Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Advancing Science to Reduce Premature Mortality Worldwide

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Co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia, Stanford University

Human life expectancy improved more in the last 50 years than in the preceding 5000 years. Much of this recent progress arose from declines in childhood mortality, and most of this decline was due to scientific knowledge and technologies (defined widely as drugs, diagnostics, policies, strategies, and epidemiological knowledge). The dominant challenge of the 21st century is to apply scientific knowledge to reduce premature adult mortality, in particular from vascular and neoplastic disease but also from persistent infectious disease such as malaria. Reliable quantification of the causes of death is a key starting point for control of adult diseases, as shown by the early results from India's Million Death Study. Specific global attention is required to tobacco, as on current patterns there will be 1 billion deaths from smoking in the 21st century, as opposed to "only" 100 million deaths from smoking in the 20th century. Scientific research on adult mortality, paired with specific action, might well halve premature adult mortality worldwide in the next few decades.

Professor Prabhat Jha has been a key figure in epidemiology and economics of global health for the past decade. He is the University of Toronto Endowed Professor in Disease Control and Canada Research Chair at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and the founding Director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Professor Jha is a lead investigator of the Million Death Study in India, which quantifies the causes of premature mortality in over 1 million homes from 1997-2014 and which examines the contribution of key risk factors such as tobacco, alcohol, diet and environmental exposures. He is the author of several influential books on tobacco control, including two that helped enable a global treaty on tobacco control, now signed by over 160 countries.

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Prabhat Jha University of Toronto Endowed Professor in Disease Control and Canada Research Chair Speaker the Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Seminars

Evaluating Iraqi “Winnebagos of Death”: A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats

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About the Topic: There remain persistent shortcomings in U.S. government and nongovernment assessments of biological weapons threats—shortcomings with important national security implications.  This long track record showing a consistent pattern of error regarding bioweapons threats stems from a striking conformity in judgments about biotechnology and its possible uses. Government and nongovernment analysts assert that the increasing ease, pace, and diffusion of biotechnology is creating a growing, elusive, and more technologically advanced set of bioweapons threats. But this conclusion fails to incorporate crucial social factors that can powerfully shape the development, use, and evaluation of biotechnology for weapons purposes. To illustrate these points, Vogel will discuss the U.S. intelligence failures on Iraqi mobile bioweapons laboratories leading up to the 2003 Iraq War and illustrate the importance of using a sociotechnical understanding of bioweapons threats and its implications for threat assessments and policymaking. 

About the Speaker: Kathleen Vogel is an associate professor at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science & Technology Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.  Dr. Vogel studies the production of knowledge on technical security policy issues.  Her recent book with The Johns Hopkins University Press, Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?  A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats, examines the social context and processes of how U.S. governmental and non-governmental analysts produce knowledge about contemporary biological weapons threats.  Dr. Vogel received her PhD in biological chemistry from Princeton University. 

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Kathleen Vogel Associate Professor, Department of Science & Technology Studies/Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Cornell University Speaker
Seminars

Contending with Dual-Use Science

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--Co-Hosted with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences--

Director Albright will give a CISAC science seminar as part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Workshop on Dual-Use Technologies within their Global Nuclear Future Initiative.

Penrose C. "Parney" Albright is the 11th Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the second president of Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), LLC. Albright has extensive experience in executive leadership, including policy direction, strategic planning, congressional and executive branch interactions, financial and personnel management of large mission-focused science and technology organizations, and research, development, testing, and evaluation of national security technologies and systems. He has a broad and deep understanding of U.S. military and international security requirements, functions, and processes in the national security arena.

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Penrose C. (Parney) Albright Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Speaker
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Building Peace One Entrepreneur at a Time

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An army officer turned social entrepreneur, Vivek Garg will share his transition from combat to economic development work and present three case studies on how he used economic tools to foster peace among hostile communities in conflict affected regions of Kashmir and Northeast India.

Vivek Garg is Founder and CEO of a social venture called BAPAR (Business Alternatives for Peace, Action and Reconstruction), which focuses on impact entrepreneur incubation and early stage investment for the economic reconstruction of conflict affected regions of India. Prior to BAPAR, Garg served as an infantry officer with the Indian Army for over 10 years, wherein he led combat operations in Kashmir and Siachen Glacier. He coordinated operations and deployment of a division size force of 10,000 troops and managed a development aid budget of US$ 2.5M in insurgency infested, tribal regions bordering China and Myanmar. Garg is currently pursuing a degree with the Sloan Master’s Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Vivek Garg Fellow, Sloan Master's Program, Graduate School of Business Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

CISAC-SCICN Special Seminar: Investigating Post-Conflict Violence at the Micro-Level: Accounting for Patterns among Victims of Past Atrocities in Liberia

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Anupma Kulkarni is currently a Fellow of the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN) and Co-director of the West Africa Transitional Justice (WATJ) Project, a cross-national study on the impact of truth commissions and international criminal tribunals from the perspective of victims of human rights violations in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.  Dr. Kulkarni received her PhD in Political Science from Stanford University and was Assistant Professor at Arizona State University from 2007-2009.  She has been a MacArthur International Peace and Cooperation Fellow at CISAC and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law.  Her research specializes in transitional justice, the ways in which post-war and post-authoritarian societies address matters of memory and accountability for human rights violations as part of the larger project of effecting democratic change and political and social reconciliation.  Her book manuscript, Demons and Demos: Truth, Accountability and Democracy in Post-Apartheid South Africa, is based on her award-winning fieldwork in South Africa.  She is also co-authoring, with David Backer, The Arc of Transitional Justice: Violent Conflict, Its Victims & Pursuing Redress in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, a book based on primary research conducted under the auspices of the WATJ Project, made possible through generous support from the National Science Foundation.

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Anupma Kulkarni Fellow Speaker Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN)
Shiri Krebs Predoctoral Fellow Commentator CISAC
Seminars
Regional Conflict and Cooperation

Uncertain Times Ahead: Changing Principles

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The world has undergone major drastic changes in the last two decades driven by several major factors, eg, explosion of human population and connectivity. Such changes seem further accelerated in recent years and it seems that our future becomes more uncertain and unpredictable. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident awakened us and led to creation of Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan; The Commission Report revealed some of the fundamental issues of Japan’s nuclear policy. Meanwhile, multi-stakeholders’ engagement has become critical in various social affairs and in policy making domains within and across national boundaries, and has contributed in significant ways to affect the processes of addressing and impacting global agenda, such as climate change, food and water, energy, urbanization, biodiversity, human capital with shifting the balance of economy and power. In my view, the principles of our society may be changing quite fast heading somewhat differently from our conventional norm. The science community can and should contribute to these issues in nurturing future leaders, but in what way?

Kiyoshi Kurokawa is a graduate of University of Tokyo School of Medicine, trained in internal medicine and nephrology, in US 1969-84; Professor of Med, Dept Med ofUCLA Sch Med (79-84), Chair, Univ Tokyo Faculty of Med (89-96), Dean of Tokai Univ School of Med (96-02, President of Science Council of Japan (03-07), Science Advisor to Prime Minister (07-09), Board member of A*STAR (06-00), Bibliotheca Alexandria (04-08), Khalifa University (08- ), Okinawa Institute of Science and Tech (06- ), Global Science and Innovation Advisory Board of the Prime Minister of Malaysia (11-); President of Intl Soc Nephrology (97-99), Inst of Medicine of US Academies (92). Recently, chaired Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan (Dec 11-July 12). AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award (2012), ‘100 Top Global Thinkers 2012” of Foreign Policy.

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Kiyoshi Kurokawa MD, President Speaker Science Council of Japan (2003-06)
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

How Can Trade Improve Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa?

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For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries, including in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been depressed by a pro-urban and anti-trade bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced global economic welfare and agricultural trade, and almost certainly added to global inequality and poverty and to food insecurity in many low-income countries. Progress has been made over the past three decades in reducing the trend levels of agricultural protection in high-income countries and of agricultural disincentives in African and other developing countries. However, there is a continuing propensity for governments to insulate their domestic food market from fluctuations in international prices, which amplifies international food price fluctuations. Yet when both food-importing and food-exporting countries so engage in insulating behavior, it does little to advance their national food security. This paper argues that there is still plenty of scope for governments to improve economic welfare and alleviate poverty and food insecurity by further reducing interventions at their national border (and by lowering trade costs). It summarizes indicators of trends and fluctuations in trade barriers before pointing to changes in both border policies and complementary domestic measures that together could improve African food security.

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Center on Food Security and the Environment
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Tim Forsyth

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room C309
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-0756 (650) 723-6530
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2013 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow
ForsythTim_WEB.jpg PhD

Tim Forsyth joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he is a reader in environment and development at the Department of International Development.

His research interests encompass environmental governance, with particular reference to Southeast Asia. The main focus is in implementing global environmental policy with greater awareness of local development needs, and in investigating the institutional design of local policy that can enhance livelihoods as well as mitigate climate change. Fluent in Thai, Forsyth has worked in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. He will use his time at Shorenstein APARC to study how global expertise on climate change mitigation is adopted and reshaped according to development agendas in Southeast Asia.

Forsyth is on the editorial advisory boards of Global Environmental Politics, Progress in Development Studies, Critical Policy Studies, Social Movement Studies, and Conservation and Society. He has published widely, including recent papers in World Development and Geoforum.He is also the author of Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (2003); Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: the Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (2008, with Andrew Walker); and editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development(2005, 2011).

Forsyth holds a PhD in development from the University of London, and a BA in geography from the University of Oxford.

The Egyptian Revolution, Two Years Later: A Civil Society Perspective

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This event is presented by CDDRL and the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy

Esraa Abdel Fattah is Vice-Chairman at the Egyptian Democratic Academy.

* Founder of Free Egyptian Woman, a group for women’s political empowerment.

* Columnist at El- Masrey-Al-Youm newspaper, the most widely distributed, privately owned newspaper in Egypt, and has her own talk show on channel “On TV Life " every weekend.

* Co-founded April 6 General Strike Egypt in 2008, a Facebook group, to promote a day of civil disobedience calling for workers to stay home in protest against low wages and soaring food prices. After being dubbed the social-networking phenomenon “Facebook Girl”, she was detained by Egyptian security and spent two weeks in prison.

* Political Activist, played a leading role in the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the 25th January Revolution. She was not only active on the Internet, but also on the ground, updating Al Jazeera TV with the latest news related to the opposition.

* Named Woman of the Year 2011 by Glamour Magazine for her leadership in organizing the historic Tahrir Square movement in Egypt.

* Named as one of Arabian Business Magazine's 100 most powerful Arab women in 2011 & 2012.

* Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, 2011.

* Co-Founder and member of the Steering Committee in ElDostor Party , 2012. 

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Esraa Abdel Fattah Egyptian Political Activist Speaker
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UN leader urges Stanford students to reach beyond borders for peace

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged Stanford students to become global citizens, working together beyond borders for peace, security and a common prosperity.

"You may come from the United States or Korea, Japan or elsewhere, Arab countries, but you're now part of a global family," Ban said to a crowded auditorium during his campus visit. "Therefore, it's very important to raise your capacity as global citizens. Only then, I think we can say, we're living in a very harmoniously prosperous world."

Despite a troubling tally of crises around the world, Ban was hopeful about the future, and said he gains inspiration from the younger generation.

"Everything my life has taught me points to the power of international solidarity to overcome any obstacle," he said.

Ban's speech, sponsored by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, kicked off a series of events celebrating the 30th anniversary of the center.

Ban was introduced by former Secretary of Defense William Perry, an FSI senior fellow, who lauded Ban for his work on women's rights, climate change, nuclear disarmament and gay rights.

Ban told the audience that the world was undergoing massive changes and outlined three ways to navigate the transition: sustainable development, empowering young people and women, and pursuing dignity and democracy.

"The level and degree of global change that we face today is far more profound than at any other period in my adult lifetime," he said.

"We have no time to lose," he added later.

California, he said, has led on clean air legislation, creating a cap-and-trade law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"I am convinced national and state action can spur progress in global negotiations, creating a virtuous cycle," he said.

Sustainable development, Ban said, goes hand in hand with creating peace. Noting the problems in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria, he said a country cannot be developed if there is no peace and security.

"Syria is in a death spiral," he said. He cited the toll the conflict has taken on Syria's citizens and surrounding countries since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. More than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. Hundreds of thousands more have been displaced.

Ban spoke at Stanford as a hostage crisis also unfolded in the region.

In retaliation for military action by France in the West African nation of Mali, Islamist extremists in Algeria took several hostages at an international gas field Thursday. News organizations reported that the kidnappers and some hostages were killed in a raid by the Algerian government.

Ban spoke of the efforts by the United Nations to counter terrorism in Mali, where Islamist rebels last year took control in the north in the chaos following a military coup that ousted the elected government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.

"We must continue to work for peace," Ban said. "Our hard work cannot be reversed, especially for women and young people."

With half the world's population under the age of 25, Ban said the international community must support and empower that group.

Ban also said that fighting for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities was important in advancing peace and prosperity around the world.

"I have learned to speak out for one essential reason," he said. "Lives and fundamental values are at stake."

Ban told the students to harness a spirit of hope as they confront the challenges of the world.

For him, he said, that spirit was sparked by a visit to California decades ago. He reflected on an eight-day visit to the state in 1962, when he stayed with a family, the Pattersons, in Novato on a trip sponsored by the Red Cross.

"In many ways, I still carry the same energy and enthusiasm and sense of wonder that I did when I first landed on Miss Patterson's doorstep half a century ago," he said.

"I came back knowing what I wanted to do with my life and for my country," he said.

Ban said he still keeps in touch with his host, his "American mom," 95-year-old Libba Patterson, who was in the audience and stood to applause.

"It was here in California," he reflected to the students, "that I first felt I could grab the stars from the sky."

 Brooke Donald writes for the Stanford News Service.
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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaking at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Thursday.
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