Foreign Policy - #210 January-February 2015

FOUR YEARS AGO, IOANE TEITIOTA BARELY KNEW WHAT GLOBAL WARMING WAS. TODAY, THE MIGRANT FARMER FROM THE TINY ISLAND NATION OF KIRIBATI IS A TEST CASE FOR DETERMINING WHETHER MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, PUSHED FROM THEIR HOMES BY CLIMATE CHANGE, WILL BE ACKNOWLEDGED— OR FORGOTTEN. EXILE BY ANOTHER NAME BY KENNETH R. WEISS PHOTOGRAPHS BY BIRGIT KRIPPNER

A COLD NEW ZEALAND rain pelted the broad, As the seas rose and dormant volcanoes ble before midcentury. Without replen- weathered face of the man from the tropi- sank under their own weight, reefs of living ishing rains, the thin lens of depleted cal Pacific. He squinted up at the gathering coral grew toward the light and produced groundwater turns brackish. More than storm before refocusing his attention on enough rubble and sand to form land. The half of Kiribati’s 110,000 people now live crates of freshly picked Chinese cabbages, lone exception is the raised-coral island on the capital island of Tarawa, a propor- carefully adjusting and wrapping them of Banaba, which peaks at 266 feet, the tion steadily increasing with more arrivals to make sure they would arrive at market nation’s highest point. (Banaba was left from outer islands seeking cash, jobs, and in perfect condition. Over the years, such defaced by the British, who strip-mined better schools for their kids. (It’s culturally attention to detail and dependability have its rock phosphate for nearly eight decades taboo to refuse the request of a relative, so elevated him from field hand to foreman of before they finally abandoned it and the households pack dozens of extended fam- a vegetable farm on the outskirts of Auck- other islands when granting Kiribati its ily members under one roof and bed down land. Typically, Ioane Teitiota (pronounced independence in 1979.) on woven floor mats.) The capital’s shan- Tess-ee-yo-tah) reports to work every day, tytowns are bulging and sprawling onto for eight-hour shifts or longer, though he To think of these islands as emerging reclaimed or low-lying land vulnerable to takes an occasional Sunday off. “Some peo- from the sea with lush green hills like inundation whenever wind-driven waves ple say it’s hard work,” he said. “I say it’s Jamaica or Tahiti gives the wrong mental arrive with the highest tides. good for me and my family.” picture. Kiribati’s atolls, including Tabi- teuea, are stitched together by squat, nar- But the worst has yet to come for this des- Teitiota was born on Tabiteuea atoll, row strands of sand severed by intertidal perately poor and isolated country. Kiribati, one of the 33 tiny islands scattered across channels that connect the surrounding whose land averages little more than 6 feet a vast expanse of the central Pacific that deep blue ocean to a shallow aquamarine above sea level, is on the list of places in belong to the Republic of Kiribati (Keer- lagoon in the middle. It’s hard to find a the world most vulnerable to rising oceans. ree-bahss). The country reaches across 1.35 place more than a few minutes’ walk to the Water expands as it warms, and the world’s million square miles of ocean, but all its water’s edge, in any direction. swelling seas are being deluged with gla- islands combined add up to just 313 square cial melt; once they rise 3 feet or possibly miles, a landmass the size of Kansas City, Straddling the equator about halfway more this century, as most climate scien- Missouri. The nation’s atolls formed mil- between Hawaii and Australia, Kiribati tists predict they will, Kiribati will suffer lions of years ago around what were once has seen fresh groundwater grow scarce even greater erosion and flooding than it the rims of sunken undersea volcanoes. and fish catches decline under the demand does already. As this happens, it will likely of a booming population expected to dou- become one of the first countries to face an exodus of people due to climate change. Before moving to New Zealand in 2007, Teitiota spent four frustrating, jobless years living in Tarawa with his wife’s extended family on reclaimed land—sand and rubble piled up behind a shoulder-high sea wall of coral chunks and cement. Ocean waves riding the backs of high tides knocked out part of the sea wall and flooded the family compound not once, but twice—and both times Teitiota helped rebuild it. Like most I-Kiribati, as the people of the country are called, he saw this as the normal way of life for people in intimate proximity to the sea. He certainly didn’t think much about the distant notion that rising seas would bring such trouble more often. The idea of climate change barely registered in the back of his mind. In 2007, when New Zealand granted work visas to Teitiota and his wife, they left within a month, cashing in her manda- tory retirement savings to buy airline tick- ets. Two flights and 2,600 miles away, she 50 JAN | FEB 2015

became a caregiver in an Auckland nurs- ing him up as a symbol, this very atten- tality rate was 58 deaths per 1,000, nearly ing home; he found ample work in nearby tion has only vilified him in his homeland. 10 times higher than in New Zealand, greenhouses and farm fields. In quick suc- according to the U.N. Inter-agency Group cession, they had three children. The past After three dismissed court cases, for Child Mortality Estimation.) Immigra- eight years, Teitiota said, raced by in a blur. Teitiota lives with the threat of deporta- tion experts said that Teitiota would have He was making a go of it in a new country; tion, dreading that he will fall back into had a strong case, given the fact that his chil- his life was going very well. the ranks of the unemployed and fearing dren were young, vulnerable, and born in for the well-being of his children, ages 2, New Zealand—though none were granted Although his story might seem like a 4, and 6, should the family be sent back to citizenship at birth due to a change in the familiar one—a laborer from an impov- a country that struggles with high child law that took effect in 2006. Yet after the erished country takes a lowly job and his mortality, a startling lack of toilets, and grace period, there was no legal room for a perseverance pays off, giving his family a contaminated water supplies. humanitarian appeal. foothold in a foreign land—it is anything but. In the case of Teitiota, his story goes “Our future is so unsettled,” he said So Kidd began to pray about the case— something like this: In 2011, he had inad- through an interpreter. “Our lawyer is his way of brainstorming legal possibili- vertently overstayed his visa, so he filed a working on it, but we don’t know.… I’m ties. (On his website, he promotes his legal series of court appeals in a bid to stay in worried about the knock on the door and practice as combining “the law of mankind New Zealand. What he wanted was some- people telling us to leave.” and the law of God,” which can “achieve, thing straightforward: a visa extension. sometimes, miraculous results.”) Kidd, a What he got, however, was an attorney who THE TROUBLE BEGAN in 2010, when Teitiota large, unkempt man in his early 60s, with decided to present Teitiota as a casualty of found a lawyer in New Zealand to renew a shirttail hanging out, is a seeker of “spir- climate change—and to set out to change visas for him and his wife. Teitiota under- itual fitness,” a Pentecostal pastor who vis- international law. The argument goes that stood that the lawyer would take care of it its prisons, volunteers with the Salvation Teitiota can’t return home because the all, so “I left everything to him,” he said. Army Faith Factory, and goes on church coming deluge not only threatens Kiribati, But it wasn’t so simple. The lawyer had missions to Pacific islands like Vanuatu. but the health and safety of him, his wife, follow-up questions on how to proceed, He has an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in law, and their three young children. not to mention concerns about payment; aboriginal spirituality, and anthropology however, Teitiota—who was working long and has been a champion of marginalized Consequently, over the past year, this hours in the fields—was difficult to reach. communities since he worked for various 38-year-old migrant farmworker has Without the cash to cover legal fees, the Australian aboriginal legal service offices become an unlikely international celeb- lawyer stopped working on the Teitiotas’ in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, he gener- rity, a stand-in for the thousands of peo- case and held onto their passports, visas, ally handles low-profile criminal cases out ple in Kiribati—as well as millions more and other documents. More significantly, of his storefront office in suburban Auck- worldwide—expected to be forced from the lawyer didn’t tell Teitiota that import- land, mostly for clients of Maori descent their homes due to rising seas and other ant deadlines had passed—a reality that or for other Pacific Islanders. disruptions on a warming planet. Teitiota came crashing down on Teitiota when he is a contender to become the world’s first was stopped by a patrol officer for a burned- As he prayed, Kidd said, he saw Teitiota climate refugee, albeit an accidental one. out tail light in December 2011. Because he as a victim of a growing global inequity, had overstayed his visa, a warrant had been a larger humanitarian issue that needed Around the world, governments, policy- issued for his arrest. “He was locked up for a to be addressed. “We weren’t a bunch of makers, activists, and academics are wres- couple of days until they realized he wasn’t greenies, saying, ‘Let’s do a global warm- tling with what to do about the coming wave going to run away,” said Michael Kidd, his ing case.’” But when he met with I-Kiri- of climate migrants—a category of displaced current lawyer. bati expatriates and saw pictures of people that now falls into what the United flooded villages, the answer to his prayers Nations’ refugee chief calls a “legal void.” In By the time Teitiota asked Kidd to take slowly dawned on him. “I thought maybe fact, the issues raised in Teitiota’s case have his case in early 2012, the deadline for this would be a good test case,” he said. become part of the debate in legal journals requesting a visa extension was long gone. Although perhaps new to Kidd, this wasn’t and international meetings. So was the 42-day grace period to appeal to an absolutely novel idea in New Zealand: immigration authorities on humanitarian In recent years, other Pacific Islanders have Now, Teitiota, who barely speaks grounds, which would have allowed Teitiota raised similar court challenges, but with- enough English to communicate effec- a chance to argue, in the words of the coun- out success. “It’s not just people fearing tively with his attorney, much less under- try’s immigration law, that “exceptional being drowned,” Kidd said. “There’s all stands the legal language of New Zealand’s circumstances,” such as high child-mortal- of the environmental degradation due to immigration rules, is both pained and per- ity rates, would make it “unjust or unduly rising sea levels.” plexed as to how and why he has fallen on harsh” should he and his family be forced to the wrong side of the law. And while many return home. (In 2013, Kiribati’s child-mor- Like many I-Kiribati, Teitiota had seen in the international community are hold- FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 51

the damage from erosion and flooding that Ioane Teitiota holds his Kiribati passport. comes when bad weather hits the islands at high tide. He said he had “heard stories” of weathering a changing climate? a Ph.D. in New Zealand on the compound- about the threat of climate change, but It didn’t take long for Teitiota to gain the ing pressures of climate change, urbaniza- didn’t really understand “the fuller picture tion, and population growth. After three about rising sea levels” until he moved to first insights into those questions. Before he months of deliberation, Burson issued a New Zealand and started watching televi- knew it, the farmworker was celebrated for lengthy ruling in 2013 that found Teitiota sion programs about it. “It discouraged us seeking to become the world’s first climate credible, along with his story that he and from going back.” refugee. Painfully shy, he was featured in his wife did “not wish to return to Kiribati an Oxfam New Zealand video titled “The because of the difficulties they faced due to That sentiment was enough for Kidd. So Biggest Challenge of Our Time.” Last June, the combined pressures of over-population he appealed to New Zealand authorities to New Zealand political activists organized and sea-level-rise.” But Burson rejected his allow Teitiota to stay as a protected refugee a campaign event to raise climate change appeal, as a matter of law. under the 1951 U.N. Convention relating awareness among voters; they acknowl- to the Status of Refugees. Adopted while edged Teitiota as a Pacific Islander stand- So did the High Court later that year, Europe was in chaos after World War II, ing up for his rights. His lawyer still regularly after the well-publicized open hearing that the convention was specifically designed fields calls from journalists inquiring about first allowed Teitiota’s name to go public. to help those with legitimate fear of perse- the case from France, Germany, and Swit- In May 2014, the Court of Appeal also dis- cution based on race, religion, nationality, zerland, among other nations. Television missed the case. All three bodies issued political opinion, or membership in a social crews from Australia and South Korea have similar decisions, ruling it wasn’t their group. Kidd’s primary argument was that flown in to interview Teitiota. place to expand the scope of the interna- Teitiota faced indirect persecution from tional refugee convention to cover those human-caused global warming. The international media glommed on displaced by climate change. Despite their to Teitiota’s court appeals. His first began sympathy for the people of Kiribati, the “Morally his case is very strong,” Kidd behind closed doors at New Zealand’s legal authorities said Teitiota’s argument said, who noted that over decades of prac- Immigration and Protection Tribunal, failed to meet the narrow criteria spelled ticing law, he has seen insurmountable whose proceedings are held in secret to out in the convention. legal hurdles crumble away. “Legally, with protect the identities of people seeking the way the law is written.… Well, the point asylum. Bruce Burson, a tribunal mem- In their various opinions, New Zea- is: The laws need to be changed.” ber and migration law expert, listened to land authorities wrote that the impacts Teitiota’s and his wife’s testimonies. He of climate change are largely indiscrimi- As soon as the case hit New Zealand’s saw pictures of ocean floodwaters poison- nate, rather than targeting any individual High Court in October 2013, it drew inter- ing coconut trees and swamping houses, for any particular reason. Furthermore, national media attention, with stories and images brought by expert witness John the appellate justices agreed with Jus- TV broadcasts beamed around the world. Corcoran, a native of Kiribati completing tice Priestley, writing that the arguments “This surprised me,” wrote Justice John Priestley, who presided over the case. In an email, Priestley, who has since retired, wrote that he was astonished that the Wall Street Journal covered the case, as did Aus- tralian TV and many others. “A week after the hearing I received an email from an old high school friend who has lived in Paris for 40 years [and] who saw a shot of me in Court on French TV,” he wrote. “There had been no prior publicity about the Tri- bunal decision or about the appeal as far as I knew. So exactly how the media inter- est was created remains a mystery to me.” The allure, of course, was how the case touched on broader political questions. Should international law protect those forced to leave their countries due to climate- related disasters? Do wealthy, high carbon dioxide-polluting countries have a responsi- bility to help the poor countries least capable 52 JAN | FEB 2015

in the case attempted to “stand the [ref- by floods, storms, and other disasters in modern-day Atlantis raises novel legal ques- ugee] convention on its head.” Refugees 2013—roughly three times as many as those tions that have yet to be tested. She finds typically flee from governments that have displaced by conflict or violence, accord- nothing in international law that would failed to protect them from persecution ing to a report authored by the Internal preclude Kiribati from reconstituting itself or that have persecuted them directly. In Displacement Monitoring Center and the within another country, for example. At the this case, Teitiota “is seeking refuge within Norwegian Refugee Council. And scientists same time, she said, even if Kiribati were the very countries that are allegedly ‘per- know that a warmer atmosphere loads the to buy land in another state, this wouldn’t secuting’ him,” Priestley wrote, referring dice for more frequent and more extreme guarantee citizenship or other rights there to industrialized nations filling the skies weather events. Maps of the world’s areas to I-Kiribati migrants, possibly leaving them with greenhouse gases. Priestley noted most vulnerable to climate change show without the right to work, access to health that if he granted asylum to Teitiota and that it’s going to be particularly tough on care, or even permission to stay. if the legal precedent spread around the those living in river deltas and low-lying world, it would open the doors to “millions coastal areas. This isn’t just a hypothetical for schol- of people” facing economic deprivation, arly debate. In 2014, Kiribati purchased consequences of natural disasters, or other No one knows for sure, of course, how more than 8 square miles of private land “hardships caused by climate change.” many people will be forced to migrate in in Fiji at a cost of around $8 million. Fijian the decades ahead. Forecasts range from 25 President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau has assured Although disappointed by the rulings, million up to 1 billion by midcentury, the the I-Kiribati that some or all of them Kidd said he thought Priestley’s words were high end cited by the London-based non- would be welcome to migrate 1,300 miles “refreshingly honest” about an issue that profit Christian Aid in 2007. The most com- across open ocean waters to his country, if the New Zealand government and others monly cited estimate of climate migrants is the need arose. “Fiji will not turn its back could simply ignore. It has made him want about 200 million by 2050, according to the on our neighbors in their hour of need,” he to carry on with the case. So in December International Organization for Migration. said in 2014 at a state dinner hosted in Kiri- 2014, Kidd was again finalizing legal papers bati by President Anote Tong. “In a worst- to seek climate refugee status for Teitiota’s All these figures add up to one conclu- case scenario and if all else fails, you will wife and three children. This time, his plan sion: Climate change doesn’t just forebode not be refugees.” The migration of people is to package the whole family in one uni- an ecological crisis, but a humanitarian from Kiribati to Fiji has some history that fied appeal to the Supreme Court of New one as well. That is to say, it’s not just may offer a precedent too. When the Brit- Zealand, partly to work around some of the polar bears and penguins whose survival ish Phosphate Commissioners resumed lower courts’ rulings that did not consider is threatened, but that of people too. mining on Banaba, one of Kiribati’s islands, potential harm to Teitiota’s children. after World War II, they moved the surviv- Jane McAdam, author of Climate ing Banabans to a Fijian island the British Odd as it might seem, Teitiota and his Change, Forced Migration, and Interna- had purchased. The Banabans, including lawyer have never had any in-depth discus- tional Law, has analyzed “sinking islands” sions about the legal strategy for the case or like Kiribati and whether entire populations CLIMATE CHANGE its chance of success. Angua Erika, often might be legally cast adrift as “stateless per- serves as an interpreter, though her English sons” when countries cease to exist. For a DOESN’T JUST is limited. Money to hire an interpreter isn’t state to be recognized under international in the picture. In fact, Teitiota has so few law, it must generally meet various crite- FOREBODE AN funds that Kidd said he has donated most of ria, including having a defined territory his time to a case he finds enthralling com- and maintaining a permanent population. ECOLOGICAL CRISIS, pared with his usual load. “If it wasn’t for my [paying] criminal clients, I wouldn’t be A law professor at the University of BUT A HUMANITARIAN able to represent Mr. Teitiota.” New South Wales in Australia, McAdam points out that rising seas have never ONE AS WELL. Teitiota would just as soon leave the legal before caused the extinction of a nation; strategy to his defender. “I trust what my typically, more conventional means, such lawyer is doing,” he said. Although he has as being absorbed by another country or become something of an international celeb- broken apart by internal conflict, are the rity, he cares little about this, he added—so reasons for demise. The greatest challenge long as he gets to stay in New Zealand. of a “disappearing state,” she said, appears to be maintaining a permanent popula- TEITIOTA’S CASE won’t be the last one filed on tion, because most islands are likely to be behalf of those who must relocate due to a rendered uninhabitable by seawater intru- hotter, more crowded planet. Nearly 22 mil- sion and diminishing freshwater supplies lion people were displaced in 119 countries long before they vanish beneath the waves. McAdam said the prospect of becoming a FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 53

those who remain in Fiji, still have repre- In an interview in October, Tong dis- [and] not covered by any regime—by the ref- sentation in Kiribati’s Parliament. missed the question of whether he had any ugee protection regime in particular—they sympathy for Teitiota or any appreciation find themselves in a legal void.” Tong’s government has plans to adapt for what he is attempting to do in New Zea- certain Kiribati islands to rising seas by land’s courts. “I’ve never promoted or advo- But aside from a proposal by the Mal- building shoreline protections and improv- cated the idea of climate refugees,” Tong dives, another island nation vulnerable to ing water supplies. But it’s tough, he said, said. Nor has he championed any expan- rising sea levels, to include climate refu- to build up “sea defenses” on atolls that are sion of the refugee convention in order to gees in the convention, few of the United nothing but slivers of land that encircle a offer protected status for people forced by Nations’ 193 member countries have tidal lagoon like a Life Savers candy with rising sea levels to leave their homelands. shown much interest in expanding the chunks nibbled away. “If we had one solid “I must admit it may be out of a sense of commissioner’s mandate. The primary piece of land, it would be easier,” he said, pride. Basically, I don’t want to go begging.” concern is that any further expansion will and that’s precisely why he is shopping He wants to organize plans so his people spread the commissioner’s staff too thin for property. “The point that nobody has can migrate before disaster strikes. He calls and require additional funds on top of its really grasped is: If we build up these lands this “migration with dignity.” $5 billion budget. [here], it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” he said. “We might as well be buying land Tong has designed a program to inspire Some organizations and policy experts for millions of dollars elsewhere.” the next generation of I-Kiribati and train are pushing for a separate international them as carpenters, electricians, auto treaty—a companion to the 1951 refugee Tong appreciates the reassuring words mechanics, and nurses who can compete convention—that would give special status of Fiji’s president. But it might not be polit- for jobs in other countries. He has nudged to those forced across borders due to nat- ically acceptable for all of Kiribati’s people donor countries to help with training pro- ural disasters, flooding, or drought. Oth- to crowd into Fiji. It’s perhaps for this rea- grams and to welcome skilled I-Kiribati ers, like the Nansen Initiative—launched son that Tong is cautious, even coy, about immigrant workers who can fill labor by the governments of Norway and Swit- the land purchase in Fiji. It’s a good invest- shortages. To Tong, his people should be zerland—want to sidestep altogether the ment in rare freehold land, he said, a place “deserving migrants.” cumbersome U.N. process. Started in 2012, to grow food for Kiribati’s people and a the initiative has been holding a series of possible refuge for some of them should Although the program is off to a slow meetings in regions vulnerable to climate- it come to that. He’s keen on purchasing start, the president finds encouragement related displacement, namely the Pacific, even more land, he said, citing the closest in the thousands of applicants seeking to Central America, the Horn of Africa, South wealthy countries as prime locations. “I move to New Zealand through its Pacific Asia, and Southeast Asia. The gatherings know Australia and New Zealand are sell- Access Category, a lottery that selects are focusing on how to protect those dis- ing off land to the Chinese,” Tong said. “So 75 people from Kiribati a year. “When it placed as a result of climate change, but why shouldn’t we be buying land?” started off, that quota was never taken what’s new is who is in the room: U.N. up because our people don’t like to go. and other international agencies, regional TONG IS PERHAPS best known for admonish- They don’t like to leave home. But once organizations, activists, academics, and ing the world’s industrial powers for fail- we started talking about climate change members of the public and private sectors. ing to cut fossil fuel emissions so they can and what the future holds for the young The objective is to reach a global consen- continue to stoke their economic engines at people, the queue started getting long.” sus in Geneva this October. Ultimately, the expense of sinking island countries. He such findings could allow countries, inde- often characterizes his country as “drown- But while Tong takes issue with the idea pendently, to adopt a set of guiding princi- ing”—due to wealthy countries’ irresponsi- of refugee-like protections for his people, ples for helping those displaced by natural bly high consumption of coal and oil—and some international officials are pushing it. disasters. says that, as a consequence, there will be an Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commis- inevitable I-Kiribati diaspora. But he also sioner for refugees, has been positioning his All this uncertainty has contributed to does not want his people to be treated as agency to be a key player in taking care of the international interest in Teitiota’s case, desperate victims, looking for handouts. those uprooted by climate-related disasters. which, through the courts, could carve its Guterres, who took office in 2005, has long own protected legal path for climate refu- The 62-year-old executive has closely argued that climate change will lead to mass gees. If successful, it would “set off an ava- trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, with expres- displacement and suggested repeatedly that lanche as a precedent,” said Colin Rajah, the sive brown eyes and bushy black eyebrows his agency’s mandate should be expanded international coordinator of the Global Coa- that show his mixed I-Kiribati and Chinese to help those affected. “These persons are lition on Migration, a Geneva-based migrant heritage. He completed a university degree not truly migrants, in the sense that they did rights advocacy group. That said, he fears in New Zealand and a master’s at the Lon- not move voluntarily,” he said in a speech in the case was doomed from the start: “On a don School of Economics. First elected in 2011, marking the 60th anniversary of the purely legal and practical level, the push to 2003, he will wrap up his term later this year. refugee convention. “As forcibly displaced qualify someone displaced by climate as a 54 JAN | FEB 2015

Ioane Teitiota and his wife, Angua Erika, with their three children. take. “He was carrying a knife and trying to stab me.” The nimble, preteen Teitiota refugee isn’t going anywhere soon.” the couch in the living room of his tiny, managed to avoid injury. Yet on some of In part, this is because it’s rare to find a two-bedroom stand-alone granny flat in Kiribati’s islands, such grudges appar- one of Auckland’s suburbs that includes ently do not fade easily. And so Teitiota’s country eager to accept more refugees— Maoris, Tongans, Samoans, and other knife-wielding nemesis factored into his particularly a new category of refugees Pacific Islanders. To Teitiota, this place family’s decision to send him to the neigh- that could quickly add up to the millions. represents the fulfillment of his modest boring island of Abaiang to continue his Moreover, as a practical matter, it’s diffi- dreams for his family. studies at a boarding school run by the cult to determine whether anyone moves Kiribati Uniting Church. exclusively for climatic or other environ- Teitiota grew up in a traditional village mental reasons. That’s especially true in of fishermen and farmers trying to harvest Once he graduated from high school, the case of slow-onset crises such as rising enough to get by. They paddled canoes to Teitiota worked for a wholesale shipping sea levels and advancing desertification catch fish, waded into the shallows for clams company, distributing sacks of rice, cases of from drought. Often, an ensuing disaster is and other shellfish, dug freshwater pits to Spam, and other dried goods on his home merely an event that has pushed a migrant grow giant swamp taro, and climbed trees island of Tabiteuea. When the company past the point of endurance, exacerbating to harvest coconuts and collect the sap of went bankrupt three years later, he found existing economic strains or other troubles. coconut flower stems—obtaining a syrup a job on a 175-foot Japanese fishing boat Poor people have less resilience, and when they call “toddy.” (It’s called sour toddy that hauled in big tunas with stout poles. they live in countries with little capacity to when fermented into cheap alcohol.) It’s While on shore leave on Tarawa, he met his help them, they are doubly at risk. a difficult, physically demanding lifestyle, wife, who was a typist at the headquarters and one that’s complicated because so little of the Kiribati Uniting Church. They soon Yet until the international community grows in Kiribati’s poor sandy soils under married, and after seven years at sea, he takes climate migration more seriously, the broiling sun, or nothing at all when left the boat to be with his bride. He moved there could be a day when people from high tides and wind-driven waves cause in with her and her extended family on Kiribati wind up in fenced refugee camps, seawater to wash over the land. Breadfruit reclaimed land behind a sea wall in Abarao, rather than resettled into homes in a new from a large tree planted on mounded land a village on South Tarawa. Their house had country. And though Tong encourages his remains a cherished part of the diet, but electricity, but no plumbing or toilets. A people to plan their exit strategy early, it only when available. recent study by the Asian Development will be all for naught if countries are not Bank estimates that 60 percent of people willing to take them in. He may not realize Teitiota lived with his family until he on South Tarawa lack access to improved it, but Tong’s vision for his people’s future, was around 10 years old and had an unset- toilets, leaving a large segment of society in many ways, is the story of someone who tling encounter with a grown man, an to defecate on the beach or in other unsan- has already left Kiribati: Ioane Teitiota. island bully struggling with alcoholism and itary conditions. other demons. “He was a bit drunk at the AFTER AN OCTOBER DAY in the chilly, rain- time,” Teitiota said. “He talked to me and I Perhaps the remotest patch of urban- soaked fields, Teitiota plunked down on talked back to him.” That was a serious mis- ized blight on the planet, South Tarawa is so crowded these days that disputes over land ownership and boundaries have intensified, clogging Kiribati’s courts and elevating neighborhood tensions. While Teitiota was living with his wife’s fam- ily, fights broke out in the village, requir- ing police to intervene and restore order, Teitiota recalled in his March 2013 testi- mony before New Zealand’s Immigration and Protection Tribunal. “Some used the knife,” he testified. “People got injured.… Yes, some people were killed.” Teitiota said that he was never directly engaged in such a fight, but both he and his wife were con- cerned about their safety walking through the neighborhood after dark. In his testimony, he seemed even more troubled by his inability to find work on Tar- FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 55

AS MANY AS 2.2 MILLION PEOPLE often leak into the freshwater lens, accord- of circumstances.” ing to a 2012 presidential report on South COULD BE Tarawa; all groundwater has tested positive In terms of the new case he is preparing for fecal coliform. Other infectious diseases DISPLACED FROM are taking advantage of the crowding in this to file, Kidd is optimistic that the Supreme island nation’s shantytowns. Tuberculosis SMALL ISLAND is on the upswing. Leprosy is spreading. Court justices will give Teitiota a hearing. NATIONS BY THE END “Some people in the I-Kiribati com- “My feeling is that they will listen to the case munity, they think I’m running down the OF THE CENTURY. island,” Teitiota said, and he winced. At because it’s of international interest,” Kidd the family home in Tarawa where Teitiota awa. He didn’t like relying on his brother- lived with his wife’s family, his sister-in- said. “They like to get involved in a little bit in-law as the primary wage earner for a law started crying when I came to talk to household of 15 people. “The pay that he her. She said the family asked the radio of judicial activism every now and then, just received was hardly enough to go round,” station to quit broadcasting stories about he said. So when Teitiota and his wife the case. Arabaio Erika, the family bread- like the federal courts in the United States.” obtained work visas in New Zealand, they winner and eldest brother, scowled when jumped at the chance to leave. I showed him pictures of his youngest sis- The attorney plans to renew a second ter, her husband, and their three children. In his new community in New Zealand, He abruptly left me, saying he didn’t have legal argument, seeking asylum for his Teitiota remains well appreciated. His boss, time to talk, his shoulders tight and raised Fred Argent, the owner of the farm where he as he hurried away. Angua Erika, Teitiota’s clients under the International Covenant works, is eager to keep the Pacific Islander wife, said she gets the same cold-shoulder as his foreman. “He’s a hard worker,” Argent treatment from her brother every time she on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a said. “He’s a good, honest man.” But in Kiri- tries to telephone him. bati, the islander’s legal posturing to stay U.N. treaty that, among other things, pro- in New Zealand has made him a public tar- Teitiota said he sometimes feels “caught get of scorn. And the criticisms go beyond in the middle” between New Zealand and tects against being “arbitrarily deprived of President Tong’s: Some islanders, in heated Kiribati—where he is both accepted and online comments, have suggested greeting rejected for different reasons. “Everybody [one’s] life.” Teitiota’s case failed on those Teitiota at the airport with placards telling loves their country,” he said. But his out- him to go back to his new home. look has changed since his children were grounds in previous appeals because Kidd born in a nation without the troubles bear- Teitiota realizes now that his testimony ing down on his homeland. “If I were to go didn’t point out any specific action, or and court filings about frequent flooding back home, I know there is no future there and health hazards in Kiribati have unin- for me or my children.” lack of one, by Kiribati’s government that tentionally wounded national pride. He has voiced concern about his children not SINCE TEITIOTA’S last court rejection in May threatens Teitiota’s life. Nor did the attor- having enough food or getting sick—a claim 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- ridiculed by those in Kiribati who seem mate Change has completed its fifth assess- ney show the situation in Kiribati to be so offended at how he’s portraying life on the ment, with ever-stronger language about islands to outsiders. Yet since this case has the trouble ahead for the Earth. “It is virtu- precarious that the lives of Teitiota’s fami- come to light, Tarawa residents have been ally certain that global mean [sea-level rise alarmed that 2,400 children fell ill and nine rates] are accelerating,” reads the chapter ly’s members would be in imminent danger children died after picking up a rotavirus, on small islands. On top of waves and storm likely from sewage-contaminated water. surges, the rising seas will “present severe should they be forced to return home. Tim- Aside from the widespread practice of out- sea-flood and erosion risks for low-lying door defecation, pit latrines and flush toilets coastal areas and atoll islands.” The report ing seems to be the critical sticking point. highlights forecasts that as many as 2.2 mil- lion people could be displaced from small Although some legal experts contend island nations by the end of the century. it may be years before imminent harm Such dire predictions fill Teitiota’s lawyer with hope. “It’s something we can from climate change reaches the point hang an appeal on,” Kidd said, “a change of triggering human rights protections, Kidd disagrees. His case has been fortified by the calamitous forecasts of the world’s leading climate scientists, he said, and he thinks now is the time—and Kiribati is the place. “Whether you roast someone slowly or throw them in the fire, the end result is the same: Death is death.” The U.N. Human Rights Committee, the Geneva-based body that oversees imple- mentation of the ICCPR, reviews individ- ual cases to consider whether human rights have been violated. “If we are not success- ful with the Supreme Court,” Kidd said, “we’ll go to Geneva.” Kidd likes to quote his hero, Mahatma Gandhi, “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” For his part, Teitiota is along for the ride. Q KENNETH R. WEISS (@KennethWeiss), a Pulit- zer Prize winner, writes about science, the environment, and public health. A grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Report- ing supported research for this article. 56 JAN | FEB 2015

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What are the top 20 35Survey Demographics HILLARY CLINTON institutions for 36 45 WAS RANKED undergraduate, 46 55 31% AMONG THE master’s, and 56 65 MOST EFFECTIVE Ph.D. programs 66+69% SECRETARIES in international MALE FEMALE OF STATE. relations? Who are the top 35% The results of the 2014 Ivory Tower sur- scholars? And 30% vey—a collaboration between FOREIGN what are the 25% POLICY and the Teaching, Research, and most important 20% International Policy (TRIP) project at the foreign-policy 15% College of William & Mary—provide an issues facing the 10% insider’s guide. Responses from 1,615 IR United States 5% scholars drawn from 1,375 U.S. colleges and today? universities determined rankings for the AGE BREAKDOWN leading Ph.D., terminal master’s, and under- BY DANIEL MALINIAK, SUSAN PETERSON, graduate programs in IR. (The scholars were RYAN POWERS, AND MICHAEL J. TIERNEY 38% asked to list the top five institutions in each category.) The survey also quizzed respon- The road to Washington is paved 62% dents about recent historical events and with elite educations. Indeed, for CONSULTED WITH future policy challenges: Just how plausi- young people hoping to secure ble is a U.S. war with China, for example, jobs in Foggy Bottom, on Penn- GOVERNMENT IN PAST and who was the most effective secretary of sylvania Avenue, and elsewhere FIVE YEARS DID NOT state over the past 50 years? (Hint: Neither in the foreign-policy establish- Condoleezza Rice nor John Kerry.) ment, a key ingredient to success is often a diploma in interna- All told, the Ivory Tower survey offers a tional relations (IR) from one of window into how America’s top IR scholars America’s top universities. There see the world today—and which institutions are debates to be had about this are effectively nurturing future generations model—how the pipeline can of thinkers and policymakers. become more affordable, for instance, to ensure greater diver- THE TEACHING, RESEARCH, AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY sity among government hires. PROJECT IS SUPPORTED BY THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION Scholars and policymakers alike OF NEW YORK AND THE MACARTHUR FOUNDATION. rightly agree, however, that lan- guage skills, expertise about regions of the world, and other knowledge gleaned in the class- room make for a stronger, more effective corps of foreign-policy wonks. So which schools prepare students best? 58 JAN | FEB 2015

Who was the most influential Who was the most effective scholar of the past 20 years? U.S. secretary of state of the past 50 years? 1 Alexander Wendt 40.76% 2 Robert Keohane 34.00% 1 Henry Kissinger 32.21% 3 John Mearsheimer 32.73% 2 Don’t know 18.32% 4 James Fearon 24.82% 3 James Baker 17.71% 5 Kenneth Waltz 23.23% 4 Madeleine Albright 8.70% 6 Joseph Nye Jr. 17.32% 4 Hillary Clinton 8.70% 7 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita 13.20% 6 George Shultz 8 Samuel Huntington 7 Dean Rusk 5.65% 9 Martha Finnemore 11.51% 8 Warren Christopher 3.51% 10 Robert Jervis 11.19% 8 Cyrus Vance 1.53% 11 Stephen Walt 11.09% 10 Colin Powell 1.53% 12 Kathryn Sikkink 10.77% 11 Condoleezza Rice 1.07% 13 Peter Katzenstein 8.76% 12 Lawrence Eagleburger 0.46% 14 Beth Simmons 12 John Kerry 0.31% 15 David Lake 7.92% 0.31% 7.18% 6.76% FOR COMPLETE RESULTS, VISIT HTTP://TRIP.WM.EDU/REPORTS/2014/ In which issue areas has IR research had the largest impact on U.S. foreign policy? 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL INTRASTATE HUMAN RIGHTS DEVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN INTERNATIONAL NONE OF THESE ENVIRONMENT INTERNATIONAL GLOBAL CIVIL OTHER HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY POLITICAL CONFLICT STUDIES LAW FOREIGN POLICY RELATIONS SECURITY ORGANIZATIONS HEALTH SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL ETHICS ECONOMY THEORY RELATIONS FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 59

MILES KAHLER Distinguished Professor Editor, Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance AMITAV ACHARYA Professor and UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance Author, The End of American World Order GREAT HOW IS THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER CHANGING? CHALLENGES School of International Service professors Amitav Acharya OF OUR TIME DEMAND A and Miles Kahler explore challenges to the nation-state and the role of emerging economies in global governance. GLOBAL Learn how you can join Professors Acharya and Kahler PERSPECTIVE and their SIS colleagues in world-class conversations at american.edu/sis.

To which of the following events did you respond by Which area of the world do you consider to be increasing or decreasing your research in a related of greatest strategic importance to the United area of study? (Top 10 responses) States today? 9% 30% IRAQ WAR WAR IN KOSOVO 8% 19% 11% CHINA’S GLOBAL FINAN OPENING CIAL CRISIS RWANDAN GENOCIDE 19% AFGHANISTAN WAR 40% 22% 1 40% EAST ASIA INCLUDING CHINA 2 37% MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA INCLUDING OTHER TURKEY 3 10% WESTERN EUROPE 4 5% RUSSIA/FORMER SOVIET UNION EXCLUDING THE BALTIC ARAB SPRING STATES 5 2% LATIN AMERICA INCLUDING MEXICO AND THE CARIBBEAN 5 2% NORTH AMERICA EXCLUDING MEXICO 7 1% CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE INCLUDING THE BALTIC STATES 26% 7 1% SOUTH ASIA INCLUDING AFGHANISTAN 7 1% SOUTHEAST ASIA 7 1% SUB SAHARAN AFRICA ALL OTHER AREAS LESS THAN 1% FALL OF USSR Which area of the world do you think will be of 37% greatest strategic importance to the United States 20 years from now? 9/11 ATTACKS What are the three most important foreign-policy issues facing the United States today? 1 Global climate change 40.96% 1 66% EAST ASIA INCLUDING CHINA 2 10% MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA INCLUDING 2 Armed conflict in the Middle East 26.81% TURKEY 3 6% WESTERN EUROPE 4 3% LATIN AMERICA INCLUDING MEXICO AND THE CARIBBEAN 3 Failed or failing states 22.29% 4 3% SUB SAHARAN AFRICA 6 2% ARCTIC 6 2% RUSSIA/FORMER SOVIET UNION EXCLUDING 4 China’s rising military power 21.54% THE BALTIC STATES 6 2% SOUTH ASIA INCLUDING AFGHANISTAN 6 2% SOUTHEAST ASIA 5 Transnational terrorism 21.23% ALL OTHER AREAS LESS THAN 2% 6 Renewed Russian assertiveness 17.47% 7 Global poverty 16.42% Likelihood of U.S. war with China or Russia in the 8 Global wealth disparities 15.66% next 20 years (on a scale of 0-10) 9 China’s rising economic influence 15.51% 10 Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction 14.01% 30% 10 Transnational political violence 14.01% What are the three most important foreign-policy 25% issues the United States will face over the next 10 years? 20% 15% 1 Global climate change 45.90% CHINA 2 China’s rising military power 28.28% RUSSIA 3 Armed conflict in the Middle East 23.03% 4 China’s rising economic influence 20.87% 10% 5 Failed or failing states 20.71% 6 Transnational terrorism 19.94% 5% 7 Global wealth disparities 16.07% 8 Renewed Russian assertiveness 14.37% 0 WON’T HAPPEN WILL HAPPEN 10 9 Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction 12.83% 10 Transnational political violence 12.52% FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 61

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NEITHER EFFECTIVE NOR INEFFECTIVE Top Master’s Programs for Policy Career in IR INEFFECTIVE What is the VERY EFFECTIVE 1 Georgetown University 58.61% 2 Johns Hopkins University 47.76% effectiveness of 3 Harvard University 46.31% 4 Princeton University 33.33% each policy tool? 5 Columbia University 31.21% 6 Tufts University 29.08% EXTENDING OR 7 George Washington University 26.06% WITHDRAWING ECONOMIC 8 American University 17.11% ASSISTANCE 9 London School of Economics 13.42% 10 Stanford University 5.37% IMPOSING TRADE 11 University of Denver SANCTIONS OR GRANTING 12 University of Chicago 5.15% TRADE CONCESSIONS 13 University of California—San Diego 5.03% 14 University of Oxford 4.70% PROMOTING OR RESTRICTING 15 Yale University 4.47% PRIVATE INVESTMENT 16 Syracuse University 3.91% 17 University of California—Berkeley 3.13% PROMOTING OR RESTRICTING 18 University of Cambridge 2.57% BUSINESS WITH BANKS IN 19 University of Pittsburgh 2.35% TARGETED COUNTRIES 20 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1.79% 21 Monterey Institute of Int’l Studies 1.68% USING SOVEREIGN WEALTH 21 Sciences Po—Paris 1.45% 21 University of Michigan 1.45% 20% FUNDS TO INCREASE OR 24 Graduate Inst. of Int’l and Dev. Studies 1.45% WITHDRAW INVESTMENT 24 New York University 1.12% 24 Texas A&M University 1.12% IN A TARGET MARKET 1.12% EFFECTIVE EXTENDING OR VERY INEFFECTIVE WITHDRAWING MILITARY ASSISTANCE 40% 60% DON’T KNOW Top U.S. Undergraduate Institutions to Study IR Top Ph.D. Programs for Academic Career in IR 1 Harvard University 46.20% TOP 10 RECOMMENDED 1 Harvard University 62.51% 2 Princeton University 39.14% LANGUAGES FOR A CAREER 2 Princeton University 53.17% 3 Stanford University 33.02% IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 3 Stanford University 48.76% 4 Georgetown University 28.06% 4 Columbia University 32.44% 5 Columbia University 24.37% 1. CHINESE 5 Yale University 21.80% 6 University of Chicago 19.62% 2. ARABIC 6 University of Chicago 21.37% 7 Yale University 18.67% 3. ENGLISH 7 University of California—San Diego 16.00% 8 George Washington University 11.39% 4. SPANISH 8 University of Michigan 15.68% 9 American University 5. FRENCH 9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 13.43% 10 University of Michigan 9.92% 6. RUSSIAN 10 University of California—Berkeley 12.03% 11 University of California—Berkeley 9.49% 7. FARSI 11 University of Oxford 8.59% 12 Dartmouth College 8.54% 8. HINDI 12 Cornell University 7.30% 13 University of California—San Diego 8.23% 9. GERMAN 13 London School of Economics 6.66% 14 Tufts University 7.70% 10. TURKISH 14 Ohio State University 5.48% 15 Cornell University 7.07% 15 Georgetown University 5.37% 16 Johns Hopkins University 6.43% 16 University of Cambridge 4.51% 17 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 6.12% 17 Johns Hopkins University 4.08% 18 College of William & Mary 5.06% 18 George Washington University 3.22% 19 Swarthmore College 4.54% 19 New York University 2.69% 20 Williams College 3.48% 19 University of Wisconsin—Madison 2.69% 21 University of California—Los Angeles 2.95% 21 University of Minnesota 2.26% 22 Brown University 2.85% 22 American University 22 University of Virginia 2.74% 22 Duke University 2.15% 24 Ohio State University 2.74% 22 University of Rochester 2.15% 25 Duke University 2.64% 25 University of California—Los Angeles 2.15% 2.22% 2.04% FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 63



observation deck MAPPA MUNDI ECONOMICS NATIONAL SECURITY BOOKS CULTURE THE FIXER Is unrestricted Are foreign How the U.S. can Do international Olayinka Olu- Internet access investors problems use surveillance book awards wakuse III on what a modern human or solutions in the to save lives—not dilute world to see and do right? | P. 66 Ebola crisis? | P. 68 target them. | P. 70 literature? | P. 76 in Lagos. | P. 78 LONDON THE INTERNET VIRGINIA ICON BY ELIAS STEIN FOR FP LIBERIA EARTH SPACESHIP LAGOS Illustration by TAMARA SHOPSIN FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 65

mappa mundi by DAVID ROTHKOPF Rights 2.0 Is unrestricted Internet access a modern human right? NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONS ARE SUPPOSED TO innovators in Article 1, Section 8 (the Copyright Clause). The tech- nologies that were mentioned were ones that by the late 1700s enshrine fundamental rights for every- had become so ingrained in day-to-day life that they were seen one—and for generations. Such docu- as natural to the course of human existence, or at least critical to ments are also products of moments in the functioning of government: money, for instance, and a mili- time and reflect perceptions of life in those tary. In at least two cases in the Bill of Rights, the unfettered use of moments. That’s why the best of them, like technologies was seen as necessary for citizens’ freedom—those the U.S. Constitution, contain the seeds of technologies being the press and arms. The press was more than their own reinvention. Indeed, the secret three centuries old when the Constitution enshrined the right to a sustainable constitution is that it both to freedom of expression. Meanwhile, the arms referenced were captures what is enduring and anticipates not specified, but no doubt included the firearms of the day that the need to change. were essential to the upkeep of a militia, which was the express rationale (even if today it is generally overlooked) for the right to Over the years, the U.S. Constitution has bear arms in the first place. been amended 27 times—the first 10 being the Bill of Rights, of course—to ensure that To be sure, technological progress challenges the assumptions it stays current with prevailing views of that underlie even the best-conceived documents. This has been what is fundamental or best for the United evident recently in the debate over whether Fourth Amendment States. Among the finest examples of the guarantees against illegal searches and seizures, which explic- Constitution’s adaptability to shifting and itly pertain to the main information technology of the late 1700s maturing norms are the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, and the 15th and 19th amendments, which guaranteed voting rights for everyone, regardless of race or gender, respectively. Because it is meant to be malleable, the original Constitution included refer- ences to very few technologies. In fact, America’s founders were so sure that tech- nologies would evolve over time that they even included protection of the rights of 66 JAN | FEB 2014 Illustration by MATT CHASE

OBSERVATION DECK nia, Finland, France, Greece, and Spain, tricity needed to plug into the web? The have asserted some right of access in their constitutions or legal codes, or via judicial answer, resoundingly, is yes—even though, rulings. Meanwhile, some advocates, such as Internet co-inventor Vint Cerf, have argued that content on the Internet must be protected from censorship, lest people’s right to information be lost. in a great tragedy of multilateralism, the creators of the Millennium Development Goals failed to set a benchmark for energy ARGUING THAT PEOPLE access. Electricity once seemed a luxury, CANNOT ASSERT RIGHTS BEYOND but today the nearly 1.3 billion without it THE IMAGINATION OF THE are effectively cut off from modern life. CONSTITUTION’S FRAMERS IS AN ABSURDITY, AND A DANGEROUS ONE. Yet this raises another question: In a world where roughly 80 percent of electricity is— and for a long time will be—produced by burning fossil fuels, how is the right to a clean, healthy environment also protected? This points to a need for universal access to The thrust of these arguments converges clean, sustainable, and affordable energy. on a single point: It is difficult, if not impos- (“papers”), cover technologies that have sible in some places, to participate fully in Abstract as a discussion of fundamental developed subsequently, such as email today’s world without an open, available and metadata. And, surprisingly, there has Internet. This will become even truer as rights may seem, determining what people not been more meaningful debate about access is increasingly required to win and whether the Constitution protects the use perform jobs, gather news, participate in must have to survive and thrive, and wres- of arms that Madison & Co. could not possi- politics, receive education, connect with bly have foreseen—namely, modern assault health-care systems, and engage in basic tling with the conflicts found among these weapons—and how the Second Amend- financial services. (Coin and paper money, ment applies in a world without militias. one of those few technologies mentioned elements, may represent the greatest chal- in the U.S. Constitution, will fade in impor- Arguing that people cannot assert tance in coming decades, outmoded by lenge of this century. The world requires rights beyond the imagination of the Con- mobile banking.) stitution’s framers is an absurdity, and a new rules that will empower and enable dangerous one. As the metadata instance These are daunting thoughts on a planet shows, it is hazardous not to bring the on which 4.4 billion people lack Internet more and more people to tap into the full American conception of rights in line access—but that number is shrinking rap- with the ways and means of modern life. idly. The International Telecommunication promise of human existence, while not Just as it took the invention of the print- Union projected in May 2014 that 3 billion ing press to trigger a deliberation on free- people would be online by the end of 2014, simultaneously undercutting and dimin- dom of expression, technological changes up some 300 million from the previous today are so profound that they demand year’s projection. In a July 2014 report, ishing that promise. a reconsideration of what constitutes a based on a canvass of more than 1,400 fundamental right. experts, the Pew Research Center found These rules are being made possible by that even though governments will likely In recent years, more people have find new ways to restrict Internet access technological advances, but they will not maintained that the right to unfettered and content, billions more people may be Internet access is the modern equivalent online by 2025. Microsoft has estimated actually come to be if leaders do not act of the right to the comparable technol- that number will be close to 5 billion. ogies of centuries ago. The U.N. special to create them—if governments leave it rapporteur on freedom of opinion and This revolution carries with it other expression has argued that disconnect- important questions. If there is a right to to the happenstance of progress to sort ing people from the Internet constitutes the Internet, for instance, does that mean a human rights violation. A number of people must also have a right to the elec- out tensions among the modern ingre- countries, including Costa Rica, Esto- dients of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The conversation about nec- essary action is already coming too late. The longer it takes to kick into high gear, the longer humans will continue hurtling toward a new economic and social real- ity. Simultaneously, there will be much slower progress toward ensuring that the gains this reality brings are not offset by the tragedy of too few people benefiting or by the planet’s gradual but irrevers- ible degradation. Q DAVID ROTHKOPF (@djrothkopf) is CEO and editor of the FP Group. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 67

economics by DEBORA L. SPAR Heroic Villains Are foreign investors problems or solutions in the Ebola crisis? For months, the news out of West Yet there have been glimpses of good news amid the tragedy, Africa has been unrelentingly including some emanating from unlikely sources: multinational grim. As of early December, the companies that play an outsized role in West Africa’s economy. At devastating Ebola epidemic had its vast plantation and company town in Liberia, for example, rub- infected a reported 17,942 peo- ber producer Firestone—which accounts for around 60 percent of ple and killed 6,388, according to the country’s rubber exports—built two isolation clinics after an the World Health Organization employee’s wife contracted the disease, converted pickup trucks (WHO); the actual toll, which into ambulances, and enforced a “no visitors” policy, intended would also account for unre- to protect its 8,500 workers and their 71,500 dependents from ported cases, is presumed to be contact with the sick. By October, the company reported that no even higher. Order has broken cases of infection remained on its plantation. Steel giant Arcelor- down in some towns and vil- Mittal, whose planned $1.7 billion iron-mining project in Liberia— lages, and entire families have now delayed because of the epidemic—will eventually cost nearly been wiped out. In Sierra Leone, as much as the country’s entire GDP, moved with similar efficacy, Guinea, and Liberia, seeds of eco- educating its workers about the disease, creating buffer zones around nomic growth that only recently its property, and constructing medical facilities staffed with trained seemed so promising have been personnel. As of November, the firm’s sprawling community of 500 threatened, suddenly, by catastro- square miles and 25,000 people had seen only one fatality. phe. The cost of the epidemic is likely to hit at least $3 billion by the end of 2015, according to recent World Bank estimates. 68 JAN | FEB 2015 Illustration by MATT CHASE

OBSERVATION DECK Africa, or part of the solution? Do they help for instance, where democratically elected poor countries on the path to development, or only hurt them? governments are slowly starting to acquire As is so often the case with delicate rela- legitimacy and administrative competence. tionships, the answer to these questions is simultaneously yes, maybe, and a little of As soon as these countries registered cases both. That’s because the underlying reality is murky, shaped not only by foreign firms’ of Ebola, their governments implemented undeniable power, but also by their host countries’ lack of it. Or, put another way, quarantines and swiftly tracked all possi- one of the reasons firms appear to have responded so efficiently to Ebola is that ble contacts. In Nigeria, only 20 people contracted the disease before the WHO declared the country Ebola-free; in Sen- egal, not a single transmission occurred. This contrast says a lot about the compli- WHEN STATES ARE WEAK AND cated balance of power between firms and CRISES EMERGE, RESIDENT FIRMS states in post-colonial Africa: When states INEVITABLY FILL POWER VACUUMS, are weak and crises emerge, resident firms FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. inevitably fill power vacuums, for better or for worse. When states are strong, however, the role of foreign investors—for better or for worse, again—inevitably declines. In Botswana, for instance, diamond min- Under normal circumstances, neither the governments of Guinea, Liberia, and ing has long accounted for the vast bulk of Firestone nor ArcelorMittal is accustomed Sierra Leone have responded so poorly. to getting much positive press out of Africa. economic activity. But as the country has Firestone has been attacked for allegedly To be sure, Ebola caught everyone channeling funds to Charles Taylor, the by surprise; even the United States and become stronger and more stable—today, murderous dictator who ruled Liberia from Spain arguably bungled the first cases 1997 to 2003, and ArcelorMittal has faced that reached their borders. But Guinea, it ranks in the 67nd percentile of the World accusations of twisting arms and gaining Liberia, and Sierra Leone were stunned unfair advantage—including a preferential by the sheer enormity of the crisis and Bank’s scale, and the World Justice Proj- tax regime—with regard to the granting their lack of capacity—financial, tech- of its 25-year mining concession. More- nical, medical, and even military—to ect says it has the strongest rule of law in over, some critics have blamed all of West do anything about it. This relative inca- Africa’s extractive industries for helping pacity stems not from their relationship sub-Saharan Africa—the South African to spark the Ebola epidemic in the first with multinational firms, but from their place. The logic here is straightforward: recent historical legacy as very young, very firm De Beers has gradually ceded control As firms harvested resources or made way weak states. Liberia and Sierra Leone are for open land, they inevitably cut through just over a decade removed from ruinous of the diamond industry to the government forests, reducing their mass and forcing civil wars, while Guinea has been plagued wildlife into areas of human habitation. since independence by civil strife and a and local investors. And thanks to progress As a result, animal-borne viruses such as string of military coups. None of these Ebola could jump more easily and fero- countries has managed yet to build since the 1994 genocide, Rwanda—which ciously to humans, spreading along the independent political parties, strong networks of commerce and transportation government institutions, sound infra- now sits in the World Bank scale’s 53rd per- that the firms also helped create. structure, or robust civil societies. Based on the most recent data, all rank very low centile—has managed to woo foreign inves- As the Ebola epidemic continues to rage, on the World Bank’s scale of government therefore, foreign investors such as Fires- effectiveness, scoring only in the 12th tors but also keep them from exerting too tone and ArcelorMittal find themselves cast percentile (Liberia), 11th percentile (Sierra on both sides of a complicated, perennial Leone), and 9th percentile (Guinea). much control over industry and politics. debate: Are multinational firms part of the problem in epidemics and other crises in In comparison, it is telling to note where In the end, the threat of Ebola is so dire Ebola has not spread: Nigeria and Senegal, that the world community would be fool- ish not to deploy whatever lines of resis- tance are available. That includes the WHO, Doctors Without Borders, armies, volun- teers—and, yes, even rapacious extractive industries. Because the problem here is not the power of foreign firms. It is the weak- ness of local states. Q DEBORA L. SPAR (@deboraspar) is a colum- nist for FOREIGN POLICY, the president of Barnard College, and the author, most recently, of Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 69

national security by JAMES BAMFORD The Black-and-White Security Question How Washington can use surveillance to save lives—not target them. Within the rarified world of Gripped by severe arthritis, his hands the machines; we’ve got the guys with the technical intelligence, few have were swollen and knotted as he handed me know-how here in Washington.” matched the extraordinary a coffee cup. “We believe that one day the instincts of Arthur Lundahl, United States might want to consider having I was shocked. Here was the father who, in 1961, founded and a center like NPIC established somewhere, of space intelligence suggesting that an headed the CIA’s National Pho- but completely dedicated to the handling of organization could take top-secret space- tographic Interpretation Center world peaceful problems,” he said. “I don’t surveillance imagery, reduce its resolution, (NPIC)—and who, a year later, mean monitoring the SALT agreement; I declassify it almost in real time, and make alerted President John F. don’t mean anything to do with military it available to the public. His idea would Kennedy to his agency’s images intelligence. I mean when there’s an earth- turn espionage on its head: Back then, the of Soviet nuclear warheads in quake in a country, a fire, a flood, a huge vol- U.S. government didn’t even acknowledge Cuba, leading to the missile cri- canic eruption, a big tidal wave, a disaster, that espionage from space took place, and sis. In late November 1984, I had a famine like in Africa at the present time.” the name of the agency that built the spy lunch with Lundahl at O’Donnell’s, satellites and controlled them in orbit, the a bustling seafood restaurant The “White Center,” as he called it, National Reconnaissance Office, was top near his home in Bethesda, “would be freely open,” he said. “We’ve got secret. Maryland; afterward, he asked me back to his place, where we could talk more privately. On a wall of his small wooden house on Chestnut Street were a num- ber of his awards, including the National Security Medal, the highest honor in the U.S. intelli- gence community; the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal; and even the Order of the British Empire, with the rank of honorary Knight Commander, presented to him by Queen Elizabeth II. 70 JAN | FEB 2015 Illustration by MATT CHASE

OBSERVATION DECK Nevertheless, Lundahl told me, he and a Introducing the small group of associates were determined that a White Center be built. With it, imag- FREDERICK S. PARDEE ery useful for everything from predicting SCHOOL OF GLOBAL STUDIES humanitarian crises to directing rescue efforts during natural disasters could be Global Vision sanitized and made available to the world. Local Impact International Perspective But in the days of President Ronald Rea- Regional Insight gan, there was no interest in helping the world with American secrets. So the idea Graduate Undergraduate quietly died. Programs Minors Thirty years later, long after the Cold 9 8Graduate Undergraduate War, Lundahl’s White Center is once again Certificates Majors worth considering. And his words still ring true: The United States has the machines 2 5Centers and the people—including the digital map- 7 & Programs ping expertise at the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA), the mam- For a complete list of our degrees and programs, moth data-crunching computers at VISIT bu.edu/pardeeschool the National Security Agency (NSA), and the bevy of epidemiologists at Advancing Human Progress the National Center for Medical Intel- ligence (NCMI)—to create a White @BUPardeeSchool Center that could mitigate, or even fore- stall, the effects of natural or man-made catastrophes, potentially saving countless lives in the years to come. THE NGA, WHICH LONG AGO absorbed Lundahl’s agency, is now the eyes to the NSA’s ears, col- lecting billions of images around the world every year with tools ranging from drones packed with 192 cameras to school-bus-sized satellites orbiting deep in space. An agency almost unheard of outside the intelligence community, the NGA’s head- quarters is housed in an ultramodern $1.7 billion building tucked inside a giant mil- itary base in Northern Virginia. At 2.77 million square feet, it is the third-largest government building in the Washington, D.C., area, just after the Pentagon and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. In the same way the NSA has been expanding exponentially since the 9/11 attacks—building additional listening posts, launching more satellites, and cre- ating Cyber Command—the NGA has been burgeoning, both in size and in importance. It was the NGA that kept a constant eye on Osama bin Laden as he took long strolls in his high-walled compound in Pakistan. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 71

national security OBSERVATION DECK by JAMES BAMFORD THE NGA, WHICH LONG AGO of data, which, if printed, would fill some 200 million four-drawer filing cabinets, ABSORBED LUNDAHL’S AGENCY, IS according to a 2012 report by the Govern- NOW THE EYES TO THE NSA’S EARS, ment Accountability Office. These “objects” COLLECTING BILLIONS OF IMAGES run the gamut from high-definition, full- AROUND THE WORLD EVERY YEAR. motion videos to hyperspectral imagery— photographs snapped at various And it was the NGA that used imagery to document from the Defense Information wavelengths. construct a model of his house. Systems Agency, the NGA is looking to store “hundreds of billions of objects” that will To some extent, the NGA has already In fact, the agency has been gathering take up to 4 exabytes of data. That’s about begun moving toward a White Center. An so much information that it is now look- 400,000 times the printed material held NGA document from 2012 describes the ing to build an enormous data warehouse by the Library of Congress, and this is in agency’s new focus on what’s known as like the NSA’s facility in Bluffdale, Utah. addition to the NGA’s roughly 10 petabytes “human geography,” which it defines as According to a redacted 2013 procurement a “discipline that looks for interconnec- tions between people and places, includ- ing how people use the physical landscape and how, based on a number of factors, that use evolves over time.” By analyzing human geography, the document said, the agency can obtain “new insight into age-old 1new from NATIONAL SECURITY AND DOUBLE GOVERNMENT MICHAEL J. GLENNON Professor of International Law, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University “Michael Glennon has written a brilliant book that helps explain why U.S. foreign policy changes so little over time, despite frequent failure. Barack Obama certainly promised to fundamentally alter America’s approach to the world, but little changed after he took office. Glennon shows how the underlying national security bureaucracy in Washington—what might be called the deep state— ensures that presidents and their successors act on the world stage like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” 2014 | 272 pages John J. Mearsheimer 9780190206444 | Hardcover | $29.95 R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago To order please visit www.oup.com/us 72 JAN | FEB 2015

From 20th century walls to 21st century bridges. From geopolitics to global business. From security to humanitarian aid. From investment to sustainable development. From walled gardens to open source. The world you inherit will require you to be agile across borders of many kinds— EHWZHHQFRXQWULHVEHWZHHQDFDGHPLFÀHOGVEHWZHHQNQRZOHGJHDQGSUDFWLFH EHWZHHQWRSGRZQSROLFLHVDQGERWWRPXSYHQWXUHV 7KH)OHWFKHU6FKRRO·VPXOWLGLVFLSOLQDU\\DSSURDFKWRFRPSOH[SUREOHPVROYLQJ WUDQVFHQGVWKHFODVVURRPDQGSUHSDUHVJUDGXDWHVIRUOHDGHUVKLSSRVLWLRQVWKDW VSDQWUDGLWLRQDOERXQGDULHV6WXGHQWVIURPGLͿHUHQWFRXQWULHVFKRRVHIURP PRUHWKDQFRXUVHVLQODZHFRQRPLFVÀQDQFHGLSORPDWLFKLVWRU\\SROLWLFV VHFXULW\\DQGPXFKPRUH$FURVVP\\ULDGEDFNJURXQGVÀHOGVRILQWHUHVW SHUVSHFWLYHVDQGFXOWXUHVWKH\\ZRUNFROODERUDWLYHO\\DQGVWXG\\FROOHFWLYHO\\ $VDUHVXOW)OHWFKHUVWXGHQWVHPHUJHQHWZRUNHGHQJDJHGDQGHTXLSSHGZLWK WKHVNLOOVWREXLOGEULGJHVWRZDUGDPRUHVHFXUHDQGSURVSHURXVIXWXUH Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) Visit fletcher.tufts.edu or Master of International Business (MIB) email [email protected] Global Master of Arts Program (GMAP) Master of Laws in International Law (LLM) Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Master of Arts (MA) Executive Education Become part of a global network of international leaders shaping today’s world: Photo credit: ICRISAT Rachel Kyte GMAP 2002, James Stavridis MALD 1983, PhD 1984, Manjula Dissanayake, MALD 2012, Mariana Benitez Tiburcio, LLM 2012, World Bank Group Vice President and (left), former Supreme Allied Founder, Educate Lanka micro- the first female Deputy Attorney General Special Envoy for Climate Change at Commander at NATO and current scholarship fund; Diplomatic Courier’s for International and Legal Affairs of an ICRISAT lab for transgenic crops Fletcher Dean, and Joseph Dunford Top 99 Under 33 Foreign Policy Mexico, second in line to the national MALD 1992 (right) Commandant of the Leader (2013) Attorney General’s Office United States Marine Corps

national security by JAMES BAMFORD questions, like: Where will the next pan- satellite imagery to other types of intelli- this crisis would be the NSA’s supercom- demic occur?, Where will transnational gence. In the same way the NGA might use puters—the largest collection in the world. criminal activity spread?, Where will the its spies in space to pick up clues about a And there are models to follow: In Canada next mass migration event occur?” potential missile attack by observing move- last year, for example, researchers drafted ment in a missile facility’s parking lot at an their country’s most powerful supercom- In 2014, in response to the Ebola crisis, odd hour, it could seek to detect the spread puter into the fight against Ebola. Hoping the agency launched a public website con- of a contagious disease. For example, a to find a drug to stop the virus, Chematria, taining unclassified, continuously updated study in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina has a start-up supported by the University of geospatial imagery, as well as computer- shown that traffic measurements in hospi- Toronto, began evaluating millions of ized mapping tools, to assist in a worldwide tal parking lots can quite accurately predict potential drugs using a 32,767-core IBM effort to fight back against the disease in future influenza outbreaks. Blue Gene/Q computer. “What we are West Africa. This allowed users anywhere attempting would have been considered to pinpoint cases of the virus and locate It’s worth noting that rogue viruses science fiction, until now,” Abraham Heif- nearby field hospitals and airfields. “The pose far greater risks to most countries ets, Chematria’s chief executive officer, level at which we are trying to expose our than do rogue terrorists. For example, stated in a news release. “We are going to data and commercial imagery products is in Liberia in 2006 (the last year the U.S. explore the possible effectiveness of mil- unprecedented,” Martin Cox, the official government published such statistics), lions of drugs, something that used to take who leads the NGA’s Ebola effort, said in a terrorism accounted for 11 deaths—but decades of physical research and tens of quote on the agency’s website in October. between March and November 2014, the millions of dollars, in mere days with our “Why would we not want to help?” country reported more than 3,000 deaths technology.” from Ebola. In a worst-case scenario, the But this approach needs to be even more U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre- The NSA’s massive data-mining capabil- technologically sophisticated to tackle the vention (CDC) estimate that the disease ity could also be redirected from reading many crises—from health to environmen- could infect more than 1.4 million people everyone’s telephone metadata, a practice tal to man-made disasters—that are con- in Sierra Leone and Liberia by early 2015. that has turned up virtually no terrorists, to stantly springing up around the world. It searching the Internet for any clues or should be expanded beyond the use of An obvious tool that could help address 74 JAN | FEB 2015

OBSERVATION DECK is the NCMI, part of the Defense Intelligence AS ART LUNDAHL MADE CLEAR during our lunch Agency. In its basement sits a version of a war room, an operations center with large, three decades ago, there is a direct correla- flickering wall-mounted screens. Along the hallways, 150 medical spies wear lab coats tion between preventing disasters around instead of cloaks and carry syringes instead of daggers. Ironically, the 45,000-square- the world and American security at home. foot facility is housed at Maryland’s Fort Detrick, where earlier bioweapons spe- As Sierra Leone and Liberia have shown cialists developed deadly germs to assas- sinate world leaders such as Congo’s Patrice in recent months, disasters often cause Lumumba and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. destabilization in weak nations. And weak nations sometimes turn into failed states, which can then become breeding grounds IT’S WORTH NOTING THAT ROGUE for terrorists. VIRUSES POSE FAR GREATER The nexus between disaster abroad and RISKS TO MOST COUNTRIES THAN security at home was a point emphasized DO ROGUE TERRORISTS. by President Barack Obama at the United Nations in September 2014. “This is also more than a health crisis. This is a grow- ing threat to regional and global security,” he said of Ebola. “In Liberia, in Guinea, in indications of new diseases or outbreaks in For years, the NCMI’s principal focus Sierra Leone, public health systems have news reports and other publicly available has been tracking diseases threatening data. According to world health experts, U.S. forces overseas. But more recently it collapsed. Economic growth is slowing dra- there is an enormous need for powerful has begun expanding its mission to include computers to better extract patterns from investigating infections that could endan- matically. If this epidemic is not stopped, data. With these computers and thousands ger civilians in the homeland. Understand- of personnel expert in data mining, the ing the risk of every endemic disease in this disease could cause a humanitarian agency could contribute greatly. every country is a key requirement of the center’s Infectious Disease Division. catastrophe across the region. And in Another key area in which the NSA could provide invaluable assistance is in transla- Although the NCMI’s greatest benefit is an era where regional crises can quickly tion. The agency—which has spent billions to provide the world with early warning of of dollars on developing highly sophisti- a highly infectious disease, the problem, become global threats, stopping Ebola is cated translation hardware and software of course, is that the NCMI is an intelli- to identify even the slightest signs of ter- gence organization, so it mostly provides in the interest of all of us.” rorism—could use its technologies for early that information, confidentially, to senior detection of infectious diseases and for policymakers. Thus, when in April 2009 In the short run, Obama’s decision to transmitting this information, in near real the organization determined that there time, to a White Center. (Some of the pre- would soon be a global outbreak of H1N1 send 3,000 troops into Liberia to build liminary signs of the Ebola outbreak were influenza, the warning came in the form reported in local newspapers, but in French of a classified intelligence report; it took medical treatment facilities and train or Portuguese, and much of the U.S. govern- two months before the World Health Orga- ment’s data mining is limited to English-lan- nization and CDC officially issued a sim- health-care workers may help ease this guage newspapers.) ilar warning. crisis. But in the long run, given the poten- OTHER AGENCIES COULD BE instrumental in Declassifying such infectious disease-re- a White Center too. Fifty miles from the lated data and making it available in a tial for global disasters—from diseases to NSA’s headquarters is another intelligence timely manner to the international medi- organization few have ever encountered. cal community could allow for more accu- earthquakes to tsunamis to famines—a Housed in a low-slung, windowless red- rate predictions of a virus’s spread, thus brick building behind barriers and fences saving more lives. And it could even has- more permanent solution to anticipating ten a cure, such as a vaccine. and dealing with emergencies is vitally needed. Lundahl’s White Center could make all the difference in the world, possibly demonstrating that the United States can respond to international crises with solutions beyond just war and killer drones. Q JAMES BAMFORD (@WashAuthor) is a colum- nist for FOREIGN POLICY and the author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. He also writes and produces documenta- ries for PBS. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 75

books & culture by DIANE MEHTA Prize and Prejudice Tim Parks, author of Where I’m Reading Do international From, thinks ornate books like Catton’s signal the increasingly formulaic high- book awards dilute wire act of what he calls “the dull new world literature? global novel.” He critiques the Spanish- Argentine writer Andrés Neuman’s Trav- New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s recent neo-Victorian eler of the Century and the Briton William epic,The Luminaries,an832-pagemammoth,hasdaz- Boyd’s Waiting for Sunrise as “complex zled some critics—especially those who handed her literary novels together with the kind of the Man Booker Prize in 2013. But it has exasperated high-tension plot that can attract a wider others with its “hocus-pocus” astrology-based struc- readership.” And he faults prize juries that ture, its overlapping mysteries, and its archetypal char- mistake ambition for quality. “In the long acters of many nationalities. Catton’s style is rooted run,” he argues, “it seems inevitable that in a history of structurally complex and often globe- style will align with what can be readily trotting novels—to some likeable, to others not— translated more or less into multiple lan- includingSalmanRushdie’sMidnight’s Children,Don guages and cultural settings, or into a read- DeLillo’s Underworld, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. ily intelligible international idiom.” But Catton’s book underscores what has now become a clear trend: the grandiose, high-concept novel. By writing for an international audience, will authors cleanse their prose of the cul- tural peculiarities that enlighten, fasci- nate, and move us? Imagine Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice without the provin- cial protocols of courtship in 19th-century Hertfordshire. The current shift in the novel dovetails with—and may even respond to—another development: Prestigious English- language book prizes, once limited to writers from a handful of countries, are opening up to worldwide competition. In 2013, when the Man Booker announced it would accept non-Commonwealth books, the decision drew fierce criticism. After all, the prize was designed for quintessentially British and British-inflected writers. Global competition will surely threaten what until now has been a protectionist local game. The world’s writers and publishers are now invested in that game. And two new international prizes for English- language novels were inaugurated in 76 JAN | FEB 2015 Illustration by MAAYAN PEARL

OBSERVATION DECK the past few years: the Folio Prize in the language choice is a separate issue, she (won’t require too much local knowledge, United Kingdom and the Windham Camp- cautions, noting that Stieg Larsson’s thrill- bell awards in the United States. They join ers are as popular abroad in translation as for instance) and may even reinforce West- the Neustadt, the Impac Dublin, the Nobel, the Swedish originals, and questioning and the Booker International. Unlike most whether the Nagasaki-born British novel- ern preconceptions about the ‘natives’?” national prizes, they are highly lucrative, ist Kazuo Ishiguro would have written The awarding from $50,000 on up. Remains of the Day, about an English but- He observes that an author who writes in ler, if he were writing in Japanese. “These When prizes—profile-raising, sales- authors think about what’s the best voice a local language must depend on transla- enhancing incentives—nudge writers for this story and what’s the best way to toward an ambitious but less vividly tell it. But there’s no one holding a gun to tions for a career-sustaining income or gain original style, the novel is in a pickle. South anyone’s head saying, ‘Write in English.’” African-born Nobel laureate and two-time command of a global language, English Man Booker winner J.M. Coetzee acknowl- Not a gun, perhaps, but a promise of being both the commercially astute option and the medium of prizes. While some novelists pander to the broadest possible international reader- ship, however, many great ones still tilt in the other direction. In Italy, the pseudony- mous Elena Ferrante writes about women in an impoverished Naples neighborhood, yet enchants readers abroad. The flow- ering of literature intimately grounded SOME FEAR THAT WORLD in place—such as the Welsh countryside LITERATURE MAY WILT AS in Gerbrand Bakker’s The Detour, war- ENGLISH BECOMES THE LINGUA time Biafra in Chimamanda Ngozi Adi- FRANCA FOR NOVELS. chie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, and 1950s Cuba in Mayra Montero’s Dancing to “Almen- dra”—may provide a robust enough counterweight to problematically com- plex, soulless novels that world litera- ture has little to fear from the bylaws of edges the concern: “I don’t know any writ- laurels and commercial viability. There juried prizes. In fact, the backlash ers who write books that are meant simply are 335 million native English speakers to win prizes (as opposed to being good in the world and 505 million for whom against the ambitious, globe-straddling books), but I concede that pressure from English is a second language. Some elite editors and the example of the kind of international prizes accept translations, novel may be a parallel shift inward. books that do win prizes could in some but only 4.5 percent of literary books cases have an influence on writers’ prac- published in the United Kingdom and In 2004, German publishers inaugu- tice.” That said, he observes, “If indeed Ireland are translations—and fewer than 3 there is a formula for a prizewinning novel, percent are in the United States—putting rated the Deutscher Buchpreis (the any judge of integrity would surely be sus- foreign-language writers at a disadvantage picious of a work that does nothing but in the English-speaking market. In France, German Book Prize) for the best German- implement the formula.” by comparison, a third of novels published annually are translations. language novel. And Parks observes a But Robin Desser, editorial director at Knopf, sees no evidence that authors Some fear that world literature—with revival of dialect poetry in Italy. choose to write in a global style to sell its range of linguistic idiosyncrasies books. “Readers are global and stories are and regional traditions—may wilt as Because a country’s literature is key local, and they’ve always been local,” she English becomes the lingua franca for emphasizes. Japan’s Haruki Murakami novels. In question is whether the West to its identity, it seems shortsighted for a sells millions because “there’s a hunger is truly inclusive or if it really just values for other places and great storytelling.” an Anglo-American style. The issue has venerable national prize to open the flood- Readers responded enthusiastically to been debated in Africa since the 1950s, Cutting for Stone by Ethiopian-born Ker- Coetzee says. He asks: If a writer is aware gates to any nationality, as the Man Booker alite Abraham Verghese, set in large part at that most of his or her readers are in the an Addis Ababa hospital during Ethiopia’s West, “will there not be a subtle internal did. But the new, expressly international civil war. “Who would think the subject of pressure—as well as a not-so-subtle pres- fistula would come up in a novel read by sure from agents and publishers—to write prizes are a different matter. Andrew Kidd, millions of people?” Desser asks. Authorial in a way that is accessible to Westerners founder of the Folio Prize, is right in assert- ing that “for any prize launched in the 21st century, it would seem perverse to have anything other than a global outlook.” If Ferrante is any example, the world’s best writing will transcend the current fad for a high-concept style, gain word-of-mouth traction, and find the readership—and, perhaps, the prizes—it deserves. Q DIANE MEHTA (@DianeMehta) is a Brooklyn- based writer working on a novel about a mixed-race couple, set in 1946 India. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 77

the fixer photographs by GLENNA GORDON Lagos, Nigeria Olayinka Oluwakuse III on what to see, do, taste, and buy—and how to speak some pidgin along the way-o. WHERE TO RUB WE SAT IN ENDLESS TRAFFIC, listening to WHERE TO BUY TUNES: Afrobeat on Smooth 98.1, in downtown ELBOWS: EKO HOTEL Lagos, Nigeria. Olayinka Oluwakuse III, THE JAZZHOLE. The who goes by Yinka, explained that he isn’t owner, Kunle on Victoria Island. a full-time fixer for journalists—or, at least, Tejuosho, is very Recently, I went to a that he doesn’t do it for the money. He does grounded in music presidential dinner the job (and does it well) because he likes and has been a col- there for everyone hanging out with people—whether it’s lector of records for in the arts. taking them to Makoko, a slum on Lagos’s decades. You can President Goodluck waterfront that, he said, journalists always buy CDs and LPs Jonathan was there; want to see, or escorting them to the sets of and listen to live Finance Minister Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry. music sometimes. Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala was Yinka is like many other entrepre- 234 702 559 5697 there; Petroleum neurial types in one of Africa’s largest cit- Resources Minister ies. Depending on whom you ask, Lagos WHERE TO SHOP: Diezani Alison- is home to 15 million people, or maybe Madueke was there. 25. It has only a few tall buildings, and L’ESPACE on Victoria There were some everything is packed together: pedestri- Island—a Nollywood stars: ans, buses, apartments, street vendors, fashion-designer Aki and Pawpaw, taxi touts. marketplace— Kunle Afolayan, where you can Monalisa Chinda. Our car inched toward Freedom Park, find contemporary a former colonial prison that is now an stuff from Nige- EKOHOTELS.COM oasis of bars, restaurants, stores, and green rian designers like space—a rarity in this concrete city. Once Andrea Iyamah, there, Yinka promptly got into an argument Obsidian, Toju with the parking attendant. “Baba know I Foyeh, and more. won’t pay-o!” he laughed, and handed over It’s hard to shop no cash. Inside, Yinka swallowed a Star in Lagos because beer, the local brew, and explained that of traffic, but you for his next business, he’s going to charge can go online and young people 30,000 naira ($167) to make read fashionablela- them famous on YouTube. “I love young gos.com [a website people,” he said. “They’re so aggressive— founded by Yinka]; you can’t see the whites in their eyes,” it’s an aggregation he said, meaning that they are intensely of inventory from focused on success. stores in Lagos. Lagos does indeed have its share of peo- LESPACEBYLPM.COM ple hustling to get rich. But its enormous energy and creativity have other channels WHERE TO LEARN too: thriving art, literature, and fashion scenes, for instance. “I love Lagos; it’s my HISTORY: THE home,” Yinka said. “I hate the traffic,” he added, “because I can’t do all I want to do NATIONAL MUSEUM at in one day.” GLENNA GORDON Onikan. Document- ing Nigerian his- tory since 1957, it has the car in which the former ruler of Nigeria, Murtala Muhammed, was assassinated. 234 803 311 2623 78 JAN | FEB 2015