作为由全球顶级社科学术期刊《哈佛国际评论》（Harvard International Review）主办的写作竞赛，HIR哈佛国际评论学术写作竞赛（HAWC）自2020年创办以来，已成为国际中学生展示学术能力、培养全球视野的重要平台。其含金量不仅体现在赛事的权威性上，更在于对参赛者综合能力的深度锤炼和名校申请中的独特价值。
Surveillance has become a ubiquitous part of people’s lives; it takes any number of forms, but the surveillance state exists wherever governments do. Part of the national security law passed by China towards the end of June 2020 codified and expanded the Chinese government’s ability to massively surveil the citizens of Hong Kong in order to halt political subversion. In the United States, corporations and industry organizations—including the Chamber of Commerce—have urged the federal government to expand its use of facial recognition technology as a tool for policing, border security, and more. The Israeli government’s response to COVID-19 includes a provision granting the country’s internal security agency the power to monitor and collect cell phone location data. On a global scale, responses to the coronavirus are accelerating the expansion of the surveillance state, particularly as a tool for authoritarian regimes.
Currently, domestic surveillance law is under the purview of individual nations. But national borders cannot neatly confine the modern surveillance state as a domestic issue. Cross-border surveillance—when nations surveil individuals in other countries—is becoming increasingly prevalent, and laws controlling it have not kept up. Many countries simply have no restrictions on entities conducting electronic surveillance outside their borders. In contrast, the United States has specific legal frameworks regarding cross-border surveillance. And in the most extreme instances, the governments of multiple nations collaborate to conduct cross-border surveillance, as the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did with Project Echelon, “a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.”
Unfettered international surveillance creates an array of issues, from invading intellectual privacy to distorting power relationships between state and citizen to accelerating discrimination and human rights abuses. The surveillance state is ubiquitous and increasingly transnational, so the realm of international law presents an opportunity to build a theoretical framework for at least protecting the human rights and privacy of non-citizens from foreign surveillance. Considering and implementing this framework is a necessary first step in the path to a universal reduction in surveillance for all people in all nations.
While the origins of global surveillance reach back to intelligence sharing between Allied Powers’ armed forces during the Second World War, in recent decades, technology has increased the capacity of nations to conduct widespread surveillance due to the rise of mobile phones and the internet. The public’s awareness of this issue dramatically rose with Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks unveiling illegal surveillance conducted by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) and other nations’ intelligence agencies. The documents disclosed by Snowden unveiled the extent to which governments collaborated with one another and corporations to establish a system for the collection, analysis, and use of data on their citizens and non-citizens alike. The system includes collection of telephone metadata, email communications, financial transactions, smartphone data, and even the infiltration of commercial data systems (like private Google data centers). The Snowden leaks resulted in some policy changes by governments to strengthen already tenuous legal justifications for surveillance of their own citizens, but few privacy protections exist for the surveillance of non-citizens. This is where international standards ought to play a role.
A country surveilling its own citizens might be indirectly influenced by international standards, but the murkier problem of states surveilling non-citizens has the potential to be solved through the mechanisms of international institutions and law. The fundamental right to privacy is codified in the foundational documents of international institutions. For example, the foundational International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) reads that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.” Unfortunately, while other transnational issues like ozone pollution have been solved with the shared responsibility framework of international agreements, there has been far more cooperation between governments towards conducting surveillance than addressing its ramifications. Unlike other issues of international significance, surveillance is largely unseen, secret, rarely causes tangible harm. This significantly lowers the incentive for states to engage in cooperation to limit these activities, as the costs of secret, intangible surveillance are far exceeded by the benefits it confers to the intelligence and national security interests of states.
There is no single treaty that has been written or proposed on the issue, but the UN has not been silent on the issue of global surveillance. Since 2010, the body has issued several resolutions outlining the dangers of states surveilling non-citizens in particular. Reports from the UN Commissioner for Human Rights describe how systems of direct access and indiscriminate data collection limit people’s right to freedom of expression and discussion, create a high risk of abuse, and may facilitate illegal disclosure to third parties. The closest thing to a treaty affirming these resolutions was a set of principles the UN Human Rights Council put forward in 2014, called “International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance.” The core principles outlined are that surveillance must achieve a legitimate aim and be as minimally intrusive as possible and proportionate—confined to relevant information with a high probability of usefulness after the exhaustion of alternatives. But without adequate enforcement or incentive for states to adopt them, these sound principles do little to affect real change. Still, the document has been adopted by some non-state actors; hundreds of companies, organizations, experts, and elected officials have signed the principles document. However, it is still far from the kind of effective international treaty that has a chance at solving global issues.
In the absence of a consensus approach to international surveillance law for states, there are several ways to consider how surveillance should be interpreted from existing laws and principles. The first and most simple is an application of the Lotus Principle, an idea dating back to the League of Nations which posits that in the absence of explicit prohibitions on an activity, states may act as they wish. This interpretation means that without any explicit prohibitions on a state surveilling the citizens of another state, they are free to do so. But these laissez-faire interpretations are not adequate in the real world; their implication is a harmful, unregulated expansion of harmful non-citizen surveillance—in other words, what practically exists now.
Three different interpretations offer potential ways to push back on this. One uses the previously discussed ICCPR and the fact that surveillance of a foreign citizen could violate the global human right to privacy. Another rests on Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires all foreign officers to respect the laws of the country in which they are posted, meaning that surveillance conducted by diplomats is illegal (this was the basis of a 2017 criminal investigation in Turkey concerning embassy spying). Article 41 does not extend to non-diplomat citizens, but establishes the precedent that unfettered surveillance ought to be regulated. A final interpretation relies on the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity that could be extended to mean that surveillance constitutes an undue interference in the internal affairs of another state.
The simple fact that states do not respect these implied prohibitions means that the reality of the way international law governs foreign surveillance is far more permissive than prohibitive, but a theoretical approach based in human rights, the precedent of the Vienna Convention, and sovereignty means that prohibitive international surveillance law is possible to create.
The norm of states being permitted to engage in mass surveillance is slowly giving way. A combination of factors contributes to the changing norms: political pressure on heavily surveilling countries like the United States; rights-driven pressure from the UN, as illustrated by the previously mentioned resolutions; and economic pressure from technology companies that fear negative association with surveillance hurting their bottom line. This pressure was accelerated by the Snowden revelations, but it was not enough to spur lasting changes to international law. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring what the framework for future international surveillance law could look like.
Regulation of extraterritorial surveillance is unlikely to develop from state self-regulation. For example, the United States’ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act exists to provide structure to oversee requests for warrants to surveil foreign agents; however, no such structure exists for bulk transnational surveillance in the United States, and many countries have no such program at all. So, the development of international surveillance law has to be actively pursued.
The development of substantive policy on privacy and surveillance has proved difficult. Thus, in addition to the subject of the first stages of international surveillance law emphasizing transnational surveillance, they should also avoid establishing explicit substantive definitions and instead remain procedural in nature. Procedures should be built around accessibility and transparency; by minimizing the secret discretion afforded to governments, the potential for abuse can be significantly lessened. Critically, procedures should deemphasize the difference between surveilling citizens and non-citizens; this would significantly reduce the disparity in treatment between the two. Finally, procedures should be put in place to dynamically interpret transgressions of these principles. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provides an example of how to transnationalize rights through a court system. In particular, the case of Maximillian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner modeled the obligation and ability of states to protect the rights of their own citizens against transgressions by foreign powers. The inclusion of some form of court process—whether a new one or within an existing institution like the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—is essential to ensuring dynamic interpretations of the procedural norms in the eventual international surveillance regulation system.
A World Without Mass Surveillance
Although international surveillance law remains elusive, considering the theoretical framework of such a law is worthwhile. In the absence of norms or procedures governing it, transnational surveillance and the inherent unfettered privacy violations of non-citizens therein are only going to grow worse as technology improves and global crises provide justification. Identifying and implementing the most effective design of international surveillance law even in the face of profound difficulties is critical to protecting the human rights and privacy of non-citizens from foreign surveillance and the beginning of a world without mass surveillance.
On September 18, 2020, the front page of Dimokratia, a right-wing Greek newspaper, featured the headline “Siktir Git Mr. Erdogan,” meaning “F*** Off Mr. Erdogan.” In response, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leader of Turkey since 2014, filed an aggressively worded criminal complaint against the four people involved. Erdogan’s criminal report and the scramble by Greece and Europe to respond reveals the degree to which Erdogan’s desire for total control over his public image has expanded beyond Turkey’s borders, impacting the way he engages diplomatically with both allies and rivals. This diplomatic tension, unfolding against the backdrop of Turkey’s resumption of talks with Greece over energy control in the Eastern Mediterranean, highlights Erdogan’s use of journalists as leverage in his broader fight for regional hegemony. By weaponizing his abuse of the free press to serve his internationalagenda, Erdogan is signaling his increasing willingness to push the boundaries of international norms in his overall campaign for more geopolitical power.
Erdogan and the Press
Erdogan has had a rocky history with the press: the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 47 journalists are currently jailed in Turkey, and Erdogan has sued over 2,000 people for insulting him since taking office. The legal consequences for insulting the president as well as restrictions on vaguely defined “terror propaganda” and content that allegedly threatens national security contribute to an atmosphere of media self-censorship in Turkey. Even for journalists who don’t face legal consequences, the professional pressure to refrain from censuring the Erdogan government is strong, aided by government policies after the 2016 coup that forced over a hundred media outlets to shut down and required others to be transferred or sold at below-market rates to businessmen who are friends or allies of Erdogan. This functional cartel of business interests, which are intimately linked to Erdogan, transforms nearly all Turkish journalism, even privately-owned news outlets, into de facto state media. Because of this tight control, Turkey ranks 154th out of 180 on the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, lower than Russia and Pakistan.
An International Incident
While Erdogan’s relationship with the press in Turkey has consistently worsened since he took office, international outlets have, naturally, remained largely outside of his sphere of influence. The recent Dimokratia dispute, however, has appeared to change this norm: although the offensive headline was published in Greece, Erdogan has attempted to use the same aggressive legal threats that granted him full control of the Turkish press to silence international journalists as well. Rather than address his concerns with Dimokratia to the newspaper directly or to relevant Greek officials, Erdogan has attempted to resolve his dispute exclusively within Turkey’s bureaucracy, a major affront to Greek sovereignty. Inflating the severity of the headline from a personal slight to a perceived international crime, Erdogan’s complaint was submitted directly to the Ankara prosecutor’s office. Although the only “suspects” named in the complaint were the four journalists directly involved in the publication of the article (Manolis Kotakis, Andreas Kapsampelis, Yorgos Giatroudakis, and Dimitris Rizoulis), Erdogan’s complaint also implicated broader Greek society; it asserted that, “considering the silence of the Greek public, it is understood that this moral collapse is not limited to marginal segments.” This view that all of Greece was somehow involved in the headline’s aggressive view of Erdogan’s administration was echoed by Dimokratia itself, who responded to the backlash by saying that their headline “said everything that all the Greeks wanted to say.”
Acting on his complaint implicating the entire Greek public, Erdogan has mobilized all levels of Turkey’s government to fight the perceived slight against him, treating it as an affront to Turkey rather than to Erdogan as a private citizen.Fahrettin Altun, Communications Director at the Turkish Presidency, wrote a letter to the Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas, stating: “on behalf of the Turkish government, I condemn in the strongest terms the publication of insults directed at our President.” In a letter to Greek Justice Minister Kostantinos Tsiaras, Turkish Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül goes even further: “I strongly condemn and find this immoral and shameless act unacceptable that is presented under the guise of freedom of the press but is far from the objective of freedom of the press and in no way compatible with the peaceful intentions required by international law.” This understanding of the “objective of freedom of the press,” apparently defined by Gül as media that does not offend the sensibilities of foreign leaders, was not fully embraced by the Greek foreign ministry, which was summoned by the Turkish government over the incident. In response, the Greek ministry wrote:
Freedom of expression and freedom of the Press are fully protected in Greece. This fact does not negate the obligation to refrain from insulting the personality of any individual, particularly a foreign leader. The use of offensive language is contrary to our country’s political culture and can only be condemned.
Although they did not accept Turkey’s broad assertion that insulting Erdogan should be internationally illegal, the Greek officials’ willingness to condemn the headline reveals Erdogan’s surprising influence in Greek matters. By garnering a somewhat receptive response to his rather aggressive claim, Erdogan has succeeded in his goal of pushing the boundaries of Turkish influence a little further, thus encroaching on Greek sovereignty.
Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean
Erdogan’s decision to use Turkish bureaucracy to fight the headline makes sense, as his complaint argued that “the target of this despicable act was not only the president, but the interest of Turkish nation that Erdogan defends with determination in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea.” Erdogan’s determination to be the sole defender of the Eastern Mediterranean has been the topic of significant international scrutiny lately as Turkey, Greece, the European Union, and NATO have recently resumed talks over energy control in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ever since large amounts of hydrocarbon were discovered in the Mediterranean, Turkey and Greece have struggled to delineate their maritime borders in the region. Typically, such disputes would be decided by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which governs the boundaries of exclusive economic zones off the coast of countries. However, Turkey has not acceded to UNCLOS (Greece has), and both countries claim historical control over islands in the Eastern Mediterranean that would make the region their exclusive economic zone. Because of these disputed territorial claims, the issue of regional control remains hotly contested. Control of the Mediterranean is especially important to Turkey, as Cem Gürdeniz, a former Turkish admiral, described gaining control over the sea as “defending our blue homeland [...] after our continental shelf was stolen by Greece and Cyprus,” singling it out as “the greatest geostrategic challenge of the century.”
In pursuit of total control, Turkey has deployed two research vessels near Cyprus over the past few months, ratcheting up tension in the region. These tensions peaked in August, when Turkish and Greek military vessels collided in the Eastern Mediterranean, causing years of slowly bubbling tensions to reach a boiling point. While Turkey has since removed the offending ship from the waters, its recent aggressive moves—the continued deployment of more naval vessels—have exacerbated the consistent tensions between Turkey and the EU over maritime control. In treating the Eastern Mediterranean as Turkey’s exclusive territory before the dispute has been settled, Erdogan has demonstrated his willingness to presumptively act as if he has control over other sovereign states, then occasionally pull back when challenged. While none of these disputes have escalated into military confrontations, Erdogan’s tendency to push the outer bounds of international acceptability demonstrates a deeply concerning trend. The recent criminal complaint against Dimokratia is only the latest in Erdogan’s series of nonviolent but unmistakably aggressive moves toward Greece, which strategically pushes them into a constantly reactive, defensive position when entering talks.
Erdogan’s consistent challenges to Greek control through military actions and attempted media censorship have certainly upset some Greek officials, including Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who has stated, “one thing is certain: Turkish provocation, whether manifested through unilateral actions or through extreme rhetoric, can no longer be tolerated.” However upsetting they may be to Prime Minister Kyriakos, Erdogan’s consistent “provocations” may make sense for Turkey’s long-term geopolitical strategy, as they allow Erdogan to regain the perceived upper hand in diplomatic talks mediated by Germany and the European Union (EU). Maintaining dominance in diplomacy is clearly important to Turkey, as Erdogan has repeatedly warned the EU that they must be impartial in negotiations and expressed concerns about possible biases toward existing EU members, specifically Greece and Cyprus. In forcing the Greek people to respond to his complaint against Dimokratia, Erdogan could be attempting to regain some of the influence he feels he has lost in the EU’s mediation.
While Turkey may be somewhat disadvantaged in negotiations with the EU, it is ostensibly on equal footing with Greece within NATO, in which both countries are members. On October 1, Greek and Turkish negotiators agreed to a bilateral de-confliction mechanism through NATO that includes the establishment of a hotline between the two countries to prevent military conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean. Assuming this mechanism will be effective in preventing military conflict, which is far from guaranteed, the NATO resolution only sets the basic groundwork for diplomatic discussions of long-term control over the hydrocarbon reserves. These broader discussions, as of right now, are still being mediated by the EU and its member states.
Erdogan’s decision to target members of the Greek press, whether as a strategic provocation to gain leverage in energy negotiations or simply the protection of a totalitarian strongman’s ego, reveals his disregard for the free press of other sovereign states. Erdogan’s attempted encroachment on Greek press not only highlights his willingness to treat journalists as pawns in his geopolitical power struggles, but also advances his concerning pattern of provocations toward Greece in particular and Europe in general, including his recent assertion that French President Emmanuel Macron needs “some sort of mental treatment.” This comment, coupled with Erdogan’s increasing military aggression, has caused the EU to threaten to impose sanctions against Erdogan if his affronts toward EU nations continue. As Greece and the EU head into energy talks with Turkey, how they choose to respond to Erdogan’s more aggressive maneuvers, both military and diplomatic, may be pivotal in the broader struggle over regional dominance.
To equitably address health and climate change worldwide, one solution stands out: the bicycle. However, bicyclists compete with drivers in most countries, and cyclists’ vulnerability to crime discourages their use in higher crime neighborhoods. Unfortunately, many lower-income, ethnic-minority neighborhoods lack the safest bicycle facilities because allocation of funds depends on the public participation process, which requires many volunteer hours and knowledge of which bicycle facilities are the safest. Bicyclists also compete at public meetings with home and business owners who want to continue to have cars parked on the side of the road, and transportation officials often side with those residents and business owners, not the bicyclists who would use the public right-of-way for transportation.
To change from the current system, decision makers charged with responding to the larger issues of health and climate change should allocate funding based on those concerns while avoiding making decisions for just the loudest residents’ interests. Also, climate change should be anthropomorphized so she has a voice at public hearings and can offer her insights when rewriting bicycle facility design guidelines.
What Environments Are Safest?
In a recent study conducted in Boston’s lower-income, ethnic-minority neighborhoods, individuals familiar with the neighborhoods examined 32 pictures of different bicycle environments to gauge their potential for adverse safety outcomes, such as crime or crashes. Eight groups, deemed community sense, included individuals from churches and YMCAs, and five of the groups, deemed street sense, included residents in halfway houses and homeless shelters or gang members. Including this latter group was critically important because they see opportunities for crime and can suggest how to lessen vulnerability. Their comments, aligned with 55 different themes, offered details about the best and worst bicycle surfaces and contexts through which to travel.
From the quantitative ranking, the two-way cycle track or protected bicycle facility was the safest related to crime, and the shared-use path was the least safe. Related to crashes, the shared-use path and the two-way cycle track ranked the highest.
A wide two-way cycle track with newly painted lines, bike stencils, and arrows that indicate the correct direction to bike represented the lowest crime risk. Some participants figured that bicyclists would know the way back home, so they would avoid getting caught in risky situations. Contextually, the participants felt safest in areas with good lighting, clean signs, well-maintained greenery, and homes and businesses, while they felt more at risk in areas with litter and dark alleys.
Participants reported that one-way wide red cycle tracks with a median, a bicycle stencil, and a directional arrow were safest in terms of crashes, while the safest surrounding context for low crashes had people around to report the crash and bicycle signals. Cars nearby, bus stops, and multiple intersections decreased crash-related safety, the participants felt.
How Do Current Guidelines Fare?
Unfortunately, current bicycle facility guidelines do not reflect the participants’ feedback. Guidelines such as those published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) used the same materials in the bicycle facilities that engineers specify for the construction of roads such as lines, delineator posts, signals, and signs, leaving other bicycle-specific facilities out of the mix. While the transportation guidelines suggest lessening crash risk with barrier-protected cycle tracks and bicycle signals, they do not mention reducing the corresponding crime risk. Furthermore, the AASHTO and NACTO bike guidelines do not discuss refined details about the surface of the bicycle facility, such as faded stencils, or the surrounding context through which the bicycle facility passes, such as cafes, second-story windows, and shops for added surveillance. Therefore, incorporating these environmental factors could significantly improve the safety and desirability of biking.
The Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles also reflect dated ideas about bicycles and crime. Published in the 1960s and 1970s, they included the recommendation for “eyes on the street,” a concept involving neighbors knowing neighbors. However, on a Main Street with sidewalk cafes and storefronts, not everyone would know the bicyclists passing. Therefore, the study’s insights suggested updating the CPTED to foster caring amongst strangers through locally owned sidewalk cafes, flowers, room-creating tree canopies, and downward warm lighting to enhance bicyclists. By incorporating the context enhancements from this study, city officials might see the economic development benefits from an enhanced cycle track network.
Building Equitable Bike Infrastructure Everywhere
The insights from this research came from individuals familiar with lower-income ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States, and these neighborhoods are the last to have the state-of-the art bicycle facilities. The current system to get the best facilities involves the public participation process, and the largest group of work-commute bicyclists live in households that make less than $10,000 each year. Since they have less time to attend countless hearings, this means policymakers do not take their opinions into account.
However, another approach exists. Other countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, decided to provide wide bicycle-exclusive cycle tracks and penalize a driver if they hit a bicyclist starting in the 1970s. The Dutch and Danish residents do not have to spend hours in evening hearings making the case for the bicycle facilities because building bicycle facilities is as automatic as building roads and sidewalks.
While these enhanced demarcations would be easy to conceptualize in China due to the country’s long history of providing extremely wide cycle tracks, the practice would be more difficult in crowded countries such as India or Nigeria. In these countries, cycle tracks are an open space that can quickly fill with vendors, temporary housing, or piles of gravel and sand. The best way to discourage encroachment would be enforcement of existing rules and beautification of the corridor and edges so that users realized the bicycle place is sacrosanct, along with a steady flow of bicyclists.
Cycle Track Systems as a Series of Living Rooms
To help frame the design of these bicycle facilities in different countries, city officials could think of cycle tracks as a series of living rooms. This distinction is necessary because a vehicle occupant and a bicyclist are not in the same environment. The vehicle occupant is sitting in a locked living room with a controlled temperature, seating comfort, sound, and even perhaps company. The bicyclist has no crumple zone, no protection from the weather, and is vulnerable to crime and crash contact.
When the bicyclist travels through a series of living rooms, they would want a consistent carpet or hardwood floor so they did not have to look down and could instead look up and enjoy the rooms as the pass through. They also would prefer to have a carpet runner as a desire line to help in their decision about direction of travel. In going from one living room to another, they would know, seeing a closed door, to stop and wait until given permission to enter. The bicyclist would be bored if traveling from one unoccupied beige room to another and would appreciate color variation, views out windows, and casual conversations with people sitting on the couch. Bicyclists would be hesitant to enter a dark room because furniture might be in the way, and they would find a room more inviting if lit with shaded lamps. The bicyclists would also appreciate details in the living rooms such as geraniums in the windows and seeing the children playing with the dollhouse.
The Dutch, who have been perfecting the bicycle environment since the 1970s, offer insights. The Dutch have red carpets on their cycle tracks to distinguish the bicycle environments from the road sections for vehicles. They also have timed bicycle signals as closed doors that open when bicyclists have their turn to enter the road. Bicyclists travel on the smooth red carpets besides housing areas, parks, cafes, and schools, and they can always enjoy the view because they do not have to be looking down for potholes. On the red carpet cycle tracks, the Dutch bicyclists are in their own room and, if a vehicle enters their room, the driver receives a citation. Sometimes the Dutch bicyclists are traveling through a living room shared with drivers but, in this room, the driver again receives a citation if she harms the bicyclist. Unlike the car occupant who is sheltered from rain and snow, the Dutch cyclist has to bike in the elements, but their travel surface, colorful storefronts, and views of nature are consistently present.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The car culture is so dominant in some countries that even the best efforts only result in isolated segments of cycle tracks. Especially in the United States, the public participation process is an unfair time burden on the bicyclists who have to attend countless hearings where the transportation officials,all on full salary, present their plans. Even the time citizens spend in meetings does not result in cycle tracks, so discouragement runs high.
While the overall number of bicyclists killed is lower than the overall number of vehicle occupants killed, bicyclists are killed at disproportionate rates, which reveals the unjust risk for bicyclists, more responsive to climate change than even electric vehicles. In the discussions about autonomous vehicles, bicyclists become secondary or non-existent, but AVs will only add to congestion in high density cities with growing populations, hurting bicyclists further.
Building on the Dutch example has involved copying some picturesque elements from their bike facilities, but it has regrettably not included their commitment to build the best bicycle facilities. Rather than just looking at the pictures in the Dutch bike facilities book, all countries should hire Dutch engineers and solicit their input on the best locations for bicycle facilities, as well as local communities. Elected officials should take their advice. If they do not, they should not be re-elected.
Rather than only showing car owners the stick, governments should also introduce carrots such as off-street car parking with EV charging stations so wide cycle tracks can replace parallel parking. Furthermore, the homeowners who live near tall apartment buildings should be able to buy, and not just rent, the vacant parking spaces in the building.
With dense cities, income disparities, care for racial issues, and climate change, the time is right to change the current model and establish new priorities. By focusing on the bike, it is possible to rethink the built environment and identify the best decisions for this generation’s health and the planet’s future.
Anne Lusk is a Research Associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she is one of the world's foremost experts in promoting bicycle usage among lower-income and marginalized communities.
On October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 onboard. In light of Indonesia’s poor aviation safety record, which includes a 11-year operating ban in the European Union, this tragedy would not have been particularly surprising had the aircraft involved not been a brand-new Boeing 737 MAX, the latest version of the world’s most popular commercial aircraft at the time. These fatalities shocked the world, coming just more than a year after the model first entered commercial service. Preliminary investigations focused on a failure with the plane’s anti-stalling system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) soon issued an emergency directive warning to flight crews about the proper procedures that would allow them to address similar issues.
An even greater shock came less than five months later. On March 10, 2019, another brand-new Boeing 737 MAX, operated by Ethiopian Airlines as Flight 302, plunged into the ground outside Addis Ababa, killing all onboard. Unlike Lion Air, which has been criticized for its lax stance on safety, Ethiopian Airlines has maintained a good safety record throughout its history, adding to the scrutiny of the aircraft involved. In the aftermath of this second disaster, public confidence in the 737 MAX all but vanished, particularly after preliminary speed data was released, showing similarities to the Lion Air crash. As a result, airlines and countries around the world took the rare step of grounding the 737 MAX.
In a first for a traditionally Western-dominated industry, China led the world in implementing a country-wide ban, grounding all 737 MAX aircraft within 24 hours of the crash. Other countries and agencies followed, with the European Union suspending flights just one day later across its member nations. Notably, the last country to follow through was the United States, where the FAA remained defiant and insisted on the US-made jet’s airworthiness until a full day after the European decision. The speed at which these decisions were implemented was unprecedented, and the loss of 346 lives onboard the two next-generation Boeing jets is grave. The consequences of United States’ conduct, including both Boeing and the FAA, will erode the United States’ dominant role in the market for commercial aircraft, while also opening the industry to emerging competitors.
As the aviation industry grew and became more sophisticated in the 1920s and 1930s, the role of American firms on the global market increased significantly. For example, the United States pioneered the use of all-metal aircraft, such as the Boeing 247 and the very popular Douglas DC-3, which greatly improved safety and found customers around the world. This early commercial success was interrupted by the significant military needs of World War II, although all-metal aircraft proved useful as military transports.
The end of the war coincided with the beginning of the jet age. In 1949, the world’s first commercial jet, the de Havilland Comet, took its maiden flight in the United Kingdom, which had a robust commercial aviation industry prior to the war. However, the Comet’s design had multiple fatal flaws, and early on, the model experienced several high-profile crashes that irreparably damaged not only its reputation, but also the reputation of the British aviation industry as a whole. This also coincided with the postwar geopolitical realignment in which the United States became a dominant world power, allowing it to exercise great influence over the West, particularly economic matters like the purchase of high-value commercial aircraft.
In response to the Comet’s devastating crashes, and still with a desire for the great speed associated with jet aircraft, most airlines in the Western sphere of influence naturally gravitated toward the American-built Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 aircraft. These were essentially the only jet products offered by the West: the Soviet Union had developed the Tu-104 jet, which was off-limits to due the realities of the Cold War, while economic pressures forced a Canadian firm to end the development of its Avro C102. However, the American role in aviation was not only built upon a lack of alternatives: only several years after the 707 took flight, Boeing revealed the 747, which not only revolutionized air travel with its high seating capacity but also remained an icon of economic prosperity for decades.
Over time, business mergers and other financial realities led Boeing to become the lone American player on the global market. However, the American dominance from the early days of the jet age has faded away as other firms from various Western and Western-aligned regions of the world emerged—particularly Europe’s Airbus, Canada’s Bombardier, and Brazil’s Embraer. Today, the American role in the market is at a crossroads. Recently, Boeing has experienced significant problems with quality control, while China and Russia have begun to invest heavily in their own alternatives through state-owned firms with high hopes for at least some foreign success. In light of the historical and recent developments, the 737 MAX disasters represent not only heavy economic losses for Boeing, but also the latest erosion of American influence on the global stage.
A New Design (from the 1960s)
Photo by PhillipC, CC-BY-2.0, accessed via Wikimedia Commons
As a modern aircraft with state-of-the-art technology, the Boeing 737 MAX stands in stark contrast with the seemingly primitive designs of the early and mid-20th century. However, Boeing’s problems actually stem from modifications to a design that dates back almost 60 years. The first model of the Boeing 737 was developed in the mid-1960s, when wide-spread jet travel was still in its infancy and airport infrastructure was lacking, with limited mechanized equipment for essential services such as catering and luggage handling. Since food and baggage were loaded by hand, aircraft that were closer to the ground were easier for airports to handle. Meanwhile, the launch airline Lufthansa envisioned the 737 as a short-haul plane, which required a set of built-in folding stairs to maximize efficiency. These preferences for a lower height were integrated into Boeing’s 737 and actually proved critical for its success.
However, as the 737 rapidly gained popularity, particularly after the deregulation of US airlines in 1978, this early accommodation proved problematic. Airlines demanded jets that could seat more people, creating a need for larger and more powerful engines. Since the aircraft was still close to the ground, the larger engines had to be positioned differently on the wing, affecting the plane’s flying behavior. These changes were generally minor, particularly because any significant deviation from the existing design would have required costly training protocols for both pilots and airlines. Accordingly, as the 737 evolved, the FAA simply reviewed and approved these changes rather than approaching new variations with a holistic view; so long as the new design was linked to the original 1967 design on paper, Boeing was able to avoid lengthy scrutiny. This approval process was also economically attractive for airlines since they only needed to provide a brief online course on how to fly the plane, rather than having their pilots go through the expensive and time-consuming flight simulator training that is required for all new aircraft models. Over the decades, these types of modifications attracted limited attention and allowed the 737 family to gain a reputation as the world’s most popular plane series until it was surpassed by the A320 in the wake of the two MAX crashes.
Nonetheless, this seemingly relaxed system of regulation was not the most significant contributor to the fatal design flaws found in the 737 MAX. Instead, the FAA—the American agency tasked with providing a “safe and efficient” use of domestic airspace—delegated much of the safety certification work to Boeing under Congressional approval. The rationale was that private-sector work would allow the agency to “leverage its limited resources.” A recent phenomenon, this practice has proven devastating to the global reputation of Boeing and the American aviation industry at large. In particular, although the FAA’s airworthiness approval has not lost its value because of the geopolitical influence of the United States, the value of the Boeing name, and by extension, perhaps the rest of the American aviation sector, has drastically declined.
The European Moment and Other Challengers
Photo by Eduard Marmet, CC-BY-SA-3.0, accessed via Wikimedia Commons
In 1969, just a few years after the first Boeing 737 was put into service, several European countries joined to create Airbus Industrie, which quickly devoted its resources to the design of the Airbus A300. This two-engine wide-body aircraft came in an era where three-engine airliners dominated the long-haul market, such as the Lockheed L-1011 and the Douglas DC-10, both of which were American-made. Like the 737, the A300’s new design initially found a limited reception, but airlines were eventually attracted by the economical two-person cockpit and the safer hydraulic controls. After US-based Eastern Air Lines placed an order for the A300 in 1978, the aircraft found its footing on the global market. The ensuing popularity of the homegrown Airbus A300, and later the narrow-body A320 series, not only challenged the post-WWII American hegemony on the commercial aircraft market but also convinced initially skeptical European governments to allocate more funding and subsidies for Airbus, all but guaranteeing its continued success.
Other countries around the world are also starting to catch up technologically, and some have made significant inroads toward their own aircraft programs with varying degrees of success. For instance, Canada’s Bombardier, known for its Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) and recently the CSeries aircraft, was quite successful in the 1990s and 2000s, although it focused on producing smaller, short-haul aircraft. In recent years, it has experienced significant cost overruns with the CSeries program, causing the Quebecoise government to be increasingly hesitant about the size of subsidies and bailouts. This has caused financial difficulties at Bombardier, which has now sold the CRJ to Mitsubishi of Japan and the CSeries to Airbus—where it is now being rebranded as the A220. Meanwhile, the other significant player in the jet market, Embraer of Brazil, has entered a Boeing-controlled joint venture partnership and is no longer independent from US influence. Since these alternatives have proven financially impractical with existing levels of government subsidies, it is clear that the ongoing Airbus-Boeing duopoly cannot be broken without even greater levels of government intervention.
As Europe continues its rise in the international aviation market, alternatives have emerged in Russia and China, both of which have invested significantly in the development of domestic commercial aircraft manufacturing. As with the Airbus A300, which paved the way for the European consortium to become the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, these traditional US rivals have high hopes for entering the global mainstream. Although non-Western aircraft have traditionally been perceived as inferior, creating a significant barrier to global economic success, both the Russian and Chinese governments have demonstrated a desire to substantially fund and subsidize their aircraft manufacturers to the point of outright state ownership. In addition, Russia has gathered significant experience in building aircraft throughout the Cold War, and although the passenger safety record is lackluster, several models have proven enormously popular on the world stage such as the Antonov 124 designed and built in modern-day Ukraine.
Somewhat surprisingly, these Russian and Chinese investments have only come to limited fruition outside their home countries, despite the significant funding streams and the low purchase cost compared to Western aircraft. For example, Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 has been in service with Mexican low-cost carrier Interjet, which has even used the aircraft on flights serving the United States, although the airline is returning the planes due to a lack of spare parts. Meanwhile, although China’s COMAC ARJ21 and C919 aircraft have received interest from Ghana and perhaps other countries in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the only confirmed orders thus far are from Chinese state-owned airlines. At the same time, there have been severe setbacks such as a recent deadly crash of a Superjet 100 at a Moscow airport as well as the lack of European or American approval for the Chinese projects.
These programs have also experienced other underlying issues, such as a critical supply chain issue for the Sukhoi Superjet, which make the aircraft much less desirable. For example, such technical problems may prevent an airline from being able to operate the aircraft according to its operational needs, which can prove much more costly than the one-time cost of buying a more expensive Western-made aircraft. However, these problems are not insurmountable given time, and even Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner suffered issues early on. Moreover, China and Russia also have plans to work together on a widebody jet, the CR929, set to enter service later this decade even after delays, and unlike their current regional aircraft, the CR929 is designed for long-haul, international routes. Even though there is the possibility that neither the FAA nor the EASA will certify the CR929, the aircraft could still be used to directly connect China and Russia with countries in their expanding sphere of influence.
While the commercial intentions may seem benign, the geopolitical consequences are serious. A Russian or Chinese aircraft would be formidable on the world stage because the two governments have the financial capability—and do not need political will—to heavily subsidize their domestic manufacturers, perhaps to the point of outspending Boeing and Airbus on research and development. More significantly, a successful non-Western aircraft would increase the appeal for many developing countries to join their spheres of influence. This is particularly true given the fact that commercial aviation is seen almost universally as a concrete symbol of progress and economic prosperity, and the inexpensive prices that non-Western manufacturers have traditionally offered would allow countries to rapidly build up local airline industries. This is not simply a theory: in September 2019, China allegedly offered subsidized aircraft to Kiribati in return for the island nation dropping its existing diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. Additionally, various countries have occasionally used high-value purchases of Western aircraft as goodwill gestures to aid diplomatic efforts, meaning that aviation autonomy in Russia and China could even mean the worsening of economic relations with the West.
With so much effort already spent toward disrupting the Airbus-Boeing duopoly, Russia and China have caught a break. The 737 MAX crashes have severely damaged Boeing’s reputation around the world, and airlines have cancelled orders—to the extent that Boeing has reported net negative orders in 2019. This adds to the skepticism already held by leaders and citizens in countries that have traditionally shunned the Western-led world order and redirects their attention to the less expensive—and perhaps more politically prudent—alternatives from Russia and China. Perhaps more significantly, the very poor reputation of the 737 MAX thus far has virtually put it on the same level as many Soviet-era commercial aircraft since both are perceived by the public as dangerous and inferior to alternatives available on the market. This allows Russia and China to make broad inroads; their aircraft are now considered to be no worse than the 737 MAX from a passenger safety perspective, even though they may lack some of the most modern technologies. In this sense, a sizable window of opportunity has opened. As Boeing’s market share suffers, it is not necessarily just Airbus that fills in the gap, but rather non-Western manufacturers with their emerging products.
Thus, the 737 MAX crashes and the consequent loss of public confidence in Boeing are only the latest additions to the virtual collapse of the American-led status quo on the global aviation market. While the European rise in aviation is not surprising, and perhaps even inevitable in the long-term vision of European post-WWII recovery, the Russian and Chinese rise is quite troubling. While more aircraft options may be beneficial for the industry as a whole, the reality is that the design and certification of these new models will have limited transparency—much like the governments that oversee them, perhaps making them less safe than Western-built aircraft. Moreover, should Chinese and Russian aircraft become alternative global standards of aviation, the West, and particularly the United States, will have lost yet another tool of foreign policy, which only adds to the gradual erosion of the existing world order. To prevent this, it is imperative that the FAA and Boeing implement stricter regulations for the 737 MAX and future aircraft, both to make flying safer and to win back the hearts and minds of those around the world who have been disillusioned by the failures of two brand-new American jets.
Amid the noise of the United States' engagement with China, Japan and South Korea have recently engaged in their own trade war. On July 4 of this year, while Americans were celebrating their own independence and freedom, South Koreans were reminded of their own colonial history as their neighbor and former colonizer, Japan, began to impose new trade sanctions. What started off as a South Korean Supreme Court ruling has now escalated into a crippling economic war that threatens a key source of technology for Asia and the world.
Although this particular dispute is now only a few months old, the roots of colonialism began in 1910 when the Japanese Empire invaded and occupied the entirety of the Korean peninsula. Over the course of the next few decades, the Japanese Empire would aggressively expand and control most of South-East Asia and even parts of China, until its ultimate demise at the end of the Second World War. During Japanese occupation of Korea, Japanese companies, such as Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel, often times conscripted Korean men and women for forced unpaid labor.
Recently, however, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in October and November of 2018 that Japanese companies must pay reparations for these historical injustices. Consequently, on July fourth, the Japanese government retaliated by imposing limitations on the trade of materials essential to the construction of microchips and technological products in South Korea. Incensed by South Korea’s lack of response, Japan reinforced its message by taking South Korea off its “white-list” of favored trading partners, leading to ramifications beyond the technology industry. South Korea reacted by removing Japan from their equivalent top tier of preferred trading partners. In this deep spiral of sanctions in response, South Korea and Japan have interlocked in a vicious and politically charged trade war. While many trade wars are understood as responses to unequal terms of trade, Japan and South Korea's trade war seems to be particularly coded in political motives, given that its impetus was about reconciling with Japan's colonial past.
And, there seems to be no clear end in sight. Public opinion in both countries are highly supportive of their respective government’s policies, so both Seoul and Tokyo have political incentive to continue their policies or even escalate. With federal elections occurring within the next year for both countries, neither country can afford to buck against public opinion.
Moreover, unlike other disputes like the nuclear threat of North Korea, no foreign power is willing to aid in diffusing the tension and mediate between the two neighboring countries. The United States has traditionally adopted the role of the mediator but with its own trade worries with China, Washington has no attention that it can spare to Japan and South Korea. Furthermore, the US has historically allied with both Japan and South Korea, so it has little incentive to be involved, lest it risk its relationship with either country.
Indeed, almost every country in the world has a vested interest in the swift resolution of this conflict. The world relies on South Korea for its technology products, ranging from microchips to completely processed smartphones. The Korean technology industry is a necessity even for Western giants, such as Apple and Dell. Korea supplies 60 percent of the world’s DRAM memory chips. However, the Korean technology industry conversely relies on Japan for its chemicals, such as fluorinated polyamides, as an intermediary product for the making of semiconductors and computer chips.
With stakes this high, it is crucial that the economic war be resolved with urgency. The highly politicized nature of this particular trade war clouds rational judgement of politicians. This is detrimental, especially when the chips in play are the economic outlooks of millions of Japanese and Korean citizens, as well as the global technology industry. There is not a trade-off between attention paid to the US-China trade war and that of Japan and South Korea. Both play a crucial role in the global economy and affect billions of people’s day-to-day lives. As some of the biggest economic powers in Asia spiral into economic warfare, international neglect could have ramifications that affect the world at large.
January 24, 2020: Nepal reported its first case of COVID-19—the first in all of South Asia. By March 8, every country in the region had at least one reported case of the virus. Governments purported to act quickly, immediately announcing a COVID-19 relief fund when there were merely 150 cases overall. Amidst rampant government shutdowns with cursory notices, the region comprising a fourth of humanity was expected to come to a complete standstill—within a single day or two in some instances. As always, some groups fared worse than others. Visceral images of migrant laborers walking hundreds of kilometers back to their villages—unable to survive in closed cities or access regular transportation back home—quickly gained global infamy. As the international focus on domestic migrant workers in South Asia reached its eventual peak, another problem started appearing on countries’ purview: the millions of workers working abroad, supporting their families, communities, and in many cases, whole economies.
Remittance, for more than 272 million people around the world, is the money they send back to their families from their wage labor. For developing countries, remittance is a macroeconomic promise—a promise to act as a safety net during economic downturns. But as remittance-dependent economies in South Asia experienced a global pandemic, the promise started to falter; the promise to individual workers from the sub-continent, that of a better life with lower poverty, higher disposable income, and a better life overall started slipping through the cracks too. The pandemic revealed what decades of political consensus had missed - that exporting labor, without a plan B, is an ill-conceived long term growth strategy. Countries in South Asia which depended heavily on foreign remittance suffered more during this pandemic. People in the region who built their lives around foreign remittance suffered the most.
The World Bank predicted in April that remittance flows in South Asia would fall by more than 22 percent in 2020—slightly higher than its global prediction of 20 percent. For the millions of families of migrant workers around the world, the pandemic threatened their main source of income and economic stability. The effect was especially pronounced in South Asia, with India contributing the highest number of migrant workers globally. India was also the highest recipient of foreign remittance in 2019. For a country like Bangladesh, where remittance contributed to 38 percent of the growth in output per capita over 1970-2009, remittance was simply too significant of a growth driver to replace. In Nepal, which garnered 26 percent of its total GDP in 2019 from remittance alone, the consequences of such a drop would be devastating to families, communities, and the whole country.
Remittance and History
Following the economic liberalization of the subcontinent starting in the 1980s, government policies heavily encouraged labor migration. Pakistan offered special incentives, including duty-free imports for migrant workers and seats in public universities and public housing schemes to non-resident Pakistanis (NRPs). Bangladesh introduced special wage earner bonds to promote migrant savings. Sri Lanka even went as far as offering pre-departure travel loans and free insurance to the families of migrant workers. They had every reason to—every measure of economic health expressed glowing reviews in favor of remittance. One study found that migrant remittances had led to a decline in poverty in Nepal from as much as 42 percent in 1995 to 31 percent in 2003.
One would be remiss to ignore the historical consequences of colonialism at the heart of modern South Asia. Colonialism formed channels of vulnerabilities in the sub-continent which manifests today, most starkly among others, in the form of economic dependencies like the export of labor. The central reason why any large number of people would move beyond the comforts of their home country for job opportunities is painfully obvious—a lack of economic opportunities at home. Such incentives are boosted by a more lenient international migration system facilitated by the demand for foreign labor. Gulf countries, as they embarked on their own state-building enterprise, were one of the biggest employers of workers from South Asia. Today, the Gulf region alone contributes more than half of all the remittance sent to South Asia.
With more than 28 percent of the total GDP funded exclusively by foreign remittance, Nepal stands as an outlier even for South Asia. Pakistan comes at a distant second, with 8 percent. Nepal has the fifth highest GDP dependence on remittance of any country in the world. A report in 2016 found that one in four households in Nepal has one member working abroad at any given time. More than three-quarters of the formal work permits are issued for Gulf countries, but informally, many in Southern Nepal work in India given the open border between the two nations. Why are so many people in Nepal going abroad for work?
A lot of what happened can be traced back to the Maoist Civil War from 1996 to 2006, which displaced more than 100,000 people in Nepal and disproportionately ruined the economic prospects of rural areas. The war was followed by nearly a decade of political and economic instability. Many fear that such conditions have formed a recurring culture of dependence on remittance. The absence of the household head, the father in many cases, for most of one’s childhood creates channels of vulnerability among young children. These children then disproportionately drop out of school and follow their father’s footsteps—footsteps which lead them directly to foreign lands among unfamiliar faces but a very familiar situation.
Nobody disputes the great extent to which remittance has helped curtail poverty and boost economic growth in Nepal. Yet, there is similarly little disagreement over the remarkable ineptitude of the Nepali government to assuage economic needs within the country. The public outcry against government negligence of foreign workers shifts with the tides of media coverage. Meanwhile, the harrowing halls of the only international airport in Kathmandu shrieks with cries of horror as it receives three dead bodies of migrant workers every single day of the year.
Remittance and COVID
Remittance failed to outlive its illustrious promise of a countercyclical safety net during COVID. While estimates of a precipitous downfall in remittance rattled families and governments in South Asia, some pointed to the pre-COVID years of 2015, when remittance from migrant workers almost doubled during the once-in-a-lifetime earthquake in Nepal, significantly boosting recovery efforts. Some also point to the more recent floods in Kerala, a state in India, where floods in 2019 led to India retaining its top spot as the highest recipient of remittances globally. The pandemic, however, shed a bright light on the biggest vulnerability of remittance-based economies, that is, its nervous reliance on many issues desperately beyond the control of any single state: geopolitical tensions, the global economy, and now, a global pandemic.
While a global pandemic has dire economic ramifications for all countries, dependence on remittance makes economic recoveries much harder. Such countries do not only require their own economic comeback; they also desperately depend on increased remittance from the economic recovery of other countries they previously depended on. Hope in such dependency gets murkier as different channels of economic associations falter and break during long recessions or lockdowns. For long periods of time, this could simply become a catch-22 for option-less governments and families: no recovery without further remittance and no remittance without further recovery.
Again, nobody disagrees over the poverty-lifting, standard-increasing, and consumption-boosting benefits of remittance. But the pandemic has made it abundantly clear, that questions about economic growth should not merely concern the short term upliftment of people’s living standards, as important as that is. Long-term prospects of economic growth are equally, if not more important. Economists generally agree that the long-term effects of remittance in a country’s economic prospects simply depends on how the remittance is spent. If the money coming in is being spent for the future, then it will yield good results in the future. But surveys in Nepal show that 80 percent of remittance is spent buying foods, clothes, and home appliances. The multiplier effects of consumption is unfortunately not always to one’s benefit. In fact, one of the studies reported that remittance in Nepal had resulted in a sharp decrease in the country’s net productivity due to a paucity of domestic workers and increased consumption of agricultural imports boosted by remittance.
Many highlight the moral hazard associated with a remittance culture: that governments simply stop spending enough on social services like education and health care, and citizens also cease holding governments accountable. For a region that receives more than a quarter of all the remittance in the world, any discussion of shifting away is definitely distressing—but it is a discussion we must have.
The lightest of metals may be causing the largest of impacts. Lithium, which powers our phones, laptops, and electric cars, is essential to our battery-driven world. The demand for lithium has rapidly increased, as the global market’s annual consumption has risen by 8.9 percent annually. This demand will only intensify as hybrid and electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and portable electronics become increasingly widespread. While lithium has been found on each of the six inhabited continents, Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia—together referred to as the “Lithium Triangle”—hold more than 75 percent of the world’s supply beneath their salt flats.
The Lithium Triangle is one of the driest places on earth, which complicates the process of lithium extraction: miners have to drill holes in the salt flats to pump salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface. They then let the water evaporate for months at a time, forming a mixture of potassium, manganese, borax, and lithium salts that is then filtered and left to evaporate once more. After between 12 and 18 months, the filtering process is complete and lithium carbonate can be extracted.
While lithium extraction is relatively cheap and effective, it begs the question of sustainability and long-term impact. That is to say, will lithium mining benefit the globe and its inhabitants, or will it entrench societal and environmental harm? Perhaps the Lithium Triangle will provide some answers.
Economic and Social Factors at Play
Bolivia is home to Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat that spans 4,000 square miles. Beneath this natural wonder are massive lithium deposits, composing about 50 percent of the earth’s total. In 2008, the vice president of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera, proclaimed that this natural resource would relieve the 40 percent of citizens who are living in extreme poverty by “training them in scientific and technological fields so that they become part of the intelligentsia in the global economy.” This sentiment was echoed through government policy and action, with the impassioned declaration of “¡100 percent Estatal!”, or full control by the Bolivian state of the lithium extraction that would occur in Salar de Uyuni.
However, these ideals have yet to come to fruition. Bolivia may be rich in natural resources, but it is a very poor nation, which makes the prospects of autonomously operating lithium-mining projects slim. Lithium mining requires significant financial and technological investments, and no foreign firm was willing to cede control if it was to make those investments. It was not until 2018 that Bolivia found a partner. ACI Systems Alemania, a German firm, formed a joint venture with the Bolivian government and planned an investment of US$1.3 billion for the industrial use of lithium.
This joint business venture, however, has not appeared to take the form of a true partnership, and has certainly not been what García Linera envisioned. The local population is not reaping the benefits of the work that is being done near their homes. There have been few jobs offered to unskilled, indigenous workers, let alone well-paid jobs. These concerns have built up to recent protests in the city of Potosí—where Salar de Uyuni is located—which are demanding higher royalties and a greater allocation of the revenue from lithium mining. On November 3, 2019, the government rescinded the legislation that established the joint venture with ACI Systems Alemania. This experience parallels how Bolivia was similarly once positioned as a major owner of natural gas reserves, but lost any potential profit to foreign exploitation. Official statements from the government have been lacking, but what is known is that Latin America’s poorest nation has little to gain through agreements that sign away its mineral rights to foreign firms in pursuit of quick but fleeting profits.
In Argentina, a similar story unfolds. Beneath the ancestral land of the indigenous Atacamas lie lithium stockpiles worth billions of dollars which have attracted the attention of mining companies for years. One such company, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture called Minera Exar, has made an agreement with six indigenous communities, with expected sales of US$250 million a year. Minera Exar originally established that each community would receive an annual payment ranging from US$9,000 to US$60,000, but testimonies from local residents complicate that picture. Luisa Jorge, a resident and leader in Susques, said “lithium companies are taking millions of dollars from our lands… they ought to give something back. But they’re not.”
Local residents should not be struggling to pay for sewage systems and adequate resources while distant firms profit off of their natural resources. Revision to the legal framework that governs lithium mining is essential, as the current system privileges the interests and whims of companies like Minera Exar. While the provincial government in Argentina has control over mineral rights, the Atacamas have legal rights of their own. However, those rights have been undercut by the present lack of a formal process for negotiations between local communities and mining companies. As such, the interests of mining companies are ultimately overrepresented in the contracts, with leaders of local communities left unaware of how much money and support they should expect to receive. This process is emblematic of a broader legacy of exploitation in Latin America, and in need of urgent reform. Such reform would not be unprecedented, as Argentina has previously adopted international standards to ensure that indigenous communities “shall wherever possible participate in the benefits of such activities, and shall receive fair compensation for any damages which they may sustain as a result of such activities.”
Investments in lithium mining should not be universally rejected. Sales de Jujuy, a mining company that operates directly within Argentina, extracts lithium from the Olaroz salt flat and has explicitly identified the goal of fostering mutually beneficial and understanding partnerships with localities, evident in the fact that 65 percent of its employees are from indigenous communities. Those employees are paid about US$1000 a month, which is an above average salary for the region and an overall satisfactory salary for the nation. Additionally, Sales de Jujuy has provided medical and dental services and made microloans to support health and innovation among local residents. Lithium mining, then, does have the potential to lift up communities it interacts with, but this can only be the case if companies respect and prioritize local conditions and voices, which has so far proven to be the exception rather than the rule.
Environmental Friend or Foe?
Lithium extraction in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile requires significant amounts of water, at approximately 500,000 gallons per ton of lithium. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, lithium extraction being performed by various companies has consumed 65 percent of the region’s water supply. This has not only created extreme water shortages, but has also had a substantial impact on the abilities of local farmers to grow crops and maintain livestock.
An additional environmental impact of lithium mining is that it harms soil and contaminates the air and the already limited water supply. In Tibet, for example, Chinese lithium mining has leaked chemicals like hydrochloric acid into the Liqi River, which resulted in the poisoning of fish and the killing of livestock. Similar consequences are being seen within the Lithium Triangle already. In Chile, local inhabitants have criticized mining companies for polluting their waters and covering their landscapes in blankets of discarded salt. In Argentina, natives of the Salta and Catamarca provinces have alleged that the operations of lithium mining companies have contaminated the streams that are used by humans and livestock and for the purposes of crop irrigation.
However, advocates of lithium mining maintain that lithium-ion batteries are essential in the fight against the adverse effects of global warming. The rechargeable battery has a relatively high power density that enables it to store more energy for longer periods of time. Electric automakers like Tesla are pushing drivers to adopt clean, battery-powered replacements for combustion engines. More electric cars on the road would be a powerful way to combat climate change by producing fewer greenhouse gases and emissions. The Department of Energy estimates that the carbon pollution of electric vehicles is 60 percent lower than that of gasoline-powered cars. In a clean-energy state like California, it would be 80 percent lower.
Saving the planet, however, should not come at the cost of destroying fragile ecosystems. Lithium mining cannot be considered a long-term or just solution if it contributes to water depletion and air pollution, which have severe and disparate impacts for local communities that are already struggling in many ways to make ends meet.
A Battery-Powered Future
Lithium mining is in need of much reform if it is to be universally beneficial as a practice. The biggest players in lithium mining must commit to principles of transparency and cooperation with the local governments of the Lithium Triangle. Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia could lead efforts in researching and organizing data that sheds light on the impacts of mining and extraction. Progress has already been made on that front, as in Chile, the Atacama People’s Council has set up monitoring stations in a lagoon on its salt flat in order to track changing water levels. Further developments can and should be made in that regard to ensure that the green revolution does not endanger the people and environments it promises to protect.
