An article in Nature highlights the negative aspects of dam building throughout the Himalayan region. The article draws on a new report, criticizing the current rush to build dams throughout the Himalayan region, as well as commentary from other scientists. The article concludes by pointing out that:
India is not alone in its rush to build dams in the Himalayas. Other countries, especially China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, plan to add hundreds more dams along the rivers, prompting similar concerns about their EIAs. Damming rivers upstream could have significant impacts on downstream nations, but “every country behaves as if the river is 100% theirs”, says Edward Grumbine, an environment-policy researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institute of Botany. “This is a recipe for disaster.”
Unfortunately, from the perspective of this blogger, the scientists’ worries are all about the negative effects on fish, forests, and other non-human categories.
Why are humans, who depend on the fish and the forest, so unworthy of mention?
Shirley Fiskean environmental anthropologist and research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, published a letter to the U.S. presidential candidates in CounterPunch. It begins:
“We are in the final week of the Presidential campaign of 2012, buffeted by a massive storm that wreaked havoc in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. SuperStorm Sandy has demonstrated the devastation that nature can bring even with the best public compliance behavior and sophisticated forecasts and warnings.”
Fiske goes on to argue that anthropology can play an important role in climate change studies and policy:
“Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ as policy experts have termed it and solutions are not easy; but we can’t afford to let climate and adaptation fall off the policy agenda. Anthropologists and other environmental social scientists can help by describing how climate changes are affecting communities and their capacity to sustain lives and livelihoods. We can help work with communities to strengthen their resilience in the face of adverse change by improving adaptive capacity. And, we can help work with governments to shape policy that reflects the cultural guideposts that are central to actually achieving intended results. But it is far harder to do our work if climate policy becomes a policy of neglect, if no one is listening to the plights of real people, and our leaders aren’t talking about either climate change or infrastructure.”
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Chair of Anthropology,
and Director of Institute of Archaeology at Baylor University
When: Thu, Sep 13 | 5:30pm – 6:30pm Where: 1957 E Street NW
6th floor, Lindner Family Commons, 602
Sara Alexander is an applied social anthropologist whose research focuses on livelihood security and vulnerability, food security, ecotourism, natural resource management, human dimensions of climate change, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. She recently completed a two-year field study, funded by NOAA, in several coastal communities in the Meso American Barrier Reef System to examine a resilience of vulnerable households to climate-related events and shocks. These data are being used to develop a Resiliency Index.
George Washington University with Amazon Watch, Green GW, and GW Roots and Shoots Presents:
TOXIC: AMAZÔNIA
Fighting for the rainforest can still get you killed
When: Wednesday, April 4th 7:00pm – 9:30pm
Where: George Washington University
Marvin Center, Room 309
In the film, Toxic: Amazonia, film-maker and journalist Felipe Milanez, interviews scientists, policy-makers, local activists, and victims of violence to provide a human picture of the factors that threaten the largest remaining tropical rainforest on earth and its inhabitants. The film is a complex view of one moment in history — the brink of Brazil’s consideration of its newly proposed Forest Code — and the social, economic, and political issues that are called into play. The film shows the heroic struggle of José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo. These two individuals lived in the Amazon, fought for the Amazon’s protection and were eventually murdered in the Amazon.
This film is being shown in conjunction with Amazon Watch‘s “DC-Brazil Environmental Awareness Week.” There will be a panel discussion after the film, featuring Sabrina McCormick, Dept. of Environmental and Occupational Health, and Andrew Miller, Amazon Watch.
This event if free and open to the public. Invite your friends on Facebook!
One of the great success stories of the travel sector in recent decades has been the development and growth in ecotourism, which is currently estimated to be worth around $60 billion annually. Companies, which operate in diverse environments, including cities, villages, religious sites and wildlife sanctuaries, have realized that to be perceived by consumers as “eco-friendly” bestows considerable status, especially where it has become the dominant benchmark of the new visitor economies in countries like Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenya, Madagascar and Nepal. In these nations ecotourism contributes a significant amount to GDP, at the same time as it brings in much-needed foreign currency.
However, ecotourism is not always a progressive force. For example, the sector has sometimes been accused of profiteering at the expense of environmental degradation and hiding its sins behind “greenwashing.” Ecotourism has also been accused of the violation of human rights by colluding with the displacement of indigenous peoples — the shocking fate of the Maasai when the Masai Mara National Reserve in south-west Kenya was established in 1948 being a prime example.
The Developing World’s 10 Best Ethical Destinations. Source: Ethical Traveler
Some cultural anthropologists have added to the criticisms. For example, Carrier and Macleod claim that the distinction between ecotourism and mass tourism is difficult to sustain when “the destinations and experiences sold to tourists are abstracted from their contexts, thus inducing a distorted image of them and of ecotourism itself” (p. 315).
So, the purity of the “ecotourism” brand image has been damaged to some extent: it is no longer self-explanatory (and self-justifying), and many consumers are now uncertain about whether to trust the claims being made. Is there now a gap in the marketplace? The people behind Ethical Traveler, a small, non-profit organization that is part of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute, certainly think so. It has the tagline “Empowering Travelers to Change the World.”
Ethical Traveler has just issued its fifth annual “top ten” list of the developing world’s best ethical destinations for 2012. They are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Latvia, Serbia and Uruguay and four island states, Bahamas, Dominica, Mauritius and Palau. All except the Bahamas, Mauritius and Serbia appeared on the 2011 list.
Using data from institutions like Freedom House, Millennium Challenge Corporation and the World Bank, three initial criteria — “environmental protection”, “social welfare” and “human rights” –- were used to draw up a shortlist of 30 countries. Then a more in-depth study was carried out to identify the actions of governments over the previous 12 months, in particular to find out whether policies implemented have improved or degraded the welfare of the population and the environment. This makes the Ethical Traveler list of approved ethical destinations broader in scope than many mainstream eco-tourism locations, which tend to have a much narrower remit focused on environmentalism.
An article in Nature discusses the findings of economists that the monetary costs of disasters are rising mainly because more investments are being made in disaster-prone areas: “Almost two-thirds of 2011’s exceptionally high costs are attributable to two disasters unrelated to climate and weather: the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March, and February’s comparatively small but unusually destructive magnitude-6.3 quake in New Zealand.” Catastrophe count graph from 1980-2010. Source: Munich RE
The article goes on to say: “That conclusion is backed up by a forthcoming study — supported by Munich Re — by economists Fabian Barthel and Eric Neumayer at the London School of Economics. Their analysis of events worldwide between 1990 and 2008 concludes that ‘the accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone areas is and will always remain by far the most important driver of future economic disaster damage'” (F. Barthel and E. Neumayer Climatic Change in press).
Some discussion then follows about the possibility that climate change is also involved in terms of precipitating weather-related disasters.
The article, in all, says nothing about the….what should we call them….human costs?
Stuart Kirsch, anthropology professor at the University of Michigan, shared a link to a Huffington Post editorial updating the human rights situation there. Written by the Lowenstein International Law Clinic at Yale University, the essay highlights land grabbing and controversial development plans in the West Papua rain forest. The Clinic will be producing a full report in near future.
Canada’s Tsilhqot’in Nation is going to court to block Taseko Mines Ltd. from doing preparatory work on its controversial New Prosperity mine in British Columbia’s Cariboo region.
In a petition filed with the B.C. Supreme Court, the First Nations group is asking the court to halt drilling, excavation, timber clearing, road construction and the like while reviewing provincial approvals for the work on a revised mine plan.
Chief Joe Alphonse, tribal chairman of the Tsilhqot’in National Government, said the decision affects the group’s rights and culture: “The province refused to acknowledge these impacts, no matter what we say; it is more concerned with handing over approvals,” Alphonse said in a statement. “We’ve gone to court before, we’ve stood in front of the federal panel, we have proven over and over again how important these lands are to our people and our culture — but the province never seems to get the message.”
Several First Nations oppose the project because the mine proposal would mean the destruction of a lake considered culturally significant to them.
For those of you (including me) who enjoy watching TV cooking contests, we know that the worst that can happen is that an aspiring winner is perspiring, or the presentation was chaotic, or the judges made nasty comments about the taste of one of the dishes.
For millions of women who cook family meals, especially in developing countries, the challenges are quite different. There is no panel of judges and no “time’s up” called out to arrest the work of the contestants in their well-equipped stainless-steely kitchen. Rob Bailis speaks at the Elliott School of International Affairs, Nov 3, 2011.
Instead, there is a “killer in the kitchen” which calls time’s up for mothers and children who spend a lot of time inhaling cook stove fumes.
On November 3, Rob Bailis, assistant professor of environmental social science in the department of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, gave a CIGA seminar entitled, “Arresting the Killer in the Kitchen: The Promises and Pitfalls of Commercializing Improved Cookstoves.”
Bailis took the audience on a rich and insightful tour of how improved cook stoves could have a major positive impact on women, children, and the environment. His talk drew on knowledge about the effects of various types of fuel for daily cooking on the cooks and the wider environment.
His slides included maps of types of household fuel in various regions of the world. He brought together data from the fields of environmental studies, public health, and local surveys.
He discussed the “energy ladder hypothesis” which says that as people get wealthier, they use cleaner fuels. As I was listening, I was thinking: okay, this doesn’t sound good for the earth, given the way the economy is going.
Another point to share is this: Bailis said that Western development experts have been pushing improved cook stoves for three decades but there is very little evidence about their effectiveness in terms of reducing health risks for cooks/children and reducing deforestation and other environmental problems.
China is the country to watch on improved cook stoves. Of the 200 million improved cook stoves in the world, 80 percent are in China. Let’s hear about the “best practices” there and how they might be replicated elsewhere.
Thirty years is a long time, especially without much to say in terms of what works. Time to switch channels and get back to the cooking throw-down.
Maybe we need a TV show about what works in development?
Update from Professor Rob Bailis:
In fact, there is evidence that some improved stoves certainly improve quality and, based on that, we can justifiably hypothesize that if families adopt such stoves and use them regularly, then their air quality will improve and their health risk will be reduced. More importantly, there is evidence of this – just last week (about a week after my presentation) a paper was published in the Lancet by Kirk Smith and his team. This reports the results of the first randomized control trial based on improved cookstove adoption. They found that the stoves they promoted reduced the incidence of severe forms of respiratory infection by around 30%. So the evidence exists. What is lacking is program-specific follow-up to understand whether a given intervention is resulting in effective and long-term stove adoption. But, like I hinted at in my talk, the carbon markets are having an interesting influence on project monitoring by creating elaborate protocols to make sure stoves are actually used.
Oil-related problems in the Niger Delta are not new. They are old, enduring and stain the future of Nigeria. They have to do with powerful corporate and state interests, corruption, global oil and petroleum demand, and the unrelentingly harsh cruelty of capitalist profiteering at the expense of local people and their environment and livelihoods. Nigeria is a major provider of petroleum to the United States.
The Niger Delta region has been exploited with impunity by outside powers for many years. During the British colonial era, Nigeria provided wealth for the Crown through the export of palm oil (Osha 2006). In the postcolonial era of globalization, a different kind of oil dominates the country’s economy: petroleum. Starting in the 1950s, with the discovery of vast petroleum reserves in Nigeria’s Delta region, several European and American companies have explored for, drilled for and exported crude oil to the extent that Nigeria occupies an important position in the world economy.
Most local people in the delta, however, have gained few economic benefits from the petroleum industry. Instead, most have reaped major losses in their agricultural and fishing livelihoods due to environmental pollution. They are poorer now than they were in the 1960s. In addition to economic suffering, they have lost personal security. Many have become victims of the violence that has increased in the region since the 1990s through state and corporate repression of a local resistance movement. Continue reading “Is there hope for the Niger Delta?”→
An article in Nature highlights the negative aspects of dam building throughout the Himalayan region. The article draws on a new report, criticizing the current rush to build dams throughout the Himalayan region, as well as commentary from other scientists. The article concludes by pointing out that:
anthropologyworks 