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How to stop desertification?

July 24, 2009 by John Boonstra

Build a giant wall.  6,000 kilometers long.  Made out of sand.  Stuck together with bacteria.  No, seriously.

“The threat is desertification. My response is a sandstone wall made from solidified sand,” said Mr Larsson, who describes himself as a dune architect.

The sand would be stabilised by flooding it with bacteria that can set it like concrete in a matter of hours.

Take his word for it; he’s a dune architect.  And desertification is not something to mess around with.  It’s poised to affect over 2 billion people in 140 countries if left unchecked.  But with a gigantic, bacteria-reinforced dune wall, buttressing a “Great Green Belt” of trees, unchecked it will not be.  As long as we can figure out minor details like politics, funding, and where to obtain “giant bacteria-filled balloons.”

If this seems similar to ad hoc geo-engineering schemes of righting the climate, well, it does to me, too.  Except that I’m more comfortable building walls to stop desertification than, say, attaching tubes to giant zeppelins that pump the air full of sulfur dioxide to block the sun and cool the planet.

(image from flickr user John Spooner under a Creative Commons license)

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UN Foundation name invoked by “phishing” scamers

by Mark Leon Goldberg

As regular readers know, UN Dispatch enjoys the support of the UN Foundation.  It would seem that the UN Foundation’s good name is being used in an email phishing scam.  Needless to say, if someone calling himself “Dr. Mack Smith” sends you an email from a UK hotmail account informing you that, “You have been choosen by the U.N Foundation to receive a grant donation of 1,000,000.GBP,” don’t believe it. 

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Angelina Jolie makes third trip to Iraq

by Mark Leon Goldberg

The UN Refugee Agency’s most active goodwill ambassador makes her third trip to Iraq.  A UN spokesperson offers some details:

UNHCR has more on her trip, which is meant to call attention to the estimated 1.6 million Iraqis that remain displaced in their own country.

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Flogging a dead horse?

July 23, 2009 by Emily Ross

Well, let’s hope not.  But, according to Gareth Evans, this is what we’re at risk of if the General Assembly session on the Responsibility to Protect continues casting the debate in terms of humanitarian intervention. 

Contrary to what Noam Chomsky would have us believe, R2P is not humanitarian intervention.  In fact, the concept involves a wide range of policy options short of the use of force to prevent military intervention when mass atrocities are already occurring. 

As Gareth Evans, co-chair of the historic International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) clearly stated, “the core theme [of R2P] is not intervention but prevention”.  Instead of dwelling on morally questionable cases of “humanitarian intervention” past, States should look forward to define policy options across the spectrum of prevention, capacity building and response, to ensure such unthinkable crimes as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are never repeated. 

Fiery rhetoric which re-ignites neo-colonial fears will do nothing to ensure Kofi Annan’s famous words of “never again” are realized.  Let’s hope this afternoon’s session, where States will have the opportunity to make formal remarks on the Secretary-General’s report, will move the debate forward, not back.

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Max Boot’s UN mercenaries

by John Boonstra

Max Boot takes issue with Gideon Rachman’s assumption that conservatives are reflexively opposed to the very idea of the “UN army” that Rachman raised in his FT column the other day. Boot avers that he — unlike, he admits, most conservatives — is not in fact is not opposed to the concept, only Rachman’s specific proposal.

Rachman suggested that troop contributing countries “give the UN first call” on some of their military personnel. Boot objects to this model, but before doing so he laments that UN peacekeepers “have a disturbing propensity to commit sex crimes and other offenses for which they are currently not punished.” He even says “that’s why” he doesn’t agree with Rachman.

First of all, the insistence that blue helmets are more likely to commit sex crimes than other military personnel is greatly exaggerated. Abuse by UN peacekeepers is reprehensible, but, since it has been built up into a meme by conservative hysteria, it shadows the equally reprehensible abuse committed by men in militaries all over the world — including, yes, the United States’ own.

But Boot’s real gripe with Rachman’s plan is that his UN army would still be composed of troops from countries like “Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc.,” which Boot calls “the bottom of the barrel.” It’s hard not to read into the juxtaposition of his words an assumption that soldiers from these developing countries are more likely to commit sexual abuse than those from Western countries.

Even giving Boot the benefit of the doubt — that his argument bespeaks not ethnic prejudices, but a somewhat legitimate comment on differing accountability standards among more and less well-trained militaries — his counter-proposal makes little sense. He fails to acknowledge that the reason that UN peacekeepers are drawn from “the bottom of the barrel” is because top military nations like the United States do not offer troops to UN missions.

Boot would fix the problem by adopting a Blackwater-esque (gulp, no issues of war crimes there…) approach, suggesting that the UN hire veterans from Western militaries. But beyond the issue of legitimacy (how would this differ from a Western intervention?), Boot again does not consider that of cost. Who is to pay for these UN mercenaries? To attract talent willing to go to the most dangerous places on Earth, you need to have a source of funding, and unless he’s in favor of providing more money for the UN, which I feel safe in assuming that conservatives generally oppose, then he’ll have to come up with a more realistic alternative.

(image from UN Photo)

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The declining utility, and enduring legacy, of a Save Darfur movement

by Mark Leon Goldberg

My post on the declining utility of a Save Darfur movement has sparked some debate.

John generally agrees with Newcomb and Norris, saying that the movement’s next challenge is, in fact, pushing the Obama administration to take a hard line approach on Sudan.   Similarly, a movement leader writes me,  “can’t we generate noise on this so Hillary and others push back [on the more conciliatory approach favored by Sudan Envoy Scott Gration]?”

Again, I think both sentiments place unrealistic expectations on the movement’s constituency to get into the weeds of an inter-agency policy debate.  The movement has been a singular success in making Darfur a household name and infiltrating the White House with its members.   But as I wrote earlier, it now up to the movement alumni in the White House to see that their policy options are implemented.  Outside activism has brought us to this point–but change is now dependent on the ability of vanguard policy makers to press their case to their colleagues.  

That said, I don’t think the movement should just dissapear. One of the best things to emerge from the Save Darfur movement are new institutions and organizations that nurture an activism beyond Darfur to the problem of genocide and mass atrocity more broadly.  The Genocide Intervention Network and the Enough Project are two sterling examples of organizations that are directing the energy of the Save Darfur movement to places and issues that are not yet household names.  

For example, the Enough Project just announced a video contest to show the connection between minerals used in the manufacture of cell phones and conflict in the Congo. A year ago, I’d bet only a handful of experts would have known this is an issue. By the end of this contest, many thousands will have a passing familiarity with it, and of those thousands, a certain percentage will want to do something about it.   Pretty soon “conflict minerals” from Congo may be as familiar to Americans as “conflict diamonds.”     

Ultimately, I’d argue that the results of these sorts of efforts are a better way to judge the success of the Save Darfur movement than the outcome of the inter-agency debate on Sudan policy.  

pic from flickr user onthedecline

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