Shirey: The Hidro-Aysen Case and Habitat III: the Conflict over Resources in the Age of Urbanization

The case study that follows may be suggestive of the fate of the UN Habitat III agenda in its attempts to lead the world community of nations towards a more sustainable urbanism; in short it may reduce to an exercise of “herding cats.”

EcoWatch: “Recently the Chilean government revoked an environmental permit for an $8 billion Hidro-Aysen project, which would have built five dams in the ecologically rich and wild Patagonian region.”  After nearly a decade of organized protest, which evolved from local grassroots opposition into an international cause celeb, the project was defeated, the issue seemingly resolved in favor of Aysen community. But this story needs to be put in context, especially as it relates to the relationship of the rural sector as a provider of resources, in this case electricity to the cities, and the other interests, namely those of the nation-state and powerful global players in their constant quest for capital expansion.

The proposal was put forward by Endesa, the largest electricity utility company in Chile and Spain, and (now owned by the Italian corporation, Enel), which promotes itself as a company whose total culture fosters sustainability and environmental sensitivity. Their website stresses their good standing and conformance with the UN Global Compacts (UNGC) standards, with an “advanced level” rating, said to be awarded to those who demonstrate a high level of sustainable performance throughout their institutions and affiliates. And from the UNGC's website there is no apparent contradiction to these claims. Their process seemingly has no mechanism to monitor the real world behaviors of its signatories.

But there is much left out in this glossed account.  First, Endesa has a long history in Chile, where it was first a public company before being privatized during the Pinochet era, at which time it was granted ownership of river rights under a new category termed “non consumptive” usage which means you must return after use.. The devil is in the details of “usage” in that the resultant purified water is inimical to animal life. While later legislation (2005) required detailed reporting on possible environmental impacts, these requirements were mostly unenforced until the recent proposal to build the five dams in the middle of Chile's most diverse ecological region in the Patagonian range. Here Endesa's long term relationship with the governmental power brokers and their deep pockets gave them a distinct advantage over local grassroots movements, and their claims, that the dams would endanger the environment and their way of life which was farming, fishing, and ecotourism. 

Supporting Endesa, the government asserted that Chile, long noted for its expensive energy costs, needed to solve its “energy crisis,” and that this project would provide much needed, and less expensive, energy to main urban areas such as Santiago. The locals of the governmentally underserved Aysen, were not buying this story, although subsequently Endesa with the aid of media and government ministries, attempted various campaigns of misinformation to split public opinion along with promises of new infrastructure and jobs, meant to undermine social cohesion.  The truth was always that the dams would be built to serve the mining sector, that the winners would be the extraction industry, providing resource exports that benefit transnational companies.  The losers would be the locals who cherished their way of life, and the degradation of the pristine and irreplaceable biosphere of the Aysen.  The project was never about the rural supporting growing urban needs. And the issue of alternative energy sources was excluded from the discussion until the community pushed back with its counter story. 

Ironically, this transnationally imposed project was met with a like response, when local grassroots movements were transformed into the Patagonian Defense Council, which tapped into an international environmental movement and brought to bare the discourse of internationally established environmental norms. With the assistance of 80 NGOs, and the power/knowledge of the scientific community, they were able to construct a counter storyline to defend against this double "expulsion" of biosphere by degradation and the irreplaceable way of life of a long marginalized population. Their usage of the 'global' to turn back its encroachments is a heartening result, but hardly the end of neoliberalist attempts to harvest the world without regard for the long term damages it inflicts. But the battle continues; and the vacuum that was the lack of renewable alternatives has become the challenging new discourse defining Chile's and the region's future.

UN Habitat III has put forth a preliminary agenda which will focus on development that is sustainable. The contests described in this blog post illustrate the numerous obstacles that must be over come, as UN Habitat “herds the cats” of multiple conflicting interests. First, the resources to feed the ever expanding need of the cities, are often embedded in bio-diverse regions that support life ways that are inherently different from the urban.  This player (or cat) sees their life form endangered and comes to the issue in the developing spirit of resistance pervading Latin America, finding allies in the global community. The nation-state, seen as underserving and corrupt, has its own interests, working to accommodate global corporations and investors, while facing the realities of growing urban populations and energy needs. This “cat” may have truly committed to their claim that the dams were a solution to the “energy crisis” rationale and the surface argument that they represent clean, renewable power. Still they have a long history of being reshaped by global corporate interests, so one wonders what effect the emerging goals of Habitat III will have on such a conflicted actor.  The global corporate interest, Endesa, arguably the biggest or more most resilient cat, has many options and has shown enormous patience in their quest for control of the market for energy. They are also ahead of the curve from a PR standpoint, paying due diligence in their courting of UNGC. 

We might think of the UN as the lion tamer in the room, but in truth it's the creature of its clientele nations, and more so the many and more influential corporations they are in bed with. Thus their institutional skills of conflict resolution, not to mention the attempt to frame a sustainable agenda, against this assortment of divergent world views, would seem as ill-fated as past efforts of this kind.  A primary focus of this study will be to follow their attempts to link all parties to some meaningful action plan that will deal with the existent and looming crisis of the new urban age. Theirs will be a major task against a diffuse opposition that seems hell bent on creating a world that favors their separate interests, but in its diffusion favors the powerful and their quest to control land and water resources and continue their reckless expansion with little regard for the growing needs of the city. As Sassen argues in her recent work the prevailing theme of neoliberal capitalism is that of exclusion, the capture of land, water, and the biosphere, for its own use without regard for the needs of the planet or its cities.

Sources

http://ecowatch.com/2014/06/16/hidroaysen-dam-chile-patagonia-river/

Robinson, William I. Latin America and Global Capitalism : A Critical Globalization Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Sassen, Saskia. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

Kuecker: The Pentagon’s Top Security Threat

The Christian Science Monitor, in its October 24, 2013 issue, explored the question, “What sorts of threats will the US Military face in the ‘deep future’?” The question was raised at the Association of the US Army 2014 conference.  The conference identified “The growth of cities – and of slums” as the “top future threat,” beating out Sunni-Shiite violence in the Middle East as well as “the revolution in personal communications” and drones-robotics.  Their urban concern was focused on the security threat presumably posed by 2 billion slum dwellers.  According to a former Pentagon official, Kathleen Hicks, slums present a “very high potential for lack of governance” due to their anticipated population growth.  Hicks highlighted the lack of “governance structures” as well as the shortage of basics services as the root cause of the security risk.  Weak urban governance she maintains, provides opportunities for alternatives to fill the void, such as gangs and narco-traffickers, or “Hamas-like organizations.”  

Hicks' line of analysis, although generated from a distinct political position, reflects the dystopian vision of the 21^st century urban form presented by Mike Davis in his Planet of Slums.  In the book’s concluding chapter, Davis outlines the security challenge slums present to empire, and suggests that the geography of 21^st century warfare will be located in the urban slum.  While planning for Habitat III seldom broaches the topic of urban warfare, its development-centered approach toward building resilience strongly hints at the close correlation between development and military strategy, especially the finer art of counterinsurgency.  Capacity building, a central development goal within Habitat III, concerns issues of “good governance” and the delivery of basic services, which correlates nicely with US military planner’s concerns about the urban form.  Recent events in Iraq, of course, illustrate how the Pentagon’s threat landscape merges both slums and Sunni-Shiite conflict to generate complex challenges to empire that have the potential to overwhelm the Global North’s capacity to police the 21^st century, a point clearly made in Davis’ Planet of Slums.  How Habitat III planning will engage its security shadow constitutes an important line of analysis in thinking about the evolution of the 21^st century urban form.  

Sources:

Anna Mulrine, “The Growth of Cities and of Slums” The Christian Science Monitor, October 24, 2013. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/World/Security-Watch/2013/...p-three-threats-in-the-deep-future/The-growth-of-cities-and-of-slums

Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums.  New York: Verso, 2007.

Kuecker: Interview with Stephen Cook, Associate Director Ove Arup and Partners, Ltd., May 31, 2014

At the ICLEI Resilient Cities 2014 conference in Bonn, Germany, I had the opportunity to interview Stephen Cook, who is an Associate Director at Ove Arup and Partners, Ltd.  I asked Stephen to outline what he thinks the most significant challenges are facing cities in the 21^st century.  His reply focused on the problem of energy transition and its relation to optimal urban density, the need for green infrastructure beyond the simple provision of green spaces, and the role of community. 

Where do you begin where do you end?  I think in terms of a design and infrastructure point of view, where the first point that comes to mind is energy.  In recent history electrification happens far away from the city and it gets carried in. That may continue to work, but to switch from a fossil fuel based system to something much more renewable, and low carbon, cities will have to engage with how they can generate energy locally, and how they make use of the energy that they have.  How do you get a city to operate in a way that is safe and efficient that is using energy that is broadly in line with the amount it can generate?  Is there a limit to density, or an optimal density for a city? 

Another critical area is green infrastructure that is not being dealt with by cities today.  Green space is seen as an amenity, not as part of the functioning of the city, as a way to reduce urban heat island effect and help with water drainage.  When there is going to be so much pressure on land from immigration, for cities to hold the line and even expand green areas and even create corridors, it is going to be a big challange to find a way to make that work and defend that and somehow capture the value of green space.

I spent a couple of weeks in New Orleans in November as part of Rockefeller Foundation research.  New Orleans was a city disastrously flooded in 2005 and because of their post-disaster mentality they understand how exposed they are to flood risk.  They have recently produced a plan that is very focused on creating green space and to do that on a much more holistic way than they have in the past, which was to pump flood waters out and keep it out.  Rotterdam is another example.  The ICLEI conference panels last year showed that Rotterdam is managing water in different ways that is a new paradigm then what’s been before in terms of defense and storage.

The other thing that comes to mind that derives from what Arup’s been doing with the Rockefeller Foundation is on the community side.  When you really think about the resilience of cities --for all the time I spend on thinking about infrastructure and cities and how to make them work better-- it seems to me intuitively that the real basic survival of the city is most often linked to the connectedness of people.  The extent to which a city is resilient depends on having communities that are strong and supportive, and having city governments that are communicating, where knowledge and understanding are shared in ways that people in a disaster event know what to do, and afterwards they are able to access resources locally, those kinds of human level support systems that are low energy and sustainable.  Yet, many cities are utterly failing to put community as their first area of focus. 

There is the great example of someone who used to work on our team, who used to work as the London Mayor’s environmental advisor, and is now with C40.  He would often give the example of New York and London and their response to floods.  London is containable due to the river, so that’s the solution.   They use a system of locks on the Thames.  In New York you do not have that, you have much more exposure to the sea, so their response has been public information and preparedness.  So, when Sandy hit, it was clearly a disaster when the flooding happened, but actually the behavior and the knowledge of the people in the city was high and they knew what to do in an emergency.  The knowledge of Londoners is actually pretty poor about what to do in an emergency, because they are essentially defended by their infrastructure.  

I think that cities that are thinking of the social and community part of resilience as a core part for providing services, are the cities that will be the cities that find themselves to a low-energy place.  Those cities that are putting their first emphasis on technology and infrastructure and hard capital solutions may find that if their communities are not informed and engaged they will come to some difficult places and that may exhibit itself in all sorts of ways. 

If I came down to one thing, it would be about community and the relationship between the people and those in power and the way in which information and knowledge are shared between people and those in power.  That communication creates the human platform for the infrastructure, and as you get more density you need that infrastructure functioning.  But if you do it the other way around you have a much less resilient outcome in the long term as those events occur and they will.