The 46 countries bound by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) have signed a new declaration on migration, setting out how they believe human rights law should apply to migration issues.

With the ECHR playing a contentious role in immigration discourse in the UK, the UK government trailed this declaration as a “more modern interpretation” of the ECHR that would help “restore order and control”. Yet the declaration may not change very much in practice.

The ECHR is a key human rights treaty signed by almost every European country, binding them to respect a list of fundamental rights. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has the final say in interpreting what these rights require in practice.

Two ECHR rights are particularly important when it comes to immigration: Article 8 (the right to respect for private and family life), and Article 3 (the right to freedom from torture or inhuman treatment). This new declaration, signed in the Moldovan capital of Chișinău, follows a campaign by some countries, including the UK, to change the interpretation of these rights to make removing migrants easier. It does not remove the authority of the Strasbourg court on these issues, but is likely to influence it.

The right to family life

Article 8, the right to family life, is known as a “qualified right”. This means that governments can make decisions that interfere with it (such as deporting someone with family in the UK) to pursue aims like immigration control – so long as their actions are “proportionate” to their aims.

The UK government wants a “rebalancing” of this right, giving more weight to the “public interest” and less to offenders’ family ties. The Chișinău declaration says that Strasbourg should respect national governments’ views, intervening only very exceptionally.

In reality, however, the Strasbourg court has already been doing this for years. In 2017, the court held that as long as ECHR countries carefully weighed up all relevant factors, such as the extent of the person’s family life and nature of their offending, then, “it is not for the court to substitute its own assessment”.

The perception that Strasbourg hinders the UK on family life matters is aided by misinformation – for example, the extensively reported case of a criminal migrant who was supposedly allowed to remain in the UK because his son disliked the chicken nuggets abroad. This was, however, never the basis of the decision. The declaration may fuel headlines about closing a “chicken nugget loophole”, but no such loophole really existed.

Inhuman treatment

The other right up for reinterpretation is Article 3, covering torture or inhuman treatment. This is an “absolute” right, meaning states are forbidden from such treatment under any circumstances.

Strasbourg’s interpretation of this right in migration has caused a genuine problem for governments. An example is the recent case of Nicolas de Brito, who was wanted on murder charges in Brazil. After fleeing to the UK, he successfully challenged extradition because prison conditions in Brazil fell below Strasbourg’s standards for inhuman treatment, due to overcrowding. He was released to live and work in the UK, and the murder case in Brazil had to be shelved.

In my forthcoming research, I argue that results like this arise from a crucial mistake made by Strasbourg. The problem began with a case in 1989, when the court first considered a new question: can a European state extradite someone if they might suffer inhuman treatment in the country receiving them?

The court’s judgment was ambiguously written. In my view, it is best read as saying that the ECHR does not normally govern what another state outside Europe does after extradition. However, removal should be blocked if there is a risk of exceptionally grave treatment.

In subsequent cases, though, Strasbourg arguably misinterpreted this. Instead of holding that only the most serious forms of mistreatment should prevent a person’s removal, it began holding that anything that would breach Article 3 should prohibit a person being extradited, if it might happen abroad.

Read more: Why is it so difficult for the UK to deport foreign criminals?

When “inhuman treatment” was later expanded to include overcrowded prisons, this created a difficult situation for governments trying to extradite people. If a European country’s own prison systems are found to fall below acceptable standards, they can respond by changing them. However, they cannot control prisons in countries like Brazil. This means that in a case like de Brito’s, they are forced to release him regardless of the murder charges, as this is the only way to ensure he does not enter these conditions.

The solution is to recognise that while the ECHR should still bar European governments from imposing inhuman prison conditions themselves, the position must be different when it comes to conditions in another country. Then, only the most serious matters should block extradition. This is not because someone in de Brito’s situation has inferior rights to a prisoner in Europe, but because it is Brazil, not the UK, that is responsible for fulfilling his rights.

While the new declaration made in Moldova expresses that states are “concerned” about the implications of this issue, it otherwise again simply restates the law as it already is. This is a missed opportunity to untangle the knot in which the court has tied itself.

Finally, in a section on “new approaches to migration”, the declaration says that European states are allowed to process asylum seekers’ claims in another country. This could include schemes like the UK’s now-abandoned Rwanda plan.

However, this is not a new position. The UK’s plan wasn’t blocked because countries could not process asylum claims abroad in principle. Instead, it was because the UK’s specific scheme failed to ensure these claims would be properly dealt with. This remains the case: the declaration says that states’ power to operate such schemes applies only “provided that they continue to fulfil their [ECHR] obligations”.

Overall, then, the declaration does very little to change how countries may legally approach immigration control. It spends much time restating existing law, while missing a chance to meaningfully engage with the hardest issue.

Rights groups worried that the declaration would weaken protections for migrants. Their concern should not be with the declaration itself, but the wider political context in which it originates – and that debate is set to rumble on.

Angus Harrison 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.

One argument often used to quell concerns about the rising energy and resource demand of data centres is that artificial intelligence (AI) models will need less in the future as they improve and become more efficient.

But this seemingly logical thinking is a trap, according to a new United Nations report that quantifies the environmental costs of AI.

The report estimates that by 2030, AI’s energy use could double to consume 3% of the world’s electricity, produce emissions to equal the UK and deplete more water for cooling than the annual drinking water need of the global population.

It also anticipates the use of AI will follow an economic principle known as the “Jevons paradox”, which predicts that when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource, it leads to a rise, rather than a fall, in the total consumption of that resource.

The paradox is named after economist William Stanley Jevons who observed this effect with the use of coal in 19th-century England. Efficiency gains did not reduce overall consumption. Instead, the lower costs resulted in expanded use and higher overall demand.

As AI models become cheaper and more attractive, the report expects this to encourage new uses and higher volumes of use, eroding and possibly erasing any savings from efficiency advances.

To avoid falling into this trap, it lays out a roadmap for responsible AI use based on guiding principles of transparency, efficiency by design, equity and justice, lifecycle responsibility, global cooperation and sustainable use.

The scale of the problem

Last year, data centres already consumed as much electricity as Saudi Arabia, which ranks as the world’s 11th largest electricity consumer.

If electricity use doubles as projected by 2030, the associated carbon footprint would require 6.7 billion trees grown over ten years to offset this demand.

Data centres would also require 9.3 trillion litres of water and land nearly ten times the size of Mexico City.

Beyond resource use, the report also underscores the structural inequity at the heart of the AI boom, with only 32 nations hosting AI-specific cloud infrastructure and 90% of that capacity located in the US and China.

It warns of a widening digital divide between nations that build and control AI systems and those that consume them, with the latter often bearing a disproportionate environmental burden caused by mineral extraction and e-waste.

Responsible AI use

Two main forces shape AI’s operational footprint: how much we use it and how we use it.

This involves all tasks AI models perform, from text and code generation to image and video. Each of these tasks requires different levels of computational effort.

The model choice also matters as each AI system performs these task with distinct energy and environmental costs.

The report argues responsible AI requires full value-chain governance, from mineral sourcing to recycling and safe disposal.

It calls for a twinning of capability and environmental stewardship – thinking about both what AI can do for us and the protection of the natural environment.

This would mean making environmental disclosures a routine part of AI development, at both the model and task level, and incorporating projected AI demand in climate and energy planning.

Responsible AI is crucial as countries are promoting and adopting AI across government and the public sector.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the government has launched a national AI strategy and a public service AI framework.

While the framework was informed by the OECD’s values-based AI principles, including inclusive and sustainable development, there is no requirement for environmental disclosures and no regulator compiling energy use or emissions.

Likewise in Australia, improving public services is part of the national AI plan. For example, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has created Bowerbird, a machine learning-enabled mass audio and video transcription engine, to document material. The Department of Veteran’s Affairs has developed a proof-of-concept tool to see whether AI can help speed up the processing of claims.

Both countries take a deliberate “light touch” and principles-based regulatory approach to AI. But this approach risks overlooking the growing environmental cost of AI that can’t be solved by improving it.

The natural environment is foundational to the economy, culture and wellbeing. It should be at the centre of our thinking. It’s time to rethink the AI innovation playbook and shift focus toward a sustainable tech future.

Amanda Turnbull-McRae 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.

Australia’s housing policy has come a long way over the past year, as the Albanese government tries to help more people buy their first home.

Last October, the federal government expanded its Home Guarantee Scheme, removing income caps and opening the scheme to all first home buyers with a 5% deposit.

Since then, it has also launched the Help To Buy shared equity scheme and announced major reforms to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.

The government claims these schemes are for everyone. One, however – the 5% deposit scheme – has a significant blind spot. The scheme operates through a panel of more than 30 approved lenders. But it doesn’t include a single Islamic finance provider offering faith-compliant home loans.

For the many Muslim Australians who observe the Islamic prohibition of riba (interest), the door remains shut unless they compromise on their faith.

The exclusion from this scheme isn’t deliberate. It’s a side effect of the way our banking system has been designed.

Here’s how Australia could follow the United Kingdom’s lead to update the system and give Muslim home buyers a fair go.

How home loans without interest work

First, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how Islamic finance (sometimes called Shariah-compliant finance) works.

The Quran, Islam’s holy book, explicitly forbids the practice of charging interest on loans. But it does not prohibit earning a return altogether. Islamic financial institutions can still make a profit under strict rules, usually by buying, selling, or leasing a real asset rather than charging interest on a loan.

In broad terms, many of these loans are instead structured around paying a lender an agreed amount of rent for an underlying asset (like a home) while the principal is paid off over time.

Read more: Comic explainer: how does Islamic finance work?

Expanded access that still excludes

To access the government’s First Home Guarantee 5% deposit scheme, you’ll need to apply for a loan through one of its participating lenders. The federal independent housing delivery agency, Housing Australia, has authorised these lenders to access and offer the scheme.

With the exception of Indigenous Business Australia, a Commonwealth statutory body, these lenders are all what are known as authorised deposit-taking institutions. This means they’ve been formally licensed to accept deposits from the public and conduct other banking business.

Currently, no Australian Islamic finance providers have an authorised deposit-taking institution licence. That’s because their business model isn’t built around accepting deposits and using them to earn interest.

Australia’s first Islamic bank, Islamic Bank Australia, was granted a restricted licence in 2022, but this was revoked at the bank’s own request in 2024 after it reportedly struggled to raise the necessary capital and had no customers or deposits. The institution has since changed its name to Islamic Money Australia.

So despite being regulated by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and holding Australian credit licences, no Australian Islamic finance providers are on the list of approved lenders.

A disproportionate impact on women

My own recent research shows how this limited regulatory recognition of Islamic financial principles extends beyond housing.

Successive governments have acknowledged the absence of Islamic finance from Australia’s legal and regulatory architecture. But it has not been addressed.

The cost is not evenly distributed and falls most heavily on Muslim women, who already face compounded financial disadvantage. This is shaped by factors such as the gender wealth gap, lower superannuation balances, lower workforce participation rates and the structural barriers that come with being part of a culturally and linguistically diverse community.

These challenges faced by Muslim women need to be understood through the lens of intersectionality, a term coined by US scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. This is the idea that overlapping social identities, race, gender and class, create compounding discrimination and privilege.

For Muslim women specifically, this also includes structural disadvantages such as Islamophobia and racism.

A Muslim woman who is professional, employed, financially capable and has saved a deposit will be unable to access the government’s flagship first home buyer scheme if she is looking for a faith-based lender.

What the UK did

The UK has faced similar challenges in accommodating Islamic finance. But more than two decades ago, it took steps to address them.

From 2003 onwards, the UK amended its laws to bring Islamic finance into its mainstream regulatory framework. This included explicitly recognising Shariah-compliant products within its banking regulation and licensing Islamic banks to operate as regulated deposit-taking institutions.

This process required extensive consultation with the Muslim community and collaboration between government, regulators and the Islamic finance industry.

But as a result, the UK set up a number of Islamic banks. These include AlRayan Bank which serves hundreds of thousands of customers with regulated, compliant home finance.

What Australia could do

In principle, what needs to change is not complicated. However it needs genuine political commitment to examine how the housing scheme’s loan eligibility framework can cater for Muslim Australians.

These questions have been raised before. The political will to work through answers is what’s missing. The UK shows what’s possible.

Maria Bhatti 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.

The government’s recent announcement of support for voluntary carbon and nature markets effectively offers a “warrant of fitness” to signal which markets can be trusted, without directly regulating them.

The aim is straightforward. By giving investors, landowners and developers confidence, the government hopes to unlock private finance for projects that reduce emissions or restore ecosystems.

As Associate Minister for the Environment Andrew Hoggard put it:

The pressures on nature and climate are bigger than the public purse.

But voluntary markets are based on self-imposed targets and governed by a patchwork of organisations. The credibility of climate claims in voluntary carbon markets has already been repeatedly challenged internationally.

This raises the deeper question of whether the government can create a credible framework by relying on externally developed standards in a lightly regulated system, or whether it risks outsourcing key decisions about environmental integrity.

How voluntary markets work

Carbon markets allow organisations to buy and sell “credits” representing reductions or removals of greenhouse gas emissions. In compliance markets – such as New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme – participation is required by law, and governments set the rules.

Voluntary carbon markets are different. In these markets, businesses and individuals choose to buy credits to meet self-imposed climate targets or demonstrate environmental responsibility.

They are not governed by a single regulator. Instead, various independent organisations verify projects and issue credits, often following standards set by international bodies.

Voluntary nature markets work in a similar way but extend beyond carbon, covering biodiversity, water quality and ecosystem restoration.

This decentralised structure is both a strength and a weakness. It allows innovation and experimentation, but it also means that credibility depends heavily on the quality and consistency of external standards.

The credibility problem

Voluntary markets can channel finance into projects that fall outside regulated systems such as emissions trading schemes. But internationally, they have been dogged by controversy.

The main issue is credibility. For a carbon credit to have real climate value, the emissions reductions it represents must be real, additional and permanent. In practice, many credits fall short of these criteria.

Concerns have been documented widely. They include weak or inconsistent standards, limited transparency, difficulties verifying whether projects would have happened anyway, risks that stored carbon may later be released, and the possibility of the same reductions being counted more than once.

These problems are not just technical. Some analyses suggest a significant share of offsets used by companies may not deliver genuine emissions reductions.

Even where credits are of high quality, they can be misused to justify claims of “carbon neutrality” without any meaningful reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

The result has been a persistent gap between the promise of voluntary markets and their performance. Investor confidence has been shaken and concerns about greenwashing have grown.

A ‘light-touch’ solution

The government’s response is not to regulate the market directly, but to endorse schemes it considers credible.

Three international initiatives – the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets and the Paris Agreement’s own Crediting Mechanism – have received approval.

However, endorsement does not eliminate the underlying risks.

These initiatives operate within a system that remains fragmented and evolving. Their effectiveness depends on how consistently standards are applied, how rigorously projects are assessed and how transparently information is shared.

By relying on these schemes, New Zealand is effectively tying its approach to international governance processes over which it has limited control. Endorsement may signal quality, but it also outsources key judgements about environmental integrity.

It is a light-touch approach in a context where the risks are already well established.

Beyond trees

Despite these concerns, voluntary markets could offer important opportunities, particularly for diversifying New Zealand’s approach to carbon removal.

At present, tree planting dominates the country’s removal strategy. But there is growing interest in alternatives such as wetland and peatland restoration, soil carbon, coastal “blue carbon” ecosystems and emerging technologies such as direct air capture.

Many of these approaches are not yet supported by compliance markets. Voluntary markets could provide early-stage funding, helping promising ideas get off the ground.

In this sense, a light-touch approach may encourage innovation.

But here, too, the risks are not insignificant. Measuring and verifying carbon removals in soils, oceans or engineered systems is often more complex and uncertain than measuring emissions reductions. This makes these areas especially vulnerable to weak standards and low-quality credits.

The same flexibility that enables innovation also increases the risk of poor environmental outcomes, particularly in areas where robust measurement is hardest.

What role should voluntary markets play?

The international evidence suggests voluntary carbon and nature markets can play a useful but limited role in climate policy.

They can help mobilise private finance, support conservation and restoration projects and provide early funding for emerging technologies. But they are not a substitute for direct emissions reductions or strong domestic regulation.

For New Zealand, this implies a need for clear boundaries. Voluntary markets should complement, not undermine, the emissions trading scheme and other core climate policies. That means ensuring strict rules around how credits can be used and what claims can be made.

Without guardrails, voluntary markets could expand faster than the governance needed to ensure they deliver genuine climate benefits.

The government’s strategy may succeed in attracting investment. But its long-term credibility will depend on whether that investment translates into real, measurable and lasting environmental gains.

Jennifer Campion received funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment under the Endeavour Fund.

A new Masters of the Universe film is now out in cinemas – nearly four decades on from the original 1983 cartoon series and 1987 film.

For audiences who grew up in the 1980s, nostalgia alone may be enough to drive them to the theatre. Indeed, such reboots are often dismissed as attempts by modern studios to make a quick buck using “nostalgia bait”.

But while nostalgia is part of it, it’s not the whole story. In fact, many beloved 80s characters were deliberately created as part of franchisable intellectual property (IP) ecosystems, spanning toys, TV and merchandise.

In other words, they were never just characters or toys. They were designed from the outset to be profitable, across a variety of contexts, for decades.

A merchandising empire

Before Marvel built cinematic universes, companies in the 80s were creating commercial worlds centred around children’s toys. Remember Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, the Care Bears and the Smurfs? These characters and stories were all carefully designed to sell merchandise and generate ongoing production opportunities.

Prior to the 80s, toys were generally created only after a highly successful cartoon had been released.

But this changed in 1977 with the release of George Lucas’s hugely successful original Star Wars film. The following year, American toy brand Kenner Products reportedly sold some 40 million units of Star Wars items.

Lucas produced his subsequent Star Wars projects with merchandising in mind. This approach would go on to define popular character franchises.

Children’s TV as a giant toy catalogue

Commercial and intellectual property strategies pioneered in the 1980s continue to influence how today’s studios revive and adapt old franchises.

Several major changes occurred during this time. In 1983, there was a loosening of industry restrictions that had prevented children’s shows from functioning largely as toy advertisements.

The Antitrust Division of the US Justice Department put legal pressure on the National Association of Broadcasters to change its industry rules, arguing they had unlawfully restricted competition. So the association abandoned its code of self-regulation.

By 1984, the US Federal Communications Commission had also changed its rules on maximum limits on advertising for children’s TV shows. This meant cartoons created specifically to sell toys were no longer considered extended advertising, whereas they previously were.

Media and toy companies increasingly embraced a “character franchise” model, in which proprietary characters became the foundation for TV programs, toys and licensing opportunities.

The creation of a single character, such as He-Man (the lead in Masters Of The Universe) or Rainbow Brite, became a whole world built on an extensive network of licences.

Through these licensing arrangements, the IP owner controlled how the characters and stories were portrayed across TV, film, toys, merchandise, and various media platforms (such as into the video game space). This is known as “transmedia storytelling”.

Mattel deliberately created Masters of the Universe so the underlying IP rights would be entirely exploitable, and He-Man’s character reproducible across different types of products.

Mattel released the first He-Man toys and merchandise in 1982. This followed by a 65-episodes series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, in 1983.

Mattel provided its partners a brand bible depicting the character’s aesthetics and backstory – which had to be complied with.

The 1980s also saw the rollout of cable TV, with a massive influx of channels, including children’s networks.

This meant TV producers could distribute children’s series through these cable channels and syndicated television markets, rather than relying on the major broadcast networks.

From 1983 to 1988, the number of US toy-based TV shows went from 13 to more than 70. Revenue from the sales of related products tripled. These products – including toys, books, comics, lunchboxes, apparel and stationery – were often licensed to specific manufacturers who had expertise in their area of production.

The transmedia model endures

Toy-based TV shows started to diminish following the Children’s Television Act of 1990.

This act restricted the amount of children’s advertising allowed. It classified a cartoon as an advertisement if a commercial for the cartoon’s associated toy or product aired during, or immediately adjacent to, that specific episode. It also mandated three hours of educational programs per week.

Nevertheless, the underlying IP strategies developed in the 1980s still hold relevance today, even if the context has changed in the digital era.

Today’s media giants such as Disney, Universal, Mattel and Hasbro have built interconnected IP ecosystems that extend across films, TV, games, streaming, toys and consumer products.

For fans of the 80s, the longevity of the transmedia franchising model is good news; they can expect several more adaptations based on their favourite childhood characters. Transformers v GI Joe, Polly Pocket and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are all slated for future releases.

I am a member of the Copyright Society of Australia and the Asia-Pacific Copyright Association.