Look and Read for International Surprises

"They're all wearing jeans," a friend said back in 1979, when Iranian militants were storming the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. That observation introduced me to what can be learned by looking at the details in media photos and also by looking for unexpected information in novels and other publications.

The clothes and expressions on people used to illustrate articles say a lot. When criminals or terrorists are captured, we don't see them well-groomed, wearing well-tailored business suits, or smiling at the camera, because pictures are chosen to help tell the same stories as the articles tell.

Some times pictures unexpectedly generate funny ideas instead of the serious ones they are intended to communicate. Draperies/curtains made into clothes is a device we've seen in Gone With the Wind, Sound of Music, and Enchanted. Seeing China's President, Xi Jinping, dwarfed by the enormous red drape behind him at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, all I could think of was how many gowns could be fashioned from that material.

Then, there is the information that turns up in unexpected places. While reading the class notes about alumni in a secular university's magazine, I saw a former student wrote a book about a Roman Catholic priest, Bernhard Lichtenberg, who was martyred for speaking out on behalf of Jewish citizens against Nazi practices.

When I was listening for stock market tips, Jim Cramer, a stock analyst and the host of "Mad Money" on CNBC, mentioned he once heard a professor say, if you wanted to learn about reality, read novels. Sure enough, I was reading the latest novel, The House of Unexpected Sisters, by Alexander McCall Smith, the British author who writes a series set in Botswana, Africa, when, on page 151, I saw he wrote about a store that sold furniture made from Zambezi teak and mukwa wood, "none of this Chinese rubbish." I hadn't expected the controversial subject of African wood, a subject I discussed in the blog post, "Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels," to turn up in a novel.

World Energy Attitude Shifts

According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2016 the global economy grew and carbon dioxide emissions from energy production did not. In fact, the IEA found worldwide carbon dioxide emissions have remained the same for three years.

Progress is uneven but promising. China reduced emissions 1% last year, and India just passed tougher auto emissions standards in March, 2017. Where lower priced alternatives to coal have encouraged countries to switch to natural gas, renewable power sources, and nuclear energy. carbon dioxide output has declined or stabilized. In every country, improved energy efficiency has helped the environment in terms of carbon dioxide reduction and less deforestation. In Malawi, for example, rural and urban consumers have been willing to consider replacing traditional three-stone fires with an investment in clay, metal, or thermoelectric stoves that burn charcoal more efficiently than charcoal and much more efficiently than wood.

The growing concern about climate change has stimulated the search for green energy alternatives. In Norway, the Ocean Sun company is working on solar farms that can float on the ocean and transmit power back to crowded urban areas. Others are looking into technology for floating wind turbines, for generating power from hydrogen, and for using the hydropower of waves, tides, and rivers.

 At its gold mines in Suriname and Burkina Faso, Toronto-based IAMGOLD is using solar energy to reduce the use of diesel oil that generates greenhouse gases. The company sees the hybrid diesel solar photovoltaic engine, built by the Finnish group Wartsila at its gold mine in Burkina Faso, not only as a way to make an environmental contribution to the world but also as a way to reduce energy costs, protect against fuel price volatility, and increase local employment.

Efforts to convert the power of Atlantic Ocean waves into energy in the Orkney Islands north of the Scottish mainland and at the Wave Hub facility in Cornwell off the far southwest coast of England have been less successful. Besides the prohibitive cost, tricky engineering problems and the need to develop new materials capable of withstanding storm stresses and corrosive salt water require solutions. A device needs to handle the variety of pounding storms and normal waves, up and down motions, and wave speeds. Navigation needs to avoid these devices. And biologists view the moving parts of underwater turbines as a threat to sea mammals, fish, and diving birds. Yet, the UK's European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkneys attracts tests by Wave-tricity's Ocean Wave Rover and Finland's Wello Oy Penguin. Australia's Carnegie company has been financing CETO's Wave Energy Technology which has placed giant buoys off the coast of Cornwell in an attempt to produce emission-free energy and desalinated freshwater.  

Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels

The old saying reminding us to be cautious and know what we're buying applies in the global timber trade. Some woods are much more valuable than others. Shipping a load of Brazil's big leaf mahogany into a country labeled as $9000 worth of less expensive timber can make a huge profit even if it is relabeled correctly and sold below real market prices. The American Forest and Paper Association estimates U.S. firms that use legally harvested domestic wood lose up to $460 million a year competing with this kind of undervalued, illegally logged timber. Globally, illegal logging makes up to 30% of the $150 billion a year trade in forest products.

     There are sustainable, legal ways to harvest timber, but logging companies have taken advantage of poor oversight in some countries by just putting roads in tropical forests and harvesting and exporting endangered, heavily regulated species of wood, like West African kosso. On the world market, those involved in the illegal timber trade also smuggle endangered species, illegal drugs, weapons, and slaves. Harvests of protected rosewood and ebony in Madagascar invite captures of rare wildlife, while orangutan in Indonesia are endangered along with the country's valuable tropical forests. Like the diamond and jade trade, illegal timber sales have been known to finance armed conflicts in the form of genocide, coups, and civil wars.

     Efforts to combat the illegal timber trade and its damaging side effects include government regulations and laws and consumer awareness. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) provides regulations authorizing country customs officials to confiscate illegally harvested logs being shipped through the world's ports. In the U.S. the 1900 Lacey Act and its 2008 amendment ban trafficking in illegal wildlife and illegally harvested timber and require seizure of such products and fines. Since the Lacey Amendment also makes it illegal to sell a wood product in the U.S. that contains wood that has been illegally harvested in the country of origin, U.S. retailers and other companies that sell wood products need to be sure to buy from legal sources.

     Celso Correia, Mozambique's new minister for land, environment and rural development, is an African who has learned to play the game illegal loggers used to win by relying on weak law enforcement and corruption. As few as three years ago, a report from the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency stated 93% of timber in Mozambique was cut and exported illegally, mainly to China, the world's largest log importer. China's illegal timber imports deprived Mozambique of at least $400 million plus taxes. Mozambique now seizes more illegally cut timber exports, but the country is competing with an insatiable Chinese demand for raw timber. In The House of Unexpected Sisters, which is set in Botswana, Africa, the author writes about a store that sells furniture made from Zambezi teak and mukwa wood, "none of this Chinese rubbish."

      Mozambique and other African countries are facing long odds when they try to replace deforestation with sustainable forest conservation methods that protect woods,  such as the desirable Pau Ferro, and when they try to attract responsible Chinese companies willing to process logs into more valuable planks and furniture within Africa.


     Consumers do have a way to be sure they are buying legally sourced wood and paper products. Just as kids can help adults check for an ENERGY STAR on appliances that save money by using energy efficiently, they can look for the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) logo of a check mark and tree on wood and paper products. When items like toilet paper, bookcases, doors, and picture frames come from forests that meet environmental, social, legal, and economic standards, they carry the FSC logo. Learn more at fsc.org.

(Also see the earlier post, "Uncover the Economic Value of Wood.")
   

   

Africans Learn to Play the Game

Whether a child is playing Candy Land or trading Pokemon cards, an innocent young child can be tricked into trading a valuable card for one less useful. But as they learn how to play the game this kind of trickery no longer works. Africa has a lot of valuable "cards," and Africa will learn, and is learning, not to be fooled by those who take advantage of corruption, questionable land titles, promises of employment, and pretend friendships.

     Since Africa has valuable mineral deposits, the continent has been a target of questionable mining deals. After the Democratic Republic of the Congo seized First Quantum Minerals, the close relationship of an Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) partner with Congo President Joseph Kabila caused First Quantum to question the financial deal that enabled ENRC to purchase its seized copper assets. The legal dispute did not end after Luxembourg-based Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) acquired ENRC and strengthened its position in Africa's copper belt. In fact, ERG's stake in the former ENRC became even more valuable after the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China's Export-Import Bank provided $700 million to build the copper and cobalt project that made ERG the world's largest producer of the cobalt used in batteries. The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) continues to investigate ENRC's original deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

     In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah walked through mounds of dirt and deep puddles to do his own investigation of a gold mine digging a massive pit on church land. Earlier, after one of the mine's earthmoving machines cut an electrical line that left the town without power, Bishop Afoakwah had met with local chiefs. He understood the church held a legal deed to the land that had been donated by a chief for the purpose of building a clinic and nursing school. During his meeting, the bishop learned various chiefs claimed to protect land for other chiefs and, taking advantage of the interwovern land rights and the high per ounce price of gold, a Chinese mine owner provided a payoff to secure a mining concession on the church's land. At the gold mine, workers said a "Mr. Kumar" owned the Hia site. Two Chinese engineers dashed into the bush, when they saw the bishop approaching. Ghana's Minerals Commission only has eight officials to investigate the country's illegal mining and an incomplete database of mining concessions. President Nana Akufo-Addo, who took office in January, 2017, put Ghana's Chinese miners on notice that he intends to enforce laws governing gold mining.

     Not only have gold mining operations destroyed agricultural land that has fed local farmers for generations, but heavy machinery has buried and severely injured untrained workers and health-damaging cyanide and mercury used to extract gold from stone have contaminated air and water. Farmers who sell their land to miners enjoy only a short-term gain that lasts a few years. Even if the land is returned to them after the mine is exhausted, the three feet of top soil are destroyed and the poor quality clay soil underneath cannot support a family. Yet, workers who fear losing salaries from mining jobs willingly risk their health and ignore environmental consequences. In fact, miners have thrown rocks at inspectors and even killed a fleeing official by rolling over him with a car.

     The path to legal mining in Ghana and in other developing countries is a difficult one. It requires learning "to play the game" without corruption and payoffs, with only those foreign investors willing to train employees and commit to some community development, and with activists like Bishop Afoakwah who are willing to take on lengthy court battles for damages done to the land by illegal miners. In the end, Africans will come to the same conclusion that Cardinal Peter Turkson, archbishop emeritus of Cape Coast, Ghana, did. "It is...unjustifiable for developing countries to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future."

     While Ghana continues to sort out land ownership issues affecting local gold miners, a group of 33 illegal gold miners in Uganda spent four years forming the first gold mine the UK's Fairtrade organization certified in Africa. The Syanyonja Artisan Miners Alliance (SAMA) now boasts: 1) a timbered pit unlike the dangerous open pits where dirt walls collapse, when heavy downpours swamp quarries and whole families of miners, and 2) gold extraction processes that employ proper handling of mercury and cyanide. SAMA's certified gold mine offers small-scale coop members the prospect of premium prices, savings, a local health center, and subsidized school fees. Now that the association pays taxes SAMA members find they have more government influence. SAMA also benefits from the "I Do" campaign sponsored by the Fairtrade Foundation's focus on commodities campaign in the UK, which alerts couples to choose Fairtrade Gold wedding bands.

Earlier posts involving Africa's resources include:

• Wood: Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels, Uncover the Economic Value of Wood
• Coffee: Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future; Coffee Prices Going Up; Allowances Going Down?
• Cocoa: Become A Discriminating Chocolate Consumer, Chocolate Tasting Party and More; Chocolate's Sweet Deals
• Palm oil: Can Small Farms End Poverty?
• Oil: Nigeria's New Beginning
• Diamonds: Diamond Flaws

Also see the earlier post: Why Will Africa Overcome Poverty?"

   
   

Can Small Farms End Poverty?

Before performers, men, women and young people gather, at the Global Citizen Festival in New York City's Central Park on September 26, for the purpose of ending extreme poverty, let's look at a few of the factors contributing to world hunger. Silo thinking, where everyone focuses on their own problems and solutions, is undermining the need to feed and employ people, provide export revenue from agriculture, and protect the environment.

     Small farms provide employment that prevents a country's rural population from flocking to urban areas that are not ready to provide sufficient jobs, sanitation, housing, transportation, and education. David Hoyle, deputy director of ProForest has pointed out how small farms would benefit from governments willing to engage in land-use planning. What governments need to do is designate specific areas where: 1) villagers can farm and live, 2) concessions are leased to large scale export producers of, for example, palm oil and timber, and 3) forested areas needed to sop up greenhouse gases are protected. Water use planning to prevent pollution and supply sufficient water for sanitation, cooking, and crops is also necessary.

     Without land-use planning, plantations governments are counting on to provide agricultural export revenue are in constant competition and conflict with local farmers. Moreover, plantation owners need government help to provide the housing and sanitation facilities, schools, and clinics that are a constant source of complaints by the laborers they employ.

     Countries have tried to coordinate local production and crop exports by providing villagers with fertilizer, seeds, technical assistance, and credit. In exchange, under contract state-owned enterprises buy, at fixed prices, what the farmers produce. As earlier posts for Nigeria, coffee, and cocoa reveal, this process has been financially unsuccessful to both governments and small growers. Modifications have led governments to provide farmers with vouchers they can use to buy their own supplies, and private companies or coops have taken over the task of buying commodities from farmers.

     Chemical companies in a position to perform research for the precision farming that provides seeds, fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides adapted to local soil and climate conditions in global areas of extreme poverty now concentrate their efforts on profitable corn, soybean, and cotton crops important to American agriculture, not, for example, cassava, which feeds the poor in sub-Saharan Africa.

     Instead of engineering crops to provide added vitamins and minerals to first world consumers, in areas of extreme poverty the same objective could be achieved by introducing small farmers to new crops they could plant and bring to their local markets. Not only would a greater variety of produce improve nutrition, but crop rotation could improve soils and increase a farmer's income. Farmers might save money by controlling weeds with mulch rather than chemicals, and they may even be able to make additional money by using weeds to weave baskets (see baskets for sale at serrv.org) or make bio-fuel.

(Farming topics also are covered in the earlier posts, "World (Food) Expo, Hybrid Crops & New Farming Practices" and "Back to the Land.")