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Democracy & Governance

Adelaide, Australia: Water-Wise Greening in a Drying South

Adelaide is the driest capital city in the driest inhabited continent on Earth, and it has known this about itself for long enough to have developed some genuinely instructive responses. Its investment in recycled water infrastructure, its early and serious engagement with urban heat as a public health emergency, and its stewardship of one of the great metropolitan parkland systems in the Southern Hemisphere all represent hard-won lessons rather than inherited advantages. Whether those lessons are being applied at the speed and scale that a warming Mediterranean climate demands is a more complicated question — and one the city is still in the process of honestly answering

The Trainable Heart: Buddhism and the Discipline of Kindness

Buddhism treats kindness as something you practise rather than something that visits you. On mettā as a trainable skill, Buddhaghosa's near enemies, and what happens when the most developed doctrine of loving-kindness in the world is set beside its own record

The Mountain Has a Name: Nepal’s Rasuwa Flood Disaster, One Month On

The satellites have named the mountain — the same massif that destroyed Langtang village in 2015. K.J. Parker sorts a month of evidence into fact, inference, contested and speculation, states the Langtang hypothesis, and sets out how it could actually be tested

Melbourne, Australia: The Liveable City Under Heat Stress

Melbourne's liveability rankings measure the compact, tram-served inner city. They do not measure Tarneit on a 45-degree day. On 27 January 2026 the western suburbs ran three degrees hotter than the centre — and that gap, not the weather, is the story of a world-class urban forest, a sprawling metropolis, falling reservoirs and two cities under one name.

Ecocide: Criminalizing the Destruction of Our Shared Home

Criminalizing ecocide: Tracing its evolution, real-world impact, and legal strategies to establish it as an international crime against nature and humanity.

Mark Twain: The American Voice of Wit and Wisdom

Listen to our short audio summary of the article below to get a feel for the content. I have always enjoyed the work of Mark...

Democracy in the Balance: A 21st-Century Audit

This is the second of my essays on the topic of democracy, the parlous state of which I have been researching over recent months...

A Gathering Storm for Global Freedom: Democracy Under Threat

For many of us these these concerning times as it seems democratic norms and values are under increasing threat. The data bears this out...

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