Monthly Archives: July 2020

Around the world, 2020 has emerged as one of the most challenging years in many of our lifetimes. In six months, the world has endured multiple challenges, including a pandemic that has spurred a global economic crisis. As societies reopen, its apparent that the economy in July will not be what it was in January. Increasingly, one of the key steps needed to foster a safe and successful economic recovery is expanded access to the digital skills needed to fill new jobs. And one of the keys to a genuinely inclusive recovery are programs to provide easier access to digital skills for people hardest hit by job losses, including those with lower incomes, women, and underrepresented minorities.

To help address this need, today Microsoft is launching a global skills initiative aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of the year. This initiative will bring together every part of our company, combining existing and new resources from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft. It will be grounded in three areas of activity:

(1) The use of data to identify in-demand jobs and the skills needed to fill them;

(2) Free access to learning paths and content to help people develop the skills these positions require;

(3) Low-cost certifications and free job-seeking tools to help people who develop these skills pursue new jobs.

At its heart, this is a comprehensive technology initiative that will build on data and digital technology. It starts with data on jobs and skills from the LinkedIn Economic Graph. It provides free access to content in LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, and the GitHub Learning Lab, and couples these with Microsoft Certifications and LinkedIn job seeking tools. In addition, Microsoft is backing the effort with $20 million in cash grants to help nonprofit organizations worldwide assist the people who need it most. One-quarter of this total, or $5 million, will be provided in cash grants to community-based nonprofit organizations that are led by and serve communities of color in the United States.

Our vision for skills extends beyond these immediate steps for job seekers. Employees will also need to skill and reskill through their careers, and we want to make it easier for employers to help. Our vision is a connected system of learning that helps empower everyone to pursue lifelong learning. That is why we are also announcing today that Microsoft is developing a new learning app in Microsoft Teams to help employers upskill new and existing employees. This will bring together best in class content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party training providers, and a companys own learning content and make it all available in a place where employees can easily learn in the flow of their work.

We are also pledging that we will make stronger data and analytics available to governments around the world so they can better assess local economic needs. Finally, we will use our voice to advocate for public policy innovations that we believe will advance the skilling opportunities people will need in the changed economy.

While this represents the largest skills initiative in Microsofts history, we recognize that no company can come close to closing the skills gap alone. Sustained progress will require a renewed partnership between stakeholders across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and were committed to supporting this. Following is a complete description of our thinking and plans.

The problem we need to solve

Within only a few months, COVID-19 has provoked a massive demand shock, setting off job losses that far exceed the scale of the Great Recession a decade ago. The world will need a broad economic recovery that will require in part the development of new skills among a substantial part of the global workforce.

According to Microsoft calculations, global unemployment in 2020 may reach a quarter of a billion people. It is a staggering number. The pandemic respects no border. In the United States alone, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the country may witness a 12.3 point increase (from 3.5% to 15.8%) in the unemployment rate, equating to more than 21 million newly out-of-work people. Many other countries and continents face similar challenges.

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As is often the case, the biggest brunt of this downturn is being borne by those with lower educational attainment, people with disabilities, people of color, women, younger workers, and individuals who have less formal education. The impact on communities of color in the United States is especially concerning. Just last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that the country ended the month of May with unemployment rates in the Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latino communities that were markedly higher than for white individuals.

The employment of American women has also been impacted disproportionally by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment rates among women, which has hovered with or edged below mens unemployment rates, soared to more than 16%, almost 3 percentage points higher at the April peak.

The challenges ahead reach beyond the immediate pandemic. Crises have a way of accelerating trends already in motion, and the COVID-19 pandemic has proven no exception. Our data shows that two years worth of digital transformation have been concentrated into the past two months. By one account, the final weeks of March alone witnessed as much broadband traffic growth as would be expected in a full year.

The pandemic has shined a harsh light on what was already a widening skills gap around the world a gap that will need to be closed with even greater urgency to accelerate economic recovery. This longer-term disconnect between supply and demand for skills in the labor market appears to be driven by three primary long-term factors: (1) the rapid emergence of AI-powered technologies that are propelling a new era of automation; (2) the growing need for technological acumen to compete in a changing commercial landscape; and (3) the drop-off in employer-based training investments over the past two decades. Navigating these challenges to close the skills gap will require a renewed partnership between stakeholders across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

As we look to the future, we can draw insights from recessions in the past. Although recent recessions differed in their causes, each followed a trend of shedding low-skilled jobs and gradually replacing them with less automatable roles. In the late 1960s, roles that involved repetitive tasks involving manual work made up 34% of all jobs. These have been easier to automate, and as a result these jobs have now shrunk to 26% of all jobs. By contrast, jobs involving heavy cognition and problem-solving have simultaneously risen from 22% to 34%.

This pattern is poised to repeat itself, with an added emphasis on a jobs recovery that requires an increasing focus on digital skills. There are two reasons this appears likely.

First, in the shorter-term COVID-19 will continue to lead to unprecedented reliance on digital skills. In many situations, some workers may spend several months or longer in a hybrid economy, where some will be in the workplace while others continue to work from home. The shorter-term hybrid economy is a more digital economy. With continued consumer and employee reliance on almost remote everything, we can expect digitization of the economy to continue to advance at an accelerated speed. And as companies respond to a recession by increasing efficiency, this need for digital transformation will increase even further.

Second, the economic recovery will take place amid the longer-term and already-unfolding wave of automation based on the new technologies that underpin what some have called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Over the next five years, we estimate that the global workforce can absorb around 149 million new technology-oriented jobs. Software development accounts for the largest single share of this forecast, but roles in related fields like data analysis, cyber security, and privacy protection are also poised to grow substantially.

Of course, the magnitude and mixture of job growth will vary by country, industry, and sector. Although the impact will not be distributed evenly, digital transformation will touch virtually every corner of the global workforce from food production (324,000 new jobs) to healthcare (2 million) and the automotive industry (6 million).

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All this is made more urgent because of a challenge that has been two decades in the making, namely the decline and then stagnation in employer investments in training. Employer investments in training grew substantially throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as personal computers and the internet reshaped the worlds workplaces. This trend ceased around the turn of the century, as the dot-com recession and 9/11 marked the start of a nearly decade-long decline in employer-based investment in training.

Since 2008, the downward trend in employer-paid training has given way to a decade of stagnation, both in North America and around the world notwithstanding a small spike in the wake of the Great Recession. Alarmingly, the trend of the past few years appears to be slightly negative. This contraction occurred despite the fact that the U.S. economy, which accounts for just under half of the global training market, was enjoying an unprecedented period of growth, and technological advances were beginning to reshape the modern workplace yet again.

Exacerbating the challenge is the fact that existing training is not reaching the populations who need it most. On-the-job training far outpaces distance learning and other alternative modes, limiting options for prospective employees. Perhaps more significantly, on-the-job training is more than two times as prevalent among workers who are already in higher-skilled roles, leaving those in more automatable positions even more vulnerable to displacement.

Digital technologies will be key to narrowing the divide, not only because they can expand the reach and accessibility of training, but because proficiency in these tools is in top demand. In a recent survey of American workers by Pew Research Center, for instance, 85% of respondents cited digital skills as either extremely important or very important to succeeding in todays workplace.

But technology is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. The same Pew survey also observed that 85% of respondents regarded soft skills like collaborating with others and communicating effectively as highly important. In other words, people-oriented success skills remain as essential as ever perhaps even more so given their durability at a time when technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed. Although technology companies have an important role to play in helping close the skills gap, success will take a concerted effort among employers, nonprofits, governments, and other stakeholders. The task calls for renewed partnerships and redoubled investments in skills, ensuring that training reaches the broadest group of people with the greatest needs.

A principled approach

As we have with our work to protect privacy, security, and environmental sustainability, weve concluded that the global skills challenge calls for a principled response. As a company, well base our efforts on six key elements:

What we are launching today

Todays global skills initiative is based on months of planning across Microsoft to provide meaningful help to 25 million people globally by the end of 2020. Our activities will be focused on three areas:

Several years ago, LinkedIn operationalized the worlds first Economic Graph to track workforce trends and provide a window into emerging skills gaps. The Economic Graph is a digital representation of the global economy based on more than 690 million professionals, 50 million companies, 11 million job listings, 36,000 defined skills, and 90,000 schools. In short, it is all the data on LinkedIn and shows available jobs, their required skills, and the existing skills job seekers have.

The Economic Graph also makes it possible to spot in-demand skills, emerging jobs, and global hiring rates. These insights help connect LinkedIn members to better opportunities and assist governments and organizations as they create economic opportunity for the global workforce.

As part of this new initiative, LinkedIn is sharing free, real-time labor market data and skills insights to help governments, policymakers and business leaders understand whats happening in their local labor markets: what companies are hiring, the top jobs companies are hiring for and the trending skills for those jobs. This data can be accessed using a new interactive tool at linkedin.com/workforce. Data is available for more than 180 countries and regions (150+ cities, 30+ countries). Users can search by country or region and download the data sets.

We have also used the Economic Graph as a critical planning resource for todays skills initiative, by identifying the key jobs and horizontal skills that are most widely in demand and creating learning paths for these via LinkedIn Learning. Using this data, we identified 10 jobs that are in-demand in todays economy and are well positioned to continue to grow in the future. These 10 jobs were identified as having the greatest number of job openings, have had steady growth over the past four years, pay a livable wage, and require skills that can be learned online.

Much of our skills work is targeted at providing people with the skills for these disciplines.

To help people pursue jobs in these areas, we are making LinkedInLearning pathsalignedwith each of these roles availablefree of charge through the end of March 2021. Each learning pathincludes a sequence of video content designed to help job seekersdevelop the core skills needed for each role. Each learning path is currently available in English, French, Spanish, and German.

LinkedIn Learnings library for each learning path also includes collaborative courses, all taught by industry-expert instructors, allowing individuals to move through content and demonstrate their learning with a certificate of completion. Covering a broad range of skills from entry-level digital literacy to advanced product-based skills for technology roles, these role-based learning paths provide numerous opportunities for people along a learning continuum to reskill and upskill. We believe these are the types of resources that can place in-demand roles within reach of millions of job seekers.

In addition to theseLinkedIn Learning paths, we are offering through Microsoft Learn free and in-depth technical learning content that also supports these roles. For roles that are more technical in nature, job seekers can go deeper on specific role-based Microsoft technologies with Microsoft Learn modules, gaining the most in-demand skills on widely used technologies.

We will also enable job seekers pursuing developer roles to access the GitHub Learning Lab to practice their skills. GitHub Learning Lab is a bot-based learning tool that uses repositories to teach technology, coding, Git, and GitHub via real-life, demo-based modules. This means that as job seekers engage in learning paths, they will have the opportunity to practice newly acquired skills by completing realistic projects in a personalized GitHub repository.

To provide people with easier access to the soft skills needed to pursue a new job, we are offering free access to four horizontal LinkedIn Learning paths. These are:

Finally, we are committed to developing and making available new courses and content that will focus on the skills needed to develop, deploy, and use technology in a responsible way. We recognize that issues such as privacy, security, digital safety, and the responsible application of artificial intelligence will continue to become even more important in the months and years ahead. We are committed to leading on these issues, not only for our own technologies but in assisting others to master needed skills as well.

Todays initiative also aims to help job seekersdemonstrate their skills to potential employers.This part of our initiative has multiple parts.

First, we will offer low-cost access to industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications based on exams that demonstrateproficiencyin Microsoft technologies.We are making exams for these Microsoft Certifications available at a significantly discounted fee of $15 available to those who self-attest that their employment has been impacted by COVID-19. This represents a large discount on the price of exams that typically cost more than $100. We are committed to supporting the integrity of certifications by enabling proctoring safely in an online setting that is accessible from anywhere. The $15 fee will be paid to and will enable third parties to scale to meet the potential surge in examination resources and will support the integrity of the certification by enabling proctoring via a safe, online setting that is accessible from anywhere. We will also work with governments, nonprofits, foundations, and other private sector partners if they wish to absorb this third-party cost.

Participants will have the ability to schedule an exam from September to the end of the year, and exam takers will have until March 31, 2021 to complete the exam. This will provide access to the exams that provide five fundamentals certifications and eight role-based certifications. These will include:

These exams will be available initially in whole or in part in seven languages English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese (simplified), and Korean.

We have found that these certifications are a powerful asset for job seekers and those looking to advance in an existing role. For example, in Global Knowledges 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report, more than half of IT decision-makers surveyed believe the main benefit of certified individuals is their ability to close organizational skills gaps seen in an everchanging technology environment. It also showed certifications helped make hiring easier, helping job seekers stand out. Among other things, these certifications, as well as completion of a learning path on LinkedIn Learning, can be added to an individuals LinkedIn profile.

We are also making available tools to help individuals identify and pursue potential jobs. This includes a recently developed job interview preparation-feature, powered by MSFT-AI, to prepare and practice for job interviews.It also includes a new feature we are announcing today called #OpenToWork, which enables job seekers to surface to employers the roles for which they would like to be considered.Through a simple LinkedIn profile photo frame, #OpenToWork enables job seekers to let employers and the LinkedIn network know they are actively seeking a new opportunity, indicate the type of job they are looking for, express their needs for support, and get help from the LinkedIn community to find new opportunities.

We believe the strength of these resources is their comprehensive nature. To help people find and navigate all of our offerings, we have made all of these resources accessible from a single location: opportunity.linkedin.com. A job seeker or anyone looking to develop these on-demand skills can start here and will be guided through the learning paths based on the roles in which they are interested.

In addition, Microsoft and LinkedIn will continue to provide on-ramps for people from nontraditional backgrounds to successfully transition from learning skills to landing a job. This will include the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy, or MSSA, which provides transitioning U.S. service members and veterans with technology skills.It also includes Leap, which Microsoft launched in 2015 to recruit, develop, upskill non-traditional talent, and create a connection to employability in the tech industry. And it includes REACH, which is a multi-year engineering apprenticeship program at LinkedIn.

Supporting these offerings with cash grants to nonprofits

While all these tools, training, and certifications will be available online to millions of people in multiple languages, we recognize the need to supplement them with additional services and support. Thats why we will provide $20 million in financial grants, plus technical support, to nonprofit organizations around the world.

In part this will enable nonprofits to translate these resources into additional languages and to localize and tailor the learning content. These groups will also provide and support teachers and facilitators to help learners complete learning pathways and certification, and provide connections to wrap-around supports, coaching, and mentoring. We expect these grants will enable the nonprofits to reach 5 million unemployed workers, with a focus on particularly vulnerable groups. This includes people with disabilities, people from low-income communities, and people from diverse backgrounds that are underrepresented in tech, including women and underrepresented minorities.

We are launching this initiative globally with several highly-regarded nonprofit partners, including:

Although this is a global initiative, its important to take special steps to make digital skills more accessible to communities of color in the United States. We are focusing on community-based nonprofits, which are local organizations created to address the unique needs of the people living in a community. They are often the most trusted and effective at driving positive impact. However, data has shown that there are disparities in the funding provided to community-based nonprofits serving in communities of color and led by people of color.

This needs to change. Therefore, as a part of this skills initiative, Microsoft will dedicate support to community-based nonprofit organizations working to increase skill development and economic opportunities for communities of color, especially Black and African American communities. We will provide $5 million in cash grants to community-based nonprofit organizations that are led by and serve communities of color in the United States. This summer, we will publish additional information on this opportunity and will select organizations for this funding by fall of this year. We recognize that this is but a small part of the long overdue investment needed to address historical racial inequities in our society. We look forward to partnering with communities and other like-minded individuals and organizations to use our voice and resources to advocate for change to support communities of color.

Using our voice on public policy issues

We are committed to sharing data and what we learn from this initiative with governments around the world. In addition, we will advocate for public policy innovations that we believe can help accelerate essential skills needs and opportunities. We plan to address three priorities:

One creative example comes from Canada, where workers who risk displacement in an economic downturn are encouraged to develop individual training plans ranging from upgrading skills in current jobs to preparing for promotions and even training for jobs outside the company. This Work-Sharing (WS) program helps employers and employees avoid layoffs when there is a temporary reduction in the normal level of business activity beyond the control of an employer. It provides income support to employees eligible for employment insurance benefits who work a temporarily reduced work week while their employer recovers. WS is a three-party agreement involving employers, employees and Service Canada. Employees must agree to a reduced work schedule and to share the available work for a specified time. The impacted employees are compensated with salary for participation in skills enhancement training, whether on-the-job or at off-site courses, during the days/hours missed because of participation in the WS program.

Good examples are plentiful. They include work in New Zealand, where the government has invested approximately $1 billion to make vocational training courses free for all agesover the next two years. In the United States, the Pledge to Americas Workers American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, established by the White House, is developing proposals focused on investments in learning pathways, skills-based hiring, and the modernization of education and training to accelerate reskilling and facilitate innovation in workforce development. Other examples include programs in countries such as Singapore and France to create Lifelong Learning Accounts or similar mechanisms that wouldallow individual employees, employers and,in some models,the public sector, to invest in training for individuals.

COVID-related stimulus spending creates an important opportunity to pursue these opportunities further. As the European Commission has recently recognized, a Next Generation EU recovery package should address the importance of digital skills. To improve and adapt skills, knowledge and competences, the commission will come forward with a Skills Agenda for Europe and an updated Digital Education Action Plan.

Coming next: A new learning app in Microsoft Teams

The programs we are launching today are focused on helping job seekers. We have a broader vision for skills. We believe we need a connected system of learning. Central to this vision is a recognition that employers have a vital role to play in helping their employees to skill and re-skill. We know that employers need additional tools and resources to help here. As we have talked with our customers, we have heard some key themes:

Just as companies today have a system of engagement for customers with CRM technology and a system of record with ERP, they will need a system of learning. This will need to provide a continuous feedback loop between the work, skills and learning required to succeed at the task at hand, as well as the credentials to accelerate career advancement.

To support this, we are developing and will preview a new learning app in Microsoft Teams later this year, to bring learning into the natural flow of work. People are already using Microsoft Teams for meetings, chat, calling, collaboration, and business processes, and we are planning to extend that to include learning. The Teams learning app will allow employers to integrate world-class content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, a customers own content, and other content providers all in one place, ranging from instructor-led training to shorter, micro-learning content. The app will empower managers to assign and track learning progress and enable employees to have conversations around the content while also earning certifications and recognition for their new skills. Whether a new employee is onboarding, a manager is looking to sharpen a teams skills, or a first-line worker is in the field needing immediate training, this new app will create a seamless experience for employees to learn in the flow of work.

Looking forward: A foundation for the skills and jobs of the future

As this detailed description makes clear, we are launching today the most comprehensive approach we have ever undertaken to meet the digital skilling needs of individuals and employers alike. We believe we can provide meaningful help to more than 25 million people globally in the coming months.

But in many ways, our ambitions are larger than this. For every part of Microsoft, including LinkedIn and GitHub, this marks a new beginning that will build on everything we have today and a new wave of technology innovation to come. We believe we can combine the best in technology with stronger partnerships with governments and nonprofits. Together we can better serve people, filling jobs and creating opportunities for individuals around the world. We should all aspire to turn a year that had a bleak beginning into a decade that has a bright finish. We bring a long-term determination and a commitment to do our part.

Watch the announcement event here and visit this site for more information.

*******

About LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning is an online educational platform that helps people discover and develop business, technology-related, and creative skills through expert-led course videos. With a catalogue of over 16,000 courses, and 60+ new courses released every week, LinkedIn Learning provides high-quality, relevant and up-to-date courses taught by real-world practitioners, located across the globe. Drawing on insights from millions of members, LinkedIn Learning personalizes course recommendations at scale and surfaces relevant learning content to each employee based on their connections.

About Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn is a free, interactive, hands-on training platform that helps people develop in-demand technical skills related to widely used Microsoft products and services including Azure, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics, and more.

Microsoft Learn combines short step-by-step trainings, browser-based interactive coding and scripting environments, and task-based achievements to help learners advance their technical skills and prepare for Microsoft Certifications. With millions of registered learners, Microsoft Learn offers over 225 learning paths, more than 1,000 modules, and is localized in dozens of languages. Microsoft Learn is great for individual users to advance their skills, as well as organizations that want to create curated employee training paths.

Tags: Brad Smith, education, Global skills initiative, Training

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Microsoft launches initiative to help 25 million people worldwide acquire the digital skills needed in a COVID-19 economy - Microsoft

Alberta's hurry-up corporate tax cut is less an investment in the future than a gift to the biggest current players, say experts

Premier Jason Kenney, with his neweconomic recovery plan Monday, had some words to encourage those of us who despair that too many of Albertas eggs are in one black, tarry basket. Hisgovernment has sector-specific strategies coming for forestry, tourism, aviation and more. Having shredded the former NDP governments tech firm incentive programsand some degree of sectoral confidence with itKenney promises bold, new startup incentive grants to replace them. And to finance thisnewfound bit of interventionism, Finance Minister Travis Toews casually discarded years of his United Conservative Partys deficit-hawk dogma by noting a difference between good debt and bad debtthe sort of thing his crew would pillory Rachel Notleys New Democrats for saying.

Kenney seemed most animated about his new rescue plan for his provinces recessionary economy when he was talking about his pitch to steal financial firms away from Toronto. As of Wednesday, Albertas corporate tax rate will fall to eight per cent, down three pointsfrom the current rate and 3.5 percentage points below Ontarios.

What do you think were going after? Kenney said with such a salesman-like zeal that, if you werent looking, you might imaginehe was whipping off his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves. All those banks and insurance companies down on Bay Street that are paying way more taxes, their workers are paying way more taxes, they are paying way more for rent, theyre fighting Toronto traffic

Were going to be telling them they can save money for their shareholders, for their workers, for their operations, by relocating financial and fin-tech jobs to places like downtown Calgary and downtown Edmonton.

RELATED:The end of Alberta exceptionalismwell, the part Jason Kenney never cared for

Why, Albertas premier was so convinced of his pitch that he declared firms would be irresponsible if they dont consider moving operations to Alberta.

Reach for the stars, right? That seemed to be the goofy economic-development lesson of cities from Winnipeg to Hamilton, Ont. to Tucson, Ariz. when they launched flashy bids during that Willy-Wonka-meets-corporate-welfare dash for Amazons secondary headquarters. There was a period around 2006, when Albertas oil economy was rocketing upwards so quickly, and big firms like Imperial Oil had shifted their bases west, that a few starry-eyed observers wondered whether a Big Five bank would naturally follow andgaspmaybe the whole axis of corporate Canada would come with it.

In that vein, its charming to see that optimism sparked again in a period when Albertas oil sector is at catastrophically low ebb. A few resource booms ago, being near the hard-chugging engine of the national economy may have been alluring enough to financial institutions to offset the inconvenience of being two time zones away from Bay Street and Wall Street. But now that Calgary has lost its lustre, Kenneys Discount Zone pitch smacks of trying to woo a modern tech giant with oodles of free parking.

Before COVID, with so many of Albertas corporate offices vacant, the appeal of low office rents in high-quality buildings had become a big economic development pitch. Then the pandemic shifted how the world works, making corporations rethink their need for oodles of office space. Soon Calgary may not be alone with its hollow core.

The tax cut on corporate profits, meanwhile, does make Alberta the bargain-basement place to make big money in Canada. The problem is that Kenney announced last year hed slash the rate to eight per cent by 2022hes simply moving it up a couple years. So this isnt new information for anybody in Bay Street plotting a big move of employees that would takeyears.

RELATED:Jason Kenney and the oil sands: look whos statist now

These are long-term, strategic thinkers.The minute the rate cut was announced theyd integrated it into their decisions, says Philip Bazel, research associate with the University of Calgary School of Public Policy. Kenneys team tends to dismiss criticism from the NDP that corporate tax cuts are mere plums for plutocrats, but rushing out the full tax cut all at once is a benefit for current players in Alberta, not future ones. The decision to do it right away is giving a gift to firms that have already made investments and are earning profits on those investments, says Michael Smart, a University of Toronto Economist. The common practice is to avoid that giveaway or windfall gain to existing companies by phasing in that rate reduction over time.

Why do it fast? Kenney says its to prove to investors Alberta wont back down from its tax cut plans the way the United Kingdom did recently, or Saskatchewan did four years ago, or Ontario did way back in 2012. Another possible reason: Kenney cannot double down on the oil sector as he might have in the past, so hes reaching for the familiarity of a key campaign pledge. Its a policy that was supposed to take $2.4 billion from the provincial treasury when it was phased in; there wasno immediate measure of what the all-at-once move will cost the already depleted Alberta coffers. (Meanwhile, those looking for child care or renewable energy in Kenneys recovery plan will be disappointed; he may have a newfound appreciation for deficitsbut hes still among Canadas most resolutely conservative leaders.)

Kenneys government calls it the job creation tax cut,citingpre-pandemic research predicting tens of thousands of jobs would be created by new or relocated companies, as well as existing Alberta firms with more money to spend. With a cut so deep and quick, however, Smart foresees little new job creation but a lot of Ontario-based companies booking profits in Alberta to pay lower tax ratesshades of the Quebec shuffle that occurred in the 1980s when that province slashed corporate taxes to undercut Ontario. Capital moves slowly; accountants move fast, Smart says.

RELATED:The coronavirus market crash leaves Alberta running on fumes

In the meantime, other premiers may be tempted to cut rates apace, creating a race to the bottom that nobody wins. But this is what happens when economic tides shift, and jurisdictions begin competing against each other for investments they might not otherwise get. For many years, the strength of Albertas fossil fuel-based economy allowed it to forego the economic-development competitions that other regions muckaround with.With the resource-driven Alberta advantage greatly eroded, race to the bottom could become a new provincial modus operandi.

Albertas premier flashed another big-dollar item to an anxious public Monday$10 billion in infrastructure, with echoes of the Harper governments response to the 2008 recession. But $7 billion of that was already booked in Albertas budget, and a further $1.5 billion is already pledged toward the provinces new stake in the Keystone XL pipeline, the ever-in-peril Canada-U.S. bitumen conduit. Even when diversification is Kenneys new watch-word, oil habits die hard.

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Jason Kenney reaches for economic heights with a race to the bottom - Maclean's

By Lotta Heikkonen, Forest Policy Adviser at Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF) and at Nordic Family Forestry (NSF).

Forests and forest-based industries have an important role in strengthening the low-carbon circular bioeconomy. The circular bioeconomy provides sustainable alternatives to fossil-based materials and fossil energy, helping decouple economic growth from resource depletion and environmental impact.

The overall climate benefits of forests and harvested wood products include sequestration of CO2 by forest growth thanks to sustainable forest management; the carbon storage effect of harvested circular forest-based products; the substitution effects of replacing carbon-intensive and fossil-based materials and fuels with forest-based materials. On a system level, this is the most efficient carbon emission reduction system we have today. This is why the EUs forest and forest-based sectors have crucial role to play in achieving the blocs 2050 carbon-neutrality goal.

Today, instead of just lumber and pulp, the side streams of production and chemical compounds of wood are in focus to be used as raw materials for new forest-based products. A wood-based compound called lignin is in the spotlight for developing new solutions ranging from pharmaceuticals and cosmetics to packaging and energy solutions. It is even possible to process lignin into a carbon intermediate for electrode materials used in cell phone batteries and other daily electric appliances like Stora Enso is doing at the Sunila mill in Finland.

There have been surprising end uses for new bio-based products. For example, Noireco was exploring whether their biochar could be used to replace coal in energy production when they realised that another interesting end-use for their products was soil improvement and filtering. Biochar is naturally porous and can absorb tiny particles.

What are the important values for the forest sector and society? One of the key of successes of the forest-based industry is the innovative cooperation across the value chain. Starting from the sustainable forest management to products that can be recycled or reused, the forest-based sector needs to work together to get the best value out of wood.

CEPF (Confederation of European Forest Owners) (@CEPFSecretariat) is one of four founding members of the forest-based Sector Technology Platform which has established the European research and innovation priorities of the sector towards 2030 in its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.

The reorientation towards a fossil-free, circular bio-based economy, moving away from the fossil-based economy, is indispensable. The forest-based sector actors, including European forest owners, are ready to become the most competitive, innovative and sustainable provider of net-zero carbon solutions for a climate-neutral Europe, as explained in the forest-based industry 2050 vision.

Lotta Heikkonen represents European private forest owners in EU level policy making on forest related policies. For more information about the topics raised in this article, please contact Lotta on lotta.heikkonen@mtk.fi

Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bio Market Insights editorial team and management.

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Spotlight on feedstocks: Sustainable forest management and the efficient use of wood leads to climate benefits - Bio Market Insights

By securing victory in a national vote on constitutional changes, Vladimir Putin could now remain president of Russia until 2036 if he chooses to stand again. After 20 years in power, the narrative of Russias chaotic 1990s remains core to Putins legitimacy as the leader who restored stability.

Although the decade still divides public opinion, whats not in doubt is that it was a dangerous and exciting period. The ambiguity of the 90s is summed up by the then-popular Russian word, bespredel, the title of a 1989 prison drama meaning anarchic freedom and unaccountable authority.

At the time, Russias turbulent post-Soviet transition was seen as a lurid sideshow to a stable post-cold war west. A generation later, the uncertainties of that period have a wider resonance than they did at the time.

Demise of the democrats

The 1990s began with the Soviet Unions first multiparty elections in March 1990 when Boris Yeltsin emerged as leader of Russia. It ended, punctually, on December 31, 1999, when Yeltsin resigned in favour of Putin, his designated successor.

The decade included two failed coups in 1991 and 1993, and the abolition of both the ruling Communist Party and the USSR. Massive economic dislocation occurred as Soviet economic ties were severed, a market economy was created and shock therapy accompanied by mass privatisation.

The social impact was immense. Life expectancy fell, with up to five million excess adult deaths in Russia in 1991-2001, birth rates collapsed and both of these trends were compounded by widespread crime and trafficking. These negative effects were concentrated in periods of economic crisis in 1991-94 and 1998-99.

Sharply rising inequality and the emergence of a new wealthy class, including some leading reformers, meant that the term democrat had become a term of abuse as early as 1992.

St Petersburgs reformers

My own research from that period shows how the concentration of power was a trend right from the beginning of the reforms. It was from part of the reform movement itself that the style of government associated with Putin emerged.

I arrived in St Petersburg in 1991, expecting to study the conflict between democratic and communist ideologies. Instead, I found that the conflict was between two groups of reformers those who supported strong executive rule and those in favour of representative or parliamentary rule. It was a re-match of the 19th century Russian debate between protagonists of state and society. In both cases it was the statists who won.

For advocates of strong executive rule, such as the leading reformer and mayor of St Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak under whom Putin served as deputy elected councillors were an obstacle to efficient governance.

All reformers united in opposing the attempted coup by hardline Soviets in August 1991, but from then on the split in the reform camp between the advocates of executive and representative powers grew wider. It culminated in October 1993, in a brief armed conflict between president and parliament. The parliamentary forces were mostly anti-liberal nationalists, but they were also supported by councils. Among them was the reformer-led St Petersburg council, then deep in a legal conflict with Sobchak, its former chair, over what councillors saw as his excessive concentration of power.

Yeltsin ordered his forces to fire on the parliament to quell the attempted coup. With parliament defeated, most regional and city councils across the country were dissolved and replaced by assemblies with reduced powers.

The conflict between Sobchak and his former allies continued until his death in 1999. By then his former deputy, Putin had reached the apex of executive power at national level taking many of Sobchaks St Petersburg team to form the core of his Kremlin administration.

Acting President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila offere condolences to Lyudmila Narusova, widow of Anatoly Sobchak. Photo: By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0

Power, concentrated

Concentration of power at all levels of the hierarchy meant a more intensive zero-sum struggle to win it, rather than the compromises inherent to parliamentary systems. Higher stakes meant aggressive mobilisation of media for an information war became a feature of 1990s electoral politics at regional level, following the pattern of the 1996 presidential election.

By then, the corruption associated with privatisation had made Yeltsin and the reformers unpopular and many feared the communists would return to power. The democrats had to resort to desperate measures. Every possible resource was mobilised to ensure that Yeltsin was re-elected including deals with powerful oligarchs with large media empires. The communists were defeated but the price was endemic cynicism about the democratic process.

The Yeltsin presidency remained beholden to Russias regional governors and the oligarchs. It fell to Putin to curtail the powers of these groups, campaigning in 2000 under the slogan of the dictatorship of law. That such a slogan could have popular support shows the degree to which the public had become disillusioned in the late 1990s. However, the direction towards concentration of power had been set almost a decade before Putin was elected president.

Russias reformers of the 90s largely achieved the irreversible economic change they wanted. They were less successful in creating a positive narrative for the new Russia. Reform had seemed to be based on the idea that Russia needed to learn as much as possible from the west. Over time, disillusion with this idealised view of the west grew and public opinion became more nationalistic.

By the late 1990s, nationalism was both a threat and an opportunity. As in the era of Putins reputed role model, Tsar Alexander III in the late 19th century, the policy appeared to be for nationalism to provide the state with an ideology while centralisation would contain it from getting out of hand. The new constitutional changes Putin has now introduced continue this dual path of greater concentration of power and emphasis on national identity and sovereignty and both have their origins in the early 1990s.

Adrian Campbell, senior lecturer in International Development, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Wild Decade: How the 90s Laid the Foundations for Vladimir Putin's Russia - The Wire

Local oil producers are having a hard time keeping up with their regulatory obligations during the pandemic.

Half a dozen companies in Kern County have responded to a state offer by applying for extra time to test oil field injection sites, plug wells, and perform other required health and safety tasks.

Some applicants have received deadline extensions and others haven't. More than a dozen applications are pending.

Oil producers have generally made the case that, although they have been designated critical industries during the pandemic, sharply lower barrel prices have limited their ability to operate as normal.

The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity has criticized the state's offer, saying oil companies operators were using the pandemic as an excuse and should not be allowed to set aside their responsibility to protect against pollution.

QUALIFYING CONDITIONS

State Oil and Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk stated in May that to qualify for an extension delays must have been caused by COVID-19 or government orders related to it and that any postponements must "not increase the risk of damage to life, public health, property or natural resources."

"Since all California operators are responding to historically low supply demand, with difficult layoffs and cutbacks," he wrote in a May 1 letter, "CalGEM will consider a one-time, two-month extension in the requirements to submit idle well management plans (IWMP) and fees provided that individual operators demonstrate that this extension will not result in environmental harm."

State records show 39 deadline extension requests were filed with CalGEM, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, between March 23 and June 16. As of Thursday, six have been approved and 18 denied. Two were ruled unnecessary because the operator has the time requested even without asking for it. An additional 13 remained under consideration.

Ntuk said by email Friday, "Each request is unique for each operator and situation. CalGEM is reviewing the submissions and will process them shortly."

In several of the denials, state officials judged the applicants' requests to be beyond the scope of Ntuk's offer, often because the companies asked for more time than he had offered to grant them.

HIGH COSTS

Local oilman Chad Hathaway, who had asked CalGEM for extra time to conduct mechanical testing of his company's injection wells in the Edison Oil Field, said he made the request because doing such work is expensive and requires hiring outside labor at a time he'd rather spend the money keeping his own staff working.

"It requires a workover rig, third party packer service, third party pumping service and about 18 hours worth of labor all of which are third party (not internal employees)," he wrote in an email. "All in all, about $7-10K worth of time and materials. We prefer to keep OUR people working on projects that can support themselves. We cannot afford to hire third party contractors at the moment."

The state didn't grant or deny Hathaway's request. It said he didn't need to do the testing immediately because the wells aren't being used, but that he'll have to complete the work prior to resuming operations there.

MARKET HARDSHIPS

Another local company that filed a request, Bakersfield-based Aera Energy LLC, asked for a 90-day hiatus for its idle-well testing compliance plan because of COVID-19-related market hardships.

Noting its well-testing regimen had been progressing ahead of schedule, Aera wanted to extend a six-year compliance period by four months.

But CalGEM denied the request in a June 19 letter, saying the company had asked for an extension beyond July 1, which Ntuk had disallowed for such cases.

Company spokeswoman Cindy Pollard said it and other California companies are having to cope with COVID-19 and low oil prices. The deadline extension Aera asked for wouldn't have relieved it of CalGEM's oversight or its commitment to health and safety.

"Instead it would have given us a little extra time to meet that compliance, in light of the financial limitations we were experiencing, while continuing to produce the oil our state needs," she said by email. "Aera is especially proud that we were ahead of the States required pace of abandoning idle wells before COVID and we remain committed to meeting the pace outlined in our plan.

OTHER REQUESTS

Other locally operating companies requesting regulatory deadline extensions include California Resources Corp., Chevron, Crimson Resource Management and E&B Natural Resources.

Chevron asked for a one-year deadline extension to abandon or remediate 19 wells that had failed mechanical integrity tests in the Kern River Oil Field.

Making its case in a May 26 letter to CalGEM, Chevron said that "due to the large backlog of remediation work from new UIC regulations and the resource limitations due to COVID-19," the company would miss its deadline for addressing the wells' problems. Chevron couldn't be reached for comment.

State records show the company's request remains under consideration.

E&B requested additional time for a variety of projects including mechanical testing of cyclic steam and steam-flood wells in the Poso Creek Oil Field, testing of water disposal wells elsewhere in Kern, idle-well management work and continuous pressure monitoring at local wells. Some of the requests were denied and some are pending.

Ted Cordova, the Bakersfield-based oil producer's public and governmental affairs director, said by email the requests were intended to "balance the economic forces facing the entire state while still complying with the toughest environmental protections on the planet."

"Our operations have been deemed essential and we are focused on keeping Kern County residents working instead of relying upon public services," he wrote. "Providing flexibility on deadlines ensures that responsible and affordable energy production continues while still protecting the environment and the economy.

Santa Clarita-based CRC is awaiting word from the state on its requests for more time to conduct mechanical testing of injection wells. It said by email it hopes the state will reexamine oil companies' regulatory deadlines.

"CalGEM and other state regulators have chosen not to defer pending regulatory deadlines or new regulations as a general matter and have required specific COVID-19 extension requests," it said.

"While these agencies originally envisioned the COVID-19 hardships ending this month, the increase in COVID-19 cases and the Governors July 1 order make it clear that the pandemic and its effects will be with us for many months to come," it wrote.

Follow John Cox on Twitter: @TheThirdGraf

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Oil producers appeal for time to comply with regulations during pandemic - The Bakersfield Californian

Abstract

Plant economics run on carbon and nutrients instead of money. Leaf strategies aboveground span an economic spectrum from live fast and die young to slow and steady, but the economy defined by root strategies belowground remains unclear. Here, we take a holistic view of the belowground economy and show that root-mycorrhizal collaboration can short circuit a one-dimensional economic spectrum, providing an entire space of economic possibilities. Root trait data from 1810 species across the globe confirm a classical fast-slow conservation gradient but show that most variation is explained by an orthogonal collaboration gradient, ranging from do-it-yourself resource uptake to outsourcing of resource uptake to mycorrhizal fungi. This broadened root economics space provides a solid foundation for predictive understanding of belowground responses to changing environmental conditions.

The diversity of plant traits across the globe shapes ecosystem functioning (1). Seeking general patterns, ecologists have used economic theory to explain trait variation in leaves as the aboveground plant organs for resource acquisition by photosynthesis (13). Aboveground plant strategies thereby fall along a leaf economics spectrum (2) from cheaply constructed but short-lived leaves optimized for fast resource acquisition to more expensive but persistent leaves with a slower rate of return over longer time scale.

Fine roots acquire resources from the soil and are often considered the belowground equivalent of leaves (4). Therefore, fine-root trait variation has been hypothesized to follow a similar one-dimensional spectrum (1, 5). At one side of this spectrum, plants with a fast belowground resource acquisition strategy are expected to construct long, narrow-diameter roots with minimal biomass investment but high metabolic rates (1, 4, 6). At the opposite side of the spectrum, plants with a slow strategy are expected to achieve longer life span and prolonged return on investment by constructing thicker-diameter, denser roots (4, 7).

However, mixed empirical results caused ecologists to question whether variation in root traits can be adequately explained by a one-dimensional fast-slow economics spectrum (1, 5, 810). Instead, when taken together, earlier results reveal that root trait variation might be driven by multiple evolutionary pressures (8, 1114). Here, we aim to settle this debate by presenting a new conceptual framework of root economics that better captures the complexity of belowground resource acquisition strategies. First, we integrated existing knowledge to build a conceptual understanding of the covariation among four key root traits (Table 1 and Fig. 1). Second, we tested our conceptual model against root traits of 1810 plant species from a global database. Third, we investigated generality of the concept across all biomes of the world, different plant growth forms, and symbiotic partnerships. All analyses were phylogenetically informed using fine-root trait data from the Global Root Trait (GRooT) database (15).

Expected correlations are based on mathematical and ecological rationale and empirical support from the literature. De facto correlations (see also fig. S1) are phylogenetically informed correlation coefficients of species subsets with the respective trait coverage. D, root diameter; SRL, specific root length; RTD, root tissue density; N, root nitrogen content; CF, cortex fraction.

On the basis of this concept, we hypothesize (i) a collaboration gradient ranging from do-it-yourself soil exploration by high specific root length (SRL) to outsourcing by investing carbon into the mycorrhizal partner and hence extraradical hypheae, which requires a large cortex fraction (CF) and root diameter (D) and (ii) a conservation gradient ranging from roots with high root tissue density (RTD) that show a slow resource return on investment but are long-lived and well-protected, to fast roots with a high nitrogen content (N) and metabolic rate for fast resource return on investment but a short life span. Arrows indicate negative correlations between the single traits (see Table 1).

The currency of root economics is the carbon input required to construct fine roots that explore the soil for resource acquisition. Specific root length (SRL)the root length per unit masstherefore reflects the rate of return per unit of investment and is a function of both root diameter (D) and root tissue density (RTD)the root mass per unit of root volumefollowingSRL=4/(D2RTD)Although this equation (6) is a simplification when sampling heterogeneous fine-root populations (16), it implies that SRL increases with decreasing D and/or RTD. Besides efficient soil exploration, plants have to maintain a high metabolic rate to assure fast resource acquisition leading to high nitrogen content (N) in the fine roots (1, 17). While strong negative relationships between SRL and D (9, 14, 1820) and between RTD and N (9, 14, 19) have been observed, the relationships between SRL and RTD (19, 21, 22) and between D and N (10) have been less clear. In fact, observations across a wide range of species suggest that plants can construct roots with many combinations of SRL and RTD (9, 14), indicating complex trait interactions inconsistent with a one-dimensional root economics spectrum (811, 14).

A growing body of literature (8, 1114) indicates that this root trait complexity may result from the range of belowground resource uptake strategies. In contrast to aboveground photosynthesis, which is solely conducted by plant organs, belowground many species have the ability to outsource resource acquisition. This gradient of plant collaboration strategies ranges from do-it-yourself acquisition by cheap roots for efficient soil exploration to outsourcing acquisition via the investment of carbon in a mycorrhizal fungal partner for the return of limiting resources. However, these outsourcing strategies have consequences for root traits. This is particularly true for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) because plants must increase their root cortical area, and hence their D, to provide the intraradical habitat for their fungal partner (19, 23, 24). This is generalizable for plant symbiosis with AMF, the most widespread type of mycorrhizal fungi (24) and also well documented for ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi (25). Using this body of literature as our foundation, we developed an overarching concept of root economics based on the understanding that plants can optimize resource uptake by investing carbon either in thin roots that efficiently explore the soil themselves (14) or in a mycorrhizal fungal partner, which often requires a thick root for efficient symbiosis (Fig. 1).

This conceptualized collaboration gradient from do-it-yourself to outsourcing challenges the traditional spectrum of root economics that assumes D to increase with RTD for tissue conservation. Both scaling laws and empirical data (22) show that as D increases, root cortex area increases at a faster rate than stele area such that D scales positively with the cortex fraction (CF) (19) [although patterns can vary among growth forms (10)]. The parenchymatous cortical tissue has a lower carbon content and dry weight than the stele tissue, which transports nutrients and water through lignified cells (26, 27). Thus, CF and RTD will be negatively correlated (Table 1). Furthermore, since D and CF are closely positively correlated and increase in unison with mycorrhizal symbiosis, D should be negatively correlated with RTD. These relationships contradict the assumption of a one-dimensional root economics spectrum, where plants with a slow strategy are expected to construct roots that are both thick and dense, and advocate for a multidimensional space of root trait variation.

By testing pairwise correlations of all traits, we confirmed the bivariate relationships underlying our new concept of a belowground economics trait space with two main dimensions (Table 1). The strongest negative correlation was found between SRL and D (R = 0.70), representing the collaboration gradient from do-it-yourself to outsourcing. We also found a negative correlation between RTD and root N (R = 0.26) as observed in previous studies (9, 14, 19), which corresponds to a conservation gradient, representing the traditional trade-off between fast and slow return on investment (Fig. 1).

On a subset of 748 species with complete information on the four main root traits (SRL, D, RTD, and root N), we could confirm these two distinct and largely independent gradients in a phylogenetically informed principal component analysis (PCA) where the first two axes encompass a plane with a cumulative explanatory power of 77% of all root trait variation. Henceforth, we refer to these gradients as the main dimensions of the root economics space (Fig. 2A). The first PCA axis (44% of total trait variation) represents a gradient from SRL to D, confirming our conceptualized collaboration gradient and suggesting that it actually represents the main source of root trait variation. The second PCA axis (33% of total trait variation) represents the conservation gradient from root N to RTD (table S1).

Phylogenetically informed principal component analyses (PCAs) of core traits of (A) 748 global species, (B) 621 arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) species (blue), and (C) 94 ectomycorrhizal (EM) species (red). NM, nonmycorrhizal. The collaboration gradient (44%) ranges from do-it-yourself roots with high SRL to outsourcing roots with thick diameters (D). The conservation gradient (33%) ranges from fast (N) to slow (RTD). For each corner of the root economics space, in (A) we highlight two representative plant species: QV, Quercus virginiana Mill.; CH, Carex humilis Leyss.; CO, Cornus officinalis Siebold & Zucc.; ZM, Zea mays L.; LP, Lathyrus pratensis L.; GB, Ginkgo biloba L.; BL, Betula lenta L.; CP, Cardamine pratensis L. (D) Woody (ocher) and nonwoody (green) species show no distinct pattern within the root economics space (see fig. S4 and table S4). (E) PCA based on bivariate trait relationships. The percentage mycorrhizal colonization (%M) and the CF are positively correlated with D along the collaboration gradient, while root life span is negatively correlated with N along the conservation gradient. See table S1 for PCA scores.

Species associated with AMF were the largest group in the database and were distributed over the entire trait space (Fig. 2A) but differed significantly from both nonmycorrhizal (NM) and EM species (table S4). NM plants aggregated on the do-it-yourself side of the collaboration gradient and on the slow side of the conservation gradient. EM plants showed less variation along the collaboration gradient than AM plants with a tendency toward do-it-yourself and slow as well. A high RTD, indicative of a slow strategy, might partly originate from the fact that EM species are often woody (28) or it might reflect a general slow nutrient cycling in ecosystems dominated by EM species (29, 30). The tendency for EM plants toward do-it-yourself roots with high SRL likely results not only from the nature of the EM symbiosis that is less dependent on cortex area but also from its more recent evolution, as evolutionarily younger species tend to have thinner roots (14, 23, 27, 31). Even so, PCAs that solely represent the root traits of either AM or EM plant species (Fig. 2, B and C, and table S1) show the same dimensions of variation as in the global dataset, highlighting the existence of the same trade-offs within each mycorrhizal type.

Plant species associated with N2-fixing bacteria differed from other species (table S4) by being located on the fast side of the conservation gradient as their roots are rich in N (fig. S2A). Nevertheless, we could still confirm the collaboration gradient as the first PCA axis within this species set (fig. S2, B and C, and table S1). The importance of the collaboration gradient within N2-fixing species might derive from the large P demands of plants associated with N2-fixing bacteria, which leads to either high mycorrhizal dependency or alternative do-it-yourself strategies like cluster roots (24). Investigating different plant growth forms, we found that woody plants span a wider range of variation than nonwoody plants within the global trait space (Fig. 2 and table S4). Still, the two gradients of the root economics space exist within both woody and nonwoody plants (fig S4), indicating that there is wide variation and very similar trade-offs operating irrespective of growth form. Last, the two dimensions of the root economics space are present irrespective of biome (Fig. 3 and table S1), which did not differ from each other in their location within the global trait space (table S4).

Root traits and trait relations are known to vary across biomes (14). We found no respective between group variation within the root economics space (table S4). Still, to test whether the concept is broadly generalizable, we present separate PCAs for biomes spanning arid to tropical. We found that the root economics space was apparent in all of the biomes represented by our species (panels A, B, C, and D). In continental systems, the conservation gradient was represented by principal component 3 (D) instead of principal component 2 (E). See table S1 for principal component analyses. pc, principal component.

To confirm our ecological interpretation of the proposed gradients, we added traits to the PCA that act as proxies for ecological functions (Fig. 2E and table S2). We used percent root length colonized by AMF (%M) as a proxy for the strength of the mycorrhizal symbiosis (32) and CF as a general proxy for the ability of a species to host mycorrhizal fungi (19, 33, 34). We found both %M and CF to be associated with the outsourcing side of the collaboration gradient. To test whether the proposed conservation gradient aligns with the classical fast-slow economics spectrum, we used root life span as a proxy for short- or long-term investment of plant carbon (1, 3537). We found that longer life span was indeed associated with the slow side of the conservation gradient, which is consistent with reports of negative relationships between root life span and N (1, 35, 37).

The decrease in D over evolutionary time (14, 31) suggests a reduced dependence of plants on mycorrhizal fungi. We found that the collaboration gradient was indeed phylogenetically conserved, showing an evolutionary transition from outsourcing to do-it-yourself (Fig. 4 and tables S3 and S5). In contrast, the fast-slow trade-off of the conservation gradient was less pronounced across all plant families in our database (Fig. 4) and also less phylogenetically conserved (table S3). Terrestrial plants coevolved with AMF, causing the mycorrhizal symbiosis to be evolutionarily stable (38, 39). This might explain the finding that the consequences for root morphology and anatomybeing associated with the collaboration gradientare phylogenetically conserved at high levels. Different explanations have been proposed as to why D gradually decreased with evolutionary time, including a decline in atmospheric CO2 (13), leading to higher water demands and a reduction in the dependence on mycorrhizal fungi (14). Remarkably, this trend very rarely resulted in a complete loss of the mycorrhizal symbiosis but instead led to varying degrees of outsourcing. Following this line of reasoning, evolutionary history might be the reason why the collaboration gradient is the main source of variation in root traits. As the ability to outsource is a major difference between above- and belowground economics, the importance of the collaboration gradient might be the key to explaining decoupling of root and leaf traits, leading to inconsistencies within the plant economics spectrum found in the past (9, 11, 27, 40).

On the left, we display the phylogenetic tree of 1810 species aggregated at a family level with the standardized family mean trait values of the four core traits (center) ranging from low (yellow) to medium (green) to high (blue). The collaboration gradient shows a strong phylogenetic pattern ( = 0.8, P < 0.001) with a transition from families with thick D to those with high SRL. The phylogenetic signal in the conservation gradient is less pronounced ( = 0.5, P < 0.001), although still significant (see also table S3). For detailed information about specific clades, see table S5, and for family distribution across clades, see table S6. Pie charts (right) depict the fraction of different mycorrhizal association types within the broader plant phylogenetic clades (indicated by corresponding background colors).

Together, we provide a conceptual framework explaining the mechanistic basis behind root trait covariation and show its ubiquity across biomes, growth forms, and symbiotic partnerships. The root economics space synthesizes recent evidence to illustrate why root trait variation cannot be adequately explained by a one-dimensional spectrum (8, 9, 11, 14, 19, 41). Plant outsourcing of belowground resource acquisition through collaboration with mycorrhizal fungal partners is not just an extra dimension in the root economics space but rather is the main dimension of root trait variation, which is fundamentally different from the aboveground economy. This collaboration gradient from do-it-yourself to outsourcing represents an investment in soil exploration by either the root itself or its mycorrhizal fungal partners. It is independent from the conservation gradient, which represents the well-known concept of fast versus slow return on investment. Thus, both gradients depict different facets of root economics and, rather than a single one-dimensional spectrum, encompass a whole root economics space of plant strategies for belowground resource acquisition.

All analyses presented here are based on the GRooT database (15). The GRooT database combines root trait observations from the Fine-Root Ecology Database (FRED) (42) and TRY (43) with additional datasets providing data measured on individual plants for which taxonomical information is available. It includes data on both coarse and fine roots. For the objective of this study, we selected fine roots only, as coarse roots are usually not absorptive and therefore less relevant in the context of root economics (42, 44). We treated roots as fine roots if they met at least one of the following criteria: (i) they were of root orders 1 to 3, (ii) they were classified as fine roots by the initial authors, or (iii) their diameter was smaller than 2 mm. Data measured on dead roots were excluded from the analyses. Furthermore, we excluded ferns (Polypodiopsida) because of their very special root morphology that is hardly comparable with vascular plants (45, 46). We only selected data where species-level information was available. During the past decade, a set of root traits was found to be highly informative of root economics: SRL, D, RTD, and root N (811, 14, 20, 27). Hence, we focused our main analyses on those four traits. In addition, we analyzed the percentage of root length colonized by mycorrhizal fungi (%M) while > 99 % of these data refer to arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization - and the root area occupied by the cortex, i.e., CF as proxies for the strength of mycorrhizal symbiosis, as well as mean root life span. We checked the values of these traits for outliers and excluded values of RTD exceeding 1.0 in further analyses.

Categorical data from GRooT such as main biome type (tropical, temperate, continental, arid, or polar) following the Kppen-Geiger classification, plant woodiness (woody, nonwoody, or facultatively woody), mycorrhizal association (NM, arbuscular mycorrhiza, ectomycorrhiza, or other (e.g., ericoid mycorrhiza), and nitrogen-fixing ability (fixers or nonfixers) were used in the downstream analysis and testing of our conceptual framework. GRooT includes mycorrhizal association data from FungalRoot (47), which did not cover our entire species set. To achieve full data cover, we filled the gaps and did minor annotations based on the following general rules:

(i)Mycorrhizal association is constant within species, hence excluding a facultative mycorrhizal type. In cases where a lack of mycorrhizal colonization has been reported only under specific environmental conditions less suitable for the mycorrhizal symbiosis, we assigned the species as mycorrhizal, while in cases with intraradical hyphae but no evidence for a symbiotic interface, we assigned species to be NM.

(ii)Almost all plants have one type of mycorrhizal association as the dominant one. Therefore, dual mycorrhizal association was only assigned if species show no clear dominance toward one type.

(iii)The mycorrhizal association type is usually constant within a monophyletic genus and often within a family (24, 47, 48). Therefore, we filled remaining gaps with the respective mycorrhizal association type of sister species.

All data processing and analyses were done using R 3.6.1 (49). In this study, we analyzed how different root traits are related to each other at the level of plant species; hence, a first step was to calculate species mean values. As root traits were measured in different studies varying in design (e.g., on in situ grown plants versus plants growing in pots), and because most traits varied several orders of magnitude, several steps of data processing were required before calculating species mean trait values. First, to obtain normal distributions, we log-transformed each trait, except for %M and CF, which were scaled to the range of 0 to 1 and arcsine square root transformed. We then Z transformed each trait to a mean of 0 and an SD of 1 to assure variance homogeneity. Furthermore, we corrected for main study design (measurements on plants in situ, in pots, or hydroponics) and the publication in which the trait measurements were first reported (as a proxy for other study specific factors, e.g., plant age, soil conditions, or sample handling). This was done by building a linear mixed model for each trait, where the trait was treated as the response variable, study design as a fixed factor, and publication as random factor. We used residuals of these models in further analyses.

Within some species, the categorical traits woodiness and biome had different data entries (e.g., because the species occurs both in temperate and continental biomes). In those cases, we categorized the species in the biome in which it had most observations, and we categorized its woodiness by its most commonly observed entry in further analyses.

In total, we analyzed information of 1547, 1662, 1361, and 1158 species for D, SRL, RTD, and N, respectively. Scientific names in GRooT are standardized among datasets and brought up to date by querying species names using the Taxonomic Name Resolution Service v4.0 (http://tnrs.iplantcollaborative.org/) (50). We constructed a phylogenetic tree including all species using the backbone phylogeny from Zanne et al. (51) and adding additional missing species with the function add.tips from the package phangorn (52). We calculated Pagels using the package picante and evaluated the strength of the phylogenetic signal for each trait; a large (close to the upper bound of 1.0) Pagels value indicates higher phylogenetic conservatism (53), whereas a low (close to 0.0) value indicates a lack of phylogenetic conservatism.

As all traits exerted strong phylogenetic signal (table S3), we used phylogenetically informed methods for all analyses. We first assessed bivariate relationships between the four core traits (D, SRL, RTD, and N) and CF to build our conceptual framework (Table 1 and Fig. 1), and we also tested for relationships of these traits with %M and root life span (fig. S1). Sample sizes varied for these bivariate correlations, depending on the number of species with complete information for both involved traits, and ranged from 19 (for the correlation between %M and root life span) to 1402 (for the correlation between D and SRL) (fig. S1). In total, we used 1810 species for these bivariate correlations. We fit phylogenetic generalized least square models using the pgls function in the R package caper (54, 55) to each pair of traits to conduct phylogenetically corrected regression analyses. Phylogenetically corrected correlation coefficients (r values) were then calculated by taking the square root of the adjusted model r2 and by multiplying this with 1 if the regression coefficient was negative. In cases where the adjusted model r2 was negative, we assigned an r coefficient of 0.

We used phylogenetically informed PCA to identify main dimensions of variation among root economic traits. A phylogenetic PCA was performed for the four core traits D, SRL, RTD, and N using the phyl.pca function of the phytools package (56). There were 748 species that had complete data for these four core traits. The eigenanalysis uses the correlation structure of the phylogeny to inform its estimates of eigenvalues and eigenvectors (56, 57). To assess whether the PCA results and hence the dimensions of the root economics space were sensitive to biome type, mycorrhizal association, woodiness, or nitrogen-fixing ability, we repeated the above analysis for subsets of different biomes [tropics, temperate, continental, and aridthe polar biome was represented by too few species (n = 5) to perform a reliable analysis], mycorrhizal association type (arbuscular mycorrhiza versus ectomycorrhiza), woodiness (woody versus nonwoody), and nitrogen-fixing ability (present or absent).

We assessed whether roots from species with different mycorrhizal associations (arbuscular mycorrhiza, ectomycorrhiza, arbuscular mycorrhiza, and ectomycorrhiza, i.e., intraspecific variation in mycorrhizal association type, ericoid mycorrhiza, and nonmycorrhiza associated), species from different biomes (temperate, tropical, arid, and continental), woody or nonwoody species, and species that either did or did not associate with bacteria able to fix nitrogen, differed significantly from each other in the global multidimensional PCA space, i.e., in their first two PCA axes (which jointly explained 77% of all trait variation). This was done using a permutational multiple analysis of variance, in which the first two PCA axes were treated as the response variables and mycorrhizal association type, biome, woodiness, or ability to fix nitrogen as the fixed factor. We used Euclidean pairwise distances in PCA space among species and calculated 999 permutations using the pairwise.adonis function in the pairwiseAdonis package (58). To test for the significance of differences between different categories of mycorrhizal associations and biomes, we used false discovery rates (59) to reduce the likelihood of type I errors due to multiple testing.

Furthermore, we investigated multivariate trait space for seven traits, i.e., the four core traits from the above-described PCAs (D, SRL, RTD, and N) supplemented by three additional traits: CF, %M, and root life span. Observation-based PCA requires each replicate (species) to have complete data for all traits, but there were few species with a complete set of all seven traits. Therefore, we performed an alternative dimensionality reduction analysis based on pairwise correlations between traits. For this analysis, we computed phylogenetically informed pairwise correlations between each of the 21 trait combinations, where each trait combination included a slightly different set of species for which traits were available (fig. S1). We then performed a standard eigenanalysis on this positive definite matrix of phylogenetic correlation coefficients (60).

Visual examination of the distribution of traits across the phylogeny was obtained using the function phylo.heatmap in the package phytools (56). We further examined the phylogenetic trends observed across broader phylogenetic clades of seed plants using a randomization test to quantitatively compare individual clade trait values to the rest of the phylogeny. The test determines whether the mean trait value observed in a clade deviates significantly from the population mean under the null hypothesis that the trait has a random phylogenetic distribution. To do so, we created an algorithm in R that selected clades sequentially at each node. Because of the large number of species, we selected particular nodes that enveloped important phylogenetic clades with at least 30 species (tree tips) included. For each clade, we calculated the observed mean and kurtosis values as measures of central tendency and dispersion values within clades, respectively. Then, we generated a series of 999 random values shuffling trait values among the tips of the original tree. Significance was calculated after estimating if the observed clade mean or kurtosis were outside the 95% confidence intervals of the clade estimations using the randomized datasets. In the case of the kurtosis, values higher than the randomized mean were interpreted as evidence of underdispersion in the clade (leptokurtic distribution), whereas lower values were considered sign of overdispersion (platykurtic distribution).

W. Troll, Vergleichende Morphologie der Pflanzen (Verlag der Gebrder Borntraeger, 1943).

P. Raven, R. F. Evert, S. E. Eichhorn, Biology of plants (W.H. Freeman and Company Publisher, ed. 8, 2013).

R Core Team, R: A language and environment for statistical computing (2019).

D. Orme, R. Freckleton, D. Thomas, T. Petzoldt, S. Fritz, N. Isaac, W. Pearse, Caper: Comparative Analyses of Phylogenetics and Evolution in R (2018).

P. Martinez Arbizu, pairwiseAdonis: Pairwise Multilevel Comparison using Adonis (R Packag. version 0.3, 2019).

D. C. Lay, Linear algebra and its applications (Pearson, 2006).

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The fungal collaboration gradient dominates the root economics space in plants - Science Advances

Years after our popular Where Are They Now: Local Media series, weve decided to revisit the concept with former elected officials in and around Traverse City to find out what theyve been doing since they left office.

Mike Estes served as Traverse City mayor from 2007 to 2009 and again from 2011 to 2015. He owns several tree farm parcels, where he works to remove invasive species such as autumn olive and replace them with native trees. Its mostly hardwoods, he says. Things have gone very well. I have time to work on the properties and trees. Once hes removed the non-native plants, he sells the parcels, then does it again elsewhere.

Estes serves on the Northwestern Michigan College Board of Trustees and runs his own private equity firm. In the last few years, he says he has significantly cut back on the time for the latter. Thats because he has chosen to spend more time with his family and in the great outdoors. I have six grandchildren. Now I have time to see them. I spend more time boating and fishing part of my passion is hunting and fishing.

Jason Allen is now Michigans state director of the USDA Rural Development. He seved as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives for the 104th District from 1999 to 2002.He was elected to the Michigan Senate in November 2002, and was re-elected in November 2006.He sought the Republican nomination for Congress in the 2010 primary, losing by 15 votes to Dan Benishek. He was asked by former Governor Snyder to serve as a policy advisor for the states Veterans Affairs Agency, then ran in 2016 to succeed the retiring Benishekand was defeated in the primary by Jack Bergman.

Today, as the state director for Rural Development, he leads a team of professionals across the state: USDA Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand economic opportunities and create jobs in rural areas, including infrastructure improvements, business development, community services such as schools, public safety and health care, and high-speed internet access.Among the projects Allen has helped spearhead: a current project in Benzonia replacing two miles of US-31 along with all-new curb and gutters, sidewalk repairs and ramp upgrades and sewer structures; a new road commission building in Mt. Pleasant; and a new jail in Escanaba.

Rural development also directs housing programs and Allen works to provide access to high-speed fiber networks for internet access in rural areas.

And he still works from time to time at Captains Quarters, the downtown Traverse City haberdashery owned by his father, Maurie Allen. I still have a key. For street sales, its all hands on deck, he says.

Michelle McManus is a vice president at Fifth Third Private Bank in Traverse City. She served in the state House of Representatives 1993-1999 and in the Michigan State Senate from 2003 to 2010. She left both positions after being term-limited. She said she chose not to pursue further office or working elsewhere in government or lobbying. At that point my daughter was in seventh or eighth grade and I had a little boy. I felt it was time to make a change, she says.

Though she had not previously considered a career in the field, her work on committees for appropriations and finance led her in that direction. I thought it would be an interesting career, she says. Shes since worked in various capacities at both Fifth Third and Honor Bank. I get to work with families and help them with their financial goals and needs. Its similar to working with constituents. I always said when I was a commercial lender it is like passing a bill: You find the loan or opportunity for a bill, draft it, then take it to committee. Then it gets passed or vetoed.

Best of all? I never left northern Michigan, she says.

From 1993 to 2011, Bart Stupak was the Democratic congressman representing Michigans 1st District, including northwestern lower Michigan and the upper peninsula. He chose not to run in 2010, and said he had no real plan when he left office. Then Harvard came calling. Harvard offered a fellowship. I held weekly seminars, he says, discussing issues with students and other fellows.

Stupak has since joined the Washington, D.C. law firm Venable LLC, where he focuses on healthcare system financial restructuring and also serves as a lobbyist. Though based in D.C., he says most of his clients are from Michigan. Stupak says the most rewarding part of his job is the pro bono work he and the firm do, much of which is for homeless and disabled persons. Its challenging, he says, particularly when people have no fixed address.

The pandemic has been a challenge as well. Hes working from his home just outside Escanaba. I left March 16, and thought Id be back in a week. I left things on the edge of my desk, now I have to try to recreate files, Stupak says.

Linda Smyka was mayor of Traverse City in 2000 and again from 2003-2005. She says she has dedicated much of the time since to her family. Weve been raising our now 14-year-old granddaughter, so its been a busy life, she says. While shes worked with various community groups, including her longtime stint as a member of the Womens Resource Center Board of Directors, the pandemic gave her a new role: teacher. Ive had a refresher course in algebra. Its a whole new ballgame, she says with a laugh.

Its all about her family. That includes working with her husband, Stanley Smyka, at his dental office. The biggest thing on the horizon now is an upcoming move from Traverse City to Kingsley, where their granddaughter Mia just completed her freshman year. The move will be huge. Ive lived in my current home for 20 years, she says.

Dan Scripps was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the Michigan Public Service Commission in 2019. A decade ago, Scrippsserved one term representing Benzie, Leelanau, Manistee, and Mason counties in the Michigan House of Representatives. After losing his reelection bid in 2010 to Ray Franz, he ran again in 2015, losing to Curt Vanderwall.

He subsequently served as president of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council and Institute for Energy Innovation,as a vice president with Advanced Energy Economy, and as the Energy Foundations midwest policy program director for 13 states. He also practiced law in Washington D.C., again working primarily on issues regarding energy.

Today, Scripps again lives with his family in his hometown of Northport, where his oldest is in school. His wife works from home, while he commutes back and forth to Lansing or did until the pandemic hit. There have been lots of phone calls and video calls, he says. When (new) normal circumstances return, he will be commuting again, including going back and forth to the Upper Peninsula, where he has been appointed to the UP Energy Task Force.

Howard Walker left office in 2013 after choosing not to run for a second term as state senator. Hed earlier served three terms as a state House representative. He said he enjoyed his time in the legislature, but eventually decided he wanted to spend more time with his family. The work was very meaningful and exciting. I miss it, but family was more important, he says. I wanted to reconnect with my family and spend more time being a dad.

He previously owned a surveying company, and still has his surveying license as well as a real estate license, but hes spent of his time around the house working on the house. I enjoyed carpentry and manual labor. Its good for you physically, he says.

After improving their home on Old Mission Peninsula, he and his wife Dianne moved to Elk Rapids. We wanted to downsize. We love it, he says.PHOTO (top row): Estes, McManus, Scripps; (middle) Stupak; (bottom): Allen, Smyka, Walker

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Where Are They Now: Local Politicians - Traverse City Ticker

By MONITOR TEAM

One of the big questions sparked by the coronavirus crisis is: How do communities and societies best navigate a fast-changing and unpredictable world faced with multiple crises around climate, environment and health?

These challenges can be local, regional or global, and are worth examining to understand how different communities confront them. Scientists working on the Rights and Resilience (RARE) research project have been studying the responses of the Maasai of southeastern Kenya to these crises.

Many segments of the population at the local level in Kenya are currently struggling with three intertwined crises: Climate change, locusts and the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

Climate change is a global phenomenon that is characterised by a general rise in the temperatures of the earth surface and the sea as a result of humans emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Climate change is particularly concerning because it is believed to be a precursor to numerous problems such as droughts, floods, declining farm yields, and increasing water scarcity. It is an overbearing threat to human lives and livelihoods.

Long before climate change became a modern-time human concern, desert locusts had been known to ravage Africa. Swarms of billions of insects can eat away thousands of hectares of croplands and other green vegetation, leading to problems such as food insecurity and scarcity of livestock fodder.The destruction may also cause landscape changes that could lead to conflicts over natural resources.In recent times, the world has been attacked by coronaviruses: the SARS Coronavirus (SARS-Cov) that led to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in November 2002; the MERS Coronavirus (MERS-Cov) that caused Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in September 2012; and the novel SARS Coronavirus-2 (SARS-COV-2) that was first identified in December 2019 in Chinas Wuhan City and is responsible for the Coronavirus disease-19 (Covid-19) pandemic.

These are some of several other coronaviruses that have potential to attack and sicken humans.

SARS-Cov reportedly disappeared in 2004 while MERS-Cov continues to make sporadic but localised attacks around the world.

ImpactOf the coronavirus attacks, the ongoing SARS-COV-2 has had the most impact in terms of geographic coverage, number of humans infected, and deaths.Like a colossus, it has literally spread across the world, threatening whole economies, lives and livelihoods. Some analysts argue that its effects may also inevitably impact world politics and peace.

The big question is: How do people get around a crisis that is characterised by combined attacks from climate change, locust infestation and coronavirus? This has been the situation in some parts of Kenya since the outbreak of Covid-19 in December 2019 at a time when the country was already facing climate-induced floods and swarms of locusts.

The Rights and Resilience (RARE) research project has followed up on how Kenyan pastoralists handle such a complex situation.

Among others, the study has focused on the Maasai, the world-renowned cattle herders whose rustic lifestyles are often portrayed on film and television in a romantic light. In fact, the Maasai are active participants in modern society, and are trying to cope with the challenges (such as a changing environment) of the modern economy while maintaining their cattle culture and lifestyle.

Climate change poses a major challenge for the Maasai due to their herding economy that thrives largely on stock mobility to reach seasonal pasturelands.

As Kenyas climate becomes more unpredictable, with frequent droughts and more intense floods, the Maasai are constantly grappling with the question of how their cattle, goats and sheep can get enough fodder and water.

Their households also need adequate food to get them through seasons whose impacts they can hardly envisage. Drought-flood cycles have meant that crops rot and the livestock get more diseases during flooding; and households run out of food and herds get decimated due to shortage of fodder in times of drought.

There is also a whole issue around intergenerational change. While older Maasai folks have held onto their herding culture despite challenges such as climate change, the younger generation seems to be attracted to trappings of the modern market economy.

Though many may not completely abandon herding entirely, Maasai youth are increasingly pulled towards the perceived comfort of city life, and given a chance they would probably not hesitate to convert most livestock assets into other holdings that are compatible with city life.

Climate change is therefore impacting not only the Maasai lifestyle but also individual mindsets, with probable far-reaching consequences.

On March 13, Kenya announced the first coronavirus infection in the country. At the time, Maasai land was also experiencing heavy rains (and associated floods) as well as one of the worst locust infestations that had been ravaging much of eastern Africa since 2019.

While floods cause crops on the fields to rot, locusts often destroy vegetation that livestock consume as fodder. This means that post-locust seasons are characterized by fodder scarcity and Maasai herds could starve at a time when there may also be disease outbreaks.

Drought-flood cycles are linked to climate change, but the connection with locust infestations is still unclear even though both events contribute significantly to food insecurity among the Maasai.

An outbreak of diseases like Covid-19 necessitates urgent government measures to protect people and the economy, but such actions could alter the survival equation for the Maasai in many ways.

One such measure is restricted movement of people that comes in the form of curfews and lockdowns. For the Maasai herder who needs mobility to access distant pastures, these measures disrupt movement (which usually occurs many times at night) and failure to reach pasture and water at the right time.

It may mean a lack of adequate time to reach a fellow Maasai age mates kraal to spend a night and access important services like food and drinking water. Further, it may even mean that pasture and water reconnaissance groups that go ahead of migrating herds take long to send back reports, thereby putting herd movement in jeopardy.Other actions

Other actions like closure of livestock markets depress household incomes, which may cause families to sell their livestock on informal markets at lower prices, thus growing poorer. Curfews and lockdowns may also put enormous pressure on herders, especially from their families back home.

On the whole, official measures to control Covid-19 may only exacerbate an already dire situation, especially in instances where multiple events such as climate change, locust infestation and coronavirus disease act together.

So how are the Maasai herders handling such a disastrous complex situation? As specialists in dealing with crises and unpredictability, cattle keepers are meeting the new challenges creatively by drawing on three basic strategies: mobility, diversification and adopting new ways of managing scarce resources.

Mobility, a long-time key strategy in Maasai pastoralism, has been used to access distant pasture and water, sometimes across international borders. In response to climate change, some Maasai have expanded this strategy to move to new places and to remain mobile in other ways, for example by letting young people take jobs in the city.

Mobility is no longer just about herds and herders; it now involves family members leaving the comforts of home to travel to urban centres (many times quite distant or even across borders) in search of wage labour.

Income from such work can come in handy especially during droughts and scarcity when remitted to families to pay school fees, meet medical costs, and buy food or even water. In periods of abundance, mobility can be a key source of money for restocking, herd growth and home improvement.

Though work-related mobility is not a new phenomenon among the Maasai, it is certainly on the rise, probably an indicator that more households are getting more stressed by climate-induced factors. It may also mean that herding alone may no longer sustain increasing households and hence a complementary income becomes critical.

Additionally, many Maasai are trying to diversify their finances so that there are different income streams to pool in times of a crisis. For example, through education, wage labour, small businesses, and the sale of new agricultural products in connection with traditional livestock and crops are opening up as extra income streams.

This provides more revenue opportunities, and when one income fails, another can be depended upon. Diversification therefore reduces vulnerability, increases resilience in the face of unpredictability.

Arguably, supporting diversification could wean the Maasai from relief and put them on the path to a stronger pastoralist economy and sustainable development.

Finally, the Maasai are developing new ways of organising how they manage scarce natural resources. Changing land tenure has led some to invent new or reinvent versions of traditional principles, such as joint agreements on the management of grass and water according to certain rules, thereby making it easier to get by with fewer resources. For example, households may merge herds and share herding labour to reduce costs and free resources.

Some have also made new agreements about when to move their livestock to certain pastures and wetlands within or beyond group ranches.

Others have abandoned the past collective principles to embrace more individualised property rights, which they believe strengthens their ability to cope. The latter has probably been motivated by changes in land tenure from communal to individual ownership across most of the Kajiado Maasai.

For example, many Maasai households now grow grass on individually owned or leased lands and make silage for their herds, which is a form of ranching. Some increasingly prefer to keep their livestock in paddocks most of the time, and use their land for individual farming purposes, which is a radical change in the way Maasai manage their land.

The big city of Nairobi neighbouring Maasai lands has also caused changes in mindsets as more people now see a better future not just in the vast lands and herds but also in greater interaction with the urban economy to overcome crises.

The strategies of the Maasai illustrate a major point, namely that resilience is not just a question of surviving a crisis and then returning to normal, but about using the experience from each crisis to develop and change resource utilisation, economics and organisation. It is about using experience to continuously innovate for a changing environment and increasingly more complex situations.

The Maasai situation also shows how important it is to bring peoples own experience-based knowledge about what works here into the game of living with unpredictability. Though the Maasai strategies make good practical sense, they are often met with skepticism among many scientists, planners and policy makers who do not always fully understand tacit approaches to resource planning and crisis management.

Yet studies show that expert-based solutions are not necessarily successful when adjusting to unpredictability, scarcity and complexity. Drawing on different forms of knowledge and providing for a democratic dialogue that allows tapping into dynamics of tacit knowledge may lead to better solutions for the Maasai as they adapt to the new reality.

Finally, lessons from current multiple crises illustrate the need for integrated thinking, across not just crises but also scales. The coronavirus crisis has made it difficult to fight the locust plague, and has also hit some of the strategies otherwise used by the Maasai to adapt to climate change.

While climate, locusts and coronavirus may seem like a rare combination, they have not only hit the national economy but also specific communities such as the Maasai even harder. Movement restrictions threaten Maasai social systems and livelihood strategies, which are founded on mobility, among other things. Thus, crises in climate, environment and health can all play together.

Challenges cannot be resolved separately as science, policy and practice attempt a better understanding of such complex situations.

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Maasai lessons to the world on managing multiple crises - Daily Monitor