TENSIONS RISE 100 OBJECTS THAT SUMO BOUNCES

IN KOSOVO DEFINE ANTARCTICA BACK IN JAPAN

GEOGRAPHICAL
www.geographical.co.uk Magazine of The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) November 2022 • £4.99

Carbon or
renewables?
HOW AFRICA SOLVES
ITS ENERGY CRISIS
COULD SEAL ALL
OUR FUTURES
 W E LC O M E
Geographical
A continent at a crossroads GEOGRAPHICALJuly 2020
Volume 92 Issue 07

How Africa resolves its energy crisis will have a profound effect on the whole Publisher Graeme Gourlay
Editor Katie Burton
planet. Its demand for energy is expected to double in the next 20 years with Design Gordon Beckett
a booming population and rapid economic growth. Today, three quarters of Staff writer Bryony Cottam
Operations director Simon Simmons
the continent’s electricity is oil, gas or coal-generated. However, it has a vast Sales and marketing Elaine Saunders
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Pristina for an arts festival
(see Page 34). ‘Far more
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untold tale of polar
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Anderson about his
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4 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 CONTENTS
November 2022 • Volume 94 • Issue 11

COVER STORY

18
AFRICAN ENERGY
Will cheap oil, gas and
coal tempt rapidly
changing Africa to stick
with fossil fuels or will
it choose to develop its
vast renewable energy
resources?

26 42
ARCTIC OCEAN
ADVENTURES
DEPARTMENTS
WORLDWATCH
A research voyage to remote
6 The Welsh Atlantis
Jan Mayan island.
8 Are we volcano ready?
THE BEARS OF 9 Climatewatch
ASTURIAS 10 Geopolitical hotspots:
Brown bears are making An eventful year
a comeback to the 12 Rise of the autocrats:
Cantabrian Mountains Democracies in decline
14 Research round-up
in Northern Spain and
16 Geo-graphic: passports
posing some questions
for the locals. REGULARS
58 Reviews
62 Gallery: Sumo wrestlers

36
68 Geo-photographer:
Robbie Shone
73 Discovering Britain:
The River Fleet
74 Where in the World?
75 Crossword
TENSIONS MOUNT 76 RGS-IBG archive

50
IN KOSOVO ANTARCTIC ARTEFACTS 78 In Society; RGS–IBG events
Balkans flashpoint Some of the 100 objects that 82 Next month
smoulders again. help define our wildest continent.

Find out more about

the benefits of joining
RGS panel at www.rgs.org/joinus

NOVEMBER 2022 . 5
 WOR LDWATCH
WALES
The Gough Map: north is to the left and east at the top
Welsh Atlantis
Medieval map reveals evidence of a
Welsh kingdom claimed by the sea
he medieval Gough Map, held in the
T
collections of Oxford University’s Bodleian
Library, is the earliest surviving map to show
an identifiable coastline of the British Isles. But
one area depicted in Cardigan Bay in Wales
doesn’t match any land recognisable today.
‘I noticed there were two quite prominent islands on
the map that clearly don’t exist anymore,’ says Simon
Haslett, professor of physical geography at Swansea
University. Curious about what the islands could
represent, Haslett and David Willis, professor of Celtic at
Oxford University, analysed all of the sources available to
them – including local legends of a land lost to the sea.
Several different stories in Welsh folklore tell how
an area of land to the west of Wales disappeared
beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay – the earliest
known version appears in the Black Book of
Carmarthen, a 13th-century Welsh manuscript.
In a later version, a land called Cantre’r Gwaelod
(the ‘Lowland Hundred’) is flooded by the drunken
gatekeeper Seithiennin. Haslett explains that while
drawing upon all the different strands of evidence, ‘we
couldn’t overlook the folklore and the Celtic literature
6 . GEOGRAPHICAL
BODLEIAN LIBRARY OXFORD
that offer geo-mythological support for those islands
having existed.’ Together, this ancient map and the
legends and folklore of a lost Welsh kingdom hint at
how the Welsh coast has evolved since the end of the
last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago.
Studying how ancient oral and written traditions
account for geological phenomena – floods,
earthquakes, fossil discoveries – can provide valuable
information about past events, or how a landscape
may have changed over time. Flood myths can be
found in most ancient cultures and Cantre’r Gwaelod
is often described as a ‘Welsh Atlantis’, but Haslett is
keen to emphasise that the island in Cardigan Bay
didn’t actually sink. ‘There are no sunken islands,’ he
says. ‘People like to think about submergence, but
that’s not what we’re suggesting happened.’
Instead, Haslett and Willis propose that the
islands were remnants of a landscape underlain
by soft glacial sediment deposited during the last
ice age. Over time, this land has been eroded by
the sea, rivers and surface runoff from the land,
carving it into islands before these, too, were worn
away, disappearing by the 16th century. Submarine
formations of boulders and pebbles, known locally
as sarns, mark the location of the islands, left behind
after the finer sediment had eroded.
‘Evidence from the Roman cartographer Ptolemy
 Wake-up call Rise of autocracy
Are we prepared for a Report details a
major volcanic eruption? growing trend
The section of the map that
depicts Wales, showing the
islands in Cardigan Bay
suggests that the west Welsh coastline 2,000 years ago
may have been some 13 kilometres further out to sea
than it is today,’ says Haslett, meaning between five
and ten metres of land was eroded per year between
Ptolemy’s records and the drafting of the Gough Map.
Such rates of erosion are high, but not atypical.
‘There are other places in the same period that
suffered similar erosion rates. Dunwich, in the east of
England, was probably lost to the sea in a similar way,’
says Haslett.
Understanding the processes along the Cardigan Bay
coast could help us figure out how it will continue to
Winter of discontent
Tim Marshall’s end
of year overview
NICKY RHODES/SHUTTERSTOCK
Penbryn, Cardigan Bay
BODLEIAN LIBRARY OXFORD
evolve in the future, essential in an area at risk from sea-
level rise. Erosion is still occurring in these areas, albeit
at a slower rate. Haslett says that remnants of the soft
glacial sediments still remain, sheltered by hard rock
that protects it in landforms such as groynes, and by the
artificial sea defences erected to protect the vulnerable
communities on the coast of Cardigan Bay. l
NOVEMBER 2022 . 7
 WORLDWATCH
Volcanoes
Ethiopia
ARE WE PREPARED
FOR THE WORST?
The threat posed by a major volcanic
eruption is largely ignored, but there
are ways to reduce the risks
cientists monitoring New Zealand’s Lake
S
Taupō volcano, which caused one of the
largest eruptions of the past 5,000 years,
have raised the alert level for the first
time. It was in 232 CE that the volcano
erupted with extraordinary violence,
sending 120 cubic kilometres of pumice and ash
into the atmosphere. More recently, nearly 700 small
earthquakes have been recorded at its caldera since
May this year, signalling a shift in activity.
This isn’t the first episode of volcanic unrest at
Taupō and the likelihood of an eruption is still very
low. The alert-level change is a result of improved
monitoring and increased knowledge from research.
But researchers at the University of Cambridge’s
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) say
that if such an event were to happen, the world would
be ‘woefully unprepared’.
Michael Cassidy is a professor of volcanology whose
8 . GEOGRAPHICAL
research focuses on understanding what controls
volcanic explosivity, improving forecasting of large-
magnitude eruptions, and learning what, if anything,
we can do to minimise their impacts. ‘We’ve come to
the conclusion that there are things that can be done,
and we’re not doing enough of them,’ he says.
The first steps, says Lara Mani, a researcher at CSER,
would be to establish an international network and
increase the monitoring and early-warning systems for
volcanic eruptions in highly populated areas. Some of
the regions in which monitoring is most lacking are
places where volcanoes are most active: Indonesia, the
Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia. ‘You can
mitigate a lot of risk right there,’ she says. Making sure
communities are more resilient to climate change would
also help them manage if faced with multiple hazards.
The next step is volcano geoengineering. ‘We still
think this is quite far off,’ says Cassidy, ‘but we could be
in a position to make volcanoes a bit safer if we invest
in research now.’
Cassidy imagines a scenario where an unmanned
plane could release sulphur aerosols into the
atmosphere during an eruption, preventing a potential
volcanic winter (in which volcanic ash and droplets
of sulfuric acid and water obscure the Sun, reducing
 There have been 700 small earthquakes
around the caldera that overlooks Lake
Taupō in New Zealand in recent months
N MINTON/SHUTTERSTOCK
temperatures on a global scale). And a project to assess
the possibility of magma manipulation to moderate its
explosivity has already received EU funding.
At the moment, however, Mani says that neither
the existential risk experts, nor the volcanologists, are
taking large-magnitude eruptions seriously. ‘It’s seen as
being a bit sensationalist,’ says Cassidy. ‘Some scientists
have even been somewhat discredited over it. For that
reason, I think there hasn’t been much work done on
this issue in recent years.’
In comparison, hundreds of millions of US dollars have
been spent on planetary defences against asteroid and
comet impact, which would have a comparable climatic
impact, but are considerably less likely to happen.
Mani describes the moment in the aftermath of
the huge eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai in
December 2021, when volcanologists were left without
the support of a globally coordinated network similar
to that of the planetary defence community, as ‘very
sobering’. Emails were shared, questioning, ‘Is this
serious? What does this mean? Is this going to cause
climatic feedback?’ The most recent research suggests
that yes, it might. ‘That’s why we think Tonga is an
important moment for our field and for volcanology,’
she says. ‘It’s our wake-up call.’ l
CLIMATEWATCH
The price
of inaction
Marco Magrini suggests that
moving away from fossil
fuels is by far the
best business decision
we could make
he 2006 Stern Review stated that investing
T in decarbonising the world’s economy would
have been much, much cheaper than paying
for climate-induced disasters. At that time,
Sir Nicholas Stern estimated those costs to
be around one per cent of global GDP. Today,
historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that ‘just’ around two
per cent of global GDP – about US$1.7 trillion – is needed
annually to dodge the looming catastrophe.
In other words, while climate inaction is often said to be the
workings of economic interests chasing profit, it is , in fact, not
economically sound at all.
Hurricanes and monsoons are nothing new. Yet, the
hurricane that devastated Florida with 240 km/h winds and
the monsoon that submerged large parts of Pakistan were
clearly supercharged by our warming climate. What’s the
cost of these two events alone? What’s the marginal cost
of climate change?
To the provisional bill for 2022, let’s add the
destruction caused by extreme weather in Nova Scotia,
Alaska, Italy, Vietnam and elsewhere. We should then
include the social and economic costs of the heatwaves
that plagued the Northern Hemisphere last summer,
including weeks of halted industrial production in China.
Of course, we can’t forget the staggering agricultural
losses caused this year by widespread droughts, nor the
damage caused by record wildfires in the Amazon, the
Congo Basin and across Siberia.
Those costs would probably be less than the US$1.7
trillion we should have been investing annually. However,
were we to seriously price the full costs of climate change,
the balance sheet would look far bleaker. The cost of losing
all of our tropical forest alone would outstrip such a spend,
never mind coral reef loss and many other threats. A paper
recently published in Science warns that there are at least
five more impending tipping points, or points of no return.
They perfectly illustrate why getting out of fossil fuels as
rapidly as possible is a sound business proposition.
Ah, I was almost forgetting. The world’s nations are to
convene in Egypt this month for COP27. Apart from raising
their emission-cutting ambitions (which they generally won’t),
their agenda includes how to fund the Climate Fund, how to
finance adaptation and how to pay for reparations in disaster-
hit poor countries. In other words, they will mostly talk about
money, likely neglecting, once again, the steep price of our
ongoing climate inaction.
NOVEMBER 2022 .9

A winter of discontent
e’re well into Q4
W time - the fourth
quarter of the
year. Time to look
ahead to some of
what’s coming up
before we cycle back around to Q1.
Let’s start with another Q. What
makes Russia think that it can still
win in Ukraine, when it hasn’t won
in eight months? We don’t have an
answer, and that makes us nervous
because we don’t know what may be
coming. Tactical nuclear weapons are
one possibility, carpet bombing Kyiv
is another. Or perhaps Moscow no
longer thinks it’s going to win and so
will escalate to de-escalate ahead of
a ceasefire. What can be said with a
degree of confidence is that the war
won’t stop before year’s end.
Winter is re-entering the fray.
Icy roads and muddy terrain will
limit some fighting and parts of the
800-kilometre front line may be
frozen but at the moment, Ukranian
forces remain on the front foot.
Politicians in the European capitals
will take a keen interest in their
temperature gauges. The lower the
temperature – the lower the levels
in the continent’s gas storage tanks.
A severe winter could lead to gas
rationing. This is unlikely in Q4 as
the coldest months are January and
February, and current forecasts are
for relatively mild temperatures.
Nevertheless, Russia will continue
to try to keep gas flows low and
our bills high, hoping that public
pressure will cause governments’
resolve on sanctions to crumble.
A decision on renewing sanctions
is due in January.
The Ukraine war has also affected
food prices, which are now biting
ever harder in poorer countries such
as Egypt – a recipe for social unrest.
By the time you read this, China
will almost certainly have anointed
President Xi as general secretary of
the Communist Party for the third of
his two terms in office. No, that’s not
a typo. For decades, there has been
a two-term limit but Xi has ensured
that this doesn’t apply to him. He’s
vowed to bring Taiwan back under
Beijing’s control, but we’re unlikely to
GEOPOLITICS
Tim Marshall is a
journalist, broadcaster
and author of Prisoners of
Geography and Divided:
Why We’re Living in an
Age of Walls
A roadblock in Ukraine
GORB ANDRII/SHUTTERSTOCK
see an immediate uptick in tensions
around the island unless Nancy
Pelosi decides to get some more
air miles under her belt with a
return visit.
Speaking of the house speaker –
Mrs Pelosi is expected to retire within
weeks of the 8 November mid-term
elections. However, the 82-year-old
is being coy about confirming this.
Waiting for the results perhaps?
The Iranian government will spend
Q4 repressing its volatile younger
generations while simultaneously
planning for the next generation
of Ayatollah to take over so that
repression can continue. The
recent violent anti-government
demonstrations have reminded them
that if the ageing Supreme Leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dies during
another round of protests they may
face an even greater struggle to
suppress them. The ‘Assembly of
Experts’ is busy getting its ducks
in a row for as smooth a transition
of power as possible. Khamenei is
82 and may not have taken kindly
to the recent burning of his portrait
and chants of ‘Death to the Dictator!’
heard across the country.
The leadership is also currently
negotiating a deal with US and
European officials about a return
to the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action meant to ensure that
Iran can’t build and deliver nuclear
weapons. An agreement is unlikely
by the end of the year and if talks fall
apart next year, tensions between
the USA and Iran, and Israel and Iran,
will heighten.
Next door, in Afghanistan, the
arrival of winter will heap even
greater misery onto a beleaguered
population and increase pressure on
governments in several countries
to find ways to send help without
benefitting the Taliban. Naive
predictions that we would see a
relatively more liberal ‘Taliban 2.0’
have proven to be as hapless as they
sounded a year ago.
Hopes for a ceasefire in Ethiopia
have been dashed by renewed
fighting in the north between
government forces and the Tigray
People’s Liberation Force. This is
likely to continue through the next
few months. An agreement next year
remains possible but the numerous
ethnic differences in a fractured
country mean that Ethiopia is
unlikely to be at peace with itself for
the foreseeable future.
Skirmishing between Azerbaijan
and Armenia over Nagorno-
Karabakh may break out between
now and year’s end, but behind the
scenes, negotiations are taking place
to resolve territorial differences.
This brings us back to Russia and
Ukraine. It was notable that the
round of fighting in September came
shortly after Russian peacekeeping
forces in Nagorno-Karabakh were
withdrawn and sent to the Donbas.
On the positive side – the presidents
of the two countries are due to meet
in Brussels in November.
Oh, and there’ll be some football
played in Qatar.
NOVEMBER 2022 .11
 WORLDWATCH
Democracy
Democracy in decline
According to a new report, autocracies are on the rise
around the world and the speed of change is increasing
For a long time,
autocratisation has been
a slow-moving trend,
involving a gradual erosion
of democratic norms and
values. ‘That is changing,’
says Staffan Lindberg. ‘The
speed of autocratisation
is increasing.’
Lindberg is a political
scientist and founder
of the V-Dem Institute
at the University of
Gothenburg in Sweden,
which recently published
its 2022 democracy
report, documenting the
continuing decline in 2021,
a year punctuated by war
in Europe, five military
coups and one self-coup
(Tunisia). The report makes
for worrying reading and
reveals a very different
world to the one of just
ten years ago. When
asked whether it has
uncovered anything
positive, Lindberg gives a
despairing laugh. ‘No.’
According to the report,
70 per cent of the world’s
population now lives
under some form of
autocratic regime. The last
30 years of democratic
advances have been
eradicated and autocrats
are becoming bolder, less
concerned about what the
international community
thinks or does. ‘Putin’s
war is the epitome of this,’
says Lindberg.
With the report as a
guide, we take a look at the
decline of democracy in
three different locations.
12 . GEOGRAPHICAL
HUNGARY
On 15 September, the European parliament
declared that Hungary was no longer a full
democracy. Eighty-one per cent of MEPs
who voted backed the resolution, which
designated the country a ‘hybrid regime
of electoral autocracy’ with no respect for
democratic norms.
Democracy has deteriorated in Hungary
since 2018, when prime minister Victor
Orbán’s party, Fidesz, won the national
parliamentary election after campaigning
on immigration and foreign interference,
securing its third consecutive supermajority.
Four years earlier, while speaking to ethnic
Hungarians at a student summer camp in
Romania, Orbán had declared his intention
to build ‘an illiberal state’.
Orbán has been accused of using state
media to limit independent press freedom
HAROLD ESCALONA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Vladimir Putin with the late Venezuelan
president Hugo Chávez in 2010
Protests over controversial
labour laws introduced by
Hungary’s Victor Orbán in 2018
ZOLTAN GALANTAI/SHUTTERSTOCK
and to discredit civil society – such as
the NGOs Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch – and his political
opponents. He’s passed electoral and major
constitutional reforms that have allowed
Fidesz to further consolidate its hold on
power. According to the V-Dem report, the
country has escalated towards ‘toxic levels’
of political polarisation, a situation that goes
hand in hand with autocratisation, forming
a ‘mutually reinforcing, vicious cycle’.
French MEP Gwendoline Delbos-
Corfield, who drafted the recent resolution
on Hungary, says the European parliament’s
decision was clear and irrevocable.
‘Hungary is not a democracy. It was more
urgent than ever for the parliament to take
this stance, considering the alarming rate at
which rule of law is backsliding in Hungary.’
DRIVERS OF
AUTOCRATISATION
According to Lindberg, the academic
community doesn’t have any evidence
that can conclusively explain the rise
in autocratisation, but he believes that
there are a few plausible reasons.
The recent upward trend in
autocratisation can be traced back
to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, as
well as the election of Hugo Chávez as
president of Venezuela, at the end of the
MYANMAR
Myanmar had been one of the top
democratising countries in V-Dem’s
2021 Democracy Report, following
a decade of liberalising political and
economic reforms (including the
relaxation of press censorship, amnesty
for hundreds of political prisoners and
new labour laws) that saw the country
transition from a military junta to a
partial democracy. That all changed in
February 2021, when a military coup
brought the democratisation process to
an abrupt end.
Early in the morning on 1 February,
Myanmar’s military detained state
counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other
members of the National League for
Democracy (NLD) party, following
unfounded allegations of electoral
fraud after the NLD’s overwhelming
victory in the November 2020 general
elections. Power was handed to general
Min Aung Hlaing, who declared a state
of emergency. By day two of the coup,
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, centre stage
SEFAYILDIRIM/SHUTTERSTOCK
1990s. ‘They were the frontrunners,’ says
Lindberg. ‘That was the beginning of
this wave.’ In the past 20 years, Putin has
worked to derail democracy in Russia,
in former Soviet states and beyond. US
intelligence has revealed that he may
have authorised attempts to influence
the result of the 2020 US election in
Donald Trump’s favour, while the British
government failed to investigate Russian
interference in the EU referendum.
China, too, has been a destabilising
Protestors
supporting Aung
San Suu Kyi after
her detention
CARSTON YANGON/SHUTTERSTOCK
thousands of protestors had taken to numerous democracy campaigners have
the streets in peaceful pro-democracy been executed after closed-door trials.
demonstrations. After two unarmed The country remains under emergency
protestors were shot, millions joined a rule, which was extended in August for
general strike, part of the nationwide another six months, with no chance
Civil Disobedience Movement. The of elections before 2023. As a result,
military responded with brutal force. Myanmar became one of five new closed
Since then, Aung San Suu Kyi has autocracies in 2021 (the others are Chad,
been sentenced to 20 years in prison and Guinea, Mali and Afghanistan).
TURKEY
In the early years of his role as prime minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan was seen as a liberalising force in the Middle East;
reforms paved the way for the start of EU membership
negotiations. But after Erdoğan’s nearly two decades in power,
Turkey’s bid to join the bloc is at a standstill, democracy is
being eroded, and the prime minister is widely considered to
be a dictator.
Following an attempted coup in 2016 by a faction within the
Turkish Armed Forces, hundreds of thousands of people were
detained and forced from government roles. More than 200
journalists were arrested and the event triggered wide-ranging
restrictions on the press, lawyers, academics and human rights
activists. Internet and social media censorship have also increased.
In March 2021, Erdoğan announced Turkey’s sudden
withdrawal from the Council of Europe’s Convention on
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and
Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention,
a human rights treaty signed by 45 countries and the
European Union, claiming that it was incompatible with the
country’s family values.
force, spreading narratives of democracy ‘I’ve said this now a number of times:
being a deficient or ‘Western’ ideology democracy dies with the lies. If you
that doesn’t apply to other cultures. can lie, and be believed, then vertical
Lindberg also points to the growth accountability disappears.’
of rightwing extremist groups across Finally, there’s the role that the
several countries, which have taken enormous increase in inequality has to
advantage of the unregulated freedom play. ‘The level of relative inequality has
of speech of the Internet era to reach become extreme. We haven’t seen this
new audiences, and the government in more than 150 years,’ says Lindberg.
spread of misinformation, particularly ‘These frustrations and fears for the
in North Africa and the Middle East, future can be harnessed and used by
but also in Malta, the USA and the UK. political leaders.’
NOVEMBER 2022 .13
 WORLDWATCH
Research round-up
SHUTTERSTOCK

Massive
Fishing without magma
chambers
n Researchers at

a catch the University of the

Witwatersrand have
found evidence that
large, long-lived,
molten magma
chambers once
existed in the Earth’s
crust. Rais Latypov, a
professor of igneous
petrology, says that
the amount of magma
in the chamber of the
Bushveld igneous
rock complex in
South Africa was,
at one stage, ‘really
staggering – more
than five kilometres
thick with a volume of
more than 380,000
cubic kilometres. This
amount of magma
is several orders of
magnitude larger
than any known
The right whale is one of the most super-eruptions in
endangered large whales and is in
very real danger of extinction the Earth’s history.’
The idea of huge,
molten magma
n ‘Ropeless’ fishing could reduce acoustic signals for location and retrieval, chambers, thought
entanglements of the critically endangered reducing the risk that it poses to marine to be key to volcanic
North Atlantic right whale, according to a life. The NOAA has released a roadmap to activity, is a long-
report from the US National Oceanic and encourage the adoption of the new fishing held hypothesis,
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At gear along the US east coast. The strategy but a lack of
least 54 right whales have died as a result of would potentially allow the return of pot compelling evidence
ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear and trap fisheries, upon which coastal has led to doubts in
since 2017, with fewer than 350 individuals communities have traditionally relied, to recent years.
left in the wild. ‘Ropeless’ fishing gear uses areas where right whales are common.

Termites like tiny cows Termites could have a big

impact on global warming
n Termites are best known as pests that damage homes
and wooden furniture, but they also play an overlooked,
critical role in natural ecosystems. Like microbes, they
help to decompose dead wood, but can do so at relatively
low moisture levels, such as those found in tropical
savannahs and subtropical deserts. ‘These systems are
often underappreciated in terms of their contributions to
the global carbon budget,’ says Amy Zanne, a University
of Miami biology professor. Like tiny cows, termites
release carbon from the wood they eat as methane and
carbon dioxide, two of the most important greenhouse
gases. As global temperatures warm, their range, and
numbers, are likely to expand, leading to them playing a
larger role in greenhouse gas emissions. ‘The impact of
termites on the planet could be huge,’ says Zanne.
SHUTTERSTOCK

14 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 SHUTTERSTOCK

GLOBAL WATCH
South Africa
South Africa is facing
unprecedented levels of power
blackouts this year. Citizens were
left without power for at least
six hours a day during June and
September, and face the prospect
of 12-hour cuts during the
coming months. A combination
of strikes and a reliance on
ageing coal power stations is
fuelling the crisis.

USA
The Republican governor of
Florida, Ron DeSantis, has
Flooding in Karachi, relocated 48 Venezuelan asylum
Pakistan, this summer seekers to the small, wealthy
island of Martha’s Vineyard
in a political stunt that some
Not-so-natural disasters legal experts have deemed to
be human trafficking. A federal
n This summer’s devastating floods in study illustrates very well what scholars class-action lawsuit has been
Pakistan, caused by a tripling of the in disaster studies have long argued: brought against DeSantis by civil
country’s usual rainfall for August, were namely, that there’s no such thing as rights lawyers.
likely intensified by human-caused a natural disaster,’ says Leslie Mabon,
climate change. However, analysis of the lecturer in environmental systems at the Northern Ireland
flooding, conducted by researchers at Open University. She adds that while Census results show that
the World Weather Attribution initiative, climate change makes weather extremes Northern Ireland has more
suggests that climate change is one of a more likely, political decisions influence Catholics than Protestants for
number of factors; high rates of poverty who and where are worst affected by the first time, a century after the
and political instability also contributed extreme events, and the extent to which country was created with the
to the amount of damage caused. ‘This people are able to adapt. aim of maintaining a pro-British,
Protestant majority. This historic
shift comes at a time when
there is growing support for
Subduction zone stress Irish reunification.
n The Nankai Trough, off the south coast of Japan’s Honshu island, marks
one of the world’s best-studied seismogenic subduction zones, where large Qatar
megathrust earthquakes have repeatedly occurred every 90–150 years. Hundreds of civilians, including
The last major earthquakes took place in 1944 and 1946, and the next one foreign diplomats summoned
is expected to happen soon. A recent scientific mission to drill deep into back from overseas, have been
the tectonic plate has gathered invaluable data about the levels of tectonic called up for mandatory military
stress. To much surprise, the stress levels that have built up since the last service in Qatar. The conscripts
earthquake are close to zero, suggesting the fault needs less energy to slip are needed to operate security
into an earthquake, that stress builds up very suddenly, or that the stresses checkpoints at World Cup
are closer to the fault than the drilling reached. This new information will stadiums this November. With
help scientists to better understand the link between tectonic forces and a population of just 2.8 million,
the earthquake cycle, potentially leading to better earthquake forecasts. the country is anticipating an
influx of 1.2 million visitors for
the tournament.
Raids and referendums Tanzania
n During the pandemic, as the world Atmospheric Research group, which The Tanzanian port of Mtwara is
went into lockdown, global carbon found that by 2021, emissions had busy with vessels exporting coal
emissions fell 5.3 per cent below 2019 returned to nearly pre-pandemic levels to Europe and beyond. As demand
levels. For aviation, the industry most and, in some countries, continue to for coal grows, a result of Russia’s
affected, the decrease was nearly 50 rise. China, the USA, the 27 EU war with Ukraine, buyers are
per cent. But all of that was just a countries, the UK, India, Russia and increasingly looking to remote coal
blip, according to a new report from Japan remained the world’s largest mines in places such as Tanzania.
the Emissions Database for Global CO2 emitters.

NOVEMBER 2022. 15
 GEO-GRAPHIC

GERMANY ITALY

The power SWEDEN

FINLAND
LUXEMBOURG
NETHERLANDS
AUSTRIA
SWITZERLAND

of passports SPAIN
FRANCE
USA

Passport power rank

Not all passports are created equal. While some people can /mobility score:
travel the world at leisure, only requiring a visa for a few
destinations (or having easy access to a visa), for others, a
passport is more of a hindrance than a help, with almost all
nations requiring lengthy prior approval before entry.

The Passport Index 2022 (www.passportindex.org) is

2/172
a global ranking of passports. Every passport is given a
mobility score, which is the total number of countries that
can be easily accessed, calculated based on Visa-
free, Visa-on-arrival, eTA, and eVisa issued
within three days. Based on these scores
each passport is then given a ‘power
rank’ from 1-100. Here we set out the
passports that fall within the top five
power ranks and the bottom five.

UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES
Passport power rank
/mobility score:

1/175 TOP FIVE

PASSPORTS

Americas passports
The USA and Canada unsurprisingly have
the most powerful passports across the
Americas as a whole, with a rank of 2 and 4
respectively. The majority of other countries
in the region fall within the top half, with
Brazil the highest in South America (rank:
10, MS: 161). Some of the Caribbean islands
have the lowest rankings on the continent,
with Haiti coming in last with a rank of 81
and a mobility score of 62.

Data from The Passport Index. The index has been updated
for 2022 but very recent changes (for example as a result of
Russia’s war in Ukraine) may not be encapsulated yet.
Design: Geoff Dahl

16 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 African passports
Passport power rank African nationals are the travelers
/mobility score: in the world who face the most
administrative difficulties. Only three

5/169 SINGAPORE SLOVAKIA

countries: the Seychelles (rank: 23,
MS: 141, Mauritius (rank: 30, MS: 132)
and South Africa (rank: 45, MS: 106)
fall within the top half of the ranking.
Bottom ranked on the continent is
Somalia, with a power rank of 97 and a
MALTA UK mobility score of just 43.

LITHUANIA

IRAQ
Passport power rank
/mobility score:
AFGHANISTAN
Passport power rank
/mobility score:

98/39 100/36
SOMALIA

Passport power rank

/mobility score:

97/43

BOTTOM FIVE
PASSPORTS

Passport power rank

/mobility score:

99/38
Passport power rank SYRIA
/mobility score:

96/44
YEMEN
PAKISTAN

Passport power rank CZECH REPUBLIC

/mobility score:
GREECE

4/170 HUNGARY
CANADA
AUSTRALIA
European passports
European passports generally score highly
across the board with only four nations
falling in the bottom half of the rankings:
Belarus (rank: 55, MS: 91), Azerbaijan (rank:
63, MS: 80), Armenia (rank 66, MS: 77) and
Kosovo (rank: 87, MS: 55).
Passport power rank DENMARK JAPAN
/mobility score:
BELGIUM SOUTH KOREA

3/171 PORTUGAL
NORWAY
POLAND
IRELAND
NEW ZEALAND NOVEMBER 2022 . 17
 DOSSIER
AFRICAN ENERGY

AFRICAN
The African continent has huge potential to
expand renewables and launch an energy
revolution, but abundant fossil fuel reserves
mean the path to progress is far from clear
By Mark Rowe

16 . GEOGRAPHICAL
ENERGY
SAMY SNOUSSI/SHUTTERSTOCK

The sun sets over wind

turbines in Bizerte, Tunisia

NOVEMBER 2922 . 17
 DOSSIER
African energy
I
t’s sometimes said that if the Industrial Revolution had
take place in Africa, the world would now run entirely
on solar energy. Yet while that resource is abundant –
most of the region enjoys more than 300 days of bright
sunshine a year – many nations on the world’s poorest
continent are acutely aware of the opportunities that
their fossil fuels offer, not only for lucrative short-term
revenues but for the basic access to energy much of the
world takes for granted. More than 645 million people
on the continent don’t have access to electricity.
As African economies expand, the energy sources
to which the continent turns will influence the planet’s
path towards mitigating climate change. Decisions made
today will shape the continent’s energy sector – and the
planet’s – for decades.
RAPID GROWTH AND HUGE POTENTIAL
Since 2000, Africa has experienced rapid economic
growth and improving social conditions. Given the
continent’s large and growing population, energy
demand is expected to nearly double by 2040. Right
now, the continent relies on oil, gas and coal for more
than three quarters of electricity-grid power generation.
Yet clean, indigenous and affordable renewable energy
solutions can offer the continent the chance to achieve
its economic, social, environmental and climate
objectives. According to the International Renewable
Energy Agency (IRENA), Africa could meet nearly a
quarter of its energy needs from indigenous and clean
renewable energy by 2030. Gazing deeper into the
crystal ball, IRENA projects that the continent could
increase the share of renewables in its total energy mix
to as much as two-thirds by 2050.
The potential renewable-energy resources across
Africa are extraordinary. The portfolio includes almost
unlimited solar potential (10 TW) and abundant hydro
(350 GW), wind (59 TW) and geothermal energy
sources (15 GW). However, it’s just that: potential. UNEP,
the UN’s environment programme, describes Africa’s
renewable energy resources as ‘diverse and enormous in
quantity’, but its latest Atlas of Africa’s Energy Resources
report says that Africa is ‘rich in energy resources but
poor in its capability to exploit and use them’.
Ambition is apparent. The African Union aims to
generate at least 300 GW of new renewable energy a year
by 2030. This corresponds to a seven-fold increase from
the capacity available in 2017, which amounted to 42
18 . GEOGRAPHICAL
GW. The potential for transformative energy use is huge,
resulting in carbon-dioxide emissions reductions of up
to 310 megatonnes a year, according to the accountants
PwC. Yet for now, most of this remains untapped. PwC
calculates that only 0.01 per cent of wind potential
is utilised, while 93 per cent of economically feasible
hydropower potential remains unused.
Ironically, Africa already uses more renewable energy
than any other of the world’s regions, deriving as much
as 70 per cent of its energy consumption from what can
loosely be termed renewable sources. However, much
of this involves a heavy reliance on traditional uses of
biomass by both households and industry. It’s estimated
that four out of five homes rely on solid biomass, mainly
fuelwood and charcoal for cooking, which are not only
far from sustainable but often involve potential health
risks from indoor air pollution.
PIPELINE QUANDARY
l Wind and solar, or fossil fuels? Or both? The 1,445-
kilometre East African Crude Oil Pipeline will transport waxy
crude from Uganda to Tanzania and goes to the heart of
the quandary facing many nations on the continent. The
pipeline will run alongside the Nile, through and beneath
chimpanzee-rich forests and below Lake Victoria, before
traversing savannah home to big cats and elephants, and
then reach Tanzania’s Swahili coast, where it will be exported.
According to Uganda’s energy ministry, up to US$3 billion
per year will be generated by the pipeline, substantially
adding to the nation’s annual tax revenue of US$4.5 billion.
This would be sufficient, advocates say, to wean Uganda off
foreign aid. International financial watchdogs are sceptical,
however, pointing to state corruption levels in Uganda of up
to 40 per cent of revenues.
Women and children would particularly benefit from
a transition to cleaner energy sources, according to the
International Energy Agency (IEA). ‘Indoor or rooftop
renewable systems for cooking and lighting lead to a
reduction of indoor air pollution, reduced working hours
on collecting and preparing the fuel, and better working
or studying conditions of improved lighting or phone-
charging devices,’ says an IEA spokeswoman. ‘All these
contribute to the enhanced wellbeing of local people.’
SCALING UP RENEWABLES
Even if much of Africa’s renewable potential remains
untapped, clean energy is being rolled out and
scaled up in pockets of the continent. ‘Renewable
energy capacity is growing quickly on the continent,’
says Wei Shen, a research fellow at the Institute of
Development Studies. ‘This is due to ample wind, solar
and geothermal sources, which are really changing the
energy endowment in Africa. Over the past decade,
newly added power-generation capacity has mainly
come from renewables rather than fossil fuels. The scale

and distribution of energy resources, production and
consumption trends is huge, as is the existing potential
for environmentally sustainable expansion.’
According to the World Economic Forum, from 2019
to 2020, solar and wind capacity increased by 13 per cent
and 11 per cent respectively, while hydropower soared
25 per cent. ‘Sustainable development and use of the
continent’s massive biomass, geothermal, hydropower,
solar and wind power have the potential to rapidly
change Africa’s current realities,’ says a spokesperson
for IRENA, who points to Africa’s wider potential role
in tackling climate change at a global level. ‘Endowed
with significant renewable-energy resources, a rapidly
growing economy and a large population with increasing
energy demand, Africa is crucial to accelerating the
transition to renewable energy.’
With irradiance levels twice the average for Germany,
where a thriving solar industry has developed, solar
energy potential alone is believed to provide more than
all the energy capacity needed in Africa. Shen describes
Africa as ‘having the best solar radiation in the world’.
NICOLE MACHEROUX-DENAULT/SHUTTERSTOCK
A solar power station at
Upington in South Africa
feeds into the national grid
The distribution of sunlight across Africa is fairly
uniform, with more than 80 per cent of the landscape
receiving almost 2,000 kWh per square metre per year.
This gives solar power the potential to bring energy to
most locations in Africa without the need for expensive
large-scale grid infrastructure. The US Department
of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory
describes Africa’s solar energy potential as ‘huge’ and
equivalent to 90–100 million tonnes of oil per year.
The continent is already home to the world’s largest
concentrated solar power plant, the Noor Complex,
located in the Sahara Desert in Morocco. The project,
whose first phase was switched on in 2016, has a
580-megawatt capacity and provides electricity for more
than a million people.
Africa’s wind energy potential is also substantial. In
2020, a study by the International Finance Corporation
found that continental Africa possesses an onshore wind
potential of almost 180,000 TWh/annum, enough to
satisfy the entire continent’s electricity needs 250 times
over. Wind is primarily being utilised in Morocco and
NOVEMBER 2022 . 19
 DOSSIER
African energy
Egypt, with modest opportunities in Tunisia, South Africa
and Tanzania. Egypt has an installed wind generation
capacity of almost 1.5 GW across 13 wind farms and
expects to commission another 2 GW by 2025 with an
additional 14 wind farms. South Africa has commissioned
34 wind farms with an installed capacity of more than
3.3 GW. Wind farms have also been commissioned in
Cabo Verde, Kenya and Djibouti, as well as a pan-national
project in Senegal and Mauritania. In March 2022, Niger
signed a contract for its first wind farm.
Tidal power is seen as a huge opportunity along the
continent’s east and west coasts, with UNEP reporting
studies that suggest ocean-current-turbines along the
2,000-kilometre coastline from Morocco to Senegal
Africa’s energy infrastructure
(power plants and lines)
20 . GEOGRAPHICAL
alone could potentially generate all of Africa’s energy
needs. Meanwhile, green hydrogen operations remain
embryonic but are widely recognised as having huge
potential. The Mauritanian Ministry of Petroleum, Mines
and Energy is progressing Project Nour, a potential
development of up to 10 GW from onshore solar and
offshore wind to be deployed for electrolysis to split
water and produce green hydrogen and oxygen. Namibia
issued a licence in 2021 to develop southern Africa’s
first gigawatt-scale green hydrogen project to produce
300,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year.
Geothermal power has also been identified along
the East African Rift System, although PwC notes that
this potential remains mostly untapped. As for nuclear
ATLAS OF AFRICA ENERGY RESOURCES, 2017, UNEP

Africa’s crude oil reserves
power, South Africa has the continent’s only currently
operating nuclear projects generating energy, although
100 MW of nuclear is under construction in South
Sudan. Ghana, Egypt, Morocco, Niger and Nigeria are
also considering adopting nuclear power.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
The long-term benefits of following the renewables path
have been laid out by many economists. PwC point out
that fossil fuel extraction and processing creates 2.7 jobs
per US$1 million invested in Africa, compared with
7.5–15 jobs per US$1 million invested in renewable
energy and energy efficiency. ‘Renewables can be applied
under different scenarios to serve both productive and
non-productive purposes,’ says Shen, ‘from irrigation,
milling, schools, hospitals, churches, outdoor and indoor
lighting, and phone charges to computers.’
According to Shen, clean energy can also overcome
many of the infrastructure problems faced by fossil fuel
ATLAS OF AFRICA ENERGY RESOURCES, 2017, UNEP
engineering and transportation. ‘Renewable energy,
particularly solar, can provide flexible solutions to
various energy/development problems,’ he says. ‘It can
be developed as utility-scale infrastructure or off-grid
systems. It can be applied in different rural and urban
contexts. It can enhance African countries’ energy
independence as these are local sources, and hence
with very limited uncertainties around importing raw
materials, unlike most fossil fuel infrastructure.’
But the fact remains that African nations can’t
unilaterally embrace renewables and trigger the
transition on their own. Estimates from UNEP and PwC
indicate that the continent needs anywhere from US$43
billion to US$70 billion per year between 2030 and 2040,
compared to current energy investments of about US$8–
9.2 billion. ‘Notwithstanding the significant innovation
and related cost reduction being realised from renewable
energy technologies, the required capital investment
for sustainable energy supply in Africa must cover the
NOVEMBER 2022 . 21
 DOSSIER
African energy
generation, much-needed sector reform as well as grid
and utility strengthening,’ says a PWC spokesman. ‘This
is often simply unaffordable to poorer economies.’
Shen is concerned that international funding is
already levelling off, just when it needs to increase. ‘Most
African countries are in dire need of reform of their
electricity sector to be more competitive and efficient,’ he
says, ‘but public and private funding are drying up due
to the impact of Covid and looming economic recessions
at a global level. Innovative financial solutions could
be experimented with, such as green bonds or even
crowdfunding, but in the near term, they are unlikely
to play a major role to change the overall risk appetite
among private and development financiers.’
Without such international support, African nations
may have little choice but to turn to their fossil fuel
resources. Excluding South Africa, nearly one billion
people across 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa share
roughly the same generation capacity as Germany’s
population of 83 million people. Of the world’s 20
countries with the least access to electricity, 13 are in
Africa: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, (the former)
Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar, Niger, Malawi,
Burkina Faso and Angola. Close to 70 per cent of rural
African areas aren’t connected to the grid.
Low energy supply, complete with shortages, high
costs and poor access, provide major economic and
social impediments, according to a report by Sustainable
Energy Fund Africa. Only 34 per cent of hospitals and
28 per cent of health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa
have reliable electricity access; about 58 per cent of
health care facilities in sub-Saharan African countries
have no electricity at all.
‘Sub-Saharan Africa has a massive population without
access to the power grid and relying on burning biomass
or kerosene for cooking, heating, lighting or other
household purposes,’ says Shen. ‘Any external actors
who wish to accelerate Africa’s take-up on renewables
should first focus on how to make up these financial,
WOMEN AND SOLAR ENERGY
l In Africa – as across the world – more women than men
suffer from energy poverty. But according to a UNEP report,
in Kajiado County in Kenya’s Rift Valley, Maasai women are
leading a solar-power revolution. A local organisation trains
women to install solar products in homes and villages, and
to market the products within their communities.
In just seven months, solar energy use rose from zero to 20
per cent in the area. The economic, social and environmental
benefits to the community are almost incalculable, says
UNEP. Children can now study by solar light after nightfall
and teenagers can sleep indoors instead of guarding
livestock from predators. Tangible benefits include savings
on the cost of kerosene, less exposure to harmful indoor
smoke and fewer trees cut down in the local environment.
22 . GEOGRAPHICAL
technological, and capacity gaps, before urging Africa to
cut off its reliance on fossil fuels.’
THE LURE OF FOSSIL FUELS
Given the lack of energy infrastructure, it’s unsurprising
that fossil fuel resources provide a juicy bait. The
continent’s proven fossil fuel reserves are estimated at
more than US$15.2 trillion.
Sub-Saharan Africa has undiscovered, but technically
recoverable, energy resources estimated at about 115.3
billion barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic metres of gas.
In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly half of the current export
value is derived from fossil fuels with an estimated
contribution to GDP from Africa’s current oil, coal and
gas production of US$156.2 billion.
Several nations are itching to expand output or join
the ranks of oil exporters and see fossil fuel revenues
as the key to decoupling themselves from international
and donor aid. Libya and Nigeria combined have the
largest share of oil by far, accounting for 63 per cent
of the African total, with Algeria and Angola adding
another 20 per cent. Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Nigeria,
meanwhile, are already among the largest gas producers
in the world. Important natural gas resources have
recently been discovered in Mozambique, while recent
discoveries of gas in East Africa have been welcomed
by governments who see an opportunity for them to
be of enormous benefit to the high-population-density
region of the Rift Valley for cooking, power generation,
transportation and fertiliser production.
Unconventional oil reserves are being identified all
the time and Angola, Madagascar, Congo, Nigeria,
South Africa, Ethiopia and the DRC have vast bitumen
deposits rich in tar sands oil and/or oil shale. In July
2022, the DRC began auctioning 27 new oil blocks for
exploration, including several that infringe on vast tracts
of tropical rainforest and peatlands that store billions
of tonnes of carbon, and two that are partially inside
Virunga National Park, home to a third of the world’s
remaining mountain gorillas. Coal is concentrated, for
Having taken ownership of the technology, women are
now more empowered. In a speech at the 2022 Green
Energy Africa Summit, held this autumn in South Africa,
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka the former director of UN
Women said: ‘Diversified energy sources used together
with rich energy reserves could act as a force multiplier
for growth, economic upliftment, poverty reduction and
improved health.’
Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was South Africa’s first female
deputy president, pointed to a judicious use of revenues
from fossil fuels: ‘Money gained from fossil fuels must
also be used to invest in clean energy. Investment in
future projects must ensure full benefits and upliftment
of women and children of our continent.’
Most households in Africa
rely on biomass, which
is technically renewable
but not a clean source
of energy
‘Africa needs to save itself by
transforming its own energy
system as soon as possible to
embrace these new opportunities’
now, in southern Africa; South Africa produces around
140 million tonnes of oil equivalent from its coal sector
while Zimbabwe’s single mine, Hwange, is another
important coal producer.
All of this comes with a moral issue. The West
developed rapidly on the back of fossil fuels and despite
calls and pledges to rely primarily on renewables, China
and India are doing the same. Why should anyone
reasonably expect the world’s poorest continent to take a
different approach?
A 2021 PwC report notes how Africa ‘is being
swept along in the global energy transition and
increasingly coming under the same net-zero policy
pressure as developed economies such as the EU [that
contribute far more to global warming].’ The same
report notes that ‘Africa still has significant untapped
fossil fuel reserves, which could provide much-needed
foreign direct investment and export revenue. Despite
the clear and necessary long-term decline in demand
for fossil fuels, shorter-term demand and prices remain
buoyant, providing strong commercial justification
for their exploitation.’
This autumn, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the former
Nigerian minister of state for petroleum resources,
called on African countries ‘to first focus on the existing
energy resources that we have and exploit that for our
development while collaborating with the rest of the
world to work out a long-term energy transition plan
that is best for Africa... renewable technology is not
ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY
ACROSS AFRICA
NORTH AFRICA
252 million people
98 per cent electrified
5m without electricity access
WEST AFRICA
414 million people
47 per cent electrified
220m without electricity access
EAST AFRICA
458 million people
53 per cent electrified
242m without electricity access
CENTRAL AFRICA
186 million people
30 per cent electrified
DAVIDE BONALDO/SHUTTERSTOCK
130m without electricity access
SOUTHERN AFRICA
68 million people
51 per cent electrified
33m without electricity access
ready to carry the major energy load needed to develop
and progress Africa out of poverty for at least another
decade, if not longer.’
SETTING A COURSE FOR NET ZERO
Given its renewable resources, there is huge
environmental and political pressure for Africa to
utilise these as its economies expand. Africa has the
world’s lowest per capita energy consumption: with 16
per cent of the world’s population it consumes just 3.3
per cent of global primary energy. Yet it’s already one
of the most energy-intensive regions, obtaining little
economic output from its modest energy use. Unless
renewables enter the picture, population growth and
rapid urbanisation will increase the use of inefficient
fuels for cooking and lighting. Expansion of traditional
fossil fuels will have important impacts on ecosystems,
Africa’s natural wealth and magnificent wildlife.
Despite the phenomenal income to be made from
fossil fuels, 35 of Africa’s 54 nations have undertaken
some form of commitment to net zero, according to
PwC. ‘Africa is not responsible to save others from the
climate crisis as it is not these countries who created
this mess,’ says Shen, ‘but Africa needs to save itself by
transforming its own energy system as soon as possible
to embrace these new technology and development
opportunities embedded in the global trend of
renewable energy revolution.’
If Africa opts to take the fossil fuel bait, warns Shen, it
risks being the poor relation when renewables become
mainstream elsewhere. ‘Africa does have sufficient and
exploitable renewable energy resources, which can
benefit it tremendously,’ he says. ‘Otherwise, it will
lag behind once again. I am cautiously optimistic as
the value of renewables is now well recognised among
African leaders. To put it simply, Africa needs more
energy – the cleaner the better.’ l
NOVEMBER 2022 . 23
 BROWN BEARS
Conservation

BEARS
IN MIND
After teetering on the brink of extinction, northern Spain’s
brown bear population is growing. Chris Fitch explores how
local communities are responding to their new neighbours

26 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 A Cantabrian brown bear,
the last of Spain’s wild bears

Fundación Oso Pardo

NOVEMBER 2022 . 27
 BROWN BEARS
Conservation

Y
Cantabrian brown bears
usually only appear around
dawn and dusk

ou would think that a bear the size of a

small car would be fairly straightforward to spot. Doing
so equipped with powerful binoculars, accompanied by a
guide patiently explaining exactly where to look, should
make it even easier. But as I scanned the mountainous
landscape before me, pausing briefly to check whether
various bear-shaped objects were, inevitably, just
another rock, it became clear that this was going to be
considerably more challenging than first anticipated.
There had been no guarantees. ‘We will try to see the
bear,’ were the cautious words from Victor García, a
guide from tour company Wild Spain Travel. So much
weight hung on that word ‘try’ that it was starting to
buckle under the pressure.
Bear watching is very different from, say, a safari,
where a vehicle can park right next to an animal
and provide a front row seat. With bears, distance is
mandatory and patience critical. These crepuscular
animals (active at dawn and dusk) emerge only when the
temperature is optimal. Even when waiting in the perfect
spot at the perfect time there are no assurances. Therein
lies the thrill when one does make an appearance.
The surrounding mountains were bathed in the scarlet
light of an impending sunset. Despite the warmth of the
day, fragments of crisp winter snow clung to the peaks.
Huge rock strata rose dramatically from the valley,
lying across the landscape like creased laundry. Silence,
broken only by the crunching of gravel as a handful of
fellow aspiring bear-spotters shifted their weight from
one foot to the other.
Suddenly, a flurry of activity. Faces disappeared
behind metre-long camera lenses, amid whispers that
ASTURIAS l Oviedo l Santander
not just one, but two bears had emerged, far off on the CANTABRIA
opposite side of the valley. CANTABRIAN MOUNTAINS l Vitoria

‘You can see that the male is smelling and going GALICIA
the same way as the female,’ said Victor, his normally LA RIOJA
CASTILE
booming voice reduced by several decibels to something AND
more wildlife-appropriate. Once I’d located the animals, LEÓN
l Valladolid
I saw what he meant: a smaller bear running – if you can
call her quick-footed shuffle over the rocks a run – with
a larger bear sniffing in pursuit. The male paused for a
CASTILLA
moment, grabbed a young tree and gave it an almighty LA MANCHA
shake, as though letting out some pent-up frustration.
MADRID n
Dropping back onto all fours, nose to the ground, he was EXTREMA-
quickly on his way again, scurrying after her into the
descending twilight.
allowed to hunt them. Over time, their prestigious
BACK IN THE DAY status waned and non-aristocrats were permitted to
Spain was once full of bears. During the 14th century, organise bear hunts.
they were documented living as far south as Andalucía, It became a free-for-all. Written records from the 16th
on the Mediterranean coast. Initially, these animals and 17th centuries detail payments made to hunters
were somewhat protected, with only high-society elites who undertook the dangerous job of killing bears (and

28 . GEOGRAPHICAL

wolves), which were considered alimañas, vermin.
Combined with the high value of bear skins and fat, they
provided a handsome income. Renowned hunters – such
as 18th- and 19th-century icons Manuel Álvarez and
Francisco Garrido Flórez, who racked up confirmed kills
of 48 and 66 adult bears respectively – were heralded as
heroes. They were so successful that by the start of the
19th century, the brown bear had been almost wiped off
from the Iberian Peninsula.
On Spain’s northern coast, adjacent to the Cantabrian
Sea, lies Asturias. Around the size of Devon and Cornwall
combined, and home to roughly a million Spaniards, it’s
a region with an illustrious history. Victory for Christian
Visigoth forces over Islamic Moors at the Battle of
Covadonga in 722 CE led to the founding of the Kingdom
of Asturias, and was widely seen as the starting point for
the seven-century Reconquista. Consequently, this small
corner of territory is often referred to as the birthplace of
the Spanish nation. The region’s importance lives on in
that fact that the title of Prince or Princess of Asturias is
anointed upon the heir-apparent to the Spanish throne,
the equivalent of the Prince(ss) of Wales.
VICTOR GARCIA
Around 80 per cent of Asturias is covered by the
Cantabrian Mountains. A striking landscape that
wouldn’t look out of place in the wilds of Patagonia,
it contains several peaks that surpass 2,500 metres in
elevation. These mountains are a rare spot in which
Spain’s bears clung on to survival, evading hunters by
disappearing into the rugged terrain. Hence the name –
the Cantabrian brown bear – for the specific subspecies
of Ursus arctos that lives here, U. a. pyrenaicus.
But even Asturias witnessed a severe decline. As
recently as the mid-1990s, there were as few as 50
bears living across the region, with only a handful of
breeding females. Worse still, having been split into two
subpopulations (one in the west, a smaller one in the
east), the prospect of stabilisation, let alone a healthy
recovery, was further weakened. Extinction beckoned.
DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK
The morning air was freezer cold, a faint haze lingering.
By the side of a winding mountain road, I once again
stared out at a broad panorama – a deep valley rising to
multiple treeless summits. Even with years of practice, I
NOVEMBER 2022 . 29
 BROWN BEARS
Conservation

Fernando Ballesteros
observes the growing of
chestnuts in a nursery

There has been a significant shift in human-

bear relations over recent decades
ALL PHOTOGRAPS FUNDACIÓN OSO PARDO

30 . GEOGRAPHICAL

wondered how anyone could locate a wild animal within
such a scene. Only thanks to the experienced eyes of
rangers and their high-powered telescopes was I soon
watching a family of bears – a mother and two cubs –
slowly walking on the opposite side of the valley.
It’s extremely difficult to get a sense of scale at
such a far remove. The mountains warp any innate
understanding of height or distance, flattening
space, playing hypnotic tricks on the eye. From afar,
these bears could easily have been the size of their
North American cousins, the grizzlies. Although the
Cantabrian bears are smaller, they’re certainly not
small, with males weighing up to 200 kilograms. It’s
difficult to see detailed tones from such a distance, but
there was a creamy caramel colour to their fur, perhaps
lightened by the golden morning light.
Fernando Ballesteros, a bespectacled local biologist,
watched with me. The bears lumbered along a tree
line around the edge of a distant grassy clearing, the
Once a very rare sight,
female bears with cubs can
now be seen again
youngsters wandering around, occasionally doubling
back, getting to know the environment. As Fernando
explained, this is no longer such a rare sight. ‘If you
see a graph of females with cubs, the graph is sharply
declining, then suddenly starts to grow...’ he said,
drawing a giant V in the air with his finger to illustrate.
The turn in the Cantabrian bears’ fortunes coincided
with the 1992 founding of Fundación Oso Pardo
(FOP), the Brown Bear Foundation, of which Fernando
is a 20-year veteran. Much of the organisation’s energy
was derived from founder and president Guillermo
Palomero García, a carnivore enthusiast. From the
beginning, his focus was on achieving social acceptance
of the bear in rural areas.
To make this happen, FOP’s opening move was to
target illegal hunting, bringing an end to shooting and
the setting of traps. Even though bear hunting had
been banned nationally since 1973 (and restricted, with
minimal enforcement, over preceding decades) illicit
NOVEMBER 2022 .31
 BROWN BEARS
Conservation
poaching remained widespread. FOP focused on finding
and disabling the rudimentary traps and snares used by
poachers – removing thousands – and making it socially
unacceptable to install new ones. Thirty years ago, to
find a bear missing one or more limbs, the consequence
of an encounter with a snare, wasn’t unusual, but such
sightings today are extremely rare.
The end of poaching-related mortalities has turned
the bears’ fortunes around. The Cantabrian brown bear
population, once facing elimination from this landscape,
now stands at at more than 400, and continues to
increase by an additional 30–40 individuals annually.
Still endangered, yes, but on a steady path to recovery.  and beechnuts. But when summer rolls round, these
For the first time in generations, local communities
are discovering how to live in an environment with
more bears, not fewer. Unsurprisingly, not everyone
is enthusiastic about this development. Human–bear
conflict remains a significant issue, so FOP, their
illegal-poaching mission largely complete, now
promotes a culture of cohabitation with the bear
population. Funded by organisations such as the
European Nature Trust, it’s re-educating communities
about traditions lost after a century or more of minimal
(if not zero) bear presence in the environment.
For example, beekeeping is a popular pastime and
economic activity in Asturias. Unfortunately, as anyone
who has read Winne the Pooh knows, bears are also
fans of honey, and younger animals display no fear of
human settlements, associating them with food and
safety, not danger. While the regional government runs
a compensation scheme that pays nominal fees to people
whose livestock, crops and/or property are damaged,
keeping wild bears from destroying hives is important
for maintaining the peace.
Traditional methods for keeping them away included
building structures called cortines (alvares elsewhere
in Spain) – stone structures with high walls that make
it difficult for ursine opportunists to reach the golden
treasure within. While a handful are still in use, the
modern version involves electric fencing. FOP has
donated fencing to more than 2,000 beekeepers and
visits properties to ensure that they’ve been installed
correctly. With in-person demonstrations, brochures,
tutorials, masterclasses and other educational means, FOP
is restoring critical cultural knowledge about cohabitation.
FOLLOW THE TRAIL
One enduring problem is the reluctance of female
bears to migrate. Males will happily wander Iberia, into
neighbouring regions such as Cantabria and Castilla y
León, and even northern Portugal. But without females
to breed with, they inevitably return home. With
subsequent mothers and cubs also sticking to familiar
landscapes, the cycle repeats. Such a pattern threatens
to overload the contemporary habitat with bears while
surrounding territories remain bearless.
One aspiration is to combine the east and west
subpopulations within the Cantabrian Mountains.
Encouraging these two groups to mix would expand the
animals’ range beyond their comfort zones, reducing
pressure on existing habitats, as well as improving the
genetic health of the subspecies.
‘The philosophy here is to colonise new lands,’ said
Victor. He led me to a remote location to demonstrate
32 . GEOGRAPHICAL
one way this is being achieved. The scene around us
appeared to be an ordinary tree planting operation.
Surrounding fields were feral, with tall grasses, daisies
and buttercups, large prehistoric-seeming unfurling
ferns, and stinging nettles scratching my legs. The air
was full of floating dandelion seeds, and a fragrant
bouquet of cow dung. Crag martins overhead glided
through the valley.
Around us were native cherry trees, explained Victor,
planted by volunteers eight years previously. Wild bears
have a varied diet, feasting upon everything from ants
and bees, to young grass shoots and flowers, to acorns
fast-growing fleshy fruits are an irresistible favourite.
By planting these skinny trees on farmland between the
two subpopulations, FOP are luring the bears from one
territory to the other, like cartoon characters following
FUNDACIÓN OSO PARDO
Genetic analysis can be
performed on bear samples
left on fences
a trail of sweets. Another field populated by young trees
was visible 500 metres away – the next stepping stone
along this route.
BEYOND BEARS
With bears now increasingly common in Asturias,
bear watching has, almost by accident, become a viable
tourist activity. When Spanish photographers and
nature lovers began promoting the region during the
1990s, it helped to trigger a change in attitude among
local communities, with bears seen less as pests and
more as economic assets. As in many parts of the world,
giving local wildlife a value, a reason for tourists to
fill guesthouses and purchase local products such as
handicrafts and honey, has helped to persuade people to
accept the presence (and sometimes the inconvenience)
of brown bears.
‘The people that were there when we were seeing the
bears were local people,’ said Victor, referring to our first
bear-watching experience. ‘People who, if they saw a
bear, once preferred to shoot them with a gun. Now they
are there with binoculars, or a telescope, or a camera to
take pictures. That’s a big change.’
Authorities in Asturias are reluctant to over-promote
 Fruit plantations lure bears
out of their usual territories
FUNDACIÓN OSO PARDO
The regional brown bear
population is over 400, and
growing
bear watching – to make their tourism strategy all about
trying to spot bears. ‘We want you to see the bears, but
we really want you to enjoy the nature in which the bears
lives, to get in touch with the people who are close to
the bear, and get to know the local culture,’ explained
Tatiana González, who is in charge of marketing tourism
in Asturias. She had joined me for a final bear-spotting
experience in the quiet settlement of La Peral, near the
southern end of Somiedo National Park, and her words
were accompanied by a soundtrack of cow bells and
bovine bellows.
As the setting sun lit up a blanket of mist, the shadow
of the western mountains cast an ever-lengthening
darkness behind us, until only the highest peaks
continued to glow. Scanning my camera across the
terrain at full zoom, a dark, moving shape caught
FOP patrols collect data on
evidence of passing bears
FUNDACIÓN OSO PARDO
VICTOR GARCIA
my attention. A bear ambled out of the forest before
quickly disappearing – a young one, energetic. He
tumbled down a small slope as though desperately
trying to reach the bottom of the valley. A moment
later, he composed himself and began a gentle stroll,
slowly moving away from me. Pausing for a moment,
he turned and galloped from sight. Moments such this
can be fleeting, over in a matter of seconds, but the
impact on the region, and the people who live here, will
hopefully endure for considerably longer. l
Discover more:
• The Fundación Oso Pardo: fundacionosopardo.org/en
• Asturias Tourism: www.turismoasturias.es/en/home
• The European Nature Trust: theeuropeannaturetrust.
com
NOVEMBER 2022 . 33
 BALKANS
KOSOVO

KO S O V O’S
An arts festival in Kosovo tackles the
nation’s turbulent past, amid rising
tensions with neighbouring Serbia.
Tim Brinkhof reports

34 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 © Chiharu Shiota. Photo © Manifesta 14 Prishtina, Majlinda Hoxha

CHALLENGES

‘Tell me Your Story’, an

installation by Chiharu
Shiota that includes
personal stories from the
people of Kosovo, woven
into a web that symbolises
their existence in memory

NOVEMBER 2022 . 35
 BALKANS
KOSOVO

SLOVENIA declared itself one in 2008, and continues to deny its

HUNGARY
independence to this day.
n Zagreb Kosovo’s tragic past and uncertain future add
CROATIA weight to Manifesta’s art exhibits. Donjetë Murati, a
• Novi Sad ROMANIA programming coordinator, says that one of the goals
of the festival is to ‘challenge dominant narratives and
Belgrade n
inspire alternatives to a world where violence and war
BOSNIA take place’. Take, for example, ‘Ring the Bells my land’ –
AND a futuristic, post-apocalyptic installation by the Prizren-
HERZEGOVINA SERBIA based artist Doruntina Kastrati located inside Pristina’s
Sarajevo n
dilapidated Grand Hotel. Here, visitors are encouraged
not only to observe the installation, but to walk on top

BULGARIA
MONTENEGRO
of it, further pulverising heaps of red brick that are
Pristina n
Podgorica
meant to represent the surface of a colonised Mars. The
n KOSOVO message is subtle yet obvious: the creation of art – like
AD
RI n Skopje the recording of history – ought to be a collaborative
AT
IC process. This is hammered home more clearly at another
SE MACEDONIA building occupied by Manifesta: the Centre for Narrative
A n Tirana
Practice. Inside this quaint little townhouse, tucked
away between office buildings and kebab shops, various
ITALY ALBANIA GREECE objects recount a collective history of Kosovo. Family
photographs, knickknacks and a box of discontinued
Soviet cereal, paint a picture of the past that’s more
trustworthy – as well as objective – than any individual
historian (or politician) could ever produce.
Constructed during the 1930s, the Centre for

O
Narrative Practice was once used as a municipal library
before falling into disrepair and, ultimately, disuse.
Thanks to Manifesta, however, the city of Pristina has
been able to raise the funds necessary to renovate the
townhouse and its private garden, which now doubles
as an outdoor workspace, with music and food trucks.
Murati tells me that the renewed centre contains a
reference library, a children’s library, historical archives,
a podcast studio and a screening space – facilities, she
says, that will remain available to local residents long
after Manifesta has left the country.
The Centre for Narrative Practice is but one of
n the final day of my brief stay in Pristina, many abandoned buildings in Pristina that Manifesta
the capital city of the Republic of Kosovo, some fellow is helping to restore. In the Dutch newspaper NRC
travellers urged me to check out an arts festival called Handelsblad, photographer Atdhe Mulla has published
Manifesta. This nomadic biennial, founded by Dutch pictures of students (paid a decent salary according
art historian Hedwig Fijen, is known for setting up shop to one of them) painting the outside of an old factory
in locations where the political climate is anything but that, prior to the festival, was used as an unregulated
stable. In 2006, for instance, Manifesta was supposed garbage dump. Pristina’s Grand Hotel, built on the
to come to Cyprus, but plans fell through following a orders of Yugoslav dictator Josip Tito to accommodate
disagreement between the island’s Greek and Turkish ambassadors and other diplomats, businessmen and
inhabitants. And in 2014, the festival arrived at Saint other guests of distinction, is also resuming its role as a
Petersburg, Russia, just months after Vladimir Putin hub for high culture in Kosovo.
moved his soldiers into Crimea and signed a law For readers in the USA and Western Europe, where
banning gay ‘propaganda’. urban environments are regenerated all the time,
Pristina makes for an equally tumultuous backdrop. initiatives such as these may not sound particularly
Preparations for Manifesta were well underway when noteworthy, yet they acquire special significance when
Putin – unsatisfied with his previous annexation – viewed from the perspective of Balkan history. That
launched an invasion that’s threatening not just history has been described in all its sad detail by Peter
Ukraine but all of Eastern Europe. Kosovo’s already Lippman, a Seattle-based carpenter turned journalist
weak economy has grown even weaker, while its and human rights advocate, and the author of Surviving
age-old enemy, the Kremlin-backed and Kremlin- the Peace: The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-
backing government of Serbia, is being emboldened by Herzegovina. Lipmann spent years campaigning in
nationalist fantasies of its own. Emulating Russia, Serbia Bosnia and Kosovo – countries where people, and public
didn’t recognise Kosovo as a sovereign nation when it spaces, suffered heavily under Serbian repression.

36 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 The Monument to Heroes
of the National Liberation
Movement in Pristina was
built under the rule of Josip
Broz Tito, former president
of Yugoslavia, in 1961. As
part of the Manifesta arts
festival, Swiss artist Ugo
Rondinone temporarily
transformed the grey
monument into a
brightly coloured one

© Ugo Rondinone. Photo © Manifesta 14

NOVEMBER 2022 . 37
 BALKANS
KOSOVO
Although the enmity between Serbians and Kosovo’s
ethnic-Albanian population goes back centuries,
Lippman believes that the present conflict began during
the 1980s, when Serbian president Slobodan Milošević
revoked the autonomy that Kosovo had gained
under Tito and his immediate successors. In Pristina,
professors who refused to teach Serbian curricula were
fired on the spot. Kicked out of their own institutions,
they taught classes in basements and backrooms. In an
article for the Seattle Times, Lippman recalls attending
an advanced-English course inside an empty, unheated
store where students used boxes as chairs and tables.
In healthcare, things were even worse. Doctors and
nurses were told to turn in their scrubs, sometimes while
they were in the middle of operating on someone. A
parallel medical system was created, but it was too poorly
equipped to take care of Kosovo’s ailing population. At
the Mother Teresa Clinic, the only free clandestine clinic
in the region, pregnant women had to share beds while
giving birth for lack of space. Once their babies had been
delivered, they were given two hours to leave the facility.
In response to these conditions, more and more mothers
were forced to go into labour at home, causing infant
mortality rates to skyrocket.
Keeping these historical horror stories in mind, one
can see clearly that Manifesta employees are doing more
than cleaning up garbage dumps and building podcast
studios. They are also helping to rebuild the infrastructure
that Serbia dismantled for the purpose of undermining
Kosovo’s economy and human development. With public
places such as the Centre for Narrative Practice back in
use, citizens of Pristina no longer have to meet in each
other’s private residences to look back on the past and
plan their futures. Topics such as political repression,
38 . GEOGRAPHICAL
The Grand Hotel Prishtina
on Zahir Pajaziti Square
in Pristina, Kosovo
ROBSON90/SHUTTERSTOCK
civil rights and war crimes can now be discussed openly,
freely and defiantly. At least, that’s the idea.
Unfortunately, Manifesta’s impact on Pristina has
been overshadowed by news coverage of an unnerving
confrontation between the governments of Kosovo and
Serbia. This confrontation began a little over a year ago,
when Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, announced
that ethnic Serbs living in the country would have to
start fitting their vehicles with Kosovar, as opposed to
Serbian, number plates. The Serbs, provoked by their
brethren on the other side of the border, responded by
organising protests and roadblocks. For months, the
Far more probable than war is the
prospect of Russia exploiting political
instability to extend its sphere of
influence in southeastern Europe
world has been waiting to see what will happen once the
new rule goes into effect.
An initial deadline was set for 1 September 2022.
However, pressure from Kosovo’s Western allies
persuaded Kurti to wait until the two countries
could reach an agreement with which both can live.
Diplomatic meetings, facilitated by European emissaries
and monitored by NATO peacekeepers, took place
throughout August. But while Serbia and Kosovo have
agreed to waive certain entry and exit requirements
for travellers heading in either direction, and various
government officials, including Serbian prime minister

The National Public Library of Pristina (foreground)
with Christ the Saviour Cathedral just behind
Ana Brnabić have expressed a desire to see their
relationship normalised, tensions have yet to defuse.
And they won’t anytime soon. The countries are arguing
about much more than number plates. In Lippman’s
words, it’s simply another ‘manifestation of Kosovo
trying to assert its sovereignty and Serbia trying to deny
it’. A similar scenario played out last year when Serbia
placed special police units along the border. Tomorrow,
Lippman adds, discussions may revolve around criminal
justice (Serbia and Kosovo rarely cooperate in the search
for missing persons) or around the Community of Serb
Municipalities, an as-yet unsuccessful campaign to allow
areas in Kosovo with majority Serb populations to form
a self-governing federation.
Could one of these scenarios lead to war in the
Balkans? It’s possible, but unlikely. Kosovo and Serbia
have, of course, fought before, during the late 1990s.
The conflict, which ended soon after NATO began
bombing the Serbian city of Novi Sad, left a bitter taste
in the mouths of both sides – especially Serbia. Today,
war is kept off the table by the involvement of foreign
powers mightier and wealthier than Serbia and Kosovo
combined. Under their auspices, leaders regularly meet
in Brussels to air their grievances, and although Lippman
thinks these visits are a diplomatic charade, they have,
for now, contributed to keeping the peace.
Still, those who travel through the region today sense
danger in the air. Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s current
president, has declared time and time again that he
will never recognise Kosovo. In light of recent events,
his defence ministry has been carrying out training to
‘maintain a high degree of combat readiness’. And such
inflammatory language isn’t restricted to political press
briefings; while in Tirana, I ran into a Dutch backpacker
© Cevdet Erek Photo © Manifesta 14
‘Brutal
Times’
by artist
Cevdet Erek,
installed in
the Rilindja
Press Palace,
a brutalist
concrete
building from
the 1970s
Kosovan
president
Vjosa
Osmani-
Sadriu
OPIS ZAGREB/SHUTTERSTOCK
who had just came from Belgrade. He told me how, at a
local bar, he met a group of teenagers who said that they
would ‘die for their country’, and who pressured him
into saying, out loud, that ‘Kosovo is part of Serbia!’
Far more probable than war is the prospect of Russia
exploiting political instability to extend its sphere of
influence in southeastern Europe. Not only has Putin
rejected Kosovo’s claim to sovereignty, but he has also
provided Serbia with military training and equipment.
Elsewhere, in Bosnia, the Kremlin threatened to ‘react’
should the increasingly westward-leaning country decide
to join NATO. In this sense, conflicts in the Balkans are
about much, much more than local rivalries; the region
is rapidly becoming one of several battlegrounds on
which Western powers will be waging their new proxy
war against Russia.
The great tragedy of it all is that Kosovo – in a
turn of events that’s somewhat rare in this part of the
world – has acquired a remarkably stable and honest
regime. Where many neighboring countries are ruled
by personality-based parties whose members act more
like common criminals than government officials,
Kosovo’s Kurti is part of a true grassroots movement.
This movement, called Lëvizja Vetëvendosje (the
Self-determination Movement), gained followers not
through force or fearmongering, but through peaceful
demonstrations and educational events. Its delegates,
Lippman says, actually represent their constituents.
The origins of Lëvizja Vetëvendosje can be traced back
to the final years of the previous century, when students,
tired of congregating in basements and backrooms,
took to the streets. They wanted their classrooms back
and they wanted to be taught in Albanian, not Serbian.
Gradually, spontaneous and disjointed protests coalesced
NOVEMBER 2022 . 39

BALKANS
KOSOVO
into a single organisation that called for the boycott of
Serbian goods, the release of political prisoners locked
up across the border, the prosecution of war criminals
and other things that – to quote Lippman one last time –
‘matter to ordinary people’.
Both Kurti and Kosovo’s young, female president,
Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu, enjoy widespread support due
to their unwillingness to compromise with Serbia. This
is in stark contrast to Osmani-Sadriu’s predecessor,
Hashim Thaçi, who, in 2018, was talking to Vučić about
redrawing the border so that Kosovo’s ethnic Serb
municipalities would once again fall under Serbian
jurisdiction. Thaçi left office before his plan could
proceed – a good thing, according to political analysts,
as ceding even the smallest portion of Kosovo’s hard-
won territory could leave the republic vulnerable to
other secessions and perhaps even occupation.
Although the recent victories of Lëvizja Vetëvendosje
inspire hope for a better future, the overall situation
in Kosovo still looks rather grim. Reports from the
European Commission show that the republic’s judicial
system is dubious, its law enforcement unreliable. For
every Kurti or Osmani-Sadriu, there’s a powerful person
who only looks out for themselves.
But worse than Kosovo’s corruption is its poverty.
Around 18 per cent of the population lives below the
poverty line, with five per cent below the extreme
poverty line. In 2020, the unemployment rate reached
25.8 per cent, the highest of all the candidates competing
for EU membership.
Poverty goes hand in hand with another serious
problem: brain drain. The Kosovo Agency of Statistics
40 . GEOGRAPHICAL
© Flaka Haliti. Photo © Manifesta 14
Flaka Haliti, a Kosovo native, appropriated material
from a former NATO peacekeeping site for her
installation ‘Under the Sun — Explain What Happened’
Despite everything that’s happened in the
past, she is deeply in love with her country
and believes that she can do some truly
important and meaningful work
estimates that more than 220,000 people left the country
over the past decade, a sizable portion of its population
of 1.8 million. Many of these emigrees are young people
looking to try their luck abroad – understandable
considering that, at home, one in every two college
graduates can’t find a job. Those who find work don’t fare
much better. A journalism major from the University of
Pristina, who moved to Zagreb to work in construction
years ago, says that most employers in Kosovo make
you work long hours for little money, without offering
insurance benefits.
And yet there is more to this story. Walking through
Pristina, I ran into quite a few young professionals who
could leave but choose not to. One such was Manifesta
programming coordinator Donjetë Murati, who studied
art and activism in New York. I met her in the garden of
the Centre for Narrative Practice, where she sat with her
laptop. Although she could have stayed in the USA – a
country in which many emigrees aspire to end up – she
made a conscious decision to return to Kosovo because,
despite everything that’s happened in the past, she is
deeply in love with her country and believes that she
can do some truly important and meaningful work
here. I don’t doubt it. l
ncl.ac.uk/study-geography
 ARCTIC OCEAN
Expedition

71 DEGREES
NORTH
Hugh Francis Anderson reports on a centenary
expedition to Jan Mayen island in the Arctic
Ocean, site of the northernmost active land
volcano. Photographs by Hugo Pettit

42 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 Captain Andreas B Heide
at the helm of the research
yacht Barba off the north
coast of Jan Mayen island

NOVEMBER 2022 . 43
 ARCTIC OCEAN
Expedition

ALASKA
(USA)

CANADA

ARCTIC OCEAN

North Pole RUSSIA

Svalbard
GREENLAND (Norway)
(Denmark)
GREENLAND
SEA

Jan Mayen
NORWAY

NORWEGIAN
FIN

SEA
N
EDE

LA

ICELAND
N
SW

F licking through a 100-year-old edition of the

Geographical Journal in the Members’ Room of the
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in Kensington
a few years ago, I found an article about Jan Mayen
island, a remote volcanic outcrop in the Arctic Ocean. I
had recently returned from a research trip to the Arctic
where, coincidentally, the captain of the yacht I was
aboard had told me about this little-known outpost.
The article was a report on the first British expedition
to the island in August 1921, led by Sir James Mann
The Barba approaches
the coast of Jan Mayen

dominating north, where the world’s northernmost

Wordie, the geologist and chief of scientific staff with
Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition,
1914–1917 (he later became president of the RGS). The
expedition’s goal was two-fold: to undertake the first
geological study of the island and claim the first ascent
of Mount Beerenberg.
I called my expedition skipper, Norwegian explorer
and marine scientist Andreas B Heide, and we soon
decided that, as it was 18 months away from the
centenary of the first trip, it was time to mount another.
THE BLOODY AGE OF WHALING
Look on a map, and you’ll likely miss the island
of Jan Mayen. With a landmass of just 377 square
kilometres, it lies on the southern edge of the Arctic
Ocean, between the Greenland and Norwegian seas.
A volcanic growth sprouted from the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge as recently as 500,000 years ago, it sits in more
than two million square kilometres of open ocean. A
short isthmus separates the low-lying south from the
sub-aerial active volcano, Mount Beerenberg, rises
more than two kilometres out of the ocean. Beerenberg
is comprised of 20 glaciers and is topped by a one-
kilometre crater rim.
At the commencement of European Arctic whaling
during the early 17th century, the British and Dutch
battled for hunting grounds. While some believe
Henry Hudson discovered Jan Mayen in 1607, the first
verifiable account was in 1614 by Englishman John
Clarke. At the same time, three Dutch whaling ships
arrived, one of them captained by Jan Jacobsz May, after
whom the island is named.
Susan Barr, a former cultural heritage advisor on the
Arctic to the Norwegian government, explained: ‘The
market for whale products was large in Europe and once
the Dutch discovered Jan Mayen, with the numbers
of whales nearby, it was natural for Dutch whaling
companies to occupy the bays there with their train oil
(bowhead blubber) boilers. The whaling started very
successfully but petered out around 1642.’
Whaling logbooks of the time record the presence of
thousands of bowhead whales. The bowhead population
in the Arctic is thought to have been in excess of 46,000,
thriving on the abundant plankton in the nutrient-rich
meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet. However,
after just 22 years, bowhead stocks were so depleted
that Jan Mayen became unprofitable for the Dutch. By
1850, bowheads in the Arctic had been hunted to near
extinction. While the subpopulation around Greenland

44 . GEOGRAPHICAL
The expedition team (clockwise from
from top left): Annik Saxegaard Falch,
Hugo Pettit, Hugh Francis Anderson,
Andreas B Heide and Jaap van Rijckevorsel
remains endangered, according to the International
Union for Conservation of Nature, the global population
has rebounded to an estimated 10,000 individuals.
The Austro-Hungarians first undertook significant
mapping of Jan Mayen during the First International
Polar Year, 1882–83. While they spent almost a year
on the island, their party was without a geologist, and
failed to reach the summit of Mount Beerenberg. It was
a combination of these two factors that inspired Wordie
and his team (JL Chaworth-Musters, botanist; TC
Lethbridge and WS Bristow, naturalists; and Paul-Louis
Mercanton, glaciologist) to join a Norwegian party led
by Hagbard Ekerold, who aimed to establish the first
weather station on the island.
By 1930, Jan Mayen had been annexed by Norway. It
was a source of much interest during the Second World
War and has since had a continuous Norwegian military
presence. A meteorological station and a groundstation
for the Galileo satellite navigation system are also
located there. The island’s north is now a protected
nature reserve with significant restrictions to maintain
its fragile ecosystems. It’s seldom visited.
MODERN-DAY RESEARCH
Captain Heide uses the ship Barba as a research and
storytelling platform, with a message of conservation
that focuses on whales as ambassadors of the ocean. I
joined him in 2019 as part of his Arctic Whale expedition
to study the effects of microplastics on Atlantic whale
species in Iceland’s coastal waters. It made sense,
NOVEMBER 2022 . 45
 ARCTIC OCEAN
Expedition

therefore to combine the centenary expedition with more

research, namely the 2021 Arctic Sense expedition – a
collaborative, four-month, 3,000-nautical-mile scientific
and communications voyage to the polar Atlantic with a
rotating team of scientists and storytellers.
‘Marine research has a great importance for the
general life-support function of the ocean and for
sustainably using the ocean to feed an ever-growing
population,’ says Heide. ‘Marine research in the Arctic
is of special importance as the ecosystem is undergoing
rapid change with retreating ice as a result of global
warming. The retreating ice also brings with it an
increased opportunity for commercial exploitation of
the region, making it even more important to document
what we are at risk of losing.’
In partnership with the research group Whale Wise,
and with the support of the University of Stavanger and
the University of Iceland, a comprehensive research plan
has been established to gather as much information
about Arctic and sub-Arctic cetaceans as possible.
‘Our aim is to monitor Arctic ecosystems, focusing on
whales, in an unobtrusive way,’ Whale Wise cofounder
Tom Grove explained. ‘Arctic ecosystems remain poorly
characterised. Across large parts of the Arctic Sense route,
the occurrence, distribution and diversity of cetaceans are
virtually unknown.’
Photographer and filmmaker Hugo Pettit and I met
Heide in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost
settlement with a population greater than 1,000 and
the largest inhabited area of Svalbard, Norway. He had
just completed a circumnavigation of Svalbard. Our ‘Fin whales are hard to observe underwater, as they
five-person crew was completed by sailors Jaap van are shy and fast-moving, and I have not previously seen
Rijckevorsel and Annik Saxegaard Falch, and we set off on any underwater footage of such behaviour,’ said Heide.
the 1,200-nautical-mile journey across the Greenland and We remained with the fin whales for several hours
Norwegian seas to Jan Mayen and then on to Shetland. before we resumed our crossing to Jan Mayen. With
I felt the onset of autumn in the air, but the winds were the wind building but manageable, we passed over the
gentle and the water calm as we sailed out of Isfjorden and Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 80 nautical miles off the coast of
into the Norwegian Sea. Within 24 hours, Rijckevorsel Svalbard. The ridge is an underwater mountain chain
spotted a large blow (whale breath) on the horizon. At that runs the entire latitudinal length of the Atlantic;
four to five metres high, it was likely from a fin whale. We its numerous peaks and trenches are hotspots for deep-
changed course and sailed in its direction. More blows diving cetaceans. While studied in detail to the south of
appeared. Groups of 10–20 fin whales surfaced beside us. Iceland, much less is known about the remote northern
The deep exhalations and inhalations resounded in the air portion leading to Jan Mayen and beyond.
like a symphony. The whales’ movements at the surface ‘This region consists of a series of ridges, troughs,
were slow, betraying their great size; fin whales are the canyons and seamounts,’ says Grove. ‘Such extreme
world’s second-longest whale species. topography is likely to result in upwelling, and we
Heide and Pettit readied themselves and then entered might expect the northern part of the ridge, a complex
the water. From the boat, I could see large pockets of network of topographic features ranging from 1,000 to
bubbles rising to the surface around a bait ball, on which 3,000 metres deep, to show a similarly high diversity
the fin whales were feeding. It was a rare chance to and occurrence of cetaceans.’
observe fin whale ‘bubble net’ feeding. Here, Heide deployed the towed hydrophone array,

The IUCN still lists the fin whale as vulnerable,

with Icelandic boats killing more than 1,000
since they restarted whaling in 2006

46 . GEOGRAPHICAL

I could see large pockets of bubbles
rising to the surface around a bait ball,
on which the fin whales were feeding
designed to pick up both low- and high-frequency
vocalisations. When interfaced with the PAMGuard
system and visualised on a spectrogram, the detection
of cetaceans can be documented in real-time. Within
minutes, Heide heard and saw the familiar clicks of
sperm whales. The hydrophone remained in the water
recording for more than 48 hours. Once processed by
the Whale Wise team, the data should tell us more about
cetacean occurrence and distribution in the region.
ASCENDING THE VOLCANO
Alongside the whale research, the centenary climb of
Mount Beerenberg was firmly in our minds from the
The world’s second-longest whale
species, the fin whale is also one
of the fastest – it has been dubbed
the ‘greyhound of the sea’
outset of the expedition, but it raised two questions.
First, due to climate change and glacier degradation,
would it still be possible to reach the summit using the
1921 route? And second, could we collect glaciological
data for analysis? When the Wordie party reached the
summit in August 1921, the route began at the base
camp near Eldste Metten, the weather station built by
Ekerold. They travelled west up Ekerold Valley to an
advance camp at the base of the frontal moraines of
South Glacier. The summit was achieved by travelling
up South Glacier to the crater rim. By combining
3D-mapping software, which was used to plot the 1921
route as accurately as possible, with current satellite
imagery, we were able to set a provisional route.
After five days at sea, it was with bated breath that we
waited for the clouds to rise from the peak. From our
anchorage in the north, we studied the mountain, and
our first question was quickly answered. The crevasses
towards the top of South Glacier, which we estimated
to be between eight and 12 metres wide, would be
impassable: it wouldn’t be possible to reach the summit
NOVEMBER 2022 . 47
 ARCTIC OCEAN
Expedition
PICTURE CREDIT
using the same route as the Wordie party in 1921. While
we were deflated, this came as little surprise. Globally,
glaciers are losing more than 30 per cent more ice
and snow each year compared to 15 years ago, with
anthropogenic climate change the most likely cause.
On Jan Mayen, our observation of the increase in
crevasses on South Glacier is further evidence of this
pattern and as such, it offered an opportunity to collect
samples to help further understand what might be
contributing to the degradation.
Biological darkening is one of the causes of glacial
melt and the Deep Purple research project aims to
discover more about the growth and causes of algal
blooms on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Due to the darkened
pigmentation of snow and ice algae, these blooms absorb
solar radiation, which subsequently causes the glacier to
melt at an increased rate.
Professor Martyn Tranter, who heads the research,
explained: ‘The amount of meltwater the Greenland Ice Jan Mayen, painted by Johannes Blaeu in 1662
Sheet is producing has accelerated over the last 20 years.
That coincided with the growth of a dark band along the
western margin of the ice sheet called the Dark Zone,
which is formed by the annual growth and blooming
of purple-pigmented glacier ice algae. Deep Purple is
trying to get all the data to determine how much the
Dark Zone will expand over the coming decades.’
Data from other regions are also valuable to
determine whether similar melting effects occur
elsewhere. On Jan Mayen, testing for snow and ice
algae had never been undertaken. So, with protocols
and equipment compiled, we aimed to collect samples
from South Glacier to learn more.
While the original expedition’s route would be
impossible for us, Wordie had proposed a secondary
route that followed the southwest buttress to the
crater rim, which our observations suggested was still
achievable. Our approach began from the south, across
the isthmus, some 20 kilometres away from Eldste
A snow algae sample
Metten. Even here, on this remote Arctic outpost, the from Jan Mayen
onyx sand is littered with plastic and fishing debris.
Such is the island’s remoteness that we came across the
skeletal remains of a bowhead whale hunted more than
400 years ago. The ruins of Eldste Metten appeared
between the volcanic outcrops, its structure a fragile
In total, the gruelling approach and
shell of the building erected 100 years ago. ascent took 37 hours, in which we
We began our ascent during the night and by
daybreak we had reached the base of South Glacier travelled almost 70 kilometres
and broken above the low-lying cloud. However, our
favourable weather window closed rapidly, and a
blizzard with winds of more than 40 knots hammered ‘Very interestingly, I could not see any ice algae in any
us as we approached the final ascent to the crater. The of the samples,’ he told us. ‘But, because of the biomass
conditions were so poor that we only knew that we of snow algae that you have in some of the samples, that
had reached the summit thanks to our GPS. is going to melt some of the snow, expose the bare ice,
As the blizzard eased and the clouds lifted, the late- which will then be colonised by the ice algae, and which
afternoon light shone off South Glacier. Around, large, is then going to generate the further darkening of the
darkened patches of snow appeared, some pink, some ice. These samples are important because they show
red, some green. We figured that they must be patches how widespread the colonisation of snow algae is across
of snow algae, so we collected some samples on our different glaciers worldwide.’
descent. These have since been examined by Professor The gruelling approach and ascent took 37 hours,
Alexandre Anesio, a principal investigator on the Deep and we travelled almost 70 kilometres. Such is the
Purple team. Anesio discovered a large amount of red hostility of this Arctic Ocean outpost that just hours
snow algae, alongside green snow algae, cryoconite after returning to Barba, an incoming weather front
material, cyanobacteria and flagellates. But he was forced us to set sail or risk being stranded at anchor
surprised by the absence of ice algae. for the coming week.

48 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 Heide (left) and Anderson on the
summit of Mount Beerenberg

Anderson and Heide on

South Glacier during the
ascent of Mount Beerenberg

The ruins of Eldste Metten,

the radio station built
by Norwegian Hagbord
Ekerold in 1921

TIME FOR REFLECTION

Heide (left) and Anderson
Seven days later, we glided into Lerwick Harbour in the start on the approach to
Shetland Islands, exhausted from the unrelenting seas Mount Beerenberg
and headwinds that pushed us so far off course that we
almost reached mainland Norway. However, the last leg
of the journey had offered a time for reflection and a
discussion on the nature of contemporary exploration.
In a modern interpretation of a 100-year-old
expedition, our journey had collected data to help
better understand the state of Arctic ecosystems and
provided a chance to record the rarely seen feeding
behaviour of fin whales, but it also highlighted our
personal search for adventure. Curiosity and the
pursuit of knowledge drive us to seek adventure.
And while the context has certainly changed, these
elements bond us across time. l

For more information on the research platform Barba,

please visit barba.no

Hugh Francis Anderson is a writer specialising in adventure

and the environment. Visit hughfrancisanderson.com

NOVEMBER 2022 . 49
 ANTARCTICA
Artefacts
Antarctica in objects
In this edited extract from Antarctica: A History in 100
Objects we showcase six items that chart the course of
human intervention on the most inhospitable continent
By Jean de Pomereu and Daniella McCahey
WORLD MAP
n Millennia before it was first discovered, the idea of Antarctica
resulted in a whole variety of imaginary projections and
interpretations. Its imaginary mapping can be traced as far
back as the 5th century BCE, when the Greek philosopher
Parmenides divided the world into five parallel zones, believing
that a southern land mass must exist to counterbalance the
known lands of the north. This idea was retained by Aristotle in
his Meteorology of c.330 BCE.
With the Renaissance and the emergence of maritime
exploration, maps became essential instruments for
scholasticism, geographic expansion and trade. A new
cartographic tool was introduced during this period – the globe
– and in 1531, the French cartographer and mathematician
Oronce Fine produced a groundbreaking bi-cordiform world
map, in which he represented Antarctica as a massive, solid
and largely empty landmass extending across the lower
latitudes and the South Pole.
50 . GEOGRAPHICAL
© GETTY IMAGES/NANJING MUSEUM
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (Map of the Myriad Countries of the World), 1608
Fine’s map inspired France’s Dieppe school of cartography,
the Brabantian cartographer Abraham Ortelius and the Flemish
cartographer and engraver Gerardus Mercator, who in his mappa
mundi of 1569 also represented a vast and solid Terra Australis,
engulfing what we now know as Australia.
Among those who perpetuated Mercator’s projection was the
Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who produced the first Chinese
world maps with collaborators such as the engraver Li Zhizao.
The oldest is the 1584 Yudi Shanhai Quantu, followed in 1602 by
the woodblock-printed Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, commissioned
by the Wanli Emperor. Hugely significant in its combination of
European and Chinese geographic knowledge at the time, the
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu places China near the centre of the world
and features Mercator’s Terra Australis. Slightly later, hand-
drawn manuscript versions such as this one populate Terra
Australis with both real and imaginary creatures – elephants,
crocodiles, rhinoceros, lions, ostriches and dragons, as well as
sea creatures and ships along its coastline.
 © SCOTT POLAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM

Dr Koettlitz, Bernacchi and the carpenter,

British National Antarctic Discovery Expedition,
1901–04. Photo by Reginald Skelton

© SCOTT POLAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF

CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM
HARNESS
n Few objects are more emblematic
of the glories and horrors of the Heroic
Age of Antarctic exploration than the
harnesses used by explorers to man-
haul their heavily loaded sledges. This
particular harness was designed by
Robert Falcon Scott for his Discovery
expedition of 1901–04, the first to
journey deep into Antarctica’s hinterland.
Scott was confident of the advantages
that his new harness design would bring to
their endeavours. Once in the field, however,
man-hauling still proved torturous. Sledges
were often overloaded with equipment and
provisions, weighing up to 170 kilograms
per man. Some days, the snow surface
was so soft and sticky that despite the help
received from sails fixed to the sledges,
harnesses dug into the explorer’s flesh
and bones with every step. On such days,
the distance travelled shrunk from 25
kilometres on a good day to just a couple A brown textile man-hauling harness
of kilometres. In Scott’s words: ‘The sledge used during the British National
was like a log; two of us could scarcely Antarctic Discovery Expedition,
move it, and therefore throughout the long 1901–04
hours we could none of us relax our efforts
for a single moment — we were forced to One situation where harnesses were then saw that I was some little way down
keep a continuous strain on our harness welcome, however, was when someone a crevasse … my harness had held.’ This
with a tension that kept our ropes rigid and fell into a crevasse, as happened to Scott time, Scott’s harness saved his life, but
made conversation quite impossible … it himself: ‘I felt a violent blow on my right a decade later the strain and hardship
is rather too much when the strain on the thigh, and all the breath seemed to be of man-hauling to the South Pole would
harness is so great, and we are becoming shaken out of my body. Instinctively I contribute to his demise and that of his
gaunt shadows of our former selves.’ thrust out my elbows and knees, and companions.

NOVEMBER 2022 . 51
 ANTARCTICA
Artefacts
© NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES
POLAR STAR
n By the early 1930s, the South Pole had been reached by
Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, and flown over by
Richard Byrd. Despite Shackleton’s efforts with the Endurance,
crossing Antarctica remained the next big prize in the continent’s
exploration, with flight considered the most viable method.
The son of a Chicago coal magnate, Lincoln Ellsworth set his
sights on crossing Antarctica. He persuaded Hubert Wilkins, a
pioneer of Antarctic aerial exploration in the late 1920s, to serve as
his adviser, and commissioned a special, two-seat ski-equipped
Northrop Gamma, which could fly at 350km/h, land on ice, and be
strapped down in case of storms in the field.
After two failed attempts at crossing the continent, Ellsworth Lincoln Ellsworth’s 1933 Northrop Gamma
invited Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, a Canadian First World War Polar Star. This was the first plane to fly across
Antarctica, 23 November to 5 December 1935.
veteran experienced in flying Arctic rescue missions, to come Photo by Eric Long
on board as his pilot. The Polar Star took off from Dundee Island
at the northern tip of the peninsula on 23 November 1935.
The destination was Little America, an abandoned station
first established by Richard Byrd in 1928. Little America was first of four landings, crumbling the fuselage of their aircraft
located 3,800 kilometres away on the coastline of the Ross and destroying their radio. Despite this, they managed to take
Sea. Reaching it required flying over thousands of kilometres of off again the next day, but a storm forced them to land once
unexplored territory. In Ellsworth’s own words: ‘We were the first again and take shelter for three days. Weather conditions forced
intruding mortals in this age-old region, and looking down on the them to land twice more before they ran out of fuel and made
mighty peaks, I thought of eternity and man’s insignificance.’ their final landing, 40 kilometres short of Little America. They
Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon encountered several dangerous completed their crossing on foot, reaching Little America on 15
setbacks during their journey. After 14 hours, they made the December 1935.

© NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES

Landing site and camp during Lincoln

Ellsworth and Herbert Hollick-Kenyon’s
flight across Antarctica, 23 November 1935

52 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 The interior of a Kharkovchanka,
comprising driver cabin, living quarters,
communication centre, galley and
bathroom

© ENGAGE STUDIOS, MOSCOW RUSSIAC

KHARKOVCHANKA The Snow Cruiser being loaded onto

n Of all the motor vehicles that have been a ship bound for Antarctica as part of
tested in Antarctica, the Soviet-designed Richard Byrd’s 1939-41 expedition
Kharkovchankas are among the most
remarkable. Not only did they transport
heavy loads and passengers across the
continent, but they also contained 28
square metres of tight but comfortable
living and working accommodation for up
to eight men.
Weighing 32 tonnes, the
Kharkovchankas were completely self-
contained, allowing engineers to work
on the engine and scientists to carry out
their research from the sheltered interior.
Rarely driven faster than 10km/h their
huge weight meant they burned more
than 10 litres of fuel per kilometre.
Two Kharkovchankas were delivered
to Antarctica in 1959. Shortly thereafter,
the vehicles undertook an 89-day, © BYRD POLAR AND CLIMATE RESEARCH CENTER ARCHIVAL PROGRAM, THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, COLUMBUS, UNITED STATES
5,4000-kilometre return journey from
the coastal Mirny Station to Vostok
Station and on to the Geographic South continued to be utilised well into the metre-long, 6 metre-wide behemoth that
Pole, where they surprised United States’ 2000s and some remain on the continent moved on huge rubber wheels rather than
personnel living at the newly established today as historic monuments. tracks. Manufactured in Chicago in 1939–
South Pole station. They were greeted While Kharkovchankas were the first 41, the Snow Cruiser proved a public
with open arms and stayed at the pole for habitable Antarctic vehicles to prove sensation. Once in Antarctica, however, its
three days, during which the American successful in the field, the idea for such smooth tyres proved incapable of gaining
and Soviet flags flew side by side. machines originated with the United traction on the snow and it had to be
Improved versions of the Kharkovchanka States’ Antarctic Snow Cruiser, a 17 abandoned..

NOVEMBER 2022 . 53
 ANTARCTICA
Artefacts
AQUATIC ROVER
n In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, igniting
the space race with the United States. For most of this period,
the extreme environments of the Antarctic, as well as its status
as an international commons for scientific research, turned the
region into an analogue for outer space.
Starting in the 1960s, research into extremophiles living
on the hostile Antarctic continent, particularly in the McMurdo
Dry Valleys, helped to reveal what life might look like on
other planets. In the 1970s, microbiologists Roseli Ocampo-
Friedmann and Imre Friedmann travelled to Antarctica’s Darwin
Mountains, where they discovered unicellular blue-green algae
living inside the rocks that tolerated the cold and, in the summer,
would rehydrate and photosynthesise. This research suggested
that endolithic life forms could survive in Martian environments
and could ultimately be used to terraform Mars. NASA later
referred to their work when the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on
54 . GEOGRAPHICAL
© NASA/JPL-CALTECH, PASADENA, UNITED STATES
Buoyant Rover
for Under-Ice Exploration.
Photo by Kevin Hand
the planet in 1976 and undertook biological experiments to find
evidence of life on Mars.
Antarctica is frequently used to develop preliminary research
on the equipment and protocols that will one day be used in
extraterrestrial exploration. In 2011, scientists and engineers
travelled to Marambio Island, along the Antarctic Peninsula, to test
a newly developed pressurisable North Dakota eXperimental-1
spacesuit, developed for possible future human field operations
on Mars. In 2019, the Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration,
developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explore the
frozen oceans on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon
Enceladus, was tested at Australia’s Casey Station.
Antarctica also serves as a key site for studying human
behaviours and capabilities in extraterrestrial environments. At
the Concordia Station, the European Space Agency annually
sponsors medical doctors to carry out studies on the effects of
isolated, confined and extreme environments on humans.
 © COURTESY OF PABLO DE LEÓN. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA, GRAND FORKS, UNITED STATES

North Dakota eXperimental-1

(NDX-1) spacesuit, 2011

NOVEMBER 2022 . 55
 ANTARCTICA
Artefacts
GEOLOCATOR
n For the French poet Charles Baudelaire, the albatross was ‘the
prince of the clouds’, the most legendary of all seabirds.
Eighteen of the more than 22 recognised species of
albatrosses live in the Southern Ocean. The biggest is the
wandering albatross. With a wingspan that can exceed 3 metres,
it can live more than 60 years and fly up to 1,000 kilometres
in a single day. Like most species of albatrosses, it spends the
majority of its life at sea, only landing on remote outcrops of the
Southern Ocean during the breeding season.
Today, albatrosses are under threat, with some species on
the verge of extinction as a consequence of incidental mortality
(bycatch) in fisheries, invasive alien species at colonies and
disease. Their brutal decline in numbers is made worse by their
slow reproductive rate, taking up to ten years or more to reach
sexual maturity, with some species, including the wandering
albatross, breeding only every other year.
The tagging of albatrosses with geolocators was pioneered
in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These tiny devices record
ambient light and make it possible to estimate a bird’s location
twice per day by applying astronomical algorithms to the
timing of sunset and sunrise. This allows scientists to measure
the scale to which albatrosses have been affected by human
activities, particularly fishing, as well as to better understand
their habitat preferences and how climate change influences
their distributions, year-round.
Despite deep-rooted maritime superstitions about a curse
that befalls those who kill an albatross, their killing is nothing
Light-level geolocator tag for tracking
Southern Ocean albatrosses
© COURTESY OF RICHARD PHILLIPS, THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY, UNITED KINGDOM
A wandering albatross on Bird
Island, fitted with a geolocator
PHOTO BY RICHARD PHILIPS © UKRI-BAS. REPRODUCED COURTESY OF THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY, UNITED KINGDOM
56 . GEOGRAPHICAL
new. As early as the second voyage of James Cook, when he
ventured south of the Antarctic Circle, the expedition’s naturalist,
Georg Forster, ‘shot some albatrosses and other birds, on
which we feasted the next day, and found them exceedingly
good’. Cook’s account of this voyage possibly also inspired the
Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, published in 1798 and arguably the first piece
of Antarctic literature. In this poem, Coleridge recounts the story
of a sailor needlessly killing an albatross with his crossbow as it
appeared out of the fog. As punishment by his crew, the sailor is
forced to wear the body of the albatross around his neck and do
penance after the souls of the rest of the crew have themselves
been claimed by death. For some, The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner has become an allegory for the destruction that humans
have brought to Polar Regions.
© Jean de Pomereu and Daniella
McCahey, 2022. From Antarctica:
A History in 100 Objects by Jean de
Pomereu and Daniella McCahey to
be published in Hardback by Conway
on 27 October 2022 at £25.00
Engraving by Gustave Doré of a scene from
the Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, 1877
© GETTY IMAGES/DUNCAN1890
 DISCOVER WHAT YOU LOVE
IN NEW YORK STATE

© NYSDED- Photo by Darren McGee

New York State is historic. It’s untamed. It’s iconic. But more importantly, it’s anything
you want it to be. Away from the bright lights of the big city, ‘upstate’ is relatively
undiscovered, and offers a huge array of attractions. Whether it’s outdoor activities
such as hiking, biking, canoeing, or golf, sightseeing along the Hudson River, in the
Adirondack Mountains, or at Niagara Falls, or sampling local culinary delights and
the region’s fine wines, you’ll find a lot to love!

020 8742 8299 | americaasyoulikeit.com

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 REVIEWS
BOOK OF
THE MONTH
EXPLORING THE WORLD
Two Centuries of Remarkable
Adventurers and Their Journeys
By Alexander Maitland
Orion
n ‘I am prepared to go anywhere,
provided it is forward.’ This quote
from David Livingstone could be
applied to many of those who appear in
Alexander Maitland’s new book, which
covers 70-plus recipients of the Royal
Geographical Society’s gold medals:
the Founder’s and Patron’s medals.
Originally bestowed as a premium for the
encouragement and promotion of geographical science
and discoveries, the award was initially a sum of 50
guineas, first made in 1831, a year after the Society was
formed; by 1839, it had morphed into the two separate
gold medals that are now handed out annually, and
which still require royal approval.
The resulting roll call of recipients reads like a who’s
who of exploration. Nearly all of the men and women
covered are worthy of a book in their own right, and
many of the big names are here: Richard Burton,
David Livingstone, Colonel Percy Fawcett, Alfred
Russel Wallace, Eric Shipton, Gertrude Bell and
Dame Freya Stark.
What emerges as the tales layer up is the inspiring
singularity of so many of these intrepid individuals. They
aren’t all high-achieving head girl/boy types, but instead
come across as often unconventional and intractable,
occasionally irrational, but nearly always resolute, even
in their aberrance.
EDIBLE ECONOMICS
A Hungry Economist Explains the World
By Ha-Joon Chang
Allen Lane
n Over the decades, as Britons’ culinary tastes
have expanded from a bland diet of boiled meat
and veg, the diversity of economic theories that
inform UK government policy has shrunk. In Edible
Economics, Ha-Joon Chang presents an easily digestible
introduction to some of the more challenging, and
misunderstood, economic ideas.
Each bite-sized chapter takes the name of a food that,
somewhere in the world, is a store-cupboard staple –
okra, noodles, anchovies, Coca-Cola – using their
histories, recipes and cultural importance to explore a
variety of different economic theories. For example, in
‘Strawberry’, Chang explains how this labour-intensive
fruit (actually not a berry) has contributed to the rise in
low-wage jobs and, later, the automation that is seen as
58 . GEOGRAPHICAL
Many of them overcame considerable odds. Consider
writer and Middle East explorer Stark, whose hair was
dragged into a mechanical loom at her mother’s silk mill
when she was 13, causing her to lose an ear, part of an
eyelid and half of her scalp. Or Vilhjalmur Stefansson,
an Icelandic-Canadian who spent four years in the
Arctic with a fellow student living off rotten whale meat,
ptarmigan feathers, tea leaves, snowshoe lashings and
anything else that might provide them with a semblance
of nourishment, without any contact or support from
the outside world.
Their suffering often had an underlying purpose.
Stefansson would go on to become a passionate advocate
of the Inuit diet, claiming that after years living on meat
and boiled fish washed down with nothing but cold
water he had never been healthier. At the other end
of the globe, Edward Wilson, Apsley Cherry-Garrard
and Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers went on ‘the weirdest bird’s
nesting expedition that has ever been or ever will be’ in
the hope of using the eggs of the emperor penguin to
prove that there was a link between reptiles and birds (it
was thought at the time that as embryos developed, they
revealed their species’ evolutionary history – a belief
that has since been disproved – and that the eggs of this
‘primitive’ bird would thus show their relationship with
the dinosaurs). The expeditioners trudged more than
100 kilometres in temperatures that dropped as low as
–60°C. Cherry-Garrard’s teeth cracked because they
were chattering so violently and they all had to have
their clothes cut from their bodies when they returned
to camp. But the shell of one of the three eggs collected
remains one of the Natural History Museum’s most
hallowed treasures and Cherry-Garrard’s veracious
account of the wider expedition, The Worst Journey in
the World, hasn’t been out of print since.
Amid the tales of derring do, elements of the
surrounding culture ocasionally seep through, such
as the Victorians’ growing interest in spiritualism and
‘the destroyer’ of those jobs (actually, Chang writes, it isn’t).
This isn’t a book about the economics of food. Rather
the food tales often act as ‘conversation starters’ – the ice
cream bribe to get us to eat our greens, as Chang describes
them. Indeed, I sometimes lost the thread connecting a
certain food to a particular economic theory amid the
interlinking histories of cultures, languages and religions,
but fortunately each chapter does circle back to food.
Edible Economics is a funny, thought-provoking book
that often made me forget that I was reading about
economics, which I’m sure was the point. I didn’t reach
the end with a full understanding of even the most
dominant economic theory – not even close – but Edible
Economics has sparked in me an interest in a subject that
I had previously found impenetrable, revealing it to be a
much broader-ranging topic than I had believed. As the
author explains, economics has a direct and enormous
impact on our lives, so it’s ‘vital that we all understand at
least some of its principles’.
BRYONY COTTAM
psychic mediums. When Lady Franklin’s husband
disappeared searching for the Northwest Passage – a
then mythical route that would cut thousands of miles
off the sea journey between Europe and Asia – during
the mid-1840s, she consulted various young women who
were believed to possess psychic powers, even going so
far as to direct the search for her missing husband based
on directions purportedly provided by the sibyllic ghost
of a three-year-old victim of gastric fever called Louisa
(Weesy for short), who appeared to her family as a ‘ball
of bluish light’.
Here and there, Maitland touches upon the moral
complexities of exploration – eschewing the word
‘discovery’, except in the case of the Antarctic and
acknowledging that naked commerce often acted as
a powerful incentive for voyages and expeditions –
but present behind the more dubious elements of
various missions is the slow, inexorable layering up
of knowledge, via various cul-de-sacs and endless bouts
of illness, long years away from homes and families,
days of hunger and exhaustion, and sometimes ships
crushed in polar ice.
In the midst of all the hardships can sometimes be
gleaned small, touching moments of compassion and
humanity, such as the letters that Captain Robert Falcon
Scott wrote to the families of his comrades Bowers and
Wilson as they lay foredone and dying in a tent on their
return from a failed quest to be first to reach the South
Pole. To Mrs Wilson he wrote: ‘If this letter reaches
you, Bill and I will have gone out together… He is not
suffering… His eyes have a comfortable blue look of
hope and his mind is peaceful. My whole heart goes out
to you in pity.’
And underlying all of the loss is all that has been
gained, both in terms of supporting the Society’s
founding purpose – to further geographical and
scientific knowledge – and in terms of the myriad
journeys and adventures that have been ‘spurred on by
curiosity, wonder and the pursuit of learning’.
OLIVIA EDWARD

STOCKSNAPPER/SHUTTERSTOCK

The legendary meeting of Henry

Morton Stanley (left) and David
Livingstone in Africa in 1871

WILDER Kerr mentions in a footnote, conservationists sometimes

How Rewilding is Transforming
Conservation and Changing the World
By Millie Kerr
Bloomsbury Sigma
n In Wilder, journalist and former lawyer Millie
Kerr explores the innovations, practicalities and
possibilities of rewilding around the world.
While conservation seeks to preserve the natural
world, rewilding seeks to restore entire ecosystems
by letting land recover or by actively reintroducing
lost species. Thus far, most rewilding discussions have
focused on projects in the UK, the USA and Europe,
but Kerr’s book steps off that beaten path, exploring the
return of jaguars to an Argentinian national park, the
first ever pangolin reintroduction project in South Africa
and how giant tortoises are aiding ecosystem recovery in
the Galápagos islands.
The term rewilding itself can be a barrier for some; as
avoid using it. In the UK, the concept seems to have
become part of the oversimplified ‘farmers versus
environmentalists’ culture wars or, at worst, part of a
greenwashed land grab for big businesses keen to offset
carbon emissions. But rewilding isn’t just about tree
planting; Wilder explores more nuanced expressions of
ecological restoration, including species reintroductions
in the Global South and in countries affected by conflict,
adding much-needed perspective to the discussion.
The beauty and challenge of rewilding is that it can
mean different things to different people, but ‘the
diversity of approach and perspective that defines
the practice of rewilding likewise applies to how we
contribute to environmental protection,’ Kerr concludes.
Just as each species has its niche, so we too can – and
must – find our own way into rewilding ourselves and
the world around us. This book is a compelling and at
times personal guidebook for that journey.
ELIZABETH WAINWRIGHT

NOVEMBER 2022 . 59
 REVIEWS
INTO IRAQ
By Michael Palin
Hutchinson Heinemann
n Many people’s abiding memories of
contemporary Iraq are of an ill-conceived and
unpopular war led by Western powers to oust
Saddam Hussein and the later campaign to
crush the Islamic State terrorists who came to control
nearly half the country.
Michael Palin acknowledges that Iraq is a land that
arouses mixed feelings, but also one that has much to
offer the visitor, which is made clear in the engaging
story of his journey to the cradle of one of the world’s
most ancient civilisations. The internal conflicts that
have ravaged the country have left its people with a
feeling of waste and dissipation. Yet almost nowhere on
Palin’s journey was he made to feel unwelcome.
Palin was drawn to Iraq by evocative names: the
Mesopotamia of the Greeks, the empire of Babylon, the
holy pilgrimage city of Karbala, the 6,000-year-old city-
state of Ur. The length of the River Tigris was the chosen
route for the author’s day-by-day account of his travels in
AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF EVOLUTION
The Story of the Huxley Family
By Alison Bashford
Allen Lane
n It would be difficult to overstate the debt of
gratitude owed to the Huxley dynasty for our
knowledge of evolution in all its forms. Alison
Bashford narrates the fascinating story of 200 years of
modern science and culture through one family history,
focusing primarily on the patriarch Thomas Henry
Huxley and his grandson, Julian Sorrell. Together,
they left a legacy of more than 20 books, some multi-
volumed, that helped to redefine science and add
immeasurably to the understanding of evolution.
Thomas Henry became an exponent of the theory of
evolution expounded by his friend, Charles Darwin, albeit
with some reservations. The two men were of disparate
social origins, yet they forged a strong intellectual
relationship. Huxley eagerly argued the case for evolution
by means of natural selection and in doing so became
known in scientific circles as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’. Thomas
Henry met his future wife, Henrietta Heathorn, when
his ship docked in Sydney and the couple eventually
had eight children, later becoming grandparents to such
celebrated personages as the evolutionary biologist Julian
and his brother, the novelist Aldous.
Julian, the youngest of the clan, was a gifted exponent
of science. In his view, Darwin’s favoured ‘tree’ image of
evolution simply didn’t work for humans. Ultimately,
as the author explains, Julian was conceptualising a
past that was far more alive than the history of Thomas
Henry’s accumulation of evidence regarding homologies,
anatomical comparisons and the fragment-by-fragment
piecing together of ape-man fossils. ‘Julian was trying to
give a modern twist to his grandfather’s question: what
exactly distinguished humans from other species and
what was man’s place in nature?’ writes Bashford.
60 . GEOGRAPHICAL
Iraq. Leave it to Palin to encounter a man in an Erbil tea
shop who has lived in Margate and who, in turn, points
to a friend who has spent time in Maidstone. ‘I felt as
though I’m in a Python sketch,’ Palin remarks.
From there, the team drives south for the tougher part
of the journey to Baghdad, Babylon and Basra. On day
nine, they head to Kirkuk, which his guidebook warns
is ‘the most dangerous city in Iraq’. They’re now firmly
in Iraqi government territory, while the land grows
more menacing the further south they travel. Despite
the ubiquitous presence of troops and the dishevelled
appearance of Kirkuk, this ancient Mesopotamian city
was once part of numerous empires, a heritage that
was literally submerged in oil nearly two centuries ago
when Western drillers brought a gush out of the ground,
turning Iraq into the world’s fifth-largest producer.
Numerous checkpoints later, Palin is in Baghdad,
where the ‘horrors’ of his first hotel room contrast
with the cheerful hubbub of café and street life. The
book’s insightful observations on Iraq are enhanced by
a colourful collection of illustrations that bring to life
Palin’s travels through a much misunderstood country.
JULES STEWART
Thomas Henry
Huxley came
to be known
in scientific
circles as
‘Darwin’s
bulldog’
ISTOCKWORLD/SHUTTERSTOCK
Developing a proper understanding of the human
species’ place in nature was the great Huxley drive.
Julian conceded that humans were indeed a part of
nature and that evolution by natural selection was
the great and only law in operation across all time
and place. However, culture, too, was part of that
nature, uniquely developing in humans over
evolutionary time.
Bashford says that the Huxley intergenerational shift
from nature to culture might be considered through
the science of craniology. For Julian, his collection of
skull-orbs was his key to the literal nature of humans
and to illustrate the point, we see him among the book’s
collection of striking images contemplating an African
bust in his Hampstead home.
JULES STEWART
 West Island, part of the
Diego Garcia group

WRITER’S
READS
Alexander Maitland is an author, artist
and lecturer, perhaps best known for
his biographies of Wilfred Thesiger.
His new book, Exploring the World,
is out now
n Dance and Drama in Bali (1938)
by Beryl de Zoete and Walter Spies
Beautifully produced, de Zoete’s exhaustive
account of traditional dance and dance-drama
is richly and evocatively illustrated with Spies’s
magnificent black and white photographs.

n Conrad’s Eastern World (1966)

by Norman Sherry
An enthralling exploration of Joseph Conrad’s
life and voyages around Indonesia, which
FOREIGN, COMMONWEALTH & DEVELOPMENT OFFICE
inspired such novels as Allmayer’s Folly
THE LAST COLONY and Lord Jim.
A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy
By Philippe Sands n In Good King Charles’s
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Golden Days (1939)
by George Bernard Shaw
n During the 1960s, as countries across Africa
Marvellously entertaining, Shaw’s comedy of
finally asserted their independence, the British Restoration manners, with drawings by Feliks
government hived off the far-flung Chagos Topolski, is set in Isaac Newton’s library in his
Archipelago from Mauritius and created a new colony: the Cambridge house in 1680.
British Indian Ocean Territory. It then forcibly removed the n Martin Fierro (1935)
entire population – some 1,500 Chagossians, the descendants by Jose Hernandez (translated by Walter Owen)
of enslaved or indentured Africans – to allow the USA to The great gaucho epic rendered into English by
build a military base on one of the islands, Diego Garcia. Owen’s creative translation and illustrated by
Among them was Liseby Elysé, who was deported when Alberto Guiraldes.
she was four months pregnant, leaving behind everything bar
a few clothes. ‘[When] we boarded, conditions in the [ship’s] n Wine of Genius (1952)
hull… were bad. We were like animals and slaves... People by Robert Coughlan
were dying of sadness.’ Her baby was subsequently stillborn. A touching, vivid portrayal of the painter
Elysé’s story is the emotional core of human rights lawyer Maurice Utrillo and his circle during the
Philippe Sands’ searing account of the four-decade legal legendary decades of Montmartre.
struggle to end British colonial rule over the archipelago and
secure justice for the Chagossians. Sands – who has acted n Delius (1923)
as legal counsel for the Mauritian government on the issue by Philip Heseltine
since 2010 – also weaves in an outline of the development of This precocious, revealing and at times brilliant
international law following the Second World War. study of the composer was written by his
Featuring piercing illustrations by Guardian cartoonist young friend and amanuensis.
Martin Rowson, The Last Colony builds up to a landmark n Days in Old Spain (1936)
judgement in 2019, when the International Court of Justice by Gertrude and Muirhead Bone
ruled that Britain’s administration of Chagos was ‘wrongful’ During 1925-28, the author and her artist
and must be ended ‘as rapidly as possible’. Shamefully, if husband travelled the hidden byways of
unsurprisingly, the government has refused to act, despite the Spain, and in so doing created
fact that it has failed ‘to persuade any international judge – not an incomparable record of this still remote
even one – to express support for its claim’ to Chagos. country and its people.
Given the current political debates about colonial history
in the UK, The Last Colony feels particularly timely. A story n Tramping with a Poet in
of empire and self-determination, racism and hypocrisy that the Rockies (1922)
shines a light on the egregious behaviour of successive British by Stephen Graham
governments, the book enlightens and enrages in equal measure. Magnificent descriptions of Graham’s long
Above all, Elysé’s powerful testimony shines through: walk with Nicholas Vachel Lindsay through a
‘Nobody would like to be uprooted from the island where wonderland of snow-capped peaks, forests
he was born, to be uprooted like an animal. And it is and starlit high valleys. This was one of Freya
heartbreaking. And I maintain justice must be done.’ Stark’s favourite books.
SHAFIK MEGHJI

NOVEMBER 2022 . 61
GALLERY
Sumo
By Lord K2

In the epicentre of the world’s largest city lies a grand

stadium draped in ancient symbolism and brimming
with anticipation as crowds pour in, settling onto their
cushions as the dohyō (ring) is swept to perfection, as it
has been for two millennia. Spectators chatter eagerly
as warm sake is poured into small cups. The chatter
grows to a clamour as, from the corner of the arena,
giants emerge. Immense 150-kilogram men, wrapped in
loincloths and sporting stern faces, waddle into the ring,
their bodies rippling. They toss salt high into the air over
the dohyō, ritually cleansing the stage, as applause rises
across the auditorium.
The sport is one of the oldest in the world, stretching
back nearly 1,000 years in its current format. Sumo
can trace its origins back through deeply religious
roots to the Shinto temples of the third century CE.
Originally, fights were arranged as a spectacle for the
entertainment of the gods. Sumo developed into a
professional sport at the beginning of the Edo period, in
the early 1600s. Wrestlers from across the land were
invited to battle in front of the imperial courts as grand
entertainment events for the nobility. Many wrestlers
were samurai working part time for extra income. Fights
were brutal and blood was frequently drawn. The sport,
however, was a far cry from today’s well-scripted art
form. Fighters usually found themselves in the ring to
settle scores, often on behalf of their masters. It was as
much a blood sport as a duel of wits and cunning, not
dissimilar to Roman gladiator games.
The first professional sumo tournament didn’t take
place until 1685 at the Tomioka Hachiman Shrine in
Tokyo. The event became biannual and is considered to
be the birth of today’s sumo. Japanese culture were beginning to wane. Crowds
The rules of sumo are relatively simple. The winner of thinned to just the elderly and tourists, and fights ceased
a bout is either the first wrestler to force his opponent to be broadcast on national television. There were fears
out of the dohyō, or the first to force his opponent to of its eventual demise. However, recent years have seen
touch the ground with any part of his body other than the something of a resurgence, perhaps in part due to PR
bottom of his feet. campaigns, perhaps as push-back against increasingly
Despite its centuries spent metamorphosing, today, postmodern lifestyles. Tickets now regularly sell out
those in the upper echelons of the sport are deeply during tournaments and stadiums are filling up again
dogmatic about reformation, preferring to maintain sumo with spectators eager to hark back to a different time,
as a fascinating antiquity. However, at the turn of this a different Japan – one steeped in tradition, mysticism,
millennium, its popularity and relevance in contemporary respect and honour.

62 . GEOGRAPHICAL
n Rikishi (professional sumo wrestlers) psyche themselves up, plan their
attack and attempt to intimidate their opponent before they clash. Once
ready, they crouch, breathe in a synchronised manner and clash as soon as
all four hands touch the ground.

Sumo by Lord K2 (Ammonite

Press, £20) is available online
and from all good bookshops

NOVEMBER 2022 .63

GALLERY

n Routine early-morning
training at Hakkaku
beya (a sumo stable
where professional
wrestlers train, eat
and sleep) in Ryogoku.
Drills for new recruits
start at 5am, while the
seniors roll out of bed
by 7am. Training takes
place before the stable
master, who sits and
observes, occasionally
barking instruction and
advice to the wrestlers.
The wrestlers begin with
a series of stretches,
followed by clashing
into one another in the
dohyō to build their
endurance and hone
their technical skills.

n Wrestler Okinoumi Ayumi entertains his companions outside Hakkaku beya. While sumo
wrestlers take their careers very seriously, outside work they’re often playful and approachable.

64 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 n Chanko Nabe (sumo stew) prepared for
breakfast. The staple dish of sumo wrestlers,
it’s made from practically anything found in
the kitchen. Inside the stables there exists a
strict hierarchy – the higher ranked wrestlers
enjoy all of the perks while the novices spend
much of their time taking care of the stable and
serving the seniors. By 9am, the new recruits
stop training to begin preparing breakfast. The
wrestlers then dig into a mammoth high-calorie
meal, followed by sake and beer, before a nap –
required for the processing of the food into fat.
It’s estimated that the average rikishi consumes
around 8,000 calories per day.

n The rules of sumo are fairly simple. The goal is to force your opponent out of the dohyō or
make them touch the ground with any part of their body other than the bottom of their feet. It’s
permissible to thrust at the throat, but choking and strangling are forbidden.

NOVEMBER 2022 . 65
GALLERY

n Wrestlers wear keshōmawashi

(ceremonial belts) during a
ring-entering ceremony. The
sport has attracted numerous
foreign wrestlers, especially
from Eastern Europe, as well
as Hawaii, Brazil and Egypt.
However, the past decade
has seen Mongolian fighters
dominate the sport. Mongolian
wrestlers are considered to hold
a true fighter’s spirit, as well as a
winning appetite, in part because
they tend to come from poor
rural regions. Unlike Japanese
wrestlers, they also have the
responsibility of supporting their
families back home, providing n As well as wrestlers and trainers, stables house the referees, ushers and
added motivation. Japanese hairdressers. This tin contains the equipment used by a tokoyama (hairdresser)
wrestlers have made a comeback to style the hair of a sumo wrestler. The awl is used to give some bulk to the
in recent years, winning half of all hair when making an oicho-mage (a style reserved for the highest-ranked
the major tournaments. wrestlers that resembles a gingko leaf).

66 . GEOGRAPHICAL
n A rikishi loses a bout after his hands touch the ground. It can be dangerous to sit
close to the dohyō as wrestlers frequently fall onto spectators.

n Rikishi at the Kise beya go through a

final drill to wrap up training. There are 43
stables in Japan, housing several hundred
active sumo wrestlers. Behind the scenes,
the sport is shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
Foreigners, particularly Westerners, are
discouraged from sticking their noses in or
interfering with its ancient traditions. It’s
considered a sport invented by Japanese,
for Japanese. Sumo stables aren’t tourist
attractions; only a few stables can be visited,
and only as long as the list of strict rules is
strictly followed.

NOVEMBER 2022 . 67
GALLERY
n Fans fill the Ryōgoku
Kokugikan in Tokyo
to capacity in order to
honour popular Mongolian
wrestler Kyokutenhō
during his danpatsushiki,
an official retirement
ceremony held for a top
wrestler in which his
topknot is finally cut
off. The next generation
looks up in awe at one of
the all-time favourites.

n A rikishi walks inside the grounds of the Ryōgoku Kokugikan. Competitive wrestlers live by an
extremely strict code of conduct, both inside and outside the stable. They can be spotted riding
local trains or cycling around Tokyo in traditional kimonos, as they’re forbidden from driving cars
or wearing contemporary clothes. Rules dictate that in public, wrestlers must be softly spoken
and self-effacing at all times. Even after fights, the victor isn’t permitted to show any signs of
vitriol or schadenfreude.

68 . GEOGRAPHICAL
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Subs Ad.indd 1 12/10/2022 15:15

 GEO-PHOTOGRAPHER
Robbie Shone
Depth of vision
F
orty-thousand years ago, we
lived in caves – they were
our homes. As evolution
developed, we found safe
refuge in caves, yet for
some reason, in today’s
world, we fear them,’ says professional
cave photographer Robbie Shone. ‘I’m
puzzled by it, because I’m fortunate to
have explored so many caves and seen
so many beautiful things. So part of
my quest and my journey in life is to
transform them, to change that view that
we all have of them.’
And yet, of course, getting spectacular
images of some of the world’s largest and
most impressive caves is no easy task.
Since joining a caving society during
his university days, Shone has spent two
decades travelling the world, honing
both his climbing and his photographic
skills – and even then, things can go
Making use of a raft to explore Lake Cadoux in the Gouffre Berger, Vercors, France, 2011
70 . GEOGRAPHICAL
wrong. ‘Even with experience, you can’t
predict what the weather might do,’ he
says. ‘Especially in today’s world, when
we’re living with these freak weather
systems in parts of the world. I was
unfortunate to experience one of those
freak weather patterns when I was at the
bottom of the deepest known cave in the
world. It brought down a tremendous
amount of water and it flooded the cave,
raising the water table by 130 metres
in the space of a few hours. And that’s
frightening. Absolutely frightening.’
But, despite the danger, Shone
maintains a deep fascination for these
hidden realms, a fascination helped in
huge part by his relationship with his
fiancée, cave researcher Gina Mosely,
with whom he has a young daughter.
Mosely’s work – which involves seeking
clues to past and future climate change
in some of Greenland’s most inaccessible
and unexplored caves – has given Shone
a new view of these spaces. ‘Caves are
like time machines,’ he says. ‘They’re
one of the very few places, if not the
last places on Earth, where you’re
transported to the world as it was
when it was being formed hundreds
of thousands of years ago. I find that
absolutely fascinating.
‘When I first started this, it was all
about adventure and I was making
photographs with no understanding
of the importance of what science
can teach us,’ he continues. ‘But since
meeting Gina and meeting her sphere of
colleagues and working with them, I’ve
come to realise and appreciate that caves
are more than just a playground.’ l
Robbie’s first book, Hidden Worlds,
published by Kozu Books, is available
now. www.shonephotography.com
 Descent into Boxhead Pot, a limestone cave on Leck Fell in Lancashire, UK, 2011

PURPOSE
n I think it’s important to show the
public what lies beneath the ground
because there’s more to this planet
than just the surface. I think it’s
important that people get to see
the beautiful side of caves. But
I’m also drawn to the challenges.
I’m fulfilling a personal goal by
challenging myself with the lighting
and everything else that comes with
photographing the darkness.

INSPIRATION
n In the early days, it was all the
great cave photographers who had
come before, like Nick Nichols,
Steven Alvarez, Carson Peter, Jerry
Wooldridge and Chris Howes, who
wrote a book called Images Below,
which I used to call my Bible. But
I think that today, it has to be my
daughter. Seeing Maddie at 18
months old and knowing that
she’s going to be here for so
long into the future beyond us –
I think that’s the new inspiration
to continue down this road.

ADVICE
n If you do have a dream – and my
dream was a bit crazy, because it
was making a living out of cave
photography– follow that passion,
even when it gets tough, even when
it gets hard. This might be a bit of a
cliché, but I think your work is good
if it comes from the heart.
Cloud Ladder Hall in Quango Dong, China, 2012

NOVEMBER 2022 . 71
 EX PLORE
DISCOVERING BRITAIN – RIVER FLEET

For this month’s

Discovering Britain,
Rory Walsh traces
the route of one of
London’s hidden rivers

E
merging from the London
Underground at Angel
station, regular Monopoly
players will know exactly
where we are. Across the
road is the distinctive
orange dome of The Angel, Islington.
Turn left and Islington High Street
meets the thundering traffic of
Pentonville Road. Pentonville Road
and The Angel are among the cheapest
properties on the Monopoly board,
but we’re looking for a different one:
Water Works. Vehicles trundle by, shop
radios blare, people tap at and talk into
phones. ‘Water, water everywhere, nor
any drop to drink.’
Coleridge’s words from The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner often spring to

Walking
mind during this walk. Writer Caroline
Millar describes it as ‘walking on water
without getting your feet wet. You’re
surrounded by water throughout but

hardly see any’. From Islington, the
route flows south along the course
of the hidden River Fleet. Along the
way, it explores how water has shaped
and influenced the capital. ‘This was
the first walk we produced and it set
the template for the series, finding
the geographical stories in the places
around you,’ says Millar, Discovering
Britain’s former project manager.
From Pentonville Road, we enter
quieter streets. At the end of a narrow
alley, two metal gates appear. The
farthest opens onto a viewing platform
lined with information boards. A
balcony surveys a scenic garden
braided with stone paths. Dominating
the scene, however, is a sound:
running water. Through the other gate,
a path leads down to a large, circular
fountain, tiered like a wedding cake.
Here are our water works. ‘Welcome to
New River Head,’ says Millar.
At this urban oasis, Millar explains:
‘Before 1600, London’s water supply
came from rivers, streams, wells and
springs. Water was carried to, and
sold in, places that were too far from a
natural source. As London’s population
grew, demand increased and the
water table dropped. The New River
on water
was a 64-kilometre canal cut along
the contours of the Lea Valley to take
water into London from Hertfordshire
springs. Initially, it was gravity-fed
using hollowed out tree trunks. New
River Head was the reservoir at the end.’
Besides topography above ground,
local geology meant that water also
emerged from the deep. ‘There are
many wells and springs around here,’
Millar says, ‘because we’re in a part of
Animal remains
from Smithfield
Market being
dumped in the water
turned the river into
a putrid open sewer
London where two soil types meet.’
The terraces of the River Thames are
lined with gravel, which is permeable
allowing water to drain away. To the
north of the river, the dominant ground
is impermeable London clay. Where the
clay forced water to the surface, springs
erupted. Evidence of them endures in
several road names and the famous
Sadlers Wells theatre.
Past Sadlers Wells, we pause at a
cattle trough on St John Street, once
a droving road into Smithfield meat
market. The market’s role in Millar’s
tale becomes apparent later. First, we
reach another watery place. Beyond
St John’s Gate, the land rolls downhill
towards a railway cutting. The trains
are hidden behind high walls but their
rumbling and roaring fills the air.
We stop outside Well Court. At first
glimpse, the building looks like a high-
end estate agent or an art gallery. The
walls inside display old maps and a

72 . GEOGRAPHICAL

curious metal plaque with a spout. Way
beneath our feet is a hole.
‘This is the Clerk’s Well,’ says Millar.
‘It was first recorded in 1183 and
became an important water supply in
medieval London. The surrounding
area became known as Clerkenwell.’
The historic well isn’t the only water
source here. The road climbs onto
Ray Street Bridge, which straddles the
railway cutting. On the horizon beyond
the wall, the Shard nestles next to St
Paul’s Cathedral: God and Mammon
side by side. The walk, however,
highlights something we can’t see. ‘The
railway lines sit in the valley of the
River Fleet,’ Millar reveals.
Across the road in Ray Street, Millar
stops us by the Coach and Horses pub.
We could almost be in the bottom of a
giant saucer. The surrounding roads dip
towards us. Outside the pub is a grate.
Millar encourages me to step closer to it.
‘Can you hear water again?’ she asks. I
PICTURE CREDIT
St John’s Gate straddles what
used to be a droving road into
Smithfield meat market
can. ‘That’s the Fleet passing underneath
us.’ A watering hole with a fleeting
glimpse into a hidden waterway. ‘This is
my favourite stop,’ Millar says. ‘At first
glance, there’s nothing much to see but
this unassuming grate is key to the story
of the Fleet.’
Emerging from a spring on Hampstead
Heath, the River Fleet flows downhill
for 6.5 kilometres before entering
the Thames at Blackfriars. Today, the
Fleet is hidden underground, but for
centuries it was a navigable open river.
The Fleet marked the western
boundary of Roman London. The stone
for the original St Paul’s Cathedral
was carried along the river by boat.
Mills lined the banks. By the early
18th century, pollution from various
trades – including animal remains from
Smithfield Market being dumped in the
water – turned the river into a putrid
open sewer. So, section by section, the
Fleet was covered up.
Traces of its heyday can still be
found. At Holborn Viaduct, we get
a sense of the river’s sheer size. The
Victorian viaduct, which replaced a
medieval bridge, is 425 metres deep and
25 metres wide. The gorge underneath,
Farringdon Road, is another section of
the Fleet valley. In centuries past, boats
instead of buses would waft below us.
‘This stretch of the Fleet was a busy
port,’ says Millar. ‘Corn, hay, timber,
cheese, oysters and herrings were
loaded and unloaded on the wharves.’
Today, the river’s name lives on in
Fleet Street, once the actual and now
the metaphorical home of London’s
press. ‘Printing required lots of water,’
Millar explains. ‘The Fleet provided
an abundant supply.’ Off Fleet Street
itself, we stop in St Bride’s churchyard.
A plaque on the gates notes that they
were erected by the Newspaper Society.
Many journalists and printers attended
St Bride’s. Many also worshipped at
different spiritual homes – the nearby
pubs. Brewing was another water-based
industry supplied by the Fleet.
At Ludgate Circus, St Pauls reappears
on top of its hill. On the way to the final
stop, I ask Millar what inspired this
walk. ‘There’s something satisfying about
following a river, a completeness,’ she
reflects. ‘Plus, we are all drawn to water
in some way, whether staring out to
sea or as kids splashing in puddles.’ For
Millar, following the Fleet also highlights
wider interests. ‘Walking can be so much
richer when you ask questions about
where you are. Keep your eyes open,
look out for anomalies and peculiar
features. Think about place names. And
challenge yourself to explore.’
When we reach Blackfriars Bridge,
the view is our first prolonged glimpse
of water since the fountain at New River
Head. ‘The Fleet enters the Thames
through a drain in the wall, underneath
the bridge,’ says Millar. ‘You can only
really see it at low tide.’ Once more,
the Fleet is out of sight. As we watch
a passing river bus, more Coleridge
lines emerge: ‘Through wood and dale
the sacred river ran/Then reached the
caverns measureless to man.’ n
WALK
Urban • Greater London
www.discoveringbritain.org
NOVEMBER 2022 . 73
 QUIZ

Where in the world?

Clue: Named after a mammal with an inaccurate name Clue: Its name means ‘cut rock’ in the local language

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Clue: Boasts the most basalt columns in its host nation Clue: The largest canyon in its host continent

Can you identify these canyons and plot them on the map below?
Find the correct coordinates at the bottom of page 82

74 . GEOGRAPHICAL
 CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 and 5 Awfully dry, boring bloke becomes a

Manhattan landmark! (8,6)
9 10
9 Gold rush district might be OK linked to 4 down (8)
10 Evaluate the quality of steamship in rough seas (6) 11

12 and 13 Popular ingredient in oriental dishes – ‘Aston 12 13 14

Superb’ variety? (4,7)
15 16
17 Aircrewman involved in mid-19th century conflict (7,3)
19 Distress call in the Sargasso Sea (1,1,1) 17 18 19
21 It could enable you to write opening of novel, 20
in black (3)
22 Aegean islands where cod need sea change (10) 21 22

24 Claimed wrong health examination (7) 23

25 Large urban settlement – it occupies borders
24 25
of country (4)
28 A tense assembly in the upper house (6) 26 27

30 Small insect to run away and marry gazelle? (8) 28 29 30

31 Dunstable, sadly, has no bed for Muslim ruler (6)
32 Phone about worn-out English county (8)
31 32

DOWN
1 Herb tea drink you finally found in Azerbaijan (4)
2 Musical instrument gets British award, including
Oscar (4)
3 Result of greed, eke out fish dish (8)
4 We hear you swindle gold prospectors here? (5)
6 Holiday venue in the Azores or Tenerife (6)
7 River that follows sea, by the sound of it (3)
8 New head of state uses taxes to create
English county (4,6)
11 Land around a country house in east California,
for example (6)
14 Initially Taoiseach rules out former Irish province (6)
15 Conservative leader is someone different, so cuts
down on expenditure (10)
16 Immoral act, not good for fabled sailor (6)
18 Strip of pasta made from old one (6)
20 Severely criticise article on Roman temple (8)
23 See 26 down
25 In African country nasty contagion ain’t going away (5)
26 and 23 down So, vacation arranged in Canadian
peninsula (4,6)
27 Collapsed on northern hill (4)
29 Endless river means nothing (3)
OCTOBER CROSSWORD SOLUTION
ACROSS
9 Alexandra 10 Stage 11 Namur 12 Euphrates 13 Marches
14 Russian 17 Ravel 19 Las 20 Vegas 21 Strayed 22 Torquay
24 Primroses 26 Ingot 28 Olive 29 Apennines
DOWN
1 Rain 2 Weimar 3 Caerphilly 4 Adders 5 Ramparts 6 Tsar
7 Farthing 8 Tees 13 Marks 15 Sovereigns 16 Nasty 18 Virginia
19 Lodestar 22 Taster 23 Urgent 24 Pool 25 Reel 27 Tusk
WIN Download your entry at:
geog.gr/cross_word or simply fill in and
cut out the grid above. Send your entry
to the editorial address on page four,
marked ‘November crossword’. Entries
close 21 November. The first correctly
completed crossword selected at random
wins a copy of Philip’s Essential World
Atlas, a comprehensive hardback atlas
worth £25. For details, visit
www.octopusbooks.co.uk

NOVEMBER 2022 . 75
 RGS-IBG ARCHIV E
ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY (WITH IBG) IMAGE

76 . GEOGRAPHICAL
Kago or
travelling chair
Anonymous, 1860-80

F
rom samurai and sumo to geishas and tea
ceremonies, the richness of Japanese tradition and
culture has long inspired and intrigued onlookers.
This studio portrait, taken some time during the late
19th century by an unknown photographer, features
a richly dressed young woman sitting in a kago or
travelling chair while her bearers stop for a smoking break.
The approximate time period of this picture coincides with
a general opening up of Japan, during which people may have
been more exposed to images of the country. The late 19th
century saw Japan dramatically shift from the conservative,
isolationist policies of the primarily agricultural Edo period,
when the country was ruled by the military Tokugawa
shogunate, to the modernising stance of the Meiji (‘enlightened
rule’) era, during which practical imperial rule was restored to
Japan under the Emperor Meiji.
During the Meiji era, Japan opened its borders, sending
several high-ranking expeditions abroad and inviting foreign
advisors to Japan, partly to assist with the country’s adoption
of modern Western technology. Japan rapidly industrialised
and adopted Western ideas and production methods. The
government introduced a national education system and a
constitution, creating an elected parliament called the Diet
(although very few people could actually vote).
Some aspects of traditional Japanese culture suffered
during this period. The power and status of the samurai were
drastically curbed, while most of the country’s castles were
destroyed by the Meiji government. Nevertheless, Japan has
worked hard ever since to balance modernisation with the
preservation of its traditional culture, which now acts as a
significant draw for foreign visitors. n

The Royal Geographical Society Picture Library is an unrivalled

resource, containing more than half a million images of
peoples and landscapes from all over the world. The collection
holds photographs and works of art from the 1830s onwards
and includes images of exploration, indigenous peoples and remote locations.
For further information on image licensing and limited-edition prints, or to
search our online collection of more than 7,000 images, visit www.rgs.org/
images. Rolex kindly supports public access to the Society’s collection of
photographs, books, documents and maps.

NOVEMBER 2022 . 77
 IN SOCIETY
DOCUMENTING THE FIRST MOUNT EVEREST EXPEDITIONS
Everest through the lens
T
he Society’s new exhibition, Everest Through the
Lens, marks the centenary of the first European
expeditions to Mount Everest. Open to visitors
until 20 January next year, the exhibition
explores how the films of Captain John Noel
helped to create the popular image of Everest
during the 1920s and are now revealing some of the less
well-known elements of the expeditions.
The Society and the Alpine Club, London, were
instrumental in the planning and execution of the first
European-organised expeditions to Everest, having formed
the Mount Everest Committee in 1919, which combined
the geographical, cartographic and scientific interests of the
Society with the mountaineering expertise and technical
knowledge of the Alpine Club.
Following the success of the 1921 expedition, which
gathered and shared vital geographical information,
the Mount Everest Committee sought to further survey,
map and photograph the landscape and document the
people of the Himalaya. This led to the involvement of the
professional photographer and filmmaker Captain John
Noel, who was aware of the commercial opportunities
available to present the first footage of the people and
78
72. GEOGRAPHICAL
• Geographical
Captain John Noel filming the ascent
of Mount Everest. A Sherpa porter
can be seen steadying the tripod
RGS-IBG PICTURE LIBRARY
landscapes of the region, and the attempt to reach the
mountain’s summit, to audiences in the West.
At the heart of the Society’s new exhibition are the films
that Noel produced of the 1922 and 1924 expeditions. Using
both research on the films and the films themselves as a
lens through which to reframe the story of the expeditions,
the exhibition explores topics such as the part played by
local knowledge from both intermediaries and porters in
supporting the expeditions, as well as their role in making
filming on location possible; the tragic death of a group of
porters during an avalanche on the 1922 expedition; and the
making and commercialisation of the films as a means to
support future expeditions.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of events that
draw upon and further develop the ideas presented through
lectures, film screenings, panel discussions and Collections
talks, driven by recent research on Noel’s films and on the
items in the Society’s Everest collection.
Everest Through the Lens, produced with global experience
design agency Event, is on display in the Pavilion until 20
January 2023. It’s free and open Monday to Saturday, 10am to
5.30pm (it’s closed over the Christmas period).
www.rgs.org/everest
ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY (WITH IBG)
SELECTION OF EVENTS FOR NOVEMBER

5–6 November 2022 8 November, 7.30pm–9.30pm 10 November, 7pm–9pm

Workshops (In-person, London)
EXPLORE: RGS expedition and
fieldwork planning weekend
EXPLORE brings together a range of
expedition professionals, scientists
and travellers with experience from
all over the world to help you get the
most out of your project and learn
from others who’ve recently returned
from the field.
n Venue: Royal Geographical
Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington
Gore, London, SW7 2AR.
Tickets: from £75
geog.gr/Explore2022
Talk (In-person, Norwich)
The Atlas of Geographical
Curiosities - Vitali Vitaliev
Join the East of England committee
to hear all about Vitali’s latest book,
Atlas of Geographical Curiosities,
a compendium of interesting,
unexpected and downright bizarre
geographical anomalies that are
guaranteed to delight and inspire.
n Venue: Blake Studio, Norwich
School, The Close, NR1 4DD.
Tickets: from £5; free for students
and RGS-IBG members
geog.gr/AtlasCurios
Talk (In-person, Belfast)
Jan Morris and the 1953 Mount
Everest expedition - Paul Clements
In an illustrated talk, Paul recounts the
excitement of the adventure almost
70 years ago that saw Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay become the first
mountaineers to stand on the summit
of Mount Everest.
n Venue: Queen’s University Belfast,
Elmwood Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1NN.
Free
geog.gr/JanMorris

21 November, 7.30pm–8.45pm 23 November, 7pm–8.30pm 24 November, 7.30pm

Talk (In-person, Chester)
Afon Dyfrdwy to River Dee: source
to sea - Jim Holmes
Rising in Snowdonia, Wales, a peaty
brown rivulet starts its journey
towards the sea. As the importance
of the UK’s watercourses becomes
increasingly clear, Jim’s presentation
explores the rich history of the River
Dee, its current importance and its
diverse natural environments, which
now more than ever require support.
n Venue: The Grosvenor Museum, 27
Grosvenor Street, Chester, CH1 2DD.
Tickets: £6, free for RGS-IBG members
geog.gr/RiverDee
Panel discussion (Online
and in-person, London)
Recording the first
Everest expeditions
A panel that includes Professor Felix
Driver, Dr Jonathan Westaway and
Atem Lemtur will reflect on the ways
in which local knowledge facilitated
the first expeditions to Everest and
how they were documented.
n Venue: Online and Royal
Geographical Society (with IBG), 1
Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2AR.
Tickets: online from £5; in-person
from £10
geog.gr/RecordingEverest
Talk (In-person, King’s Lynn)
Navigating our way towards a
plastic-free ocean – Emily Penn
Having spent a decade at sea
exploring plastic pollution from the
tropics to the Arctic, Emily will share
her adventures, connecting her
scientific insights from ‘eXXpedition’
to upstream solutions on land.
n Venue: St George’s Guildhall, 29
King Street, King’s Lynn, PE30 1HA.
Tickets: £14; £12 for RGS-IBG
members.
geog.gr/OceanPlastic

n The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) is the home of
geography. Founded in 1830, we are the UK’s learned society
for geography and professional body for geographers. Our
core purpose is to advance geographical science. We achieve
this in many ways, through our charitable work in education,
research and fieldwork, and more widely as a membership
organisation.
The Society welcomes anyone fascinated by the world’s
people, places and environments. Membership is open to
all and tailored to you. Whether you’re a Fellow, Associate
Fellow, Student Member or Member, we make your
adventures in geography richer and more meaningful.
Geographical is the Society’s
magazine, and available with all types
of membership – but there are so
many other benefits. Our Fellows and
Members gain access to topical events
and activities, where you can meet
others who share a passion for geography.
So whether you’re a geography professional or student, or
simply have a thirst for geographical knowledge, membership
of the Society will satisfy your curiosity.
n For more on what membership has to offer you,
visit our website at: www.rgs.org/join-us

RGS-IBG CORPORATE SUPPORTERS

March 2018
NOVEMBER 2022• .73
79
 GEOGRAPHICAL

Next month
TOMMY TRENCHARD

The painstaking work of removing

anti-personnel mines

THE LEGACY OF WAR

he HALO Trust has destroyed some 100,000 anti- of their country ‘the land at the end of the world’. This

T tank and anti-personnel mines in Angola since the

1990s. However, the work of the British de-mining
charity is far from complete in this vast country
still ravaged by the legacy of a brutal civil war.
Initially, efforts to rid the country of the
scourge of these illegal but all too prolific, indiscriminate
and lethal weapons were focused on urban and relatively
densely populated areas. In the past two years, however,
thanks to a US$60 million injection of funds by the
Angolan government, attention has switched to sparsely
populated but ecologically critical parts of the country.
There are at least 1,000 minefields still to be cleared,
and 150 are located in the national parks of Mavinga and
neighbouring Luengue-Luiana. Angolans call this part
remote region in the far southeast of Angola was once
home to tens of thousands of elephants, but since the civil
war started in 1975, numbers have plummeted to a few
thousand. Lions in the area have fared even worse, with
just ten individuals left across the two national parks.
Poaching funded the bitter civil war and paid for many of
the mines. It has been mainly left unchecked in the political
vacuum that followed the war’s cessation. The mines have
also inflicted a steady toll on the elephant population.
Our Africa correspondent, Tommy Trenchard, joined the
HALO teams carrying out the painstaking and dangerous
task of ridding the parks of the munitions and discovered
that not all the impacts on the wildlife have been negative.
Read his report in our December edition.

DECEMBER ISSUE ON SALE

24 NOVEMBER Where in the world answers:
Antelope Canyon, USA: C7; Itaimbezinho Canyon, Brazil: H17;
Subscribe today: geog.gr/geo-sub Stuðlagil Canyon, Iceland: K3; Fish River Canyon, Namibia: M16

80 . GEOGRAPHICAL
UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMMES IN THE SCHOOL OF
GEOGRAPHY, EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
■ Geography
■ Global Environmental Change and Sustainability
■ Earth Sciences
■ Environmental Sciences
■ Urban and Regional Planning

Many of our programmes are also available with an integrated Masters, Year Abroad or
Professional Placement Year. Field trip opportunities available.

Be part of a vibrant community of students and staff making real-world impact

by addressing past, current and future challenges in the fields of geography,
environmental science and urban planning.

JEMIMA

BA Geography

‘My favourite thing is the

diversity and flexibility
of the course. No other
subject offers you a
lecture in the morning
about glaciers and a
seminar in the afternoon
on prison architecture!
You can choose from a
huge range of modules
meaning that you only
study what interests you.’

Find out more about our courses, entry requirements and modules:
www.birmingham.ac.uk/gees/areasofstudy