Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Do you still remember your first day at school?
Yes, school was different back then. For example, we had to kneel in front of the blackboard.
Today, there are other challenges to overcome. Concentration has become a key skill and is often lacking among pupils. The ubiquitous smartphone is often blamed but right now the main culprit is the paralysing heat.
Warm greetings from Bern
Primary schools in nine cantons start the new school year today. The shortage of teachers is easing but the heat stress is not.
The new school year begins today in the cantons of Aargau, Bern, Basel Country, Basel City, Glarus, St. Gallen, Solothurn, Schwyz and Thurgau.
There are signs of a slight easing of the shortage of teachers in several cantons. As a survey of the cantons by the Keystone-SDA news agency shows, falling birth rates and more trained teachers could also contribute to improving the situation in the medium term.
The canton of Zurich no longer reports a shortage of teachers. Basel Country also indicates a positive development. In the canton of Bern, on the other hand, the tight situation has not yet been overcome.
The umbrella association of Swiss teachers also sees no reason to give the all-clear. “The shortage of teachers remains a challenge,” says a spokesman.
For many schools, however, another topic is likely to be in the foreground this week: the persistent heat. Most classrooms in Switzerland do not have any fans or air conditioning. At temperatures well above 30 degrees, both the students’ and teachers’ ability to concentrate suffer.
In Basel, individual schools are examining the installation of ceiling fans. Other cantons recommend that afternoons be used more for extracurricular activities, such as a visit to an air-conditioned museum.
Between 1930 and 1989, the Federal Police kept a file on politicians who ended up becoming government ministers. A total of 39 members of the Federal Council were monitored.
Among those who had a file on them were Christoph Blocher, Moritz Leuenberger, Ruth Dreifuss and Elisabeth Kopp. As the SonntagsZeitung reports, many of those affected were registered at a young age, long before they took government office. In the case of Ruth Dreifuss, her commitment against the Vietnam War was enough for the opening of a file.
Former government minister Moritz Leuenberger spoke to the SonntagsZeitung about his own files. As president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, which was set up in 1989, he had helped uncover the scandal.
“I mainly read banal, wrong and even deliberately wrong things,” says the former Social Democrat minister. In addition, he had been linked to persons with whom there had been no relationship whatsoever. Such entries are examples of the mixture of suspicion and false accusations that have been found again and again in the files, Leuenberger said.
Rivers and lakes cross borders. In times when water is becoming scarce, disputes over this resource are inevitable.
Switzerland is the water tower of Europe. It covers less than 0.5% of European territory, but holds up to 6% of the continent’s freshwater reserves.
The Ticino river fills the Po in Italy. The Rhine flows to Germany and the Netherlands. The Rhône runs through France into the Mediterranean. This makes Switzerland an important player in water diplomacy – and with increasing droughts, the pressure on Switzerland increases. This summer, almost every river that rises from the Alps, every common lake with a neighbouring country forms a potential terrain for confrontation.
Currently, Italy, for example, wants Ticino to let more water flow out of the reservoirs because regional agriculture is suffering from the drought. But this would threaten the reserves for winter electricity – and Ticino’s fields also need water.
Meanwhile, in Lake Maggiore, Italy is demanding a higher water level so that the lake can be used for the adjacent agriculture. Ticino, however, fears flooding in the Locarno area.
In a report in the NZZ, hydrologist Klaus Lanz expresses the conviction that the distribution conflicts between Switzerland and its neighbouring countries will come to a head. Just last week, Transport Minister Albert Rösti announced that he would revise the national water strategy. The topic has thus also become a priority for the Federal Council.
The persistent heat and drought are also putting pressure on the right-wing Swiss People’s Party. The party now recognises climate change, but remains cautious about its causes.
“Global warming is not bad for farmers.” Swiss People’s Party parliamentarian Marcel Dettling had just become president of the country’s largest party in 2024 and said this in a now often quoted interview. In view of the current drought and crop failures, the assessment seems outdated today.
The party of the farmers has moved on when it comes to climate policy. It no longer fundamentally questions climate change. However, many party exponents continue to doubt that humans are the decisive cause of warming. In this context, Dettling spoke of a “new form of witch hunt”.
Instead of emission reductions, the party is focusing primarily on adaptation measures. Many of its parliamentarians are convinced that Switzerland can deal with the consequences of climate change.
“If warming continues, Switzerland will have about the same climate as California in 2100. There, people don’t drop dead in rows. On the contrary, it is a prosperous region,” said parliamentarian Manfred Bühler.
Despite falling domestic emissions, Environment Minister Albert Rösti recently admitted that the climate targets for 2030 are likely to be difficult to achieve. However, he argues that Switzerland contributes only a small part of global emissions and can only influence the global climate to a limited extent.
Translated from German. Sub-edited by Anand Chandrasekhar
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
