Andrew Crighton
Life Editor
March 3 and 4 marked the 45th annual Frank Church Symposium at ISU. It featured many delegates from around the country including ISU faculty, alumni and other experts. All the presenters examined the many aspects of sustainable development.
The panels on Thursday examined areas such as the basic needs of human life, struggles for political power and how war and peacekeeping are influenced in the search for this power.
Thursday night was marked by the keynote, which was presented by His Excellency Arun K. Singh, Indian Ambassador to the United States. Singh discussed the challenges that India faces while attempting to expand its economy, and move away from the reliance on agriculture and replace those jobs with manufacturing.
According to Ambassador Singh, India missed this key stage of development while under British occupation. The country moved from an agricultural economy to a service economy, skipping the traditional mid-step of manufacturing.
In order to begin this process while maintaining sustainability, one key area of importance is increasing usage of renewable energy, notably, solar power. Solar provides an opportunity to help move the economy towards manufacturing as well, by creating the manufacturing plants for the solar panels used across the nation.
The Friday discussion panels examined displaced peoples, medicine and technology and economics. Professor Laura Dean, Clayton State University, presented on the number of refugees and internally displaced people within the country of Ukraine, and the difficulties associated with the war.
There are an estimated four to five million internally displaced people within the country of Ukraine, and as the war continues, the ability and willingness of communities to provide shelter, work and food drops lower and lower.
Professor Zackary Heern, Idaho State University, focused on the ongoing war in Syria.
Heern described Syria as the, “Failure of the Arab Spring.” To date, it is estimated that nearly half of the Syrian population, 11 million of the pre-war population of 23 million, has been displaced either within the country or to the point they have fled.
By the end of 2015, approximately 3,000 refugees had been accepted into the United States, a statistic that prompted Heern to say, “In my opinion if the United States can be involved in this war, and fight, have their own proxy in the war, they should be able to take some of the fallout.”
Major General Tony Taguba, United States Army Retired and ISU alum, agreed with this sentiment when giving his own presentation, discussing the difficulties in rebuilding a nation after a war, but also the aid that often goes unnoticed by the media.
Taguba gave an anecdote of his deployment during Operation Iraqi Freedom, that when soldiers sent messages home asking people to send boxes filled with some of the basic needs of living, the response swamped the mail system in the area. He describes FedEx planes parked at Baghdad International Airport, with soldiers distributing the boxes to those who came.
Taguba mentioned the fact that the United States has had a recent trend of spending a lot of money on war, but not considering the funds necessary for rebuilding after the fighting.
Taguba also gave a one-on-one interview discussing Syrian refugees and the U.S.’s responsibility.
Saju Matthew, of the International Justice Mission discussed everyday violence; not that caused by war, but by people who are simply in poverty, particularly those who are enslaved.
There are an estimated 21 to 36 million people enslaved across the world today. For comparison, the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade to the U.S. resulted in around 17 million.
Medicine and technology was the topic of another of the panels.
Rafi Ahmed, Ph.D. at Emory University and ISU alum, discussed the difficulties of finding a vaccine for HIV, and why it has taken over three decades to develop even a hint of protection with a vaccine. One of the main causes for this difficulty, explained Ahmed, is that the virus is highly varied, and in order for a vaccine to provide protection it would need to be effective against around 100 different strains of the virus.
Professor Ahmed also gave a one-on-one interview discussing the current research on the Zika virus; look for the separate article in next week’s issue.
Within the discussion of medicine technology, Professor Monica Mispireta, Idaho State University, evaluated how preparation for the possible epidemics that follow natural disasters can influence the death rate.
With the example of cholera outbreaks after the 1992 Peruvian mudslides and the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Mispireta explained that because the health care system in Peru was acclimated to the treatment of diarrhea, and the community had knowledge of what to do when individuals showed signs of illness, the mortality rate was at 0.7 percent.
In Haiti however, the system was not acclimated to treatment of this disease and was not prepared. As a result, the initial mortality rate was 10 times higher, at 7 percent until aid arrived.
Fahim Rahim, M.D. discussed the missing women phenomenon and gender disparity within health care. Rahim explained throughout the world, there is a shortfall in the number of women from what you would expect, adding up to 80 to 90 million women.
In many cultures as well, young women are victimized. Rahim tells a story of an African country, he would not disclose the name, where an aid organization built a school for the children of the area.
After a period of time, they found that many of the girls were withdrawn from classes. They discovered that while gaining an education was invaluable to the children of the area, parents had to balance that the walk to and from school was when their young girls were most vulnerable; when assaults and rapes were most likely to happen.
Professor Jerald Schnoor, University of Iowa, discussed the necessity to change the way that we use water, and argued that within the very near future, climate change will become undeniable because of water.
Water unsustainability is an issue of key importance as well. According to Schnoor, because of climate change we can expect natural droughts to last for longer, as well as man-made droughts.
Because of climate change, we have seen weather patterns go to extremes, with examples like hurricane Sandy, hurricane Patricia and typhoon Haiyan, all of which were the largest storm on record for those areas.
“It was a good run, but now it’s time to get out.” Not because we are out of fossil fuels, but because their continued use at this rate is unsustainable.
If you would like to watch any of the panel discussions, lectures or the keynote presentation, all of them are available to watch at the ISU YouTube page at: www.youtube.com/user/idahostateu.
