The story goes like this. Victor Hugo was travelling out of town and wanted to know how his latest book was selling. He messaged (telegraphed?) his agent: ?
The agent, not to be outdone, replied: !
Enough said. How I wish I could beat that economy of words…
I have a fondness for both question marks and exclamation marks — I used a good deal of both in my own speaking and writing. I use these as a metaphor in a tribute I just wrote about one of my mentors: Ray Wijewardene.
“If I had to condense the multi-faceted and fascinating life of Ray Wijewardene, I would reduce it to a whole lot of question marks and exclamation marks. In his 86 years, Ray generated more than his fair share of both.
“He was unpigeonholeable: engineer, farmer, inventor, aviator and sportsman all rolled into one. Whether at work or play, he was an innovative thinker who rose above his culture and training to grasp the bigger picture.”
My weekly column on science, development and media, published in Ravaya newspaper on 28 August 2011 (converted into unicode Sinhala font using UCSC online facility, which has some limitations).
In this Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I summarise the views of late Dr Ray Wijewardene on sustainable farming. Written to mark his first death anniversary, it is the beginning of a series of explorations of his critical thinking on issues of agriculture, energy, environmental conservation and innovation.
This first appeared in Ravaya Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 21 August 2011.
In my Ravaya column (in Sinhala) for 31 July 2011, I look back at South Africa’s HIV/AIDS misadventure under President Thabo Mbeki, who refused to accept the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it. Instead, he and his health minister embarked on a highly dubious treatment using garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as AIDS remedies — all in the name of ‘traditional knowledge’.
It turned out to be a deadly experiment, and one of the worst policy debacles in the history of public health anywhere in the world. In 2008, A study by Harvard researchers estimated that the South African government could have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.
There are lessons for all governments addressing complex, technical issues: do not allow a vocal minority to hijack the policy agenda, ignoring well established science and disallowing public debate on vital issues.
South African cartoonist Zapiro lampooned President Mbeki’s HIV folly
Asking questions. Connecting the dots. Explaining matters.
These actions sum up what I have been doing in the spheres of communication and development for over 20 years. They form the cornerstone in my attempts to make sense of our globalised world and heady times.
As a journalist, I was trained to look for what’s New, True and Interesting (‘NTI Test’). Early on, I went beyond just reporting events, and probed the underlying causes and processes. With experience, I can now offer my audiences something more: perspective and seasoned opinion.
I look back (slightly) and look around (a lot) in a half-hour, in-depth TV interview with media researcher/activist and fellow citizen journalist Sanjana Hattotuwa. This was part of The Interview (third series) produced by Young Asia Television, and broadcast on two Sri Lankan TV channels, TNL and ETv on May 8 (with repeats).
Watch the full interview online: Sanjana Hattotuwa talks to Nalaka Gunawardene
I have always worn multiple ‘hats’, and dabbled in multiple pursuits rather than follow narrow paths of enquiry. I see myself continuing to oscillate between the ‘geeks’ and greens, and where possible, bridging their worlds.
I sometimes feel a strange kinship with the ancient Greeks, who first asked some fundamental questions about the universe. They didn’t always get the answers right, and neither do I.
But it’s very important that we question and critique progress – I do so with an open mind, enthusiasm and optimism.
The setting is exotic enough – I’m near some of the finest beaches and bluest seas in the world. It’s a cloudy day outside, with tropical sunshine interrupted by occasional showers. We’re just a few hundred kilometres north of the Equator.
But it’s whole different world inside the meeting room. We have no windows and are visually cut off from the scenery. And the air conditioning is too strong. Even the 50 or so people inside the room don’t emit enough body heat to counter the chill spilling out from the ceiling.
Paradise (resort) isn’t alone. Across tropical Asia, our public offices, hotels and shopping malls just love to freeze us out.
This habit has a particular irony at this meeting. Convened by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), it’s discussing how to stay cool without killing the planet.
To be precise, how air conditioning and refrigeration industries can continue their business – and keep cooling people and goods – without damaging the ozone layer or warming the planet.
It’s the semi-annual meeting of government officials from across Asia who help implement the Montreal Protocol to control and phase out several dozen industrial chemicals that damage the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere.
A nitpicker in Paradise? Photo by Darryl D'Monte
Adopted in 1987 and now ratified by 196 countries, it is the world’s most successful environmental treaty. It has reversed a catastrophic loss of ozone high up in the Earth’s atmosphere, and prevented tens of thousands of cases of skin cancer and cataract.
A landmark was reached at the end of 2009, when it succeeded in totally phasing out the production and use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — chemicals that had helped the cooling industries for decades. Now, a bigger challenge remains: removing two other widely used gases known as HCFCs and HFCs.
Both were originally promoted as substitutes for CFCs in the early days of the Protocol. HCFCs are less ozone-damaging than CFCs, while HFCs are fully ozone-safe. However, both have a high global warming potential — up to 1,700 times that of Carbon dioxide — and therefore contribute to climate change.
It was only a few years ago that scientists and officials realized that there was little point in fixing one atmospheric problem if it aggravated another. So in 2007, the Montreal Protocol countries agreed to address the climate impacts of their work.
The Montreal Protocol now encourages the countries to promote the selection of alternatives to HCFCs that minimize environmental impacts, in particular impacts on climate change.
The air conditioning and refrigeration industries are being encouraged to switch from HCFC to substitutes ahead of the global phase-out deadline of 2030. Alternatives — including natural refrigerants such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons — are entering the market for many applications.
Parallel to this, consumers are being encouraged to opt for newer appliances that are both ozone-safe and climate friendly.
It takes time and effort for this message to spread and take hold. Many users — especially in the developing countries — only consider the purchase price of appliances and not necessarily the long-term energy savings or planetary benefits.
Events like the first Asian Ozone2Climate Roadshow, held in the Maldivian capital Malé from 8 to 12 May 2011, are pushing for this clarity and awareness. It’s still an uphill task: too many people have to be won over on too many appliances using a wide range of chemicals and processes.
And sitting here at my freezing corner of Paradise, I feel we should add another message: conserving energy includes a more rational and sensible use of air conditioning.
Perhaps we should promote and adopt the Japanese practice of Cool Biz.
Introduced by the Japanese Ministry of Environment in the summer of 2005, the idea behind Cool Biz was simple: ensure the thermostat in all air conditioners stayed fixed at 28 degrees Centigrade.
CoolBiz LogoThat’s not exactly a very cool temperature (and certainly no freezing), but not unbearable either.
The Cool Biz dress code advised office workers to starch collars “so they stand up and to wear trousers made from materials that breathe and absorb moisture”. They were encouraged to wear short-sleeved shirts without jackets or ties.
A Cool Koizumi: Leading from the front...Then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi himself set the tone, wearing informal attire. But then, he was already known for his unorthodox style.
Clothes designers and retailers chipped in, with clothes offering greater comfort at higher temperatures.
Cool Biz changed the Japanese work environment – and fast. I remember walking into a meeting at a government office in Tokyo a few weeks after the idea had been introduced, and finding I was the most formally dressed.
The Japanese like to count things. When the first season of Cool Biz ended, they calculated the countrywide campaign to have saved at least 460,000 tons of Carbon dioxide emissions (by avoided electricity use). That’s about the same emissions from a million Japanese households for a month.
The following year, an even more aggressive Cool Biz campaign helped save an estimated 1.14 million tons of Carbon dioxide – or two and half times more than in the first year.
The idea also traveled beyond Japan. In 2006, the South Korean Ministry of Environment and the British Trade Union Congress both endorsed the idea.
This summer, the seventh since Cool Biz started, there is an added reason for the Japanese to conserve energy. As the Asahi Shimbun reported on 28 April 2011: “In what has been dubbed the ‘power-conserving biz’ campaign, many companies plan to conserve energy during the peak summer period in light of expected power shortages caused by the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.”
Meanwhile, the rest of us freeze-happy tropical Asians can evolve our own Cool Biz practices – we don’t need to wait for governments and industry to launch organized campaigns.
For a start, we – as consumers or patrons – can urge those who maintain public-access buildings to observe voluntary upper limits of cooling. Sensitive thermostats can automatically adjust air conditioner operations when temperatures rise above a pre-determined comfortable level.
It all depends on how many of us pause to think. Of course, we can also continue business as usual – and freeze ourselves today for a warmer tomorrow.
The sun sets in Paradise too - photo by Nalaka Gunawardene
2nd LIRNEasia Disaster Risk Reduction Lecture, 27 April 2011 in Colombo: Nalaka Gunawardene (standing) moderates panel discussionWriting on 20 April 2011, exactly 25 years after the Kantale large dam breached and washed away downstream villages, I posed the question: “If there were to be a catastrophic dam failure in Sri Lanka today, is there a warning system in place to detect the failure and issue timely warnings? Have the downstream communities participated in evacuation drills and know what action needs to be taken when a warning is issued?”
I’ve been asking such questions for a while. In fact, the post-mortem of the Kantale dam breach was one of the bigger stories I covered soon after I entered mainstream journalism in late 1987. By then, a few months after the incident, a presidential commission of inquiry was looking into what caused that particular disaster.
My interest in this subject is perhaps inevitable. I live in a country that has a high concentration of man-made water bodies. There are approximately 320 large and medium sized dams in Sri Lanka, and over 10,000 smaller dams, referred to as “wewas”, most of them built more than 1,000 years ago. In fact, Sri Lanka probably has the highest number of man-made water bodies in the world. According to the Sri Lanka Wetlands Database, the major irrigation reservoirs (each more than 200 hectares) cover an area of 7,820 hectares, while the seasonal/minor irrigation tanks (each less than 200 hectares) account for 52,250 hectares. This adds up to 60,070 hectares or just over 600 square kilometres — nearly a tenth of the island’s total land area.
Lankans are justifiably proud of their ancient hydrological civilisation — but don’t take enough care of it. Nothing lasts forever, of course, but irrigation systems can serve for longer if properly maintained. In a world where extreme weather is becoming increasingly commonplace, we can’t afford to sit on 25 centuries of historical laurels. Unless we maintain the numerous dams and irrigation systems – most of which are still being used for farming – heritage can easily turn into hazard.
Cartoon from Daily Mirror, 20 Jan 2011As indeed happened in early 2011, when massive and successive floods lashed the country’s Dry Zone where most reservoirs are located. It was a strong reminder how dams and reservoirs not only attenuate the effects of heavy rains, but if breached, can magnify the effects of such rainfall.
More than 200 small dams did breach during those rains, causing extensive damage to crops and infrastructure. The most dangerous form of breach, the over-topping of the earthen dams of large reservoirs, was avoided only by timely measures taken by irrigation engineers — at considerable cost to those living downstream. This irrigation emergency was captured by a local cartoonist: the head in this caricature is that of the minister of irrigation.
In early February, Sri Lanka announced that it will expand its dam safety programme to cover more large reservoirs and will ask for additional funding from the World Bank following recent floods. Never mind the irony of a proud heritage now having to be maintained with internationally borrowed money. Public safety, not national vanity, comes first.
Bandula MahanamaThe main lecture was delivered by Dr Aad Correlje of the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. The response panel comprised Bandula Mahanama (a farmer organisation leader from one of the worst flood-affected areas in the Polonnaruwa District), S Karunaratne (Sri Lanka National Committee on Large Dams), Dr Kamal Laksiri (Ceylon Electricity Board) and U W L Chandradasa (Disaster Management Center). A summary is found on LIRNEasia’s blog.
Dams and irrigation systems are widely seen as the exclusive domain of civil engineers. They certainly have a critical role to play, but are not the only stakeholders. I was very glad that both our panel and audience included voices from many of these groups — especially the many communities who live immediately downstream of dams and reservoirs. Some of them are always in the shadow of a dam hazard, and yet helpless about it.
This was the gist of farmer leader Bandula Mahanama’s remarks – he made a passionate plea for a more concerted effort to improve proper maintenance of dams and reservoirs. “Wewas are part of our life, but right now our lives are in danger because the irrigation heritage is in a state of disrepair,” he noted.
I will write more about this in the coming weeks. My last thought from the chair was something I first heard many years ago in a global documentary. When it comes to water management, everybody lives downstream.
That’s certainly the case — but some are more downstream than others. And not everyone lives with the same peace of mind. We need to do something about it.
CSE TVEAP Media Briefing on Air Qualitry Issues in Colombo, 27 April 2011
Almost exactly four years ago, I wrote a blog post called Gasp! Asthma on the rise – and we made it all possible. I argued how we who suffer from Asthma — and our numbers keep increasing — are also contributing to making the bad problem worse.
I held up my life-saving inhaler that I always carry around wherever I go, and am never more than a few feet away from. This is not theatrics, but drama in real life. Almost exactly a year ago, I was rushed to hospital at night for nebulisation. I don’t suffer such attacks too often, thank goodness, but I also don’t want to take chances — as I can never count on good air in my home city.
And I’m far from being alone. Wherever I go, I find increasing numbers of fellow asthma sufferers: we gripe and groan, but only a few among us realise that our lifestyles, choices and apathy contributes to the worsening quality of our air.
Almost every South Asian city today is reeling under severe air pollution and gridlocked urban traffic congestion. Colombo, a medium sized city by South Asian standards, has the (slight) advantage of the sea breeze flushing out part of its polluted air — but Greater Colombo is still struggling with polluting fuels, outdated vehicle technologies and rising numbers of private vehicles leading to massive congestion. Air quality levels vary considerably as we travel to the interior of the island, but some provincial cities now have mounting air pollution problems.
Finding the 'Common Air' in everybody's self interest...
This is why we collaborated with CSE, which has a long track record in knowledge-based advocacy for clean air in India and other countries of developing Asia, to organise this event. It was an open forum where air quality experts in Sri Lanka and India engaged Sri Lankan journalists and broadcasters on the status of Sri Lanka’s air quality and what it can learn from the neighbouring countries.
In my remarks, I said: “The quest for clean air in developing Asia is much more than a simple pollution story. It has many layers and complex links to government policies, regulation, industrial lobbies and technology options.
I added: “Our big challenge, as professional story-tellers, is to ask tough questions, seek clarity and then connect the dots for our audiences. At stake is our health, prosperity and indeed our very lives. Air pollution kills, slowly but surely!”
Kantale Reservoir: Full again, but what if another dam breach happens as in April 1986?
There are approximately 320 medium and large dams in Sri Lanka and over 10,000 small dams, most of which were built more than 1,000 years ago. The consequences of a major dam failure in Sri Lanka can be devastating to life, property and the environment.
One such dam disaster happened exactly 25 years ago, on 20 April 1986, when the ancient Kantale dam, 50 feet high and over 13,000 feet long, breached. Its waters rapidly flooded several villages downstream, killing 127 people and destroying over 1,600 houses and paddy lands.
A short documentary made in 2005 revisited the scene of this disaster 19 years later to gather memories and opinions of the affected people and engineers involved. The film, made by Divakar Gosvami, was part of a 2005 study on dam safety by LIRNEasia, Vanguard Foundation, Sri Lanka National Committee of Large Dams and Sarvodaya. Its final report asked: if there were to be a catastrophic dam failure in Sri Lanka today, is there a warning system in place to detect the failure and issue timely warnings? Have the downstream communities participated in evacuation drills and know what action needs to be taken when a warning is issued?
Kantale Dam Breach Revisited: Part 1 of 2
Kantale Dam Breach Revisited: Part 2 of 2
This film is not merely documenting a tragic moment of recent history. It also carries the caution: have we learned the lessons from this incident?
Dr Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO of LIRNEasia, has just written: “As I watch it again in April 2011, I wonder whether all that they had built up since 1986 had got washed away, again. Two successive periods of heavy rainfall at the beginning of the year devastated the livelihoods of the people of the wav bandi rajje, the irrigation civilization we are so proud of. Flood upon flood. More than 200 small tanks breached; big tanks were saved by the emergency actions of irrigation engineers.”
I once saw a sports car on the narrow streets of Malé, capital of the Maldives (total population 350,000). Nothing unusual about it — except that the whole of Malé is about two square km: we can WALK the length and breadth of the crowded capital in 10 or 15 minutes. The other 1,200 islands that make up the Indian Ocean archipelago are even smaller.
That reality didn’t stop an optimistic Maldivian from investing in a fast vehicle – after all, a car (especially a sports model) is more just a means of transport.
Something akin to this plays out in the virtual world everyday in many parts of developing Asia. Many Internet users have state of the art access devices — ranging from the latest laptops and high-speed desk tops to ipads and internet-enabled mobile phones. But most of the time the users and devices are held up by poor quality internet connections. I mean patchy, uneven, really S-L-O-W ones.
So part of the time — how often and how long depends on where you are, and who your internet service provider or ISP is — we are all like that Maldivian sports car owner. Dressed up and rearing to go, but not really going very far. Because our network is overloaded.
What can you do when your broadband internet connectivity slows down, making some web applications tedious or impossible? How can you measure and compare the quality of broadband service within the same telecom network or across different service providers?
As consumers, we have limited options. We can grin and bear, and be grateful that we are among the 2 billion (and counting) human beings who regularly access the Internet. We can grumble and rant, and even complain to our ISP. But chances are that they’ll plead it was a system fluke, an exception to the norm.
Now there’s another option. The Ashoka-Tissa method, a simple and free software developed by LIRNEasia and IIT Madras, enables just that: with it, you can gather evidence before taking it up with telecom operators.
Rohan Samarajiva: Fraudband-buster?At TVE Asia Pacific , we have just produced a short video in which LIRNEasia — a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank active across the Asia Pacific — sums up their experience in developing a user-friendly method to measure broadband quality of service experience. It also shows how they engaged telecom operators and regulators in South and Southeast Asia from 2007 t0 2010.
“256 kbps up and down is the minimum definition (of broadband),” says Dr Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEasia’s Chair and CEO. “There are various people debating about it: whether it should be 2Mbps and so on, but I will give an acceptable minimum definition…Our research shows that, in fact, many broadband products that say they are giving 2Mbps don’t even meet this minimum rate.”
The former Sri Lankan telecom regulator adds: “Then of course there is this whole story of companies promising all kinds of things. 2Mbps up, 2Mbps down and various other things being promised and giving not even 256kbps. So there is almost like a dishonesty factor here. As one of my friends says, this is not broadband; this is fraudband!”
PS: While writing this blog post, I was frustrated by the poor quality of my own supposedly high-speed broadband connection, provided by Sri Lanka’s oldest telecom operator.
Open Minds! 