Showing posts from category From the Wilson Center.
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Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East
›Isobel Coleman, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said she believes demographic changes are intensifying the notion that women’s empowerment is key to the growth and prosperity of the economies of Arab and Muslim-majority countries.
Coleman, author of the book Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East, spoke at the Wilson Center in October, with Haleh Esfandiari moderating.
In addition to the Middle East’s demographics, Coleman also discussed how women in these traditional societies face challenges expanding their roles because women’s rights are often seen in a negative light. Coleman noted that things are changing, however, because women in the Muslim world are turning towards an Islamic discourse, which allows them to expand their rights within society’s religious framework. With this tactical shift and gradual gains in education, Coleman explained how women are slowly yet steadily transforming their societies.Coleman began her talk by focusing on the demographic changes in the region, noting that 50 percent of the Arab world’s population is under the age of 22. Furthermore, education was once the exclusive preserve of men in many Arab and Muslim states (in some cases, only decades ago). Today, however, women often constitute the majority of those enrolled in these countries’ educational institutions: Females outnumber males in Jordan’s secondary schools and constitute 70 percent of all university students in Iran. While the levels of educational attainment and achievement among women are increasing, normative and legal restrictions on their socioeconomic mobility remain. Coleman indicated that this contradictory scenario has led to greater opposition to impediments to women’s equality.
Coleman went on to address the tactics being used by the latest generation of reform-minded women in the Muslim world. She said today’s reformist women are more cognizant of the religious conservatism in their societies and are taking on religion in a way earlier feminists did not. By making feminist arguments from an Islamic perspective they avoid being “slandered” by conservatives and traditionalists as pro-Western or anti-Islamic. Coleman noted that some women adopt such a stance out of deep religious conviction, while others do it in the name of expediency. She indicated this new strategy of compromise has given more women influence in social affairs and led to significant engagement with governments.
With the advent of new social media and technology, women have become more visible and able to express their opinions about previously taboo gender-related issues. Female journalists and bloggers are more stridently supporting feminist discourses. Coleman mentioned Sweet Talk, the Arabic language equivalent of the American television show, The View, on which the female co-hosts have addressed topics such as polygamy, rape, incest, and the Saudi prohibition on women driving.
According to Coleman, these factors of change – demographic transitions, the role of media, and an awareness of growing extremism in society – are contributing to women making strides in the region and a “wearing away” of gender inequality in the Muslim world. Given the gains women have made so far, Coleman said she is “cautiously optimistic” for the future.
Luke Hagberg is an intern with the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center; Haleh Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East Program.
Photo Credit: Yemeni women in computer class, courtesy of flickr user World Bank Photo Collection, and David Hawxhurt/Wilson Center. -
New Insights Into the Population Growth Factor in Development
›“We have not found any country that has developed or gotten out of poverty while maintaining high birth rates,” said Martha Campbell, president of Venture Strategies for Health and Development. “Family planning is not a cost to a Ministry of Finance – it’s an investment,” said Malcolm Potts of the University of California Berkeley.
Campbell and Potts were joined by panelists Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, director and founder of the African Institute for Development Policy, and Jotham Musinguzi, director of the African Region at Partners in Population and Development, for a Wilson Center discussion of the implications of rapid population growth on human and economic development. [Video Below]
Africa’s Key Population Growth Challenges
“Africa’s population of one billion can reach between 1.8 and 2.3 billion by 2050, depending on how well the continent actually does in reducing fertility,” Zulu said. In 2010, Africa accounted for 15 percent of the total world population, but current estimates suggest this will grow to 23 percent by 2050.
“Rapid growth, young age structures, and urbanization are Africa’s main population challenges,” said Zulu. “Addressing these concerns is increasingly seen to be the key to the continent’s development prospects and realization of the Millennium Development Goals.” With 40 to 50 percent of populations in Africa under the age of 15, there is “high momentum for further population growth,” he said.
“Africa has a very high demand for fertility control, and the demand will undoubtedly increase,” said Zulu. “The main challenge, therefore, is not that of demand, but how to ensure those who are in need actually have access to contraception.” In many African regions, current rates of contraception use are as low as seven percent. In some areas, as many as 97 percent of women cannot afford the full cost of contraception, he said.
“It’s not just about reducing fertility,” said Zulu. Improving education and increasing labor force opportunities will not only help populations develop economically, but will also allow African countries to take full advantage of the demographic dividend, he said.
“The international development community should build on Africa’s success stories and support efforts to achieve universal access to family planning, expand public education on reproductive matters, improve the status of women, and improve the situation in urban settings,” Zulu concluded.
Family Planning and the MDGs
“Women are dying; children are dying. They shouldn’t be,” said Musinguzi. “By investing US$1 million in family planning, you can prevent 800 maternal deaths, 11,000 infant deaths, 14,000 deaths in children under five, and 360,000 unwanted pregnancies.”
“Women are clearly saying they have a need for family planning,” Musinguzi said. Presenting statistics from sub-Saharan Africa, he noted that 31 countries have a total fertility rate of more than five. Fourteen million unintended pregnancies occur each year, but only 25 percent of women use family planning. In Uganda, for example, the population has more than doubled in less than 20 years; women on average have more than six children each; and only 18 percent of married women use modern contraception.
“For a country trying to achieve the MDGs…the question of addressing total fertility rate is very important,” said Musinguzi. Reducing unmet need for family planning services can help African countries reduce the costs of achieving several of the Millennium Development Goals, including offering universal primary education; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Policy Implications
“This is an urgent message – waiting 10 years to get family planning back on the international agenda will be enormously costly,” Potts said. “Of all the medical interventions that exist, contraception is the single most powerful. It is the only one that can have an impact on maternal and infant mortality, on the autonomy of women, on economic progress, on social stability and the rate at which we destroy the environment,” he said.
“Education and family planning are the driving mechanisms of development – they’re synergistic,” said Potts. “One of our needs is to get economists, family planning, and development experts on the same page.”
Sources: Guttmacher Institute, Population Action International, Population Reference Bureau.
Photo Credit: Untitled, courtesy of flickr user stttijn. -
Minister Izabella Teixeira at the Wilson Center
A Review of Brazil’s Environmental Policies and Challenges Ahead
›Stressing the need for concrete, tangible institutional policies, Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, discussed the challenges and goals of her ministry at the Wilson Center on October 20. Sustainable development, not just conservation, must be the focus, and that requires bringing lots of different players to the table, taking into account not only environmental but also social and economic agendas. To do this, she argued, one must take the rather ephemeral and hypothetical notions of environmental stewardship and put them into the realm of a practicable, institutionalized framework, built on a social pact that engages all sectors of society.The foundation of sustainable development and environmental policy must be biodiversity, according to Teixeira. Central concerns, such as food and energy security and combating climate change, all rely on a diverse array of natural resources. These need to be conserved, but they must also be developed in a responsible, sustainable way. A legal international framework toward this end, covering access to biodiversity and genetic resources, has yet to be implemented. Developing and developed countries need to find a middle ground on allocating the benefits that accrue from the use of genetic resources found in areas such as the Amazon, and this agreement must then be linked into existing political institutions.
Teixeira noted the strides Brazil has made toward protecting its environment – including having set aside the equivalent of 70 percent of all protected areas in the world in 2009 and the establishment of the Amazon Fund. Nevertheless, Brazil must continue to protect and maintain these nature preserves, not just establish them. Creating a program that pragmatically implements international goals in a national context is an ongoing process, and countries like Brazil now need to focus on the “how” of implementing these goals, rather than just the “what.”
Teixeira also highlighted the complexity of formulating environmental policy that integrates all the various points of view that must be taken into consideration. At recent meetings to discuss transitioning to a low-carbon economy, 17 different cabinet ministers had to be present to coordinate government positions and policies. The complexity is due in part to the need to create alternatives, not just to prevent certain activities. For example, one must not only use legal enforcement to stop illicit deforestation, but also create paths to legal, sustainable logging. Once again, attempting to balance environmental, social, and economic concerns is difficult, to say the least, but crucial for long-term effectiveness.
Also a unique challenge for Brazil is the natural diversity that exists within such a large country. While much of the attention paid to the environment goes (rightly so) to the Amazon, there are many other biomes and local environments that must be taken into consideration, Teixeira observed.
The cerrado, Brazil’s enormous savanna, requires a different strategy than the Amazon, which is different than the coastal Atlantic forest. Furthermore, urban areas need their own environmental policies that can take into account issues of human development and population density.
To illustrate the need for an inclusive, well-thought-out policy, Teixeira discussed–rather frankly–the controversy surrounding the recent proposed amendments to the Forest Code. She argued that the proposal makes blanket changes that do not take into consideration differences in biomes, differences between large agribusinesses and family farms, and between historic, settled communities and recent developments. The implications of this proposal, according to the minister, could have enormous social costs. Teixeira said she believes that it would be virtually impossible to enforce the amended Forest Code if it was approved by Congress. She used this example to underscore her role in offering legislative alternatives that seek to provide a more nuanced, and ultimately more effective, institutional framework that can use Brazil’s many natural resources to help its population to the greatest extent possible.
J.C. Hodges is an intern with the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center; Paulo Sotero is the director of the Brazil Institute.
Photo Credit: “Rio Jurua, Brazil (NASA, International Space Station Science, 05/29/07),” courtesy of flickr user NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center. -
Rebuilding Stronger, Safer, Environmentally Sustainable Communities After Disasters
The GRRT Toolkit for Humanitarian Aid
›Natural disasters present an immediate humanitarian crisis but are also an opportunity to rebuild societies to be more resilient and environmentally sustainable than they were before. The “Green Recovery and Reconstruction Training Toolkit” (GRRT), created by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the American Red Cross and launched at the Wilson Center on November 19, will help future humanitarian efforts integrate principles of environmental conservation into their disaster recovery strategies. This strategic partnership has been “an incredible effort and marriage between organizations that have different operating styles, different approaches to situations,” said WWF Chief Operating Officer Marcia Marsh. While implementing the GRRT may not be easy, “we need integrated solutions for integrated problems,” said Erika Clesceri, bureau environmental officer at USAID.
A Critical Partnership
In the midst of a crisis, humanitarian workers on the ground often do not have the time, skills, or funding to incorporate environmental concerns into relief efforts, said Robert Laprade, senior director for emergencies and humanitarian assistance at CARE. Humanitarian workers are “going a hundred miles an hour, they’re going on adrenaline and they’re there to save people’s lives – and the environment is just of secondary importance,” he said.
But “environmental sustainability is critical to the achievement of long-lasting recovery results,” said Roger Lowe, senior vice president of communications at American Red Cross. The Red Cross Principles of Conduct state that “relief aid must strive to reduce future vulnerabilities to disaster as well as meeting basic needs” and “avoid long-term beneficiary dependence upon external aid,” he said.
From Damnation, Purgatory, and Armageddon to Redemption
For many crisis-stricken regions, lack of an emphasis on environmental sustainability during disaster recovery efforts can mean “damnation in the present, purgatory in the near future, and Armageddon in the long term,” said Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. Stress on the environment caused by climate change or unsustainable resource consumption can often contribute to conflict, he explained.
In Darfur, “the environmental change was part and parcel of what led to that conflict,” Walker said. At one time an “environmental Eden” of diverse ecological zones, Darfur gradually became an environment that could not support a society of livestock herding. As the environment changed, some former herders became salaried, armed gunmen, known as the Janjaweed who felt they faced “a choice of no choice,” Walker said, to either “die as pastoralists or become pariahs as mercenaries.”
The challenge for humanitarian aid organizations is to not only help communities recover from disasters, but help them adapt to future environmental stress caused by globalization, climate change, or other factors. “If you cannot adapt,” Walker said, “that’s going to lead to violence.” To avoid aid dependency or resurgence in conflict it is critical to integrate environmental sustainability into disaster relief efforts from the beginning, he said:We used to believe that our world in the aid business was divided between relief on the left and long-term development on the right, and one would gradually go into the other in this relief-development continuum. But the reality is that you have a significant population – a population of millions of people – who are effectively trapped in a form of aid purgatory. They’re basically on a drip feed. Humanitarian assistance does not get you forward, it keeps you alive.
The GRRT offers organizations guidelines for implementing integrated disaster relief to provide a sustainable solution. While every crisis is different, the GRRT’s guidelines should be as applicable to “flooding in Boston as they are to flooding in Aceh,” said Walker.
Implementing Integrated Solutions
Securing funding for this integrated approach will be a challenge, as a significant portion will go towards staffing and training people on the ground, said Clesceri. A stand-alone, dedicated budget for environmental issues within humanitarian assistance programs must “be fought and re-fought for on a continual basis,” she said.
Local partnerships are essential. “Replicate” should be “stricken from the lexicon,” said Marsh. “You can’t replicate, and this toolkit isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all.” Instead, she said, the goal of the GRRT is to “create very practical approaches with communities.”
The key to helping communities recover from disasters is to form the kinds of strategic partnerships demonstrated by WWF and the American Red Cross in the creation of the GRRT. “Interdisciplinary groups are always, in my mind, going to get you a better solution in the end, but the risk is that they take more time…but it’s absolutely worth it,” she said.
Photo Credit: “Dark Clouds from Haiti’s Hurricane Tomas Loom over Camps,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo. -
Developing a Blueprint for Addressing Glacier Melt in the Region
Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia
›“Glacier melt is part of larger hydrologic and climate systems, so effective programs will be cross-sectoral and yield co-benefits,” said Elizabeth L. Malone, senior research scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, speaking at the Wilson Center on November 16. “Looking more closely at glacier melt, we come to understand that upstream actions and choices have a potentially huge effect on downstream communities,” added Kristina Yarrow, health advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Asia and Middle East Bureaus.
Malone and Yarrow were joined by Mary Melnyk, senior advisor for natural resource management at USAID’s Asia and Middle East Bureaus, to discuss the agency’s new report, “Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia: Addressing Vulnerabilities to Glacier Melt Impacts,” prepared by Malone in collaboration with CDM International and TRG. “This report is a move towards mainstreaming climate change across the development portfolio to ensure enduring success of our investments,” Melnyk said.
Mainstreaming Climate Change
Providing information about the science, vulnerabilities, and current efforts to respond to environmental change and glacier melt in Asia, the new report also features a number of practical, cross-sectoral approaches to addressing glacial retreat in Asia that, if implemented well, could produce multiple benefits. The report highlights the complexity of the issues surrounding glacier melt in the region, and the critical need to prepare today for future environmental changes.“Climate change in general, and glacier melt specifically, can potentially impact all sectors: economic growth, governance, and health,” Melnyk said. Because there is a lack of scientific knowledge on glacial retreat in Asia and limited financial and human resources to address these issues, it is critical to maximize results through programs that will provide environmental, health, and development co-benefits.
“The challenge is that, in practice, addressing issues of climate change and other environmental security issues still are not a part of the day-to-day business across sectors,” Melnyk said. This report is a first step in the right direction to raise awareness and action on these issues and “although there is uncertainty, we need to move forward – the time to act is now,” she concluded.
Multiple Sectors, Multiple Benefits
“Cross-sector collaboration and programs, when done correctly, can have a much greater impact than when doing a vertical program within a specific sector,” Yarrow said, stressing the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to address environment, health, and development issues. Understanding the health impacts of climate-related environmental change now can help prepare us to address these specific impacts in the future.“On a global scale, there is indeed a relationship between population growth, environmental change, and development,” Yarrow said. In Asia, stress on water resources due to climate change and rapid population growth will likely exacerbate health problems caused by lack of clean water. Proactively expanding and improving programs that address the causes and effects of diarrheal disease and under-nutrition can help address these vulnerabilities and make communities more resilient.
“Finding innovative ways to improve access to and integrate family planning messages and services into climate adaptation programs will also yield some important co-benefits,” Yarrow said. Family planning can slow population growth, which could help reduce projected demand for water supplies, as well as potentially reduce the amount of water pollution.
Yarrow also added that “population growth affects glacier melt indirectly through the consumption of resources that exacerbate black carbon.” Black carbon, which is produced by cooking and heating with biomass fuels, contributes to regional climate change and severe health problems, including respiratory illness and pneumonia. Accompanied by efforts to promote alternative fuels, family planning could reduce black-carbon emissions, significantly improve health, and strengthen community resilience to climate change.
“Though challenging, integrating across sectors is absolutely essential – we’re not experts yet, but we’re definitely getting better,” Yarrow said. “Understanding and addressing the multiple issues like climate change, poor health, poverty, dependence on natural resources, and governance challenges that these communities are dealing with in a comprehensive and holistic fashion will improve results.”
Responding to Glacier Melt
“We simply do not have the kind of broad-scale knowledge that we would like to have,” Malone said. Current data on glacier melt is scarce and very few direct measurements of glacier volume exist, making calculations of glacier retreat difficult. Moving forward, it is critical to respond to this lack of information by improving regional scientific cooperation on glaciers, snowpack, and water resources in High Asia, and strengthening climate and water monitoring capacity.“Even the smallest amounts of glacier-melt contribution correspond to the regions of the highest population, so any change in water supply has large implications,” Malone said. Glaciers may not be disappearing as fast as had been previously thought, but “climate change is happening in the Himalayas and is having an effect.”
“If systems – both human and ecological – are already stressed, they are less able to be resilient in the face of changes. But the good news is that we can take actions now that will be crucially important to how societies can respond in the future,” Malone said.
Implementing cross-sector projects can help to target places where environmental, economic, health, and even security issues overlap. Focusing on water resource management, ecosystems, and the needs of high-mountain communities, as well as mitigating climate change by reducing emissions of black carbon, can help reduce both direct and indirect vulnerabilities and improve resilience to future changes.
“The results of this report allow USAID and others to grasp the complexity of these issues, understand the critical gaps, and to respond to the changes in the glaciers to come,” Melnyk said. The next step is applying the knowledge gathered in the report to practitioners in the field and in policy discussions.
“A crucial role USAID can play is to link partners in the government and private sectors to build capacity and spark synergies among new initiatives to really integrate new initiatives with concerns about glacier melt,” Malone concluded.
Photo Credit: “Nepal Sagamartha Trek,” courtesy of flickr user mckaysavage. -
The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace
›To understand the security concerns of the developing world, we must understand that lack of institutional capacity has created a “house of cards,” said U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Shannon Beebe, speaking at the Wilson Center on October 19. “When that card gets pulled out, the house is going to fall.”
Beebe, a senior Africa analyst for the Department of Defense, and Mary Kaldor, professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, discussed their new book, The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace, in which they argue for a broader conception of human security. “The world is suffering from a lack of a security narrative,” said Beebe.
“The ultimate weapon is not the F-22,” said Kaldor, “it is a change of mindset.”
Creating Pirates: Threats vs. Vulnerabilities
“What happens when a man is already a fisherman and you take all his fish away? You create a pirate,” said Beebe. The environmental and human security threat of overfishing in Somalia was not taken seriously as a security threat until it was left unchecked for 20 years and developed into a “real kinetic threat” of piracy, he said.Beebe spent a year interviewing 80 to 90 Africans in 13 countries, including military leaders, academics, NGO leaders, and even Somali cabdrivers in the United States, about how they view their security. “What came back was resounding, sobering, and confusing,” said Beebe. Amongst those interviewed, few expressed traditional “kinetic” security concerns stemming from physical threats. Instead it was the “conditions-based vulnerabilities” — such as poverty, health, water and sanitation, gender equality, and climate change — that were identified as primary security threats.
“Until we stop giving Africans and the developing world our definition of what is right for their security and start listening to what they are saying is relevant to their security, we are going to continue to marginalize ourselves,” Beebe said.
Filling The Security Gap
There is currently “a profound security gap,” Kaldor said, and a failure to meet the diverse needs and root causes of violence in much of the developing world. Filling the security void has been an array of both good and bad actors – NGOs, humanitarian agencies, militias, and warlords. If we do not adapt our own security strategies to fill this gap, “it will be filled by someone [else],” Beebe warned.
Human security must be incorporated into our security narrative, Beebe and Kaldor argue in their book, which means addressing the security needs of individuals and communities, not just the state. It also involves protection from violence, material deprivation, and natural disasters. They advocate for more robust global emergency forces that would act as a global national guard or police force.
Integrating Human SecurityPromoting the rule of law domestically and shifting interventions “from a war paradigm to a law paradigm” is crucial, said Kaldor. Furthermore, we must change our mindset so that we value the lives of those in foreign countries as highly as we value American or European lives. “You can’t bomb your own people,” she said.
Our greatest challenge, Beebe explained, is to shift our language from “siloed approaches” to create an interconnected, coherent security narrative. Beebe cited former General Anthony Zinni’s UMC (Ret.) incorporation of environmental security into U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) strategy during his tenure in the late 1990s as evidence of the possible success of integrated approaches. More recently, the Belgian High Command adopted a human security policy, said Kaldor.
While human security is already being taken into account on the ground, “it is very much organic, rather than institutionalized…we understand that there is an imperative but again it is the security narrative that is lacking,” said Beebe. Only by engaging with individuals and taking their needs into account with a more comprehensive security narrative can we foster lasting and sustainable security, he said.
Photo Credit: “Elderly Woman Receives Emergency Food Aid,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo. -
Demography and Women’s Empowerment: Urgency for Action?
›Why do Middle Eastern women participate in economic life at a rate lower than that of female citizens of other regions? According to Nadereh Chamlou, a senior advisor at the World Bank, restrictive social norms are to blame. At the Middle East and Environmental Change and Security Programs’ “Demography and Women’s Empowerment: Urgency for Action?” event, Chamlou argued that the region’s women must be empowered to participate in a more significant way if their countries are to effectively exploit, instead of squander, the current economic “window of opportunity.”According to Chamlou, the region is facing a “demographic window of opportunity” where its relatively high numbers of working-age people create the potential for rapid economic growth. However, Middle Eastern countries also have the highest dependency rates in the world. Without opening more economic opportunities for women, the region’s demographic window of opportunity will not be exploited to its full advantage.
Chamlou disputed the commonly held assumptions regarding the historic lack of female participation in the Middle East’s economic sphere, such as the belief that women abstain from joining the workforce because they do not possess the necessary education and skills. She cited statistics showing that the region’s women are represented at a near-equal level as men in secondary school, and to an even greater degree at the university level. They are also studying in marketable fields, disproving the theory that they are not acquiring employable skills.
A survey conducted by the World Bank in three Middle Eastern capital cities — Amman, Jordan; Cairo, Egypt; and Sana’a, Yemen — showed that negative male attitudes regarding women working outside the home were the most significant reason for poor female representation in the workforce. Notably, negative male attitudes restricted women’s participation far more than child-rearing duties. Despite the successful efforts of most Middle Eastern states to improve female education, conservative social norms that pose a barrier to female empowerment remain in place.
Chamlou concluded her remarks with three policy recommendations: 1) Focus on medium-educated, middle-class women; 2) Undertake more efforts to bring married women into the workforce; and 3) Place a greater emphasis on changing attitudes, particularly among conservative younger men, towards women working outside the home. Such changes could more effectively utilize the Middle East’s demographic window of opportunity.
Luke Hagberg is an intern and Haleh Esfandiari is director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center.
Sources: Population Reference Bureau.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Obey Stikman,” courtesy of flickr user sabeth718. -
Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control
›As geoengineering becomes a more politically and technologically appealing approach to addressing climate change, it is critical to heed the lessons of history and understand the limits of our control over nature, said James Fleming of Colby College. Speaking at the launch of his new book, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control, at the Wilson Center on October 6, Fleming brought what he called a “historically informed view of the humanities” to a growing policy discussion: the possibility of using geoengineering as a “quick fix” for the problem of climate change.
Not So Ancient History
“When facing unprecedented challenges, it’s good to take a look at the precedents,” said Fleming. He pointed to recent weather management projects conducted in China, U.S. experiments in the 1940s, and older historical discussions about geoengineering as evidence of humanity’s long fascination with “fixing of the sky.”In 2008, “they had 30,000 Chinese artillerists shooting chemicals at the clouds to keep either the venues clear or get the rain down on the weekend before the Olympics started,” Fleming said. “And they’re still doing this kind of stuff. So now there’s inter-regional tensions in China, because imagine rains comes across the country, some places get hit some places get missed, there’s intermittent showers, but now every intermittent shower is seen as a managed event where ‘you took my rain away from my farmland.’ So as soon as you start managing the sky, you start fighting about it.”
In 1839, the United States’ first meteorologist, James Espy, proposed lighting regular fires along the Appalachians to induce rainfall on the eastern seaboard. “What if Espy’s idea actually worked?” asked Fleming. “It’d very much like that Chinese story today, where there’s internecine struggles between keeping and taking the rain away from others,” he said.
The Threat of Militarization
Fleming highlighted a number of fundamental ethical concerns raised by atmospheric scientist Alan Robock:
In 1947 Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir, in conjunction with GE and the U.S. military, experimented with controlling Hurricane King by seeding it with dry ice. They expected the storm to continue its course off the coast of Florida into the Atlantic, but instead it veered west and hit Savannah, Georgia, causing considerable damage. The lesson, said Fleming, is that “you can intervene in a cloud, but you can’t point it downwind – you can’t tell it what to do.”- Who has the moral right to change the climate?
- Where would be the “global thermostat” be?
- Will it reduce incentives for mitigation?
- Could it be commercialized and/or militarized?
Other U.S. military research into geoengineering included researching the possibility of inducing west-to-east moving rain storms in Europe to help neutralize a Soviet invasion and using the magnetosphere to create selective blackouts over Moscow.
“Shall we fix the sky – is it broken?” asked Fleming. “And if it is broken should we have people with military hardware shooting at it?”
One possible institutional counter could be strengthening the UN Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD), which Fleming said “has been revisited again twice, and could be revisited again if large-scale environmental modification were to get more serious – if there’s deployment of geoengineering techniques.” The treaty prohibits environmental modification “through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.”
The Once and Future Earth
The Greek myth of Phaeton illustrates how old, but also flawed, the human desire to control climate really is, said Fleming. In the myth, Phaeton convinces his father, Helios, to let him drive the sun’s chariot for a day. However, Phaeton falters, lacking the strength and experience to control the reins, and Zeus intervenes to save the world from immolation. “Take up Phaeton’s reins,” said Fleming, should be interpreted as “control your carbon emissions,” rather than trying to control the sky.
We should consider geoengineering to be only an “interesting hypothetical exercise,” said Fleming, until the consequences and results of such colossal tinkering can be better assessed. “Even perfect climate prediction would lead to climate chaos, because the country that could do that could trump its competitors” in various markets, he said. However, such predictions might never be possible, considering the difficulty in modeling cultural and ethical norms, as well as the geostrategic implications – in short, the human element.
Fleming cautioned against the fundamental belief that you can accurately model the impact of geoengineering projects, reminding would-be geoengineers that “you can only have one Earth to experiment on, you don’t have a lot drosophila Earths or laboratory rat-Earths – you only have one.”
Event Resources
Sources: NASA, Toronto Star, U.S. State Department.
Image Credit: Adapted from original by Craig Phillips for The Wilson Quarterly, reproduced with permission.
