Check out: Ruth DeFries, University of Maryland / College Park
Ruth DeFries is an environmental geographer who uses remotely sensed satellite imagery to explore the relationship between the Earth’s vegetative cover, human modifications of the landscape, and the biochemical processes that regulate the Earth’s habitability.
The facts on sewage in this country are pretty astounding - very, very few Americans have any idea just how much raw and partially-treated sewage is spilled or legally dumped into our streams and rivers every year.
IF INDIAN newspaper reports are to be believed, the children of Punjab are in the throes of a grey revolution. Even those as young as ten are sprouting tufts of white and grey hair. Some are going blind. In Punjabi villages, children and adults are afflicted by uncommon cancers.
The reason is massive and unregulated use of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals in India’s most intensively farmed state. According to an environmental report by Punjab’s government, the modest-sized state accounts for 17% of India’s total pesticide use. The state’s water, people, animals, milk and agricultural produce are all poisoned with the stuff.
Rising seas, an inevitable result of global warming, will almost certainly inundate those important historical sites located along coastlines. And at this point, there’s very little to be done about it.
The People of Nueva Linda from Mi Mundo
A lovely photo spread of the “men and women from the southern coast [of Guatemala] who continue their struggle against impunity.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sweeping assertions and rumors swirled as violently as the storm. PM heads to New Orleans to investigate what went wrong, what went right and what we can do better next time.
The overriding goal of author Ricardo Cantú in his delightfully titled “Ethanolomics: The Think-About’s of the Mexican Ethanol Project” is to devise a strategy for improving the living standards of the rural poor in Mexico via an invigoration of the agricultural economy, without committing the major sin of inducing price hikes in food staples that will hurt the urban poor.
Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia, laid out the, ahem, inconvenient truth: That countries like his suffer because of what countries like ours have done, and that a world-wide cap-and-trade treaty would have to allow countries like Ethiopia to sell carbon allocations to countries like the United States.
He says the funds would be used to invest in green energy. Of course, they could also end up spent on Ethiopia’s continuing quest to take over Somalia, so, it seems, there would have to be some oversight here.
With a push from the United Nations “Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign”, designed to encourage tree planting around the world, Cuba has committed to plant some 135 million trees this year.
Treehugger recently posted a piece about Sara Bongiorni’s book “A Year Without ‘Made in China’”, which recounts her and her family’s attempt to live a year without goods made in Middle Kingdom. Bold.
Out of curiosity last week, I spent the morning noting where everything I touched over the course of 4 hours came from. I have hence realized that life without made in China is an existence devoid of my favorite consumer electronics. What I had not realized is the diversity of places where clothing is manufactured. See below.
Electronics
Computer- Components are from China, Philippines, US, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan,
Laptop Charger -China
Earphones - China
MP3 Player - China
Batteries - USA
Camera Charger - China
40 GB Drive - Thailand
Cell Phone, Charger and Battery - China
Thumb drive - Taiwan
Clothes/Accessories
Tote Bag - US
Purse - China
Change Purse - China
Purse-sized Mirror - Japan
Necklace - Morocco
Makeup - USA
Skivvies - Israel (4), Jordan
Tank Tops - China, US
Shirts - Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, El Salvador
Capris - USA, Thailand
Jeans - Japan
Shorts: USA
Skirts - Turkey, China
Sandals - China
Rock Climbing Shoes - Italy
Pillow - Made in China/Filled and Finished USA
Pillow Case, Sheets, Blankets - China
Toothbrush - Germany
Shower Scrubbers - Taiwan
Bathmat - ?
Shower Curtain -?
Bathroom products - a mystery
Facial tissues - US
Deodorant - US
Perfume - France
Kitchen
Expresso cups - China
Mints - US
Mints Tin - China
Office Products
Notepad - US
Pen - China, Japan (2), India
Transport
Car - Japan
And lest you think I’m totally insensitive, Farewell My Concubine is one of the book’s chapters and an amazing if traumatizing Chinese film (a.k.a. Ba wang bie ji).
Once upon a time I had the bright idea to do a book club. Unfortunately, time evaporated after the first book. Well, I still don’t have any time, but I did managed to read the second book on the list, Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, while on vacation. Over the next week or so, I’ll put down my observations/thoughts inspired by the book.
Book synopsis
In the 1970’s, a group of scientists (engineers, biologists, botanists, agriculturists, sociologists, doctors), teachers and artists founded a community in the llanos region of Columbia. Before they came, many would have called those miles and miles savannah north of the Amazon rain forest, a wasteland. However, the founders saw a dream. They wanted to show the world a different way of living: sustainable, self-sufficient, and environmentally viable. Not a utopia, per se. They didn’t believe those were possible anyway, but they did believe that they could create a decent approximation. Given the state of the world at the time, they also figured that people would need to learn how to make such uninhabitable places habitable. With the relentless urban expansion, the depletion of non-renewable resources, and continued poverty, people would be pushing into these areas sooner or later anyhow. The Gaviotans wanted to lead the way.
Somehow, Gaviotas became an oasis of calm in the midst of maddening turbulence. In her heyday, Colombia was a pearl, but drug trafficking, guerrilla warfare, paramilitary action, and kidnappings had tarnished her tremendously [Read the 5/17/07 BBC story of hostage escaping the FARC]. Somehow, Gaviotas was relatively immune to the violence that surrounded it. I say relatively because there were instances where people were taken away by guerrillas never to be seen again.
Overall, the community sounds like a paradise for thinkers and inventors, where your garage workshop grew to encompass an entire village. Together, they made marvelous things: a solar kitchen, biogas systems, solar panels, windpumps, water purifiers, etc. etc. By the end of the book, they also started to beat back the savannah, turning it back into forest.
My gut reaction:
It was my third time trying to read the book. Though the writing itself is good (Weisman knows how to turn a phrase), the execution is somewhat tedious. So many people were involved in making Gaviotas a reality; Weisman was bent on recognizing them all. While this is quite fair, it makes a good chunk of the storytelling a litany of names and comings and goings. Yawn. You get to know Gaviotas the place, but you don’t get more than a passing sense of any of the remarkable people who live(d) there. Okay okay, since it is a story of a semi-socialist shangri-la, it makes sense that no single individual stands out as the hero of the piece. Still.
I never read Fast Company before they wrote on us last October, but I’ll admit they have a lot of great stories.
Some interesting stories out this month…
Q&A: Pierre Omidyar - Empower Seller I’ve been trying to get into Omidyar.net (as in, become a regular user), but can’t seem to. It strikes me as a place to … okay this will seem really pretentious, but my folks are Haitian and I speak the language … flâner. Flâner is a French word for walking around in an aimless but contented way, strolling as it were. Apparently, it’s the best way to appreciate Paris. Unfortunately, I’m so harried these days that I have very little patience for the activity over the internet except for on youtube, digg,or zefrank. I’m wondering about other folks experiences with Omidyar.net. Am I missing something? Also, I can’t stand the interface.
Business 3.0 “The oblivious capitalist’s days are numbered.”
Their premise is that corporations will have to do better than their perfunctory attempts at social responsibility (e.g. those separate social responsibility departments and corporate foundations) and fully integrate the principle into their business practices. Why? Due to increased natural resource scarcity (freshwater, copper, lead, silver, tin, silicon), if they don’t, it’ll be Game over man. Game over!
Slick Read (only available on the print edition at the moment) An insider’s journey through the oil industry, from the wells to your wallet.
Review of Oil on the Brain.
In the comments section of this post, Miles Lasater asks:
After reading Sachs, do you think that it is possible to end extreme poverty on this schedule? If the money was spent as he recommends would it be effective?
I was thinking about this all day. My gut reaction is mos def, but …
Here is where I am pessimistic
Marshall Plan: Part Deux? I don’t see the West stepping up to the amount that is needed, i.e. Marshall Plan style. I do think they will eventually give more and that more countries will get close to the 0.7% mark. But still, I think it will take a very special president of FDR scale proportions to get the U.S. out of its aid torpor. I can see us reducing the amount of development money that we spend on expensive consultants or other wasteful things rather than the nuts and bolts of poverty reduction. I see that being a slow reluctant decline. [It is a toughie though, smart people cost money and the US government probably wants that cash recycled back into our own economy. Sigh.] Maybe John McCain should make that a pet project. Check out “The Darker Side of Development AID”
Global Warming. With widespread desertification, the shrinking of water resources, increased food insecurity and other horrible effects of global warming, will poor countries develop fast enough to mitigate the negative effects that climate change will have on their populations? If they are unable to do so, I can see many more people being thrust into poverty as the predictability and/or bounty of the land they rely on fades. Actually, I really pessimistic about that one. It feels like that race has already begun and we’re barely in the starting blocks.
Sachs, the central planner? Okay okay, I know that Jeff Sachs is so not into central planning, but I think Easterly is right. Sachs’ plan really smacks of it. Or at least a bit of control freakery. I worry that with bureaucracy piled on top of it, his plan will go form being a helpful roadmap to a suffocating straitjacket. In the best of all possible worlds, it would be a human rights lovefest. All participatory and stuff, where the rights and concerns of the developing countries were put at the forefront, things would gosmoothly, no tendencies (real or imagined) towards neo-colonialism or racism would creep in, folks would be working towards that Nash Equilibrium (everyone’s a winner). Unfortunately, I’m not Candide and this isn’t the best of all possible worlds.
A related worry: Foreign aid reduces government accountability to its citizenry. I have to relocate the blog post that brought this up, but a writer made the point that foreign aid makes leaders more accountable to foreign entities than to their own citizenry, sometimes forcing them to put foreign interests above those of their own people. If you think lobbyists have power, imagine if a big chunk of your government’s budget was coming from one place. If you know which side bread is buttered, you’re not going to cross them.
Agricultural subsidies. I do believe that they will eventually disappear, but I think it will be an ugly death where they are kicking and screaming to the bitter end. I don’t think they will go away in the time frame and with the speed necessary to meet Sach’s 2025 poverty elimination target. To meet targets, poor countries would either have to get a fairer shake when it comes to agriculture and/or give up on that industry and move into to another where they would be majorly competitive. Who knows? Maybe the poor countries would go for freer trade with each other.
HIV/AIDS. So much knowledge and so many skills are being lost at a faster rate than they are currently being replaced given poor government’s resources.
Crazy Dictators who are failing to safeguard the well-being of their citizens. Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, Myanmar’s Than Shwe. I’m just going to leave it at that.
Here is where I’m optimistic.
I do see developing countries taking up the burden to help their own. In the aftermath of the tsunami for example, India pulled the bold and controversial move of politely declining aid and even gave money to help other countries in need [I don’t know if this policy eventually changed. Do correct me if you know differently].
China Syndrome. China is seeing itself as quite the benefactor these days. It is giving A LOT of aid to African countries and with fewer strings attached than they usually would get from the big lending institutions. Time will tell if this is a good or a bad thing. Some conditionalities imposed by international banks have hamstrung governments in terms of determing their own policies, however others have made governments honor human rights, etc. China already seems to be having a dodgy effect on the foreign policy of one African Nation. South Africa recently took up its 2 year seat on the Security Council and long story short voted with Russia and China to let Myanmar off the hook for its appalling human rights record. Thabo, Booba. What are you doing? [btw that is a Die Hard reference]. So summary: a huge influx of Chinese dosh with fewer conditionalities may on balance yield good results for Africa’s poor though human rights will probably suffer.
We’ve reached the tail end of the Years of Magical Thinking. Finally development agencies, banking institutions, and economists recognize that structural adjustment is a bad idea (as well as a barrier to fulfilling people’s social, economic and cultural rights) [See Commission on Human Rights resolution 2001/27 for a nice summary of the badness]. They understand that there is a minimum that a country needs to invest in its own people and that human development is as important as economic development, if not more so. You’d think that would be a no-brainer.
Technology. Technology is going to allow poor countries to do things we haven’t even begun to imagine. I’m just thinking of the minor tech victories AIDG is achieving in Guatemala. Blow that up on a massive scale and WOW.
Teach a man to fish… make a bouillabaisse, make fish cakes,etc.. I think the introduction of microlending, micro-VC and social entrepeneurship are going to be huge boons to poverty reduction. Yes therer are times whee people just need a handout, but thee are others where they need a hand up. It seems that that distinction is being made more effectively each day.
I grow sleepy (it’s 1:33 am), so I’ll summarize the last few things that make me hopeful: political will behind Millennium Development Goals, Debt cancellation efforts, slow yet steady improvements in the rights of women. Okay so looking at the list of negative, my belief that we can end extreme poverty in 2025 looks really Pollyannah-ish, but I’m sticking to my guns and using the “I’m tired” defense for why I don’t have more positive reason… Yawn.
I’m on the Acela (I missed my train by 30 seconds. Bah! That was an expensive 30 seconds.) So have a good deal of time to sit and write about my thoughts on Jeff Sachs book “The End of Poverty” without worrying that my battery will die.
Overall, “The End of Poverty” comes off as a well thought out sensible read with the hype being well justified. I’m not going to give are review. I’ll leave that to better writers than I. The biggest thing is that Sachs isn’t talking about ending all poverty by 2025, which seems absurdly optimistic, but extreme poverty.
The definitions of extreme and moderate poverty:
Pg. 20. Extreme poverty means that households can’t meet their basic needs for survival. They are chronically hungry, unable to access health care, lack the amenities of safe drinking water and sanitation, cannot afford education for some or all of the children, and perhaps like rudimentary shelter… and basic articles of clothing such as shoes…. >$1/day
Moderate poverty generally refers to conditions of life in which basic needs are met but just barely. $1-2/day
The worldwide breakdown
1 billion: Extreme poverty; subsistence living, the Grim Reaper is always hovering nearby waiting to pick off a few
1.5 billion: Moderate poverty; chronic financial hardship, lack of basic services like drinking water and sanitation
2.5 billion: Middle class; they are like the Jefferson’s: moving on up.
1 billion: High income, Europe, North America + high incomes individuals living in developing countries. Yup, compared to most of humanity, you are filthy stinking rich.
He feels and I would have to agree that it is altogether possible to get that 1 billion of the world’s population into the economic game by 2025. We just have to want it bad enough. And by want I mean willing to spend 0.7% of our national income on development assistance.
After this, I have one more post on structural adjustment, and then we’re off to the next book in the book club series Gaviotas. I don’t read/write nearly enough about appropriate technology, so it’ll be a nice change.
“The sweatshops are the first rung on the ladder out of extreme poverty.” Pg 11.
It does make you take a double take. His point is a good one though. Yes, the hours are bad, the conditions often abysmal, workers benefits a myth, unions crushed, sexual harassment rampant. However, for the people working there, they are a source of good income for their families and they allow folks to get by, if only just. Sachs also suggests that if you are protesting against [insert mega-corporation here] for their use of sweatshop labor, campaign for better standards for the workers and not for the company to pull out of the country/close the factory. The latter choice is more likely to hurt the people you are trying to help, and not bring out the result of interest.
Side note: I was at this human rights conference last year and we were talking about the differences in the public perceptions of Nike and Reebok after their reliance on sweatshops was revealed. Long story short: Reebok was more open, worked more with activists in the beginning and either genuinely wanted to do something positive or knew that not doing so would hurt their brand. Nike was … well … a bit arsier, slower to act perhaps thinking that the issue would just go okay. In the end, I believe both companies made similar changes in their factories. The difference is I hear sweatshop, I think Nike. Pity.
“Virtually every poor country that has developed successfully has gone through these first stages of industrialization. These Bangladeshi women share the experience of many generations of immigrants to NYC’s garment district and a hundred other places where their migration to toil in garment factories was a step on the path to a future of urban affluence in succeeding generations.”Pg 12.
Hmm, It sounds like he’s saying that some levels of exploitation of workers accompanied the early stages of development in many areas. Here are a few questions for you folks out there.
Do you think that early development in a country can ever be squeaky clean (i.e. upmost standards of human rights including indigenous and minority rights, respect for the environment, etc.). I think a common response would be “Yes, but growth rates will be smaller.”
Can you be a mensch and have fast economic growth at the same time?
Is fast economic growth the be-all end-all?
Not anymore apparently. The touchy feelies are making an impact. Hurray.
“Human development is about much more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests.” (UNDP 2001)
“Economic growth is a means and not an end of development. There is no automatic link between high GNP growth and progress in human development.” (UNDP 1990)
Aw yeah.
The concept of human development is a holistic one putting people at the centre of all aspects of the development process. [ref]
We’re sending less aid to Africa not more
In constant 2002 dollars, aid per person in African FELL from $32 per person in 1980 to just $22 per person in 2001. pg 82
5 countries have already met the target for 0.7% of national income on foreign aid: Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden [ref]
Debt reduction/cancellation is not such as new idea as you might have thought.
Bolivia and many other countries had defaulted in the 1930’s and had their debts cancelled in the 1940’s. pg. 100
In the 1953 London Agreement, “the Allied victors of World War II [gave] the new Democratic Republic of Germany a fresh start by reducing the burden of pre-World War II era debts”.
World history is far more interesting than what they taught in high school
The British went to war with China over the right to get the Chinese citizenry high. Yup “Great Britain attacked China in 1839 to promote British narcotics trafficking, launching the first of the Opium Wars of 1939-42 to force China to open up to trade. … It is as if Columbia waged a war with the United States today for the right to sell cocaine.” Pg. 151
The life expectancy in India was 32.5 in 1947. Today it is 64.71 years. [CIA World Factbook]
The IT centers in India are in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyperabad (nicknamed Cyberabad) and Mumbai.
Being a completely landlocked nation (with few navigable rivers) can seriously impair trade and economic development
“Malaria and yellow fever delayed the construction of the Panama Canal for over 30 years.” Pg. 197
“What the?”
In 2002, the United States gave $3 per Sub-Saharan African. Taking out the parts for U.S. consultants, food and other emergency aid, administrative costs, and debt relief, the aid per African came to a grand total of 6 cents [emphasis added].” pg. 310
On a global scale:
$30 per Sub-Saharan Africa (in 2002)
$5 à consultants from donor countries
$3 à food and emergency aid
$4 à servicing debts
$5 à debt relief operations
$13 à left over
Racism is a moving target
“Virtually every country that was once poor has been castigated for being lazy and unworthy until its citizens became rich, at which point their new wealth was “explained” by their industriousness. Pg. 315
Excluding the Marshall plan, foreign aid given by the US had never been scaled to the levels needed to spur economic growth in poor countries. Pg. 336
From the Economist Magazine: Economics A-Z
Agricultural Policy
In 2003, rich countries together spent over $300 billion a year supporting their farmers, more than six times what they spent on foreign aid.
Why has aid achieved so little? Donations have often ended up in the offshore bank accounts of corrupt politicians and officials in poor countries. Money has often been given with strings attached, so that much of this “tied” aid is spent on companies and corrupt politicians and officials in the donor country. War has ravaged many potentially beneficial aid projects. Moreover, some aid has been motivated by political goals – for example, shoring up anti-communist governments – rather than economic ones.
Questions unanswered:
Is it ever safe to have foreign-based companies owning your national utilities?
Lessons Learned.
When it comes to helping the world’s poor, don’t take no for an answer. With persistence, responses generally go from “When hell freezes” over to “No” to “Maybe”, then “Yes” (often, “Okay fine! Just stop bugging me, already!”). Always remember, si se puede.
A large surplus of highly educated workers seems to be one of the keys to India and China’s current successes.
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