Strange Small World — The line between Vietnam and Annapolis via Berry, Oz and the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Bruce

[There’s a new on-line newspaper called OZY being advertised pretty extensively on media such as US National Public Radio — The news feed is sort of interesting, and seems to have more than casual references to Australia, so I get its daily feed of articles. . .

Came across the story below about a woman that I’ve long admired, Jennifer Robinson, the attorney who has been a frequent defender of WikiLeaks.
Discovered that Jennifer Robinson is from Berry, New South Wales, Australia. (There’s an interesting article on Wikipedia about “Berry, New South Wales.” The population of Berry is about 1,500 people.). Berry also happens to be the hometown of 8 or 9 tourists that we were with on the small cruise boat that we enjoyed in Halong Bay, last year in Vietnam. So, ok, yes — coincidences do happen. . .

bp]

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/julian-assanges-consigliere/3682

Julian Assange’s Consigliere

By Pooja BhatiaNOV 142013

Whether or not you side with Assange, it’s hard to find fault with his lawyer.

Q: What do an Australian priest who has spoken out against child sexual abuse, a West Papuan activist who escaped from prison, and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange have in common?

A: That would be Jennifer Robinson, a 32-year-old Australian attorney who may well be the new face of human-rights law. The telegenic former Rhodes scholar has advocated on behalf of all of them in one way or another, and though you may not have heard of the priest or activist, Robinson sees commonalities: They’re dissidents, whistle-blowers and activists who’ve suffered for challenging power. Understanding that is a key to understanding why and how Robinson does what she does.

Her clients are dissidents, whistle-blowers and activists who’ve taken on power and suffered for it.

“All three of them, in their own ways, took on powerful interests to stand up for what is right,” says Robinson, now based in London, “and I am definitely compelled to help people to do that.”

Many are the photos and television interviews that show Robinson speaking on some aspect of the WikiLeaks case or at Assange’s side, toting a briefcase or sheaf of documents. Robinson is probably the organization’s longest-serving lawyer and has helped work on nearly every thread in its complex legal tangle, from financial blockades to a Swedish attempt to extradite Assange. These days, with Assange going on 18 months in an austere chamber in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, Robinson worries about his well-being and legal future. A sealed indictment of Assange likely lurks in some United States courtroom, and though Assange has been offered asylum in Ecuador, the British government probably wouldn’t let him out of the county. Things are “quite unfortunately at an impasse,” says Robinson.

Robinson has become a sort of consigliere to Assange. She visits him in the embassy every week or two to discuss legal issues and strategy and also, inevitably, to lend moral support and friendship. She was one of a small number of guests at his embassy birthday party, and says, “Julian’s one of my favorite people to debate with, actually. He’s incredibly smart and lots of fun to engage in debates with — cracking debates.”

Whether you think WikiLeaks performs a sacrosanct public function or unjustifiably endangers national interests, it would be hard to find fault with Robinson. “She works too hard?” hazards Eben Kirksey, an anthropologist who knows Robinson through their work on West Papua, after describing her as kind, down-to-earth, caring and charismatic.

Julian’s one of my favorite people to debate with, actually. He’s incredibly smart and lots of fun to engage in debates…

Enlarge

 

Robinson, who grew up as one of six siblings in a “big country family” in the tiny town of Berry, Australia, says her time in West Papua was formative. “It was probably the best thing I’ve ever done, to this day, and I can’t imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn’t done it,” she says. She was 21 when she volunteered for a legal organization in West Papua, which has been under Indonesian military rule since the 1960s. Estimates of the number of West Papuans killed since then range from 100,000 to 500,000; activists say that violence against West Papuans who advocate independence is common and that it could qualify as a genocide.

Jennifer Robinson during a TED Talk with Benny Wenda

Though she spoke fluent Indonesian at the time, Robinson was thrust into a situation she perhaps did not expect. The lawyers around her were subjected to constant ancaman, or threats, sometimes in person, sometimes by text message, sometimes clear, sometimes vague. One was shot at. Robinson’s work involved investigating extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions, including that of Benny Wenda, an activist imprisoned on false charges of killing a policeman. Robinson helped transport his wife and baby to a refugee camp in Papua New Guinea.

Watch Robinson at , talking about the West Papuan struggle for self-determination.

Then came the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed more than 200 people, including 88 Australians. Robinson’s university gave her “marching orders” back to Australia, much against her wishes. She felt “devastated and horribly guilty about leaving — because I could leave,” she says, but soon learned that Wenda had managed to escape from prison. Later, Robinson helped Wenda and his family get asylum in the United Kingdom. They now live in Oxford, and Robinson is a frequent visitor.

“She could have just let West Papua and this particular family slip by the wayside, but instead she’s maintained a personal relationship,” says Kirksey, “not only ensuring their legal right to be in the U.K., but that daily life is good for them.” Many foreigners “go to these conflict zones to get a notch on their CV or the latest exclusive story, but Jen hasn’t been like that. She’s very under the radar.”

Robinson is at her most fluid and passionate when speaking about her clients and causes. Last year, when TV news reporters interviewed her about being temporarily at London’s Heathrow Airport, Robinson took the opportunity to plug her work in West Papua, which “doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” and tried to shift focus to frontline activists: “If it’s happening to lawyers, who are one step removed, what’s happening to the activists and the people we defend?”

“She’s one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met,” says human-rights lawyer Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He’s worked with Robinson on WikiLeaks matters as well as many others. At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Ratner watched Robinson approach Attorney General Eric Holderand ask, as she tells it, “How do you think history will reflect upon your treatment of WikiLeaks and Assange?” Holder’s guard went up, and he wouldn’t answer when she asked whether the U.S. government intends to prosecute Assange.

Source: Renee Nowytarger

“That kind of courage,” says Ratner, “in public places to take people on and not back off, without screaming — just solid, strong — I haven’t really encountered that in someone so young.”

Robinson has a sunniness to her, a certain vivacity that you might not expect, given her intense workload, the threats she and her clients receive, and the high profile of her cases. Apparently she can carouse till the wee hours: “She’s Australian, and those people can stay out very late,” Ratner says. She also can surf, is adamant about physical exercise, and likes good food and drink. (“I get really knarky about bad food,” says Robinson. “And I’m sorry, but when you’re working on hard-core stuff all the time, you need a glass of wine now and then.”)

In 2011, Robinson took a position at a new organization called the Bertha Foundation. Her job is to meet with established human-rights lawyers around the world and connect them with ambitious potential protégés. The idea is to provide up-and-coming human-rights lawyers mentorship opportunities like the ones she had in West Papua.

As for what’s next? “We all ask ourselves that all the time,” says Ratner. Among the possibilities he’s envisioned: Robinson as a future prime minister of Australia, continuing as an activist lawyer, or becoming a rare queen’s counsel. Others could see her as head of Amnesty International or another human-rights defense organization.

For now, though, it’s obvious that Robinson derives fulfillment from her job. “This kind of work is fun!” she says. “It doesn’t mean it’s not hard or challenging or difficult, but it’s also really, really fun.” For her, working for human rights is not about being some sort of dour martyr, and she doesn’t understand why it’s sometimes made out to be.

Anyway, she adds, “You can’t take yourself too seriously. That’s a very Australian trait.”

Top Image Source: Stefan Wermuth/Corbis

Read more: Julian Assange’s Consigliere | Rising Stars | OZY

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Banking Regulation in Small — VERY Small — Islands: St. Helena

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Bruce

Forwarded by our friend Bob Conrich from the metropolis of Anguilla . . .

Begin forwarded message:

Wall Street Journal
Meet the Banking Regulator With an 8,000-Mile Commute

Mr. Duncan’s territory has a volcano, Napoleon’s empty tomb and no ATMs
By Max Colchester
June 15, 2015

One day in February, a British bank regulator caught the boat on his regular commute.

Six days later, Chris Duncan arrived at work on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The critical things were there: Napoleon Bonaparte’s empty tomb; Jonathan the tortoise; the stacks of cash to count in what may be the world’s smallest regulated financial system.

Mr. Duncan is Chairman of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of St. Helena, a rocky tropical isle 1,200 miles off Africa’s coast. Amid burgeoning global financial regulation, even tiny outposts need oversight, Mr. Duncan says.

Could the financial system of St. Helena, population about 4,600, ever implode? “Yes,” he says. Among other things, “the bank is on top of a volcano.”

St. Helena is a British Empire relic. Queen Elizabeth II has executive authority over it. The U.K. helps appoint the governor who administers its 47 square miles.

The only way to get there is by sea, as Mr. Duncan does every year. There isn’t cellphone reception. It has a currency—the St. Helena Pound—but no ATMs. It has one bank and, hence, needs a bank regulator.

Its residents, many of British, Asian or African origin call themselves “Saints.” Some are descendants of settlers who made it a stopover for sailing ships after its discovery, uninhabited,
in the 16th century. Today, big exports are fish and an expensive coffee said to have been enjoyed by Napoleon, who died there in exile and was later reburied in France.

The volcano that created the island is extinct, not much of a threat to its financial system. But St. Helena faces upheaval of another sort: It is preparing for a global debut when its first airport opens next year.

“We will be the newest tourist destination in the world,” says Niall O’Keeffe, chief executive for economic development at Enterprise St. Helena, which promotes investment into the island.

Touted attractions include picturesque walks, Napoleon’s first tomb and Jonathan, a giant tortoise that lives on a colonial-mansion lawn and may be 183 years old. The rocky coastline doesn’t offer white-sand beaches, but it is pleasantly warm year-round.

Mr. O’Keeffe hopes airplanes will bring visitors to invigorate an economy long reliant on U.K. subsidies. Mr. Duncan worries visitors may include shadier types, perhaps money launderers aiming to exploit the offshore banking system. “I have been preparing for the time,” he says, “when the potential eyes of criminals will come into focus on such a place.”

Thousands of miles north, from his house on England’s south coast, 67-year-old Mr. Duncan can oversee much of what happens at the island’s bank via computer.

But some things he just can’t see without going.

The credit-card system is limited, so cash prevails for many things. The Bank of St. Helena’s busiest day is Thursday, says Rosemary Bargo, its general manager. That is when fresh vegetables arrive and a queue snakes outside as customers withdraw cash.

“Most people go on Thursdays to avoid Fridays,” says Richard Wallis, who runs a St. Helena media company. On Fridays, airport-construction workers get paid, causing slightly longer lines in what some locals dub “Black Friday.”

It once hand-delivered pay envelopes to government workers, who then queued to deposit them back. Now there is online banking; the bank expects an ATM soon.

The bank closes at 3 p.m. “But on the upside, there’s rarely any reason to spend money after dark anyway,” says August Graham, a Briton who recently moved to the island.

There are several pubs and general stores, a cathedral, a hotel and two local radio stations. Popular programs include “Prime Time,” in which two math teachers discuss numerical conundrums and play number-related songs.

Mr. Duncan spent his career with British bank Barclays PLC working in West Africa, Japan and South Korea. Four years ago, as Mr. Duncan lined up at a lunch buffet for Barclays retirees, a former colleague suggested the St. Helena job.

After consulting a map, he applied. “In retirement,” he says, “I have refused to go to the golf course.”

Mr. Duncan takes his St. Helena trip in February, when British weather is inclement.

It is a regulatory odyssey. Flying the roughly 6,000 miles to South Africa, he boards a Royal Mail Ship for St. Helena, about 2,000 miles away. It boasts a fine galley, and sometimes passengers play cricket on deck. When it storms, he reads banking rules on his bunk.

Disembarking at the capital, Jamestown, he dons blazer and tie and embarks on a whirlwind tour. After checking in to a bed-and-breakfast, he meets the governor and bank management.

He goes on a radio phone-in show. “I get asked, ‘Is my money safe?’ and I say ‘Yes, it is.’ ”

Mr. Duncan takes a hands-on regulatory approach. He looks inside the bank’s Victorian-era vault and inspects the bank notes that make up its £500,000 customer cash reserves. He visits the pub for local gossip. “It’s important to really kick the tires.”

Outside a few minor procedural issues, he hasn’t found anything amiss.

More problematic is overseeing other islands under St. Helena’s jurisdiction, including Tristan da Cunha, an archipelago of about 300 residents 1,500 miles farther south.

The archipelago includes Inaccessible Island and has no bank branch. “I don’t know what they do there,” Mr. Duncan says, adding he can’t justify the cost of visiting and relies on emailed reports and phone calls. Sometimes, he says, the U.K. Foreign Office calls him to check if the islands are solvent.

He isn’t worried St. Helena’s government-owned bank is “too big to fail” but about how its 36 staff handle a visitor influx. He wants it to keep up with a global push to make banks safer, particularly by increasing money-laundering controls like identity checks.

Ms. Bargo, the bank manager, says its “Know Your Customer” protocols are up to scratch: “We know everyone on the Island.”

Off work, Mr. Duncan hikes, fishes and visits Jonathan. He soon ships back out: “A week for me is fine.”

…………………………………………………..

Posted in Development | Leave a comment

Old News from WaPo: Sesame Street Is Good Education

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Bruce

In the early 1970’s, my first job after Peace Corps was working with Bill Darnell and Allen Benn at their start-up company, UNCO, a group that was applying advanced analytical processes (a al “operations research”) to social systems, such as Job Corps Training Centers and Sesame Street. Bill (who had his degree in Educational Technology) was a great fan of Sesame Street, claiming that it had impacts on the young audience that were orders of magnitude greater than any other instructional system that he had ever studied or heard about.

Bill and Allen were both in awe of the consistency and rigor that Joan Ganz Cooney enforced on the program’s design in the early years of its production (the Children’s Television Workshop model,” described in Wikipedia).

from Monday’s Washington Post front page: <Economy> — check the politically charged (isn’t everything) comments on-line, at the link above.

Economy

Study: Kids can learn as much from ‘Sesame Street’ as from preschool

 

This is how Cookie Monster makes your kid smarter(2:58)

Jennifer Kotler Clarke, VP of research and evaluation at Sesame Workshop, breaks down the Biscotti Kid scene starring Cookie Monster, explaining what this skit teaches kids. (Lee Powell/The Washington Post)

By Jim Tankersley June 7 at 9:49 PM

NEW YORK — Most Americans born since the mid-1960s have a favorite “Sesame Street” skit. Jennifer Kotler Clarke watched hers on a black-and-white television set in her family’s Bronx apartment. There were two aliens: One of them had long arms that didn’t move, while the other had short, moving arms. The aliens wished to eat apples from a tree, and they succeeded, after a couple of minutes, by working together. “Let’s call this cooperation,” one of them says. “No,” the other replies, “let’s call it Shirley.”

Clarke grew up to be the show’s vice president for research and evaluation, and she has long believed that the program’s laughs and lessons stick with children. Now, landmark academic research appears to back her up.

The most authoritative study ever done on the impact of “Sesame Street,” to be released Monday, finds that the famous show on public TV has delivered lasting educational benefits to millions of American children — benefits as powerful as the ones children get from going to preschool.

The paper from the University of Maryland’s Melissa Kearney and Wellesley College’s Phillip Levine finds that the show has left children more likely to stay at the appropriate grade level for their age, an effect that is particularly pronounced among boys, African Americans and children who grow up in disadvantaged areas.

After “Sesame Street” was introduced, children living in places where its broadcast could be more readily received saw a 14 percent drop in their likelihood of being behind in school. Levine and Kearney note in their paper that a wide body of previous research has found that Head Start, the pre-kindergarten program for low-income Americans, delivers a similar benefit.

VIEW GRAPHIC
How to explain the impact of ‘Sesame Street’ to your kids

The researchers also say those effects probably come from “Sesame Street’s” focus on presenting viewers with an academic curriculum, heavy on reading and math, that would appear to have helped prepare children for school.

While it might seem implausible that a TV show could have such effects, the results build on Nixon-era government studies that found big short-term benefits in watching the show, along with years of focus-group studies by the team of academic researchers who help write “Sesame Street” scripts. Several outside researchers have reviewed the study, and none are known to have questioned its results.

The new findings offer comforting news for parents who put their children in front of public TV every day and/or memorized entire Elmo DVDs, unwittingly.

They also raise a provocative question, at a time when many lawmakers are pushing to expand spending on early-childhood education: Do kids need preschool if a TV show works just as well?

Yes, say the economists — and the “Sesame Street” educational team. Head Start, Kearney and Levine write, was designed to provide more than an academic boost: It delivers family support, medical and dental services, and development of emotional skills that help kids in social settings.

Levine and Kearney see the study as a clear lesson in the value of a (very cheap) mass-media complement to preschool. The potentially controversial implication they embrace from the study isn’t about early-childhood education. It’s about college, and the trend toward low-cost massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

“Sesame Street,” Levine and Kearney write, was the original MOOC. “If we can do this with ‘Sesame Street’ on television, we can potentially do this with all sorts of electronic communications,” Kearney said in an interview. “It’s encouraging because it means we might be able to make real progress in ways that are affordable and scalable.”

Sesame Street: ‘The Biscotti Kid'(5:04)

In this “Sesame Street” clip, Martial Arts Master takes on Cookie Monster as a student of Biscotti Karate. Can he train Cookie Monster to be The Biscotti Kid? (Sesame Street)

The research can’t say whether the show continues to deliver such high benefits to children, said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an economist at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy, who has read drafts of the paper and given feedback to the authors.

But, she said, it clearly shows “the importance of childhood education, which is really having its moment right now.”

Natural experiment

The economists’ study was brought to you, so to speak, by the letters U, H and F.

“Sesame Street” debuted in 1969 with a diverse cast of humans and brightly colored fuzzy Muppets, including Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, and, of course, Big Bird. It was the country’s first explicitly educational children’s program, and it was an immediate hit: In the early 1970s, one-third of all American toddlers watched it.

That’s a Super Bowl-level audience share. But it’s even more striking because another third of the nation’s toddlers couldn’t have watched the show if they wanted to — they didn’t have the right antenna to tune in to their local public television station.

This was well before the popularization of cable. TV broadcasts arrived over the air, on two different kinds of signals. The higher-quality signal was known as VHF, or Channels 1 to 13 on a standard TV set. The lower-quality signal was called UHF, and many households at that time were unable to tune it in. By a quirk of federal licensing, the public broadcasting channels in many major cities, including New York and Boston, aired on VHF channels, while others, including Los Angeles and Washington, aired on UHF.

As a result, about two-thirds of the nation’s households were able to watch “Sesame Street.” The other third weren’t.

Levine read about that divide in early 2014. He realized it was the sort of rare natural experiment that economists live for — two groups of people, divvied up by fate and the Federal Communications Commission, who could be compared over time to see whether there was a difference in their educational outcomes.

“It’s econometrically phenomenal,” he said, “because it’s essentially random, who had UHF and who had VHF.”

Levine and Kearney pinpointed which cities had high or low levels of access to the show. Then they used census data to track children from those cities throughout school, to see whether they were staying at grade level. They couldn’t study individual people, or even determine whether people in particular areas watched the show. But they found a large and statistically meaningful effect on the educational progress of children who, because of where they lived, were much more likely to be able to watch. (The effect appears to fade out before high school graduation, they also found.)

Shared experience

“Sesame Street” writers design their shows to have those effects.

From the start, the program rooted its scripts in an academic curriculum designed to help children — particularly low-income urban kids — prepare for school.

At first the writers focused on basics: letters, numbers, cooperation. Over the decades they expanded to incorporate research on what children needed to succeed in the classroom and in life. “We’re constantly changing the show, for good reasons,” said Rosemarie Truglio, the senior vice president of global educational content at Sesame Workshop.

When writers wanted to emphasize science learning, Truglio said in an interview in “Sesame Street” offices just off Central Park in Manhattan, they turned Super Grover into a one-Muppet embodiment of the scientific method.

When they realized that media-soaked children needed more help paying attention and controlling impulses, they decided to make an example out of Cookie Monster — the character who cannot resist sweets.

“As an educator, I was a little worried about that,” Truglio said. “Because he was going to fail, a lot.” Then she realized that was the point: Children needed to see someone struggle with the attention issues they struggle with, and try multiple techniques to overcome them. In one recent skit, modeled on the “Karate Kid” movies, Cookie Monster needs three tries to learn a special move from his sensei, but he finally masters listening with his whole body and, as a reward, he earns a cookie belt.

Which he eats.

“Sesame Street” researchers aggressively test their shows via focus groups to see what works. Their success, they said, rests on a simple formula that wraps education in entertainment, harnessing the power of human narrative. They said the approach could easily extend to college students — to MOOCs — as well as preschoolers.

“Storytelling is critical,” Clarke said. “If you organize information in storytelling, children are more likely to learn it. And adults are, too.”

Like Clarke, Kearney grew up loving “Sesame Street.” (Levine, her co-author, was of school age when the show hit the air.) Kearney remembers running through her house with her sisters, singing a Big Bird song about the alphabet. Her favorite character was the Count — the one who most resembled an economist.

Posted in Fun | Leave a comment

French minister: 2015 climate deal must not require approval by US Congress

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Bruce

from the website of US News and World Report: <http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/06/01/european-oil-and-gas-majors-call-for-carbon-price>

French minister: 2015 climate deal must take a form that doesn’t need approval by US Congress

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius talks to delegates during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, Monday, June 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
Associated Press

June 1, 2015 | 12:57 p.m. EDT+ More

By SYLVIE CORBET and KARL RITTER, Associated Press

BONN, Germany (AP) — The global climate agreement being negotiated this year must be worded in such a way that it doesn’t require approval by the U.S. Congress, the French foreign minister said Monday.

Laurent Fabius told African delegates at U.N. climate talks in Bonn that “we know the politics in the U.S. Whether we like it or not, if it comes to the Congress, they will refuse.”

If negotiators follow his plan, that would exclude an international treaty that has legally-binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions — something some countries still insist on but which would have no chance of being ratified by the Republican-controlled Congress.

“We must find a formula which is valuable for everybody and valuable for the U.S. without going to the Congress,” said Fabius, who will host the U.N. climate summit in Paris in December where the new agreement is supposed to be adopted.

Those pushing for a legally binding deal in Paris include the 28-nation European Union and small island nations who fear being wiped out by rising seas.

Amjad Abdulla, a Maldives delegate who is the chief negotiator for the small-island group, said while the group still wants a binding agreement “I think it’s important that we get everyone on board.”

“We are still looking into options,” he said.

One possible outcome in Paris is a deal in which some elements are binding but not the emissions targets set by individual countries.

The Obama administration has pledged to reduce U.S. emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said he was “completely sure that we will have an agreement in Paris,” despite the complex political situation in the U.S.

Jennifer Morgan, a climate policy expert at the World Resources Institute, said it was encouraging that Fabius was raising the legal issue now so it can be dealt with before the Paris conference.

“It’s a sign that he’s really pushing countries to come to terms with what the agreement can and cannot be,” she said.

Negotiators also need to decide how to differentiate between what rich and poor countries should do to fight climate change, and how to verify that countries are doing what they say they would.

The main goal for the two-week session in Bonn that began Monday is to shorten the sprawling climate change negotiating text.

Ahead of the meeting, six European oil and gas companies called for a global price on carbon.

In a letter to Fabius and U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, the chief executives of Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Eni, Total, Statoil and the BG Group said carbon markets should be introduced around the world and eventually linked into an international system.

Carbon markets set limits on the pollution a company can release and allow them to trade emission permits using the market to set the price.

“Our companies would like to open direct dialogue with the U.N. and willing governments,” the companies said.

Some environmental groups were suspicious of the letter, with Greenpeace calling it a “smokescreen,” and the role carbon markets will play in the Paris agreement is still unclear.

“In the long term, they have the wrong business model. And that’s something they have to acknowledge,” said Martin Kaiser, a Greenpeace climate policy expert.

____

Ritter reported from Stockholm.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Posted in Climate Change, Development, Governance | Leave a comment

FORGOTTEN FORESTRY INFORMATION OF PUERTO RICO

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Bruce

Frank Wadsworth’s useful blog on things forestal in the insular Caribbean has this valuable review of information in back issues of the “Caribbean Forester.”

frankhwadsworth's avatarFrank H. Wadsworth

FORGOTTEN FORESTRY INFORMATION OF PUERTO RICO

Frank H. Wadsworth

8-24-2014

Volunteer, International Institute of Tropical Forestry

Now that the island is more than half covered with forests and we are having an unprecedented number of students searching for the ecology of nature in Puerto Rico there is an unexpected fundamental source of information about the trees and forests that appeared between 1940 and 1964.  It was also a period in which the objectives were different. Reservation of abandoned farmland called for reforestation. It called for trees propagated, adapted, fast growing, and productive of useful woods.

Tree propagation in nurseries rose to 9 million trees per year, and in a 9-year period more than 29 million trees were planted.  The number of tree species used was 500, 190 natives and 310 introduced species. An array of sites throughout the island was included, making the findings of interest almost everywhere. Much was…

View original post 480 more words

Posted in Conservation, Information, Resource Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

The US Bloom is off the Rose of Globalization

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Bruce

from the Sunday Business section of the Washington Post: <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/reconsidering-the-value-of-globalization/2015/04/24/7b5425c2-e82e-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html>

This analysis, however, does not hold for developing countries, especially small islands, who remain very dependent on overseas trade issues like natural resources (fish, alumina), tourism, and offshore financial processing of various sorts.

Posted in Development, Finance Services | Leave a comment

Jean Wiener Islands and Island Nations 2015 Goldman Prize Recipient

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Bruce

From the Goldman Prize web site: <http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/jean-wiener/>

Jean Wiener

Islands and Island Nations 2015 Goldman Prize Recipient

In a country plagued by extreme poverty and political instability, Jean Wiener led community efforts to establish the nation’s first Marine Protected Areas by empowering Haitians to see the long-term value in sustainably managing fisheries and mangrove forests.

Haiti is home to an incredibly diverse array of marine life, housed in mangrove forests and coastal reefs. It is also the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living in poverty. Natural disasters and political instability have further hampered the nation’s ability to create meaningful economic opportunities for its citizens.

Driven by extreme poverty, many Haitians have resorted to overfishing. Fish stocks have been further decimated as locals cut down mangrove trees—key habitat for young fish—to illegally make and sell charcoal. Others have turned to harvesting coral reefs, which also provide protection and shelter for fish, for construction material such as rocks and lime. The deforestation of coastal mangroves brings more cause for alarm: The trees are known to sequester carbon at a rate five times greater than tropical rainforests and protect coastlines from storm surges, making their destruction a further threat to the future of an island nation already vulnerable to climate change.

Growing up in Haiti, Jean Wiener relished family trips to the beach, which would typically end with his parents struggling to pull him away from the water when it was time to go home. To the young boy, swimming in the Haitian coast felt like swimming in an aquarium, with beautiful coral reefs and vibrant colors. Wiener’s parents had plans for him to become a doctor and sent him to pursue a medical education in the United States. During his studies, he reconnected with his childhood love for the ocean and ended up with a degree in marine biology instead.

He returned to Haiti in 1989 and began working in the science department at a local school. While Wiener had seen signs of the damaged marine wildlife during his visits home, he now fully realized the serious extent of the toll the ecosystem had taken from unchecked exploitation. He frequently heard stories from local fishermen of how much harder it was to find fish. “We used to be able to fish for a half day and feed our family for two weeks,” they said. “Now we fish for two weeks and feed our family for a half day.” Determined to restore the marine wildlife of his childhood and bring sustainable economic opportunities for the people of Haiti, Wiener started the Foundation for the Protection of Marine Biodiversity (FoProBiM)in 1992.

Wiener immediately set out to create opportunities for communities to help themselves. Core to FoProBiM’s work was for villagers to see beyond the short-term gains from overfishing and mangrove harvesting. Wiener not only created tools to help communities create promising livelihoods through small-scale enterprises such as tree nurseries and beekeeping; he engaged them in paid research work and mangrove restoration and helped them see that protecting fisheries, coral reefs and mangrove forests today will strengthen their future and the country’s long-term sustainability.

Recognizing that Haiti was the only country in the Caribbean without any official Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), Wiener brought together coastal communities and government officials to identify key areas for protection while supporting local needs. He trained local people to conduct biodiversity assessments, which ended up being essential in identifying boundaries and priority locations for MPAs.

His work paid off in July 2013, when Haiti’s government announced the country’s first MPA on the island’s southwestern coast, followed by a second in December that year on the island’s northeast coast. In doing so, Wiener had to overcome the seemingly insurmountable challenge of conducting outreach and building support in a constant stream of changing government officials. He would pour weeks and months into building relationships with key ministers and officials, only to have office holders change months later.

Wiener is now working to involve local communities in the successful implementation and management of the two MPAs to ensure they don’t end up as “paper parks.” He also hopes to develop a broader system of Marine Protected Areas throughout the rest of the country by assisting other communities with MPA proposals. Key to his success will be securing funding for the MPAs’ implementation and enforcement of marine protection laws.

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For Our Friend Sherry: “The Giant Rats That Save Lives”

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Bruce

from Sunday, 19 April, 2015, NY TImes Op Ed by Nicolas Kristof . . . [This is especially for Sherry, who served one of her dozen-and-a-half “Doctors Without Borders” tours in Angola, where she described her entire tour as “preparing small kids who had their legs blown off from land mines for evacuation,” and who in recent years has worked in and supervised several different drug-resistant TB campaigns, ranging from Siberia to Mumbai, and now Swaziland. Read to the end of the story to see why the TB issue is important.. . . bp]

SundayReview | OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Giant Rats That Save Lives

APRIL 18, 2015

By Adam B. Ellick and Catherine Spangler Nicholas Kristof

MALANJE, Angola — I’M walking in a minefield here in rural Angola, tailing a monster rat. This is a Gambian pouched rat, a breed almost 3 feet from nose to tail, the kind of rat that gives cats nightmares. Yet this rat is a genius as well as a giant, for it has learned how to detect land mines by scent — and it’s doing its best to save humans like me from blowing up. These rodent mine detectors have been dubbed HeroRats, and when you’re in a minefield with one that seems about right. You’re very respectful, and you just hope this HeroRat doesn’t have a stuffed nose.

I’m here because five years ago, my kids gave me a HeroRat for a Father’s Day present through GlobalGiving.org. I didn’t actually take physical possession (fortunately!) but the gift helped pay to train the rat to sniff out explosives. And now I’ve come to minefields of rural Angola to hunt for my rat..

A Gambian pouched rat clears a minefield in northern Angola.
CreditNicholas Kristof/The New York Times

I’ve seen land-mine detection in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and it’s dreadfully slow and inefficient. Typically, men in body armor walk in precise rows holding metal detectors in front of them. Whenever they come across metal, they stop and painstakingly brush away the soil until they see what it is. Usually it’s an empty AK-47 cartridge or a nail. Sometimes there is metal every few inches. Each time, the whole process stops until the soil can be brushed away.

In contrast, the rats scamper along on leashes. They respond only to the scent of explosives, so scrap metal doesn’t slow them down. At this minefield, which is full of metal objects, a human with a metal detector can clear only about 20 square meters a day. A rat can clear 20 times as much. “Rats are also more reliable,” said Alfredo Adamo, a field supervisor here. “With humans, concentration wanes after a while, but rats just sniff away.” The rats are paid in bananas, peanuts, avocados and apples, and they don’t need body armor — partly because they’re too light to set off land mines. (They can still weigh up to 2.5 pounds, which is a lot of rat when you’re face to face.)

I think I found my rat: a scraggly codger named Boban who is just the right age to have been trained when my kids sponsored the rat. Boban was named after a Tanzanian soccer star, and the handlers said he was highly dependable. Bart Weetjens, a Belgian product designer, started the HeroRat program after puzzling about how to improve mine detection. As a boy, Weetjens had kept rats as pets, and he came across an article about the use of gerbils for tasks involving scent detection. Weetjens then consulted rodent scholars, who suggested Gambian pouched rats, in part because they compensate for very weak eyes with a superb sense of smell. They are called “pouched” not because they are marsupials but because they fill their cheeks with nuts and other goodies, and then bury them underground — relying upon scent to recover their caches later. Another advantage of Gambian pouched rats is that they have an eight-year life span that offers a lengthy return on the nine months of training needed to detect land mines.

So Weetjens started an aid group, Apopo, that trains the rats in Tanzania and then deploys them to minefields in various countries. Apopo is also now branching off into using HeroRats to detect tuberculosis — a disease of poverty that kills 1.5 million people a year around the world.

A huge challenge with tuberculosis is diagnosis. It takes a trained health worker with a microscope all day to examine about 25 samples of sputum to determine if they are positive for tuberculosis. In contrast, a HeroRat can screen 100 samples in 20 minutes — ambling along a row of petri dishes, sniffing at each, and pausing when one is positive for tuberculosis. The rats are also much more accurate than a human with a microscope. In the clinics where HeroRats are now doing the detection (their diagnoses confirmed by humans in labs), the number of tuberculosis patients identified has risen 48 percent — meaning that more patients are diagnosed and treated, preventing the disease’s spread.

Apopo pampers the rats, which get better health care than most Angolans. The rats work only a couple of hours a day (they get hot in midday), and they retire at age 6 when they become less dependable. “We debated what to do with them after retirement,” Adamo recalls. “It would be very unfair to just, er,” — he paused slightly, embarrassed, looking for a euphemism — “get rid of them.”

So the HeroRats spend their golden years nibbling on avocados and hanging out with their handlers. When the time comes, the handlers lay them to rest in a rodent cemetery, with several people present to pay respects. Adamo admires the rats because he has seen the damage that land mines can do. He grew up in Mozambique in a village separated from its farming fields by a mine belt, and his grandfather lost his leg to a land mine. Three neighbor boys were killed and a fourth badly injured by a mine. To me, HeroRats are an example of an explosion of innovation taking place in the philanthropic world — and seeing large gains in productivity as a result. We see this with cellphone apps in poor countries for savings and health, with microsaving and microinsurance, with impact investing and, yes, with animals. Apopo is also an example of aid groups connecting donations to particular tasks in a way that donors can easily relate to. Through Apopo.org, you can “adopt” a HeroRat for $84 a year. Take it from me, this makes a terrific Mother’s Day or Father’s Day present!

The handlers grow attached to the rats and recognize each of them by face. Francisco Pedro, a 38-year-old Angolan who has worked in demining for many years, initially with a metal detector and the last three years with HeroRats, says that his affection for the rats has led to marital challenges. “When there are rats in the house, I just shoo them away,” he said. “I can’t kill rats now.”

“But my wife can,” he added, explaining that he pleads with his wife to let the rats be.

He paused for a moment, looking wounded, and said: “When I’m not at home, she kills them.”

I invite you to sign up for my free, twice-weekly newsletter. When you do, you’ll receive an email about my columns as they’re published and other occasional commentary. Sign up here.

I also invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter. A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 19, 2015, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Giant Rats That Save Lives. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

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I think I saw the Same Headline 40 Years Ago When I Lived in the USVI

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Bruce

From the “E-Edition” of the Virgin Islands Daily News at <http://virginislandsdailynews.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx?noredirect=true&gt;

Scathing IG report urges EPA to takeover some V.I. programs

Mismanagement cost USVI $37M in grants Audit recommends feds take control

A scathing audit released Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General has found that the territory’s mismanagement of EPA programs endanger public health and the environment.

Additionally, the inadequacy of the territory’s financial management system has caused it to miss out on almost $37 million in grant funding that would have been available to the USVI during the last decade.

The audit report made the recommendation that the EPA take control over several programs that have been administered by the local government.

“The USVI has not met program requirements for numerous activities related to implementing the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Underground Storage Tank/Leaking Underground Storage Tank programs,” the auditors stated. “These activities included monitoring environmental conditions, conducting compliance inspections and enforcing program requirements. Management control weaknesses contributed to these shortcomings.”

Federal law allows the EPA to authorize states, territories and tribal and local governments to handle the permitting, inspection and enforcement of a number of federal programs. The local government must have the staff and resources to conduct the management of the programs, and in return, the federal agency provides grant funding to the local government to manage the EPA programs.

The most recent performance partnership grant covers fiscal years 2014 and 2015 and provides the Virgin Islands with as much as $4,632,096, or more than 82 percent of the approved budget, to implement these programs, the audit report said.

Clean Water Act

One of the programs the local government— through the V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources— is responsible for is the management of the Clean Water Act.

The USVI gets $1.1 million a year from the EPA for water-quality monitoring, permits and enforcement.

“However, DPNR failed to comply with water quality workplan commitments because they failed to collect ambient samples in 11 of 25 quarters between FY 2007 and the first quarter of FY 2013,” the report said.

Even when DPNR did collect samples, they did not collect all the samples they were supposed to.

In 2010, the EPA placed DPNR on a corrective action plan, which was revised again in 2012. The federal agency wanted to declare the local program non-compliant, but that would have meant a loss of funding, so they provided “in-kind” assistance instead.

“In our view, the DPNR program is non-compliant,” the report said.

The audit also found deficiencies with the permitting program — the Territorial Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits.

More than 90 percent of the facilities with pollution discharge permits were in noncompliance during the last six years, the report said. Even when DPNR identified violations, no enforcement actions were taken, the report said.

Safe Drinking Water Act

While in the territory, EPA auditors found water quality concerns at the V.I. Water and Power Authority.

“We received information about problems with low residual chlorine, high turbidity and water color that may present human health risks,” the report said.

WAPA has consistently maintained that the water discoloration is not a health issue and is harmless.

When auditors reported the concerns to EPA Region 2 administrators in March 2014, some sampling and tests were done. However, the tests did not look for for bacteria or metals— which may be why the water is yellow or brown in areas of St. Thomas.

Of the 15 samples taken, turbidity exceeded the recommended level in eight; the chlorine amount did not meet recommendations for eight samples and was not present at all for one; and color anomalies were identified in eight of the samples.

In May 2014, WAPA provided EPA with a corrective action plan and a bacterial test that showed eight of the 10 test sites showed levels of total coliform or fecal coliform bacteria in the water. EPA Region 2 was satisfied with WAPA’s corrective action plan, but the EPA’s Inspector General’s Office still was concerned because the historical data provided did not include bacterial testing.

Neither Region 2 nor the water utility collected repeat bacteria samples to determine adherence to Safe Drinking Water Act regulations, according to the report.

“As a result, the EPA, the water utility and the public do not know whether the bacteria results indicate a serious human health risk in the drinking water system on St. Thomas,” the report said.

Clean Air Act

The territory gets EPA funding to monitor air quality. As part of the performance review, the auditors found that DPNR had numerous operational and maintenance issues that resulted in periods of incomplete air-monitoring — or none at all.

The territory has not met the minimum 75 percent data collection requirement for any of the air-quality monitors since 2010, according to the audit findings.

Underground Storage Tanks

Regarding the Underground Storage Tanks inspection program, auditors found that the USVI could not locate and provide inspection reports for eight of the 44 underground storage tank facilities in the terrtiory between FY 2011 and FY 2013.

Of 36 facilities that had reports, 32 of the reports were incomplete, missing either signatures, reporting information or supporting documentation.

Findings

The Inspector General said the audit recommends withdrawing approval for the Clean Water Act program and issuing a notice of deficiency for the Clean Air Act operating permits program.

The territory’s financial state means that DPNR lacks equipment, staff and resources needed to properly participate in the federal monitoring, permitting and enforcement programs.

“Since the EPA retains the responsibility for ensuring that USVI federal environmental programs are implemented and enforced, EPA Region 2 needs to take appropriate actions to ensure that environmental programs that continue to be delegated to USVI are properly implemented and the public and environment protected,” the report said.

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Three Months and 12 Days since Last Kayak

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Bruce

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