Perfect Storms. Will UN science stir up political will?
Frank A. Hilario
September 27, 2009
Givens: On one hand, in many constitutions of the countries of the United Nations, there is a distinct separation of Church and State; this is internationally observed. On the other hand, there is a fragile separation of Science and State, and this is universally not recognized. If the connection between scientific knowledge and state policy is flimsy, how can Science ever inform the People of the options for better lives, especially given the global challenge of Climate Change?
We all are vulnerable to Climate Change as in, the waters rise, the economy goes down. I imagine that's why the Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, William Dar calls it 'a perfect storm' (see also my 'Pinoy talks of a perfect storm, the UN listens,' americanchronicle.com):
The world is facing a ΄perfect storm,΄ with a number of huge problems converging around land issues. At the center of this storm are the poor, who depend on the land for survival yet, they are unable to fight off the massive storm clouds that are abuilding.
Dar includes in his idea of his perfect storm the rise and fall of temperatures, continual visits of droughts and storms, as well as escalating population pressure and poverty all resulting in harsher suffering. As an indicator, land degradation is progressing at the rate of 1% a year.
Dar happens to be the Chair of the Committee on Science and Technology, CST, of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD. The CST is the convenor of the Buenos Aires scientific conference. The CST conference was organized by ICRISAT and four other international research institutes under the Drylands Science for Development Consortium in collaboration with the UNCCD. The Consortium is made up of five leading desertification organizations catalyzed by ICRISAT: European DesertNet (based in Spain), Institute for the Environment and Sustainability (Italy), International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (Syria), International Network on Water, Environment and Health (Canada), and ICRISAT (India). If you want to know more about the poor in the semi-arid tropics, the people of ICRISAT are ready to talk (visit their website, icrisat.org). Representing ICRISAT at the CST meeting were Mark Winslow and Suhas Wani. This was Dar's final session as Chair of CST; his 2-year term was a watershed in that he led in overhauling the CST to jibe with the revised UNCCD strategy, and this has been highly appreciated by UNCCD leaders as well as the CST members themselves. He is a Team Captain par excellence.
The CST scientists know that the poor in the drylands of Asia and Africa are the most vulnerable, as they cannot afford the rich's response to global warming: more air-conditioned planes, more air-conditioned hotels, more air-conditioned offices, more air-conditioned cars. Meanwhile, the drylands get drier, the arid soils get warmer, the wastelands deteriorate further Mother Earth groans and Atlas shrugs.
Too, the policymakers, that is, the lawmakers of the land, as well as the managers in national and local offices public and private are vulnerable to climate change but they are invulnerable to policy change when challenged by science. The scientists know that, but they have to try again. This time in the good airs of Buenos Aires, summoned by the UN, they are not talking but the way I understand it, the world's scientists have previously agreed that you cannot convince the policymakers of climate change, or even just to look at any of its signs or symptoms, if you don't have the hard facts resulting from actual monitoring and evaluation, ME, which in turn is actually monitored and evaluated (MEed) as it proceeds. Ideally, scientists do their thing, and the world watches.
I look at the Buenos Aires scientific conference as a parallel approach to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC's work on postulating about climate change. The IPCC had gathered data, organized them into data sets, processed and analyzed them, and came out with the conclusion that climate change was 'unequivocal' (see the highlights of the IPCC report 'Warming Of The Climate System Is Unequivocal,' UN Chronicle Online Edition, un.org). Our warm physical explorations, exploitations, experimentations are warming Mother Earth.
What the IPCC did was enough to win the Nobel Prize for Peace, but not enough to convince the policymakers of the world (not to mention the grant givers, and George W Bush) that indeed there is global warming. Your science is good, but we need cause; we need the unmistakable signs of the times to cause us to act.
So we begin with the poor of the Earth. The poor families. The poor soils. Especially the lands that right now are suffering desertification, degradation and drought. What happens to them? What do you mean desertification? What do you mean land degradation? What do you mean drought?
In other words, there remain the doubts of policymakers. You have to quantify the doubts so that they become certainties. Simplifying, that's what the Buenos Aires scientists met and talked about. In the end, they agreed essentially on the who, what, where, when, why and how to measure desertification, the final stage in the process of land degradation, that which is exacerbated by drought.
The CST scientists meeting agreed to 'make use of knowledge-management approaches' to monitor and measure desertification in its various stages. But what in Earth's name does a 'knowledge-management approach' do? With a bit of luck, just launched is Google Earth's Climate Changer (my term); here is part of the Google Earth announcement (Leo Hickman, 25 September 2009, guardian.co.uk):
In collaboration with the Danish government and others, we are launching a series of Google Earth layers and tours to allow you to explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it. Working with data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, we show on Google Earth the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.
If you haven't, just download and install Google Earth, and already you have a good idea what is a 'knowledge-management approach' the CST scientists are talking about. The Climate Changer makes use of Google Earth to show you Before and After scenarios using IPCC data. Click the mouse and you are looking at the climate changing!
Notwithstanding all that, about the 'IPCC data' as basis for knowledge if I were a policymaker, I would say, 'ay, there's the rub,' as Shakespeare's Hamlet did say; you can't convince me of Climate Change if all you have are mostly presumptions and propositions, given that they are computerized, created as 3D and shown in Google Earth or even in IMAX. What the CST scientists want to do next is gather post-IPCC data, that is to say, Data Over Time, DOT, later to show in a time series, that Climate Change is costing us that much and must be mitigated, and how. I say, DOT's the spirit!
Based on the Buenos Aires discussions, the CST scientists are advising the UN, through the UNCCD, to set up a scientific advisory, one, 'to facilitate the coordination and dissemination of new knowledge,' and two, to set up 'clear channels for its advice in decision-making.' That is to say, the scientists want the policymakers to listen to them before they decide on what actions to take. Aside from that, the scientists want the UN to 'make use of a networking body so that (scientific) results can be accessed, shared and used with greater ease.'
If I may use my metaphor again, what the CST scientists want done is gather data and information that can be transformed and used with tools like Google Earth's Climate Changer, which anyone can download at anytime, and is absolutely free.
All that has to do with some critical thinking. When we get to know all that the CST scientists are asking to be known, what then? Then the policymakers will do their critical thinking. What if the policymakers don't agree with the scientists? Then we will see science trying to stir up the political will. Then we will have another perfect storm, the scientists asserting that they are perfectly right while the policymakers remain perfectly unmoved. And both sides might forget that it is not working with knowledge that is the most important; ultimately, it is working with people.
Science is critical thinking. The problem is using critical thinking from beginning to end. Before and after critical thinking, we have to do some creative thinking, which is not the realm of science. I asked Captain of Team ICRISAT William Dar how he came up with the idea of Team ICRISAT, and he said it came from the basketball Team Philippines. You cannot move the policymakers by science alone. Al Gore knows that; he began thinking about An Inconvenient Truth via creative thinking in serendipity; then, he resorted to critical thinking, using logic to convince his audience. You can't convince using logic alone. That's why it took him 30 years to get our attention! I don't think we have the luxury of waiting for another genius for another 30 years.
MANILA The havoc wrought by the tropical storm Ketsana (local name, Ondoy) in the Philippines is a sign of the coming times. The weather bureau PAGASA said the rainfall recorded Saturday in Manila alone is the capital city's highest amount of rain since 1967: 410 mm of rain in 9 hours, exceeding the average rainfall of 391 mm and the 1957 record of 331 mm. Nilo Prisco of PAGASA said, 'We can attribute this to climate change' (IANS, 27 September 2009, sify.com). About 280,000 people were distressed by Ketsana, not to mention death and destruction as thousands spent the night on the roofs of nearly submerged houses in Manila and suburbs like Marikina, where the flood was roof high. There were landslide victims and fishermen who drowned. The runway of the international airport in Manila was closed as it was flooded. That was more than a month's rain in less than a day. PAGASA Director Nathaniel Cruz said, 'This is related to climate change and could be a manifestation of things to come' (Francisco Alcuaz Jr, 27 September 2009, bloomberg.com). 'We were all totally caught unprepared,' Chair of the Philippine National Red Cross and Senator Richard Gordon said. 'This was supposed to be a small typhoon.' The good Senator has not been paying attention to Al Gore either. The government declared a state of calamity in Metro Manila and 25 provinces (cbc.ca).
Will such bad news stir the political will of policymakers towards sympathy with the demands of science? Let's see what my President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will do after this. But I doubt that Climate Change will be acknowledged officially and acted upon with firm resolve. How about people who have declared their intentions of running for President in next year's election: Noynoy Aquino, Manny Villar, Bro Eddie, Bro Mike, Gibo Teodoro? I doubt it too. The death and devastation speak for themselves, but the connection between those and Climate Change is not obvious. Logic will not save the day. For instance, the river squatters do not see that their hovels and their daily throwaways are clogging the waterways they only see that they are entitled to survive and they will break the law of common sense to do it, while politicians patronize them for their votes. Logic works for the good of the politicians, not for the good of the people.
I worked as a copywriter 35 years ago; at the Pacifica Publicity Bureau in the City of Makati, we learned that to market your product, your best come-on is atmosphere (virtual), not logic (real). Nothing has changed much. Ultimately, you convince by logic, but you don't begin with it. You don't stir political will by logic. The genius of Philippine President Ferdinand E Marcos showed you can stir it with a slogan ('This nation shall be great again!'), followed by political will. The uncertain genius of Benigno 'Noynoy' Aquino III who would-be-President, himself the son of assassinated would-be-President Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino Jr, is trying to stir it with the colors of Benigno (red and yellow); the slogan is meaningless, 'Ituloy ang laban' ('Carry on the fight' for what?), and I don't see political will. Manny Villar is portraying himself as the man from rags to riches; that is the politics of the poor. Good luck! 'The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination' Albert Einstein. I can imagine that.