A report from the occupy wall street movement

Playing chess at Zucotti Park
Note the masked 99% guy in the background.

I guess it was just a matter of time. When both Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Stiglitz take time off from their busy agendas to use the "human microphone" its a clear signal that you need to pay attention to what's happening outside the library. I made some time to take the 2 train to Fulton street and then walk to Zucotti Park. So what is this place? Well it's the closest park in New York City to what is known as Wall Street. It has been receiving a lot of attention in the past few days because of a non-unique movement that is occurring in quite some locations around the globe. Under the motto: "We are the 99%" quite a number of individuals are "occupying" the park to make their voices heard. 

The entrance to the OWS library.

I decided to push the pause button on my recurrent visits to Lehman in preparation of midterms to obtain a personal view of this movement and hopefully develop a personal opinion on what is happening here. So I grabbed my camera and a small notebook and after getting off the subway walked down liberty street to this, now globally renowned, park. My first impressions where of a quite organized open-street market. As I immersed myself into this micro-ecosystem I first came across the Wat-San working group (WatSan is short for Water and Sanitation in the international development jargon). This working group was created after the realization the so many people occupying a location without the proper infrastructure would sooner or later begin to produce to much waste. The working group is regularly cleansing the park. After this interesting encounter I came across a demonstration of electricity production with the use of a bicycle. The front wheel of the bicycle was connected to a power generator and with the help of volunteers a luminescent reflector was being lit. They say never judge a book by its cover but from a first glimpse this was clearly not just a mob dirtying the immaculate city of New York. Diving into the diverse mix of people with innumerable standards stating their more or less clear cause of presence I arrived to the sleeping quarters.  I found a young couple lying on an air mattress surfing the internet, and to my great satisfaction a pair of youngsters playing a quite interesting chess match.  A sign: "Informacion  en Español" drew me to a men probably in his fifties that was only able to explain to me that: "Yo apenas llegue ayer, solo se que somos el 99% y que la asamblea general es alla enfrente en 15 minutos". I kept wandering for 15 more minutes around, observed quite a diverse mix of people, eating or playing cards with signs that read: "Protect Endangered Species", "Veterans" and "Revolution in Progress. Please cooperate", before arriving to the meditation session in the southwestern corner of the park, here a group of people are sitting, trying to meditate in the midst of the curious band of first timers in the park. At 7:15PM, I sat within the the first eco of the human microphone of the general assembly. 

I learned that you need a city permit to use any kind of electronic voice amplifier in the city of new york. Lacking such a permit the crowd at OWS are using a very interesting technique that is known as "the human microphone". It consist on the use of neighboring amplification, where those immediately around you repeat in unison what you are saying, like a chorus of whatever statement you pronounce. The crowd was particularly large, probably due to the presence of Mexican Curious such as myself, and the group on the podium decided that a "double eco" was required. After several "MIC CHECK"... "MIC CHECK"... "MIC CHECK"... and "PLEASE RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU CAN HEAR ME"... "PLEASE RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU CAN HEAR ME"... "PLEASE RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU CAN HEAR ME"...  the assembly started. Struggling to fully understand the different signals to express yourself when lacking the modern speech amplification technologies, I learned some ways to express discontent, acceptance, request for clarification and solicitation of the use of the "Human Mic". My struggle to understand what people were saying was disturbing, I mentioned to some people around me that they should actually deploy a communication work group that should be live transcribing the conversation and put up a screen where they would project the discourse. A nice lad next to me just smiled and pointed his finger over my shoulder and smiled, silently to avoid any disturbance of the "Human Mic". Turning around, I discovered to my great satisfaction that a huge screen had been deployed in an area that had signs that read: "Library" some individuals were actually projecting the speech. I witnessed a quite nice attempt of covering several agenda points of the assembly in an experiment of a: "direct democracy" according to my not-so-silent neighbor. It was interesting to observe how this group of people where having trouble with the mechanism of message delivery.

Live transcripts of the general assembly statements - much more effective than the Human Microphone.

Indeed, in a direct democracy "where everyone has a voice" you can waste a great amount of time with individuals that want to vent, show-off or hijack the human mic for individual purposes or alternate causes. The idea that having the right to speak does not mean that you can say anything that crosses your mind is still hard to understand by some people. It seems OWS still is understanding how to handle this reality.

V

Nevertheless I did get some clear messages from  this chorus. The main idea was that: "We are the 99%". When I finally decided to leave I had heard personally what these crowd is doing there. This is my very personal understanding from what I heard. Apparently they consider themselves a movement, I was surprised after reading many articles on the internet that the word revolution was never mentioned. On the contrary there was quite some emphasis in the fact that they consider themselves a "Non-violent movement". It was also interesting to hear that against what I've been reading in some papers they do have a clear objective. They state that they are part of the lowest 99th percentile of the american population on the income rank, and that they are there to protest. To protest because they feel that there is a problem, they do not understand how, after the financial collapse of the global economy caused by some very particular practices in the financial markets of Wall Street, the American government has not taken any serious action to secure that the system failure of 2008 does not happen again. They are "outraged" that the 1% of the population owns 25% of the wealth in the United States. They are angry because they feel that the collapse of the financial markets was caused by people from the 1%, that some people from this group actually benefited from this crisis and that the other 99% suffered from their actions.

15O in Times Square.

At first glance it seems that this guys are just ranting against the fact that there exist inequality in the world. When lingering one can realize that they are not just ranting but actually raising a red flag, a red flag to signal that there seems to be an indicator that is out of control. That the allocation of wealth in the american economy has gone beyond a safe threshold. That the wealth distribution between the 99% lower income and the 1% higher income is inefficient. Why do they believe that the allocation (0.99, 0.75| 0.01, 0.25) is inefficient? Because of historical reasons. There is very limited empirical evidence on this subject but the reality is that the last time that the american economy reached this allocation was in the year of 1928 right before the great depression. Based on this undeniable fact, some have decided to express their frustration on the fact that the causes leading to this, possibly, inefficient allocation have not been fully understood and that there are signs that no measures to make sure that this situation is avoided in the future have been set. The underlying message seems to be that they do not believe that a regressive tax system (a tax system where as income increases relative taxing levels decrease) is not reaching the desired outcome of creating more jobs by increasing private investment. 

I have to say that although I still have my reserves on what the OWS movement might develop into in the short term, it did trigger a deep reflexion in my brain. You see, as you can see in my older postings, there seem to be three important trends that should make anyone with at least two neurons worry. Scientific facts have proven that:

More than just inequality the movement appears to include other causes.

1- Human activities around the globe are affecting the natural environment. climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity and desertification are some of the more important issues that humanity is observing.

2- Population growth, although 1,000 Million humans suffer from undernourishment we are still growing in numbers towards an estimated peak of 9 to 10.5 thousand million individuals by 2050.

Now loss of natural capital or gains in population levels is not dramatic when observed independently, but when you think that individuals obtain their levels of well-being from transforming natural resources to satisfy their needs things change. If you create a ratio where you put natural wealth in the nominator and amount of population among which this wealth is divided in the denominator then these two trends amplify themselves. If the population is growing and natural wealth is decreasing then the ration is decreasing. This means that the amount of natural resources per capita to be transformed into well-being is becoming smaller and smaller. 

Now there is an additional factor that we have not mentioned yet, this is what economists like to call capital, sometimes they refer to it as machines other times it refers more to private (or public) investment to increase productivity. And here I would like to introduce the third worrying trend. It appears that the transformation of natural capital into societal well-being is catalyzed by capital. When you increase the levels of capital into any production process you increase the levels of output of the process and increase worker productivity. But it seems that in order to optimize the relation between Natural Capital (R), Human Capital (L) and the other capital (K) you require certain key assumptions to be fulfilled. I am no economist so I will not pretend to be versed in the subject, but as I mentioned before it seems from empirical evidence that when 1% of the population holds a relatively large amount of the total wealth GDP tends to plummet and economic growth is hampered.

3- The levels of inequality in the world are high. In the first decade of the XXIst century, 1,000 Million of the population are not being able to eat three meals per day, 3,500 Million people are still directly depending on agriculture to survive, 4,000 Million do not have reliable household access to a modern source of power, 5,000 Million do not have household access to a washing machine. Compare this to the 1,000 Million of people that are able to buy at least one flight per year and you start to realize that there is a high standard distribution in income per capita in the world. Within countries these differences are also troubling. In the USA 1% of the population held 23.7% of the wealth in 2008 and 99% held only 76.3%. With Israel, Chile, Mexico and Turkey, America is having a hard time to keep the American Dream Promise alive.

These three trends are strong signals pointing to the fact that apparently there is something wrong in our incentive system and our socio-economic system. Some symptoms of these three realities can be observed around the world. Climate change, high inequality, loss of ecosystems including important threats to the Amazon basin, piracy in the indian ocean and the recent riots in Europe are just manifestations of our inability to address these three important trends. 

15O in 43rd Street, NYC. 

It seems to me that these occupy movements around the world (some are already calling the 15O a date to remember in world history) are about stressing the leaders of the world to start truly addressing these worrying trends. In each "occupy" movement there seem to be a global objective as well as very local concerns that are related to the particularities in which they are developing. But from my poor understanding it would appear that there is a global demand that says: "Hey guys! Something is not working well, let's make sure that we are truly addressing the important issues that we are facing". The call seems to request politicians, corporate leaders and in general the civil society to solving effectively and efficiently the global economic system to change the business as usual grim future scenario.

Chanting: "This is a peaceful demonstration"

In the case of the occupy wall street movement important personalities have expressed interesting opinions about the why's and what's of their protest. According to them the problem is that the current governmental regulation of the financial sector in the USA has led to a situation where  "profits have been privatized and losses socialized" - Joseph Stiglitz - Nobel prize in economics. According to Paul Krugman, respected economist that writes a famous NYT column called "the conscience of a liberal", the 99% are protesting because no measures to "prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation". The problem according to him is that some of the creators of the great 2008 recession " have paid no price for their actions, their institutions were bailed by the taxpayers. The current situation is that the outcomes from flipping a coin are: Heads: they win the benefits - Tails the 99% loose their share". Other quotes form his blog are that "it's not just the vast wealth accumulated by these guys but how it was earned and how it is being used" and that it's "not about criticizing capitalism but the lack of free markets". Jeffrey Sachs went down to Zucotti park and used the Human Microphone, he states in the hufftington post that it is normal to see this kind of movements rise when: "the 12,000 wealthiest households in the USA dispose of the same aggregated income than the poorest 24 million households in the country". He also finds the fact that: "50% of he members of the american congress belong to the wealthiest 1% slice of the population". Steve Cohen, executive director of the Earth Institute stated that these people are right to be frustrated because of the "bail out of the institutions that helped create the economic crisis" and that this kind of movements should we expected when we think that "hourly earnings (adjusted to inflation) in america has stagnated for the past 50 years while CEO earnings have increased 300% since the 1990s". 

Revolution in progress, thank you for your cooperation.

The chaotic expression of this movement still requires some important logistics but I found the following quote in an interesting article stating that: "There is no real danger posed by too many messages as long as the central message remains clear and undiluted". 

When you actually see a nobel prize winner (again professor Stiglitz) presenting himself to Zucotti Park to explain why the latest public policy related to Wall Street has allowed this situation of profit privatization and socialization of looses and clearly saying that: "that is not capitalism, that is not a free market economy, that is a distorted economy and if we continue on that path, we won't succeed in growing and we won't succeed in creating a just society" you start to think about the legitimacy of the ideas expressed in lower Manhattan.

Peaceful sweeping of the street by the police.

To conclude this post I have to say that I have done some research and it appears that given my current monthly income endowment I am not within the wealthiest one percent. If I am not within the wealthiest 1% the  it must be that I am also part of the 99%. If this is true then when they say "We are the 99%" I should probably feel called upon. At least I feel the responsibility of understanding what they are saying, and by they I guess that I should be saying we. But I am a skeptic, I cannot rush to conclusions yet. Let's see how this global movements develop. Let's hope that they manage to stay calm when face to face with NYPD as the days pass.

I have just very recently turned my head to look at the occupy global movements, I was surprised that the viral contagion around the world has also hit my home country, in Mexico people gathered around the Monument to the Revolution (yes we have a huge structure in the center of the megalopolis called like that) mexicans gathered to raise their own voice. Their message was a bit harder to understand from the youtube/distance, it seems from the little I saw that they still haven't been able to grasp on the modernization of the issues discussed. We are now talking of transitioning into a sustainable development paradigm, a low-carbon green economy where inequality is kept within a certain efficient threshold. My fellow mexican are still using the big words: "Capitalism versus Communism" I hope that this movements help them understand that we are now in the XXIst century.

I appears there are many "Indignados" around the world that are still struggling to understand why they are paying the broken dishes of the international trading of toxic assets exported by american banks during the months previous to the great recession. 

Be creative. 

One important message I want to tell these new dreamers of a "better world" is that they need to fully understand that direct democracy might mean that everyone has the right to raise their voice, but that the right to raise your voice is also a big responsibility and that using this right irresponsibly also leads to inefficiencies and even to a loss of functionality of such a system. It seems that we need to understand that raising your voice is like driving. Everyone can obtain a license if they show they are worthy of such a right, misuse this right and you might get your license revoked for a time. So direct democracy does not mean that anyone can say whatever they want in a disordered manner but that in a participative democracy there are some very important self-restraining measures to take into consideration, especially when you have to rely on a Human Microphone to express your ideas.

Meditation session.

But the most important message is that they need to remember of Non-Violence. This is the key to their movement. Forget it and you will loose any support from the moderates of the world that are today listening to what they are saying.

Remember that the key is non-violence.

So be creative, no one really knows all the answers! Keep meditating, keep playing chess, keep going to the library, believe in the power of positive action and keep anger and fear under control. We probably need a change in our value system, we probably need a more real democracy, a more real capitalism, we are probably optimizing the wrong indicators but this doesn't mean that all the models are wrong.

I leave you with a quote from a Mexican 15O protester I found on youtube: "Ora si que ojala que podamos ir contruyendo un mundo mas chido"...

Ideas for a lower emissions future - and a question to Mexicans.

Today I was unable to secure a vehicle to collect the geographical coordinates of the new water tap stands that will change the lives of around 5,000 individuals in this southwestern location of rural Uganda. I am trying to analyze the number of households that will be positively impacted by this new water infrastructure scheme. On average households were spending between 2 and 4 hours per day collecting the precious water in 20 liter jerry-cans for cooking, drinking and cleaning purposes. Women are usually the ones that do the work, girls and boys also spend hours just fetching water. Imagine the economic/wellbeing impact of reducing this time to 20 minutes... The inauguration was so important that a large commitive including Jeffrey Sachs, the Ugandan minister of water and the Ugandan minister of health were present to do the honors. Of course the CEO of the company that donated the pipes was also there, and the press! 

The impact on the livelihoods of the people is being measured with surveys and suffer from self-reporting bias. I am trying to change this by using distance analysis with my GIS tools. 

So as I failed to advance the data collection, I read in the news about the 2011 drought in Somalia and Kenya. UNICEF is already considering that 500,000 people might die from starvation. This is a lot (Haiti and the Asian Tsunami accounted each for ~250,000 deaths and are the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history). After 1 year in Columbia University I have learned that attributing the drought to climate change is not politically correct, I know... But, if the past 9 years have been among the 10 hottest years in history, there is probably some links, don't you think? 

The World Bank published a video in you tube today, the legend reads: Almost 70 of the world's sharpest minds on climate change got together at the World Bank in Washingtonin July 2011 to find ways to best support the exploding demand from countries for a low-carbon future.

 Ideas for a lower emissions future

The sky in the center of Mexico city.
The reddish tone is due to the
pollution that floats in the city.

Ten years ago this was an impossible shot.
Popocateptl seen from the west of the city.

Iztaccihuatl and Popocateptl.
The two lovers in a beautiful sunset.
Separated by urbanization.

To my great enjoyment I found some of the thinkers that have been influential to my line of thought in the past years. Sir Nicholas Stern and his cost-benefit report suggesting that investing 1% of global GDP today is better than waiting 20 years to act and having to invest 20% of global GDP at that time (crude simplification of what he actually says but I have limited access to internet and can't give the exact numbers right now - Don't let perfection be the enemy of perfection). But to my greatest surprise among these sharpest minds are two mexicans. Mario Molina our Nobel Prize, who helped us stop the destruction of the ozone layer (He actually received the Nobel as an American citizen). Nonetheless he invested the money in the creation of a think tank based in Mexico to help solve Mexican issues. He is the main responsible for cleaning Mexico City air in the past 20 years. Also our very own Minister of the Environment Rafael Elvira Quezada giving his views on the need of policy to solve the climatic (I say environmental - Ocean Acidification, Loss of Biodiversity and Desertification are also fundamental problems of our generation) crisis. I am proud of Mexico involvement in the Climate arena, of course our vulnerability to climate change is one of the highest in the world.

So what are these ideas? Is there anything new? A brief summary of what struck me:

We desperately need to turn on the "bulb".
Ideas anyone?

1- We understand that we need a new industrial revolution that will cost a lot. 

2- The direction of this new industrial revolution is in the green technology arena and energy efficiency.

3- We need to mainstream this agenda, talking green, clean and eco only reaches the 15% of the population that are already actors of change. the 15% that will resist the change will resist it anyway (the skeptics). To achieve change we need to reach the big chunk in the middle. Engaging this chunk will be critical for green growth.

4- We need new technology but also new diplomacy, we need research and development, we need financial capital and framework policy.

5- Smart Policy is key, vehicle fuel efficiency is a good example, we have the technology, it is cost effective. But car makers will not make the change unless regulation accelerates the uptake of these new technologies.

6- Political Support at the highest level, Mexico has put Climate Change as an issue of National Security.  7- People invest in education even if it won't pay for decades, so this is a proof that there is a willingness to pay for a better future. 

8- Voluntary changes will not be enough.

9- We need to become more productive in the use of our natural resources.

10- We need leaders that look in the eyes of they grandchildren and do the right thing for them.

11- It is not cheap but it is not expensive (1.3% of global GDP)

12- We don't know everything but we know enough.

Seeds of change?

My spanish friend from SIPA always says the following after I finish my intense monologues on the problems of the world: "So, what do we do?". I am still thinking of the answer. As a computer engineer who loves making maps, growing lettuces on rooftops and thinking of the best policies to make the change needed towards the green economy, the planetary society and the paradigm of sustainable development, I am still looking for the answer. (Again sustainable development is not an empty concept: it is the process of improving the livelihoods of all humans, ensuring that everyone has the minimum necessary to live in dignity, in a way that preserves the ecosystem services for infinite future generations ). 

But one thing I do know. It is not fair, ethically correct, recommendable or even economically efficient that tropical nations who contribute near to nothing to green house gases to pay for the excess use of energy in high and middle income countries. This is the most unfair of all negative externalities that exist today.

A urban farm in Brooklyn,
empire state in the background and that great flag!
America wake up, the world needs you!

So if a global binding agreement is not possible because of the "tour de force" between US and China is not possible, what do we do. Moving without them is like shooting ourselves in the foot (the path towards the green economy will probably slow down our economies in the short run). But not moving is like cutting both legs with a rusty machete in the long run (at least for Mexico). So if you have read this far, I would really like to hear your ideas on these matters, if you are Mexican even more (although I would certainly like to listen to other nationalities views). It is highly likely that half of our country will become a desert, we are depleting the reservoirs of fossil water that we had in the Laguna region and Sinaloa. The south will suffer from recurrent floods. It could be that we loose the southern peninsula in the long run. Hurricanes could become more frequent or more intense (and we get them from both sides).  Sounds creepy? Well add the terrible problem of violence and insecurity to the equation and you get a recipe for disaster. 

The map of the city of hope in my old apartment.

La ciudad de la esperanza by night.

We are a nation that complains, a nation of victims. But we have so much potential, we have one more chance to rise to the level of the challenge. We are still among the 15 richest economies in the world, our 2010 census show some indicators that are at the level of the developed world. We live in one of the 13 most biodiverse countries in the world. We still conserve 54% of our natural capital. We have just finished our demographic transition. We are contributing 1.5% of the global emissions (14th place). We are part of the OECD (I still don't know how we did it , but we are...). We are running out of oil. Our neighbor in the north in building a wall to keep some problems at bay. We have the most interesting election process coming in 2012. What are we going to do?

Tons que? Le entramos?

That is totally Terra Ignota... 

Que si se puede, carajo!

The missing MDG

The Millenium Development Goals are a set of objectives that the international community agreed on in the year 2000 that needed to be accomplished in the world by 2015. They relate to halving hunger, women empowerment, health, education, environmental and economical sustainability.

My first event at Columbia was about the status of the commitments in 2010. I remember one of the speakers arguments was that all the MDG's could not be fully accomplished without access to modern energy. For good health services you need refrigeration services, children cannot study only with candlelight. I remember I disagreed with his point. If the whole population uses energy in the way that developed nations do we would need three more planets.

I have been living without electricity at night for the past three weeks. Something about a strike by some of the power generating companies in Uganda. And I have come to realize that without access to cheap energy, development is truly impossible. I have changed my mind about the fact that we do need to provide energy to the world population.

Now the question is how to do it without trashing the planet. Yes, renewables and energy efficiency are part of the solution. Lowering consumption in some countries should also be an important strategy. So in the end energy is indeed the critical aspect that needs to be addressed both for development and for environmental sustainability.

My blog is suffering from this lack of energy and I am not enjoying it...

Somethings are just the same everywhere.

A very short thought, last week we were in Kampala, Uganda's capital and largest city (2 million or so). We were spending the weekend in Jinja (a sort of industrial center by the Nile riverside). We tried to make the most of our trip and had scheduled a meeting with someone in the forestry ministry. The meeting was a complete disaster: the person never showed up and his cellphone was off... No comments.

What I really want to talk about is that we had the chance to explore the Bugologi neighborhood in Kampala. Huge houses with neat gardens, reminded me of some areas of Mexico city. I guess that somethings are just the same everywhere...

Please notice the water tanks.
Different from the Rotoplas tanks in Mexico or the beautiful,
enormous Cedar water tanks of New York.
Why are there on a different structure and not on the roof?
One more question that probably has a very logical explanation.

I have absolutely no idea what is this tree doing here.
It is of course not to be found anywhere else in the city - maybe even the country (looks lebanese).
It seems some eccentric Ugandan or Expatriate decided to "be original".

On sunday, we were desperate to go back to Mbarara, we had absolutely no clue how to get back to the bus station that brought us here. The Boda-Boda (particularly dangerous motorcycles that originally transported you through East African Borders --- Border-Border ---> Boda Boda!) guys we took obviously took us to the wrong terminal, then a guy told us to get into the wrong bus for which we payed the wrong price. Typical scam, I felt like a stupid amateur. The longest ride to Kampala of my life, we stopped in every single Trading Center (what in Mexico we call rancherias or Hoyo del Puc). Of course we got early to Kampala to do the traveling by day, got to the bus station at 2 PM, the bus left at 6 PM, no reimbursements of course once we learned he was not leaving right away. Stupid Muzungu, having travelled to 27 countries in three continents, lived in three of the largest Megalopolis in the world (NYC, Paris and of course, the "City of Hope" or "el Defecado", Mexico city) and still got scammed like a peasant seeing the big city for the first time.  We got the see the old taxi park, an area where all public transportation gathers and start all the routes inside and even outside the city. It is definetely not the nicest spot in Kampala, reminds me of Mexico City "paraderos" of  "microbuses". A sort of orderly chaos that you can only find in the developing world. Masses of people, cars, bicycles, walking, shoping, honking... And you wonder how can this disaster work? And yet it does. In in it's own, very particular way but it works. El "Realismo Magico" of Latin-america can be found in Africa also, here it has a different name and feeling that a Muzungu would take years to fully understand. I guess that somethings are just the same everywhere...

The streets are not paved though!
During the more than 3 hours wait for the bus to finally leave,
I just stood in that spot and started taking pictures undercover.
People don't like Muzungus taking pictures of them - I completely understand.

The noise and movement of people, motorcycles, minivans, bicycles.
The market, the sound coming from the mosque,
the songs in the background from a place that was having a Sunday party.
Images say more than 1,000 words
but they can't completely transmit what this moment was truly like.
You are missing the sounds, the smells
and the feeling of frustration I had at the time.
In 20 years I will also have forgotten the full scene.

The secret to success: Teamwork.

I must say that during most of my years in school I strongly relied on my capacity to excel in exams by exploiting the good memory I used to have. I would always wait until the last minute and cram all the information in my head right before the exam. It was not until my College days that I started to realize that no man is an island. Indeed, heroes, stars and leaders require from others to rise up. A leader without followers is usually just a schizophrenic with dreams of "grandeur". Although we stress that  outperforming in today's society requires us to be competitive and gifted with the individual skill of entrepreneurship, humanity managed to survive in a highly hostile environment by forming groups and societies. 

The outcome of poor team coordination,
natures extremes + human vulnerability = Disaster!
We swallowed tons of Nile water.

My father has always been a strong advocate of high performance team work. He would repeatedly mention to his selfish son that no one needs little stars or geniuses. That the secret to success lies in being able to form balanced teams of people with complementary skills and characters. I learned the hard way in the world of consulting that doing the best analytics was not enough if your client did not understand what you talk about and that if you were not capable of forging a good relationship with them your highly developed quantitative senses were not very useful in the real world. At the same time, people in the office, your coworkers, your boss, your subordinates will never support you if you work on your own even if it means money for everyone. During my years as a consultant I had some great successes but I have to say that I also had enormous failures. I succeeded because of my abilities as a consultant, computer engineer, extroverted personality and negotiation techniques, my failures were often related to social factors. I would convince myself that it was the clients fault, the providers faults, the taxi driver fault, my coworker fault. I got to the point of some quite unprofessional attitudes that made me loose one of my first subordinates in the company. It took quite some time, one amazing girlfriend and stepping away for a couple of months from my consultant career to realize everything I was doing wrong. It reduced to one single thing, I was not good at team working. 

I remember in 2009, in the midst of the "great recession", I started loosing some major contracts, everyone was at the time. I was so frustrated by the situation, one day I asked my father: "What can you do in such a situation". He said: "High performance team working". 

Even if you manage to stay in the boat,
loosing one of your teammates to the white waters
 usually means failure.
You loose paddling power, stability and moral.
All for one and one for all.

That year the company I used to work for managed to transmit the feeling of urgency to the whole office. I still do not know how we managed to ride the storm out. A combination of need for information from our clients as the car market was free falling, our fear to get fired, our desire to prove that crisis can mean opportunity and especially a motivated group of young professionals with diverse skills and backgrounds and thirst for running the extra mile managed to do the impossible and we, not only maintained revenue and reduced costs, managed to grow. When I finally left Urban Science to shift into the world of sustainable development I had finally learned to appreciate what a fine-tuned group of people can do when paddling together in the same direction. Team Work is the secret to great achievements. 

Joining the ranks of Ivy League graduate students, inserted me back in a world of individualism. In the country were individual freedom is praised as the most important value, in the city where there is no free lunch, in a university were each one is reaching for one's dream, teamwork is not so highly regarded. Envy, competition and ambition are common in Columbia. It is of course only half truth because I have also made some amazing friends and colleagues and teamwork also exists but success in academia depends on being the best. I have met some amazing people in Columbia, but I have to say that PHD's and Master Students tend to work on their own, some people even decide to not work in groups for working on homework. 

As you start improving interpersonal skills you
avert total failure but half a failure is still a failure.
Plus you have to rescue the team one by one.

My Master in Development Practice classmates and I are dispersed all over the least-developed work, trying to contribute to organizations that focus on alleviating poverty in these development-forgotten areas of the world. We are all discovering that we have to rely on others to do our work. Whether fetching a project car to go to a meeting, obtaining data from the local team, organizing a meeting with the coffee farmers, preparing the logistics for a sanitation training or receiving support from New York, we are back in a situation where you have to rely on others to achieve your goals. An let me tell you, grad students at this level don't like to rely on others, we are little stars that want to shine on their own. And of course it doesn't work...

We had a fantastic trip to raft on the Nile this past week end. We discussed about the possibilities of contracting schistosomiasis from the still waters of this tropical river. We took the risks of braking a bone in the level 5 rapids. But most importantly we risked ourselves to get on the same boat with six other individuals with different physical capacities and experience. Rafting is all about synchronizing efforts and following instructions. Forward, back, left forward, right back. Simple instructions, but once you are paddling to avoid turning flipping you discover that you are actually with a bunch of lazy paddlers that have absolutely no coordination capacities... right? Wrong, again it is all about trust and team work, you need two good leaders that coordinate their paddling, with strength, not rushing like a madmen with rapid strokes but with deep strong paddling. Oh Hisse! Oh Hisse! The rest must follow this rythm, have bad leaders and you will fail to navigate the rapids. If you fail to balance the strengths between sides you will be turning instead of going forward. If your people get scared in the middle of the rapid and hide inside the boat you will fail. 

You need the brain, the heart and the guts to succeed. 

Perfect coordination!

We tipped twice in the first two rapids, swallowed tons of water, probably got the nasty worm and irritated our guide and ourselves. We tried several combinations of leadership, we tried to stay on the boat, rescued our team members when they fell to the water. And slowly, we started to understand that the secret to stay dry was to follow a good set of leaders, work hard, talk to each other and be ready to help one another. When we finally reached the final rapid we were one of the only teams to survive a triple rapid of whirlpools and enormous rocks. By the end of the day we were completely exhausted, in pretty bad shape and feeling a little bit defeated by the river. Once in the lodge we watched the video of our exploits that day. We saw our first failures, everyone paddling without any coordination, yelling at each other, hiding in the boat. As the video continued and we realized that we were one of the only teams to perform that bad I felt the need to write this post, we were terrible team workers. One japanese, three colombians, one nicaraguan, one american and myself, the mexican were completely incapable of agreeing on anything. It took some hours of hard comments, some trial and error with the leaders, a couple of people loosing their temper to start scoring some points. By the end we were (almost) like an perfectly oiled machine whose paddles moved in perfect harmony (exageration) and with individuals that were risking a little more than they would normally to put their paddle one or two extra times into the water. The video was amazing, we all grabbed one another and just yelled like cavewomen (because using men would be sexist!) while drinking our beers. We had bonded! 

The brains, the heart and the guts!

Yesterday I was talking to a Ugandan Colleague over some Waragi (the local drink) and Rolex (the local fast food) about the difference between Latin american poverty and development and the one of subsaharan Africa. It certainly seems like Latin america has managed to move forward while Africa has had some limited success. He told me that the problem in Uganda is that you belong to your tribe and then to your region and then to your country only because you were forced to. Governments benefit their clans and put obstacles on the rest. How can you move forward in this situation. Then aid comes and creates a situation of dependency that limits entrepreneurship even more. Corruption and disbelief in the future are the result, people stop believing in the common good and they decide to work by themselves for themselves (or not work at all, I must also say). 

Work together and you might face challenges
you thought impossible to overcome.

The world today looks a lot like this actually. We are aware that our current development paradigm is a failure (there is still even some groups of blind people that are unable to put things in perspective and acknowledge that the era of cheap development is over). Sustainable Development is no longer a matter of ethics or of just being nice. It has become a necessity. We are all in the same raft, we cannot keep making holes to the raft to fulfill our needs, we all need to paddle and we all have to move forward and we need to thing of those who will use the raft after us. I have discussed in previous posts the needs to shift our linear production/consumption system to a cyclical one, we need to decouple growth from fossil fuels and environmental degradation, we need to ensure a better distribution of wealth and we need to stop believing in the impossible idea of infinite economic growth (per capita) in a planet with limited resources. But we also need to work as a team, we need to become planetary citizens, we need to govern ourselves at the planetary level. We have to work together as a planetary society. Governments, corporations, entrepreneurs, organizations and institutions and especially the civil society urgently will have to learn how to manage common goods and avoid the scaling up of the outcomes in Easter Island. Humanity will have to overcome the terrible situation of the prisoner dilemma and game theory and start with real global cooperation. Maybe it is impossible, in which case we are probably going to tip the raft. Let's hope we don't swallow too much water...

Cheese and Diet Coke vs Guaca and Tortillas

Cheese and Diet Coke, the two things I miss from home (home has become a blurry concept). Yesterday, I decided to prepare some Guacamole and Chapati (greasy tortillas) to feel closer to my beloved Mexico. I was very careful in cutting the tomatoes, the onions, putting enough lemon and, of course, leaving the avocado peat inside the guaca. The chapatis received much less oil than the usual and were especially flattened (I miss tacos!). Add some beans, and there it was a fantastic dinner! The chapatis were so crispy that I could actually eat them as a taco filled with guaca and beans. I was so happy. So I thought to myself, I could actually live here...

What would I miss? Lot's of things... People of course but what would I really miss from my home (Mexico/New York)? Movie theaters would be top of the list, but you can actually get most movies in the streets (in the informal market), so if desperation would come I could always see the damned movie (Harry Potter). As I thought of the things I crave at night I realized that the two things that are really making me have strange dreams are Cheese and Diet Coke.

I found a dairy a week ago, the only in town, they make all the cheese for Muzungus in the area. The cheese is not bad and it has become a weekly tradition to go and buy as much cheese as I can carry. Ugandans don't eat cheese, my theory is that the lack of electricity in the country does not allow for adequate handling of the product and as a result it never penetrated the Ugandan cuisine. People really don't like cheese, one of my roomates at the house actually refused to eat a plate of pasta when I mentioned there was some little cheese in it. He told me he doesn't like cheese because it tastes like soap.
The first time I went to the dairy, the taxi driver that took me was intrigued to know what that thing I was carrying was and where did it come from. He had never seen or ate cheese in his life (24 years old). Life without cheese... That is something I could not live without. No quesadillas, no cheese sandwiches, no parmesan on pasta, no pizza. It is truly amazing to live in a country where goats are everywhere (really everywhere, jumping and eating anything they see) and there is NO goat cheese at all.

On the other hand Diet Coke is one of these very bad habits that one catches and struggles to abandon. I have to say that I crave the caffeine that comes in that sweet carbonated drink. I quit normal coke so many years ago to avoid the 300 calories that each canned soda contains and I am not used to the taste anymore. I don't know if it is just me or I have truly devloped a physical dependence to it. On fridays, I go to a hotel out of town that has a pool, a hot shower with pressure and Diet Coke... I like cold beer, but when I drink that 600 ml plastic bottle of cold diet coke I truly say ahhhhhhhhhhhh...

A stupid post fo a stupid day...

P.S. Coca cola did not pay me to do this post, no cows or goats were hurt in obtaining my beloved cheese.

Next week: Cheddar and Edam cheese Ugandan style!

Like an idiot.

Yesterday I talked with one of my contacts here in Uganda. We discussed some of the projects we are working on. My contact asked me some questions that not only was unable to reply to but made me feel like an idiot because I did not know the answer.

Matooke truck

One example:

Contact: "So we are working right now with a very interesting new cooking practice"
Me:"How much does it cost?"
Contact:"24,000 for materials and another 24,000 for maintenance over the 10 year life time"
Me: "(Playing smart) So it would be around 1,000 UGX per year per person considering an average household of 5.4 (Stats Bs since there are no 0.4 of humans)" - Should have asked: "How do you know it lasts ten years if it is a new practice?"
Contact: "Yes, that is around 50 cents of a Dollar per year per person, the only issue is that the household has to put a large sum upfront, but after we did the demonstration it was a complete success", "It has to be done right after the harvesting season since farmers don't have ways to store their produce and wait until prices are higher"
Me: "(Aja - Show off time) You know in this area there has been developments of commodity storage provided to farmers, you pay a moderate sum of 7 USD per month to store your crops until the prices go up, it seems to be working great" (31% of the population in Uganda still live with less than 1.25 USD per year).

Biker like an icon

Contact: "Oh! Ya! And how many people actually used it last season?"
Me: "Huh? Well... Ahem, A very interesting question! (This answer was learned during my graduate education), I will have to comeback to you later" - (What an idiot!) - "You know what, I can see your experience in the field and perception to see through things by the nailing questions you make"
Contact:"Well I've been two years in the field and I have heard it all"
Me: "... (Thinking to myself) I wish I could develop that skill"

This is a great problem in the International Development industry, everyone says that this or that works and actually: no one really knows. Statistical methodologies like RCT (randomized control test), quasi-experiments and difference-in-difference tests are some of the preferred methods, but after reading study after study and critic after critic it seems that answering the question: "What does really work?" is quite complicated.

Houses in Uganda

Munzungu! Munzungu!

I had a dream, that with satellite imagery we could actually measure facts, not self-reported improvements or random surveys but real images. Problem right now is that access to data is limited. I have imagery from 2003, the project I am working on started in 2006. I can only measure the past, not the present, the future seems even more blurry. Any ideas?





I sometimes miss working for the car industry...

The value of a human life. Supply and Demand?

What is the value of a human life? Many will reply: it is invaluable.

Sounds good, but not true... Our planet is invaluable and yet we seem to be in the process of putting a value on everything in it, call it ecosystem services and the internalization of externalities. I just payed 500 USD to spend one hour observing Gorillas, basically I considered that I was willing to pay 500 USD not only to see the Gorillas but to make sure that they are not exterminated by the needs of the villagers surrounding the park. We are analyzing the value of animals, plants and full ecosystems to decide if it is worth it to save them from extinction/degradation or not. We are discounting their future value to decide if we should just consume them today or tomorrow. The methods we are using to evaluate these "ecosystem services" to internalize their social value in markets can also be used to evaluate the value of human life.

The answer to my first question appears to be: it depends... In Somalia? What if you are a central american passing through northern mexico states? A congolese man in the rubber plantations of Belgian King Leopold II? An indigenous person in the Mexico of 1900? It seems the value of life is pretty low in these cases.

Sunday I had an experience that triggered this poor and scandalous reflexion. I was in a small Ugandan town, three muzungus hiking in the area. We stopped to wait for the rest of the crew and some young Ugandans with a soccer ball started throwing it at us. We rapidly formed a circle and began comparing soccer skills between Ugandans and Americans (some people think Obama is the president of the whole American continent and Mexico is sometimes part of the US for practical purposes). Things were actually going pretty well. In two seconds everything changed, a small child no more than three years old was crossing the street and uphill a boda (motorcycle) was coming down full speed. Some were screaming at the driver to stop, others at the child, some tried to get him, others just were completely paralyzed just expecting the impact ad its definitive consequences. There was nothing to do, I only had time to realize there was going to be blood spilled and that the happy day was over. But there was divine intervention, the driver did not stop, didn't even slow down, he moved his bike a little bit at the last second. This 10 mm move was enough so that the small child was not hit by the motorcycle but only by the knee of the driver. He did fly one meter and turned around from the strength of the impact, but he seemed to be all right. The kid started crying, his mother came, picked him from the ground and took him home. The motorbike driver stopped 100 meters away, turned his head and drove as fas as he could. The kid to my left hit the soccer ball and we resumed playing... Just like that... I guess you get over accidents that almost happened than those did happen.

My stomach was in shambles, I just couldn't believe how close I had been to get spilled with this little kid blood. Later that day I learned that this type of accidents do happen often, when the driver does kill or severely hurts someone, he better run as fast as he can. If the community catches him, they will beat him to death. An eye for an eye... In tis case it seems that the value of a human life is another human life.

This experience has truly left a mark in me, I just can't stop thinking about it. One of my colleagues at work told me that his mother did not gave him a name until he was five years old (the highest vulnerability period for a child). In a country where 138 children of 1000 die before their fifth birthday then it makes a little sense. Another shocking experience is the answer to the typical question "How many sibling do you have?" which often comes in the form of "Alive or dead?" or "My mother had 8 of us but only 5 remain". One of the taxi drivers I hire to move around the city told me he has 20 siblings... All from the same mother! This woman has to be an extraordinary character, after numbers were added, multiplied, I came to the conclusion that she had to spend 27 years producing (this is like ford factory production line) babies, she spent 10.5 years pregnant. Why do people have such a number of children? It makes no sense at all. I get the different hypothesis of why some countries only have two children per couple and others eight. But 20? That is some intensity. Is it because they value life too much? Is it because of fear to their husbands? Is it because children serve as a retirement fund in poor countries? Is it because having many children is a sign of wealth and status? I do not know.

A couple of days ago, we talked to a woman that told us that she actually preferred being pregnant because without her period she could be more efficient in the field. When it came every month it was a problem since work was much harder when women have no access to sanitary pads or any other feminine hygiene product due to prices. I dod not buy her story 100% but she had a point.

So solving the worlds problems include:

1- Washing machines for everyone.

2- Reduce fertility rates to the stable level

3- Produce a low cost alternative to deal with women's period

So how much is a life worth? Try to quote how much you are worth if you sold your organs to people that need them. That is a lot. Think of the indebted father who commits suicide so that his life insurance allow his children to move on with their lives.

Above the airline

Not much to say today. Long discussions about the idea that democracy is only good when society is sufficiently educated and until then its better to have a strong leader (dictator) to guide development...

Statistic of the day:

Hans Rosling says that 2 Billion people live below the poverty line with an income lower than 2 USD per day, 28% of the population consume 8.3% of energy. Then we have 3 Billion people earning between 2 and 40 USD per day, 43% consume 25% of the energy. Then one billion above the washline (they have washing machines) with incomes between 40 and 80 USD per day, 14% of the population consumes 16% of the energy consumption in the world. Finally we have those that live above the airline (travel by plane on holiday once a year) with incomes above 80USD. 14% of the population consumes 50% of the total global energy consumption.


Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine | Video on TED.com

Sahara.

Manhattan.

The city of hope.

Chicago.

La sierra de Guadalupe, DF

La torre Latino, DF

Iztaccihuatl y Popocateptl

San Luis Potosi.

Toluca de Lerdo.

Chalco de Diaz Covarrubias, DF

Mi plane!

Peña de Bernal

Missisipi Delta.

Desierto de Sonora

Desierto de Sonora II

Hermosillo, SO.

DF blurry

Monterrey, NL

Baja California Sur

Sea of Clouds