The World Today for August 21, 2024

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Common Ground

TANZANIA

Architects in Tanzania are using three-dimensional printers to construct housing and other buildings, also using soil rather than artificial materials – the production of which emit greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

The builders hope to construct a village called New Hope to the west of the capital of Dar es Salaam that will include a school for almost 500 girls as well as farming plots, livestock pens and recreational areas, reported CNN.

This positive story suggests Tanzanians can live in greater harmony with nature and each other as they attempt to strike a balance between modern and traditional approaches to life.

But it isn’t always the case. One major issue in Tanzania today, for example, involves officials kicking traditional Maasai communities off their ancestral land to make way for conservation efforts and economic development. The Maasai are nomadic pastoralists whose lives revolve around their herds.

As Amnesty International explained, Tanzanian officials and private businesses, including a trophy-hunting company tied to the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, have colluded to evict Maasai folks from their land. Officials have also shut down government services in Maasai communities to compel people to move to towns and cities, added Human Rights Watch.

The government frequently offers displaced Maasai people houses to live in and a few acres of land to farm. “But the houses do not reflect the needs or complexities of Maasai families, which traditionally are large, polygamous, multigenerational and multihousehold,” argued an Al Jazeera opinion piece.

Those who speak out against the relocation have faced threats and intimidation from rangers and security forces, creating a climate of fear, HRW wrote. “You’re not allowed to say anything,” one displaced resident told the organization, adding that people have “fear in their hearts.”

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan says she wants to protect the environment from the Maasai’s livestock. She has proposed enlarging the area of protected land in the southern African country from 30 to 50 percent of its territory, cutting into the Maasai’s ancestral lands, noted Deutsche Welle.

But critics of the evictions say the government gives hunting and tourism companies free rein on the vacated land. Hassan’s plans also involve new airports, tourism facilities, and other accoutrements of a growing capitalistic economy, added Bloomberg.

These moves might cause international friction. Kenya, for example, frowns upon the trophy hunting that Tanzania promotes, reported Reuters. Kenyan officials fear that elephants that generate money from tourists there might cross the border into Tanzania where hunters might kill them. In July, for instance, hunters in Tanzania had shot five bull elephants in the prior few months.

There arguably is little point in preserving nature, Kenyan officials told the newswire, if the goal is to destroy it.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

‘Spiritual Terrorism’

NICARAGUA

Nicaragua on Monday outlawed 1,500 non-governmental organizations, many of which are religious entities, as part of its ongoing effort to crack down on dissent against President Daniel Ortega, Agence-France Presse reported.

Bringing to 5,000 the number of organizations that have been shuttered in the Central American country since protests in 2018 against Ortega’s authoritarian rule, the move was the largest of its kind in a single day.

The non-profit NGOs were banned because they failed to declare their income and will duly have their assets seized, according to the government.

The list included the Nicaraguan Red Cross, rotary clubs, sports associations, and Catholic church entities.

Ortega has waged war against the Catholic church since 2018 because his government believes the protests were an attempted coup sponsored by faith organizations with the backing of the United States.

The crackdown on the protests killed 300 people, according to the United Nations, with high-profile priests denouncing human rights abuses.

Last year, some 30 religious leaders were imprisoned and sent to the Vatican. In total, nearly 250 priests, nuns, and bishops have been forced out of the country.

Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is also Ortega’s wife, called religious people “children of the devil” carrying out “spiritual terrorism.”

Monday’s decision signaled a shift because, for the first time, the government targeted evangelical groups, showing that Ortega aimed at censoring any and all opposition, the New York Times wrote.

Hundreds of Pentecostal and Baptist churches are to be shut down under the government order.

“One of the government’s biggest fears is that through religious leaders, the people of Nicaragua can have change,” Catholic activist Félix Navarrete told the newspaper.

In power since 2007, Ortega’s authoritarian regime is the target of US and European sanctions.

Unholy Matters

UKRAINE

Lawmakers in Ukraine passed a law on Tuesday that could open the door to a ban on a Russia-affiliated minority Orthodox church, in an effort that Kyiv says aims to uphold the country’s “spiritual independence,” Reuters reported.

The move would target the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), one of two Orthodox entities in Ukraine, where a majority of the population follow the Orthodox Christian faith.

The bill, approved by an overwhelming majority in the legislature on Tuesday, in effect banned the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) on Ukrainian soil. ROC leaders have spoken out openly in support of Russia’s war on its neighbor.

The law will authorize a government commission to make a list of organizations “affiliated” with the ROC, potentially including the UOC.

A court will then decide whether to shutter the listed organizations.

The UOC is a minority church in Ukraine, which Kyiv has accused of spreading Russian propaganda and hosting spies within its buildings. However, the church has claimed it had cut ties with the ROC.

Nonetheless, the government has launched criminal proceedings against the UOC and sent at least one of its clerics to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the law would prevent “manipulation of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow.”

The move comes as Russia tries to repel an invasion of its territory by Ukrainian troops. This week, it announced it has deployed a regiment of its so-called “space troops” in response to the offensive in the Kursk region near the Ukrainian border, Newsweek reported.

Personnel from the Russian Aerospace Forces were sent to the region, where Ukraine has seized almost 450 square miles of Russian territory – more than the area Russia has taken in Ukraine since the beginning of the year.

Still, Russia also made gains in Eastern Ukraine this week, forcing authorities to order the evacuation of Pokrovsk, a key city in the disputed Donbas region, the BBC reported.

The Sound of Silence

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban authorities said they had destroyed over 21,000 musical instruments over the past year, in a series of crackdowns on culture to impose its interpretation of Islamic Sharia law in Afghanistan, Voice of America reported.

At a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday, officials of the so-called Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice discussed the public burning of the instruments in the northern province of Parwan. They called on Afghans to refrain from playing music at celebrations.

The officials also announced they had destroyed thousands of copies of “immoral films,” without elaborating on which films were involved, and blocked thousands of personal computers from showing such movies.

The ministry said the crackdowns were part of “societal reforms” regarding audio, visual, and print media.

Vice and Virtue Minister Mohammad Khalid Hanafi said on Monday that the Taliban “are determined to implement Islamic Sharia and no one’s pressure is acceptable in this regard.”

Sharia is Islam’s traditional legal system, derived from the Quran and Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, which serves as moral guidance for Muslims. It has been applied, to greater and lesser extents, in Muslim countries around the world, the BBC explained.

The Taliban’s interpretation of it, nonetheless, has involved measures leading to “a climate of fear and intimidation” among Afghans, according to the United Nations’ mission in the country.

The mission identified the Vice and Virtue Ministry as the biggest violator of human rights, especially those of women.

Women’s rights have shrunk since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 2021, with gender-based discrimination in workplaces, a ban on women working in some fields or being outside the home without a male relative, and a ban on schooling for girls after the sixth grade.

DISCOVERIES

Underwater Directors

As most of the world’s ocean floors remain uncharted, scientists are brainstorming effective – and low-cost – ways to monitor underwater habitats.

For example, South African researchers equipped white sharks to record kelp forests, according to a 2019 paper.

Now, camera crews comprised of sea lions are helping marine scientists document the deep unknown seafloor, according to a new study.

Recently, a research team attached small, lightweight cameras to eight adult female Australian sea lions to map previously unexplored seabed habitats off the southern coast of Australia, the Washington Post reported.

The study took place from December 2022 to August 2023 and focused on two sea lion colonies on Kangaroo Island and the western Eyre Peninsula.

Despite a few mishaps, the animal crew collected about 89 hours of usable footage and captured nearly 350 miles of seabed habitats at depths of as much as 360 feet.

The footage revealed six broad habitat types, including macroalgae reefs, bare sand plains and sponge reefs. The team also combined the data with machine learning models to predict the presence of these habitats across larger areas, even in regions the sea lions did not visit directly.

The recordings also showed some of the marine mammal’s foraging strategies, lead author Nathan Angelakis explained in an interview with Science Magazine.

“We had lots of footage of a behavior we call sit-and-wait predation,” he said. “The sea lion will swim to the bottom and might spend two to three minutes stationary. It will wait for a fish it likes to pass, and then it will then chase down and ambush that fish.”

Angelakis and his colleagues also noticed the creature flipping over rocks to catch octopuses and a mother teaching her offspring to forage – which the team described as “the first direct evidence” of social learning in Australian sea lions.

The authors noted that the data not only helps chart the sea floor, but also helps identify key habitats of the Australian sea lions, which are listed as an endangered species.

“All of this information is critical to identifying key habitats, and giving us important information so we can effectively conserve and manage their populations in the future,” Angelakis told Science.

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