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“We sat at the table with these folks for hundreds of hours to hammer out this deal and we are very pleased with the outcomes of what we’ve seen,” Shaun Laden, president of the education support professionals chapter of the union, said at a press conference following the announcement of the agreement.

Provisions in the union’s tentative deal for ESPs include increased work hours and workdays, and increased pay rates of $2 to $4 per hour — bringing the annual salary for many ESPs closer to the union’s original ask of $35,000 per year as a starting salary. The agreement also secured seniority and placement rights for associate educators, who are largely people of color, according to Laden.

Beyond that, the new agreement provides more mental health support for students and outlines a return-to- work agreement, which would replace the 14 missed school days during the strike by extending school days starting next month.

However, how things will play out in Minneapolis remains uncertain. According to Anderson, significant parts of the tentative agreements have not been well received.

“The contract is not at all what we hoped for,” Anderson said, referring to both the return-to-work terms and the union agreement.

“I do believe this is the best our negotiation team could get. I do think they worked very hard, and I am happy the ESPs got closer to what they deserve. It was just silly to think we wouldn’t be punished for our action,” Anderson added, calling the return-to-work deal “punitive.”

Tentative Agreement voting now open at MFT. We are EXTENDING VOTING HOURS until 9:30 p.m. tonight, Saturday, March 26! pic.twitter.com/cInG5PtPsK

— MFT 59 (@MFT59) March 26, 2022

Anderson said many of her colleagues hadn’t expected the strike to go on for as long as it did, nor had they expected the cavalier attitude they saw from school district officials once the strike had commenced, which only prolonged the strike.

“They actually refused to come to the negotiating table, I think four or five out of the 13 days, 14 days that we’ve been out,” she recalled. Anderson plans to discuss the agreement terms with her colleagues before making her decision on the union vote.

Minneapolis union members will vote on the tentative agreements through the weekend. If a simple majority is not reached to accept the deals, the teachers’ strike will likely resume.

Covid-19 exposed a broken education system in the US

The Minneapolis teachers’ strike isn’t the only walkout by educators this year. California and Illinois have both seen similar protests, including a January walkout by the Chicago Teachers Union over Covid-19 protocols in classrooms.

As educators striking in Minneapolis vote on the tentative agreements reached this weekend, school teachers in Sacramento are just getting started on negotiations with district officials. On Saturday, after four days of strikes, district officials agreed to meet with the teacher’s union.

According to Pringle, the issues raised in the Sacramento strike are similar to those that were pushed by educators in Minneapolis.

“The school district has the resources to address the concerns and issues that educators have raised around the same kinds of things,” Pringle said. “We hope certainly that the [Sacramento] district will bargain in good faith and see what the teachers and other educators are asking for are things that we have been talking about for years that our students need.”

Sacramento also has a particularly acute problem with labor shortages. “On some days, at some schools, it’s hard to even run the schools because there are so few adults on campus,” David Fisher, the president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association, told the New York Times on Friday.

These overlapping teachers’ strikes follow a surge of teacher activism in 2018 and 2019, which resulted in a number of walkouts around the country as part of the Red for Ed movement.

They also reflect a wider trend of growing labor movement activism that has gripped the country and spans various professions, from teachers and health care professionals to factory workers and retail employees.

But an increasingly disenchanted workforce, particularly among educators, could spell disaster for the country’s public education system in the long run. A February survey by the NEA found 55 percent of responding members are considering leaving the teaching profession earlier than they had planned, representing an increase from 37 percent of educators saying the same thing in August.

Moreover, a disproportionate percentage of Black (62 percent) and Hispanic or Latino (59 percent) educators — groups already underrepresented in the teaching sector — were considering early exits, according to the NEA survey.

According to union leadership, however, Friday’s Minneapolis teachers deal shows it’s possible for school districts to prioritize their staff.

“What we’ve said all along is that we don’t have a budget crisis, we have a values and priorities crisis,” Laden said in his Friday press conference. “I think what our members have proven is that is the case.”

Pringle agrees. She points to historic funding from the American Rescue Plan for the country’s schools, which has been distributed to all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

“It was a historic investment, and then we ran into roadblocks as it was being distributed and being implemented,” Pringle said of the federal funding boost. “It’s unacceptable that we were able to at least fight and get that money, and then we’re having these conversations at district levels about ‘oh, we can’t spend it to hire more mental health professionals.’ … Our kids need that [support] now.”

A lack of funding, Pringle said, “is not an excuse that we are willing to tolerate.”

It would be decidedly short-term thinking to fast-track LNG terminals in Europe. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called it “madness” to ignore the need to reduce fossil fuel reliance when it has become abundantly clear the world needs to stop building new infrastructure. “Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction,” he said on March 21. “Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use.”

The European Union is second only to the United States in having the largest impact on climate change since the Industrial Revolution, and the next few weeks can reshape global energy politics permanently. It’s far from a given, though. EU members now have a choice: They can boost oil and gas from elsewhere, or they can undertake the most ambitious transition to renewables and energy efficiency in history.

There’s a real chance Europe chooses fossil fuels

Energy prices may have been steadily climbing in the last year, but for now there aren’t immediate gas shortages in Europe. Next winter will be the true test of whether Europe can survive without Russian gas because that’s when heating for buildings drives up gas demand. No country is in for more of a roller coaster than Germany, which relies on Russia for more than half of its gas imports, followed by Italy.

The European Commission released an initial plan, dubbed RePowerEU, on how to get through the immediate crisis. One of the first steps the European Commission advised was to increase storage of gas ahead of next winter to 80 percent of capacity. The EU’s looking to other countries to stock up on that gas.

But the EU needs infrastructure to process and transport all this gas, and the existing infrastructure isn’t going to cut it. According to the German newspaper Deutsche Welle, there are 37 LNG terminals in EU member states, and none in Germany. Countries like Germany are planning new terminals, but those already in the works won’t be completed for several years. One proposed LNG terminal in northwestern German cities wouldn’t be built until 2026, and would meet up to 10 percent of the country’s gas demand. Now there are talks of two new terminals planned in Germany in response to Russia’s war with Ukraine, a sign that countries are increasing their investments in fossil fuels in response to this crisis.

This is hardly an energy revolution. Europe’s energy supply would still look largely the same in response to the crisis; it would just come from other parts of the world, at a higher cost.

Defenders of the plan to boost LNG imports to Europe say it is the only way to make up the gap left by Russian gas. As one White House senior administration official said in a press call Friday, the LNG deal is needed “in the very near term to avoid people getting cold this winter and next winter before clean energy is deployed at scale.”

That approach has its critics. “The necessary measures to permanently reduce fossil gas consumption go hand in hand with what’s needed to meet the EU’s climate targets,” Matthias Buck, director of the German think tank Agora Energiewende, said. “The EU now needs to make sure that RePowerEU accelerates energy efficiency and renewables expansion to achieve energy sovereignty by 2027.”

Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program director Jake Schmidt argues building new infrastructure for fossil fuels would be foolish. “There’s a lot of skepticism about whether or not Germany can actually build the import facilities as fast as they’re claiming,” Schmidt said. “The gas facilities will come online at a time where they won’t need that gas. And so you’re looking at a 30-year investment facility that has five to 10 years of life, max. That’s not great economics.”

Europe can get through this crisis without latching on to more fossil fuels. Seriously.

Two reports out this week from European think tanks argue that almost all of Europe’s gas needs can be met with energy efficiency and exploring underutilized clean energy options. It would require the EU to make a concerted effort to slash energy consumption. One report from Agora Energiewende, which advocates for Germany’s clean energy transition, suggests it’s possible to cut the EU’s overall gas usage by 32 percent by 2027.

A second report from environmental NGOs Bellona, Ember, E3G, and Regulatory Assistance Project concludes that combining a clean energy expansion with accelerated energy efficiency efforts would replace about two-thirds of the demand for Russian gas as soon as 2025.

Importantly, the report argues that “security of supply and reduction of Russian gas dependence do not require the construction of new EU gas import infrastructure such as LNG terminals.” The NGOs argue this can even be done without extending the life of nuclear power or increasing coal use in the next few years.

Some reforms that the report suggests require more accountability and oversight for the oil and gas industry, namely by doing more to prevent methane leaks throughout their operations, since that is wasted fuel could be conserved and used. Other solutions are fairly simple but do require collective action. These are relatively small changes to behavior, like consumers reducing their heating by a degree or two, installing smart thermostats, sealing drafty windows, and installing LED bulbs.

These measures sound small, but add up to a lot, according to Agora Energiewende. For example, the report says energy efficiency and replacing gas boilers in buildings that run on fossil fuels could slash reliance on gas by more than a third by 2027, by 480 terawatt hours. Heat pumps — a technology that can be used to heat or cool buildings — are one of the modern alternatives to the inefficient gas boiler. Industrial operations could also stand to become more efficient, so some similar energy-saving measures could net even greater gains.

Added up, the report claims that of the 3,800 terawatt hours of gas that the EU consumed in 2020, about a third could be displaced in five years.

Then there are the policy levers. Governments can fast-track permitting for proposed clean energy projects offshore and on land. Meanwhile, the European Commission has already announced a plan to double the rate of heat pump installations by this winter. There are other policies in the works that can ensure the EU is less reliant on fossil fuels. France, for example, announced it will end subsidies for new gas heaters, and ramp up subsidies instead for heat pumps.

Beyond energy efficiency, there are other policies that work to speed up a transition to clean energy. The European Union is considering a proposed regulation that places a fee on imports from countries with lagging climate policies, constituting the world’s first carbon border tax. The idea behind the tax is to discourage companies from relocating to countries with more lax climate policies.

The common thread of many of these solutions is that there needs to be more emphasis on energy efficiency. Leadership on many of these measures won’t come from the United States. The US has yet to pass any comprehensive law to tackle climate change, and Biden’s hopes for clean energy investments have stalled in Congress. The US won’t lead, but Europe still can.

Andrew Skowron/We Animals Media

A Ukrainian boy and his dog sit on a cot that has been set up in a makeshift refugee shelter at the Katowice train station in Poland. The family is resting here before continuing their journey.

Animal welfare groups like UAnimals, as well as activists around Ukraine who have stayed amid the chaos of war, are working around the clock to rescue stray animals and keep shelters running. That devotion can come with a cost: An animal shelter in Kharkiv was bombed, and three animal rescue volunteers were killed in fighting earlier this month while attempting to deliver dog food.

Chevganiuk says UAnimals is focused on providing feed and other supplies to animal shelters and street animals, as well as evacuating animals to safety in neighboring Poland.

“The most horrible part is when you’re not able to reach a place and you know animals are suffering there,” she said. “It’s not possible to reach all the areas, or it’s pretty difficult because of the danger, so you have to find real brave people who will agree to go near these areas in danger.” The organization is also operating a support hotline, fielding questions around animal rescue and connecting fellow Ukrainians to resources for animal care.

Zoos are also under threat. The Feldman Ecopark zoo in Kharkiv was damaged amid fighting and there are reports that animals at Park XII Months zoo, north of Kyiv, have begun to die from starvation and cold. Animals in zoos already suffer psychological stress from captivity; the disruption and chaos of war only exacerbates it.

AFP via Getty Images

Elephants at the Mykolaiv zoo in southern Ukraine on March 22, 2022.

Farmed animals are victims of war too. According to the Netherlands-based trade publication Poultry World, Avangard — the largest egg producer in Ukraine — says several of its farms have been shut down and destroyed due to Russian aggression. One farm had to suspend production due to loss of power, and most of its flock had to be slaughtered due to lack of feed.

MHP, the country’s largest chicken meat producer, suffered losses of $8 million when Russian shelling hit a large frozen food warehouse in the Kyiv region. According to international humanitarian law, intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure in armed conflict zones, like farms, could be considered war crimes.

The situation for animals in Ukraine is disturbing, though sadly unsurprising. For most of human history, animals were not just indirectly harmed by war but were drafted into war efforts, whether as transport or to carry a knight or later a cavalry fighter onto the battlefield — where they were often targets themselves.

Andrew Skowron/We Animals Media
Cats accompanying war refugees from Ukraine rest at the train station in Katowice.

Technological advances in warfare have largely rendered animal labor unnecessary. But with animals now woven into our economy and our daily lives — whether as beloved pets in the home, entertainment in circuses and zoos, or as food in industrial farms — they have become victims of war alongside the humans that keep them for companionship or profit.

The valiant efforts by Ukrainians who’ve stayed behind in a war zone to save animals is perhaps the best demonstration of humanity’s deep connection to other species, but it has also underscored the dearth of animal welfare protections, whether humans are at war or not. As the legal status of animals slowly improves, however, their legal status in armed conflict might too — that is, if animal welfare and environmental advocates can include them in international humanitarian law and national disaster planning.

A brief history of animals’ role in war

Before war became highly mechanized and technological, animals were enlisted to shoulder much of the burden of war alongside human soldiers. Larger mammals like horses, donkeys, oxen, and elephants were used to transport soldiers and supplies, fighters charged into battle on horseback, and carrier pigeons reliably delivered messages when telegraph and telephone lines were cut off.

Pigeons were so critical to Britain’s efforts in World War I that shooting them was criminalized under the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914 since any pigeon may have been carrying a critical message. Horses were still used by some armies during that war in the midst of machine guns and chemical weapons, as the play and 2011 film War Horse demonstrated. “Mercy dogs” were used to comfort dying British soldiers and donkeys were used to console soldiers suffering from PTSD.

Animals are still employed in war today, though in much smaller numbers. Dogs are trained to sniff out bombs and rats are trained to detect landmines, while dolphins and sea lions are trained to protect harbors from sea mines. Pigs, monkeys, mice, and guinea pigs, among other species, have been used in grisly weapons testing, such as biological and chemical agents and explosives tests.

As is the case with human beings, animals in wartime are now mostly harmed indirectly, as we’ve seen in Ukraine: Pets are abandoned by fleeing owners, zoos are put under siege, livestock are left to starve or are seemingly targeted to damage a country’s food supply, and wild animals are inadvertently killed from shelling.

A paper published in Nature found that from 1946 to 2010, “conflict frequency predicts the occurrence and severity of population declines among wild large herbivores in African protected areas” and that conflict frequency was the most important predictor of wildlife population trends among the variables researchers studied. This is caused, in part, by the poaching and wildlife trafficking that can increase during conflict.

In the midst of war, animal protection is often ignored by everyone involved, from policymakers to generals to civilians. But some organizations and conflict scholars have ideas, and even some plans in motion, to incorporate animal welfare into war and other emergency situations.

How to protect animals in war

According to research by Jerome de Hemptinne, an expert on international humanitarian law (IHL), animals are largely excluded from wartime treaties like the Geneva and Hague conventions. There are some exceptions, such as multilateral pacts that protect endangered species, but even as the legal status of animals has evolved in recent decades, incorporating animal protections into IHL remains challenging.

Beyond protecting civilians themselves, IHL in general protects “civilian objects,” such as schools, homes, and places of worship, but it’s unclear whether a civilian object must be an inanimate object to merit protection, Hemptinne writes. If so, it would by definition exclude animals. But IHL conventions wouldn’t place animals in the protected category of “civilian,” either. As they do so often in peacetime, animals in wartime exist in a legal gray zone.

But in his 2017 paper “The Protection of Animals During Warfare,” Hemptinne details some paths forward for animal protection in warfare.

First, in 1977, additional protocols were added to the Geneva Conventions that grant protection to demilitarized zones between belligerents. “The protection of areas of high global species diversity could be enhanced if belligerents were to agree to formally classifying them as ‘demilitarized zones,’” Hemptinne wrote.

Second, Article 53 of Geneva Convention IV prohibits the occupying power from destroying private and public property unless it’s absolutely necessary for military operations. “This provision could provide minimum protection to certain animals when considered to be items of private or public property,” Hemptinne added.

There are also broader efforts underway to protect animals in emergency situations, like wars, as well as natural disasters. “Animals need to be included in the consideration when we speak about humanitarian aid,” Jackson Zee, director of global affairs and disaster resilience for the animal welfare organization Four Paws, told me.

To that aim, Four Paws collaborated with European Union member states to include animal welfare in the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, a framework created to improve disaster preparedness and response in the region. The animal welfare language is largely symbolic, but Zee said it’s a first step. His organization is now using it to lobby EU member states to include animals in their national disaster planning and set aside resources to operationalize animal protection in disaster response.

Four Paws has taken a similar approach with the United Nations. In 2018, the organization helped to secure animal welfare language at an EU/UN summit on disaster risk reduction.
“It was mostly in spirit because there was no monetary tag to it,” Zee says. “We will be pushing that forward so that it’s adopted on a national basis across every country [in the EU]. Currently, Italy is the only country that’s adopted that fully.”

These policy efforts are only at the beginning of a long, uncertain slog, and even if animal protections were adopted into the laws of war, enforcing those rules in conflict would be as difficult, if not more so, than enforcing the laws meant to protect the tens of thousands of humans who die in war each year. For now, Zee and many of his colleagues are focused on Ukraine, as Four Paws has staff on the ground aiding in rescue efforts and watching over animals at the organization’s bear sanctuary in Domazhyr.

Thomas Machowicz/We Animals Media

A brown bear at the White Rock Bear Shelter in the Kyiv region of Ukraine.

Zee also has his eye on the future. “The effort will last a long time,” he told me. “This is only the beginning … so the efforts that we do now need to continue to be facilitated months from now, and eventually, hopefully for the recovery.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed, as have so many past wars, the critical roles animals play in human life. When we’re separated from our pets, we’ll go to great lengths to find them because the companionship they provide can be just as meaningful, and sometimes more so, than that provided by fellow humans. When conflict kills wildlife, it also harms ecosystems that humans rely on. When farms are destroyed, so too are sources of food and people’s livelihoods.

Animal welfare and human prosperity are often pitted against one another, as though well-being were a zero-sum game. But human health and animal health, in wartime and peacetime, are inextricably linked.

A version of this story was initially published in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to subscribe!

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