Interview: Cleo Paskal on Tonga in the Matangi Tonga

Cleo Paskal spent much of August and September in the South Pacific nation of the Kingdom of Tonga, learning as much as she could in the lead up to its elections on November 25th. Mary Lyn Fonua of the Matangi Tonga interviewed Cleo about her visit. An excerpt (for the full interview, click here):


What was interesting for me was this very unique situation of having to think through many of the fundamentals of an electoral process from scratch. What do you do about term limits? What do you do about term lengths? What do you do about campaign financing? These are all critical, extremely important issues that other countries are still struggling with and they were all being dealt with at the same time; and on top of that it's fundamentally a foreign system. There are traditional government structures that have worked for a very long time, at the village level, at the church level. So the whole question of not only good governance but appropriate governance is all coming to a head here, now, and there are questions that are of universal importance anywhere human society has to govern itself. This is a unique place, and a unique time, and a unique set of circumstances for thinking about those sorts of issues.

Cleo Paskal Interviewed in Canadian Business on Economic Implications of Environmental Change

Jordan Timm of Canadian Business Magazine interviewed Cleo on some of the ways environmental change could affect investments. An excerpt:


A typhoon hits Shanghai
Hurricane Katrina showed the level of destruction a storm can wreak on a developed city, and while a hit on New York isn't impossible, another global financial centre is extremely vulnerable. "Shanghai is like New Orleans," says Cleo Paskal, author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. "It's very low-lying, it's in an active delta, it's in a typhoon zone. For the last few years they've been evacuating literally hundreds of thousands of people from that coastline in anticipation of typhoon hits." Paskal says a direct typhoon hit on Shanghai could have severe repercussions, economically and globally. "If the hit is severe enough, China may have to sell off T-bills in order to fund domestic reconstruction, and pull out of strategic foreign investments for the same reason." In that scenario, she expects China to dump its holdings in secondary markets like Europe.


The big thirst
"Right now, in most economic equations water is valued at zero," says Paskal. But as it becomes an increasingly critical resource for agriculture and energy production (as much as 40% of fresh groundwater in the United States and Europe passes through an energy plant at some point), that may no longer be feasible. "A lot of economic calculations about what is viable will need to be reassessed. The water supply isn't so much a water issue as it is an energy issue." We could see one vulnerable province start bulk water sales, opening the floodgates under NAFTA. But the Holy Grail of water science, Paskal says, is a cheap desalination technology: "Whoever comes up with that is going to be a very rich person."

Video: Commonwealth Club of California interview with Cleo Paskal

fora.tv has the interview Cleo Paskal did with Amy Standen from KQED at the Commonwealth Club of California (San Francisco). It covers a range of environmental change and security issues. 

Profile of Cleo Paskal (with interview) in the Toronto Star

Antonia Zerbisias, the great Toronto Star columnist interviewed Cleo before her IdeaCity talk. An excerpt:

Q: When you say that the world map will be redrawn, how much upheaval will there be?

A: If the U.S. doesn't start to deal with the domestic disruption, then I am very concerned that it will fragment and destabilize. If that happens, the world will be severely affected.

For more cheerful news, click here. 

Review of Global Warring and Interview with Cleo in the Calgary Herald

Trent Edwards of the Calgary Herald reviewed Global Warring and interviewed Cleo for the paper. An excerpt:


Cleo Paskal may be an academic, but her new book is frighteningly practical.
Frightening, because Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic And Political Crises Will Redraw The World Map (Key Porter Books, $32.95) rings the alarm for all of us about the environmental changes that have the potential to devastate the world during the 21st century....
Paskal, a Canadian geopolitics expert and foreign correspondent who lives in London, England, spent a decade researching her thought-provoking book.
In it, she shows just how interdependent countries have become, and how a fast-changing environment will test nations' ability to adapt, likely causing unexpected shifts in global economic, political and security landscapes along with the more obvious changes in the physical landscape.
She delves into problem areas that could start future conflicts, such as access to water and resources in Asia, economic trends that are shifting the balance of power (such as China's policy of nationalistic capitalism) and geopolitical realignments (such as the burgeoning strategic partnership between the U.S. and India)....
Paskal's book isn't all doom and gloom. She offers helpful advice for how to prepare for, mitigate and recover from the coming changes in the environment.


To read the rest of the review, and the interview, click here.

National Geographic interviews Cleo Paskal on vulnerability of energy infrastructure

Christine Dell'Amore's interesting feature for National Geographic News on the vulnerability of energy infrastructure to environmental change uses research from Cleo's Briefing Paper on the topic, as well as interviewing Cleo herself. A sample excerpt:

[A lack] of foresight in planning energy infrastructure is common, especially in the U.S., where billions of stimulus dollars are being poured into new energy projects that haven't factored in future catastrophes, Paskal added. "We are underestimating our own vulnerabilities," she said, "quite dramatically."

You can read more here. 

Gulnura Toralieva interview Cleo Paskal on environmental change in Central Asia

Multitasking journalist Gulnura Toralieva interviewed Cleo on some of the implications and politics of environmental change in Central Asia.  


You can hear an excerpt here. 

Interview with Cleo Paskal -- in Russian!

No, Cleo doesn't speak Russian. She is still working on English (according to some editors). Someone was kind enough to translate. You can see it by clicking here.

Interview (video) with Cleo Paskal by Geoff Dabelko, Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program on the vulnerabilities of energy infrastructure to environmental change

Review of Global Warring and Interview with Cleo Paskal by Patrick Lejtenyi of the Montreal Mirror

The Mirror newspaper in Montreal ran a review of Global Warring sprinkled with some quotes from an interview with Cleo Paskal, giving her instant street cred with procrastinating students across the city. An excerpt:


[...] in Paskal’s new book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map, the changing world is creating a new playing field in which the Great Powers will struggle for power and influence. A cool, clear-eyed analysis of the emerging geopolitics, Global Warring does not engage in climate change-induced scenario speculation nor does it offer emotional appeals to curbing emissions. It simply explains what the new realities are, and what we can do to adapt to them. 

To read more, click here.

Interview with Cleo Paskal in the Montreal Gazette

Catherine Solyom from Cleo Paskal's hometown paper, the Montreal Gazette, just ran an extensive interview with Cleo, making her parents very proud, and confusing old high school classmates who thought she had died sometime in the mid-1990s on Butaritari atoll (a rumour started after she filed a story on Butaritari for the CBC mentioning how sick she got there -- though the fact she filed the story should have been an indicator that she survived). An excerpt:

In your book, you talk about the developed world's mistaken belief that it won't be significantly affected by climate change. What do you see happening in Quebec?

One question will be what happens with the St. Lawrence Seaway. If we see big reductions in the levels of the Great Lakes, then the St. Lawrence Seaway may reduce in level. That could mean a few things - one, that the big ships can't get up into the Great Lakes anymore and Montreal can become a bigger port, another might be the salt-water front in the St. Lawrence could move and we'd have to push back our water filtration plants. And with more mild winters and increasing winter precipitation, it's possible there will be more ice storms.

You mention the ice storm of 1998 in your book. What are the lessons to be learned from the ice storm here and Hurricane Katrina in the U.S.?

The developed world is heavily reliant on network-provided power, and when that power goes, we lose everything we consider to be normal components of modern life - our communications systems, our banking systems, our refrigeration, our heating, all goes. So what is sustaining the way we live is actually very narrow and potentially very fragile. I was lucky enough to be able to travel with the Canadian military during the ice storm and they did a phenomenal job - that really drove home the importance of having trained professionals who are capable of dealing with emergency situations, something that was visibly lacking in New Orleans.

There we saw that environmental change can create its own problems, but it can exacerbate existing problems. So if you have a society that is already fragmented, where the resources are already stretched, where the emergency services are understaffed and under-equipped, if you have a disruption, everything gets very bad very quickly. It's not just that the environment is changing, it's our reaction to that changing environment that really determines how bad the situation will be.

What is your analysis of what's happening in Haiti?

What's happening in Haiti is heartbreaking and tragic. There's not much that can be said. But what's interesting is that many of the houses were built to withstand hurricanes so they had concrete roofs that became a death trap in an earthquake. So when we're looking at how to build resilience, it's important to take into account the range of threats. The other thing is to see who is good at responding to these disasters. Which nations have been able to get people in in order to help quickly? It will take a few weeks to figure out who's done it successfully. But I would hope that the countries that didn't would take a look at their emergency services and see how they can be bolstered. Because unfortunately we will be dealing with many more national disasters in the years to come.

To read more, click here.

Interview with Cleo on the Huffington Post

Jerry Cope writes in the Huffington Post about climate change and security in Copenhagen, and interviews Cleo on some specifics. Sample Q&A:

Jerry Cope: You seem to be quit clear that the concerns should be domestic as well as international.

Cleo: It's not a complete assessment and if anything contains the words climate change as opposed to environment change you know it's not a complete assessment. Climate change will feed into other environmental changes. If you are assessing climate change but not what the US Army Corps of Engineers is doing to your coastline you are not getting a complete picture.

Click here to read more...

CalicutNet Interview with Cleo

One of the questions:

Rajesh Kumar Edacheri: Do you think climate change will worsen poverty, political instability and regional conflicts?

Cleo: It can, but it is not inevitable. With thought, effort and will we can get through this. We have to.

Think of a factory on the coast of Kerala. If it continues as usual, it might first have problems with erosion affecting its foundation; then power lines down the coast might fall over, affecting its electrical supply; then the building itself may flood. And flood again. It will face problem after problem until it is too much and it collapses.

Alternatively, it can defend itself, perhaps with anti-erosion techniques; can put in its own renewable energy supply, covering the cost of installation by selling off the excess energy it generates; and then become highly profitable as it develops and sells a new water purification system.

Business usual is not going to work anymore. But we all are in a position to turn that challenge into an opportunity and to create more stability and security for ourselves, our neighbors, our communities and our countries, and the world. We have to. The cost of failure is unimaginable.

Click to read more....