Jim Castle is a friend of mine. I have known him since we were graduate students in Indonesia in the late 1960s. While I labored in academe he went on to found and grow CastleAsia into what is arguably the most highly regarded private-sector consultancy for informing and interfacing expatriate and domestic investors and managers in Indonesia. Friday mornings he hosts a breakfast gathering of business executives at his favorite hotel, the JW Marriott in the Kuningan district of Jakarta.

Or he did, until the morning of July 17, 2009. On that Friday, shortly before 8am, a man pulling a suitcase on wheels strolled into the Marriott's Lobby Lounge, where Jim and his colleagues were meeting, and detonated the contents of his luggage. We know that the bomber was at least outwardly calm from the surveillance videotape of his relaxed walk across the lobby to the restaurant.

He wore a business suit, presumably to deflect attention before he blew himself up. Almost simultaneously, in the Airlangga restaurant at the Ritz Carlton hotel across the street, a confederate destroyed himself, killing or wounding a second set of victims. As of this writing, the toll stands at nine dead (including the killers) and more than 50 injured.

On learning that Jim had been at the meeting in the Marriott, I became frantic to find out if he were still alive. A mere 16 hours later, to my immense relief, he answered my e-mail. He was out of hospital, having sustained what he called "trivial injuries", including a temporary loss of hearing. Of the nearly 20 people at the roundtable meeting, however, four died and others were badly hurt. Jim's number two at CastleAsia lost part of a leg.

The same Marriott had been bombed before, in 2003. That explosion killed 12 people. Eight of them were Indonesian citizens, who also made up the great majority of the roughly 150 people wounded in that attack - and most of these Indonesian victims were Muslims. This distribution undercut the claim of the country's small jihadi fringe to be defending Islam's local adherents against foreign infidels.

But if last Friday's killers hoped to gain the sympathy of Indonesians this time around by attacking Jim and his expatriate colleagues and thereby lowering the proportion of domestic casualties, they failed. Of the 37 victims whose names and nationalities were known as of Monday, 60% were Indonesians, and that figure was almost certain to rise as more bodies were identified. The selective public acceptance of slaughter to which the targeting of infidel foreigners might have catered is, of course, grotesquely inhumane.

Since Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was first elected president in 2004, Indonesia's real gross domestic product has averaged around 6% annual growth. In 2008 only four of East Asia's 19 economies achieved rates higher than Indonesia's 6.1% (Vietnam, Mongolia, China and Macau). In the first quarter of 2009, measured year-on-year, while the recession-hit economies of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand all shrank, Indonesia's grew 4.4%. In the first half of 2009, the Jakarta Stock Exchange soared.

The economy is hardly all roses. Poverty and corruption remain pervasive. Unemployment and underemployment persist. The country's infrastructure badly needs repair. And the economy's performance in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) has been sub-par: The US$2 billion in FDI that went to Indonesia in 2008 was less than a third of the $7 billion inflow enjoyed by Thailand's far smaller economy, notwithstanding Indonesia's far more stable politics.

Nevertheless, all things considered, the macro-economy in Yudhoyono's first term did reasonably well. We may never know whether the killer at the Marriott aimed to maximize economic harm. According to another expat consultant in Jakarta, Kevin O'Rourke, the day's victims included 10 of the top 50 business leaders in the city. "It could have been a coincidence," he said, or the bombers could have "known just what they were doing".

Imputing rationality to savagery is tricky business. But the attackers probably did hope to damage the Indonesian economy, notably foreign tourism and investment. In that context, the American provenance and patronage of the two hotels would have heightened their appeal as targets. Although the terrorists may not have known these details, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is an independently operated division of Marriott International, Inc, which owns the JW Marriott brand, and both firms are headquartered on the outskirts of Washington DC.

Second-round revenge against the Marriott may also have played a role - assaulting a place that had rebuilt and recovered so quickly after being attacked in 2003. Spiteful retribution may have influenced the decision to re-attack the Kuta tourist area in Bali in 2005 after that neighborhood's recovery from the bomb carnage of 2002. Arguable, too, is the notion that 9/11 in 2001 was meant to finish the job started with the first bombing of the Twin Towers in 1993. And in all of these instances, the economy - Indonesian or American - suffered the consequences.

Panic buttons are not being pushed, however. Indonesian stock analyst Haryajid Ramelan's expectation seems plausible: that confidence in the economy will return if those who plotted the blasts are soon found and punished, and if investors can be convinced that these were "purely terrorist attacks" unrelated to domestic politics.

Sympathy for terrorism in Indonesia is far too sparse for Friday's explosions to destabilize the country. But they occurred merely nine days after Yudhoyono's landslide re-election as president on July 8, with three months still to go before the anticipated inauguration of his new administration on October 20. That timing ensured that some would speculate that the killers wanted to deprive the president of his second five-year term.

The president himself fed this speculation at his press conference on July 18, the day after the attacks. He brandished photographs of unnamed shooters with handguns using his picture for target practice. He reported the discovery of a plan to seize the headquarters of the election commission and thereby prevent his democratic victory from being announced. "There was a statement that there would be a revolution if SBY wins," he said, referring to himself by his initials.

"This is an intelligence report," he continued, "not rumors, nor gossip. Other statements said they wished to turn Indonesia into [a country like] Iran. And the last statement said that no matter what, SBY should not and would not be inaugurated." Barring information to the contrary, one may assume that these reports of threats were real, whether or not the threats themselves were. But why share them with the public?

Perhaps the president was defending his decision not to inspect the bomb damage in person - a gesture that would have shown sympathy for the victims while reassuring the population. He had wanted to go, he said, "But the chief of police and others suggested I should wait, since the area was not yet secure. And danger could come at any time, especially with all of the threats I have shown you. Physical threats."

Had Yudhoyono lost the election, or had he won it by only a thin and hotly contested margin, his remarks might have been read as an effort to garner sympathy and deflect attention from his unpopularity. The presidential candidates who lost to his landslide, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Jusuf Kalla, have indeed criticized how the July 8 polling was handled. And there were shortcomings. But even without them, Yudhoyono would still have won. In this context, speaking as he did from a position of personal popularity and political strength, the net effect of his comments was probably to encourage public support for stopping terrorism.

One may also note the calculated vagueness of his references to those - "they” - who wished him and the country harm. Not once in his speech did he refer to Jemaah Islamiyah, the network that is the culprit of choice for most analysts of the twin hotel attacks. Had he directly fingered that violently jihadi group, ambitious Islamist politicians such as Din Syamsuddin - head of Muhammadiyah, the country's second-largest Muslim organization - would have charged him with defaming Islam because Jemaah Islamiyah literally means "the Islamic group" or "the Islamic community".

One may hope that Din's ability to turn his Islamist supporters against jihadi terrorism and in favor of religious freedom and liberal democracy will someday catch up to his energy in policing language. Yet Yudhoyono was right not to mention Jemaah Islamiyah. Doing so would have complicated unnecessarily the president's relations with Muslim politicians whose support he may need when it comes to getting the legislature to turn his proposals into laws. Nor is it even clear that Jemaah Islamiyah is still an entity coherent enough to have, in fact, masterminded last Friday's attacks.

Peering into the future, one may reasonably conclude that the bombings' repercussions will neither annul Yudhoyono's landslide victory nor derail the inauguration of his next administration. Nor will they do more than temporary damage to the Indonesian economy. As for the personal aspect of what happened Friday, while mourning the dead, I am grateful that Jim and others, foreign and Indonesian, are still alive.

Donald K Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford University. He is a co-author of Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam (Stanford University Press, November 2009) and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (Stanford/ISEAS, 2008).

Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ony Avrianto Jamhari taught the Indonesian language at Stanford in 2005-06 as a
Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) under Fulbright sponsorship.  He was
active on campus in other ways as well, including organizing an Indonesian film festival. 
SEAF Director Don Emmerson enjoyed working with him on research projects in
Indonesia.  In 2009 Ony began teaching Indonesian language and culture at Woosong
University, Daejeon, South Korea.  He can be reached at ony_jamhari@yahoo.com.
 
In July 2009 he looked back on his time at Stanford and brought SEAF up to date on his
activities and interests since then:
 
“My time as an FLTA at Stanford was a blessing, an honor, and an incredible experience
for me.  Not only did I gain academic experience; my time at Stanford opened doors to
my future career. In addition to teaching Indonesian, I was able to learn about the
American system of higher education. This knowledge encouraged me to strive toward
the ultimate goal of my life:  to become an agent for change in the educational world.  
 
“In 2006 I left Stanford to return to Indonesia.  I continued teaching Indonesian (bahasa
Indonesia) in Jakarta.  Thanks to contacts with colleagues and friends, I was able to teach
the Indonesian language to many foreigners working and living in the capital city of
Indonesia.  Sudirman Street (Jalan Sudirman)—Jakarta’s main thoroughfare and business
area, became in effect my office, as I moved from one building to another from early
morning to late evening teaching Indonesian. I was also often asked by the Fulbright
committee in Jakarta to serve as a resource person helping to orient and train their new
grantees—Indonesians preparing to go to the US as FLTAs and Americans who had
come to teach English to Indonesia.
 
“My desire to focus and develop my personal skills in education also motivated me to
work at the Indonesian International Education Foundation (IIEF) as a program officer
for an International Fellowships Program (IFP) sponsored by the Ford Foundation. This
program provided opportunities for advanced study to individuals who would go on to
use their education to become leaders in their respective fields. My experience with IFP
broadened my knowledge and my network of colleagues and contacts, as I worked with
twenty-two international partners of the program in cities around the world. 
 
“In February 2009 I moved to South Korea to my present position teaching bahasa
Indonesia at Woosong University in Daejeon here in South Korea.  So far not many
students have signed up to take Indonesian.  Many Korean students prefer to take either
Japanese or Chinese, in addition to English, which is required.  It is a big challenge for
me to promote the study of Indonesian.  Fortunately, some professors and staff have been
very helpful in disseminating information about the availability of Indonesian classes.  I
expect there will be more students interested in learning the language next semester.  

“Besides teaching, I am also working for Prof. Lee Sung Joon, the Director of the Asia
Research Center at Woosong, to conduct research on Indonesian education. On 6-10 July
2009 I attended two conferences in Vietnam. Prof Lee and I presented a paper entitled
‘Higher Education as a Trade Service in Indonesia’ at one conference organized by the
Korea Research Academy of Distribution and Management and the Korea Logistics
Research Associations, Inc. At the other event, hosted by the Korean Education
Development Institute, I was a discussant of ‘Mid to Long Term Education Cooperation
Development in Indonesia,' a research paper presented by Prof. Lee Sung Joon. 
 
“I am hoping and expecting that my contribution in education will be useful for others, as
well as for my beloved country, Indonesia. 
 
“Looking forward, there are two things that I want to do in the near future: to work
toward a Ph.D in the field of education, and to write my first novel, entitled ‘International
Jomblo,’ about an individual who looks for better things in his life.”

Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature. Without question, the tyrannical triumvirate — Ayotallah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard — have dealt a crippling blow to the popular movement protesting their electoral coup of June 12.

Thousands of Iranians have been arrested and savagely tortured — from street protesters to election campaign organizers for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the likely victor in that contest. Many are now being forced to “confess” to having been agents of the United States or Britain.

We have seen this play before, not simply in Iran but in other tyrannies that suppressed mass movements for democratic change with massive violence and terror.

But Iran in 2009 is not China in 1989, Burma in 1990 or Belarus in 2006. The crisis in the Islamic Republic has exposed and widened massive cracks within the ruling elite. Such divisions are always a sign of an impending crackup of dictatorship.

Despite the rush to bury Iran’s reformist movement as another lost cause, Iran remains at a possible political tipping point. Democracies around the world have a duty — not simply to themselves, but to their strategic interests — to weigh in. They must not be deterred by threats to shun talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has gotten it right by signaling America’s support for peaceful protest, human rights and the rule of law. More explicit language, not to mention action, would only play into the hands of the most cynical and vicious conservative elements in Iran. Moreover, with no diplomatic ties and all but no trade with Iran, there is little more the U.S. could do right now to pressure the regime.

But there are over 100 other democracies in the world. It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran.

Britain shares with the U.S. the handicap of a past history of negative interference in Iran. But Britain has diplomatic and economic ties to the regime, and breaking or suspending those will weaken Ayatollah Khamenei and his reactionary allies.

Moreover, Britain can have a unique kind of impact in Iran: For more than a century, Iranians have believed in the omnipotence of the “British hand” in the affairs of their country. Any indication that Britain is no longer willing to do business with the Islamic regime will hearten the Iranian people and undermine the regime’s aura of invincibility.

Germany, France and Italy are major trading partners with Iran. They have little history of colonial interference in Iranian affairs. Their decision to refuse to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime would have an immense effect. More compelling still would be a similar declaration from the entire Group of 8 at its impending summit.

The smaller and less powerful democracies can also have an impact. It would be preposterous for Iranian hardliners to attribute ulterior strategic motives to actions by the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada or Slovenia. If a coalition of such countries were to condemn the crackdown, call for a release of political prisoners and demand full respect for human rights — and back up these positions with a downgrading of diplomatic and trade ties — this would send a powerful message to both sides in Iran.

Many democracies around the world, including the above, have diplomatic ties with Iran. It is important that they maintain their embassies in Tehran. But they should now refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government.

The most powerful coalition of democracies in the world, the 27-member European Union, is now debating whether to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.

The withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors would send a stunning message to the Iranian hardliners that coups and bloody suppression of peaceful protests carry a heavy price in international standing.

With the simple diplomatic act of denying legitimacy — something nearly all democratic forces in Iran are now asking of the world — the democracies of the world can give a needed boost to the forces of democratic change in Iran and earn the lasting gratitude of a movement that will eventually triumph.

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, SPRIE Co-Director Henry S. Rowen looks to 1970s New York City for a solution to California's current budgetary crisis. While then-president Gerald Ford refused a federal bailout of the bankrupt city, in the end Washington did provide assistance. California needs help, Rowen argues, but not without reform, and an unconditional bailout will only delay that needed reform.

As President Obama will soon discover, erasing the nuclear weapons legacy of the cold war is like running the Snake River rapids in Wyoming — the first moments in the tranquil upstream waters offer little hint of the vortex ahead. Now that Mr. Obama has set a promising arms reduction agenda with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, he faces the greater challenge of getting his own government and the American nuclear weapons establishment to support his audacious plan to make deep weapons cuts and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.

So far, Mr. Obama has effectively coupled an overarching vision of getting to a world without nuclear weapons, outlined in a speech in Prague earlier this year, with concrete first steps like the one-quarter reduction in operational strategic nuclear weapons promised in Moscow this week. Given his short time in office, and the looming December expiration of the treaty with Russia covering strategic nuclear arms reductions, the new limits are a good, realistic start. It is especially important to extend the monitoring and verification provisions of the expiring arms accord.

But the overall Obama approach involves a balancing act that requires him to move boldly while reassuring opponents that he is not endangering our security. Put simply, he has to maintain a potent nuclear arsenal while slashing it.

Mr. Obama might consider Ronald Reagan’s experience when he tried to set a similar course. The nuclear weapons crowd practically disowned Reagan when he proposed abolishing nuclear weapons during his 1986 summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. After the meeting, when Reagan asked his generals to explore the ramifications of possibly sharply cutting warheads and eliminating nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, they politely but firmly told their commander in chief it was a terrible idea.

Mr. Obama’s moment of truth with his generals is coming later this year when the Pentagon completes its periodic Nuclear Posture Review. This, in the Pentagon’s words, “will establish U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, strategy and force posture for the next 5 to 10 years.” So it will be the American nuclear weapons bible for the remainder of Mr. Obama’s presidency, one term or two.

President Obama must make sure it reflects his thinking. That will not be automatic, because the nuclear weapons complex — the array of Pentagon and Energy Department agencies involved in nuclear operations, including the armed services and the weapons labs — harbors considerable doubt about his plans. The same goes for the wider world of defense strategists. There is resistance in Congress, too.

The view in these quarters is that the weapons cuts Mr. Obama envisions — deeper than the modest goals set in Moscow this week — would dangerously undermine the power of America’s arsenal to deter attacks against the United States and its allies. Sentiment also favors building a new generation of warheads, a step Mr. Obama has rejected.

If the White House does not assert itself, the Nuclear Posture Review could easily spin off in unhelpful directions. The review that was produced when Bill Clinton was president in 1994 offered a rehash of cold war policies. The one that was done when George W. Bush took office in 2001 was more unconventional, but was quickly overshadowed by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq.

To serve Mr. Obama’s interests, the new review should lay the groundwork for pronounced cuts in weapons and shape America’s nuclear stockpile to fit a world in which threats are more likely to come from states like North Korea and Iran than from a heavily armed power like Russia.

After the review, the next big test for Mr. Obama will likely be Senate consideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He has pledged to resubmit this 1996 United Nations treaty, which was flatly rejected by the Senate in 1999.

To get the two-thirds majority needed for its approval, Mr. Obama will need to hold his fellow Democrats in line — far from a sure thing — and also pick up some Republican support. Two influential Republican senators — John McCain and Richard Lugar — are pivotal. Both voted against the treaty in 1999.

Opponents wrongly argue that the treaty is unverifiable. That might have been the case a decade ago, but technological advances make monitoring of even small underground nuclear tests possible today. Critics also say a permanent ban on testing — the United States has honored a moratorium since 1992 — would eventually cripple the nation’s ability to maintain reliable warheads. So far, most weapons experts would say, that has not proven to be true and should not be for many years.

Few presidential moments are more glittering than the announcement of arms reduction accords in the Kremlin’s gilded halls. For Mr. Obama, that was the easy part.

Peter B. Henry, the Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and an affiliated faculty member with the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), has been appointed by President Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, the White House has announced. This distinguished and diverse group of 28 accomplished Americans is responsible for recommending an exceptional group of men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows, America’s most prestigious program for leadership and public service.

“The men and women of this commission embody what makes the White House Fellows program so special,” said President Obama in making the June 17 announcement. “These leaders are diverse, non-partisan, and committed to mentoring our next generation of public servants. I am confident that they will select a class of White House Fellows that demonstrate extraordinary leadership, strong character, and a deep commitment to serving their country.”

“Peter Henry is a superb scholar, teacher, leader, and mentor,” said CDDRL Director and FSI and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond. “This recognition is richly deserved and will give Peter a national venue to continue developing a new generation of leaders, scholars, and policy practitioners.”

Alumni of the White House Fellows Program include former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, and author Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Henry is also the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at Stanford’s business school.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Among the numerous awards and honors Henry has received are a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award, a National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and the National Economic Association Dissertation Prize.  He has published several articles in journals and books, including “Capital Account Liberalization, the Cost of Capital, and Economic Growth” in the American Economic Review and “Perspective Paper on Financial Instability” in Bjorn Lomborg’s Global Crises, Global Solutions.

Dr. Henry received his BA in Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was later a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a BA in Mathematics.  He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology.

Professor Henry is also part of the distinguished Stanford faculty group that teaches in the Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program each summer at Stanford.  From some 800 applicants, this program selects 25 to 30 rising leaders from important countries in transition – such as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe—and brings them to Stanford to examine and help foster linkages among democracy, development, human rights, and the rule of law in their countries.  Other Stanford faculty teaching the Draper Hills Summer Fellows include Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, FSI Deputy Director Stephen Krasner, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy, Avner Greif from economics, and Erik Jensen from Stanford Law School.

Synthetic fertilizers have dramatically increased food production worldwide. But the unintended costs to the environment and human health have been substantial. Nitrogen runoff from farms has contaminated surface and groundwater and helped create massive "dead zones" in coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico. And ammonia from fertilized cropland has become a major source of air pollution, while emissions of nitrous oxide form a potent greenhouse gas.

These and other negative environmental impacts have led some researchers and policymakers to call for reductions in the use of synthetic fertilizers. But in a report published in the June 19 issue of the journal Science, an international team of ecologists and agricultural experts warns against a "one-size-fits-all" approach to managing global food production.

"Most agricultural systems follow a trajectory from too little in the way of added nutrients to too much, and both extremes have substantial human and environmental costs," said lead author Peter Vitousek, a professor of biology at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

"Some parts of the world, including much of China, use far too much fertilizer," Vitousek said. "But in sub-Saharan Africa, where 250 million people remain chronically malnourished, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrient inputs are inadequate to maintain soil fertility."

Other co-authors of the Science report include Woods Institute Senior Fellows Pamela Matson, dean of Stanford's School of Earth Sciences, and Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

China and Kenya

In the report, Vitousek and colleagues compared fertilizer use in three corn-growing regions of the world--north China, western Kenya and the upper Midwestern United States.

In China, where fertilizer manufacturing is government subsidized, the average grain yield per acre grew 98 percent between 1977 and 2005, while nitrogen fertilizer use increased a dramatic 271 percent, according to government statistics. "Nutrient additions to many fields [in China] far exceed those in the United States and northern Europe--and much of the excess fertilizer is lost to the environment, degrading both air and water quality," the authors wrote.

Co-author F.S. Zhang of China Agriculture University and colleagues recently conducted a study in two intensive agricultural regions of north China in which fertilizer use is excessive. Their results showed that farmers in north China use about 525 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre (588 kilograms per hectare) annually--releasing about 200 pounds of excess nitrogen per acre (227 kilograms per hectare) into the environment. Zhang and his co-workers also demonstrated that nitrogen fertilizer use could be cut in half without loss of yield or grain quality, in the process reducing nitrogen losses by more than 50 percent.

At the other extreme are the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Kenya and Malawi. In a 2004 study in west Kenya, co-author Pedro Sanchez and colleagues found that farmers used only about 6 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre (7 kilograms per hectare)--little more than 1 percent of the total used by Chinese farmers. And unlike China, cultivated soil in Kenya suffered an annual net loss of 46 pounds of nitrogen per acre (52 kilograms per hectare) removed from the field by harvests.

"Africa is a totally different situation than China," said Sanchez, director of tropical agriculture at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "Unlike most regions of the world, crop yields have not increased substantially in sub-Saharan Africa. Nitrogen inputs are inadequate to maintain soil fertility and to feed people. So it's not a matter of nutrient pollution but nutrient depletion."

U.S. and Europe

Image

A comparison of 3 agricultural areas of the world found massive imbalances in fertilizer use, resulting in malnourishment in some regions and pollution in others. Photo: David Nance, USDA

The contrast between Kenya and China is dramatic and will require vastly different solutions, the authors said. However, large-scale change is possible, they said, noting that since the 1980s, increasingly stringent national and European Union regulations and policies have reduced nitrogen surpluses substantially in northern Europe.

In the Midwestern United States, over-fertilization was the norm from the 1970s until the mid-1990s. During that period, tons of excess nitrogen and phosphorus entered the Mississippi River Basin and drained into the Gulf of Mexico, where the large influx of nutrients has triggered huge algal blooms. The decaying algae use up vast quantities of dissolved oxygen, producing a seasonal low-oxygen dead zone in the Gulf that in some years is bigger than the state of Connecticut.

Since 1995, the imbalance of nutrients--particularly phosphorus--has decreased in the Midwestern United States, in part because better farming techniques have increased yields. Statistics show that from 2003 to 2005, annual corn yields in parts of the Midwestern United States and north China were almost the same, even though Chinese farmers used six times more nitrogen fertilizer than their American counterparts and generated nearly 23 times the amount of excess nitrogen.

"U.S. farmers are managing fertilizer more efficiently now," said co-author Rosamond Naylor, who is also a professor of environmental Earth system science and senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico persists due to continued fertilizer runoff and animal waste from increased livestock production."

Low nitrogen in Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, the initial challenge is to increase productivity and improve soil fertility, the authors said. To meet that challenge, co-author Sanchez recommends that impoverished farmers be given subsidies to purchase fertilizer and good-quality seeds. "In 2005, Malawi was facing a serious food shortage," he recalled. "Then the government began subsidizing fertilizer and corn seeds. In just four years production tripled, and Malawi actually became an exporter of corn."

Food production is paramount, added co-author G. Philip Robertson, a professor of crop and soil sciences at Michigan State University. "Avoiding the misery of hunger is and should be a global human priority," Robertson said. "But we should also find ways to do this without sacrificing other key aspects of human welfare, among them a clean environment. It doesn't have to be an either/or choice."

For countries where over-fertilization is a problem, the authors cited a number of techniques to reduce environmental damage. "Some of these--such as better-targeted timing and placement of nutrient inputs, modifications to livestock diets and the preservation or restoration of riparian vegetation strips--can be implemented now," they wrote.

Designing sustainable solutions also will require a lot more scientific data, they added. "Our lack of effective policies can be attributed, in part, to a lack of good on-farm data about what's happening with nutrient input and loss over time," said co-author Alan Townsend, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "Both China and the European Union have supported agricultural research that yields policy-relevant information on nutrient balances. But the U.S. is particularly lacking in long-term data for a country with such a well-developed scientific enterprise."

Even in Europe, with its strong research programs on nutrient balances and stringent policies for reducing fertilizer runoff, nitrogen pollution remains substantial. "The problem of mitigation of excess nitrogen loss to waters is not easily resolved," said co-author Penny Johnes, director of the Aquatic Environments Research Centre at the University of Reading, U.K. "Society may have to face some difficult decisions about modifying food production practices if real and ecologically significant reductions in nitrogen loss to waters are to be achieved."

According to Vitousek, it is important in the long run to avoid following the same path to excess in sub-Saharan Africa that occurred in the United States, Europe and China. "The past can't be altered, but the future can be and should be," he said. "Agricultural systems are not fated to move from deficit to excess. More effort will be required to develop intensive systems that maintain their yields, while minimizing their environmental footprints."

Other co-authors of the Science report are Tim Crews, Prescott College; Mark David, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Laurie Drinkwater, Cornell University; Elisabeth Holland, National Center for Atmospheric Research; John Katzenberger, Aspen Global Change Institute; Luiz Martinelli, University of São Paulo, Brazil; Generose Nziguheba, Columbia University; Dennis Ojima, The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment; and Cheryl Palm, Columbia University.

This work is based on discussions at the Aspen Global Change Institute supported by NASA, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; and at a meeting of the International Nitrogen Initiative sponsored by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment.