Stanford University

Environment

FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.

Energy Production and the Environment in Canada Info Session

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Looking for a research opportunity this summer? Join us on an exciting adventure to use skills learned in the classroom to tackle a real-world problem: fossil fuel production and its effects on climate change. Come learn about the Energy Production and the Environment in Canada trip details at our info session. Lunch will be served.

Find out more on our website here.

 

International Policy Studies Kitchen, Ground Floor, Encina Hall (616 Serra St.)

Eyes in the sky, boots on the ground : assessing satellite- and ground-based approaches to crop yield measurement and analysis in Uganda

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Crop yields in smallholder systems are traditionally assessed using farmer-reported information in surveys, occasionally by crop cuts for a sub-section of a farmer's plot, and rarely using full-plot harvests. Accuracy and cost vary dramatically across methods. In parallel, satellite data is improving in terms of spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution needed to discern performance on smallholder plots. This study uses data from a survey experiment in Uganda, and evaluates the accuracy of Sentinel-2 imagery-based, remotely-sensed plot-level maize yields with respect to ground-based measures relying on farmer self-reporting, sub-plot crop cutting (CC), and full-plot crop cutting (FP). Remotely-sensed yields include two versions calibrated to FP and CC yields (calibrated), and an alternative based on crop model simulations, using no ground data (uncalibrated). On the ground, self-reported yields explained less than 1 percent of FP (and CC) yield variability, and while the average difference between CC and FP yields was not significant, CC yields captured one-quarter of FP yield variability. With satellite data, both calibrated and uncalibrated yields captured FP yield variability on pure stand plots similarly well, and both captured half of FP yield variability on pure stand plots above 0.10 hectare. The uncalibrated yields were consistently 1 ton per hectare higher than FP or CC yields, and the satellite-based yields were less well correlated with the ground-based measures on intercropped plots compared with pure stand ones. Importantly, regressions using CC, FP and remotely-sensed yields as dependent variables all produced very similar coefficients for yield response to production factors.

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Working Papers
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World Bank Group
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David Lobell
George Azzari
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Nation-State-izing Religion: Bureaucratic Islam in Southeast Asia

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Co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

Transnational Islam lacks the centralized leadership and institutions associated with Catholicism. Yet hierarchical and authoritative bodies do make decisions regarding Islam in various contemporary settings, including within the institutional frameworks of states. What happens when Muslim faith and practice are adapted to the terms and procedures of bureaucracy and the modern nation-state?

Dr. Müller will present an original conceptual framework for studying the bureaucratization of Islam. He will apply it to five Southeast Asian cases—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. State bureaucracies in these countries vary widely, but generally they aim to influence or control trends and meanings in local Islamic discourse. Drawing on current debates in the anthropology of the state, with particular reference to Brunei and Singapore, Müller will offer an original analytic framework to explain similarities and differences in bureaucratized Islam in Southeast Asia. Possible implications beyond the region will also be explored.

Dominik Müller

dominik mueller4x4
heads the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology’s Research Group on the Bureaucratization of Islam and Its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia. He is also a non-resident fellow in the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior positions include visitorships at NUS (2016), the University of Oxford (2015), the University of Brunei Darussalam (2014), and Stanford University (APARC, 2013).  His doctorate in anthropology is from Goethe University Frankfurt (2012).His latest publication is an article on “Hybrid Pathways to Orthodoxy” in Brunei in the April-May 2018 Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, a special issue on bureaucratized Islam that he also guest-edited.

 

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Dominik Müller

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room C331
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-5656 (650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar
MullerDominik.jpg PhD

Dominik Müller joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from February until May 2013 from the Department of Anthropology at Goethe-University Frankfurt where he serves as a postdoctoral research associate.

His research interests encompass Islam and popular culture in contemporary Southeast Asia, Malaysian domestic politics, and socio-legal change in the Malay world.

During his time at the Shorenstein APARC, Müller will conduct research on the religious bureaucracy of Malaysia. His research project at Stanford is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Müller obtained his PhD summa cum laude in 2012 in cultural anthropology from the Cluster of Excellence the “Formation of Normative Orders” at Frankfurt University. He previously studied anthropology, philosophy, and law in Frankfurt and at Leiden University. His dissertation on Islam, Politics, and Youth in Malaysia received the Frobenius Society’s Research Award 2012 and will be published in 2013.

Visiting Fellow, Islamic Legal Studies Program on Law and Social Change, Harvard University
Seminars

How did the Fukushima disaster affect air pollution?

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In March 2011, a post-earthquake tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air explosions and the release of radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The Fukushima disaster has been called the most significant nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Professor Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), as a member of a team of Japanese researchers, today published a report on the details of what exactly — at the particle level — was released into the air after the disaster.

In the discussion that follows, Ewing explains the team’s findings and why they are important for health and environmental safety.

Why did you decide to study the Fukushima disaster?

The Fukishima Daiichi event surprised me. I now teach a freshman seminar on this event. I am particularly interested to understand why the accident occurred and what the long-term impact will be on the environment. This research paper reflects my interest in answering these questions.

We’ve heard lots about possible health effects from contaminated water after the Fukushima disaster, but less about particulates in the air. What did you find?

During the core melt-down events at Fukushima Daiichi, radioactivity was released as fine particulates that traveled in the air, sometime for distances of tens of kilometers, and settled onto the surrounding countryside.

In order to understand the health risk, it is very important to understand the form and chemistry of these particulates.

Recently, in a previous paper we have described a new type of particulate that is Cs-rich (some Cs isotopes are highly radioactive). The highly radioactive Cs-rich particles formed in the reactor by condensation from a silica-rich vapor, formed from the melting of core and concrete structures. In this paper, we describe the first identification of fragments of the melted core that were entrapped by the Cs-particles and transported away from the reactor site, some 4 kilometers. This is an important discovery because this provides us with samples of the fuel and melted core.

This is a special contribution because it uses very advanced electron microscopy techniques that allow for imaging of individual atoms or clusters of atoms. This advanced technique is required because the particles are so small — nanometers in size.

How did you come to work with your collaborators in Japan?

I have had long standing collaborations with Japanese scientists for decades. The lead researcher for the group, Professor Satoshi Utusunomiya, was once a member of my research group when I was at the University of Michigan. We have always collaborated on topics that involve radioactive materials and the use of electron microscopy. This collaboration is an entirely natural outgrowth of previous collaborations.

What, if any, policy recommendations would you suggest based on your findings?

The most direct result would be to design monitoring systems so that we have a good record of released particulates. Also, we need to push the development of advanced analytical techniques so that these particulates can be quickly identified and characterized.

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History of U.S.-Japan Relations

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Symposium on "History of US-Japan Relations"

March 6, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

 

Program

9:00am     Registration and Breakfast
 

9:30am     Welcome Remark
                 Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)
 

9:40am  Session 1: From Perry to the War with China

Presenter:
Kaoru Iokibe (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Peter Duus (Stanford University)
 

10:40am  Break
 

11:00am  Session 2: Pacific War and Occupation

Presenter:
Fumiaki Kubo (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

 

12:00pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm   Session 3: Pax Americana and Japan's Postwar Resurgence

Presenter:
Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

Discussant:
Tsuneo Akaha (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey)

 

2:00pm   Session 4: Neoliberalism and Redefinition of the US-Japan Alliance

Presenter:
Masayuki Tadokoro (Keio University)

Discussant:
Michael Armacost (Stanford University)

 

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   Session 5: US-Japan Leadership Today

Presenter:
Koji Murata (Doshisha University)

Discussant:
Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

 

4:20pm   Closing Remark
               Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)


 

Symposiums

The Elusive Goal of Global Food Security

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Ending world hunger is a universal goal, yet progress and social awareness of the issue waxes and wanes in the course of broader political and economic developments. The massive famine in China under Chairman Mao’s 1958–62 Great Leap Forward, a succession of severe droughts and associated famines in India in 1965–66, and the political violence that accompanied regime change in Indonesia in 1964–67 left tens of millions of people starving and drew global attention to the threat of food insecurity. What emerged from these events was an international commitment to agricultural technology transfers, water resource development, and foreign assistance – partly in the spirit of humanitarian goodwill and partly in pursuit of long-term geopolitical and economic interests revolving around the Cold War. Whatever the motivation, the outcome over the ensuing decades was more than a doubling of staple cereal yields in Asia, and a steady decline in real (inflation-adjusted) cereal prices.

Despite these gains, a second, quite different, rallying cry for food security resounded in 2007–8 as international grain prices spiked, food riots erupted in numerous cities throughout the developing world, and the global economy headed into a deep recession. Several factors sparked this crisis, but unlike the earlier periods of dire food shortages, the root causes included unwieldy financial markets and escalating demands for food, animal feeds, and fuel (including biofuels) in a globalized economy. This episode prompted new analyses of the connection between global commodity markets and food security, the political-economy foundations of agricultural development, and the differential impacts of food prices on net producers and net consumers. In the five-year period from 2007 to 2012, international cereal prices were highly unstable, varying by as much as 300 percent.

Today, international agricultural markets have settled at relatively low prices, but civil conflicts, extreme climate events, and other natural disasters are blocking the path toward ending hunger. In February 2017, the United Nations declared a famine in South Sudan, as war and economic collapse ravaged the newly independent nation. Although the famine officially ended in mid-2017, food emergencies and severe undernourishment still threaten tens of millions of people in South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria, due to a combination of civil conflict, prolonged droughts, and occasional floods. On the surface, it seems incomprehensible that there could be such difficulty in addressing these looming famines at a time when global cereal production and stocks are at historical highs. But the problem is not a matter of food supply; the problem is war.

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Rosamond L. Naylor

William J. Perry Conference Room, Encina Hall

Stanford Conference on "The Political Economy of Japan under the Abe Government"

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Stanford Conference on "The Political Economy of Japan under the Abe Government"

February 8 - February 9, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Sponsored by: Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Stanford University), and Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

Organizers: Takeo Hoshi and Phillip Lipscy

 

 

Program

2/8/2018

8:30am     Breakfast
 

9:15am     Welcome remarks
                 Gi-Wook Shin (Stanford University)
                Toru Tamiya (Japan Society for Promotion of Science)
 

9:30am  "Transformation of the Japanese Political System: Expansion of the Power of the Japanese Prime Minister", Harukata Takenaka (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

Discussant:
Saori Katada (University of Southern California)
 

10:30am  Break
 

10:50am  "Constitutional Revision Under the Abe Administration", Kenneth McElwain (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Yu Jin Woo (Stanford University)

 

11:50am  Lunch
 

1:00pm    "Do election results reflect voters' policy preferences? Evidence from the 2017 Japanese general election", Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College), Shiro Kuriwaki (Ph.D, Harvard University), Daniel Smith (Harvard University)

Discussant:
Rob Weiner (Naval Postgraduate School)

 

2:00pm   "Japan's Security Policy in 'the Abe Era': Radical Transformation or Evolutionary Shift?", Adam Liff (Indiana University)

Discussant:
Ashten Seung Cho (Stanford University)

 

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   "Abenergynomics: The Politics of Energy and Climate Change under Abe", Trevor Incerti (Yale University) and Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

Discussant:
Kent Calder (Johns Hopkins SAIS)

 

4:20pm   "Innovation Policy", Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

Discussant:
John Zysman (University of California, Berkeley)
 

5:20pm     Adjourn
 

6:30pm     Group Dinner

 

2/9/2018

9:00am   Breakfast
 

9:30am   "Abenomics, Monetary Policy, and Consumption", Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan), Takashi Unayama (Hitotsubashi University), and Johannes Wieland (University of California, San Diego)

Discussant:
Huiyu Li (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
 

10:30am  Break

10:50am "The Great Disconnect: The Decoupling of Wage and Price Inflation in Japan", Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University) and Anil Kashyap (University of Chicago)

Discussants:
Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan)
Johannes Wieland (University of California, San Diego)
 

11:50pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm  "Corporate Governance Reform", Hideaki Miyajima (Waseda University)

Discussant:
Curtis Milhaupt (Stanford University)
 

2:00pm   "Womenomics", Nobuko Nagase (Ochanomizu University)

Discussant:
Steve Vogel (University of California, Berkeley)
 

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm  "Japanese Agricultural Reform Under Abe Shinzo: Two Steps Forward, A Half-Step Back?", Patricia Maclachlan (University of Texas at Austin) and Kay Shimizu (University of Pittsburgh)

Discussant:
Takatoshi Ito (Columbia University and National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)
 

4:20pm   "Yen Depreciation and Competitiveness of Japanese Firms", Kyoji Fukao (Hitotsubashi University) and Shuichiro Nishioka (West Virginia University)

Discussant:
Katheryn Russ (University of California, Davis)
 

5:20pm  "Next Step", Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University) and Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)
 

5:50pm  Adjourn

Conferences

Abe Fellows Global Forum: Confronting Climate Change

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The Japan Program hosted the Abe Fellows Global Forum, “Confronting Climate Change: What Can the U.S. and Japan Contribute to Creating Sustainable Societies?” at Bechtel Conference Center at Stanford University on October 20, 2017. The event was co-organized with the Social Science Research Council, in collaboration with the Center for Global Partnership of the Japan Foundation, which funds the Abe Fellowship Program.

The conference opened with a remark by George P. Shultz, Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution at Stanford University and former US Secretary of State and US Secretary of Treasury followed by a keynote by Michael Armacost, Shorenstein APARC Fellow at Stanford University and former ambassador to Japan and the Philippines, who addressed questions on strategies for reducing energy consumption and possibilities for future international cooperation between Japan and the United States on climate change.

Following the keynote speech, experts from Japan and the United States engaged in a panel discussion and shared some of the lessons that have been learned from Asia’s experience.  Toshi Arimura, Professor, Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, presented the experience of carbon pricing in the U.S. and Japan and the successful experience in both countries.  Janelle Knox-Hayes, Lister Brothers Associate Professor of Economic Geography and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed out the importance of the socio-political context in various countries for creating well-functioning markets for carbon emission.  Philip Lipscy, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at FSI, Stanford University, discussed how the political context has been influencing Japan’s energy policies.  Dana Buntrock, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies and Professor of Architecture, UC Berkeley, presented how specific contexts in Japan and the U.s. have shaped the energy policies in two countries.

The conference was followed by a reception in the Oksenberg Conference Room.

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