Quiero empezar por aclarar que sos de los que me dio mis primeros entrenamientos en sensibilidad intercultural, para ponerte en perspectiva lo que significás para mí, más allá de que nos conozcamos y hayamos sido amigos por casi 30 años.
Concuerdo con tu apreciación sobre el orgullo que genera la afinidad con símbolos patrios. En mi iTunes a menudo suenan canciones de dos discos que escucho con frecuencia: Típicas Bailables, del Conjunto Rítmico Los Ticos, e Himnos y Marchas de Costa Rica (la Patriótica Costarricense nunca falla en sacarme lágrimas y dejarme erizado, de ojos cerrados imaginando mi amado terruño).
Concuerdo también con que nuestro nacionalismo es bastante moderado, pues se limita a la ocasional mejenga de la Sele. Esta invasión nicaragüense es una ofensa a lo más profundo de nuestra identidad nacional, y una para la cual no tenemos defensa. Ha sido un acto de mala fe -espero que por error estratégico- y ha sido una enorme distracción. La semana pasada le dediqué 25 horas a la Isla Calero, y eso es un lujo que no me puedo dar a dos semanas de exámenes finales. Pero quiero hacerlo, porque los 14,893 kilómetros que separan esta ciudad de mi ciudad no separan el vínculo que siento en la panza por todos ustedes y por todo lo nuestro.
Pero no quiero dejar pasar la oportunidad que nos da el artículo para reflexionar sobre una forma de ser del costarricense que no siempre fue así, y que, aún habiéndolo sido, podríamos mejorar. La xenofobia, al igual que la homofobia y todo movimiento ideológico "anti-", son cuestión de actitud. Yo elijo odiar a la Ultra o a la Doce; odiar a los nicaragüenses o a los colombianos o a los jamaiquinos o a los estadounidenses; odiar a los que evaden impuestos; odiar a los corruptos; odiar a los conductores borrachos; odiar a los bañazos, polos, igualados, arrimados, etc.
La buena noticia es que depende de nosotros mismos, y de nadie más, adoptar una actitud más favorable, y amar a las personas más allá de sus preferencias o circunstancias. Ese es el principio del cambio hacia una nación más civilizada. En términos de civilidad, queremos llegar a ser como la Unión Europea, donde las más dissímiles culturas coexisten pacíficamente, productivamente, respetuosamente, sosteniblemente. En Europa había guerra hace 65 años; hoy no hay fronteras. La pregunta, entonces, es cómo hacemos para llegar a eliminar la frontera con Nicaragua? La historia, la ciencia política, el derecho, la economía, la ecología, los estudios de paz y el pensamiento estratégico, podrían darnos algunas luces.
El artículo que publicó Ottón Solís hace un par de días fue bien recibido porque era escrito en un tono patriótico, conciliador, serio y maduro. Estas cuatro virtudes casi nunca las logró combinar en sus campañas políticas. Otro resultado hubiera obtenido. Pero menciona un argumento que es denigrante para con los nicaragüenses, y además falacioso. Sostiene Ottón que a los nicaragüenses los necesitamos porque es rentable y porque eso le permite a madres de familia costarricenses trabajar por un salario en lugar de trabajar en la casa como amas de casa y sin ingreso. Australia es un país rico, de altísimo desarrollo humano (#2 según ONU) y no hay empleadas domésticas. Entonces eso no es un factor indispensable de desarrollo. Lo correcto, lo sensible, lo propositivo, es decir que debemos asegurarnos de que dentro de 20 años los hijos (costarricenses) de esas empleadas domésticas y "guachimanes" nicaragüenses van a tener la opción de ser lo que ellos quieran ser, que es lo que queremos para nuestros hijos. El mismo gesto de amor que tenemos con uno propio lo debemos de tener con otro ajeno, y para eso es el Estado: para garantizar que universalicemos la prestación de servicios públicos con la mejor cobertura y la mejor calidad. En cobertura nos sacamos arriba de 90. En calidad, la meta es igualar el estándar de atención de la medicina privada a la medicina pública sin que cueste tan caro. Este es el tipo de retos que requerimos y que nuestra generación debe empezar a asumir ya. Para eso no hay opción más que mejorar la recaudación fiscal. Ni siquiera creo que haga falta, por ahora, aumentar la carga impositiva. Primero recaudemos bien, y después vemos. Dentro de 20 años ya vamos a haber vivido los años de mayor actividad productiva y habrá otra generación deseosa de oportunidades para corregir los errores que heredaron de nosotros.
Desde hace tres años no estoy en Costa Rica. He tenido la honorable distinción de servir al país en el exterior y aún después de retirado he continuado comportándome como un embajador de Costa Rica en el exterior. Esto no me lo enseñó la diplomacia ni la función pública. Me lo enseñó el CISV, donde me ayudaste a entrenarme como representante nacional fuera del país. Cada día añoro más estar allá, aunque sea de visita. Ver un volcán (que no hay ni en Australia, ni en China ni en Brasil), un cielo azul, un aguacero, una playa con bosque, un mar cálido, un mono (no los hay en Australia), un gol de la Sele en el estadio, un picadillo y un yigüirro. No sabría reconocer a Josué Martínez en la calle; no conozco la costanera ni he visto el Estadio Nacional; no conozco a los hijos de mis mejores amigos.
Tenemos mucho que mejorar, y sólo depende de nosotros. No es culpa del gobierno ni de los extranjeros ni de los corruptos. La responsabilidad es compartida por parejo entre todos, y lo que necesitamos es que cada uno sea el líder que puede ser para sí mismo, para su familia y para su comunidad, para que juntos forjemos la mejor Costa Rica que está por venir.
Debemos recuperar el amor propio, ser humildes, y tener fe en que toda la violencia y toda la corrupción y toda la evasión fiscal y toda la xenofobia la podremos superar, y pronto. Es impensable lo que nuestro país podría transformarse en estos diez años, si nos lo proponemos. Repito, no necesitamos más administradores públicos. Necesitamos más líderes.
Abrazos, Álvaro.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Querida Jackie
Hemos venido reprimiendo sentimientos por muchos años. Nuestro sistema político y socioeconómico es injusto porque le permite al rico crecer con facilidad y le dificulta al pobre salir adelante. Hubo un cambio de la generación de nuestros padres a la nuestra. Eso genera una presión social que se manifiesta en pequeñas detonaciones de violencia por aquí y por allá. No sólo los asesinatos son manifestación de violencia. Un accidente de tránsito también lo es. Al igual que un insulto o un chiste insensible con otra cultura. Creemos que está bien hacer chistes peyorativos cuando en realidad no lo está. Porque no sabemos lo que se siente vivir en otro país y que los pobladores locales constantemente hagan bromas sobre mí, sobre mi cultura, y más ofensivo aún, sobre mis carencias. La trágica muerte de un ser humano en las fauces de un animal fue motivo de chiste en Costa Rica por meses y años. Qué vergüenza.
Más allá de la violencia directa de un ser humano agrediendo a otro física o verbalmente, está la violencia estructural, que es esa injusticia que mencionaba atrás. Nos hemos economizado millones en armas y los hemos invertido en gasto social, sobre todo salud y educación. Nada más virtuoso que eso. Lo que evadimos de impuestos -los ricos, que somos los que tenemos medios para evadir y necesidad de guardar o gastar un poquitico más a fin de año- es dinero que el rico le roba al pobre. Si el pobre se diera cuenta...Porque el tejido social es de todos, a todos nos debería importar cuánto se cobra de impuestos, cuánto se paga y se deja de pagar, quién lo administra, en qué se gasta el dinero, cómo se gasta, quién lo cuida, cómo lo cuida, y sobre todo, hacer un exhaustivo análisis de costos y beneficios a largo plazo para determinar, con números claros, cuánto dinero necesita el estado para erradicar la pobreza, para modernizar un sistema de salud que se quedó en los años 70s, para instalar una computadora para cada niño de escuela, para desarrollar la infraestructura requerida los próximos 40 años, para invertir en energías renovables, para aumentar la cobertura de áreas de conservación, para crear un fondo de becas para educación superior, para actualizar el transporte público a estándares de siglo XXI, entre otras.
Las soluciones para el problema tributario están a la mano. El gobierno digital permitiría que se sincronicen todos los movimientos registrales en el Registro Público con los bancos estatales y los bancos que ofrecen sistemas crediticios, y con la Tributación Directa. Basta un sencillo software que sin duda puede ser desarrollado en Costa Rica y por costarricenses, el país que más software exporta en América Latina. Esto permitiría identificar quién y cuánto está dejando de pagar por una jugarreta sucia de las que somos tan conocidos los notarios públicos para que el cliente no tenga que pagar tanto por disfrutar de los lujos que le permite tener un país de paz. Dije país de paz? Sí, ese es el discurso y ha sido la práctica por medio siglo. Pero desde hace 15 años el deterioro en el tejido social ha hecho de la violencia una vertiginosa tendencia de aumento en delitos contra la vida humana y la propiedad privada. Si seguimos así, pronto no tendremos gusto los ricos de disfrutar de nuestros lujos en paz, para evitar un bajonazo. O ya está sucediendo?
La crisis con Nicaragua tiene muchas oportunidades para aprender algunas lecciones que debemos aprender de una vez por todas si queremos llegar a ser un país desarrollado algún día, ojalá pronto. Una de las lecciones es que no es culpa de ningún extranjero el que nos hayamos desenamorado de nosotros mismos y hayamos descuidado a los nuestros que más lo necesitan. No sólo me refiero a los costarricenses pobres que aún arrastran las secuelas de la crisis económica de hace 30 años, sino a todo aquel que por decisión propia haya cruzado la frontera para buscar un mejor futuro en nuestro país. Para ellos también es merecedor un porvenir más próspero, más seguro, más feliz.
Abrazos, Álvaro.
Más allá de la violencia directa de un ser humano agrediendo a otro física o verbalmente, está la violencia estructural, que es esa injusticia que mencionaba atrás. Nos hemos economizado millones en armas y los hemos invertido en gasto social, sobre todo salud y educación. Nada más virtuoso que eso. Lo que evadimos de impuestos -los ricos, que somos los que tenemos medios para evadir y necesidad de guardar o gastar un poquitico más a fin de año- es dinero que el rico le roba al pobre. Si el pobre se diera cuenta...Porque el tejido social es de todos, a todos nos debería importar cuánto se cobra de impuestos, cuánto se paga y se deja de pagar, quién lo administra, en qué se gasta el dinero, cómo se gasta, quién lo cuida, cómo lo cuida, y sobre todo, hacer un exhaustivo análisis de costos y beneficios a largo plazo para determinar, con números claros, cuánto dinero necesita el estado para erradicar la pobreza, para modernizar un sistema de salud que se quedó en los años 70s, para instalar una computadora para cada niño de escuela, para desarrollar la infraestructura requerida los próximos 40 años, para invertir en energías renovables, para aumentar la cobertura de áreas de conservación, para crear un fondo de becas para educación superior, para actualizar el transporte público a estándares de siglo XXI, entre otras.
Las soluciones para el problema tributario están a la mano. El gobierno digital permitiría que se sincronicen todos los movimientos registrales en el Registro Público con los bancos estatales y los bancos que ofrecen sistemas crediticios, y con la Tributación Directa. Basta un sencillo software que sin duda puede ser desarrollado en Costa Rica y por costarricenses, el país que más software exporta en América Latina. Esto permitiría identificar quién y cuánto está dejando de pagar por una jugarreta sucia de las que somos tan conocidos los notarios públicos para que el cliente no tenga que pagar tanto por disfrutar de los lujos que le permite tener un país de paz. Dije país de paz? Sí, ese es el discurso y ha sido la práctica por medio siglo. Pero desde hace 15 años el deterioro en el tejido social ha hecho de la violencia una vertiginosa tendencia de aumento en delitos contra la vida humana y la propiedad privada. Si seguimos así, pronto no tendremos gusto los ricos de disfrutar de nuestros lujos en paz, para evitar un bajonazo. O ya está sucediendo?
La crisis con Nicaragua tiene muchas oportunidades para aprender algunas lecciones que debemos aprender de una vez por todas si queremos llegar a ser un país desarrollado algún día, ojalá pronto. Una de las lecciones es que no es culpa de ningún extranjero el que nos hayamos desenamorado de nosotros mismos y hayamos descuidado a los nuestros que más lo necesitan. No sólo me refiero a los costarricenses pobres que aún arrastran las secuelas de la crisis económica de hace 30 años, sino a todo aquel que por decisión propia haya cruzado la frontera para buscar un mejor futuro en nuestro país. Para ellos también es merecedor un porvenir más próspero, más seguro, más feliz.
Abrazos, Álvaro.
Monday, November 15, 2010
METALLIC PEACE IN NICARICA
Anyone in Adelaide that wants a Metallica ticket for tonight? No one? OK, then I guess I have no choice. SAD BUT TRUE. METALLICATOS, NO ME TIREN SUS TOMATOS. QUE NOS VAMOS A LOS CATOS. (Queremos PAZ en Nicaragua y Costa Rica, aquella rica costa de vida pura que vivimos ambos países desde siempre, hermanos todos desde adentro. Somos de los mismos. Y nos queremos muchísimo. Por estar viendo lo malo nos perdemos de ver el amor que nos tenemos. El que vive en Costa Rica por decisión propia es bienvenido. Como mi madre y mi esposa. Y un puñado de mi familia que se siente en casa cuando vienen de visita. Así son los nicaragüenses en Costa Rica: de la casa. De la familia. Ustedes, los que también sienten amor y agradecimiento por algunos de nosotros, lo saben. El amor no es la cuestión. La cuestión es el desarrollo, el de quienes habitamos ambos países, a ambos lados de la frontera. Según el más reciente Índice de Desarrollo Humano de la ONU, publicado el 4 de noviembre anterior, ambos países promedian 89 en el orden oficial. Ese es un nivel de desarrollo muy bajo. Debemos encontrar la forma más segura de desarrollarnos juntos en los próximos 40 años. Nunca nos iremos a la guerra porque en Costa Rica se proscribió el ejército hace más de 60 años. De eso ni siquiera estamos hablando. Ha sido muy violento sentir una ofensa de este nivel inesperadamente, como quien zancadillea al que va intentando empezar a correr. Un poco como que le quita la emoción al asunto. Y es quizás la más hábil manera del estratega de esta movida de garantizar dos elementos esenciales para la paz conjunta, justa y duradera para ambos países: recordarle a uno que no se olvide del otro ni que lo maltrate nunca por ninguna razón -como ha sido la norma costarricense, de no ofender a la República de Nicaragua; y poner los ojos del mundo en el Caribe, uno de los sitios más subdesarrollados del planeta en términos económicos. Está muy descuidado y necesita ayuda. Ayuda europea para el desarrollo. Prometemos portarnos bien. Por favor préstennos el dinero para el desarrollo transfronterizo en Centroamérica. La región pide a gritos atención para seguirse desarrollando en paz. Hace décadas que no peleamos. Pero nos seguimos matando. Solos no podemos. Por favor inviertan en energías renovables en la región. Y asegúrense de cumplir normas de transparencia estilo europeo, para educarnos en el proceso. Saludos desde el sur de Australia.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
A comment on Nicaraguan rainforest
What an interesting fact about the Rain Forest in Nicaragua! [A comment made on this blog http://ogleearth.com/2010/11/about-costa-rica-nicaragua-their-border-and-google/ says that Nicaragua holds 60% of Central America's rainforests.] Perhaps this could be a principle of the transformation of this conflict, to make sure that both countries integrate biological corridors across the border to preserve habitats and wildlife of the region. It is a truly precious and unique ecosystem that both countries share. Some of the best preserved wetland left in the world.
In China, for example, many wetlands along the country’s east coast have been converted into urban development, ports that extend for kilometers along where some of the most ancient wetlands in our planet used to exist. They don’t exist anymore.
Both countries could gain international notoriety and recognition of the area in dispute if it became the most famous delta in the world. One of the most beautiful ones it already is. Building the capacity for both nations to sustainably develop the area for eco-tourism and biodiversity research is the correct thing to do.
I think a harbor is a body of water and an island is a mass of land. If that were so, Harbor Head belongs to Nicaragua, and Isla Calero belongs to Costa Rica, which is what the historical evidence -and your comment- tend to confirm. Could you please explain what you mean by “contemporary historians?” It could be that they know something that should be heard as well. If it belongs into Nicaraguan official history textbooks, then there has to be a date of origin, and hopefully a map that supports the claim.
One truth in this matter is that one would not exist without the other. Under such symbiosis, demarcating the land would not enrich the area. It would only corrupt it from its pure and natural state.
For Costa Rica, historically Isla Calero belongs to Barra del Colorado Wildlife Refuge (Reference to Costa Rican government’s official website on the area: http://www.acto.go.cr/bacolwildrefuge.html). The fact that it is a wildlife refuge implies that it is the legally assigned use of the land by the decision-makers who ruled it so since 1985.
More than 25% of Costa Rica’s territory is protected under some sort of conservation legislation, and that percentage is the highest in the world. Therefore our reputation as conservationists.
If you appreciate environmental topics, I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@alvarcidane), as it is one of my areas of interest. If you are Nicaraguan, I hold you and your people very close to my heart. I am Central American too.
In China, for example, many wetlands along the country’s east coast have been converted into urban development, ports that extend for kilometers along where some of the most ancient wetlands in our planet used to exist. They don’t exist anymore.
Both countries could gain international notoriety and recognition of the area in dispute if it became the most famous delta in the world. One of the most beautiful ones it already is. Building the capacity for both nations to sustainably develop the area for eco-tourism and biodiversity research is the correct thing to do.
I think a harbor is a body of water and an island is a mass of land. If that were so, Harbor Head belongs to Nicaragua, and Isla Calero belongs to Costa Rica, which is what the historical evidence -and your comment- tend to confirm. Could you please explain what you mean by “contemporary historians?” It could be that they know something that should be heard as well. If it belongs into Nicaraguan official history textbooks, then there has to be a date of origin, and hopefully a map that supports the claim.
One truth in this matter is that one would not exist without the other. Under such symbiosis, demarcating the land would not enrich the area. It would only corrupt it from its pure and natural state.
For Costa Rica, historically Isla Calero belongs to Barra del Colorado Wildlife Refuge (Reference to Costa Rican government’s official website on the area: http://www.acto.go.cr/bacolwildrefuge.html). The fact that it is a wildlife refuge implies that it is the legally assigned use of the land by the decision-makers who ruled it so since 1985.
More than 25% of Costa Rica’s territory is protected under some sort of conservation legislation, and that percentage is the highest in the world. Therefore our reputation as conservationists.
If you appreciate environmental topics, I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@alvarcidane), as it is one of my areas of interest. If you are Nicaraguan, I hold you and your people very close to my heart. I am Central American too.
On Ogle Earth's comment about Nicaragua-Costa Rica-Google border dispute
http://ogleearth.com/2010/11/about-costa-rica-nicaragua-their-border-and-google/
I have shared the following comment on the blog cited above:
A very serious and well grounded approach, much appreciated. Whatever the outcome of this issue shall be, appealing to facts that could be eventually proven before a legitimate tribunal will contribute towards the transformation of the conflict, especially if the Rule of Law prevails.
It is desirable that the outcome may be achieved sooner rather than later, because it is in no party's interest to prolong the dispute. If we aspire to development, both sides of the border should make joint efforts to achieve notoriety for the right reasons.
Costa Rica already shares a National Park across an international border. It is called Parque Nacional La Amistad ("Friendship National Park") and it lies across borders between Costa Rica and Panama.
You cannot choose your neighbors, but you can choose how to relate to them. It is in the best interest of both societies that this issue is settled in a civilized manner. That means, by way of honor and justice, and by way of virtue and harmony.
I believe it is possible to coexist mutually in synergy, Costa Rica and Nicaragua and all their citizens living on either side of the border. It is up to us and nobody else to govern that relationship.
Perhaps Isla Calero, historically Costa Rica's largest island (as learned in every elementary school), and Harbor Head, which Costa Ricans have always acknowledged as Nicaraguan territory, should belong to a common National Park across borders. It is already a natural sanctuary, and neither the birds nor the fish wonder on which side of the border they are. If we do not preserve the area co-jointly, making efforts to enrich the surrounding ecosystem together, neither one will survive if either chooses to degrade the natural habitat. A port or an interoceanic channel anywhere within 10 km. of the region would alter its ecosystem perhaps permanently, and could eventually disappear. A few machines can turn Isla Calero-Harbor Head into human-made infrastructure in a matter of weeks.
Therefore, the most important and urgent issue is to immediately ensure that the controversy both countries are engaged in, does not threaten the most sensitive value at stake, which is biodiversity itself, including all forms of life.
If, beyond the environmental issues, there has been a clear violation of international law and one of the parties identifies a possible source of mistake, then an apology would be the shortest path to reconciliation.
It is indeed a very peculiar geography in the area. Difficult to imagine another river delta between two countries, where the river itself belongs to the territory of only one of them, that has such a peculiar dividing line. In fact, there are very few cases in which a river dividing two countries belongs to only one of them.
I have shared the following comment on the blog cited above:
A very serious and well grounded approach, much appreciated. Whatever the outcome of this issue shall be, appealing to facts that could be eventually proven before a legitimate tribunal will contribute towards the transformation of the conflict, especially if the Rule of Law prevails.
It is desirable that the outcome may be achieved sooner rather than later, because it is in no party's interest to prolong the dispute. If we aspire to development, both sides of the border should make joint efforts to achieve notoriety for the right reasons.
Costa Rica already shares a National Park across an international border. It is called Parque Nacional La Amistad ("Friendship National Park") and it lies across borders between Costa Rica and Panama.
You cannot choose your neighbors, but you can choose how to relate to them. It is in the best interest of both societies that this issue is settled in a civilized manner. That means, by way of honor and justice, and by way of virtue and harmony.
I believe it is possible to coexist mutually in synergy, Costa Rica and Nicaragua and all their citizens living on either side of the border. It is up to us and nobody else to govern that relationship.
Perhaps Isla Calero, historically Costa Rica's largest island (as learned in every elementary school), and Harbor Head, which Costa Ricans have always acknowledged as Nicaraguan territory, should belong to a common National Park across borders. It is already a natural sanctuary, and neither the birds nor the fish wonder on which side of the border they are. If we do not preserve the area co-jointly, making efforts to enrich the surrounding ecosystem together, neither one will survive if either chooses to degrade the natural habitat. A port or an interoceanic channel anywhere within 10 km. of the region would alter its ecosystem perhaps permanently, and could eventually disappear. A few machines can turn Isla Calero-Harbor Head into human-made infrastructure in a matter of weeks.
Therefore, the most important and urgent issue is to immediately ensure that the controversy both countries are engaged in, does not threaten the most sensitive value at stake, which is biodiversity itself, including all forms of life.
If, beyond the environmental issues, there has been a clear violation of international law and one of the parties identifies a possible source of mistake, then an apology would be the shortest path to reconciliation.
It is indeed a very peculiar geography in the area. Difficult to imagine another river delta between two countries, where the river itself belongs to the territory of only one of them, that has such a peculiar dividing line. In fact, there are very few cases in which a river dividing two countries belongs to only one of them.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Saludo de Paz
Estimada Teresa,
Soy ciudadano costarricense, exfuncionario de gobierno y exdiplomático de Costa Rica. Serví bajo la más reciente administración Arias Sánchez.
Me gustaría invitarla a ver otras fotos mías en Twitter, LinkedIn o en mi blog. Alternativamente, puede ver mi foto en los álbumes en Facebook. Creo que todos son públicos.
Obtuve en Noruega una maestría en estudios de paz y transformación de conflictos. Es una bonita historia, porque el hombre que creó el que fuera el primer programa de maestría de paz en Noruega, el Dr. Ole Mjøs, se inspiró en un discurso que escuchó de don Óscar Arias en una conferencia de UNESCO en París, Francia, en 1998.
Fui la primera generación en graduarme del programa y fue muy simbólico que yo fuera costarricense. Todos me relacionaban con Óscar Arias por eso.
El Dr. Mjøs luego presidió el comité Nóbel de la Paz por seis años y finalmente se retiró en 2009.
Mi foto en el perfil de Facebook fue tomada en 2004 en Puerto Viejo, costa caribeña costarricense, después de dos años de vivir en el norte de Noruega, en la ciudad de Tromsø, ubicada en el círculo polar ártico, a 70 grados latitud Norte. El pelo largo no sólo me protegió durante los nueve meses de invierno, sino que cortármelo allá costaba unos $60, inalcanzable para un estudiante becado como era en aquel entonces.
Una semana después de tomada la foto en el caliente y húmedo Caribe, me lo corté y es la única foto que tengo que me recuerda tanto de mi tiempo en Noruega como de mi precioso Caribe.
Pasé dos años en la Embajada de Costa Rica en China y actualmente termino una maestría en política pública y gerencia en Carnegie Mellon University en el sur de Australia. Extraño mi país cada hora de cada día.
Esta foto se ha convertido en un ícono en mi perfil de Facebook. Es mi avatar y la gente lo acepta como es, incluso el presidente Arias, con quien ya he interactuado por este medio.
Realmente quiero hablar sobre paz. Pienso que nuestro país lo necesita desesperadamente, y no encuentro mejor persona con quien dialogar de paz que con él.
Aprecio mucho su atención y su interés. Espero que mi evidente falta de camisa en la foto no le haya generado una errónea impresión sobre mí. La foto no la cambiaré.
Cordiales saludos, y espero su invitación para ser amigos en Facebook.
Álvaro Cedeño Molinari.
Soy ciudadano costarricense, exfuncionario de gobierno y exdiplomático de Costa Rica. Serví bajo la más reciente administración Arias Sánchez.
Me gustaría invitarla a ver otras fotos mías en Twitter, LinkedIn o en mi blog. Alternativamente, puede ver mi foto en los álbumes en Facebook. Creo que todos son públicos.
Obtuve en Noruega una maestría en estudios de paz y transformación de conflictos. Es una bonita historia, porque el hombre que creó el que fuera el primer programa de maestría de paz en Noruega, el Dr. Ole Mjøs, se inspiró en un discurso que escuchó de don Óscar Arias en una conferencia de UNESCO en París, Francia, en 1998.
Fui la primera generación en graduarme del programa y fue muy simbólico que yo fuera costarricense. Todos me relacionaban con Óscar Arias por eso.
El Dr. Mjøs luego presidió el comité Nóbel de la Paz por seis años y finalmente se retiró en 2009.
Mi foto en el perfil de Facebook fue tomada en 2004 en Puerto Viejo, costa caribeña costarricense, después de dos años de vivir en el norte de Noruega, en la ciudad de Tromsø, ubicada en el círculo polar ártico, a 70 grados latitud Norte. El pelo largo no sólo me protegió durante los nueve meses de invierno, sino que cortármelo allá costaba unos $60, inalcanzable para un estudiante becado como era en aquel entonces.
Una semana después de tomada la foto en el caliente y húmedo Caribe, me lo corté y es la única foto que tengo que me recuerda tanto de mi tiempo en Noruega como de mi precioso Caribe.
Pasé dos años en la Embajada de Costa Rica en China y actualmente termino una maestría en política pública y gerencia en Carnegie Mellon University en el sur de Australia. Extraño mi país cada hora de cada día.
Esta foto se ha convertido en un ícono en mi perfil de Facebook. Es mi avatar y la gente lo acepta como es, incluso el presidente Arias, con quien ya he interactuado por este medio.
Realmente quiero hablar sobre paz. Pienso que nuestro país lo necesita desesperadamente, y no encuentro mejor persona con quien dialogar de paz que con él.
Aprecio mucho su atención y su interés. Espero que mi evidente falta de camisa en la foto no le haya generado una errónea impresión sobre mí. La foto no la cambiaré.
Cordiales saludos, y espero su invitación para ser amigos en Facebook.
Álvaro Cedeño Molinari.
Peaceful Greeting
Dear Teresa (I don't know if you speak Spanish),
I am a Costa Rican citizen, former government official and retired diplomat. I served under Oscar Arias in his recent presidential term.
I would like to invite you to see other pictures of me either on Twitter, LinkedIn or my blog. Alternatively, you can see my photo albums on Facebook. I believe all of them are public.
I have a master degree in Peace and Conflict Transformation that I obtained in Norway. It is a very nice story, because the man who created that first peace program in Norway, Dr Ole Mjøs, was inspired by a speech Oscar Arias gave at a UNESCO conference in Paris in 1998.
I was the first generation to graduate from the program and it was very symbolic that I was Costa Rican. Everyone related me with Oscar Arias because of that.
Dr Mjøs then led the Nobel Peace Prize committee for six years and retired in 2009.
The picture on my Facebook profile was taken in 2004 at Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, after two years of living in Northern Norway, in the city of Tromsø, which lies within the Arctic circle (at 70 degrees latitude North). Not only the long hair protected me during the 9-month winter, but having a haircut cost some $60, unaffordable for the student budget I had at the time.
A week after the photo was taken in the hot and humid Caribbean, I cut it off and it is the only picture I have that reminds me both of my time in Norway and my beautiful Caribbean.
I spent two years at the Costa Rican Embassy in China and am now finishing a one-year master in Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon in South Australia. I miss my country every hour of every day.
This photo has become an icon in my Facebook profile. That's my avatar and people accept it as it is, even President Arias, with whom I have interacted before.
I really want to talk about peace. I think our country needs it desperately, and there is no better person to dialogue in and about peace than him.
I appreciate your attention and interest. I hope my evident lack of shirt on my picture has not given you the wrong impression about me. The picture will not change.
Best regards, and I await your invitation to befriend you on Facebook.
Álvaro Cedeño Molinari.
I am a Costa Rican citizen, former government official and retired diplomat. I served under Oscar Arias in his recent presidential term.
I would like to invite you to see other pictures of me either on Twitter, LinkedIn or my blog. Alternatively, you can see my photo albums on Facebook. I believe all of them are public.
I have a master degree in Peace and Conflict Transformation that I obtained in Norway. It is a very nice story, because the man who created that first peace program in Norway, Dr Ole Mjøs, was inspired by a speech Oscar Arias gave at a UNESCO conference in Paris in 1998.
I was the first generation to graduate from the program and it was very symbolic that I was Costa Rican. Everyone related me with Oscar Arias because of that.
Dr Mjøs then led the Nobel Peace Prize committee for six years and retired in 2009.
The picture on my Facebook profile was taken in 2004 at Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, after two years of living in Northern Norway, in the city of Tromsø, which lies within the Arctic circle (at 70 degrees latitude North). Not only the long hair protected me during the 9-month winter, but having a haircut cost some $60, unaffordable for the student budget I had at the time.
A week after the photo was taken in the hot and humid Caribbean, I cut it off and it is the only picture I have that reminds me both of my time in Norway and my beautiful Caribbean.
I spent two years at the Costa Rican Embassy in China and am now finishing a one-year master in Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon in South Australia. I miss my country every hour of every day.
This photo has become an icon in my Facebook profile. That's my avatar and people accept it as it is, even President Arias, with whom I have interacted before.
I really want to talk about peace. I think our country needs it desperately, and there is no better person to dialogue in and about peace than him.
I appreciate your attention and interest. I hope my evident lack of shirt on my picture has not given you the wrong impression about me. The picture will not change.
Best regards, and I await your invitation to befriend you on Facebook.
Álvaro Cedeño Molinari.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Comentario para Daniel Helft, Senior Manager para Políticas Públicas, Google América Latina
Estimado señor Helft,
Soy costarricense radicado en el sur de Australia. He seguido con preocupación los últimos días la polémica sobre la demarcación de la frontera entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua, específicamente por la ocupación ilegítima que el ejército nicaragüense ha hecho de la Isla Calero, la cual hemos estudiado desde niños que es la isla más grande de Costa Rica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Costa_Rica).
La aclaración hecha por su empresa es la correcta, tanto desde el punto de vista corporativo como desde el punto de vista político de la empresa. Sin embargo, hay un pliego de oportunidades que se sirven sobre la mesa que vale la pena identificar para lidiar con esta crisis de manera proactiva.
Primero, se aproximan elecciones en Nicaragua y en medio de las convulsiones socio-políticas del país, siempre un enfrentamiento con Costa Rica unifica a la sociedad y aumenta el capital político del gobierno local. He leído en CNN que la Embajada de Nicaragua en Inglaterra le ha solicitado a Google no rectificar la demarcación de la frontera (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/11/05/nicaragua.raid.google.maps/). Sería una victoria política para el gobierno de Nicaragua lograr que la frontera demarcada por Google se mantenga al menos hasta las elecciones de noviembre de 2011, en la cual el presidente Daniel Ortega optará por la reelección.
Segundo, las relaciones de buena vecindad entre Nicaragua y Costa Rica se han visto alteradas la última década por un conflicto limítrofe respecto a la interpretación del tratado que fijó la frontera entre ambos países (Tratado Cañas-Jerez, 1858 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tratado_Cañas-Jerez). La oportunidad para utilizar una herramienta tan sofisticada como Google maps para generar un acercamiento entre ambos países en torno a medios constructivos de interactuar a lo largo de su frontera sería bienvenida por ambas partes como una forma de zanjar diferencias y buscar vías de desarrollo para ambos países.
Tercero, y relacionado con lo anterior, la frontera entre Nicaragua y Costa Rica es una de las que marca una mayor distancia en términos de desarrollo entre dos países. De acuerdo con el más reciente índice de desarrollo humano de Naciones Unidas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), Costa Rica se ubica en el puesto 62 y Nicaragua en el puesto 115. Esto significa que el desarrollo de esta frontera es fundamental para las buenas relaciones entre ambos países, en especial porque una de las situaciones que genera más tensión entre ambos países es el flujo migratorio nicaragüense hacia el sur en busca de mayores oportunidades laborales.
Cuarto, fondos de cooperación de la Unión Europea con ocasión del Tratado de Asociación que ambas regiones han negociado en años recientes podría canalizarse para realizar una tarea eficaz de desarrollo transfronterizo, de manera que la calidad de vida a lo largo de la frontera aumente para ambas partes.
Quinto, la utilización de tecnologías de redes sociales como Google Maps permitiría identificar áreas de mayor necesidad u oportunidad para negocios, turismo, educación, salud, patrullaje conjunto, medio ambiente, y otras áreas que pueden servir como incentivo para la más cercana interacción entre miembros de ambas sociedades.
Será un gusto poder participar más activamente de esta discusión.
Atentos saludos.
Soy costarricense radicado en el sur de Australia. He seguido con preocupación los últimos días la polémica sobre la demarcación de la frontera entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua, específicamente por la ocupación ilegítima que el ejército nicaragüense ha hecho de la Isla Calero, la cual hemos estudiado desde niños que es la isla más grande de Costa Rica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Costa_Rica).
La aclaración hecha por su empresa es la correcta, tanto desde el punto de vista corporativo como desde el punto de vista político de la empresa. Sin embargo, hay un pliego de oportunidades que se sirven sobre la mesa que vale la pena identificar para lidiar con esta crisis de manera proactiva.
Primero, se aproximan elecciones en Nicaragua y en medio de las convulsiones socio-políticas del país, siempre un enfrentamiento con Costa Rica unifica a la sociedad y aumenta el capital político del gobierno local. He leído en CNN que la Embajada de Nicaragua en Inglaterra le ha solicitado a Google no rectificar la demarcación de la frontera (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/11/05/nicaragua.raid.google.maps/). Sería una victoria política para el gobierno de Nicaragua lograr que la frontera demarcada por Google se mantenga al menos hasta las elecciones de noviembre de 2011, en la cual el presidente Daniel Ortega optará por la reelección.
Segundo, las relaciones de buena vecindad entre Nicaragua y Costa Rica se han visto alteradas la última década por un conflicto limítrofe respecto a la interpretación del tratado que fijó la frontera entre ambos países (Tratado Cañas-Jerez, 1858 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tratado_Cañas-Jerez). La oportunidad para utilizar una herramienta tan sofisticada como Google maps para generar un acercamiento entre ambos países en torno a medios constructivos de interactuar a lo largo de su frontera sería bienvenida por ambas partes como una forma de zanjar diferencias y buscar vías de desarrollo para ambos países.
Tercero, y relacionado con lo anterior, la frontera entre Nicaragua y Costa Rica es una de las que marca una mayor distancia en términos de desarrollo entre dos países. De acuerdo con el más reciente índice de desarrollo humano de Naciones Unidas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), Costa Rica se ubica en el puesto 62 y Nicaragua en el puesto 115. Esto significa que el desarrollo de esta frontera es fundamental para las buenas relaciones entre ambos países, en especial porque una de las situaciones que genera más tensión entre ambos países es el flujo migratorio nicaragüense hacia el sur en busca de mayores oportunidades laborales.
Cuarto, fondos de cooperación de la Unión Europea con ocasión del Tratado de Asociación que ambas regiones han negociado en años recientes podría canalizarse para realizar una tarea eficaz de desarrollo transfronterizo, de manera que la calidad de vida a lo largo de la frontera aumente para ambas partes.
Quinto, la utilización de tecnologías de redes sociales como Google Maps permitiría identificar áreas de mayor necesidad u oportunidad para negocios, turismo, educación, salud, patrullaje conjunto, medio ambiente, y otras áreas que pueden servir como incentivo para la más cercana interacción entre miembros de ambas sociedades.
Será un gusto poder participar más activamente de esta discusión.
Atentos saludos.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
CancunCocoon#14: "Either with us or against us"
The ultimate consequence of our behavior with our environment is the extinction of a species.
Under normal circumstances, species thrive and grow in population. When the volume of the population grows unsustainably beyond the constraints of the ecological niche where it can live, then the population is reduced naturally. If there is not enough food, the weakest will starve leaving food for the strongest, who will eventually survive.
When a species becomes extinct, it is because its ecological niche is not able to support it any longer. Either food has ran out, or basic protection or humidity levels of quality of the air or water has deteriorated. When a forest is cut down to build a neighborhood, all the animals that lived in the forest cannot live on the streets. Animals have not learned to be homeless.
In 2010 alone, more than 100,000 species of animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms have become extinct. Most of them has to do with human behavior. We are cutting down forests, and this reduces habitats or ecological niches for those species. We dump thousands of tons of toxic chemicals into the ocean and that kills small microbes on which larger species feed. So both the microbes and their predators are disappearing.
I do not foresee a rapid change in our behavior that will prevent species from growing extinct. My concern is the realization of the interconnectedness of our behavior and the extinction of a species. It is a chain reaction. Although we are not predators of the species in some cases, the satisfaction of our needs is pushing the limits for more forests, for more consumption, for more food.
The waste we generate accumulates where we don't normally see it. Somewhere behind the mountain or into the desert or at the bottom of the sea. Waste chemicals are usually invisible. The east garbage patch is a floating garbage dump composed of an estimated two trillion pieces of plastic. It floats on the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Hawaii and Japan. It covers an area twice the size of the state of Texas, or twice the size of France.
What if we collect that garbage and process it by adding some heat and reshape it in the form of highway divisions to prevent car crashes? This could be a triple-win situation: we would be reutilizing waste, we would be cleaning the environment for millions of animals that die trapped in plastic containers, and we would be reducing deaths in our highways.
If non-human nature had a voice, it would probably be hollering "are you with us or against us?" Truth being said, it should be us asking the exact same question: are we with "us" or against "us"? The planet is one. The global ecosystem is one. Extinction of a species is a threatening symptom about our own behavior. We cannot thrive as a civilization without trees and forests; without clean sources of water to drink; without fertile land to grow our food.
Giving animals a break is giving ourselves a break. Have I said my health has never been better as it has been since I became a vegetarian? Plus, I lost 16 kg (38 lb) in the process. Try it. Or at least do it for a few days at a time. Culture is what we make of it. It is constantly changing. Help our culture change.
Friday, October 22, 2010
CancunCocoon#13: Where Have All The Forests Gone?
When we got married, my wife and I decided to have an alternative celebration. We gathered our closest friends and relatives for a tree-plantation ceremony. We requested people to dress on a white top (not everyone did, much to our dismay) so that pictures would have a nice contrast between faces, white outfit and green, natural scenery around. The pictures look beautiful!
Anyway, we decided to plant trees because we thought our relationship had to be like caring for a garden or a forest. It needed nurturing, attention, sensitivity. So far it has worked beautifully. And the trees are growing strong too!
When a tree is planted, it absorbs carbon from the air as long as it lives. Growth of trees is the accumulation of carbon for its trunk and branches. Not only does a tree absorb carbon from the atmosphere. It also releases oxygen as part of its respiration process, and releases water vapor, pure and pristine, that later becomes clouds and rain. Trees clean our air and our water.
It would sound like a good business, then, to grow many trees so that we ensure there is always abundant -at least sufficient- clean water and air for our consumption. Well, it's perhaps the two elements we can't live without, right? And still what is happening is completely the opposite: we are tearing down trees at a rate of 20 football fields per minute, all day, every day. At that rate, all the rainforest of my paradisiac Costa Rica would be chopped down in 15 weeks. A horrible thought. Somewhere in the world in the next 15 weeks a forest of 25,000 square kilometers will be converted into, well, whatever a forest becomes when it lacks trees: grassland, and eventually desert.
The big problem is in the long term. How many more trees can we cut without losing the planet's ability to recover itself and to clean our air and water? If we had to pay for the price of cleaning our air and water I am sure it would cost us dearly. In fact, The 11th Hour, a documentary produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, proposes that the value of the function that our natural environment serves us cleaning air and water could cost some $40 trillion dollars, a value far greater than the estimated $18 trillion worth of global economic output per year.
It's not about money. Without trees there would be very little life that could be supported around here. So the need to preserve it is existential as well. Ethical or moral. Principled or rooted on a very humanly inherent will to survive and to procreate into the future.
Perhaps that's what we have lost: a sense of ownership with a future that we won't live to see. The world of our grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren. As a Native American leader said, we need to think about the seventh generation after this one to learn how to preserve nature so that they -whoever that is- will also enjoy it.
We have also lost sensitivity for everything that is not immediate and discardable. The instant fix of satisfaction that goes with the next breath of air and that is costing so much on our nonrenewable resources. Our forests are in a way nonrenewable. We could replant a forest that has been cut down, but it will take as long as it had been standing, if at all, to recover. That's the greatest wealth of primary forests. They have been standing since time immemorial. They carry our history, our genes, our wisdom. Chopping it down is an unintelligent thing to do as a species.
The way to change our culture is to start planting trees, as many as you want. Make an appointment with friends to go plant trees. Watch them grow. Learn about them. Teach our children to care for them. Plant trees on behalf of your faraway relatives. Of the ones that have passed. On the ones that will come. Plant a tree for each child that is born. A tree to celebrate a promotion and a tree when each tooth of our child falls. Make up lame excuses to plant trees and plant as many as you possibly can. We will need to make a coordinated effort, those of us who care, to make a significant impact on our destructive tendency as a species.
Change culture and make it cool so we can have fun in the process. Change has never been boring anyway!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
CancunCocoon#12 - Overfishing: Who Cares!
It awakens my concern to realize the way in which our fishing industry deals with our common marine resources. A tragedy of the commons indeed. At the pace we are extracting fisheries, many species will be decimated to endangered levels or even to extinction.
It could very well be that some are not aware of that. It could also be that some are aware but don't care, and even others that are aware and do care. The way market forces operate, tendencies indicate that the first two groups of people have a leading voice in hyper-consumption.
Some hard facts:
-More than a third of the animals extracted from the oceans are dumped back -dead- because they have no market value, because they were caught unintended, or don't meet market standards (species, size, volume, etc.)
-According to Conservation International, in the last 50 years volume of fish caught has grown four times, from some 20 million tons per year to almost 90 million tons per year. In the same period of time, volume of available fisheries has decreased 50%.
-Ninety percent of large species of fish (sharks, cod, tuna) have disappeared.
-For every pound of wild-caught schrimp, ten pounds of other edible seafood is discarded as waste.
-some 1000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die EACH DAY in trawl nets. [http://www.conservation.org/FMG/Articles/Pages/disturbing_costs_unsustainable_fishing.aspx]
-According to "Science," at prevailing trends of overfishing, we will run out of wild seafood in 2048. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_fishing]
Now, who cares? If you didn't know, how can I expect you to care? If you knew and did not care, what would make you react? Knowing you won't be able to afford some seafood in a few years, or it simply won't be available anymore? Who cares!
I do not eat seafood. In fact, I do not eat animals. The environmental cost of our unsustainable agribusiness of meat, poultry and seafood motivated me to suspend -if only temporarily- to stop consuming meat of any kind. I have never felt this healthy before and I only felt cravings during the first 11 days, and three or four times per year only. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to undertake with pleasure.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
CancunCocoon Episode#11 - Deadliest Catch
Who doesn't know the famous Discovery Channel show about king crab fishing? This is not about crabs, but about everyday vegetables and seafood we eat regularly.
Our food production process is corrupted. We use fertilizers to increase land yield. This makes crops more vulnerable to plague. To combat those, we use pesticides, some of which have been so toxic that they have been already banned, like DDT. At least in the developed world. Or so we hope.
Daniel Goleman quotes an expert in his book Ecological Intelligence explaining an additional problem with fertilizers: “Producing and applying fertilizer contributes sixteen percent of all global greenhouse gases, especially nitrous oxide, which is three hundred times more aggressive than CO2 [carbon dioxide].”
Once the harvest is collected, not only have nutrients been extracted from the soil, but also chemical residue that has been added in the process seeps into the soil contaminating it as well as water reservoirs or nearby lakes and rivers. Some chemicals -like antibiotics we use to combat infection in humans and animals or mercury used in mining- do not biodegrade easily. They flow into water basins and all the way to the sea in some cases.
These chemicals, which pile up in the thousands of tons every year in our lakes, rivers, beaches, and underground aquifers, are being absorbed by marine species, both plants and animals, and in the process, it affects their gene pool. In some cases, they are simply stored on the skin, bones and muscles of those animals and we later eat them ignorantly. Dr Al Sears, M.D., mentions an Environmental Protection Agency test conducted in 300 streams in the U.S., where 100% of all trout sampled accumulated mercury, and two-thirds of them were beyond the maximum threshold that the EPA considers safe. Mercury -he continues- sticks to red blood cells and accumulates in animal muscle, which is the part of fish we eat. Then it gets scary: your body confuses mercury with amino acids, being stored into all tissues and organs of our human body, including the brain, affecting our nervous system. [http://www.alsearsmd.com/mercury-toxins-throw-away-fishing-poles/]
Terrifying what we are doing to ourselves. Those of us who know should spread the word. We need culture change. And fast. Suggestions, anyone?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
CancunCocoon: Episode#10
Sunlight has struck the Earth for billions of years and will do for billions more. As long as 650 million years ago, living organisms that nurtured from the sun's light later decomposed and piled up as the Earth was still forming as we know it today, including more evolved life forms.
In a way, burning today a combustible material that lived on the surface millions of years ago is the equivalent of burning sunlight that hit the planet that long ago. In other words, we are generating carbon that should be buried underground in order to preserve the planet's long-achieved climactic balance.
Today, our civilization has developed technologies that allow us to extract those very ancient fossils that have been compressed under a lot of pressure over a long, long time, and we have managed to convert them into energy. Unfortunately, over a century of extraction of fossil fuels has not made us more efficient transforming that long-gone decay. In fact, an important amount of energy is invested or lost in the process of extracting, transporting, refining, and burning these fuels.
Seventeen billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere in 2010 alone will have an important impact in the temperature exchange between the heat that reaches the Earth and the heat that leaves to outer space because of the Greenhouse effect. Gases that accumulate in the atmosphere trap some of the sun rays that are reflected from the Earth's surface (albedo effect). This prevents them from leaving back into space, and instead create an amount of heat that is contained when it should be released.
There are plenty ways of sinking more carbon back from the air. Growing vegetation is perhaps the most important one. Forests, vegetation in general, plankton in the oceans, and agricultural products are predominantly composed of carbon. Growing more trees additionally helps other living organisms have access to oxygen in the air, as they breathe carbon dioxide in, and breathe oxygen out. I have known this since fourth grade elementary school. I am sure you have, too! :)
Monday, October 18, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
CancunCocoon#8
Imagine what would happen if greenhouse gases (GHG) and carbon emissions would have remained at ground level instead of rising up into the atmosphere. Billions of toxic gases blurring our vision and contaminating our lungs outside our house. Who would have tolerated. Worse than that, our youngest ones playing out in the street and coming home suffocating with asthma symptoms.
If that was the reality, climate change would have been dealt with a century ago, as no one in the early industrialized countries would have tolerated. Today we tolerate because gases go up and we don't see them, and because the amount of pollution has been accumulating very slowly, over the course of years and decades of running engines and burning fossil fuels to heat our homes, cook our meals and keep our electronic toys running. In sum, to keep our addiction to comfort up to par.
The rate at which we are generating carbon emissions is clearly unsustainable. Everybody knows that. The problem is that action to cap that contamination comes at a very high cost for everybody as well. Now, we are talking about two different types of costs. The monetary cost of transforming industrial processes to be less carbon intensive will cost producers and consumers alike in their efforts to incorporate negative externalities into the supply and demand equation. The environmental cost is less tangible and not so much spoken about.
You see, among the policymakers that rule the world, many are economists of have studied classic economics, a marvelous field of study that lies somewhere between social science, mathematics and psychology. If Economics would also teach about ecology then we would be saved: we would understand, once and for all, that our economies are constrained within our human societies, and that our human societies are constrained within our natural ecosystem. We cannot grow beyond our environment. We cannot live outside the limits of the planet. At least not yet. At least not all of us anyway.
So, as long as this is not a possibility, it is up to us to deal with the problem. If you are not in the oil industry, if you are not a politician that makes promises as a way of living even if they are never fulfilled, if you care about the world you are going to die in, if you would like to inherit onto your descendants a healthy, secure place to thrive as individuals and families within communities, then I suggest you get informed about what needs to be done to change our culture of unsustainable development.
As Jared Diamond wonders in his masterpiece "Collapse," what did the Easter Islanders say the day they cut down their last tree? If we don't want to answer that question, we better start planting more trees than the ones we are cutting down today. So far this year, almost 9 million hectares of forest have been lost worldwide. That is more than twice the total land area of Costa Rica, my beautiful piece of paradise.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
What is Culture Change?
It is the description of the task we have before us as a civilization required to transform the incompatible constraints that emerge before us as a Global Community: our pace of economic growth and the pace of environmental unsustainability at which we are retrogressing.
We need to revert the sense of the engine, in more than one sense of the word. One certain way to do it is to coordinate our leaders into understanding that the problem at hand is anything BUT a political problem. They as well as we depend institutionally for our social cohesion on the Rule of Law reigning our global governance. Humanity has not encountered a better way to coexist peacefully than through the language spoken at the United Nations. The Security Council has delivered much order and security, and much peace and prosperity to billions of citizens. Making it a stronger organ is in our best interest as a concert of nations. The solution is not political. In politics all ideas but one are defeated and only one survives, governing the rest for a very long time. That has never been the source of progress of a people. Progress has been the result of coordination between a people to achieve a common task.
Let's stop telling China to democratize its political system. Let them be. That is their culture. They are proud of their Communist Dynasty and what it has achieved so far in only 61 years. Jiang Zemin said at the turn of the century that China pretended to recover the leading role in human civilization that it lost a thousand years ago and that they had for a thousand years before that. One of the most ancient civilizations in our world that are still thriving. Like Jews and Hindus alike.
What a beautiful diversity of wealth and love we have created! We have made sure to create the most comfortable place to live in the entire Universe. In terms of real estate, we have the best location in the universe, and believe-you-me it's true. There is no place around like Earth. Nowhere. Not that we know of. Not even close. Nothing lives out there that we have discovered. Nothing thrives. No one dreams. No one enjoys. Nobody laughs. Nobody cries. Nobody sleeps. Just silence. And mostly darkness. For miles and miles around. For millions of years around. We are completely alone in the Universe. So far. So let's make sure we fix things up in here and ensure that it will remain the best place to live. We all benefit from this.
Human collapse or extinction are not a devastating event for the planet. More than ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND (100,000) species of living organisms have ceased existing this year 2010 alone (scroll down to Environment for other scary revelations: http://www.worldometers.info/?ref=nf). I would even dare argue that the planet could take a break from us sometimes, but we insist in toiling away incessantly.
More than EIGHT MILLION HECTARES (approximately 8,913,392 as of the instant I last checked today, Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 21:28 hrs. GMT+10.5) of forests have been lost in the entire planet this year alone. That is more than two times the size of Costa Rica. I think what would happen if next year it was my country which would lose all its forest. Even worse. At the rate at which we are deforesting the planet we would deforest Costa Rica's more than 50% of its territory covered by forests (approximately 25,000 square kilometers, or 2,500,000 hectares) in three months. To imagine arriving back home in March of next year to a country without a A SINGLE TREE makes me react concerned in call for action and attention.
I am working on an independent academic study with Ari Lightman (http://socialtheorem.com/) on Social Media Strategy and Analysis. Part of what I am doing is learning how to connect more effectively with others to communicate messages virally and intentionally. What a blessing, I thought. People still listen! And what I have learned so far is enormously valuable for all of us to know: everyone listens! We are always listening. All day. All the time. Let's do so with Unconditional Positive Regard (Carl Rogers) as Steve Olweean teaches and preaches and practices at the Common Bond Institute (http://www.cbiworld.org/).
Let's listen to each other with admiration. Let's not stop asking questions, as Isaac Newton reminded us. And let's learn now to listen and talk to the Groundswell (http://www.amazon.com/Groundswell-Winning-Transformed-Social-Technologies/dp/1422125009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287229956&sr=8-1-catcorr), which is where we can communicate the fastest we have ever done so. Global Community, meet Twitter (http://twitter.com/). This is the tool we needed to implement some minor adjustments -attitudes mainly, and some information- to outpace the rate of degradation of our planet by restoring its ecosystem.
Would you give us a hand? How do you want to participate? Please be creative and ask for your friends' help. Make a hugely constructive use of Facebook. It's more fun than before, believe me. You have a role to play. It's your planet too. We got in this together and only together will we manage to succeed. Look for us in Twitter under #culturechange or follow @alvarcidane. Let's get going. Pura vida.
PS. I regard Michael Jackson as the first global humanitarian of our civilization. Blessings to him for singing. Global Community, meet Grooveshark. (http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/search/songs/?query=earth%20song).
We need to revert the sense of the engine, in more than one sense of the word. One certain way to do it is to coordinate our leaders into understanding that the problem at hand is anything BUT a political problem. They as well as we depend institutionally for our social cohesion on the Rule of Law reigning our global governance. Humanity has not encountered a better way to coexist peacefully than through the language spoken at the United Nations. The Security Council has delivered much order and security, and much peace and prosperity to billions of citizens. Making it a stronger organ is in our best interest as a concert of nations. The solution is not political. In politics all ideas but one are defeated and only one survives, governing the rest for a very long time. That has never been the source of progress of a people. Progress has been the result of coordination between a people to achieve a common task.
Let's stop telling China to democratize its political system. Let them be. That is their culture. They are proud of their Communist Dynasty and what it has achieved so far in only 61 years. Jiang Zemin said at the turn of the century that China pretended to recover the leading role in human civilization that it lost a thousand years ago and that they had for a thousand years before that. One of the most ancient civilizations in our world that are still thriving. Like Jews and Hindus alike.
What a beautiful diversity of wealth and love we have created! We have made sure to create the most comfortable place to live in the entire Universe. In terms of real estate, we have the best location in the universe, and believe-you-me it's true. There is no place around like Earth. Nowhere. Not that we know of. Not even close. Nothing lives out there that we have discovered. Nothing thrives. No one dreams. No one enjoys. Nobody laughs. Nobody cries. Nobody sleeps. Just silence. And mostly darkness. For miles and miles around. For millions of years around. We are completely alone in the Universe. So far. So let's make sure we fix things up in here and ensure that it will remain the best place to live. We all benefit from this.
Human collapse or extinction are not a devastating event for the planet. More than ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND (100,000) species of living organisms have ceased existing this year 2010 alone (scroll down to Environment for other scary revelations: http://www.worldometers.info/?ref=nf). I would even dare argue that the planet could take a break from us sometimes, but we insist in toiling away incessantly.
More than EIGHT MILLION HECTARES (approximately 8,913,392 as of the instant I last checked today, Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 21:28 hrs. GMT+10.5) of forests have been lost in the entire planet this year alone. That is more than two times the size of Costa Rica. I think what would happen if next year it was my country which would lose all its forest. Even worse. At the rate at which we are deforesting the planet we would deforest Costa Rica's more than 50% of its territory covered by forests (approximately 25,000 square kilometers, or 2,500,000 hectares) in three months. To imagine arriving back home in March of next year to a country without a A SINGLE TREE makes me react concerned in call for action and attention.
I am working on an independent academic study with Ari Lightman (http://socialtheorem.com/) on Social Media Strategy and Analysis. Part of what I am doing is learning how to connect more effectively with others to communicate messages virally and intentionally. What a blessing, I thought. People still listen! And what I have learned so far is enormously valuable for all of us to know: everyone listens! We are always listening. All day. All the time. Let's do so with Unconditional Positive Regard (Carl Rogers) as Steve Olweean teaches and preaches and practices at the Common Bond Institute (http://www.cbiworld.org/).
Let's listen to each other with admiration. Let's not stop asking questions, as Isaac Newton reminded us. And let's learn now to listen and talk to the Groundswell (http://www.amazon.com/Groundswell-Winning-Transformed-Social-Technologies/dp/1422125009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287229956&sr=8-1-catcorr), which is where we can communicate the fastest we have ever done so. Global Community, meet Twitter (http://twitter.com/). This is the tool we needed to implement some minor adjustments -attitudes mainly, and some information- to outpace the rate of degradation of our planet by restoring its ecosystem.
Would you give us a hand? How do you want to participate? Please be creative and ask for your friends' help. Make a hugely constructive use of Facebook. It's more fun than before, believe me. You have a role to play. It's your planet too. We got in this together and only together will we manage to succeed. Look for us in Twitter under #culturechange or follow @alvarcidane. Let's get going. Pura vida.
PS. I regard Michael Jackson as the first global humanitarian of our civilization. Blessings to him for singing. Global Community, meet Grooveshark. (http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/search/songs/?query=earth%20song).
Agent-based Modelling for Water Forecasting
SimulAIt is a software based on artificial intelligence, namely agent-based modelling, from the defence industry. Autonomous agents are used to represent the behaviour of different people and system components. Some agents represent households, others business people and regulators. All respond in different ways to prices, policies, programs, services, and opportunities to replace products.
Thousands of agents can be used to mimic the many thousands of components in the real world to create a virtual simulation of it. The ability to integrate a vast quantity of dynamic social, economic and environmental data and behaviours, enables better predictions to be made through a greater understanding of how people behave and respond to change. The simulation can be used to run “what-if” scenarios and observe the emergent behaviour of the system, as well as the behaviour of its individual elements.
From a conflict prevention point of view, Don Perugini and his team could soon be considered champions in the struggle for safe, clean water for all, today and in the future.
BlogActionDay has given us the opportunity to put our heads together into thinking, talking and sharing about water today. Coordinated action will most likely come from the synergies developed over the web in social media platforms through events like this one. Kudos for the initiative and impressive mobilisation!!!
Thousands of agents can be used to mimic the many thousands of components in the real world to create a virtual simulation of it. The ability to integrate a vast quantity of dynamic social, economic and environmental data and behaviours, enables better predictions to be made through a greater understanding of how people behave and respond to change. The simulation can be used to run “what-if” scenarios and observe the emergent behaviour of the system, as well as the behaviour of its individual elements.
From a conflict prevention point of view, Don Perugini and his team could soon be considered champions in the struggle for safe, clean water for all, today and in the future.
BlogActionDay has given us the opportunity to put our heads together into thinking, talking and sharing about water today. Coordinated action will most likely come from the synergies developed over the web in social media platforms through events like this one. Kudos for the initiative and impressive mobilisation!!!
Forecasting, Modelling, Predicting, Simulating
How can we predict our future economic and resource needs? Do we have data today about how much we are consuming? How are circumstances like demographic growth and climate change going to affect availability and consumption of resources?
When we talk about water, this discussion immediately moves from rhetoric and politics to mathematics and action. Thanks to BlogActionDay, we are able to raise awareness and motivate towards action to tackle our most sensitive of elements: water. A broken pipeline, a contaminated aquifer or a drought can bring entire communities to the brink of collapse.
Conflict prevention is perhaps the best, easiest and certainly cheapest way to deal with future problems. A tool that allows us to predict how a situation might escalate into conflict is very useful to identify effective ways to prevent those scenarios from happening, if possible. That's what Simulait offers.
Simulait is beyond econometrics and statistics, and has the capability to model the reactions and behaviours of millions of consumers at the national, state, regional, city, postcode and household level.
A key benefit of SimuaiIt is the ability to validate models by "predicting forward from the past", and comparing simulated results to actual historical data that has not been explicitly used as an input into the model (e.g. customer billing data). This can be achieved because Simulait uses highly detailed data to logically derive outputs. This type of validation provides a high level of confidence in the model’s predictive capability.
Simulait Online provides a web portal into Simulait, allowing users to create and run scenarios, as well as analyse and obtain results, anytime and anywhere via a web browser. Large scale simulations are run on dedicated servers, eliminating hardware requirements.
This versatility makes Simulait a cost-effective requirement for your company, your township or your government.
When we talk about water, this discussion immediately moves from rhetoric and politics to mathematics and action. Thanks to BlogActionDay, we are able to raise awareness and motivate towards action to tackle our most sensitive of elements: water. A broken pipeline, a contaminated aquifer or a drought can bring entire communities to the brink of collapse.
Conflict prevention is perhaps the best, easiest and certainly cheapest way to deal with future problems. A tool that allows us to predict how a situation might escalate into conflict is very useful to identify effective ways to prevent those scenarios from happening, if possible. That's what Simulait offers.
Simulait is beyond econometrics and statistics, and has the capability to model the reactions and behaviours of millions of consumers at the national, state, regional, city, postcode and household level.
A key benefit of SimuaiIt is the ability to validate models by "predicting forward from the past", and comparing simulated results to actual historical data that has not been explicitly used as an input into the model (e.g. customer billing data). This can be achieved because Simulait uses highly detailed data to logically derive outputs. This type of validation provides a high level of confidence in the model’s predictive capability.
Simulait Online provides a web portal into Simulait, allowing users to create and run scenarios, as well as analyse and obtain results, anytime and anywhere via a web browser. Large scale simulations are run on dedicated servers, eliminating hardware requirements.
This versatility makes Simulait a cost-effective requirement for your company, your township or your government.
Simulait: Simulate?
Simulait is a sophisticated consumer modelling and forecasting tool that has achieved over 95% accuracy in water and environmental sectors.
As explained by its creator, Don Perugini, "Simulait is a consumer modelling tool perfect for marketing problems which you may not have encountered before or are seemingly ineffable. Simulait is a micro-simulation with the capability to model the reactions and behaviours of millions of individual consumers to new strategies, products, prices and competitive behaviour. Simulait allows the integration of a wide range of complex (qualitative and quantitative) data, such as market research, demographic data, econometric and statistical data, environmental data, as well as your domain knowledge. The ability for SimulAIt to model drivers of consumer decision making enables you to run "what-if" scenarios to explore options to influence consumer behaviour, and answer a broad range questions."
On this BlogActionDay, talk about water can't just end in talk. We need action. Water scarcity, contamination and consumption will affect each and every one of us and our communities. Are we drinking clean water today? What chemicals are used to purify it? What are the side effects of those chemicals, especially on our youngest population?
Understanding how consumers behave today and how they will behave into the future is critical to deal with the issue. This is a matter of numbers and data, not only of good intentions and eloquent blogging.
As explained by its creator, Don Perugini, "Simulait is a consumer modelling tool perfect for marketing problems which you may not have encountered before or are seemingly ineffable. Simulait is a micro-simulation with the capability to model the reactions and behaviours of millions of individual consumers to new strategies, products, prices and competitive behaviour. Simulait allows the integration of a wide range of complex (qualitative and quantitative) data, such as market research, demographic data, econometric and statistical data, environmental data, as well as your domain knowledge. The ability for SimulAIt to model drivers of consumer decision making enables you to run "what-if" scenarios to explore options to influence consumer behaviour, and answer a broad range questions."
On this BlogActionDay, talk about water can't just end in talk. We need action. Water scarcity, contamination and consumption will affect each and every one of us and our communities. Are we drinking clean water today? What chemicals are used to purify it? What are the side effects of those chemicals, especially on our youngest population?
Understanding how consumers behave today and how they will behave into the future is critical to deal with the issue. This is a matter of numbers and data, not only of good intentions and eloquent blogging.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Water forecasting: modelling consumer behaviour
BlogActionDay (blogactionday.change.org) is a great opportunity to raise awareness about the gravity of water scarcity. Perhaps we are subsisting -if only barely- despite water shortages and water contamination. In 40 years from now, regardless of what we do, our global population will reach 9 billion people. That would be equivalent to adding two times the population of India to our current population. Then water scarcity will be a life-or-death issue, most likely the latter, unless we do something about it now.
Simulait is the perfect tool to conduct water forecasting of consumer behaviour into the future, to know where -and how much- water will be required. Pricing is just part of the problem. Availability is much more so.
Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgqZaloXNcI
Simulait is the perfect tool to conduct water forecasting of consumer behaviour into the future, to know where -and how much- water will be required. Pricing is just part of the problem. Availability is much more so.
Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgqZaloXNcI
Three days without...
On a conversation I had with Don Perugini, founder and director of Simulait, a very accurate water forecasting software, he said:
"Existing modelling tools are not accurate enough or truly predictive. We know that consumer decision making is influenced by many social, economic, environmental factors. Examples include: demographics, psychology and culture, marketing approach, price, expendable income, discretionary and non-discretionary expenditure, product quality and quantity, weather, sporting events, etc. Existing tools lack the ability to effectively incorporate all these complex factors to accurately represent millions of different consumers and their decision-making at a suitable level of granularity. The Simulait consumer modelling and forecasting tool addresses these shortfalls."
On this BlogActionDay2010, water is an issue. We can write poetry about it. We can sing and dance under the rain. We can worry about drought or grow concerned about contamination of water basins. Truth is, we can't live three days without it. Knowing how much we will need -and, most importantly, where we will obtain it- is a of utmost concern for our policymakers at a local and international level.
"Existing modelling tools are not accurate enough or truly predictive. We know that consumer decision making is influenced by many social, economic, environmental factors. Examples include: demographics, psychology and culture, marketing approach, price, expendable income, discretionary and non-discretionary expenditure, product quality and quantity, weather, sporting events, etc. Existing tools lack the ability to effectively incorporate all these complex factors to accurately represent millions of different consumers and their decision-making at a suitable level of granularity. The Simulait consumer modelling and forecasting tool addresses these shortfalls."
On this BlogActionDay2010, water is an issue. We can write poetry about it. We can sing and dance under the rain. We can worry about drought or grow concerned about contamination of water basins. Truth is, we can't live three days without it. Knowing how much we will need -and, most importantly, where we will obtain it- is a of utmost concern for our policymakers at a local and international level.
Water needs in 2025
I have had the honour to encounter Don Perugini, director and founder of Intelligent Software Development, the company that has created Simulait, the software modeling tool for consumer behaviour simulation.
It comes across as a very handy tool for conflict prevention. They have been quite successful modelling water consumption behaviour. On the day of the Blog Action Day dedicated to water (blogactionday.change.org), the discussion about future water scarcity is a must in today's future scenario planning. We have heard for years that wars in the future will be fought over water. Well, maybe not.
This is what Perugini has to say about his full-time job:
"Simulait is a sophisticated consumer modelling and forecasting tool, and has proven to be 95% accurate in forecasting consumer behaviour in industries such as water retail and environmental policy. Simulait is a micro-simulation with the capability to model the reactions and behaviours of millions of individual consumers to new strategies, products, prices, policies and competitive behaviour. Simulait allows the integration of a wide range of complex data, such as market research, demographic data, econometric and statistical data. Simulait has been used to simulate up to 2 million households and 4.5 million consumers to assist with forecasting, strategy and business case development, marketing, policy, pricing, and behaviour change."
More in a while.
It comes across as a very handy tool for conflict prevention. They have been quite successful modelling water consumption behaviour. On the day of the Blog Action Day dedicated to water (blogactionday.change.org), the discussion about future water scarcity is a must in today's future scenario planning. We have heard for years that wars in the future will be fought over water. Well, maybe not.
This is what Perugini has to say about his full-time job:
"Simulait is a sophisticated consumer modelling and forecasting tool, and has proven to be 95% accurate in forecasting consumer behaviour in industries such as water retail and environmental policy. Simulait is a micro-simulation with the capability to model the reactions and behaviours of millions of individual consumers to new strategies, products, prices, policies and competitive behaviour. Simulait allows the integration of a wide range of complex data, such as market research, demographic data, econometric and statistical data. Simulait has been used to simulate up to 2 million households and 4.5 million consumers to assist with forecasting, strategy and business case development, marketing, policy, pricing, and behaviour change."
More in a while.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Simulait: Water Forecasting
These guys at Intelligent Software Development in Adelaide, South Australia, are changing the game of forecasting consumer behaviour with a remarkably precise agent-based software for modelling and predicting future consumption.
Their track record and award-winning start-up is already leading the way in terms of water forecasting. What a useful tool for the world to know about!
They are launching the Simulait-Online interphase that will allow users to run their simulations over the Internet. How cool!
More on Simulait during the day. Visit them at http://www.intelligentsoftware.com.au/, see their newly released video on YouTube under Simulait channel, or follow them also in Twitter @simulait.
Pura vida!
Their track record and award-winning start-up is already leading the way in terms of water forecasting. What a useful tool for the world to know about!
They are launching the Simulait-Online interphase that will allow users to run their simulations over the Internet. How cool!
More on Simulait during the day. Visit them at http://www.intelligentsoftware.com.au/, see their newly released video on YouTube under Simulait channel, or follow them also in Twitter @simulait.
Pura vida!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Ecological Intelligence: Accountability for a Culture Change
We are used to seeing the graph of carbon emissions as a quadrant in the “X-Y” axis, where time runs right along the “X” axis and tons of emissions run up along the “Y” axis. This gives the subconscious impression of earnings, profits, positive change, when in fact the accumulation of such gases represents a deterioration of the global ecosystem, also called “carbon footprint.” It puts nations in a vicious spiral of competition towards who is the greatest polluter.
Oddly enough, nobody wants first place. As long as you are second, this already hides you behind the shield of the biggest polluter. Whether measured by country (China), per capita (US), per unit of density (Australia) or otherwise, the greatest polluters of the planet are the largest economies measured in dollar terms (the G-20 countries contribute with 85% of greenhouse gas emissions).
There is a second quadrant that lies below the “X” axis, in which negative carbon emissions represented by carbon sink on behalf of the Earth can be graphed as a curve over time that indicates restoration of ecosystems.
According to BBC news, this year alone, 100,000 km2 of forests have been lost. That is equivalent to twice the land surface of Costa Rica. Desertification shows similar figures: 120,000 km2 of land converted into desert only in 2010. These two trends have been occurring for decades. Another trend that has been recurrent throughout the 20th Century is demographic growth. Today at seven billion, the trend projects nine billion people in 2050. A question that should be posed for policymakers, scientists, corporations and consumers alike is how much forest coverage and fertile land (non-desert) is needed to support nine billion people on the planet?
Let’s think for an instant that we invert the quadrants of degradation and restoration and we place the restoration quadrant on top. That would show, when positive, the negative carbon footprint or how much pollution we manage to extract from the planet’s air, water and land.
The shift is not only graphical. The shift is cultural. The concept of sustainability has made us believe that we should simply aim for that line as if that was the solution, when the truth is that we already have enormous damage to repair to the planet in order for it to recover its sustainability.
According to National Geographic State of the Earth 2010, today we are consuming 1.4 Earths worth of resources per year. At 1.0, the Earth is able to renew or replenish the resources that have been extracted from it. That’s referred to as its carrying capacity. Beyond 1.0, it is referred to as the Earth’s overshoot, the gap between ecological demand and supply. This year, the planet reached overshoot on August 21. That means that, since that date, we are using resources that the planet will be unable to restore before the beginning of a new year. We are entering an ecological debt, and this trend has been happening for the last 30 years, according to the Global Footprint Network.
According to the same source, if every human being consumed like Americans we would need 5.4 Earths to support our lifestyle. It is clear that the American-style consumerism is dangerously unsustainable. Here the pertinent question would be: how can we incorporate Americans into the path towards solving this collision course in which civilization is apparently heading to? Without them becoming aware of the problem and acting effectively and boldly towards it, it will be impossible to come to a transformation from degradation to restoration of the world’s ecosystems.
Assuming there was consensus about the diagnosis of the conflict, the debate between mitigation and adaptation to climate change would require a complex solution. The ethical stance of sustainability is necessary to understand the impact of our modern behavior. Adaptation demands differentiated accountability from three major groups of actors: policymakers, corporations, and consumers.
With regard to policymakers, the laws in place should guide action towards solutions, not towards punishment. Containing carbon emissions or developing a yet another global financial market to exchange carbon certificates is not a guaranteed path towards ecological remediation. Instead, efforts should be geared towards investing sufficient public and private funds into research and development to achieve technological innovation for two main purposes: first and foremost, renewable energy generation; and second, towards the development of technologically engineered consumer products whose waste enriches the ecosystem instead of degrading it.
If the vision is a virtuous one, the correct challenges will be in place for technological designers and innovators, biologists and engineers, to transform our culture by developing consumption products with restorative effects on ecosystems.
Restraint for nations is important especially because fossil fuel energy generation tends to be a matter of state for most countries in the world, but not exclusively. There are private transnational corporations that are also accountable and need to abide by new sets of rules towards a change in culture.
Concerning corporations, they are critical players because every industrialized product we consume has been manufactured by one. They know –or should know at least- the ecological impact of the materials they use, the by-products they generate, and the waste once the products are discarded or thrown away. As Daniel Goleman (Ecological Intelligence) says, “when you through something away, there is no away: it stays on planet Earth.”
This means that corporations are the ones that can lead the transformation of production and consumer goods redesigning them towards eco-remediation. This process can be enhanced and accelerated by public and private investment on research and development. It does not necessarily require policy that obliges them to behave in that manner. Many corporations have taken the initiative towards greening their production. Also, consumers can have a great impact voting with their feet, walking away from products that have a greater ecological footprint, and towards others that have a lesser one.
The third group is, therefore, consumers. For this change to occur, buyers require transparent information about the products. Could we think about policy that would compel manufactured goods to clearly reveal their toxicity content and the ecological impact of their production? Countries like Australia and the European Union already require certification of production standards. Information technologies can drive an exponential change in consumer awareness, therefore reducing the information asymmetries that do not allow transparency in the process.
In order to move forward, we must set our sight farther ahead. Focusing the climate change discussion on carbon emissions is looking backwards to the source of the problem. Culture change will come when we start thinking and doing things differently, as Einstein warned.
Oddly enough, nobody wants first place. As long as you are second, this already hides you behind the shield of the biggest polluter. Whether measured by country (China), per capita (US), per unit of density (Australia) or otherwise, the greatest polluters of the planet are the largest economies measured in dollar terms (the G-20 countries contribute with 85% of greenhouse gas emissions).
There is a second quadrant that lies below the “X” axis, in which negative carbon emissions represented by carbon sink on behalf of the Earth can be graphed as a curve over time that indicates restoration of ecosystems.
According to BBC news, this year alone, 100,000 km2 of forests have been lost. That is equivalent to twice the land surface of Costa Rica. Desertification shows similar figures: 120,000 km2 of land converted into desert only in 2010. These two trends have been occurring for decades. Another trend that has been recurrent throughout the 20th Century is demographic growth. Today at seven billion, the trend projects nine billion people in 2050. A question that should be posed for policymakers, scientists, corporations and consumers alike is how much forest coverage and fertile land (non-desert) is needed to support nine billion people on the planet?
Let’s think for an instant that we invert the quadrants of degradation and restoration and we place the restoration quadrant on top. That would show, when positive, the negative carbon footprint or how much pollution we manage to extract from the planet’s air, water and land.
The shift is not only graphical. The shift is cultural. The concept of sustainability has made us believe that we should simply aim for that line as if that was the solution, when the truth is that we already have enormous damage to repair to the planet in order for it to recover its sustainability.
According to National Geographic State of the Earth 2010, today we are consuming 1.4 Earths worth of resources per year. At 1.0, the Earth is able to renew or replenish the resources that have been extracted from it. That’s referred to as its carrying capacity. Beyond 1.0, it is referred to as the Earth’s overshoot, the gap between ecological demand and supply. This year, the planet reached overshoot on August 21. That means that, since that date, we are using resources that the planet will be unable to restore before the beginning of a new year. We are entering an ecological debt, and this trend has been happening for the last 30 years, according to the Global Footprint Network.
According to the same source, if every human being consumed like Americans we would need 5.4 Earths to support our lifestyle. It is clear that the American-style consumerism is dangerously unsustainable. Here the pertinent question would be: how can we incorporate Americans into the path towards solving this collision course in which civilization is apparently heading to? Without them becoming aware of the problem and acting effectively and boldly towards it, it will be impossible to come to a transformation from degradation to restoration of the world’s ecosystems.
Assuming there was consensus about the diagnosis of the conflict, the debate between mitigation and adaptation to climate change would require a complex solution. The ethical stance of sustainability is necessary to understand the impact of our modern behavior. Adaptation demands differentiated accountability from three major groups of actors: policymakers, corporations, and consumers.
With regard to policymakers, the laws in place should guide action towards solutions, not towards punishment. Containing carbon emissions or developing a yet another global financial market to exchange carbon certificates is not a guaranteed path towards ecological remediation. Instead, efforts should be geared towards investing sufficient public and private funds into research and development to achieve technological innovation for two main purposes: first and foremost, renewable energy generation; and second, towards the development of technologically engineered consumer products whose waste enriches the ecosystem instead of degrading it.
If the vision is a virtuous one, the correct challenges will be in place for technological designers and innovators, biologists and engineers, to transform our culture by developing consumption products with restorative effects on ecosystems.
Restraint for nations is important especially because fossil fuel energy generation tends to be a matter of state for most countries in the world, but not exclusively. There are private transnational corporations that are also accountable and need to abide by new sets of rules towards a change in culture.
Concerning corporations, they are critical players because every industrialized product we consume has been manufactured by one. They know –or should know at least- the ecological impact of the materials they use, the by-products they generate, and the waste once the products are discarded or thrown away. As Daniel Goleman (Ecological Intelligence) says, “when you through something away, there is no away: it stays on planet Earth.”
This means that corporations are the ones that can lead the transformation of production and consumer goods redesigning them towards eco-remediation. This process can be enhanced and accelerated by public and private investment on research and development. It does not necessarily require policy that obliges them to behave in that manner. Many corporations have taken the initiative towards greening their production. Also, consumers can have a great impact voting with their feet, walking away from products that have a greater ecological footprint, and towards others that have a lesser one.
The third group is, therefore, consumers. For this change to occur, buyers require transparent information about the products. Could we think about policy that would compel manufactured goods to clearly reveal their toxicity content and the ecological impact of their production? Countries like Australia and the European Union already require certification of production standards. Information technologies can drive an exponential change in consumer awareness, therefore reducing the information asymmetries that do not allow transparency in the process.
In order to move forward, we must set our sight farther ahead. Focusing the climate change discussion on carbon emissions is looking backwards to the source of the problem. Culture change will come when we start thinking and doing things differently, as Einstein warned.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Work at GreenBiz.com?
I perceive high affinity between this job and my core competencies.
As a Costa Rican, I understand the value of living in peace with nature. This requires both ecological restoration and innovation on renewable energies. Most importantly, sustainability is a matter of ethics to do good while doing well.
I envision a future where different corporate sectors and world cultures contribute their best practices towards the global transformation of green business: United States’ remarkable entrepreneurial ability to leapfrog technology through innovation; China’s massive funding of renewables; Brazil’s environmental superpower status; Australia’s clean energy potential; Africa’s and Latin America’s potential for organic agriculture and eco-tourism; European Union’s virtuous legal implementation to tackle climate change through a culture change.
Moreover, I consider the coming decade as crucial to reach the necessary tipping point to guide humanity from a degrading lifestyle to a restorative one. Therefore, identifying the key stakeholders at a global level and the best scenarios to engage them in conversation and to broker deals with them will be elemental.
I pay close attention to Brazil as my wife is from there. Apart from the media coverage that the country’s development is having in recent years, it has started to become clear that it is, by far, the world’s environmental superpower and it is playing an aggressive role as world leader in the field. Its private sector is powerful in terms of finances and innovation, and also in social responsibility and environmental friendliness.
In the coming years, Brazil will host the two largest sports events in the world: the football (soccer) World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. This represents a remarkable opportunity to showcase policies, products, partnerships, and lifestyles of a new, green cultural paradigm.
I am willing to relocate, to Oakland or Brazil or elsewhere, the same way I have lived in Costa Rica, Norway, China and Australia. I have been looking for the perfect job that will fulfill my three main interests: to be passionate about it, to contribute the most according to my competencies, and to be well remunerated for the effort. I feel I may have found it at GreenBiz.com.
My full-time academic program at Carnegie Mellon Australia will finish in early December. As of now, I have no scheduled commitments afterwards and am currently searching for a full-time job.
As a Costa Rican, I understand the value of living in peace with nature. This requires both ecological restoration and innovation on renewable energies. Most importantly, sustainability is a matter of ethics to do good while doing well.
I envision a future where different corporate sectors and world cultures contribute their best practices towards the global transformation of green business: United States’ remarkable entrepreneurial ability to leapfrog technology through innovation; China’s massive funding of renewables; Brazil’s environmental superpower status; Australia’s clean energy potential; Africa’s and Latin America’s potential for organic agriculture and eco-tourism; European Union’s virtuous legal implementation to tackle climate change through a culture change.
Moreover, I consider the coming decade as crucial to reach the necessary tipping point to guide humanity from a degrading lifestyle to a restorative one. Therefore, identifying the key stakeholders at a global level and the best scenarios to engage them in conversation and to broker deals with them will be elemental.
I pay close attention to Brazil as my wife is from there. Apart from the media coverage that the country’s development is having in recent years, it has started to become clear that it is, by far, the world’s environmental superpower and it is playing an aggressive role as world leader in the field. Its private sector is powerful in terms of finances and innovation, and also in social responsibility and environmental friendliness.
In the coming years, Brazil will host the two largest sports events in the world: the football (soccer) World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. This represents a remarkable opportunity to showcase policies, products, partnerships, and lifestyles of a new, green cultural paradigm.
I am willing to relocate, to Oakland or Brazil or elsewhere, the same way I have lived in Costa Rica, Norway, China and Australia. I have been looking for the perfect job that will fulfill my three main interests: to be passionate about it, to contribute the most according to my competencies, and to be well remunerated for the effort. I feel I may have found it at GreenBiz.com.
My full-time academic program at Carnegie Mellon Australia will finish in early December. As of now, I have no scheduled commitments afterwards and am currently searching for a full-time job.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Climate Change: A Conflict Transformation Approach
Part II: Intentional Transformation
There are many instances that provoke a negative impact on our global ecosystem. Many forms of consumption, production, and disposal of essential and non-essential goods in our everyday lives take a minute toll on the ecosystem. All of them added together represent a burden to heavy to carry for the planet.
In accounting terms, we would say that the planet does not have the possibility to reach or maintain a “break-even quantity” (BEQ) of natural resources depleted and natural resources renewed by the planet itself. For example, it would take millions of years to replenish oil reserves. It can be said that it is not indispensable for life on the planet to have those reservoirs. It is precisely the opposite which could be a more determining factor: when was the last time that those fossil reserves were living organisms roaming the planet? Millions of years ago. As most living organisms grow and thrive with the energy from the sun, it can be said, as some experts have analyzed, that petroleum is sunlight that is kept in storage under the earth’s surface. When we transform it into carbon dioxide, we are pouring into the atmosphere the equivalent of ancient sunlight, as if the sun would suddenly warm up and produce more or warmer rays towards the Earth.
In ecological terms, the problem is referred to as carrying capacity: the planet is not being able to renew the resources that we are extracting from it, be it renewable or nonrenewable, such as forests or minerals.
So far, the problem is almost invisible –except for highly contaminated cities like Beijing, Los Angeles, or New Delhi- difficult to measure, and very hard to tell the extent of the consequences of this uniquely human action.
It is not uniquely human to generate carbon emissions. Every time a living organism expires, its decomposition entails releasing a fair amount of carbon into the atmosphere. This explains why, before the Industrial Revolution, it is said that as much as 280 particles of carbon per million were present in the atmosphere. It also includes volcanic eruptions and other forms of gaseous releases around the planet, like gas columns from the ocean floor or geysers.
Since the Industrial Revolution, this amount has climbed to some 380 ppm, and experts forecast that it will reach 450 ppm by mid century. The situation aggravates when considering the sink of carbon from the atmosphere back into the ground, which is a process that is predominantly reliant on forests and other living organisms consuming carbon material. In a way, a human being is a large sink of carbon, and a large consumer of it too. The problem is that most of the carbon we take in, we also release back after transforming it into energy. It is forests which become larger and larger as their carbon intake increases. When forests are cut down at the fast pace at which we are doing it, then we are affecting the demand side of the carbon equation, hence hampering the planet’s carrying capacity even further.
Prior to elaborating public policy suggestions, it is important to consider three non-constraints that are sometimes confused in the discussion about Climate Change.
First, as it has been stated above, there has always been and always will be carbon particles in the atmosphere. Moreover, there have been episodes in the Earth’s history when CO2 ppm has been far greater than it is now or will be during the rest of the century. Of course, there is a tipping point beyond which life as we know it, with large species of reptiles and mammals on the surface of the planet may not be possible. But life will not be extinguished and the life cycle of the planet will not terminate because of excess carbon emissions generated by humans. Again, it could be that human life is compromised by excess carbon particles, but the planet has proven to be self-sufficient at taking care of itself.
Second, and again related to the planet’s life cycle, there is sufficient evidence that there are temperature cycles of heating and cooling every 10,000 years called ice ages. Australian aborigines are believed to have survived the last five ice ages, as they are believed to have settled and roamed this land since some 60,000 years ago. So, a dramatic increase in atmospheric temperature that would trigger a massive melting of poles and glaciers, consequently bringing a surge in ocean levels flooding millions of square kilometers around the planet, both inhabited and uninhabited, would, in turn, force a sudden reduction in human behavior that generates emissions (think, for example, of oil fields being flooded, together with lowlands where rice and beef and sugarcane and soybean are grazed, all existing ocean ports being destroyed, and tens of millions of people in rich and poor countries being displaced or killed by hundred-meter waves all of a sudden). Although it sounds like a cataclysm, it is an event that can be predicted in the following way: there is a temperature tipping point beyond or after which ice melts or freezes. All ice that is warmed up and brought to a constant temperature above 0 ºC will become water. If such temperatures are achieved, then all ice in a particular region of the planet will melt irremediably and fairly quickly, not in a matter of years, but in a matter of weeks. In turn, this water surge around the planet will destroy existing vegetation but will promote the growth of new vegetation that, in the course of decades and centuries, will help sink carbon from the atmosphere, therefore reducing global temperatures, forcing ice caps to form and grow around the poles and in high altitude regions in the form of glaciers or lakes.
Third, it is important to refer to the thermodynamics principle of entropy that explains how energy will naturally tend to flow from higher to lower temperatures. Similarly, as this principle explains, it is impossible to convert 100% of the energy of a system into work. So, some of the energy will be liberated from the system in the form of heat. This means that no matter how much we try to reduce human-generated emissions, there will always be excess energy from human action. A growing population means a growing bulk of heat emissions that alter the planet’s temperature.
With these three non-constraints in mind, the idea is to create policy recommendations that would enhance the quality of the ecological cycle of life on the planet, so that living beings can thrive in greater happiness.
One, the measure of economic growth in GDP and dollar terms seems to be unsustainable. Although wealth can be created from intellectual innovation, industrial manufacturing still requires natural resources and the process of depletion of those resources has a limit. This means that not all countries can expect to have a per capita GDP like the United States or other rich countries. In order for that to happen, we would exhaust supplies of some raw materials essential for some of those industrial processes.
Two, population growth has been exponential, partly because quality of life and access to health systems allows humans to live far longer than we did only a century ago. This means that, even in poverty-stricken societies, human populations have grown dramatically, putting pressure on local natural resources for those communities to utilize.
Three, attempting to cut carbon emissions drastically could have a negative effect, both in terms of economic impact affecting the most vulnerable communities in their supply of basic goods and their sources of employment, as well as in terms of cost-effectiveness of the measure. This means that if a million dollars will be used to cut down emissions from a particular system, that will result on an economic surplus that might not reach an equivalent accrued social value.
Four, conducting intelligent investment in raising awareness about the problem and its solutions. The most cost-effective way to do this is investing in education, more concretely, in research, development and innovation of new procedures and technologies to improve the generation and consumption of energy, both as individuals as well as communities around the world. As a matter of illustration, we became aware of computers and how they could enrich our lives only when they became widespread in the 1990s. They only became widespread when further research and development that led to greater and faster innovation made them accessible for the masses. At constant prices, computers sold in 1980 would be unaffordable for a high percentage of the population that today owns or has access to computers. Similarly, in the 2000s, telecommunications suffered a similar boom as more money was put into research, development and innovation of new technologies, making them cheaper, better, faster, more accessible.
What will happen, then, when technologies to harvest renewable sources of energy will become as widespread as computers and telecommunications? Could we as policymakers provoke a coordinated effort in that direction? Today, renewable energies are as unaffordable as were computers in 1980 or do not exist like many telecommunication platforms prior to the turn of this century. Government spending can lead to greater research and development of innovative technologies to make energy a lot cheaper than it is today, but most importantly, more renewable, causing a natural shift from contaminating sources like coal and oil to less contaminating sources like solar and wind energy.
Five, implementing coordinated and restorative action towards ecosystems around the planet. It is believed that 95% of forests existing in the United States 400 years ago have disappeared. What would happen to the planet if we continue this trend in Africa, Latin America and South Asia? The question to ask is “what will we say the day we cut down the last tree?” as Jared Diamond provocatively asks in his book Collapse. To make sure we never get to that point, we should think in terms of planting more trees, repopulating forests, afforesting regions that have a greater vocation for forest growth, and preserving nature as an invaluable –in fact, priceless- treasure in our planet.
Six, promoting change in the way we deal with residues in human systems, from water to food rests to plastic containers, paper and metals, without forgetting other more toxic components like radioactive waste or low biodegradable materials, like cement. The principle is to change the mindset from “waste” to “input”, so that anything we discard today in the form or leftover or waste can be used in some other process as input, either through recycling or reusing or transforming.
Seven, raising global awareness at an international policy level about the positive externalities that nature offers in economic terms. To begin with, what would be the cost for human industries to purify and clean all the water and air we consume on a daily basis? In turn, this would become food for thought in terms of the negative externalities that represent the pollution from human behavior on the natural environment. If these elements are brought into an economic equation that can be of common agreement to policymakers with the help of the scientific community, supported on civil society organizations for promotion and spread of the word, then it would be expected that many more people will reduce their material consumption, or will reuse the things they buy in creative and non-contaminating ways, or even profit from the economic value of recycling many products that are gone to waste in large communities worldwide.
There are many instances that provoke a negative impact on our global ecosystem. Many forms of consumption, production, and disposal of essential and non-essential goods in our everyday lives take a minute toll on the ecosystem. All of them added together represent a burden to heavy to carry for the planet.
In accounting terms, we would say that the planet does not have the possibility to reach or maintain a “break-even quantity” (BEQ) of natural resources depleted and natural resources renewed by the planet itself. For example, it would take millions of years to replenish oil reserves. It can be said that it is not indispensable for life on the planet to have those reservoirs. It is precisely the opposite which could be a more determining factor: when was the last time that those fossil reserves were living organisms roaming the planet? Millions of years ago. As most living organisms grow and thrive with the energy from the sun, it can be said, as some experts have analyzed, that petroleum is sunlight that is kept in storage under the earth’s surface. When we transform it into carbon dioxide, we are pouring into the atmosphere the equivalent of ancient sunlight, as if the sun would suddenly warm up and produce more or warmer rays towards the Earth.
In ecological terms, the problem is referred to as carrying capacity: the planet is not being able to renew the resources that we are extracting from it, be it renewable or nonrenewable, such as forests or minerals.
So far, the problem is almost invisible –except for highly contaminated cities like Beijing, Los Angeles, or New Delhi- difficult to measure, and very hard to tell the extent of the consequences of this uniquely human action.
It is not uniquely human to generate carbon emissions. Every time a living organism expires, its decomposition entails releasing a fair amount of carbon into the atmosphere. This explains why, before the Industrial Revolution, it is said that as much as 280 particles of carbon per million were present in the atmosphere. It also includes volcanic eruptions and other forms of gaseous releases around the planet, like gas columns from the ocean floor or geysers.
Since the Industrial Revolution, this amount has climbed to some 380 ppm, and experts forecast that it will reach 450 ppm by mid century. The situation aggravates when considering the sink of carbon from the atmosphere back into the ground, which is a process that is predominantly reliant on forests and other living organisms consuming carbon material. In a way, a human being is a large sink of carbon, and a large consumer of it too. The problem is that most of the carbon we take in, we also release back after transforming it into energy. It is forests which become larger and larger as their carbon intake increases. When forests are cut down at the fast pace at which we are doing it, then we are affecting the demand side of the carbon equation, hence hampering the planet’s carrying capacity even further.
Prior to elaborating public policy suggestions, it is important to consider three non-constraints that are sometimes confused in the discussion about Climate Change.
First, as it has been stated above, there has always been and always will be carbon particles in the atmosphere. Moreover, there have been episodes in the Earth’s history when CO2 ppm has been far greater than it is now or will be during the rest of the century. Of course, there is a tipping point beyond which life as we know it, with large species of reptiles and mammals on the surface of the planet may not be possible. But life will not be extinguished and the life cycle of the planet will not terminate because of excess carbon emissions generated by humans. Again, it could be that human life is compromised by excess carbon particles, but the planet has proven to be self-sufficient at taking care of itself.
Second, and again related to the planet’s life cycle, there is sufficient evidence that there are temperature cycles of heating and cooling every 10,000 years called ice ages. Australian aborigines are believed to have survived the last five ice ages, as they are believed to have settled and roamed this land since some 60,000 years ago. So, a dramatic increase in atmospheric temperature that would trigger a massive melting of poles and glaciers, consequently bringing a surge in ocean levels flooding millions of square kilometers around the planet, both inhabited and uninhabited, would, in turn, force a sudden reduction in human behavior that generates emissions (think, for example, of oil fields being flooded, together with lowlands where rice and beef and sugarcane and soybean are grazed, all existing ocean ports being destroyed, and tens of millions of people in rich and poor countries being displaced or killed by hundred-meter waves all of a sudden). Although it sounds like a cataclysm, it is an event that can be predicted in the following way: there is a temperature tipping point beyond or after which ice melts or freezes. All ice that is warmed up and brought to a constant temperature above 0 ºC will become water. If such temperatures are achieved, then all ice in a particular region of the planet will melt irremediably and fairly quickly, not in a matter of years, but in a matter of weeks. In turn, this water surge around the planet will destroy existing vegetation but will promote the growth of new vegetation that, in the course of decades and centuries, will help sink carbon from the atmosphere, therefore reducing global temperatures, forcing ice caps to form and grow around the poles and in high altitude regions in the form of glaciers or lakes.
Third, it is important to refer to the thermodynamics principle of entropy that explains how energy will naturally tend to flow from higher to lower temperatures. Similarly, as this principle explains, it is impossible to convert 100% of the energy of a system into work. So, some of the energy will be liberated from the system in the form of heat. This means that no matter how much we try to reduce human-generated emissions, there will always be excess energy from human action. A growing population means a growing bulk of heat emissions that alter the planet’s temperature.
With these three non-constraints in mind, the idea is to create policy recommendations that would enhance the quality of the ecological cycle of life on the planet, so that living beings can thrive in greater happiness.
One, the measure of economic growth in GDP and dollar terms seems to be unsustainable. Although wealth can be created from intellectual innovation, industrial manufacturing still requires natural resources and the process of depletion of those resources has a limit. This means that not all countries can expect to have a per capita GDP like the United States or other rich countries. In order for that to happen, we would exhaust supplies of some raw materials essential for some of those industrial processes.
Two, population growth has been exponential, partly because quality of life and access to health systems allows humans to live far longer than we did only a century ago. This means that, even in poverty-stricken societies, human populations have grown dramatically, putting pressure on local natural resources for those communities to utilize.
Three, attempting to cut carbon emissions drastically could have a negative effect, both in terms of economic impact affecting the most vulnerable communities in their supply of basic goods and their sources of employment, as well as in terms of cost-effectiveness of the measure. This means that if a million dollars will be used to cut down emissions from a particular system, that will result on an economic surplus that might not reach an equivalent accrued social value.
Four, conducting intelligent investment in raising awareness about the problem and its solutions. The most cost-effective way to do this is investing in education, more concretely, in research, development and innovation of new procedures and technologies to improve the generation and consumption of energy, both as individuals as well as communities around the world. As a matter of illustration, we became aware of computers and how they could enrich our lives only when they became widespread in the 1990s. They only became widespread when further research and development that led to greater and faster innovation made them accessible for the masses. At constant prices, computers sold in 1980 would be unaffordable for a high percentage of the population that today owns or has access to computers. Similarly, in the 2000s, telecommunications suffered a similar boom as more money was put into research, development and innovation of new technologies, making them cheaper, better, faster, more accessible.
What will happen, then, when technologies to harvest renewable sources of energy will become as widespread as computers and telecommunications? Could we as policymakers provoke a coordinated effort in that direction? Today, renewable energies are as unaffordable as were computers in 1980 or do not exist like many telecommunication platforms prior to the turn of this century. Government spending can lead to greater research and development of innovative technologies to make energy a lot cheaper than it is today, but most importantly, more renewable, causing a natural shift from contaminating sources like coal and oil to less contaminating sources like solar and wind energy.
Five, implementing coordinated and restorative action towards ecosystems around the planet. It is believed that 95% of forests existing in the United States 400 years ago have disappeared. What would happen to the planet if we continue this trend in Africa, Latin America and South Asia? The question to ask is “what will we say the day we cut down the last tree?” as Jared Diamond provocatively asks in his book Collapse. To make sure we never get to that point, we should think in terms of planting more trees, repopulating forests, afforesting regions that have a greater vocation for forest growth, and preserving nature as an invaluable –in fact, priceless- treasure in our planet.
Six, promoting change in the way we deal with residues in human systems, from water to food rests to plastic containers, paper and metals, without forgetting other more toxic components like radioactive waste or low biodegradable materials, like cement. The principle is to change the mindset from “waste” to “input”, so that anything we discard today in the form or leftover or waste can be used in some other process as input, either through recycling or reusing or transforming.
Seven, raising global awareness at an international policy level about the positive externalities that nature offers in economic terms. To begin with, what would be the cost for human industries to purify and clean all the water and air we consume on a daily basis? In turn, this would become food for thought in terms of the negative externalities that represent the pollution from human behavior on the natural environment. If these elements are brought into an economic equation that can be of common agreement to policymakers with the help of the scientific community, supported on civil society organizations for promotion and spread of the word, then it would be expected that many more people will reduce their material consumption, or will reuse the things they buy in creative and non-contaminating ways, or even profit from the economic value of recycling many products that are gone to waste in large communities worldwide.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Climate Change: A Conflict Transformation Approach
Part I: Diagnosis
“Peace is the ability to transform conflicts creatively, empathically and nonviolently.” (Johan Galtung)
Conflict can be defined in very simple terms as an incompatibility of goals. These two definitions allow us to reach two preliminary conclusions: one, that Climate Change is a conflict; and two, that the transformation of this conflict may be reached by increasing degrees of peace at a global scale.
Regarding the former, the incompatibility seems to be relatively simple to identify: our depletion of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources has reached a level that does not allow nature to regenerate them for our use in a sustainable manner. The conflict can increase in complexity if we include all other living beings that are being pushed to extinction, mainly due to two overarching constraints: first, habitats of some endemic species are disappearing faster than inhabiting species can adapt or migrate; and second, pollution is altering the sanity of some marine and terrestrial ecosystems beyond species’ ability to cope with such contamination.
Part of the problem that Climate Change poses is the difficulty to portray the holistic dimension of the conflict. It has been reduced to a political conversation of a few international leaders that most likely will not be occupying those roles in ten years. We have also narrowed down the causes that have led to this conflict to the mere carbon emissions.
It is clear that combustion of fossil fuels is provoking a global effect on the planet. This offers two interesting propositions: first, that fossil fuels are carbon-rich residues of decayed organisms that lived on the planet millions of years ago. Those organisms grew, fed and reproduced using sunlight, pretty much in the same way we do today. Everything we eat is carbon-rich. Our bodies and those of all other living beings is carbon-rich, from a whale to a tree. If we burn a tree today, the smoke it generates is carbon dioxide (CO2) that goes into the atmosphere. So, burning hydrocarbons like petroleum and natural gas implies releasing very ancient sunlight that has been stored into the crust of the earth and underneath the ocean floors a very long time ago. In other words, carbon emissions are adding ancient sunlight into our present-day atmosphere. The design of the atmosphere precisely assists in the capture of temperature to make sure some of the light received from the sun remains and makes the planet a livable one.
The second proposition is that, if greenhouse gases (GHG, where CO2 is the most abundant one, but certainly not the only one and far from being the deadliest) remained at surface level instead of rising up into the atmosphere, many of us would not be here as we would have already died from toxic poisoning. The same way as we would not want our children to stay inside a closed garage where a combustion engine is on because it is life-threatening, it would also represent a fatal risk to live where millions of tons of toxic gases remained at the surface level where we live, walk and work.
Rhetorically, we could claim that if such would have been the case that GHG remain at surface level, the amount of toxic gas generated 100 years ago would have already forced us to find a solution to the problem, either transforming the sources of energy, the uses of energy, the efficiency of generating it from fossil fuels, the ability to sequester poisonous residues, or any other paradigmatic change that would have dealt with the situation permanently.
Today, the problem forces us to think that, in a way, those gases are remaining at surface level. The holistic implications of the amount of GHG poured into the environment is causing enormous pressure on the entire planet, and more critically, on the global ecosystem. This global ecosystem knows no boundaries and belongs to no one. As a matter of fact, no one has control over it in terms of conservation. Not even all the efforts to preserve it and enrich it and enlarge it are being effective, because the effort we are doing together as humankind is greater, therefore the accelerating degradation of the planetary environment as a whole.
Back to the partial problem of Climate Change is precisely this: we only speak about CO2 and other GHG. As a matter of fact, there are possible future scenarios in which the GHG spewed into clean air could be taken care of by nature itself. In order for this to happen, though, the global ecosystem would have to increase in size significantly.
Vegetation –forests in particular- are absorbing all the CO2 they can. More precisely, vegetation needs CO2 to grow and flourish. This means that, not only do forests purify the planet’s water and clean the planet’s air, but they also feed of it. It is a magnificent symbiosis despite the fact that our exhaust fumes are contaminating the air we all breathe.
The problem has two vectors: one is the amount we emit, and the other is nature’s capacity to absorb it. The equation is imbalanced, and the imbalance grows every single minute, because of two opposing trends: the volume of emissions is increasing while the forest coverage is decreasing. Even if emissions would keep on growing –as they in fact are- and there was abundant forest coverage worldwide, perhaps the balanced equation would cancel out the contamination, allowing us to move on into other matters, at least temporarily.
The problem of GHG is, then, bidirectional, because by cutting our forests we are increasing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. In pre-industrial times, it is calculated that the atmosphere held approximately 280 particles of carbon per million (ppm). Today, this number has climbed to 380, and forecasts estimate that, given the unwillingness and inability to reduce carbon emissions, this figure may reach 450 ppm by 2050 (Jeffrey Sachs, “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.”) As a mere illustration, the White Paper on Environment Policy published by the Chinese government in 2008 shows a commendable effort to transform the energy mix to renewable sources by 2050. They estimate their capability to transform up to 20% of the energy they will require 40 years from now. The remaining 80% will still come from hydrocarbons. To put this number into perspective, it does not mean that they will burn fossil fuels at 80% of today’s levels, but at 2050 levels, when China will have grown many times the size it has today. Therefore, 80% of carbon emissions in 2050 are equivalent to many times today’s emissions.
A similar scenario can be depicted for Russia, United States, India, Australia, and perhaps even the European Union, whose environmental policy on Climate Change is decades ahead of that of other continents.
Going back to the GHG problem, policymakers and international leaders have focused solely on this issue. This does not allow room to look up, pause and think about the underlying causes of the conflict. As a matter of illustration, some of the GHG is the residue of heat to stay warm during winter and to prepare food. Another larger portion of GHG is the residue of transportation of commodities and consumer goods from one place to the other, and to commute people from one city to another, and from home to work and back. Yet another portion of GHG is the residue of industrial manufacturing of many different things we buy. Much energy is generated worldwide from fossil fuel combustion. The energy is then used to manufacture textiles, electronic appliances, cement, vehicles, and basically all other product we purchase on our everyday lives.
Sadly, most of those goods are disposable, whether in one use or a few, whether they last a year or several. The problem is that we are not discarding them properly. Proper discarding of our residue is making sure it becomes input of some other process or system. For example, if all the plastic containers we throw away that are non-reusable and non-recyclable, were melted together to construct highway divisions to contain cars that drive out of control. This would even prevent deaths making life safer on our roads; or if all food leftovers could be sent to composters that will transform it into organic fertilizer. It is essential that we shift the way we think about garbage because this is one of the critical issues that makes Climate Change an incremental conflict. Exhaust fumes are the residues of combustion, and it is not feeding any other process or system. So it represents millions of tons of toxic gases that we are dumping into clean air, without any regard about who will deal with it, how and when.
Another part of the conflict is that the global atmosphere, like most of the planet’s ocean waters and the global ecosystem, belongs to no one. So, no one is responsible, no one is in charge of enforcing it preservation, and no one is punished for polluting the air that we all need to live. This paradox has been referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons, or the unsustainable condition that common goods that have no owner suffer, which leads them to exhaustion or extinction. If no one owns a river, a factory can dump toxic chemical waste into the river. This will harm the river’s ecosystem and biodiversity, and eventually will cause a severe and permanent damage on the ocean or lake where the river flows. Such is the case of the Gulf of Mexico, that has a dead zone along the United States coast as a result of millions of tons of toxic waste dumped upstream the Mississippi river by numerous factories.
This paradox can be extended into a different dimension that could allow for a greater comprehension of the dimension of the conflict of Climate Change. Let’s call it the Tragedy of the Unaware. A person buys a product unaware of how much residue was generated to produce it. She discards the product unaware of how it will be disposed of, either by the system in charge of dealing with garbage or by nature itself. For example, a person purchases a mobile phone, uses it until it is time to replace it, and gives it away or throws it away. Many cellular batteries end in garbage dumps where the battery will leak toxic residue for decades, contaminating the ground and possibly underground aquifers or nearby masses of water for a very long time.
A tentative question to raise is if that person is to blame or should be held liable for her unawareness. The answer is no, but she should. No, because her unawareness is partly the result of a producer willing to sell a product that does not observe quality controls in environmental terms, both in the residues generated to produce it, as well as in the residue it becomes once disposed of by the customer. This paradox is referred to as an information asymmetry. It is a behavioral principle that states that if a person had more information, her decision-making process may differ. For example, if a product had a label that disclosed the environmental impact the product has generated in its production process, and what is the expected environmental impact it will have when discarded, then the customer might not buy it. This could potentially lead many industries to bankruptcy. Instead, they are getting away with it by concealing some crucial information and this is leading the global environment to bankruptcy, or something equivalent.
A possible solution to this problem would be, as suggested by Daniel Goleman in “Ecological Intelligence,” that all producers of consumer goods be forced to disclose a precise measurement of environmental impact when producing a good, and that it offers clear instructions as to how to dispose of the good properly. The European Union has environmental policy that effectively makes obligatory for all producers to give consumers an instruction about how to return the product to the company when discarded, so the company itself deals with it properly. This may mean reusing, recycling, or refurbishing some components, or to classify residues in an environmentally sustainable manner.
A reflection is necessary at this point regarding humankind’s habits of consumption. The impact that our behavior is having on the global ecosystem is so large that we could say that we are working to earn money to spend it on garbage, whether in the form of GHG, a toxic chemical that is the residue of mining, or a plastic bottle that will probably find its way into the Eastern Garbage Patch, a floating garbage dump mainly of plastics that occupies an area twice the size of Texas on the Pacific Ocean. It is estimated that this garbage dump contains “three trillion pieces of plastic debris” (Thomas M. Kostigen, “You Are Here.”)
Paradoxically, we are not only generating a lot of garbage with our modern lifestyle, but we are not generating a proportional degree of happiness. It is revealing, from the Happy Planet Index (http://www.happyplanetindex.org/), that the happiest nations are not the richest. In fact, most of them are among the poorest. These two contradicting trends signify that the more we buy, the unhappier we become. Perhaps it is something that should lead us, as a civilization, to revise bad habits we have adopted in recent decades, when consumption became more important than happiness.
The complexity of the conflict of Climate Change increases to far greater levels when we stop to realize that the group of international leaders that concentrate most of the decision-making power for an effective transformation process are the political leaders of the so-called G-20, the 20 largest economies in the world, which, much to our dismay, are precisely the 20 that pollute and contaminate the most. This contamination is not only in GHG emissions, but also in resource depletion from other countries that, being poor, are led into commercial deals for their natural resources, be they minerals, forests, or arable land, which, in turn, is causing greater environmental degradation onto the planet’s ecosystem.
In other words, the G-20 has self-appointed itself to deal with a conflict that they have predominantly created, and the way to deal with the conflict is to self-regulate themselves. Does this sound like a sustainable system? Does this sound like a governance principle that would make geopolitics a more just system? Is this an enforcement of the rule of law? Is this bridging the divide between public opinion and public policy?
“Peace is the ability to transform conflicts creatively, empathically and nonviolently.” (Johan Galtung)
Conflict can be defined in very simple terms as an incompatibility of goals. These two definitions allow us to reach two preliminary conclusions: one, that Climate Change is a conflict; and two, that the transformation of this conflict may be reached by increasing degrees of peace at a global scale.
Regarding the former, the incompatibility seems to be relatively simple to identify: our depletion of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources has reached a level that does not allow nature to regenerate them for our use in a sustainable manner. The conflict can increase in complexity if we include all other living beings that are being pushed to extinction, mainly due to two overarching constraints: first, habitats of some endemic species are disappearing faster than inhabiting species can adapt or migrate; and second, pollution is altering the sanity of some marine and terrestrial ecosystems beyond species’ ability to cope with such contamination.
Part of the problem that Climate Change poses is the difficulty to portray the holistic dimension of the conflict. It has been reduced to a political conversation of a few international leaders that most likely will not be occupying those roles in ten years. We have also narrowed down the causes that have led to this conflict to the mere carbon emissions.
It is clear that combustion of fossil fuels is provoking a global effect on the planet. This offers two interesting propositions: first, that fossil fuels are carbon-rich residues of decayed organisms that lived on the planet millions of years ago. Those organisms grew, fed and reproduced using sunlight, pretty much in the same way we do today. Everything we eat is carbon-rich. Our bodies and those of all other living beings is carbon-rich, from a whale to a tree. If we burn a tree today, the smoke it generates is carbon dioxide (CO2) that goes into the atmosphere. So, burning hydrocarbons like petroleum and natural gas implies releasing very ancient sunlight that has been stored into the crust of the earth and underneath the ocean floors a very long time ago. In other words, carbon emissions are adding ancient sunlight into our present-day atmosphere. The design of the atmosphere precisely assists in the capture of temperature to make sure some of the light received from the sun remains and makes the planet a livable one.
The second proposition is that, if greenhouse gases (GHG, where CO2 is the most abundant one, but certainly not the only one and far from being the deadliest) remained at surface level instead of rising up into the atmosphere, many of us would not be here as we would have already died from toxic poisoning. The same way as we would not want our children to stay inside a closed garage where a combustion engine is on because it is life-threatening, it would also represent a fatal risk to live where millions of tons of toxic gases remained at the surface level where we live, walk and work.
Rhetorically, we could claim that if such would have been the case that GHG remain at surface level, the amount of toxic gas generated 100 years ago would have already forced us to find a solution to the problem, either transforming the sources of energy, the uses of energy, the efficiency of generating it from fossil fuels, the ability to sequester poisonous residues, or any other paradigmatic change that would have dealt with the situation permanently.
Today, the problem forces us to think that, in a way, those gases are remaining at surface level. The holistic implications of the amount of GHG poured into the environment is causing enormous pressure on the entire planet, and more critically, on the global ecosystem. This global ecosystem knows no boundaries and belongs to no one. As a matter of fact, no one has control over it in terms of conservation. Not even all the efforts to preserve it and enrich it and enlarge it are being effective, because the effort we are doing together as humankind is greater, therefore the accelerating degradation of the planetary environment as a whole.
Back to the partial problem of Climate Change is precisely this: we only speak about CO2 and other GHG. As a matter of fact, there are possible future scenarios in which the GHG spewed into clean air could be taken care of by nature itself. In order for this to happen, though, the global ecosystem would have to increase in size significantly.
Vegetation –forests in particular- are absorbing all the CO2 they can. More precisely, vegetation needs CO2 to grow and flourish. This means that, not only do forests purify the planet’s water and clean the planet’s air, but they also feed of it. It is a magnificent symbiosis despite the fact that our exhaust fumes are contaminating the air we all breathe.
The problem has two vectors: one is the amount we emit, and the other is nature’s capacity to absorb it. The equation is imbalanced, and the imbalance grows every single minute, because of two opposing trends: the volume of emissions is increasing while the forest coverage is decreasing. Even if emissions would keep on growing –as they in fact are- and there was abundant forest coverage worldwide, perhaps the balanced equation would cancel out the contamination, allowing us to move on into other matters, at least temporarily.
The problem of GHG is, then, bidirectional, because by cutting our forests we are increasing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. In pre-industrial times, it is calculated that the atmosphere held approximately 280 particles of carbon per million (ppm). Today, this number has climbed to 380, and forecasts estimate that, given the unwillingness and inability to reduce carbon emissions, this figure may reach 450 ppm by 2050 (Jeffrey Sachs, “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.”) As a mere illustration, the White Paper on Environment Policy published by the Chinese government in 2008 shows a commendable effort to transform the energy mix to renewable sources by 2050. They estimate their capability to transform up to 20% of the energy they will require 40 years from now. The remaining 80% will still come from hydrocarbons. To put this number into perspective, it does not mean that they will burn fossil fuels at 80% of today’s levels, but at 2050 levels, when China will have grown many times the size it has today. Therefore, 80% of carbon emissions in 2050 are equivalent to many times today’s emissions.
A similar scenario can be depicted for Russia, United States, India, Australia, and perhaps even the European Union, whose environmental policy on Climate Change is decades ahead of that of other continents.
Going back to the GHG problem, policymakers and international leaders have focused solely on this issue. This does not allow room to look up, pause and think about the underlying causes of the conflict. As a matter of illustration, some of the GHG is the residue of heat to stay warm during winter and to prepare food. Another larger portion of GHG is the residue of transportation of commodities and consumer goods from one place to the other, and to commute people from one city to another, and from home to work and back. Yet another portion of GHG is the residue of industrial manufacturing of many different things we buy. Much energy is generated worldwide from fossil fuel combustion. The energy is then used to manufacture textiles, electronic appliances, cement, vehicles, and basically all other product we purchase on our everyday lives.
Sadly, most of those goods are disposable, whether in one use or a few, whether they last a year or several. The problem is that we are not discarding them properly. Proper discarding of our residue is making sure it becomes input of some other process or system. For example, if all the plastic containers we throw away that are non-reusable and non-recyclable, were melted together to construct highway divisions to contain cars that drive out of control. This would even prevent deaths making life safer on our roads; or if all food leftovers could be sent to composters that will transform it into organic fertilizer. It is essential that we shift the way we think about garbage because this is one of the critical issues that makes Climate Change an incremental conflict. Exhaust fumes are the residues of combustion, and it is not feeding any other process or system. So it represents millions of tons of toxic gases that we are dumping into clean air, without any regard about who will deal with it, how and when.
Another part of the conflict is that the global atmosphere, like most of the planet’s ocean waters and the global ecosystem, belongs to no one. So, no one is responsible, no one is in charge of enforcing it preservation, and no one is punished for polluting the air that we all need to live. This paradox has been referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons, or the unsustainable condition that common goods that have no owner suffer, which leads them to exhaustion or extinction. If no one owns a river, a factory can dump toxic chemical waste into the river. This will harm the river’s ecosystem and biodiversity, and eventually will cause a severe and permanent damage on the ocean or lake where the river flows. Such is the case of the Gulf of Mexico, that has a dead zone along the United States coast as a result of millions of tons of toxic waste dumped upstream the Mississippi river by numerous factories.
This paradox can be extended into a different dimension that could allow for a greater comprehension of the dimension of the conflict of Climate Change. Let’s call it the Tragedy of the Unaware. A person buys a product unaware of how much residue was generated to produce it. She discards the product unaware of how it will be disposed of, either by the system in charge of dealing with garbage or by nature itself. For example, a person purchases a mobile phone, uses it until it is time to replace it, and gives it away or throws it away. Many cellular batteries end in garbage dumps where the battery will leak toxic residue for decades, contaminating the ground and possibly underground aquifers or nearby masses of water for a very long time.
A tentative question to raise is if that person is to blame or should be held liable for her unawareness. The answer is no, but she should. No, because her unawareness is partly the result of a producer willing to sell a product that does not observe quality controls in environmental terms, both in the residues generated to produce it, as well as in the residue it becomes once disposed of by the customer. This paradox is referred to as an information asymmetry. It is a behavioral principle that states that if a person had more information, her decision-making process may differ. For example, if a product had a label that disclosed the environmental impact the product has generated in its production process, and what is the expected environmental impact it will have when discarded, then the customer might not buy it. This could potentially lead many industries to bankruptcy. Instead, they are getting away with it by concealing some crucial information and this is leading the global environment to bankruptcy, or something equivalent.
A possible solution to this problem would be, as suggested by Daniel Goleman in “Ecological Intelligence,” that all producers of consumer goods be forced to disclose a precise measurement of environmental impact when producing a good, and that it offers clear instructions as to how to dispose of the good properly. The European Union has environmental policy that effectively makes obligatory for all producers to give consumers an instruction about how to return the product to the company when discarded, so the company itself deals with it properly. This may mean reusing, recycling, or refurbishing some components, or to classify residues in an environmentally sustainable manner.
A reflection is necessary at this point regarding humankind’s habits of consumption. The impact that our behavior is having on the global ecosystem is so large that we could say that we are working to earn money to spend it on garbage, whether in the form of GHG, a toxic chemical that is the residue of mining, or a plastic bottle that will probably find its way into the Eastern Garbage Patch, a floating garbage dump mainly of plastics that occupies an area twice the size of Texas on the Pacific Ocean. It is estimated that this garbage dump contains “three trillion pieces of plastic debris” (Thomas M. Kostigen, “You Are Here.”)
Paradoxically, we are not only generating a lot of garbage with our modern lifestyle, but we are not generating a proportional degree of happiness. It is revealing, from the Happy Planet Index (http://www.happyplanetindex.org/), that the happiest nations are not the richest. In fact, most of them are among the poorest. These two contradicting trends signify that the more we buy, the unhappier we become. Perhaps it is something that should lead us, as a civilization, to revise bad habits we have adopted in recent decades, when consumption became more important than happiness.
The complexity of the conflict of Climate Change increases to far greater levels when we stop to realize that the group of international leaders that concentrate most of the decision-making power for an effective transformation process are the political leaders of the so-called G-20, the 20 largest economies in the world, which, much to our dismay, are precisely the 20 that pollute and contaminate the most. This contamination is not only in GHG emissions, but also in resource depletion from other countries that, being poor, are led into commercial deals for their natural resources, be they minerals, forests, or arable land, which, in turn, is causing greater environmental degradation onto the planet’s ecosystem.
In other words, the G-20 has self-appointed itself to deal with a conflict that they have predominantly created, and the way to deal with the conflict is to self-regulate themselves. Does this sound like a sustainable system? Does this sound like a governance principle that would make geopolitics a more just system? Is this an enforcement of the rule of law? Is this bridging the divide between public opinion and public policy?
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