Right Wrong 2: African Ambiance at MIT Senseable City Lab

I'm looking for time to edit down the long post I've written for "what the NGO's and MIT got right, what the NGO's and MIT got wrong" piece.  That's a problem for me, finding time to edit stuff.

The 14 months that have now passed since March-April trip to Ghana in 2015 have been in large part the editing or digesting of the experience there.  I'm still re-editing things I wrote at the time, I'm still reviewing interviews we filmed.  And new information keeps coming, even as the situation is evolving.

Wahab - our business partner in Ghana - has been back and forth four times to see his cousin Kamal, CEO of Chendiba Enterprises.  And I continue to take calls every week from young men I met there.   Kamaldeen has now finally graduated the engineering school program (he had been working at Chendiba Enterprises to help pay for his studies).  And Awal, the "lead guy" of the wire burning men at Agbogbloshie, still calls several times a week.  When Wahab's here, it's easier, because my pidgin English is really rusty.  Wahab and I help ground each other's wires;  my compassion for Awal keeps Wahab from spanking his ass for calling and shilling, and Wahab's grown up expectations of the men (and Awal is definitely a man, not a "child labor orphan") who will twist a guilty knife is welcome intervention in the role-play.  I've had good and bad experiences intervening in Africa, and having time and partners from the area give needed perspective.

What I need to say about Jim Puckett, Kevin McElvaney, and the MIT team, PBS and @Earthfixmedia is important, but I do owe it to them to take the time to edit.  They deserve the same compassion and patience we show Awal and the company at Agbogbloshie.  And this extends of course to Dr. Jack Caravanos and PureEarth, and the StEP team, and everyone in the business of "saving Africa".  I need to edit, and to demonstrate the dignity these researchers and journalists deserve.

It takes time.  Primum non nocere. Don't rush to judgement. Listen to your human subjects.  Basics.

Environmental Anaphylaxis: Auto-immune Attacks by Environmentalists on Harmless Africans

This is another "Environmental Malpractice" blog.  And it's not an easy read. Some may decide to ignore it.  But the number of people who "get it" is steadily increasing.  This summer another major player "took the red pill", and realized that "saving Africa" is not accomplished by impugning motives, environmental balance, or skills of Africa's "ewaste" Tech Sector.  In this blog I try by analogy to connect the #whitesaviorcomplex, #charitableindustrialcomplex, and #environmentalmalpractice to greater liabilities and inefficiencies in societal systems designed to cure flaws - from affordable housing, to peanut allergy, to snakebite kit sales, or to used car sales in Eastern Europe... 

It's all about bringing Stewardship Advocates to practice Stewardship (liability) for their own regulatory systems, to do no harm, and when they find out they have been harming, "adjust course".  It doesn't require a mea culpa if you do the right thing from now on.

Last week I was alerted to an editorial by Laura Seay and Alex de Waal (July 17)

This was via a tweet from AfricanSolarLLP, a boots-on-the-ground solar energy project coordinator based in Accra, Ghana, who (along with Alhassan Abdallah) has been bringing first-hand accounting of the Old Fadama / Agbogbloshie real estate evictions (vs. "Sodom and Gomorrah") via @Twitter.

TASC‏@AfricanSolarLLPDo-gooders, do no harm: What are the best-and worst-ways to help those mired in international conflicts? http://wpo.st/jX-R0 

The article (Q and A) addresses many of the cautions I've undertaken, and there's some heavy stuff to dish out to readers of de Tocqueville.  An increasing number of environmentalist intellectuals like myself, may remain ardent environmentalists, but still fear the "churchiness" of the environmental-regulatory complex.  This is also true of other "world savers", we can be ardently pro African while suspicious of what Peter Buffet called the Charitable Industrial Complex.  In fact, much of it could apply to Fair Trade Recycling, and is a reminder of the dangers in heroicizing our "geeks of color" and "hurricane bensons".

Making more people aware of an injustice by oversimplifying the problems and the remedies is Poster Child Policy.  Making sad photo-essays of orphans working in scrap yards, and representing those children to be "emblematic" or embodiment or archetypal of African importers, is wrong on the science, and leads to environmental malpractice.

The challenge is to neither write so densely that no one reads it, nor so simply that it sets people off with the equivalent of racial profiling.  Basel Action Network "simplified" the long and complicated Annex IX, B1110 rules on export for repair and refurbishment by telling virtually everyone that it meant "fully functional", creating a set of enforcement guidelines which Joe Benson eventually gave up and pled guilty to in return for a decreased sentence.  [NOTE: That is not "twice convicted of the same offense," the just-world-fallacy / panacea shared by CWIT].  But at the same time, we have to recognize that progress has been made in understanding the nuance of "ewaste exports", and I think I can report that arrests of other Africa Tech Sector geeks like Joe Benson are less likely.

The awareness of the misuse, and misapplication, of well-meaning guidelines should serve as a broader lesson for all environmental interventions.  First, do no harm.  Protection of the innocent takes precedence over the simplified profiling guidelines (what Emile Lindemiller of Interpol called "Proactive Enforcement" - get out there and accuse people before the crime has been committed, and less environmental harm will occur.

That's like giving snakebite kits to everyone and telling them to incise and suck out the venom, whether you know the snake was poison or not.

I'm happy to report that Interpol staff may not be electronic repair experts, but I'm reassured they can eventually see when their enforcement is being abused by interested parties.  Eventually, they will get it right.  What environmentalists need to learn is to take responsibility for our stewardship and environmental dumping enforcement "cures" before a proper diagnosis has been reached.

This is how the study of environmental health must learn the same lessons as the application of western medicine to promote human health.  It's ok for a doctor to make a mistake, a mistake is not malpractice.  It becomes malpractice when you have been provided information to correct your practice and don't follow it.  This is the pivot point.  We don't blame NGOs or Interpol for believing 80-90% of used computer purchases by Africa's techs were for "primitive burning" when they actually believed it, and were told so by the press.  Once the source of the statistics has been discredited (and we can safely say we are at that point), it is the way the agencies - International and Non-profit - comport themselves going forward which matters.

Environmental Malpractice: Old Fadama (Agbogbloshie) Still Shaken by Bullyboys

First the good news:   Three great articles came out making the same points that I've been trying to make for ten years, adding a great deal of intellectual value to the discussion of the E-Waste Export controversy.

Restart Project, Representations of Waste Matter
http://therestartproject.org/repair-elsewhere/representations-of-e-waste-matter/

Lepawsky, Goldstein, Schulz:  Criminal Negligence?
http://discardstudies.com/2015/06/24/criminal-negligence/

Minter, Anatomy of a Myth
http://shanghaiscrap.com/2015/06/anatomy-of-a-myth-the-worlds-biggest-e-waste-dump-isnt/

Ghana's Parliament is now involved, and is asking the same tough questions posed by the Twittersphere through the week.   If it's about flooding, why did they start in the rainy season?  Why did the AMA start on the populated side of the river, rather than dredge from the opposite (scrapyard and landfill) side of the water?  Why start on the first day of the holy Ramadan?

The bad news is that it's too little, too late to help the dispossessed refugees of the shantytown.   My friends and acquaintances there describe homeless children now sleeping on the floors of mosques, unable to purchase mandatory school uniforms and supplies burned or bulldozed.

But the worse news is the slum will be rebuilt much faster than the reputations of environmentalists and journalists.  Too many environmentalists are ignoring our role in the propaganda campaign.

We are living up to our label as "parasites of the poor".  We are losing a generation of influence, as the scrappers of Agbogbloshie grow to dislike us and distrust us, believing that the people repeating lies about them are raking in enormous sums of wealth.

Bullyboy environmentalist, Joe Benson called us.

Sadly, in proportion, it's more true what they say about us than what we are saying about them.  I'm sorry to be the bearer of that news, but don't kid yourselves, I'm not making it up, I have these conversations recorded on film.

My role as a blogger is to remind my fellow environmentalists, including the NGOs and EU-based bureaucrats who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions, in the case of one NGO) off of the #ewastehoax, that hyperbole harms.

#EWASTEGATE #COLLATERALDAMAGE #AGBOGBLOSHIE #WORLDREFUGEEDAY

"He that beats the drum for the mad man to dance is no better than the mad man himself." – African proverb

It began as a simple problem.  Ghana household teledensity (TV, internet, cell phone) is increasing like wildfire, two and three digit growth, year on year.  Ghana residents mostly afford this with used devices cherry picked from Western depots by African expats.  The most recent study (Secretariat Basel Convention) estimated that Ghana imported 215,000 Tons of second hand electronics goods (including refrigerators, microwaves, as well as PCs, TVs).  The study concluded that about 90% of these were reused or repaired.  21,500 tons not reused were added to the estimated 129,000 tons junked by Ghana residents after years of use.  The fallout rate for used electronics is actually less than new electronics, according to Ghana technicians, explaining consumer preferences.

However, well-intentioned NGOs like Blacksmith Institute, Greenpeace and BAN used the statistics above to imply that "western companies" dumping on Africa was the cause of the toxics problem.  Professional photographers (Fedele, Hugo, Bellini, McElvaney, etc.) used close-ups of scrap workers and odd Biblical references like "Hell" and "Sodom and Gomorrah" to scare people into a pledge campaign to boycott Africa technicians.

The "Sodom and Gomorrah" references to Agbogbloshie are a biblical reference, and the "E-Waste Hell" photos of Old Fadama are everywhere on Twitter, Facebook, in newspapers and magazines.  Fellow environmentalists discovered a white-guilt honeypot.   They found easy grant money, and crossover support from environmentalists and social activists on the "common ground" of not "polluting the poor".   But look what transpired...

1.  Create widespread citation of fake dumping statistic.

"Approximately 80% of electronic waste currently delivered to recyclers is actually exported to developing countries." 

"The dirty little secret is that when you take [your electronic waste] to a recycler, instead of throwing it in a trashcan, about 80 percent of that material, very quickly, finds itself on a container ship going to a country like China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Pakistan — where very dirty things happen to it," says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Basel Action Network, which works to keep toxic waste out of the environment.

Makes it easy to imagine 50,000,000 tons going into a scrapyard - by hand pushcart - without a driveway.

2.  Take pics of Tire burning

Homer Simpson Voice:   OOOOOooooo!  Fire!

3.  Tell simple story about nameless faceless White Exporters

4. Ignore actual African Importers, Techs of Color 

5. Ignore true statistics (93% Reuse) when Techs ARE interviewed

5.  Hide when Collateral Damage is documented

Photos of Agbogbloshie homes being destroyed June 2015

Twitter photo from Ab

 

Alhassan Ibn Abdalla‏@AbdallaIbn

@BBCAfrica @USEmbassyGhana the people look on helplessly as their homes are crashed in #OldFadama #Agbogbloshie

Did enviros conspire with land grabbing developers to evict thousands of homes of scrapper families in Old Fadama / Agbogbloshie?  Of course not.

But we played into a propaganda war over the increasingly valuable property.  It would have been expensive for AMA and developers to buy it.   Easier to find a reason / excuse for teargas and military evactuation.

"They are unChristian outsiders, Dagomba tribe are settlers, Sodom and Gomorrah"

"They caused the flooding which killed 150 people in May"

"They import electronic waste from other countries and burn it, poisoning us"

I had no clue about the property issue when I went to Agbogbloshie.  I was surprised how close it was to the most expensive developments in all of Ghana.  When I saw less than 1,000 tons (not 215,000 tons, and certainly not "most" of the world's millions of tons of ewaste), all home scrap, I asked the scrappers why anyone would repeat this?  I thought maybe, for grant money.

The Dagbani speaking scrappers had another theory about the lie.

They said it was about their land.   People wanted it but did not want to pay for it.  And sure enough, soon after they were being blamed for importing waste, for causing floods, and for being un-Christian... the teargas and bulldozers came.   It looked pretty bad, and I had no idea this was going to happen so quickly.

I'm not very popular with some environmental groups right now.

But see, I'm doing us all a favor.

When someone in our "tribe" of do-gooder environmentalists attacks someone innocent, they draw negativity against our tribe that can affect many generations.  Standing up against "friendly fire" is not disloyal, is not profiteering, is not damaging.    I'm taking bullets for this but I really believe this is the right thing to be documenting, and am asking friends to retweet our messages of support for the "geeks of color".

#freejoebenson
#whitesaviorcomplex
#povertyporn
#accidentalracism
#unintendedconsequences
#geeksofcolor
#worldrefugeeday
#Agbogbloshie

Robin Ingenthron‏@WR3A

#Agbogbloshie wire recycler Awal. "They tell lies about us importing waste. All home scrap from Accra." Why? "Land"

There are truths about Agbogbloshie and there are lies. What's really scary is the number, volume, direction of lies.

For a well written history of the land dispute by Josh Lepawsky and Grace Akese of Memorial University (Geography), read this "Discard Studies" essay, just published.

50 million tons per year to this small scrapyard?  Let's see, that's 50,000 tons per day, at 25kg per TV/PC... Gee, Guardian, short on editors?  But hey, it's Africans, don't sweat the easy calculator stuff.

You reprinted two of three propaganda tropes about the minority Dagbani, a Muslim minority in Accra, saying they go by "Sodomites" and that they handle 5 million scrap televisions per DAY.  You just needed to say they were responsible for the flooding.  

Growth of Internet users in Nigeria (Quartz)

Q: Are Millions of Tons of Western "e-Waste" Dumped in Agbogblshie, Ghana?

No.

There is more and more "e-waste" in Africa.  But the West (Europe and USA) are exporting fewer and fewer containers of used electronics.   The implication is obvious... used electronics DID work for 5-15 years after they were imported - Africans are finally replacing TVs and computers they imported more than a decade ago.

There is no big story here, other than the fake news was faked and Joe Benson is in jail because of it.

More African city households have had multiple televisions since the 1990s.  But the "sources" for the foreign dumping claim have all dried up.

John Henry:  "Where did that @#$% statistic go?"

Containers of used equipment being imported into Ghana's port (Tema, not Accra) are not going directly to the Agbogbloshie scrap yard. That can be disproved from any editor's desktop, or by looking carefully at photos purporting to show it.

And there is no evidence of widespread violations of international law.  15% waste is the margin of accidental breakage, electrostatic discharge, human error, etc., and it's as likely (or more likely) to come from brand new product lots as from used.

The discussion is not about what happens to used electronic scrap.  This is about is how to feel about people, and how those feelings promote a political agenda with multiple stakeholders, winners and losers.

How to feel about poor people, how to feel about non-profits, how to feel about ourselves when we consume more goods, how to feel about ourselves as do-gooders and non-profit founders..?  That's far more interesting than which type of video display (used CRT or new LCD) an African with $3,000 annual income should invest in.

[Addendum 6/23/2015 - After forced evictions begin, Discard Studies essay by J. Lepawsky and G. Akese explains history and land politics]

"E-Waste Crimes in Ghana" 9 - Great White Savior Gam

We revisited Agbogbloshie in urban Accra yesterday.   Having 9 days in Tamale, learning the Dagbani context, was important.  It honed and shaped our thinking.  Wahab and his 2 cousin/friends could focus their Dagbani translation on our questions, rather than siphon off the translation for American and Italian reporters.  As importantly, we had 9 days to think about the questions we didn't think to ask on the first day.

Since it was Agbogbloshie, of course there was yet another documentary being filmed that day... Justin from New York said he's a masters degree film student.   That's basically all he'd tell us.

This time we got to the wire-burning "hot spot" via the long and windy route.   We saw much, much more of the scrap metal site and trash dump.  It is indeed impressive in the context of a city of 1 million residents.  Of course, this city has closer to 5 million.   Recyclers will get my point... there has to be a lot of stuff still out in the city somewhere, waiting for a decision maker to let it be recycled.

money shot

The white photojournalist had Awal (Howell) set up along the canal, sitting on a TV housing, with his back to the tire fires east of him.  We took a vantage point under the sun canopy where the scrap burners and hanger-abouters rest and have lunch.

Agbogbloshie as a scrapyard has little to do with wire burning, and the wire burning has much more to do with automobile wire than with "e-waste".  But those wire fires, while a very small part of the equation, attract thrill seekers - unemployed teenagers and #greatwhitesaviors like me and "Justin".  

The site, seen from above, is mostly scrap automobiles, motorcycles, and bus recycling,.  It's not the largest electronics dump in the world, not even in the top 100.  Given the number of African households who have had electroncs for decades, there should be much more e-scrap.  "E-waste" is a very small part of the scrap, apparently because Africans are still holding onto it, "speculating" that used electronics they don't use now will be sellable to someone.  Today's Agbogbloshie is probably the tip of an iceberg as decades of reuse and repair will eventually cascade from a next generation of smart phone users.