One World, Many Peaces

The Nile Treaty, Water Security and the Future of Peace in Africa

The Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement (or Nile Treaty, under the auspices of the Nile Basin Initiative, NBI) seeks the establishment of a permanent Nile River Basin Commission through which member countries will act together to manage and develop the resources of the Nile, the world's longest river. To many who visit, the Nile and its fertile valleys are a beautiful backdrop for a cruise or vacation. But for those who live around and depend upon the river, it is that and the source of their physical survival and cultural heritage.

Formally launched in February 1999, the NBI provides an institutional mechanism, a shared vision, and a set of agreed policy guidelines to provide a basinwide framework for cooperative action, according to the Nile Basin Initiative website. The initiative's policy guidelines define the following as the primary objectives of the NBI:

•To develop the Nile Basin water resources in a sustainable and equitable way to ensure
•Prosperity, security, and peace for all its peoples
•To ensure efficient water management and the optimal use of the resources
•To ensure cooperation and joint action between the riparian countries, seeking win-win gains
•To target poverty eradication and promote economic integration
•To ensure that the program results in a move from planning to action.

The NBI's Strategic Action Program represents Nile riparian concerted approach to achieving sustainable socioeconomic development in the basin through “equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.” The Strategic Action Program provides the means for translating this shared vision into concrete activities through a two-fold, complementary approach:

•Lay the groundwork for cooperative action through a regional program to build confidence and capacity throughout the basin (the Shared Vision Program)
•Pursue, simultaneously, cooperative development opportunities to realize physical investments and tangible results through sub-basin activities (Subsidiary action programs) in the Eastern Nile and the Nile Equatorial Lakes regions.

So far, five countries have signed the Nile Treaty: Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and most recently, Kenya. However, two countries key to the viability of the whole project, Egypt and Sudan, have so far vehemently opposed the Nile Treaty on the grounds that it will detract from their economic interests in the river. 

Nonetheless, Egypt, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda belonged to the Technical Co-operation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin (TECCONILE), founded in 1992, a forerunner to the NBI.

As the African population grows with the rise of industrialism, and bigger cities replacing villages, water security and agriculture will be of paramount importance. The Nile Treaty gives reason to hope that these potential conflicts will not turn violent, but no guarantee.

The Nile remains a current event after thousands of years of human dependency on it, and will create a future of peace only if humans can work their problems out before they become violent. 

Selenium Cells: The Secrets of Next-Generation Solar Energy Revealed

By Rosalind Sanders

Scientists at the American Institute of Physics are seeking to identify superior light-catching substances in order to better transform more of the sun's power into carbon-free electric power. And their learned labors are now bearing fruit that could change the way the world gets its energy forever: cheaper, faster and less harmfully to the environment.
 
A new study in Applied Physics Letters (published by the American Institute of Physics) describes how solar energy could potentially be collected by using oxide materials that have the element selenium. A team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, inserted selenium in zinc oxide, a relatively low-priced component that could make more cost-efficient use of the sun's power.
 
The research team determined that even a relatively small level of selenium, just nine per-cent of the mostly zinc-oxide base, dramatically enhanced the material's performance in absorbing light.
 
The principal author of this analysis, Marie Mayer (a fourth-year College of California, Berkeley doctoral student) says that photo-electrochemical water splitting, that signifies employing energy from the sun to cleave water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, could potentially be the most revolutionary future application for her work. Using this reaction is key to the eventual creation of zero-emission hydrogen powered automobiles, which hypothetically will run only on water and sunlight.

The conversion effectiveness of a PV cell is the proportion of sunlight energy that the solar cell converts to electricity. This is very important when discussing Photovoltaic products, because boosting this efficiency is vital to making Pv electricity competitive with more standard sources of energy (e.g., fossil fuels).
 
For comparison, the very first Photovoltaic products converted about 1%-2% of sunlight power into electric energy. Today's Pv devices convert 7%-17% of light energy into electric power. Of course, the other side of the equation is the dollars it costs to make the PV devices. This has been reduced over the years as well. In fact, today's PV systems generate electricity at a fraction of the cost of first PV systems.
 
In the 1990s, when silicon cells were twice as thick, efficiencies were much smaller than today and lifetimes were reduced, it may well have cost more energy to produce a cell than it could generate in a lifetime. In the meantime, the technological know-how has progressed significantly, and the energy repayment time (defined as the recovery time required for generating the energy spent to produce the respective technical energy systems) of a modern photovoltaic module is normally from 1 to 4 years depending on the module type and location.
 
Normally, thin-film technologies - despite having comparatively low conversion efficiencies - obtain considerably shorter energy repayment times than standard systems (often < 1 year). With a normal lifetime of 20 to 30 years, this signifies that current solar cells are net energy producers, i.e. they generate significantly more energy over their lifetime than the energy expended in producing them.
 
Rosalind Sanders is the publisher of, and writes for, The Solar Panel Review, which focuses on helping homeowners reduce expenses with solar energy.

Win $1000 in this Peace Writing Contest (And Make A Difference, Too)

Friends of the Arc (FOTA) is a nonprofit advocacy organization that believes that the Arc, developed by the RAND Corporation (a problematic sponsor, on which more below) and Suisman Urban Design, has the potential according to them "to ensure a viable Palestinian state and a Middle East that knows sustainable peace, prosperity, and security."

FOTA has announced a $1,000 prize for the best essay by a college or graduate student, in the form of a policy brief to President Barack Obama, on the topic of the usefulness of RAND Corporation’s Arc concept for the current Middle East peace negotiations.

According to RAND's website: "Palestine’s crumbling infrastructure presents a major challenge for a new Palestinian state. Yet it also provides an opportunity to plan for sustainable development and to avoid the environmental cost and economic inefficiencies of haphazard, unregulated urban development that might otherwise result from the need to accommodate a rapidly growing population. The Arc, RAND’s concept for developing the physical infrastructure of a Palestinian state, provides such a plan." More information about the Arc is available here.

Submissions should respond to the following prompt:

With the resumption of direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, many observers doubt that more purely political discussions will finally produce a comprehensive peace settlement; they suggest that some paradigm-changing idea is needed to break the deadlock. You have been asked to brief President Obama about the Arc project. Prepare a policy brief making the case that the Arc plan is just such a compelling idea, and that with U.S. support, it could help negotiators achieve a breakthrough for peace.

Submissions are due October 8, 2010, at 6 pm ET and should be no more than 1,000 words in length. Before crafting their submissions, participants should view the 30-minute Arc video and other resources at www.friendsofthearc.org. College and graduate students from any country are eligible to apply.

One World, Many Peaces deems it necessary to point out the RAND has close ties to the military, that the Arc project is being developed without the express consent of the Palestinian people, and that it is all-too remeniscent of the Soviet-style infrastructure development projects that brought so much of post-colonial Africa and Eastern Europe close to ruin. These could be topics for consideration for the peace writing contest.

We asked the contest's organizers how they resolve the paradox with the close military ties and this "peace" project, here is what they had to say:

"The RAND Corporation certainly has its origins in conducting studies and R&D (R&D is the origin of the name RAND) for the US Air Force.  These days, it remains a publicly funded think tank for conducting studies and performing R&D.  But, now its funding is much more diversified with over half of its funding going to topics such as health, education and development.  The Arc study was actually privately financed by philanthropists interested in how development strategies could spur peace, prosperity and security in the Middle East.  RAND, which brought on world renowned designer Doug Suisman through his urban design firm Suisman Urban Design, conducted the study to answer the questions posed by the sponsors – just as they do any other study.  RAND only conducted a study.  By charter, RAND cannot and does not advocate or implement.  As such, RAND is not “helping negotiators achieve a breakthrough for peace”.  But Friends of the Arc, which is a worldwide network of individuals who see the power of the Arc concept in inspiring peace, prosperity and security in the Middle East, is working to advocate the Arc as something that could help negotiators to a breakthrough for peace."

The winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize and will be featured on our website. FOTA reserves the right to post all essays on its website and to send one or more to President Obama. For all competition details, please visit www.friendsofthearc.org/essaycontest

First, Do No Harm: Lessons from the BP Gulf Oil Spill Ecocatastrophe

By Robert Koehler

As Planet Earth continues to hemorrhage crude oil from its wound — with a worst-case estimate of as much as 100,000 barrels a day — we grope, beyond our anger and guilt, simply to imagine what damage we have done in the pursuit of human empowerment.

This is bigger than BP, blameworthy though the company may be. This is bigger than any sort of “us vs. them” scenario we can think of. It’s a crisis of civilization, which means all of us.

If we drive, use energy, buy products wrapped in absurd, throwaway plastic — if we live at all — it cuts across our lives. The roots of this disaster, and, God help us, the ones to come, are political and corporate and governmental, and they are also intensely personal. We all collude in society’s “addiction” to oil, or what I would call its sense of entitlement: This is our planet. We’re the boss.

What we’re truly addicted to, or at least inextricably caught up in, is what my friend Jim Oberg calls “doomsday capitalism” and its need for reckless, unlimited economic growth. With this system operative, we trend toward war, empire and exploitation.

Maybe, as we look at the graphics of this disaster — pelicans, for instance, covered in black goo — we begin to grasp our immaturity as a species. Let’s say we do survive ourselves and create a sustainable, eco-harmonious way to live and prosper: What we’re presently churning up in our clumsiness and techno-entitlement is a warning to the future of how not to be. We’re scaring up a whole new mythology, and new definitions of sacrilege.

I know nowhere to start except here. And I know of nothing less to reach for than . . . salvation.

I use this language not to promote existing religions, which far too often collude in the problem, but to reach deep into the human core, into the raw material of existence, to find new commonality with one another and to discover new — or perhaps I mean to rediscover ancient, uncompromised and uncorrupted — principles to live by.

The rebuilding of human society cannot be superficial. It must begin with a realization that those in power mostly have no idea what they’re doing; they operate with crippling short-sightedness, in a context of eerily limited self-interest. (“History, we don't know,” George Bush said to Bob Woodward, regarding future assessments of the Iraq war. “We’ll all be dead.”) We’re, like, on our own here.

Knowledge that this is the case leads either to despair and cynicism or translates into a deeper, more profound sense of personal responsibility. I opt for the latter, understanding that present-day U.S. democracy is comfortable with a spectator citizenry: entertained, isolated and disengaged. We don’t pursue the sort of awareness that would propel us into troubled discontent, and we’re not supposed to. But it’s our only choice. And while this sort of awareness doesn’t translate into easy or obvious action, maybe that’s OK.

First, do no harm.

What if that phrase, which is the byword of many professions, became a sort of operating principle with which to proceed, individually and collectively, into the future? Even if it’s an impossible standard, wouldn’t we be far better off attempting to live by its implications, or at least reflecting on them and debating them, than by mockingly dismissing them?

Our most destructive enterprises all depend on moral relativism and a suspension of this value, allegedly in service to a greater good, which generally fails to materialize. I submit that the “greater good” argument is a convenient scam, pulled out of a hat time and again by those intent on gaming the system for limited, self-serving ends.

Yet it springs eternal — certainly as the ultimate argument for war, but also for anything that might generate a profit.

Harvey Wasserman, for instance, writing about the resurgence of the nuclear power industry and its backing by the Obama administration, notes that, “Like BP, their builders would enjoy financial liability limits dwarfed by damage they could do.”

Nuclear power has been able to recast itself as a green alternative to coal and oil only by minimizing or dismissing the problem of radioactive waste and the dangers of meltdown. “If the White House has a reliable plan for deploying and funding a credible response to a disaster at a reactor that’s superior to the one we’ve seen at the Deepwater Horizon, we’d sure like to see it,” Wasserman writes.

As I read this, my thought is that the forces that ultimately determine the future of this industry will be responding to something more short-sighted and “pragmatic” than my proposed operating principle: First, do no harm.

The United States is both an aggressive empire and a throwaway society. We wage open-ended wars that are mostly for the sake of resource control, and we package our groceries in “disposable” plastic bags, given away by the billions, which are made from the primary resource we seek to control.

The crisis is upon us. Our paradoxes have come home to roost, and they’re covered with oil.

Photo Credit: The National Guard

U.S., Europe Two-Timed by Ukraine: 'Double Accord' Sealed with Russia on Gas Prices and Navy Bases

How is the Ukraine getting away with playing the two main sides in one of the world's major ongoing power struggles? Or is this an early sign of new era of power sharing? As previously reported on One World, Many Peaces and by Antony Adolf on Change.org, the Ukraine remains buddy-buddy with the U.S. largely thanks to missile sites President Obama promised to scrap in his campaign, then went ahead with anyways after taking office. However, what became clear today is that Ukrainian leaders are proving expertly adept at attracting more than one major power into their sphere of influence. A coup de grace?

Viktor Ianoukovitch, President of the Ukraine, and Russian Premier Dmitri Medvedev have just concluded what France's La Presse is calling a "double accord." First, to avoid any more gas shutoffs that kept large parts of Europe in the cold last year, the two countries agreed that gas coming from Russia and passed through Ukraine would be purchased by the Ukraine at a significantly lower rate so that it can make higher profits as the European distributor of Russian gas. Since coming to power, Ianoukovitch has sought closer ties with Russia, and the so-called "blue gold" deal proved to be the surest and most beneficial means to bring the two countries into their closest ties since the Cold War. Europe stands to gain little and will likely pay even more for Russian gas passed through the Ukraine now that this first part of the double accord is signed.

Second-- and the connection is altogether unambiguous-- in return Russia will be allowed to have its naval bases at the port in Sebastopol until 2042. Given that the Ukraine controls 80% of gas entering Europe, Russia understandably wants to keep its near-monopoly safe and sound, and Ukraine seems to be more than happy to outsource this task. But when it came to the U.S. missile shield to be housed on Ukrainian territory, the country's leaders also seemed more than willing to in-source military projects, again for the sake of increases in gross domestic product. Russian vehemently opposed the U.S. missile shield but has remained quiet about its latest development. At the signing of the double accord, Medvedev explicitly stated that the reduction in gas prices was to be understood as a "payment towards the rent for the navy bases." The U.S. is also paying the Ukraine for using its land for military purposes.

On May 9th, 1,400 troops from the Ukraine and Russia combined will mark the 60th anniversary of Russia's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. The joint exercise is mostly symbolic, but a highly potent symbolism at that. What is being signified is a rather small country's power to two-time two major world powers (the U.S. and Russia) as well as a whole continent (Europe). Should other equally-situated countries follow suit, major powers as current events will disappear under the weight of deals they rush into and know nothing about until its too late, creating a future in which money can be made off militaries that aren't even one's own.

De-‘Sanitizing’ a Legacy: Learning from the Mistakes of Martin Luther King Jr.

No one likes to hear of the mistakes of heroes— except when they can help make better heroes of us all. The great African American scholar Henry Louis Gates commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday, at the church where the civil rights leader began his ministry, by saying that his legacy should not be “sanitized.” By this, he meant that after twenty-five years of being a recognized holiday (only partially observed in the U.S.), what King did, what it meant for the country and what it means now and will in the future is at risk of becoming as meaningless as Flag Day.

Gates’ call went far from un-criticized: What, should we sully or infect King’s legacy to make more “real”? Instead, we propose that there is much to be learned by focusing on three of King’s major mistakes. De-sanitizing, more accurately demythologizing, great leaders and innovators in no way detracts from their achievements, but rather makes them shine brighter among the experiments and experiences that went awry.

1. Not Adapting Tactics and Strategies: Attempting to build on his partial successes in nonviolent transformation in the Deep South, beginning in 1966 King sought to build a similar movement in Chicago. It didn’t work. What King found out the hard way was that his assumption—the same nonviolent tactics and strategies would work equally well in the industrialized north as in the rural south because their shared race would trump all— was unwarranted. In the end, he left Chicago for New York City and Los Angeles having, if anything, lost a bit of the momentum he had been gathering for over a decade.

LESSON: Transformational tactics and strategies must always be adapted to the conditions, participants, motives and means at hand to be effective.

2. Incessant Womanizing: There’s no way around it, King was a notorious womanizer with a lady to lie with in every town, sometimes more than one. How are we to integrate this in his legacy? Or should we? If a man is or is more than the sum of his parts, then in retrospect the value of each of his parts cannot be overlooked in tabulations. But as it takes three to sleep around, the resilience of King’s wife and his mistresses must be acknowledged as a sine qua non of what he did and did not achieve.

LESSON: Don’t confuse a leader’s actions with their followers acquiescence.
 
3. Too Much and Too Little Focus: The lowest common denominator among African Americans was in King’s time as today Christianity, regardless of the relative strengths and weaknesses of Islam and the atheistic materialism of the hip-hop generations. King understandably seized upon Christianity as his frame of rhetorical and analytical analysis to great effect, but he was also limited by its radicalism when it came to socio-economic and anti-military justice, which became part of his ministry after civil rights. And so, the myriad of issues he attempted to work on at once within a single frame of reference lost some of effectiveness it could have had otherwise.

LESSON: Learn from environmentalism— one cause, many means and messages.   

President Obama, speaking among for the most part anonymous African American elders and their grandchildren, sanitizingly harkened: “So tonight let us remember the courage of the man who had that dream. Let us remember the perseverance of all those who have worked to fulfill that dream. Let us recommit ourselves to doing our part in our own lives and as a nation to make that dream real in the 21st century.” The major difference between King and Obama so far is that the President’s message is based on hope that may be fulfilled, and King’s message is based on impending changes that will occur — or else.

Above all, demythologizing great leaders and innovators makes their methods more immediately practicable for us today and in the future. Whoever does not doubt the effectiveness of nonviolence we owe to what leaders like King, Gandhi and Petra Kelly were able to do despite and because of their failures and shortcomings. Their distinct legacies are, in more ways than one, current events we are lucky that are creating the future.

Hot Off the Press-- 2009: The Year in Review from One World, Many Peaces with Antony Adolf

 

 

What was 2009 all about — or was but you didn’t hear about it? How will 2010 and beyond take shape? 2009: The Year in Review is One World, Many Peaces’ answer. Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, shares the stories he covered throughout the year as “Current Events Creating the Future” — Ours.

Includes three new essays by Antony Adolf published together for the first time:

•Buyers and Buy-Nots: The New Economics of Poverty and Affluence
•Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration Can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace
•A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?

One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and Podcast will start anew on January 5. Thank you for a great year and have a safe and happy New Year!

 

The Future of International Relations and Global Negotiations: Lessons from Copenhagen

What was at stake in Copenhagen was not only the ecological future of our planet, but in many ways the future of how nation-states will and will not find ways to meet their needs, seek compromise and achieve common goals. The contentious round of climate change negotiations at Copenhagen, which have resulted in a "better than nothing" treaty, are a strong indication of how topic-based negotiations on a global level may take place in the 21st century. For better and worse. Is this one step away or closer to a world government?

Even though the conference took place under the auspices of the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), hardly anyone-- participants or media pundits-- have mentioned the United Nations in its regards. Whether or not this more than hints that the U.N. may be very close to expiration date, as a standing-forum the U.N. shares many of the shortcomings of its League of Nations predecessor. Task-focused, results- oriented meetings like Copenhagen may be new wave of international relations, making it a laboratory for how unequal participants can (or cannot) reach a multilateral agreement instead of the bilateral agreements that have dominated world affairs since the 1990s. Ironically, the conference's sponsors include BMW and Honda.

Imagine if, after working out the major procedural kinks and staying vigilant to other ones, the Copenhagen process was used to address issues like world hunger, the global economy, disarmament, regional security and so on. Such ad-hoc, topical conventions could be compared to the Hague Conferences of the early 20th century, which were at least partially effective. They would not by definition constitute a world government, but if doing so is more effective, does it really matter? Perhaps the Copenhagen paradigm is the future and we are the current events creating it.

 

For more on the Copenhagen conference, visit their official site.

For more on the UNFCC, visit their official site.

Food First, Everything Else Next: The Decade in Review, Part Three

Being eager to "save the planet" in its Copenhagen form is noble and necessary and all, but it remains more than a bit relevant to ask: who are you saving it for? The single most stunning piece of news this decade is, for me, that one billion people in the world are hungry. One billion, roughly one in six: think of your favorite five people in the world and, with yourself, one of them is hungry with little to hope for but still too weak to do anything else.

 

 

That the news came out halfway through 2009 only makes clear to what extent the situation has been building for years, if not decades. In Peace: A World History, I show that nutrition as the most basic component of corporeal peace is the basis for all other peaces. Far from the first to say so, food forms the basis of peace since time immemorial: Ancient Chinese sages and Ancient Greek philosophers each attested to the primacy of food in peace (and everything else, for that matter).

 

 

That hunger should persist as a worldwide problem is as atrocious as state-sanctioned slavery lasting till the late 19th century, and in other forms today. As is well known, the world's hungry are kept that way for lack of proper distribution, not production. Americans, we found out recently, waste about forty percent of their high-calorie diets on average. That's enough for about half the world's hungry, with the rest coming from removing the red tape and skimming in food aid, and sustainable local farming.  Easier said than done, of course, but worldwide hunger is worth more concerted effort and news coverage as a current event creating the absence of a future.

 

This decade's closing in two short weeks gives occaision to reflect upon it as well that which is about to open. In honor of this arbitrariness, One World, Many Peaces will run a four-part weekly series on Thursdays, "The Decade in Review," to offer provocative closing and opening. thoughts.

Who's Protecting the World's Endangered Languages (All 7000)? These Guys

 

When an insect only seven people have ever seen goes extinct in a place you need a government grant to get to, more than just environmentalists feel a part of our world has gone forever. Understandably so. But what about when a language once used by thousands is down to its last speaker, and the universe of relations and ideas that language conveys will not survive them? Who protests, who runs worldwide campaigns or passes legislation against hazardous, toxic notions like "official languages" and "world languages" that creep onto and kill ways of understanding what it means to be human? A group of fifty linguists meeting at the first-ever Endangered Languages Information and Infrastructure Workshop, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, realize the tragedy but aren't superheroes.

In the last 500 years, half of the world's languages have become extinct. What is new is the accelerated rate of language extinction today. Linguists predict that in the next 100 years nearly 90 percent of the world's 7,000 languages will become extinct, with a best case scenario at only 35 to 50 percent surviving (Krauss,1992). "When we lose, say, 50 percent of languages, we're losing 50 percent of human cognitive ability," says linguist Lyle Campbell.  "Linguistics is a study of human cognition, what makes the mind tick, click, and work. It's our responsibility as linguists to do what we can." Unfortunately for Campbell and his colleagues, words difficult to pronounce just aren't as cute and cuddly as panda bears and Hollywood superstars have yet to milk endangered languages for their publicity value. Try asking a panda whether or not there is life after death. Unfortunately, while hundreds of groups protect species for biodiversity, none protect endangered languages for logodiversity.

The admirable work of these linguistics overlooks one major possibility based on a historical actuality: that as languages die, new ones can and are created not in their place, but in the space they leave behind. "A language is not just words and grammar; it is a web of history that binds all the people who once spoke the language, all the things they did together, all the knowledge they imparted to their descendants," says Anthony Aristar, professor of linguistics at Eastern Michigan University, in Science Daily. There is also such a thing as the languages of the future, beyond but also in between the lingua francas that are most likely to survive: English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. The languages of the future, whatever they may look or sound like, will be made from those of the present, which is why the study of multilingualism is at least as important as current event that can literally speak to the future.