Geography News - Dec 5th 2012

• 1) Philippines hit by Typhoon Bopha - Philippines was hit by a strong typhoon yesterday and the impacts of this disaster is great. More than 50 citizens are reportedly killed, and tens of thousands are displaced. In the UN Climate Change conference in Doha, a representative from the Philippines said that "Hurricane Sandy and now Typhoon Bopha are evidence that climate change is really happening" and urged developing nations to reduce their CO2 emissions. 
• Firstly, to what extent are disasters now to be blamed for climate change ? Philippines have a history of strong typhoons during the December months, and is annually subjected to typhoons similiar to Bopha. Is Bopha merely just another typhoon, or is it more serious in other ways ? A climate scientist from the USA said that Bopha is indeed stronger than previous typhoons, but it is not the largest-scale disaster to hit the nation. 
• Secondly, this raises the issue of climate refugees and migrants. Are the displaced citizens of Philippines considered refugees or climate ? Generalisations and labeling of a "refugee", and gaining refugee status allows access to certain rights and power. A refugee can enter some countries, e.g. Hong Kong, as asylum seekers, and legally have rights of abode after a certain number of years. This generalization carries power and weight. But the new category of "climate refugees", meaning the people who are forced to leave their homes because their livelihoods and ways of life are threatened by climate change disasters, has unclear legislature and is a new, broad and uncertain realm.  
• Lastly, this news seems to imply that the Doha conference isn't really conclusive and heading in a good direction. It is a blame game of who is responsible - Them or Us ? 

• 2) Aids drugs increase South Africa life expectancy number for up to 5 years - The increased distribution of antiviral drugs have increased the average life expectancy of South Africans by 5 years from 2006 to 2011. This is an improvement from when former president Mbeki denied the impacts of AIDS and it's presence in South Africa. However, 30% of pregnant women are still HIV positive and the disease is still highly prevalent amongst the population. 
• Two key points: 
• 1) The scientific community and media is actually reinforcing Said's Orientalism theory by frequently citing AIDs with African nations. Although AIDS have been attributed partly to the sexual practices of some groups of societies in Africa, science remains ultimately very political. 
• Science is influenced by politics and society in various ways. Funding and grants for research are usually provided to scientific studies that support the governments' agendas or political stance. Without funding, often there can be no study carried out. Politicians often have a vested interest in particular aspects of a scientific study, hence can choose what evidence is shown to the public. Authors and lecturers select pieces of science that support their own theories to present in public literature. 
• For climate change, if a particular research cluster comprises of pro-climate change scientists, then results will be skewed towards positive findings. If the panel is made up of climate change deniers, then the results will swing the opposite way. The fact that terms like "believers" and "deniers" are used shows that science often has political implications and non-objective connotations! 
• 2) The word AIDS / HIV carries negative stigma. This association is a constructed social discourse. Applying Foucault principles, then I ask - what is the true situation of these aids suffers in Africa ? The diseased are often subjected to a victim status. They are victimized, and deemed helpless, poor and wasting away. 
• Visual discourse of AIDS suffers are not unlike famine victims - emaciated, children and women looking sad, slums, flies, dry land, uninhabitable homes and degraded farmland in the background. Is it effective ? Many in the Global North become desensitized to these images depicted. 
• The image of AIDS is very much political, and just like famine, this image is used for political reasons - to gain support for a large-scale aid project, to gain funding to donate many antiviral drugs to South Africa, and to raise money to run agencies and continue the market cycles of aid agencies.  

I can relate that to a famine example. Famine is mass death from starvation and related chronic diseases. A good case would be in North Korea in 1994, where nearly 3 million people died because of starvation. Not only did North Korea have limited food supply (though arguably they had enough to feed everyone - just not a huge surplus like our current 20% global surplus) it was the elites, like Kim Jong Il and his government officials, that obtained most of the food. Keeping the population starving and hungry is one key strategy to keep the Communist regime in power - people were too weak to rebel or to escape from concentration camps. Women suffered most - infant mortality and maternal mortality rates increased staggeringly. Famine affects different social groups differently.