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The Herald Scotland
12-07-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Scottish Greens at the crossroads – principle or pragmatism?
Fergus Ewing, the former SNP Minister, previously dismissed them as 'wine-bar revolutionaries'. To each and every taunt, Green politicians tend to respond with a gentle, faintly supercilious smile. Read More: In truth, the most fervent advocates of Greenery can occasionally seem a mite smug. Like religious adherents, they can sometimes give the impression that their path is the way to truth, while others are self-deluded. Only very occasionally, mind. And they mean well. They genuinely believe, as they set out in their 2024 election manifesto, that 'we are hurtling towards climate hell.' Such a conclusion tends to lessen the scope for nuanced politics. But, alongside that, there is also an intriguing conundrum confronting the Scottish Greens right now as they elect their next leaders and contemplate the pending Holyrood elections. Are they content to be, principally, a party of voluble protest? Or is there pragmatism too – an opportunity to cut deals with other parties, such as the SNP or Labour, in pursuit of interim Green objectives? As The Herald has ably chronicled, there are those in the party who argue that the Greens must present a fully radical agenda, who distrust Holyrood compromise, including the Bute House pact previously struck by the retiring leadership. Equally, though, there are prominent Greens who lampoon such talk as 'heroic Bolshevik insurgency' – which achieves precisely nothing for the people of Scotland. Politics is frequently a question of balancing principle, pragmatism and power. Just ask those Labour MPs who found it impossible to back their leader's demands for welfare cuts. Again, commonly, that balance becomes trickier as a party gains more salience. It is relatively easy to be pure of thought when what you say and do is immaterial. That tends to change when there is the prospect that your contribution could alter Parliamentary arithmetic, could advance or thwart legislation, could sustain or oust a government. Then you have to choose. To compromise. You have to acknowledge that you cannot implement every line of your manifesto. Not least because the people did not vote for you in sufficient numbers. Be clear. The Greens will not abandon principle. They will still, on occasion, sport that knowing smile. But perhaps they may once more seek a mandate to enter negotiations with others. Is that feasible? Are the Greens not burned by Humza Yousaf's abrupt decision as First Minister to end the Bute House pact and kick them out of government? Seems not. One senior source dismissed the notion that they were 'nursing some raw fury at the SNP.' I was told that there is a good 'transactional' relationship with Team Swinney, as evidenced by the negotiations over the Scottish Government budget. The Greens know that John Swinney does not share their overall outlook. For example, he believes firmly in pursuing GDP economic growth while they do not, insisting that was excluded from the Bute House deal. First Minister John Swinney (Image: PA) And, yes, perhaps the relationship with Nicola Sturgeon was deeper. She is arguably closer to the Green perspective. After all, in a lecture, she previously set out the concept of assessing 'well-being', rather than simply economic wealth. But it seems the Greens could still work with John Swinney, where necessary. There is, I was told, 'sufficient mutual trust and respect.' There could also be a deal with Labour, arithmetically. But core Labour policies might be problematic – not least their eager advocacy of nuclear power. For now, the SNP seem more likely partners. After all, both parties support Scottish independence. Albeit with differing degrees of vigour. Frankly, I do not believe that Green politicians get up in the morning with the first thought that they must end the Union. Their waking focus is on the environment and climate change. Still, the Greens insist that they back independence, placing it in the context of those environmental aims. They say that an independent Scotland would be better placed to alter energy policy and tackle the climate crisis. And there is another thought lurking at the back of Green minds. They note that John Swinney has faced a degree of internal SNP criticism from those who believe he is not sufficiently fervent in pursuing independence. One source suggested to me that this might present an opportunity for the Greens to highlight their independence credentials. Frankly, to prise votes from the SNP. However, as with Mr Swinney, it seems the Greens want to get away from discourse over the independence process. To build support instead for the proclaimed advantages of the notion. Again, though, the Greens will not shed their iconoclastic image. They will continue to position themselves as challenging the wealthy establishment. An opportunity to do that presents itself with President Trump's possible Scottish visit. Many leading politicians will be torn between mounting protests and arguing Scotland's interests, if given a chance. No such dilemma confronts the Greens – who will be firmly behind the barricades. But, still, there is the lure of pragmatism. I expect the Greens to enter the next Holyrood elections with a litany of claimed achievements and a taste of what more could be feasible, if they are granted influence. Always a degree of grandiloquence on the climate. But a focus on cutting costs for working families. Rent controls, free bus travel for young people, secured by the Greens in partnership with the SNP. This leadership election will determine who is primarily making that case. Patrick Harvie is standing down as co-convener. Lorna Slater is seeking re-election. As I write, MSPs Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay are also in the frame. Others may emerge. En passant, I should note that the winners will not necessarily be one woman, one man, as in the past. That reflects revised equality guidance. But political balance will still be at the core of this contest. What direction will the Scottish Greens pursue? And could it lead them back to shared power at Holyrood? Brian Taylor is a former political editor for BBC Scotland and a columnist for The Herald. He cherishes his family, the theatre – and Dundee United FC
The Hindu
30-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
From The Hindu, July 1, 1925: Bolsheviks and India
London, June 29: Colonel Sir Walter De Frece asked whether the Government of India had recently received any indication of Bolshevik agitation in India or on the Frontier. Earl Winterton replied he was not quite sure what Sir Walter De Frece meant by Bolshevik agitation. Attempts at Bolshevik propaganda in India and the Frontier were continuous and openly advocated by Communist leaders in Russia.
Spectator
30-06-2025
- Business
- Spectator
Will Putin really reign in Russia's defence spending?
At the very time when those warmongering Nato nations are pledging to raise their defence spending substantially, that doveish peacenik Vladimir Putin is promising to reduce his. It's hard to know which of these two commitments is less plausible, but those anticipating the cranking down of the Russian war economy any time soon are going to have to wait rather longer. At the recent St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Putin said that: We are planning to reduce defence spending. For next year and the year after that and so on – for the next three years – we are planning to do so, although there is not yet a final agreement between the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development, but overall everyone is thinking in that direction. The real risk for Putin is of prolonged economic decline, recession and stagflation In part, this was a response to the decision at last week's Nato summit to commit alliance members to a planned 5 per cent spend on defence. Of course, this is only a target and – just as not all members hit the previous 2 per cent figure – most will only slowly, if ever, reach this level. Spain, for example, has incurred the wrath of Donald Trump by already opting out, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez saying that 2.1 per cent is 'sufficient and realistic'. Besides, Nato's new target is not really 5 per cent, but rather 3.5 per cent on core defence spending and 1.5 per cent on related line items. As this can include everything from Ukraine aid to fixing transport infrastructure (wouldn't it be wonderful if Britain's potholes could be filled in the name of defence as a result?), it is essentially meaningless. Nonetheless, some Russian propaganda has been juxtaposing the Nato decision with Putin's words to present him as the dove, especially to the Global South, which was something of a focus of the increasingly-marginal SPIEF. More important, though, have been the warning signs within the Russian economy. Although certainly no Communist, Putin has often held an almost Bolshevik line on the economy: that somehow market forces ought to be able to be made to bend to indomitable political will. This works no better in the mid 2020s than it did in the late 1910s. Even technocrats, generally excluded from Putin's innermost circle and expected to shut up and get on with keeping the engines of the ship of state turning, have begun breaking cover. Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov warned that Russia was already 'on the verge' of economic recession, while Elvira Nabiullina, the highly capable governor of the Central Bank, made it clear that previous 4 per cent economic growth reflected not just defence spending but the take-up of idle industrial capacity and that it would not continue. Of late, Nabiullina has come under growing political attack from the hawks for her 'pessimism', but now hers is no longer an isolated voice of caution. Alexander Shokhin, chair of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, has frankly admitted that many companies are on the verge of default. Even the oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, one of Putin's closest childhood friends, has obliquely criticised the impact of the war and sanctions as businesses struggle with the high interest rates necessitated by the need to control inflation. Putin has tried to dispel this talk with his usual mix of confidence and implied threat: 'Some specialists and experts are pointing to the risks of stagnation or even a recession. This, of course, must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances.' Nonetheless, while it is questionable whether the defence budget is likely to be reduced at all while the war in Ukraine still wages – and even after, it will by necessity remain high as Russia rebuilds its ravaged armed forces – his words at SPIEF do suggest a belated awareness that there are serious economic risks and long-term consequences. These risks and consequences are not, though, enough in and of themselves to force Putin to end the war. When Russia is doing well in the war, the call from Kyiv and its Western supporters is for more sanctions to turn the tide; when it is doing badly, it is for more sanctions to finish the job. The truth of the matter is that while sanctions are working in imposing extra costs on the Russian war economy, neither they, nor the impact of the conflict, are going to 'crash' the system. The real risk for Putin is of prolonged economic decline, recession and stagflation. The challenge is that this will force Putin to make the hard guns versus butter decisions he has so far largely dodged. Of course, he will choose guns, and this runs the risk of deepening public and elite discontent. The economic technocrats, after all, are not the only ones who are sounding warnings – those in law enforcement are too. Interior Minister Kolokoltsev, a career police officer, is admitting that his force is now heavily understrength. Prosecutor General Krasnov, who made his reputation as a skilled investigator, is reporting that corruption cases have risen by 25 per cent since the same quarter last year. These are no dissidents, but insiders trying to warn the monarch of stresses on the system. Putin may at least be hearing them, but considering that he still seems committed to his war, can he offer more than empty promises in return?
The Wire
30-06-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Why Normal Finkelstein's Book Still Raises the Israeli and US States' Hackles
A devastating critique of how the memory of the Nazi genocide has been brazenly abused, 'The Holocaust Industry' is a meticulously researched book that detractors find easier to excoriate than refute. Norman Finkelstein. On June 14, the day after Israel launched murderous – and completely unprovoked – airstrikes on Iran, the New York Times ran an editorial with this headline: 'Anti-Semitism is an Urgent Problem. Too many People are making Excuses.' Typically, the NYT handles its messaging somewhat more adroitly, making a great show of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. But this was one of those occasions when you couldn't help showing your hand. After all, a 'besieged', 'existentially threatened' Israel couldn't be left to its own, poor devices – and the NYT knew it had to rally to Israel's defence. Hence the invocation of the escalating danger of anti-Semitism at the precise moment when the Jewish state of Israel was about to plunge West Asia into an all-out war. Recall how, when Hitler's Sixth Army was stopped in its tracks near what was then Stalingrad, the Fuehrer cried out against the 'Bolshevik invaders'? The great NYT was only taking a page out of the venerable Nazi playbook here. It was the same playbook that the newspaper had turned to when it nonchalantly ran its first notice (August 6, 2000) on the Norman Finkelstein monograph entitled The Holocaust Industry. 'There is…something indecent about it,' the purported review said, 'something juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid.' Elsewhere, it talks passionately about 'the warping of intelligence' and the 'perversion of moral indignation' that supposedly saturates the book's pages, and upbraids its 'shrill hyperbole' and 'indifference to historical facts'. But, incredibly, nowhere does this reviewer identify the aspects of Finkelstein's presentation that he finds flawed, indeed reprehensible, let alone refute them. It looks as though the book under review was so trashy that it merited no real review. The question is moot: why then did the NYT commission the review in the first place? The answer is not far to seek. The NYT could not fail to review – in effect, excoriate – the book precisely because Finkelstein so determinedly lifts the veil on the ideological and financial skulduggery rife in (what the book calls) the 'Holocaust industry', an enterprise of which the great American liberal media (NYT included) are spirited cheerleaders. Probably beneficiaries, too. But the Holocaust industry found its votaries elsewhere as well, notably among English liberals. Thus The Guardian 's notice of July 14, 2000 rages about the book reading 'like a rant, with splenetic attacks on individuals, many of them (Holocaust) survivors, and vast generalisations about the whole of world Jewry'. Nowhere does the reviewer, Jonathan Freedland, point to even one of the 'vast generalisations', much less the 'rants', he claims the book is crawling with. For good measure, he titles his essay 'An Enemy of the People', and goes on to close it with this staggering malediction: "Finkelstein sees the Jews as either villains or victims – and that. I fear, takes him closer to the people who created the Holocaust than to those who suffered in it." Extraordinary, isn't it, how Finkelstein, both of whose parents were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz (and most other members of whose extended family were liquidated by the Nazis), so effortlessly transmutes, in the hands of the 'liberal' commentator, into a Nazi, 'an enemy of the (Jewish) people'? And how the reviewer doesn't even condescend to tell the reader how Finkelstein earned the Nazi moniker? So what is it about the book that gets the NYT 's goat, and The Guardian 's? A look at Finkelstein's central thesis, best presented in his own words, excerpted here from his Introduction to The Holocaust Industry, provides the answer: "…..' The Holocaust'is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust. Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. The Holocaust is not an arbitrary but rather an internally coherent construct. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, the Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood – in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified. Those enjoying this immunity, I might add, have not escaped the moral corruptions that attend it… (Emphasis added)" For a book that was published in the US in the year 2000, such a theme was as counter-intuitive as it was incendiary. Indeed, for many prominent Jewish organisations in the US (like the Jewish Defence League) and elsewhere, and their backers in the US and Israel, it was maddeningly provocative. Only a Holocaust denier, mainstream American political (and even much of academic) opinion affirmed, could peddle such an obnoxious lie. Even before this book, Finkelstein had already been identified by the US's powerful Israel lobby as a 'self-hating Jew': his books Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict; The Rise and Fall of Palestine:A Personal Account of the Intifada Years; and, perhaps most importantly, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth had so irked many major Jewish groups that he was often spoken of in the most degrading terms – 'Stinky Finky' and 'a sick puppy' being among the more imaginative ones. Finkelstein has a PhD in political science from Princeton and his work has been praised for its brilliance and intellectual rigour by such stalwarts as Raul Hilberg, Noam Chomsky, Avi Shlaim and Sara Roy. He has held faculty positions at Rutgers University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University and DePaul University – but no institution agreed to give him a tenured position, no doubt because of his political convictions, which he never made a secret of, and his unrelenting criticism of Israel's hostility to Palestinians and a potential Palestinian state. Raul Hilberg, the doyen of Holocaust studies, was a Republican whose worldview differed vastly from Finkelstein's, but this didn't stop Hilberg from paying this moving tribute to the much younger radical scholar: "Finkelstein's place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed – albeit, it so seems, at great cost." The Holocaust Industry grew out of Finkelstein's review, for the London Review of Books, of Peter Novick's important 1999 book The Holocaust in American Life which, among other things, examined how the Holocaust began to powerfully exercise the American imagination from the late 1960s onwards though it had had little traction in the US until then. Finkelstein broadly agrees with and elaborates on Novick's assessment, but points to its limitations as well: unlike Novick, he believes that the Holocaust came to acquire primacy in the American cultural discourse not through a fortuitous set of circumstances but because it was a political project that the American elite found handy for furthering its 'political and class interests'. The Holocaust Industry builds Finkelstein's case assiduously, working relentlessly through contemporary and recent historical records, even cultural minutiae, to make that case iron-clad. To a polemical book like this, a reader can react in only two radically different ways: by agreeing with it in large measure, or (when there's a preconceived bias against the subject) by denouncing it wholesale. Western liberal media couldn't but have bristled at the point Finkelstein was making here. The 224-page book (2003 edition) comprises three chapters and two separate postscripts to the book's two editions. Chapter 1 – 'Capitalising the Holocaust' – traces the path taken by the champions of 'The Holocaust' narrative to try and transfigure the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews into an utterly unique, wholly-incomprehensible, near-mystical phenomenon which not only cannot but also mustn't be compared with anything that came before it or can ever come after. It then shows how this mystique helps sanctify the existence of the Israeli state and legitimises Israel's every action – however sordid or base – against Palestinians and Israel's critics. The chapter also demonstrates how, in its anxiety to fully assimilate itself, the Jewish community in the US studiously kept its distance from Israel for as long as the US government was lukewarm to the Jewish state, but embraced Israel wholeheartedly once it became clear that Israel was emerging as a valuable strategic asset for the US in West Asia. Chapter 1 also addresses the puzzle of why the Nazi holocaust engaged so little popular attention in the US in the immediate post-Second World War years. Cold War priorities overrode every other American concern then, pushing de-Nazification to the backburner, coopting prominent ex-Nazis to the Cold War enterprise, and making sure (West) Germany felt welcome in the 'common cause' against the Soviet Union. The Eichmann trial of 1961 brought the Nazi holocaust to the ordinary American, and Israel had necessarily to foreground the 'Holocaust experience' so that Eichmann's abduction from Argentina wouldn't attract adverse scrutiny. The Six-Day War of 1967 alerted the US to Israel's strengths and its potential as a regional asset, while the Yom Kippur War of 1973 both demonstrated the limits to that potential and warranted a full-throated invocation of the danger of a repeat Holocaust by highlighting the (supposed) threats to Israel's very existence. From then on, as the US and Israel steadily came ever closer to each other, the Holocaust came to be front and centre of the Jewish sensibility both in Israel and the US. And, for the American elite, the Holocaust became both a byword for the ultimate evil and a handy whip with which to scourge all criticism of the state of Israel. Chapter 2 – Hoaxers, Hucksters, and History – examines how the memory of the Jewish suffering in the Nazi holocaust and its purported uniqueness drive a cringe-worthy crop of 'literary' and pseudo-scholarly output that is egregiously false and perfidious. Finkelstein cites three books in particular. One is Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which perversely argues that all of German society had always been so viscerally anti-Semitic that the Jewish genocide had only been waiting to happen. The other two works – Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird and Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments – masqueraded as camp survivor memoirs until both of them were exposed as elaborate hoaxes with no connection to real events. Both these frauds, however, earned glowing praise from American Jewish organisations, prominent Jewish intellectuals, as well as mainstream liberal media, and were touted as 'classic Holocaust literature'. Both books became best-sellers, and also won awards. Indeed,even after Kosinski's hoax had been called, the NYT stoutly defended him, alleging that he had been the victim of a Communist plot, no less. As for the Wilkomirski book, no less a man than Israel Gutman, director of Israel's Yad Vashem, argued with a straight face that 'it's not so important' whether the book was a fake, because, clearly, Wilkomirski was 'someone who lives the story very deeply in his soul. The pain is authentic…' This, despite the fact that Wilkomirski turned out to be not even Jewish! Chapter 3 – 'The Double Shakedown' – provides a detailed account of what Finkelstein suggests was nothing short of a massive financial scam. The perpetrators were a group of combative US-based Jewish organisations led by the World Jewish Congress, aided and abetted by the Clinton administration and the US federal judiciary. The victims were a host of Swiss banks who were accused – unfairly, in large measure, as proved later – of concealing, and indeed expropriating, deposits made into Swiss banks by European Jews during the Hitler years. The Volcker Commission, headed by a former chair of the US Federal Reserve and comprising representatives of the Jewish groups and the Swiss banks, painstakingly worked for three years, and identified dormant Jewish deposit accounts holding some 36 million Swiss Francs (or $55 million) in 1999. But, much before the commission submitted its report, class-action lawsuits were filed in a US federal court against the banks, alleging serious sharp practices and opacity. Dutifully, the Clinton administration mounted humongous diplomatic and economic pressure on the Swiss government, obliging the banks to agree to an out-of-court settlement of $1.2 billion. And this was a double swindle because most of the settlement monies never reached the survivors, but were diverted to law firms, consultants, politicians, Holocaust organisations and industry elites. Finkelstein calls it 'an outright extortion racket'' and quotes Raul Hilberg's assessment that the Holocaust industry conjured up 'phenomenal numbers' of survivors and then 'blackmailed' the Swiss banks into submission. In much the same manner, German banks were also ripped off, and again 'only the tiniest fraction' of the proceeds were paid out to survivors, in what Finkelstein dubs 'Monte Carlo casino'-worthy shenanigans. Curiously, the World Jewish Congress never joined issue with the US government on such reparations, though Finkelsten adduces significant evidence that US banks were big beneficiaries of Jewish wealth during the Nazi holocaust. How does the 'Holocaust industry' minister to the political and class interests of the American Jewish elites? Finkelstein persuasively argues that this is achieved by branding all serious opposition to their neo-conservatism as essentially disrespectful to the Holocaust, and hence anti-Semitic. With the American Jewry having moved decidedly to the right of US politics, this extreme sensitivity (real or pretended) to the Holocaust's memory at times helps deflect even genuine criticism of US state policy by characterising such criticism as potentially anti-Semitic. Anjan Basu can be reached at basuanjan52@ The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
Euronews
29-06-2025
- General
- Euronews
Polluting shipwrecks a ticking timebombs at the bottom of our oceans
ADVERTISEMENT In December 1918, the HMS Cassandra was headed towards Tallinn to support Estonian efforts to break away from Bolshevik rule at the end of World War I. She hit a mine and sank off the island of Saaremaa. Most of her 400 crew survived, but 11 went down with the cruiser. Around 100 metres deep, the site of the wreck of the Royal Navy ship was only discovered in 2010. Inside it, a hidden environmental time bomb in the form of oil. Matt Skelhorn, who is currently on board a ship surveying the HMS Cassandra, says it is 'exceptionally preserved', like many others in the Baltic. 'It is certainly in better condition than most of the wrecks we encounter in British waters,' adds the head of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) Wreck Management Programme at its Salvage and Marine Operations team (SALMO), Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S). 'This poses an interesting challenge.' The wreck is decaying at a slow rate, so it isn't likely to collapse or cause a catastrophic spill anytime soon. But its unusually good condition also means that large amounts of oil are more likely to have remained on board than in heavily degraded wrecks found elsewhere in the world. HMS Cassandra is already leaking small amounts, and eventually, what is still on board will be released. 'As far as we're aware, HMS Cassandra has not thus far been at risk of catastrophically leaking. The aim of this survey is to ascertain what state the wreck is in, which will inform how we manage her moving forwards,' says Harriet Rushton, DE&S SALMO's wreck environmental manager. A toxic remnant of 20th century conflicts The team are hoping that what they learn from surveying the wreck will help shape how they manage potential risks in the future for the HMS Cassandra. Working with the Estonian government, their aim is to create a proactive management plan, preventing leaks and the need to clean up a catastrophic oil spill in the first place. It is an approach experts say could serve as a blueprint for nations looking to tackle what are known as potentially polluting wrecks (PPWs). These wrecks contain a cargo of fuel or their own fuel that has the potential to cause environmental damage if it leaks or there is a catastrophic release. Scattered from the Baltic Sea to the South Asia-Pacific, some are already leaking, threatening marine ecosystems, fisheries, and nearby communities. An estimated 8,500 PPWs lie beneath the waves, most dating back to World War I and II. Limited data means the actual number is likely much higher. After 80 to 110 years, Project Tangaroa warns that they are all becoming increasingly unstable. This global community of experts, coordinated by Lloyd's Register Foundation, The Ocean Foundation and Waves Group, issued an urgent call to action to address this toxic global legacy of conflict at the UN Oceans Conference (UNOC3) in Nice earlier this month. They have already been vital in connecting the UK and Estonian governments to deal with HMS Cassandra and are hoping to do the same for other governments. 'The solution to basically every issue and every point we raise is collaboration,' says Lydia Woolley, Project Tangaroa's programme manager at the Lloyd's Register Foundation. A looming climate threat There's another layer to this urgency that is being exacerbated by human activity. Sitting at the bottom of our oceans, these wrecks have been gradually corroding over decades. It's natural for materials to deteriorate as a result of prolonged immersion in water. But the rate at which wrecks have been breaking down has started to accelerate. Rising ocean temperatures and the shifting acidity of the water - both a direct consequence of climate change - are to blame. Extreme weather events like typhoons and storm surges, also made more frequent and more intense by climate change, put added stress on these already weakened structures. 'These climate-driven changes, combined with growing ocean industrialisation, bottom trawling, and emerging threats like deep-sea mining, significantly heighten the risks associated with PPWs,' says Woolley. The effects of human activity are shortening the already precarious fuse on these ticking environmental time bombs. Data, data, data: The need for international collaboration To act before a catastrophe occurs, experts and governments need detailed data. But crucial information on where wrecks lie, their condition, and what pollutants remain is patchy and often inaccessible. The UK MOD's SALMO team has been closely involved with Project Tangaroa since its inception. 'While we have a very good idea of how many ships sank in World Wars I and II and their approximate sinking locations, many of their wrecks are yet to be discovered,' says Skelhorn. 'This is particularly true of wrecks in deeper waters and in remote locations that are rarely surveyed.' Even in areas where surveying regularly takes place, many have also been misidentified, Skelhorn adds, making it hard to assess potential risks and pollutants. Assessing the consequences of pollution brings up a range of different holistic considerations, too. 'They are potentially polluting, but they're also really dynamic, like biodiverse coral reefs,' she adds. The wrecks can be great for local marine life, for fishermen or even for diving - and so the local tourism industry. They may also be the last resting places for the crew who went down with these ships. Some of them have been designated as war graves, and they have a 'cultural heritage' - a status which comes with lots of different legislation. PPWs are a 'multifaceted problem', Woolley explains, one that Project Tangaroa is hoping a better sharing of collective knowledge can solve. By making data more accessible - including digitising archives, tracking financial resources, harnessing resources from research vessels and better modelling of potential spills - it will be easier to take on this toxic legacy. In the roughly 18 months since the initiative was first proposed, Woolley says there have already been 'loads of examples' where they have helped the right people to connect - the Estonian and UK governments are just one among many. Navigating 'loopholes' and legacies So, who exactly is responsible for cleaning up these wrecks? Right now, there's 'kind of a loophole' in the framework that would dictate that, Woolley says. 'Currently, the majority of arrangements for oil spill management have been designed to provide emergency response to contemporary incidents that involve privately owned and operated vessels – a scenario that is fundamentally different to the challenge posed by PPWs,' she explains. 'Several arrangements also explicitly exclude legacy wrecks and casualties of war from their remit.' Some protocols are in place, like the 2007 International Maritime Organisation's Wreck Removal Convention, which sets out an international legal framework for the removal of wrecks hazardous to the marine environment, and the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund, a global compensation system set up to provide financial reparations for oil pollution damage. But these only impose obligations and liabilities for oil spills from wrecks that happened after they came into force. They also only apply to privately-owned ships, not necessarily the wrecks of state-owned ships. 'Another challenge is sovereign immunity,' Woolley adds. 'The flag states of sunken state vessels, such as the US, Germany, Japan and the UK, have stated that their sunken craft are presumed to remain owned by them, unless expressly abandoned. 'As such, these PPWs are subject to sovereign immunity, meaning the flag states cannot be legally compelled to act, and intervention cannot take place without their consent.' This means flag state cooperation is critical in the management of these wrecks, and right now it is largely dependent on goodwill, a sense of moral responsibility or overarching geopolitical factors. Some states have taken proactive action to figure out the risks from PPWs in their own waters and sometimes in other countries. But many countries with high numbers of wrecks in their oceans don't have the resources or finances to do this, let alone develop management plans to mitigate this risk. They often depend on flag states to react on a case-by-case basis to emerging dangers from each individual wreck. Though some existing resources could be applied to spills from PPWs, it would likely involve lengthy negotiations about funding, leaving coastal countries even more vulnerable. 'If you're trying to figure out who's responsible for months before you can do any kind of remediation, I mean that's catastrophic,' Woolley says. 'Something, maybe potentially quite small, has escalated into something big because of not being able to respond.' None of this can happen without an established international legal framework. 'While action has been taken on some individual wrecks – typically in response to an identified oil leak or request for interventions – the proactive, systematic approach needed to tackle this problem at scale remains lacking,' she explains. Seven key calls to action At UNOC3, Project Tangaroa published 'The Malta Manifesto' in a bid to encourage governments to act decisively before the situation reaches breaking point. The coalition wants to transform the situation before the 100th anniversary of World War II in 2039. And the Manifesto outlines a framework to tackle the problem in this timeframe, advocating for a precautionary approach and global cooperation on long-term solutions. In it are seven key calls to action - covering financing, standards, regional and national planning, innovation, training and data sharing - aimed at empowering governments, industry, researchers and civil society globally to address the challenge. One of its key recommendations is the establishment of an international PPW Finance Task Force to drive international cooperation and innovative financing solutions. 'Our message is not fatalistic – it is one of urgent encouragement,' Woolley concludes. 'Thanks to the work of the global community of experts brought together by Project Tangaroa, we already know how to manage the risks posed by these wrecks – but we need the resources to put this knowledge to use at the required scale.'
