Class News
Class of '64 Summer Fellowships for 2006
The Class of 1964 Summer Fellowship supports summer travel and fieldwork by Yale juniors and seniors who have an interest in the environment. The Class of 1964 Summer Fellowship Committee is co-chaired by Frank Basler and Mike Price.Following in the footsteps of our 2005 Fellows and 2004 Fellows, four Summer Fellows for 2006 have been named. They include three juniors and one Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Masters student:
- Eset Akcilad is in Stockholm investigating their "Congestion Pricing Scheme" to be voted on this fall
- Bjorn Fredrickson, is in China studying resettlement policies for citizens displaced by dam projects along the Nu River in Yunnan
- Dominique Gomez is in Mexico administering a survey to learn about attitudes toward consumption
- Mohamad Chakaki is completing an internship at the Urban Resources Institute in New Haven to complete his MS work at SFES; he is helping neighborhoods organize and strengthen their communities through tree planting projects.
Below are their reports, submitted in October 2006.
- Bjorn Frederickson: "Lamenting the Angry River: Forced Relocation for National Progress"
- Eset Akcilad: "Pricing of Public Goods: Congestion Pricing Policy"
- Dominique Gomez: "Travel Summary Report"
Bjorn Frederickson
"Lamenting the Angry River: Forced Relocation for National Progress"
The Nujiang, Chinese for the "Angry River," pours off the Tibetan
Plateau and comes barreling around the eastern edge of the Himalayas. In
time its waters have carved a deep, steep-sided gorge that stretches for
1,750 miles through Tibet, Yunnan, and Myanmar. Christened the Grand
Canyon of China, the Nu is the longest undammed river in mainland
Southeast Asia. However due to Chinese government plans to build
thirteen large dams along its length, its free-flowing days are limited.
I decided to travel to the banks of the Nujiang in northwest Yunnan
Province after reading that an estimated 50,000 people will be displaced
by the cascade dam system. I wanted to discuss this issue with the
farmers who would lose their land and homes, local government officials,
and activists in hopes that I could begin to understand how the
project's various stakeholders view the resettlement process and the
futures of the dam displacees; I wished to become knowledgeable of
Chinese resettlement policies and evaluate whether or not the Chinese
government is justly compensating those whom make sacrifices for
national progress.
Prior to traveling to Yunnan I stopped at Hohai University in Nanjing.
At the National Research Center for Resettlement I met with a number of
professors and doctoral students who answered some of my general
questions regarding the history of developmental resettlement in China
and provided me with documents outlining national policies. In Yunnan I
had intended to conduct a survey to determine how much potentially
affected peoples know of the cascade dam system project and resettlement
process, if people throughout the valley think the dams will directly
benefit them, how much importance people assign to various aspects of
resettlement compensation, and if people regard their futures as
displacees as optimistic or pessimistic. After meeting Kristen McDonald,
my research mentor, Yale Environmental Studies alumnus, and U.C.
Berkeley Environmental Science, Policy and Management doctoral student,
and distributing a number of surveys, however, I decided I would explore
the use of open-ended interviews to obtain my data. I came to the
conclusion that in simply surveying, I was missing a great deal of
anecdotal evidence that I had not considered while planning my project;
interviews would allow people to tell me a variety of stories of
personal significance and I could still ask a group of specific
questions to obtain some quantitative data.
During my stay in China I visited eleven of the thirteen planned dam
sites located in Yunnan's Nujiang Autonomous Prefecture and Baoshan
Municipality, and Tibet's Linzhi Region. To my surprise, not a single
citizen that I spoke to seemed to know if the dams would actually be
built or not; they had all heard rumors of the project, and witnessed
surveys and various geological studies being performed, but the
government has yet to provide them with any information pertaining to
the region's hydroelectric development plans. Women and the elderly knew
especially little about the situation and often asked me if the dams
were real, if I had come to oversee construction, where the electricity
would be sold, and who was funding the project, questions I viewed as
fundamentally obvious. In the regions surrounding the Shitouzhai and
Saige Dams, the two southernmost sites that I visited in Baoshan
Municipality, many members of Han, Bai, and Yi minority groups
wholeheartedly welcome the dams, feel that the Nu River Valley must be
industrially developed, and stated that the farming lifestyle is too
taxing, that they hope for the opportunity to move to cities and find
work when their villages are inundated. The Dai people in this region,
however, fear that they will face discrimination in other parts of
Yunnan or China and say that they could never adjust to living in
another place. They told me that they were "backwards" and would have a
difficult time assimilating into non-Dai communities.
To the north of Baoshan Municipality in the Nujiang Autonomous
Prefecture the predominant ethnic group is Lisu and then gradually
shifts to Nu as one moves further upriver. Once I left the areas
surrounding the Shitouzhai and Saige Dams, I found that fewer and fewer
people outright support dam construction along the Nujiang. Many of the
agriculturalists raised the point that the government will do what it
pleases because no one actually owns the land he farms; all of China's
land is government-controlled. I got the sense that people feel
helpless, even if the adamantly disagree with the dams. Others are clear
about the fact that they do not support dam construction in the valley.
Differences in opinion aside, the farmers generally feel that fair
displacement compensation should include a new home, land or monthly
payments for life to cover the cost of living, and a one-time payment to
offset moving costs; some also place a great deal of importance on
improvements in educational and medical facilities, and an increase in
the ease of transportation.
The northernmost dam site, Songta, is located across the Tibetan border.
A day-long truck ride from the end of the paved road in Yunnan takes one
into a region that is linguistically, culturally, economically, and
climactically distinct from anything in the south. None of the Tibetans
in Songta Administrative Village speaks Mandarin, they all subscribe to
Tibetan Buddhism instead of Christianity (the predominate religion along
the Nu River in northwest Yunnan), rely heavily on foraging medicinal
plants and fungi to generate an income, and not far north of the Yunnan
border one suddenly finds herself in a desert, complete with cacti,
rather than the verdant forests of Yunnan. The Tibetans are also
intensely distrustful of the government due to a number of disagreements
regarding compensation for various projects in the past. In the last
five years the villagers were required to help with the construction of
the local road and had to build several schools. For each they were
promised payment from the government. No one to this day, however, has
received a single cent. Thus the inhabitants of Songta are
understandably skeptical that they'll receive any compensation if they
lose everything to rising reservoir waters. They also fear that will
they starve if forced to leave their homes because they'll no longer be
able to grow corn or forage wild plants in an unfamiliar environment.
There are also myriad small-scale hydroelectric projects under
construction on tributaries of the Nu River. Eighteen families living in
Dimaluo Administrative Village were given two weeks notice that their
homes would be demolished to make room for one such diversion dam. Each
family was bestowed with a new house and every person was given $60 to
move, but the provision of land or jobs was not a part of the
compensation package. These eighteen families are currently subsisting
on last season's corn crop and the local government continues to ignore
their pleas for a secure livelihood. In Gegehe Administrative Village
several families had to give up land for another small hydro project and
were afforded a one-time payment as compensation. As agriculturalists,
however, they rely on their land to feed themselves and worry about the
future once their savings have been spent.
Activists working on the Nu River dam issue are quick to state that
approximately two thirds of dam resettlers in China experience a
decrease in livelihood after leaving their homes and currently live
under the national poverty level of roughly $100 per year. They also
note example after example of farmers, after being resettled in urban
areas, that are unable to secure employment due to a lack of education,
resettlers generating income via activities such as rubbish collection,
and migrants that find living in unfamiliar climates unbearable to the
point that they try to return to the sites of their previous homes.
Corruption surrounding many resettlement programs also seems to be a
serious problem due to a lack of transparency and public participation
in the projects. Although government officials throughout the river
valley had varying opinions about the feasibility of successfully
implementing a resettlement project that would increase the livelihoods
of 50,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them claimed that every
single person in the region supported the dams and that hydroelectric
development would bring positive changes for all. Each official
admitted, however, that the Resettlement, Land Resources, and Water
Resources Bureaus had not yet begun to share any information at all
about the Nu River Cascade Dam System with the people.
Based on China's past attempts at resettlement and current events along
the Angry River, the futures of the 50,000 people that will be displaced
by the proposed cascade dam system are anything but bright. The
government is not encouraging all stakeholders to participate in
resettlement planning, and many of the affected peoples have reason to
be concerned about the possibility of receiving inadequate or unjust
compensation in exchange for giving up their homes. Further complicating
the issue at a local level are questions regarding cultural differences
amongst the resettlers and how people interact with the environment that
surrounds them. After traveling in the Nu Valley, it seems that the
implementation of development programs most certainly changes the manner
in which people use local resources. In Yunnan, development projects are
often closely tied to how people live their lives; they aim to prevent
individuals from cutting trees for fuel wood, for example. An additional
question that begs to be answered is how dam construction-induced
changes in riverine geomorphology, hydrology, and ecology will affect
downstream communities; far more than 50,000 people will experience
changes in their livelihoods after the thirteen dams are constructed.
Although each of these questions could be the subject of an in depth
study, I am grateful to the Environmental Studies Internship Program,
Summer Research in East Travel Grant, Class of 1964 Summer Environmental
Fellowship, and Richter Summer Fellowship for the opportunity to travel
to the Nu River and begin to consider the larger questions of
displacement, compensation, and development as they pertain to dam
construction in China. Such questions will most certainly make their way
into my senior thesis in the Environmental Studies program, a project
that would be impossible without the generosity the aforementioned
donors.
Eset Akcilad
"Pricing of Public Goods: Congestion Pricing Policy"
Deeply concerned with the globally increasing congestion related
problems and fascinated by the success of "London Congestion Pricing
Policy," I traveled to London and Stockholm to study the economic and
political implications of a congestion charge aimed at reducing traffic
related problems. However, first I stopped by Buenos Aires, Argentina
for a period of seven weeks, where I interned at the development office
of a monitoring NGO, HelpArgentina. Such an unparalleled exposure to a
third world country and its social sector would retrospectively define
the pinnacle of my project in the developed Northern European countries.
Seven weeks of social sector development work in Argentina opened my
eyes to the necessities and the luxuries of a civilization and the
relativity of such definitions.
Leaving Argentina and my newly made friends was no easy task. So I
traveled to London with a heavy heart and even heavier suitcase. In
London I had to first understand the general public opinion of the
"Congestion Pricing Policy" that requires people to pay $14 dollars per
day to drive their cars downtown. Next one week I found myself
interviewing locals living downtown and business owners operating within
the "Congestion Zone." After interviewing over one hundred locals, I
found that contradictory to my initial anticipations "Congestion Pricing
Policy" in London is unexpectedly popular between downtown occupants. My
second week in London was dedicated to understanding the policy from an
academic point of view. The politics textbook definition of this policy
implies that the successful adaptation of such a policy is not feasible.
After all, no politician with a career concern should be willing to
charge people for the use of their cars. As the opposition also shouts
out: "Congestion Pricing Policy" is a limitation on basic freedom of
movement. However, empirical data and economic textbooks argue that
everything has a value and the three economics professors with whom I
studied the "Pricing of Public Goods Theory" all pointed out to the fact
that for Londoners the value of a congestion-free downtown is way higher
than $14.
With a clear understanding of the general feeling towards the policy,
that proved the related theories, I was ready to study the nature of
policy adaptation and its political implications. Hence, next I needed
to pay visits to policymakers, and so I found myself insistently
knocking on the doors of Labor Party policymakers and mayor's office. As
someone who does not believe in the existence of discourteous acts, I
came to realize that there is such a thing when British Bureaucracy is
concerned. Although I got two confirmed meetings with London Mayor Ken
Livingstone, I was informed in a stern manner that he had some last
minute things coming up each time. Having aimed too high, the low that I
hit was no low by any means; I got the unparalleled opportunity to tag
along Stephen Cameron and Richard Donner, two city developers did not
only master but also contributed to the adaptation of "London Congestion
Pricing Policy" in 2003. They were kind enough to explain to me the
strategic lines of the Congestion Zone and how it redefined the
"downtown" of London, as well as why, in their opinion, the policy found
strong support from the public. Through their profound comprehension of
the system, I got to understand the political implications and
limitations of this policy. They offered me a unique perspective on the
resourcefulness of the policy through empirical data, proving the
constructive role the policy played in raising revenues for the
betterment of public transportation, reduction of congestion related
problems, as well as the overall national saving due reduced use of oil
reflecting the decreased number of car usage. "Congestion Pricing
Policy," thus, seemed to be a necessity for Londoners and the most
rational solution for fighting congestion related problems.
In the environment friendly and human-life-quality respecting Sweden I
was astonished with the unpopularity of the policy that was in a trial
phase. City of Stockholm has implemented the same policy for a trial
period beginning in January 2006. The city of Stockholm followed similar
guidelines while adapting the popular London policy; vehicles entering
the inner city area on weekdays between 6:30am and 6:30pm are charged
20kronos (~$3) per entry for a maximum of 60kronos (~$9). Given the fact
that the relative prices of base goods are comparable in both cities,
one would at once assume that Stockholm's version of lower entry costs
would make the policy even more attractive. However, after carrying out
the same research method in Stockholm my interviews proved that a higher
number of downtown residents and business owners were opposed to the
policy than those projected in mass media studies.
The "value" based theory that I studied in economics textbooks and with
academicians in London needed to hold true here in Stockholm as well.
After all, Stockholm had a congestion problem and its residents too
highly valued the solution of such a problem. To further complicate the
matter, prior research demonstrated that general public was in favor of
paying higher fees than 20kronos per day, if it truly meant a reduction
in congestion. On the other hand, independent research firms
demonstrated that there was indeed a reduction in all congestion related
externalities in Stockholm over the trial period. Realizing the lack of
prior scholarly studies on this specific example, I abandoned the
textbook part of my research and mainly concentrated on Stockholm City
as a geography rather than demography. This together with my extended
conversations with the opposing policymakers demonstrated that revenues
raised from "Congestion Pricing Policy" did not help Stockholm City with
reducing congestion related problems. As a city built on many small
islands, there is only so much public transportation development that
can take place in Stockholm. The city, it seemed, has reached its limits
in terms of a quantitative increase in its public transportation. Hence,
the raised revenues have mostly been used in an extravagant qualitative
development, which growingly creates opposition and makes certain the
possible: given the Stockholm's geographic reality "Congestion Pricing
Policy" is an unnecessary luxury for Stockholm.
The financial support I received from a number of Yale Fellowships,
including the invaluable Class of 1964 Fellowship, provided me with the
fortuitous opportunity to spend eight weeks conducting the above
independent research in two different countries. My familiarity with
these countries and my fluency in both English and Swedish languages
helped me preempt possible problems and have a smooth transition period
from one culture to the next. Even though this was the first endeavor of
its kind I have undertaken, my research project went efficiently, and
not only did I gather the necessary data for my senior project, learned
in detail the inner workings and politics of implementing an unpopular
policy but I furthermore most importantly formed relationship with
locals, academicians, economists and policymakers. This experience
provided me with the unparalleled opportunity to engage in an academic
research that demanded me to apply my textbook knowledge to the real
world. I want to thank all benevolent donors of Class of 1964 Fellowship
for proving me with such a unique opportunity.
Dominique Gomez
"Travel Summary Report"
This summer, with the help of the Class of '64 Fellowship, I traveled
to Santiago, Chile to study the perceptions of Chilean university
studies about their own personal consumption of material goods, what
sorts of objects they felt were necessary in their lives, and the
positive and negative effects they associate with having few or many
possessions. The summer was a wonderful experience, and I learned a lot
not only about my original area of interest, but about other aspects of
Chilean culture as well. Not only did I truly enjoy my seven weeks in
Chile, but I believe that I have a solid amount of research with which
to begin my senior essay.
My original interest in consumption comes from an environmental
standpoint, where I feel that high consumption in countries with high
standards of living is continually overlooked as the major problem when
it comes to increasingly scarce resources. Even though consumption is
included in the well known equation for resource usage, the IPAT model
(Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology, where Affluence is
essentially the consumption level), it is still often overshadowed in
resource scarcity discussions with the issue of population. For
instance, while the Yale Biology department has offered the MCDB course
"Global Problems of Population Growth" for many years, no similar course
is offered in the global problem of over-consumption. I secondly feel
that while consumption in countries such as the United States has played
such a strong part in creating a strong economy, there are negative side
effects of high consumption, both environmental and otherwise, that are
often not discussed. Lastly, I was interested in the interplay between
needs for human survival, comfort, and advancement and how these needs
match up (or fail to match up) with the consumer items available to and
consumed by much of the developed world.
To study consumption in this way, I designed a context manipulation
experiment which will compare conceptions of needs in the United States
and Chile. In this experiment, students from public and private
universities in Santiago, Chile were asked to think about and identify
items that a family needs to live in Chilean society. To inform the
context in which they think about needs in their society, participants
were randomly assigned one of three possible photographs. The three
photos come from the book Material World: A Global Family Portrait by
Peter Menzel, and depict either (1) a middle class American family
standing outside their home with all of their material possessions, (2)
a middle class Argentine family outside their home with their material
possessions or (3) a Malian family outside their home with their (few)
material possessions. These photos should elicit different responses
when participants then think of needs in their own society, and should
vary the extent to which a respondent is pushed to question average
consumption in their own society. For a control group, one group of
participants were not given a photo, but solely asked to think about and
identify items that a family needs to live in Chilean society without
any set context. For my senior project, this experiment will be
replicated at several public universities in the United States in the
fall of 2006 in which American students are asked to consider the needs
of an American family. Like the Chilean students, the context in which
American students answer this question will also be informed by one of
the three Menzel photographs with one control group with no photograph.
My project went very well, although it had to adapt to a few changes.
For one, my methodology was originally to work with a few professors in
being allowed to administer the survey to several of their classes at
the end of class time. Due to a student strike that went on for the
first three weeks I was in Santiago, the professors I had approached
about doing this were no longer able to allow me this time, and I had to
change my methods. In the end, I was granted permission to approach
students and small groups of students that were working quietly in
university libraries, cafés and other common spaces. My base number of
surveys was originally 300, and while I was able to exceed this base by
completing a total of 400 surveys, I had originally hoped to do more.
This, however, was made impossible by the delay of the student strike
which lasted nearly half of my time in Chile.
Although I am still working, and will be working all year as a part of
my senior project for the Sociology major, on the results of my survey
and research, the initial results have already been rewarding. In just
compiling my information, doing data entry and lots of translation, I
have begun to get a feel for how the various pictures affected students'
responses and some of their thoughts on consumption in general.
Especially in translating different comments about the possible negative
effects of either very few or extremely many possessions, I was able to
get the sense of the kinds of realizations Chilean students make about
the value of material goods, and their limitations. I look forward to a
year working with this data and doing comparisons with data I will
collect here in the United States, and I thank Class of ‘64 Fellowship
for allowing me this amazing experience.