Nuclear Territory Forum

Nuclear Territory Forum poster

A reminder that the Intervention, strictly speaking, is not the only controversial Federal Government policy affecting Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory.

From the website:

Radioactive Rollout

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is continuing to roll out the Howard Government’s radioactive agenda for the Northern Territory.

After more than a year in office there has been no indication that the draconian NT waste dump laws, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, will be repealed. This is despite a clear election promise from the ALP to repeal and a Senate Inquiry that called for repeal in the first parliamentary sittings of 2009.

ALP Platform pledges to ‘establish a process for identifying suitable sites that is scientific, transparent, accountable, fair and allows access to appeal mechanisms.’ (ALP Platform 2007, Chapter 5). This is clearly in contrast to current ways of operating around the NT dump proposal.

Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson continues to ignore affected communities and national environment and health groups who have called for information and action from the government.

Australia is maintaining involvement in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) agreement, which asserts that countries exporting uranium accept ‘stewardship’ over the metal. This will inevitably increase pressure for high-level radioactive waste to be returned from overseas after being ‘leased’ for use in reactors.

There is a plethora of uranium exploration applications across the Territory and support from both Federal and Territory governments for increased exploitation in return for short- term profit.

Cuts to Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) and the increasing economic disadvantage in remote areas means many Aboriginal communities are feeling pressure to accept uranium projects on their country as a source of jobs and income- sometimes in exchange for essential infrastructure like roads and housing.

Community resistance

Despite pressure from both industry and government, communities in the NT continue to be at the forefront of a major struggle against expansion of the nuclear industry in Australia.

Successful community campaigns fought the uranium mine proposed for Jabiluka in Kakadu National Park.

Central Australian residents are currently mobilising against the uranium exploration project at Angela Pamela, 25 km south of Alice Springs in the town’s water catchment area.

There is continued and strong opposition to the planned federal radioactive waste dump, already over a year behind schedule.

It is important for national awareness and mobilisation to support communities directly targeted by the industry.

The Rudd Government must be held accountable for its radioactive rollout.

Come along and hear from inspiring Arrernte/Luritja author, poet and artist Mitch, who is fighting the federal radioactive waste dump proposed for her country.

CFP: Global Food Crisis

The US National Association of Practicing Anthropologists has just released a call for papers on the subject of the global food crisis.  Here are the details:

Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists
Sponsor: NAPA Bulletin, National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA)
Contact Information:

David A. Himmelgreen
Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Ave, SOC 107
Tampa FL 33620
Email: dhimmelg [at] cas.usf.edu

Description

The NAPA Bulletin welcomes submissions for a thematic issue on “Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists,” to be tentatively published in Spring 2010. NAPA Bulletin is the official publication for the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA), a section of the American Anthropological Association. Recently, a convergence of events including environmental threats (e.g., floods, droughts, frosts) and cost of fuel in the United States and around the globe has resulted in skyrocketing food prices throughout the world, leading to a global food crisis not seen in decades. The ensuing threats of hunger and food insecurity have caused civil strife and political instability in dozens of developing countries. In the United States and other industrialized countries, rising food prices has further eroded the buying capacity of consumers and threatened the ability of families to access nutritious food in sufficient quantity. While the increase in food prices have been felt by most Americans regardless of socio-economic status, low income families have been the most drastically affected. The effect of this trend in rising prices on food security is clearly seen by increases in the use of soup kitchens in majority of the major U.S. cities. This proposed NAPA volume will bring contributions from both practicing and applied anthropologists to examine how rising food prices are affecting peoples’ food choices, to discuss the way international and domestic food and energy policies are exacerbating the problem of hunger and food insecurity in both developing and industrialized nations, and to provide recommendation for addressing the global food crisis in the coming years. This CFP invites practicing and applied anthropologists and other social scientists with expertise in aspects of agriculture and food, especially as they relate to global food policies, structural adjustment programs, and the development of food assistance initiatives either within or outside the United States to contribute full-length articles (approximately 7,500 wordsto this proposed volume.

Please submit a 250 word abstract and 150 word biographical sketch to David Himmelgreen , no later than November 1, 2008.

From refugees to ‘envirogees’?

Scott Thill at Alternet has published an article on the social impact of climate change.  The article goes as far as coining a new term: ‘envirogee’.  The implication seems to be that ‘refugee’ has a certain amount of baggage, being intrinsically associated with political persecution.  We are entering an age, mainly due to climate change, but also because of other cheery current/future phenomena such as peak oil, in which the traditional definitions of refugee will need to change to retain relevance.  The article is certainly polemic in tone, but I think it does the job of provoking thought on what the world is going to look like in the not too distant future and how our understandings of human movement, human rights, national boundaries and so on.  Here’s an excerpt:

Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee.

It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. That light is crucial, because so far envirogees haven’t been fully recognized by those who certify the civil liberties of Earth’s various populations, whether that is the United Nations or local and national governments whose people are increasingly on the move for a whole new set of devastating reasons.

In short, immigration is about to enter a new phase, which resembles an old one with a 21st century twist. For thousands of years, humanity has fled across Earth’s surface fearing instability and in search of sustainability. But that resource war has kicked into overdrive thanks to our current climate crisis — a manufactured war with its own clock.

And the clock is ticking.

From earthquakes in China to cyclones in Myanmar to water rationing in Los Angeles, societies are shifting like their borders. And all the outcry over so-called illegal immigration neglects to answer one time-honored question: If the borders aren’t standing still, why should the people who live in their outlines do so? Especially when they’re under attack from catastrophic floods, fires, droughts and any number of other environmental dangers?

Right now, the 1951 Geneva Convention does not recognize the envirogee phenomenon, instead focusing on immigration as a result of political persecution. But then again, it was established over five decades ago when Earth’s climate was anything but a terrorist. But the Geneva Convention, like everything that must adapt or die, needs to mutate in time with the rest of the world and its hyperconsuming inhabitants in order to remain relevant in our still-new millennium.

‘Uncontacted Indians?!’ — contact an anthropologist!

The Courier-Mail here in Australia has just posted a story, Indian tribe discovered in Brazil, prompting (so far) two reporters to call me. Before I made too many statements on the radio, I thought I’d track down the original source for this report, as I found it improbable at best. So, after tracking down several variants, following it through Survival International’s website, I got to the original report from the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI, warning: Portuguese website), who I trust more than the Courier-Mail or the UK Daily Mail’s version (here).

The Daily Mail piece is perhaps the most ludicrous and misguided of the versions I’m linking to here (by a whisker), so I’ll sample from it. First, the caption to this photograph is: ‘Painted: In a thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian border, these tribespeople are thought never to have had any contact with the outside world.’

After the author, Michael Hanlon, helpfully translates the body language of the people in the picture as ‘Stay away,’ he writes:

The apparent aggression shown by these people is quite understandable. For they are members of one of Earth’s last uncontacted tribes, who live in the Envira region in the thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian frontier.

Thought never to have had any contact with the outside world, everything about these people is, and hopefully will remain, a mystery.

Another photo caption reads, ‘The tribespeople are likely to think the plane that took this photgraph is a spirit or large bird.’ And Hanlon waxes philosophical: ‘It is extraordinary to think that, in 2008, there remain about a hundred groups of people, scattered over the Earth, who know nothing of our world and we nothing of theirs, save a handful of brief encounters (emphasis added).’ Hanlon explains well enough why these groups might not want to be contacted: problems with loggers in Peru, miners, cattle ranchers, petroleum drilling, and ‘diseases like the common cold to which they have no resistance’ (the cold?!).

The global food crisis II

Following on from Nursel’s recent post, I’d like to draw readers to a recent New York Times article about the “global food crisis”. According to the article, rising commodities prices, especially fuel and food prices, are producing unprecedented stress and anger across the globe, resulting in unrest and even riots. The article includes disturbing descriptions of people in Haiti eating concoctions made in part from mud in order to still their hunger pains. It is worth being reminded that what is experienced as a bit of additional pain at the checkout for the world’s wealthy can be an issue of survival for the world’s poor.

The article states:

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

Significantly, the article also acknowledges the interconnectedness of the global economy in that rising prices have “pitted the globe’s poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations’ farm and environmental policies”. The production of biofuels putting upward pressure in prices is mentioned, though the competition between animals and humans for grains is not.

Given the likely future impact of rising fuel prices, climate change, the expansion of economies such as China and India on food production and prices, the fact that the situation appears already to be so bad is worrying indeed.

See also the NYT’s index of articles on food prices.

The Global Food Crisis

George Monbiot’s latest article ‘The Pleasures of the Flesh’ on 15 April 2008  is about the causes of the current global food crisis. Currently there are food crises in 37 countries. Monbiot says “the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%(1).” and according to the World Bank one hundred million people could become poorer by the high prices. Actually there is no scarcity of food; for example “at 2.1 bn tonnes, last year’s global grain harvest broke all records” and “it beat the previous year’s by almost 5%”.

A significant amount of food produced are used as biofuels; for instance according to the World Bank “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”. And according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), this year 2.13 bn tonnes is likely to be consumed, and only 1.01bn will feed people. Monbiot complains that now in the UK, all sellers of transport fuel have to mix fuel with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. He says: “In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate. “

Monbiot also discusses the other cause of the food crisis, which “is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer”. This year 100 m tonnes food will be used as biofuels, and a bigger amount, 760 m tonnes, will be used to feed animals. Since meat consumption in Asia and Latin America has been booming, and the UN estimates that the population will rise to 9bn by 2050, Monbiot tries to answer the question “What level of meat-eating would be sustainable?” and he says “ If you care about hunger, eat less meat”.

At the end of his article, George Monbiot says:

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food barely registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other.

Applying Anthropology in the Future: the future is now

I’m sure many of you have heard about Masdar, the ‘green city’ being built in Abu Dhabi.  For those of you that haven’t the city is touted as:

a world model of energy conservation with zero carbon emissions and zero waste. Compared to average urban levels, fossil fuel consumption will be reduced by 75%, water demand by 300% and waste production by 400%. Cycling and walking will be the most common means of travel.

Accoring to the city’s master plan, no one will be more than 200 meters from essential facilities, including shops selling locally grown produce. A fully automated, electric Personal Rapid Transit System will provide a flexible and comfortable alternative to private cars. A Light Railway Transport system will link the Masdar development to adjacent developments, the airport and in the future with the center of Abu Dhabi.

Through a micro-chip-like network of connections, developers plan to coalesce the expertise and resources to enable global technological breakthroughs in advanced energy technologies. There will be a university education and research center – the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (in partnership with MIT) – which will offer Masters and PhD programs in science and engineering disciplines focused on advanced energy and sustainability. Its research and educational institutions and partnerships will search for solutions to mankind’s most pressing problems: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development.

For the full story see –

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.feature/id/1497

While I applaud the effort to build more sustainable cities I recently came across an article which asks a provocative question; what impact will cities like Masdar have on cultural diversity?

If successful, Masdar City could act as a model for environmentally friendly urban planning and sustainable development. “Green cities,” such as Masdar, could become a future trend around the world. But are there unforeseen consequences for such initiatives? While the environmental advantages of promoting and constructing green cities are clear, such planning may also accelerate the homogenization of, and even destruction of, cultures around the world. Cultural diversity is currently in decline. Globalization and the dominance of Western (especially U.S.) economic and cultural practices have influenced and altered almost all regions of the world. Languages and cultural traditions are becoming extinct at greater rates than ever before.

For the full story see – http://www.wesleyanargus.com/article/5989

 

While there is arguably potential in the development of ‘green cities’ to accelerate cultural homogenization historically people have found an almost infinite number of ways to diversify and differentiate and I’m relatively confident this will  continue to be the case.  However, as planed cities ‘green cities’ offer anthropologists a unique opportunity/burden in influencing the future of culture and cultural diversity. 

It seems probable that governments and city planners will hire anthropological consultants to advise them on the design an implementation of ‘cultural spaces’ (for example) within ‘green cities’. So while anthropology has typically been directed at documenting, analysing and comparing culture, if we take on a role in helping to plan the cities of the future will we become instead the creators of culture? If so on model will we rely?  Will the ‘cultures’ anthropologists instil in these ‘green cities’ be based on notions of tradition, authenticity and existing diversity or on notions of progress and sustainability?  Ultimately will anthropologists ask what kind of cultures have there been or what kinds of cultures should/could there be?  And what are the potential benefits and risks associated with our choices now?

Biofuels and Indigenous Peoples

Thailand’s The Nation reports on the impact of biofuels on the world’s indigenous peoples.   Of particular concern is the impact of deforestation and monocropping that the demand for biofuels is producing. Here’s an excerpt:

Indonesian activist Abdon Nababan of the AMAN group said the impact of growing oil palm plantations had seriously hit indigenous people in his country – socially, culturally and ecologically.

“Often, human rights violations occur,” he said.

“The climate pact in Bali must take the rights of indigenous people into consideration more seriously than today. We cannot solve one problem by creating another problem,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairman of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

GFC’s Lovera said biofuel itself was good if implemented properly. But to promote biofuel for export or for emissions trading would cause huge consequences for indigenous communities and the ecology, he said.

“It will be okay if you promote biofuel in the right place, in communities to replace the use of fossil fuel, but not for export and without the effects on food security in the community, as fuel crops are also food crops. All these conditions could not be met in reality,” he said.

“Carbon trading could be done among real renewable energy industries like wind, tidal and solar, not in the ‘grey’ area like biofuel,” he said.

It’s an important point, I think, that biofuels are not necessarily bad, it’s just the way they’re being used.  I can imagine that on a particular scale they would be very useful, not only to reduce greenhouse emissions but to free certain communities from dependence on the oil economy.  I also think that production of biofuels from waste products of other industries is probably legitimate.  It is the trend towards biofuel crops that is pushing up the price of the world’s staple food products and leading to even greater pressure on forests than was previously the case.

Read the full article.

Jovan Maud

The dangers of biofuels

George Monbiot has just written a powerful article about the dangers of biofuels.   Amongst other things, he points out the enormous social impact they will have if agricultural land is increasingly used for vehicles during a time of unprecedented demand to produce food in the Third World.  Essentially, the increasing production of biofuels, unless strictly regulated, means that the cars of the rich will compete with the poor of the world for food — and market forces will determine that cars win this battle.

I see here shades of the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s, in which advanced agricultural techniques, the use of chemical fertilizers and machinery was sold to Third World farmers as a panacaea that would bring them out of a state of ‘underdevelopment’.  In effect, the benefits for the West were much greater.  Consumers benefitted from a drop in global food prices, but the Third World farmers encouraged to mass produce monocrops were left with large debts and diminishing returns on their harvests.  In a similar way, biofuels, presented as a Good Thing will turn out to be anything but for the global South.

Monbiot writes:

Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels “might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further.”(5) This week the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls “a very serious crisis”(6). Even when the price of food was low, 850 million people went hungry because they could not afford to buy it. With every increment in the price of flour or grain, several million more are pushed below the breadline.

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%(7). Biofuels aren’t entirely to blame – by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand – but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.

They turn away because biofuels offer a means of avoiding hard political choices. They create the impression that governments can cut carbon emissions and – as Ruth Kelly, the British transport secretary, announced last week(8) – keep expanding the transport networks. New figures show that British drivers puttered past the 500 billion kilometre mark for the first time last year(9). But it doesn’t matter: we just have to change the fuel we use. No one has to be confronted. The demands of the motoring lobby and the business groups clamouring for new infrastructure can be met. The people being pushed off their land remain unheard.

And, because they only apparently benefit the environment, but in fact produce much greater levels of greenhouse gases when deforestation and the fertilisers used to grow them are taken into account, they are going do more harm than good for everyone.

Grounding those narratives

Joana’s earlier post about uses of ICT in low-income communities emphasised the value of ethnographic research to challenge widely-held assumptions. When I read it I was reminded me of a post on Savage Minds from about the same time which referenced a Guardian article on British anthropologist Melissa Leach.

Working in the field of development studies, Leach makes clear her disdain for “bullshit research”: i.e. research which constructs grand narratives about a topic without being grounded in empirical, field-based research. In her opinion, this kind of research primarily serves to reinforce assumptions and stereotypes about a particular topic rather than accurately representing what is happening “on the ground”. I tend to agree that one of the primary virtues of good ethnographic work is to challenge and “talk back to” orthodoxies of various kinds by throwing up uncomfortable details “from the world”.  This was illustrated at a seminar I attended some time ago when a historian who was giving a paper threw up her hands in mock despair at yet another “but what about?” question from an anthropologist and exclaimed “That’s the problem with you anthropologists; you’re always ruining our nice neat theories!”

Leach also shows how ethnographic research can ruin a perfectly good master narrative:

“It’s easy,” she argues, “to come up with narratives about deforestation: all the world’s trees are disappearing fast; or, water scarcity will lead to water wars. But these are often contradicted by evidence on the ground about how environments are really changing.”

And the article lists another couple of examples:

Leach and her colleagues had shown how experts can reach wildly wrong conclusions if local knowledge and history are not taken into account. Their findings became a book, Misreading the African Landscape, and a film, Second Nature: Building Forests in West Africa’s Savannahs. A decade later, they are still being used to illustrate the power of anthropological methods.”It shaped my entire career,” she says. “A lot of my work since has been about trying to bring to life the knowledge of local people.”

Seven years later, she struck another blow for social anthropology. Leach and a local anthropologist in northern Nigeria uncovered the reasons for villagers’ fears about taking the polio vaccine, administered to them by the World Health Organisation. Polio was either not seen as a priority, they found, or it was perceived as a spiritual affliction that was impossible to prevent. Leach argued that the polio vaccination campaign was using resources that weakened, rather than strengthened, local primary care health systems.

Original article

See also this recent post on Leach on antropologi.info which also emphasises the value of “local knowledge”.