Catching Up

I finally got through a major backlog of posts in my google reader, and wanted to share some of the most-interesting links here. The video and interactive map, in particular, make for a nice study break / procrastination tool if you, like me, are in the middle of midterms...

-I love maps. Especially interactive maps. Check out this map of migration, where you can select a country and see the migration patterns.

-The Clinton Global Initiative celebrities poke fun at themselves courtesy of Funny or Die (h/t A View From the Cave)

-I've been working on a couple of projects on Malawi, and Ken Opalo has some good links on the encroaching dictatorship of President Mutharika

-Jeffrey Sachs defends (and clarifies) the Millennium Villages Project, as an additional $72 million is committed to the project (full disclosure: my program is very closely associated with MVP, and if I survive these midterms there is a good chance I will be working in one of these villages next summer)

-Kenya at War - the Kenyan military has crossed into Somalia to combat Al-Shabab

-Why is the US sending troops to hunt down the LRA? It is something an old college comrade has been advocating for for years, but why now? Danger Room notes that it could be to stop a massive new assault by the LRA on civilians

-2 posts on working on-the-ground in aid/development: Tales from the Hood and WhyDev

-In general, I love A Window to Ghana and Africa, but this post in particular struck me. Maybe it was this line:

And finally, I’d advise you hang out with passionate people, if you can’t find any, may be, you can start with cutting out negative people. The people who have a million reasons why it can’t be done. Or who understand all the challenges there on the way and so advise you to take it easy. Once you cut them off, you can see more clearly.

What we need to succeed is not OUT there. It is IN us. You need to block out all the noise and passionately follow where your heart leads you.

LIVE NOW.

I've said it before, but it is such passionate people that is making my graduate school experience special.


-Finally... I've mentioned this before, but if you are interested in development issues you need to be checking Poverty Matters regularly. If climate change is more your style, be sure to check out the Earth Institute's blogs.

Lots of Links (Video- and Madagascar-Heavy)

I am way behind on a number of interesting links that I wanted to share. So let's just jump right in:

Tea Party vs. Madagascar's Forests - an interesting article about the US Tea Party movement coming down on the side of Gibson guitars against US government regulation, yet the regulation stems (no pun intended) from Gibson's use of illegally-harvested hardwoods from Madagascar's protected forests. (on a personal note, I have never been to that part of Madagascar but the photo at the top is so universal of the rural areas that I thought at first glance I recognized the family).

Madagascar "transitional" President finally got a chance to speak at the UN General Assembly this year. He spoke about the importance of international mediation in resolving conflicts. He then tried to justify his power-taking (what most would call a coup d'etat) by citing human rights abuses and poverty, both of which have persisted under his watch and in the case of abuses potentially increased (though I am quick to point out the departure of international aid as a main reason for at least the poverty-worsening). He entered to what sounds like dead silence, which I thought was telling, but then I realized people were probably clapping but the audio is that of the translator. Check out TGV here:



Nice wrap-up of Rajoelina's visit to the UN. The article calls out the UN Secretary-General for meeting with him despite claiming it was "unofficial," and emphasizes the fact that the return of ex-President Marc Ravalomanana that sealed the deal is not going to happen, with many in the current government saying once again that they will arrest him (even claiming they will go to South Africa to arrest him in exile - the ex-President's host, the South Africa government, will never let this happen, though).

Here is video of the Peace Corps bike tour for AIDS awareness (the Fety Ribà Mena) we put on last year in the Lac Alaotra region. You may recall me talking about it a lot last summer (search the blog for details), now you can see some footage of our project... and far too much footage of me dancing...


A few blogs written by friends/colleagues worth checking out:
-I have mentioned Salama Madagascar! many times, but the last few posts have been great. I plan to write more about the environmantal/ conservation movement soon, and link particularly to Ryan's article on virgin forests / the Conservation myth.
-Beerconomist by fellow MDP student Holly. The blog title is great and the development insight is even better.
-International Agriculture and Development by fellow MDP student Rafael. This blog focuses on agriculture, and has been especially good at pointing out useful resources for development practitioners.

Speaking of the MDP program, which I have written about before really starting (and am currently enjoying the heavy workload of), here are some informational links... first, a video about the program:


Also, this pdf details the program further:

And of course you can visit the website itself to learn more (and apply, for all you Mada RPCVs or soon-to-be RPCVs.... manasa! Even better - Malagasy students should apply too!)

Paternalism

One ethical issue I have been struggling with for a long time is paternalism. This word may not be the best description of the following thoughts (ramblings), but it was the first that came to mind. Specifically, how to avoid the perception that the outsider, in this case a development practitioner, knows better than the people in the community where he or she works? This is especially a challenge for those of us coming from foreign countries, but for development practitioners working in their native country it is also an issue because they will still be working in communities where they are the outsider.

                To show up in a community and pretend like you know everything is ridiculous. There are numerous historical, cultural, and technical issues that you do not know about. A major part of studying development practice is learning to understand your own limitations. But despite your best efforts to create an inclusive program that works with the community and includes local leaders, the perception that “the outsider knows best” or that “the outsider, who just showed up, thinks he knows better than us, who have lived here forever” can persist. Many developing countries and regions have seen development practitioners and experts come and go for decades, telling the people, “if you just do X, Y and Z, your community will be ‘developed.’” It is a difficult trap to escape. Either the community listens only to the practitioner’s advice and local problem-solving is sacrificed or the practitioner becomes resented by the community as an intruder.

                On the one hand, I feel a strong ethical sense to be involved in development. On the other hand, who am I to tell an old rice farmer how to transplant his crop? (a fellow PCV’s father, while visiting Madagascar, once likened it to a Japanese practitioner showing up in Nebraska and telling a farmer how to grow corn). I like to think that I have skills to offer communities where I have worked and will work. But I am also fully aware that my role is to encourage local participation and assist the community in discovering its own solutions. If I allow the outsider-as-expert mentality to take hold, I am doing damage where I want to be providing assistance.

                This mentality was especially prevalent in Madagascar. The Malagasy often defer to authority of any sort, but especially to foreigners. They looked at me as an American and knew I had the right answers. My attempts to create community-inspired solutions often met with confusion, as everyone was just waiting for me to tell them what to do. The best thing I could do was try to convince people that they could solve their own problems, and my role was a facilitator in helping them accomplish this. But it is easier said than done.

                In a sense, this is the major ethical issue of international development to me (indeed, I think the entire idea of foreign countries providing assistance to developing countries runs the danger of falling into this perception). I do not have an answer of course (once again I am trying to underplay the “development practitioner knows best” angle). It is merely something that troubles me when I stop to think about it, or when I am interacting with fellow practitioners, or when I was in Madagascar. I would love to hear some others’ thoughts on this, and appreciate any feedback.

Unrelated postscript: My apologies for the limited posting lately. Grad school has been intense, but also my thoughts have been shared in classroom settings and in an online collaborative forum, which has left me less inclined to write here. But I will make a concerted effort to produce content here as well… stay tuned.

The Earth is Warming, and We're Causing It...

...the rest is figuring out what to do about it.

That was the concluding remark form Jason Smerdon during a panel discussion this weekend called: "Climate Chane & Extreme Weather: Are They Connected?" Dr. Smerdon was one of many climatology researchers on the panel, along with Richard Seager, Suzana Camargo, and Kevin Anchukaitis. This panel took place on Saturday during the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's (LDEO) Open House event. LDEO is the location of most of the research done by Columbia University's Earth Institute. Once a year, LDEO opens its doors to the public and shares details on its various scientific projects and research. Not only do people with a general interest (of all ages) attend, but the Open House also invited back alumni of LDEO (former students, researchers, and employees of the observatory). For instance, the panel I mentioned was moderated by Heidi Cullen, an alumnus of LDEO as well as the Weather Channel's first on-air climate expert and creator of Forecast Earth.

The panel focused on links between climate change and extreme weather. If you are a climate change doubter and/or think the human effect on climate to be overstated, there would not have been much in the discussion or Q&A for you. The audience focused the questions on hurricanes and droughts, probably due to the recent occurrences of each in the United States. The recent trend for hurricanes that Dr. Camargo described was one of less frequent but more intense hurricanes, and this being due to changing precipitation patterns that are linked to climate change. Drought, on the other hand, was a more local occurrence tied to El Nino / La Nina events mostly. The climatologists predicted that the drought in Texas, for example, would likely continue into next year.

The crowd then moved on to the Big Question: mitigation of global warming. The scientists pointed out that there is no "magic bullet" that will reduce global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. A "transportation" and oil entrepreneur in the audience pointed out that the public often focuses most of its attention on transportation effects on global warming, but in reality the causes are manifold. Sure enough, agriculture, deforestation, energy production, transportation, and many other factors are causing this global warming.

After much discussion, the main takeaways were:
1) the climate is changing, and humans are major contributors to this change
2) scientists unanimously agree on global warming and climate change, but politics has misconstrued their message(s)
3) there is no clear answer on what to do about climate change. Even if we cut emissions to zero, we will be in serious trouble, so sequestering of greenhouse gases may be needed (but this is expensive and again a clear path is missing).

There were plenty of other interesting speakers throughout the day, including Jeffrey Sachs speaking on the lead-up to Rio +20, and a panel discussion on "Mega Quakes." But I did not get to see any of these, as I spent a good portion of the day volunteering at the welcome stand. This was fun and interesting, because while handing out maps and giving directions, I met many interesting people. Many young children arrived with their parents in tow, excited to see the experiments and displays designed for young budding scientists such as trashcan volcanoes and bathtub science. There were adults with an interest in what LDEO was and who just wanted to explore. Also many alumni arrived, LDEO scientists from the 60s and 70s who had incredible stories of rugged Indiana Jones-like science in the field. When I did get some free time, besides the panel and the stories, I wandered around the labs and the displays, where many interesting things caught my eye: a bamboo bicycle, the tree ring lab (where they use tree rings to date past climate fluctuations, droughts, rainfall, etc), and many details of LDEO's fleet of ships and their oceangoing (and mapping) expeditions.

It was an interesting day, and had I been blogging more lately I would have invited you all! The best part of the day, for me, remains the many young people who had a day of getting excited about science. Maybe one or two of them will go into this field, and they will look back on a world-class research institute opening its doors to them (even just for a day) to thank for that.