Comments Geoff Dabelko has made

Haleh released!

Great news on Haleh Esfandiari's case. My colleague here at the Wilson Center just flew out of Iran to Austria and will soon be returning to the United States. Her legal status in Iran remains unclear, but we are thrilled she has rejoined her family. For more, see this Wilson Center press release and Robin Wright's first interview with Haleh.

Geoff Dabelko

More on the pictures

Caniscandida, Thanks for the good reviews on the pictures. It was an unforgettable trip. Lake Shalla, pictured in post and in many of the ones in the gallery, is actually undrinkable water because of underground volcanic activity that has fouled the water. What you don't see in these pictures is the unbelievable poverty that accompanies these vistas.  I am hesitant to offend the desperately poor people as if they are a tourist attraction so they are under-represented in these images. Just behind me when I was taking the picture in the blog were children trying to sell us rough wooden carvings and trinkets. They were some of the many people living in the national parks (this one is Arbietta-Shalla National Park) where they have their cattle and grow crops.  

Geoff Dabelko

Don't have to wait until 2015

Thanks for flagging World Water Week Sarah - it is an important gathering.  I haven't read the WBCSD report yet but the account here suggests that some key points are underplayed:

The majority of water in almost all countries is used by agriculture for mostly inefficient irrigation.  As much of 85 percent of water but routinely 65%-75% goes to ag.  So scarcities are relative and not absolute in most cases for household, industrial, and commercial usages, something that should actually be encouraging because we can do something about it.   The focus on quantity often obscures the quality issues which of course take more water out of circulation, feeding back into the quantity issue.  But again, we can address it.

Second, sudden changes in availability of water are what are the toughest. Water scarce places that have been water scarce have found lots of ways to adapt. Real challenges come with sudden changes, making the prospects for climate driven changes in precipitation patterns and amounts that much scarier.  It is also why dams are such flashpoints - quick change in access and availability patterns.

Finally, we don't have to wait until 2015 to experience a number of the points described.  Northern China is already extremely water scarce and it is affecting industrial growth rates in measurable ways as well as producing tremendous hardship for the people. Multinational corporations are already being accused of using too much water in water scarce areas - Coke continues to have troubles in India for how much water they use and for the allegedly contaminated water in the product (the Indian NGO Center for Science and Environment has issued reports saying they found pesticides in the Coke sold there).  See the recent spate of devastating mudslides in the Philippines for links between massive deforestation and mudslides. And the "export" of water through crops, what Tony Allen coined the term "virtual water" to describe, is happening every day in the US Midwest as the American breadbasket is watered at unsustainable rates by the falling Ogallala aquifer (See Glennon's book Water Follies on unsustainable US groundwater use).  

Geoff Dabelko

Oil, environment and conflict in Nigeria

Nigerian political scientist Okechukwu Ibeanu took a hard look at the environmental damage from oil extraction in the Niger Delta and its contribution to the instability that we are seeing in headlines today. The article appeared in the 2000 issue of the Environmental Change and Security Project Report. Even though the piece is five years old, the song remains the same so to speak.

Geoff Dabelko

MD is not a DR and vice versa

Regarding the "accuracy" post, fair enough but I don't want my MD doing climate science and I certainly don't want any of those IPCC modelers performing surgery.

Geoff Dabelko

Friedman weighs in again

Friedman wrote again on geo-greens and his view that the US is paying for both sides of the war terror by supporting high gas prices with a bankrupt energy policy.

Geoff Dabelko

"Bare Branches"

The Chinese name for all those unweddable men is "bare branches." It is also the name of a serious MIT Press book by Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer looking at the security implications of Chinese and India's skewed sex ratios.  Hudson, a Bringham Young University political scientist, spoke at the Wilson Center last June. Our story on her talk reads  

What happens when sex selection leaves a nation with significantly more men than women? In their controversial new MIT Press book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer assert that historically high male-to-female ratios can trigger domestic and international violence. Since the mid-1980s, widespread sex selection has skewed the sex ratios of some Asian countries--particularly China and India--in favor of males on a scale that may be unprecedented in human history. The authors argue that this disproportionate number of low-status young adult males threatens domestic stability and international security.

Regarding Chip's larger point, one practical step for undercutting the sentiment that developed countries need to jump start their population growth rates is to stop using misleading headlines like, say for example, the depopulation bomb.  Just to pick one.  Ben Wattenberg's Birth Dearth is another. Newspapers love it but we are heading to 9 billion at best before leveling off.  

Geoff Dabelko

I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Did you say...?

I'm all for taking the invasive and non-native species issues seriously. But is the Biodiversity First! rant all we can muster when potentially thousands of people's lives were directly spared because of tree-planting?  I imagine the people in question view this "short term benefit for some people" with a bit longer view than your casual dismissal.

Let's try to focus on the larger point Dave was trying to make. Forests or mangroves in coastal areas saved lives by providing a natural break on the force of the waves.  This tsunami example trackes with the evidence from Hurricane Mitch in Central America. Areas where there was significant hillside deforestation suffered much worse flooding and loss of life.  As we try to integrate concepts of vulnerability into proactive land use policy and practices, these lessons should be instructive, not dismissed with demands for ecological purity.

Geoff Dabelko

Environment vs development

Steve Malloy of junkscience.com expresses similar outrage about environmentalists linking climate change and the tsunamis.  He claims insurance company Munich Re is making similar links although doesn't tell you where or how.

But the latter parts of Malloy's column speak to Dave's comments about environmentalists' susceptibility to critique for being single-mindedly focused on climate change.  Malloy lambasts environmentalists for being anti-development and impeding efforts to address poverty in developing countries.  There is the twisted possibility of converging arguments from those who love unfettered growth in the north and those who want to develop to survive in the south. You can begin to see the PR disaster potential with greens portrayed as more concerned about possible sea level rise horrors decades hence while dirty water and mosquitos provide real body counts today (2-3 million per year presently for just the diarrhea types, majority of which are children).

He also cites banning the use of DDT to kill malaria-carrying mosquitos as a further example of environmentalist's missing the forest for the trees.  Picking your poison in this equation may actually mean do I die early or do I die later.  Perhaps Gristmill contributor Pete Myers, the real environmental health expert, could provide nuance to two bad choices.  

Geoff Dabelko

Pragmatism, not idealism

Dave- You say with little understatement the current administration will never be idealists on environment/energy issues. But Tom Friedman isn't asking them to be idealists - he is asking them to be pragmatists. He is suggesting a means to reach their goals ie energy independence to force political reform in the Middle East.  It is the idealist arguments that have failed to impress the current crowd, and frankly and unfortunately, a much larger segment of the populace than voted red.  So I'm for the pragmatic pointing in the right direction from the most important foreign affairs columnist in the country.  

A personal experience on engaging the Chinese on climate change illustrates the same point.  Rather naively I was part of an effort to foster trilateral US-European-Chinese dialogue on climate change.  We had all sorts of distinguished Americans and Europeans lined up to participate. But the effort was DOA when we came to Beijing with a "climate" project.  Had we looked more closely at the Chinese goals and interests, we would have framed the dialogue in terms of economic efficiency (replacing outdated boilers) and human health (decreasing particulates and air pollution that contributes to considerable respiratory disease and economic burden).  Subsequent efforts that have been framed in these more practical ways have achieved many of the climate goals the initial project set out to accomplish.

Geoff Dabelko