Archives for May 2018

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins was one of the largest private landowners in the world before she gave it away

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins made history earlier this year when she completed what is said to be the largest ever transfer of land from a private entity to a government.

In a ceremony in Chile with President Michelle Bachelet at her side, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins formally handed over 1 million acres of land of while President Bachelet designated 9 million more acres to create vast new national parks.

This created areas of protected wilderness about the size of Switzerland.

That ceremony was the culmination of decades of work by Kristine and her late husband Doug Tompkins. Kristine was the longtime CEO of the outdoor apparel company Patagonia. Doug, who died in a kayaking accident in 2015, was the co-founder of the clothing companies North Face and Esprit. Together, the created the non-profit Tompkins Conservation.

In this conversation, Kristine Tompkins discusses the origins of her work as a conversationist and as a pioneer of corporate social responsibility. She also describes the process of creating wilderness areas in partnerships with governments.

We caught up while she was in New York to receive an award from the United Nations Environment Program.

Among other things, this is an interesting conversation about the impact of philanthropy in global affairs and conservationism.

A New Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The ebola outbreak ongoing the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most severe ebola outbreak since the 2014 calamity in west Africa that killed over 11,000 people.

By the last week of May, there a have been over 20 deaths linked to this outbreak and over 50 suspected cases. But this is a fluid and fast moving situation, so what I wanted to do with this episode is to offer listeners some broader context for understanding this particular outbreak, and also explore how the international response to this outbreak is so profoundly different from the response back in 2014.

I could have no better person discuss outbreak than my guest today Laurie Garret. She is a global health expert, pulitzer prize winning journalist and former fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We kick off discussing the origins of this new outbreak. We then have a longer conversation examining how the response to this outbreak is so profoundly different than the devastating outbreak in West Africa four years ago.

If you have 20 minutes and want some context for understanding this ongoing emergency in the DRC and how it may evolve, have a listen.

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A Conversation With Michael Møller, Director General of the UN Office in Geneva

I was a bit skeptical when my guest today told me that every person on the planet, in any 24 hour period, is somehow impacted by the work of the UN and other international entities in Geneva.

Still, Michael Møller would be in a position to know. He is the Director General of the UN Office in Geneva, which makes him a very senior UN official.  As he explains, the mundane routines of life — everything from brushing my teeth in morning to calling my grandmother in Montreal — is touched by work done in Geneva.

We discuss how he is trying to change the perceptions of the UN’s work in Geneva by explaining its relevance to everyday life on the planet. We also discuss the innovative “SDG Lab” launched by his office and the work of the UN Conference on Disarmament, of which Møller is the titular head.

I will be seeing Michael Møller in Stockholm next week where he will be delivering a keynote address to the New Shape Forum. This is a conference and ideas festival convened by the Global Challenges Foundation.

We kick off this conversation discussing what Michael Møller is looking forward to from the New Shape Forum and also he previews some of the remarks he’ll be delivering at his keynote address.

This episode is presented in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation, whose aim is to contribute to reducing the main global problems and risks that threaten humanity. Last year, the Global Challenges Foundation held an open call to find new models of global cooperation better capable of handling the most pressing global risks. In May this year at the New Shape Forum in Stockholm, the top proposals will be presented publicly and further refined through discussions with key thought leaders and experts.  

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How Shipping Containers Explain the Conflict in Yemen

Yemen is experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and the circuitous route and tangled politics that cargo ships must navigate in order unload their goods on Yemen’s ports helps explain why that is.

Yemen has two main ports, Hodeidah to the north, on the Red Sea and Aden to the south, on the Gulf of Aden. Of these two ports, Hodeidah is by far the bigger one. But Hodeidah is under the control of forces aligned with the Houthi rebels. Aden, on the other hand, is controlled by forces aligned with the internationally recognized government of Yemen —  a government that is militarily backed by a Saudi-led coalition.

The politics and the basic logistics of getting goods into these two ports offers key insights into the dynamics of the conflict in Yemen and can explain why Yemen is experiencing such a profound humanitarian crisis.

My guest today, Scott Paul, is the humanitarian policy lead at Oxfam America. He recently returned from a fact finding trip to the Port of Aden and some of its surrounding towns. He wrote about that experience in a piece on the website Just Security. In this conversation, we briefly discuss the background of the conflict and its main drivers before having a longer conversation about the explanatory power of shipping containers for understanding this conflict.

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Understanding the Gaza Protests

It’s been a tumultuous week in Israel and Palestine. On the same day that the United States formally opened its embassy in Jerusalem, dozens of Palestinians were shot to death by Israeli soldiers along the border between Gaza and Israel.

That incident along the border fence was part of a broader Palestinian protest movement that has gained steam in recent months.

The movement is known as the Great Return March. In it, Gazan protesters approach and seek to breach the border fence that separates Gaza from Israel —  ostensibly to return to lands that were expropriated by Israel during the country’s founding as a Jewish state. Clashes have ensued, including the shooting deaths of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.

On the line with me to help put this latest protest movement in context is Yousef Munuyyer. Yousef brings a unique perspective to this issue. He is the executive director of the US Campaign Palestinian rights. He is also and Israeli citizen, and American citizen and a Palestinian.

Yousef  explains why this protest movement is unique and resonates deeply beyond Gaza.  We also discuss the complex issue of the the “Right to Return” before turning to a conversation about how the Israel-Palestine issue is interpreted through domestic American politics.

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How Colonialism Explains HIV in Africa

Around the world the HIV rates for men and women are more or less equal. Except, that is, in sub-saharan Africa which is the only region in the world where the HIV rates for women are substantially higher than that of men. Scholars call this the “feminization” of HIV and AIDS in Africa and have devoted a great deal of effort into studying why.

Getting to the bottom of this question is vitally important to combating HIV and AIDS in general. Some 80% of all women who live with HIV are living in sub-Aaharan Africa.

Economist Siwan Anderson is the author of a fascinating new study that that offers an explanation for why HIV rates for women are high in some African countries. In a forthcoming paper in the academic journal The American Economic Review, she finds that the legacy of the legal system of the former colonial power contributes to very high female HIV rates in former British colonies compared to that of the former colonies of continental Europe that used the civil law tradition.

And this difference, as she explains is how British common law and civil law countries approached property rights for married women.

She finds that female HIV rates for countries under common law–which is the legal tradition of the UK — are twice that as female HIV rates in civil law countries, which is the legal tradition of continental Europe.  The reason? Married women are more easily able to access property rights in civil law countries and therefore are more able to refuse sex.

This is a fascinating and revealing study.

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The Demise of the Iran Nuclear Deal

No journalist covered the ins and outs of the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal as closely as Laura Rozen. She is a reporter with the middle east news website Al Monitor and in the negotiations that lead up to the July 2015 deal, her reporting and high volume Twitter feed were an essential resource to anyone wanted to know the pulse of these negotiations.

Now that the pulse may be turning to a flatline after Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States is withdrawing from the nuclear deal, I wanted to reach out to Rozen to get a sense of what happened and what comes next?

In this conversation we discuss the demise of the JCPOA, how Iran and Europe are reacting to this development and how diplomacy on this issue may evolve.

This was not terribly unsurprising that the Trump administration would pull out of the agreement. But it is still a shock to the international system for reasons that Laura Rozen and I discuss. If you have 20 minutes and want to understand what the fallout from this move might look like, have a listen.

Can Tom Frieden Save 100 Million Lives?

Dr. Tom Frieden lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017. He now has a new role: President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies.

And in this role he has an audacious goal: to save 100 million lives.

In our conversation, Dr. Frieden explains why he believes that he can achieve that goal by focusing on two health issues: cardiovascular disease in the developing world and shoring up our global defenses against pandemics.

To those ends, he has some major backers including the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

In this episode, Dr. Frieden discusses these two issues in depth and some strategies his organization is using to confront them. He also explains why, of all the issues in global health, he chose to focus on these two.

If you have thirty minutes and want to learn from one of the world’s leading public health experts, have a listen.

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Xi Jinping is Embracing a New Role for China in the World

My guest today, Elizabeth Economy, is the author of the new book The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State. The book examines the transformative changes ongoing in China today under the leadership of Xi Jinping.

Xi Jingping has consolidated power in an unprecedented way. And as Elizabeth Economy explains he is fundamentally shifting China’s domestic and foreign policies. We spend the bulk of our conversation focusing on changes underway in Chinese foreign policy, including China’s massive foreign development program called the Belt and Road initiative, it’s attempt to create an ostensible rival to the World Bank and its assertive policies in the South China Sea.

A key question driving this interview: is China, under Xi, seeking to be a revolutionary global power, or work within the established international system?

This is a great conversation about a newly emerging force in international affairs. If you have 20 minutes and want a good grasp of the trajectory of China’s role in the world, have a listen.

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