Global trade

Regardless of how you celebrate end-of-year holidays, food is probably central to your winter festivities. And a trio of spices – cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger – feature in many dishes and drinks and are an unmistakable part of the scent profile we associate with the holiday season. As a plant scientist, I was curious to know how these spices, grown in the tropics, became so closely associated with the Northern Hemisphere’s winter holidays. Just as cranberries’ fall harvest makes them a natural choice for Thanksgiving, I thought that perhaps the seasonality of spice harvest had something to do with their use during the winter months. However, this doesn’t appear to be the case. When it comes to growing spices, producers are playing the long game. Spices are prized commodities that have fueled global trade, exploration and conquest for centuries. Growing holiday spices Take ginger, which features in both sweet a...

Russia’s war on Ukraine has cast a shadow over this week’s meetings of world leaders at the G-20 summit in Bali and the United Nations climate change conference in Egypt. The war has dramatically disrupted energy markets the world over, leaving many countries vulnerable to price spikes amid supply shortages. Europe, worried about keeping the heat on through winter, is outbidding poor countries for natural gas, even paying premiums to reroute tanker ships after Russia cut off most of its usual natural gas supply. Some countries are restarting coal-fired power plants. Others are looking for ways to expand fossil fuel production, including new projects in Africa. These actions are a long way from the countries’ pledges just a year ago to rein in fossil fuels, and they’re likely to further increase greenhouse gas emissions, at least temporarily. But will the war and the economic turmoil prevent the world from meeting the Paris climate agreement’s lon...