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President Trump promises to make government efficient − and he’ll run into the same roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, among others

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theconversation.com – Jennifer Selin, Associate Professor of Law, Arizona State University – 2025-01-24 07:39:00

President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Jennifer Selin, Arizona State University

As President Donald Trump issued a slew of executive orders and directives on his first day of his second administration, he explained his actions by saying, “It’s all about common sense.”

For over a century, presidents have pursued initiatives to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government, couching those efforts in language similar to Trump’s.

Many of these, like Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which he appointed billionaire Elon Musk to run, have been designed to capitalize on the expertise of people outside of government. The idea often cited as inspiration for these efforts: The private sector knows how to be efficient and nimble and strives for excellence; government doesn’t.

But government, and government service, is about providing something that the private sector can’t. And outsiders often don’t think about the accountability requirements that the laws and Constitution of the United States impose on government workers and agencies.

Congress, though, can help address these problems and check inappropriate proposals. It can also stand in the way of reform.

Two men in dark suits and fedoras leave a formal-looking building.
Charles E. Merriam, left, and Louis Brownlow, members of the President’s Reorganization Committee, leave the White House after discussing government reorganization with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Sept. 23, 1938.
Harris & Ewing, photographer, Library of Congress

Proposing reform is nothing new

Perhaps the most famous group to work with a president on improving government was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on Administrative Management, established in 1936.

That group, commonly referred to as the Brownlow Committee, noted that while critics predicted Roosevelt would bring “decay, destruction, and death of democracy,” the executive branch – and the president who sat atop it – was one of the “very greatest” contributions to modern democracy.

The committee argued that the president was unable to do his job because the executive branch was badly organized, federal employees lacked skills and character, and the budget process needed reform. So it proposed a series of changes designed to increase presidential power over government to enhance performance. Congress went along with some of these proposals, giving the president more staff and authority to reorganize the executive branch.

Since then, almost every president has put together similar recommendations. For example, Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed former President Herbert Hoover to lead advisory commissions designed to recommend changes to the federal government. President Jimmy Carter launched a series of government improvement projects, and President George W. Bush even created scorecards to rank agencies according to their performance.

In his first term, Trump issued a mandate for reform to reorganize government for the 21st century.

This time around, Trump has taken executive actions to freeze government hiring, create a new entity to promote government efficiency, and give him the ability to fire high-ranking administrators who influence policy.

Most presidential proposals generally fail to come to fruition. But they often spark conversations in Congress and the media about executive power, the effectiveness of federal programs, and what government can do better.

Most presidents have tried the same thing

Historically, most presidents and their advisers – and indeed most scholars – have agreed that government bureaucracy is not designed in ways that promote efficiency. But that is intentional: Stanford political scientist Terry Moe has written that “American public bureaucracy is not designed to be effective. The bureaucracy arises out of politics, and its design reflects the interests, strategies, and compromises of those who exercise political power.”

A common presidential response to this practical reality is to propose government changes that make it look more like the private sector. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan brought together 161 corporate executives overseen by industrialist J. Peter Grace to make recommendations to eliminate government waste and inefficiency, based on their experiences leading successful corporations.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton authorized Vice President Al Gore to launch an effort to reinvent the federal government into one that worked better and cost less.

The Clinton administration created teams in every major federal agency, modeled after the private sector’s efficiency standards, to move government “From Red Tape to Results,” as the title of the administration’s plan said.

A page from a report on how to make government more efficient.
An introductory page from the 1993 National Performance Review executive summary, commissioned by the Clinton administration.
CIA.gov

Presidential attempts to make government look and work more like people think the private sector works often include adjustments to the terms of federal employment to reward employees who excel at their jobs.

In 1905, for example, President Theodore Roosevelt established a Committee on Department Methods to examine how the federal government could recruit and retain highly qualified employees. One hundred years later, federal agencies still experienced challenges](https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-03-2.pdf) related to hiring and retaining people who could effectively achieve agency missions.

Two men standing behind a microphone at a lectern, looking excited.
President Bill Clinton applauds as Vice President Al Gore speaks at a press conference on March 3, 1994, at which Gore gave Clinton a report of the National Performance Review.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

So why haven’t these plans worked?

At least the past five presidents have faced problems in making long-term changes to government.

In part, this is because government reorganizations and operational reforms like those contemplated by Trump require Congress to make adjustments to the laws of the United States, or at least give the president and federal agencies the money required to invest in changes.

Consider, for example, presidential proposals to invest in new technologies, which are a large part of Trump and Musk’s plans to improve government efficiency. Since at least 1910, when President William Howard Taft established a Commission on Economy and Efficiency to address the “unnecessarily complicated and expensive” way the federal government handled and distributed government documents, presidents have recommended centralizing authority to mandate federal agencies’ use of new technologies to make government more efficient.

But transforming government through technology requires money, people and time. Presidential plans for government-wide change are contingent upon the degree to which federal agencies can successfully implement them.

To sidestep these problems, some presidents have proposed that the government work with the private sector. For example, Trump announced a joint venture with technology companies to invest in the government’s artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Yet as I have found in my previous research, government investment in new technology first requires an assessment of agencies’ current technological skills and the impact technology will have on agency functions, including those related to governmental transparency, accountability and constitutional due process. It’s not enough to go out and buy software that tech giants recommend agencies acquire.

The things that government agencies do, such as regulating the economy, promoting national security and protecting the environment, are incredibly complicated. It’s often hard to see their impact right away.

Recognizing this, Congress has designed a complex set of laws to prevent political interference with federal employees, who tend to look at problems long term. For example, as I have found in my work with Paul Verkuil, former chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, Congress intentionally writes laws that require certain government positions to be held by experts who can work in their jobs without worrying about politics.

Congress also writes the laws the federal employees administer, oversees federal programs and decides how much money to appropriate to those programs each year.

So by design, anything labeled a “presidential commission on modernizing/fixing/refocusing government” tells only part of the story and sets out an impossible task. The president can’t make it happen alone. Nor can Elon Musk.The Conversation

Jennifer Selin, Associate Professor of Law, Arizona State University

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

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If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?

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theconversation.com – Ming Xie, Assistant Professor of Emergency Management and Public Health, University of Maryland, Baltimore County – 2025-02-10 07:45:00

If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?

Hurricane Ian caused widespread damage in Florida in 2022, estimated at over $112 billion. This scene was once a shopping center.
Giorgio Veira/AFP via Getty Images

Ming Xie, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Imagine a world in which a hurricane devastates the Gulf Coast, and the U.S. has no federal agency prepared to quickly send supplies, financial aid and temporary housing assistance.

Could the states manage this catastrophic event on their own?

Normally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, is prepared to marshal supplies within hours of a disaster and begin distributing financial aid to residents who need help.

However, with President Donald Trump questioning FEMA’s future and suggesting states take over recovery instead, and climate change causing more frequent and severe disasters, it’s worth asking how prepared states are to face these growing challenges without help.

What FEMA does

FEMA was created in 1979 with the job of coordinating national responses to disasters, but the federal government has played important roles in disaster relief since the 1800s.

During a disaster, FEMA’s assistance can begin only after a state requests an emergency declaration and the U.S. president approves it. The request has to show that the disaster is so severe that the state can’t handle the response on its own.

FEMA’s role is to support state and local governments by coordinating federal agencies and providing financial aid and recovery assistance that states would otherwise struggle to supply on their own. FEMA doesn’t “take over,” as a misinformation campaign launched during Hurricane Helene claimed. Instead, it pools federal resources to allow states to recover faster from expensive disasters.

During a disaster, FEMA:

  • Coordinates federal resources. For example, during Hurricane Ian in 2022, FEMA coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Defense and search-and-rescue teams to conduct rescue operations, organized utility crews to begin restoring power and also delivered water and millions of meals.

  • Provides financial assistance. FEMA distributes billions of dollars in disaster relief funds to help individuals, businesses and local governments recover. As of Feb. 3, 2025, FEMA aid from 2024 storms included US$1.04 billion related to Hurricane Milton, $416.1 million for Hurricane Helene and $112.6 million for Hurricane Debby.

  • Provides logistical support. FEMA coordinates with state and local governments, nonprofits such as the American Red Cross and federal agencies to supply cots, blankets and hygiene supplies for emergency shelters. It also works with state and local partners to distribute critical supplies such as food, water and medical aid.

The agency also manages the National Flood Insurance Program, offers disaster preparedness training and helps states develop response plans to improve their overall responses systems.

What FEMA aid looks like in a disaster

When wildfires swept through Maui, Hawaii, in August 2023, FEMA provided emergency grants to cover immediate needs such as food, clothing and essential supplies for survivors.

The agency arranged hotel rooms, rental assistance and financial aid for residents who lost homes or belongings. Its Direct Housing Program has spent $295 million to lease homes for more than 1,200 households. This comprehensive support helped thousands of people begin rebuilding their lives after losing almost everything.

FEMA also helped fund construction of a temporary school to ensure that students whose schools burned could continue their classes. Hawaii, with its relatively small population and limited emergency funds, would have struggled to mount a comparable response on its own.

A man wearing a T-shirt with the state seal of Hawaii speaks with reporters, standing next to a woman with 'FEMA' on her cap and shirt with ocean and burned properties behind them.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, center, and then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell speak to reporters in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 12, 2023, while assessing the wildfire damage there.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

Larger states often need help, too. When a 2021 winter storm overwhelmed Texas’ power grid and water infrastructure, FEMA coordinated the delivery of essential supplies, including water, fuel, generators and blankets, following the disaster declaration on Feb. 19, 2021. Within days, it awarded more than $2.8 million in grants to help people with temporary housing and home repairs.

Which states would suffer most without FEMA?

Without FEMA or other federal support, states would have to manage the disaster response and recovery on their own.

States prone to frequent disasters, such as Louisiana and Florida, would face expensive recurring challenges that would likely exacerbate recovery delays and reduce their overall resilience.

Smaller, more rural and less wealthy states that lack the financial resources and logistical capabilities to respond effectively would be disproportionately affected.

“States don’t have that capability built to handle a disaster every single year,” Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, told Stateline in an interview. Access to FEMA avoids the need for expensive disaster response infrastructure in each state.

States might be able to arrange regional cooperation. But state-led responses and regional models have limitations. The National Guard could assist with supply distribution, but it isn’t designed to provide fast financial aid, housing or long-term recovery options, and the supplies and the recovery effort still come at a cost.

A National Guard member walks in front of search and rescue vehicles.
Members of the National Guard and a FEMA search-and-rescue team work together in the disaster response after Hurricane Florence pounded Wilmington, N.C., in September 2018.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Wealthier states might be better equipped to manage on their own, but poorer states would likely struggle. States with less funding and infrastructure would be left relying on nonprofits and community-based efforts. But these organizations are not capable of providing the scope of services FEMA can.

Any federal funding would also be slow if Congress had to approve aid after each disaster, rather than having FEMA already prepared to respond. States would be at the mercy of congressional infighting.

In the absence of a federal response and coordinating role, recovery would be uneven, with wealthier areas recovering faster and poorer areas likely seeing more prolonged hardships.

What does this mean?

Coordinating disaster response is complex, the paperwork for federal assistance can be frustrating, and the agency does draw criticism. However, it also fills an important role.

As the frequency of natural disasters continues to rise due to climate change, ask yourself: How prepared is your state for a disaster, and could it get by without federal aid?The Conversation

Ming Xie, Assistant Professor of Emergency Management and Public Health, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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

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Here’s how researchers are helping AIs get their facts straight

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theconversation.com – Lu Wang, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan – 2025-02-10 07:44:00

Here’s how researchers are helping AIs get their facts straight

AI chatbots need help learning to give accurate answers.
CreativaImages/iStock via Getty Images

Lu Wang, University of Michigan

AI has made it easier than ever to find information: Ask ChatGPT almost anything, and the system swiftly delivers an answer. But the large language models that power popular tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude were not designed to be accurate or factual. They regularly “hallucinate” and offer up falsehoods as if they were hard facts.

Yet people are relying more and more on AI to answer their questions. Half of all people in the U.S. between the ages of 14 and 22 now use AI to get information, according to a 2024 Harvard study. An analysis by The Washington Post found that more than 17% of prompts on ChatGPT are requests for information.

One way researchers are attempting to improve the information AI systems give is to have the systems indicate how confident they are in the accuracy of their answers. I’m a computer scientist who studies natural language processing and machine learning. My lab at the University of Michigan has developed a new way of deriving confidence scores that improves the accuracy of AI chatbot answers. But confidence scores can only do so much.

Popular and problematic

Leading technology companies are increasingly integrating AI into search engines. Google now offers AI Overviews that appear as text summaries above the usual list of links in any search result. Other upstart search engines, such as Perplexity, are challenging traditional search engines with their own AI-generated summaries.

The convenience of these summaries has made these tools very popular. Why scour the contents of multiple websites when AI can provide the most pertinent information in a few seconds?

AI tools seem to offer a smoother, more expedient avenue to getting information. But they can also lead people astray or even expose them to harmful falsehoods. My lab has found that even the most accurate AI models hallucinate in 25% of claims. This hallucination rate is concerning because other research suggests AI can influence what people think.

YouTube video
It bears emphasizing: AI chatbots are designed to sound good, not give accurate information.

Language models hallucinate because they learn and operate on statistical patterns drawn from a massive amount of text data, much of which comes from the internet. This means that they are not necessarily grounded in real-world facts. They also lack other human competencies, like common sense and the ability to distinguish between serious expressions and sarcastic ones.

All this was on display last spring, when a user asked Google’s AI Overviews tool to suggest a way to keep cheese from sliding off a pizza. The tool promptly recommended mixing the cheese with glue. It then came to light that someone had once posted this obviously tongue-in-cheek recommendation on Reddit. Like most large language models, Google’s model had likely been trained with information scraped from myriad internet sources, including Reddit. It then mistakenly interpreted this user’s joke as a genuine suggestion.

While most users wouldn’t take the glue recommendation seriously, some hallucinated information can cause real harm. AI search engines and chatbots have repeatedly been caught citing debunked, racist pseudoscience as fact. Last year, Perplexity AI stated that a police officer in California was guilty of a crime that he did not commit.

Showing confidence

Building AI systems that prioritize veracity is challenging, but not impossible. One way AI developers are approaching this problem is to design models that communicate their confidence in their answers. This typically comes in the form of a confidence score – a number indicating how likely it is that a model is providing accurate information. But estimating a model’s confidence in the content it provides is also a complicated task.

YouTube video
How confidence scores work in machine learning.

One common approach to making this estimate involves asking the model to repeatedly respond to a given query. If the model is reliable, it should generate similar answers to the same query. If it can’t answer consistently, the AI is likely lacking the information it needs to answer accurately. Over time, the results of these tests become the AI’s confidence scores for specific subject areas.

Other approaches evaluate AI accuracy by directly prompting and training models to state how confident they are in their answers. But this offers no real accountability. Allowing an AI to evaluate its own confidence leaves room for the system to give itself a passing grade and continue to offer false or harmful information.

My lab has designed algorithms that assign confidence scores by breaking down a large language model’s responses into individual claims that can be automatically cross-referenced with Wikipedia. We assess the semantic equivalence between the AI model’s output and the referenced Wikipedia entries for the assertions. Our approach allows the AI to quickly evaluate the accuracy of all its statements. Of course, relying on Wikipedia articles, which are usually but not always accurate, also has its limitations.

Publishing confidence scores along with a model’s answers could help people to think more critically about the veracity of information that these tools provide. A language model can also be trained to withhold information if it earns a confidence score that falls below a set threshold. My lab has also shown that confidence scores can be used to help AI models generate more accurate answers.

Limits of confidence

There’s still a long way to go to ensure truly accurate AI. Most of these approaches assume that the information needed to correctly evaluate an AI’s accuracy can be found on Wikipedia and other online databases.

But when accurate information is just not that easy to come by, confidence estimates can be misleading. To account for cases like these, Google has developed special mechanisms for evaluating AI-generated statements. My lab has similarly compiled a benchmarking dataset of prompts that commonly cause hallucinations.

But all these approaches verify basic facts – there are no automated methods for evaluating other facets of long-form content, such as cause-and-effect relationships or an AI’s ability to reason over text consisting of more than one sentence.

Developing tools that improve these elements of AI are key steps toward making the technology a source of trustworthy information – and avoid the harms that misinformation can cause.The Conversation

Lu Wang, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan

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Why the price of your favorite chocolate will continue to rise

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theconversation.com – Narcisa Pricope, Professor of Geography and Land Systems Science and Associate Vice President for Research, Mississippi State University – 2025-02-10 07:44:00

Why the price of your favorite chocolate will continue to rise

Chocolate prices spiked amid very dry conditions in Africa.
Chuck Fishman/Getty Images

Narcisa Pricope, Mississippi State University

Valentine’s Day often conjures images of chocolates and romance. But the crop behind this indulgence faces an existential threat.

Regions like northeastern Brazil, one of the world’s notable cocoa-producing areas, are grappling with increasing aridity – a slow, yet unrelenting drying of the land. Cocoa is made from the beans of the cacao tree, which thrives in humid climates. The crop is struggling in these drying regions, and so are the farmers who grow it.

This is not just Brazil’s story. Across West Africa, where 70% of the world’s cacao is grown, and in the Americas and Southeast Asia, shifting moisture levels threaten the delicate balance required for production. These regions, home to vibrant ecosystems and global breadbaskets that feed the world, are on the frontlines of aridity’s slow but relentless advance.

A man in a baseball cap reaches for a large pod on a tree.
A farmer in Colombia holds a cacao pod, which holds the key ingredients for chocolate.
©2017CIAT/NeilPalmer, CC BY-NC-SA

Over the past 30 years, more than three-quarters of the Earth’s landmass has become drier. A recent report I helped coordinate for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification found that drylands now cover 41% of global land, an area that expanded by nearly 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers) over those three decades — about half the size of Australia.

This creeping dryness is not just a climate phenomenon. It’s a long-term transformation that may be irreversible and that carries devastating consequences for ecosystems, agriculture and livelihoods worldwide.

What causes aridity?

Aridity, while often thought of as purely a climate phenomenon, is the result of a complex interplay among human-driven factors. These include greenhouse gas emissions, land use practices and the degradation of critical natural resources, such as soil and biodiversity.

These interconnected forces have been accelerating the transformation of once-productive landscapes into increasingly arid regions, with consequences that ripple across ecosystems and economies.

Greenhouse gas emissions: A global catalyst

Human-induced climate change is the primary driver of rising aridity.

Greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, increase global temperatures. Rising temperatures, in turn, cause moisture to evaporate at a faster rate. This heightened evaporation reduces soil and plant moisture, exacerbating water scarcity – even in regions with moderate rainfall.

Aridity began accelerating globally in the 1950s, and the world has seen a pronounced shift over the past three decades.

This process is particularly stark in regions already prone to dryness, such as Africa’s Sahel region and the Mediterranean. In these areas, reduced precipitation – combined with increased evaporation – creates a feedback loop: Drier soils absorb less heat, leaving the atmosphere warmer and intensifying arid conditions.

Charts show dryness in recent years and increasing populations in dry areas.
The number of people living in dryland regions has been rising in each region in recent years. Years 1971-2020. Scales vary.
UNCCD

Unsustainable land use practices: A hidden accelerator

Aridity is also affected by how people use and manage land.

Unsustainable agricultural practices, overgrazing and deforestation strip soils of their protective vegetation cover, leaving them vulnerable to erosion. Industrial farming techniques often prioritize short-term yields over long-term sustainability, depleting nutrients and organic matter essential for healthy soils.

For example, in cocoa-producing regions like northeastern Brazil, deforestation to make room for agriculture disrupts local water cycles and exposes soils to degradation. Without vegetation to anchor it, topsoil – critical for plant growth – washes away during rainfall or is blown away by winds, taking with it vital nutrients.

These changes create a vicious cycle: Degraded soils also hold less water and lead to more runoff, reducing the land’s ability to recover.

A woman holds two vegetables in her hands while standing in a dry, sparsely populated field with small houses in the distance.
Aridity can affect the ability to grow many crops. Large parts of the country of Chad, shown here, have drying lands.
United Nations Chad, CC BY-NC-SA

The soil-biodiversity connection

Soil, often overlooked in discussions of climate resilience, plays a critical role in mitigating aridity.

Healthy soils act as reservoirs, storing water and nutrients that plants depend on. They also support biodiversity below and above ground. A single teaspoon of soil contains billions of microorganisms that help cycle nutrients and maintain ecological balance.

However, as soils degrade under aridity and mismanagement, this biodiversity diminishes. Microbial communities, essential for nutrient cycling and plant health, decline. When soils become compacted and lose organic matter, the land’s ability to retain water diminishes, making it even more susceptible to drying out.

In short, the loss of soil health creates cascading effects that undermine ecosystems, agricultural productivity and food security.

Global hot spots: Looming food security crises

Cocoa is just one crop affected by the encroachment of rising aridity.

Other key agricultural zones, including the breadbaskets of the world, are also at risk. In the Mediterranean, Africa’s Sahel and parts of the U.S. West, aridity already undermines farming and biodiversity.

By 2100, up to 5 billion people could live in drylands – nearly double the current population in these areas, due to both population growth and expansion of drylands as the planet warms. This puts immense pressure on food systems. It can also accelerate migration as declining agricultural productivity, water scarcity and worsening living conditions force rural populations to move in search of opportunities.

A map shows large dry areas across the western U.S., Africa, Australia, Asia and parts of South America.
A map shows average aridity for 1981-2010. Computer simulations estimate that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities caused a 1.2% larger increase in the four types of dry regions combined for the periods between 1850 and 1981–2010 than simulations with only solar and volcanic effects considered.
UNCCD

Aridity’s ripple effects also extend far beyond agriculture. Ecosystems, already strained by deforestation and pollution, are stressed as water resources dwindle. Wildlife migrates or dies, and plant species adapted to moister conditions can’t survive. The Sahel’s delicate grasslands, for instance, are rapidly giving way to desert shrubs.

On a global scale, economic losses linked to aridification are staggering. In Africa, rising aridity contributed to a 12% drop in gross domestic product from 1990 to 2015. Sandstorms and dust storms, wildfires and water scarcity further burden governments, exacerbating poverty and health crises in the most affected regions.

The path forward

Aridity is not inevitable, nor are its effects completely irreversible. But coordinated global efforts are essential to curb its progression.

Countries can work together to restore degraded lands by protecting and restoring ecosystems, improving soil health and encouraging sustainable farming methods.

Communities can manage water more efficiently through rainwater harvesting and advanced irrigation systems that optimize water use. Governments can reduce the drivers of climate change by investing in renewable energy.

Continued international collaboration, including working with businesses, can help share technologies to make these actions more effective and available worldwide.

So, as you savor chocolate this Valentine’s Day, remember the fragile ecosystems behind it. The price of cocoa in early 2025 was near its all-time high, due in part to dry conditions in Africa. Without urgent action to address aridity, this scenario may become more common, and cocoa – and the sweet concoctions derived from it – may well become a rare luxury.

Collective action against aridity isn’t just about saving chocolate – it’s about preserving the planet’s capacity to sustain life.The Conversation

Narcisa Pricope, Professor of Geography and Land Systems Science and Associate Vice President for Research, Mississippi State University

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

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