Attributing geographical causality: why I have problems with using the terms “Global South” and “Global North”

I have long been troubled by the widely accepted and increasingly used terms Global South and Global North.[i]  Those who wish to use them for political purposes or to highlight the factors that they claim cause inequalities across the world will of course continue doing so, but there are at least six main reasons why I find it a misleading and problematic choice of terminology.  I list these below just to help explain why I don’t uses these terms, and I hope my comments may also encourage others to do likewise.

People from several different parts of the world coming together on the Equator in Kenya

• Above all, the use of such terminology implies some kind of spatial causality, usually around the idea of the North exploiting the South in the present and/or the past.  This strikes me as being surprisingly similar to the now widely discredited notion of environmental determinism, advocated by the likes of Ellsworth Huntington and Ellen Churchill Semple in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (for a wider discussion, see my The Place of Geography, 1992).  There is not something universal about living in the North (whatever that means), or about the North itself that makes it inherently more powerful and dominant than the South.[ii]
• I remain confused about why the word “Global” is at all necessary.  What does it add? In 1980, the Brandt Report entitled North-South: a Programme for Survival, managed to convey very similar meaning, but much more succinctly,[iii] and indeed also drew a much more nuanced wavy line between the two regions.  To be sure, there are those who want to use the term global to represent some kind of global solidarity, especially in the South, but this is more aspirational than real (see also comments on relative usage of the terms below)
• In an absolute global sense, the geographical north is the northern hemisphere, and the south the southern hemisphere.  Yet, there are problems with such usage to refer to per capita economic wealth and human well-being.  It is often forgotten that the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, for example, are all in the northern hemisphere.  Likewise, many more African countries are in the northern hemisphere than are in the southern.[iv]  The rich countries of Australia and New Zealand are in contrast in the southern hemisphere. 
• There is also much economic poverty in the northern hemisphere and much richness in the southern.  If large absolute regions are being considered it is in some ways more accurate to consider the Tropics (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn) as being economically poorer/more exploited than either of the areas to the north and the south.  Such suggestions, though are dangerously close once again to falling down the slippery slope of environmental determinism.
• North and South can also, though, be interpreted in a relative sense.  Given that only 10-12% of the world’s population actually lives in the Southern Hemisphere, this relative approach is certainly a more realistic one to trying to grapple with the differences between states. It is nevertheless also problematic as a framework for explaining wealth differences (or indeed most other differences).
• Countries or regions further north are sometimes poorer in per capita wealth then those further south and vice versa.  Canada’s per capita income is less than that of the USA; Mozambique and Angola are poorer than South Africa.  In the UK, the widely used term North-South divide actually refers to a poorer northern region and a richer southern one.
• I’m afraid that the argument that I sometimes hear that the use of the terms is only an approximation and simplification and it doesn’t really matter if they are inaccurate holds no water with me.  Using such terms reinforces inaccurate understandings of cartography and geodesy, and supports looseness of meaning and language.  I wonder how many people, for example consider that India is in the Global South, and thus think it is also in the southern hemisphere?  Moreover, all too frequently we read or hear comments such as “The Global North generally correlates with the Western world”.[v]  If that is the case, surely “Western” would be a better term to use than Northern.  But we need to remember then that everywhere Western is west of some East.
• A significant problem is therefore that seeking to carve the world up into binary divisions is overly simplistic and usually harmful, for all but those who persist in using or imposing them. There are enormous differences between the continents and countries within both the so-called Global South and the Global North, and it is this rich diversity that we must cherish in multi-layered ways and understandings.  Those who seek to impose an ill-fitting binary distinction generally do so in their own interests.  Sometimes this is for the sake of simplicity, but as the above brief comments highlight such simplicity can be very misleading.  At other times it has just become a lazy shorthand.  As that well known “source of all knowledge” tells us “The Global South is a term generally used to identify countries in the regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania”.[vi]  Well, why not instead just use the actual geographical names Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania? This source goes on to comment that “Most of humanity resides in the Global South”.[vii]  It is interesting to ponder what this actually means.  As noted above this is certainly not true if South here is referring to the Southern Hemisphere.

In brief, this is a call for meaning, clarity and precision.  If we mean that techno-capitalism domiciled in the states of the USA, Canada, the countries of Europe, the Gulf and Australia/New Zealand increasingly controls and exploits the rest of the world then let’s say so rather than couching our language in a mealy mouthed meaningless “geographical” distinction between North and South.  But even this is an over-simplification of a different kind.  What about China and indeed Russia?  Those who really believe that there is something about being “Northern” that makes people dominant, aggressive and exploitative, and something about being “Southern” that makes them ripe for exploitation, believe on.  But such dreams will not improve the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalized wherever they are found.  It is indeed a great disservice to the many rich indigenous cultures, traditions, livelihoods, and social formations to be found in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific.  We must always ask ourselves in whose interest words are used.  Who benefits most from the use of the terms Global North and Global South?

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[i] Apparently first used by Carl Oglesby in 1969 in “Vietnamism has failed … The revolution can only be mauled, not defeated”. Commonweal, 90.

[ii] Despite this notion having been long discredited, I do think it is time that the environmental factors influencing human behaviour are revisited in a more sensitive and sensible way by geographers.  The influence of day and night length variations on cultural behaviours in high latitudes is, for example, a fascinating topic of enquiry.

[iii] Two words rather than four; Brandt, W. (1980) North-South: a Programme for Wurvival; Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

[iv] The equator runs through southern Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, the Congos, and Gabon.

[v] From the widely used popular source of knowledge about everything, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South, 30 March 2023.

[vi] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South, 30 March 2023.

[vii] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South, 30 March 2023.

Reflections on slavery: past, present and future

This reflection[i] has three main purposes:

• to emphasise the long and diverse history of slavery across the world, and to highlight its differing historical expressions and complexities;
• to recognise that we cannot change the past nor know the future with certainty, and can only act in the immediacy of the present; and
• above all, in the light of the above, to encourage us all to do much more now to eliminate the scourge of modern slavery.

Context

It is easy to say or write that slavery is fundamentally wrong because of the loss of freedoms and violence usually[ii] associated with it.  It is far more difficult, though, actually to do something constructive about eliminating slavery at the only time over which we have any control, the present.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-blm-protesters-acquitted-over-pulling-down-slave-trader-statue-2022-01-05/

The Black Lives Matter and associated anti-slavery protests in the UK in 2020 raised many questions (see image above). I was particularly challenged, for example, by the emphasis of those protesting on the past rather than on contemporary slavery.  The majority of banners likewise seemed to highlight the wrongs of past slavery more than they did the wrongs of present slavery.  My reflections here seek to grapple with why this was, and why it remains so.[iii]  In the years since, there has been much more visible concern in Britain over reparations for past slavery, especially relating to the 18^th and 19^th centuries, than there has been real action to eliminate contemporary slavery: statues of people who had once been slave-owners have been torn down; streets have been renamed; universities, such as Manchester  and Cambridge that have benefitted from donations from people who gained from the  slave trade have undertaken enslavement inquiries; and institutions such as the National Trust have published reports on their links with historic slavery. 

In part this is because of the overlapping interests between the Black Lives Matter movement and those protesting against slavery.[iv]  However, slavery matters in its own right; it is not just a racial matter.  In this piece I therefore seek to disentangle the issues of slavery and racism.[v]  I want to focus primarily on slavery rather than race.  I fully recognise that the two are often intertwined, and there are good reasons why people feel strongly about this intersection, but here I focus on broader issues relating specifically to slavery, and how we respond to the past.  I begin with some personal reflections on the origins of my own interest in slavery, and then provide a short conceptual framework that includes a note on definitions of slavery, before highlighting what I see as some of the most difficult and problematic issues concerning slavery past, present and future.  My purpose is to encourage us to shift our focus from the past about which we can change nothing, to the present where we do have the option to do something.

My interests in slavery

I have long been interested in slavery, from my days as a boy reading the Bible about the unfairness of Joseph being sold into slavery (Genesis 37) and my difficulty in trying to reconcile my own emerging moral views about slavery with some of Paul’s comments on slaves being obedient to their masters (Ephesians 6, Colossians 3, 1 Timothy 6, and Titus 2).  However, I have taken a much more serious and academic interest in slavery since the mid-1970s.  Three factors have been particularly important in helping to shape my current understanding of these issues. 

• First, my doctoral thesis in historical geography written in the second half of the 1970s focused in large part on the changing economic and social structures of medieval Midland England.  I was fascinated to learn that slaves could sometimes have had better lifestyles than villeins within feudal society.  In this I was heavily influenced by the writings of Marc Bloch (both his seminal La Société Féodale first published in 1939, but also in essays that have recently been collated under the title Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages) and in the historical records with which I was working.
• Second, some 20 years ago I encountered modern slavery in England for the first time as I sought to support someone who was trying to rescue a person who had been forced into slavery on their arrival to work in our country.  This opened my eyes to the widespread existence of modern slavery in many parts of the UK, and it continues to haunt me as I continue to see such slavery within the country that I call home. 
• Third, my experiences working in Africa during the last 20 years have inevitably forced me to confront issues of colonial history and slavery, especially in Sierra Leone and Ghana.  Despite its fraught history both as a Crown Colony until 1961 and then as an independent state since, Freetown and Sierra Leone always cause me to think about the potential for freedom in the human mind and the abolition of slavery;[vi] it is also salutary to recall that it is the home of Fourah Bay College which was founded in 1827 as the first western style university built in Sub-Saharan Africa.[vii]  I like to think that there is a connection between freedom and knowledge.

Freetown, 2009

Likewise, I have many fond memories of working in Ghana.  A visit to Cape Coast Castle in 2008, though, remains etched in my mind because of one very specific conversation that I had there while visiting the Castle and Dungeon.  Initially the castle had been established as a small fort by the Swedish Africa Company in the middle of the 17^th century, and it later became one of the most important “slave castles” along the former Gold Coast.  Watching a group of European women who were very upset by what they saw, one of my close Ghanaian friends commented that he never quite understood why many Europeans became so emotionally distressed when visiting the castle.  I was initially perplexed, but he went on to say that, after all, it was the African people living in the surrounding areas who had sold their awkward cousins and uncles, or people captured in conflicts as slaves to the Europeans in return for guns and other items that they wanted. Slavery had long been a way of life in the region, and had most definitely not been introduced by the Europeans.  His matter of fact comments challenged much of what I had previously rather taken for granted about the Triangular trans-Atlantic slave trade.[viii]  This trade was undoubtedly coercive, violent and exploitative, but its transactional character and the collaboration of African communities who were willing to sell other Africans for a price to European slavers needs to be recognised in any discussion of this particular expression of slavery.[ix] 

Cape Coast Castle, 2008 (as rebuilt by the British in the 18^th century)

On concepts and definitions

I have long enjoyed reading Onora O’Neill’s inspirational philosophical writings (see especially the collection of essays published as Justice Across Boundaries, 2016), and have found that many of my own ideas coincide quite closely with hers, especially around obligations, rights and justice (although I have tended to focus on the notion of “responsibilities” rather than “obligations”).  In particular, she highlights the difficulties that arise in discussing the rights to compensation for actions in the distant past that are widely considered to be wrong today. Her work is well worth reading at length on this topic; I frequently return to it for clarity on these difficult issues.  What follows is in part sparked by reflections on slavery in the contexts of these wider philosophical and conceptual debates.  Three challenges seem particularly important.

• First, no individual has any effective power over what her or his distant ancestors did in the past.  If they have no power to change the past, what are their responsibilities? We might have had some influence on our own parents’ actions, and those who have known their grandparents might also have had a little influence on their lives.  However, we cannot have had any actual influence on the lives and actions of those we never knew.  If we have had no such influence, can we have any responsibility for their actions in the past?  If we have no responsibility for those actions, why should we be criticised and condemned by others for the actions of our ancestors (individually and collectively)?  These are real challenges in the context of slavery.  It is not easy to clarify the logical reasons why the descendants of slave owners (and institutions they benefitted) should have received the opprobrium that has been cast on them by many of those today condemning slavery.  This is regardless of how one might “judge” (itself a very problematic notion) those who were children of slave owners, but who argued vehemently for abolition in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, or even those who had owned slaves but then championed abolition.[x]  Even John Locke, widely seen as being one of the founders of liberal democracy, has recently been savaged by historians and others because of his role in administering the British colonies in North America in the 17^th century where slavery was widely practised.[xi]

• Second, there are profound difficulties in “judging” the past by the standards of the present.  As Hartley wrote in The Go-Between (1953), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”.  All societies evolve and change, but they all have mechanisms through which the few rich and/or privileged extract a surplus from the many poor and exploited (Karl Marx’s modes of production remain a powerful theoretical model of such change; for Marx and Engels, slave society was the earliest form of class society).  There are, though, many conundrums within the idea of “criticising” past societies, not least because our present societies have emerged from them, and would be different if they had not existed. There is nothing we can do about changing past societies.  Hopefully our present societies have evolved positively and are better than those of the past, although this is by no means always so!  The key thing is that we need to learn the lessons of history; we need to understand the past so that we do not make the same mistakes our ancestors made then and there (at least as “judged” by our own societies).  “Now” is the only time when we can actually do anything, and the choices we make in the present need to be made in the light of the past so as to help make a better future.  As Tolstoy (1903) wrote in his short essay Three Questions, “Remember then: there is only one time that is important – now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power”.  Such reflections also force us to consider how future generations will perceive our own actions.  How, for example, will they consider our ineffectual efforts to abolish modern slavery?  Might they see our enforced addiction to digital tech as but another, les immediately brutal, form of slavery, and today’s digital barons as equivalent to the slave masters of the past?

• Third, these considerations also make it important to try to define what exactly slavery is.  It is, though, very problematic to provide a clear and all-encompassing definition of slavery, not least because of the ways in which the notion and practices have varied and evolved over time (and may continue to do so in the future).  Two key elements are central to any definition: a lack of “freedom”, and being under the absolute control of another person.  Exactly what types of freedom and control are necessary to be considered as slavery are disputed and have changed over time.  One way of addressing this is to define certain practices as being indicative of slavery, as with chattel slavery (treating someone as the personal property of another), bonded labour (where someone pledges themselves to work for another to pay off a debt), or forced labour or marriage (where someone is forced in some way to work or marry against their will).  Another approach has been to adopt legal definitions agreed by conventions.  The 1926 UN Slavery Convention, thus defines slavery as ”the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching the right of ownership are exercised”.  In practice, it may be best to consider a spectrum of characteristics that comprise slavery, recognising that different people may choose to include some or all of these in their definitions.  “Servitude” is thus considered by some to have many of the characteristics of, but to be less severe than, “slavery”. The European Court of Human Rights (2022), for example, has recently argued that servitude “is a particularly serious form of denial of freedom”, although it should be considered as an aggravated form of forced labour, and therefore although related to slavery it is not to be confused with it. “It includes, in addition to the obligation to provide certain services to another, the obligation on the “serf” to live on the other’s property and the impossibility of changing his status”.[xii]  The relationship between “slavery” and “serfdom” has, though, also evolved over time.  In origin, the words “serf” and “slave” come from the same root, namely the Latin servus (meaning slave; and from which the word servitude is also derived).  However, serfs and slaves have generally been seen, at least from medieval times onwards, to be rather different categories.  For some, the word “serfs” is a generic term to describe the group of people originally known as coloni, or tenant farmers in the late Roman period onwards, and whose status had generally become increasingly degraded.  For others, it is even broader, and is often equated with the word “peasants” to refer to the mass of people at the bottom of the emerging class system in medieval and early-modern times, but above the status of slaves.[xiii]

These three conceptual framings underlie the ensuing sections on slavery in the past, in the present and in the future.

Roman collared slaves (Ashmolean Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_collared_slaves_-_Ashmolean_Museum.jpg)

Slavery: the past

Four important observations about past slavery are all too frequently ignored or downplayed in contemporary public discourse, but I suggest should be considered in any reasoned discussion of slavery:

• First, slavery was a normal and accepted aspect of society in many parts of the world for well over six millennia, whereas the abolitionist movement in Europe only really began in the mid-18^th century, less than three centuries ago.[xiv]  It must have been as unthinkable for the majority of people for most of history (and indeed pre-history) to have challenged slavery as it is now for someone to try to promote slavery.

• Second, slavery was practised at some time in the past in most parts of the world.  Slavery existed in most ancient civilizations as in the Babylonian and Persian Empires.  It was common throughout the Roman world; slaves from what is now the UK were paraded in Rome.  In the early Islamic states in West and North Africa it has been estimated that about one-third of the population were slaves; in East Africa, Zanzibar was the main port for slave trading to the Arabian peninsula.  Slavery was widely practised in the Pre-Columbian cultures of Middle and South America.  It formed a crucial element of the Ottoman Empire; in the 17^th century it is estimated that a fifth of the population of Constantinople was probably slaves. Slaves remained fundamentally important throughout the Ottoman Empire until the 19^th century, notably as the much feared Janissaries (elite infantry soldiers). Slavery was widespread for centuries in China, and was only abolished in 1909.  The Triangular trade between Europe, Western Africa and North America, which features so prominently in current popular discourse on slavery was thus only one example of the very widespread pattern of global slavery.  It is often forgotten that between the 15^th and 18^th centuries white Europeans from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and England had also been sold into slavery by North Africans. Frequently slaves were captured as a result of warfare, sometimes there were regular expeditions to capture slaves, and often people sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts.  This ubiquitous character of slavery raises interesting questions about the payment of reparations.  Should Italy pay England for taking slaves during the period of Roman occupation?  Should Turkey pay countries in the Balkans for the devşirme (blood tax) through which Christian boys were taken to become Janissaires? Should the rulers of states in the Arabian peninsula pay reparations to the countries of eastern Africa?  Should Israel pay reparations to the surrounding countries from whence their ancestors took Canaanite slaves?  The usual response to such questions is “No”, on the grounds that such reparations only apply to the recent past.  But when is the past recent?[xv] 

• Third, it must be recognised that everyone in societies where slave ownership was practised benefitted to some extent from slavery, and it is not possible just to attribute blame to slave owners or traders and their descendants.[xvi]  The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker all benefitted from the wealth gained by those who invested in estates that used slave labour.  All societies, past and present, have mechanisms and legitimation systems through which the rich can exploit the poor, and can thereby afford to live “better” lives and purchase luxuries.  Slavery is just one mechanism through which such surplus extraction and exploitation occurs. Indeed, life for the poor in 18^th and 19^th century Britain was unbelievably harsh by modern standards.  However, everyone (apart from the slaves) takes a share of the trickle-down financial benefit.  The elite pay architects, artists and jewellers to produce what many societies now cherish as their cultural heritage, but this enabled these craftsmen to afford to buy paints, or beer, or clothing, which in turn benefitted the brewers, merchants and clothiers.  Ultimately, almost everyone in the past, and not just slave owners or institutions that received gifts derived from slave ownership, benefitted in some way from slavery.  It therefore seems highly problematic to pick out certain slave owners or institutions (and their descendants) in certain societies for retribution.

• Fourth, it is likely that in most cases slavery did not generally collapse purely for moral grounds, but rather also for economic ones. The ultimate reason that slavery collapsed was often because it became too expensive to obtain and maintain slaves.  We like to think that it resulted exclusively from some kind of enlightened belief, or a rise of moral virtue in the 19^th century, and this may indeed have helped in some cases (as with the abolitionist movement in Britain), but there is little evidence to support the argument that a sudden rise in moral concern was usually the primary reason that slavery ended.   As conflicts and wars reduced in frequency, it became less easy to capture people and enslave them.  Moreover, the costs of feeding slaves could become prohibitive, especially at times of rising basic staple prices. Forcing slaves to cultivate land to feed themselves was also problematic since it took land and labour away from other forms of production, and yields were in any case often not high.  Most importantly, new more efficient forms of labour exploitation (such as the factory system in the 19^th century) and the mechanisation of agriculture, reduced the economic benefits of slave production.

Slavery: the present

As noted in the quotation from Tolstoy cited above, the present is a very special time, because it is the only time when we have any power.   How we act in the present, though, depends very much on our understanding of the past.  Four problematic issues seem worthy of reflection here about how we are acting in the present with respect to slavery.

• First, it must be recognised and acknowledged that slavery still exists.  It was not eliminated by the abolutionist movement in the 19^th century.  According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, there are about 49.6 million people living in modern slavery, mostly in forced labour and forced marriage.[xvii]  Roughly a quarter of these are children.  To be sure, definitions of slavery have changed over time, but these figures compare with best estimates for the number of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas of around 12.5 million.[xviii]  Modern slavery is real and present at a very large scale.  We can choose to do something real and practical about it.  It is as violent and horrendous as are most forms of past slavery.  While much current media attention and political activity focuses on black slavery, colonialism and issues around restitution and reparations, we also need to focus on the reality of modern slavery across the world and do something to bring it to an end.

• Second, the timing of the sudden upswelling of interest in slavery, the recent actions taken by many people and organisations to try to atone for the past, and the vehemence of commitment of many of those campaigning for reparations and against past slavery seem in part to represent a collective failure to understand and appreciate the impact of slavery, both in the past and at present.  Having learnt about slavery as a child, and written and taught about slavery through much of my career,[xix] I find it hard to believe that so many people in Britain seem to have been unaware of the impact of slavery on our economy.[xx]  Why did they not protest before 2020? The apparent sudden discovery of our role in the Triangular Trade, seems in part to reflect a failure in our education system to address the complexity of history, and especially to consider slavery in a global and holistic framework.  In a society increasingly dominated by scientism (science’s belief in itself) it becomes more and more important for young people to study the disciplines of history and geography which play such a crucial role in shaping their sense of time and place.  A good historical understanding of slavery throughout history and across the world would also help people have a much more nuanced and sensitive approach to understanding its complexities, and the reasons why we need to respond urgently to the continued existence of modern slavery. 

• Third, it is always easier to criticise people who cannot respond, especially in the past, than it is to act wisely in the present.  As any political leader knows, it is much easier to criticise others, than it is actually to deliver policies that have positive outcomes.  In the context of slavery, it is easy to stand up and protest, it is easy to adopt slick slogans, it is easy to blame people in the past, and it is easy to post critical comments on social media.  This is especially so when those who lived through those times are completely unable to respond or tell their side of the story.  It is very much more difficult to change existing practices, such as modern slavery, because that takes considerable time and effort, it is tough to do, it is expensive, and it is not easy to understand what really needs to be done.  However, given now is the only time when we can influence things for the better, we should surely concentrate on what we can actually do something about, rather than spend so much time bemoaning something that we can never change.  We can learn from the past to change the present.

• Fourth, it is difficult to justify criticising people in the past, because we were not there and have no way of knowing how we would have behaved ourselves at that time.  We might like to think that we would have acted in the past in accordance with our present moral compasses (if we recognise that we have such things), but the reality is that it is highly unlikely that we would have done so.  We simply have no real way of knowing what we would have done if we had been living during past epochs when slavery was rife.  Perhaps our biggest fear would have been the chance of being captured and sold into slavery ourselves.  If we cannot guarantee that we would have opposed slavery then, it seems difficult to justify the opprobrium that we cast on those who benefitted from slavery in the past, especially if we are doing little to prevent it in the present.

In short, the logic of the above comments seems to point to a conclusion that we should focus our attention more on trying to stop modern slavery, because we can indeed do something about this, rather than spending most of our time criticising the actions of people in the past about which we can do nothing.

Slavery: the future

Such arguments have interesting implications when slavery in the future is considered.  Again, four comments seem appropriate.

• First, we might be able to reduce the extent of slavery in the future if we take action to do so now, and at the very least those who do indeed believe that slavery is wrong would then be acting according to their moral principles.  This in itself raises many further difficult issues.  Given that slavery still exists, and has therefore probably done so ever since human “civilizations” first emerged, is it somehow a “natural” human condition?  Will slavery always exist?  Even if this is the case, though, those of us who believe it is wrong can nevertheless still seek to take action now to reduce its extent in the hope that this will happen in the future. 
• Second, how will those in the future look back and see our actions today with respect to slavery?  Just as we cannot influence the past, we will not be living when those in the future think about us. At one level, this question will not really matter, because we will be long dead and the thoughts of people in the distant future can have no real influence over us.  Nevertheless, many people do wish to be remembered kindly. For those who do care how history will see them, if only the near history of their children and grandchildren, taking action now at a time over which we do have some control or power, would seem to be wise (although of course many people may not wish to be wise). How will our offspring and descendants judge us most positively: for acting to reduce the slavery that does exist and we can do something about, or for merely protesting about a past over which we could never do anything to change.
• Third, if we do nothing about slavery today, there is a chance that those nearest and dearest to us might be forced into slavery in the future.  This may be an unlikely scenario for many reading this post, but it is at least a logical possibility.  Every one of the nearly 50 million people currently in slavery has parents, and possibly grandparents who may still be alive and know them.  At least some, perhaps most, of these relatives will grieve that their offspring are enslaved.  By acting today, we can reduce the chances of our children and further descendants becoming enslaved.
• Finally, it is worth asking what future generations may consider about the nature of freedom and slavery in our societies today?  I have recently spent much time pondering this question, and writing and speaking about digital enslavement as a new mode of production.  Put simply, if we cannot live without using digital tech, have we become enslaved by the owners of the companies and governments who force us to use such technologies?  If we cannot spend a day, let alone a week, without using digital tech, have we not become enslaved by those who make it?[xxi]  Have we not willingly become “unfree”?  The new slave masters expropriate a vast surplus from our data and everything that they know about us, and we seem unable to escape from giving this to them at no charge.  Indeed, we have to pay significant amounts to be connected to the internet, just so as to enable them to exploit us further.   What will future generations think?  Will the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos also have the work of their foundations and donations castigated, their virtual statues torn down, their reputations smashed, and their children’s children hated for the actions of their ancestors?[xxii]

In conclusion

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the above reflections, and everyone will have somewhat differing views about them.  They are intended to raise difficult questions and encourage open debate on them.  I have tried to focus on slavery alone, although clearly this intersects, especially at this time in history, with other categories of contemporary interest such as race and colonialism.  However, these reflections are explicitly not intended to address either of these other two categories in any detail.  Slavery has existed between and within many different races; it has transcended most modes of socio-economic, political and cultural formation.  It is not unique to the Triangular Trans-Atlantic slave trade. There has been a considerable amount of research done on the history of slavery and very much more that needs to be done.  However, history alone is not enough.  It is the moral questions that we ask, and how we use them to shape the futures of the societies in which we live that, to me, matter most.

The above arguments suggest to me that it is more important to focus on trying to reduce contemporary slavery (and its possible variants in the future) than it is only to protest about the horrors and injustices of past slavery.  Both are important, and this is not to belittle the value of highlighting the undoubted injustices of slavery in the past.  However, we cannot change what has happened in the past, and it is surely therefore our responsibility to past slaves that we act now, when we can, to prevent slavery continuing into the future.   Protesting is the easy bit; changing the future is when the going gets really tough. Others may well feel differently, and I certainly accept that we need a sound understanding of the past if we are to act wisely in the present.  I began by reflecting on my surprise at how few of the anti-slavery and anti-racism protests that I saw in 2020 and 2021 focused on modern slavery. My hope is that those who read and engage with what I have written here may turn their anger at what they cannot change into energy to reduce the extent of slavery that remains all about us today.  I also hope that they will strive to maintain the perceived freedoms that so many now cherish and take for granted, and yet are in very real danger of being taken away from us through the increasingly all-pervasiveness of digital enslavement. 

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[i] I am immensely grateful to several friends and colleagues who took time to comment on an earlier version of this draft and have undoubtedly helped me to improve it.  I know that the issues it addresses are sensitive, but I hope that this final version strikes an appropriate balance as I seek to encourage us all to refocus our attention on how we eliminate the modern slavery (and especially violence against women) that continues to exist across the world.

[ii] I have deliberately used this word here because I remain struck by the reality that the lives of some slaves in the past were in many ways better than the lives of the poorest agricultural labourers.

[iii] There were indeed some banners relating to modern slavery, but from the protests and images that I saw these were in a minority.

[iv] This was also associated with transfers of ideology and practice from the US to the rather different context of the UK. 

[v] This is not in any way to downplay the horrors of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas between the 17^th and 19^th centuries, but it is to try to explore fundamental principles associated with slavery per se rather than racism.

[vi] See for example, Abraham Farfán and María del Pilar López-Uribe (2020) The British founding of Sierra Leone was never a ‘Province of Freedom, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/06/27/british-founding-sierra-leone-slave-trade/. It is also important to note here that it was actually in the UK, a colonial and later imperial power, where the abolutionist movement first gained considerable traction, initially in the late 18th century and then especially from the 1830s onwards.

[vii] The Province of Freedom in what became Sierra Leone was first settled in 1787 by formerly enslaved black people, but this early settlement collapsed, and it was not until 1792 with an influx of more than a thousand former slaves from North America that the settlement of Freetown was firmly established through the agency of the Sierra Leone Company.

[viii] See also Trevor Phillips’ important essay in The Times (18 September 2020 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trevor-phillips-when-you-erase-a-nations-past-you-threaten-its-future-xx9rqzqh9) entitled “When you erase a nation’s past, you threaten its future”, in which he suggests that “Those who have African heritage might do well, before they denounce long-dead British slave owners, to find out which side of the vile transactions in West Africa’s slave ports their own ancestors stood”.  See also his review “Colonialism by Nigel Biggar: don’t be ashamed of empire”, in The Sunday Times, 5^th February 2023, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/colonialism-by-nigel-biggar-dont-be-ashamed-of-empire-lp83ptqtd. More research needs to be done on the origins of slaves from West Africa in the Caribbean and North America, and how they were enslaved.

[ix] This also reminds me of the continuing African slave trade across the Sahara today.  See for example https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/07/africa/un-sanctions-migrant-traffickers-intl/index.html, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/29/african-refugees-bought-sold-and-murdered-in-libya/, and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/29/african-refugees-bought-sold-and-murdered-in-libya/.

[x] See for example the life of John Newton who had been a slave, a captain of slave ships, and then championed abolitionism, as well as writing the famous hymns Amazing Grace and Glorious things of Thee are spoken. 

[xi] See Brewer, 2018.

[xii] https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/guide_art_4_eng.pdf, p.8.

[xiii] In my own work on medieval society, I found it helpful to avoid the generic word “serf” and stick to the terms actually in use at the time, such as villeins, cottars and bordars.  In very general terms, in 11^th century England there were two broad groups of rural people beneath the level of knights and lords: the free peasantry (freemen and sokemen) who comprised about 12% of the population recorded in Domesday Book of 1066; and the unfree (villeins representing about 40% of the population, alongside the poorer cottars and bordars) who worked the land in return for onerous obligations and services to the Lord.  Beneath them all were the slaves, comprising perhaps 10% of the population, who had no property rights and could be bought and sold.

[xiv] Although Louis X of France published a decree in 1315 declaring that any slave arriving on French soil should be declared free, the widespread rise of abolitionism is usually dated to the emergence of The Enlightenment in the mid-18th century, and the activities of the Quakers in England and North America in the latter part of that century.  Interestingly, although slavery was abolished during the French revolution, Napoleon restored it in 1802 as one means to try to retain sovereignty over France’s colonies.

[xv] Complex legal debates around statutes of limitations are one way on which attempts have been made to answer this question.  See for example the UN’s OHCHR “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law” https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation.  See also Shelton, D. (2002) Reparations for human rights violations: how far back?, Amicus Curiae, 44, 3-7

[xvi] I have deliberately concentrated here on slavery in a global context, and not just on the current emphasis in European and North American societies on the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  The horrors, misery and death associated with slavery in the context of European colonialism should not be trivialised, but at the same time their needs to be open and honest discussion about the existence of slavery in Africa long before the arrival of white Europeans.

[xvii] See ILO, Walk Free and IOM (2022) Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, Geneva: ILO, Walk Free and IOM. See also https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/.

[xviii] See https://www.slavevoyages.org/, as well as extensive other research by Franz Binder, Ernst van den Boogart, Henk den Heijer and Johannes Postma, James Pritchard, Andrea Weindl, Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Manuel Barcia Paz, Alexandre Ribeiro, David Wheat and José Capela.

[xix] especially in the context of my teaching of Marxist theory between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1990s.  See also the work of the UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.

[xx] There has been very substantial research on slavery in the past, and the extent to which British society and the economy were shaped by it in the 18^th and 19^th centuries has long been well known.  See for example the work of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ which emerged from earlier funded research projects in the 2000s and 2010s, and also the useful short  note by John Oldfield (2021) on abolition of the slave trade and slavery in Britain, https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/abolition-of-the-slave-trade-and-slavery-in-britain, which draws heavily on research dating back to the 1930s.

[xxi] Do consider using #1in7offline to promote the practice of having a day a week offline.

[xxii] See my 2022 piece on Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons: a thought experiment.

COP 27, loss and damage, and the reality of Carbon emissions

The soundbites from the widely acclaimed success of COP 27, especially around the creation of a loss and damage fund (see UNCC Introduction to loss and damage), made me look once more at the realities of global CO₂ emissions to see which countries are actually generating the most CO₂, which are improving their performance, and which are suffering most. Sadly, this only made me appreciate yet again that the over-simplifications that occur during so many UN gatherings such as COP appear to be more about political correctness and claiming success than they do about developing real solutions to some of the most difficult challenges facing the world.

The UN Climate Press Release on 20 November summarised the outcomes relating to the fund as follows: “Governments took the ground-breaking decision to establish new funding arrangements, as well as a dedicated fund, to assist developing countries in responding to loss and damage… Parties also agreed on the institutional arrangements to operationalize the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage, to catalyze technical assistance to developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change”.

Unfortunately, it is not quite as easy as it might seem to validate the claim underlying this that it is the rich countries who do most of the pollution and should therefore compensate the poor countries where the most harmful damages from CO₂ occur (see, for example, ThePrint, India; UN News, noting that “Developing countries made strong and repeated appeals for the establishment of a loss and damage fund, to compensate the countries that are the most vulnerable to climate disasters, yet who have contributed little to the climate crisis”; and BBC News, “A historic deal has been struck at the UN’s COP27 summit that will see rich nations pay poorer countries for the damage and economic losses caused by climate change”). How should it be decided, for example, which countries should be donors to this fund, and which should be beneficiaries from it? Pakistan, which led much of the discussion around the need for richer countries to fund the poorer ones, was actually the 27th largest global emitter of CO₂ in 2019; China was the largest contributor, and India the 3rd largest.

The Table below, drawing on World Bank data (2022), gives the various rankings of the top 30 countries in terms of CO2 emissions per capita in 2019, and CO₂ total emissions in 1990 and 2019, as well as the change in ranking of the latter two columns.

Rank	Country	CO2 metric tons per capita 2019	Country	CO2 total emissions kt 1990	Country	CO2 total emissions kt 2019	Change in rank 1990-2019
1	Qatar	32.474	United States	4844520	China	10707219.7	+1
2	Kuwait	22.022	China	2173360	United States	4817720.21	-1
3	Bahrain	20.266	Russian Federation	2163530	India	2456300.05	+4
4	United Arab Emirates	19.330	Japan	1090530	Russian Federation	1703589.97	-1
5	Brunei Darussalam	16.132	Germany	955310	Japan	1081569.95	-1
6	Canada	15.431	Ukraine	688620	Germany	657400.024	-1
7	Luxembourg	15.306	India	563580	Iran, Islamic Rep.	630010.01	+12
8	Saudi Arabia	15.285	United Kingdom	561770	Indonesia	619840.027	+16
9	Oman	15.282	Canada	538661	Korea, Rep.	610789.978	+6
10	Australia	15.238	Italy	532860	Canada	580210.022	-1
11	United States	14.673	France	356240	Saudi Arabia	523780.029	+11
12	Palau	13.888	Poland	350210	Mexico	449269.989	+2
13	Trinidad and Tobago	12.323	Mexico	269580	South Africa	439640.015	+3
14	Turkmenistan	12.263	Australia	263630	Brazil	434299.988	+6
15	Korea, Rep.	11.799	Korea, Rep.	247680	Turkiye	396839.996	+11
16	Russian Federation	11.797	South Africa	247660	Australia	386529.999	-2
17	Kazakhstan	11.457	Kazakhstan	237250	United Kingdom	348920.013	-9
18	Czechia	9.820	Spain	214950	Vietnam	336489.99	+59
19	Japan	8.541	Iran, Islamic Rep.	198470	Italy	317239.99	-8
20	Netherlands	8.504	Brazil	197900	France	300519.989	-9
21	Libya	8.381	Romania	172630	Poland	295130.005	-9
22	Singapore	8.307	Saudi Arabia	171410	Thailand	267089.996	+11
23	Belgium	8.096	Czechia	150200	Malaysia	253270.004	+23
24	Malaysia	7.927	Indonesia	148530	Egypt, Arab Rep.	249369.995	+10
25	Germany	7.912	Netherlands	148380	Spain	239979.996	-7
26	Poland	7.774	Turkiye	139200	Kazakhstan	212110.001	-9
27	Estonia	7.672	Korea, DPR	123330	Pakistan	190570.007	+15
28	China	7.606	Uzbekistan	117770	United Arab Emirates	188860.001	+16
29	Iran, Islamic Rep.	7.598	Belgium	109310	Ukraine	174729.996	-22
30	South Africa	7.508	Venezuela, RB	101630	Iraq	174559.998	+9

Many important observations can be made from these figures, and I highlight just a few below:

Per capita emissions

• The highest per capita emitters are generally those in countries with recently developed hydrocarbon-based economies, such as Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Brunei Darussalam, and generally not in the old rich industrial economies of Europe.
• Surprisingly, quite a few European countries such as the UK, Denmark and Spain (ranked 52nd-54th) actually lie well outside the top 30 highest emitters
• The twelve lowest per capita emitters for which data are available (not shown here) are all African countries.
• There are many fewer countries above the world average, at 4.47 metric tons per capita (which would rank 61st) and many more ranked beneath it, implying that the highest emitters are much higher than the lowest are low: Qatar at 32.47, has 28 metric tons per person more than the average; yet, 55 countries have emissions per capita of <1 metric ton.

Total emissions

• 60% of total CO₂ emission are generated by people living in five countries (China, 31.18%, the United States 14.03%, India 7.15%, the Russian Federation 7.15%, and Japan 3.15%). Eleven further countries, all producing more than 350,000 kt CO₂ annually account for a further 16.68% of emissions. More than three-quarters of emissions in 2019 were therefore from people in just 16 countries.
• Those countries with the lowest total emissions are nearly all small island states (SIDS; not shown in the Table), but note that these were not necessarily the lowest per capita emitters.
• The changes in total emissions since 1990 are also very interesting. The highest increases within the top 30 were Indonesia (+16) and Iran (+12), although much higher risers came into the top 30 from below, including Vietnam (+59), Malaysia (+23), UAE (+16) and Pakistan (+15).

These data do not make easy reading for policy makers, campaigners and the UN system as a whole, all of whom like to have simple answers and short soundbites. The world is unfortunately too complex and messy for these. As the world’s popultion passes 8 billion (2.8 times what it was when I was born), population growth is the dominant factor in determining total country-based emissions, but economic growth (following the US-led carbon-based capitalist mode of production) has also played a significant part. The big risers in total emissions are countries with large populations and/or with high economic growth rates over the last 30 years. Neither of these should be surprising. Poor countries, with low economic growth and relatively small populations are never likely to be amongst the largest consumers of energy. Overall, the biggest factor determining total CO₂ emissions over the last century, and especially in the last 50 years, has been human population growth (see my recent post on “climate change”). Moreover, there has for long been an intricate and complex relationships between humans and carbon: the carbon cycle and the production of oxygen are essential for human life, and our economic systems have also been driven by carbon as a fuelfor centuries. These complexities make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to argue that we need to create two groups of countries: one being the recipients of funding (from a loss and damage financial facility), and the other being contributors to it. Instead, we need to work collaboratively together to transform the underying factors causing environmental change, of which CO₂ emissions are actually only but a small part.

That is not, though, to say that there should not be much greater global effort to work together to resolve the environmental problems caused by our centuries old carbon-based economy (as well as those caused by so-called renewable energy). It is also completely separate from moral arguments suggesting that there should be a shift in wealth distribution from the rich to the poor. However, these should not be conflated into over-simplistic statements and assertions about responsibililty for climate change, such as those being promoted by UN agencies and mainstream media at the end of COP 27. It is also to reassert that we need to work together with renewed vigour collaboratively across sectors and disciplines to understand better the complex interactions that humans have with the environments in which we live, and then to make wise decisions how to implement them in the interests of all the world’s peoples and not just those of the rich and privileged parts of the world.

The above draft was written on 21 November 2022 (and has been revised slightly subsequently)

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In response to the above, Olof Hesselmark kindly asked why I had not added further details also about the spatial distribution of CO₂ emissions – something that as a geographer I care greatly about! I responded that I hadn’t wanted to complicate matters further, but also that I guess it was because I am aware in my own mind of these spatial distributions, and the country names (and sizes) are in-built into my consciousness! However, they do add an important additional element of complexity to the discussion, and I am delighted that he has agreed for me to add his slightly cropped map of CO₂ emissions per sq km below:

I’m not entirely sure which projection this is, but my preference for such maps is Eckert IV, or other equal area projections such as Gall-Peters or Mollweide that place less visual emphasis on the apparent size of countries in high latitudes. This map nevertheless highlights the varying densities of emissions, with China, Europe and the USA being high, and Africa and Latin America being low. It should also be emphasised that there are enormous differences within countries, as well as between them, with urban-industrial environments generally being much higher in their CO₂ emissions than sparsely settled rural ones.

A different perspective once again is thus from the Smithsonian Magazine‘s 2009s map below (carbon emissions from 1997-2010), which does indeed show how a very few areas contribute the largest amount of CO₂ emissions.

Update 22 November 2022

World’s Best Vineyards Top-50 celebrations in Mendoza

It is a great honour to serve as the Academy Chair for the UK and Ireland of the World’s Best Vineyards awards organised by William Reed, which are designed to celebrate and promote the best wine tourism experiences in the world. To achieve this, there are 21 regional panels, each of which has 36 members, who annually vote for their top 7 winery/vineyard experiences. Membership of these panels changes each year, with a constant rotation of new members rotating onto them. In this role, I have very much tried to ensure that our panel represents the rich diversity of the countries of the UK and Ireland, different wine sectors (including importers, retailers, sommeliers, writers, and consultants) and varied personal characteristics including gender, ethnicity and age. This is by no means easy to achieve!

The annual awards ceremony for the top 50 winery/vineyard experiences is hosted by a different country each year. The 2021 ceremony was thus hosted at Schloss Johannisberg in the Rheingau in Germany, and this year’s ceremony was held in late October at Zuccardi, Valle de Uco, in Mendoza Argentina. The Academy Chairs along with a select group of other leading figures in the wine tourism industry are invited to these awards, and this year a spectacular progamme of winery visits was arranged in Mendoza in partnership with The Government of Mendoza.

We had the privilege of visiting the following wineries, where we also had comprehensive tastings:

• Catena Zapata
• Anaia Wines
• El Enemigo
• Huentala Wines
• Salentein
• Zuccardi (where the awards ceremony took place)
• Durigutti Family Winemakers
• Cheval des Andea
• and althogh we did not visit Bodega DiamAndes, they hosted a welcome dinner and tasting.

I have long wanted to explore Mendoza, and the beauty of the mountains and vineyards, the commitment and expertise of the wine-growers, the winery architecture, and above all the generosity and expertise of all of our hosts went far beyond any of my expectations. I hope that the slide-show below (in approximate order of visits) captures something of my enthusiasm and excitement. Especial thanks are due to the team at William Reed, and to Dr. Nora Vicario, Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Province of Mendoza, for supporting this event, and for her constant energy and enthusiasm.

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It would be invidious to pick out any one wine or winery as being somehow the “best” – they were all so interesting and different! The following, though, are among my lasting memories:

• The land appears so flat – but terroir matters! Most of the vineyards are laid out for mile upon mile (or kilometre upon kilometre) across the alluvial plain at the foothills of the majestic Andes. However, although appearing very flat it is actually gently sloping, and there are indeed important difference in terroir. These depend particualrly on altitude, but also on soil depth and charactistics (not least depending on the balance between clay, sand, and stones).
• The nets. Many vineyards are swathed in black plastic netting (clearly shown in the image at the top of this post) which is particularly intended to protect the young shoots from being harmed by hail, but it also helps shade the vines from the intense sunlight that prevails here. It nevertheless adds significantly to the costs of production.
• The architecture. I don’t think I have ever visited a wine region with such a wealth of recent architectural creativity. The level of financial investment in these wineries, restaurants, and hospitality venues is conspicuously high! While some of this investment comes from external sources and the proft generated from their owners’ other enterprises, I was also told that during the COVID restrictions they continued to have significant income from wine sales at a time when their costs were actually reduced, thus enabling them to invest further in their wineries.
• Innovations in the wineries – and the music. It was fascinating to see the new wine making equipment and innovations in all of the wineries we visited (very visible in the images above). Egg-shaped and rounded fermentation tanks were very evident, and the novel mate-shaped tanks designed at Anaia have pushed the boundaries of vinification yet further. Concrete was dominant everywhere, but it was also interesting to learn about ongoing various micro-vinification trials. Several wineries nevertheless continue to use oak barrels extensively. It will be several years before the influence of these different methods on the wines produced will be fully understood. It was also fascinating to see how many wineries placed an emphasis on the connections between music and wine – even with tango on top of the concrete tanks at Zuccardi!
• Irrigation everywhere – almost. The plains below the Andes in this part of Argentina are dry and arid. Almost all of the visible vegetation has thus been planted through the use of extensive irrigation; drip irrigation in the vineyards is ubiquitous. However, on being asked, several of the vitculturalists with whom I spoke mentioned that they are beginning to explore dry farming nearer the Andes mountains where water is more plentiful. The challenge here, though, is the danger of the much colder weather in the higher areas nearer the Andes. I look forward, though, to the results of this experimentation, and suspect that they just might produce even higher quality wines.
• The wines. I have always enjoyed Malbec (or Cot as it is known in the Loire and Cahors), and recall that years ago we published a fascinating paper in the Journal of Wine Research in 1991 by Angel Gargiuolo that explored how quality and quantity could be combined in Argentina through careful selection of vines and appropriate crossings that would achieve optimal yelds and quality in this environment. Ever since then, I have wanted to visit Mendoza to taste for myself the results of this research (as well as the early work by Nicolás Catena Zapata) that helped to lay the foundations of the modern Mendoza wine industry. The red wines that we tasted (mainly Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon – although also including less familiar Italian grape varieties and others as well) were almost all of very high quality, with the Malbecs at their best combining real elegance, rich blackberry and plum flavours, and fascinating herbal and spicy overtones. However, I also learnt much more about the different characteristics of the wines made from grapes in the region’s various subdivisions (often reflecting differences in altitiude). I particularly enjoyed, for example, the elegance of the wines from grapes grown in Gualtallary (at up to 1600 m) in the Uco valley, especially the Malbecs and Cabernet Francs (as well as blends between them) – although this might have been in part infleucend by my enjoyment of Malbec (Cot) and Cabernet Franc blends in the Loire Valley the previous week! While it is indeed possible to find very good Malbec on the shelves in UK outlets, it is clearly necessary to visit Mendoza itself to taste the very best!
• The hospitality and culture. I was blown away by the generous hospitality of all our hosts. It was such a privilege to learn from so many hugely experienced and knowledgeable wine-growers, and to taste the complex nuances in their wines. Beyond that, though, the professionalism, knowledge and warmth of welcome from all those who helped show us around was truly impressive – everyone I met, from the chefs and those pouring the wines, to the hospitality staff and the winery owners, went out of their way to help us understand their many cultures of wine. It was very humbling to experience the generous warmth of their welcome.

If I had to choose my favourite experience it must have been the opportunity we had at Catena Zapata to make our own blends of wine from different districts – mine was, though, very different from their official blend: yes, you’ve guessed it, I had a much larger proportion of Gualtallary! Thanks so much to Ernesto and Alejandro for guiding us through this (and to Alejandro for his wonderful wines at El Enemigo).

It has been so sad to read recently of the heavy frosts that hit Mendoza the week after we left – very much hoping that the impact will not be as serious as at first it appears.

Thanks again to everyone at William Reed, the Government of Mendoza and all of the wineries that we visited for making this such a memorable journey of discovery

The influence of environmental factors on Covid-19: towards a research agenda

Considerable attention was paid in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to its spatial distribution in the hope that environmental factors might be found to play a key role in influencing its spread in two ways: by restricting it to a narrow band of countries with specific environmental factors; and hoping that a rise in temperature in the summer would kill it off.

• Researchers at Maryland University (Sajadi, M.M. et al., 2020) thus used maps of the early stages of Covid-19 to suggest that it spreads more easily in cold, damp climates, and that its highest incidence would be between latitudes 30-50 N.  At the time, I suggested on 3rd April that there were too many anomalies for this to be valid, that it was only based on limited data (where the coronavirus had spread by early March 2020) and that it was necessary to understand better the actual physical processes involved.  However, the idea that there might be environmental factors that will control Covid-19 still persists.
• Likewise, in the early days of the pandemic there was much optimism that the new coronavirus might act in similar ways to some of its predecessors and be seasonal in character, waning in the summer months when it gets warmer.  Again, this was in part based on the timing of its outbreak (in China in December 2019 ) and its rapid spread through Europe with an approximately similar timing to seasonal flu.  However, many experts were cautious about this possible scenario (see Jon Cohen in Science, 13th March 2020, and Alvin Powell in the Harvard Gazette, 14th April 2020).

Nevertheless, the much more rapid spread of Covid-19 in Europe and North America than in Africa and South Asia has led some to continue to argue that the devastating impact of lockdown in countries nearer the equator, particularly on the lives of some of the poorest people living there, may be un-necessary if this pattern can indeed be explained by environmental factors.  The lockdown has already been partially rolled back, for example, in countries such as Pakistan (with some factories reopening on 12th April , and congregational prayers at mosques durong Ramadan being permitted from 21st April) and South Africa (with initial steps being taken to reopen the economy on 1st May).  Clearly, the rate and distribution of the spread of Covid-19 is influenced by many factors, including government policies (with the UK performing especially badly, see my recent post),  demographic characteristics (with the elderly being particularly vulnerable), population distribution (spreading slower in sparsely settled areas), characteristics of the several strains and mutations of the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus (summary in EMCrit), and the inaccuracy and unreliability of reported data about infections and deaths (see my comments here).

The role of environmental factors remains uncertain, despite a considerable amount of research (see systematic review by Mecenas, P. et al., 2020 – thanks to Serge Stinckwich for sharing this) which has sought to draw conclusions from the distribution of cases in parts of the world with different climates, and has suggested that cold and dry conditions helped the spread of the virus whereas warm and wet climates seem to reduce its spread.  A more recent study by Jüni et al. (8th May 2020) has claimed that epidemic growth has little or no association with latitude and temperature, although it has weak negative associations with relative and absolute humidity.  Unfortunately, very few studies have yet sought to do experimental research that actually measures the survivability and ease of spread of Sars-Cov-2 under different real-world environmental conditions.  Moreover, if as appears likely, most infections actually occur indoors, it is not the external climatic conditions that will influence rates of infection but rather the artifical environments created indoors through heating and ventlaltion systems that will be of most significance in influencing its spread.

Two related approaches to this challenge are necessary: identifying its survivabililty in a range of different environments (and surfaces), and analysis of the effect of different environments on the distance that it can be spread by infected people.

Research on the survivability of Sars-Cov-2 in different contexts

Several reported studies have explored the stability of the new coronavirus on different surfaces.  In a widely cited study, van Doremalen et al. (13th  March 2020) suggested that the stability of HCov-19 (Sars-Cov-2) was very similar to that of Sars-Cov-1 (the SARS outbreak in 2003), and that viable virus could be detected as follows:

• in aerosols up to 3 hours after aerosolization
• up to 4 hours on copper
• up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 47-72 hours on plastic and stainless steel.

This important study has subsequently been used as the standard estimate for the survivability of the coronavirus.  However, it was undertaken in the USA under very specific relatively humidity (for aerosols at 65%; for surfaces at 40%) and temperature conditions (for both at 21-23^o C) (See also more recently, van Doremalen et al. 16 April 2020).  A rapid expert review of Sars-Cov-2’s survivability under different conditions (Fineberg, 7th April 2020) notes that the number of experimental studies remains small, but that elevated temperatures seem to reduce its survivability, and that this varies for diffferent materials.  Nevertheless, Fineberg emphasises that laboratory conditions do not necessarily accurately reflect real-world conditions.  In referrring to natural history studies, he also emphasises, as noted above, that conflicting results have emerged because such studies are “hampered by poor quaity data, confounding factors, and insufficient time since the beginning of the pandemix from which to draw conclusions” (p.4).

If a better understanding of Sars-Cov-2’s survivability in different parts of the world is to be gained, it is therefore essential urgently to undertake real world studies of its viability on similar surfaces in various places with different temperature and humidity profiles.

The dispersal distance of Sars-Cov-2

The standard advice across many countries of the world is that people should maintain a minimum distance of 2 m (in some countries 1.5 m) between each other to limit the spread of Covid-19 (see, for example, Public Health England).  This is double the WHO’s advice for the public, which is to “Maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and others. Why? When someone coughs, sneezes, or speaks they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person has the disease“.  The 2 m figure was adopted early by some CDCs, and appears to be more of an approximate early guess (based on the previous Sars-Cov-1 outbreak) that has taken root, rather than an accurate scientifically based figure.

Since then, more rigorous research has been undertaken, much of which suggests that 2 m may not be enough. Setti et al. (23rd April) thus note that Sars-Cov-2 has higher aerosol survivability than did its predecessor, and that a growing body of literature supports a view that “it is plausible that small particles containing the virus may diffuse in indoor environments covering distances up to 10 m from the emission sources”.  They also conclude that “The inter-personal distance of 2 m can be reasonably considered as an effective protection only if everybody wears face masks in daily life activities”. A particularly interesting laboratory based study a month previously by Bourouiba (26th March 2020) provides strong evidence that the turbulent gas clouds formed by sneezes and coughs provide conditions that enable the coronavirus to survive for much longer at greater distances: “The locally moist and warm atmosphere within the turbulent gas cloud allows the contained droplets to evade evaporation for much longer than occurs with isolated droplets“.  She concludes that the “gas cloud and its payload of pathogen-bearing droplets of all sizes can travel 23 to 27 feet (7-8 m)”.  Furthermore, another study by Blocken et al. (9th April) noted that the 1.5 m – 2 m distance was based on people who were standing still, and that there could be a potential aerodynamic effect for people cycling and running.  For someone running at 14.4 km/hr the social distance in the slipstream might be nearer 10 m.

Such studies have been controversial (for a summary, see Eric Niiler in Wired, 14th April), but they highlight that in practice:

• the “safe’ distance between people is unknown;
• there is little strong scientific evidence for the 1 m – 2 m recommendations for social distancing; and
• this distance is highly likely to vary in different environmental contexts.

Not enough conclusive reseach has yet been undertaken on the extent to which environmental factors, such as humidity, pressure, altitude, wind and temperature actually affect how far Sars-Cov-2 will disperse, and at what infectious dose (see Linda Geddes, NewScientist, 27th March 2020, where viral load is also discussed; see also ECDC, 25th March 2020).  It seems likely, though, that dispersal will indeed vary in different conditions, and thus in different parts of the world.  We just don’t yet know how great such variability is.

The latest systematic review published in The Lancet, and cited in The Guardian (2nd June 2020) sugggests that distance does matter, and that not only is 2 m safer than less than 1 m, but also that face masks can indeed reduce substantuially the risk of infection.

Towards a research agenda

This post has emphasised that we actually know remarkably little with certainty about how Sars-Cov-2 physically survives and disperses in different environmental contexts.  This has hugely important ramifications for the spread of Covid-19 in different parts of the world, and thus the mitigating policies and actions that need to be taken.  If, for example, Covid-19 does not survive in hot humid conditions, and is also dispersed over shorter distances in such circumstances, then it might be possible for governments of countries where such conditions prevail not to have to impose such stringent social distancing requirements as those that have been put in place in Europe.

Urgent experimental research is therefore required in real-world environments on:

• the survivabililty of Sars-Cov-2 in a range of different physical environments (and surfaces), and
• the effects of different environments on the distance that it can be spread by infected people.

A standard protocol and methodology for such research should be created that could then be used collaboratively by scientists working in different parts of the world to address these crucial issues.  Contrasting environments that would warrant the earliest such research (given the high number of economically poor countries therein) would include: high altitude savanna (as in the Bogotá savanna, and the much lower montane Savanna of the Angolan scarp), tropical and subtropical savanna (as in parts of Brazil and Kenya), tropical rainforests (as in Indonesia and Brazil), semi-arid and arid landscapes (as in much of northern and south-west Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and parts of South Asia).  It is also very important to undertake such resaerch both in urban and rural areas, and indoors as well as outside.  If scientists can indeed co-operate to provide a swift answer to the questions raised in this post, then it would be possible to provide much more tailored advice to governments concerning the mitigating measures (including the use of masks) that they should be taking to protect the highest number of people while also maintaing essential economic activity.

[Updated 8th May, 12th May, 30th May 2020 and 2nd June]

Digital-political-economy in a post-Covid-19 world: implications for the most marginalised

Now is the time to be thinking seriously about the kind of world that we wish to live in once Covid-19 has finished its rampage across Europe and North America.[i] Although its potential direct health impact in Africa and South Asia remains uncertain at the time of writing, countries within these continents have already seen dramatic disruption and much hardship as well as numerous deaths having been caused by the measures introduced by governments to restrict its spread.  It is already clear that it is the poorest and most marginalised who suffer most, as witnessed, for example, by the impact of Modi’s lockdown in India on migrant workers.[ii]

This post highlights five likely global impacts that will be hastened by Covid-19, and argues that we need to use this disruption constructively to shape a better world in the future, rather than succumb to the potential and substantial damage that will be caused, especially to the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalised.  It may be that for many countries in the world, the impact of Covid-19 will be even more significant than was the impact of the 1939-45 war.  Digital technologies are above all accelerators, and most of those leading the world’s major global corporations are already taking full advantage of Covid-19 to increase their reach and their profits.[iii]

The inexorable rise of China and the demise of the USA

Source: Hiram1555.com

I have written previously about the waxing of China and the waning of the USA; China is the global political-economic powerhouse of the present, not just of the future.[iv]  One very significant impact of Covid-19 will be to increase the speed of this major shift in global power.  Just as 1945 saw the beginning of the final end of the British Empire, so 2020 is likely to see the beginning of the end of the USA as the dominant global (imperial) power.  Already, even in influential USAn publications, there is now much more frequent support for the view that the US is a failing state.[v] This transition is likely to be painful, and it will require world leaders of great wisdom to ensure that it is less violent than may well be the case.

The differences between the ways in which the USA and China have responded to Covid-19 have been marked, and have very significant implications for the political, social and economic futures of these states.  Whilst little trust should be placed on the precise accuracy of reported Covid-19 mortality rate figures throughout the world, China has so far reported a loss of 3.2 people per million to the disease (as of 17 April, and thus including the 1290 uplift announced that day), whereas the USA has reported deaths of 8.38 per 100,000 (as of that date); moreover, China’s figures seem to have stabilised, whereas those for the USA continue to increase rapidly.[vi]  These differences are not only very significant in human terms, but they also reflect a fundamental challenge in the relative significance of the individual and the community in US and Chinese society.

Few apart from hardline Republicans in the USA now doubt the failure of the Trump regime politically, socially, economically and culturally. This has been exacerbated by the US government’s failure to manage Covid-19 effectively (even worse than the UK government’s performance), and its insistent antagonism towards China through its deeply problematic trade-war[vii] even before the outbreak of the present coronavirus. Anti-Chinese rhetoric in the USA is but a symptom of the realisation of the country’s fundamental economic and policial weaknesses in the 21^st century.   President Trump’s persistent use of the term “Chinese virus” instead of Covid-19[viii] is also just a symptom of a far deeper malaise.   Trump is sadly not the problem; the problem is the people and system that enabled him to come to power and in whose interests he is trying to serve (alongside his own).  China seems likely to come out of the Covid-19 crisis much stronger than will the USA.[ix]

Whether people like it or not, and despite cries from the western bourgeoisie that it is unfair, and that the Chinese have lied about the extent of Covid-19 in their own country in its early stages, this is the reality.  China is the dominant world power today, let alone tomorrow.

An ever more digital world

Source: Forbes.com

The digital technology sector is already the biggest winner from Covid-19.  Everyone with access, knowledge and ability to pay for connectivity and digital devices has turned to digital technologies to continue with their work, maintain social contacts, and find entertainment during the lockdowns that have covered about one-third of the world’s population by mid-April.[x]  Those who previously rarely used such technologies, have overnight been forced to use them for everything from buying food online, to maintaining contacts with relatives and friends.

There is little evidence that the tech sector was prepared for such a windfall in the latter part of 2019,[xi] but major corporations and start-ups alike have all sought to exploit its benefits as quickly as possible in the first few months of 2020, as testified by the plethora of announcements claiming how various technologies can win the fight against Covid-19.[xii]

One particularly problematic outcome has been the way in which digital tech champions and activists have all sought to develop new solutions to combat Covid-19.  While sometimes this is indeed well intended, more often than not it is primarily so that they can benefit from funding that is made available for such activities by governments and donors, or primarily to raise the individual or corporate profile of those involved.  For them, Covid-19 is a wonderful business opportunity.  Sadly, many such initiatives will fail to deliver appropriate solutions, will be implemented after Covid-19 has dissipated, and on some occasions will even do more harm than good.[xiii]

There are many paradoxes and tensions in this dramatically increased role of digital technology after Covid-19. Two are of particular interest.  First, many people who are self-isolating or social distancing are beginning to crave real, physical human contact, and are realising that communicating only over the Internet is insufficiently fulfilling.  This might offer some hope for the future of those who still believe in the importance of non-digitally mediated human interaction, although I suspect that such concerns may only temporarily delay our demise into a world of cyborgs.[xiv] Second, despite the ultimate decline in the US economy and political power noted above, US corporations have been very well placed to benefit from the immediate impact of Covid-19, featuring in prominent initiatives such as UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition,[xv] or the coalition of pharmaceutical companies brought together by the Gates Foundation.[xvi]

Whatever the precise details, it is an absolute certainty that the dominance of digital technologies in everyone’s lives will increase very dramatically following Covid-19 and this will be exploited by those intent on reaping the profits from such expansion in their own interests.

Increasing acceptance of surveillance by states and companies: the end of privacy as we know it.

Source: Wired.com

A third, related, global impact of Covid-19 will be widely increased global acceptance of the roles of states and companies in digital surveillance.  Already, before 2020, there was a growing, albeit insufficient, debate about the ethics of digital surveillance by states over issues such as crime and “terrorism”, and its implications for privacy.[xvii]  However, some states, such as China, South Korea, Singapore and Israel, have already used digital technologies and big data analytics extensively and apparently successfully in monitoring and tracking the spread of Covid-19,[xviii] and other coalitions of states and the private sector are planning to encourage citizens to sign up to having fundamental aspects of what has previously been considered to be their private and personal health information made available to unknown others.[xix]

One problem with such technologies is that they require substantial numbers of people to sign up to and then use them.  In more authoritarian states where governments can make such adherence obligatory by imposing severe penalties for failure to do so, they do indeed appear to be able to contribute to reduction in the spread of Covid-19 in the interests of the wider community.  However, in more liberal democratic societies, which place the individual about the community in importance, it seems less likely that they will be acceptable.

Despite such concerns, the growing evidence promoted by the companies that are developing them that such digital technologies can indeed contribute to enhanced public health will serve as an important factor in breaking down public resistance to the use of surveillance technologies and big data analytics.  Once again, this will ultimately serve the interest of those who already have greater political and economic power than it will the interests of the most marginalised.

Online shopping and the redesign of urban centres.

Source: Independent.co.uk

Self-isolation and social distancing have led to the dramatic emptying of towns and cities across the world.  Businesses that have been unable to adapt to online trading have overnight been pushed into a critical survival situation, with governments in many of the richer countries of the world being “forced” to offer them financial bail-outs to help them weather the storm.  Unfortunately, most of this money is going to be completely wasted and will merely create huge national debts for years into the future.  People who rarely before used online shopping are now doing so because they believe that no other method of purchasing goods is truly safe.

The new reality will be that most people will have become so used to online shopping that they are unlikely to return in the future to traditional shopping outlets. Companies that have been unable to adjust to the new reality will fail.  The character of our inner-city areas will change beyond recognition.  This is a huge opportunity for the re-design of urban areas in creative, safe and innovative ways.  Already, the environmental impact of a reduction in transport and pollution has been widely seen; wildlife is enjoying a bonanza; people are realising that their old working and socialising patterns may not have been as good as they once thought.[xx]  Unfortunately, it is likely that this opportunity may not be fully grasped, and instead governments that lack leadership and vision will instead seek to prop up backward-looking institutions, companies and organisations, intent on preserving infrastructure and economic activities that are unfit for purpose in the post-pandemic world.  Such a mentality will lead to urban decay and ghettoization, where people will fear to tread, and there is a real danger of a downward spiral of urban deprivation.

There are, though, many bright signs of innovation and creativity for those willing to do things differently.  Shops and restaurants that have been able to find efficient trustworthy drivers are now offering new delivery services; students are able to draw on the plethora of online courses now available; new forms of communal activity are flourishing; and most companies are realising that they don’t actually need to spend money on huge office spaces, but can exploit their labour even more effectively by enabling them to work from home.

We must see the changes brought about by responses to Covid-19 as important opportunities to build for the future, and to create human-centred urban places that are also sensitive to the natural environments in which they are located.

Increasing global inequalities

Source: Gulfnews.com

The net outcome of the above four trends will lead inexorably to a fifth, and deeply concerning issue: the world will become an even more unequal place, where those who can adapt and survive will flourish, but where the most vulnerable and marginalised will become even more immiserated.

This is already all too visible.  Migrant workers are being ostracised, and further marginalised.[xxi]  In India, tens of thousands of labourers are reported to have left the cities, many of them walking home hundreds of kilometres to their villages.[xxii] In China, Africans are reported as being subjected to racist prejudice, being refused service in shops and evicted from their residences.[xxiii]  In the UK, many food banks have had to close and it is reported that about 1.5. million people a day are going without food.[xxiv]  The World Bank is reporting that an extra 40-50 million people across the world will be forced into poverty by Covid-19, especially in Africa.[xxv]  People with disabilities have become even more forgotten and isolated.[xxvi]  The list of immediate crises grows by the day.

More worrying still is that there is no certainty that these short-term impacts will immediately bounce-back once the pandemic has passed.  It seems at least as likely that many of the changes will have become so entrenched that aspects of living under Covid-19 will become the new norm.  Once again, those able to benefit from the changes will flourish, but the uneducated, those with disabilities, the ethnic minorities, people living in isolated areas, refugees, and women in patriarchal societies are all likely to find life much tougher in 2021 and 2022 even than they do at present.   Much of this rising inequality is being caused, as noted above, by the increasing role that digital technologies are playing in people’s lives.  Those who have access and can afford to use the Internet can use it for shopping, employment, entertainment, learning, and indeed most aspects of their lives.  Yet only 59% of the world’s population are active Internet users.[xxvii]

Looking positively to the future.

People will respond in different ways to these likely trends over the next few years, but we will all need to learn to live together in a world where:

• China is the global political economic power,
• Our lives will become ever more rapidly experienced and mediated through digital technology,
• Our traditional views of privacy are replaced by a world of surveillance,
• Our towns and cities have completely different functions and designs, and
• There is very much greater inequality in terms of opportunities and life experiences.

In dealing with these changes, it is essential to remain positive; to see Covid-19 as an opportunity to make the world a better place for everyone to live in, rather than just as a threat of further pain, misery and death, or an opportunity for a few to gain unexpected windfall opportunities to become even richer.  Six elements would seem to be important in seeking to ensure that as many people as possible can indeed flourish once the immediate Covid-19 pandemic has dissipated:

• First, these predictions should encourage all of us to prioritise more on enhancing the lives of the poorest and the most marginalised, than on ensuring economic growth that mainly benefits the rich and privileged. This applies at all scales, from designing national health and education services, to providing local, community level care provision.
• This requires an increased focus on negotiating communal oriented initiatives and activities rather than letting the greed and selfishness of individualism continue to rule the roost.
• Third, it is essential that we use this as an opportunity to regain our physical sentient humanity, and reject the aspirations of those who wish to create a world that is only experienced and mediated through digital technology. We need to regain our very real experiences of each other and the world in which we live through our tastes, smells, the sounds we hear, the touches we feel, and the sights we see.
• Fourth, it seems incredibly important that we create a new global political order safely to manage a world in which China replaces the USA as the dominant global power. The emergence of new political counterbalances, at a regional level as with Europe, South Asia, Africa and Latin America seems to be a very important objective that remains to be realised.  Small states that choose to remain isolated, however arrogant they are about the “Great”ness of their country, will become ever more vulnerable to the vagaries of economic, political and demographic crisis.
• Fifth, we need to capitalise on the environmental impact of Covid-19 rapidly to shape a world of which we are but a part, and in which we care for and co-operate with the rich diversity of plant and animal life that enjoys the physical richness of our planet. This will require a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of the harm caused to our world by the design and use of digital technologies.[xxviii]
• Finally, we need to agree communally on the extent to which individual privacy matters, and whether we are happy to live in a world of omnipresent surveillance by companies (enabling them to reap huge profits from our selves as data) and governments (to maintain their positions of power, authority and dominance). This must not be imposed on us by powerful others.  It is of paramount importance that there is widespread informed public and communal discussion about the future of surveillance in a post-Covid-19 era.

I trust that these comments will serve to provoke and challenge much accepted dogma and practice.  Above all, let’s try to think of others more than we do ourselves, let’s promote the reduction of inequality over increases in economic growth, and let’s enjoy  an integral, real and care-filled engagement with the non-human natural world.

---

Notes:

[i] For current figures see https://coronavirus.thebaselab.com/ and https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6, although all data related with this coronavirus must be treated with great caution; see https://unwin.wordpress.com/2020/04/11/data-and-the-scandal-of-the-uks-covid-19-survival-rate/

[ii] Modi’s hasty coronavirus lockdown of India leaves many fearful for what comes next, https://time.com/5812394/india-coronavirus-lockdown-modi/

[iii] Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Square, might well be an exception with his $1 billion donation to support Covid-19 relief and other charities; see https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21212766/jack-dorsey-coronavirus-covid-19-donate-relief-fund-square-twitter

[iv] See, for example, discussion in Unwin, T. (2017) Reclaiming ICT4D, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  I appreciate that such arguments infuriate many people living in the USA,

[v] See, for example, George Parker’s, We Are Living in a Failed State: The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken, The Atlantic, June 2020 (preview) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/.

[vi] Based on figures from https://coronavirus.thebaselab.com/ on 15^th April 2020.  For comparison, Spain had 39.74 reported deaths per 100,000, Italy 35.80, and the UK 18.96.

[vii] There are many commentaries on this, but The Wall Street Journal’s account on 9 February 2020 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-trade-war-reshaped-global-commerce-11581244201 is useful, as is the Pietersen Institute’s timeline https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/trump-trade-war-china-date-guide.

[viii] For a good account of his use of language see Eren Orbey’s comment in The New Yorker, Trump’s “Chinese virus” and what’s at stake in the coronovirus’s name,  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/whats-at-stake-in-a-viruss-name

[ix] China’s massive long-term strategic investments across the world, not least through its 一带一路 (Belt and Road) initiative, have placed it in an extremely strong position to reap the benefits of its revitalised economy from 2021 onwards (for a good summary of this initiative written in January 2020 see https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative)

[x] Kaplan, J., Frias, L. and McFall-Johnsen, M., A third of the global population is on coronavirus lockdown…, https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-on-lockdown-coronavirus-italy-2020-3?r=DE&IR=T

[xi] This is despite conspiracy theorists arguing that those who were going to gain most from Covid-19 especially in the digital tech and pharmaceutical industry had been active in promoting global fear of the coronavirus, or worse still had actually engineered it for their advantage.  See, for example, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/technology/bill-gates-virus-conspiracy-theories.html, or Thomas Ricker, Bill Gates is now the leading target for Coronavirus falsehoods, says report, https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/17/21224728/bill-gates-coronavirus-lies-5g-covid-19 .

[xii] See, for example, Shah, H. and Kumar, K., Ten digital technologies helping humans in the fight against Covid-19, Frost and Sullivan, https://ww2.frost.com/frost-perspectives/ten-digital-technologies-helping-humans-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/, Gergios Petropolous, Artificial interlligence in the fight against COVID-19, Bruegel, https://www.bruegel.org/2020/03/artificial-intelligence-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/, or Beech, P., These new gadgets were designed to fight COVID-19, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-covid19-pandemic-gadgets-innovation-technology/. It is also important to note that the notion of “fighting” the coronavirus is also deeply problematic.

[xiii] For my much more detailed analysis of these issues, see Tim Unwin (26 March 2020), collaboration-and-competition-in-covid-19-response, https://unwin.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/collaboration-and-competition-in-covid-19-response/

[xiv] For more on this see Tim Unwin (2017) Reclaiming ICT4D, Oxford: Oxford University Press, and for a brief comment https://unwin.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/dehumanization-cyborgs-and-the-internet-of-things/.

[xv] Although, significantly, Chinese companies are also involved; see https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/globalcoalition

[xvi] For the work of the Gates Foundation and US pharmaceutical companies in fighting Covid-19 https://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Article/2020/03/27/Bill-Gates-big-pharma-collaborate-on-COVID-19-treatments

[xvii] There is a huge literature, both academic and policy related, on this, but see for example OCHCR (2014) Online mass-surveillance: “Protect right to privacy even when countering terrorism” – UN expert, https://www.ohchr.org/SP/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15200&LangID=E; Privacy International, Scrutinising the global counter-terrorism agenda, https://privacyinternational.org/campaigns/scrutinising-global-counter-terrorism-agenda; Simon Hale-Ross (2018) Digital Privacy, Terrorism and Law Enforcement: the UK’s Response to Terrorist Communication, London: Routledge; and Lomas, N. (2020) Mass surveillance for national security does conflict with EU privacy rights, court advisor suggests, TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mass-surveillance-for-national-security-does-conflict-with-eu-privacy-rights-court-advisor-suggests/.

[xviii] Kharpal, A. (26 March 2020) Use of surveillance to fight coronavirus raised c oncenrs about government power after pandemic ends, CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-surveillance-used-by-governments-to-fight-pandemic-privacy-concerns.html; but see also more critical comments about the efficacy of such systems as by Vaughan, A. (17 April 2020) There are many reasons why Covid-19 contact-tracing apps may not work, NewScientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241041-there-are-many-reasons-why-covid-19-contact-tracing-apps-may-not-work/

[xix] There are widely differing views as to the ethics of this.  See, for example, Article 19 (2 April 2020) Coronavirus: states use of digital surveillance technologies to fight pandemic must respect human rights, https://www.article19.org/resources/covid-19-states-use-of-digital-surveillance-technologies-to-fight-pandemic-must-respect-human-rights/ ; McDonald, S. (30 March 2020) The digital response to the outbreak of Covid-19, https://www.cigionline.org/articles/digital-response-outbreak-covid-19. See also useful piece by Arcila (2020) for ICT4Peace on “A human-centric framework to evaluate the risks raised by contact-tracing applications” https://mcusercontent.com/e58ea7be12fb998fa30bac7ac/files/07a9cd66-0689-44ff-8c4f-6251508e1e48/Beatriz_Botero_A_Human_Rights_Centric_Framework_to_Evaluate_the_Security_Risks_Raised_by_Contact_Tracing_Applications_FINAL_BUA_6.pdf.pdf

[xx] See, for example, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200326-covid-19-the-impact-of-coronavirus-on-the-environment, https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-environmental-impact-of-covid-19/ss-BB11JxGv?li=BBoPWjQ, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/life-after-coronavirus-pandemic-change-world, and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-is-affecting-co2-emissions/.

[xxi] See The Guardian (23 April 2020) ‘We’re in a prison’: Singapore’s million migrant workers suffer as Covid-19 surges back, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/singapore-million-migrant-workers-suffer-as-covid-19-surges-back

[xxii] Al Jazeera (6 April 2020) India: Coronavirus lockdown sees exodus from cities, https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/04/india-coronavirus-lockdown-sees-exodus-cities-200406104405477.html.

[xxiii] Financial Times (13^th April) China-Africa relations rocked by alleged racism over Covid-19, https://www.ft.com/content/48f199b0-9054-4ab6-aaad-a326163c9285

[xxiv] Global Citizen (22 April 2020) Covid-19 Lockdowns are sparking a hunger crisis in the UK, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/covid-19-food-poverty-rising-in-uk/

[xxv] Mahler, D.G., Lakner, C., Aguilar, R.A.C. and Wu, H. (20 April 2020) The impact of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) on global poverty: why Sub-Saharan Africa might be the region hardest hit, World Bank Blogs, https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/impact-covid-19-coronavirus-global-poverty-why-sub-saharan-africa-might-be-region-hardest

[xxvi] Bridging the Gap (2020) The impact of Covid-19 on persons with disabilities, https://bridgingthegap-project.eu/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-people-with-disabilities/

[xxvii] Statista (Januarv 2020) https://www.statista.com/statistics/269329/penetration-rate-of-the-internet-by-region/

[xxviii] For a wider discussion of the negative environmental impacts of climate change see https://unwin.wordpress.com/2020/01/16/digital-technologies-and-climate-change/.

Servants of the poor – WSIS TalkX

It was a great honour to have been invited – a few hours beforehand – to give one of the inaugural WSIS TalkX presentations last Thursday evening as WSIS 2019 drew towards its close.  Seven of us had been asked if we would like to talk about our lives in technology for around 5 minutes. I opted to go last – just before the closing cocktail party.  Several colleagues had to leave before the end to get to other commitments and so they spoke first; I knew I would be remaining to enjoy the wine.  Before me there were some amazing, inspirational speakers: Stephenie Rodriguez, Joel Radvanyi, Gloria Kimbwala, Ayanna T Samuels, Sebastian Behaghel and Ted Chen…

With little time to prepare it was difficult to know quite what to say.  We had been asked to tell our own stories, and so I chose five images as five “scenes” around which to tell my tale.  Posting the images on social media, I had hoped that people might be able to see them as I spoke…

In reality, I’m not sure that many people actually saw the pictures, and I know many were rather confused when I began and introduced myself in the persona of one of my aliases.  I had, though, been introduced by the Master of Ceremonies as someone learning from the life of Hassan-i Sabbah…

To see and hear what I had to say, click on the image above (or here).  Fully to understand it, though, you would need to listen to the other six talks, because I tried hard to link it to what the speakers had to say – especially, for example, about the best university in the world, and the SDGs!

The basic message is simple – if we really believe in empowering the poor and the marginalised through digital technologies we must become their servants…

Why the notion of a Fourth Industrial Revolution is so problematic

Watching a video last Wednesday at UNESCO’s Mobile Learning Week produced by Huawei on the Fourth Industrial Revolution reminded me of everything that is problematic and wrong with the notion: it was heroic, it was glitzy, women were almost invisible, and above all it implied that technology was, and still is, fundamentally changing the world.  It annoyed and frustrated me because it was so flawed, and it made me think back to when Klaus Schwab first gave me a copy of his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution in 2016.  I read it, appreciated its superficially beguiling style, found much of it interesting, but realised that the argument was fundamentally flawed (for an excellent review, see Steven Poole’s 2017 review in The Guardian).  Naïvely,  I thought it was just another World Economic Forum publication that would fade away into insignificance on my bookshelves.  How wrong I was!  Together with the equally problematic notion of Frontier Technologies (see my short critique), it has become a twin-edged sword held high by global corporations and the UN alike to describe and justify the contemporary world, and their attempts to change it for the better.  Whilst I have frequently challenged the notion and construction of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, I have never yet put togther my thoughts about it in a brief, easy to read format. Huawei’s video has provoked this response built around five fundamental problems.

Problem 1: a belief that technology has changed, and is changing the world

All so-called industrial revolutions are based on the fundamentally incorrect assumption that technology is changing the world.  With respect to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Schwab thus claims that “The premise of this book is that technology and digitization will revolutionalize everything, making the overused and often ill-used adage “this time is different” apt.  Simply put, major technological innovations are on the brink of fueling momentous change throughout the world – inevitably so” (Schwab, 2016, section 1.2; see also Schwab, 2015).  The entire edifice of the Fourth Industriual Revolution is built on this myth.  However, technology itself does not change anything.  Technology is designed by people for particular purposes that serve very specific interests.  It is these that change the world, and not the technology.  The reductionist,  instrumental and deterministic views inherent within most notions of a Fourth Industrial Revolution are thus highly problematic.

In the popular mind, each so-called industrial revolution is named after a particular technology: the first associated with mechanisation, water,  steam power and railways in the late-18th and early-19th centuries; the second, mass production and assembly lines enabled by electricity in the late-19th and early-20th centuries; the third, computers and automation from the 1960s; and the fourth, often termed cyber-physical systems, based on the interconnectivity between  physical, biological and digital spheres, from the beginning of the 21st century.  However, all of these technologies were created by people to achieve certain objectives, usually to make money, become famous, or simply to overcome challenges.  It is the same today.  It is not the technologies that are changing the world, but rather the vision, ingenuity and rapaciousness of those who design, build and sell them.  Humans still have choices.  They can design technologies in the interests of the rich and powerful to make them yet richer and more powerful, or they can seek to craft technologies that empower and serve the interests of the poor and marginalised.  Those developing technologies associated with so-called “smart cities” can thus be seen as marginalising those living in rural areas and in what might disparagingly be called “stupid villages”.

Problem 2: a revolutionary view of history

Academics (especially historians and geographers) have long argued as to whether human society changes in an evolutionary or a revolutionary way.  There have thus been numerous debates as to how many agricultural revolutions there were that preceded or were associated with the so-called (first) industrial revolution (Overton, 1996). Much of this evidence suggests that whilst “revolutions” are nice, simple ideas to capture the essence of change, in reality they build on developments that have evolved over many years, and it is only when these come together and are reconfigured in new ways, to serve specific interests, that fundamental changes really occur.

For example, the Internet was initially used almost exclusively by academics, with the first e-mail systems being developed in the 1970s, and the World Wide Web in the 1980s, largely in an academic context.  It was only when the commercial potential of these technologies was fully realised in the latter half of the 1990s that use of the Web really began to expand rapidly.  In this context, most things associated with the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution actually seem to be extensions of ideas that existed very much earlier.  The notion of integrated physical-biological systems is, for example, not something dramatically new in the 21st century, but rather has its genesis in the notion of cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs, at least as early as the 1960s.

More importantly, the main drivers of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution go back many centuries, and each previous “revolution” was merely an evolving process to find new ways of configuring them.  If there was any fundamental “revolutionary” change, it occurred in the rise of individualism and the Enlightenment during the 17th century in Europe.  Even this had many precursors.  Fully to understand the digital economies of the 21st century, we need to appreciate the shift in balance from communal to individual interests some four centuries previously.  Once it was appreciated that individual investment in the means of production could generate greater productivity and profit, and institutions were set in place to enable this (such as land enclosure, patent law and copyright), then the scene was set for “money bent upon accretion of money”, or capital (Marx, 1867), to become the overaching driver of an increasingly global economic system in the centuries that followed.  The interests underlying the so called Fourth Industrial Revolution are largely the same as those driving the economic, social and political systems of the previous 400 years: market expansion and a reduction of labour costs through the use of technology.  It is these interests, rather than the technologies themeselves that are of most importance.

Problem 3: an élite view of history

The notion of industrial revolutions is also largely an expression of an élite view of history. It is about, and written by, the élites who shape them and enable them.  It is about the owners of the factories rather than the labourers, it is about innovative geniuses rather than the peasants labouring to produce food for them, and it is about the wise politicians who see the potential of these technologies to transform the world in their own image.  Certainly, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is premised on an assumption that global corporations and brilliant innovative minds are driving the technological revolution that will change the world for what they see as being the better.  It is also no coincidence that the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution was established in the USA, and that most of its proponents seem to be drawn from US élites (see for example the World Economic Forum’s video What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?).  The notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution clearly serves the interests of USAn élite politicans, academics and business leaders far more than it does the poor and marginalised living in remote rural areas of South Asia, or the slums of Africa.

Counter to such views are those of academics and practitioners who argue that history should be as much about the poor and underprivileged as it is about their political,  military or industrial leaders.  The poor have left few historical records about their lives, and yet they vastly outnumber the few élite people who have ruled and controlled them.  Traditional history has been the history of the literate, designed to reinforce their positions of power, and this remains true of accounts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  In 2017, Oxfam reported that eight people thus owned the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity; five of these people made most of their wealth directly from the technology sector.  In an increasingly unequal world, the way to create greater equality cannot be through the use of the technologies that have created those inequalities in the first place.  Rather, to change the global balance of power, there needs to be a history that focuses on the lives of the poorest and most marginalised, rather than one that glorifies élites in the interests of maintaining their hold over power.

Problem 4: male heroes of the revolution

One of the most striking and shocking features of the Huawei video that prompted this critique was that almost all of the people illustrated as the heroes of the industrial revolutions were men.  Most historical accounts of industrial revolutions likewise focus on male innovators and industrialists, and yet women played a very significant part in shaping the outcomes of these technological changes, not least in their roles as workers and as mothers.  Not only are accounts of industrial revolutions élite histories, they are mainly also male histories.  It is thus scarcely surprising that men continue to dominate the rhetoric and imagery of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, despite the efforts of those who have sought to reveal the important role that women such as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper or Radia Perlman played in the origins of digital technologies (see techradar, 2018).

The perspective of a masculine revolutionary view of societal change presents significant challenges for those of us working to involve more women and girls in science and technology (see for example TEQtogether).  Much more needs to be done to highlight the roles of women in history, especially histories of technology, and to encourage girls to appreciate the roles that these women have played in the past and thus the potential they have to change the future themselves (see for example, the Women’s History Review and the Journal of Women’s History).  Otherwise, the masculine domination of the digital technology sector will continue to reproduce itself in ways that reproduce the gender inequalities and oppression that persist today.

Problem 5: the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a self-fulfilling prophecy

Finally, the idea of a heroic, male industrial revolution has been promoted in large part as a self fulfilling prophecy.  Schwab’s book and its offspring are not so much a historical account of the past, but rather a programme for the future, in which technology will be used to make the world a better place.  This is hugely problematic, because these technologies have actually been used to create significant inedqualiites in the world, and they are are continuing to do so at an ever faster rate.

The problem is that although the espoused aspirations to do good of those acclaiming the Fourth Industrial Revolution  may indeed be praiseworthy, they are starting at the wrong place.   The interests of those shaping these technologies are not primarily in changing the basis of our society into a fairer and more equal way of living together, but rather they are in competing to ensure their dominance and wealth as far as possible into the future.  The idea of a Fourth Industrial Revolution seeks to legitimise such behaviour at all levels from that of states such as the USA, to senior leaders and investors in  technology companies, to young entrepreneurs eager to make their first million.  Almost all are driven primarily by their interests in money bent on the accretion of money; some are beguiled by the prestige of potential status as a hero of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  In some cultures such behaviour is indeed seen as being good, but in others there are greater goods.  The Fourth Industrial Revolution is in large part a conspiracy to shape the world ever more closely in the imagination of a small, rich, male and powerful élite.

Is it not time to reflect once more on the true meanings of a revolutionary idea, and to help empower some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people to create a world that is better in their eyes rather than in our own?

[For a wider discussion of revolution, see Unwin, Tim, A revolutionary idea, in: Unwin, Tim (ed.) A European Geography, Pearson, 1998.  As ever, please also note that a short post cannot include everything, so remember to read this in the broader context of my other writing, and especially Reclaiming ICT4D (OUP, 2017).  For my thoughts on the other edge of the two-edged sword, do read my much shorter “Why the notion of ‘frontier technologies’ is so problematic…“]

Dubai in 1980

Continuing the digitization of some of my early slide collections, I post below a selection of pictures from Dubai in 1980.  I remember it then undergoing a building boom, but that was of a completely different scale from what has subsequently happened over the last 30 years or so.  I wish I had been there in the 1960s, when by all reports it was a small, sleepy town built around the harbour! However, my pictures do still capture something of the old character of the city, and the busy waterfront.  I loved wandering around the Bastakiya quarter, and remember being fascinated by the wind towers and architecture. It is good to see the sympathetic restoration that has taken place in the quarter in recent years, but it does not have quite the same atmosphere that it did then!  It was good to wander in the suq and see all of the glittering gold that i could never afford! I also loved just watching the small boats and dhows plying their trade along the creek. My favourite hotel was undoubtedly the Meridien, a quiet oasis where I could escape from the business of the city, but surprisingly I never took a photograph of it!

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Religions in the UK’s 2011 census: David Cameron and his critics

The rather strange and surprisingly vehement exchange of views that has erupted following the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron’s, comments about “faith and the importance of Christianity in our country”,  and those who wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph criticising his “characterisation of Britain as a ‘Christian country'”, made me explore some of the data that has been published on religious affiliation in the UK.  I found the results somewhat surprising.

Cameron’s critics claim that “Repeated surveys, polls and studies show that most of us as individuals are not Christian in our beliefs or our religious identities”.  So, I turned to the England and Wales Census of 2011, and the reports on it from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for an update of the situation.  The question on religion was the only voluntary question in the 2011 census, and yet interestingly only 7.2% chose not to answer it.  This might be taken as suggesting that questions about religious affiliation are indeed something that do matter to the majority of people.  As the ONS notes, though, defining religion or religious affiliation is indeed complex: “The question (‘What is your religion?’) asks about religious affiliation, that is how we connect or identify with a religion, irrespective of actual practise or belief. Religion is a many sided concept and there are other aspects of religion such as religious belief, religious practice or belonging which are not covered in this analysis”.  The questions we ask undoubtedly influence the answers we get!

The responses to this question need to be treated with caution, but according to the census, the largest religion in the 2011 Census was Christianity with 33.2 million people, representing a substantial and surprising 59.3% of the population.  Muslims were the next largest religious group, although with only 4.8% of the population.  25.1% of the population said that they had no religion.  Of the other main religious groups: 817,000 people identified themselves as Hindu (1.5% of population); 423,000 people identified as Sikh (0.8% ); 263,000 people as Jewish (0.5% ) and 248,000 people as Buddhist (0.4% ).

Religious affiliation, England and Wales, 2011 (Source: ONS)

According to these figures, I find it very hard to accept the views of Cameron’s critics at face value.  As comparison with the 2001 census shows (see below), things are undoubtedly changing.  There has certainly been an increase in those reporting “no religion”, from 14.8% of the population in 2001 to 25.1% in 2011.  Likewise, there has been a substantial decline in those reporting to be Christian, from 71.7%  in 2001 to 59.3%  in 2011.

Change in religious affiliation, England and Wales, 2001-2011 (Source: ONS)

However, at least based on these figures, which unlike representative surveys include responses from almost all of the population, it would indeed seem to be the case that England and Wales are still largely a Christian country, and that Cameron’s critics are wrong in claiming that “most of us as individuals are not Christian in our beliefs or our religious identities”.

The problem with this debate is that the two sides seem to be focusing on rather different meanings and interpretations.  Cameron’s critics have focused primarily on their argument that “most British people … do not want religions or religious identities to be actively prioritised by their elected government”, and they are critical of Cameron for introducing religion into politics; it would actually be quite interesting to see data on whether or not their claim is true. Cameron, on the other hand, seems to have been focusing both on his own faith, and on the heritage that Christianity has given to the country and its people.  Again, I have to side with Cameron on the second of these.  Whilst many other religions, and indeed non-religious perspectives, have shaped Britain in recent centuries, Christianity has been the major religious influence over the last 1500 years, and has had a very major impact on our society, culture, and indeed landscapes.

So, to me, this debate is largely a political one, and actually has rather little to do with religion or faith.  In terms of religious beliefs and people practising religions, it is clear that there has indeed been a dramatic decline in Christianity, with a Tearfund report in 2007 indicating that only 15% go to a church at least once a month, and most of the evidence suggests that churchgoing has continued to decline since then.  Accordingly, the moral values of the majority of people are indeed no longer based on a deep Christian faith – if ever they were – but this is something entirely different from saying that Britain is not a Christian country. Indeed, I have a sneaking suspicion that there is some truth in Cameron’s assertion that Britain is more welcoming to people of other faiths than many other countries, “precisely because the tolerance that Christianity demands of our society provides greater space for other religious faiths”.

While on the evidence of the census, it is fascinating to note the substantial regional differences in religious affiliation, as the ONS map below indicates:

Spatial distribution of Christian population, 2011 (Source: ONS)

According to ONS figures, Christianity was the largest religion in all local authorities except Tower Hamlets where there were more people who identified as Muslim.  The spatial distribution of people with different religious affiliations is itself fascinating: the local authorities with the next highest percentage of Muslims were Newham, Blackburn with Darwen, Bradford and Luton; Hindu representation was highest in Harrow, Brent, Leicester, Redbridge and Hounslow; Sikhs were most represented in Slough, Wolverhamtpon, Hounslow, Sandwell and Ealing; Buddhists in Rushmoor, Greenwich, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hounslow; and Jews in Barnet, Hertsmere, Hackney, Bury and Camden.  One of the riches of Britain is indeed our cultural diversity.