavirus pandemic.)

El Salvador not only made Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021, it is also planning Bitcoin City, a geothermally powered, tax-free city to be funded by Bitcoin-backed bonds at the base of a volcano in the eastern part of the country. According to this recent article from Fortune, Bitcoin City is only one of several initiatives being pitched to Latin American governments by crypto enthusiasts and libertarians advocating for the creation of private, corporate-run city-states to operate outside the legal structure of the nation-state. fortune.com/2022/04/22/crypto-millionaires-building-tax-free-cities-central-america/

Data collected by the Pacific Group and analyzed by Statista finds that water-related conflicts have escalated sharply in the last decade, particularly in Asia and Africa, as this geo-graphic shows: www.statista.com/chart/27272/water-conflicts/  (The full data set is worth exploring to understand the growing range of ways in which water is being weaponized or spurring violence: www.worldwater.org/conflict/list/)

The U.S. recently announced that it will no longer use missiles to destroy defunct satellites -- which scatters orbital debris that then poses collision problems for other satellites and space launches -- and called on other countries to do the same. The U.S. announcement comes ahead of a UN meeting on May 9 that is to be the first ever considering the development of norms and rules to reduce "space threats." www.politico.com/news/2022/04/18/u-s-vows-no-anti-satellite-tests-00026144

Year-over-year prices show inflation running at its fastest pace in 30 years as the economy and consumer spending first contracted sharply in 2020 and then quickly rebounded in 2021. But do even these prices actually reflect the true cost of goods? True Price, a nonprofit organization based in Amsterdam, is working with stores to post two prices on their goods: the price to be paid at the cash register and a price that takes environmental and other externalities into account. Let's say there are two types of apples in the store, and they both have the same posted price. But one type of apple comes from a farm 50 miles away, and the other type comes from across the country (or another hemisphere or is picked by child labor). The "true price" of both apples would also be posted, allowing consumers to make a more informed choice about which apple to buy, not unlike posting calorie information at a fast food restaurant. This article from The New Yorker profiles True Price and other organizations trying to make information about economic externalities more visible to governments and consumers.  www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-much-do-things-really-cost

In the last two years, extremist violence in West Africa has increased significantly in frequency and spread out from its original geographic flashpoints in northeastern Nigeria and central Mali. This map shows the location of 2021 attacks by extremist groups operating in West Africa. The U.S. military and others have observed that "[t]he Islamist militants who have rampaged through the heart of West Africa in recent years are now spreading toward the Gulf of Guinea coast, including some of the continent’s most stable and prosperous countries, ... [with] militant cells infiltrating as far as Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producers." [Quote and map from www.wsj.com/articles/sahel-based-militants-edging-south-toward-west-africas-most-stable-and-prosperous-states-11646221800.]

This article from Popular Mechanics explains the use and specs of the various loitering drones (the so-called "kamikaze" drones because they have no landing gear and are designed to detonate themselves and their explosive payload when they reach their target) currently being used in Ukraine: www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a39517660/kamikaze-drones-in-ukraine/

Where are Ukrainians taking refuge? For now, primarily in neighboring countries. Poland has taken in more than half of the roughly 4 million people who have left Ukraine. This map (like last Thursday's geo-graphic) is from Statista based on data from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/26960.jpeg

As of late last month, an estimated 4 million people had left Ukraine, 9% of the population. This geo-graphic from Statista, based on data from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, puts Ukraine in the context of previous refugee crises since 1960: www.statista.com/chart/27151/largest-refugee-crises-since-1960-by-peak-number-of-refugees

A recent Pew Research Center study asked Americans what they think of artificial intelligence and "human enhancement." The survey asked about "six developments that are widely discussed among futurists, ethicists and policy advocates. Three are part of the burgeoning array of AI applications: the use of facial recognition technology by police, the use of algorithms by social media companies to find false information on their sites and the development of driverless passenger vehicles. The other three, often described as types of human enhancements, revolve around developments tied to the convergence of AI, biotechnology, nanotechnology and other fields. They raise the possibility of dramatic changes to human abilities in the future: computer chip implants in the brain to advance people’s cognitive skills, gene editing to greatly reduce a baby’s risk of developing serious diseases or health conditions, and robotic exoskeletons with a built-in AI system to greatly increase strength for lifting in manual labor jobs." The results are summarized here: www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2022/03/PS_2022.03.17_ai-he_00-01.png  (from www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/ai-and-human-enhancement-americans-openness-is-tempered-by-a-range-of-concerns)

Not surprisingly, Russia has become the most sanctioned country in the world, with nearly 6,000 different sanctions targeting individuals and/or governmental entities. This geo-graphic from Statista looks at the countries with the most international sanctions. cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27015.jpeg

In late February, Ukraine invited foreign fighters to come to the defense of Ukraine and announced the creation of a "foreign legion" to deploy these foreign fighters. Within 10 days, Ukraine said 20,000 people from 52 countries had expressed interest in joining. At the same time, Russia said these foreign fighters would be considered mercenaries, not regular combatants, which not only potentially exempts them from the protocols governing the treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, if Russian history is any guide, it suggests Russian forces may execute them on sight. This article from Foreign Policy examines the history and law surrounding foreign fighters: foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/15/ukraine-war-foreign-fighters-legion-volunteers-legal-status

World Water Day was earlier this week. This map, developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit based on projections from the World Resources Institute, shows anticipated stresses on world water supplies by 2040. The UN defines a territory as water stressed when it has withdrawn 25% of its freshwater resources. The EIU report includes a number of other interesting maps related to too much or too little water around the world.  (Map from impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/water-optimisation/download/water-opt-report-EIU-version.pdf.)  

China's agricultural minister recently announced China is looking at its worst winter wheat harvest since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Although the timing of the announcement is viewed as somewhat odd, China's wheat problems are assumed to be due to heavy rains and flooding in central China that impacted last fall's planting season.  China is the world's largest producer and consumer of wheat. ipad.fas.usda.gov/rssiws/al/crop_production_maps/China/China_wheat.jpg