DC event: Water, conflict and peacebuilding in development: lessons for practitioners

The Environmental Change and Security Program and Middle East Program are pleased to invite you to the Wilson Center

Join us for the launch of USAID’s Water and Conflict Toolkit for Programming, a document designed to help development practitioners gain a deeper understanding of the forces driving violence and instability related to water. Written by USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, the Wilson Center, and Group W Inc., the toolkit provides guidance to development professionals not familiar with water and conflict dynamics, with the aim of developing more strategic and focused interventions.

Panelists will discuss what needs further investigation to inform this kind of programmatic strategy, the challenges in this field of study, and how the toolkit addresses those shortfalls.

Where: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
6th Floor Flom Auditorium

• Federal Triangle stop on Blue/Orange Line
• A map to the Center is available at WilsonCenter.org/directions.

When: Monday, February 24, 2014, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Featuring:

• Gidon BrombergIsraeli Director, EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East
• Chris KosnikDirector, Office of Water, U.S. Agency for International Development
• Sandra RuckstuhlSenior Social Scientist, Group W Inc.
• Aaron WolfProfessor of Geography, Oregon State University

Moderator:

• Geoffrey D. DabelkoSenior Advisor, ECSP; Director of Environmental Studies, Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, Ohio University

<< RSVP Here >>

Note: Photo identification is required. Please allow additional time to pass through security.

Want to attend but can’t? Tune into the live or archived webcast at WilsonCenter.org (not every event is webcast live; archived webcasts go up approximately one week after the meeting date).

Join the conversation on Twitter by following @NewSecurityBeat and find related coverage on our blog at NewSecurityBeat.org.

Call for papers: Conference on Transforming Development

The Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity and the Center for Social Concerns at the University Notre Dame in collaboration with SIT Study Abroad announce the 6th annual student conference on human development.

Offering participants the opportunity to explore interdisciplinary and sustainable research to improve livelihoods while advancing human dignity, this year’s theme is inspired by the idea that development is an evolving process. A widening set of stakeholders and rapidly advancing technologies raise new possibilities for the field. The conference will be a chance to reflect on both successes and failures in development, while analyzing opportunities created by these new trends.

With the goal of showcasing student research that investigates collaborative and innovative solutions to address human development’s most challenging issues, we welcome proposals from undergraduate and graduate students to share their research, particularly those based on experiences in the field, in a broad spectrum of topics:

• Agriculture
• Aid
• Business
• Culture
• Economics
• Education
• Engineering
• Environment
• Gender
• Governance
• Health
• Human Rights
• Infrastructure
• Migration
• Peace and Conflict
• Public Policy
• Religion
• Technology

Students interested in presenting a paper should submit their abstract (no more than 500 words) no later than Thursday, November 14.

Call for student paper proposals: 2014 conference on transforming development

The theme of the 6th annual Human Development Conference at the University of Notre Dame is Transforming Development: New Actors, Innovative Technologies, and Emerging Trends.

The conference will be held on February 28 and March 1, 2014

It will showcase student research that investigates collaborative and innovative solutions to address human development’s most challenging issues. Proposals are welcome from both undergraduate and graduate students, particularly those whose research is based on experiences in the field.

Students interested in presenting a paper should submit their abstract (no more than 500 words) no later than Thursday, November 7th.

For abstract submission please visit: http://fluidsurveys.com/s/HDC_call_for_papers/

Additional details can be found here.

On violence against indigenous women in Latin America

Karmen Ramirez Boscan is a Wayuu indigenous woman from Colombia. She has worked as a consultant for the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, Switzerland. She writes in Al Jazeera that violence against indigenous women is a the twofold challenge. One challenge is the militarization of indigenous territories that forces women to face unconscionable abuses based on gender discrimination. The second challenge is the presence of multinational companies (MNCs) in indigenous territories: “When established, MNCs were expected to greatly benefit indigenous peoples, but now they have become an endless source of frustration… Unfortunately, there are no official statistics to show the impact of these mega projects and MNCs on indigenous women. “

Cambridge IDC 2012: Ethical development?

Should government aid be conditional upon human rights or economic reform? How can a gap year truly make a difference? Do religious groups use charity as an evangelistic tool? Can Corporate Social Responsibility change the world? Is the very idea of International Development ethical?

Join the debate at the Cambridge International Development Conference this December in a conference which will examine the ethics of International Development. Be inspired by the decision-makers and thinkers of today as they explore the ways in which we can improve our approach to International Development.

1st December 2012 at Cambridge University Law Faculty.

Killing with kindness: readings in the NYC area

Mark Schuller, assistant professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership Development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti, is the author, most recently, of Killing With Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs (Rutgers, 2012). He will be doing readings from his book at the following locations in early November:

• Thursday, November 1, 2012 – 4:30pm – Inquiring Minds Bookstore, 6 Church Street, downtown New Paltz

• Friday, November 2, 2012 – 7:00pm – Bluestockings Bookstore in SoHo, 172 Allen Street, New York, NY

• Sunday, November 4, 2012 – 5:00pm – Grenadier Books / Haïti Liberté, 1583 Albany Avenue, Brooklyn

Japan: Looking ahead to recovery

Guest post by Jin Sato

On April 4, 2011, the Asia Society and the Japan Society co-sponsored a Japan town hall meeting in New York City to discuss questions related to the recent earthquake. Several prominent experts constituted the panel which was moderated by Fred Katayama. Topics and questions for discussion were formulated by Jin Sato of the University of Tokyo and visiting democracy and development fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University.

The event was taped and can be viewed by clicking on the image below.

Questions were clustered into three areas in order to generate broad discussion about the disaster’s impact on Japanese politics, economics and social life, as well as to assess the extent of the uniqueness and historical significance of the changes for the Japanese people, and for Japan as a nation:

1. Japan’s Reliance on Nuclear Energy: The Politics of Risk Sharing

Japan has only 20 percent self-sufficiency in primary energy supply and more than half of that is nuclear power. Historically, the main rationale for advocating nuclear power was to enable Japan to be more self-sufficient. More than 30 years ago, during the incidents of “oil shock” and petrochemical shortage in the 1970s, the Japanese people learned the lesson of dependence on fossil fuels. Given the magnitude of the ongoing catastrophe, questions such as these arise:

• Is it time to question Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy as the primary domestic source of electric power?
• Given this kind of catastrophe, is it appropriate for Japan to allow the private sector to continue to manage this kind of high-risk operation?
• What should be the role of the government?
• How do we democratically control high-risk operations?
• Will a growing awareness of the inequitable distribution of risk lead to the Japanese public questioning of the reliance on nuclear energy?

2. The Future of the Japan Brand: Economic Fallout of the Disaster

Historically, the myth of superior Japanese technology has prevailed and even in this tragic series of events, the international community was shocked to discover the failure of the “failsafe” Japanese nuclear technology and safety mechanisms. Questions include:

• Will this incident signal the beginning of the end to the myth of Japanese technological superiority?
• What will be the impact of the current nuclear crisis on Japan’s reputation as a high-tech exporter and more generally on the “Japan brand”?

Cooking up a storm

Woman cooking on a clay stove in Nepal. Credit: Ah Zut, Creative Commons licensed on Flickr

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced this past week the launch of a new international alliance to supply improved cooking stoves to 100 million poor households by 2020. An article in the Economist describes how many programs to promote cleaner stoves throughout the world have failed: “Too much emphasis has gone on technology and talking to people at the top, too little to consulting the women who actually do the cooking.”

That statement, all told, is probably true. Nonetheless, a quick search in Google Scholar and my university library’s electronic databases reveals many relevant studies including some by cultural/social anthropologists. They address and document both the health risks especially for women and children of traditional cookstoves and perceptions of improved cookstoves.

The most fine-grained anthropology study that I have found is Patrice Engle and co-authors with some Maya people of Guatemala. She and her co-authors used observation and recall methods to learn about time spent over cooking fires. The results indicate that young mothers and young children (who are with the mother while she is cooking) spend the most time in the kitchen and are most at risk for smoke-related health problems. Women with co-resident husbands spend more time in the kitchen than women without husbands or whose husbands are away.

In terms of how to provide improved cookstoves, the best publication I know is by Rob Bailis and co-authors. They assess subsidized versus market-based stove dissemination and compare several contexts in which clean cooking technologies were promoted.

Cultural anthropologists and others who take a grounded approach to learning about important issues: get cooking on cooking! This topic connects to social and gender disparities, environmental pollution and sustainability, and the future of all of us.

Related Reading:
Dherani, Mukesh et al. Indoor Air Pollution from Unprocessed Solid Fuel Use and Pneumonia Risk in Children Aged under Five Years: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86(5):390-398, 2008.

Masera, Omar et al. Impact of Patsari Improved Cookstoves on Indoor Air Quality in Michiacán, Mexico. Energy for Sustainable Development 11(2):45-56, 2007.

Simon, Gregory. Mobilizing Cookstoves for Development: A Dual Adoption Framework Analysis of Collaborative Technology Innovations in Western India. Environment and Planning A42(8):2011-2030, 2010.

Troncoso, Karin et al. Social Perceptions about a Technological Innovation for Fuelwood Cooking: A Case Study in Rural Mexico. Energy Policy 35(5):2799-2810, 2007.

Boomerang aid: giving to get back

According to the World Health Organization, the Asia-Pacific region is one of the highest risk areas for the emergence of new infectious diseases. Factors such as dense rural populations living in close proximity to animals and dense urban housing are found throughout the region. Existing national and regional capacity to prevent or deal with disease outbreaks is uneven, ranging from more adequate systems in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand to countries with minimal health-care infrastructure such as the Solomon Islands, Micronesia, and Papua New Guinea.

In June 2007, the revised International Health Regulations (IHR) of the World Health Organization became official after a 12-year revision process. The new IHR emphasizes prevention of disease outbreaks and spread rather than reaction. Each member state of the WHO has five years to fulfill the seven key obligations. While richer countries will not face a serious problem in implementation, developing country members will find it difficult if not impossible to meet the obligations by the deadline. They require an advanced health-care infrastructure including well-trained medical professionals and scientists, diagnostic laboratories, surveillance systems, and health care services far beyond their economic means.

In an article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Adam Kamradt-Scott, Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, reviews the challenges to the developing countries in the region of meeting the IHR obligations. He then considers the role of Australian aid in helping developing countries. Most recent AusAID funds have supported general development goals such as improving economic infrastructure and local employment with smaller amounts of funding targeted to strengthen health care infrastructure.

Kamradt-Scott finds this pattern regrettable since more emphasis on health care investment would have two “spin-off benefits:” improving the capacity for early identification of disease outbreaks and strategic building on the investments Australia has already made in enhancing pandemic preparedness in the region. Both, in turn, will benefit Australia in protecting the health of its own people.

A final benefit the author mentions, drawn from a AusAID document, is that such aid from Australia to regional LDCs will “bolster, and potentially extend, its existing sphere of influence” and help Australia achieve “other foreign policy objectives such as promoting regional stability and governance reform.” Refreshingly direct, isn’t it.

Cultural anthropologists have defined many categories of gift-giving and exchange including the “free gift” for which there is no thought of a return of any kind at any time. A “free gift” is the logical opposite of theft in which someone takes something from someone else with no intention to ever return it to the owner. In between is reciprocity (which has subcategories such as generalized or balanced) in which two people exchange items of roughly equivalent value over time with no exact date specified for the return. Kula trading in the Trobriand Islands is a classic example of reciprocity. And then there is market exchange in which a seller seeks to make a profit through a sale in which a buyer agrees to transfer a specified payment by a specified date.

Development aid explicitly to expand influence poses a challenge to anthropological categories of giving and exchange. Unlike a pure gift, there is a sense on the part of the giver that a return is expected. Unlike reciprocity as in the kula, identifiably similar goods are not exchanged between roughly equal-status trading partners. Unlike market exchange, there is no sale involved, no buyer and seller. It’s not theft. It’s a gift given with the knowledge that its benefits will come back to the giver. It’s boomerang aid.

I don’t mean to point the finger of blame at Australia alone since many other countries, my own included, direct most of their aid to serve their own political or business interests. Readers: do you know of any recent studies that have compared bilateral aid organizations in terms of how much of their aid is self-interested and how much is more altruistic?

Photo, “long distance”, from Flickr, Creative Commons.

The nightmare lives on: Indian wars in our time

By Barbara Miller

An article in the Economist (“A national shame,” August 27, 2009) points the finger of blame at the Guatemalan government for the current high rates of childhood malnutrition in Guatemala, especially among the indigenous Maya people (August 29, p. 33). With almost half of its children malnourished, Guatemala is the sixth worst-performing country in the world on this measure.

Guatemala is not the poorest country in Latin America by any means. Other low-income Latin American countries such as Bolivia have reduced child malnutrition. So, the article says, government failure is to blame. The government is to blame for Maya victimization during the decades-long civil war and, now, for failure to put in place a progressive tax structure that would help improve life for impoverished Maya by providing schools and health care. The many very rich people in Guatemala City don’t seem to be listening.

But shouldn’t the finger of blame also point northward to the United States? The genocide and sustained trauma suffered by the Maya during the civil war have to do with hemispheric imperialism as well as state government failure (for more detail, see Jennifer Schirmer’s profile of human rights violations during the country’s civil war, The Guatemalan Military Project). The United States owes a huge debt to the indigenous peoples who suffered so much and who continue to be economically insecure in their own homeland. What does the Obama administration have in mind for Guatemala?

The Economist article says that the high rate of child malnutrition in Guatemala is a matter of national shame. That’s only partly right. We in the United States should be hanging our heads in shame and thinking of how to make things better for the people that our imperialism harmed so deeply.

Photo, “Guatemala siblings”, via Flickr, Creative Commons.