Almost 60 countries, representing about a third of the global economy, met in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta last week for the first international summit on the transition away from fossil fuels.

It was hailed as a bold step to shift global dependence on hydrocarbons into an era of clean energy. The group of 57 countries, including Australia, Canada, Norway and Brazil, launched a new international process to coordinate the global phase out of coal, oil and gas. This historic shift brings us closer to the end of fossil fuels.

Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister and chair of the talks, said: “We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete, political and collective endeavour.”

Here are five key developments from Santa Marta.

1. Moving beyond negotiating deadlocks

This meeting was a successful complement to the UN’s annual climate summits, not a replacement for them.

Decisions at UN climate meetings are made by consensus. Outcomes such as the 2015 Paris Agreement have huge legitimacy because they are agreed by nearly 200 countries. But the consensus rules also allow a handful of fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia to block progress.

Holding a summit outside these formal UN talks brought much-needed fresh air to global climate diplomacy. Without petrostates blocking the way, willing countries were able to have pragmatic discussions about the legal, fiscal and economic measures needed for a coordinated wind down of fossil fuels.

These discussions will now feed back into the next UN climate talks, to be held in Turkey in November. They will, for example, raise expectations that countries include timelines to end fossil fuel use in national climate plans.

2. Paths away from coal, oil and gas

Working groups were established in Santa Marta to help countries develop national and regional plans to move away from fossil fuels, with targets and timelines to end the use of coal, oil and gas.

France launched its national roadmap at the summit, pledging to end the use of coal by 2030, oil by 2045 and gas by 2050. Europe’s second-largest economy plans to close its last coal-fired power plant next year, while replacing oil with electricity for transport and switching from gas to heat pumps for home heating. France wants two out of three new cars to be electric by 2030 and will ban the installation of gas boilers in new homes this year.

The ongoing US-Iran war has only added momentum for a shift to clean energy, as nations grapple with their dependence on imported fossil fuels amid the worst energy crisis in history.

Other nations are now expected to create plans to move away from fossil fuels and bring them to future summits.

3. A science panel to guide the transition

A new scientific panel launched in Santa Marta brings together experts in climate, economics, technology and law to advise policymakers as they draft plans to shift away from fossil fuels.

The panel will map out the most promising policies, regulations and financial arrangements to support the shift to clean energy. It is spearheaded by Professor Johan Rockstrom from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Ahead of Santa Marta, a global group of researchers released a report listing 12 high-level actions nations can take to support a fossil-fuel phaseout.

4. Tuvalu to host next summit, with Irish support

Tuvalu will host the next meeting on ending fossil fuels in 2027. As a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu’s future is threatened by sea-level rise. The Pacific nation has led global climate diplomacy for decades.

“If we are to address the climate change issue, we have to address the root cause, and the root cause is the fossil fuel industry,” said Maina Talia, Tuvalu’s climate change minister.

That there are plans for a second summit is meaningful in itself. A single conference could be a flash in the pan. But a series marks the birth of a new international process with buy in from both wealthy nations and developing countries. This year’s summit was co-hosted with the Netherlands and next year will be co-hosted with Ireland.

5. Toward a fossil fuel treaty

Today, fossil fuel producers plan to dig up more than double the amount of coal, oil and gas in 2030 than would be consistent with meeting shared climate goals.

Tuvalu is part of a growing bloc of countries, including 11 Pacific nations, that wants a new treaty to phase out fossil fuel production. Such a treaty would have three elements: ending fossil fuel expansion; phasing down existing production; and supporting a just transition to clean energy.

It would be similar to global agreements to phase out weapons, harmful substances or hazardous waste.

Climate diplomacy now runs at two speeds

We will only appreciate the full significance of the Santa Marta summit in history’s rear-view mirror.

But what is clear is that climate diplomacy now has two operating speeds. André Corrêa do Lago, who headed last year’s UN COP30 climate talks in Brazil, calls this “two-tier multilateralism”.

The first speed is that of the UN climate talks, which are slower and anchored in consensus. They ensure legitimacy, universality and collective direction.

But what the Santa Marta conference shows is the existence of a second, much faster speed available to any country wanting to rapidly move to end the use of fossil fuels, once and for all.

Wesley Morgan is a Fellow with the Climate Council of Australia.

Australia is rich in minerals, metals, sun and wind. Iron ore, copper and critical minerals are all mined here and largely exported overseas to be turned into products such as steel, fertiliser, fuel and infrastructure. Mining and heavy industries create jobs and wealth. But their emissions are some of the hardest to cut.

This is changing. Steel can now be made without coal. Hydrogen can be made using water and renewable power rather than from gas.

The Australian government wants to create greener export industries. It hasn’t been easy. Green hydrogen is proving difficult to finance and scale, while the development of green iron is moving slowly. Interest has grown in green fuels such as biodiesel during this year’s energy crisis, but progress remains slow.

But hard doesn’t mean impossible. To make new exports competitive, policymakers should create green hubs close to renewables and where resources can be shared.

Precincts, not projects

To make enough green iron, green ammonia and green fuels to export, Australia will need large renewable energy zones, energy storage, hydrogen production, water supply and port infrastructure. Much of this already exists or is being scaled up. The problem is coordination.

If every company builds its own separate systems for power, water and transport, costs rise and land use expands. It’s cheaper and more effective to plan regional hubs where industries can share infrastructure, use renewable energy more efficiently and reduce environmental impact.

This isn’t new. Australia’s large, high-tech mining industry relies on hubs. Queensland’s port city of Gladstone is a hub for coal and gas exports, aluminium smelting and chemical manufacturing. These heavy industries use shared infrastructure such as ports, roads and power.

Countries such as China, Germany and the Netherlands are using this hub method as they rapidly scale up green exports.

The cost of green iron and steel depends not just on the technology used in furnaces, but on how well integrated the facility is. A waste stream from one plant can become an input for another. The intense heat produced by making green ammonia or clean fuels can be used for other processes such as preheating iron ore for ironmaking.

Our modelling shows integrating renewables, hydrogen and green iron at a proposed hub in South Australia can cut power costs 20–30% compared to standalone projects by avoiding overbuilding of electricity infrastructure. More cheap renewable power is used, less gas is required and emissions fall more rapidly.

Modelling of a separate hub in New South Wales shows similar benefits.

Future green hubs should be centred around a nature-positive philosophy, where industry and nature restoration sit side by side. Instead of approving projects one by one, planning happens across whole landscapes. Sensitive areas are protected from the start. Infrastructure is concentrated into shared corridors. Natural restoration is part of the plan.

Iron ore – or green iron?

Australia has long been a major iron ore exporter, but makes little iron or steel here.

If Australia moves rapidly, it could take more market share as buyers shift to clean options. German and Australian researchers are working to green the steelmaking process. One option is for Australia to make and export green iron as a precursor to steel.

This would be a surprisingly effective climate measure. Studies suggest Australia could singlehandedly reduce global emissions 4% if it turned its iron ore into green iron.

Is it possible?

Turning this vision into reality is not straightforward. Coordinated industrial hubs are difficult to deliver in Australia.

Fragmented regulations across agencies slow progress. Environmental approvals are typically done project by project rather than at a system level. Government-business collaboration is limited. Business models focus on individual projects rather than collaboration. Where technical solutions exist, institutional and commercial barriers can slow progress.

Here’s how to begin.

First, policymakers should identify optimal hub locations able to co-host mining, processing, green fuel production and renewable energy.

Second, plan the hubs at scale so environmental impacts can be managed and restoration work undertaken nearby.

Third, give the hubs clear, measurable emissions and nature goals. Set targets for emissions reductions, renewable and hydrogen use, water recycling, and ecosystem restoration at a regional scale. Track them over time.

Clear roles for government and industry

Governments have a key role in setting the direction of travel. This means selecting hub locations, coordinating land use and infrastructure planning, aligning approvals to allow system-level assessments rather than individual and investing in shared infrastructure.

They can also reduce risk by supporting early projects and broker agreements between companies. Long-term policy certainty will help unlock private investment.

Industry must respond by collaborating. This includes sharing infrastructure where it makes sense, coordinating across value chains, designing projects around environmental outcomes and working with communities as genuine partners.

Australia can punch well above its weight on green industry. If we succeed, our clean product exports will be a model for the future.

Changlong Wang receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the South Australian Government (Department of Energy and Mining).

Rahman Daiyan receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, NSW Government and RACE CRC.

On the western side of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales, Australia, sits Myuna Bay, a quiet bay with meadows of seagrass waving beneath the water. The most common marine plant species you find there is Zostera muelleri. It has long ribbon-like leaves that grow from stems (called rhizomes) buried beneath the sediment and provides important shelter for small fish, shrimp and crabs.

Although Myuna Bay looks quite normal, it is actually a bit unusual. For decades, the nearby Eraring power station released warm water into the lake that was used to cool down their systems, causing water temperatures here to be consistently 1°C to 3°C higher than nearby sites.

This made the bay a rare natural laboratory for understanding what warming oceans might mean for coastal ecosystems.

In our new research, published today in the journal New Phytologist, we used this setting to investigate what happens to seagrass and the microbes living in the sediment when ocean temperatures increase in the way climate models predict they will in the future.

One of the most important coastal habitats

Seagrasses are often overlooked, but they are among the most important coastal habitats on Earth.

They are marine flowering plants that stabilise sediments, improve water clarity and provide food and shelter for many marine animals. They also store large amounts of carbon in the sediments beneath them, making them important for slowing climate change.

But seagrasses don’t function alone. Beneath the leaves, in the sediments, lives a hidden ecosystem of microbes: bacteria, fungi and other microscopic organisms that interact with the plant.

Just as plants on land depend on soil microbes, seagrasses rely on microbial communities in the sediment around their roots. These microbes carry out many important processes. Some provide nutrients that plants need to grow. Others break down organic matter or detoxify harmful compounds in the sediment.

In some ways, the relationship can be compared to the partnership between corals and the microscopic algae living inside them. Corals rely on those algae for energy, while seagrasses depend on microbes to help maintain a healthy environment around their roots.

But not all microbes are helpful. Some produce sulphide, a compound that can be toxic to seagrass roots when it accumulates in sediments. We are starting to find out that whether microbial communities help or harm the plant can depend strongly on environmental conditions, including increases in ocean temperatures due to climate change.

Simulating future ocean warming in the field

To understand how ocean warming might affect the relationship between seagrasses and microbes in the sediment under realistic future conditions, we designed a field experiment at Myuna Bay.

We collected seagrass plants and sediments from both warmer and “normal” temperature sites in Lake Macquarie. Some plants were grown in sediments with their microbial communities intact.

In other treatments, the sediments were heated to 121°C to disrupt the microbes; this reduces total bacterial abundance by more than 95%.

This allowed us to test how plants performed when the microbial community was intact versus when it had been disrupted. We then placed plants in pots with those different sediments and exposed the plants to warmer conditions at Myuna Bay, similar to those expected in the future.

After one month, we monitored how the plants responded. We measured how they survived, how many shoots they produced and how their biomass changed over time. At the same time, we analysed the bacterial communities in the sediment using DNA sequencing to see how they differed between treatments.

Looking beyond plants

When plants were grown in sediments from “normal” temperature sites, seagrass performed well whether the microbes were intact or disrupted. But when plants were grown in sediments from warmer sites, the outcome changed: plants growing with intact sediment microbial communities performed worse. These sediments from the warm areas also contained different bacterial communities, which may help explain the lower plant biomass we observed.

One possible explanation involves sulphide. In seagrass sediments, certain microbes produce sulphide as part of their metabolism. At high concentrations, sulphide can be toxic for seagrasses. Warmer temperatures may stimulate microbial activity, increasing sulphide production and tipping the balance from a supportive microbial community to one that harms the plant.

Our findings highlight an important idea: the impacts of climate change on seagrasses can’t be understood by looking at the plants alone. The microbial communities living in the sediment can also influence how these plants respond to warming.

This has important implications for conservation and restoration. Around the world, seagrass meadows are declining due to coastal development, pollution and climate change.

Restoration projects often focus on planting seagrass shoots or seeds. But the condition of the surrounding sediment, including its microbial community, may also determine whether restoration succeeds.

As oceans continue to warm, the future of seagrass meadows may depend not only on the plants we see when snorkelling, but also on the microscopic microbes living in the sediment beneath them.

Renske Jongen is a council member for the NSW Branch of the Australian Marine Sciences Association.

Ziggy Marzinelli is an Associate Professor at The University of Sydney and receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the NSW Environmental Trust.

Paul Gribben receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Across the world, concern about democratic backsliding – the erosion of democratic institutions and civil liberties – is growing.

It has become a live issue even in established systems, where erosion can often occur through the steady degradation of institutions and processes.

A recent report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) highlights the role of parliamentary processes in this dynamic.

The core insight of this report is deceptively simple: parliamentary rules are not just procedural technicalities. They are often important institutional guardrails for democracy.

The IDEA report identifies several ways in which these guardrails can be undermined. Governments may compress legislative timelines, limit debate, or curtail committee scrutiny in ways that reduce the capacity of parliaments to perform their core functions. Procedural tools – for example, control over the legislative agenda or the structuring of committees – can be used to entrench executive dominance.

These insights resonate in how democracy in practised in Australia. There is a growing chorus of concern – from academics, research-based organisations such as the Centre for Public Integrity, professional bodies such as the Law Council of Australia, and non-government parliamentarians – that the Australian parliament is being undermined in different ways. As a result, policies and accountability are suffering.

Law-making with little parliamentary oversight

A first area of concern is the heavy reliance on executive law-making with little respect for parliamentary oversight. This was particularly apparent during the COVID pandemic, where governments understandably required flexibility to respond to rapidly evolving circumstances.

The Senate Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee’s inquiry showed how easily significant executive lawmaking was undertaken outside of parliamentary control. In just the first seven months of 2020, 249 legislative instruments were made. Of those, 48 — around 20% — were exempt from parliamentary disallowance (that is, the parliament cannot veto them). Experts queried whether such exemptions were required even in the context of the pandemic.

The committee also found reduced parliamentary sittings meant less oversight. The committee recommended stronger safeguards, including limiting exemptions and ensuring emergency instruments remain subject to scrutiny.

While executive law making is a necessary feature of modern governance, there are serious concerns when it happens without parliamentary scrutiny. The expansion of such powers raise questions about the balance between efficiency and accountability. These concerns were exacerbated within, but extend beyond the pandemic response.

Disrespect for parliament’s constitutional role

A second issue concerns the integrity of primary lawmaking processes. The Centre for Public Integrity’s recent report, Lawmaking with Integrity, documents a pattern of legislative practices that, while not unprecedented, have become increasingly common. These include

• compressed timeframes
• limited or opaque consultation
• the curtailment of parliamentary scrutiny in the name or urgency.

The Law Council of Australia has expressed similar concerns. In 2025, it too released a Best Practice Legislative Development Checklist.

A small selection of case studies illustrate these trends.

The first involves the passage of the 2025 reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. Concerns were raised about the limited consultation preceding introduction and the “urgent” progression of the bill through parliament before the conclusion of the Senate Committee inquiry – even before public submissions had closed. This required the suspension of the Senate Standing Order that requires committees to report on bills before passage.

The proposed 2025 changes to freedom of information laws provide another stark illustration of how parliamentary processes can be abused. The FOI amendment bill was developed with no public consultation. The government’s approach to the parliamentary scrutiny process did little to restore confidence.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry was conducted by a government-dominated, government-chaired committee. Notably, it did not call a number of prominent expert submitters to give evidence.

Equally troubling, reporting later suggested that in seeking to secure passage of the bill, the government had offered additional staffing resources to the opposition. If this allegation is true, it raises serious concerns about the use of public resources in negotiating legislative outcomes.

Government dominance of parliamentary committees

A third area of concern, also highlighted in the IDEA report, is the functioning of parliamentary committees. Committees are central to the scrutiny function of parliament. Yet their effectiveness depends on their composition and operation.

Where committees are dominated by government members, or timelines are truncated, their capacity to perform this role can be diminished. This is why the Centre for Public Integrity has called for best-practice models that ensure at least integrity scrutiny committees are not government-dominated (which remains the norm across most Australian jurisdictions).

Government control of information

A further dimension of democratic erosion is the control of information. Parliamentary procedure also determines what information is available to the parliament, and therefore what scrutiny is possible. Parliament requires appropriate access to information to make laws and hold the executive to account. These functions are central to responsible government.

It is in this context that growing concerns about information control in Australia must be understood. There has been an increasing pattern of government resistance to providing documents to parliament when requested.

The Centre for Public Integrity’s 2025 report, Still Shrouded in Secrecy, documented a significant increase in refusals to comply with Senate orders for the production of documents. Governments are more frequently asserting broad public interest immunity claims and, in some cases, failing to provide adequate justification for withholding information. There is no independent procedure to very such claims.

Parliamentary procedure dictates how the parliament can respond to such refusals. To date, this has had limited success.

At the same time, concerns have been raised about the quality of information provided to parliament in the legislative process itself. In a number of cases involving complex and uncertain reforms, governments have declined to release the underlying evidence or legal advice informing legislative proposals. Instead, it has asked parliament, and the public, to accept assurances that appropriate advice has been obtained.

In at least one instance, such assurances have later been called into question.

Resisting backsliding

In Australia, what may be dismissed as procedural trends are actually concerning signals of democratic backsliding. In particular, the Albanese government, armed with commanding parliamentary numbers following the 2025 election, has too often used that position to undermine the constitutional role of the parliament as a legislative and oversight body.

A healthy democracy requires maintaining democratic guardrails. In the current environment, this will require vigilance. Civil society must be willing to call out poor process, and oppositions, minor parties and independents must be prepared to defend parliament’s role. Importantly, those within the governing parties must be willing to uphold the constitutional function of the legislature rather than acquiesce to the demands of leadership.

Gabrielle Appleby works as the Research Director for the Centre for Public Integrity. She has previously received grants from the Australian Research Council.

Words escape you. Your skin tingles. You are overwhelmed by how small and insignificant you really are, bursting with a feeling that is hard to define. This is awe.

Awe is a complex emotional state we experience when the enormity of what we see or feel transcends what we understand. It can be positive or negative.

Astronauts report this feeling when confronted with the vastness of space and Earth’s puny place within it. This experience – sometimes known as the “overview effect” – can change forever how people who’ve seen Earth from afar think about life here.

But you don’t have to travel to the moon and back to experience awe. Beautiful art, a walk in nature or dancing in a crowd can give you this overwhelming, transcendent feeling.

Neuroscience suggests experiences of awe can be good for your mental health – when they’re positive. So, when is awe good for us? And what exactly is going on in the brain?

Awe can be both positive and negative

Positive awe is what probably comes to mind when most people think of awe. If you’ve ever been moved by something immense and beautiful – such as a majestic mountain or sunset – you’ve likely experienced this sense of calm and wonder.

However, psychologists sometimes describe awe as an experience at the boundary of pleasure and fear. Both pleasure and fear can result in similar bodily arousal – racing heartbeat, goosebumps and chills – but the way we interpret this as an emotion will depend on the context. It can be the same when we experience something vast and overwhelming.

Negative awe may occur when we feel threatened or a lack of control, such as during an earthquake or terrorist attack.

Imagine standing in front of a tsunami and seeing it come towards you. You may feel powerless and filled with dread, while also overcome with a sense of insignificance in the face of nature’s majesty and power. This is the complexity of awe.

Trying to make sense of the unexpected

Our brains are constantly making predictions and integrating our experiences into what we already know.

We tend to “filter out” sensory signals that match our expectations, to instead focus on being ready to respond to information that is surprising.

New information is processed by parts of the brain that help to fit it within our pre-existing understanding of the world, knowledge frameworks known as schemata (or schemas).

According to schema theory, we either assimilate this new information into an existing schema, or have to change the schema to fit the new knowledge.

Not all new experiences will evoke awe. It occurs when we experience both the inability to assimilate an experience into current knowledge and a sense of vastness.

For example, you might have a schema for “waterfall” – a mental framework of what you expect (rocks, water, beautiful). But confronted by the roar of Victoria Falls, its size and velocity, the way the sun hits the spray, you experience awe; it’s unlike any waterfall you have ever seen and is beyond your expectations.

What happens in the brain when we experience awe?

When we feel awe, activity decreases in the brain regions associated with internal or self-referential processing. This network is what drives our memory and understanding of our place in the world.

When activity in these regions decreases, there is a shift away from yourself towards processing external information. This may explain why you tend to “feel small” when you experience awe.

But positive and negative awe may have different effects on our nervous system.

Negative awe is associated with sympathetic nervous system activity, which drives our “fight or flight” response.

Positive awe, however, is associated with increased parasympathetic activity. This reduces heart rate and arousal, which is why we may feel calmer.

How awe can be good for us

If you’re someone who seeks out experiences bigger than yourself – hiking for breathtaking views, enjoying meditation, art or losing yourself in the roar of a crowd – you probably already know awe can make you feel fantastic.

Now, research is exploring why. Emerging evidence suggests awe may be good for mental health and wellbeing in five ways:

1. improving your nervous system’s ability to relax
2. diminishing self-focus
3. making us more likely to help other people
4. connecting us to others
5. increasing sense of meaning.

More work needs to be done before we can say whether awe results in long-lasting benefits. But purposefully seeking awe may help you feel less stressed, more satisfied and happier.

Finding awe in the everyday

What evokes awe will likely be different for different people. But we know some things are more likely to induce this complex feeling, such as experiences of art, music and natural environments that move us.

Many people also find awe in collective experiences, especially those involving shared music or movement, or religious rituals. These help us transcend ourselves and become part of something bigger. Contemplating inspiring and complex “big” intellectual ideas by learning something new may also have this effect.

So, can you actively cultivate awe? One way to start is by taking “awe walks”. These involve walking with the intention of noticing beauty, vastness and wonder. Connecting with your own sense of spirituality – even if you are not religious – can also evoke awe.

In many cases, the vast and overwhelming experience of awe can start with simple acts of noticing.

Nikki-Anne Wilson has previously received funding from the Australian Association of Gerontology and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.

Australians are familiar with the disturbing statistics of intimate partner homicide: one Australian woman is killed every 11 days, on average, by a current or former intimate partner.

While these deaths are increasingly reported on, suicide represents a largely hidden and potentially far greater part of the intimate partner violence death toll.

Each week in Australia, on average, an estimated 15 women die by suicide. Evidence from coronial reviews suggests intimate partner and family violence may be contributing factors in 28–56% of suicides among women – or four to eight per week.

But these estimates come from isolated coronial case reviews in only three states (Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia). We don’t have a clear picture of the incidence in each state, let alone nationally.

A federal parliamentary inquiry is currently investigating the links between domestic, family violence and sexual violence and suicide.

More than 200 written submissions and a series of public hearings have exposed deep frustration with systems that obscure violence, re-traumatise victim-survivors and allow preventable deaths to continue.

Here are early insights from the inquiry about preventing women’s suicide.

How partner violence increases women’s suicide risk

International research shows intimate partner violence is one of the strongest social determinants of suicidal thoughts in women. It increases women’s risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts two- to five-fold.

Women experiencing coercive control often face constant threats, stalking and intimidation. Hypervigilance and fearfulness create exhaustion, isolation, and a deep sense of being trapped.

Women have described the acute impacts of men’s physical violence used within coercive control:

[T]he results of physical violence are more like hyper-arousal, difficulty turning off flight and fight […] a physical attack sort of switches that on […].

This abuse often escalates after separation.

When women cannot access immediate safety from partners, family members, or even from systems that dismiss or disbelieve them, their distress compounds and suicide risk increases.

If a woman is being stalked, threatened, or attacked, therapy and crisis support aren’t going to stop her suicidal thoughts. She needs the violence to stop.

What themes are emerging from the inquiry?

The parliamentary inquiry asked how services identify and respond to suicide risk. The community answered by showing how systems themselves often produce risk, compound harm and shape the hopelessness that precedes suicide.

Women with experiences of intimate partner violence described being dismissed, blamed for the abuse, or redirected into mental health pathways during contact rather than having the violence recognised by health, policing and legal services.

This reflects a broader pattern in which women’s distress and suicidal thoughts and behaviours are treated as individual disorders rather than understood as responses to ongoing violence, coercive control and entrapment and systemic failures.

When the impacts of abuse are routinely misclassified as a mental health crisis, the danger posed by violent partners or family members disappears from view.

Opportunities for prevention can vanish with it.

Violence is common but hidden

In Australia, 27% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15.

Yet most women never seek formal help. Only around 20% of women who experience intimate partner violence report it to police. Fewer than 25% access health services.

When women access health services for suicidal thoughts or actions, violence often isn’t identified.

One study found nearly 60% of women presenting to emergency departments with suicidal thoughts or actions had experienced intimate partner violence at some point in their life. Yet hospital staff rarely ask about abuse.

The invisibility of violence becomes even more pronounced in the context of technology-facilitated and financial abuse. Abusive partners now use technology to track, control and harass women in ways that are difficult to detect and even harder for the justice system to address.

Perpetrators have used tax systems to lodge false returns, incur debts and withhold critical financial information, inflicting long-term economic harm.

Perpetrators have also weaponised the child support system to continue financial abuse after separation.

These tactics often fall outside traditional definitions of intimate partner violence and may not be recognised.

What can be done about it?

To prevent suicides, we must listen closely to the voices of victim-survivors and their advocates.

We need a national approach and improved collaboration between health, policing, justice, housing and specialist domestic and family violence services.

Emergency departments, police and front-line crisis services are vital. But they should not be women’s only entry points to support and safety pathways. Outreach models are also essential for reaching women who will never connect with a formal service.

Responses must also meet the needs of groups facing higher risks: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, migrant and refugee women, children and young people, victim-survivors of childhood sexual abuse, young people leaving out-of-home care and women with disability. Responses should be culturally safe, disability-inclusive and trauma-informed.

National death reviews show examining patterns of prior abuse and risk factors can guide prevention. We need a comparable national picture of suicides linked to intimate partner and family violence to understand the scale of the problem and prevent it.

Finally, preventing these deaths depends on directly addressing men’s violence. The government is progressing a A$4.7 billion national plan to end violence against women and children. It’s essential to hold offenders to account, through consistent legal consequences and interventions, to stop cycles of abuse and trauma.

Male violence is driving some women’s suicide, and our systems are compounding the risk. Until we confront both harms, these deaths will continue.

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If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can also call 13YARN on 13 92 76.

For information and advice about family and intimate partner violence contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732). If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact 000.

Victoria Rasmussen receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) stipend.

The beaches of Sydney’s Royal National Park have been disrupted by a pungent odour. And its source is drawing in more than just seagulls.

A 25-tonne sperm whale is rotting on the rock platform of Era Beach. This spectacular sight is drawing in curious spectators and hungry predators.

The humans are keen for a photo op. The predators are drawn by the potential meal.

The lifeless whale may look inviting – to some. But it might be more dangerous for us humans to get close than you may suspect.

How often do whales wash up on shore?

This particular cetacean is likely to have died at sea some weeks ago. But unfortunately, many more whales are being stranded on rock platforms and beaches across the globe.

Strandings are not rare in Australia or New Zealand. Southeast Australia alone recorded 639 strandings between 1920 and 2002. The rate of whale strandings globally also seems to be climbing as some whale populations are recovering and there are more people out in nature to spot them.

Australia has also seen some of the largest mass strandings on record (it has the unenviable title of being a global hotspot). These include 470 long-finned pilot whales beached at Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour in 2020.

However, a single large carcass, like the Era Beach sperm whale, is more typical – and the one people are more likely to see.

It’s quite a spectacle

A decomposing whale is quite the spectacle. It’s a fascinating and morbid sight. According to one media report today:

Thin strips of flesh hang down like rotten tinsel, swaying in the wind. Glistening fluid trickles on to the stone where insects buzz.

Unsurprisingly, beached whales draw in curious people involved in both citizen science (when the public collects and analyses data about the world around us) and for the prospect of a grisly social media shot.

But frolicking around a huge dead beast has potential dangers. And in this case, the environment where the whale rests is the most significant factor.

The massive whale is decomposing on a rock shelf next to the ocean, with tides, waves, and swells. Standing on a rock ledge inspecting a whale means you’re not paying attention to your surroundings. This is how you can find yourself unintentionally entering the ocean.

The ocean may appear calm and forgiving when you first step onto that ledge to inspect the whale, but conditions can change rapidly.

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Read more: The ocean can look deceptively calm – until it isn’t. Here’s what ‘hazardous surf’ really means

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Then come the sharks

People aren’t the only ones going for a stickybeak at this whale. Bull, tiger and great white sharks are scavengers. To them, a fresh whale carcass is like an enormous buffet. The blobs of fat floating in the water around the whale are, essentially, canapes.

One study used drones to see how the behaviour of 55 white sharks off the coast of New South Wales changed near a stranded whale. They swam faster. Sharks near a stranded whale also tend to be larger on average – possibly because big sharks muscle smaller ones out the way.

These hazards are why many beaches near the stranded whale have been closed as a precaution. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service warns people not to enter the water due to increased shark activity.

What is that smell?

A gigantic decaying whale, warmed by the midday sun, and kept moist by sea spray, is basically a huge vat of bacteria.

As microbes break down proteins and fats inside the carcass, they release a cocktail of volatile compounds. These include hydrogen sulfide (the smell of rotten eggs), methanethiol (rotting cabbage) and ammonia. Then there’s the aptly named putrescine and cadaverine, the compounds that give corpses their distinctive stink.

So it’s probably best not follow your nose on this occasion. The smell of a rotting whale carcass can be so bad, it can make you vomit. And as waves wash over the carcass or it bloats and ruptures, tiny aerosols are released into the air. These can carry bacteria and pathogens, along with that putrid smell that can drift far beyond the carcass itself.

Marine animals can also carry zoonotic diseases (illnesses that pass from animals to humans). So it’s important not to touch the carcass.

Watch out! It might explode

And who wants to be near when the ticking time bomb goes off? Yes, whale carcasses can explode.

This happens when there’s the natural build-up of gases as the whale decomposes. This is one reason authorities prefer to send the carcass back to sea, if feasible.

So, a selfie that involves climbing onto a whale carcass is a genuinely bad idea.

Samuel Cornell 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.

What happens when natural selection, the most powerful process driving change in the living world, shapes artificial intelligence (AI), perhaps the most potent technology humanity has invented to date?

We might be about to find out.

According to a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we are entering the era of “evolvable AI” – AI systems that can undergo evolution. In turn, that might give rise to a major transition in evolution.

How major is “major”? Well, in nearly 4 billion years there have only been eight, or perhaps only seven, other major transitions. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The ingredients for evolution

Evolution doesn’t require DNA, cells or even biological life. It just needs information that can replicate, and a source of variation that affects how successfully the information replicates.

When these conditions exist, evolution happens, whether anybody intended it to or not.

Modern AI systems already meet these conditions. Models can be copied. Their parameters, architectures and training data can vary. And some variants perform in ways that make them more likely to be reused, refined or deployed.

Evolution has long operated outside biology. It shapes languages, technologies and cultures. But AI introduces something different: systems that are both information-rich and can influence their own reproduction.

That combination raises the stakes dramatically.

Two scenarios for ‘evolvable AI’

The authors of the new paper recognise two broad AI evolution scenarios that could influence both how selection happens, and the kinds of consequences that might flow on.

Ecosystem scenario

The ecosystem scenario eventuates when AI variants compete, recombine and propagate with little top-down oversight. The better an AI is at persisting and spreading, the more successful it is.

Science fiction authors, AI pioneers and contemporary AI risk experts have long recognised the dangers of such untrammelled and chaotic Darwinian evolution. The fear of self-replicating AIs is an evolutionary fear, even if it doesn’t name evolution explicitly.

Every new AI model, however different, inadvertently adds to the supply of the fuel consumed by natural selection: variation. And we’re not dealing with a single AI but an ecosystem bustling with various machines and humans.

Breeder scenario

Charles Darwin based his idea of natural selection on how animal and plant breeders deliberately select which individuals to breed from. In the wild, nature does the selecting, hence “natural selection”.

The second evolvable AI scenario recognises the power of breeder-based selection – the force that domesticated so many animals and plants, from dogs and cattle to wheat and rice.

Last year, philosophers Maarten Boudry and Simon Friederich proposed that if AI evolution is directed in a top-down fashion (much like deliberate breeding), AI might remain in human control. Evolution still occurs, but it shapes the AI into tamed beasts of computational burden that serve humanity – or, at least, whoever owns the machine.

Within the framework of these two scenarios, the authors apply a sound and comprehensive analysis of what biology can tell us about AI’s potential evolutionary trajectories.

Evolution upgraded

In biology, variation comes from random genetic mutations. The potential for evolution is constrained by this blind source of variation.

AI need not be constrained in the same way. Indeed, the potential exists for AIs to plot the course of their own evolution. They could find the variation they need to follow that route. It may even exist on the internet.

This is similar to how bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance by copying the genes that other, quite different lineages of bacteria have already evolved. With this horizontal gene transfer there’s no waiting in hope for the right mutations.

AI could potentially do something similar. The authors of the new paper argue that a large language model could predict what functionality it needs to replicate and survive, and then find and incorporate code to achieve just that.

The authors recognise that if we maintain breeder-like control over evolvable AI, it will be less likely to pose catastrophic risks, such as dominating humans or outcompeting them for resources.

But the potential for an evolvable AI to escape and run feral always remains.

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Read more: Nobody wants to talk about AI safety. Instead they cling to 5 comforting myths

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Is it a major transition, though?

One of the paper’s authors, evolutionary biologist Eörs Szathmáry, introduced the idea of “major transitions in evolution” in a landmark 1995 book with the late evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith.

For example, ancient life used to involve RNA, a relatively fragile molecule that functioned as both the genetic information and the protein that did the organism’s work.

A major transition was the evolution of DNA – it made the information more stable and required the production of proteins as a separate act. This fundamentally changed how genetic information is encoded and used, and made possible great increases in the complexity of living things.

At each subsequent transition, the thing doing the evolving became more complicated – from single-celled life to multicelled life and so on.

The new paper argues that some current trends in AI resemble what happens in major transitions. AI systems are scaling up and expanding in complexity. New training and development methods reorganise how AIs process information. And AI agent teams working together are shifting the concept of what a “single” AI even is.

It’s certainly interesting that evolution within the AI ecosystem is following trends seen in the major transitions in biological evolution. But these things also happen, on a smaller scale, during business-as-usual evolution. They should not yet be interpreted as evidence that AI represents a major transition fit to be listed with those that transformed biological life.

There are, however, many ways evolvable AI could effect a major transition in evolution. Generating an entirely new realm of intelligent life would do the trick.

Another possibility is the rise of co-evolving human-machine symbiosis, akin to our relationship with smartphones. That could create a new kind of individual somewhere between biological and artificial life. If such a development took hold, it would definitely constitute a major evolutionary transition.

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Read more: Smaller brains? Fewer friends? An evolutionary biologist asks how AI will change humanity’s future

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Rob Brooks receives funding from the Australian Research Council.