Water find may end Darfur war

Byoliveridley

It has been posited that the Darfur crisis war genocide is a resource conflict caused by water shortage. If that is true, finding the world’s 10th largest lake (underground) will help.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Water find may end Darfur war

A huge underground lake has been found in Sudans Darfur region, scientists say, which they believe could help end the conflict in the arid region.

Some 1,000 wells will be drilled in the region, with the agreement of Sudans government, the Boston University researchers say.
Analysts say competition for resources between Darfurs Arab nomads and black African farmers is behind the conflict.
More than 200,000 Darfuris have died and 2m fled their homes since 2003.

“Much of the unrest in Darfur and the misery is due to water shortages,” said geologist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, according to the AP news agency.

“Access to fresh water is essential for refugee survival, will help the peace process, and provides the necessary resources for the much needed economic development in Darfur,” he said.

I am a technology sceptic sometimes, in the sense that I don’t believe technology fixes everything. But, this seems to be a promising development. If anything, all that activity, well digging, etc. will bring more people into Sudan and that could slow down the murderous Janjaweed.

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    Per capita energy

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    The actual journal paper seems to be behind a subscription wall. But, here’s a summary…

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    gwmr_89_f4.gif
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    gwmr_89_f1.png
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  • | |

    Lead and Crime

    Byoliveridley

    leadcrime.jpg

    The next time Giuliani tries to take credit for the decrease in violence during his tenure as NYC’s mayor, send him this chart.

    The NY Times shines some light on Jessica Reyes’ excellent work linking decreased lead exposure to a drop in violent crime in the US. The decreased lead exposure, of course, was from the phase-out of leaded gasoline from the American market. BTW, Nascar still uses leaded gasoline in its cars, nice going, guys.

    The answer, according to Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an economist at Amherst College, lies in the cleanup of a toxic chemical that affected nearly everyone in the United States for most of the last century. After moving out of an old townhouse in Boston when her first child was born in 2000, Reyes started looking into the effects of lead poisoning. She learned that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less intelligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive (Emphasis Added).

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    Reyes’ research mentions that while decreased lead exposure was very well correlated with violent crime (accounting for 56% of the reduction in crime), no correlation was found to property crimes (such as theft). This of course makes intuitive sense. A property crime is usually premeditated whereas violence is usually impulsive (excluding serial killers, of course). It is more likely that a budding criminal sets out to steal a car than to beat somebody to pulp. It is when the crime goes wrong that the probability of a violent crime increases. An individual with damaged impulse control is then more likely to seek a violent way out of the bad situation.

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    Reference

    Reyes, Jessica Wolpaw (2007) “Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 (Contributions), Article 51.

3 Comments

  1. it is a bit oversimplified of them to say it will help mitigate the conflict. it has to be more complicated than that when the government is hiring bands of vermon to attack villages unprovoked. there’s all sorts of shit going on there, from chinese and american oil investments, to political promises to the cia in the “war against terror”, to ethnic cleansing, to arms trade, etc. anyway, just thought i’d rant.

  2. A, you’re right. Sometimes, press releases of scientific results/research tend to overstate their findings just a wee bit and indulge in hyperbole. I mean, it’s great work, and a very valuable find. The logical fallacy is as follows:

    A started B
    A is now gone.
    B will therefore stop.

    I leave it to the philosophy major to identify this by its name!

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