Clean Water: Shall this be the legacy of President Lobo?
The good news is, “Plenty of reason for hope.”
After a recent expedition to the Swan Islands of Honduras, ocean explorer Dr. Sylvia Earle delivers a special message to President Lobos.
Swan Island, “Clean Water”: An organizing principle for Honduras development
The good news is, a place like [Honduras], if we protect it — given the basic ingredients — can recover.
There is plenty of reason for hope. I hope that you will use your power to extend protection to the essence that your country has, has in abundance. But they are also vulnerable to the many pressures that are now coming in from all sides.
To the extent that you can really expand those areas that are protected — and really protected, where even fish are safe — a tiny fraction of 1% of the ocean is safe for the fish. So important not just for humans to extract to eat but critical to the health of the ocean itself.
Water, water everywhere: The interaction between rules and technologies and social reality
Consider the insights offered by economist Paul Romer (the flows of ideas: e.g., charter cities, cuidades modelos), “An analysis of the interaction between rules and technologies may help explain important puzzles such as why private firms have successfully diffused some technologies (mobile telephony) but not others (safe municipal water.)”
A Rachel Carson moment
In 1962 Rachel Carson had her book Silent Spring published, bringing awareness to ecological degradation and environmental issues. So, then, I leave you, the reader, with this question: In the 21st century, How best can Honduras structure a conversation to raise global awareness and understanding of its fundamental need for clean water? Structure a combination of rules, technology, and people, perhaps.
President Lobo can make it happen.
Civil society, social reality and the matter of scale
New York City, Singapore or Campesinos Sosa in Honduras: no matter where you live, the dimensions of a security-market nexus are present.
The tempo–rhythm, energy, and emotion–of each dimension creates the condition as well as the call to connect to, transact with, the other dimensions.
The tension between reason and desire in civil society drives the evolution and maturation of each dimension.
Answering the call to connect–at any scale–is the social reality for mutually-assured dependence.
Crowdsourcing Ciudades Modelos: Model Cities in Honduras 2011
[Disclosure: The author, Critt Jarvis, has a Promoter affiliation with WIKISTRAT LTD. Translated/quoted material has been edited to ease the burden of reading. Sources translated/quoted are linked in the footnotes.]
Honduras is a keystone country. In the middle of America, in the middle of the world, it connects two continents and two oceans—geographically, socially and strategically—advancing the flow of people, trade, and ideas. However, Honduras is a country still reorganizing after an extra-constitutional crisis, which reached a tipping point in June, 2009, resulting in a coup d’état. The question in front of Honduras today is How does a country break away from a legacy of corruption, break out of poverty, if it’s trapped in a system of bad rules?
Honduras: middle of America, middle of the world
From one idea, a grand vision for Honduras
Paul Romer has an idea: How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it’s trapped in a system of bad rules? Make new rules; create a city-scale administrative zone, a charter city. “If we can give more choices to people, and more choices to leaders, if we can give those choices to both, that necessary tension will give us a set of rules for changing rules.”1
In January, 2011, the Honduras National Congress approved a proposal to establish a charter city.
Honduras has a grand vision: Strategically connect North and South America and the global economy by becoming a transshipment hub and provide a logistics corridor to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Interdependence among partners of strategic flows encourages market development and cultural stability.
Honduras: Logistics corridor, transshipment hub
Honduras has a new story: special regions for development
Special Development Regions (SDR)2 attract high value added services and industries, developed as private/public partnerships. Ideally, an SDR is initially located on 200 – 1000 square kilometers, in isolated and unpopulated areas, where infrastructure, ports, and airport facilities can be built.
Special Development Regions will issue their own rules, which are more efficient and investment friendly than the ones used today in the rest of the country. The rules applicable in these regions will incorporate the best practices available to date for each of the different industries that decide to operate in this area.
Each SDR will be governed by a charter with unlimited duration. The charter will be approved by a super-majority of the of the Honduran Congress. Each charter can only be changed, amended, or appealed if it’s authorized by the people living in the SDR.
As a public/private partnership, investors can be involved in the drafting of the charter to make sure international standards are met. The SDR will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, including the authority to appoint their own administration, their own judges, and their own police force.
All those officials will be appointed in an open and competitive process that guarantees the selection of the best person.
Three points of view: Juan Orlando Hernandez, Octavio Sanchez, Pepe Lobo
Juan Orlando Hernandez, Presidente del Congreso Nacional 3: “First of all, because Honduras is located very close to one of the main markets of the world, the United States of America, that gives us a great opportunity for competition. At the same time, we compete with the price of our hand work. Moreover, we can connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that enables the flow of people and merchandise from one ocean to another… We are working strongly in the creation of a promotion and guarantee law for investment in medium and long term. We also have a new legal scheme that will allow investment by the state of Honduras at the same time with the private sector for medium and large projects that our country needs.”
Octavio Sanchez, Secretario de Staff Presidencial 4: “Honduras is ready to increase substantially the volumes of investment that it receives annually. Our country has an enviable geographical position, a population mostly young, willing to undertake a challenge, and enough land to develop large projects that require a long term maturation. The special regions for development will offer the proper conditions for investment with security enabling rapid development. This will allow our country to become one of the meeting points for world trade.”
Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Presidente de la República de Honduras 5: “Honduras offers enormous possibilities for the creation of special regions for development, also known as “charter cities”. Honduras is located in the middle of the American continent. We are 500 miles away from the United states of America and also the same distance from South America. We have shores in the Atlantic and the Pacific, each with ports with the greatest depth in the region. We also have many attractions, more than 600 kilometers of white sandy beaches, crystal clear waters that can be enjoyed the whole 365 days of the year. We have the Mayan ruins in Copan, as well as an extensive biological reserve, and the biggest coral reef in America—second in the world. Honduras is the biggest bilingual population in the region.”
Korea, POSCO believe in the vision
Establishing an infrastructure to support and advance commerce and culture in an SDR requires large scale engineering projects—i.e., water power generation, renewable energy and road construction—and large scale direct investments. POSCO, headquartered in Pohang, South Korea, is the world’s largest steel maker by market value6. As reported in The Korea Herald, POSCO chief executive Chung Joon-yang met with President Porfirio Lobo Sosa of Honduras on May 4th and signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) for joint cooperation in the country`s infrastructure and city construction project investments.
The high value proposition POSCO brings to Honduras—the capacity to build a logistics corridor and transshipment hub, the creation of Special Development Regions—comes from a combination of six-sigma best business practices and altruistic intentions, a “Firm of Endearment.” As stated on their corporate website, “To become a firm of endearment, POSCO plans on becoming a guide to the `society` from poverty, disease and neglect based on humanism, providing its `partners` with a long-term growth foundation which allows them to become lifetime partners, and offering trust on long-term investments to present its `investors` with good management results. In addition, the company will guarantee the best quality and services to its `clients` as well as success through sensible relationships, become a reliable support as a job for lifetime to its `employees` and their families` present, future and past, and drastically reduce the discharge pollutants during all steelmaking processes to protect the `environment.’ “
Governing dynamics: the tempo of collaboration and competition
Grand vision begets grand narrative. Do best practice decisions emerge from a narrative? And, can narratives be designed to create the necessary tension affording a flow of ideas, ideas that create new sets of rules?
Personally, I believe best practice decisions are narrative-driven and, as Thomas P.M. Barnett recently discovered, that “the collaborative competition approach really does yield some amazing nuggets.” Barnett reached this conclusion while summarizing the results of a month long international grand strategy competition, an exercise hosted by Wikistrat.
Barnett’s observations and advice follow7.
“[The competition was] a throw-everybody-at-the-problem, wisdom of the crowd, massively multiplayer answer to searching for solutions.
“So many brains working the same problem. When you make it competitive, make it collaborative, we think you get some amazing and interesting answers. The kind of stuff we think we can bring to bear for corporate and government clients looking to harness large numbers of analysts as we did in this competition.
“Got a big problem? Want to throw a lot of brains at it? We think [our methodology] can come up with interesting ideas.
“Everybody was looking at everybody else’s work, citing it more. And that was pushing them on to more connect-the-dots analysis.
“If you’re a government, if you’re a corporation, if you’re trying to do long range strategic planning on an international or even global scale, you want to be able to “What if” your thinking as much as possible. And if you can do that using hundreds–thousands even– of analysts spread around the world–all collaboratively and competitively working with one another, we think that gives you a flow of ideas you won’t get anywhere else.”
Social reality: This ain’t no BOGSAT, throw everybody at the problem
Again, the Honduras Congress:
“The charter will be approved by a super-majority of the of the Honduran Congress. Each charter can only be changed, amended, or appealed if it’s authorized by the people living in the SDR.”
“As a public/private partnership, investors can be involved in the drafting of the charter to make sure international standards are met.”
Who could be the “analysts,” the active participants solving problems? The pool of solutions come from the Honduran people and their international counterparts. For example, Members of the Honduran Congress, people living in the proposed SDR, public and private investors, non-governmental organizations, and non-profits. Wouldn’t such a composition sound a grand strategy?
An offer of hope: a future worth creating
Feeling safe in your environment, having confidence in governance and access to services; enjoying the inspiration of cultural cues while being a leader in global connectivity.
Aspirations fulfilled are futures worth creating.
~
Email the author at crittjarvis@gmail.com
Links to translated/quoted sources
1 Paul Romer’s radical idea: Charter Cities
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html
2 Charter City 2011 Honduras , passim
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXa3Puj55c
3 Charter City 2011 Honduras, 03:25
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXa3Puj55c
4 Charter City 2011 Honduras, 04:40
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXa3Puj55c
5 Charter City 2011 Honduras, 05:36
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXa3Puj55c
6 Wikipedia, POSCO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSCO
7 Wikistrat Grand Strategy Competition – Summary and Conclusions
http://thomaspmbarnett.com/globlogization/2011/7/26/wikistrat-grand-strategy-competition-summary-and-conclusions.html
Midnight in the War on Terror
We have heard so many times words like, “he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.” Martin Luther King Jr writes in The Strength to Love, “The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” The story of violence begetting violence, is but a pair of bookends capturing warring masters and dutiful slaves, bound in a chain of contexts, whose only purpose is to hold the story together. My conscience is not assuaged.
There are those among us who sway to the power of evil. Past and present Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh and Anders Behring Breivik. Each a perpetrator of unconscionable means—sworn to a terrorhood of hate—who took to the killing of innocents. From this I wonder, what is their story, their narrative-driven circumstance, that drives their hearts, heads and hands to join and conspire to the unholy ends of terror? And in their story, I question, is it possible there might not be evidence—a remnant, or even a shred—of some redeeming quality which would give the world hope that the bread of forgiveness could be set upon a common table, that the chain of violence could be broken?
I need the bread of faith, this day: a bread begetting hope. I need to believe something extraordinary can happen. I need the bread of life: a loaf of reconciliation, in the shape of living in this world, in a relationship of loving in this world. Indeed, is this not a miracle worth creating?
This global war on terror, this global war on drugs, this chain reaction of evil, this chain of violence begetting violence, this chain of contexts must be broken. Until then, no violence-begetting response of any measure from any quarter can assuage my conscience. This be my suffering.
Narrative-Driven New Media Vehicles in Honduras
Getting beyond the polemics of propaganda, oppression and surveillance; solving social problems without violence
From all – the voices heard – patterns, deep story
A composition of rhythms, emotion, and energy.
~Prickly Mountain, Warren, Vermont – June 26, 2011
When an opportunity exists to influence social transformation on a grand scale, what are we to do?
Come with me back to Honduras, the summer of 2009. Amidst the confusion of contradicting news and editorial reports following the then-called coup d’etat in Honduras, stood one clear signal of how the future might unfold for Hondurans: an editorial opinion – a clarion call – written by Octavio Sanchez, published in the Christian Science Monitor.
Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America’s authoritarian tradition. The Constitution’s provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo.
…
I am extremely proud of my compatriots. Finally, we have decided to stand up and become a country of laws, not men. From now on, here in Honduras, no one will be above the law.
The social reality of Honduras – embodied in its people, its present and emerging leadership – does not exist separate from the law abiding universe. Honduras, though a small sovereign country, connects two continents, physically and geopolitically; Honduras is global. Honduras is a local voice and a global conversation; thus the question, what are we to do?
There is a window of opportunity in Honduras. One which affords the challenge to build a new strategic neighborhood, one of reconciliation, one beyond war-like slogans of “victory.” The Report to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Honduras recommends, “Sweeping changes to the constitutional order should reflect, as much as possible, a true social consensus.”
Could an open framework be built for how to enact a regional solution to the future rules of law, a future worth creating? I believe a framework can be built, socializing solutions driven by the rhythm, emotion and energy of Honduras culture. If you are interested to learn more about the framework, send me an email.