Lessons From A Volcano

This incredible image, taken by photographer Ragnar th. Sigurdsson, shows some of the lightning storms within the eruption. Go to his website and see some of his other amazing images and read The New York Times interview with him from Iceland.

It is there on our TVs, internet, facebook pages and if you or your money are unlucky enough to be lost in the travel chaos, it's all around you. So far, above Europe the ash cloud cannot really be seen, but it's effects are everywhere. 200 Billion dollars is lost already by airlines, but the knock-on effects throughout the business, entertainment and political spheres are rocketing around the world faster than...well faster than a parked jet airplane.

Here in South Africa on the front page of the nationwide newspaper Business Report are dire predictions about the possible effects to the World Cup of Soccer, held here in just over six weeks time -unless the cloud dissipates. The headline reads "Volcanic Ash Spreads Cloud Over World Cup".

The London Book Fair, where 46 South African authors were to fly and present their latest works will only see 13 of them. Flowers and fruit exporters to the EU, reliant upon regularly scheduled air freight, have seen millions of dollars in losses at a time when the economy is just emerging from The Great Recession.

Insurance companies are working overtime trying to gauge the effects of the aircraft grounding and whether something like this is covered in their policies. In the South African press this morning, Lloyds of London insurance spokesman Bart Nash said that "It's too early to tell what type of insurance contracts the Icelandic Volcano may trigger, however we are currently assesing any exposure we may have". The crisis is rocking every industry in the world.

So we are dealing with a large-scale environmental event, something that is immediately affecting the air, our commerce, and our very delicately balanced modern system of trade. Suddenly, some of the most wealthy and developed countries in the world lost their air travel overnight, and there is little to suggest that everything will quickly be fine again in the next day or two.

Like the big freeze in the UK at the beginning of this year, this crisis once again shows how at the mercy of the Earth our civilisation really is. There are talks of potential food shortages in parts of Europe, the collapse of the aviation fuel industry, and other, darker clouds on the horizon. So this is it, we must accept that in a world of instant messaging and air travel, our societies are so interconnected in every way that even a modest event like this one can have extreme consequences.

Now in the world of Global Warming, Climate Change and the many different extreme scenarios that may or may not be visited upon us, it would be wise for leaders and individuals to wake up to how delicate a high-wire we are on. If a really serious storm closed Europe, like it did around 11,000 years ago, and dropped dozens of meters of snow, which happened on a regular basis, any idea of "adaptation" would be laughed at. By today's reckoning, millions would die of hunger, economies would shut down, air travel would be crippled. Our world economy may crumble.

When we look and peer into the future, trying to see how our human activities may lead to an unbalancing of the systems that make our world a comfortable place to live, this volcano becomes a great tool to understand how these future environmental changes may affect us. Because our modern system of worldwide commerce is so susceptible to even small disruptions, we now know more about what effects a man-made environmental calamity might cause. It isn't pretty.

Never A Truer Word Spoken

A rare deforestion poster in Mulanje, Malawi. It says in Chichewa, "The Evil Of Fire" -Most of the forest in the country is gone to slash and burn agriculture and energy.

The wind is blowing an unseasonable mist over the city of Blantyre. It's cold, too cold for late summer, and the torrential rain of last week has only slightly abated. Here in Malawi's southern region, millions of people live from harvest to harvest, dependent completely on whether the rain comes at the right times of the year.

The planting starts in December, or these days November. It's anyone's guess and everyone's gamble. Monsanto maize, bought by farmers, who are supplied with the vital Monsanto fertlizer by the government, have but three short months where their yearly crop must grow, fruit and then dry in the fields. If too much or too little rain falls at one of these crucial parts of the process, the crop will be lost. This is hand-to-mouth living, right on the edge of survival, dependent soley upon the weather, and the weather has been getting unpredictable.

One of the most important mitigators of rainfall and run-off has been lost. Flying from Lilongwe, in the central region, down to Blantyre, in the south, the plane soars at only twenty thousand feet. Close enough to see that the forests that covered this whole country have been decimated. So gone are they that the uneducated observer would not believe they were ever here, and that the bare hills and valleys, cut by erosion, were ever thus.

So without forest to protect against torrential flooding, or to bring the rain, as outlined in this excellent study at Columbia University, the people of Malawi and virtually all of Africa are at the mercy of Climate Change.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner, writes in the New York Times Magazine this week about what can be done to Build a Green Economy, and how to make big sweeping changes in the way we pollute and control CO2 by simple processes that have already worked well in the United States. His is a welcome exploration of the issues around climate science and he gives a chilling and urgent reminder that responding to this crisis is not negotiable, no matter where on political spectrum your beliefs may lay.

Other climate thinkers like writer Paolo Bacigalupi, economist Nicholas Stern, and The Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown have all agreed that it is poor countries who are facing the worst hazards of climate change because of their precarious food security, and that this is just a taste of things to come for all of us.

If the indian monsoon did not come for one single year, the world's total food production would not be enough to feed all of the people who would go hungry. Bacigalupi's "contraction" would begin, and "growth" and "development" will become quaint terms, lost to our dwindling human population.

Brown believes that a contraction may already be under way, and that the current recession is as much about commodity prices and water resources in the face of global scarcity than it is about the price of oil, or the United States' credit market. The latter, says Brown, just fell because it was the most unstable, like the first to topple in a house of cards.

Krugman gives us a chance. He sees the obstacles to cleaning our air and greening our businesses and economy as surmountable, and carefully regulated carbon markets can successfully regulate pollution, be cost effective, and there is a lot in his article to suggest he is right. I certainly hope so.

There are millions of individual reasons here in Malawi to start reducing our greenhouse gas emmissions today, and hopefully part of that Cap and Trade system also sees third-world countries replanted with their lost forests as a way to further remove the carbon already in the atmosphere, bring back regular rainfall, and stop erosion. Maybe then not only will the rich emitting states enjoy good schooling, three meals a day, and the chance to live without fear of hunger.

What is it about Aid that is not working?

The view over Malawi's southern Lakeshore, from Zomba on the left, all the way to Cape Maclear on the right.


Water, development, health, HIV/AIDS, education, environmental degradation, poverty, more and more people working in development feel that all of these issues are inextricably linked together. It sounds like a huge pile of work and energy to solve them all at once, and many groups and governments around the world have been trying to tackle just a few, but the trillions of dollars poured into Africa through "aid" and other philanthropy that has clearly not worked shows us that the current status quo needs rethinking.

For anyone who is interested in extreme models of development, a more interesting model than the Pacific island of Bouganville could not be found. In the fascinating and uplifting documentary the Coconut Revolution, the BRA (Bouganville Revolutionary Army) uses sticks and then captured weapons to drive the company Rio Tinto off of their island, after it poisoned rivers, stole their land, and dug a massive open-pit mine in the rainforest. Australia bankrolled and trained the Papua New Gineau Government to fight the BRA, and imposed a total sea blockade for more than five years.

What happened is nothing less than miraculous. The islanders turned to local skills, in medicine, power generation and agriculture, and for the first time since colonialisation, the islanders became self sufficient. Their diets and health improved, and more than 50 small hydroelectric power stations gave them electricity to light their homes. In isolation the islanders even made diesel fuel for their cars out of coconut oil, fuel which is cleaner, safer and more efficient than that which used to be shipped in by sea.

In Africa today, any suggestion that Africans may develop best if simply left alone is anathema. The idea fo leaving starving people to die of drought and disease is simply not an option, but in her book Dead Aid, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo suggests that although assistance in the most critical times may be rendered, by and large all foreign aid assistance to Africa should be rethought. She examines countries in Africa that turned down Aid, and compares them with those that have welcomed it. Across the board the results are surprising, in all countries that accepted it, "overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid."

In Malawi, there is an urgent need for everything. Trees are being cleared to make way for a growing population that still has an exploding birthrate in one of Africa's most populous countries. The trees are gone and flooding off the steep hillsides wipes out villages and fields, taking lives and livelihoods. Children forced to work to help increase crop yeilds receive no education, and have children themselves when they are still in their teens, succumbing to AIDS and Malaria by their mid 40s. But in Malawi things are also different, here there is a concerted and real effort by the government to try and address these issues, but good development models can be hard to come by.

At least half the country's economy is supported by foreign governments through direct foreign aid. Aid that has increased only to see virtually every socioeconomic indicator decrease at the same time. So the status quo is not working, and people like the Bouganvillers and Dambisa Moyo have other suggestions. Maybe it's time we listened to them?

The Global Warming Debate

Sunflowers near Chimoio in Mozambique. A perfect example of how to make energy from the sun.


That there is a debate about the nature and severity of Global Warming is good. It keeps everyone on their toes, and makes sure that issues and discrepancies are dealt with as they come up. That is is dominated on one side by pseudo-science, factions that are supported by shadowy "research groups" funded by oil companies, and marginal right-wing proponents that shout loudly with few scientific facts is irrelevant. This debate needs to be played out in the public sphere and mind. Sadly, the whole point of the debate sometimes gets lost.

The main questions seem to be, are humans having an impact on the Earth's climate? Even from some of the more denialist camps, there is some acceptance that this is so. If you fart in a room too much, it does get a bit smelly. It is a direct human impact on the environment. So everyone can agree that at least on this very personal level direct impacts are not just possible but to be expected.

So, by throwing out billions of tons of pollutants like carbon dioxide and that oh-so-smelly gas methane, and cutting down the forests that remove these pollutants, most kindergarten classes would grasp the idea that we are indeed having an impact on our closed system (a much larger room, but finite still). The question is then, what impact are we having, and what impacts can we possibly avoid?

The Earth is a very complex system. Predicting the weather is only about 72% accurate, and that is on a day-to-day basis. A committed reader of this blog may have noticed that I have always stayed away from the term Global Warming, preferring the term Climate Change.

Some of the loudest denialist arguments come from people who suggest that change is the norm for our climate, so why bother changing our behavior? For the last ten thousand years, called the Holocene period, the Earth's crazy climactic behaviour mollified, and has remained within certain parameters that have allowed a stable climate, and many would suggest that it is this stability that allowed our civilization to develop. Before this short little period, things were rather unsavoury. Ice ages, mega-storms and floods, oceans rising and falling, droughts, -pretty much every one of them would spell doom for our way of life. So that sort of change should really be avoided.

So we have gotten a reprieve. So what has made our current system so stable? The truth is we don't know. What we do know is that with the loss of arctic sea ice, the melting of Greenland and other well-documented facts, things are headed for a change. Did we cause this? Scientists, thousands of them, believe we have had a hand in it. Do you need to prove that you can smell up a room?

Climate campaigners have proven that the Earth's climate is changing, and fought from a fringe movement in the 1970s and 80s. They have sharpened their tools by fighting congressmen like James Inhofe. He loves to burst the bubble of the climate change debate, but it's hard to take a man seriously who, according to PBS, has taken more than $572,000 in campaign contributions from big oil companies. That is more than most spokespeople get paid.

I am sure genuine believers exist on both sides, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, changing our behaviour to account for our role in climate change is pretty reasonable even if climate change is not the huge bugbear that many of us believe it to be.

Stop CO2 and other pollutants getting into the atmosphere, use fancy new technology to generate power, plant trees to help clean the air, make cleaner running cars so our kids have better air to breathe and our cities are not health hazards. These are do-able and when scaled up, create a lot of high-end jobs for an economy like the United Sates'. Our kids would be happier, and history will judge us well. Critics say it will cost money. Investing in our better future seems to be money well spent.

The downside of doing nothing, is not sustainable, and I don't mean just environmentally. Our ability to produce food and continue to live at the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to will both diminish. As we run out of oil, and we have not created these very green solutions to replace our energy needs, prices will go up, economies will suffer. Gradually at first. It could be called a recession. But a return to previous prosperity will not happen. My friend Paolo Bacigalupi, a futurist who's book The Windup Girl was chosen last year by Time Magazine as one of the best book of the year calls it a "Contraction". Business as usual becomes like a funeral dirge, driven by buy-out politics supported by the stranglehold of big energy companies and the politicians in their pockets.

The world is changing, China is rising, at the expense of her environment and politics. The only way the western world can succeed in stopping a contraction is to counter with another expansion. It makes health sense, it makes business sense, and it may even help slow Global Climate Change.

If some of the more dire climate predictions are right, a hollow "I told you so" by scientists and researchers will not cut it, but if they are wrong, and we have made a transition out of our coal and oil powered world, energizing our economy while finding a way to live in balance with our planet, then we all win.

Last week I was sitting with some friends who work in sustainable agriculture and green fuels. They were approached by an American industrialist, who is ready to spend one billion dollars supporting green industries like theirs. He made his money is gas and oil in the USA, and over drinks they asked him why he was changing his tack. "I am tired of my young daughter telling me what a big ugly polluter I am, how I am part of the problem, I have to get her off my back!". We are borrowing this place from our kids, and arguments about Global Warming aside, it's time we started acting like it.

Internship Position

Environmental Reporting Internship Available

Six months, part-time (no more then 20 hours a week) position working with international film maker and photographer Jeffrey Barbee. Possible travel to Africa, and the possibility of payment and a long-term position.

Location:

Internet Based, with the possibility of international travel.

When:

March to October 2010

Duties will include but not be limited to:

Proposal and grant writing for documentary films about the environment. The intern would help refine and present Barbee's proposals to companies, film festivals and funding organizations in both the US and Europe for these documentary films. Other duties will including selling already produced works that Barbee owns the rights to, and assist (if funding is found through the intern's endeavors) in the creation of the material, in Africa, Greenland and elsewhere.

This is an unpaid position that will give the intern experience in the real world of documentary film making as well as: proposals, marketing, selling, editing, presenting, shooting, and exhibiting environmental documentary reportage, writing and multi-media movies. However, IF the intern is successful at raising money above and beyond projected budgets, then the intern will receive a sizable percentage of those sales. So although the position is unpaid, there is the very real chance of income and the certainty of experience in this challenging work environment.

Applicants should have the following skills:

Complete computer competency, able to use skype and conferencing software, MS word, create basic web pages, use twitter, facebook and other social networking systems, a passing knowledge of Photoshop, and hopefully have and be able to use Final Cut Pro 7 on a fast HD-capable Apple computer.

Excellent phone skills.

A very good people person who can dress for movie premiers or a tough day in the bush.

Physically and (at least somewhat) emotionally fit.

Camping experience or an interest in it.

Patience

Persistence, someone who can hear "NO" and keep on going.

Investigative and interested in environmental issues.

Able to laugh easily, and plan on the spur of the moment.

A rough knowledge of all aspects of video reporting and production (or an interest in learning)

Travel Ready (passport, no criminal record etc.)

About the film maker:

(click the links for work examples)

Jeffrey Barbee is a photojournalist and film producer who works freelance with the New York Times, the BBC, The UK Guardian, NOS Tv Holland, Smithsonian, Global Post, RTL News, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, the LA Times, National Public Radio, and many others.

Barbee's long term work with the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting has been broadcast in specials on World Focus and PBS's other headline shows, Smithsonian Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and twelve US based newspapers and Magazines, and can be seen here.

He is the Africa At Large reporter and a share-holder in Global Post.

His images and stories have appeared in more than 47 different local and international publications, and his films and short news pieces have been broadcast in nine countries.

He is currently working on a project called Trading Trees.

He is based out of Johannesburg, South Africa.

A typical story for PBS in the USA about forests (as seen on PBS). LINK

Please feel free to contact Mr Barbee for more information

The End of The Day in Mozambique

Allan Schwarz tends to Baobab seedlings in his nursery at the Mezimbite Forestry Center, outside of Beira, Mozambique.

Its late in the day, and hot. Hot like only the tropics can get after rain. Daniel, Alan Schwarz's assistant manager at Mezimbite, sits across from me, panting in the heat.

He is hot. He lives here. He is not as hot as me. I have lived in the tropics for more than 15 years, but this is too much. I am used to Namibia, to the dry ridiculous heat of the desert. 128 degrees is not that unknown for me. Today its only a hundred. But the humidity. Daniel keeps saying, in his very limited English, "hoo-meeditay! ...ah!" while fanning himself with his T shirt.

He is the perfect companion for a hot, fly-covered tropical evening. Quiet, good natured, friendly and generous with his coffee and smiles. Portuguese is important here in Mozambique. Vital even. I wish mine was better so I could get to know him better. Daniel is clearly a man to be reckoned with. He is whip strong and commands respect, not only because he is in charge but because he leads from the front, always has a smile and treats everyone as his equal, even a hot, bothered tall American like me. He rises early and has the coffee going long before George the cook arrives in the morning at 7.

Today was the first day of sunshine and no rain. OK, some rain but generally not much, and little enough that I was able to meet and interview some of the people who work here at Mezimbite Forest Products. David (last name withheld) comes from the wrong side of the political chaos in Zimbabwe, and worked there as a carpenter. "I never knew how much it matters that we replace the forest that we are using for our wood and timber" he tells me in good English. "Before I would just use wood, even waste a lot of it," he pauses, and looks a bit sad, scratching his chin, "But here, I have learned that we must replace what we use," as a car drives by and I have to pause the video camera, he brightens, "but now we can even get paid for that too, and its important, because I have seen a lot of forest disappear."

I am surprisingly suffering from something I have just put my finger on, prickly heat. Its painful, and feels like I am sitting on a cactus. I remember hearing about it, and maybe searching back in my memory on a trip to Florida to see my aunt I have had this before. I was a very tempestuous and sickly child, so its not unlikely. But its harmless. It spreads like a rash, and if memory serves me (no internet here) it comes from the pores of the skin, or maybe the nerves, or something, but rest assured it is caused by heat, circulation, and something to do with sweat or the lack of it.

Daniel and I sit back, our feet covered in flies, excellent coffee in our hands, and enjoy each other's company. There are so few moments like this. Make no mistake, this has been one hell of a job, replete with fights, struggles and successes. But sometimes these special quiet times mean more than everything.

Tomorrow I go back to Johannesburg, to my life and my flat and the struggle to make it all work together, but for now we are uncomfortably content, working on something we love, Daniel and I, and hoping against hope that whatever we are doing will be a success.

Saving A Little, To Save a Lot

Domingo Chinamasa, 41, clears bush to plant more Cassava. This low-nutrition crop is easy to grow, but also strips the soil of nutrients. Thousands of hectares of cleared forest have been replanted with Cassava in central Mozambique, leaving the land unproductive after a few short years.


It is the fifth day of rain and wild weather here on the flood plain (emphasis on flood) near the Mozambiquan city of Beira. Its still wet, and rather miserable, but in between downpours I have been able to get into the bush and continue the work I am doing.

Allan Schwarz, who runs the Mezimbite Forest Center, is my host at the moment. If you see my last post, you will know that he is working to return forests to their original glory, and it is tough work.

Schwarz runs the largest nursery within the Miombo biome. What that means is that he has the largest selection of seedlings of indigenous tree species in more then ten African countries, including Congo, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Angola and Malawi.

Last night, as we drove through the rain back to his roadside camp and tree nursery, he explained that the work he does has been recognized around the world. Schwarz is often the keynote speaker at talks on sustainable forestry from Switzerland to the Americans, and yet his project is tiny compared to the destruction visited on the forests of southern Africa. "I do not even replant or save 1% of the forests just in Mozambique, much less the rest of Africa."

It's late, and the road is dark and wet. We dodge potholes and hard-to-see pedestrians. His back hurts from years of rough driving. He is clearly upset. "And yet my project is held up as a paragon of possibility! Its ridiculous! There is no political will, there is no social change happening, just a lot of lip service and empty promises."

He is right. From the man on whom so many depend for the hope of forests, his tirade rings too true. People simply don't care, and that means you, that means me. There is not enough change happening at a fast enough pace to keep up with the destruction. Our natural world is fragmenting, has been fragmented, and our local micro-climates already show the strain. But he is also wrong.

His mistake comes because he thinks, in his well of reality, that people do not care. But they do. There is a growing movement of people that are upset that forests are gone and not being replaced. There are folks working to plant trees, working to improve their environment all over the world, right now. I saw thousands of them in Copenhagen at the Climate Conference.

The numbers are growing, and at some point a critical threshold will be reached that pushes these concerns to the front pages of our newspapers, gets them debated in Congress and Parliaments in every country. By that time it may be too late. It may already be too late, but the truth is that as long as there are seed banks and small forests left, as long as the Allan Schwarzes of this world keep fighting to save just a little from what was so much, there will be the chance to change it all around.

Schwarz sees what little is being done, but future generations will look back at him and those who championed his causes and judge him for what huge things he succeeded in doing at a time when it was not fashionable, not supported and not valued.

From the muddy reaches of developing countries to the hills behind your house, people are struggling against un-imaginable odds to save little pieces, little forests, little stores of indigenous knowledge and genetic material. By saving these little places, by their small successes, they may eventually be saving our future.