Failure to realize it’s a project. A project has a start, an end, and has multiple steps in between.
Not designating a project manager. If it’s a project it needs a manager and can be assumed at any-level of an organization – not only by a senior-role.
Lacking project leadership. Share a clear vision. Engage smart, committed people. Get out of their way.
A growing number of companies are taking action on climate change because they know it is critical for their long-term success and they know leadership brings reward. The role of corporate climate leaders is more important than ever.
Employee engagement and wellbeing yield additive benefits
Engaged and high-wellbeing workers have higher life ratings
Best practices incorporate wellbeing into engagement action planning
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Continually polarising debate and failing to stick to the actual science on business sustainability issues can lead to a dangerous lack of credibility, and distraction from engaging with the real challenges, argues Mallen BakerIf you want to make the world a better place, there is a modern paradox you have to negotiate.
We have never had such an abundance of data and analysis highlighting the problems we have to solve. At the same time, we have rarely been so divided in our beliefs about what those problems even are, never mind how they should be tackled.
There is a presumption by many that there are two sides. One side “follows the science” and cares about the facts. The other side serves vested interests and is blinded to those facts at best, malevolent in their face at worst. “We”, of course, are on the right side.
However, the evidence does not support this hypothesis.
Many of the facets of the sustainability agenda have come from, or at least evolved from, the arguments of environmental campaigners. Some such arguments have proved to be robust, some less so.
Campaigning, as a process, creates its own incentives. Simply by doing what seems right, people of good will end up adopting causes, concepts and symbols that then become part of their belief system. It stops being a discussion of evidence and facts and pragmatic solutions, and instead becomes an orthodoxy.
Truths ‘that just ain’t so’
There is a growing list of examples. Things that we “know” to be true that – just maybe – aren’t true at all. These include (but are not restricted to) such articles of faith as:
· polar bears are in imminent danger of extinction because of climate change;
· we are in the middle of a sixth mass extinction;
· eating meat is one of the biggest problems because of methane emissions; and
· intensive agriculture is the problem and variations on organic farming the solution (supported by the “fact” that there are only 100 harvests before soil erosion wipes out our ability to grow food).
These are all areas where we should be urgently curious to know the truth. Before you can solve problems, you need to understand the reality of what actually needs fixing. Get it wrong and you’ll probably arrive at the wrong solutions.
You can’t get a better example of the perverse incentives created by campaigning than the polar bear.
Climate icon
The polar bear only became a symbol of climate change because a campaign group, the Center for Biological Diversity, decided to try to use the US Endangered Species Act as a “tail-wags-the-dog” measure to push the then US president, George W Bush, to have to deal with climate change. The power of the bear as an emotive symbol soon became evident, and before long you couldn’t touch on the topic of climate change without polar bears popping into view.
However, in recent years bear populations have been stable overall, with certain sub-populations growing, others declining, others stable or unknown. Climate sceptics have jumped on these figures. Others have defended the icon by arguing that these populations will be affected more in the future as sea ice declines. At least one study, however, has suggested that a sub-population already exposed to such decline has been doing just fine. In other words, it’s complicated.
As a result, WWF took the conscious decision to move on – something it has found difficult because of the early success in boosting people’s emotional attachment to the bears and creating the total widespread conviction that they are in imminent threat. WWF spokesperson Leanne Clare told EUObserver: “… all people want to talk about is: when is it going to go extinct? And if it is not going to go extinct, what is the problem?”
It has become an example of how the symbol became more important than the actual problem it was meant to symbolise – the very real one of the impact of climate change on the Arctic.
Mass extinction?
Similarly, the idea that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction has become an article of faith on the part of some, but at most it is a point of scientific debate. The ancient mass extinctions were the genuinely catastrophic result of a cascade of failures that followed from a major change: a chain reaction effect that was massive and – once it was in train – unstoppable. These were global die-offs from which recovery could only take place over geological timescales. Fortunately, that is not where we are.
Some scientists do advance the case that, because extinctions outpace what has been established as the “normal” background extinction rate, the current situation should qualify as a mass extinction. Others dismiss this position as absurd.
Right now, the decline in overall biomass is tied predominantly to habitat loss. In areas where we halt or reverse that habitat loss, populations recover. Model-based predictions of extinctions resulting from habitat loss have been shown to be overly pessimistic.
That is not an argument for complacency. It may be that, in the future, climate change becomes a bigger factor in the die-off of species. We can’t count out that we may be at the beginning of such a process, but international agencies such as IPBES do not claim we are in such an extinction.
What is the question?
No areas are more hotly debated than those that affect us personally. Food is a prime example. This is not a candidate for easy quick fixes. If our aim is to feed seven billion people sustainably that is a multiple-variable problem.
You would look at what creates emissions and whether those could be reduced. You would look at what uses land, and whether it is the best use of that land. You would look at quality of nutrition, and you would look at the acceptability to the population of proposed changes.
On that sort of equation, meat has a significant part to play. Much of the land used for livestock is land that cannot be used for crops. Meat provides high quality nutrition. It has played an important role in human development and remains highly prized in most societies.
For some, however, meat eating is a moral issue. The question that they are answering is a different one to that of “how to feed seven billion most easily”.
So, they focus on methane emissions from beef cows, and how much more powerful a greenhouse gas methane is. They ignore the fact that the limited lifetime of methane in the atmosphere means that a stable livestock population over the course of a decade will result in a stable level of methane, not a growing one. It is not a helpful fact in achieving their objective of eliminating that foodstuff from human consumption.
7bn mouths to feed
Likewise, if you decide that intensive agriculture is a moral bad, and organic “natural” approaches are inherently good, you risk rendering yourself incapable of reviewing the evidence in a rational way. This is not a trivial matter, since there are now seven billion people whose nourishment depends on rational decision making.
In pure productivity terms, intensive agriculture is the most efficient way to transform inputs into nutrition. It has its problems, but we’ve shown good progress in solving at least some of them. Organic farming, as preferred by some, is significantly less efficient. Which means it takes a lot more land to produce the same amount of food. Worldwide we are now at a point where land is our most limited resource.
The debate is not made easier by widespread misinformation and myths. Some will tell you that, because of intensive agriculture, “the science says there are only 100 harvests left worldwide due to soil erosion”. Others say that actually we are down to 30 years at most.
Such statements are compelling, alarming and wrong.
Last year, New Scientist reviewed all the articles and campaign statements to trace the original source. The only source found was one 2014 research paper that, when examined, did not actually make the claim at all. The magazine then checked with leading soil scientists and found that none of them supported the contention.
There are problems to be solved. None of them are helped by misdiagnosing the problem by quoting “science” that someone made up.
The extreme claims problem
At the heart of all of this is the tendency to catastrophise the debate. This comes about from two powerful forces.
The first is the business model of the mainstream media in a digital age. Extreme claims get more engagement and clicks, and reward advertisers. Consequently, worst-case scenarios always appear in headlines.
The second is the belief by campaigners that extreme messages are more likely to motivate necessary action. The evidence for that belief is mixed at best, but it is one of those notions so intuitive that it survives contrary evidence.
This tendency feeds the polarisation that is so corrosive to current political discourse. It makes it very easy for those who would rather believe that “do nothing” is the right option to highlight the gaping holes in arguments and to mock the failure of extreme short-term predictions (in other words “crying wolf”).
It leads people to conclude that “environmentalism is the new religion”, that it is a belief system based on faith, not evidence. And what is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
If our aim is to actually solve problems, we have to achieve some degree of dispassionate scepticism towards public claims and counter claims. Look at what the data and the evidence actually say, and where the points of disagreement are amongst experts. Honestly evaluate the success or failure of measures taken. And not get distracted by the clickbait.
Mallen Baker is a writer, speaker and YouTuber on evidence-based change-making, sustainability, corporate responsibility, politics and free speech.
We all want to make the world a better place. But what power does one person actually have? Is it really possible to stop deforestation in the Amazon? Or help keep the polar ice caps from melting? Or save tigers and orangutans from going extinct? In short, yes! And it isn’t as hard as you might think. You can start by wisely choosing the food that you put on your plate. In fact, this may be the most powerful action that each of us can take to make the world a better place — and we can start today.
Just how is food connected to deforestation, climate change and wildlife? Many studies, including the 2020 Living Planet Report, have shown that how we produce and consume food is one of the biggest drivers of our planet’s deteriorating health. There is good news though — the main conclusions from this growing body of research are that: 1) we still have time to reverse course and restore nature; 2) there are win-win solutions available today that are good for people and planet; and 3) what we eat matters.
In fact, what we eat matters a lot. Our food systems have caused 70 percent of biodiversity loss on land and 50% in water; they’re responsible for around 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions; and they’ve caused 80% of global deforestation. Our dietary choices aren’t just damaging the planet, they are also damaging our own health. Unhealthy diets now pose a greater risk of morbidity and mortality than unsafe sex and alcohol, drug and tobacco use combined.
The solution is right on our plates.
In Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-Based Diets, launched today, we demonstrate that planet-based diets (high in human health benefits and low in environmental impact) not only reduce environmental damage and harm to our health, they can also be restorative — a true “win-win”. These diverse and flexible dietary patterns can help restore nature by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, halting deforestation, and saving wildlife.
Some people may argue that warnings of the catastrophic impacts of the destruction of nature are alarmist: the human population has never been healthier, and food has never been more plentiful; the human species has always advanced by utilising natural resources and it has in fact been positive and necessary for our species to thrive.
But this argument is inherently flawed. Although agricultural revolutions of the past have enabled us to feed more people, and the rapid productivity gains since the “green revolution” have spurred improvements in human health, these gains, have come at the expense of the environment. Current global food production depends on practices that cross planetary boundaries, taking us into dangerous territory and an uncertain future. So far, increased food productivity has been able to stay ahead of the effects of a deteriorating environment — but this time lag has masked the underlying symptoms of a planet in crisis, and tricked us into believing that exploitation of the Earth’s resources is without reckoning. Far from being alarmist, there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that our past actions are catching up with us.
But, if the evidence clearly demonstrates that we can restore the planet and feed humanity, then why aren’t we doing it? Three barriers have hindered action to date. Firstly, the science has only recently advanced enough for us to fully understand the global impact of the food system. Secondly, the problem has yet to be broken down in sufficient detail for individual countries to understand their piece of the global jigsaw puzzle of building a food system that feeds humanity without destroying the planet. Thirdly, humanity has never before needed to change the food system so radically at this scale or speed. The enormity of the task at hand can freeze individuals and policymakers and prevent them from taking action.
With this new study, we hope to help remove these three barriers so that action can be taken on the ground. Our work assesses how various dietary patterns could impact both the environment and human health in nearly 150 countries around the world. What we found was that dietary shifts will impact countries differently. Some countries will need to reduce their consumption of animal-source foods while others may need to increase them. Some countries may see GHG emissions decrease while others may see them increase. Some countries will need to radically transform current diets while others may need instead to work to hold on to traditional dietary patterns and resist a transition to a more Western diet. All countries, however, will need to raise the ambition of their National Dietary Guidelines and integrate dietary shifts into other policy frameworks.
Alongside the report, we have built an interactive Impact & Action Calculator which allows users to measure the impacts of customized diets, based on 13 food groups, giving them greater flexibility in evaluating potential dietary shifts. With this collection of information, we hope to help national-level decision-makers develop ambitious national food plans to improve human health and reduce environmental impacts.
The past year has been devastating in many ways — from the COVID-19 pandemic to intense fires raging from the Arctic to Amazon. But it has also shown us that a new and better world is possible. Dietary shifts are key to this and each one of us has the can play a part in creating the future we want. The power is on our plates — so load that plate with planet-friendly foods and join us in creating a global movement to harness the power of planet-based diets.
The time for talk is over. It’s now time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
GFOI partner the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is organizing a webinar to examine the current state and trends of REDD+ reporting (*) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Objectives
Highlight the important progress on REDD+ reporting to the UNFCCC
Reflect on quality of UNFCCC-reported REDD+ results and their ability to underpin results-based payments
Jointly think about likely future development of REDD+ reporting
Launch the paper “From reference levels to results reporting: REDD+ under the UNFCCC – 2020 update”
Agenda
Why do countries dedicate their efforts to reporting their REDD+ results to the UNFCCC? How can they further improve their data quality and will their efforts be rewarded with results-based payments? These are some of the questions that will be addressed by the speakers during this webinar, which includes representatives of REDD+ countries, GCF, NICFI and other GFOI partners.
Margaret Athieno Mwebesa, National REDD+ Focal Point, Uganda
Ellen Bruzelius-Backer, Policy Director, Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI)
Juan Chang, Forestry Specialist, Green Climate Fund (GCF)
Peter Iversen, Team Lead (Land Use), United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Alfred Rungol, General Manager MRV, Papua New Guinea
Resources
COMING SOON! From reference levels to results reporting: REDD+ under the UNFCCC – 2020 update
This appointment is the sixth of the #GFOI2020 webinar series organized in lieu of the GFOI 2020 Plenary, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(*) Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries.
Mayors and city leaders from the UNECE region exchanged innovative ideas and efforts to address the COVID-19 emergency and, simultaneously, combat climate change and move towards achieving the SDGs.
The Geneva Declaration of Mayors outlines aspirational commitments to: strengthen cities’ resilience; take ambitious climate action; make cities greener; accelerate the transition to sustainable energy; ensure urban transport is sustainable; ensure housing is affordable, healthy, and adequate; make cities more equitable and inclusive; and turn these aspirations into reality.
The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) convened the Forum of Mayors 2020 to share best practices and develop a shared vision for sustainable urban development. Participants endorsed the Geneva Declaration of Mayors, which aligns city leaders’ efforts with the initiative of UN Secretary-General António Guterres to “build back better” and turn the COVID-19 recovery into a real opportunity for shaping a healthy and resilient future.
The Forum, the first of its kind, took place on 6 October 2020 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and virtually. It convened under the theme, ‘City Action for a Resilient Future: Strengthening Local Government Preparedness and Response to Emergencies and the Impact of Disasters and Climate Change.’
Mayors and city leaders from the UNECE region (Europe, North America, Central Asia, and Caucasus) exchanged innovative ideas and efforts to address the COVID-19 emergency and, simultaneously, combat climate change and move towards achieving the SDGs. They highlighted the need for enhanced cooperation to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development since implementation takes place at the local level.
Describing the COVID-19 pandemic as “an unprecedented emergency,” the Geneva Declaration of Mayors indicates that the pandemic has taught us that rapid change of urban reality is possible, behavior patterns can be adapted, and humans can stand in solidarity for a common cause. The Mayors of the UNECE region aspire to:
strengthen the resilience of cities, by increasing the ability to anticipate, manage, and recover from any future emergency, and by creating environments that improve the physical, mental, and environmental health of communities;
take ambitious climate action, accelerating the transition to carbon neutrality and focusing on climate change adaptation;
make cities greener by promoting urban biodiversity, creating opportunities for urban micro-farming, and tackling food waste;
accelerate the transition to sustainable energy while improving the energy efficiency of cities and promoting high-performance buildings;
ensure that urban transport is sustainable through the design of appropriate transport systems that enhances their resilience and preparedness, and the promotion of safe, secure, green, healthy, and affordable smart mobility solutions;
ensure that housing is affordable, healthy, and adequate, actively tackling the undersupply of affordable housing, mounting urban poverty, and homelessness, as well as improving access to healthy and good quality housing;
make cities more equitable and inclusive by guaranteeing equal rights and participation for all, ensuring that women fully participate in political decision making, and ensuring that contingency plans respond to the needs of different population groups; and
turn these aspirations into reality using the Forum of Mayors as a platform for mutual learning, spreading the word, tracking progress, and achieving a multiplier effect through urban networks.
The Forum convened as part of the UNECE Sustainable Cities Week, a series of events aiming to strengthen cooperation between national and local governments. Running from 5-9 October, the Week also includes a day devoted to SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), the 81st Session of the Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management, and the fifth annual meeting of the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (UN4CC) Initiative, which brings together 17 UN agencies and programmes to achieve SDG 11.
Following the successful conclusion of the first ever Forum of Mayors, the second Forum meeting will take place in 2021. [ENB coverage]
The next months will be critical to help those hit hardest by COVID-19 and ensure that countries resume reducing poverty and address the needs of people at risk of being left behind.
IISD and partners – the Leave No One Behind Partnership – are launching a series of articles to explore this challenge.
Commentary will delve into three broad themes: current knowledge of COVID-19 and its long-term impacts; green shoots and measures that work; and the promise and risk of data for Leaving No One Behind.
As many countries cautiously reopen their economies and people start to envision life after the pandemic, it is time to begin assessing the virus’ long-term impacts, and plan how to respond. A new commentary series from the Leave No One Behind Partnership aims to make voices heard and count.
In July 2020, the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) conducted its annual review of global progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The discussions were framed by an idea set out by the UN Secretary-General as he opened the meeting: “The COVID-19 crisis is having devastating impacts because of our past and present failures, because we have yet to take the SDGs seriously.”
Because it worsens inequalities, COVID-19 has already had a devastating impact on the world’s most disadvantaged groups, including the poorest, women, the elderly and youth, migrants, Indigenous peoples, and people with disabilities. This is both a reflection of the lack of progress on the SDGs up until the time COVID-19 emerged, and a hindrance to future achievement of the Goals.
The next months will be critical to help those hit hardest and ensure countries get back on track to reducing poverty and addressing the old and new needs of people at risk of being left behind.
IISD and partners are launching a series of articles to explore this challenge. We will interview experts on the front lines of efforts to leave no one behind about their expectations for the world after COVID-19, as well as data experts and development practitioners. Policy briefs, interviews, and guest articles will share their experiences, examine the countries and people most affected, and uncover what can be done to rebuild lives and make progress toward the SDGs. We will dedicate space to the people who are at risk of being left behind – or newly poor or otherwise vulnerable – regarding what interventions they think are most needed.
Commentary will delve into three broad themes:
Current Knowledge of COVID-19 and its Long-Term Impacts: The series features stories about the impacts of continued physical distancing around the world and how COVID-19 is magnifying inequality in different and intersecting ways.
Green Shoots and Measures that Work: Experts including front-line respondents, community organizations, and policymakers have made enormous efforts to design equitable and sustainable recovery interventions. This series will include success stories of recovery interventions that also address social and ecological sustainability, social protection, and support for community-based solutions.
The Promise and Risk of Data for Leaving No One Behind: To begin to understand how the pandemic affects marginalized groups, good data are crucial. The series will include stories about data needs and gaps, community-driven efforts to collect data, and the role of national statistical offices to track progress through the pandemic.
The articles in this series are coordinated by the International Civil society Center (ICSC), Development Initiatives (DI) and IISD as part of their joint support to the Leave No one Behind Partnership. Led by 12 international civil society organizations, the Leave No one Behind Partnership works to make SDG implementation more inclusive of marginalized populations that are underrepresented in official statistics.
Funding for this series is being provided by Robert Bosch Stiftung and Economic and Social Development Canada.
If you would like to contribute a story from the front lines of leaving no one behind after COVID-19, please contact Faye Leone (faye@iisd.org) or Stefan Jungcurt (stefan@iisd.org).
The Urban-LEDS and Urban Pathways projects led by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and UN-HABITAT are organising a session focusing on integrated low-emission development planning to support fair and sustainable energy for all at the Daring Cities Conference on 19 Oct 2020 – 16-18:00 UTC+2.
The online session will focus on defining pathways for establishing more strategic cross-sectoral integration and multi-actor cooperation towards effective and economic emission and pollution reductions in urban areas and a fair and sustainable energy supply for all.
In light of the vast amount of actors, sectors and activities contributing to overall emissions and pollution levels in urban areas, current emission reduction strategies often fall short of addressing the manifold links between sectors that could not only unlock significant decarbonisation potentials but also boost the economic and social transformations required to reach local to national climate targets.
Participants will be invited to explore examples of successful cross-sectoral approaches for waste and energy and energy and transport in different project cities, as well as the benefits and success factors of an integrated strategy in different working groups guided by ICLEI and UNHABITAT experts.
The session will take place on 19 Oct 2020 – 16:00-18:00 UTC+2 online. Registration to the Daring Cities Conference and the Session is free of charge. Interested participants can register here. — Alexandra Pfohl
Officer – Communications and Member Relations ICLEI – Local Governments for SustainabilityEuropean Secretariat | Brussels OfficeRue du Luxembourg 19-21, 1000 Brussels
This week: Some early pointers from Innovation Forum’s new smallholder farmer research group – involving Clinton Foundation, COLEACP, CottonConnect, GIZ, Golden Agri-Resources and Nestlé – from Dr Peter Stanbury. And, another chance to hear from Fairtrade America’s Stephanie Westhelle about working to ensure long-term sustainability in the west African cocoa sector.
Plus: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Danone, Nestlé and others underline commitment to PET bottle deposit return schemes; new global rubber sector sustainability commitments; and, UK Modern Slavery Act tightens reporting requirements, with civil sanctions to come, in the news digest.
In late January, when most people around the world viewed the novel coronavirus as a remote medical crisis, I realized that my professional and personal life was going to be changed significantly.
As co-director of Global Business Journalism, a master’s degree program created by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and Tsinghua University in Beijing, I knew that we would need to plan to conduct our spring semester virtually through an online platform, rather than in the classroom in China. Like many of our international students, I was outside China and unable to return to the locked-down campus.
For my program, this crisis became an opportunity, and Global Business Journalism began its spring semester on schedule and with all students in attendance via Zoom — an online video conferencing platform. Now that COVID-19 is understood to be a global threat, many other universities are responding similarly. More than 200 U.S. universities, and more than 1,000 globally, switched from in-person to online classes in the first two weeks of March.
This unanticipated disruption need not be a burden, if you are adaptable and innovative. “Online education is an opportunity to make coursework more customized and flexible,” writes journalist and educator Lisa Waananen Jones.
Here are 10 tips to make an online learning experience more rewarding:
Before launching your online class, consider your needs, and determine an online learning platform that will best support them. Your online learning site must be able to handle the number of people in your classes or meetings, how long you plan to use it and more.
Many platforms cost money, especially for “premium” plans, so consider your budget and whether you are willing to accept the limitations of free sites, which usually cap the number or participants or limit the time of your sessions. Different sites offer different features, including chat capabilities — for the full group or individual members — and group meetings taking place at the same time inside of the class session.
As I was working with my Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication colleagues to set up our virtual classrooms, the Iowa Democratic caucuses demonstrated to the world the risks of adopting new technologies without sufficient beta testing. We moved quickly with small-scale beta testing of several platforms, which is why we chose Zoom. We followed up with a beta test of five staff members and then our first-year graduate students. Each was successful, so we were ready for our official launch — all within a week.
(3) Focus on your community
If you don’t already have a social media chat group for your class, create one. My Tsinghua class uses WeChat, but WhatsApp, Facebook, Slack and other platforms can work for you. I interact with my students far more often during this period of online class than when we were on campus together, answering quick questions and offering tips and suggestions.
(4) Think visually
The most boring way to teach is to be a talking head, so it’s important to add visual elements to your class. I started with my virtual classroom set. As the son of a scenic designer for Broadway and opera, I created a backdrop for my lectures. On a more substantive note, I vary the images on the screen at any one time — whether still shots or videos. Most video conferencing platforms allow you to share your screen, so I scroll through examples of best practices, and have even conducted live searches of online databases.
If you need help designing innovative content, Torrey Trust, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, put together a Google Slide deck with innovative ideas, links to visual technology platforms and other advice for online teaching.
Of course, there’s always a risk that one of your visual exercises could go awry, but that’s part of the excitement of live TV.
Inevitably, something will go wrong in real time: the streaming video, someone’s audio, someone’s internet connection, the live chats or something you haven’t even considered. Patience is important. As long as your students understand that this virtual classroom might not be perfect, everyone will be a bit less anxious if they experience any type of malfunction.
(6) Tailor your lecture materials
Don’t just transfer your lecture notes or PowerPoint presentations to an online format. You need to communicate differently than in class. Online there is no natural interaction of professors and students, and students online don’t raise their hands or give you a non-verbal clue that they’d like to participate in a discussion. Instead, you need to invite them into the discussion through simultaneous social media chats or online surveys.
(7) Forgive your students’ complications
My remote teaching experience is unusual as my students span 22 time zones. My class begins at 9 a.m. on the east coast of the United States, which means 10 p.m. in Japan and Korea, 5 p.m. in Oman, 3 p.m. in South Africa and so on. Some students, cloistered in their parents’ homes, have to whisper so they don’t wake sleeping relatives, and I have allowed some students to present “oral” reports through the group chat function.
Remember: it’s not the students’ fault that our spring semester has become so complicated.
(8) Give your students individual attention
It’s important to build or maintain relationships with everyone in your class, which becomes particularly important when you cannot engage in the basic social interactions of a classroom setting. Instead of having my regular weekly office hours, I offer virtual office hours at times that I pre-arranged with each student. Because some students are shy, I reached out to schedule meetings in advance of major assignments. At the end of every lecture, I leave a few minutes for students who want to hang around in the virtual classroom and ask me any questions on their minds.
I also respond to social media messages or emails from my students within the day — or sooner, if practical — because I believe it’s important to show students that you care about their learning experience and progress. This isn’t always doable, depending on class size, but prioritize your students needs and respond as quickly as possible.
(9) Remain physically active
Over the first few weeks of online teaching, I felt lonely or irritable. I was accustomed to the interactions with students, and the social camaraderie of my office. To cope, I make sure to exercise regularly. Others in China and Italy have developed much more creative coping mechanisms during their weeks in quarantine. Those of us free to move around in our hometowns must act responsibly, but we don’t want to cloister ourselves and live in a world of irrational fear.
(10) Rely on your teaching assistant or office staff
Teaching remotely requires more work than teaching in the classroom. It requires more coordination, communication and logistical planning than normal courses, and it can be challenging to keep up. Empower your teaching assistant or office staff to remind students of upcoming assignments, guest lectures and schedule changes, and always remember to say “thank you” to the staff that helps you.
None of us are in this alone. Amherst College President Biddy Martin was speaking for me when she informed her students and staff on March 9 of a temporary shift to online education.
“It will be hard to give up, even temporarily, the close colloquy and individual attention that defines Amherst College,” she wrote, “but our faculty and staff will make this change rewarding in its own way, and we will have acted in one another’s best interests.”
Rick Dunham is co-director of the Global Business Journalism program and a visiting professor of journalism at Tsinghua University in Beijing. A Washington reporter for 29 years and former president of the National Press Club, he is author of the new journalism textbook “Multimedia Reporting” (Springer, 2019).
In early January, the first genome sequence of Sars-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — was released under the moniker “Wuhan-1”. This string of 30,000 letters (the A, T, C and Gs of the genetic code) marked day one in the race to understand the genetics of this newly discovered coronavirus. Now, a further 100,000 coronavirus genomes sampled from COVID-19 patients in over 100 countries have joined Wuhan-1. Geneticists around the world are mining the data for answers. Where did Sars-CoV-2 come from? When did it start infecting humans? How is the virus mutating — and does it matter? Sars-CoV-2 genomics, much like the virus itself, went big and went global.
The term mutation tends to conjure up images of dangerous new viruses with enhanced abilities sweeping across the planet. And while mutations constantly emerge and sometimes sweep — early mutations in Sars-CoV-2 have made their way around the world as the virus spread almost unnoticed — mutations are a perfectly natural part of any organism, including viruses. The vast majority have no impact on a virus’s ability to transmit or cause disease.
A mutation just means a difference; a letter change in the genome. While the Sars-CoV-2 population was genetically essentially invariant when it jumped into its first human host in late 2019, over 13,000 of these changes are now found in the 100,000 Sars-CoV-2 sequenced to date. Yet any two viruses from any two patients anywhere in the world differ on average by only ten letters. This is a tiny fraction of the total 30,000 characters in the virus’s genetic code and means that all Sars-CoV-2 in circulation can be considered part of a single clonal lineage.
Slowly mutating
It will take some time for the virus to acquire substantial genetic diversity. Sars-CoV-2 mutates fairly slowly for a virus, with any lineage acquiring a couple of changes every month; two to six-fold lower than the number of mutations acquired by influenza viruses over the same period.
Still, mutations are the bedrock on which natural selection can act. Most commonly mutations will render a virus non-functional or have no effect whatsoever. Yet the potential for mutations to affect transmissibility of Sars-CoV-2 in its new human hosts exists. As a result, there have been intense efforts to determine which, if any, of the mutations identifiable since the first Sars-CoV-2 genome was sequenced in Wuhan may significantly alter viral function.
An infamous mutation in this context is an amino acid change in the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein, the protein that gives coronaviruses their characteristic crown-like projections and allows it to attach to host cells. This single character change in the viral genome — termed D614G — has been shown to increase virus infectivity in cells grown in the lab, though with no measurable impact on disease severity. Although this mutation is also near systematically found with three other mutations, and all four are now found in about 80% of sequenced Sars-CoV-2 making it the most frequent set of mutations in circulation.
The challenge with D614G, as with other mutations, is disentangling whether they have risen in frequency because they happened to be present in viruses responsible for seeding early successful outbreaks, or whether they truly confer an advantage to their carriers. While genomics work on a UK dataset suggests a subtle role of D614G in increasing the growth rate of lineages carrying it, our own work could find no measurable impact on transmission.
Simply carried along
D614G is not the only mutation found at high frequency. A string of three mutations in the protein shell of Sars-CoV-2 are also increasingly appearing in sequencing data and are now found in a third of viruses. A single change at position 57 of the Orf3a protein, a known immunogenic region, occurs in a quarter. Other mutations exist in the spike protein while myriad others seem induced by the activity of our own immune response. At the same time, there remains no consensus that these, or any others, are significantly changing virus transmissibility or virulence. Most mutations are simply carried along as Sars-CoV-2 continues to successfully spread.
But replacements are not the only small edits that may affect Sars-CoV-2. Deletions in the Sars-CoV-2 accessory genes Orf7b/Orf8 have been shown to reduce the virulence of Sars-CoV-2, potentially eliciting milder infections in patients. A similar deletion may have behaved in the same way in Sars-CoV-1, the related coronavirus responsible for the Sars outbreak in 2002-04. Progression towards a less virulent Sars-CoV-2 would be welcome news, though deletions in Orf8 have been present from the early days of the pandemic and do not seem to be increasing in frequency.
While adaptive changes may yet occur, all the available data at this stage suggests we’re facing the same virus since the start of the pandemic. Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, was right to pour cold water on the idea that the virus has mutated into something milder than the one that caused the UK to impose a lockdown in March. Possible decreases in symptom severity seen over the summer are probably a result of younger people being infected, containment measures (such as social distancing) and improved treatment rather than changes in the virus itself. However, while Sars-CoV-2 has not significantly changed to date, we continue to expand our tools to track and trace its evolution, ready to keep pace.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
