When environmental hazards strike, the damage is usually counted in numbers: how many people died, how many homes were destroyed, how many people were displaced, and how much money it will take to rebuild.

But not all losses and damage can be measured in financial terms. Some of the most profound impacts of climate-induced disasters are emotional, cultural and social, affecting how people feel, relate to each other and think about their world.

Read more: Tropical cyclone Idai: The storm that knew no boundaries

We are scientists who research environmental hazards, climate change impacts and development practice. We wanted to find out what recovery meant for survivors of Tropical Cyclone Idai, which hit eastern Zimbabwe’s Chimanimani District for five days in 2019, turning mountains into mudslides and leaving hundreds of people dead.

We interviewed community members, including survivors and local leaders, and held discussions with government officials and aid organisations. We also spent time in affected communities, observing daily life and listening to how people spoke about the disaster and its aftermath. This allowed us to capture not just what had happened, but what it meant to those who’d lived through it.

Our research found that survivors of climate disasters didn’t only speak of losing their houses and other material goods. They also talked of grief, dislocation, loss of places of cultural significance, and a lingering sense that life would never return to what it once was.

Read more: Cyclone Idai is over – but its health effects will be felt for a long time

These experiences are harder to quantify, but no less important. If recovery efforts overlook these less visible losses, they leave deep social and emotional wounds unaddressed.

Disaster recovery is not just about rebuilding material objects or infrastructure. It is about rebuilding lives.

The hidden losses

Tropical Cyclone Idai affected over 3 million people across Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In many places, it destroyed whole communities. In eastern Zimbabwe’s Chimanimani District hundreds died, many people went missing, and thousands were displaced from their ancestral lands.

The cost of the economic losses and damage was more than US$2 billion. This amount does not include the non-economic losses – the damage to people’s sense of belonging, identity, relationships and emotional well-being that cannot be measured by money.

Our findings show that Cyclone Idai caused four major types of non-economic loss:

Loss of life and lasting trauma

The cyclone caused floods in the middle of the night, while people were sleeping, leaving them little chance to escape to higher ground before their houses collapsed or were washed away. Many families lost loved ones and said that grief remained a constant presence. A survivor told us:

What changed most is that we were a big family, but we lost two kids due to the cyclone. That alone has changed our lives and has affected us very much. We can hardly move forward because of these bad memories that we still have.

More than two years after the cyclone, some people said they still lived with injuries that prevented them from working or living as they once did. Mental health impacts, including anxiety, insomnia and post-traumatic stress, are widespread yet rarely addressed in formal recovery efforts.

Loss of sense of place and belonging

Displacement was one of the most significant consequences of the tropical cyclone. Families were moved to temporary camps and, later, resettled in new areas that were often very different from their original homes.

For example, people who had survived by farming and selling bananas were moved to a government housing compound (Runyararo village), where low rainfall makes it difficult to grow the fruit.

Read more: Rwanda has moved people into model ‘green’ villages: is life better there?

Their new area also has no tarred roads or electricity, yet people who had lived in urban and peri-urban areas were moved there. For many, this meant more than just relocation. It involved losing connection to ancestral land, familiar environments and ways of life. As one survivor described, it felt like being uprooted not just physically, but emotionally and culturally.

Breakdown of social networks

Before the cyclone, communities in Chimanimani were tightly connected through kinship, shared histories and mutual support systems. The disaster fractured these networks by separating families and neighbours. One survivor said:

We lost our younger daughter to the tropical cyclone. The older one is now living with my parents in another village, as we no longer have space … Since then, we have been helpless.

Well-intentioned aid agencies had various ways of describing the cyclone survivors – as “victims”, “directly affected people” or “beneficiaries or non-beneficiaries of disaster aid”. Our research found that using different labels for the survivors created new social tensions within communities that were already under strain.

Disruption of cultural and spiritual life

Tropical Cyclone Idai also disrupted cultural practices and belief systems. Sacred sites were destroyed, and burial rituals, which are deeply significant in local traditions, could not always be properly observed. Bodies were handled hastily due to damaged mortuaries, the absence of electricity, and acute labour shortages.

Some people were buried in pairs, which is against the Ndau culture of the area. A cultural leader said:

It was not proper to bury people who were not related, who did not share a totem, in one grave.

Breaking with established burial customs created a sense of spiritual unease and disturbed the moral and cultural order that helps people make sense of life and death.

A more human approach to disaster response

Climate change has been shown to intensify extreme weather events like Cyclone Idai, increasing both their severity and impacts. This is why disaster policies matter, including what governments and agencies do after extreme weather catastrophes.

Our research shows that disaster response must go beyond financial compensation and physical reconstruction. It must support survivors with the emotional and non-material dimensions of well-being.

Read more: Loss and damage: Who is responsible when climate change harms the world’s poorest countries?

Most importantly, it should involve affected communities in decision-making, ensuring that their experiences and priorities are recognised.

This is also a matter of justice. Whose losses are acknowledged? Whose voices are heard, and who gets support?

The stories from Chimanimani remind us that extreme weather and climate disasters tear apart the very fabric of life. When attention is focused mainly on what can be seen and measured, other forms of suffering remain invisible. But these “invisible” losses shape how people recover.

Read more: Mental health distress in the wake of Bangladesh cyclone shows the devastation of climate-related loss and damage

Emotional trauma can affect livelihoods. Loss of social networks can weaken resilience. Disconnection from place and culture can make it harder to rebuild a meaningful life.

Listening to these experiences is essential for building recovery efforts that are both effective and humane.

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.

What kind of education best helps students learn math?

In the province of Ontario, the most recent provincial standardized results (2024–25) show modest improvement in elementary mathematics achievement, but overall performance remains uneven, particularly in the junior grades.

Provincially, 64 per cent of Grade 3 students met the provincial standard, up from 61 per cent the previous year. In contrast, only 51 per cent of Grade 6 students met the standard, indicating that about half of students are not yet achieving expected levels by the end of the junior division.

Student attitudes toward mathematics also decline with age: while 67 per cent of Grade 3 students reported liking mathematics, this dropped to 48 per cent in Grade 6.

These results suggest gradual recovery following COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, but they also point to the necessity for more work to be done for both teachers and students to develop a deeper understanding of the 2020 math curriculum. This curriculum incorporated new priorities like social–emotional learning, coding, mathematical modelling and financial literacy.

Read more: 6 changes in Ontario’s not-so-basic new elementary math curriculum

My research has examined Ontario math education taught by generalist elementary school teachers in dialogue with Chinese mathematics instruction taught by specialist math teachers. Grounded in this work, I believe we should firstly be proud of Ontario math education instead of criticizing it.

This research was part of a partnership grant project from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, with education researchers Shijing Xu and Michael Connelly.

Dialogue between teachers

In our research with a “Sister School Network” project, generalist elementary teachers from a Windsor, Ont. public school and mathematics specialist teachers from a Chongqing, China primary school participated in monthly online knowledge-sharing meetings.

At the meetings, teachers shared and compared curriculum. They offered demonstrations on topics such as fractions, multiplication and estimation, and discussed student learning and parent engagement.

From 2016 to 2019, Xu and I co-ordinated these monthly exchanges and organized visits of Canadian teachers to Chongqing as well as Chinese teachers’ visits to Windsor.

Other sister schools that are part of Xu and Connelly’s project include Shanghai-Toronto, Shanghai-ChangChun and Windsor-Beijing.

Special education, professional autonomy

Chinese mathematics specialist teachers deeply appreciated the strengths of Ontario’s generalist model — particularly the comprehensive learning support provided to students with diverse needs and the high level of professional autonomy granted to teachers.

One Chinese participant with more than 20 years of mathematics teaching experience reflected:

“I wish we could have a special education support system like in Canada.”

Such perspectives highlight a key strength of Ontario’s elementary generalist system — one that educators in the province can take pride in. In an interview I did with mathematics education researcher Christine Suurtamm, whose research has engaged international perspectives on mathematics education and Canadian teachers’ practice, Suurtamm noted:

“I think the idea that we have great faith in teachers’ professional judgment to work with a curriculum, and to determine the best way to sequence and select the kinds of activities that address the curriculum expectations and meet their students’ needs, is a real benefit to our students in Ontario. I think that is something we should be proud of.”

Value of working with a specialist

In my study, a Grade 5 Canadian teacher also appreciated the opportunity to co-plan and co-teach with a Chinese mathematics specialist teacher. In interviews, the teacher emphasized a deep appreciation for this collaborative approach and expressed the hope that Canadian schools could provide more structured opportunities for such professional collaboration.

In my interview with Suurtamm, she also noted it would be worthwhile if Ontario teachers had more time to develop their math lessons in collaboration with other teachers.

In 2023, Ontario announced funds to double the number of school mathematics coaches. Research about how and where the coaching model has been implemented, how teachers are relying on it and its real effects in the classroom would help gain insight into the efficacy of this approach.

Challenges with Ontario math education

My research also suggested ways Ontario mathematics education might learn from Chinese mathematics learning.

Two key challenges emerge in Ontario mathematics teaching. First, teacher collaboration is limited. Unlike Chinese mathematics specialists who routinely engage in co-planning, lesson observation and collective reflection, Canadian generalist teachers have few structured opportunities for sustained collaboration, despite a clear desire for it.

Second, the consolidation of mathematical learning seen in Ontario is relatively weak. One Chinese math specialist teacher described teaching mathematics as a dynamic balance between Fang (放) — encouraging open exploration and the use of multiple strategies — and Shou (收) — a structured consolidation phase. In this phase, key ideas are clarified, connections are synthesized and methods are formalized.

Ontario educators and policymakers may consider these insights in ways that are responsive to local situations.

Curriculum and approaches evolve

Overall, my collaborative research views improving mathematics teaching and curricula as an ongoing and progressive process.

As Suurtamm notes, curriculum changes should be approached as an evolution rather than a revolution. Changes build thoughtfully on existing foundations rather than seeking to replace them wholesale.

Before pursuing new directions, it is important to reflect on and recognize the strengths that already characterize Ontario’s mathematics education system.

Chenkai Chi receives funding from SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Ontario Graduate Scholarship and Mitacs Globalink Fellowship.

During the summer of 2019–2020, half of Australia’s third largest island was on fire. Kangaroo Island, also known as Karta Pintingga or Karti in local mainland Aboriginal languages, was one of the worst-hit places during the Black Summer fires. Two people lost their lives and almost all the remnant vegetation on the island burned.

In the wake of the fires, fears grew for unique species that live on the island, such as the green carpenter bee, a critically endangered dunnart, and the Kangaroo Island micro-trapdoor spider.

Increasingly unstable climate conditions are exacerbating fire risk across the globe. Since the Black Summer fires six years ago, we’ve seen many more megafires as far north as the Canadian Arctic. Every fire season in Australia brings more devastation as well.

In the months following the 2020 fires, we headed to Lashmars Lagoon on the Dudley Peninsula, eastern Kangaroo Island. Here, trapped within the mud, are thousands upon thousands of charcoal fragments built up over time from ancient fires. By analysing them we could reconstruct valuable long-term context for what’s happening today.

Our findings, now published in Global and Planetary Change, tell a complex 7,000-year-long story of how fire was shaped by the climate, vegetation and people.

A rare case study

To understand environmental change and how ecosystems cope with extreme events, we need perspectives longer than written observational records.

Studies of long-term fire histories from mainland Australia propose that Indigenous management reduced fuel loads, thereby reducing the occurrence and risk of bushfires.

After European colonisation, much of the Indigenous land management stopped. Since then, plant life in many parts of Australia has changed, exacerbating the risk and impact of wildfires.

But these changes also coincided with long-term fire suppression by the colonisers, landscape degradation and anthropogenic climate change. This makes it hard to untangle the exact effect of any one of these changes on fire regimes.

Kangaroo Island provides a rare chance to study the long-term fire history of an Australian environment that wasn’t managed by First Nations people in recent times. Early European colonisers in the 1800s noted Kangaroo Island’s thick scrub and lack of campfire and cultural burning smoke as evidence for lack of human habitation.

Indigenous oral histories also describe the departure of people from the island following isolation from the mainland. Archaeological work further supports the idea that the island was uninhabited for thousands of years.

Kangaroo Island is famed for its high biodiversity and unique ecosystems. There are 45 species of plants not found anywhere else. Have widespread wildfire events in the past contributed to this high biodiversity? Or are increasingly frequent fires threatening these remnant ecosystems?

This is where we come back to a seven-metre-long sediment core (a cylindrical sample) we collected after the fires in 2020.

Painting a detailed picture

We were not the first scientists to examine the mud from this site. Fifty years ago, Australian biologist Robin L. Clark established methods central to research in this field. She used fragments of charcoal and pollen grains found in the sediment of Lashmars Lagoon to paint a picture of past fire and vegetation.

We also used these techniques, combined with scientific advances in sediment dating, analysis and interpretation, to re-evaluate Clark’s hypothesis that fires became bigger after the departure of people from Kangaroo Island.

After a rigorous screening of archaeological data, we found the last reliable evidence for people living on the island was between about five and six thousand years ago. After people left, a more shrubby, denser vegetation established on the island.

Despite this, fire remained relatively rare and subdued in the landscape for a further 3,000 years under relatively wet climates. Then, fires increased over the last 2,000 years, culminating in prominent fire activity between 700 and 900 years ago.

This increase in fire activity coincided with a trend towards the climate becoming dryer, possibly due to changes in the southern westerly winds.

Crucially, this increase in fire activity is at odds with evidence from mainland Australia. Over the same 2,000-year period, fire activity in southeastern Australia was actually lower. This suggests the importance of Indigenous stewardship in suppressing bushfires, even when contending with the impacts of a drying climate overall.

Ultimately, our study has a message of optimism. Biodiversity on Kangaroo Island appears to have weathered major changes in climate and fire regimes in the past. However, questions still remain as to whether this unique environment can continue to withstand decreasing water resources and more frequent intense fires.

One thing is certain. With a rapidly changing climate, there is an urgent need to combine Indigenous wisdom, community engagement and western scientific evidence to conserve these unique ecosystems for future generations.

Haidee Cadd receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jonathan Tyler receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

Lucinda Duxbury 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.

China’s latest national accounts show the economy grew by about 5% through 2025 and into the first quarter of 2026, pointing to resilience despite ongoing trade tensions.

But the underlying picture is weaker: growth slowed last year and, while it has stabilised, it remains below pre-COVID levels.

China used to regularly report GDP growth rates above 10% before 2010 and around 6-8% after 2010. So, what’s behind the slowdown from those growth rates?

Weak consumption, uncertain exports

Household spending growth remains modest, while exports are growing more slowly amid global uncertainty and the Iran war.

Together, these trends point to softer growth, weak domestic demand and more fragile external support.

China has long been seen as an economy needing to shift from heavy reliance on exports and investment spending towards stronger domestic demand.

To understand whether this shift is actually happening and whether these recent patterns are temporary, or part of a deeper shift, we examined what has been driving China’s growth over the past decade or so. Our results do not suggest that consumer spending has yet become a stronger supporter of China’s growth.

A shift in the drivers of growth

In a recent paper, we compare the sources of growth across two periods: 2012–2017 and 2017–2022.

From 2012 to 2017, China’s growth was relatively strong, with real gross domestic product (GDP) rising by more than 40%, supported by solid consumption, robust investment and steady trade expansion.

Between 2017 and 2022, however, the picture weakened: GDP grew by about 30% – one quarter less than in the earlier period. While the pandemic played a role, trade tensions and deeper structural changes were also important, with slower import growth, weaker domestic demand, and a smaller contribution from exports.

At the same time, demographic trends turned less favourable, with slower population growth, fewer working-age people, and falling labour force participation and employment rates, all of which added further downward pressure on growth.

What has caused this change?

The charts above show a clear shift in China’s growth pattern after 2017. To understand why, we used an economy-wide model to identify the main drivers of growth in each period.

In both periods, productivity was the biggest contributor to China’s growth. But before 2017, foreign demand, a shift towards domestic sourcing and stronger business investment all supported growth. Together, these factors generated relatively balanced expansion.

After 2017, the picture became less favourable. The contribution from foreign demand fell, although it remained positive. The contribution from domestic consumption growth also turned slightly negative.

China’s workforce is shrinking as the population ages, and this demographic shift has become a more significant drag, reducing growth by 3.8 percentage points after 2017.

With demographic pressures intensifying and both household consumption and foreign demand weakening markedly, China’s growth has become increasingly reliant on productivity improvements.

A shrinking population and slowing productivity

This helps explain the slowdown in growth in recent Chinese data. Demographic change is a larger drag, and productivity growth has slowed.

Looking ahead, demographic pressures are set to intensify. China’s population began to decline in 2022, and the pace of decline is expected to accelerate. The working-age population is shrinking even faster than the total population.

Population projections suggest China’s working-age population could fall to less than one-third of its 2014 peak by the end of the century.

Other traditional supports for growth also look weaker. Total public and private investment growth has weakened in recent years, with fixed-asset investment turning negative in 2025.

At the same time, slowing global demand amid heightened geopolitical uncertainty is proving challenging for exports. Trade patterns are also shifting as higher US tariffs on Chinese goods have encouraged diversification to other markets.

What this means for the future

Our central finding is straightforward. China’s growth is now being increasingly shaped by two forces: slower productivity growth and a drag from demographic change.

This is not to say the demand side of the economy does not matter. But in our analysis, changes in consumer demand, investment and trade make only limited direct contributions to GDP growth. Their significance lies more in what they reveal about the broader structure of the Chinese economy.

In particular, both the 2017-2022 period and recent data show little evidence of a shift towards consumer spending playing a larger role in supporting growth.

What this means for the rest of the world

Looking ahead, the main question is whether productivity growth can remain strong enough to offset the effects of a shrinking workforce.

Our results suggest some caution on that front. The scope for continued rapid growth by adopting and adapting existing technologies from more advanced economies is narrowing. Population ageing is likely to place continuing downward pressure on the supply of workers. Although China is investing heavily in automation and robotics, these advances may not be sufficient to fully offset these headwinds.

The international implications are harder to predict. Slower growth in China would weaken demand for goods and services that are exported from countries like Australia.

But it could also create new opportunities for other developing economies. This is already evident in the shift of some manufacturing investment to Southeast Asia, partly in response to rising costs and trade tensions.

The effects are therefore likely to differ across countries and industries. What is clear is that the character of China’s growth is changing, and that change will matter well beyond China itself.

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.