Volcanic Eruptions Endanger World Systems

This graphic is from an interesting article in the current issue of The Economist. It suggests that, while there are many factors that determine climate such as El Nino/La Nina, the huge volcanic eruption in the 13th century is implicated in the Little Ice Age.

Mount Tambora....., a volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, was once similar in stature to Mont Blanc or Mount Rainier. But in April 1815 it blew its top off in spectacular fashion. On the 10th and 11th it sent molten rock more than 40 kilometres into the sky in the most powerful eruption of the past 500 years. The umbrella of ash spread out over a million square kilometres; in its shadow day was as night. Billions of tonnes of dust, gas, rock and ash scoured the mountain’s flanks in pyroclastic flows, hitting the surrounding sea hard enough to set off deadly tsunamis; the wave that hit eastern Java, 500km away, two hours later was still two metres high when it did so. The dying mountain’s roar was heard 2,000km away. Ships saw floating islands of pumice in the surrounding seas for years........ 

The year after the eruption clothes froze to washing lines in the New England summer and glaciers surged down Alpine valleys at an alarming rate. Countless thousands starved in China’s Yunnan province and typhus spread across Europe. Grain was in such short supply in Britain that the Corn Laws were suspended and a poetic coterie succumbing to cabin fever on the shores of Lake Geneva dreamed up nightmares that would haunt the imagination for centuries to come. And no one knew that the common cause of all these things was a ruined mountain in a far-off sea.

The article goes on to suggest that while huge volcanic eruptions such as those described above are rare, they almost certainly will reappear. The global food system is now more global, and if food production is disrupted on one continent, production on other continents might help make up the shortfall; indeed, if production in the northern or southern hemisphere is disrupted, the shortfall might be partially made up on the other. Still, more greenhouses and hydroponic production capacity might be advisable.

Drought and Famine Plague Horn of Africa

More than 11 million people are in danger of malnutrition or starvation in the Horn of Africa region, a geographic area made up of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. The most acute problem is in Somalia, where drought, poverty, a failed state and militant armed forces combine to create a perfect storm leading to mass migration to refugee camps and famine, and complicating efforts to help the suffering. It has been estimated that as many as 400,000 people are in danger of dying in the crisis, mostly children.

This is a crisis that demands U.S. Government full-scale efforts of disaster assistance!

Compared to the suffering in the Horn of Africa, American financial problems fade into insignificance. There are a lot of places we can find the funds to help in Somalia and the Horn of Africa with domestic human costs that can not be compared to the suffering of the starving African children. I would recommend increasing taxes on the rich and decreasing military expenditures as the first places to look for the money!

A detailed briefing on the Floods in Pakistan and the Needed Relief Effort

My friend Nadia Afrin of the Development Gateway Foundation has conducted this two part interview with the Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States.

Ambassador Hussain Haqqani on Pakistan Flood (Part 1)

Ambassador Hussain Haqqani on Pakistan Flood: Part II

There are an estimated 20 million people in Pakistan who are displaced by the floods. Most of them will not be able to return to their homes quickly, a large number will not have homes to return to at all. It has been estimated that 1500 people died immediately during the flooding. Tragically, a lot of people will die in the next few weeks and months from diseases related to the flooding and to the problems of maintaining good hygiene in refugee camps and damaged villages and neighborhoods. More will probably die as a result of hunger and malnutrition in a country that has lost a major part of its crops and the communication and transportation infrastructure to more food from the ports to those who will need it. Indeed, others will die due to the damage to the health service infrastructure, which was weak enough already. Still more will die over the long run due to poverty, a poverty that will be worse due to the destruction caused by the flooding. Death and disease are only the most extreme forms of the damage that will accrue to people who have lost their property and their chances for a better life.

The Ambassador states in these interviews that those who don't want to donate to the Pakistani government can help by donating to UN agencies and/or non-governmental organizations. That seems a wise piece of advice.

Re the Pakistan Floods

According to Reuters Alert Net:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged foreign donors on Sunday to speed up aid to Pakistan and warned of more destruction after floods that have already disrupted lives of a tenth of its 170 million people.

Swollen by torrential monsoon rains, major rivers have flooded Pakistan's mountain valleys and fertile plains, killing up to 1,600 people and leaving two million homeless.

Six million people still need food, shelter and water and medicine, the United Nations says. Pakistan's government, already facing a Taliban insurgency, now faces the risk of social upheaval and long-term economic pain.

Comment: In spite of the lack of capacity of the Pakistani government, or perhaps because of that incapacity, the floods require massive aid from the donor community! JAD

Six Questions You Should ask Before Donating Goods Overseas

Source: Saundra Schimmelpfennig, The Huffington Post, April 23, 2010.

1. Is the donation appropriate for the local climate, culture, and religion?
2. After a disaster, will an influx of donated goods clog the ports?
3. Are the items actually needed?
4. Are the goods available locally?
5. Will the people receiving the goods be able to afford to fix or replace the donated item?
6. Will donating this item do more harm than good?

I am no expert on disaster relief, but I was told how bad the situation was after a serious earthquake a few decades ago. Tons of stuff, all tax deductible for the donors, arrived and was never inventoried. People came and took away "surprise packages" of stuff.

Drugs came in by the ton, many expired and few linked to the specific needs of the population. There was little likelihood that it would be properly prescribed or even reasonably distributed.

Think about Katrina, and how much harder it is to deliver disaster relief well in countries that you don't know well, with corrupt governments, different languages, and uneducated populations.

Even money may not work, if it goes to the wrong intermediary.

I have a lot of respect for the experienced NGOs that really know the countries in which they provide disaster relief, and indeed in the government agencies such as the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Relief.

I also recognize that there a billions of people whose daily lives are disasters due to extreme poverty. Sometimes you can do more good donating to a good foreign assistance program than to a weak disaster relief program!

'Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response'

Association of Space Explorers International Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, Association of Space Explorers (composed of 320 members who have been in outer space), 2008. (PDF, 52 pages)

'Earth's geological and biological history is punctuated by evidence of repeated and devastating impacts from space.....A future asteroid collision could have disastrous effects on our interconnected human society......Existing space technology makes possible the successful deflection of the vast majority of hazardous NEOs. However, once a threatening object is discovered, maximizing the time to make use of that technology will be equally important.'

This report calls for the United Nations to create an intergovernmental program to protect against asteroid threats.

Comment: There is, I would guess, only a very small probability of an asteroid impact on the earth during the next century; there has not been one in the millennia of recorded history. On the other hand, that probability is not zero. Obviously, the destruction caused by such an impact could be huge. It certainly seems that we could obtain warning of an impending impact, and apparently we could take action to mitigate its consequences or prevent the impact entirely. Under those circumstances, it seems prudent to carefully make a policy in an intergovernmental forum, based on the best scientific and technological knowledge.

The people in the Association of Space Explorers are highly selected and vastly experienced. I believe we should listen to their advice! JAD

Blind Spots on the Map of Aid Allocations: Concentration and Complementarity of International NGO Aid

Source: "Blind Spots on the Map of Aid Allocations: Concentration and Complementarity of International NGO Aid" by Dirk-Jan Koch, UNU-WIDER Research Paper No. 2007/45, August 2007.

The budgets of development NGOs have risen dramatically over the last decades. In stark contrast to bilateral donors, the geographic choices of NGOs remain virtually unexplored. Using a new dataset and Lorenz curves, this paper shows that NGOs are very active in some countries and hardly active in others. A clustering of NGO activity takes place in UN-labelled high priority countries, but ample room for improved targeting exists. Aid concentration curves provide insight into whether NGOs target the same countries as bilateral donors. The article concludes that this is the case and that NGOs are thus acting as complements. The drawback of this complementary approach is that it reinforces the donor-darling/donor-orphan divide. The paper concludes with some research suggestions and preliminary policy implications.

ICT in Disaster Relief

"Dealing with disasters: Flood, famine and mobile phones," The Economist, July 26th 2007. (Subscription required.)

Excerpt:

“Technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done,” says Caroline Hurford of the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations body that is the single largest distributor of food aid. Once upon a time, when disaster struck, big agencies would roll up with grain, blankets and medicine and start handing them out. Victims would struggle to the relief camps, if they could. For aid workers (let alone recipients) there was no easy way to talk to head office.

Now, when an emergency occurs, the first people on the ground are often computer geeks, setting up telephone networks so other aid agencies can do their stuff. Donors keep track of supplies on spreadsheets and send each other SMS messages: this road has been attacked by bandits, that village cut off by floods. Transport agencies announce helicopter flights by e-mail. Aid providers can find out where exactly on an incoming ship their medical supplies are, saving hours hanging round the docks. Aid donors find it easier to locate the victims of disaster; and victims queue as eagerly for mobile-phone access as they do for food.

As a result, the organisation of aid is changing. On the ground, all big relief operations have communications centres where aid workers go to send e-mails, read the latest security updates and study satellite maps of the affected area. The UN's humanitarian-affairs office runs a portal called ReliefWeb, containing every map and document that might help aid donors; it got 3m hits a day after the Asian tsunami.