Helen Clark: Risk and Vulnerability Analysis Special Session World Humanitarian Summit, Istanbul May 23-24, 2016

The question for Ms Clarke was on why is tackling risk is so important not just for the world humanitarians but also for sustainable development.

Thank you, one of the themes which UNDP run through all the major agenda setting conferences last year was that if development isn’t risk informed it cannot be sustainable development, at the most fundamental level we see natural disasters either shaking down or washing away or drying up development gains and so not to approach development with a risk informed lens is to endanger every investment that’s made in development and to probably set development up for very significant setbacks and indeed for the scale of humanitarian response that is sadly so often in call before.  If we were looking just at times of risk around the natural disasters clearly where you build your infrastructure, the strength to which you construct it, the level of engagement with your community and being aware of risks and being able to participate in and help direct the nature of risk reduction, these are all highly relevant to sustainable development but then I think the sessions are also calling our attention to interconnected risks and I think if we look at…what are the real risks to not achieving a goal like sustainable development goal one on the eradication of extreme poverty, what we will see I think is increasing the extreme poverty concentrated in a cluster of countries with certain characteristics which will be deep and entrenched inequalities, poor governance, risk of conflict and exposure to natural disaster and these things all tend to of course reinforce each other in a downward spiral to crisis so I think we need to be very conscious of the interconnected risks and address them comprehensively and that is why a summit like this one which is very much seeking to bring the shared analysis of humanitarian’s development act, human rights act as peaceful as whatever analysis, bring these analysis together and scanning the horizon to see where the risks are.  In a sense we know about the natural disaster risk, it may not be that easy to overcome in the year of climate change when we’re looking at worsening weather for the next 60 or 70 years but I think we more or less understand what has to be done with these more complex interconnected risks in countries which are fragile which is the hardest way we’ve come and sadly have seen some of the most profound calls for humanitarian relief at this time.

A follow up question sought to draw Ms Clarke's opinions on the future vision for sustainable development…

Well I might and address the platform just so the total support of … there’s been a lot of consultation go into the global risk platform and I think it can only be a good thing but I really want to concentrate my comment on sight, if we’re going to get risk informed development when we build and support national and local capacities to drive that development so often these discussions about us as developing the national development or other organisations but development has to happen in countries, it has to be led by governments, local, sub-national, by communities, it falls to society to participation.  I was thinking as I was listening and particularly to … about some of the really exciting things you see at the local level with governance taken into their own hands to really push ahead. I remember back in the early in the second decade of this century there was an appalling drought in Niger, people died.  By the time the next one came Niger had taken action itself, it used to have partners supporting them but it came up with its own programme for food security and called it Nigerians Nurturing Nigerians, the three N’s campaign and as a result of that they have in place an early warning system that told them that another bad drought was coming but there was time to get systems in place and growing the international pathways and so on. That’s in the basis for moving on to other initiatives, I think the insurances it spreads has an enormous role to play in getting the local products that support the small holders in … countries like it.  I can think of another example in Kenya, this is an example they did to prices.  The 2007 election was not a good experience in Kenya, it was a bad experience but the experience was that where the local communities and their local peace architecture because they knew there was potential risks, they could hold in peace and that was then … next time to have a peaceful election so my plea really is can we all acknowledge that we’re in this business to support locals and national … building the capacity to do it themselves, that’s development, that’s how we’ll truly sustain the risk in formal development.

Many thanks to Ms Emma Hall for the transciption :)

Maori Sustainability Indicators

A report by John, Reid, Tremane Barr and myself, edited by Golda Varona, presents a comprehensive theoretical overview on ‘Indigenous Sustainability Indicators for Maori Farming and Fishing Enterprises.' Published by the Ngai Tahu Research Centre (at the University of Canterbury) and the Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability (ARGOS), the report argues "to establish a set of Indigenous sustainability indicators for Māori ... it is crucial to understand what Maori want to sustain."

We discuss the relevant literature and arrive at a series of practices that give effect to sustainability values. In sum, the sustainability of an enterprise can be assessed according to the presence or absence of practices that give effect to values.

DCD and the 'Sleeping giant' that is/was the Maori economy

But are the dogs running or sleeping?

Me and dogs.

I don't mind dogs. We got a Dalmatian last year, Lila, lovely dog, killed a massive rat in our lounge once.

And I use to fish the Tutaekuri River which ran a few minutes walk from our whare in Kauri Street, Taradale. Dogs can be kai.

looking upstream of Tutaekuri, towards the Otatara pa .

I expect to see at least two guard dogs in every truck yard I pass, like the yard on the corner of Vickerys and Washbourne Roads, back of Sockburn by the old airbase. One of the dogs there - they used Dobermans, Rottweilers, the occasional Alsatian- was three-legged. Dangerous work, if you can get it.

sunrise through the HotDip galvanising plant

the old burger bunker, a wreck before the quake...

Nice.
In Capitalist korero there is the term running dogs of capitalism...which Wikipedia tells me is a "literal translation into English of the Chinese/Korean communist pejorative zǒu gǒu 走狗, meaning lackey or lapdog, an unprincipled person who helps or flatters other, more powerful and often evil people. It is derived from the eagerness with which a dog will respond when called by its owner, even for mere scraps.


I also know to Let sleeping dogs lie, remember the film? I was somewhat stunned by the synopsis:

 Following the break-up of his marriage caused by his wife's affair with another man named Bullen (Mune), "Smith" (Neill) arranges to live on the Coromandel peninsula on an island owned by a Maori tribe. Meanwhile, political tensions escalate as an oil embargo leaves the country in an energy crisis. Tensions boil over into a civil war and guerrilla activity. However, Smith enjoys his peaceful island life and has little interaction with the rest of society.

Well, we all know what happens to Smith. (Actually, I forgot, so I had to look it up.)

What we don't know is what's happening to the 'Sleeping giant' of NZ Inc that is the Maori Economy?

With so much riding on the dairy sector, it poaka-fisted attempts to control korero on its soil management strategies must. give. one. pause. to. think.

I recall Ingrid Collins, chair of Parae Whangara B5 which took out Te Ahuwhenua, saying we/they had reached the limits of intensification, and they're mainly sheep and beef.

Pity the lowlands.

i think this water is looking for the Heathcote...near Tower Junction...

Without wanting to oversimplify, the reason I'm posting on what was an obscure chemical (albeit one developed on the very campus from which this is posted...) is that Rod Oram touches on the risk to our Maori economy, or at least that chunk still on the land. DairyNZ and Fonterra, through supporting/contracting research on technological solutions to the environmental (and hence social and market contexts), are reaching those limits, both limits to the land, the water, their ecosystems, and to people, the hours they can work, the injuries they can carry.

We've seen the invisible hand reaching to the Pacific all those years ago. Now its is grasping, pummeling, clenching, all too desperate, and all too visible if you know where to look.

I think we are seeing the extremities of the logic of accumulating capital. Maori have seen the land squeezed from our hands, the blood wrung out of us as workers but still. it. goes. on.

So this latest corporate fuck up (and perhaps more in the arrogance of the political arm rather than the technocratic) is merely the latest incarnation of capital's logic. More people are aware, more focused questions can be asked, more scrutiny of the answers is possible.

Ain't the end. Ain't even the beginning of the end. But it might be the end of the beginning.

Maori views on life, the universe and everything...

Horizon Research recently released a survey - Maori Viewpoint 2012 report - that tracks our views on a range of issues (actually, not that varied a range as it happens...). The survey was done in August and is of 433 adult Maori. (Some of these results are compared with a similar survey from May, 2011).

More of us evidently think Aotearoa/NZ is headed in the wrong direction, 71.8% (compared with 63.1% in May 2011). While consistent across all age groups, concern rises to nearly 80% among rangatahi. Goodbye Gisbourne, G'day Brisbane.

We're also increasingly dissatisfied with the Government’s handling of the economy and more are reporting their household financial positions are worse than a year ago, and more expect them to worsen in the next year. Overall 34.5% of Maori expect household financial positions to crapify.

As for iwi involvement, 5% of Maori are now more involved in iwi affairs than in 2011, though a third are still not active in iwi affairs. 51% have little or no contact with their iwi and 24.6% only rate contact with them by their iwi as adequate or better.

We feel better informed on iwi issues up from 42% in May 2011 to 55%. Nearly 44% of us think our iwi is/are adequately consulting. However, a small majority of 56% feel this consultation is inadequate (it was 72.3% in the previous study). Most of us - 82.3% - want more involvement.
53.7% of Maori say we have received no personal benefit from treaty settlements; 58% feel only a few cousins are benefiting. There has been a 14% fall in the number who feel their iwi are adequately managing their fisheries. Two thirds (64%) feel we have no influence on iwi fisheries policy.
No surprises that 81% of us oppose the Government’s policy to sell shares in state owned energy companies. The party splits are Labour 95%, Mana 100%, Maori party 79% and Green 82.2%. But we're a diverse mob nowadays, so of those who voted National, 67.03% support (14.40% of strongly). There is less certainty over whether Maori own water rights and can attach a value to them: 48.7% say yes, 32% no. The survey was taken in the week the Waitangi Tribunal started hearing an application from the Maori Council and others regarding asset sales and water rights.

Health, unemployment and secondary education are seen as the most important future challenges. Less important are mining and gas and oil exploration; marine and coastal area rights are still viewed as a priority by most Maori.

IGU in Kyoto: Indigenous disaster session

I've put an abstract in for next years IGU conference in Kyoto...

Indigenous responses to hazards and disaster: risk, recovery, and resilience

"Recent disasters around the Pacific’s ‘Ring of Fire’ have emphasised the risks all inhabitants face from ever-present natural hazards and their recurring disasters. Several events stand out for the scale of destruction and the severity of disruption to affected communities: tsunamis in Japan (2011) and Samoa (2009), and a series of earthquakes in Christchurch (2010-11). Climate change is expected to exacerbate flooding and bushfire hazards in Australia and sea-level rise is a daunting challenge for the Pacific Islands.

Indigenous communities often find themselves more at risk to such hazards through histories of marginalisation, discrimination and poverty despite these communities possessing extensive knowledge of local hazards and maintaining collective memories of past disasters. This session aims to bring together aspects of Indigenous knowledge relevant to reducing exposure and surviving disasters. Contemporary experiences will also be examined for response and recovery approaches. In particular attention will be drawn to the increasing urbanisation of Indigenous communities which exposes them to new and emerging risks."


The conference theme is leveraged off an old Japanese whakatauki - on-ko chi-shin - evidently taken from a Chinese one (wengu zhixin) that says only by exploring the old can we understand the new. Understanding how traditional ideas, linked to interaction between society/culture and the environment, were formed in different countries and regions will be fundamental to future development. This works well with our earthquake research and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to take this offshore.

A panui will be coming out from organiser Brad Coombes. We have an optional hikoi of Ainu ventures which I hope to go on but time and budget are always tight. Anyone interested in being involved, please get in touch.

'Country, Native title, and Ecology': new book on Aboriginal land and its ecology.

Turned up in my inbox a couple of weeks ago - the marvels of modern information exchange. Edited by Jessica Weir...

Available for free download here...

Aotearoa/New Zealand as a Steady State Economy?

In these times of almost daily political eocnomic upheaval, it can be difficult to pullback for a grand planetary perspecitve. Maori are still, of course, engaged at many scales (notably now in debate over freshwater). But what a wondrous conundrum: the rigidly banal science that accepts a logically ultimate balance in the face of rampant theoretically and empirically destructive consumption.

Jack Santa Barbara poses a nice wee question in his 'Fleeing Vesuvius'...'overcoming the Risks of Economic and Environmental Collapse'. JSB's initial position is a simple economic geographic observation: our isolation will lead to energy descent as we are a small market at the far end of the energy supply chain. This makes us vulnerable to reduced supplies and high prices, and therefore one of the easiest customers to cut from the route. A 'market-driven energy decline could be both unexpected and abrupt'.

In many respects, Kenneth Boulding The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth is the seminal article in describing this 'closed' system and interpreting the world economy or econosphere as a number of inputs and outputs, most significant being material, energy, and information... "From a material point of view, we see objects passing from the non-economic into the economic set in the process of production, and we similarly see products passing out of the economic set as their value becomes zero." As for the energy system, Boulding notes there is no escape from the 'grim Second Law of Thermodynamics'. The large energy inputs which we have obtained from fossil fuels can only be temporary. 

The presence of "slack" in a culture 'permits a divergence from established patterns and activity' not merely devoted to reproducing the existing society but to changing it. Boulding's key point is that the closed earth of the future requires economic principles which are somewhat different from those of the open earth of the past. The open economy is like a 'cowboy economy,' the cowboy being "symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies." The closed economy of the future could be seen as a 'spaceman' economy, in which the earth has become a "single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form even though it cannot escape having inputs of energy."

So, one planet, many peoples. Here in Aotearoa/NZ we still struggle with two peoples, one Treaty. Bon chance.

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Phase2: the strong sustainability think tank