In the lead-up to the federal budget, there’s much focus on what the government will do to address cost-of-living pressures for households amid rising inflation and interest rates.

Research shows where those cost-of-living stresses are greatest. It’s not the vast bulk of middle-income Australia, but working-age welfare recipients.

It’s against this backdrop that the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee recently handed its 2026 report to government. It’s the fourth report in a row to recommend a substantial increase to JobSeeker: the payment that around 900,000 mostly unemployed, working-age Australians receive.

As everyday essentials get more expensive, this is the cohort that requires the most urgent attention in next week’s budget.

Read more: What does disadvantage look like in Australia? New research shows who’s struggling most

$272 extra per fortnight

The JobSeeker payment is the social security payment that is paid to working-age people, many of whom are unemployed. Some recipients are employed (likely on a part-time or casual basis) and some are not in the labour force.

The payment is heavily means-tested with a tight income test, an assets test and a liquid assets test, ensuring people eat away at their savings before receiving it.

While on the payment, recipients are often subject to “mutual obligations” requiring them to look for work and undertake training or other related activities.

In each of its last four reports, the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has given the government the same recommendation. It suggests the payment be increased from its current rate of around $808.70 per fortnight to around 90% of the age pension – around $1,080.80. This would be a lift of around $272 per fortnight.

In 2023, the government did increase the payment by $40 a fortnight, which followed a slightly more generous increase by the former Morrison government of $50 per fortnight.

The payment is adjusted for inflation every six months. With strong inflation recently, these substantial increases have been largely cancelled out by cost of living increases. They don’t raise the payment in “real” (after inflation) terms.

No ‘real’ relief

The committee’s reports have considered a range of evidence to show that the payment is too low.

The primary concern is that living standards, wages and many other welfare payments have increased since the early 1990s by substantially more, as they match up to an economy that has grown substantially in “real” terms. JobSeeker recipients have missed out on the living standards growth of the Australian economy.

JobSeeker recipients also have much higher rates of financial stress than the rest of the population – around six times that of non-welfare recipients and ten times that of age pensioners.

The committee also heard from people who survive on the payment. These people have struggled financially, physically and mentally, linking some of these issues to the low rate of payment.

A short-term payment?

As the JobSeeker payment has become relatively less generous over time, the committee’s research also found it to be less fit for purpose.

The length of time people spend on the payment is increasing. This is likely because recipients are increasingly “partial capacity to work” recipients – those deemed by the government to have a limited capacity to work due to illness or physical disability.

In theory, JobSeeker is supposed to be a short-term payment. The payment is frugal by design, with the goal of incentivising people to work. Given it’s short-term, the payment doesn’t have to be as high as ongoing support payments, such as the age pension.

However, the structure of the payment has changed. In the 2024-25 financial year, around 30% of recipients were on the payment for five or more years. In 2012-13, this figure was around 20%.

An increasing share of recipients are unable to work full-time hours. The share of people only working part-time roughly doubled to 40% between 2012 and 2024.

This all calls into question the assumption that JobSeeker recipients have (or should have) short spells on the payment before quickly finding employment and shifting off the payment.

These are the options

It’s important that welfare payments, particularly for working-age people, are designed to ensure a strong incentive to find work. But these payments should also be decent enough to get by.

The Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has made it quite clear that is not the case at the moment. It hasn’t been for several decades.

In designing cost-of-living relief for Australian households, the clearest need is for greater assistance to working-age welfare recipients.

While politically popular, recent attempts at cost-of-living relief, such as petrol excise cuts or energy rebates, are largely directed at people who would get by regardless and have little need for such assistance. These programs also work against the direction of monetary policy from the Reserve Bank.

Read more: Halving the fuel excise is smart politics, but flawed policy

Increasing the JobSeeker payment to the suggested 90% rate would cost around $6 billion per year. This is a permanent cost to the budget.

But the committee’s report provides a number of alternatives that cost roughly half this over the forward estimates (2026-29 financial years).

The first approach is to gradually increase the rate each year until it reaches 90% of the age pension by 2029.

A second approach would be to vary JobSeeker according to how many hours a person had a “partial capacity to work”, with more support for those who can work less.

These approaches don’t provide the ideal level of support, but would still provide substantially better immediate support to those most in need on the payment.

To date, the response from the Albanese government to the cost of living crisis has been mostly spread widely rather than targeted towards those most in need. Tuesday’s budget is an opportunity to fix a major problem with the welfare system for the most disadvantaged that has been well documented for decades.

Read more: By avoiding means testing, the government is giving handouts to the rich

Ben Phillips is a member of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee.

In April, the United Kingdom passed landmark laws that aim to create a “smokefree generation”. This means anyone born on or after January 1 2009 can never legally be sold tobacco products.

The law is a triumph for public health. And it puts the financial interests of the tobacco industry in the rear window.

Compare this to what happened on May 4, at a Senate inquiry into the illegal tobacco crisis in Australia. Tobacco giant Philip Morris Limited was not only invited to give evidence, but was permitted to do so behind closed doors without any public scrutiny.

Neither the original nor the revised speakers list mentions Philip Morris even appearing at the committee hearing.

Philip Morris was also permitted to give evidence behind closed doors to a New South Wales state parliament inquiry into the illegal tobacco trade in late February.

Having these sessions behind closed doors means Philip Morris could lobby privately for policies that would directly benefit the company, such as cutting tobacco taxes. It also allows Philip Morris to raise matters beyond what was included in its public submission.

Because Philip Morris’s testimonies were given behind closed doors, the media and the public have been unable to gauge the expertise of the witnesses who appeared. Nor can other witnesses and experts interrogate the evidence and policy advice the company presented to committee members.

Participating in regulatory review processes such as parliamentary inquiries isn’t the only way the tobacco industry tries to influence political decision-making. Tobacco companies deploy a number of strategies and interference techniques.

Here are the three most powerful tactics they use in Australia.

1. Political donations

The National Party is the last major Australian political party to accept tobacco industry political donations and membership fees. In 2024-25, the Nationals received A$137,500 from Philip Morris and $88,000 from British American Tobacco.

Labor stopped accepting donations from the tobacco industry in 2004 and the Liberal Party followed in 2013. The Greens have never accepted tobacco industry donations.

Australia has strong laws banning any sort of commercial sponsorship by tobacco and e-cigarette companies. But an exemption is granted for gifts, reimbursements and donations to politicians and political parties during election periods.

National peak health bodies have called for a universal, mandatory end to tobacco industry political donations. This is needed to protect public health from these vested interests.

2. Revolving door of lobbyists

The “revolving door” is when employees and elected representatives move back and forth and between positions in government and industry.

This lobbying tactic aims to gain and share insider knowledge of the policymaking process, develop ties and relationships with influential people, and establish quid pro quo contributions to industry. This could include pushing for policies such as reduced tobacco taxes and liberalised vaping regulations.

A research paper we co-authored found tobacco companies strategically use the revolving door to influence public health policy in Australia.

Almost half (48%) of internal tobacco company lobbyists and 55% of third-party lobbyists working on behalf of tobacco companies had held positions in the Australian government before or after working for the tobacco industry.

Many of these people moved into lobbying positions within one year of working in public office. This is despite the cooling-off periods outlined in the Lobbying Code of Conduct. These require a minimum of 12 months for senior public service and parliamentary employees, and 18 months for ministers and parliamentary secretaries, before taking up lobbying roles.

A 2024 parliamentary inquiry on lobbyist access to Australian Parliament House acknowledged the need for greater transparency. It recommended some improvements to processes and disclosures.

However, it did not endorse other significant recommendations that would have limited tobacco industry influence, such as not allowing former ministers and their staff to lobby their colleagues for the benefit of harmful industries.

3. Consultants and third-party organisations

A key tobacco industry tactic for resisting tobacco control is to recruit supposedly independent experts who are critical of tobacco control measures.

This practice can be extended to engaging seemingly neutral third parties, or creating new front groups or supposed advocacy groups, to push tobacco industry arguments and agendas.

In Australia, Philip Morris was exposed for funding a front group for vape retailers. It spent millions on external lobbyists to undermine vaping policy reforms ahead of a 2020 Senate inquiry.

British American Tobacco also subsequently set up and financed Responsible Vaping Australia – an astroturf campaign. This is where an industry-funded organisation is created to appear to represent the common concerns of everyday citizens. This particular campaign included paid social media advertisements that linked to a petition to allow retailers to sell nicotine vaping products.

Australian consultants linked to the commercial nicotine industry have advised on illicit tobacco solutions and policies both here and internationally.

Protecting public health

Australia is a party to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This includes a provision, known as Article 5.3, that requires public officials to protect public health policies “from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry”.

Despite this requirement, Australia’s political processes remain acutely vulnerable to tobacco industry interference and influence.

All Australian governments need to commit to full transparency and accountability when engaging with the tobacco industry. Offering secret meetings to nameless individuals, under the guise of tobacco company employee safety and protection, is unethical.

This kind of secrecy is also disrespectful to the 24,000 Australians killed every year by the products this industry sells.

Becky Freeman is an expert advisor to the Cancer Council tobacco issues committee, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) e-cigarette advisory committee, and a member of the Cancer Institute vaping communications advisory panel. She has received relevant competitive grants and funding from the Australian Department of Health Disability and Ageing, NHMRC, Medical Research Future Fund, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, Cancer Council NSW, and Healthway WA.

Christina Watts has received funding from the Australian Department of Health Disability and Ageing, NSW Health, Cancer Council NSW and Cancer Council Australia for work relating to e-cigarette and tobacco control.

Australians spend more money per capita on education than most comparable nations. We should have high levels of literacy – but we don’t.

NAPLAN results indicate one in three primary and secondary students do not meet basic national standards in reading and writing. The picture is likely worse for adults.

The most recent data we have is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2013 survey assessing adult competencies. It found 44% of Australian adults have literacy skills below the “necessary proficiency level for navigating modern work and life”. In other words, they were functionally illiterate.

If we assume 44% Australians adults are still functionally illiterate, this means around 9.4 million people lack the skills needed to meet “the demands of everyday life and work in a complex, advanced society”. This is a national disgrace for such a wealthy country.

Functional literacy is now widely recognised as a human right. When we think of human rights, we typically think of physical needs such as safe food, water, shelter and medicine. But meeting these needs is increasingly dependent on the ability to read and write, for instance through using text-based apps to manage our personal finances, social lives and learning.

Millions of Australians, both children and adults, struggle with literacy.

In this series, we explore the challenges of reading in an age of smartphones and social media – and ask experts how we can become better readers.

Improving functional literacy in adults may be Australia’s biggest literacy challenge. In 2021, there was a government inquiry into adult literacy. Responding to the inquiry’s list of recommendations, the government outlined a list of initiatives that either already existed or it planned to put in place.

How well are these initiatives doing? It is hard to know. The Australian government temporarily withdrew from the OECD’s most recent literacy study for data security reasons, instead opting to conduct its own “Survey of Adult Skills in Australia”. However, that survey has since been outsourced to a commercial polling company, Roy Morgan.

The results are due in late 2026. Until then, we lack up-to-date estimates of adult functional literacy levels in Australia and the ability to objectively assess if current policies and programs are proving effective.

What can be done?

Such a big problem needs a highly effective solution. In principle, this solution is straightforward: we need to accelerate the delivery of evidence-informed literacy assessment, explicit instruction and targeted intervention for children, teens and adults across Australia.

In practice, this solution is far more complex.

Let’s start with children. Ideally, every primary school in Australia would build a multi-tiered system of support for literacy. This will ensure all children receive evidence-informed, explicit instruction in foundational literacy skills, such as phonics, the ability to translate letters into sounds to decode written words, and morphology, the ability to use the smallest units of meaning within words to read words.

If a child fails to respond to this instruction, they should receive additional help, in a small group or individually. It is very heartening to see numerous primary schools across Australia starting to build this kind of system to support literacy, but they are still in the minority

This same approach should be used by secondary schools to support teens who struggle with functional literacy. However, it is more difficult to build a multi-tiered system for literacy in secondary schools, which lack the time, expertise and resources to support the large number of incoming students who need this help.

Secondary schools have traditionally been designed to teach subjects such as English or English literature on the assumption students who arrive will already be literate.

Thankfully, some secondary schools are breaking through these barriers to establish a support system for literacy, but it is extremely hard work. They need more support.

When it comes to adult literacy, no single system in Australia supports adult learning.

Gaps in support for adult literacy are mainly supported by not-for-profit independent organisations offering tutoring, programs, resources, referrals, professional learning and advocacy. They include the Australian Council for Adult Literacy, Adult Learning Australia, Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, Literacy for Life Foundation and Read Write Now.

While these organisations undoubtedly do a wonderful job, it is unlikely they can accommodate the needs of the many millions of adults who are functionally illiterate. The federal government has now committed to rejoining the OECD international literacy survey, held every ten years. The last one was held in 2023.

In contrast to Australia, Finland has a national literacy strategy to become the most “multiliterate country in the world in 2030”, recognising that a “literary way of life is the basis for equality, education and wellbeing”.

Finland embraces two educational paths for literacy: state-funded vocational schools and higher-education institutions, and a non-formal path of state-funded associations, foundations and community groups who design courses based on local needs, including basic literacy skills for immigrants.

Australia, meanwhile, awaits the results of the Roy Morgan survey on the state of adult literacy.

Genevieve McArthur receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Dyslexia SPELD Foundation, Australian Catholic University, and Curtin University.

A 28-year-old international student from Pakistan took a job as a chef in Queensland. His employer paid a flat hourly rate that was well below the legal minimum, with no payslips. When he eventually left, his employer hired the next new arrival.

“It is like an ecosystem,” he told us, “and everyone passes through it.”

His experience is not an outlier. Our new report, published today by the academic-led Migrant Justice Institute, shows that for migrants working on temporary visas, it is the norm.

Drawing on the largest national survey of migrant workers ever conducted in Australia, we found two-thirds of temporary visa holders were paid less than they were legally owed. A quarter were shortchanged by at least A$10 an hour.

We estimate across Australia, international students alone are being underpaid by around $61 million every week – more than $3 billion a year.

This is not just a failure of worker protection – the system is also allowing exploitative employers to thrive by systematically undercutting honest businesses that do the right thing.

To fix the problem, we must first understand how exploitative employers give themselves maximum power with minimum visibility.

Exploitation not a few rogue employers: it’s a core business model

Our new research draws on a survey of almost 10,000 workers on temporary visas in Australia conducted in 2024. Around 80% were international students.

Respondents provided a wide range of details about their workplace experience, including their job, hours, working conditions, wages (and how these were paid) and employment arrangements.

What we found was not a collection of isolated violations or inadvertent errors. It was an interlocking system of deliberate exploitation.

The worse the underpayment, the more likely the same employer was paying wages in cash, issuing fraudulent payslips that disguised the true hours worked, and withholding superannuation.

We found even more egregious working conditions that are indicators of forced labour – being made to work in unsafe conditions, for no pay, or being threatened with harm – rose sharply the more the migrant was underpaid.

‘Sham contracting’ replaces cash-in-hand

Since our 2016 study, the percentage of participants receiving cash-in-hand payments (which are difficult to trace) has actually fallen, from 44% to 23%. But other mechanisms for hiding underpayments have replaced cash use.

In particular, we found widespread misuse of Australian Business Numbers (ABNs) to engage workers as independent contractors. In many cases, employers had likely misclassified these workers who should have been hired as employees.

Over a third of migrants in our survey (35%) were engaged as independent contractors – more than four times the rate across the national workforce.

For many, this was likely deliberate – a practice that’s known as “sham contracting”. This practice violates strict rules about who can legally be engaged as a contractor, and who must be treated as an employee.

We suspect many businesses in hospitality, retail and commercial cleaning are unlawfully retaining migrant employees on ABNs to sidestep minimum wages, penalty rates after hours, casual loadings for non-permanent workers, obligations to pay super and Fair Work Ombudsman oversight.

Insecure work

ABN misuse is only one way that employers use insecure work structures to exploit migrants.

A further 38% of survey respondents were engaged as casual employees, which means their employers had complete power over whether and when they could work. Combining ABN workers and casual employees, three-quarters of migrants were in insecure work arrangements.

In many cases, it appeared these insecure arrangements were used to avoid detection of severe underpayment.

Some 85% of all ABN workers were paid less than they would have received as a casual employee under the Fair Work Act.

Casual employees were also twice as likely as permanent employees to be paid below the National Minimum Wage.

How employers coerce migrants to stay in exploitative jobs

Many workers told us they kept quiet about underpayment for fear of losing the hours they had. Some ABN workers wrongly assumed that they had no legal rights at all. As one Filipino student put it:

My salary was less than what was agreed. But I don’t feel like I can do anything about it since I’m on ABN.

For international students, the 48-hour-per-fortnight work cap creates an additional trap.

Many told us lawful employers turned them away because of their limited work hours. They said the only jobs available were those that were “off the books”: non-compliant, underpaid jobs with no oversight.

What needs to change

The Albanese government’s first-term reforms – tighter sham contracting laws, a new criminal wage theft offence and new protections for gig workers – were designed to fix known gaps in existing workplace laws.

But alone, these reforms are not enough to address the entrenched exploitation our research reveals. Our report makes a number of recommendations, including for the government to:

• expand the Workplace Justice visa to allow more exploited workers to safely come forward
• reduce the burden on workers to prove they’ve been misclassified
• increase whole-of-government enforcement action against industries where insecure migrant work is concentrated
• reconsider the current limits on the number of hours international students are permitted to work.

For the first time, we can see how the system operates clearly. The government and business should now embrace this opportunity to invest in genuinely dismantling it.

This research was funded by WalkFree, the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25 and the Migrant Workers Centre.

When it comes to sharing media with their children, many parents are left weighing up two imperfect options: screen time or reading.

Screen time is convenient, but continues to be linked to developmental concerns when overdone. Reading remains the gold standard, but for many families, finding the time and energy to sit down and read aloud can be difficult.

Increasingly a third option is finding its place in everyday family life: listening to podcasts together.

Emerging research suggests more families are turning to podcasts because they fit naturally into the in-between moments of daily life: in the car, while cooking, or while winding down for bed – where hands are busy, but attention can still be shared.

The benefits of audio for children’s imaginations are becoming clearer too, with what they hear often extending beyond the episode into play, drawing, questions, and everyday interactions.

Parents who listen to podcasts with children can foster family connection, creating opportunities for conversation and closeness.

With children’s podcasts now a fast-growing part of the audio industry, families have more choice than ever. Here are five that work particularly well for shared listening.

Short and Curly

ABC

Now entering its tenth year, Short and Curly takes big, often tricky philosophical questions and turns them into a lively mix of storytelling, conversation and humour.

Hosts Molly Daniels, Carl Smith and philosopher Eleanor Gordon-Smith ask: “is it okay to scare kids into being good?”, or, “when is excluding someone mean, and when is it OK?”. They pause, circle the idea, and bring in different perspectives, letting kids have the final word.

It’s easy to imagine these conversations spilling beyond the episode, resurfacing in the car or mid-task. For children, it nurtures curiosity and opens up new ways of thinking; for adults, it’s a reminder of just how clever and creative children can be.

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartRadio

Originally made for adults, Stuff You Should Know is a great early learning tool for kids.

In the early days of the podcast’s launch, Josh Clark and Charles W. Bryant realised they had a younger audience, even noting in interviews that they avoid swearing for that reason. In 2023, they released a spin-off book, Stuff Kids Should Know for their child audience.

The appeal for kids is pretty straightforward: there’s an episode on almost anything: dinosaurs, sushi, fire trucks, porcupines, jellyfish.

If a child has an interest, there’s probably an episode for it.

What makes the show work is its curiosity-driven approach. As Bryant puts it, the aim is not to be the final word, but a springboard, giving listeners ‘just enough’ to want to learn more.

Best suited to kids around 10 and up, though its wide range of topics means some episodes lean more towards older listeners.

Cereal

RTÉjr

Winner of Best Children’s Program at the New York Festivals Radio Awards 2023, Cereal is an Irish fictional “true crime” podcast aimed at primary school-aged listeners. It follows Aoife and Katie as they investigate a mystery that unfolds episode by episode, becoming a classic “whodunnit” parents can solve with their kids.

Set in small towns across the Irish midlands, it is filled with refreshingly local, green settings and charming Irish vernacular, with whimsical sayings like “murkier than a bog at midnight” and “fishier than a barrel of kippers on a Sunday evening!”.

Irish production company RTÉjr also offers a range of other quality podcasts for children worth checking out, including Our Sustainable Village on climate change and Time Tablet on ancient Egypt.

Squiz Kids

Squiz

Moving from petrol prices to major global events, Squiz Kids covers the news in a way that feels digestible for children aged five and up. For parents, it’s an easy way to stay informed alongside their child. For children, it provides the language and context to make sense of what’s happening around them.

Every Friday, the podcast also features a Parents vs Kids Weekly News S'quiz - a family-friendly, audio take on the kind of weekly news quiz many adults already know, with five questions for kids and five for grown-ups.

Hosted by Bryce Corbett, Amafa Bower and Christie Kijuina, new episodes drop daily, with more than 1,000 already available, alongside bonus brain teasers during school holidays.

Wait, They Did What?!

ABC

This podcast is a recap of the “olden days” for primary school kids, backed by real archival audio from the ABC.

Rewinding to times when “kids were hit at school” or when “wearing real fur was normal”, the podcast teaches kids that the past wasn’t just different, it was often downright wrong.

If that alone doesn’t hook parents and children, host Tilly Oddy-Black probably will. Known for her hilarious social media skits, she brings an energy and silliness that could put even the crankiest person in a good mood.

The result is a funny, fast-paced history lesson that shows children – and reminds adults – just how much the world has changed.

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

Cities and towns are usually 1–3°C hotter than the surrounding countryside, because asphalt, concrete and brick absorb heat from the sun and radiate it slowly. Some cities can be as much as 7°C hotter. This effect is known as the urban heat island.

This can be dangerous, especially in hot countries. In very hot conditions, dehydration and heat exhaustion become real risks. If it gets too hot, it can be lethal.

There’s one simple antidote: urban trees. Authorities around the world have planted more trees to counteract the heat.

But how effective is this? How much hotter would our cities be without trees?

To find out, we analysed data from nearly 9,000 cities around the world, home to about 3.6 billion people. As our new research shows, trees almost halve how much heat is trapped by the urban heat island effect.

This cooling is welcome. But it is far from even. Wealthier, suburban and humid cities have more trees on average.

Why focus on trees?

Trees act like natural air conditioners. They shade the ground and stop asphalt and buildings from heating up in the first place. They also cool the air by releasing water vapour from their leaves in a process called transpiration, lowering surrounding temperatures. They can make a noticeable temperature difference, especially on sizzling summer days.

Trees offer a simple way to counteract urban heat. This matters. More than half the world’s population (55%) now live in urban areas according to the United Nations. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 68%. Cities are facing a hotter future, as climate change drives more intense and more frequent heatwaves. The urban heat island effect makes cities hotter still.

What did we do?

We wanted to know the answer to a simple question: how much hotter would cities be without trees?

To find out, we analysed global datasets of air temperature and fine-scale tree cover across almost 9,000 cities. Then we modelled a “what if” scenario, where all tree cover was removed, and compared it to current conditions.

This allowed us to estimate the real-world cooling effect trees provide for air temperature, which is the main way we perceive heat.

Most previous global studies have used surface temperatures, often from satellite data. But surfaces like roads and rooftops can become much hotter than the surrounding air above them, especially in direct sunlight. That can give an overestimate of how much cooling trees provide. Air temperature, by contrast, better reflects what people actually feel, making it a more reliable measure of heat.

So what effect do trees really have?

The effect was much larger than we had anticipated.

Globally, trees cut the urban heat island effect by almost 50%. Since the average urban heat island effect typically adds around 1–3°C, this translates into cooling of roughly 0.5–1.5°C in many cities.

For more than 200 million people, trees reduce local air temperatures by at least 0.5°C, enough to make a meaningful difference during extreme heat.

Cooling can vary a lot from place to place.

In hot, dry cities such as Phoenix in the United States, differences in tree cover can create clear differences in air temperatures. In more temperate cities like Lisbon in Portugal or Gothenburg in Sweden, the overall cooling is still significant, but generally smaller and more consistent across the city.

Trees are not evenly distributed

A city’s trees are not spread evenly. They’re often concentrated in wealthier neighbourhoods and suburban areas. Cities in cooler or more humid climates tend to have more.

Trees are scarcer in lower-income cities or in rapidly growing regions. This inequality is also visible in many cities. Leafy suburbs are usually several degrees cooler than nearby neighbourhoods with little vegetation.

There’s a strong link with wealth. In the United States, lower-income areas average 15% fewer trees than wealthier areas – and are 1.5°C hotter. This means the people who need free cooling from trees the most are often the least likely to receive it.

Planting more trees isn’t enough

Planting trees is often promoted as a simple solution to city heat. Trees are visible, relatively low cost and come with other benefits such as cleaner air and better mental health.

It’s no wonder authorities look to urban trees as a way to counteract the heat from escalating climate change. When you stand under a tree on a sweltering day, the cooling feels immediate and powerful.

But our study shows their effect is more limited in the face of climate change. The world’s current urban trees would, we estimate, offset just 10% of the extra heat expected by mid-century under moderate climate change scenarios. With ambitious planting, this could rise to around 20%.

While important, it’s not enough. A large majority of the extra heat will go unaddressed.

What else can be done?

If the world’s cities are to cope with rising temperatures, trees have to be seen as part of a broader strategy – not the whole answer.

Clever urban design can cut heat by using reflective materials, increasing green spaces and improving airflow between buildings. Green roofs and shaded streets can also make a difference.

New tree plantings should target hotter neighbourhoods with less existing tree canopy, as these will deliver the greatest benefits.

Of course, these measures don’t replace the need to tackle climate change directly by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Using trees wisely

Billions of trees grow in the world’s cities. They are hugely valuable, acting to cool cities, support biodiversity and making urban areas more liveable.

The challenge for city residents and authorities is to use trees wisely. Plant them where they’re needed most and combine them with other methods of reducing heat. Trees are remarkable. But they can’t do it all.

Rob McDonald works for The Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit.

Tirthankar Chakraborty has received funding from DOE, NASA, and NIH to study urban environments, including impacts of vegetation on urban heat.

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

Earlier this year I gave a talk about my research at Oxford’s All Souls College, and worked with a chef to design an accompanying menu.

Thinking about my work in southwest Western Australia, I typed “Boorloo”, the Nyungar name for the City of Perth.

Autocorrect had other ideas. It replaced it with “Barolo” – which, I thought, made for a fitting wine choice on the night.

It was an amusing moment, but also a revealing one. The system’s dictionary, trained largely on mainstream English data, didn’t know what Boorloo was, so it reached for a more familiar alternative. This seemingly minor miscorrection offers a glimpse into how language technologies are shaped – including which words they recognise, and which they overlook.

Why does this happen?

Part of the answer is that technologies such as automatic speech recognition convert spoken language into text. Transcription is often presented as a straightforward technical exercise: you listen, you write down what was said.

But every transcription protocol carries within it assumptions about what standardised speech looks like. In the words of linguist Mary Bucholtz, “all transcripts take sides”.

In practice, the standardised language is almost always the “prestige dialect” of powerful institutions. For English, that may be the variety used in the Oxford English Dictionary or by the BBC.

Recent research from Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon shows what this means in concrete terms.

When people watched a video presentation with automatically generated, error-prone subtitles, they consistently rated the speaker as less clear and less knowledgeable than viewers who saw the same presentation with accurate captions. The quality of the transcription affected not only how viewers perceived the speaker, but also the content of the talk.

Automated systems, amplified consequences

The stakes are particularly high for First Nations people in Australia. Here, the mismatch between the conventions of transcription and the actual practice of communication can be severe.

In many Indigenous communities, pauses and silences themselves function as meaningful acts of communication.

In places such as Wadeye in Australia’s Northern Territory, a sustained silence is not a gap to be filled. Instead it is part of the structure of what is being communicated.

Transcription systems developed in northern hemisphere academic contexts will generally render those silences with hesitation markers, ellipses, or editorial cuts, stripping out meaning.

Common words in languages other than English (such as “Boorloo” for Perth) go unrecognised. They may be mistranscribed to fit the language models on which technology is trained.

In legal, medical and welfare contexts, transcription can determine someone’s liberty, diagnosis, or entitlements. Here, systematic misrepresentation of non-standardised language is a justice issue.

Tools using artificial intelligence (AI) for transcription are now being deployed in hospitals and GP practices across Australia, resulting in mistakes, omissions and so-called hallucinations. A recent study of several AI scribes found all of them made errors in transcription and note-taking.

About half of the samples also included factual inaccuracies, with hallucinations occurring frequently, fabricating diagnoses, or listing medications that were never taken. In one case, a male patient was even recorded as being on the contraceptive pill.

Making conventions visible

Making things better includes developing more diverse models for automated speech recognition.

But for anyone producing transcripts right now – in journalism, oral history, the law, clinical records, or sociolinguistic research – certain obligations apply. Make your conventions explicit, acknowledge what your system cannot represent, and resist the impulse to normalise speech into something legible to an imagined standard reader.

Rendering speech into writing may seem natural, but writing is itself a technology. The task is not to achieve perfect objectivity, but to be visible and accountable for decisions about what is included and excluded, and how those decisions are made.

Celeste Rodriguez Louro receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Google.

In 2019, the State Library Victoria announced it was retiring the “brand” of its groundbreaking Centre for Youth Literature.

The centre ran – among other things – Australia’s first and only national teen-voted awards for teen literature, the Inkys; a lively online youth literature community; and a two-day program that brought together everyone from readers and authors to teachers to celebrate youth literature.

Then director of library services, Justine Hyde, told the Age the library was not “axing it and we’re not closing it, we’re simply changing the name”. But despite this, the library quietly retired these core programs. Five years later, amid controversy, they also retired their creative writing workshops, Teen Bootcamp, in which major authors like Nova Weetman and Jared Thomas worked with teens.

Founded in 1991 by educator and youth literature advocate Agnes Nieuwenhuizen as the Youth Literature Project, the centre’s absence is still widely felt. Award-winning author and former staffer at the centre, Lili Wilkinson, visits a lot of schools, where she says, teachers and librarians “regularly bemoan the loss of the centre”.

Zhana Maticevski-Shumack was a Year 12 student and on the centre’s advisory board when it closed. “The decision has been made for youth rather than with youth,” she wrote in 2019. “It’s our community and we deserve a say.”

And this, sadly, brings us back to the disappointing reality. That all too often, and despite national anxiety about Australia’s “reading slump”, when it comes to engaging teen readers, we’re still not giving them a say. Even though, experts say, getting teens involved in teen reading programs is vitally important.

Millions of Australians, both children and adults, struggle with literacy.

In this series, we explore the challenges of reading in an age of smartphones and social media – and ask experts how we can become better readers.

Ironically, the United Kingdom’s Booker Prize announced last year it would select three youth judges to help award a Children’s Booker Prize. Hailing the move, Australian agent and author Danielle Binks wrote: “children being invited to judge books in an award that is for them, and treating them (finally!) as equals within their own readership is good and brilliant” – pointing out that the now defunct Inkys had the idea first.

A spokesperson for the State Library told The Conversation it offers a range of programs for young people. Two of them are the Young Regional Writers program (which brings students and children’s authors together for a term of story writing and creativity) and Big Ideas for Young Minds (where students hear from Australian leaders in social change in online sessions).

Others include VCE talks and workshops, and partnerships such as the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge and Expression Australia (a not-for-profit organisation created by and for the Deaf community). “Our programs are often refreshed based on ongoing feedback from participants to ensure they remain contemporary and meet community expectations,” said the spokesperson.

But no other state had or has a Centre for Youth Literature, nor does Victoria now. And while there are other awards that recognise the creators of books for young adults, none are entirely selected by them.

An ‘incredibly important’ history

In 1999, the Youth Literature Project moved to the State Library, and was renamed the Centre for Youth Literature. At its peak, the centre reportedly had roughly three full-time equivalent staff.

Mike Shuttleworth, who joined the centre as program coordinator in 2002, remembers it operating as an independent arts organisation within a public service agency – as much as possible. “The Library saw us [as] a way to engage young audiences, which we massively did.”

For around two decades, it was the connective tissue that held Melbourne’s young adult (YA) reading community together. And it had national reach, running professional development, events and regional tours, as well as its core programs.

One of them was Inside a Dog, an online youth literature space where teen readers could start their own book club, share ideas, post reviews or show off fan art. The site boasted 60,000 users within the first six months. Teens were hungry to talk about books. Behind the scenes, reader development was carefully balanced with youth agency.

That commitment was epitomised in The Inky Awards, Australia’s first national teen choice award for young adult literature, launched in 2007.

Each year, a panel of teen judges from across Australia would select the shortlist. It was then put to a public vote by readers aged 12–20. The Gold Inky was awarded to an Australian author (with a A$2,000 prize), with the Silver Inky awarded to an international author. Winners included Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, and Lynette Noni.

Teens involved in the program described enormous personal and professional benefits to me. The opportunity gave them confidence and, for some, public speaking and hosting opportunities. At the Melbourne Writers Festival, teen Inky judges were mentored by Centre staff to interview authors like Rainbow Rowell on stage.

Luca F. judged the Inkys in 2018, when he was in Year 7. He told me the community was “incredibly important” to him and he “made friends with people who I wouldn’t otherwise have interacted with”.

The Reading Matters biennial conference, which ran for 12 years, was another core event. It happened for the last time in 2017.

Wilkinson worked at the Centre for Youth Literature between 2001 and 2003, where she curated Inside a Dog and the Inky Awards. She describes the experience of speaking at one of the last Teen Bootcamp events in 2023, and seeing, at the end, “trolleys of free books wheeled out for the teens to take home”.

“It only took a few seconds to realise that I was looking at the entire CYL collection that I used to maintain,” she told me. “A legacy of innovative programming, gone in an afternoon.”

Treating teens as tastemakers

These programs put young people to the front, respecting their opinions and creating spaces where their voices matter. “We treated teens as capable, thoughtful readers, and as tastemakers in their own right,” said Adele Walsh, who designed and evaluated the centre’s program and services from 2010 to 2017.

Showing teens respect shouldn’t be revolutionary, but there are increasingly limited spaces where this occurs. The centre upended the (false) assumption that YA books are just a stepping stone to “real” literature.

The kind of agency that was embedded in every level of the centre’s program is vital to getting teens reading. If we really want to combat the downward trend in young people’s recreational reading, we should take this seriously.

There are programs across Australia that celebrate young adult fiction. (Storyfest in Queensland; the Readings Teen Advisory Board; #LoveOzYA, who are currently exploring a revived Reading Matters conference and the Australian Children’s Laureate Foundation – though this is arguably directed more towards primary-aged readers.)

Sadly, while there have been conversations about rehousing the Inkys, they have never eventuated, due to the lack of funds and staff capacity. The Centre for Youth Literature had provided both.

No other organisation has combined advocacy, ambition and respect in quite the same way. Since the centre closed, many teens have found communities and formed clubs on Book Tok and other social media – but for under 16s, this has abruptly ended with social media ban. If ever we needed a reboot of the centre, it’s now.

The federal government is currently consulting for its National Cultural Policy, to shape the future of the creative and cultural sector. “Engaging the Audience” is one of its five pillars.

Despite our widespread anxiety about current literacy levels and reading rates, have we forgotten the person at the heart of these matters: the teen reader?

Now is the time to reflect on Nieuwenhuizen’s goal of championing these voices – and think about how to make a new space for them in today’s literary landscape. If adults want teens to read, we need to not just bring them back into the conversation – but let them lead it.

Bec Kavanagh worked on a short contract at the CYL in 2016, and in the past has worked on events with Lili Wilkinson, Mike Shuttleworth and Adele Walsh.

Across the world’s most advanced economies, demographic issues have risen to near the top of the policy agenda.

Governments have implemented a range of measures to try and address the challenges of falling birth rates, ageing populations and shrinking work forces – with mixed results.

Aotearoa New Zealand has yet to develop anything resembling a coherent population strategy, despite decades of experts calling for one.

The latest effort to try and change this is a report from the non-partisan think tank Koi Tū, calling for a long-term national population strategy to address the country’s demographic “inflection point” and an independent population commission to lead it.

The case it makes is compelling, warning of slowing population growth, declining fertility and a significant increase in the number of people aged 65 or older.

The report deserves a serious response. But its value will depend on three things: realism about what policy can achieve, genuine engagement with Māori and Pacific demographic circumstances, and evidence that is fit for purpose.

An old concern, renewed urgency

The emerging consensus is that while demography may not be destiny, it sets forces in motion that governments cannot afford to ignore.

The notion of an inflection point has become a useful if somewhat overused tool for focusing political minds.

Demographers have pointed to several warning thresholds: a dependency ratio of two workers per retiree, a total fertility rate below 1.5, or the point at which deaths consistently outnumber births.

The new report argues Aotearoa is approaching such a moment.

This is not an entirely new concern. A 1986 report published by the New Zealand Planning Council raised many of the same issues. It flagged the combined effects of slowing population growth, falling birth rates, net emigration loss of New Zealand citizens, and a dramatically changing population composition.

That report went largely unheeded. The risk is this one does, too.

Compared with many advanced economies, Aotearoa is not in a state of demographic crisis. The total fertility rate of 1.55 sits above the OECD average of 1.40 children per woman. The population is still growing and births are projected to outpace deaths for some decades yet.

Aotearoa also lacks the acute immigrant integration challenges seen in France or Germany.

But trends are moving in a concerning direction. And the lesson from elsewhere is that governments that wait for crisis before acting find themselves acting too late.

What policy can and cannot do

This is where realism becomes essential. Population trends respond to a vast range of factors – economic conditions, housing costs, global migration patterns – that governments can influence only at the margins.

Fertility, in particular, has proven stubbornly resistant to direct policy intervention. South Korea has spent the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars on pronatalist incentives over two decades and still only has a fertility rate of 0.80.

Migration policy offers more tractable levers but with significant uncertainty. Governments can set immigration settings but cannot reliably predict how prospective migrants will respond.

Emigration is even harder to control. When just over 40,000 New Zealand citizens left for Australia in the year to June 2025, around 10,000 also came home – a detail that often gets lost in the collective hand wringing that accompanies every trans-Tasman departure spike.

A credible population strategy must be clear about the distinction between what can be shaped and what must simply be adapted to.

New Zealand Treasury’s long-term fiscal statement already models population-related pressures out to 40 years. A population commission should build on this with a sharper focus on where intervention is genuinely feasible and where evidence-based adaptation is more fruitful.

One strategy cannot fit all

Any population strategy for Aotearoa must grapple seriously with diversity, not as an afterthought, but as a foundational design principle.

The median age of Māori is 26.8 years; for Pākehā/Europeans it is 41.7 years.

These are not minor statistical differences but reflect profoundly different demographic histories and trajectories. Māori and Pacific communities represent a significant share of the future workforce that will be needed to sustain superannuation and healthcare costs for an ageing population.

Yet these same communities face lower life expectancy, poorer health outcomes and earlier need for health system support, driven by persistent socioeconomic disadvantage. A one-size-fits-all population strategy would deepen inequities.

Māori and Pacific expertise must be central to both the design and implementation of any strategy, with Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the appropriate foundation.

All of this rests on access to a high-quality data system, which is far from assured.

The shift from an enumeration-based census method to reliance on administrative data, combined with cuts to government-funded social science research, risks degrading the quality of demographic expertise and evidence, particularly for Māori and Pacific peoples.

The call for a population commission deserves support. But with an election approaching, the risk is that serious demographic debate gets crowded out by political point scoring on immigration and ethnic relations.

That would be a missed opportunity Aotearoa can ill afford.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Within the past decade, most women’s colleges in the United States – including Smith College, a liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts – have expanded their admissions policies, allowing transgender students to also attend. Many of these policies allow transgender women to apply, while policies for transgender men and nonbinary students vary more widely.

The Trump administration announced on May 4, 2026, that it is investigating Smith College for violating Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination based on someone’s sex.

“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement issued by the Education Department.

As a scholar of higher education who studies the experiences of LGBTQ+ students, I think it is important to recognize that women’s colleges offer a unique experience to students, including transgender and queer students. They create environments where students who are marginalized by their genders see themselves as leaders.

Women’s colleges have also long been welcoming places for lesbian and queer relationships, offering community and support as attitudes about gender and sexuality have changed.

A prior focus on trans athletes

Up until now, the Trump administration’s policy agenda on transgender rights and education has primarily focused on whether universities should let transgender students participate in college sports.

The Trump administration froze US$175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania in 2025 because it objected to how the school allowed transgender students to participate on women’s sports teams. One trans woman athlete named Lia Thomas, in particular, gained recognition for her strong performance on the women’s swim team at Penn.

The administration released the frozen funding after Penn agreed in July 2025 to block trans athletes like Thomas from participating in women’s sports.

Some of the sports-related lawsuits the administration filed in 2025 – like those targeting Penn and the University of Maine for allowing trans women to participate in women’s sports – have been settled out of court.

Other Title IX investigations into San José State University and the University of Nevada-Reno, for example, are still ongoing.

Understanding role of women’s colleges

Women’s colleges were created in the mid-to-late 1800s, when women were largely not allowed to enroll in most colleges. Women’s colleges became places where these students would be taken seriously as women and leaders.

As more colleges went coeducational, women’s colleges had to explain their purpose and evolving missions over time.

After World War II, for example, people said that American women who were working jobs outside the home should stop. Women’s colleges again explained their mission to the public, stating they could prepare women for the workforce and home. So, while women’s colleges were created to respond to the gendered exclusion of women, their missions have shifted as societal understandings of gender have evolved, too.

Transgender students didn’t suddenly appear at women’s colleges or other higher education institutions. But in the early 2000s, more students began to openly identify as transgender, and colleges increasingly had to decide how to adjust their policies.

Some older alumni of women’s colleges have expressed concern about admitting trans students, including whether allowing them affects a women’s college’s reputation, traditions or identity. These debates can matter a lot because most women’s colleges in the U.S. are private liberal arts colleges that depend on tuition payments and donations.

But some alumni have supported more expansive admissions policies consistent with the broader mission of women’s education.

While women’s schools have presented their own challenges for some queer and transgender students, they have long remained significant to the LGBTQ+ community.

What should women’s colleges be?

The number of women’s colleges has declined sharply over the past few decades.

In 1960 there were about 230 such colleges. In 2023 there were 30 women’s colleges in the United States. As more colleges became coeducational, women had more options, and many women’s colleges either closed, merged or began admitting men.

This decline in women’s colleges helps explain why debates over admitting trans students to women’s colleges are so charged. Each decision becomes part of a broader question about what women’s colleges are and should be.

The conversation around transgender and nonbinary students attending women’s colleges became more public in the 2010s. In 2013 Smith College denied admission to a trans woman because the student indicated that she was male on her federal financial aid forms.

This resulted in a big debate between Smith alumni and students about what the school’s admission policy should be. Leading up to this point, several women’s colleges – including Barnard, Smith, Mills and Wellesley – treated trans student applicants on a case-by-case basis, or in an informal way.

In 2014, Mount Holyoke, a women’s college in western Massachusetts, created one of the most expansive early policies on this issue. It allowed applications from transgender women and from some applicants who identified as transgender more broadly, while continuing to exclude cisgender men.

Smith also announced a new policy in 2015 that allowed anyone who identified as female to apply and be admitted.

Today, most but not all women’s colleges have their own policies regarding the admission of trans students. These policies vary: Some admit transgender women and some nonbinary applicants, while others are more restrictive. Many do not admit applicants who identify as men, including transgender men.

Mixed experiences for trans students

Some research finds that students overall at women’s colleges report higher levels of support – including from faculty – than students at coeducational colleges. Some transgender students arrive expecting these colleges to offer a safe and accepting atmosphere.

But some transgender students have negative experiences at women’s colleges and can feel like they are being watched too closely, ignored or both. These problems aren’t just because of interactions with other people. They can also occur when trans students encounter student records, bathrooms, housing and campus rules that assume everyone is either a man or a woman, or identifies with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Transgender students often report that college can feel less welcoming to them. Research on trans college students shows that academic, cocurricular, peer and institutional contexts shape how welcoming or alienating campus feels.

My research with other colleagues also examines how trans and queer students thrive in college, whether at co-ed or women’s colleges. Many form close-knit communities and are vital members of their campuses. The difficulties trans students face are not inherent to being trans. I believe they are produced by policies and systems that marginalize them because they are trans.

Barring transgender people from attending women’s colleges would block a higher education pathway for transgender and queer students.

Women’s colleges were created in response to gender inequality. I believe this history should push them to keep making college more open and supportive for students excluded because of gender.

Alex C. Lange receives funding from the Spencer Foundation.

The first international Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels concluded on April 29 in Santa Marta, Colombia. Stemming from the failure of the last COP meeting in Belèm, Brazil, to address the necessity of reducing reliance on fossil fuels, the intergovernmental event was co-organized by Colombia and the Netherlands and gathered delegations from 59 countries.

The conference included countries advocating for a phase-down of fossil fuels, such as Costa Rica, Denmark, Spain, France and Kenya within the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.

It also included countries highly exposed to climate change, such as Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda and Bangladesh, all members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, as well as major oil-producing countries like Brazil, Canada, Norway and Nigeria. Canada carefully refrained from using the word fossil fuels in its very cautious plenary declaration.

As expected, the conference did not produce binding commitments or a negotiated agreement. Its goal, for now, is more modest: to provide a space more flexible than United Nations climate COPs. That aims to enable frank discussions on the practical realities of phasing down fossil fuels and foster a coalition capable of pushing future COPs toward more concrete action, as states agreed during COP28 in 2023.

Many participants framed the Santa Marta conference as a historic turning point, echoing the optimism that followed the Paris Agreement and COP28’s call for transitioning away from fossil fuels. However, the limited tangible outcomes of these past commitments suggest caution.

Will Santa Marta mark the beginning of a genuine transformation, or remain another symbolic milestone?

Read more: Here’s what to expect from the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels

A turning point or familiar rhetoric?

The very existence of a summit dedicated to phasing down fossil fuels is unprecedented — particularly one hosted by a Global South country like Colombia, with an economy that remains significantly dependent on oil and coal export.

However, many proposals discussed in Santa Marta have already been raised at previous conferences, such as the 2025 African Climate Summit and the 2023 Summit for a New Global Financial Pact. Since then, calls for global action to address climate change and help climate-vulnerable countries have largely failed to translate into concrete policies.

This raises the risk that Santa Marta may reproduce what scholars describe as “incantatory governance” — a model that combines ambitious global goals with flexible, largely voluntary instruments and an optimistic narrative designed to mobilize international consensus without necessarily delivering structural change.

Four dynamics to watch

Whether Santa Marta becomes more than rhetoric will depend on four key dynamics.

1. Will participating countries remain in informal, non-binding coalitions, or will they form more structured and co-ordinated groups focused on phasing down fossil fuels, similar to how OPEC organizes oil-producing states? Recent academic work suggests that such coalitions could play a decisive role in shaping global efforts to phase down fossil fuels.

2. The credibility of this process will hinge on whether countries adopt binding national measures, such as bans on new exploration licenses, rather than relying solely on voluntary commitments. A meaningful transition will require combining incentives (like subsidies for renewables and electrification) with constraints (taxation, regulation and prohibitions), all within the framework of a just transition. Tools like the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Tracker can help monitor and assess fossil fuel-related policies around the world.

3. The momentum generated in Santa Marta must withstand domestic political shifts that could weaken commitments. This is particularly relevant for oil-producing countries like Colombia, where future governments may adopt different positions. At the same time, persistent distrust remains due to the gap between climate finance promises made by wealthy countries and the funds actually delivered.

4. Effective action will depend on stronger co-ordination among governments, civil society and the scientific community. Notably, the parallel academic conference and the People’s Summit for a Fossil-Free Future at Santa Marta produced detailed and actionable proposals aligned with the scale of the climate crisis. Bridging these initiatives with formal policy processes will be essential to move from rhetoric to implementation.

From commitments to action

The conference in Santa Marta is an important step toward building political coalitions to phase out fossil fuels. But its long-term significance remains uncertain. Without binding commitments, political continuity and co-ordinated action, it risks becoming another instance of empty climate diplomacy.

Turning this moment into a movement will demand structural reforms, credible policy tools and sustained political will. International negotiations and clear roadmaps are crucial.

A follow-up summit is planned for 2027 in the South Pacific, co-chaired by Tuvalu and Ireland. In the meantime, three working groups have been established. One to develop national and regional phase-down roadmaps. Another is to address macroeconomic dependence on fossil fuels and strengthen public financial capacity. And a third is focused on decarbonizing international trade.

Santa Marta could mark the beginning of a major shift in climate negotiations, one clearly focused on ultimately phasing out fossil fuels.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

One of the United States’ largest fisheries is hiding in plain sight. Recreational freshwater anglers in the lower 48 states catch – and keep – far more fish than any official body has estimated, according to new research from our team of North American fishery scientists.

Specifically, our analysis, which integrated thousands of recreational fishing surveys across the U.S., found that people who engage in recreational fishing in the country’s lakes, ponds and reservoirs catch between 2 billion and 6 billion fish each year. Many of them practice catch-and-release fishing, but even after accounting for all the fish released, we estimated that they keep between 230,000 and 670,000 metric tons of fish in the U.S. alone.

That’s between 17 and 48 times more fish than prior U.S. estimates that have been reported to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

And it’s about 20% of the United States’ total recorded annual consumption of fresh fish that has not been frozen. We estimated the value of the recreational fish catch is roughly US$3 billion a year. By contrast, domestic commercial processed fishery products are valued at about US$12 billion a year.

Not just for fun

Historically, most researchers and policymakers viewed recreational fishing as a leisure activity rather than a significant part of the nation’s food supply.

However, for many households, recreationally harvested fish – fish that people catch and keep, often to eat – represent a meaningful source of protein at very low cost. By recognizing this unseen harvest as a significant food source, policymakers can recognize that changes in recreational fishing opportunities don’t just affect anglers’ enjoyment, but also millions of households’ food security.

The immensity of recreational fishing also likely has effects on freshwater ecosystems that have gone unrecognized by fisheries managers.

For example, a 2019 analysis of nearly 200 lakes in northern Wisconsin found that around 40% of walleye recreational fisheries were overfished. Even when fish are released and not kept for eating, they can die shortly after release or be injured or stressed from having been caught. Injured and stressed fish may produce fewer offspring, be more vulnerable to predators and be less capable of catching prey.

Together, these effects on fish populations and the act of fishing can substantially change how freshwater ecosystems function. For example, removing top predators like walleye can lead to an increase in small fish, which eat tiny zooplankton, which feed on phytoplankton. If zooplankton populations fall, that can ultimately lead to more frequent algal blooms.

Effective fisheries management requires accurate estimates of fishing activity. Without that information, officials may overestimate fish population size, which could lead to unexpected population collapses and new fishery regulations and closures.

Why the numbers don’t add up

Official harvest statistics for fisheries, which are collected by the U.N. from national governments, usually focus on ocean fisheries, which are typically the largest and most lucrative.

As a result, the only official statistics for the U.S. freshwater fisheries harvest cover commercial fisheries that primarily operate in the Great Lakes.

Collecting data on recreational fisheries is challenging. Unlike commercial fisheries that unload their catch at centralized ports, it is impossible to know where recreational fishers are and what they are catching across the entire country. With an estimated 35 million people fishing across millions of rivers, lakes, ponds and reservoirs, the amount of recreational fishing makes it an extremely difficult activity to track.

Recreational fisheries data tends to be collected by state agencies that conduct angler surveys. Angler surveys involve counting and interviewing anglers at specific rivers, lakes, ponds and reservoirs to provide snapshots of who is fishing, how they fish and what they catch. Each state collects data differently, and surveys typically focus on a few locations rather than the entire state.

Without a coordinated national effort, the total recreational catch has remained effectively invisible because one state’s questions and findings do not always align with those in other states.

From local surveys to national statistics

Our new research, a collaborative effort between myself and four colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Missouri and Louisiana State University, sought to improve the quality of recreational fishing data. Over the past several years, our team has worked to compile angler surveys from across the country into a single database.

We have not received data from every river, lake, pond and reservoir; in fact, we have not even collected data from every state. But we have collected over 15,000 surveys from 40 states, and we are collecting more surveys every day.

To calculate our estimates, we combined three major factors:

• Nationwide numbers of fish caught and hours spent fishing.

• Assumptions about how many lakes, ponds and reservoirs people fish based on the relationships between water body size and known fishing locations.

• The proportion of caught fish that aren’t thrown back.

We arrived at an estimate of 2 billion to 6 billion fish caught.

Rethinking recreational fisheries

Even our most conservative assumption of harvested fish – 236,000 metric tons – is much higher than the prior U.N. estimates of 13,388 metric tons. We hope these new numbers will serve as initial estimates that will be continually refined as we and other researchers collect more data and better understand where and how people fish.

Getting this first estimate provides a baseline for fisheries managers to ensure fishing policies line up with the actual effects of recreational fishing.

We also note that recreational freshwater fishing happens across the globe. If the actual recreational fish harvest is significantly higher than has previously been estimated in the U.S., the same is likely true worldwide.

Matthew Robertson receives funding from a Marine Institute of Memorial University Start-Up Fund, the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, the Newfoundland and Labrador Innovation and Business Investment Corporation’s Research and Development program, the Atlantic Groundfish Council, the Environment and Climate Chance Canada (ECCC) Environmental Damages Fund, and the Robert and Edith Skinner Wildlife Management Fund. This research was funded by a grant for the U.S. Geological Survey Climate Adaptation Science Center.