Climate Adaptation

Making Sense of Climate Adaptation
Shunned in the past as trumping mitigation, the issue of climate adaptation is now receiving serious attention - but what does it mean?

In October, a group of investors shepherding $20 trillion in assets signed an appeal for clear, long-term policies as incentives for low-carbon economies. Later that month, a study listed the nations and mega-cities most at risk from climate impacts. Then, a report on refugees found that nations must prepare to help millions re-settle in the coming decades.

The link between these headlines is climate adaptation: reconfiguring our world’s economies and policies to work under a more extreme climate. While that might seem like an old conversation, it’s not; mitigation — reducing greenhouse gases — has been the main topic of climate discussion in the past 20 years. But attention is shifting to the once taboo topic of adaptation.

“Nobody talked about it,” Richard Klein, a climate specialist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, told me during the global climate conference in Cancun, Mexico. “People thought that adaptation meant giving up on mitigation efforts. It was politically incorrect. But after the last two decades — with frequent hurricanes, droughts, floods, record temperatures — we see that people are already adapting, whether we like it or not.

“The battle to reduce greenhouse gases is worth fighting; even though vested economic interests make mitigation a tough topic. But planned adaptation is now just as necessary.”

A few years ago, a commentary in the academic journal Nature titled “Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation” helped ignite the discussion on adaptation. Even the most optimistic scenarios for emission reduction, the authors pointed out, will not avoid lasting changes in the atmosphere’s composition and its subsequent effects on nature and society. They concluded that adaptation cannot be ignored, particularly since other trends — like the growth of cities along coastlines and in arid regions — only increase our vulnerability.

From this perspective, mitigation without planned adaptation is a mistake. Like fixing a leaky pipe, but forgetting to shut off the faucet — any improvements are otherwise quickly jeopardized. The authors of the Nature piece, led by Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, cited the case of the Philippines. That island nation acknowledges flood risks from sea-level rise (reflecting the need for mitigation), but overlooks how its excessive ground-water extraction (an adaptation issue) magnifies the problem.

In the multinational realm, the United Nations’ Adaptation Fund became operational in 2009. This fund provides financing for developing countries to address the most immediate impacts of changing climate. Negotiations in Cancun last year dealt with how adaptation funds would be monitored and distinguished from sustainable development funds. The United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa also aimed to further this agenda through its Adaptation Committee and Technology Mechanism.

There is a lot of talk about adaptation. Yet, I found it hard to get a clear answer on what is adaptation. When I asked some experts, I received no shortage of slippery answers: “Every case is different,” they said, citing long lists of abstract solutions like capacity-building and better governance.

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At the Cancun conference last year, I went hunting for clarity on “adaptation.” Stuck in the convention center miles from the beach, most participants barely saw the light of the sun. I was lucky to attend an event on the hotel strip that towers over the blue Caribbean. “Looks like Las Vegas on the beach,” I thought. “But where’s the beach?” I wondered, peering down at the thin ribbon of sand below.

Storm erosion had removed all the sand, explained David Placencia, a biologist at the nearby Akumal Ecological Center. “The big Hurricane Wilma in 2005 wrecked a few hotels and washed away the beach. The city is now pumping thousands of tons of sand to re-create the beach. We hope a hurricane won’t come again — for a few years anyway.”

Rebuilding the beach is important for tourism, officials reasoned. But, I wondered, how many Cancun hotels were rebuilt with stronger systems to deal with future storms? Spending the extra money is a matter of risk perception, depending on what we believe the future holds. Risk management with a focus on the weather is, in simple terms, climate adaptation.

Humans are creatures of adaptation. Even though the Earth’s climate has been relatively stable during the past 10,000 years, fluctuations year to year and over decades created constant change. A farmer who experiences drought may anticipate the risk of drought next year, and stockpiles extra grain. Today, just as technology has accelerated life, so has the climate become, well, faster.

“The climate is like a window of possibility, with a somewhat defined range,” explained Dan Morris, of Resources for the Future. “We are used to living within this range of uncertainty, making educated guesses about the weather in the future. The only problem is that it’s becoming more erratic and unpredictable.”
He offered the example of driving to work. Let’s say that five years ago it took you 15 minutes to drive to work. Now it can take you 15 minutes — or as much as an hour, depending on traffic. The window of possibility has become larger, so you need to give yourself a buffer and leave earlier, just in case. Increasing your buffer lets you retain some semblance of control.

Buffers are like a savings account for unforeseen expenses; they are a key way to manage risks. “By how much will the climate window grow, the temperatures and precipitation extremes?” Morris asked. “We don’t know the magnitude, but there will be more climate ‘traffic jams,’ so to speak. Increasing the buffers in the system will help it stay intact, especially when problems magnify.”

To prepare for risks, we must first recognize them. In some places it’s easier to recognize risks than others. Tuvalu, a nation of coral atoll islands laying a few feet above sea level in the South Pacific, is such a case. The country celebrated its first King Tide Festival recently (see video) with a good dose of morbid humor.
Scientific data helps clarify risks. A minister from Africa’s Burkina Faso detailed how decreasing bands of rainfall over the past 50 years stunted crop yields. Droughts were followed inexplicably by a catastrophic flood in 2009, another case of an extreme event outside the “window” of regular experience.

Being on the edge of that window puts things into perspective. A 13-year-old girl from Haiti discussed how life there has been a difficult mix of poverty, storms, earthquakes, and disease. “In Haiti, we appreciate simple, sustainable solutions,” she said.  Those on the edge have a different set of priorities. It is like being sick with the flu — we suddenly appreciate the value of a healthier lifestyle.

Industrialized nations such as the United States aren’t immune to life on the edge. The Gulf of Mexico region, for example, lies on the hurricane circuit, and while it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact ole climate change has on any individual storm, it is making them on the whole nastier. Hurricane Ike left Texas’ Galveston Island in shambles in 2008. “We couldn’t return home for a month because of problems with sewage and water,” Hannah Campbell, an adaptation manager at Conservation International, told me. “It’s a little ironic. I spend my days advising distant communities how to adapt, how to become more resilient, but Ike reminded us that climate affects everyone.”

I asked her the difference between adaptation in the U.S. and developing countries. “The principles are the same,” she answered. “It’s dealing with risk. In the U.S., we use insurance and government regulation to deal with risk; in rural Africa, on the other hand, people have to depend more on community bonds and their continued livelihood from the land. Their safety nets are fewer, their exposure greater.”

A presentation by Kenyans later in the week drove this point home. Food prices have been fluctuating from the lack of consistent rainfall. The Kenyan presenter noted, “In Africa we say that a hungry person is an angry person. Drought exacerbates social stress, as occurred sadly with the pastoralists in Darfur.”
Americans aren’t going hungry, but they can become angry. As Hurricane Katrina and floods in the Midwest have shown, vulnerability is more about proximity to the edge and ability to cope with change, than generalizations about Africans or Americans.

The U.S. Storm Center had a graphic presentation that captured the relationship between climate and wellbeing. Using a 40-inch interactive touch screen, like a massive iPad, they used maps of Las Vegas and Atlanta with layers for population growth and drought conditions to show possible effects on real estate prices. Temperature maps of Florida and Texas hinted at why people are increasingly picking more northerly states for retirement.

“Data from the past half century is largely unequivocal, so there is no excuse to overlook it,” said the center’s chief, Dave Jones. “Predicting the future, as any business person knows, is more tricky. But there´s a common misunderstanding that I need to clear up: climate prediction isn’t at all like weather forecasting.
“Who knows if it’ll be cloudy or sunny in three weeks’ time?” he asked. “The weather is a problem of chaotic eddies and turbulence. Yet we’re all pretty certain that next spring the snow will thaw and summer will come. Climate is actually a more straightforward physics problem, and some of the missing pieces, like the exact role of cirrus cloud formation, are being worked out. So despite the popular impression that it’s just a ‘big guess,’ climate models are becoming a very reliable basis for decision-making.”

Assuming we understand the risks, there is still a question of opportunity cost. Should we put money in a savings account for “a rainy day,” or just buy that new car?

Morris from Resources For the Future summed it up: “To adapt proactively is hard, because benefits exist sometime in the future, and costs occur in the present. But if you’re more prepared, you can proceed with more confidence. Like in football. You want good blockers to keep you from being tackled, so you can run the ball farther. Maybe even score a touchdown!”

Chiapas Coffee part 2

Chiapas Coffee: Price, Politics and Precipitation

The volatility of coffee prices over the last two decades has been the biggest challenge for farmers and cooperatives in Mexico, and may be the single greatest factor threatening to make Chiapas’ tasty shade-grown coffee a “threatened species.”
This threat matters, beyond denying coffee drinkers a favored brew or forcing farmers to seek more lucrative crops, because, as I explained last week, the traditional methods of growing coffee plants offer huge environmental benefits for the region. But volatile prices and politics help foster mistrust, while war and climate change batter the foundations on which traditions are built.

In the mid-’90s, coffee hit a rock-bottom price of 40 U.S. cents a pound — below a living wage for small farmers in Mexico and elsewhere. Against this background, the central government, which had been very active in promoting coffee production by small farmers, withdrew its control. Stepping into this vacuum, in many cases, fair trade organizations organized coffee cooperatives to ensure a minimum wage for growers.

As Victor Pérez-Grovas, Edith Cervantes and John Burstein wrote for Oxfam International a decade ago, “These social organizations of small-scale coffee producers evolved a menu of strategies — the collective purchase and running of processing plants and warehouses, technical assistance, some financing, collective sales of their product even eventually exporting directly — and a tiered network, operating independently of the government.”

Just Coffee  --  How is life as a fair trade coffee roaster, purchasing from cooperatives in Chiapas? See Just Coffee’s Chiapas Report from October 2010. They also have friendly posters explaining fair trade and organic coffee principles.

Global prices of Coffea arabica, the more gourmet bean grown in Chiapas, are set through the New York Board of Trade, and Coffea robusta (think cheap ground coffee and instant) through London’s Euronext. Prices are greatly influenced by the top coffee corporations (including Kraft, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, and Sara Lee, although the last named is moving out of the space) of those who collectively purchase about half the world’s coffee. The four largest coffee-producing countries (Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and Vietnam) affect the market depending on their crop quality and stockpiles. As reported in Revista Fortuna, although Mexico is the world’s fifth largest producer, and first for certified organic coffee, it still dances to a tune set by global prices.

In 2010, global prices spiked to highs of around $2.30 a pound. Although farmers are now theoretically paid more, higher prices destabilize the cooperatives and threaten to undo years of work.

“Cooperatives have limited funds to purchase large quantities when prices skyrocket,” said Roberto Guzman, the president of the Majomut cooperative. (The cooperative purchases coffee from 928 member-landowners, paying them fair trade prices in accordance with their certification, then ships then beans to overseas buyers.)

Speaking at their office on the outskirts of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico’s Chiapas state, Guzman explained, “When prices jump, the coyotes representing multinational corporations tempt our farmer-members with big paychecks to leave our cooperative.

“In the short term, it’s an attractive option. Then what happens when the price plummets in three years’ time?”
Meanwhile, a low-grade civil war that started in the mid-’90s, the Zapatista rebellion and its focus on indigenous people, created both upheaval and renewal in Chiapas.

Mexico’s military fought the Zapatistas, and at times, entire villages were compelled to migrate, leaving behind crops and livelihoods. Paramilitary groups terrorized civilians, such as during the 1999 Acteal massacre, in which 45 men, women, and children were killed.
Although the Zapatista conflict put a serious strain on coffee production, the cooperatives emerged with renewed meaning, serving as focal points for the community’s reconstruction.

For example, the cooperative Maya Vinic formed following Acteal as a peaceful response by the community to regain strength.





Following the Zapatista movement, the renewal in indigenous cultural identity included resuscitating the traditional techniques of working the land, which included organic and shade-grown methods newly in vogue among Western consumers. Still, Mexico is a country where fertilizers and pesticides continue to enjoy a high status as emblems of technological advancement. So I was surprised to hear the barista at Toyol Witz (a cooperative’s café in the upper quarter of San Cristobal de las Casas) saying, “Organic is the right thing to do. Why not make good, healthy coffee? It is part of our heritage.”

How much Rain’s a-Gonna Fall?
A year ago September, during what Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the rainest season on record, deadly mudslides slammed into villages in Oaxaca and Chiapas, and neighboring Guatemala.

It was yet another sign that the wet season, from June to October, has turned from predictable to erratic. Unexpected rains now come as farmers are sun-drying coffee beans, while the balance of the dry season is becoming hotter and more intense. According to Romeo Dominguez, director of the conservation-oriented nongovernmental organization Pronatura Sur, wildfires are more common: in the coffee-growing regions of Sierra Madre and the Lacandonian Jungle in Chiapas, an unusual 70 to 80 fires have been reported in the last few years.

“Rivers that used to be year-round are now seasonal, cold temperatures are freezing crops, and rain erosion is destroying soil,” Dominguez recounted of farmers’ observations. This year’s crop in particular suffered a drop in quality, said Roberto Guzman of the Majomut cooperative. “Thankfully, yields were sustained, but we couldn’t fetch decent prices.”

A study of climate forecasts specifically for coffee communities in Sierra Madre de Chiapas noted that coffee suitability (i.e. its optimum growing conditions) squeezes into an increasingly narrow tier. In the prime coffee growing elevations of 600 to 1,400 meters above sea level of the Sierra Madre, a vast majority of land cover has coffee plantations. Lower altitudes will become less viable for coffee due to heat and drought effects. Higher altitudes are at risk from cold spells and rain erosion.

What are the options for preserving shade-grown coffee and farmers’ livelihoods? Strengthening resilience is the first step, according to an adaptation assessment by the German development organization GTZ. They collaborated with Más Café, a conglomerate of eight cooperatives and 2,200 producers in Chiapas, to determine the best practices for adaptation. They cited a number of techniques like erosion control to protect crops and natural composting of soil for productivity, along with pest-resistant crop varieties, and diversifying farmer’s income to reduce dependence on coffee as the only cash crop.

But if yields and income drop, farmers lose their incentive to raise shade-grown coffee. One option is to pay extra for farmers to keep forests intact as carbon storage, a tricky undertaking proposed at the global level by REDD, a forestry finance mechanism (officially known as the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries.) However, Mexico’s forests are privately owned in small plots, and committing 20 years to preserve forests may be difficult for small farmers.

Even if adaptation techniques are available and cost-effective, farmers may not perceive information about the risk as credible and have little motivation to act. According to sociological research in the Chiapas coffee sector, the farmers’ strong social identity undermines the legitimacy of information about climate risks and responses offered by outsiders.

According to study leader Elisa Frank, “being part of the in-group, coffee cooperatives can be a bridge between climate scientists and individual farmers, but perceived illegitimacy of experts can be a significant barrier. New relationships of trust need to be developed.”

The Future of Coffee in Chiapas
Three biosphere reserves are found in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas region: La Sepultura, El Triunfo, and Volcán Tacaná. These treasures of fauna and flora are now linked to the well being of coffee farmers. If coffee farmers go bankrupt and the land is transformed to other uses — like cattle grazing or corn — large stretches of forest will also be compromised.

It’s about the people, as much as anything. “We want to conserve forests,” said Dominguez of Pronatura Sur. “But without reasonable income for the farmers, for the security of their families, for the education of their children, there is nothing. They aren’t asking for much — just dignity.”
Technical considerations are important. But for tasty coffee to continue to grow in Chiapas, and for forests to remain intact, farmers need a way to maintain their income and dignity.

Chiapas Coffee part 1

Antonio, the Majomut cooperative supervisor, shows off the coffee plants. The cooperative purchases coffee from member-landowners, pays them fair trade prices, then ships then beans to overseas.

Chiapas' Coffee Growers: Accidental Environmentalists
Every steaming cup of coffee could tell a story, and the shade-grown coffee from southern Mexico's Chiapas state tells tales of a disproportionate role in sustaining local villages, hillsides, and wildlife.
It's a story with several lumps of conflict and uncertainty stirred in.
The volatility of the global coffee market makes it a difficult business, and Chiapas' small farmers face the precarious equilibrium common to all small farms and businesses. But they face an additional set of unique challenges, including the shaky political truce between the government and Zapatista rebels who made global headlines in the mid-1990s for taking up arms in the name of indigenous peoples' rights. Meanwhile, the toehold made by organic and fair trade initiatives is slipping in Chiapas even as a rapidly changing climate could kill the region's top cash crop.
Chiapas has some of the world's tastiest coffee, but will the campesinos (peasant farmers) continue to grow it? Will the biodiversity and carbon storage inadvertently protected by this style of coffee production eventually be compromised?
The Origins
I went searching for these answers in the highlands of Chiapas. Uphill from the charming colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas is the much smaller community of Chamelho. Swooning after a rough mini-bus ride, and waiting for the next transport, I made a pit stop at a church in the main plaza. It was a striking scene: a combination of grass, dirt, and indigenous icons surrounding scenes of Jesus and the Nativity, an odd melding of the Christian and Mayan sacred. This juxtaposition was a tourist attraction in less remote villages, but this church featured only local parents and their children listening to music and chatting amiably.

Click here for more posts from the Voyage of Kiri.

After a series of enthusiastic hand gestures — many people in these parts rely purely on the Tzotzil Mayan language — I was dropped off at a wooden warehouse that smelled of coffee. It wasn't thick and tangible like your neighborhood coffee shop, but rather deep and musky like freshly cut grass. Clustered around a table were four Tzotzil Mayan girls in flowery blue dresses with ribbons in their hair, knitting new additions to their homemade garb.
The place was a coffee cooperative, Majomut, and it too was a melding of the indigenous and the international. The cooperative purchases coffee from 928 member-landowners, paying them fair trade prices in accordance with their certification, then ships then beans to overseas buyers, such as Café Direct, which specialize in ethical coffee and tea purchasing.
Antonio, the cooperative supervisor, greeted me jovially, and proudly led me to the reddish machine filling two big rooms. "This is where the magic happens," he said in good Spanish. He explained how the contraption transformed the dried coffee cherries into usable product through a process of shelling, sorting, and roasting the beans. They were bagged under three labels: "local usage," "national market," and "overseas export." The better the quality, the further the destination.

Poor quality coffee beans are evident in the cracked shells, caused by the excess rains this year.

Afterward, Antonio led me outside, promising a close look at a coffee plantation. I was surprised — the "plantation" looked like a forest, shaded by the canopies of tall pine trees and steep hillsides thick with understory shrubbery. Scattered banana trees revealed humans had modified the plantation, and a skinny path led to coffee plants and the shiny red fruits of Coffea arabica. The forest absorbed the coffee plants.
"Why do they prefer to grow coffee under shade?" I asked.
The coffee forest is integral to the Chiapas farmer lifestyle, Antonio explained. Campesinos organize their plots of land into milpas, a rotating combination of crops. For example, a five-acre parcel may be divided into two acres of corn, one acre of beans, and two acres of coffee. "In general, the corn and beans feed the family, and the coffee earns them money. The forest harboring the coffee also provides firewood, medicinal plants, erosion control, and great place for fruit trees," he explained, highlighting the diverse value of the coffee plantation beyond being a cash crop.
In Chiapas, at least, coffee traditionally is grown under the shade of trees, not to please environmentalists but for practical benefits. For one, growing in a diverse habitat keeps the plants healthy and resilient: Pests are less able to colonize the area; falling organic matter creates natural compost for the soil; tree roots and shrubs hold earth and slow water flow, minimizing erosion from heavy rains. Use of pesticides and fertilizers is uncommon. The shade lowers heat and evaporation, which becomes a significant benefit for other crops during the dry season.
Even though they are human-modified systems, coffee forests have surprising biodiversity. Scientific studies have detailed their role in preserving wildlife habitat, on pollination  and have identified how intensification of coffee production from shade-grown to sun-exposed monoculture causes a vast loss of species.
On a more technical level, shade coffee can maintain the genetic diversity of native trees, according to an article in the journal Current Biology, which investigated bird and bat species living in coffee forests. Lead author Shalene Jha of the University of Texas at Austin noted: "By supporting important seed dispersal processes, shade coffee farms maintain plant population gene flow across fragmented habitats." Therefore, coffee farms play an unusual and important ecological role that is just now being fully understood.

In front of the Majomut factory in Chiapas, Mexico.

Carbon storage is another recently recognized value of shade coffee. Agro-forestry systems show potential for carbon sequestration since they store carbon and reduce deforestation pressures. Specifically, coffee is a perennial crop well suited to complex canopy environments and could potentially sequester around five tons of carbon per hectare, as reported on the Coffee Habitat website. (Here is a comparison with other agricultural practices common in the U.S.; remember that a hectare is about two and a half acres.)
Paying coffee farmers for carbon storage may be in the near future. A partnership between Rainforest Alliance, the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, and an agro-industry corporation recently developed methodology for carbon monitoring in farms. A consortium of three states (California in U.S., Chiapas in Mexico, and Acre in Brazil) in late 2010 began to explore reductions in deforestation (also known as REDD, which the Guardian explains nicely in this Q&A). These transactions may play an important role in the continued viability of shade-coffee farms.
Coyotes vs. Cooperatives
Despite its profits and integral relationship with farmers, coffee has been a tricky business in Chiapas.

In the late 1980s, the dismantling of the Mexican National Institute of Coffee, along with the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement, caused prices to spiral down to a low of 40 U.S. cents a pound — below cost for most coffee farmers. Nevertheless, the coffee intermediaries — affectionately called coyotes in Mexico, pirañas in Peru, and sharks in Indonesia — squeezed prices paid to small producers.
Sun-grown coffee monoculture — think of an orchard instead of a forest — was promoted as a way to produce more beans with greater efficiency. In Central America, development organizations such as U.S. Agency for International Development, which historically invests heavily in helping coffee-producing regions, invested in the conversion of coffee farms to this higher-yield approach. The method requires substantial amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, which damages naturally occurring bacteria in the soil that contribute to organic productivity.
Subsidies covered these expenses for a decade or more, but eventually farmers plunged into debt spirals after borrowing money to pay for these agro-chemicals. With their land altered by the chemicals, they couldn't easily switch back to more traditional methods. Equally unfortunate, since forests weren't around to hold the soil during heavy rains, erosion increased and the runoff itself was tainted by the farming chemicals.
In response, fair trade organizations (which may have their own issues) began to collaborate with local coffee cooperatives like Majomut. They bypassed the coyote intermediaries by guaranteeing a minimum price for coffee (around $1.20 a pound). Organic coffee was also encouraged with premium prices. Traditional knowledge that supported organic production was re-introduced via workshops and town hall meetings. Ironically, USAID was now at the forefront of organizations promoting these practices.
The goal of these new specialty markets was to sustain the livelihood of small coffee farmers and protect biodiversity. They succeeded. Nowadays one can purchase their brew at neighborhood coffee shops, a venue where the higher amount paid to the producer is easily masked by the markup on a cuppa.
But price, politics, and precipitation continue to test the survival of cooperatives and the integrity of the system. Staying a step ahead of these changes is now the name of the game, something I'll discuss more deeply next week.


See original article.

Waterkeeper Magazine: 2 articles in Climate Change edition

The Waterkeeper Magazine covered two articles from the Voyage of Kiri in their Climate Change special edition: the stories of the Waterkeeper organizations in Bahia de los Angeles, Baja California; and Rio Verde in Oaxaca.

Download the magazine PDF here.

Or see the magazine overview in the Waterkeeper website:
http://www.waterkeeper.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/20037/pid/223

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Voyage of Kiri
Exploring the Effects of Climate on Mexico's Coastline
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Micro-Reserves Renew Life in Oaxacan Agriculture

Peasants in Mexico's jungle state of Oaxaca show that conservation need not take a back seat to development.

After the scares from this rainy season's massive landslides and floods in Mexico, people are committed to re-learn the basics of land management. (Kristian Beadle)

By Kristian Beadle. See article in Miller McCune magazine, December 29th

In 2010, Mexico suffered "one of the most intense rain and hurricane seasons in its history, after having experienced, in 2009, the second-worst drought in 60 years," noted President Felipe Calderon during his opening remarks at the recent Cancun conference on climate change. How does this actually play in people's lives?

Far away from Cancun, I visited a small community on the Oaxacan coast to find out. Although the municipality of San Pedro Tututepec looks like one of the many anonymous communities along the highway, it is unique in offering people hope. It is near Lagunas de Chacahua National Park, a wetland-lagoon system adjacent to one of Oaxaca's largest rivers, the Rio Verde. The catalyst for change was Heladio Reyes, a peasant's son who received a university scholarship to study agronomy.

Armed with new knowledge of soil science, the ecological role of forests and how watersheds are vital to farming, Reyes returned home and taught his friends. As a result, in 1993, a group of 17 land owners created the first micro-reserve: small areas in private lands that owners choose to preserve. From this initiative sprouted the organization Ecosta Yutu Cuii (which means "green tree" in the regional language Mixteco) and, eventually, the Rio Verde Waterkeeper.

More than 800 landowners participate in the micro-reserve program today, managing reserves that range from a half-hectare to 300 hectares (a bit over 740 acres). I considered this phenomenon: hundreds of self-interested farmers voluntarily preserving forest land and bypassing the economic gains of transforming those forests into cornfields. Ecosta accomplished this small miracle with just one full-time staff member (until recently), assisted by part-time staff and volunteers.

Click here for more posts from the Voyage of Kiri

How can poor people be expected to preserve nature when they're struggling to survive? We take for granted that environmental conservation and economic development are trade-offs, the former being a "luxury." This is expressed in economics as the Kuznets Curve: only when people are wealthy enough will they begin to care about the environment. But Ecosta's work reveals an opposite possibility. Conservation and development can co-exist; it's just a matter of scale and proper support.

Ecosta used three keys to open the way to this new relationship: education, food-sufficiency and micro-loans. They first taught the campesinos why clear-cutting for agriculture is a mistaken approach. Typically, corn plantations become unproductive after two to three years due to excessive fertilizer use and the loss of nitrogen-fixing by plants and micro-organisms that would otherwise re-energize the soil with nutrients. Cattle are often introduced to graze on the fallow land, but this causes soil-compaction and erosion. So additional forests have to be cut down for corn plantations, and the vicious cycle continues.

To avert this, Ecosta reintroduced organic-farming techniques and crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing plants. They explained the many benefits of keeping a reserve: less soil-erosion and heat-damage from the dry season, and healthier watersheds to disperse nutrients and diffuse toxins. On a personal level, the campesinos realized they could continue to harvest wood sustainably for fuel and construction, and have access to traditional medicinal and edible plants.

To ensure that farmers keep their reserves through years of bad production (when the temptation to clear new cropland is greatest), Ecosta began a food-sufficiency program. This is essentially a tutorial on how to create food gardens and keep small livestock. Ecosta works with 15 villages, which are growing vegetables and fruits and raising chickens. The organization also connects the families in a loose network for selling and trading surplus food.

As Ecosta grew, it was able to offer micro-loans as financial incentives to those participating in their projects. It now manages two micro-loan funds: one for agricultural assistance (tools, machinery, pest-management) and another for sustainable business (ecotourism, fair-trade products).

The owner of the iguana center, Emiliano, holds an iguana. Ecosta helps to finance the center with micro-loans. (Kristian Beadle)

Ecosta then brought together their micro-loan recipients and created an ecotourism corridor called Ocho Venado (Eight Deer). Tourists can visit an iguana nursery, purchase locally made pineapple-and-mango jam, stay at a lodge that raises deer and jabalí (boar), or spend the night in a cabaña in Chacahua (whose owner is spearheading a recycling program). Under the banner of Ocho Venado, the area may end up losing some of its anonymity — in a positive way.

Reyes and Ecosta have taken on a new challenge: With local communities, they are fighting the construction of an 825-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Rio Verde that would inundate villages and displace thousands of residents. (The federal electricity commission explained how it has reached out to explain the project's benefits.) Even if hydroelectric dams were completely a carbon-free energy source (not true at the start, because flooding of plant matter can release huge amounts of methane — some Brazilian scientists even want to capture it), dams irreversibly alter hydrological cycles.

If the Rio Verde dam isn't built, and 17 years of Ecosta's work creating micro-reserves and conserving the watershed doesn't, as Mr. Reyes put it, "go down the drain," they face a growing challenge in helping their communities adapt to climatic change. In Oaxaca, as on the rest of Mexico's Pacific coast, the dry and wet seasons used to be very predictable. But as Calderon mentioned during his opening speech in Cancun, the weather has been extreme.

Hilario, coordinator of Ecosta's programs, looking at the Rio Verde. Upstream is Paso de la Reina, one of the many communities to be flooded if the dam is built. (Kristian Beadle)

Reyes explained how this unpredictability affects villagers:

"Before, the farmers knew the 15th of April was the day to start preparing their lands. That way, between the 2nd and 6th of June, they could plant the corn and know it would survive a sensitive initial period. Now, they no longer know. There are extremely dry years followed by extremely wet years, rains occurring in April or November that are outside the usual range. The grandfathers say that in the past, if the calandria bird was nesting in very tall trees, they knew it was likely a year with little wind; or conversely, if the calandria was nesting in low trees, they'd plant the corn only in areas protected from wind. Symbolic or practical, these signals are now changing so quickly the communities are struggling to re-orient themselves."

These climate disruptions, Reyes notes, make it even more critical to create micro-reserves and protect watersheds, which helps maintain some semblance of predictability in the area's hydrology for farmers. After the scares from this rainy season's massive landslides and floods, people are more committed than ever to re-learn the basics. They know they can't rely on the government; they need to manage the land themselves for the long haul, to better respond to extreme events and secure their future well-being.

With the micro-reserves as the platform, Mr. Reyes and his colleagues are de-constructing the last few decades of misguided information about agriculture and development. Using fertilizers and clear-cutting forests is no longer taken for granted; other options must be found. With an eye to what is helpful in the long term, the people of San Pedro Tututepec are hopeful that despite crises in climate or economy, they can remain resilient.

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Kristian Beadle
Voyage of Kiri
www.voyageofkiri.com

Oaxaca: Saving Forests with a Sense of Place

Saving Forests with a Sense of Place

While visiting Oaxaca's forestry cooperatives, Kristian Beadle considers the link between remembering the dead and managing living resources — including new climate policies to reduce deforestation.

I was in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca during one of Mexico's best-known traditions, the Day of the Dead.

The somber Panteon General, Oaxaca City's largest cemetery, had been transformed into a carnival. A mariachi band played next to walls covered in candles reflecting the dead; yellow marigold flowers called cempasúchil decorated grave sites and adorned the altars that sprung up around the city. Offerings of food and drink for ancestors, who appeared in fading black-and-white photographs, were everywhere.

Although part of the Catholic All Saints and All Souls days, the creativity of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) arises from indigenous traditions. "Similar to Halloween," noted an American friend, watching the costume parade heading to the cemetery, "but with more heart, less sex and candy." Indeed, the intention of the ceremony is to invite the spirit of relatives past to celebrate with the living. The taboos surrounding mortality emerge from the dusty closet … "Just as our relatives died, so will we." It can be an oddly relaxing thought.

I considered the social implications of this collective mentality. With heightened awareness of past and future generations, might people's reason for living go beyond themselves and today? Are they more motivated to care for their community to ensure the well-being of the future?

Meanwhile, I had sat under a tree of epic proportions just 20 minutes from Oaxaca City. The Arbol de Tule, at least 1,500 years old, is the most ancient living being I've ever seen. Reportedly the widest tree in the world (its diameter is 38 feet, with a circumference of 119 feet), this particular Montezuma cypress, or Taxodium mucronatum, makes human lifespans seem like blips.

With all this in mind after the early November holiday, I drove into the mountains above the valley of Oaxaca, where several forestry cooperatives are becoming famous for their conservation of forests and balanced community development.

"About 60 percent of Mexico's forests are community-owned, and Mexico is now a world leader in sustainable forest management," explained Luis Ubiñas, the president of the Ford Foundation, addressing one of the main themes of the Cancun conference on climate change. "These forests aren't guarded by signs that prohibit use, but rather by giving local communities rights to the property and its management."

The mountain villages of Sierra Madre in the state of Oaxaca are amidst some of the most biodiverse pine-oak forests in the world. According to World Wildlife Fund, the area contains nearly 40 percent of endemic vertebrates of Mesoamerica, the bio-cultural region stretching from central Mexico to northern Costa Rica. This diversity comes from radical topography and climatic differences: the rugged terrain climbs from 3,000 feet to a peak of 11,000 feet, while rainfall varies from 28 inches to 80 to 160 inches a year.

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Communities here rely on corn, cattle and forestry — creating an inherent tension over deforestation and survival. Although a lack of access helps keep the forests relatively well preserved, there is also a conscious philosophy of conservation.

In these mountains sits the tidy town of Ixtlán de Juarez, which international forestry experts say has "become the gold standard of community forest ownership and management," as The New York Times has written. I met the general manager of the town's forestry cooperative, the well-spoken Jesus Paz. He showed me their factory on a Saturday morning, which was quiet except for the wind howling outside. Paz explained that when the state-run company's concession expired in 1983, the community regained autonomy of a nearly 50,000-acre forest.

Now they have one of the most advanced wood processing plants in Mexico, and both the logging operation and on-site furniture factory are certified with the Forestry Stewardship Council, the highest industry standard for sustainability. "The certification cost is high, but it has improved our efficiency with erosion control, tree-planting and safety," Paz said. "Plus, it was the right thing to do."

Their efficiency allows them to preserve the vast majority of their forest: a reserve of nearly 40,000 acres. Although certified wood doesn't fetch a higher price in Mexico, the government agency that contracts them to build school furniture was sold on the idea and now requires certification for new contracts — a new competitive advantage.

The cooperative is run by an assembly of 384 comuneros, or communal owners, who elect managers and make decisions democratically; they are drawn from the indigenous Zapotec people. The majority of the comuneros  also work for the company, which has now expanded into seven businesses, including a furniture store, ecotourism resort and a high-tech nursery. The comuneros are the original owners or owner-heirs of the forest land, based on post-Mexican Revolution (1912-1918) land reforms that began granting land ownership to millions of peasants.

This apparently has created a private incentive for stewardship. As cited in a 2010 report to the United Nations Forum on Forests, "151 communities are protecting over a half million hectares of forests, almost half of which are in Oaxaca."

Beyond the town square and church was the road leading to Ecotur-Ixtlán, the cooperative's ecotourism center. The mountain air was cutting through my double layer of sweatshirts, the sky piercing blue through the canopy of pine trees. One of the guides, Rodrigo, told me about his work: taking tourists on hikes to the Mesophyllic Forest, an area of near-permanent humidity in a nearby summit containing unique species.

"I used to work in logging, but I like this better," Rodrigo told me from beneath a frayed beanie. "I learned the trade by sneaking into presentations by ecologists staying at our lodge. For sure, it has changed how I think, and my decisions in the assembly. We want to do what's best for future generations, but sometimes we don't know how." Being a comunero himself, Rodrigo soon excused himself. The assembly meeting was at 5 p.m., and I was left to ponder his meanings under the trees.

Although it has become trite in some circles, the Great Law of the Iroquois still holds weight: "In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation … even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine." The multi-generational philosophy of indigenous people, it is said, makes them better stewards of the land for the benefit of all. Yet, how much of that statement is true, and how much is based on the romantic ideology of the "noble savage"?

The forestry comuneros I spoke to constantly mentioned their desire to preserve the forest for future generations. "It was the right thing to do," Paz said about certifying their operation with the Forest Stewardship Council. That essential philosophy is shared by other cooperatives in the Sierra, collectively called the Alianza EcoForce.

Genuine empathy for multiple generations is present in many cultures, and may not be reducible to indigenous ethics. The fishing cooperatives I visited in Baja's Vizcaíno Peninsula, for example, also showed a remarkable vision of resource conservation.

By virtue of their community orientation and legal status, the fishing and forestry cooperatives share a common sense of long-term ownership of their resources. They have an incentive to sustainably manage their region's marine life and forest life because they feel secure about retaining rights to zone into the future. Another element that helps build multi-generational thinking is the length of time people plan to spend in a community. The indigenous worldview that sees interconnections in natural processes also helps this thinking; but in itself it may not be sufficient to foster long-term stewardship.

REDD and Financing Forests

Enter the international discussion on forestry and climate change, strongly present in the ongoing U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancun. Early in September, Oaxaca City was host to a forestry workshop for Latin America and the Caribbean, serving as a preliminary to the Cancun conference. The workshop focused on climate policies of REDD, the emerging system for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, which is basically a way to value and finance forest preservation.

Burning forests accounts for roughly 12-17 percent of yearly global greenhouse gas emissions, almost as much as the transportation sector (a 2009 study published in the journal Nature indicates the contribution is about 15 percent when peatland degradation is included). The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — the body running the Cancun conference — considers it the most viable climate mitigation option in the short term.

REDD seeks to value the carbon stocks of forests to make them more profitable alive than dead — that is, not cleared for a palm oil plantation or cattle farming. To be successful, carbon prices need to infuse more dollars per acre (measured in carbon tons) to be paid to locals for keeping forests standing, instead of being chopped for agricultural uses. This approach doesn't count the biodiversity effects of preserving forests, which would be a tremendous collateral benefit.

One concern is finding a common language between multinational financiers and forest dwellers, so that equitable benefits go to locals and foreigners. Another concern is whether the price of carbon is sufficiently stable, achievable under a regulated market, but less likely in today's voluntary carbon market. Despite these speed bumps, the market is taking notice of forest conservation. As described in Yale e360, Merrill Lynch has invested $9 million one Sumatra project, and Brazil is creating mechanisms to raise $21 billion by 2021.

Forestry workshop participants in Oaxaca visited and were likewise impressed by the cooperatives in the Sierra but wondered if their successes can translate to other places. After all, the unique communal ownership that emerged from Mexico's particular agrarian reforms (despite its flaws and limitations) plays a key role in these cooperatives' business structure, and may not be replicable.

Nevertheless, the elusive concept of "forestry governance" may boil down to some down-to-earth principles: As outlined above, when a sense of long-term ownership is combined with sound organizational structure, the basic incentives for resource stewardship are in place.

A 2009 study analyzed 80 forests in Asia, Africa and Latin America and concluded that when local communities manage and own forests (which they call "rule-making autonomy and ownership"), there is more carbon sequestration and forest protection. That approach may be just as effective as managed protected areas, but with fewer costs. The study helped dispell the myth that local communities are unable to manage their resources (i.e. are dependent on outside companies and "experts"). I believe this is part of a shift in thinking toward more local control of natural resources.

The cooperatives' long-term well-being requires the conservation of their forests.

This lesson can be applied beyond forestry and discussions of REDD. I drove the long, windy road back to the coast, wondering if the principles from Mexico's cooperatives — long-term ownership and local management — might influence the future of forests globally.

Perhaps the principles that unite stewardship with community values can work in elsewhere. Like the meanings of the Day of Dead, even if they are not universal, they are at least inspirational, and may help us see through the "smokescreen" of forest management.

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What will 10/10/10 add up to?

What will 10/10/10 add up to?

Say you're an alien anthropologist studying human behavior on Earth.

Understandably, you are perplexed by the events of Oct. 10, 2010.

Dutch women partying in their old wedding dresses to celebrate re-using and recycling.

One-hundred-sixty eighth-graders in Cape Town walking the length of the beach leaving only one set of footprints to symbolize their future commitment to reducing waste.

A hilarious visual collage: "What can one person do when 6.8 billion are frying the planet?"

And then there were the "carrot mobs," where businesses — like an ice cream shop in California and a pub in Scotland — were invaded by throngs of people patronizing the enterprises for both their products and for their altruism. (Both the ice cream shop and pub owners had pledged to use the extra revenues from that day toward energy efficiency and renewable power generation for their stores, reducing their respective carbon footprints.) The communities thanked them with their purchasing power, using a "carrot," not a "stick," to foster change.

In southern Argentina, schoolchildren cleaned their coastline. Currents disburse trash from far north. (Courtesy 350.org)

This "carrot philosophy" governed not just the carrot mobs, but roughly 7,000 other interconnected events occurring around the globe that same day. Nearly every nation on the planet was represented: 188 countries, with exceptions of North Korea, Andorra, Equatorial Guinea and San Marino. Every state in the U.S., Canada and Mexico participated. (To see a list of the best 10/10/10 events, click here.) It was an orchestrated, worldwide event to tackle climate change, but it wasn't about pointing fingers or protesting.

Instead, stuff was getting done: Trees were planted in Kansas, mangroves in the Maldives, trash was picked up in Argentina and India, 500 bikes were built in Boston to send to Uganda, and the White House that week announced it would install solar panels. (And for full disclosure, I organized a work party where I live in Oaxaca.)

So, as alien anthropologist, it was a Global Work Party, masterminded by the group 350.org. But as an honest observer, you ask, "Was it just a social media stunt, or can it catalyze change across planet Earth?"

A Diffuse Environment
Thirty years ago, few would have guessed that climate change, a cause so indirect and amorphous, its effects indirect, far off and hard to predict, could spark such widespread mobilization. After all, people with diffuse interests, no matter how great their number, struggle to unify their voice and overcome small groups of people with specific, shared and entrenched interests.

The "environment," broadly speaking, failed to have a voice until its deterioration caused direct, immediate impacts. Health was the trigger: Toxic contamination caused cancer, rivers caught on fire, oil spills devastated beaches. In the 1960s, a huge amount of legislation was passed when the connection was established between environment and health. Even endangered species, an abstract interest to most people, were given priority over economic interests in the Endangered Species Act partly thanks to the science of ecology informing us that biodiversity underlies many of our life-support systems.

Retirees in Massachusetts collected compost from the kitchen for their garden. (Courtesy 350.org)

The rabbit hole for the environment goes deeper. New pollutants create subtle new problems, which only become obvious later or on large scales. Fertilizers, for example, were hailed as the solution to end world hunger; they have managed to foul waterways and deplete soils. We also realized that CFCs, at first miracles for refrigeration, ended up damaging the ozone layer and thereby increasing the incidence of skin cancer. Greenhouse gases are also subtle pollutants and avoided detection as serious problems until fairly recently.

Evidence of a connection between climate change and our health grows daily, through quiet scientific research and catastrophic weather events. This year, headlines were filled with crop failures in Russia from the hottest temperatures on record, floods in Pakistan, torrential rains in Mexico and the eastern United States. However, most people don't experience the brunt of problems firsthand, and many see the connection as just conjecture by scientific models — or worse, a scientific conspiracy.

Those who do care are those personally affected and those who are aware that the well-being of society and ecology are inseparable. These groups of people are not necessarily in the same community and may share little else other than their concern on this issue. As writer Malcolm Gladwell might say, they are linked by "weak ties" around the world, and in his view weak ties are not the ties that bind.

Conquering Weak Ties with Social Media
In a recent New Yorker article, Gladwell downplayed the importance of Internet and social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc) in creating social change, since their main benefit is linking people who share weak ties.

Gladwell argues that discipline and strong ties are necessary for change and warns digital activists not to put social media on a pedestal just based on the numbers who show up for an hour or a day. It is a great networking tool for mobilizing people, but it doesn't create the structure needed for the collective strength of diffuse interests to overcome entrenched interests.

In Harlem, roofs were painted white —an easy way to reflect heat and cool down cities (and the planet). (Courtesy 350.org)

Pointing to the U.S. civil rights movement, he shows that the "high-risk activism" that catalyzed change — boycotts and powerful sit-ins — required disciplined structure and strong ties. In that case, it was African Americans and some allies connected through church groups and close friendships.

Vigorous responses to Gladwell's essay streamed through the Web. The Huffington Post was critical and mentioned the successes of the "Text Haiti" fundraiser by the U.S. Department of State that raised $25 million in eight days, and Barack Obama's election to presidency aided by youth-led social networking. Discussions on the New York Times included how weak ties are helping China's civil society and how the Internet can expose repression. Nevertheless, Gladwell's statement that the weak ties of social media fail to instigate high-risk activism survived the criticism — well, the examples above all seem pretty low-risk to me.

Despite its widespread appeal, the 10/10/10 Global Work Party was not about high-risk activism. People were not asked to chain themselves to trees or risk their lives. They didn't even risk verbal brickbats. Even non-environmentalists can nod in approval at old folks in a Massachusetts retirement community working on their food garden, solar panels being installed at an educational center in Namibia, of more than three tons of acorns being gathered for reforestation in Moscow to replace oaks lost in the devastating forest fires this summer, or of roofs being painted white in Harlem to increase the albedo effect and reduce the "urban heat island" effect.

The brilliance of the Global Work Party was exactly that it was low risk and beneficial — and therefore compatible with the social media platform that it used. The appeal of these events reached enough people that behavior can change from the bottom up. The group 350.org succeeded in that role with a simple structure and strategic backbone for the event.

Oct. 10, 2010 marked the occasion of Frances' (she's in the green shirt) 90th birthday, so she planted trees with friends. (Courtesy 350.org)

But what about action from the top down, that is, legislation or policy changes that raise efficiency standards? Gladwell says high-risk activism is the key to change, and as I argue, climate change is unlikely to generate that activism. But the status quo lies somewhere between where the top-down meets the bottom-up — and so even low-risk endeavors can create lasting change.

Still, Gladwell's warning should be heeded: Strategy and discipline, not just mass numbers, are the best ingredients for meaningful results.

Environmentalism has evolved in the last 40 years: from protesters using the stick to pressure polluters, to groups using the carrot to lure businesses into improving standards. It has evolved to deal with these increasingly diffuse issues, and social media has come to the rescue to bring people together. The Global Work Party was a product of this evolution — not high risk but with tangible and good results.

After 10/10/10, it feels like we're in a new era, one in which people are taking climate issues into their own hands. May the leaders follow.

It's All in the Numbers

The 350 in the 350.org refers to 350 parts per million, the amount of carbon dioxide scientists believe is a safe level in the atmosphere. Antarctic ice core records reveal that in the past 800,000 years, CO2 levels have never been as high or have changed nearly as fast as today's rate. As of September 2010, it was measured at 386 ppm and rising at about 1.9 ppm per year. Under business-as-usual scenarios, it is expected to surpass 450 ppm by 2050, raising global temperatures more than 1 degree. On the present course, the increase in temperatures by 2100 would be 2-3 degrees, which hasn't been seen on Earth since the Pliocene Epoch, when trees grew in the Arctic and sea level was 25 meters higher than today. Forecaster Mark Lynas notes that when the climate used to be 1 degree higher, Nebraska was largely a desert.

by Kristian Beadle

October 14, 2010

(Note: this post was originally published in Miller McCune magazine)

Mexico's Celebration: Cutting through the Doom and Gloom

Mexico's Celebration: Cutting through the Doom and Gloom

Walking the streets of Mexico's capital on the occasion of the nation's 200th birthday, Kristian Beadle sees both chest-thumping and hand-wringing.

On the night of Mexico's bicentennial celebration, an old man was strumming his acoustic guitar. He was on a dark avenue surrounded by the din of crowds, festive cries and police sirens. His guitar had no amplification, and the bowl at his feet only had a few coins, but he was playing so intently that I stopped to listen. I had to get really close to hear the melody, but it was worth it. Like a rowdy family gathering that goes quiet because Grandpa starts to tell a story, the din around me faded.

The crowds kept moving and nobody stopped to listen, and I don't blame them. There were so many things to see and hear this Sept. 16: a massive float car parade with dazzling colors, beautiful dancers dressed in fantasy costumes and a dizzying landscape of red, green and white celebrating the Mexican flag. Earlier in the day, I saw the BBC News interview with event organizer Ric Birch, producer of Olympic opening ceremonies in 1992 and 2000. He said this might be one of the biggest and boldest events in recent memory, and indeed, the spectacle did not disappoint.

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The Real Revenge of Montezuma: Voyage Conclusions

The Real Revenge of Montezuma: Voyage Conclusions

Now that the trip is over, I look back and speculate on the connection behind "traveler's belly" and Mexico's ailments.

Location: In Mazunte, just north of Huatulco. Through scattered clouds, the morning sun shines on the bay, whose centerpiece is a pair of jagged boulders. The rocks are frothy with crashing waves and soft backlight. The bay is surrounded by swaying palm trees and a snaking wetland.

Conditions: From inside my swinging cot, hanging freely from a roof covered by a mosquito net, I can tell the morning air is starting to warm up. It's 8 a.m., and the septic tank truck is already pumping sewage and someone is running a drill. Fishermen are pushing their pangas past the tiny waves.

Discussion: On the return from Huatulco, we veered off the rainy highway and navigated the potholes, overhanging tree branches and yelping dogs until reaching Mazunte. It is a blissed-out beach town that attracts French backpackers and yoga students with its fairy-tale scenery and psychedelic bars with names like "Siddhartha." That is where my friend Nando, who I brought in tow for his flamenco music collection and Spanish humor, revived his old enemy, the stomach flu.

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The Balance of Evil-Doing: Kiri's Impacts

The Balance of Evil-Doing: Kiri's Impacts

Perhaps a little hypocrisy doesn't hurt - if you're aware of it?
I look at the footprint of my trip, and hope it was all worth it.

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Sustainable Tourism en Masse: Huatulco's Attempt

Sustainable Tourism en Masse: Huatulco's Attempt


On the final military checkpoint of my trip, the camouflaged officers asked me a familiar set of questions, starting with, “De donde viene?” Where are you coming from? I’m from Santa Barbara, California, I told them — heading to Huatulco, which is just a few miles away. After getting the thumbs up, I drove into town with the curious anticipation of arriving after 5,000 miles and three months of travel. That was slowly displaced by a peculiar feeling. From what I could see, I had come full circle, and two realities were merging.

The wide boulevards had center dividers, the lawns and trees were neatly groomed. Missing from view were packs of yelping dogs, iconic of most towns I’d seen in Mexico; or makeshift signs made out of car tires. Generous parking lots were in front of shiny stores. Everything looked so organized and easy to find. … I couldn’t help thinking, “This looks like my brother’s neighborhood in Aliso Viejo.” It was like a sliver of Southern California’s Orange County dropped into tropical Mexico.

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