Everyone keeps saying, just look beyond the facade. Over the last several weeks in Thailand and now Cambodia I'm continually greeted with smiles, friendliness and good wishes, making me think how happy the people must be. But that’s not the message we get from colleagues living here, especially in Cambodia, who talk about the extreme poverty. Accordingly there are two types of people, the vast majority of extreme poor and the few extreme rich. I continually hear of that big hotel or condo owned by a general, another by a high government official or friend of the prime minister, even a rich Canadian Cambodian. They own many of the venues we wealthy tourists stay in, swim after a sweaty day of viewing millennia old ruins of civilizations past, or have supper. Personally, it’s all been really great, including when thinking about my distant past. What were my ancestors doing, some 4000 generations ago? I haven’t really a clue. Surely, too, there was Rome, Greece, China, Mexico and others - all with characteristic wars bracketing the achievements.
Covid-19 over the last 2-3 years made all the poverty worse here in Cambodia, as everywhere else, just as with the climate crisis. With the country’s borders closed, no tourism occurred; some perhaps many, even starved to death in the shadow of the great ancient structures. Before Covid some 2.5 million tourists per year were coming. Acquiring food is always the first task, then keeping healthy and accessing healthcare and education adds more to the struggle. While the rich invest in hotels, condos and large farms, the young people, especially girls, get denied education beyond primary; though while free the children often must start to bring in income for food and not burden the family for books and uniforms.
The country is well known for textile factories (of which many are still closed), making many of our shirts and shoes, making them cheap for us to acquire while the workers are paid only USD195 per month, and this only after repeated strikes and strife. The one party autocratic state, now aligning with China (though so few Chinese tourists yet), embraces no dissent. Jobs are searched for in neighbouring countries with now 2 million Cambodians living in Thailand. Continued human rights infractions here have resulted in sanctions and denied privileges from Western countries, thinking it will change autocratic minds. But such hypocrisy only makes life worse for the majority poor.
While travelling, enjoying, encountering other peoples and learning of their struggles and culture is fascinating, it all comes at a cost. But in Siem Reap, famous for its truly amazing ancient Khmer civilization ruins (see ENDSHOTS), there would be close to nothing for the common person without the growing arrival of tourists, still though at best only 50% of pre-COVID days.
Interesting, too, was learning about the ancient management of water, all so crucial to any livelihood, especially when people group together in villages and cities. The ancient Khmers had it really well worked out with large rain fed reservoirs and ways of transporting it. Water security is now high on global agendas as per the very recent UN water conference in New York City. It’s a big problem once again with billions living in precarious situations. Do read on for more about this and other environmental and health news in today’s Planetary Health Weekly (#13 of 2023).
Best, david
David Zakus, Editor and Publisher
SUNSET NEIGHBOURHOOD WALK
SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA
March 25, 2023
IN COMPLETE SOLIDARITY WITH UKRAINE SEEKING PEACE AND VICTORY
"AFTER THE BATTLE" Surgeon General I. Ishechenko in hospital (1942 by Artist: A.Volnenko) in: "The Way Artists See It" (1994) by A. Grando, founder and director of the Central Museum of Medicine of Ukraine in Kyiv; p. 140. ISBN
5-7707-6698-0
AND WITH THE BRAVE PROTESTERS IN IRAN (AND AFGHANISTAN)
ENDSHOTS OF ANCIENT KHMER CIVILIZATIONS NEAR SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA
CLIMATE & BIODIVERSITY CRISES UPDATES
First Global Water Conference in 50 Years Yields Hundreds of Pledges, Zero Checks
Australian water scarcity activist Mina Guli, center, after completing her 200th marathon outside UN headquarters on 22 March 2023.
Credit: Leonardo Muñoz/ AFP/ Getty Images
The first global water conference in almost half a century has concluded with the creation of a new UN envoy for water and hundreds of non-binding pledges that if fulfilled would edge the world towards universal access to clean water and sanitation. The three-day summit in New York spurred almost 700 commitments from local and national governments, non-profits and some businesses to a new Water Action Agenda, and progress on the hotchpotch of voluntary pledges will be monitored at future UN gatherings. A new scientific panel on water will also be created by the UN.
Overall, organizers said they were happy that governments and representatives from academia, industries, and non-profits had come together to discuss the often neglected topic of water and to commit billions of dollars to improving water security. But they conceded that more was needed than a set of voluntary commitments such as a formal global agreement, like the 2015 Paris climate accords and the 2022 Montreal biodiversity pact, as well as better data and an international finance mechanism to safeguard water supplies.
“We know our job is still not done and in fact we are falling behind in our task,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s senior minister and co-chair of a summit interactive dialogue. “But we know the job can be done. We must now treat water as a global common good to be protected collectively, in the interests of all nations.”
With no internationally binding agreement, experts fear that pledges could slide as it will be hard to hold governments, industry and financial institutions to account. More than 100 water experts from research institutions and civil society groups across five continents sent a letter to the UN general secretary slamming the lack of “accountability, rigour and ambition” at the conference, arguing that the paucity of scientific rigour and binding agreements will fail to secure the more just, resilient and sustainable water future urgently needed.
“The water action agenda should include diverse experiences, but too many communities are missing, and there’s nothing legally binding so how can we hold the countries to account?” added Omar. Omar was one of the few activists from Future of Africa to get a visa.
‘Like You’re in a Horror Movie’: Pollution Leaves New Zealand Wetlands Irreversibly Damaged
Lake Waikare, in the North Island region of Waikato, the dairy powerhouse of New Zealand, is one of the most polluted lakes in the country. Credit: Iain McGregor/ Stuff Limited
Ecologists say some bodies of water may already have passed the tipping points from which they may never recover.
As David Klee nosed his boat out into the channels of Whangamarino, he saw the birds were dying. Hundreds were already dead, floating, the sheen of their feathers dulling in the scum near the banks of the river. Others, he could tell, would be dead soon: flocks that should have been sent flapping in alarm by the boat’s passage sat placid, unmoving in the water. “This wetland is slowly dying around us,” Klee says. “We’ve seen these massive shifts occurring.” As he stands in the thick grass of the river shoreline, the yellow-brown water runs slow and opaque.
As New Zealand struggles to make meaningful improvements to its polluted waterways, ecologists say some bodies of water in the region are reaching – or may have already passed – tipping points from which they may never bounce back. “We’re living it now,” says Fish & Game’s chief executive, Corina Jordan. “These systems are really resilient. But what we’ve done is we’ve overloaded them to the point where they are finding it really difficult to recover.” The losses have left community, tribal and environmental groups furious, and grieving for the waterways that formed a crucial part of their communities for generations.
"This lake water may be unsafe to touch". “It’s not just the bird life and fisheries,” says Haydn Solomon of Ngāti Naho Trust. “The saddest part for us is to see the water die, if that makes sense. Because it’s the water that gives life.” In parts of the Waikato, that water has turned to poison. A formal warning has been erected.
Lake Waikare represents one of the furthest-gone examples, but across New Zealand, the country’s waterways are under threat. About 60% are unswimmable, 74% of freshwater fish are threatened or at risk of extinction and 95% of rivers flowing through pastoral land are contaminated by pollutants, effluent or excess nutrients. The existing problems are being exacerbated by the climate crisis, which causes heavier rainfalls, more floods and higher temperatures, all of which increase chances of toxic algal blooms and mass fish deaths. “Climate change will exacerbate some of the existing problems,” says Özkundakci. “There needs [to be] some discussion around what should be done.”
Pioneering Hybrid Air Vehicles to Boost Jobs and Supply Chain
Credit: Airlander
South Yorkshire’s Mayor Oliver Coppard and the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) have approved a package of investment and support for plans by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) to produce its pioneering new low carbon aircraft, Airlander 10, in Doncaster. HAV is a UK-based leader in sustainable aircraft technology and the Airlander 10 is an ultra-low emissions aircraft, capable of carrying 100 passengers or ten tonnes of freight. The loan investment, worth £7m will be used to support HAV to begin investing in facilities, talent and supply chains in South Yorkshire. HAV’s plans will create over 1,200 new high value and highly skilled jobs in new green technologies, and further jobs and opportunities from growth across the company’s supply chains. By 2026, the company aims to deliver the first completed orders to its customers and build 12 new Airlander 10 aircraft per year in Doncaster thereafter.
"As our neighbours across the Atlantic have proved, investing in the potential of green technologies will not only help us tackle the climate emergency, it will help us create high quality new jobs and grow a bigger, better economy which takes everyone with it. We have a world-class cluster of companies working at the cutting edge of advanced manufacturing and green technology, so I’m genuinely excited that we can support HAV in their ambitions to build a sustainable aviation cluster here in Doncaster.”
Airlander 10 will deliver 90% fewer per-passenger emissions in flight than traditional aircraft and aims to enable zero emissions operations by the end of the decade.
Patagonia’s Wild River Campaign and London’s ‘Repair Week’: The Sustainability Success Stories of the Week
Credit: Edie
As part of our Mission Possible campaign, edie brings you this weekly round-up of five of the best sustainable business success stories of the week. This series charts how businesses and sustainability professionals are working to achieve their ‘Mission Possible’ across the campaign’s five key pillars – energy, resources, infrastructure, mobility and business leadership.
1. ENERGY: Pacific nations commit to just transition away from fossil fuels
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a new synthesis report, summarizing its key findings in recent years as a document designed to be easier to digest for policymakers. An important finding is that the world is currently on track for at least 2.8C of warming against a pre-industrial baseline by 2100, far exceeding the Paris Agreement. Unless deep emissions cuts are made now, the IPCC reiterated, humanity faces a future in which vast swathes of the planet are ‘unliveable’. It is timely, then, that a group of six nations among those most vulnerable to physical climate risks have agreed to spearhead efforts to create a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, with the backing of as many regions and nations as possible.
2. RESOURCES: London celebrates 'repair week'
Did you know that, across Greater London, some £1.8bn worth of items that could have been repaired are thrown away each year? Commonly binned items include clothing, electronics, electricals and furniture. To help divert some of these items from landfill or even recycling, ReLondon has been hosting a week-long campaign spotlighting repair services and teaching people how to repair their own things. Events have covered everything from bike repair to sewing on buttons; maintaining guitars to upcycling textiles.
3. MOBILITY: Surrey County Council unveils plans for 10,000 on-street EV chargers
One-third of UK-based homeowners do not have a driveway or garage, which, in many cases, is deterring them from switching to an electric vehicle (EV) because they will not have somewhere to charge it. To help reach motorists who rely on on-street parking, Surrey County Council is aiming to deliver what it believes is the largest on-street charger rollout from a local authority in England. It has partnered with Connected Kerb to draw up plans for 10,000 new charging points, which would increase the national stock by a quarter. More than half of the new chargers should be in place by 2027.
4. THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: Construction of landmark timber-frame building begins in Helsinki
In the UK, the construction sector is the biggest user of non-renewable materials and the biggest producer of waste. This comes with a considerable carbon footprint, given the carbon intensity of making common building materials like concrete and steel. Wooden buildings are an innovative, and increasingly popular, choice for reducing embodied carbon. This week, edie received news of the first wooden elements being fitted in the new Katajanokan Laituri office block in Helsinki, Finland. The walls, floors, roofs, and stairs are made of cross-laminated timber of Finnish origin, supplied by Stora Enso. The building also features wooden elements in the façade. The building is due to be completed in summer 2024 and will play host to corporate offices, a hotel, a café, a restaurant and a conference facility. In total, it will use some 7,600 m3 of wood.
5. BUSINESS LEADERSHIP: Albania's Vjosa River declared a national park after Patagonia campaign
On 15 March, the Albanian Ministry of Tourism and Environment declared the Vjosa River – one of the continent’s last remaining large wild rivers – a national park. Having natural park status will give the Vjosa special protections and help to conserve the 1,100 species of animals that live in and around the river.
Survivor, Nurse, Advocate: Catherine Meng’anyi, from Kenya, shares How She’s Working to End Female Genital Mutilation in Her Lifetime
Catherine Meng'anyi, a nurse in Kenya. Credit: World Health Organization
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a harmful practice that affects 200 million women and girls alive today. While there has been a steady decline in FGM prevalence, still, an estimated 3 million girls and women are at risk of undergoing FGM every year. FGM has no health benefits, but one in four girls and women have experienced FGM performed by health workers. This points toward an alarming trend in the medicalization of this human rights violation.
Through Catherine's efforts, she has reached more than 25,000 people from her community by advocating against FGM in a culturally sensitive way. She has rescued more than 200 girls from FGM and early marriage. Catherine has worked under Kenya’s Ministry of Health closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) in adapting materials used to end FGM and applies the WHO’s person-centred approaches to FGM prevention and care. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and is currently undertaking a Masters in Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program.
Q: What is your advice to health workers? What can they do in their clinics and at community level?
People come to health workers for FGM, thinking that it’s much better than the traditional way, but FGM is a harmful tradition irrespective of how it’s done. It has been key to empower community health volunteers as role models in their communities who say no to FGM. We have them organize forums for girls to have a conversation about the dangers of FGM and early marriage.
I believe person-centered communication is the very best approach when trying to change a person’s values. Often it starts with value clarification for providers themselves to help them understand that what they thought was correct, like FGM, is actually wrong and harmful. Usually once someone understands the dangers of something, it's easy to change their mind.
I have always believed that having a conversation and understanding where a person is coming from is important. When a patient comes in for services, we, as health workers, need to start up a conversation about female genital mutilation and address the issue. Having this conversation also means getting solutions from the community themselves. That is the only way we are going to end FGM and early marriage.
Birth Control Options for Men are Advancing. Here’s How They Work.
A newly developed, on-demand birth control for males works by targeting sperm motility, preventing the sperm from swimming to a mature egg for fertilization. Credit: D. Phillips, Science Photo Library
Birth control options for men are advancing. Here's how they work. A newly developed, on-demand birth control for males works by targeting sperm motility, preventing the sperm from swimming to a mature egg for fertilization.
The U.S. Connection to Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill
Member of parliament from Bubulo constituency John Musira, dressed in an anti-gay gown, leaves the chambers in Kampala, Uganda, on Tuesday. Credit: Abubaker Lubowa/ Reuters
The global backlash to Uganda’s new anti-LGBT law, approved by the East African nation’s parliament Tuesday, has been scathing. Widely seen as one of the most extreme forms of anti-homosexuality legislation in the world, a draft version of the bill expands existing restrictions and punishments for same-sex activity, criminalizes doing business with LGBT rights groups and calls for the application of the death penalty in certain cases for gay sex carried out by “serial offenders.” The law is awaiting the assent of the country’s long-ruling President Yoweri Museveni, who only last week described homosexual people as “deviations from normal.”
Officials elsewhere are calling on Museveni to reconsider. “The passing of this discriminatory bill — probably among the worst of its kind in the world — is a deeply troubling development,” Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement. He added: “If the bill is signed into law, it will render lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Uganda criminals simply for existing, for being who they are. It could provide carte blanche for the systematic violation of nearly all of their human rights and serve to incite people against each other.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the bill “undermine fundamental human rights of all Ugandans and could reverse gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
The irony, though, is that the United States has also played another role in the situation. While right-wing Republican lawmakers in various U.S. states are currently engineering a new wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation, a slate of proselytizing, activist U.S. religious groups have for years campaigned in parts of Africa, especially in countries like Uganda, and sown the seeds for even more hard-line measures there.
Uganda is one of the 67 countries that criminalizes same-sex relations. According to the Agence France-Presse, governments in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have also all recently embarked on campaigns to suppress efforts to spread awareness about the LGBTQ community in their nations’ schools. While anti-LBGTQ attitudes have long existed in countries around the world, we are seeing in countries like Uganda the sharp end of a broader right-wing culture war over gender rights and identities.
Indigenous Children Suffer Most from Illegal Miners’ Amazon Invasion
A Yanomami Indigenous woman takes care of her malnourished child at the Santo Antônio children’s hospital in Boa Vista. Credit: Michael Dantas/ AFP/ Getty Images
The crisis – which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared a public health emergency in late January – is the third major tragedy to strike the Yanomami in the past 50 years. Large numbers of outsiders first began invading their mountainous domain in the early 1970s after the military dictatorship bulldozed a road through the region, bringing environmental destruction and epidemics that wiped out entire villages. Fiona Watson, a Survival International activist who has worked with the Yanomami for more than 30 years, said violence and disease killed an estimated 20% of the Indigenous group between 1987 and 1993. A global outcry forced government action. Tens of thousands of miners were evicted by security forces and the protected Yanomami Indigenous territory was created in 1992.
Since 2016, rising gold and cassiterite (a tin ore) prices have provoked another deadly invasion. The influx of illegal miners accelerated after the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took power in 2019 and torpedoed the Indigenous and environmental protection agencies preventing such criminals from running wild. Experts say the presence of more than 20,000 miners aggravated a longstanding health crisis in the far-flung enclave, where Yanomami hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists have lived for thousands of years.
Heavily armed miners commandeered dirt runways used by health teams and frightened off the few medical professionals caring for Yanomami health. They also scared off game and poisoned fish with mercury, and caused an explosion of malaria, with devastating consequences for malnourished Yanomami children. A local corruption racket compounded the problem by depriving thousands of Yanomami children of essential medicines such as the anti-worm treatment Albendazole.
“To get to the extent where Yanomami children are dying from starvation in one of the most bio-diverse … rainforests anywhere – where under normal circumstances they can live completely self-sufficiently and live really well – is horrendous and utterly criminal.”
African Policymakers Ask for More Data on Climate and Health
Traditional Maasai women collect water from a borehole at the drought response site, highlighting the impacts of drought relief, at Lositeti village in Matapato North, Kajiado County, Kenya. Credit: Thomas Mukoya/ Reuters
As extreme weather becomes the norm across the African continent, the health of vast swaths of the population is deteriorating. Malawi has been bombarded with cholera, fueled by flooding and weak sanitation systems. This week, the country was pummeled yet again by Cyclone Freddy, with catastrophic flash flooding expected to exacerbate the spread of the deadly bacteria. The Horn of Africa is also experiencing historic levels of a multiyear drought, leading to widespread malnutrition and all of the illnesses that accompany a body weakened by hunger. But the urgency with which health responders must work to protect the health of the communities they support across Africa has not always translated into policy. Some policymakers are confused about how they should handle the intersection of health and the climate crisis within their borders. Speaking at the Africa Health Agenda International Conference held in Kigali last week, health experts said policymakers are asking for more data on cost-effective strategies they can roll out.
Providing Evidence
“There's an enormous gap in terms of data in Africa and data generated by Africans,” said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. And it's not just about producing the evidence, but ensuring it’s produced in a way that promotes uptake in decision-making, Zulu said. Evidence previously generated has often focused on outlining the problems. And often policymakers are also left out of research design. They aren’t consulted nor included on advisory committees in those early days — and so researchers don’t seek answers to the questions those in government want answered, Zulu said. “The policymaker has to be involved in procreation,” he said. “They can't just be passive recipients of the evidence that we are generating.”
'A perfect storm'
The health threats emerging and thriving from the changes to the climate are “conspiring together to create a perfect storm,” said Dr. Sam Oti, a senior program specialist at Canada’s International Development Research Centre. “And unfortunately, for us in Africa, we are right at the eye of that storm.” Natural disasters can destroy water infrastructure leaching sewage into drinking water sources. Droughts lead to limited water for sanitation and can drive people to drink unsafe water. Vector-borne diseases are expected to move to new geographies exposing communities without prior immunity. As climate change alters ecosystems, animals might venture into areas they hadn’t before — which can lead to spillover of zoonotic diseases.
Microsoft's New AI can Simulate Anyone's Voice with 3 Seconds of Audio
An AI-generated. image of a person's silhouette. Credit: Ars Technica
Microsoft researchers announced a new text-to-speech AI model called VALL-E that can closely simulate a person's voice when given a three-second audio sample. Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone. Its creators speculate that VALL-E could be used for high-quality text-to-speech applications, speech editing where a recording of a person could be edited and changed from a text transcript (making them say something they originally didn't), and audio content creation when combined with other generative AI models like GPT-3.
Microsoft calls VALL-E a "neural codec language model," and it builds off of a technology called EnCodec, which Meta announced in October 2022. Unlike other text-to-speech methods that typically synthesize speech by manipulating waveforms, VALL-E generates discrete audio codec codes from text and acoustic prompts. It basically analyzes how a person sounds, breaks that information into discrete components (called "tokens") thanks to EnCodec, and uses training data to match what it "knows" about how that voice would sound if it spoke other phrases outside of the three-second sample. In addition to preserving a speaker's vocal timbre and emotional tone, VALL-E can also imitate the "acoustic environment" of the sample audio. For example, if the sample came from a telephone call, the audio output will simulate the acoustic and frequency properties of a telephone call in its synthesized output (that's a fancy way of saying it will sound like a telephone call, too). And Microsoft's samples (in the "Synthesis of Diversity" section) demonstrate that VALL-E can generate variations in voice tone by changing the random seed used in the generation process.
"Since VALL-E could synthesize speech that maintains speaker identity, it may carry potential risks in misuse of the model, such as spoofing voice identification or impersonating a specific speaker.
More than 500 years before Oxford University was founded, India's Nalanda University was home to nine million books and attracted 10,000 students from around the world. Founded in 427 CE, Nalanda is considered the world's first residential university, a sort of medieval Ivy League institution home to nine million books that attracted 10,000 students from across Eastern and Central Asia. They gathered here to learn medicine, logic, mathematics and – above all – Buddhist principles from some of the era's most revered scholars. As the Dalai Lama once stated: "The source of all the [Buddhist] knowledge we have, has come from Nalanda."
The liberal cultural and religious traditions that evolved under their reign would form the core of Nalanda's multidisciplinary academic curriculum, which blended intellectual Buddhism with a higher knowledge in different fields. The ancient Indian medical system of Ayurveda, which is rooted in nature-based healing methods, was widely taught at Nalanda and then migrated to other parts of India via alumni. Other Buddhist institutions drew inspiration from the campus' design of open courtyards enclosed by prayer halls and lecture rooms. And the stucco produced here influenced ecclesiastical art in Thailand, and metal art migrated from here to Tibet and the Malayan peninsula.
But perhaps Nalanda's most profound and lingering legacy is its achievements in mathematics and astronomy. Aryabhata, considered the father of Indian mathematics, is speculated to have headed the university in the 6th Century CE. "We believe that Aryabhata was the first to assign zero as a digit, a revolutionary concept, which simplified mathematical computations and helped evolve more complex avenues such as algebra and calculus," said Anuradha Mitra, a Kolkata-based professor of mathematics. "Without zero, we wouldn't have computers," she added. "He also did pioneering works in extracting square and cubic roots, and applications of trigonometrical functions to spherical geometry. He was also the first to attribute radiance of the moon to reflected sunlight." This work would profoundly influence the development of mathematics and astronomy in southern India and across the Arabian Peninsula.
The 1.5°C Business Playbook is supported and used by some of the most influential and innovative companies in the world with a combined yearly revenue of 1 trillion dollars.
Sections:
1. Carbon Law
2. Planetary Stewardship is the Future
3. Setting a Four-Pillar Climate Strategy
4. Become a Climate Leader - Commit to the 1.5°C Ambition
“Like big tobacco, the fossil fuel industry has known for decades what its activities mean. They mean the loss of human life and property – which the civil law should prevent but does not. The scientific evidence is that global heating, the natural and inevitable consequence of its actions, will cause the deaths of huge numbers of people. The criminal law should punish this but it does not. Nor does the law recognise a crime of ecocide to deter the destruction of the planet. The law works for the fossil fuel industry – but it does not work for us.”
Jolyon Maugham KC, the head of the Good Law Project and a key signatory of the declaration
La Niña can contribute to more hurricanes in the North Atlantic and drier conditions in the southern United States. Credit: NOAA, via Associated Press
What are El Niño and La Niña, exactly?
They are both intermittent climate phenomena that originate in the equatorial Pacific Ocean but can have wide-ranging effects on weather around the world. The two are related: They are the opposite phases of what is called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. Thus they can never occur simultaneously.
What's ENSO?
ENSO describes the fluctuation of two things in the equatorial Pacific: the surface temperature of the ocean and the pressure of the air above it. When sea-surface temperatures are above average by about 1 degree Fahrenheit or more, El Niño can develop. When temperatures are below average, La Niña can form. When the pressure is lower than normal in Tahiti and higher than normal in Darwin, conditions favor the development of El Niño. When the opposite occurs, La Niña may develop.
What are the effects?
The changes in atmospheric circulation can result in changes in weather in various parts of the world, what meteorologists call teleconnections. In El Niño, the jet stream tends to shift to the south. That can bring rainier, cooler conditions to much of the Southern United States, and warmer conditions to parts of the North. Elsewhere, El Niño can create warm, dry conditions in Asia, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent. Parts of Africa and South America can be affected as well. In La Niña, the jet stream shifts northward. That can lead to warm and dry conditions in the Southern United States, and cooler, wetter weather in parts of the North, especially the Pacific Northwest. Parts of Australia and Asia can be wetter than normal. La Niña can also lead to more hurricanes in the North Atlantic because there is typically less wind shear, the changes in wind speed and direction that can disrupt the structure of cyclonic storms as they form. It’s important to note that these are just typical effects. El Niño and La Niña sometimes don’t follow the expected patterns.
How to Stop an Ever-Rising Tide of Failure: A Playbook to Unseat Liberation Movements
From left: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa, President of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi, President of Botswana Mokgweetsi Masisi
Credit: Waldo Swiegers/ Bloomberg via Getty Images; Waldo Swiegers/ Bloomberg via Getty Images; EPA-EFE/ YURI KOCHETKOV/ POOL; EPA-EFE/ GIAN EHRENZELLER
There has been much head-scratching over the failure of President Cyril Ramaphosa to go beyond rhetoric and act decisively to deal with the country’s myriad challenges, from rolling blackouts to the rapid growth of a parallel mafia state. But Ramaphosa is not unique. He shares the inability to deal with major structural problems in governance and the economy with his fellow liberation leaders in Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania, and beyond. The same malaise has also, curiously, gripped Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, who liberated his country from liberators.
The answer lies in the fact that liberation movements are well suited to rhetoric and populist posturing. They can harangue you with war stories and summon demonising rhetoric, but when it comes to making decisions and acting on them with speed, they appear to sink in a molasses of indecision and rumination. Why does this pattern repeat itself? The answer is, of course, straightforward. By the time their countries hit economic and political tailwinds, it is the liberation movements’ own leaders who are in the thick of the state’s failures, infusing the state with corruption, rent-seeking, the appointment of cronies, and a culture of indifference to outcomes.
In fact, it’s so difficult to unseat liberation movements that even when they lose, as in Zimbabwe in 2008, they hang on to power, and eventually cut a deal for some sort of inclusive government. Then they learn from their mistakes and ensure the next time around they win handsomely with a package of measures including an overinflated voters’ roll, media suppression, manipulation of results and, again, the steady flow of money to oil the wheels of electoral behaviour and support.
There is hope
It comes from Angola. Its historic rival, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), has transitioned from Jonas Savimbi’s bellicose bush army to a sophisticated modern, youthful party with urban support. It managed a radical turnaround at the August poll, officially increasing its support from just under 27% to nearly 44%, and increasing its share of parliamentary seats by 39 to 90.
A good strategy requires you to:
Protect the vote; Develop a communications network independent of the government; Get civil society and at least a segment of the armed forces onside; Promote a narrative of change and of victory; Reduce the fear of retribution by offering a way for the corrupt to pay back their stolen money, thus ensuring that the elites won’t adopt radical tactics to stay put; Build a youth movement worthy of the legend.
June 22-23, 2023: Positive Zero Transport Futures and Mobility Network will host the Emerging Mobility Scholars Conference at the University of Toronto. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows across Canadian institutions are invited to join in person at the University of Toronto to exchange ideas and showcase research relative to mobility and climate change.
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