Climate as resource and challenge: international cooperation in the UNESCO Arid Zone Programme

ABSTRACT

Perceptions of climatic challenges have changed significantly during the twentieth century. In recent decades, the question of global climate change received more attention than regional climatic challenges and the problems of arid regions. Historians have shown that persistent misconceptions and a lack of understanding of arid zones rooted in misguided colonial ideologies were propagated by United Nations (UN) initiatives such as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Arid Zone Programme. Alarmist narratives of progressive desertification proliferated and put the blame on destructive local practices such as deforestation and overgrazing. This article investigates UNESCO’s interests in natural resources (section 1) and takes a closer look at the development and scientific elements of the Arid Zone Programme (sections 2 and 3). It argues that the Arid Zone Programme offered an effective framework that helped develop and spread new interdisciplinary research approaches to improve knowledge about arid zones. The myth of progressing desertification and misguided colonial expertise characterized much of its political rhetoric, but not its scientific work, which reflected balanced and more critical appraisals of out-dated colonial expertise. In its conclusion, the article suggests that broader contexts need to be taken into account to understand a resurgence of alarmist narratives of desertification such as shifting interests in climatology from local climatic issues to the global atmospheric circulation and a neglect of the climatology of arid zones.

KEYWORDS:

• UNESCO
• Arid Zone Programme
• resource perceptions
• climate and food security
• perceptions of climate
• climatological research

Notes

1. White, “Climate at the Millennium,” 3.

2. Nicholson, Tucker, and Ba, “Desertification,” 818.

3. White, “Climate at the Millennium,” 3. This record continued more or less unabated in the following decades. Paterson, Global Warming and Global Politics; Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia; Glantz, The Politics of Natural Disaster; Hutchinson and Herrmann, The Future of Arid Lands – Revisited.

4. White, “Climate at the Millennium,” 3.

5. WMO, World Climate Conference. The conference was convened by the WMO in collaboration with other specialized UN agencies, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Three hundred and fifty participants from 53 countries attended. Zillman, “A History of Climate Activities.”

6. The Declaration stated: ‘It is possible that some effects on a regional and global scale may be detectable before the end of this century and become significant before the middle of the next century. This time scale is similar to that required to redirect, if necessary, the operation of many aspects of the world economy, including agriculture and the production of energy.’ World Meteorological Organization, Declaration, 2.

7. Nicholson et al., “Desertification,” 818.

8. Ibid.

9. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure; Hutchinson and Herrmann, The Future of Arid Lands –Revisited; Hadley, “Nature to the Fore,” 209–26.

10. Davis, Arid Lands, 142–54. Similarly Selcer, Patterns of Science, especially 245–59.

11. The sentence reads: ‘Extensive grazing is not a cause of desertification … .’ Brémaud and Pagot, “Grazing Lands,” 320.

12. Landsberg, “Climate as a Natural Resource,” 293. See also Henderson, “Envisioning a Climatological Renaissance.”

13. Practical concerns informed interests in weather and climate and its observation and conceptualization since Ancient times. Since the late nineteenth century, applied forms of climatology emerged as scientific research fields in their own right and comprised sub-disciplines such as bioclimatology and agricultural meteorology, medical climatology and urban climatology. Since the mid-twentieth century, these fields constituted a more integrated discipline referred to as ‘applied climatology’; Jacobs, “Wartime Developments in Applied Climatology”; Landsberg and Jacobs, “Applied Climatology”; Changnon, “Applied Climatology.”

14. Heymann and Achermann, “From Climatology to Climate Science in the 20th Century.” For the more general argument, see Wilbanks and Kates, “Global Change in Local Places”; Eriksen, Klimageographie.

15. Nicholson, Dryland Climatology, 431.

16. Mazower, No Enchanted Place.

17. These countries were Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. See UNESCO, “The Organization’s History,” http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/about-us/who-we-are/history/.

18. “Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.” Reprinted in: UNESCO, Basic Texts, Article 1, p. 6.

19. Gille, “Preservation of Nature,” 4.

20. “Constitution of the United Nations,” 5. On UNESCO’s mission see also Sluga, “UNESCO and the (One) World of Julian Huxley”; Sewell, UNESCO and World Politics; Huxley, UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy.

21. Quoted in United Nations, Proceedings of the United Nations Scientific Conference, p. vii; “UNSSCUR,” Memorandum by the Department of Exact and Natural Science, UNESCO, Document NS/UNR/1, 10 November 1948, p. 1, UNESCO Archive, Paris.

22. Ibid.

23. United Nations, Proceedings of the United Nations Scientific Conference, p. iii.

24. Goodrich, “The United Nations Conference,” 48.

25. Ibid.; quote, ibid., p. 49. Truman ‘had expressed the opinion that the Conference should include engineers, economists, sociologists, and scientists, who would not necessarily represent the opinions of their respective government, but should be chosen on the ground of their experience and their work’. “UNSSCUR,” Memorandum by the Department of Exact and Natural Science (note 15), 2.

26. Ibid., p. 3.

27. For the significant role of science diplomacy in the Cold War, see Doel, “Scientists as Policymakers”; Krige, American Hegemony.

28. Goodrich, “The United Nations Conference,” 52; “UNSSCUR,” Memorandum by the Department of Exact and Natural Science (note 15), 3.

29. Osborn, Our Plundered Planet; Vogt, The Road to Survival, and others strongly criticized the Western model of development and received significant attention. See Linnér, The Return of Malthus and Robertson, The Malthusian Moment.

30. “UNSSCUR,” Memorandum by the Department of Exact and Natural Science (note 15), 4.

31. Goodrich, “The United Nations Conference,” 54.

32. Aull et al., “United Nations Scientific Conference,” 96. For the plenary meetings see United Nations, Proceedings Scientific Conference.

33. Aull et al., “United Nations Scientific Conference,” 96.

34. Quoted in Gibboney, “The United Nations Conference,” 675.

35. Ibid.

36. Aull et al., “United Nations Scientific Conference”; Gibboney, “United Nations Conference.”

37. Toye and Toye, “Brave New Organization”; Petitjean, “Blazing the Trail”; Huxley, UNESCO: Its Purpose and its Philosophy, 6.

38. “UNSSCUR,” Memorandum by the Department of Exact and Natural Science, UNESCO (note 15), 5.

39. Wöbse, “The World After All Was One”; IUPN, International Union for the Protection of Nature, 6. IUPN was renamed International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in 1956.

40. Ibid., 5–6.

41. Gille, “Preservation of Nature.”

42. Wöbse, “The World After All Was One,” 342–4.

43. IUPN, International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature. In his preface to the conference proceedings, the Secretary General of the IUPN, Jean-Paul Harroy, emphasized that the discussion of these themes ‘gave a new orientation to the idea of Nature Protection’. Ibid., ix.

44. For a broad overview on UNESCO scientific activities see Petitjean et al., eds., Sixty Years of Science at UNESCO, part III, Environmental Science, 193–427 and, especially, Hadley, “Nature to the Fore.” For the example of resources in Africa see Andersen, “Scientific Independence.”

45. Wöbse concluded that this time ‘encouraged immodest visions’ at UNESCO: ‘The gate which the Conference had intended to open was not as wide as some of the protagonists had hoped. However, it should be acknowledged that, for a short moment in time, UNESCO discussed what it might be capable of.’ Wöbse, “The World After All Was One,” 348.

46. Calder, “From Dream to Plan of Action,” 12. Emphasis in the original.

47. Selcer, Patterns of Science, 224. The history of arid zone research at UNESCO is described in ibid., 223–88; Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure; Davis, Arid Lands, 143–54. The initial budget is given in ibid., 144, and Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 24.

48. Stamp, ed., A History of Land Use in Arid Regions, Preface. The other major projects were ‘Extension of Primary Education in Latin America’ and ‘Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values.’ Report on Working Party on Major Projects, UNESCO General Conference, Ninth Session, Programme Commission, New Delhi, November 26, 1956, UNESCO Archive 9C/PRG/26. On the latter major project see: Wong, “Relocating East and West.”

49. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 9.

50. Selcer, Patterns of Science, 248. On desertification narratives see e.g. Sears, Deserts on the March; Aubréville, Climates, Forests and Desertification; Saberwal, “Science and the Desiccationist Discourse.” In 1950, UNESCO published, among others, a series of eye-catching articles calling attention to desiccation and desertification: Calder, “Men Against the Desert.” One year later, Calder expanded this work into a widely read book: Calder, Men Against the Desert. Selcer attested that this book was ‘a rather crude popular rendition of the development narrative that justified the Arid Zone Programme’: Selcer, Patterns of Science, 248.

51. Ibid., 242. Nicholson, Dryland Climatology, 4. The IPCC recently presented a new classification according to which ‘drylands cover about 46.2% (±0.8%) of the global land area’: IPCC, Special Report on Climate Change and Land, ch. 3, p. 7.

52. Ibid., 271. Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics; Webster, “Development Advisors in a Time of Cold War”; Selcer, “Fabricating Unity.”

53. Diana K. Davis has shown the misconceptions of colonial expertise about arid lands. Colonial practices often turned out to be very destructive, whereas practices of local people proved much better adapted: Davis, Arid Lands; Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome; Davis, “Indigenous Knowledge.”

54. Calder, “Men Against the Desert.”

55. Experts claim that UNESCO and subsequent UN bodies such as the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) have strongly exaggerated desertification and the extension of arid lands. Nicholson, Dryland Climatology, ch. 22 “Desertification,” 431–47; Reynolds and Stafford Smith, “Do Humans cause Deserts?”

56. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 19.

57. UNESCO, “Report on the Question of United Nations Research Laboratories and Observatories,” February 20, 1947, UNESCO Archive, UNESCO/Nat.Sci.24/1947, 14 and 17. According to Batisse, UNESCO provided the most detailed report on this question. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 19.

58. UNESCO, “Report on the Question of United Nations Research Laboratories,” 3–14.

59. Petitjean, “Blazing the Trail,” 45–6.

60. Tilley, Helen, Africa as a Living Laboratory, 8–9.

61. UNESCO, “Report on the Question of United Nations Research Laboratories,” 11.

62. IUTAM was founded in 1946 as a new union of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU; today called International Council for Science). Greenaway, Science International, 79.

63. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 20; UNESCO, “Arid Zone Programme, Report on Activities of UNESCO related to Arid Zone Research and Development,” Paris, April 29, 1954, UNESCO Archive, Doc. UNESCO/NS/115, p. 1.

64. Frank J. Malina, “UNESCO and the Natural Sciences into their Fourth Year,” Paris, June 30, 1950, UNESCO Archive, Doc. UNESCO/NS/73, p. 3. Malina was one of the closest collaborators of Theodore von Kármán at the Californian Institute of Technology in Pasadena and joined the UNESCO Natural Science Section (later called Department) in 1946, eventually becoming head of its Division of Scientific Research. He may have mediated the contact between von Karman, who was also one of the main drivers of the establishment of IUTAM, and UNESCO. See also Johnson, “Frank Malina” and McCray, “Rocketeer Frank Malina’s Life as an Artist.”

65. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 24; UNESCO, “Arid Zone Programme” (note 63), p. 1.

66. Interim International Arid Zone Research Council, “Report of Session of 20-23 November 1950,” Document UNESCO/NS/83, Paris, December 6, 1950, UNESCO Archive. Observing scientific associations included those such as the International Council of Scientific Unions, the International Geographical Union, the International Association for Hydraulic Research, the International Commission on Irrigation and Canals, the International Union for the Protection of Nature and the International Union of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics (with Theodore von Kármán as observer).

67. Ibid., 3.

68. Selcer, Patterns of Science, 230. Notable members of the Advisory Committee included: Chief Hydrologist of the U.S. Geological Survey Luna B. Leopold; B. T. Dickson, retired chief of the Division of Plant Industry in the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization; the engineer and energy expert M. S. Thacker, director of the Indian Institute of Science; H. G. Thornton, head of the Department of Soil Microbiology at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in England; G. Aubert, chief of the Soils Service at l’Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique in France; and S. N. Naqvi, director of Pakistan’s Meteorological Service. Ibid., 230–1.

69. Stakman, “The Natural Science Program in UNESCO.”

70. Ibid., 14.

71. Davis, Arid Lands, 144.

72. Ibid., 145. The idealistic approach pursued by Huxley and Needham was controversial from the outset. Although it left a strong mark on UNESCO after their dismissal in 1948, science-based, development oriented approaches gained predominance. Petitjean, “Visions and Revisions”; Toye and Toye, “Brave New Organization.”

73. UNESCO Major Project on Scientific Research on Arid Lands, “UNESCO and Arid Zone Research,” Document UNESCO/NS/AZ/334, Paris, January 24, 1958, p. 1. UNESCO documents and publications typically only referred to ‘man.’ Women remained largely absent and unmentioned.

74. Ibid.

75. The meeting was organized and its proceedings edited by one of the most influential experts, Gilbert F. White of the University of Chicago. White also served in the UNESCO Advisory Committee on Arid Zone Research. White, The Future of Arid Lands. See also: Hutchinson and Herrmann, The Future of Arid Lands – Revisited, 1.

76. Interim International Arid Zone Research Council, “Report of Session of 20–23 November 1950,” Paris, December 6, 1950. p. 7. UNESCO, Directory of Institutions; Dickson, ed., Guidebook for Research Data.

77. Research activities were among others summarized in bi-annual reports. See e.g. UNESCO, “Arid Zone Programme, Activities Report for the Period 15 April to 15 August 1951,” Paris, August 16, 1951, UNESCO Archive, Doc. UNESCO/NS/86; UNESCO, “Arid Zone Programme, Activities Report for the Period 15 September to 25 March 1952,” Paris, April 16, 1952, UNESCO Archive, Doc. UNESCO/NS/93; UNESCO, “International Advisory Committee on Research in the Natural Sciences Programme of UNESCO, 3^rd Session, 5-6 April 1956,” Paris, March 15, 1956, UNESCO Archive, Doc. UNESCO/NS/AZ/277.

78. Hadley, “Nature to the Fore,” 210; UNESCO, Map of the World Distribution of Arid Regions.

79. Dickson, Guidebook; Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 57; Selcer, Patterns of Science, 238–9.

80. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 42.

81. UNESCO, “Report of the Sixteenth Session of the Advisory Committee on Arid Research,” Document UNESCO/NS/164, Paris, June 27, 1960, UNESCO Archive, 1.

82. Selcer, Patterns of Science, 235; Davis, Arid Lands, 144.

83. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 59–61.

84. M. Vanucci, “UNESCO’s Involvement in Arid Lands Research and Development,” 75.

85. UNESCO, The Problems of the Arid Zone, Proceedings of the Paris Symposium, v–vi.

86. Ibid., ix–x.

87. UNESCO, Advisory Committee on Arid Zone Research, “Report of the Fifteenth Session,” document UNESCO/NS/159, Paris, November 16, 1959, UNESCO Archive. These domains included surface water, geology, geomorphology and groundwater hydrology, climatology and hydrometeorology, microclimatology, arid zone soils, plant physiology, plant ecology, human and animal physiology, development of arid lands, energy and saline water conversion.

88. Davis, Arid Lands, 147. See also Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome. Davis, “Indigenous Knowledge.”

89. Capot-Rey refers to French experts in Algeria such as Théodore Monod and Charles Gilbert de La Chapelle ‘to mention only the French’, sharing his assessments and outrage. Capot-Rey, “The Present State of Nomadism,” 304 and 307–8. On Robert Capot-Rey see Bisson and Rognon, “Robert Capot-Rey.”

90. Brémaud and Pagot, “Grazing Lands,” 320.

91. Barth, “Nomadism,” 342.

92. Awad, “Nomadism,” 338. On Mohamed Awad see UNESCO General Conference, 8^th Session, Candidature au Conseil Executif Dr. Mohamed Awad, Curriculum Vitae, November 26, 1954, Document UNESCO/8C/NOM/29.

93. UNESCO, The Problems of the Arid Zone, Discussion of Section II, 365-367. Awad, “Nomadism,” 329.

94. Asghar, “Public Awareness,” 430–1.

95. UNESCO, Advisory Committee on Arid Zone Research, “Report of the Special Review Session,” Document UNESCO/NS/165, Paris, July 22, 1960, UNESCO Archive, 18.

96. UNESCO, Changes of Climate, foreword.

97. Wallén, “Aims and Methods in Studies of Climatic Fluctuations,” 467–8. A review of the conference proceedings confirmed the critique ‘of those firmly-stated averages set up by the professional services’. G. M., “Review of ‘Changes of Climate.’”

98. Sutcliffe, “Theories of Recent Changes”; Dzerdzeevskii, “Fluctuations of General Circulation.”

99. Wallén, “Aims and Methods in Studies of Climatic Fluctuations,” 471–2.

100. Ibid., 472; Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 83.

101. Selcer, Patterns of Science, 236–7.

102. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 77.

103. Selcer, Patterns of Science, 226; Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 77; Hutchinson and Herrmann, The future of Arid Lands – Revisited; Kobori, “Fifty Years of Personal Experience in Arid Land Atudies.”

104. Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 78–128; Dumitrescu, “The Essence of Life,” 238–43; Nace, “Water Resources.”

105. Sluga, “UNESCO and The (One) World of Julian Huxley,” 393; Hadley, “Nature to the Fore,” 201; Wöbse, “The World After All Was One,” 333.

106. A strong focus of resource related activity was Africa. In 1963, UNESCO published a comprehensive Review of the Natural Resources of the African Continent. Andersen, “Scientific Independence.” The ‘Man and the Biosphere Programme’ started in 1971 and focused on biodiversity loss, climate change and sustainable development; Hadley, “A Practical Ecology.”

107. Henderson, “Envisioning a Climatological Renaissance”; Bergman, Climates on the Move.

108. One larger example was the creation of a research center for saline water irrigation in Tunisia with three experimental stations across the country for which requested support from the UN Special Fund of nearly one million dollars was declined; Batisse, The UNESCO Water Adventure, 72–5.

109. Heymann and Achermann, “From Climatology to Climate Science”; Heymann, “Klimakonstruktionen;” Heymann, “The Evolution of Climate Ideas and Knowledge”; Edwards, Vast Machine; Edwards, “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism”; Tadaki et al., “Applied Climatology.”

110. Charney, “Dynamics of Deserts.”

111. Nicholson et al., “Desertification”; Nicholson, Dryland Climatology, 433–4. A review of drought modeling experiments based on Charney’s theory provides Nicholson, “Land Surface Processes.”

112. Nicholson, Dryland Climatology, 431–4.

113. IPCC, Special Report on Climate Change and Land, ch. 3, p. 10.

114. In 2015 a group of authors warned in the leading journal Nature Climate Change that both ‘governments and the private sector urgently require better estimates of the likely incidence of extreme weather events, their impacts on food crop production and the potential consequent social and economic losses.’ Current model assessments of climate change impacts on agriculture only provide vague average crop yield vulnerability and suffer from projection uncertainties that ‘over years and decades, and at regional and local scale, have not decreased.’ Chavez et al., “An End-to-End Assessment of Extreme Weather Impacts on Food Security,” 997.

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Matthias Heymann

Matthias Heymann is professor of history of science and technology at the Centre for Science Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focuses on the history of environmental science and technology. He has published on the history of energy technologies, atmospheric and climate research and engineering design. He is Domain Editor of WIREs Climate Change for the ‘Climate, History, Society, Culture’ domain. Currently he coordinates ‘Challenging Europe: Technology, Environment and the Quest for Resource Security’ (EurReS), the international research network funded by the Danish Council of Independent Research (2018–21).