The Calvert Journal: Waning crescent

"Despite being brought up as an atheist, I was always very aware of my family history as well as the history of Lipka Tatars. Following many discussions about rising nationalism and Islamophobia, I realised just how very few people are aware of the Muslim community peacefully settled in the heart of Europe for over 600 years. Knowing that Podlasie region is the only place within today’s Polish borders where Tatars not only lived for generations, but are still present today I decided to execute the project there. This was my first visit to the region,” says Korycki, who shot his project The Waning Crescent during the summer of 2017.  [...]

“Today when less than 5% of the population of Poland consider themselves to be a member of an ethnic minority, and over 85% Poles declares themselves to be Roman Catholic,” the photographer urges, “Lipka Tatars are a striking reminder that Poland was once a hugely multicultural and multi-religious country”  [...]

“Witaj Szkoło!” Welcome to school! Every child in Poland is greeted by this sentence in early September when school commences after the summer holidays. Although religious education is not compulsory in Poland, a vast majority of school children attend classes of religion, usually run by a Catholic priest/nun (sometimes, if enough parents/students request it, lessons of ethics are taught). Muslim pupils usually aren’t as lucky as the kids in Białystok, where the local Muslim Religious Association in co-operation with Białystok’s education board and the Muftiate Religious Association organises Islam classes. The children who attend are a mix of Polish and Crimean Tatars and Chechen refugees. Pictured is Mirza, a local imam, who is leading a prayer class to a mixed group of boys and girls. 

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Haaretz: Gulf States Rebuke Israel – With Qatar Particularly Vocal. But Alliances Still Inch Closer

In March, just as the weekly Gaza protests were getting underway, the crown prince met with pro-Israel Jewish American leaders, where he was quoted by Axios, an online newsletter focused on Washington politics, as saying the Palestinians should accept the proposals or “shut up and stop complaining.” The prince later appeared to acknowledge Jewish claims to Israel, telling The Atlantic that Israelis “have the right to have their own land.” [...]

“From Israel to Jordan to Egypt to Saudi Arabia and beyond, many leaders are fighting to modernize their countries and create better lives for their people,” Kushner said. “In confronting common threats and in pursuit of common interests, previously unimaginable opportunities and alliances are emerging.” [...]

It isn’t just Saudi Arabia that has inched closer to Israel. Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, tweeted support for Israel after an attack on Iranian targets in Syria last week. The tiny Gulf country, where the Sunni monarchy put down an uprising supported by its Shiite majority in 2011, has long viewed Iran as a threat.

Despite signs of outreach with Israel and a shared enmity for Iran, Bahrain condemned the targeting of Palestinian civilians on Monday, and reaffirmed support for an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. The United Arab Emirates also condemned Israel’s “current escalation in the Gaza Strip.” [...]

In a sign of improved ties with Israel, the Israeli Embassy in Cairo celebrated the 70th anniversary of the country’s founding earlier this month at the Nile Ritz Carlton. Only seven years earlier, protesters in Cairo had ransacked the Israeli embassy, climbing up the high-rise tower overlooking the Nile and tearing down the Israeli flag.

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CityLab: Paris Ponders an Audacious Idea: Free Transit for All

Of course, all this hinges on the results of the study, which will be delivered at the end of the year. Liberating all transit would cost the Paris region an extra €6 billion annually, according to one estimate. But the potential upsides are equally enormous: cleaner air, reduced healthcare costs, plummeting carbon emissions. There’s also the possibility that free-transit-for-all would make Paris so pleasant and easy to live in that it becomes irresistible to investors. [...]

One possibility: congestion fees. The city could raise funds by charging tolls on all motor vehicles to enter Paris Proper, the 2.2 million-resident historic heart of the metro area. Congestion charges of this type aren’t new—London has had one since 2003—but one that covered the entirety of Paris Proper would be five times the size of that in the U.K. capital. And such a plan would certainly not be an easy sell, given that Paris will have to contend with pressure from municipalities in the wider metro area where many residents still depend on their cars. [...]

There’s a more fundamental question here, too: Are free public transit zones on this kind of scale feasible or desirable? France is something of a leader on this front, with more than 30 cities that enjoy free public transit zones. As Henry Grabar reported for CityLab back in 2012, they’ve been largely successful in boosting ridership without bankrupting town coffers. But most towns that attempted the fare-free model are relatively small—the largest is the 120,000-citizen city of Niort. Germany’s caretaker government has also been toying with the idea, but its plan to trial such a scheme in five medium-sized cities, (including Bonn and Essen) has been shot down by local municipalities, leaving the 87,000-resident city of Tübingen as the only major German town seriously looking into a free bus ride scheme.

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Quartz: Forests are growing again where human well-being is increasing, finds new study

Countries with high levels of human well-being are more likely to show increasing forest growth. That’s the finding of a new study by a group of Finnish scientists, published in PLOS ONE. Their work shows that countries exhibiting annual increases in the amount of trees typically score highly on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), a scoring system that uses measures of life expectancy, education, and income to assess development status. Meanwhile, countries with a net annual forest loss typically score lower on the HDI. [...]

The authors themselves discuss caveats to their findings, and these should not be ignored. For example, switching from net forest loss to net gain may simply involve sourcing things like wooden furniture or paper pulp from abroad, often from poorer nations with weaker environmental policies and safeguards. This process, known as “leakage,” was perhaps best described and documented by the geographer Patrick Meyfroidt and colleagues in 2010. Among other examples, they illustrate leakage by looking at Vietnam, where national increases in forest cover were linked to sharp increases in imported wood, about half of which was illegal. [...]

Things can be worsened by forest restoration schemes which may have human, rather than ecological, motives at heart. In Indonesia, for example, I have witnessed forest restoration work in national parks that favored useful exotics over native forest species. In Tanzania, local NGOs such the as the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group lobby for policies that promote forest conservation over (and in addition to) tree planting, citing both ecological and well-being benefits.

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Quartz: The way scientists set climate goals has given the world a false sense of hope

The optimism is kept aloft by some promising trends. The costs of renewable energy are getting lower and lower. Shareholders of oil companies are pressuring them to fess up to the climate risks inherent to the business. Investors are pouring ever-growing sums into green bonds. Countries are becoming more ambitious about climate goals: Some are planning to ban the use of petroleum-powered cars, while others are aiming to hit zero emissions within decades in all sectors, including transportation, power, and industry. [...]

All scientists agree the current pace of climate change is unprecedented, and that it’s largely the result of human activities. But they debate the value of carbon budgets. In 2017, the dispute got particularly heated after a group of respected climate scientists suggested in a study that the world could continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rate for a lot longer than we thought previously.

These debates matter. Lawmakers, who are usually not trained to understand climate science, use carbon budgets suggested by scientists, like those in the 2017 study, to lay out policies to help their countries honor their Paris climate commitments. But lawmakers need to balance environmental concerns with economic ones. If, suddenly, scientists say we have more time in hand, policymakers are likely to respond with actions like delaying the date when all cars need to be electric. [...]

A zero-emissions target may seem inflexible, but it’s actually much more actionable than a variable and uncertain emissions budget. It is relatively simple for each country to set a target date to reach zero emissions, based on, say, how wealthy it is. Then, each greenhouse-gas emitting entity in the country can set its own goal to reach zero emissions and governments can lay out effective policies to help emitters get there by the target date.

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