Stanford’s Korean Studies Program (KSP) has recently been awarded with a major gift from Hana Financial Group and a grant from the Korea Foundation, which will provide a major boost to Stanford’s already strong K-12 outreach education offerings. KSP will collaborate closely with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) on its outreach activities.

Hana Financial Group has provided $600,000 for the next five years in support of an annual Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for U.S. Secondary School Teachers. The first conference took place this summer, from July 23 to 25, at Stanford. It brought together secondary school educators from across the United States and a cadre of Korean teachers from Hana Academy Seoul for intensive and lively sessions on a wide assortment of Korean studies-related topics ranging from U.S.-Korea relations to history, and religion to popular culture. In addition to scholarly lectures, the teachers took part in curriculum workshops and received numerous classroom resources developed by SPICE.

The Korea Foundation has awarded a three-year grant of $609,527 to support the new K-12 Education on Korea in the United States curriculum development project. Gary Mukai, director of SPICE, noted, “The coverage of Korea in U.S. high school curriculum is often limited to the Korean War.” To help address the identified need to broaden the coverage of Korea, KSP will work with SPICE to develop three high school-level curriculum units and Stanford’s first distance-learning course on Korea for high school students. The curriculum units will examine the experience of Korean Americans in U.S. history; various aspects of traditional and modern Korean culture; and the development of South Korea’s economy. The distance-learning course, called the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP), will be offered in 2013.

The SKSP will annually select 25 exceptional high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors (from public and private schools) from throughout the United States to engage in an intensive study of Korea. The SKSP will provide students with a broad overview of Korean history, literature, religion, art, politics, and economics—with a special focus on the U.S.–Korean relationship. Top scholars, leading diplomats, and other professionals will provide lectures to students as well as engage them in dialogue. These lectures and discussions will be woven into a broader curriculum that provides students with reading materials and assignments. The SKSP will encourage these students to become future leaders in the U.S.–Korean relationship and lifelong learners of Korea.

“We’re grateful to receive these two major sources of funding for Korean studies outreach education, and look forward to working with SPICE to establish Korea as a subject taught regularly in classrooms throughout the United States,” said Gi-Wook Shin, director of KSP.

In a piece for the Stanford Daily, Nadejda Marques, manager of the Program on Human Rights at the CDDRL, writes about Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the United States and the need for a global response to a problem that victimizes millions of people per year. In addition to awareness, the author emphasizes the need to dedicate more resources to research and interdisciplinary methodologies that include the causes and conditions of vulnerability among different groups of people and varied contexts.

By an act of Congress, today, Jan. 11, is Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the United States. President Obama has taken important steps to recognize the nation’s responsibility to “prevent, identify and aggressively combat” human trafficking. The Department of State has included the United States in its Trafficking in Persons Report 2010 and individual states have adopted important legislation to combat human trafficking. For instance, on Jan. 1, California became the first state to require major retailers and manufacturers doing business within its borders to publicly disclose measures taken to eradicate forced labor and human trafficking from their supply and distribution chains. However, as many of these measures do not provide for clear penalties but instead seek to provide citizens and consumers with information on the conditions under which the products they purchase are produced, they are unlikely to effectuate significant change.

Human trafficking is a global problem that calls for a global response, because, as President Obama observed in 2011, “no country can claim immunity from the scourge of human rights abuses, or from the responsibility to confront them.” In fact, no government can claim immunity, nor can intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations, domestic businesses, multinational corporations and civil society. There is a convenient reluctance to admit that trafficking is a response to market demands, weak or perverse labor and immigration legislation, absence of penalties for abusers and obscene economic and development disparities, including gender and ethnic inequities.

A Human Trafficking Awareness Day serves to call attention to a problem that we’ve been avoiding for centuries. We are so good at avoiding the scope of the problem that we are unable even to put a number to it. Estimates vary widely, ranging from 4 million to 27 million victims per year. The nomenclature employed is as unclear as the breadth of the problem: sex trafficking, bonded labor, forced child labor, debt bondage, involuntary domestic servitude and child soldiers are all terms employed to subsets of the broader problem.

There is an urgent need to raise awareness to this problem and the millions who are victimized by trafficking. To begin with, a clear understanding of the problem would be a good start. The United Nations defines trafficking in human beings by emphasizing three elements: the movement or receipt of people; some form of threat, force, coercion or deceit; and the purpose of exploitation. We need greater investment in effort to stop trafficking. We should dedicate more resources to research, developing interdisciplinary methodologies that include the causes and conditions of vulnerability among different groups in the varied contexts of war and peace to respond and combat the problem more effectively. We should develop public policy to curb the growing economic inequalities that exacerbate conditions in which human trafficking tends to occur. For our part, the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) will sponsor an international speaker series and workshops over the next two quarters to promote debate and discussion on solutions for human trafficking worldwide.

In short, we are trying to promote an approach that includes international cooperation as well as an active role for local and international business and organizations, the United Nations, the World Bank, philanthropic institutions and non-governmental organization — an approach that will work today, Jan. 11, as well as the other 364 days each year in which human trafficking continues.

Indonesia’s rainforests are among the world’s most extensive and biologically diverse environments. They are also among the most threatened. An increasing population and growing economy have led to rapid development. Logging, mining, colonization, and subsistence activities have all contributed to deforestation.

But the recent and booming expansion of palm oil plantations could cause the most harm to the rainforests, and is generating considerable concern and debate among industry leaders, environmental campaigners and scholars.

Joanne Gaskell in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Joanne Gaskell has dedicated her graduate studies to better understanding the tradeoffs and demand side of this dilemma. The doctoral candidate and researcher for the Center on Food Security and the Environment recently defended her thesis before an audience of advisers, friends, and fellow students from Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER).

“You need to understand the economics and politics of palm oil demand if you want to understand the regional dynamics of oil production and associated environmental impacts,” Gaskell said. “From a conservation perspective, this is as important as understanding supply since demand patterns affect the incentives facing producers.”

In the past 25 years, palm oil has become the world’s leading source of vegetable oil. Indonesia is currently the world’s top palm oil producer. Since the 1980s total land area planted to palm oil has increased by over 2,100 percent growing to 4.6 million hectares – the equivalent of six Yosemite National Parks. Plantation growth has predominately occurred on deforested native rainforest with major implications for global carbon emissions and biodiversity.

And Gaskell projects the demand for palm oil for food will double by 2035, requiring more than 8 million new hectares for production. Plantation expansion has already begun in Kalimantan and Papua, and Indonesian companies are now looking beyond Indonesia for new investment opportunities. Just as palm oil production spread from Malaysia to Indonesia to escape rising land and labor costs, palm oil production is now spreading to parts of Africa, where the crop is native, and Latin America.

Demand for palm oil is quickly rising in Asian markets – notably India and China – where it is used for cooking and industrial processes. Indonesia has the highest level of per capita palm oil consumption, resulting not just from population and income growth, but also from government policies that promoted the use of palm oil instead of coconut cooking oil.

“Taste preferences and investment more than international prices have driven palm oil demand in Indonesia,” Gaskell said.

Biodiesel production and speculation have also contributed to the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations, but to a lesser extent. Gaskell said the success of palm-based biodiesel hinges on remaining cheaper than petroleum diesel and whether governments subsidize the industry, as the United States has done with corn and soybean farmers.

Interest in palm oil as a cleaner burning fuel is already waning in Europe and the United States. The short-term carbon costs of deforesting and preparing land, fertilizing and managing the crops, then processing and transporting them outweigh the benefits. This is particularly true when palm oil plantations are grown on peat soils that release potent methane gas when drained for growing palm oil.

Palm oil seedlings ready for planting. Photo credit: Wakx/flikr

Growing plantations on ‘degraded land’, land that had been previously converted for other purposes, such as logging, is a much more favorable option over forest expansion. In theory, there is an abundance of degraded areas that can be profitably converted into palm oil plantations. But there are hurdles: The areas are not necessarily contiguous, making it difficult to organize a plantation, and ownership rights in these areas are often contested.

Palm oil’s considerable productivity and profitability offers wealth and development where help is most needed. Half of Indonesia’s population lives on less than $2 a day. But along with the negative ecological impacts, palm oil production increases competition for land and could exacerbate inequalities between the rich and the poor.

Gaskell believes sustainable expansion strategies are possible, and says smaller mills and different processing technologies are needed so production is affordable in scaled-down, more distributed systems.

Palm oil plantation in Cigudeg, Indonesia. Photo credit:  Achmad Rabin Taim/flickr

Her work is feeding an international conversation about palm oil production. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an international organization of producers, distributors, conservationists and other stakeholders, has promoted better ways of managing palm oil production and encouraging transparency and dialogue among corporate players, governments, and NGOs.

“We need to protect the most ecologically valuable landscapes from agricultural production and we need to make sure that, in areas where palm oil agriculture occurs, there are ecological management strategies in place such as riparian buffers, wildlife corridors, and treatment systems for mill effluent,” she said. “From a food security perspective, small palm oil producers, who might be giving up rice production or the production of other food staples, need strategies to minimize the economic risk associated with fluctuating global palm oil prices.” 

Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry joins the head of the U.S-China Energy Forum at a recent SPRIE conference to explain why shale gas “has the potential to change everything.”

In a relatively short time, U.S. shale gas production has lowered the price of natural gas in the United States to a quarter of the price in Europe and prompted some utilities to scrap plans to build coal-fired electricity plants. Meanwhile China is gearing up to apply the technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to its shale deposits in hopes that its growing energy demand can be met with gas instead of dirtier coal-fired plants.

The energy source was the hot topic at a recent conference on Innovations for Smart Green City: What’s Working, What’s Not and What’s Next, sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Energy technology and policy experts from Taiwan and the United States said they had not even discussed shale gas at a similar conference held last year, but now found themselves discussing how it could shake up the energy industry and world politics.

Here are edited excerpts from comments made by Dennis Bracy, CEO of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Forum and the Washington State China Relations Council, and Stanford Professor William Perry, the 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Dennis Bracy

Let me give you a little bit of an overview, not because the U.S. and China are everything, but the math is pretty simple. The U.S. and China together consume half the energy on Earth, nearly half the energy and nearly half the greenhouse gases. In coal, we, combined, consume 62% of the coal on Earth. And coal, by the way, represents 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so it's something we have to focus on.

Our energy pie in the U.S. is growing at about 1% per year. China's demand is growing at 1% per month. If you heard that China is doing everything possible in renewables, absolutely true. But they're also building a lot of new coal plants and hydro. We work together on these things that are perhaps not as sexy, but really, really important to the whole scheme of things.

This new national gas phenomenon seems to be changing everything. I hope it works out. I hope fracking is everything the industry says and nothing that the opponents say. But it has changed the balance of power in the industry where coal plants are now shifting to natural gas.

China is wildly seeking this, because they don't have any natural gas to speak of. They’ve got pipelines coming into China. But it affects not only our two countries' energy policy, but also worldwide geopolitics. China clearly has a plan. You can see it all over the world, lining up resources, lining up strategic relationships. If gas turns out to be the magic elixir in this, then that will drive a whole set of decisions.

William Perry

If we continue to pursue efficiencies, we should be able to offset increased energy demand with increased efficiency [in the United States]. So I see this as a break-even state. But how can we do better than that so we can actually decrease our use of coal plants? Solar and wind are still too expensive. I think it will take at least 5 years to get the cost down to grid parity. And even with grid parity, it will be 10 to 20 years to increase the contribution of renewables from 1% to 10% of grid electricity. So in sum, alternative fuels are potentially important, but their contribution is still small, and it will take a long time for them to play a significant role.

Shale gas is truly a game changer. It is a huge resource in the United States. Some have called us the Saudi Arabia of gas with more than a century of supply. The technology is mature. It was developed in the United States more than 10 years ago, and its success has already greatly exceeded anyone’s expectations. It’s already at scale—it went from 10% to 20% of the total U.S. [electricity] production in a 10-year period, and we have gone from an importer of natural gas to an exporter. Most interestingly it has been demonstrated to be cost effective. It has already resulted in lower prices for gas, which has had a ripple effect on other sources of energy.

Q: As you mentioned, shale gas could be a game changer for the next 100 years. Do you have any comment on the influence of shale gas on renewable energy development and on carbon dioxide emissions for the next several decades?

Perry: I can’t answer the question fully but here are a couple comments about it: Shale gas is twice as good as coal but it still has emissions, so it is not a panacea. Solar and wind is the more desirable option, but I find it hard to be optimistic soon. Grid parity [for solar and wind] is going to be harder and harder to reach as the cost of natural gas goes down.
Natural gas has three negatives associated with it. It does have carbon dioxide emissions. Secondly, it’s the enemy of alternative energy sources—it makes it harder and slower for them to reach grid parity, and it’s also the enemy of nuclear power because nuclear power used to be the cheap source of electricity.

Q: Could you comment about water pollution potential with fracking?

Perry: I can comment, but not authoritatively. I’ve read on both sides of the argument. One side says it is causing water pollution. This is particularly [true] in Western Pennsylvania where people are saying it is getting into their water supply, and the drilling companies say that can’t happen, we have this pipe totally encased so the water can’t get out. I don’t know what the truth is. I suspect the truth is that if drilling is done properly the water can’t get out. If, indeed, fracking is going to damage the water supply, that is a huge barrier to moving forward. Everything I’ve been able to read from engineers says that does not have to be the case.

There are other environmental issues that are almost fundamental, such as people who live in the area being annoyed by all the trucks and activity that comes with the operation. That’s a fact of life. But I think the water issue can be dealt with.

Q: With the development of shale gas, will the U.S. become more supportive of international targets on greenhouse emissions reduction set for 2025?

Perry: I would like to see us become more supportive of that in any case, but any such international agreement meets automatic resistance in some circles. It’s part of the political deadlock we have right now. International agreements are right up there with carbon tax as an issue that is politically volatile. I’m not optimistic about our ability to make political decisions, but I do think technically our ability to achieve those goals could be much enhanced by shale gas. But again, shale gas is only a halfway house in terms of the environment. It has about half the carbon emissions of coal but it still has emissions, and in the strategy that I have laid out, I started with a fallback position until zero or low carbon emissions can become a reality. It’s here and now, and we can move very quickly to replace coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants, and we should do that. 

Genetic mapping has led scientists to a better understanding of human disease and how to fight ailments like diabetes, mental illness and cancer.

But the information they have to work with is limited, drawing mostly from the DNA of people with European bloodlines. When it comes to figuring out how genetic disorders affect groups who don’t share that ancestry or have only trace amounts of it in their family histories, researchers are often at a loss.

Andres Moreno is changing that. Thanks to the $100,000 he is receiving as this year’s recipient of the George Rosenkranz Prize for Health Care Research in Developing Countries, the Stanford researcher will analyze the DNA of indigenous groups and cosmopolitan populations living in Mexico, South America and the Caribbean.

The data he gathers will lay the groundwork for scientists interested in knowing how genetic diseases take hold and manifest themselves among Latin Americans – one of the most underrepresented populations in the field of genetics.

“We can’t start talking about how to deliver personalized medicine in Latin America because we still have much to learn about their genetic makeup at the population level,” said Moreno, a research associate at School of Medicine’s genetics department.

“We need to draw the genetic map that will allow us to better understand the genetic basis of multiple conditions that lead to major health problems in Latin America,” he said.

Scientists have found numerous genetic variants linked to complex traits among people with European backgrounds, and that connection has allowed doctors to better treat and prevent diseases in that group.

But without a rich database built on the DNA of people whose family trees are rooted in Latin America, researchers have yet to find the genetic key to explain why descendants of region’s indigenous populations are predisposed to particular conditions.

Obesity, for example, is more prevalent in Mexico than in other parts of the world, Moreno said.

“We need to find population-specific gene variants that don’t exist anywhere else but locally,” he said. “Then we can maybe find the gene behind obesity there.”

Other conditions may be addressed by studying locally adapted populations, such as those living at high altitude in the Andes where pregnant women have a five-fold higher rate of maternal hypertension than the native population.

“We are trying to identify the genetic variants underlying the mechanisms for this protection, which may help to design preventive and therapeutic measures worldwide,” Moreno said.

Stanford’s Center for Health Policy, a center of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, administers the Rosenkranz award that will fund Moreno’s work. The prize was created in 2007 to foster the research of a young Stanford scholar committed to improving health care in developing countries and reducing health disparities across the globe.

The first recipient was Eran Bendavid, an assistant professor of medicine and a CHP associate.

“We believe Andres’ work will deepen our understanding of the genetics of disease across populations, and we are delighted to recognize his important scientific contributions,” said Douglas Owens, director of the Center for Health Policy, the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr. Professor in the School of Medicine and an FSI senior fellow.

The Rosenkranz prize was established by the friends and family of Dr. George Rosenkranz, the scientist who helped first synthesize Cortizone in Mexico in 1951.

Rosenkranz, who lives in Menlo Park, also synthesized the active ingredient for the first oral birth control and served as a CEO of Syntex, a Mexican pharmaceutical company.

In addition to Owens, members of the award selection committee included: Donald Kennedy, president emeritus of Stanford; Rosamond Naylor, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at FSI and Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment; Paul Yock, the Martha Meier Weiland Professor in the medical school; and Michele Barry, the medical school’s senior associate dean of global health and director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health.

Scarborough Shoal, a small lagoon in the South China Sea, remains the center of a months-long standoff between China and the Philippines. Donald K. Emmerson discusses Indonesia's role in leading ASEAN, after a week of silence, to announce a consensus that avoids the issue.