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Here is a species of lizard endemic to Sri Lanka. Caught on camera in the Kanneliya Reserve.

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A glimpse of a wonderful moment at a kite show. See More...

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Sri Lankan forests, a hub of green forests, play a key role in the production of local and foreign medicines. See More...

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Hi, I’m so grateful for the love and support you’ve shown my blog. If you’d like to help me continue creating content, you can support me. Every little bit helps, and I truly appreciate it! Thank you! 💕

I will help you as much as I can. Thank you.

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250 likes!

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Sigiriya in Sri Lanka, one of the world's greatest creations, is considered one of the eight wonders of the world. See More...

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A taste for the good life

People spend a lot for chocolate in Switzerland. But a willingness to pay up to live well gives the country its distinctive flavour. See More...

This article, by high school students Hannah Eitel and Alice Joly, was produced out of News Decoder’s school partnership program. Hannah and Alice attend Realgymnasium Rämibühl in Zurich, Switzerland, a News Decoder partner institution. Learn more about how News Decoder can work with your school.

Postcard views, luxurious watches, delicious cheese and chocolate — the country that comes to mind is idyllic Switzerland in central Europe.

But this seemingly perfect country comes at a price: its high cost of living. According to Coop and Carrefour, two leading supermarket chains in Switzerland and France, one chocolate bar in Switzerland costs more than one and a half times as much as the same chocolate bar in neighbouring France. 

“The price of chocolate with regards to its quality in Switzerland is fair and for me worth paying,” said Andrina Deragisch, a 17-year-old student of Kantonsschule Zürich Nord, a Swiss high school. 

Chocolate’s price is affected by various factors, most importantly the price of the cocoa bean. Nowadays that is at an all-time high due to climate change, plant-affecting pests in Africa and East Asia and packaging prices and taxes. Its price is four to five times higher than a year ago, according to Migros, the second-largest retail company in Switzerland. But what makes the difference in Switzerland? 

“The most significant factor is the labour,” says Richie Gray, global head of SnackFutures, the Corporate Venture Capital Hub of Mondelez that invests in businesses in the snack industry. See More...

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Do fixed borders guarantee peace?

While Russia and Ukraine war over their shared border, two Central Asian nations prove that borders can be changed by mutual agreement.

This article was produced exclusively for News Decoder’s global news service. It is through articles like this that News Decoder strives to provide context to complex global events and issues and teach global awareness through the lens of journalism. Learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program. See More...

In the modern world, the “inviolability of borders” has been the sacred principle preventing conflict.

States may not like existing borders but they do not try to change them by force. Vladimir Putin violated this rule when he seized Crimea in 2014 and it is the reason why the war in Ukraine now has such worrying implications for global order.

But what if two states, who have suffered decades of cross-border violence, voluntarily redraw their frontiers in the interests of peace? 

In February, the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan did just that, announcing that they will freely exchange territories disputed since the fall of the Soviet Union decades ago.

The land in question is in the beautiful, fertile Fergana Valley, but more of that later. First, let’s think about borders and how they come about.

Mountains and rivers are the world’s natural borders but much of the map as we know it today is an artificial construct. Colonial rulers literally took rulers and drew unnaturally straight lines through tribal lands in Africa, the Middle East, India, Australia and other places, cutting related peoples off from each other and mixing rival groups. They didn’t care about people, only imperial gains. See More...

Shifting borders

In the former Soviet Union, another empire, dictator Josef Stalin played with borders and internally deported whole peoples, creating pockets of future ethnic tension and even war.

When Yugoslavia fell apart in Eastern Europe in the 1990s it split into six different countries to represent the six different peoples who had made up its population.

But they weren’t neatly located in the sections that split off and many people found themselves stranded in new independent countries, where they were now part of a minority.

That’s a recipe for trouble. See More...

But wise politicians have known that when it comes to borders, you can’t try to unravel all the complications of history — better to accept today’s borders as they are and ensure the rights of minorities living in the countries we have now.

Leaders in Africa knew that, thoughtless though the imperial borders were, any attempt to redraw them could lead to forced relocations, chaos and violence, as happened at the Partition of India in 1947. That was why the African Union, founded in 1963, declared in its charter that existing boundaries were “unalterable”.

And as a result, for example, the Gishu tribe lives today in both Uganda and Kenya.

Likewise in Europe, the Helsinki Accords, signed at the end of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in 1975, obliged all 35 signatories to recognise the inviolability of the continent’s post-World War Two borders.

Many people might like to redraw borders. For example, ethnic Serbs in their enclave of Bosnia and Herzegovina may lean towards Serbia-proper but the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995 sets the borders as they are today, and that’s the way it has to be.

That’s the way it should have been with Crimea too. Nobody disputes that Russia has historical and cultural links with the peninsula but Crimea belongs to Ukraine. Peaceful arrangements could easily have been made for ordinary Russians and Ukrainians to enjoy the Black Sea resorts of Crimea together.

Instead Moscow chose war, opening a Pandora’s box for countries from China to the United States that might like to fiddle with the world’s geography. See More...

Which makes the peaceful agreement between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over land in the Fergana Valley all the more remarkable.

In Moscow, in Communist times, I knew about the Fergana Valley because of the peaches and apricots I bought from Central Asian traders on the market. Little did I know that this patchwork quilt of ethnicities was about to be torn apart.

The valley, which owes its fertility to the Naryn and Kara Darya rivers, lies mostly in eastern Uzbekistan but extends into southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan.

Stalin divided it between these three Soviet republics but fatally, the nationalities were not living exactly within the borders drawn for them. See More...

The crumbling of the Soviet Union brought bloodshed. I remember covering clashes in Kyrgyzstan’s Osh province in 1990 between ethnic Kyrgyz, who were mainly animal herders, and ethnic Uzbek, who were mainly farmers, with very different needs and interests.

Since then, disputes over grazing and water rights have also boiled over along the borders of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region and Tajikistan’s Sughd region. In autumn 2022, in the worst fighting over the border since the fall of the Soviet Union, dozens were killed and thousands forced from their homes.

It was after this that the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan started working on new demarcation lines. Now, after successful diplomacy to deal with the root cause of the problem, the two nations have agreed to shift their borders.

“Negotiations have reached the final point and can be discussed openly,” Kamchybek Tashiev, head of Kyrgyzstan’s secret service, told the Kyrgyz parliament in March. “After parliamentary consideration, our presidents will sign the ratification.”

Under the deal, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will swap small areas of land and make better arrangements to share water resources. A number of disputed roads will be declared “neutral” and made available to both nations, according to the Defense Post.

Which all goes to show that to secure friendship and good neighbourly relations, you sometimes have to define your boundaries.

Recommended reading: “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall, an excellent account of how geography affects history and politics. See More...

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The Paris (Dis)Agreement

A decade ago 195 countries gathered to find a way to slow climate change. Will the United States under Trump crash the “green economy” that the agreement promised?

This article was produced exclusively for News Decoder’s global news service. It is through articles like this that News Decoder strives to provide context to complex global events and issues and teach global awareness through the lens of journalism. Learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program. See More...

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When world leaders descend on your town

Each January, people who live in the small Alpine town of Davos grit their teeth as they play host to the thousands who swarm in for the World Economic Forum.

This article, by high school students Maximilian Wunderli and Lennox Huisman, was produced out of News Decoder’s school partnership program. Maximilian and Lennox attend Realgymnasium Rämibühl in Zurich, Switzerland, a News Decoder partner institution. Learn more about how News Decoder can work with your school. See More...

When Linda Zaugg’s baby caught a high fever in January, it took an hour and a half to walk him to the hospital — a journey that usually takes 10 minutes. But this was Davos, Switzerland during the week of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Some 3,000 politicians and business leaders from all around the world had descended on the city to discuss important political and economic issues. 

Zaugg is a member of the local parliament in Davos, a town in the Swiss Alps with a permanent population of about 11,000 people. She has been spearheading a campaign to raise awareness of the local impacts the conference has and find ways to mitigate them. 

During the forum, traffic becomes so bad, she said, that ambulances have trouble finding their way through the streets of Davos, causing response times to increase significantly. 

Traffic isn’t the only problem. During this time Davos experiences a massive influx of people, causing rent prices to explode by up to 10 times.

“This is the real problem with the WEF,” she said. “Not the conference itself, but all the people and companies that come along with it to make money and advertise.” See More...

Economic effects of an economic forum

Albert Kruker, the tourism director of Davos, warned that these price increases may cause a price spiral which would affect the town year-round.

During the forum, local businesses go into overdrive trying to supply the politicians, journalists and other attendees with everything they require. When asked about it, the owner of a local bakery, Bäckerei Weber, said that it is one of the most profitable but also intense weeks of the year.

“During the conference you get all these catering companies coming in and the hotels are full, so we have a lot more orders,” he told us. “During the conference we work 24 hours a day. Because of the security, we usually start delivering at two o’clock in the morning.”

Many other business and house owners during this time either stock up on their goods or rent out their buildings for exorbitant prices. A banker living in Zurich with an apartment in Davos said that he can rent out his apartment for a single week during the conference for approximately three months’ rent.

In an apartment block right next to the conference hall, many inhabitants move out during the week. These apartments are then rented by journalists, attendees and large companies. See More...

Disruption in Davos

One resident of an apartment block told us that he is never home during the WEF. “I rent out my apartment and go on holiday during this time,” he said.

The housing crunch during the forum is so intense that to accommodate attendees, some renters and families are forced out of their homes for the duration of the conference.

Zaugg said that some landlords even include a clause in the renter’s agreement dictating that the renters must leave during this period. A side effect of this is that many children must live temporarily outside the city and cannot attend school.

This problem is worsened by the fact that the streets are constantly congested and filled with drivers that aren’t used to Davos.

These drivers often do not respect speed limits or pedestrian only zones, requiring even more attention by commuters, which is especially difficult and dangerous for children and the elderly as they aren’t used to this amount of traffic.

Additionally, the public transportation system is bogged down during this time, once again causing confusion among society’s most vulnerable. See More...

Crowds and congestion

Stephan Büchli, a local bus driver, said that there are no fixed schedules during this time as the traffic is simply too unpredictable. Additionally, they must use smaller buses, as the streets are too congested to allow the manoeuvring of the traditional ones.

Furthermore, the new drivers often also park in restricted zones, further impacting public transport.

“Last year I saw an old man at the local bus station during the conference. He was crying very heavily and was confused. It really made me angry,” Zaugg told us.

The level of congestion also brings other problems with it.

All this traffic creates substantial emissions. In 2023, the private jets attending the Forum alone generated 7,500 tons of CO2, roughly equivalent to the yearly emissions of 5,000 cars. See More...

Minimising the carbon footprint

Part of the problem, Büchli said, is that limousines, trucks and taxis often leave their engines on while standing still, sometimes for upwards of half an hour. He himself has frequently witnessed cars idling with the engine running while stuck in traffic.

As a high-profile event, the WEF requires a lot of temporary structures, internal furnishings and food to function. Every year these temporary structures are erected in late December and then taken down again afterwards. Some of them only get used once and thrown away after only one week’s use.

The same is true for internal furniture such as carpets, shelves, computers and TV screens, as well as any leftover food. Several residents told us that after the WEF there are heaps of electronic equipment that gets thrown away. 

Still, while many residents feel the effects, many keep their irritation to themselves out of fear of being labelled a WEF hater.

While there are several key problems with the Forum in its current form, the organisers aren’t sitting idle. Over the past few years, several steps have been taken to lessen the impact of these problems. See More...

The road ahead

The most obvious of these steps is the reduction in waste. The organisers of the conference and the government of Davos have issued regulations on the number of temporary structures and their reusability. This has caused their number to noticeably decrease over the last few editions.

Old furniture and electronic devices are sold to the local inhabitants at reduced prices and spare food is offered to the residents for free, further contributing to making the WEF more sustainable.

To ensure that people can travel around in a manageable timeframe, the municipality has also set up extra trains that commute from one end of the town to the other. Entry into Davos by car was also restricted this year for visitors and tourists.

One of the most impactful changes was the installation of temporary ambulance stations. These stations are scattered across Davos, allowing them to respond quickly to emergencies and save lives.

Over the last few years, both the WEF organisation and Davos itself have taken several different measures to lessen the negative impacts of the conference. However, these issues still persist and require solutions.

Only time will tell if the people who organize a conference meant to bring people together to improve the state of the world can improve the lives of the people who live in this small town in the Alps, for one week of the year. 

“You truly notice how the ideological part of the WEF, the bringing together of people, gets pushed into the background in favour of economic reasons,” Zaugg said.

 

Questions to consider:

• What is the World Economic Forum?

• In what ways is the town of Davos negatively affected by the WEF?

• Is there an event that disrupts life near where you live? How do people deal with it? See More...

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Kite Festival