It’s not just the bees that are disappearing. Insects across the board are showing dramatic drops in population levels, leading to a serious knock-on effect for ecosystems everywhere

To date, experiences of insect declines have largely been anecdotal. Many people recall wiping more bugs off car windshields in the past, or remember seeing more of recognisable species like ladybirds, butterflies and bumblebees. Now, an increasing number of scientific studies are beginning to support these observations.

Last year, US beekeepers reported a 44 per cent collapse to their colonies during the winter months. In the same time period, the UK butterfly monitoring scheme reported reductions across 70 per cent of all species. As for the wider insect world, all insect and invertebrate populations were calculated to have shrunk by 45 per cent in the last four decades, according to biologist Rodolfo Dirzo in his seminal paper ‘Defaunation in the Anthropocene’.Recent research carried out in Krefeld, a western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, saw ‘an 80 per cent decline in flying insect biomass in the last 25 years,’ says Professor Dave Goulson, biologist at the University of Sussex. He helped to analyse the German data, whose numbers ‘were the most dramatic to date’.

Goulson, who often studies UK bees, believes pesticides are partly to blame. Only tiny doses of neonicotinoids, a relatively new but widespread group of pesticides, are enough to paralyse and kill bees (just 4 billionths of a gram) and his research has found that even smaller doses leave them confused, unable to navigate and unable to collect food. ‘Nobody knows for sure the cause of the declines in all insects,’ he says, ‘but most would agree that it is a combination of pesticide use and habitat loss.’

Specific extinctions have also contributed to the thinning numbers, and 42 per cent of bugs on the IUCN’s Red List are categorised as being under threat. ‘However, in many ways the loss of bioabundance is perhaps more significant,’ argues Goulson. ‘If flying insect populations are down by as much as 80 per cent, that means far fewer pollinators and far less food for insect-eating animals such as bats and birds.’

This was published in the July 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

Is it time for a new and radical approach to alleviating global poverty?

A century ago the US entered the First World War. There had long been great resistance to America joining the conflict. One diplomat who had earlier attempted to avoid the outbreak of war was Colonel Edward House, President Woodrow Wilson’s chief political advisor.

House was one of the first advocates of international development. In 1913, he recognised the rising power and ambition of Imperial Germany. He suggested to Wilson that German business interests should expand overseas and over lunch with the German ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, proposed that ‘it would be a great thing if there was a sympathetic understanding between England, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Together I thought they would be able to wield an influence for good throughout the world. They could ensure peace and the proper development of the waste places, besides maintaining an open door and equal opportunity to every one everywhere.’ A peaceful solution was not found. His proposal for overseas development to resolve Germany’s expansionist urges fell on deaf ears and soon after guns thundered across Europe.

House wanted to promote globalisation through international development assistance, although it would take several decades for policy to catch up with his ideas. After the Second World War, territories that had been exploited through colonialism in Asia, South America and especially Africa, began to receive foreign aid and more commercial investment.

This started the era of international development and many countries in sub-Sharan Africa became heavily dependent on financial assistance. Some aid has alleviated pressing social needs, but money often arrives with conditions attached. One of the main impacts of development grants, loans and debt relief has been to encourage economic liberalisation by the removal of barriers to trade and investment, enabling further integration of the world economy.

International development facilitated globalisation, which has had many effects. Firstly, it has become easier for companies to invest overseas and the type of imperial ambitions that fuelled conflict in the first half of the 20th century have been tempered. Secondly, globalisation has made some places wealthy, but has also led to rising inequality. The economies of the West grew tremendously after 1945, but progress in Africa has disappointed, despite billions of dollars of aid.

China, which was poorer than Africa in 1950, has moved out of extreme poverty, and achieved phenomenal economic and social progress. This is a great global success story, notwithstanding the many political and environmental problems that persist. Beijing’s achievements were not due to foreign aid or an ‘open door’ to international business. China did not trade money for control of economic policy. Rather than unbridled globalisation, Chinese leaders first prioritised health and education, then gradually opened their economy to international competition, which set them on the road to prosperity.

Globalisation has recently encountered resistance in the developed world. On the surface, the UK and US remain affluent, but the economic structures of both are becoming unequal. Globalisation has led to the loss of manufacturing jobs in factories that could not compete with cheap imports, predominantly from China.

China increasingly leads the way, too, in extracting African natural resources and is now an important aid donor itself. State-backed banks are cutting new loan deals that have conditions attached that further promote Chinese business interests. Globalisation is set to continue in Africa independent of Western international development assistance.

Colonel House promoted the idea of international development to help globalise the world economy and resolve international tensions between powerful nations. Globalisation has helped forestall international conflict, but has amplified the disparities between rich and poor. People in the global South have paid the price for the free movement of money, goods and services. Impoverished Africans and poor people elsewhere need to own their own development. This means protecting their economies, and nurturing sectors that provide meaningful jobs with living wages in industry and service sectors. In tandem, there is an urgent need for financial support to address the social and environmental concerns of everyone.

The growth of economic nationalism in the US and the UK poses a threat to the future financing of the International Development sector. Furthermore, world leaders need to be attentive to the lessons of the First World War and not kettle China’s international ambitions. Isolationism is not the answer, but ensuring economic independence can provide the foundation for prosperity. Policy makers who want to address the deep-seated poverty in Africa need to resist bad deals and renegotiate terms of trade to relieve some of the pressures of globalisation. This task looks harder than ever as China’s financial influence replaces Western development assistance in determining economic policy in Africa.

Dr Andrew Brooks  is a Lecturer in Development Geography at King’s College, London. Here he asks what impact nationalistic politics will have on the future of international development. Dr Brooks’ new book, The End of Development: A Global History of Poverty and Prosperity (Zed Books; £18.99), is out now. Purchase online: amzn.to/2qjzojI

This was published in the July 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

An historic exhibition at the National Maritime Museum unveils the first public display of numerous items recovered from rediscovered HMS Erebus

A left leather boot, specially crafted for Arctic conditions. An ornamental blue and white plate, a large chunk broken off. A brass fireplace broom. A pair of Royal Marine uniform buttons. A large bronze bell branded with the date 1845.

For nearly two centuries, these and other items lay far below the icy surface of the Canadian Arctic. There were all once kept upon HMS Erebus, which, along with HMS Terror, was one of two ships that set sail on the Thames on 19 May 1845 as part of Sir John Franklin’s search for the Northwest Passage. Now, they sit in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, for the very first display of such objects since their dramatic discovery just a few years ago.

Inuit-made model of European ship (Image: Canadian Museum of History)

Significantly, although perhaps surprisingly, the initial portion of the exhibition is devoted to the Inuit communities and culture whose spoken history was essential is locating the Franklin ships. From thick, hooded clothing to a long caribou antler bow (with bone arrows) to a remarkable 16th century carved wooden model of a European ship, alongside numerous recordings and literal ‘voices’ of the Inuit, it’s repeatedly emphasised what a crucial role these people played not just in the Franklin story, but in the entire course of five centuries of European exploration into the Inuit territory of the Arctic.

In the 19th century, across the Atlantic, an obsession had developed regarding the Arctic. As the exhibition stresses, even long after the prospect of finding a practical Northwest Passage in order to reach Asia had been dismissed, romantic imaginations of the Arctic and far north of the North American continent continued to enthral the public. Large exhibition maps, including interactive displays showing a visual timeline of exploration in this region, help provide a powerful sense of context behind the entire pioneering expedition.

The famous ‘Victory Point note’ revealed the dire situation the expedition had found themselves in (Image: National Maritime Museum, London)

One emphasis of the exhibition is to stress that each one of the 129 sailors aboard the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror was an individual person, with families waiting for them back home. Extracts from letters sent to their loved ones – which include details about activities such as animal collection and musical entertainments which occurred on the ships – underline the point that these men were all human, not mere pawns who happened to have been accompanying the great Sir Franklin.

For two years, nothing was heard of the expedition. The campaign of Lady Jane Franklin, emphasising the lack of contact from the ships (letters from Lady Franklin are accompanied by pottery dolls to show the celebrity status which she was able to generate during this time) eventually saw multiple search parties set sail to try and discover what happened to the expedition, as many as 36 over the years. Thanks to Britain being in something of a lull between the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars, figures from Robert McClure to John Rae to Francis Leopold McClintock were able to depart England in hope of finding, if not Sir Franklin and the crew themselves, at least some clue as to what became of them. The various tales which ensued – of which, of course, much more is actually known, many as dramatic as the Franklin expedition itself – are captured briefly but succinctly in the exhibition.

Underwater archaeologist collecting samples from HMS Erebus (Image: Parks Canada/Thierry Boyer)

As Franklin experts will know, the ‘Victory Point’ note eventually recovered on King William Island by McClintock revealed the vast number of deaths which had occurred on the expedition between May 1847 and April 1848, including Franklin himself. So what killed the crew, whose remains were uncovered scattered all around King William Island? Fans of autopsies will enjoy the chance to examine images of the preserved bodies of three crew members, while fans of conspiracy theories will enjoy deciding between the various potential causes of deaths which so wrecked the expedition. Was it tuberculosis? Lead poisoning? Hypothermia? Make up your own mind.

Ultimately, this entire story was completely turned on its head on 2 September 2014, when Parks Canada finally uncovered HMS Erebus, and, two years later, HMS Terror, as far as 160km from the understood abandonment location. With both relatively well preserved in the Arctic ice, excavations are currently underway to unscramble the mysteries of what happened to these ships, and the people who once sailed them. Details about the modern process of locating and identifying such shipwrecks are highly detailed, and demand praise for the dedication and efforts of those who were determined to finally solve this 170-year-old mystery. Especially given the timeframe available, this is an immensely well crafted exhibition – whatever knowledge you have of the Franklin story, there will be something for you to build upon it here.

Death in the Ice: The Shocking Story of Franklin’s Final Expedition in on at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, from 14 July 2017 until 7 January 2018. For more information visit rmg.co.uk/franklin

Can you complete this month’s Geographical crossword puzzle?

The first correctly completed crossword selected at random wins a copy of Philip’s Essential World Atlas – a comprehensive hardback atlas worth £25

Send your entry to Geographical, 3.20 Q West, 1100 Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 0GP, marked ‘July Crossword’. For more information visit www.octopusbooks.co.uk.

Entries close 31 July 2017.

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Clues 

Across

9 They’re from the States with cameras in disorder (8)

10 Feel concern about end of rural Irish county (5)

11 Write your own name, or a married woman in Italy (7)

12 Disciple has a job with the French (7)

13 We’re told to look furtively at mountain top (4)

14 Singer and goat beside the Atlantic? (5,5)

17 Sounds like it might be a flight to Russian plains (7)

18 Silly Gina’s about 51 and going by sea (7)

20 Ambition to move Ian to Paris (10)

23 Steep rocky outcrop as part of escarpment (4)

25 It’s same arrangement for French artist (7)

26 Male set out from Valletta, maybe (7)

28 A near conversion in sports stadium (5)

29 Teens seen drunk in US state (9)

Down

1 Charts the rise of unwanted emails? (4)

2 Be with poor Gerald in Serbian city (8)

3 He flies aircraft to edge, backwards! (5)

4 Can star sign reveal island group? (8)

5 Serial relocated to Middle Eastern country (6)

6 New car, Polo perhaps, is a feature of Athens (9)

7 Some felt tables turned by Agincourt, for example (6)

8/21Did new engine type get him twenty four hours from Tulsa? (4,6)

13 It’s found in minestrone soup, a standard Italian recipe (5)

15 Farage ousts left for right in African country! (5)

16 Sadly, no MP stars as a male athlete (9)

18 Uproar not unexpected at Belfast Castle! (8)

19 Rise in turbulent Seine swallowing crashed car (8)

21 See 8dn

22 Have a meal and try out international agreement (6)

24 Ships that run away before start of trials (5)

25 Grumble as chap goes round foot of Kilimanjaro (4)

27 Always in the Cape Verde Islands (4)

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This was published in the July 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

Can you complete this month’s Geographical crossword puzzle?

The first correctly completed crossword selected at random wins a copy of Philip’s Essential World Atlas – a comprehensive hardback atlas worth £25

Send your entry to Geographical, 3.20 Q West, 1100 Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 0GP, marked ‘June Crossword’. For more information visit www.octopusbooks.co.uk.

Entries close 30 June 2017.

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CLICK HERE for a printable version of this month’s crossword

Clues 

Across

1 Softer design for woodland (6)

4 Bet involves finale of ‘Lohengrin’, by him (6)

9/10 Old Ghana provides Dr Spooner with a chilly apparition! (4,5)

11 Sweet seaside souvenir from Gibraltar? (4)

12/23 Australian actress might be in Iceland, OK, with Tom ultimately? (6,6)

13 Shaped it anew so it could accommodate a British naval review? (8)

14 Chopped lamb in fruit in 1dn resort (4,5)

16 Leaders of countries overseas all like this fossil fuel (4)

17 Backing part of the Dubai plan for Cornish resort (4)

18 Sure, open a new arrangement with our continental neighbours (9)

22 Length between two points – it’s changed within waltz, perhaps (8)

23 See 12ac

25 US university has last of ruby beer (4)

26 French and English articles on woodworking machine (5)

27 Metal forming final 50 per cent of axle load (4)

28 Ran out of Samarkand turmoil with heavy figured fabric (6)

29 What Spaniards call home in Europe’s Panama area (6)

Down

1 Excessively elaborate, a US state (7)

2 ‘Cowboy Show Hero’ deodorant ingredient (5)

3 Hide in South East Greek island (7)

5 Region of France from Dakar to Israel (6)

6 ‘Top of the World’ is on other LP, perhaps (5,4)

7 Mac leaves broken alarm clock on rocky Atlantic islet (7)

8 Church service – such a test organised for US state (13)

15 Possibly merits dam in centre of river (9)

17 Bravo – daring sort, mountain robber (7)

19 New York’s north-east of these Scottish islands? (7)

20 Location that falls between Canada and the USA! (7)

21 Germanic peoples could be right as well as obtuse! (6)

24 Greek character at the end of the Nile (5)

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This was published in the June 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

Any historical novelist in search of a protagonist would feel blessed to come across the story of Fernão Lopes. Reliable facts about the Portuguese nobleman’s life may be few and far between, but what we can verify is utterly fascinating, and the frustrating gaps in the historical narrative would allow ample space for literary invention

In 1506, Lopes headed off to India in search of military glory, but, shortly after Afonso de Albuquerque’s capture of Goa in 1510, drops out of the historical record, only to reappear much changed in 1516. By that date he was in Bijapur, had converted to Islam, and begun to fight alongside Portugal’s enemies. This, needless to say, did not go down well with his countrymen and, captured as a renegade, Lopes was exposed to degrading punishments. Over three days he was smeared with pig dung, urinated on in the stocks, and had various body parts (his nose, ears, right hand and left thumb) lopped off. Lopes then had to choose between remaining in Goa or returning to Lisbon. He opted for the latter option but jumped ship at Saint Helena, where he remained for 14 years. Lopes appears to have carved out a relatively comfortable existence on the lonely island, and did his best to hide from any passing crews that put ashore.

Encounters could not be avoided entirely, however, and news of Lopes’ curious existence in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean made him something of a celebrity back in Portugal. Eventually, the Portuguese king forced Lopes to return to Lisbon (for the first time in 24 years) but after Lopes was quizzed and sent to meet the pope, he was allowed to return to Saint Helena. By 1546, when Lopes would have been 66, he was reported dead.This, as mentioned, would be wonderful bare bones material for a novelist but, with so little to go on, how is a historian to produce a book-length study of this enigmatic figure?

Abdul Rahman Azzam deploys two strategies. Firstly, Lopes’ story is skilfully inserted into a much broader account of Portugal’s sea-going adventures. We learn a great deal about how and why the country ‘launched its empire like a drunken love affair: chaotic and random, impetuous and cruel.’ Azzam also offers masterful portraits of two cities, Lisbon and Goa, that were central to Lopes’ story, and makes a decent fist of explaining the era’s religious tensions.

Azzam’s second tactic is less secure. When facts are not available, speculation ensues. It is suggested, for example, that Lopes, while Christian by the time he enters the historical record, may have originally been Jewish and that this could account for a ‘life in deep existential crisis’. Perhaps, but there is no significant evidence to support the claim. The book naturally looks at why Lopes converted to Islam and Azzam constructs a detailed theoretical trajectory in which Lopes first becomes culturally attracted to life in Bijapur, then develops a syncretic religious outlook that allows him to blend his beliefs with Islam, and finally finds ‘comfort, solace and tranquillity’ in his new faith. Perhaps, but where’s the proof of this?

There are, meanwhile, various possibilities when it comes to accounting for Lopes’ voluntary exile on Saint Helena: perhaps he had become mentally unhinged, perhaps he just wanted to hide from the world. Who knows? Azzam prefers a more romantic explanation. He declares that, early in his exile, Lopes ‘must have sensed the inkling of a profound inner transformation’, a chance for spiritual redemption through solitude. There will apparently have been ‘days of despair where he felt that he had dropped off the face of the Earth’ but these will have ‘been woven into days when he felt he was at the centre of the universe and that he was God’s sole focus.’ How, though, can Azzam possibly know this?

Azzam wants the ‘strange and poignant tale of Fernão Lopes’ to open up a meditation on ‘the secret of solitude’. This lofty goal presumably explains the various flights of fancy but it’s a risky move in the context of a history book, however passionate and well-written it may be.

Click here to purchase The Other Exile: The Remarkable Story of Fernao Lopes, the Island of Helena and Paradise Lost by Abdul Rahman Azzam

Plastic-free aisles in our local supermarkets may just be key to fighting global food insecurity says Frederikke Magnussen

Frederikke Magnussen is Co-Founder of A Plastic Planet. To read more about the campaign visit aplasticplanet.com.

It is widely accepted that plastic waste is the scourge of our oceans, yet few recognise it as a major threat to food security. As the rubbish heap piles up, plastic’s contamination of the food chain is only set to get worse in the decades head.

Headline figures about the extent of the plastic crisis have secured countless column inches around the world. Campaigners often cite the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s claim that there is set to be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050. Despite heightened public awareness of the link between plastic waste and environmental degradation, little attention is paid to how plastic is being allowed to contaminate the food chain.

We currently dump eight million tonnes of plastic into global ocean. Every minute we dump the equivalent of one garbage truck’s worth of plastic into global seas. In some areas of the South Pacific, plastic debris is thought to outnumber plankton by a ratio of six to one. The pollution problem shows no sign of going away any time soon however, with plastic taking potentially thousands of years to degrade in water.

When plastic debris finds its way into the ocean, it is ingested by fish who confuse it for food. People then eat this fish, themselves swallowing hundreds of small plastic pieces. A landmark University of Ghent study in 2016 revealed that British seafood eaters risk ingesting up to 11,000 pieces of plastic each year. As a nation of fish and chip lovers, this casts serious doubts on the safety of our national dish.

“British seafood eaters risk ingesting up to 11,000 pieces of plastic each year”

Last year a UN Environment Project cast serious doubt on the safety of plastic-contaminated fish. The report claimed that that people who consume plastic-contaminated fish may be exposed to chemicals that can cause poisoning, infertility, cancer and genetic disruption. With around a third of fish caught off the coast of southwest England thought to contain traces of plastic, this calls into question the UK’s ability to secure a sustainable supply of safe seafood.

A growing body of evidence also points to the fact that the leaching of phthalate chemicals used in plastic packaging into food may also endanger human health. Various studies have been done into the toxicity of these ubiquitous substances – including the landmark CHAP (Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel) report on phthalates, published by the US Federal Government in late 2014. The study raised concerns that phthalates may be carcinogenic in high doses.

With little attention paid to plastic’s contamination of the food chain, it’s clear that government and industry action on the issue may be a long way off. We should await with baited breath the outcome of Chief Medical Officer for England Dame Sally Davies’ study into the health impact of plastic particles found in fish. Due to report later this year, the study may be the wake-up call that we badly need in the UK.

The obvious solution to the plastic crisis is to reduce our consumption of single-use plastic packaging which is half of our yearly plastic production. Last year I realised I had to do something positive to stem the tide of plastic pollution. I started A Plastic Planet with my friend and serial entrepreneur Sian Sutherland after we both worked on the launch of the film, A Plastic Ocean. The film illustrates the shocking extent of the plastic pollution crisis that mankind faces. Learning from this experience inspired me to take the plastic-free message to the next level. I wanted to do something about the curse of throwaway plastic, not just talk or think about it.

And so A Plastic Planet was born. It is a campaign for the doers not the thinkers. It’s for those of us who worry about the damage we are doing every time we buy trolley-loads of groceries covered in single-use plastic packaging that will remain on the Earth long after we are gone. The campaign has thus far secured wide-ranging amongst politicians, food security experts and the public. We’ve also managed to assemble a stable of celebrity ambassadors including the adventurer Ben Fogle.

Our campaign is based on a simple premise: you can buy gluten-free, dairy-free, and fat-free, so why not plastic-free? It’s about choice. A Plastic-Free aisle would give consumers the chance to reject goods laden with plastic in favour of more sustainable alternatives.

This month we are bidding to convince Britain’s supermarket bosses that a Plastic-Free aisle would be good for business, good for the planet, and good for our children’s health. We think the supermarkets are perfectly placed to deliver the positive change generations to come so badly need. A Plastic-Free aisle would be the first step on a journey to healthier future for future generations and the planet they will inherit.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the positions of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) or Geographical.

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Where in the world is the highest density of languages? Benjamin Hennig maps the answer

There are approximately 7,000 languages believed to be spoken around the world. Despite this diversity, the majority of the world’s population speaks only a fraction of them. The three largest language groups (Mandarin, Spanish, and English) have more than 1.5 billion native speakers. Other estimates state that two thirds of the world’s population share only 12 languages.

But it is the diversity of the languages spoken by the few that makes language a remarkable cultural phenomenon. It is estimated that 96 per cent of all languages are spoken by only three to four per cent of all people. Two thousand of the world’s languages have less than 1,000 native speakers.

There are many attempts to understand and map this diversity of languages around the world. The Ethnologue database lists exactly 7,099 individual languages in a comprehensive geographic database. An even more detailed account when looking at the real diversity of language is provided by Glottolog of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Glottolog ‘aims to provide complete references on the world’s languages’. It also looks at the distribution of dialects and consists of almost 8,500 entries. Besides detailed linguistic information, this database includes basic geographic information about the origins of languages, their families and their dialects.

Image: Benjamin Hennig

The Glottolog database was used in this month’s cartogram to highlight the geographic distribution of language diversity around the world. The main locations of each entry from the database were used to calculate the density (and diversity) of languages in their spatial distribution. The cartogram therefore shows larger areas where there is a relatively higher diversity of languages. This is also reflected in the differently shaded colours overlaid.

The highest language diversity in the world can be found in Africa and Asia, both with more than 2,000 living tongues. At the other end of the geographic spectrum lies Europe with only around 250 living languages and dialects spoken.

How vulnerable languages are can be seen even in Europe, with its relatively low language diversity. As a tool to monitor the status of endangered languages and the trends in linguistic diversity at the global level, UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger lists 11 languages in the UK alone that have a certain degree of endangerment. Most critically endangered are Cornish and Manx on the Isle of Man, two of 14 languages in Europe with this most severe status. Both are now subject to revival efforts.

Language cartogram with overlaid languages (Click to embiggen – 3.8MB)

The authors of the Handbook of Endangered Languages estimate that by the end of the century, 50 to 90 per cent of the currently spoken languages could be extinct. First affected will be the approximately 500 already nearly extinct languages that often only have a few (sometimes even only one) known speakers left. Endangered languages face similar fates as endangered species in nature.

Such highly endangered examples include the Bishuo language in Cameroon for which there was only one known native speaker left in the last records. In North America, many of the nearly extinct languages are to be found among the native populations along the west coast. One is Klallam, for which there were still five speakers recorded in the 1990 Census, but which is now regarded as extinct, with its last native speaker having died in 2014. Only a few second-language speakers remain.

Efforts such as the Endangered Languages Project aim to utilise the internet in efforts to raise awareness for endangered languages and work towards the future preservation of today’s language diversity. For the most part though, it’s up to communities themselves to fight to keep their native tongues alive.

Benjamin Hennig (@geoviews) is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Iceland and Honorary Research Associate in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He is involved in the Worldmapper project and is author of www.viewsoftheworld.net. 

For more on endangered languages, read Mark Rowe’s in-depth examination of the battle to reinvigorate the use of Scottish Gaelic in the Outer Hebrides.

This was published in the June 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

With the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s film collection recently digitised on the BFI Player, Felix Driver reflects on over a century of film-making by geographers and others who used the moving image to bring the subject alive for wider audiences

‘In the early decades of film-making, geographers were drawn to its potential use in education, on expeditions, and in the dissemination of research. This was especially the case in France, where one of the pioneers in colour film and photography, Albert Kahn, sponsored a Chair in Geography occupied by Jean Brunhes, one of the leading geographers of the day.

‘In Britain, a new generation of geographers became interested in documentary film (including Robert Flaherty’s influential 1922 film about the Arctic, Nanook of the North). This interest helped to stimulate the development of the film appreciation movement.

‘In the pre-digital era, UK geographers were enthusiastic about the capacity of film to convey movement and more broadly the character of landscapes and regions; and some even encouraged teachers to involve children in the making of films themselves. Geographical published a series of essays during the 1950s on feature films and documentaries: one memorable article (by the BFI Director Roger Manvell) was titled Robert Flaherty, Geographer.

‘The newly digitised RGS-IBG film collection includes a wide variety of archival film, including commercially made travelogues, feature-length films, home movies, expeditionary films, educational shorts and unedited footage from many parts of the world. The collection presents geographers with rich possibilities for further research.

‘Highlights include remarkable film from expeditions in Amazonia and on Everest during the 1920s. Explorers used film both to publicise their expeditions and to celebrate the technological achievement of film-making in extreme environments. Such footage can be connected by researchers with other archival material available at the Society and elsewhere, including unique correspondence and original photographs, giving vital evidence of the way in which films were actually made, processed and distributed.

‘The recovery of a rich film heritage allows researchers to explore the diverse uses of geographical film in the past. It also presents exciting opportunities for geographers to develop new ways of thinking about film today.’

Felix Driver is Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London

This was published in the July 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

A selection of RGS-IBG events including lectures and exhibitions around the UK for July 2017

1 July, 10.30am–12noon

A novel character

(Guided trail, Haworth)

Join Discovering Britain trail creator Charlotte Derry to explore the south Pennine hills of Brontë Country beyond the tourist trail. This wheelchair and pushchair accessible guided walk will discover the wild forces that shaped this landscape and find out why it holds such sway on our imagination.

Meet at Haworth railway station. Free, advance booking required. For full information, please visit www.rgs.org/yorkshirenortheast

8 July, 10.30am–4.30pm

Crumbling cliffs and crashing waves

(Field visit, Teignmouth)

Pat Wilson will lead her linear Teignmouth to Dawlish Discovering Britain walk, exploring how coastal processes continue to influence the course of the main line railway and cliff collapses and sea wall breaches threaten a vital communication link for both people and the local economy.

8 July 2–5pm

Birmingham’s gem

(Guided walk, Birmingham)

This guided Discovering Britain walk will explore the rich history and culture of the Jewellery Quarter, a designated conservation area, still home to over 500 jewellery businesses. Walk creator Martin Haslett will provide insights into a trade that prospered in Birmingham’s heyday during the Industrial Revolution.

11 July, 7pm

Discovering People: John Sergeant

(Interview and Q+A, London)

Join us in conversation with John Sergeant as he discusses a distinguished career, reporting from Saigon and Washington during the Vietnam War and travelling with the Prime Minister during his 21 years in Westminster. The broadcaster, author and former Strictly contestant also reveals a passion for India’s railways and Britain’s canals.

22 July, 10.30am–1pm

Many waters

(Guided trail, Monyash)

Simon Corble will introduce the story of Monyash, whose name means ‘many waters’. The village now has only one small mere, but there used to be five; each of which was of considerable importance to local lives. Discover more on this guided Discovering Britain trail down Lathkill Dale.

22 July, 7pm

The long view

(Lecture, Kendal)

Join author Harriett and photographer Rob Fraser for a behind-the-scenes tour of The long view, an exhibition of photographs, poetry, video and installations, which looks at seven ‘ordinary trees in extraordinary locations’ in all seasons, compiled over a seven-year period and explores the wonders of the arboreal world.