Category: All Fragilecologies

Fragilecologies Archives
1 August 2007

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy” appears to be the takeaway message from the headline of an article that appeared in the 24 July 2007 New York Times, entitled “Improvement in Life Seen in Sub-Saharan Africa.” This article is so incredible (unbelievable as opposed to fantastic) that I felt compelled on behalf of the people in ten African countries to say what I think: this represents either bad journalism by an editor who chose a title without having read the text, or he’s looking for a bright side to a bleak situation on the African continent. Either way, it is misleading to the readers and a disservice to Africans struggling day by day to keep their families alive and together.

Pheew!

Many people skim a newspaper and look at the headlines first. Often, I would argue, the reader goes no further than the headline. The headline for the article on the Pew Center’s Global Attitudes project suggests that sub-Saharan Africa is finally on the path to development and a better life for its citizens. With this particular article’s headline in mind, a reader could erroneously conclude that life on the African continent has improved substantially, since the survey was undertaken by a reputable survey center (Pew) and reported in a reliable newspaper (New York Times). Nothing could be further from the reality of life in Africa.

The following statements contain some questionable (to me) excerpts from the article and the survey:

• “A plurality of Africans say they are better off today than they were five years ago and are optimistic about their future and that of the next generation, according to a poll conducted in ten sub-Saharan countries,” by the New York Times and the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
• “It found that, in the main, Africans are satisfied with their national governments, and a majority of respondents in 7 of the 10 countries said their economic situation was at least somewhat good.” What does “somewhat good” mean? What does it mean that “in the main, Africans are satisfied with their national governments”?
• Immediately after the “Africans are satisfied” phrase was the following statement: “But many said they faced a wide array of difficult and sometimes life-threatening problems, from illegal drug trafficking to political corruption, from the lack of clean water to inadequate schools for their children, from ethnic and political violence to deadly disease.”
• The article refers to the probable error in the survey, noting that “the margins of sampling error were plus or minus either 3 or 4 percentage points.” Such a statement implies that the survey results were sound and robust. Given the caveats and the information in the article, I can only believe that such surveys are of little value, highly misleading, and may even be detrimental to those the pollsters might have been intended to help.

The article then goes on to mention several of the adversities that Africans face every hour of every day of every year:

• The results showed that the struggle for democracy and good governance in Africa is more like a patchwork of gains and setbacks than a steady tide of progress across a continent that has suffered some of the worst instances of misrule.
• While all of the countries polled are nominally democracies, half of them have suffered serious rollbacks of multiparty representational government in recent years. A majority in each country said corrupt leaders were a big problem.
• The most recent elections in Ethiopia and Uganda were marred by violence and the exclusion of major candidates, and failed to meet international standards of fairness; they were considerable setbacks for countries that a decade ago were seen as rising examples of Africa’s democratic future.
• Electoral trouble has even tinged Senegal, often seen as a beacon in the volatile West African region because it has never had a coup and has a long tradition of democracy. This year, opposition parties boycotted legislative elections there over accusations of election fraud.
• In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and top oil producer, the poll results reflect frustration with the way elections are carried out — 67 percent of Nigerians said that their next presidential election would not be conducted fairly.
• Asked if they were generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things were going in their country [Nigeria], 87 percent of those interviewed for the survey said they were dissatisfied. yet Nigerians were the most optimistic of all the nation surveyed — 69 percent said they expected children growing up in Nigeria would be better off than people today.
• We have seen significant strides for democratic liberty and practices in the last 10 or 15 years. It is also a fact that in most of their countries, average citizens have seen a significant improvement in their material circumstances and their living conditions.
• A plurality of respondents said that their financial situation had improved in the last five years, with the exception of the Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Uganda.
• But more resource wealth has not necessarily led to broad prosperity. Of the respondents in Nigeria, 82 percent said average people were not benefiting from the country’s oil wealth.
• Other health concerns weighed heavily on most respondents. Gaining access to clean drinking water was seen as a big problem for a majority in all ten countries, ranging from 86 percent who noted it in Ethiopia, to 58 percent in urban South Africa. About half or more in 8 countries said that they had been unable to pay for medical care.
• But hunger seemed less of a problem — a majority of respondents in all but Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania said they had enough money to buy the food their family needed.
• Large majorities said poor schools were a major problem, and many respondents said that it was harder to provide an education for their children than to get food for them.

How, then, do these statements match the message given in the title of the New York Times article, “Improvement in Life Seen in Sub-Saharan Africa”? Putting a verbal happy face on a depressing situation does not change the situation.

The bottom line is that I am confused by the article and the survey as well. Given the caveats in footnotes (for example, in the Ivory Coast only urban dwellers were interviewed), I cannot reconcile the findings of this poll as it relates to sub-Saharan Africa to the writings and reports coming out of the continent.

Joseph Conrad once expressed the view that “Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.” I think he may be right with regard to this poll. If I am wrong, I’d like to know. What do you think? Check out the survey at http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=257.

Fragilecologies Archives
7 July 2007

In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen, a Danish author of Children’s tales, wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. The synopsis of the tale is below and was taken from Wikipedia. I had not read this tale since I was a kid. Then again, maybe I never read it, but surely I heard about the notion from friends or teachers or parents somewhere along the path of growing up. Thanks to the World Wide Web, I got to read it again; today, in fact. As I read it on the computer screen I kept subliminally picturing President Bush as the Emperor, and emperors usually have the last word on everything that happens in his (or her) empire. Damn, given the many unpopular decisions made by Bush (the protracted war in Iraq and now the latest distasteful decision, commuting of the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former key advisor), it came to me that President Bush was acting much like the fabled Emperor with his alleged new, but invisible, clothes. All I ask is that you read the synopsis that follows to see if you get the same strange feeling that Hans Christian Andersen had a glimpse of the future and was prophetically writing about America’s first president of the 21st century, George W. Bush.

Wikipedia’s Plot synopsis of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor’s_New_Clothes]

Many years ago, there lived an emperor who was quite an average fairy tale ruler, with one exception: he cared much about his clothes. One day he heard from two swindlers named Guido and Luigi Farabutto that they could make the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they said, also had the special capability that it was invisible to anyone who was either stupid or not fit for his position.

Being a bit nervous about whether he himself would be able to see the cloth, the emperor first sent two of his trusted men to see it. Of course, neither would admit that they could not see the cloth and so praised it. All the townspeople had also heard of the cloth and were interested to learn how stupid their neighbors were.

The emperor then allowed himself to be dressed in the clothes for a procession through town, never admitting that he was too unfit and stupid to see what he was wearing. He was afraid that the other people would think that he was stupid.

Of course, all the townspeople wildly praised the magnificent clothes of the emperor, afraid to admit that they could not see them, until a small child said:

“But he has nothing on!”

This was whispered from person to person until everyone in the crowd was shouting that the emperor had nothing on. The emperor heard it and felt that they were correct, but he held his head high and finished the procession.

What more to say. President Bush surrounds himself with people who agree with him. He makes unpopular decision after unpopular decision. His ratings in the polls have dropped below 30 percent, and if it drops much more, he will have a level of support for his policies that Ross Perot or George Wallace had as third-party candidates, and not as a leader of the Land. He scoffs at polls. He does not believe critics of his policy decisions, even the critics in his own political party.

And, like the Andersen’s Emperor, he will march forward even though he knows “he is naked for all to see”, just to keep alive the misbelief that as an American president, he never has to admit that his decisions were wrong and not in the country’s interest.

Fragilecologies Archives
3 July 2007

Recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote in the Washington Post (USA) that “the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change”. Many media picked up on his editorial and reported his comments, using spectacular headlines such as the following:

Reality notwithstanding, the media went into a frenzy over the statements of the UN Secretary General. It would be PC (politically correct) to agree with the UN report as described by the Secretary General. But it would be wrong to do so. I think that the Secretary General was ill-advised to make such an assertion, for a host of reasons. We know that no single event can be blamed on global warming, such as a drought, a flood, or some other extreme weather or climate event. Debate, for example, continues in the United States as to whether Hurricane Katrina was the result of global warming.

For one, drought has been a constant problem across sub-Saharan Africa with recurrent, severe multiyear droughts throughout the 20th century. For another, conflict has also been a constant problem on the continent, from colonial competition to cold war conflicts and proxy wars, decolonization, and post-independence wars. Corruption too has plagued the continent’s ability to achieve its economic development prospects. Desertification processes, ebbing and flowing from year to year because of climate variability, have also negatively affected Africans, their livelihoods and the environments on which they are so dependent.

In January 1984, Time Magazine had on the cover of an issue the picture of an African woman in the shape of the continent. The cover’s headline was “Africa ‘s Woes: Coups, Conflict and Corruption”. What was most interesting about this special focus on Africa was that there were only two sentences in the magazine about drought as an African problem, even though Africa was in the midst of widespread drought and several famines. Drought at the time was apparently seen as neither a “woe” nor as a constraint to political, social, and economic development on the continent.

Today, drought is now conspicuously placed near the top of the list of development constraints but, one must ask, have observers gone beyond what scientific research can support when they claim that the genocidal and murderous activities by the Janjaweed (with apparent Sudanese government support) in Darfur is the result at least in part due to global warming.

Such a claim, which is difficult either to support or refute with existing scientific information, is in fact a disservice to the victims of Janjaweed attacks (who suffer from the threat of death, mutilation, rape) in the refugee camps and villages in western Darfur. I have used the word “disservice” intentionally because, instead of adding to political pressure on the Sudanese government from various quarters of the international community, it actually reduces it.

If this conflict is believed by many to be related so closely to global warming’s regional and local impacts, then people in other regions will tend to refocus their attention on their own regional and local potential plight and will become less concerned about the plight of those targets of genocide in western Darfur.

It is true that scientists and policy makers can say anything they want, no matter how far-fetched. The media of course have the right if not responsibility to report on what they say. But whether what they say can be proven beyond a doubt remains an open question.

I read the Secretary General’s comments as a desperate attempt to keep the public’s eye (and especially the eyes of the policymakers) on the dangerous, potentially explosive situation in western Darfur, clearly an important thing to do. Yet, I once heard that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I hope that the UN does not go down that road by continuing to hold up the dreadful situation in Darfur as the proverbial “poster child” for climate change impacts in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

Fragilecologies Archives
2 July 2007

Recently, I wrote about the dilemma that the Chinese government is facing with regard to its rapid drive for economic development. That drive is being fueled by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels (coal especially, and oil and gas) emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which is now considered by scientists around the globe to be responsible for global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. Global warming will have foreseeable adverse impacts on food production, water resources and an increase in extreme events such as droughts and dust storms.

The Chinese government is well aware of the potential impacts that global warming might have on its territory by the end of this century, but the pressure for rapid development is today-and constantly increasing amongst its 1.3 billion citizens. The pressure to act on the global warming problem is much less, despite the foreseeable, though still uncertain, dire consequences. So, the government is aware but likely will not act quickly, and even if it wanted to act, it would take a long time to develop or secure and put into place alternative sources of energy. China has now (in June 2007) surpassed the United States as the major emitter of carbon dioxide.

Although the US national government has been opposed to taking any mandatory action against human-induced global warming, grassroots initiatives by American cities and states to reduce the U.S. greenhouse gas footprint on the global warming problem are rapidly increasing.

With the above as background, I was invited to give a paper at a conference on climate and development in Harbin, China. Participants came mainly from Northeast Asia (Russia, South Korea, and Northeast China) with a few from North America. With increasing demand for food, the pressures on this region’s land and water resources have grown sharply.

Mickey Glantz and Qian Ye attending the inauguration of the new International Center for Climate and Development in Harbin (June 2007).

Though the province of which Harbin is the capital city, Heilongjiang, is considered China ‘s breadbasket, there are several examples worldwide where the inappropriate use of land and water has turned a country’s proverbial breadbasket into an equally proverbial basket case. The national, as well as provincial, governments have recognized this foreseeable outcome — if people continue to operation in the future as they had done in the past; in other words, “business as usual”.

At the conference I spoke about climate, environment, and development issues and the need for different academic disciplines (physical, biological and social sciences and the humanities) and different government bureaucracies (weather, agriculture, water, health, economic development, environmental protection, etc.) to work together.

No single agency or ministry acting alone can solve societies’ environmental problems. Cooperation and collaboration are the driving forces for sustainable economic development in the future. With increasing amounts of manmade chemicals entering the Earth’s environment on a daily basis, sustainable solutions to the adverse impacts of the constant interactions among society-climate-environment require a multidisciplinary perspective.

During the Question & Answer session at the conference, a student from the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) asked questions about global warming and human impacts on climate. It was clear she had not been to such an international meeting because she eagerly asked several questions in a row. It was refreshing. She would ask a new question just as I finished answering her previous one. People in the room could feel her passion for environmental issues, especially global warming, that sparked her questions.

At the break, some students asked if I could give a talk at their university. I agreed, but it was Saturday afternoon. Being from the USA, I assumed it would be impossible to make such an arrangement. I was wrong. They got permission from the university for me to give a lecture at the university on 8:30 am Sunday morning!!

At 8:00 am, students came to my hotel by taxi to take me and two colleagues to the university. When we entered the classroom, we were amazed to see about 200 undergraduate students waiting for my 45-minute lecture on “Climate Affairs”. Questions followed, delivered with passion, interest, and a real desire to learn.

Enthusiasm reigned supreme at 8:30 am on a Sunday morning at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), proof that China’s “eco-generation” is alive and well (June 2007).

These students made me believe that there is hope for China ‘s environmental future. These undergraduate students 17 to 22 years old are members of the first generation to have lived totally within an era of environmental concern. Growing up since the late 1980s, students have been awash in environmental issues and concerns. They, like their peers around the globe, are truly “The eco-generation”.

Soon these students will graduate to the workplace in a wide range of companies. They will be asked by their managers in a couple of years to be involved in company decisions. Many of those decisions will relate to the environment. What I am suggesting is that there has been the onset of a “sea change”; a major subtle change is the way the eco-generation will approach environmental issues.

Previous generations alive today and witness to, as well as the cause of, environmental problems worldwide are in a position of having to forego some things to which they had become accustomed. The eco-generation, however, is in a different position. It has the option to forego (deny themselves) products and activities that are known to degrade their air and watersheds. It seems to me that foregoing is an easier choice to make than to give up something you’ve gotten used to using or doing. The appearance of the eco-generation is a worldwide phenomenon and has been called to action by concern about our changing global climate. I believe the environment has a friend in the eco-genrations of today and thereafter.

Fragilecologies Archives
17 May 2007

us·able; adjective variant(s) also use·able
1: capable of being used
2. convenient and practicable for use

The phrase “usable information” as it relates to science has been around for well over two decades. The phrase was purposely used in the wording of the law creating the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) in 1990. The USGCRP was created to develop “usable information on which to base policy decisions.”

Most likely, though, the desire for usable information stemming from scientific inquiry or from observations has existed at least since the time that humans formed settlements. How can we do something to protect ourselves from the elements? How can we do what we do now even better, faster, or more efficiently? These are some of the kinds of questions that likely led to various usable scientific and technological developments. The idea behind “usable science” was driven as much by humanitarian practical needs as by just a “need to know” or a “need to do” as it is now by the need for fame or fortune.

Some societies have managed to push ahead of others in the drive for the development and use of helpful new technological devices, examples of the products of usable science. There has always been a gap between the technological “haves” and “have-nots,” even in ancient times. However, the gap between them seems to be growing by leaps and bounds as we enter the 21st century. As an example, although we are in the digital era, a “digital divide” has already emerged between the developed and developing countries, and even in industrialized countries, including the United States. Today, there are many attempts around the globe to bridge this divide between rich countries and poor ones, and between rich and poor citizens in any given country.

The phrase “usable science” seems pretty obvious and straightforward. It suggests that scientific research findings are useful for societal or individual well-being, and especially useful for decision makers. The belief is that the more scientific research that is being undertaken, the “better” the decisions are likely to be. This is accompanied by the belief that the better the scientific research output becomes, the more usable it is likely to be. However, as simple and straightforward as the phrase “usable science” appears to be, closer scrutiny leads one to see that it sends mixed messages.

One can emphasize the first word, “usable,” or emphasize the last word, “science.” Depending on which emphasis one chooses, a different message is conveyed.

To me, “usable SCIENCE” (emphasis on science) is a call to improve physical science research so that it can be packaged for the public in a form it can use. “Usable SCIENCE” also suggests that the problem of understanding the interactions among the physical, biological, and social processes rests with a public lack of understanding of science. If that is the interpretation, then the remedy for enhancing the usability of scientific research output is to come up with better scientific research (i.e., reduce uncertainties), an improved understanding of statistics (i.e., probabilities), identify ways to reduce scientific uncertainties with faster and bigger hardware (i.e., computers) to run gazillions of calculations in fractions of seconds, an enhancement of science and math education from K-12, and so forth.

Some reasons why we need USABLE science (by A. Oman)

Consider now the phrase “USABLE science” (emphasis on usable). This emphasis represents a call for improving not the science but the ways in which society can use scientific information that already exists. The truth is that all science, even basic science, becomes usable at some point in time, even if it is the distant future. But lots of scientific research findings are ready for use today for the benefit of society and the well-being of its citizens. Even though most scientific research output may be surrounded by uncertainties, it can be used in decision-making processes. The truth is that decisions are made all the time with less than perfect information available to the decision makers.

Some years ago, there was a political debate about how funds for science are allocated. A U.S. Senator questioned whether the National Science Foundation was supporting research that was of use to the nation. More specifically, she questioned support for “curiousity-based” scientific research versus “need-based” research that would demonstrably benefit society in the not-too-distant future. This is a false dichotomy. Society needs both kinds of research, since it is highly likely that curiosity-based research will eventually yield benefits to society at some future point in time. This controversy died a quiet death, as the Senator withdrew her opposition to curiosity-based research. Yet, another conflict still rages: to what extent should funding for physical science research be shared with the social sciences interested in making scientific research output more usable to the public?

The funds required for social scientists and other practitioners to make existing scientific information more usable and useful is but a small percentage of what goes into the study of the physical sciences. Supporting scientific inquiry without supporting efforts to enable society to better use such information would be like trying to make a sound by clapping one hand.

A good example is the 60-hour (in advance of making landfall), near-perfect forecast of the trajectory of devastating Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005. The scientific community cheered the “success” of the forecasts’s accuracy. A call for increased research funding in order to increase the forecast’s lead time to 70 hours was heard shortly after the event. Yet one can question whether more lives might have been saved (of the more than 1,800 official deaths associated with Katrina) if more lead time to respond had been available.

Or, would it make more sense to focus on social science research in order to make the 60-hour forecast more usable and more effective — before providing more research support for an improved understanding of the physical aspects of a hurricane in order to produce a reliable 70-hour lead time for a hurricane’s landfall??

Fragilecologies Archives
19 April 2007

I have been in China for 10 days now and have come to realize something I did not know. The Chinese government is aware of its multitude of environmental problems and their impacts on the economy and on public health. The picture we usually hear outside of the country is that China, although burdened with a polluted environment — air, water, and soils —, does not seem to care about the long-term impacts of its degraded and still degrading environment. I accepted this view as presented in the media partly because I felt that it was true. The reason I felt it was true is not that its environment is degraded but that it continues to be degraded when in fact solutions to its environmental problems are well-known.

Kermit the Frog (cartoon character)

My new belief, that the government is trying to deal with cleaning up its environment, is based on news articles that I see in, for example, the China Daily and in the Shanghai Daily. I assume similar articles appear in newspapers around the country. I have even seen TV shows focused on the degraded environment and suggestions as well as attempts on how to clean it up. A few examples might be of interest.

Recently, there was an article providing international news about the efforts of a Japanese company to make ecologically friendly vehicles in an attempt for that company to catch up with its competitors in manufacturing “green” technology. In another recent article, a newspaper reports about what it calls unusual business. Here I quote directly:

“to make refrigeration industry operators understand the importance of protecting the ozonosphere, the China Association for Scientific Expedition organized the trip for industry representatives to the Arctic in June. According to Science and Technology Daily, the initiative also includes an international forum to increase awareness about the ozonosphere. From July 1, home appliances that use chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerant will be forbidden in the Chinese market. China is the largest producer and consumer of chlorofluorocarbons. Over 90% of air conditioners in the country use chlorofluorocarbons, while air conditioners in Europe use refrigerants that did not affect the ozonosphere” (China Daily, April 17, 2007, p.15).

In a brief article on the desertification, China ‘s President Hu Jintao has called on local officials to make greater efforts to fight desertification and improve the living conditions of impoverished people in areas hit by drought in Northwest China. He called for their support in constructing a “green wall” in the country’s western regions (China Daily, April 16, 2007, p.3).

AFP Photo / Liu Jin

The China Daily put on its front page a lead story entitled “pollution takes heavy toll on Yangtze.” The article summarized the report of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Yangtze River Water Resources Commission and the World Wildlife Fund. It noted that

“Billions of tonnes of waste dumped into China ‘s longest waterway are taking a massive toll on its aquatic life. … the river, the world’s third-longest, is hit by natural disasters, deterioration of water quality, and loss of biodiversity Ö. [In 2006] more than 26,000,000,000 pounds of waste water was pumped into the river, which runs through 11 provinces and municipalities.”

To its credit, the report implicates human decision-making is part of the problem. For example, it makes the following comment: “although The Three Gorges Dam has reduced flood risks in the middle reaches, the risk of flooding remains high in the lower reaches.” With a reference to climate change and the Yangtze, the reporter noted that “flood control remains on an arduous path along the Yangtze, given the rising temperature and frequent occurrences of extreme weather over the last 50 years. The report also noted that deforestation in the mountains was a major factor in the devastating Yangtze floods of 1998.

‘Thin ice, too little snow for Inuit hunters’ was the title of an article on the impacts of global warming on the Canadian Arctic region and its native people, the Inuit. ìInuit hunters are falling through thinning ice and I hear there is not enough ice to build the igloos for shelter. During hunts, walrus and seal pups are found abandoned and stranded on floating ice, and travel is much more difficult as the ice cannot support the weight of people or their modes of transportation.”

Another article implicitly relates to climate change reports about energy production of China ‘s largest oil company, PetroChina. It noted that the company will expand oil and gas production in the future and that the company had hit record-high production levels in 2006, up by 5% over the previous year. The article also noted the following: ‘relatively slow growth in production was partly caused by some natural disasters. Severe high winds and blizzards in northeastern China shut some fields in the first quarter.’

As a final example, China’s news agency, Xinhua, in an article entitled “Small coal plants to shut, but jobs safe,” reported that “Shanghai will close 29 coal-fired power plants by 2010” and will replace them by constructing plants that are more energy efficient, saving Shanghai from having to burn about 1.1 million tons of coal a year. The vice mayor noted that “these small coal-fired power plants [2.11 million kilowatts in installed capacity] are big energy guzzlers and serious polluters,” and the vice mayor also said that some workers will be hired for the new facilities, while others will be offered jobs elsewhere.

In these articles and even in editorial cartoons, one can see the dilemma that Chinese government officials face: on the one hand, oil production yields good profit for the company and for the government, while on the other hand the burning of that oil and gas contributes greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, worsening global warming. Economic growth and economic development are goals to be sought by a government for its citizens. However, in the process they are destroying the environmental base upon which future growth and development depends.

Unlike other developed countries whose process of growth and development took place over relatively long time periods, Chinese government officials have to deal with a plethora of social, economic and environment issues occurring simultaneously. In a country with limited space, lots of people and increasing affluence, one can only wonder how any government could manage development and growth while minimizing, if not avoiding, environmental degradation.

I no longer think that the Chinese government does not care about the environment in general or more specifically about global warming. It does. How successful they will be to manage it remains a concern. Can China have its proverbial cake-and eat it too?

Fragilecologies Archives
23 February 2006

For as long as I have been alive, the Middle East has been a point of turmoil, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. More wars have taken place there then I can recall. More deaths of all kinds from shootings to rockets, to missiles, tanks, to beheadings, to machine guns, Kalashnikovs, pistols and so on. Had I dropped in from another planet in this period, I would have to assume that such bloody turmoil was normal for the region but that normality would be interspersed with relatively short periods of what could be construed as peace.

Face it. Factions in the Muddle East hate each other, wanting to control, if not annihilate, all the other parties that oppose them. The roots of these hatreds are psychological and religious, as well as historical. Some of those roots are based in reality, while others are based on misperceptions and, oh yeah, politics. For a long time following the Second World War, the conflicts were driven by the two Superpowers, the US and the USSR, using different governments or factions within governments as proxies to do their ideological bidding. This required arming everyone (down to kids) with weaponry and hatred of their enemies, real and manufactured. The end of the Cold War along with easy access to newer, deadlier more sophisticated weaponry and explosives, which were being sold to anyone who could afford them raised the potential for devastation to a new level. It gave lone assassins and small groups an inordinate amount of military fire power and, therefore, political influence. The advent of the cellphone and the Internet expanded even further their potential destructive influence.

So, the Muddle East is armed to the teeth. Supplies of arms for all factions are seemingly endless. There are lots of pronouncements about wanting peace, but not at any price. Each faction or group wants something from the others that the others are not willing to give up. I can just picture a summary of a negotiating session among so-called diplomats: ì Israel will not disappear of its own accord and the militant Arabs (groups and countries) will not stop trying to make it disappear.î And now Hamas and Al-Fatah groups are out to dominate each other politically and, maybe more importantly, religiously.

Perhaps one problem is that the region has never been ìnormalî: normal in the sense that each country ìloves or at least respects the borders of its neighbor’s territory or religious affinity.î While most Arab governments in the region wish to see Israel disappear, it is highly likely that the religious violence of the kind that we see today in Iraq — Sunni vs. Shia (or, in southern Iraq, Shia vs. Sunni) — or in Gaza would continue to keep the Muddle East in turmoil and a potential catalyst to regional armed conflict, even if there were no state of Israel.

Many proposals have been offered for peace, but they require some sort of compromise, and compromise does not seem to be a viable concept in the Muddle East. Like many regional pundits, I have no solution that would come close to being acceptable to all parties. I am not alone. No one seems to have such a solution. When I think of sluggish diplomatic responses to such armed conflicts (which in fact are a form of non-responses in favor of the status quo), what comes to mind are scores of Emperor Neros playing their scores of fiddles as the region crumbles time and time again.

The result? While the so-called diplomats continue to dance around the task of picking a viable path to regional peace, thousands of innocent people, Arabs and Israelis, Sunnis and Shia, who just want to get on with their lives, will die. They are faceless victims to the outside world. They will be seen as “collateral damage,” to use military jargon. (Ooops, sorry; you were killed either in the crossfire or to generate terror in others.)

It makes no difference to the dead and wounded victims whether they were collateral damage, as a result of an attack on a military installation (called counterforce attack) or a wanton random rocket attack launched at an urban marketplace (called countervalue). No way really exists to apologize to those victims or to make up for the harm done to their families and to the prospects for future generations. The loss of sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandparents and friends is incalculable and is forever. Dead is dead. Wouldn’t it be nice if ideological causes died rather than innocent people?

Why is it that governments can always find money to make war and can never find money to make peace?

Fragilecologies Archives
9 February 2007

“El Niño weather” and “weather during an El Niño” are not the same thing. The main point here is that not every weather, climate or water-related event that happens during the 12-18 month lifetime of an El Niño event can be considered to have been caused by that El Niño. Weather extremes happen, with or without an El Niño being in progress.

I am going out on a limb here. I have been studying and researching El Niño and its impacts for more than thirty years. So, I believe that I have a sense of what weather anomalies one might expect to see during an El Niño episode. I also know a lot (not all) about the science of the El Niño process. In fact, today a lot of people do — and not just physical scientists. People have come a long way in thirty years with respect to their awareness of this natural phenomenon occurring in the tropical Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away.

Yet, I am frustrated when weather forecasters assert that various extremes in the United States and in other parts of the globe are the result of the weak-to-moderate El Niño of 2006-07. For example, several forecasters responsible for weather reporting on major TV channels — people who should have known better — have been calling “this snowfall” or “that tornado” an “El Niño snow” or an “El Niño tornado.” They talk about these extremes as being part of a “typical El Niño pattern.” But this El Niño is anything but typical in terms of the cluster of expected (or foreseeable) climate, water and weather anomalies that might be “linkable” to an El Niño. In fact, forecasters seem to be guilty of “ignore-ance” (as opposed to ignorance); that is, they purposely ignore mentioning the various weather extremes that are not associated with a typical El Niño, extremes that have also occurred in 2006-07.

Back in 1982, two researchers produced a diagram of what they called a “canonical” (i.e., typical) El Niño. However, the very next El Niño (1982-83) was very different: it started at a different time of the year, reached an unprecedented intensity, and caused billions of dollars in damage. After the 1982-83 El Niño, forecasters then said that no two El Niños were alike. The real answer, of course, lies somewhere in between. There are likely to be different types of El Niños, depending on when they start, where in the tropical Pacific the ocean heats up, and the set of impacts with which each type is associated.

We do know that there are some worldwide weather, water and climate-related anomalies (departures from normal) that have a higher likelihood of being linked to an El Niño. Taken together, these might be viewed as a small cluster of impacts worldwide that usually appear during an El Niño. For example, such a cluster would, in my view, include the following:

Drought in the Philippines and in Indonesia, a sharp increase in forest fires in Indonesia with widespread haze throughout Southeast Asia, drought conditions in Australia and in southern Africa, drought in Northeast Brazil and simultaneous flooding in southern Brazil, extremely dry conditions in North America’s Pacific Northwest, heavy rains in northern Peru and southern Ecuador, a mild winter across the northern half of the United States, extremely wet conditions in the southwestern United States, and epecially in southern California, cool weather in Florida, and a warm winter in the northeastern United States.

From website of International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University

In fact, some of these impacts did occur in late 2006 and early 2007. Many, however, did not. And that is my point! In fact, several of what I would consider to be part of a cluster of “signal” locations for an El Niño’s impacts were not affected as one might have expected, including, for example:

The US Pacific Northwest was wet (not dry), the central northern part of the USA was cold and blustery (not a mild winter), and heavy rains and flooding occurred in Indonesia and Malaysia (not drought). Also, El Niño-related heavy rains have yet to fall in southern California.

This suggests to me that the TV weather forecasters on major channels have been pandering to the public’s curiosity if not fascination about extreme weather disasters. The public tends to view El Niño as being synonymous with disasters. Perhaps, pandering relates in part to the pressure of TV forecasters to be first (and hopefully to be right) with a forecast of trouble ahead, and in part to their own wishful thinking to talk about something they consider to be attention-grabbing and newsworthy. Keep in mind the reality that normal weather is not newsworthy. They seem to have forgotten that their forecasts about the various hazards that an El Niño can spawn should be based on a careful review of the history, not just of El Niño but of El Niño’s impacts as well. Forecasting the onset and progress of an El Niño is very different from forecasting the impacts attributable to that particular El Niño. TV forecasters can interpret weather patterns as they wish, but they have a responsibility to the viewing public and to the scientific community to provide accurate information about climate and weather processes.

The year 2006 was forecast by some well-known and influential scientists to be the year of a “Super El Niño,” a label never before used. It did not happen. Who really cares? If a super event had taken place, those forecasters would have been heroes. But it didn’t. They go along making forecasts, as if there had been no cost associated with bad forecasts. Yet, for each forecast that is issued, people are listening and taking action based on it.

To me, these examples represent a miscommunication of science. Forecasters know that it is risky to link a specific weather event or extreme to an El Niño, but they make the link anyway when they talk of “typical” El Niño impacts. So, even if it does not make a difference to the affected public that a tornado was erroneously linked to El Niño, should it be a concern of the TV weather forecasting community? I believe forecasters have a responsibility to the science as well as to the public to get it as right as can be. Weather broadcast personalities are not exempt from being factually correct.

Fragilecologies Archives
1 February 2007

It is hard to believe; from the perspective of the first decade in the 21st century, that “adaptation” to climate change was not more than two decades ago the least desired approach to coping with global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Movie poster for the movie, “Lost in Translation”

Many of the new generation of researchers (those who joined the ranks in past 10-15 years) probably do not remember this fact! During the initial discussions of climate change in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, adapting to climate change (instead of actively trying to prevent it) was seen as a surrender of sorts by governments to the forces of Nature. After all, industrialized country leaders were sure that their technology-development communities would develop a range of technologies and techniques that could prevent global warming, either by arresting it at the sources, e.g., the burning of fossil fuels primarily, or by capturing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and burying them somewhere and somehow. And if that was not possible, they could at least come up with ways to mitigate global warming’s most dire impacts on societies and on ecosystems.

Toward the end of the 1980s, however, it had become clear that this assumption was not realistic and that societies had to consider developing ways to cope with the impacts of global warming from local to national levels; societies and their political leaders were not about to abandon their dependence and economic growth prospects by reducing their consumption of fossil fuels.

In the early 1980s, I collected various terms from the scientific literature that were expressed in order to cope with global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere; the final three that have taken hold are prevention, mitigation and adaptation. Other useful words like adjustment and compensation are no longer used in this context.

Today, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has defined adaptation in a very narrow sense. Through an IPCC lens, adaptation refers to a specific change in behavior that can only be attributed to climate change, and not to either climate variability or climate and weather extremes. The research and policy communities use the term ìadaptationî in different ways to mean different, sometimes conflicting, things. This has been misleading to the public and, I would argue, to researchers in other fields of study as well. As a result, adaptation has become an chameleon-like umbrella concept, the meaning of which takes on the complexion of its surroundings (context).

As an example, most words in the dictionary have multiple meanings. Adaptation is no different. Its usage required descriptive words (adjectives) in order to accurately convey to others a person’s message about adaptation as a coping strategy.

Some people view adaptation as THE last step in the response of a government, an individual or a group to the impacts of global warming. In other words, it is the response of last resort; and it is reactive because it is in response to an adverse stimulus.

To others, however, adaptation represents a pro-active response to a stimulus. It means that an impact of global warming is foreseeable (possible), carrying with it a qualitative expression of probability, that is, an impact is identifiable and evasive or mitigative actions can be taken by society to avoid that particular impact’s worst-case outcome. While a meteorological or hydrological hazard cannot be avoided, its impacts might be softened, if not avoided altogether, with proper planning. There is no surrender here to the forces of Nature.

My concern (fear, really) is that when people talk to each other — scientist to scientist, scientist to media, media to public, public to public, or public to policy maker, it is highly likely they are not defining the meaning of adaptation in the same way. It is as if they are speaking to each other in two different languages. At the end of the conversation, each one will take away from the discussion a different message, even though they think they understood each other.

This is why I believe that the meaning of adaptation is ìlost in translationî in discussions about strategic potential responses to global warming.

This situation can be fixed. All is not lost. In discussing adaption to global warming, or for that matter environmental change, one must make explicit what he or she means by it. To me, adaptation is a passive strategy whereby the affected parties react to the adverse impacts as they occur. I have always viewed mitigation as pro-active adaptation, in the sense that society anticipates likely impacts and begins to prepare (or hedges on the side of precaution) its decisions accordingly. One glaring example of such forethought comes out of the Netherlands, where there are plans to live with the water that for centuries they have fought to control. They are designing a ìhydropoleî (a city that can live on the water), and they are planning to give land back to the river and to the sea by moving out of floodplains, thereby removing people from global warming-related harm’s way.

P.S. And, for those who want to go deeper:

Webster definition: adjustment to environmental conditions: modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment.

OED (Oxford English Dictionary): Something, such as a device or mechanism, that is changed or changes so as to become suitable to a new or special application or situation. Change in behavior of a person or group in response to new or modified surroundings.

Adaptation to climate change

(1) Adaptation – Actions taken to help communities and ecosystems cope with changing climate conditions(website of the UNFCCC Secretariat).

(2) Adaptation – Adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. Various types of adaptation can be distinguished, including anticipatory and reactive adaptation, private and public adaptation, and autonomous and planned adaptation (IPCC TAR, 2001a).

(3) Adaptation – Consequences of climatic events are enhanced, developed, and implemented . (UNDP, 2005).

(4) Adaptation ñ The process or outcome of a process that leads to a reduction in harm or risk of harm, or realisation of benefits associated with climate variability and climate change( UK Climate Impact Programme ( UK CIP, 2003).

All four definitions differ from one another in several ways. First, they all use different words to describe what adaptation is. The first key words in the definition that express adaptation as ‘actions’, ‘adjustment’, ‘process’ and ‘outcome’ can be interpreted differently by various stakeholders. ‘Process’ seems to be a very broad and open ended term that does not include any particular time or subject references and can easily incorporate ‘actions’ and ‘adjustments’. The word ‘actions’ crystallizes ‘process’ into something more concrete. However, it is still not clear whether ‘action’ is the same thing as ‘measure’. Clarifications on the implications of these words are needed, especially given a wide use of the term ‘adaptation measure’ (see the only definition of ‘adaptation policies and measures’ from the UNDP). ‘Adjustment’ seems to imply a process that leads toward some standard or goal. The UK CIP offers additional interpretation of adaptation as an outcome. Expectations from adaptation as an outcome might be much higher than expectations from it as a process. Funding aspirations and evaluation of achieved results would also vary accordingly.

Another consideration is the way the term is understood by the UNFCCC4 and the IPCC. It appears that the UNFCCC uses the term ‘adaptation’ in a narrower way than the IPCC. The examples incorporated into the UNFCCC definition imply a very technical interpretation of the term (construction of walls, changing crops). The IPCC broadens this definition by distinguishing various types of adaptation (e.g., anticipatory, reactive, public, planned adaptation, etc.) and focuses not only on technical adaptation measures but also on institutional responses. The IPCC definition also includes adaptation of natural systems not just human. These seemingly small differences might create different expectations from different stakeholders, depending on the meaning of the term that they decide to use. One can already see that community-based adaptation practitioners and advocates use a more technical interpretation of the term (the one closer to the UNFCCC definition), while adaptation policy-makers use a broader definition and emphasize the institutional/policy side of adaptation. These varied interpretations could have serious financial implications.

http://unfccc.int/essential_background/glossary/items/2639.php ñ as of February 28, 2006

UNFCCC definition refers to the definition in the Glossary on the UNFCCC website. It is not from the Convention, and can probably be regarded as a working definition.

Key Adaptation Concepts and Terms (draft)

The interpretations also differ in their view of timing of climate change. While the UNFCCC definition implies only already occurring change in climate conditions; the IPCC definition also addresses expected changes. These differences might have consequences if the definitions are used to identify necessary adaptation measures. Scientific literature suggests that in the future some areas might experience completely different impacts from climate change from those that they are experiencing today. In addition, some areas that are less sensitive to climate change might not yet experience its effects.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/30/36278739.pdf

Fragilecologies Archives
11 December 2006

Exciting things are happening in faraway places. I say that because it is true wherever you live on Planet Earth. What is sparking this statement, however, is my recent trip to Vietnam in order to run a first-ever workshop entitled ìWater Affairsî. Perhaps not well-known outside that country, there is a university devoted to the study of various aspects of water, Water Resources University (WRU). It has more than 9,000 students, and it grants degrees from the Bachelor to the PhD level. WRU has campuses located in both Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam is a country dependent on its water resources. It has become increasingly concerned about the quantity and quality of those water resources, as well as continuing access to that water. The pressures on Vietnam ‘s water supplies (perhaps a better term than water resources) are many, both within the country as well as outside of it. For starters, an estimated 63 percent of the water in its territory comes from other countries by way of rivers. The remaining 37 percent falls directly on its territory, according to country reports. There are pressures from population, such as increasing numbers of people expecting a share of existing, finite water supplies as well as from the population’s increasing level of affluence and the country’s heightened drive for economic development.

Water quality is a major issue, nationally and locally, as polluted waters are to be found everywhere throughout the country, despite attempts and hopes to clean up its water supplies. Access is yet another issue for the country, as it does not have direct control over resources from rivers that originate upstream in other countries, like China, for example, and the Mekong River. China is building seven dams upstream (three are already finished), and this affects the ability of Vietnam to manage the Mekong ‘s streamflow on its territory because of untimely and unexpected releases of water from dams, which fit China ‘s short-term upstream needs and not the needs or concerns of downstream users.

The notion of “Water Affairs” is designed to put water as the centerpiece of a multidisciplinary educational and training activity related to global changes, natural as well as changes that are human-induced. It encompasses aspects of the following: water science, water impacts on ecosystems and societies, water law, policy & politics, water economics, and water ethics & equity. These aspects serve as a checklist to assure that each aspect receives attention of water-related educators and trainers who, in turn, educate and train their students and participants, respectively.

Vietnam ‘s Water Resources University was founded in 1959 and has focused its programs on “education, technological and scientific research within the water sector, environmental assessment, exploitation, utilization and protection of water resources and natural disaster prevention and management.”

Today, WRU is embarking on an ambitious 15-year project to enhance and upgrade current programs and to develop new ones in order to make it a world-class university for the education and training of individuals in water resources and water resources-related issues. Its geographic scope extends from mountain tops to the marine environment, given that Vietnam has a 3,300-km-long coastline. The protein taken from marine resources comes from what geographer Georg Borgstrom referred to as ìghost acres.î The term “ghost acres” refers to the land space that would be required to produce the same amount of protein for human consumption from land. In other words, it supplements to a significant degree Vietnam ‘s land-based food productivity and production. The university is working with DANIDA (Denmark International Development), and others, to develop an aggressive future plan for the university. Now is a good time to seek partnerships of some sort with this university and its faculty in a wide range of disciplines, even if certain activities do not appear explicitly in their new plan.

For some insight into our recent workshop in Hanoi, please see the website at www.ccb.ucar.edu/waf and for more information about Water Resources University, please see its website (in English) at www.hwru.edu.vn/english.