'No way back': The law that stops displaced Syrians from ever going home

Owners of properties in war-devastated areas are concerned that Law 10 is nothing but a legal cover for government expropriation, erasing all trace of opposition

A Syrian government flag flies above the rubble in the neighbourhood of Hajar al-Aswad near Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus (AFP)

By Zouhir Al Shimale-8 April 2019

Hassan’s family lost their house during the Nakba, the “catastrophe” of the forced displacement of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and ended up living in the Yarmouk camp on the edge of Damascus.

Now, some 70 years later, the Palestinian's family is set to lose their home once again - this time to the Syrian government, under a law that threatens not only refugees, but also Syrians displaced in their millions by the country’s war.

Now living with his family in a relative’s property in Eastern Ghouta, Hassan, 37, has been pressing authorities to allow him to at least begin repair work to his badly damaged house in Yarmouk, the scene of several years of heavy fighting.

But now, Hassan said, many displaced from the camp had been told that they will lose their homes for good because of Law 10, the Syrian government’s controversial programme allowing local authorities to take possession of properties in the areas worst affected by the war.

“I was told to wait and advised not to do any maintenance on the house because architects were going to evaluate the whole camp,” he told MEE.

“But some government employees have advised some of my neighbours to find somewhere else to live because it’s a waste of time. Most of us will be without homes, this is what everybody is saying.
"We know the area will be fully under the government’s authority, but who is going to compensate us, where will we stay and will we ever go back to the camp?”

An 'impossible mission'

Law 10, which was passed a year ago in April 2018, was widely criticised because it initially gave people from affected areas just one month to prove ownership of their homes and prevent their expropriation.

In November, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued an amendment to Law 10, extending the deadline for homeowners to one year.

But continued concerns about the way the law is being implemented have left many convinced that its main aim is not rebuilding after years of war, but erasing any trace of political opposition.

'I can’t go back out of fear of oppression, torture or death'
- Moaz, a Syrian citizen from Aleppo

The Syrian Ministry of Public Works and Housing did not respond to an MEE request for comment for this article.

Many affected by the law told MEE that the extension to the deadline counted for little because paperwork that would prove their ownership had either been lost or destroyed during the war, or because they faced intractable bureaucracy filing applications from abroad.

Others said they believed the law was being used to punish those who had supported the opposition.
“I am looking for a solution to what seems to be an impossible mission,” said Moaz, 52, from Aleppo, who like others spoken to by MEE asked that his full name not be used.

Moaz said that he owned two homes and a grocery shop, inherited from his family, in the Salah al-Din neighbourhood of Aleppo which was held for years by opposition fighters and heavily bombed by pro-government forces.

He said he had left Syria with his mother, wife, and three children for Konya in Turkey in October 2012, after being detained and tortured by government forces for participating in protests.

Several of his relatives had also fought for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), he added.

Though looted and damaged, Moaz was able to rent out the properties in his absence. But now he said they were once again under threat, this time not from barrel bombs, but from Law 10.

“Even though the regime hasn’t yet confirmed all the areas that will be affected by Law 10, surely my house, which is inside one of the most devastated areas, will be included,” he said.

After pro-Assad forces wrest back control of Harasta in 2018, some families have trickled back into the town - but others fear their homes may be lost forever (AFP)

In the rush to leave Aleppo as the fighting intensified, Moaz said he had left behind the title deeds for his properties.

“After the law was announced, I started looking for solicitors to help me find a way to prove my ownership,” he told MEE. “When I went to the [Syrian] consulate in Istanbul to obtain a paper in order to hire a lawyer back in Syria, I got denied after a security check.

“I wanted to pay a bribe, but they told me there was no way to arrange such things, especially for those who were wanted by the regime.”

The Syrian consulate in Istanbul did not respond to MEE request for comments at the time of publication.

Nonetheless, Moaz said, he was also advised he could pay a “large sum of money” to a senior military contact to sort out the papers and prevent the properties being transferred to the state.
Moaz said he did not plan to return to Syria to pursue his case, fearing government reprisals.
“Like many Syrians, I can’t go back out of fear of oppression, torture or death. Going back is an inevitable ‘No’.”

'No property, no way back'

Even civilians still in possession of the deeds to their homes said they had little hope of retaining them because of their political affiliations.

“Ever since this law was announced, our property in the Damascus area is on the edge of being lost,” Reda, 35, told MEE.

Reda, currently living in Hatay in southern Turkey, comes from a family well known for its opposition to Assad in the Ghouta neighbourhood.

He said he had been looking for lawyers to help him sell his home.

A bulldozer removes the rubble of destroyed buildings in Harasta, on the outskirt of the Syrian capital Damascus in July 2018 (AFP)

“As soon as they know my background they say: ‘Even paying a bribe won’t solve this’. The regime wants to wipe out our existence from the Syrian records,” he complained.

“No property, no way back. Maybe [Assad] will even withdraw our nationality from us. No one could stop him.”

Ghazwan Qrenful, the head of the Turkey-based Free Syrian Lawyers' Council which provides legal advice to Syrians, told MEE that he believed Law 10 was being used to erase opposition in areas of the country that had rebelled against the government.

While the declared purpose of the law is to reorganise and rebuild devastated areas, he said the government’s main aim was to “legalise demographic changes”.

“This is bound to happen as there is no real international force or sanctions that can stop Assad’s government,” he said.

No hope, no compensation

Others complain that their homes are threatened even though they opted to stay in Syria and regardless of their political affiliations.

Tahsin is a resident of Harasta, a suburb northeast of Damascus. He fled the town in 2013 amid fighting between pro-government forces and Jaish al-Islam, and moved in with relatives in nearby Masaken Barzaa.

'The regime wants to wipe out our existence from the Syrian records'
- Reda, Syrian refugee from Ghouta

Pro-government forces regained control of Ghouta and adjacent areas such as Harasta in March 2018.
“When I came back, my house was partly damaged but fixable,” he said.

“After the law came into existence, since Harasta was included in the destroyed areas affected, I appealed to a court to come and see that my house was not that damaged and to re-register the rights to my house.

“Weeks later, no one had come and my request was denied. I asked lawyers to take on my case, but they said these areas had already been taken by the government and there was no hope.”

Tahsin was told that the best he could hope for was six months’ worth of rent as compensation, or shares in whatever re-development project would be built where his house currently still stands.
“No compensation has been arranged yet,” he said. “I never expected the government to stab me in the back like this.”

Qrenful, the lawyer, believes that Law 10 violates Syria’s constitution - which forbids the expropriation of property without a court ruling and payment of “fair compensation”.

“[Law 10] resulted in a dramatic change of owners’ rights, turning them from owners of an actual house into owners of an equity that won’t be worth as much as the house itself,” he said.

“This plan will force the owners to sell their equity to big businesses that will obtain rights over large swathes of land for prices well below the market value.”

Rami Makhlouf, pictured here in 2010, is a close associate of Bashar al-Assad (AFP)

Qrenful pointed out that those set to profit were businessmen such as Rami Makhlouf and Samer Foz who have long been members of the Assad family’s inner circle, and who have already made fortunes from war-time business deals.

He cites the case of Basateen al-Razi, where a presidential order forced residents to leave their homes in 2012, providing the displaced with compensation of just 15,000 Syrian pounds ($29) per month for six months to help them pay rent elsewhere.

Basateen al-Razi’s buildings and farmlands have since been razed to make way for a new luxury neighbourhood known as Marota City, complete with large malls and an industrial zone built with the funding and involvement of Makhlouf and Foz.

Qrenful also draws parallels between Law 10 and the redevelopment of downtown Beirut after the Lebanese civil war.

In the 1990s, Solidere - a company in part owned by then-Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, his family and close associates – bought cheaply a majority of the devastated centre of the Lebanese capital, only to turn the area into one of the most expensive areas of the city.

Qrenful noted that the only thing likely to impede the construction of these brand new neighbourhoods was ongoing international sanctions preventing the sale of construction materials to Syria.

In the meantime, civilians like Hassan, Moaz, Reda and Tahsin told MEE that they felt helpless to prevent the loss of their homes.

“I'm handcuffed. I can only wait and see what will happen next,” Tahsin sighed.

In unprecedented move, U.S. names Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group

APRIL 8, 2019

WASHINGTON/DUBAI (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday he would name Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, in an unprecedented step that drew Iranian condemnation and raised concerns about retaliatory attacks on U.S. forces.

The action by Trump, who has taken a hard line toward Iran by withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing broad economic sanctions, marks the first time the United States has formally labelled another nation’s military a terrorist group.

The U.S. step, which takes effect on April 15, prompted an immediate response from Iran, whose Supreme National Security Council in turn designated U.S. military forces as a “terrorist organization,” Iranian state-run TV reported.

“The U.S. military bases and their military forces in the region will be considered terrorist bases and terrorist forces that will be dealt with and confronted accordingly,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Iranian state TV, calling the U.S. decision “a major strategic mistake.”

 

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” Trump said in a statement. His administration has long criticized Iran for its influence in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Critics of Trump’s decision said it was largely symbolic because U.S. law already carried penalties of up to 20 years in prison for U.S. persons who deal with the IRGC because of its designation under another U.S. sanctions program, the U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorist list.

POTENTIAL BACKLASH

Senior U.S. military commanders share Trump’s concerns about Iran and the IRGC but long opposed the designation due to concern over a potential backlash against U.S. forces in the Middle East and the problems it could create for U.S. partners who have a relationship with Iran, U.S. officials say.

File Photo: Members of the Iranian revolutionary guard march during a parade to commemorate the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), in Tehran September 22, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer

The Pentagon declined to discuss what the U.S. military was doing to protect American troops from any retaliation by the IRGC or Iran-aligned militia in places like Iraq.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the designation did not mean the U.S. military would start treating the IRGC like al Qaeda, Islamic State or other militants that it can target at will.

“This is not about going to war with Iran or killing a bunch of Iranians. Absolutely not,” said one, adding the U.S. military had not been given any new direction to “go after” Iranian forces.
Three Iranian officials said that despite Tehran’s harsh rhetoric, Iran’s reaction will be “diplomatic and mild.”

Jason Blazakis, a former State Department official who oversaw the process for labelling foreign terrorist organizations, said he believed the IRGC designation was done for purely symbolic and domestic political reasons that could have deadly consequences for U.S. troops.

He said it could prompt Qassem Soleimani, the powerful commander of the Quds Force, the IRGC’s elite foreign espionage and paramilitary contingent, to allow IRGC-controlled Shi’ite Muslim militias to retaliate against U.S. forces in Iraq.

“I imagine that tight leash he (Soleimani) has had on them (Shi’ite militias) will be less tight. He could call for them to take actions against U.S. assets in places like Baghdad’s Green Zone,” he continued, referring to the Iraqi capital’s diplomatic and governmental enclave.

The only “theoretical benefit” the designation could provide is to make it slightly easier for the Justice Department to prosecute people for providing “material support” to the IRGC, he said. The Department already has the authority for similar prosecutions under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al Qaeda.

GUARDS’ HUGE INFLUENCE

The IRGC is in charge of Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Tehran has warned that it has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 km (1,242 miles), putting Israel and U.S. military bases in the region within reach.

Slideshow (2 Images)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is up for reelection on Tuesday, warmly welcomed the designation and tweeted “Thank you, my dear friend, U.S. President Donald Trump... for meeting another of my important requests.”

Set up after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution to protect the Shi’ite clerical ruling system, the Guards have great sway in Iran’s political system, controlling swathes of the economy and armed forces.

Their involvement in Iran’s banking and shipping industries could complicate matters with U.S. allies including the European Union. The new designation makes it easier to prosecute EU or other companies or individuals that do business with Iran.

The Iranian currency weakened on Monday, falling to 143,000 rials to the U.S. dollar from Sunday’s rate of 138,000 rials, according to the website Mesghal.com.

The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC, but not the organization as a whole.

 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a strident critic of Iran, has pushed for the change in U.S. policy as part of the Trump administration’s tough posture toward Tehran.

“This designation is a direct response to an outlaw regime and should surprise no one,” Pompeo said.
The State Department said on Monday the IRGC has been engaged in terrorist activity since its inception, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans, and a foiled plan to attack the Saudi ambassador to the United States on U.S. soil.

Previous administrations considered designating the entire IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization but decided the risk to U.S. forces overseas was too great, former U.S. officials said.

Reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Arshad Mohammed, Jonathan Landay, Phil Stewart in Washington; and by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Alistair Bell and Sandra Maler

Asia’s digital integration dilemma (and the world’s)

Countries like Australia and France have also proposed national corporate income taxes on services like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Source: Shutterstock

7 Apr 2019

WHETHER over cybersecurity or multinational online services taxation, governments are growing increasingly distrustful of each other.

The internet is not the globalist nirvana many expected. Instead, the digital frontier is where globalisation ends.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s global success raised a pertinent question: could a firm like Huawei resist coercion from Chinese authorities if asked to share the valuable information flowing through its international networks?

A number of countries, including those typically friendly to trade with China — like Australia, Canada, Korea and New Zealand — have decided to limit Chinese suppliers like Huawei from building the coming 5G telecom networks on cybersecurity grounds.

Meanwhile, countries like Australia and France have also proposed national corporate income taxes on services like Google, Facebook and Amazon. The public perception is that these companies are avoiding tax because they pay taxes at their headquarters rather than in the countries where their customers are. But this is the established practice for all services exporters.

SEE ALSO: US-China espionage will crush prospects for technology cooperation

Neither taxing multinational corporations nor government espionage are problems specific to digitalisation. The digital economy is the history of globalisation repeating itself — on steroids.

The internet of today is a myriad of overlapping jurisdictions and conflicting obligations. And so far, every piece of new technology that circumvents territorial jurisdictions — from bulletin boards to blockchain — have either been subjugated to national laws or banned.

Many of these unilateral efforts are spearheaded by China with its industrial policy promoting the internet and the digital economy to reinvigorate a slowing economy. For example, China plans to substitute foreign ICT vendors with domestic equivalents.

Its online censorship also blocks all non-Chinese platforms and what citizens write in private messages could affect their ‘social credit score’— which in turn affect their loan applications or permission to travel. Chinese authorities are also making its entire digital environment ‘secure and controllable’.

A new national intelligence law forces Chinese technology companies to cooperate with the Chinese intelligence agencies even when their equipment is sold overseas. The recent moves to block Huawei are in response to this law.

Ironically, other Asian countries are responding to China’s digital unilateralism by following the same path.

To date, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam have restricted public internet and social media access. Vietnam practices an even more restrictive form of data protectionism through a new cybersecurity law where online services must be incorporated in the country to remain accessible to its citizens.

But even the online cloud has a silver lining. The internet is opening up opportunities for more democratised and inclusive trade as micro-multinationals (small businesses in the least-developed countries) are able to operate while avoiding expensive investments overseas and bypassing Western distributors.

Asian countries are responding to China’s digital unilateralism by following the same path. Source: Shutterstock

Mobile networks are also relatively cheap to deploy: Even remote areas without basic sanitation are likely to have access to high-speed mobile broadband, and approximately 93 per cent of Asia’s population will live where high speed internet coverage is available by 2020.

East Asia is at the centre of these developments. It has overtaken North America as the most ‘data rich’ region. But Asia is already at the doorstep of the next big disruption. With 5G comes industrial applications that will lead to entirely digitalised manufacturing across Asian supply-chain networks through concepts like ‘Industry 4.0’ and ‘Society 5.0’.

This new world of trade comes with regulatory challenges. Corporate networks will contain not just documents, but provide overall operational control. Figuratively speaking, an entire business could be ‘copy-pasted’, including know-how, equipment settings and production details.

These risks call for far-reaching supply-chain screening of software, hardware and other components that may shatter pan-Asian supply-chains. Privacy protection is another challenge as more than 10 billion data records may have been breached globally since the early 2000s.

The digital economy is also prone to market concentration due to strong network effects — users are generally attracted to services that can connect them to other users. Network owners can easily block new market entrants unless there are provisions that curb dominant telecom operators from blocking competing services. To date, only Singapore has such laws in Asia.

In Indonesia, major local e-commerce platforms have also been partially or fully acquired by Chinese giants like Alibaba, JD.com or Tencent and there are concerns they may favour Chinese suppliers before local ones.

SEE ALSO: Will national security concerns end the globalisation of technology?

More generally, liberalising digital trade and e-commerce will require the difficult task of reforming fundamental rights and weakened control over public order. Recent trade agreements include exorbitant digital trade exceptions, including the ambitious rules under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11). And in January this year, more than 70 countries announced their intention to open negotiations for an agreement on e-commerce under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, including a prolonged moratorium on digital taxes.

But the recent trend of imposing discriminatory digital taxes makes any meaningful agreement a remote prospect: Previous attempts have shown the differences are often irreconcilable. Even the most like-minded allies tackle issues like cybersecurity, privacy and taxation unilaterally, rather than through judicial cooperation.

As the global trading system and the digital economy are closely interlinked, they are likely to fail together. Resisting a liberalised digital economy may postpone difficult political and economic reforms, but digitalisation is necessary to spur consumption and regain competitiveness.

This is a dilemma where we are ‘unable to bear our ills, nor their cures’, to borrow the words of the ancient Roman historian Livy.

By Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, the Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE). This article has been republished from East Asia Forum under a Creative Commons license.

Government moves to regulate social media giants

By Paul McNamara-8 Apr 2019

“They’ll take your money, they’ll harvest your data, they’ll sell your details to advertisers, but protect you from harm? They say ‘no can do’.”

The words of Home Secretary Sajid Javid today as the Government launched its long awaited White Paper on the regulation of the internet.

They’re promising stronger rules, but in this global age where the internet straddles all borders, will anything change?

The Internet was obsessed with this philosophy-quoting homeless man in China. Now he’s fled the fame.

Shen Wei, or “Master Shen,” during a “fan meeting” in Shanghai last month. (Zhuang Fang/Bonfire)

By Lyric Li-April 2

 

BEIJING — The “Vagrant Master” has been offline for more than a week.

The last time people saw him, the scrawny 52-year-old known
as Shen Wei was being escorted into a white Mercedes-Benz by a ­middle-aged man in an orange jacket.

When asked where he was going, Shen replied, “To seek refuge.”

But even before he could get into the car, a man in his 20s ran up to ask for an autograph. Shen turned to sign the fan’s notebook.

China’s latest Internet sensation isn’t a wildcat locked in a staring contest with her zookeeper, a wealthy businessman caressing his thousand-dollar pet ducks or a children’s choir dedicating a whole song to tech giant Huawei.

He is a vagabond who doesn’t have a social media account and doesn’t own a smartphone. He defied stereotypes: Shen is educated and eloquent, and he provides for himself. He is dubbed the Vagrant Master or Master Shen on the Chinese Internet, and his every word has been recorded by live-streamers, shared across ­social media in the form of 15-to-30-second videos and closely watched and analyzed by millions.

After three months of stardom, he’d had enough.

“I blame no one, but I hate the Internet,” Shen told Chinese newspapers on March 22, at the height of his fame. “The Internet has brought me nothing but trouble.”

This unlikely viral star was discovered by social media when clips of him quoting Aristotle, Confucius and Dante began to surface on Douyin, a short-video platform. To the surprise of many, this homeless man — with uncombed hair, soiled clothes and unwashed beard — turned out to be well versed in literature and philosophy.

YouTube-Viewers were intrigued.

“Extraordinary hair worthy of a Taoist priest, eyes brimming with radiating vigor, and the deportment of a real gentleman,” read a top comment on Douyin. “This is what a true master should look like!”

Shen quickly became an antihero for those tired of trying to climb social and economic ladders in a country obsessed with youth, novelty, education, fame, wealth and good looks.

But Shen’s virtual fame became all too real in mid-March.

One video showed a road sign pinpointing Shen’s location, and visitors soon started flooding into the otherwise unremarkable neighborhood in Shanghai’s suburban Pudong district.

Among the pilgrims were ­e-commerce gurus who promised him a six-digit payment in exchange for commercial endorsements, curious spectators eager to catch a glimpse of the celebrity in person, and Internet-fame wannabes fighting for the best camera position to get up close with the master.

“I know people are treating me like a monkey,” Shen says in one video. (Zhuang Fang/Bonfire)

Over the following days, “Liu Lang Da Shi” (literally “the Vagrant Grand Master”) began trending on Weibo, a microblogging site like Twitter, and clips of the erudite vagabond easily got hundreds of thousands of views within hours on short-video platforms.

Short videos are huge in the world’s second-largest economy. China has nearly 830 million ­Internet users, and more than 70 percent of them now use short-video or live-streaming applications, according to the state-run China Internet Network Information Center. By 2020, the short-video sector is expected to exceed $5 billion in market value.

To attract more traffic, established media apps such as TikTok, Kuaishou and Vigo Video seek out pop stars, artists and big names from other social media sites.

Starting on March 17, the name “Shen Wei” topped searches on the Chinese search engine Baidu, and Weibo posts related to #Vagrant­Master were read by tens of millions.

Every morning when the vagabond opened his door, he would find dozens, or even hundreds, of people already waiting at the doorstep of his temporary shelter — a deserted office storeroom. Each time he opened his mouth, dozens of phones and cameras were ready to record. As soon as he finished a memorable quote, people would respond with thunderous applause and cheers.

Shen quickly came to think he was being exploited.

“I know people are treating me like a monkey,” Shen said in a 25-second video on March 19, more to himself than to a full room of smartphone-wielding spectators. “Nobody came to see me with a pure heart. You did this for money.”

People who hung around Shen sought various rewards: A woman in a leather jacket who claimed to be Shen’s girlfriend attracted 400,000 followers within four days after setting up a TikTok account. A jobless young man in a red coat, purporting to be Shen’s child, became a regular guest on popular live-streaming channels. A 10-word piece of calligraphy Shen wrote on a piece of scrap paper was reported to have sold for more than $13,000 at an online auction.

Smartphones are trained on Shen Wei as he collects items from a recycling bin. (Zhuang Fang/Bonfire)

Mainstream media took notice, too. Led by the Red Star News, newspapers and TV crews began arriving at the modest space that Shen had called home for the past 26 years.

Soon, everyone wanted to know the mysterious man’s life story.

Born into a relatively well-off family in the southwest city of Chengdu and raised in Shanghai, Shen was among the first generation of Chinese after the Cultural Revolution to attend college, according to the Chengdu Economic Daily. After graduation, he worked as auditor at a district government office in Shanghai, the Audit Bureau of Xuhui confirmed.

In 1993, he was forced into early retirement for his “abnormal behavior,” including salvaging waste paper from office trash cans and sorting recyclable garbage that only “beggars” would touch, Shen told the Meiri Renwu newsmagazine.

After that, he was hospitalized twice. In 1995, he decided to live as a full-time garbage man, local newspapers reported.

“I was destined to be a trash collector,” Shen told the Red Star News. “I admire Gandhi and want to live an ascetic life like him.”

By March 19, Shen’s cult ­following on social media had a cult following on social media.

A widely shared photo on Weibo shows smartphone-wielding young peoplesurrounding him, drawing comparisons to ­Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Citing safety hazards and the disturbance to neighbors, police cordoned off the area around Shen’s squatting space and set up meter-high wood fences. But his fans remained undeterred, with some gathering before 7 a.m.

Shen took extreme measures.

He showered and got his hair cut. Of course, videos of him with a trimmed mustache, combed shoulder-length hair and a brand-new black blazer appeared on multiple live-streaming sites within minutes.

Before long, there was a note on his squat that read: “Mr. Shen is exhausted, both mentally and physically, and will be away for a while. Thank you!”

Climate research needs to change to help communities plan for the future


How can we design projects, such as tunnels, to last decades yet still account for the uncertain effects of climate change? AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

Robert Kopp-April 5, 2019 6.43am EDT

Professor, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, and Director, Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Rutgers University

Climate change is a chronic challenge – it is here now, and will be with us throughout this century and beyond. As the U.S. government’s National Climate Assessment report made clear, it’s already affecting people throughout the United States and around the world.

Warmer temperatures are making heat waves more intense, with harmful effects on human health. More intense rainfall and higher sea levels are leading to more frequent and intense flooding, with ensuing damages to property, infrastructure, business activity and health. Higher temperatures and strained water supplies are requiring new agricultural approaches, while fisheries are shifting and in some cases shrinking; in some cases, stressed food systems are contributing to national instability.

This reality means society needs to think about climate change in different ways than the past, by focusing on reducing the risk of negative effects. And speaking as a climate scientist, I recognize that climate science research, too, has to change.

Historically, climate science has been primarily curiosity-driven – scientists seeking fundamental understanding of the way our planet works because of the inherent interest in the problem.

Now it’s time for the climate science research enterprise to adopt an expanded approach, one that focuses heavily on integrating fundamental science inquiry with risk management.

Flexible infrastructure design

Climate risk management strategies need to be broad, ranging from efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to designing new infrastructure hardened against more frequent extreme weather, to policies that encourage development to shift to less exposed areas.

And these strategies must be flexible. In some cases, decisions made today affect people’s vulnerability for the rest of this century, even though there is much that remains to be learned about how climate change will unfold over the decades to come.

Consider the risks associated with sea-level rise.

The new rail tunnel under the Hudson River – if it is built – will likely still be in use in the next century. And yet, the scientific understanding of how much sea level will rise by the end of the century is quite imprecise. That’s because of uncertainty in how much greenhouse gases humans will emit and the immature scientific understanding of the ice-sheet physics.

It is possible – if emissions are high, and ice-sheet physics unstable – that the world could see 6 feet or more of global average sea-level rise over the course of this century, with substantially more in some regions. It is also possible – if emissions are low, or ice-sheet physics fairly stable – that it could be just 2 feet.

An aerial view of the New Jersey Turnpike shows how vulnerable the area is to flooding. Ken Lund, CC BY-SA

If we as a society are making decisions that affect the world a century from now, we cannot blindly ignore either of these possibilities. If we treat 6 feet as a certainty, we could end up making unnecessary expenditures that come at the cost of other important priorities; if we treat 2 feet as a certainty, we may be putting lives and property at substantial risk.

So the best is an iterative approach. Communities can identify the resources and features that they value. Engineers and planners can identify key benchmarks – for example, critical levels of sea-level rise – that would require strategic changes to protect these values resources and features. And scientists can figure out what observations and theoretical insights would allow us to learn about those benchmarks as quickly as possible.

When the scientists discover that a benchmark is going to be hit – for example, when ice-sheet observations and modeling make clear whether we are on course for 2 feet or 6 feet of sea-level rise in this century – the engineers, planners and policymakers can adjust accordingly.

Getting out of the ivory tower

This long-term, iterative process is a break with current practices. It requires sustained relationships that are not a good fit for much of the academic scientific enterprise, which is driven by curious individuals and funded by short-term grants.

There are signs, though, that climate scientists are getting out of the ivory tower and taking a different approach to research.

Transdisciplinary research recognizes stakeholders outside of academia as critical partners throughout the research process – from problem identification to solution deployment. People like Stanford’s Pam Matsonand Harvard’s Bill Clark have been pioneers in this area, which they describe in the book “Pursuing Sustainability.” Matson, for example, has spent decades conducting interdisciplinary work with farming communities in Sonora, Mexico, that has led to both new insights into nitrogen cycling in the ocean and more sustainable agricultural practices.

True transdisciplinarity is hard – it requires a considerable investment on the part of researchers or their institutions in maintaining strong, working, trusting relationships with stakeholders, whether they be city planners, farmers, businesses, or members of vulnerable communities. And building such relationships is slow – if it must be done from scratch, it does not sit well with the time pressures faced by scientists who are not yet tenured faculty.

The land-grant university model

Fortunately, there is an example in the United States of institutions successfully maintaining long-term relationships between academic researchers and decision-makers in their communities.

In 1862, amidst the bloodshed of the Civil War, Congress established a network of land-grant universities, devoted to training the next generation of farmers and engineers, conducting research to advance agriculture, and engaging with farmers to disseminate the fruits of this research.

The Morrill Act of 1862 established land-grant universities to research agriculture and other areas for the benefit of students and society. Penn State, CC BY-NC

Many land-grant universities have extended the extension concept beyond agriculture. For example, at Rutgers where I teach, our extension service runs programs designed to help coastal communities increase their resilience to storm and sea-level rise. Rutgers staff have built partnerships, like the New Jersey Climate Change Alliance, that link communities, NGOs and businesses to climate science expertise. And the Rutgers Coastal Climate Risk and Resilience initiative trains graduate students to engage across disciplines and with stakeholders to address coastal challenges.

Elsewhere, the University of Arizona has built a Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solution, the University of Washington is building an EarthLab, and the University of California, San Diego has a new Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation. The recently established University Climate Change Coalition and Science for Climate Action Network are aiming to catalyze similar efforts.

But unlike the core agricultural work of cooperative extension, these climate risk-focused partnerships often lack institutional stability; most are the products of a small number of visionary individuals and many are funded one small grant at a time. And yet stability is critical for science that is intended to support decades of chronic risk management.

That’s why I believe it is worth considering a national investment in our universities that is analogous to that of cooperative extension but applied to scientific climate risk management.

These are not easy or cheap changes to make. But they are both easy and inexpensive when compared to the costs of climate change and the costs of the climate risk management decisions they will help inform.

Editor’s note: This article expands upon testimony delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Pesticides and antibiotics polluting streams across Europe

Wildlife and human health are threatened say scientists as Syngenta accepts ‘undeniable demand’ for change
Jorge Casado collects a water sample from a stream. Photograph: Jonathan Findalen/Greenpeace

Damian Carrington @dpcarrington-Mon 8 Apr 2019 18.22 BST

Pesticides and antibiotics are polluting streams across Europe, a study has found. Scientists say the contamination is dangerous for wildlife and may increase the development of drug-resistant microbes.

More than 100 pesticides and 21 drugs were detected in the 29 waterways analysed in 10 European nations, including the UK. A quarter of the chemicals identified are banned, while half of the streams analysed had at least one pesticide above permitted levels.

The researchers said the high number of pesticides and drugs they found meant complex mixtures were present, the impact of which was unknown. Pesticides are acknowledged as one factor in plummeting populations of many insects and the birds that rely on them for food. Insecticides were revealed to be polluting English rivers in 2017.

“The importance of our new work is demonstrating the prevalence of biologically active chemicals in waterways all over Europe,” said Paul Johnston, at the Greenpeace research laboratories at the University of Exeter. “There is the potential for ecosystemic effects.”

The research, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, found herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, as well as antimicrobial drugs used in livestock. The risk to people of antimicrobial drug resistance is well known, but Johnston highlighted resistance to fungicides too. “There are some pretty nasty fungal infections that are taking off in hospitals,” he said.

One of the world’s biggest pesticide makers, Syngenta, announced a “major shift in global strategy” on Monday, to take on board society’s concerns and reduce residues in the environment.

“There is an undeniable demand for a shift in our industry,” said Alexandra Brand, the chief sustainability officer of Syngenta. “We will put our innovation more strongly in the service of helping farms become resilient to changing climates and better able to adapt to consumer requirements, including reducing carbon emissions and reversing soil erosion and biodiversity decline.”

Another major pesticide manufacturer, Bayer, said on Monday it was making public all 107 studies submitted to European regulators on the safety of its controversial herbicide glyphosate.

“Transparency is a catalyst for trust, so more transparency is a good thing for consumers, policymakers and businesses,” said Liam Condon, the president of Bayer Crop Science. In March, a federal jury in the US found that the herbicide, known as Roundup, was a substantial factor in causing the cancer of a California man.

The testing techniques used in the new research meant only a subset of pesticides could be detected. Two very common pesticides – glyphosate and chlorothalonil – were not included in the study, meaning the findings represent a minimum level of contamination. The research focused on streams, as these harbour a large proportion of aquatic wildlife.

The detection of many pesticides that have long been banned was not necessarily due to continued illegal use, the scientists said, but could be the result of leaching of persistent chemicals that linger in soils. The study took place before the most widely used insecticides were banned by the EU for all outdoor uses.

Irish Water said on Monday that EU pesticide levels were being breached in public water supplies across Ireland. In Switzerland, another new studyfound that soils in 93% of organic farms were contaminated with insecticides, as were 80% of the areas farmers set aside for wildlife.

Research revealed in 2013 that insecticides were devastating dragonflies, snails and other water-based species in the Netherlands. The pollution was so severe in places that the ditchwater itself could have been used as a pesticide. A study in France in 2017 found that virtually all farms could slash their pesticide use while still producing as much food.

Johnston said: “Farmers don’t want to pollute rivers, and water companies don’t want to have to remove all that pollution, so we have to work to reduce reliance on pesticides and veterinary drugs through more sustainable agriculture. This is not a case of us versus farmers or water companies.”