Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

The World Health Organization estimates that around 7 million people die every year from the air they breathe. Air pollution is a major killer around the globe and one that disproportionately affects low and middle income countries.    There are two kinds of air pollution. The first is called ambient air pollution, and that is basically the air we breathe when we are outside. The second is called household air pollution, and this is air pollution driven by the use of dirty burning  stoves inside the home.    The WHO recently released a report about the global burden of air pollution, and what communities around the world are doing to combat it. Here to discuss that report and the challenge of air pollution more broadly is Dr. Maria Neira, director of the department of public health, environment and social determinants of health at the WHO.    We talk through some of the big data and root causes of air pollution and have a longer conversation about global and local strategies to improve air quality around the world.

Something truly remarkable in African history and global affairs occurred on June 26 when Eritrean leaders flew to the capitol of Ethiopia for peace talks.  In the late 1990s the two countries fought each other in a brutal war, and despite a peace agreement they have remained actively hostile to each other. But that seems to be changing. And quickly.  On the line with me to discuss this detente between two previously irreconcilable foes is Michael Woldermairam, an Assistant Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University  We discuss the roots of the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and why this easing of tensions appears to be happening now.

Mary Robinson was the first female President of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997. She then served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and has since undertaken a variety of roles at the UN system, focusing on human rights, gender equality and, as is the focus of our conversation today, climate justice.  Mary Robinson and I have an extended conversation about what climate justice means and what it entails--and this was a concept, I admit, that I was unaware of until Mary Robinson began to champion it.    We spoke a couple of weeks ago in Yerevan, Armenia, where Mary Robinson was serving as part of the jury pool to select the winner of this year's Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. This is an honor that was bestowed on a Rohingya human rights lawyer named Kyaw Hla Ang. And if you want to learn more about the Aurora Prize and the Aurora humanitarian initiative, i'd encourage you to visit AuroraPrize.org. And I should say, I'll have an interview with one of the finalists coming up in the next few weeks.    Mary Robinson and I had a tight 15 minutes between panel sessions at the conference--and I was glad she made time for this interview. I think you'll like it.

My guest today, Kari Hong is an assistant professor at the Boston College law school and an expert on US asylum policy and law. As you can imagine, we have an extended conversation about the tragedy unfolding at the Southern US border, where the Trump administration has mandated the separation of migrant children from their parents in order to deter them from claiming asylum and expedite their removal from the country.  This is inhumane, barbaric and as Kari Hong explains, not in compliance with both the laws and tradition around seeking asylum in the United States. She does a good job of putting this new family separation policy in the context and history of how the US has typically handled claims of asylum. And a little more than halfway  through this conversation we get to what I think is the heart of the matter: that separating children from their parents at the border is designed to force parents to enter a guilty plea to a misdemeanor offense which cuts off their ability to claim asylum.

For many years Tom Catena was the only doctor in the Nuba Mountain region of Sudan. This is an area on the border between Sudan and South Sudan. In 2011 it was the site of intense fighting between government forces and local groups aligned with the South.   Throughout this fighting, which lasted for years, Tom Catena ran the Mother of Mercy Hospital. He saw thousands upon thousands of patients every year under the most difficult of circumstances. His hospital was bombed, his house was targeted, but Tom Catena never left. And he is still working there to this day.    I caught up with Tom in Yerevan, Armenia where he was on hand to participate in events around the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.  Last year, Tom won this prize, which is conferred by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative. This is a group established by Armenian and Armenian-American philanthropists in honor of the survivors of the Armenian genocide. The idea behind the prize is to honor individuals who are standing up for human rights, often without much recognition and in extremely difficult circumstances. The winner this year was a Rohignya human rights lawyer named Kyaw Hla Aung.    I had the honor of participating in events around Yerevan last week and collecting some great interviews with fascinating people that I look forward to sharing with you in the coming weeks.

When I last spoke with my guest today, Kelsey Davenport, the saber rattling between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un had reached a fever pitch. North Korea was launching nuclear and missile tests; the United States was undertaking aggressive military drills, with Donald Trump routinely threatening war via Twitter. Then this meeting in Singapore happened. Now things look much different, so I invited Kelsey Davenport back on the show to help explain the significance of this meeting and what we may expect next from this diplomatic opening between the United States and North Korea. Kelsey Davenport is the Director for Non Proliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association and a longtime analyst of the situation on the Korean Peninsula. She does a very good job explaining both what happened in Singapore -- beyond the optics.  She also offers some helpful analysis to help us understand how this diplomatic process may shake out in the coming months. If you have 20 minutes and want to learn what comes next in high stakes diplomacy with North Korea then have a listen.     Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that I have just released a new bonus episode of the show that is exclusively for premium subscribers to the podcast--these are the amazing people who make a monthly recurring contribution to the show via the Patreon platform.   The bonus episode features Samantha Power and the activist John Prendergast, who was the co-founder of the Enough Project. I participated in a short but sweet press roundtable with them last week and decided to share with premium subscribers part of that conversation. You'll hear Samantha Power talk about examples of democratic renewal around the world in the context of democratic backsliding; and you'll hear John Prendergast address questions about being perceived as a "white savior." It was quite and interesting conversation and I am glad to be able to serve it to my premium subscribers, who really do help keep the lights on around there.   If you want to become a premium subscriber to unlock this episode and other bonus episodes, and also receive a complimentary subscription to my daily email news clips service then please sign up. I'll post a link in the description field of the podcast and you can also find a link at GlobalDispatchesPodcast.com    https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches

I spent the last weekend of May at a conference in Stockholm called the New Shape Forum. This was an ideas festival and prize competition and workshop all around new ideas for better organizing the world to confront catastrophic global risks.   The Global Challenges Foundation, which convened this, solicited new ideas for global governance and received several thousand ideas from all over the world. Of these submissions, 14 finalists were selected to present their ideas at the New Shape Forum.   And then those of us invited to the conference all got down to work. We identified the ideas we thought we could help refine and spent two days building upon them. At the end of the conference, three of those 14 ideas were selected as winners, and the winning ideas got $600,000 each.    My guest today, Natalie Samarsinghe is one of those winners. She is the executive director of the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom--though she wants to stress that this episode was recorded in her personal capacity, as was the idea she submitted.    She came up with a proposal for a novel kind of UN Reform --  not a reform of the Security Council, or the General Assembly. Rather, it is a proposal for how UN agencies can better design and implement programs and projects around the world.    You can find the other two winning ideas and other finalists at Global Challenges.org    This episode is presented by the Global Challenges Foundation, which recently convened the New Shape Forum in Stockholm. This was a platform where over 200 leading thinkers and experts discussed fresh ideas for improving global governance to tackle the world's most pressing problems. Next, the Global Challenges Foundation is partnering with the Paris Peace Forum in November to present further developed and more holistic ideas for confronting global catastrophic risks.  Visit GlobalChallenges.org to learn more.

My guest today, David Beasley is the executive director of the World Food Program. We caught up not long after he visited both the Sahel region of western Africa and from North Korea, where the World Food Program is actively engaged. We kick off discussing the situation in the Sahel, where food security conditions are rapidly deteriorating because of a combination of lower than normal rainfall and insurgent activities. Beasley describes the situation there, and also the link between food security and extremism.  We then discuss a trip he took to North Korea a few weeks ago, including his overall impressions of food availability in North Korea and how nuclear diplomacy with North Korea may impact the humanitarian situation there.   David Beasley took over as executive director of the WFP one year ago. He's a former politician who previously served as Governor of the state of South Carolina.

Amy Israel is the global health thought leadership and policy director for the health and pharmaceutical company, Lilly.  In that role, she's recently launched a new pilot project to combat high rates of diabetes in three neigbourhoods of the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. But this is a global health story, because the pilot project is using a model for health intervention that was pioneered in the developing world. This is often called the community health worker model, and global health nerds will be familiar with its basic outlines. But in short, it is the idea of training people of the community to be first points of contact between their neighbors and the health care system.   In our conversation, Amy discusses how the pilot project will work with three poorer neighborhoods of Indianapolis, where rates of diabetes are exponentially higher than in wealthier parts of the city and state. We discuss the link between diabetes and poverty and also, more broadly, how health ideas created in the developing world are being applied here in the United States.

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins made history earlier this year when she completed what is said to be the largest ever transfer of land from a private entity to a government. In a ceremony in Chile with President Michelle Bachelet at her side, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins formally handed over 1 million acres of land of while President Bachelet designated 9 million more acres to create vast new national parks. This created areas of protected wilderness about the size of Switzerland. That ceremony was the culmination of decades of work by Kristine and her late husband Doug Tompkins. Kristine was the longtime CEO of the outdoor apparel company Patagonia. Doug, who died in a kayaking accident in 2015, was the co-founder of the clothing companies North Face and Espirit. Together, the created the non-profit Tompkins Conservation. In this conversation, Kristine Tompkins discusses the origins of her work as a conversationist and as a pioneer of corporate social responsibility. She also describes the process of creating wilderness areas in partnerships with governments. We caught up while she was in New York to receive an award from the United Nations Environment Program.