Edward Davey

Back to Blogging...

2012-01-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

After a protracted, seven-month silence, I'm going to try to resume writing the occasional blog -- if and when there are interesting, pertinent things to write about. They will be shorter blogs, I suspect, than in the past: only the occasional paragraph or two...

This first is a simple one, a mere update for bemused readers. Since my last blog in July 2011, I concluded my job in Colombia, travelled around the country for three months, wrote a small book on the country and my experiences there (available on request with immediate effect, and with luck by Spring 2012 as an e-book), and then returned home to London, where I have just begun - in early January 2012 - a new job for the Prince's Charities' International Sustainability Unit (pcfisu.org), working on the rainforests and sustainable agriculture. I am living at home, in Battersea, and picking up my UK life after three years and two months spent in Colombia.

In terms of the blog, this means that there will be fewer articles with a Colombian theme, although I continue to follow the life and fortunes of that special country with great interest. There will be more, I predict, on books, music, international issues, and musings on the UK. So welcome (back) and I hope there is the occasional piece of interest to you. My email address remains the same: edwardleodavey@gmail.com.

Solar, by Ian McEwan

2011-07-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

On my way back from a week in London working on climate change, and the bilateral relationship between the UK and Colombia on this issue, I read Ian McEwan's latest novel -- a 'climate change novel' -- Solar, from cover to cover.

I'd been looking forward to reading it ever since it was published in 2010. Indeed, when McEwan was here in Colombia, at the Hay Festival's Cartagena festival, he spoke compellingly about Solar and about the circumstances of its inception.

Invited on a boat trip in 2005 with a group of artists and thinkers to the Arctic, to see the polar ice melting, McEwan noted with ironic glee how in the course of the week, the storage room on the boat where the group kept their winter clothes (hats, thermals, boots, glasses, etc.) became more and more chaotic -- such that, within days, everybody had lost their kit, and all were obliged effectively to steal bits of their companions' get-up (the odd glove here or there) in order to be able to participate in the daily expeditions. Chaos reigned, in what seemed to be the most simple of challenges: assuring the common good in a group of fifteen for the purposes of the voyage on which they had embarked.

By night, nonetheless, McEwan recounted to large audiences in Bogotá and Cartagena, his group would engage in lengthy, earnest, well-intentioned discussions over their dinner and plentiful wine on the boat about climate change: cap and trade mechanisms; global frameworks; contraction and convergence; domestic legislation; and all the rest.

The gap between the grandiosity of the global ambition, absolutely necessary in order to mitigate a global problem; and, in a sense, the realities of human nature, seemed to be eloquently epitomised in the author's experience on the boat.

In the novel, the void between our global predicament and the human response is also comically set out. The main character, our hero, or anti-hero, is (implausibly) a Nobel-prize winning scientist, who runs a climate change research centre near Reading. His personal life, however, is chaotic, caught as he is between wives and lovers, past and present, and increasingly entangled in a web of half-truths and lies on the academic front too. A reprehensible character, perhaps, but an engaging and very lifelike one, whose misdemeanours fill the pages and form the core of the plot.

The writing is characteristically excellent: astute, humorous, sharp, unforgiving, wry. McEwan gives ample space to the science too, such that there are passages, dialogues and debates on climate change in the novel which really bring the issue to life, and should be required reading for devotees and sceptics alike. Never have the advantages of solar photovoltaics over wind turbines on the rooftops of individual houses been so compellingly set out as in the pages of this novel...

Perhaps deliberately, and despite the humour, I found the novel ultimately quite troubling and depressing: human beings, human nature, are found wanting faced with the magnitude of the challenge we face (and of our own creation), seemed to be the message, if indeed there is a message. Doubtless reading the novel in one fell swoop in a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean, belching fumes and water vapour into the blue skies, compounded the helpless feeling.

Still, it's well worth reading: and if haven't yet read it, and need convincing, it's worth looking at the following links too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/13/solar-ian-mcewan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/14/ian-mcewan-environment-novel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/26/solar-ian-mcewan-lezard-review
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article7050338.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2011/jan/13/ian-mcewan-copenhagen-solar-video
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7359254/Solar-by-Ian-McEwan-review.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/books/30book.html

An interview with Rudolf Hommes

2011-06-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

An interview with Rudolf Hommes, Colombia's Former Treasury Minister, on the state of the Colombian economy

May 2011

Edward Davey, The City Paper

1. What are the strengths of the Colombian economy and how has the 'Emergencia Invernal' affected these strengths?

I think the Colombian economy is very resilient. It has absorbed the shock of the global economic crisis, the closing of the Venezuelan market and the internal instability due to violence with surprising endurance. I am concerned that the floods and the present winter emergency will make a dent but I may be one of the few who are troubled. Most people and analysts do not appear to be worried and there are even some who think that this tragedy is a blessing in disguise because it will make investment surge and force the government to face the reality that Colombian infrastructure is less than subpar and very poorly conceived.

2. Will recent corruption scandals affect foreign direct investment?

I think foreign companies will not be overly deterred by corruption. They often contribute to it and some European firms are still notorious for it. In this country they have promoted political corruption and financed guerrilla activities.

3. Does Colombia rely too much on its natural resource base for income, instead of developing other sectors of the economy; how will Colombia avoid the resource curse and unacceptably high environmental externalities?

Countries develop whatever they can develop and they often prefer the low hanging fruit. We need industrial and export based output, but the present opportunity is in mining, which had lagged because of insecurity and a diminished exploration. While I remain an advocate of industrial and agro-industrial development, I do not share the concept that mining is a bad option. If you look at Chile or Peru, they have been doing extremely well because they chose the right policies and stuck to them, but also because of mining which has been the hidden factor behind the recent economic success of those countries. They also have managed very well the exchange rate effects of the mining boom through fiscal restraint and special institutions to graduate the inflow of export revenues.

4. There is criticism that Colombia's infrastructure is still lacking to meet the potential of a Free Trade Agreement and to compete regionally...what does Colombia need to do urgently to improve the state of its roads, ports etc..?

Colombia's infrastructure is lacking in quantity and in quality according to surveys of the country's competitiveness in comparison with others. Its roads, ports and overall transportation infrastructure are rated at the bottom of a list of many other countries, while air transportation is at the top of the list, which is not however an achievement. It is a reflection of how bad the rest of the infrastructure is. I believe there are two reasons why this development has been so poor: the political system in Colombia is based on patronage and public works have been plagued by it. Second, infrastructure conception, planning, investment and execution lack scale. The country has been accustomed to scratch roads into the side of the mountains, to avoid tunnel construction, to conceive roads for trucks of the past and rarely undertakes a project that has the dimensions and scope that are required. There has been an overreliance on truck transportation and railroads have been relegated to niches. This is a big conceptual design mistake; it determines the mix of Colombian exports, limits the potential to expand the national market, and severely restricts the transportation capacity of people and cargo.

5. Why isn't Colombia taking more advantage of its agroindustrial possibilities?

Colombian agriculture has suffered from insecurity and violence, extreme protectionism, overreliance on subsidies for the rich and insufficient research and agricultural extension. There is also a problem of extreme poverty in rural areas and a very unequal distribution of land and opportunities. The development of agro-industry would require a 180 degree change in policies, more reliance on research and a land distribution program that would increase productivity and entrepreneurship. Land is overly expensive in Colombia, in part due to subsidies for the land owners and protectionism (the effective import tariffs of sugar and other commercial agricultural products are above 80%).

6. Has Colombia's image really had a turn for the better, in terms of investor confidence, or does the lack of peace process with illegal armed groups still affect the country's international fortunes?

Colombia is benefiting from something that usually happens in economics but not in politics: the world has already internalized that Colombia has ceased to be a semi-failed state and assumes that it is only a matter of time that the government will be in full control of the country. If progress continues in this direction, we will keep on benefitting from this perception.

7. What are the roots of all the recent corruption scandals, and what should the government do to tackle this issue?

The corruption was always there, in part due to clientelism in patronage, but it was kept “within reasonable boundaries”, as one of our political leaders used to say. Through time, with the advent of drug trafficking and due to fiscal and political decentralization, it ceased to be reasonable. During the second term of President Uribe it seemed to accelerate because there was an attempt to actually buy a third term for him and because the style of government during his administration weakened institutions, the judiciary system and controls (checks and balances). What we are seeing now is the result of all this, and I hope that it is not just the tip of the iceberg.

8. Colombia remains a country with a high taxation rate for small businesses and few incentives...is a tax reform necessary in this country?

I believe that a thorough tax reform is needed that would lower tariffs of both income and value added taxes, would reduce exemptions for the rich and would increase the tax base. It also requires a simplification of processes and separating the administrative functions of the DIAN (tax authority) from its judiciary functions. Having both functions in one institution loads the system heavily against the taxpayer. It would also require a simplified system for small firms that would encourage them to cease being informal.

Article for The City Paper on the Colombian Victims' and Land Restitution Law

2011-06-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Article for The City Paper, Bogotá

'Of Land and Victims'

A piece on the new Victims and Land Restitution Law written for the City Paper, Bogotá, on 1 June 2011.

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The words of Christian Salazar Volkmann, Representative of the UN's Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights in Colombia, pay eloquent testimony to the transcendence of the Victims and Land Restitution Law, approved by the Colombian Congress and Senate on 1 June 2011.

"The ratification of the Victims and Land Restitution Law marks a historical advance", Salazar said. "It is the culmination of an effort, initiated by President Juan Manuel Santos, to place victims truly at the centre of attention. Its implementation will mean a new horizon of hope in the search for peace and reconciliation in the country".

All those who care for the fortunes of this tragic, stoic and magnificent country will hope that Salazar's prediction comes true in the years ahead. There is no doubt as to the political, intellectual and moral commitment that President Santos, his key Ministers and the leading Senators behind the Law - principally the Liberal Party's Juan Fernando Cristo - have for the process. As the President himself said in the Congress when presenting the key debate: "if this Law alone is passed, it will have been worthwhile being President".

Over the past fifty years, Colombia's internal armed conflict has led to the deaths of thousands of people and to the displacement of millions more. As the acclaimed recent film 'Los Colores de la Montaña' powerfully and poignantly showed, whole communities have been torn apart, trapped between the FARC and the paramilitaries, drawn inexorably into a conflict not of their making and fuelled by the drugs trade.

Large-scale human rights abuses have been committed by both sides, and by the Colombian Army, and displacement from rural areas to the outskirts and slums of the country's major cities has been the inevitable outcome. Despite the valiant efforts of civil society and the media to raise awareness of the plight of the victims of the conflict, the vast majority have languished anonymously in precarious (under-)employment and poverty in the cities.

With the exception of particularly egregious or symbolic cases, such as the massacres in El Salado or Bojayá, many of the country's most grievous experiences of violence and displacement have still been neither recognised nor told; nor less, publicly acknowledged and then, perhaps, forgiven.

The Victims Law seeks to make the first steps towards changing this, by returning several million hectares of stolen agricultural lands to their rightful owners and by providing symbolic financial compensation for all victims of the conflict.

All observers agree that there will be pitfalls along the way. Already, as many as eight community leaders and human rights defenders seeking to initiate the restitution process have been assassinated. A plethora of corrupt lawyers and vested interests are showing signs of seeking to obstruct the process at every turn, particularly in regions where the conflict remains acute or where crimes have been particularly heinous.

A number of powerful politicians, including former President Uribe and the more radical factions of the 'U' Party, view elements of the Law as an instinctive threat. And, last but not least, some question the compatibility of the families' return to their land with the Government's simultaneous promotion of large-scale agriculture, mining and hydrocarbons extraction across the country. What kind of future awaits those who do manage to return to their land?

Despite the legitimate worries, however, there is much hope. As similar processes around the world have shown, most notably the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa, any society's attempts to heal its wounds from a protracted conflict or injustice necessarily imply both impressive moral and political leadership, and a collective acceptance that such a process is timely and justified. These conditions both seem now to exist in Colombia.

When President Santos signs the legislation into force in mid-June, in the company of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, a major new chapter in Colombia's history will begin. The President is to be applauded for his leadership; and the international community should provide the full force of their backing for the Law.

'Colombia's Environmental Dilemma' - a piece for the FT

2011-05-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following article for a Financial Times supplement on Colombia. It ended up being published on the FT's Beyond Brics website, alongside a good piece by the Colombian economist Alejandro Gaviria. The link is here. It took me a while to write, and I learnt a lot from John Paul Rathbone, the FT's Latin America editor, in the process. The truth is that the piece is a balanced, optimistic version of a challenge that I view to be much more bleak and pessimistic than I set out here...

Changing Colombia, part 2: the environmental challenge

May 6, 2011 4:46 pmby beyondbrics

By Edward Davey of Acción Social

Somewhat unusually, Juan Manuel Santos began his first day as Colombian president last year with the elders of the millenarian indigenous tribes that live on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the snow-capped Andean mountain range that runs down to the country’s Caribbean coast.

That same afternoon, having flown to Bogotá, President Santos told the nation in his inaugural presidential address of the moment of “transcendental significance” he had experienced that morning.

The mamas, or priests, he said, had given him a ceremonial staff and a collar with four stones, representing earth, water, nature “with which we must live in harmony”, and good government. “These prized symbols,” Santos said, “will form an integral part of the Administration, which we begin today”.

Almost a year later, many increasingly question whether Santos’s economic goals can be reconciled with the principles of the mamas’ four-stoned collar. The challenge is particularly acute in a country as biodiverse as Colombia.

On the one hand, “Colombia is sitting on a bed of coal”, as finance minister Juan Carlos Echeverry has said.

On the other, Colombia is home to 10 per cent of the world’s fauna and flora, the world’s highest number of bird species, and a breathtaking diversity of landscapes. As the noted Harvard biologist E O Wilson has put it: “biodiversity is to Colombia what oil is to Saudi Arabia”.

Those who believe environmental protection and economic development are compatible cite three arguments.

The first is Santos’s commitment to reinforcing Colombia’s environmental watchdogs, through the creation of a self-standing ‘ministry of environment and sustainable development’ and a revamping of local environmental authorities.

Second, the government argues that the damage caused by heavy winter rains – which affected over 2.4m people – is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild the country along environmentally-sensible lines, with ecologically-sensitive spatial planning.

And third, the government argues that its five “motors of development” – infrastructure, housing, mining, agriculture and innovation – are key to meeting the poverty reduction targets enshrined in its National Development Plan, as well as paying the financial costs of Santos’s signature piece of legislation, the Land Restitution and Victims Law, which will provide compensation for land and life lost during the past 20 years of conflict.

However, for the indigenous people represented by the mamas, there is a worrying overlap between Colombia’s indigenous territories and those areas earmarked for mining. Many experts fear an increase in local conflicts, as in Peru.

“While the Colombian Constitutional Court identifies 32 indigenous peoples as being at risk of extinction, there are situations in the country where mining and infrastructure projects have undermined their…very existence as a people,” says José Luis Barreiro, head of Oxfam’s territorial rights programme.

Meanwhile, Manuel Rodríguez Becerra, a former environment minister in the 1990s, argues that the “irreparable damage caused to biodiversity and water” by large-scale coal-mining projects such as Alabama-based Drummond’s operations in northern Colombia is “an image which we do not want for the future of the country”.

While applauding Santos’s attempts to combat illegal mining, he maintains that the country “cannot turn a blind eye to the impacts of large-scale projects”.

German Andrade, of the University of the Andes, similarly argues that Colombia is “not ready” for large-scale mining, due to poor institutions and a lack of data about the full environmental impact of extractive industries.

Guillermo Rudas, an advisor to the national planning council, agrees, noting that government spending on environmental institutions has declined over the past ten years to just 0.24 per cent of total expenditure.

Finally, Brigitte Baptiste, director of Colombia’s National Biodiversity Institute, shows there is a “huge overlap” between potential mining blocks and some of the country’s key ecosystems, including national parks, watersheds and forest reserves.

In a country of 114m hectares, some 40m hectares – or over a third of the national territory – have already been identified as potential mining zones. A further 48 million hectares – equivalent to four Englands – have been set aside for hydrocarbons.

Just in the páramos, Colombia’s high mountain wetlands which are crucial for water supplies and are excluded in principle from exploitation, the number of titled hectares rose from 70,000 in 2006 to 122,000 in 2009.

The country, Baptiste argues, needs to define those areas “which cannot be touched and communicate this information clearly to the private sector and government”. Once done, she adds, “we can negotiate proper local and national compensations for each project which is approved”.

Mining companies essentially agree. “It would help us immensely to have a strong Ministry of Environment and to count on clear guidelines as to which areas can and cannot be explored”, says Rafael Herz, who heads South African-based Anglo-Gold Ashanti’s operations in Colombia.

But echoing the government’s position, Herz adds: “Large-scale, responsible mining, with the highest international standards, can and must be an ally of Colombia in this important phase of its development.”

For Bernardo Toro, chair of the Colombian branch of Latin American think tank Avina: “There is an urgent need to construct a national narrative and meeting point in which all the actors can come together in the pursuit of common rules, understanding, trust and agreement.” Avina, which focuses on sustainable development, has established a national round table for the purpose.

What is certain is that the fulfillment of the mamas’ solemn invocation to Santos will depend on the clarity of the rules his government establishes, and on the strength of the environment ministry.

“We need clear rules…applied in a transparent way,” says Hernando José Gómez, director of Colombia’s national planning department.

Edward Davey of Acción Social is lead advisor on the environment in Colombia’s international cooperation directorate, Acción Social. This is the second of a two-part series.

Of friends, marriages + children

2011-05-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

A chance encounter on Facebook chat last week with my great friend Johnny Candy, from St. Edward's School days. He is in Singapore; I am in Colombia: somehow, our daily schedule coincided and we were able to chat for half an hour or so on-line about love, life and - most importantly in the context of this blog - about the lives and news of all our mutual friends.

And what news! I count at least four marriages; a couple of children already in the world; a few more on their way; friends being pageboys and best men to other friends; and so on.

Speaking to Johnny, I felt quite sheepish and shocked: manifestly, and despite Facebook, email and all the rest, I have lost touch over recent years with the lives of many of my dear friends from this stage of my life. Of course, I have little doubt that my friendships with my contemporaries from school remain as strong as they always have been; and that a few boozy dinners out in London would make up for lost time.

But our talk did concentrate the mind and make me realise that, however much one tries, almost three years away, living in a very different and distant country like Colombia, does take its toll on one's immediacy and connectedness with the lives of others - particularly, in this case, one's longest-standing English friends.

So this is a small 'mea culpa' and an earnest promise to make amends in 2012 onwards.

Back to Blogging...

2011-05-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Enthused by the experience of my new Environment blog, I have decided to have a second go at keeping this, my main blog, more frequently up-to-date.

My thinking is that, if I can find half an hour a day to write random thoughts about the environment, then I should be able to find half an hour a day - or at least a few times a week - to write more generally about life, love, culture, books, Colombia and other topics.

So here goes - back to Blog 1 too, whilst I also hope to keep up the newly-established Environment Blog.

But I suppose both blogs presuppose the question: why bother? Does what one has to say have any value? Is it a waste of time? Can't just one keep a diary, as before, and be done with it?

Occasionally, of course, I worry about these things. For example, I think that every hour one spends on the internet - newspapers, Facebook, emails, blogs - is an hour not spent reading a book. With so much to read in life, is this opportunity cost worth it?

A second worry is whether Facebook implies a loss of intimacy, and whether one's individual life and thoughts should remain a mystery, only to be revealed to good friends and family in person. I am sure there is some truth in this.

Despite these arguments, however, and doubtless others too, I have decided to engage fully with the blogosphere, for the following reasons:

1. I think writing a blog is one way of giving friends and family a sense of what I am up to life (especially for family and a large number of friends whom I currently see very little of in person);

2. I think a blog or two can form a good, virtual record of one's thoughts and preoccupations at a particular moment in one's life;

3. I enjoy writing and combine it always with a good concert on Radio 3 or the Berlin Philharmonic's truly extraordinary and much-recommended Digital Concert Hall;

and 4. two blogs a day might be better, and less annoying, than 15 Facebook posts (I have decided to reduce their number as realise they clutter up other people's pages).

So there we have it.

Welcome (back) to my main blog and all good wishes,

Edward

Hay Festival Cartagena - Prospect Blog (February 2011)

2011-02-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

"Hay avocates, mangos; avocates ... mangos ... !".

The magic of the Hay Festival's sister gathering in Cartagena de Indias, the jewel of Colombia's Caribbean coast, is the sheer beauty and sensuality of the setting.

Shortly after the mango seller awakens your Prospect blogger from his leaden slumber on the first day of the Festival, the shutters of his high-ceilinged room open out onto a street lined with colourful, dilapidated 17th century houses, colonial churches and exuberant bougainvillea at every turn.

The bright sun intensifies the colours and lifts the spirits, while the sea breeze weaving its way through the narrow streets flutters the table cloths and provides welcome relief from the all-encompassing heat.

This was the sixth Hay Festival in Cartagena, and one senses that it is here to stay, with a couple of thousand visitors (the majority Colombian) and a wide range of Latin American and international authors in town.

There wasn't, perhaps, one stellar literary figure of universal renown this year (Rushdie, McEwan and Amis featured in the past two years covered in Prospect), but - amongst others - the Italian Alessandro Baricco (of 'Silk' fame), the Filipino Miguel Syjuco (whose 'Ilustrado' won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008), the filmmaker and author Philippe Claudel and a triumvirate of Colombia's most celebrated contemporary novelists -- Oscar Collazos, William Ospina and Tomás González -- participated in interesting, illuminating talks which filled the elegant 19th century Republican Adolfo Mejía theatre.

The cultural, political and historic content of the Festival was rich too. The charismatic former UN diplomat, Shashi Tharoor, gave a spirited account of Indian politics, Gandhi, the prospects for good relations between China and India in the 21st century and a vivid defence of the UN, while the Lebanese feminist, poet, author and editor, Joumana Haddad -- author of 'I killed Scheherazade: confessions of an Angry Arab woman' -- spoke eloquently of literature in the Arab world, the lives of women and the current situation in the Middle East.

David Aaronovitch amused a crowd on the absurdities of conspiracy theories; the BBC's Bee Rowlatt recounted the story of her correspondence with an Iraqi English teacher, May Witwit, and their resulting book 'Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad'; the FT's Latin America editor John Paul Rathbone spoke thoughtfully about his book 'The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon' and on the state of Latin America; and Felipe Fernandez Armesto gave two enriching, eccentric lectures on 'the problem of change: why we live in an unstable world' and 'America and the invention of the world' in immaculate, erudite Castilian.

For the annual British Council lecture, Germaine Greer gave an engaging if unstructured hour-long monologue, reflecting on the forty years since the publication of 'The Female Eunuch', birth control in the developing world and the social problems of contemporary British society. Much to the bemused interest of more than one feminist in the audience, her talk included an affectionate ode to the Latin woman for her strength, nobility and sense of honour.

There was music too: the Festival began with an interview with the iconic Panamian politician, writer and much-loved salsa performer, Rubén Blades, which turned into an impromptu concert as the great man produced a guitar from nowhere and burst into song. Buena Vista Social Club performed the same evening, with inimitable style and panache. And Philip Glass spoke with Peter Florence, the Festival Director, about his work in the opera house and the history of his compositions, before giving an evening piano recital which had most of the audience mesmerised and spellbound (and a handful indifferent).

The highlight of the Festival, for this blogger at least -- for its simplicity, truth and sheer moral power -- was a conversation between the Mexican journalist and activist, Lydia Cacho, and the veteran Colombian journalist Daniel Samper Pizano. Cacho has devoted her working life to exposing child sex tourism, both in Mexico - where she was raped and almost killed by corrupt politicians as a result - and internationally. Her most recent work, Slaves of Power, chronicles her travels around the world in an attempt to understand sex tourism and to interview its victims. The bravery and commitment of the journalist was moving to behold and there was a standing ovation at the conclusion of her talk.

Between talks, Cartagena's bookshops heaved with life, and there were impromptu meetings in the streets with the authors throughout the four days.

All in all, there was jubilation in the air, although a hint of melancholy too, coupled with intellectual exhaustion by the end.

Edward Davey is a freelance journalist based in Bogotá: www.edwarddavey.blogspot.com

Reconstrucción con criterio ambiental - Roosevelt

2011-02-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

An article I wrote for the Colombian newspaper Portafolio in mid-January entitled 'Reconstrucción con criterio ambiental'.

The basic argument is that the reconstruction effort in Colombia, following the floods which have affected over 2,200,000 people here in the past few months, is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconsider how the national territory could be organised with climate change adaptation, and the environment in general, firmly in mind.

The quote at the end from Roosevelt is a deliberate appeal to President Santos' sensibilities: over the New Year, in an interview published in El Espectador, he revealed that he had been gripped by a biography of Roosevelt, Traitor to His Class.

‘Reconstrucción con criterio ambiental’

Portafolio, 14 de enero 2011

La reconstrucción nacional que se acerca representa una enorme oportunidad para asegurar la sostenibilidad del medio ambiente en Colombia. La deficiente gestión ambiental de las últimas décadas - que se atribuye en últimas a una falta de voluntad política - exacerbó de forma aguda el impacto de las inundaciones, con consecuencias trágicas para más de dos millones de personas. Por lo tanto, una responsabilidad ética muy profunda cae sobre los hombros del Presidente, de sus Ministros, de los congresistas, de Jorge Londoño, de Everardo Murillo y de los Gobernadores: la de asegurar que la reconstrucción se realice con base en un ordenamiento ambiental del territorio adecuado y de largo plazo.

¿Qué significa esto en realidad? Tres prioridades se destacan: (i) el manejo integral de las principales cuencas hidrográficas del país; (ii) una incorporación plena del concepto de vulnerabilidad/adaptación al cambio climático en las cinco locomotoras y el Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2011 – 2014; y (iii) una reforma y mejora significativa de la institucionalidad ambiental, tanto nacional como local.

Para asegurar el manejo integral de las principales cuencas hidrográficas del país, el Presidente tendría que establecer de forma urgente un Comité directivo de los Ministros relevantes, con los mejores expertos nacionales e internacionales, para implementar la Política Nacional de la Gestión Integral del Recurso Hídrico; para estudiar e incorporar las lecciones del Tennessee Valley Authority y del famoso estudio del sistema hídrico del país realizado por una comisión holandesa hace cuarenta años; y para impulsar la conservación y la reforestación de los bosques de las cuencas (sobre todo del Magdalena, Cauca, San Jorge y Sinú). El Comité tendría que tener ‘dientes’, presupuesto y un papel protagónico en el esfuerzo nacional liderado por el Presidente y por Jorge Londoño.

Para incorporar la adaptación y la vulnerabilidad al cambio climático en las cinco locomotoras, todos los Ministros y Hernando José Gómez del DNP tendrían que revisar sus planes de trabajo y el mismo PND a la luz de los principales hallazgos de la Segunda Comunicación Nacional de Cambio Climático del IDEAM (2010). No se trata de disminuir su fuerza; sino de proceder con el principio de precaución y de asegurar que la minería, las nuevas viviendas, la infraestructura y la agricultura se dan en las áreas correctas, con los mejores estándares internacionales, y con un respeto total por el medio ambiente.

Para este fin, una reforma y un fortalecimiento de la institucionalidad ambiental es urgente. Se requiere que el nuevo Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible se establezca pronto, con presupuesto, liderazgo, peso político, cogida en los demás sectores; y que el sistema de incentivos para mejorar el desempeño de las CAR entre en efecto en cuanto antes.

Para la mayoría de la clase dirigente en Colombia, estas consideraciones ambientales suelen ser discursivas, secundarias: incluso se consideran un estorbo en el desarrollo económico en el corto/mediano plazo. Sin embargo, lo que nos demuestra la ‘Emergencia Económica, Social y Ecológica’ – y lo que sostiene la Constitución del ’91 – es que un manejo adecuado de los recursos naturales tiene que ser el prerrequisito, la piedra angular, del desarrollo del país.

Confiamos en que el Presidente Santos acuda al espíritu de las palabras de Roosevelt (1907): “Desperdiciar, destruir nuestros recursos naturales, desnudar y agotar la tierra en vez de utilizarla, con el fin de aumentar la utilidad, dará como resultado en los días de nuestros hijos, minar la prosperidad misma que justamente deberíamos transmitirles amplificada y desarrollada”.

------------------------------------

The original English is resounding: “To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed”.

But the photos of the floods - of which there are many on the web, such as here - are more resounding still...

Michael and the Magdalena

2011-02-03T06:48:00.001-08:00

‘Michael and the Magdalena’

City Paper, February 2011

Edward Davey

Michael Jacobs is an immediately recognizable and much-loved figure at the Hay Festival in Cartagena: a giant, white-haired, benevolent and ebullient author whose erudite, illuminating books on travel, culture, history and society in Spain and Latin America have won him widespread acclaim.

Fresh from the success of his most recent book, ‘Andes’, which recounts his six-month journey in Humboldt and Bolívar’s footsteps across the Andes from Venezuela to Patagonia, Michael is about to embark on his latest project: an account of his forthcoming voyage along the Magdalena River.

“What I hope to write would be a failure if it failed to capture the sheer beauty and sensuality of the Caribbean Coast”, asserts Jacobs, describing how the book will begin with chapters on the coast before he travels inland towards Mompox, Barrancabermeja, Honda, San Agustín and beyond.

Jacobs speaks with eloquence about the symbolism of the Magdalena and the place it occupies both in the Colombian popular imagination and the country’s history. In a meeting with García Márquez at last year’s festival, the elderly author’s eyes lit up with nostalgia and warmth on hearing of Jacobs’ plans. “I can remember every single stretch of that river”, said Márquez, with characteristic, perhaps tongue-in-cheek exaggeration.

The night before our interview, Jacobs had danced the night away to the sound of ‘champeta’, the emblematic Afro-Caribbean music of the coast, and was moved by the end of one song which closes with an impassioned ode to the Magdalena.

He also recalls, more somberly, having read that half of the dead bodies resulting from the period of ‘La Violencia’ in the mid- twentieth century are said to have ended up in the river; and that the area of the river in San Agustín which he hopes to travel through may still be off limits due to fighting.

Rich though the explorations of the Colombian context in the book will be, Jacobs notes that ‘this will also be a book about memory’, with the river providing the allegorical context for an exploration of the richness and frailty of human memory, and more specifically an exploration of his own family’s experience of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Jacobs explains how his father, a keeper of impeccable diaries throughout his adult life, suffered from the disease in his later years and how, more recently, his mother has begun to suffer from dementia. The book will interweave reflections on memory and on this personal experience with the progress of his discoveries as he travels down the river.

For this purpose, Jacobs plans to take a detour half way through the trip to the area of ‘Angostura’ outside Medellin, home to the highest incidence of Alzheimer’s patients in the world and to the celebrated doctor, Francisco Lopera, whose research on the matter has been internationally recognized and whom Jacobs will interview and accompany for a few days.

But after the explorations in Angostura, it will be back to the river and to the author’s quixotic quest to travel all the way along its several thousand miles, spanning through eight Colombian departments, multiple ports, wide stretches and narrow, silted tracts.

Jacobs smiles as he thinks through the practicalities, asking precise logistical questions and noting down numbers of friends and acquaintances along the way.

All methods of transport are foreseen: ‘three days on horseback’ near Honda, laughs Jacobs, ‘the chug to Barrancabermeja’, other boats thereafter, and the occasional day’s bus ride too. The river is low in parts at this time of the year, and the floods of recent months further complicate the situation.

All being well, the book is set to be published by the end of 2011 and, as you read these words, Jacobs is likely to be on the dilapidated chug boat heading down the river towards Mompox. It will be fascinating to read the resulting work from this most special, knowledgeable and humane writers on Colombia and Latin America.

Reminiscences of Monteverdi's Vespers

2010-12-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

It's been a wonderful season of music on BBC Radio 3 for those who, like me, at the moment at least, can't attend their usual fill of London concerts in the flesh but rely on the BBC iPlayer for their musical nourishment (not to mention news, culture, politics, etc.).

First, there were two wonderful concerts from St John's Smith Square with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge and Polyphony: the Corelli Christmas concerto (including a beautiful, yearning Pachelbelesque slow movement I hadn't heard for years and which brought time to a still for a moment), and the first three cantatas of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, and then a moving, spellbinding Messiah on Christmas Eve. I have listened to the lot on a bright Bogotá day at my desk, with the sunshine streaming through the sitting room window.

The highlight of all, though, was BBC Radio 3's recording of the summer prom which Mum and I attended of Monteverdi's Vespers in the Albert Hall, September 2010. John Eliot Gardiner conducted the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, with the London Oratory Junior Choir and His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts, the musicians deployed around the vast expanses of the Albert Hall.

The recording on iPlayer has expired, I am afraid, but I am happy to report that the whole performance can be seen on YouTube, beginning with the following excerpt and then going straight through.

Mum queued heroically to get two of the best seats in the Albert Hall on that balmy summer's night in September. I had stepped off the plane from Colombia that morning. It was one of the most memorable and moving concerts I have heard, the first time I had heard the Vespers live. This is surely some of the most otherworldly, seductive, earthy, human, evocative, primal and inspiring music known to man. It pulses to the rhythms of early 17th Century Venice and, as Gardiner convincingly argued in a talk before the performance, is also powerfully redolent of the 'muezzin' and the sounds of Islam. Close your eyes and think of Baghdad, Marrakech, Damascus...

At one of many heartstopping moments in the Vespers, two sole male voices spiralled and intertwined in invocations to the divine from opposing sides of the Albert Hall, to an awed silence from the 5000 people beneath.

It was wonderful to relive the experience today. A few photos below. Love to all!

Happy Christmas 2010

2010-12-24T11:11:00.000-08:00

My dear friends, dear readers!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND ALL GOOD WISHES FOR 2011.

I am going to write a longer blog here over the coming days with an account of the past few months and what approaches in 2011. There's so much to write; I haven't had time to sit down and gather my thoughts yet.

Several hours on Natalia's farm to follow, in the midday heat, and to the sound of clucking chickens, mooing cows and a cacophony of birds and insects, for this purpose.

But meanwhile: to you all, lots of love and deepest good wishes for a happy and joyful 2011.

Edward

'Mother and Child'

2010-10-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.sonyclassics.com/motherandchild/

Just back from seeing 'Mother and Child', a 2010 film written and directed by Rodrigo García, Gabriel García Márquez's eldest son (photo above).

I found the film moving, humane, truthful, realistic and compelling, and really recommend it.

The acting is uniformly superb throughout, and Rodrigo obviously has his father's gift of capturing the human spirit, its foibles and pathos, with honesty, compassion and a fundamentally benign eye. I also felt as if in the company of Almodóvar or Mike Leigh at various points.

The plot is intricate, with several lives overlapping, and love, loss, yearning, grief, nostalgia and tenderness felt by all. There is humour, too, and some lovely music at various points -- including a wonderful song in the final credits which I would love to track down.

Friends, family: please do see it, and tell me what you think!

Huxley + me

2010-10-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

London

2010-10-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

Back to Bogota after two wonderful weeks in London with my family and friends. There were many highlights, and the photos will follow, but spending lots of time with my nephew Huxley Chapman, aged three months, was a particular joy. There was also plenty of time for films, concerts, the opera, lectures, galleries, and all the rest. It was great to see everybody, to disconnect from a hectic working life in Colombia, and to bond with my family and my home.

Charles Mackerras

2010-07-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

The great Australian conductor Charles Mackerras has died, and it is the first time that the death of a musician has hit me like a personal loss.

I have so many wonderful memories of concerts in London and elsewhere with Sir Charles conducting; and some of the finest concerts I've ever been to were conducted by him.

All day, memories have been flooding back of concerts and operas conducted by Sir Charles. I am going to list the following, all of which I can remember vividly, although I'm sure there are others too.

I think I first saw him conducting a Mozart Piano Concerto and the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique at the South Bank Centre many years ago. I was hearing the Berlioz for the first time and can remember my embarrassment at clapping vigorously at the end of the penultimate movement, along with others in the audience, thinking in my case that the Symphony had ended. Charles seemed to laugh and let the applause subside, before launching into an electrifying account of the true ending.

Elgar´s 1st Symphony. Again in the South Bank. My abiding memory is of sitting in the seats right behind the brass in the Choir. The Elgar was in the second half and as the musicians came on stage, and got ready to play, the principal tuba player gave me a wink, laughed and said: "Watch out mate, Sir Charles really loves us to go for it at the end". Sure enough, this is what happened, and I remember the visceral impact of the finale and feeling that I had had my proverbial brains blown out by the brass at the end of the performance.

Brahms Symphonies with the Philharmonia at the South Bank. I particularly remember the end of Brahms 2, which he conducted with such rhythmic glee and happiness; a feeling he also transmitted at the end of a glorious, glowing performance of Janacek's Sinfonietta, again at the South Bank.

Talking of Janacek, I heard the Makropolous Case - the first opera I heard in Oxford, aged 14 - conducted by Sir Charles at ENO a few years ago, and remember finding his conducting of that piece truly memorising: such passion, mastery, control. It was a strange production, which I now read Sir Charles didn´t like, but the quality of the singing and playing were of such a high quality it didn't matter.

In Mozart, I heard Sir Charles conduct Cosi at Covent Garden, Zauberflote in Glyndebourne and Covent Garden, and Don Giovanni and Figaro in Covent Garden. In life, the time where I have felt closest to hearing true musical perfection came on hearing Sir Charles conduct Figaro at the Opera House; I remember feeling from start to finish that his knowledge, understanding, tempi and love for the music made the whole work shimmer and glow like never before. I organised tickets for another performance, and am happy to have been with Mum, Nick (as with Don Giovanni), Natalia and others. His Mozart piano concertos were always wonderful too -- I remember queuing all day in Edinburgh to hear his farewell concert with Brendel playing two of the most lovely works, and congratulating them both at the end as they came out of the Usher Hall.

As a student at Oxford, I spent a cold December afternoon hearing Sir Charles rehearse the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in St. Mary's Church; and then, a couple of years later, went with Emma Nicholson to his 80th birthday party, to which she had been invited, where the OAE played Haydn for Sir Charles in the Holywell Music Room. Emma, characteristically generously, had asked me to find a nice present for Sir Charles; I bought him a new and much-heralded recording of the Late Beethoven Quartets by the Takacs Quartet, and so we both presented him with the CD and a nice card when we met in the Sheldonian for drinks at the end.

A month later, a letter of thanks came to me by way of Edward Davey MP, who felt he had been written to by mistake; Sir Charles was very happy with the present, and I have the elegant, typed letter somewhere at home, sent from his home in Hamilton Terrace.

Also with Emma, and with a handful of Iraqi and Iranian doctors in tow, I remember a blazing and fantastic performance of Fidelio at the Barbican, also to celebrate his 80th birthday: he was always celebrating birthdays, Mum would joke...

I was wooing Natalia at the time, and remember having to slink off guiltily (and much to her annoyance, as she later told me) from an afternoon date in order to whizz across a sultry summer London on my bike to arrive in time for the concert. I remember being exulted by the Prisoners´Chorus and moved to tears in Leonore's final, exultant solo.

I also remember Sir Charles conducting Strauss, wangling a seat in the Royal Box at Covent Garden, after two hours´standing, in time to hear a translucent rendering of the final act of Rosenkavalier; and a prom a couple of years before, with my dear friend Ron, where we also heard Sir Charles conducting excerpts of the opera with Felicity Lott.

The last time I heard and saw him was in November 2009 with the musicians of the Royal College of Music, in a lovely, innately musical account of Handel's Semele, with the avuncular, probing Sir Charles conducting a troupe of young singers and accomplished Baroque-sounding musicians with characteristic elegance . Mum and I were moved as always, having smiled at him warmly as he came in, and applauding him warmly at the end.

I really loved the man, and will cherish the memories of his concerts and the wonderful recordings of his that I have (no more so than Mozart 41, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; which reminds me of another glorious concert with the Philharmonia, in which they played Wagner's Tannhauser Overture, Beethoven's Violin Concerto and then the Jupiter, with incredible aplomb. Ron was also with me for that concert, and spoke with great eloquence about Sir Charles' conducting at the end).

I will be sad not to see him conducting again, with his elegant left hand, perfect beat and capacity to emit a beaming smile during and at the beginning and end of concerts! But what a privilege to have heard him so much during the first decade of my classical music loving life. Goodbye, Sir Charles, and rest well. Your spirit will live on.

My nephew Huxley Piers Chapman - and a photo from the Amazon

2010-07-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

30 May 2010: update

2010-05-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

It has been a very busy month, and once again the blog has been neglected -- with a parallel, and related, increase in Facebook and Twitter activity, as friends who are linked to me on those two 'networks' will have realised. I would prefer to spend more time on the blog, but facebook and twitter lend themselves more easily to one-click updates and so on, so I have become quite addicted over the past couple of months.

A quick update, in any case: there has been lots of work, as the end of the current Colombian Government approaches, and with it lots of pressure to tie up all loose ends and to bring to fruition all the work in which all civil servants have been involved since they began (Jan 2009 in my case).

So there has been lots moving on the Colombian Amazon, REDD, deforestation, climate change, and all the rest, plus an encounter in Leticia, in the Amazon, with the representatives of the international cooperation community and the different regions of Colombia which was great fun.

I have followed Colombian politics closely, and have felt enthused by the arrival of Antanas Mockus, the former Bogota Mayor, and his Green Party ... his message is progressive, with its focus on education, reducing inequality, eliminating corruption and protecting the environment.

But today's elections have gone very much in favour of the main candidate, Juan Manuel Santos, and his Partido de la U, riding on the back of President Uribe's popularity and promising to continue his approach in Government.

Still, it has been fascinating, invigorating for Colombian democracy, and an uplifting few months.

In other news: my darling sister Anna is all set to give birth in the coming days. I am so excited and following her developments closely, hoping to be able to go over to London in the coming months to see her, meet my nephew/niece, and to catch up with family and friends...

two excellent articles on Antanus Mockus' presidential campaign

2010-05-02T12:58:00.001-07:00

Two excellent articles below sum up the current political situation in Colombia, and the emergence of the Green Party led by ex-mayor of Bogotá Antanus Mockus as leading presidential contender as things stand at the moment.

Mockus is an exceptional figure in many respects, and I think it would be a wonderful thing for Colombia if he were to win; but it remains to be seen if the traditional political élites, in addition to the power of the main political parties in recruiting votes in the countryside, will enable it to happen.

But Mockus' intelligence, integrity, achievements, ethics and personality stand him in good stead; and his campaign is going from strength to strength, with record numbers of supporters recruited by Facebook, including many of Colombia's hitherto disenfranchised youth. It will be fascinating to see what happens.

Meanwhile, back at home, the Tories seem set to win. The postal vote I organised in order to be able to vote, in my absence, seems never to have arrived at our house; so I will not be able to participate, unless I can vote in person in the UK Embassy in Bogotá.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/colombia-antanas-mockus-green

http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16015299

And a nice piece on Cartagena for luck...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/travel/02cartagena.html?tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=all

my first (and last?!) international cricket match

2010-04-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

I had the honour and privilege for playing for the Colombian national cricket team in a thrilling match against Costa Rica on Saturday in the British-owned Bogotá Sports Club. It hadn't occurred to me, but this now means I have international cricketing experience: brother Nick kindly wrote from London saying he always knew I'd get an international cap one day...!

It was a grey day, with occasional rain and flitting periods of Bogotá sunshine: fitting, in other words, and sufficiently reminiscent of home -- along with the club house, replete with photos of Her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Family -- to make the experience even more surreal. My closest thing to whites is my Mexican/Colombian 'guayabera', a linen trouser suit with a flamboyant pattern on the shirt, so that was what I wore to play...

The Colombian national side is made up of a gaggle of Foreign Office diplomats, Indian and Pakistani businessmen, and Anglo-Colombian residents; we're not registered with the ICC yet, unlike Costa Rica (who play much more against their Caribbean counterparts), but we're on the way.

Costa Rica won the toss and put us into bat; there were twenty-five overs a side. Colombia scored 85 all out, which was not particularly distinguished, but due in part to tight bowling from the Costa Ricans (British and Asian too, in their majority). I went in at the exuberant position of no. 5 to steady the ship after the loss of a few early wickets, and managed to score a very distinguished 1 run -- from an exquisite, Gower-esque off drive to square cover -- eeked out over three overs, before being bowled out by an exquisite, unplayable flipper from their off spinner which skidded through my forward defensive and knocked out my middle stump.

All was not lost, though, and we went onto the pitch to field in high spirits, hopeful of stemming the Costa Ricans' easy journey to victory (they lost two wickets in the end, I think, both from shambolic run-outs). I bowled two overs, with one Shane Warne like gem of a spinner from leg- to off-, and a couple of balls with nice flight; but, sadly, in the spirit of accuracy, there was also one aerial wide and a couple of long hops. Two overs for ten runs were my final figures.

The Costa Ricans sailed to victory in the end in 22 of their allotted 25 overs. There was warm beer in the club house and then it was back to Bogotá thanks to a kind lift from Oriel of the Foreign Office. It was not the most distinguished contribution to international cricket but it was enjoyable all the same.

A chance encounter with 'Gabo', Gabriel García Márquez

2010-04-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

I had the great and joyous privilege of meeting and talking with Gabriel García Márquez on a flight from Cartagena to Bogotá yesterday. I am still reeling from the excitement and the joy of the encounter, of which I have dreamt for many years...!

Gabo was lovely and tender, as was his wife, Mercedes; they allowed me to sit next to them on the flight, where they were by themselves in business class, and Gabo and I spoke for fifteen minutes or so before he took a snooze. I told him about my love for his books, a fervent love since the age of the 13 when I first read 'El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba' (he asked me where I had read the book); we talked about the new film adaptation of 'El Amor y Otros Demonios', the final version of which he said he had liked; about his health, which I said was glowing, at which he laughed and made a lovely quip about only knowing how good it is later ('esto sólo se sabe después'); he asked about my work in Colombia; and we laughed, smiled and shook hands repeatedly.

During his snooze, Gabo would occasionally wake for a moment, open the window shutter and stare at Planet Earth with a quizzical, wistful expression beaming out from under his furry eyebrows, before returning to sleep: this wonderful writer staring out over the clouds, and Colombia's expansive green landscapes and undulating rivers, with characteristic interest and enthusiasm...

When we arrived, I helped him up, picked up his glasses off the floor, and accompanied him off the plane. We said our goodbyes and the Avianca hostess kindly took the photo above.

two wonderful concerts on BBC I-player

2010-03-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

I had the joy of listening to two memorable performances on the BBC's indispensable I-player in the past few days, Listen in the next week if you can...one review of each follows below.

1) Bach's St Matthew Passion, conducted by Simon Rattle and with a stellar cast, from Symphony Hall, Birmingham. A beautiful performance, memorably sung, and deeply gripping throughout. Magdalena Kozena's rendering of 'Erbarme Dich' was a highlight; but there were many others, and Rattle made a large chorus sound as fleat and dramatic as the Monteverdi Choir.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r8b5r/Performance_on_3_CBSO_Rattle/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article7053007.ece

2) Beethoven Symphonies 2 & 3; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Ivan Fischer. Played with style and exuberance, and the conductor's reading of the music was thrilling, with sharpened sonorities and the sense of a special musician coming to both works for the first time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r8cmj/Performance_on_3_OAE_Fischer/

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article7055457.ece

What a treat! And balm for a thoughtful, reflective Edward this week.

Quebrada La Vieja

2010-03-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

I wrote the following for Bogotá's City Paper on my favourite local walk in Bogotá.

'Quebrada La Vieja' is one of Bogotá's best kept secrets: a eucalyptus-scented, ecological path, through dense foliage and alongside crystalline streams, which leads from the 'circunvalar' with 72nd street right up into the heart of 'los cerros orientales', the green hills which flank the city and form Bogotá's striking backdrop.

Every morning, several dozen walkers -- some solitary, others with friends, and many accompanied by their dogs -- walk up the path and back again, in a round trip which takes between an hour, and an hour and a half, depending on how quick you are. On most mornings, the dawn is cool and you feel the cold as you begin; but there comes a magical moment, at around seven, when the bright morning sun breaks through the canopy of trees and illuminates the forest in golden, warming sunshine.

The path leads steadily upwards from the entrance on the main road, across streams and over rocks, trunks and stones, for about half an hour, until you reach a plateau where many stop to drink the fresh water from the stream, talk, stretch and meditate before starting to head down again. Three other paths begin here too: one, to the left, leads to the Madonna and Cross on the top of hill, from which there is another path down to the main road; another, straight ahead, and steeper still, leads, after another hour's walk, to the distant 'páramo' on which Bogotá's water supply depends; and a third path, and perhaps the most challenging of all, to the right, leads - after two and half hours' walking - to Monserrate, where one can have a good and well-deserved breakfast and then catch the cable car down.

Taking the path to the left, towards the Madonna, you reach after quarter of an hour a magical section of pine forest where the effect of the morning sun is particularly captivating. There are fewer people here, and it is consistently extraordinary to feel, so close to a roaring city of eight million inhabitants, that you could be in the heart of a Norwegian wood, to coin a phrase, or a scene reminiscent of a medieval myth like Parsifal. The ground is soft; the air limpid, cool and sweet; and the sun casts translucent rays through the trees, flecking individual branches with orange light. There is a magnificent view too, over a valley of trees leading to the 'páramo'. And then you reach the Virgin Mary and Cross which crown the top of the hill, beyond which lies the city itself: stretching as far as the eye can see, its big thoroughfares like arteries, with the Transmilenio, in tiny, red rectangles, criss-crossing at frightening speeds in the distance.

Very early in the morning, on especially bright and cloudless days, the distant snow-capped peaks of Tolima, Ruiz and Santa Isabel can be seen on the horizon; on other days, the city's pollution is more notable, and clouds them out in a dispiriting horizontal layer of grey smog.

The immaculate condition of the path is wholly attributable to a group of local citizens who made its recuperation and care their principal aim from 1984 onwards. Josefina Castro, the principal motor of the recovery of the 'Quebrada', which had fallen into disrepair, is a warm-hearted, wise and spirited woman in her 50s, and speaks with passion about how she began the campaign: "I woke up one morning, opened my bedroom window, and was shocked by the terrible smell descending from the hills. I knocked on the doors of three of my neighbours, all men, and we agreed to spend the whole Saturday cleaning up the path." Thus the effort began: and so, Josefina insists, should all local environmental causes: "Everybody should clean up a little bit - children, schools, families. Get your rubber gloves on and clean!". The path was restored to its natural beauty over a few months, and has remained pristine since then. Local residents and aficionados pay a small yearly fee to the Friends' Association to help with the upkeep.

A new initiative has begun to do the same with the collection of paths in Chapinero, with the support of Bogotá's Chamber of Commerce, the mayoress of Chapinero Blanca Inés Durán, the Corposéptima association, and local communities who live in the hills. Inspired by the achievement of Quebrada La Vieja, the coordinator of the project, Mauricio Rico, has a bold vision of a community-led renaissance of the hills and paths in the district: "it will take time, but in ten, twenty years, I hope we will be able to look back with the same pride at what we have achieved".

Throughout Bogotá, and the whole of Colombia, there are thousands of local environmental initiatives which match the conviction, enthusiasm and achievement described above. Bogotá alone counts on over 500 community-led environmental organizations, according to recent figures; and Ecofondo, a national environmental federation, relies on the support of over 3000 local partners in its work. Andrés Hernández Quiñones, a professor at Los Andes University and expert on local environmental movements, expresses no surprise, and speaks with passion of 'vibrant local organizations which speak to and arise out of people's powerful concern for the health of their local environment'.

It is a heartening outlook, especially for environmentalists who, at the national level, are doing all that they can to ensure that the next Government will do more to protect Colombia's uniquely beautiful natural environment. Sandra Bessudo, Director of the Malpelo Foundation, is coordinating an effort to get every Presidential candidate in the forthcoming elections to sign an environmental pact, which would set the standard for their period of Government if they were to be elected: almost all have signed up to date.

But all would do well to follow the example of the local efforts, led by communities with the passionate desire to improve their own environment, that abound throughout Colombia. To be inspired, begin with a morning walk in Quebrada La Vieja, amid the fresh air, flowing streams and pellucid morning light.

Edward Davey, 1 March 2010

To find out more about Quebrada La Vieja, visit montanagorg.blogspot.com; on the Chapinero project, write to Mauricio Rico c/o corposeptima@etb.net.co; for an excellent overview of the Cerros de Bogotá, including a brilliant downloadable guide, see www.cerrosdebogota.org; and to support - and please do! - the environmental pact initiative, please see www.pactoambientalcolombia.com.

update (March 3 2010)

2010-03-03T18:10:00.000-08:00

Recent neglect of 'blog' due to lots of work and general avoidance of computer beyond its already considerable daily demands. But hope to pick up again soon; a blog needs weekly attention, like my little orange tree pictured, if it is to flourish...

Much happening of interest of late: the Constitutional Court voted against an Uribe third term, so Colombian politics has suddenly come alive, with all the candidates who have been waiting in the wings now presenting their credentials; I've been involved in a campaign to get all of them to sign an Environmental Pact which would inform their leadership on environmental affairs in Colombia, were they to be elected (see www.pactoambientalcolombia.com); I saw the film Precious, which is a powerful account of poverty and abuse in Harlem which reminded me of the work of Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company, for whom I used to work (and I see with interest, although with no surprise, that Camila met the main actor in London recently); and I've written the Preface and Introduction to what might, hopefully, become a small book on Colombia, but there's so much distance to travel, in every respect, that I won't dwell on the details.

More to follow soon...

3 blogs from Hay Festival, Cartagena

2010-02-05T04:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/01/live-from-the-hay-cartagena-festival/

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/02/highlights-from-hay-cartagena-literary-festival/

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/02/hay-festival-cartagena-is-simon-schama-turning-into-a-parody-of-himself/

Blog 1

Live from the Hay Cartagena festival

Edward Davey — 31st January 2010

Cartagena: a literary lilt in the air

The fifth Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia’s jewel on the Caribbean Coast, has begun in style. The sun has shone brightly, drawing out the vivid yellows, pinks and blues of the colonial cit’s houses, churches, theatres and cafés; the breezes from the sea sweep through the streets; salsa and the sound of fruit-sellers bellowing out their wares adds a lilt to the air; and a flurry of linen-clad authors, readers and observers meander from one literary event to the next. The festival began on Wednesday evening in Colombia’s cosmopolitan capital, Bogotá (the “Athens of South America,” as it is sometimes referred to on the continent), with an hour’s conversation between Ian McEwan and Festival Director Peter Florence. Five hundred or so people listened with rapt attention as McEwan talked about his work, in particular On Chesil Beach: its composition, characters, influences, the melancholy of Florence’s disappearance from the last pages, the context of the time, their inability to overcome their traumatic experience.

It was a wide-ranging conversation, touching on the value of the novella as opposed to the novel; the mathematical structure with which McEwan begins the planning of each book that he writes; his experience writing screenplays and libretti, a humbling demotion in the case of screenplays from the role of God to a scribe whose work is subject to constant change at the whim of directors, actors and the rest; the celebrated passage in Atonement in which Briony contemplates the fingers of her hand, which the Colombian students present had found extraordinarily powerful; and the wider impact McEwan’s novels have had on his readers, here and worldwide. It was a fascinating hour and one could hear a pin drop in the packed public library in which the event was held.

Arriving in Cartagena, there is a buzz in the air. Octagenarian Gabriel García Márquez is here, a rare and exciting event as he spends most of each year in his permanent home in Mexico City. Your Prospect blogger made his perennial pilgrimage to the author’s forbidding but stylish house, built in the sixties by Colombia’s preeminent (late) architect Rogelio Salmona, to see if he might catch a glimpse of the great man. But Gabo has – surprisingly – left the city for a day or two: might this coincide with the presence of Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist? As Gerald Martin’s biography of ‘Gabo’ explains, the two men have never spoken – despite an earlier strong friendship—since Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez, and almost knocked him out, outside a Mexican cinema in 1976. The cause of the punch has never been known, although conjecture abounds.

During the day, among a multitude of other events, Gillian Beer gave a magisterial account of Darwin’s appreciation of literature and art to a capacity crowd in the Plaza Santo Domingo, a 16th century colonnaded courtyard in the heart of the old town. Darwin seems to have been deeply moved by the music of Handel, and his love of music and art informed his work throughout his mature life in varying ways. Manu Dibango, the Cameroonian saxophonist whose exuberant, soulful tones graced the town in his concert the night before, spoke of his years in the sixties in the smoke-filled jazz clubs of Paris and New York, and of his subsequent humanitarian work for the UN, Ethiopia and – last week – for the stricken people of Haiti. And Peter Godwin, the Rhodesia-born journalist of English and Polish-Jewish ancestry, spoke compellingly of his father’s life, in which he suppressed until near his death his true identity as a survivor of the Holocaust (written about in When a Crocodile Eats the Sun), and of the decline and brutality experienced in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Michael Ondaatje is here and will talk tonight; and so, over the next two days, will we also hear from Mario Vargas Llosa, Ian McEwan (again), Helena Kennedy, Hector Abad Faciolince and Juan Gabriel Vásquez (two of Colombia’s most celebrated contemporary authors), a group of contemporary authors from the Arab world, Simon Schama, Sarfraz Mansoor, travel writer Michael Jacobs and many others. The city is alive with photographic exhibitions, booksellers, cafés and musicians. There’ll be a further blog on the rest of the Festival on Monday.

Blog 2

Highlights from Hay Cartagena literary festival

Edward Davey — 1st February 2010

In conversation: Ian McEwan

The highlights of Saturday morning were two sensitive, probing and humane interviews of contemporary authors, Paolo Giordano and Mario Vargas Llosa, conducted by one of Colombia’s most celebrated contemporary writers, Hector Abad Faciolince. Faciolince is best known for his autobiographical work El olvido que seremos, a searing account of the political violence in Medellín—the second largest city in Colombia—in the 1990s which led to the assassination of his father, a prominent university professor outspoken in his condemnation of para-military, drug-related violence (a work now being translated into English by the prize-winning translator, Anne McLean).

Faciolince is a generous, kind, and erudite man, and his conversation with Paolo Giordano, in Italian, drew out many of the facets of the 28-year old author from Turin, whose novel La solitudine dei numeri primi (The Solitude of Prime Numbers), has been a worldwide publishing phenomenon. Giordano, a physicist who is to present his doctoral thesis next week, spoke about the tormented adolescence of Alice and Mattia (the two principal protagonists), his literary influences (including Ian McEwan), and the process of writing the book itself. For a young man (enviably) caught up in perhaps unexpected global success, Giordano seemed kind, unassuming, reflective and critically aware.

The Teatro Heredia was bursting at the seams for Faciolince’s interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, the avuncular elderly statesman of Latin American letters, while several hundred people more watched the interview on a big screen in the blazing sun and sultry breezes of the square outside. Vargas Llosa spoke of the demons which compel him to write, and of the obsessive single-mindedness and intensity with which he has forged his novels. Not for him, he said, the inevitable inspiration of genius; rather, writing inspired by travel, reading, interviews, encounters and a deep immersion in the world, politics, the tangled knot of human relationships, and life.

Faciolince sought to understand Vargas Llosa’s recurrent concern with fanaticism in his work, with characters swept up by passion, hatred and an uncontrollable thirst for power. Vargas Llosa contended it was not autobiographical, but rather borne out by his experience of dictatorships and brutality in Peru and across the continent over the past fifty years.

And, inevitably, there was much direct talk of politics too: with Vargas Llosa setting out his vision of a Latin America currently divided between well-established democracies with moderate parties, of both left and right, pursuing liberal market economies, and other countries caught up in demagogic, autocratic populism, primarily of the socialist kind, lurching from one crisis to the next. Vargas Llosa, consistent with his writings and political stance since the 1970s (in which he famously opposed Castro’s imprisonment of the critical poet Heberto Padilla), spoke eloquently of his liberal philosophy, concern for human rights and condemnation of “caudillismo” on the continent. It was rousing stuff and there was loud applause from the audience.

Rosie Boycott’s discussion with Sarfraz Mansoor about the politics of food and climate change seemed a salutary, if comparatively anodyne, interlude in the early afternoon, as we prepared ourselves for further conversations with Ian McEwan and Michael Ondaatje later on. Boycott argued that Britain is only ever three days from anarchy, given our wholesale dependence on a fossil fuel-dependent food distribution system which would collapse with the disruption of our ports or another oil shock, and that politicians should be promoting the growth of more local food, in addition to a reorientation of the currently inefficient (and often cruel and senseless) global agricultural system, which promotes animal brutality and absurdly water-intensive land use.

Ian McEwan’s conversation with Peter Florence drew another capacity crowd in the late afternoon and—hearteningly—touched on almost completely different themes to the encounter in Bogotá on Wednesday evening. The audience was again struck by McEwan’s humour, capacity for detached reflection on his work, and the generosity with which he shared his knowledge and appreciation of other authors.

Inter alia, McEwan spoke of the composition of Saturday, which began when the image came to him of a man, naked, standing at his bedroom window in the depth of night, his wife asleep in the bed by his side, contemplating London’s night sky, and of his subsequent, in-depth research accompanying a neurosurgeon in his work for several months to learn more about the brain. Speaking of the structure of his novels, he differentiated between their beginnings: the way in which Atonement, for example, begins with a slow setting-out of the psychological background of the characters, whereas Enduring Love, and Saturday, like Mozart’s Haffner Symphony, begin with a dramatic incident or expression and then the themes are developed. Interesting, too, that Saturday should depict a happy marriage; McEwan found it a challenge to write, given his wider concern for the failure to communicate and frailty of the majority of human relationships he depicts. He cited Tolstoy’s epiphanous description of the early days of marriage in Anna Karenina as a uniquely sun-lit, verosimilitudinous case in point.

There was some discussion of his films, in which McEwan spoke of his screenplays and of the success of the different realisations of his novels that exist (the only caveat perhaps some aspects of Enduring Love, although the director did achieve the film he wanted to make); also of On Chesil Beach, and of his latest novel on climate change, which hits the shelves in a week. The context for the book grew out of McEwan’s salutary (if dispiriting) experience on a boat in the Arctic with writers and scientists a few years ago. In the evenings, after days in minus 40 degree cold, his fellow travellers and he would have lengthy, earnest discussions putting the world to rights, working out the necessary international arrangements to reduce climate change consistent with the climate science and the evidence before their eyes. Simultaneously, and as the week progressed, the storage room in which the group kept their essential kit (gloves, thermals, coats, etc.) became ever more disordered, until such time as complete pandemomium had taken over and some of the group were not able to leave the boat on their daily expeditions for wont of kit.

Despite the inevitable reflections ensuing from this experience, implicit in his rendering of the tale and the audience’s laughter, McEwan contended he was an optimist, and that the luxury of pessimism was a luxury of youth (as a twenty-something-year-old, he would welcome the likely arrival of nuclear obliteration with a kind of passionate glea).

The consoling, mellifluous voice and instruments of Mara Carlyle were balm to the soul after the McEwan lecture, and so was the gentle voice, and poetic language, of Michael Ondaatje, in conversation with Juan Gabriel Vásquez, an hour later. Ondaatje spoke compellingly about his work, the gaps between his novels, the experience of working with Minghella on The English Patient, his poetry, and the joy he obtains from editing his twice-yearly literary journal The Brick.

The British Ambassador and his wife, John and Marion Dew, then hosted a drinks party in the sixteenth-century Palace of the Inquisition, in which the mojitos flowed, and then authors and pundits alike—including this lowly Prospect blogger—danced the night away under a full and golden moon overlooking the old city.

Blog 3

Last days at the Hay Festival, Cartagena

Edward Davey — 4th February 2010

Hay Cartagena comes to a close

The day began with an early morning interview with Judith Thurman, the distinguished biographer of Isak Dinesen and Colette, and writer for the New Yorker on fashion and books. We begin by talking about Michelle Obama and fashion. Judith speaks of Michelle’s achievement: like Jackie Kennedy, and unlike Princess Diana, she has understood the need to “mount the pedestal, hold your pose, and create a persona,” to fulfil the role of “old-fashioned consort” to the holder of office. Judith thinks that Michelle has been able to speak to different elements of America, including the majority of the population which keeps to a core of puritan, old-fashioned values.

Michelle’s is a “robust glamour,” though, with none of her feisty, opinionated intelligence reined in, and sexy too—a “wholesome marital sexuality,” as Judith puts it. All this explains her consistently high approval ratings (80 per cent) throughout the year, independent of the vicissitudes of her husband’s political life.

I ask Judith whether the eight years she spent on her biography of Colette were a labour of love, to which she replies “definitely not a labour of love, but a labour of literature”. Clearly there is a selfless aspect to biography, she contends, in one’s quest to understand every last detail and strain to another person’s life; but this is also a project about one’s self in which, as perhaps in the practice of Buddhism, one encounters “objections, impasses, antipathies and idealizations” of one’s own along the way.

Some aspects of Colette’s life (1873 – 1954) are plainly disagreeable to Judith: her occasional cruelty, and acute selfishness, and her far from courageous attitude in the second world war (in which she was successful in playing the system during the occupation to ensure her and her husband’s daily survival, but in which she wrote for anti-semitic publications and would, Judith contended, have thrown her lot in with whichever side had won).

We conclude with a conversation about Judith’s career at the New Yorker, a career in part captured in her recent volume of essays Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, the Spanish version of which has just been published in Colombia. Judith speaks of the intensity and vibrancy of life at the publication, and of her devotion to writing, and writing well.

Next in the morning, an enjoyable talk between Joanna Coles, editor of Marie Claire, and Peter Florence, about the recent documentary film about life at the magazine, Running in Heels; the publication’s ethical commitment, both to good causes and to promoting fashion for real women with real bodies; the future of print journalism; and dealing with celebrities with all their particular neuroses. It drew one into this largely unfamiliar world of a monthly women’s magazine which sells over a million copies.

I then rush over to the Santa Clara Hotel for an interview with Juan Gabriel Vásquez, the pre-eminent 36-year old Colombian novelist whose novel The Informers was short-listed for the Independent foreign fiction prize in 2009.

It was a wide-ranging conversation, in which Vásquez spoke eloquently about the “deep desire to understand”—human experience, history, memory—which underlies his writing, which extends to two novels, a collection of short stories, volumes of literary essays on a wealth of authors and inspirations (amongst others, he cites Tolstoy, Orwell, Camus, Vargas Llosa, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Conrad) and weekly articles in the Colombian and international press.

We talk about politics, in which—like Vargas Llosa, whom Vásquez much admires—the writer plays an active role. Vásquez has no “compulsion to be in politics”, but argues that “obsessive readers of novels”, like the author, “have a privileged view of society” which necessarily translates into informed political observation and action. He is “radically opposed to violence”, above all, and to the “cult of a messianic single figure” which characterises much of Latin America’s past and more recent political experience. He eschews ideological extremes, pointing to the respective horrors of Chile’s period of dictatorship and Cuba’s persecution of homosexuals and critical intellectuals, and argues for more politically mature democracies in the region which arrive at imperfect compromises.

Vásquez lives in Barcelona, a distance from his native Colombia which was self-imposed at the outset of his writing career. In the early mornings, he writes fiction, “about things that are not there”, enclosed in his study with his earplugs in place. In the afternoons he returns to the real world, to his translations, his literary work, his articles and his family. Asked about his experience at the Hay Festival, he replies that he loves talking about literature and discussing books (”not all authors do”) and that his contact with real readers is a welcome change from the permanent dialogue with the “platonic, chimeric reader” with which he interacts during the writing of his novels.

At the end of the interview, we meander together, past García Márquez’s house, to the Teatro Heredia for Simon Schama’s lecture on “Obama and History”. Schama, dressed in a bright red shirt and jeans, cut a characteristically flamboyant figure on stage, as he delivered from memory a lecture full of effect on Obama’s rhetoric and its place in American political tradition, interlaced with reflections on the ups-and-downs of the presidential campaign, the president’s mixed political fortunes in the past year and the State of the Union speech earlier in the week.

Occasionally, Schama would sit on the floor at the front of the stage, as if delivering a Shakespearian soliloquy or a telling operatic aria; at other times, he would walk backwards, or throw his water bottle in the air to catch it again. The content may at times have been brilliant, a kind of précis of The American Future: A History, but the delivery did seem distracting, almost as if it were a parody of the television persona that Schama has cultivated.

Lunch and an interview with the Americas editor of the Economist, Michael Reid, followed, the journalist’s measured tones, light touch and sanguine demeanour a striking contrast as we discussed his 2007 book, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul.

A core thesis of Reid’s, echoed in Vargas Llosa’s lecture the day before, is that Latin America is at a political crossroads between the “mass democracies here to stay”, in which a “constitutionalist, democratic tradition” has taken root, independent of the political orientation of the party in power, and other countries in the region currently caught up in a kind of populist dictatorship. Reid argues passionately and with evidence for the potential of liberal capitalist democracy, allied with adequate social policy, to take root in the continent to the (continuing) benefit of the poor and the economic growth of the region.

In the afternoon, Helena Kennedy gives a compellingly and thoughtful lecture on democracy in the 21st century, speaking on democracy in peril, the decline of political parties, the disconnect between professional politicians and an increasingly disenfranchised public, the failures of the British political system, the rise of cabinet government and the need to find new ways to invigorate life into our democracies—themes she continued to elaborate in a lecture yesterday in Bogotá at Los Andes University. A capacity crowd seemed to hang on every word.

And then, as a golden sun began to fleck the tops of the houses in Cartagena, one sensed that the end of the festival was nigh, heralding in turn the advent of a rather nostalgic melancholy in your Prospect blogger, faced with the prospect of return to his cotidian life in Bogotá. Nonetheless, there was time for three more events: Michael Reid’s discussion of his book alongside investigative reporter Jon Lee Anderson, who has recently returned from the favelas of Brazil and from Haiti, and the editor of Colombia’s main weekly political magazine, Semana; a joyous encounter between ten authors in the the theatre in which each spoke about their favourite book (amongst others, Vásquez: A Perfect Day for Banana Fish, J.D. Salinger; Schama: The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth; Hector Abad Faciolince, The Leopard by Lampedusa, and Hiob, Job, also by Joseph Roth; amongst the highlights); and then a moving encounter with one of Colombia’s most celebrated vallenato musicians, Leandro Diaz, a blind, Homer-like octagenarian, surrounded by his loving family and group of musicians, talking about his love of nature, and of God, and responding to the marvel expressed by his interviewer, Daniel Samper Pizano, at the vivid description in his music and lyrics of Colombia’s ineffably beautiful nature which he had never seen.

The music which was performed captured, in all its beauty, spirit and simplicity, the whole welter of human emotions that had been explored and experienced by the participants throughout the festival over four days; and as a full yellow moon rose to illuminate the old, now almost empty streets of the colonial city, and the dark sea beyond, it was time to get to the airport and to return to Bogotá.

Happy New Year / Cocuy, Colombia

2010-01-02T07:19:00.000-08:00

To one and all - to dear friends near and far - very best wishes for a wonderful 2010, full of good health, joy, enriching experiences and happiness.

Carolina and I went to the spellbindingly beautiful mountainous region of Cocuy in North-East Colombia; the photos above tell the tale. Some of the most extraordinary countryside I have seen in my lifetime, and another gorgeous region of this rich and fascinating country, Colombia...

My Mum arrives today from London and we set off for a fortnight's travel to the country's coffee region, to Medellín, to the Atlantic Coast and - with luck - to La Guajira too, before a few days in Bogotá at the end, and back to work. I'll update my blog from time to time.

Love to you all and Happy New Year!

Edward

an article in Portafolio

2009-12-20T18:30:00.000-08:00

Colombia's equivalent of the FT, Portafolio, published a comment piece of mine on 'Colombia, climate change and Copenhagen' a week or so ago. The link can be found below (and the mugshot accompanying it above):

http://www.portafolio.com.co/opinion/columnistas/otroscolumnistas/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR_PORTA-6783347.html

The basic gist is an explanation of the key issues in Copenhagen, Colombia's position there, and an argument at the end that - regardless of what happens at the summit - Colombia should do its best to ensure good environmental practice in the country (with regard to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the reduction of deforestation) to the benefit of current and future generations.

A full translation is available on request. I'd like to say that the piece had a tremendous impact and really prompted reflection, but only one friend, and fellow columnist, Tomás Uribe Mosquera (whose own articles are masterpieces of cogent argument and clear use of evidence) wrote, to say - happily - that he found the article 'highly informative and, indeed, pedagogic', which was kind of him.

Still, I confess I found the whole experience quite exciting: both trying to construct a compelling argument on paper, and then having it published. I am grateful to Ricardo Avila, the Editor, for giving me the chance -- and may try to dabble more in this way, de temps en temps, in 2010.

A 70-year old birthday

2009-12-20T18:12:00.001-08:00

On Monday 7 December, José Avelardo Nieto Cuervo turned 70 years old. He has lived on the streets, I remember him telling me, from the age of 12.

José and I became very friendly over the past year, from October 2008 when we moved into La Candelaria: our then flat is not far behind the graffiti in the photo. I've often bought him bread, milk, or paid for a night in the shelter and that sort of thing. When we moved out, in August 2009, I worried we would see less of each other, and indeed thus has it proved.

Nonetheless, in my diary since February has been José's birthday, and I had said since then that we would be sure to have a meal - most likely Bogotá's famous ajiaco, chicken and potato soup, in an excellent and humble local restaurant, Puerta Falsa, one of the oldest in Bogotá - on the day.

And so the day came, and I left the office to find José. He leapt up as I walked up the street, and we gave each other a warm handshake and a hug. I prevailed on him that the day of our lunch had come, but José insisted he was embarrassed to go dressed as he was, and that he wasn't feeling too hungry, but that it was a source of enormous happiness to him that I had fulfilled our deal. After some effort at persuading him, we settled at postponing lunch until another time. I slipped him a note to help with the shelter and washing his clothes, we gave each other another hug, and that was that.

saving a life in Santa Marta

2009-12-20T17:46:00.000-08:00

At the REDLAC Conference in Santa Marta in November 2009 (the meeting of the continent's environmental funds and foundations), I saved a life.

At 6pm, after a long day of back-to-back talks, I went for a walk along the beach to see the sunset and to freshen up. About a kilometre from the hotel, I came across two young men (24 and 17, respectively) lying on the beach in what was by then the darkness of night.

The younger one's chest was heaving, and he was groaning, being sick and looked truly terrible. Esteban - above - was in a bad way too, but was standing up and administering to his friend. They were both in trunks and had been swimming, when they had both been stung a number of times by poisonous jellyfish. They had been there for some twenty minutes having struggled out of the water, and were dazed and not thinking straight.

I said we had to rush to a hospital. Neither had any money. Esteban and I picked up the other lad, and carried him from the beach to the main road along a dark path for five minutes. Miraculously, there was a taxi driver a few hundred metres up the road who had been waiting half an hour for a soldier at the barracks who had not turned up. I persuaded him to take both to the local hospital, paid the taxi and exchanged numbers with Esteban.

To cut a long story short, Esteban rang me later that night to say his friend was all right, but that the doctor had said that if he had arrived any later he would almost certainly have died.

Esteban and I have stayed in touch ever since, and were able to meet up in Bogotá - see photo above - this week. It was quite moving, in an understated way, and he is the most lovely and friendly person. He has come to Bogotá in search of work and so we are keeping an eye out for opportunities in Colombia's main coffee shop, Juan Valdez, where he has worked before and would like to work again.

Interestingly, and perhaps amusingly, I only got to the bottom of the story when we met this week. In the confusion on the beach, I had understood that they had been unfortunate to swim in 'aguas malas', what I had taken to mean sewage or unclean water, which they had swallowed and hence the sickness.

Or so I thought: what became clear this week was that they had been stung by 'aguas malas', which is indeed the Colombian word for jellyfish ('medusa' was the word I was taught).

I look forward to clearing up the story with my close friend José Luis, the Director of the Conference, who was - until now - the only person I have told the story too. He seemed bemused by the sewage suggestion: he knows the beach well, and says it is well-regulated and that it would be impossible for there to be such waste there. And he was right!

So there we are. A moving experience on a beautiful and deserted beach on Colombia's Atlantic Coast in November 2009.

Demócrito

2009-12-20T17:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/articuloimpreso175688-alianza-contra-el-referendo

A group of university friends and students in Colombia have come up with an innovative campaign against a potential re-election of President Uribe which has already made the headlines. The following links give the idea:

http://alianzaciudadanaporlademocracia.net/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alianza_ciudadana/

The Classical figure of Democritus, or Demócrito, has been turned into the instantly recognizable figure of the Colombian porter, dressed in a 'ruana', the warm woolen scarf which porters in Bogotá wear in the buildings which they guard by night.

Instead of guarding the security of the building, the Democritized porter is seen to be holding out for the safety of Colombia's 1991 Constitution (one of the world's most progressive and advanced), currently at risk of being changed - again - to allow for a potential third term.

Demócrito's catchphrase - 'Qué no se pongan la ley de ruana, yo veré' - is a magisterial play of words almost impossible to render in English: although 'they'll not be pulling the wool over my eyes' comes uncannily close...

El Espectador covered the story on page 5 of the newspaper in early December: several friends rang to say that they recognised the passerby captured in the photo above.

http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/articuloimpreso175688-alianza-contra-el-referendo

Reading 2009 - 2010

2009-12-20T17:12:00.000-08:00

Some readers of the blog (and renewed thanks to you all for doing so!) may recall an earlier entry about the 53 novels I read in the year 2008. Here is the link for those who wish to see the list. The idea that year was to read a novel a week, as the Director of the LSE, Howard Davies, says he has done for the past 40 years.

The experience of doing so last year was a wonderful one, and I began 2009 with high hopes of emulating it. As I reflect wistfully with one week to go till Christmas, however, I confess that this week I have only read 30 books, of which some 10 - 15 are non-fiction.

What happened? In part, a busy working life this year has meant for less time to read (although Howard Davies must have always managed to create the time); in part, perhaps, intellectual exhaustion from last year's effort, plus the rigours of the LSE, might have meant that there's been less appetite in the brain this year; perhaps, with regards to fiction, I've less had in the way of empathy for human character, and attentiveness to plot, this year than last; perhaps it's emotional exhaustion (it's been a rollercoaster of a ride, these past 6 months); perhaps it's a combination of all these things.

Either way, I am beginning to work out what the plan for next year should be. 53 novels again; or 53 books (unspecified division between fiction and non-fiction) as my first boss here, Luis Alfonso Hoyos Aristizábal, an impressive autodidact, reads per year; or 53 books on Colombia, given my own efforts to write about this country in 2010; or just a little and often, with no fixed targets...?

I am slightly torn. For all those who think the above dilemma is mad, or beside the point, I invite them to read a novel a week for a year -- it is a wonderful and enriching experience! Hence the nostalgia and trying to find a plan for 2010.

Calle de la Agonía

2009-12-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

Bogotá's La Candelaria is full of wonderful and evocative street names and signs, but this seemed to me particularly so...

An Experience of Life Coaching

2009-12-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

Over the past three months, I have had the privilege to have had 6 sessions of 'life coaching' with my dear friend Anamaría Aristizábal, a photo of whom is above.

Anamaría is a truly wonderful person: rich, invigorating, intelligent, kind, dynamic; an empathetic and attentive listener; blessed with a delightful and irreverent sense of humour; and profoundly open to human experience, and the spiritual and intellectual life. Finally, she lives out her principles in so many ways: through local initiatives, her work as an international consultant on development and environment, and in life coaching itself, where she feels - and I can testify - that she can have a profound impact on an individual life.

I've enjoyed the process a lot, learnt a huge amount, and feel very grateful to her for her openness and her commitment throughout.

To Blackberry or not to Blackberry

2009-12-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

This question has been nagging at me for the past few months. In brief, as it's a fundamentally boring blog, I perceive the following advantages and disadvantages: advantages - (i) work doesn't get hold up when one is travelling or in long meetings; (ii) searching for that address or number which one forgot to note down from email is suddenly possible; (iii) occasionally possession of a Blackberry must be of crucial importance and really make a decisive difference: disadvantages - (i) repetitive strain injury, to which I am already susceptible from protracted typing and text messages, must become more of a menace with Blackberry-ownership; (ii) increased stress burden associated with being permanently accessible and having to engage even more frequently with the world of email, internet and information (overload); (iii) cost, manageable but doubtless excessive if one is not careful in use; (iv) the possibility of becoming neurotic and/or not being able to concentrate on another person due to the constant possibility of checking one's BB.

Conclusion: I will resist until either my work gives me one and pays the bill, because I am sufficiently important to need it (my boss Sandra is a brilliant and dynamic user of her BB, and is the perfect vindicator of its ownership), or until I can simply resist no more. But no BB in 2010 for ED.

photos from a wonderful week in London

2009-11-24T07:37:00.000-08:00

Al Gore

2009-11-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

Interesting interview with Al Gore in today's Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/07/al-gore-interview-climate-change

A Year in Colombia -- article for The City Paper, Bogotá

2009-11-05T06:27:00.000-08:00

A Year in Colombia - a personal reflection

Edward Davey

The City Paper, November 2009

I arrived in Colombia at the beginning of October 2008. In the US, the Obama victory was approaching, although it looked by no means certain at the time. In the UK, where I am from, the financial crisis was reaching its zenith, with gloom and recrimination in the air, and unemployment on the rise. Colombia seemed a good place to be!

In Bogotá, in what was perhaps a metaphor for the times, the rainy season was beginning, and there were torrential downpours – followed by bright sunshine – most afternoons. The DMG financial pyramid scandal had recently erupted, with the country gripped by tales of this elaborate hoax which had invariably ended in tears and protest.

A year on, the events of October 2008 seem simultaneously vivid and part of the distant past. President Obama looks older and wiser, a year into his administration, and continues to act in an inspirational – in this author’s view – and refreshing way on almost all fronts. The first ‘green shoots of recovery’ from the financial crisis, meanwhile, seem to be showing themselves in the UK and elsewhere – or so an exhausted-looking Gordon Brown would have us believe.

In Bogotá, the ‘winter’ has returned, in even more dramatic fashion, although this bemused Englishman can’t avoid a wry smile when friends complain of the terrible cold. And the mysteries of David Murcía’s exploits have been eclipsed by the daily, and more far-reaching, discussions of whether President Uribe intends to stand for an unprecedented third term in government – and what it might mean for Colombia if he does.

All in all, it seems a good vantage point from which to reflect on a year in Colombia, and I am grateful for the Editor’s invitation to do so.

I would like to begin with the positive. Colombia continues to amaze me in multiple ways every day. I am consistently taken aback by how kind Colombians can be. In a multitude of daily transactions – whether buying vegetables in the market; in conversation with taxi drivers, porters, shopkeepers, waiters, mango and newspaper-sellers; or in the context of professional life – there is a kind of human warmth, a pulse, a sense of humour and a sense of exchange which constantly lifts the spirits and adds a lilt and a spring to daily life. I find Colombians almost universally courteous, warm-hearted and kind; if there were one reason for the joy and zest I have experienced in the country over the past year, it would unquestionably be this.

Bogotá has won me over too. Despite the terrible traffic, the aggressive buses, and the dispiriting pollution – about which much more should be done – I have grown to love this ‘Athens of South America’.

Take the magnificent view when you walk from Externado University down to Plaza Bolívar in the bright morning sunlight, or on a golden sunny afternoon: the colonial houses, with their tiled rooves; the church spires; the handsome, Republican Government buildings; and – towards the horizon – the city spanning out towards the distant hills.

Or the view on an early morning, after the walk up to Monserrate or the pine forest at the top of ‘Quebrada La Vieja’ in Rosales (one of the city’s great unknown treasures), with the whole city waking up to life, a riot of orange-red apartment blocks, skyscrapers, avenues, parks, and with the snow-capped peaks of Tolima and Ruiz a magisterial backdrop on the distant horizon.

I am enthralled by the city’s bookshops, restaurants, cafés, museums, cinemas, and cultural and musical festivals – the city has yielded its secrets slowly, and has drawn me in.

It’s been love at first sight with the rest of Colombia, meanwhile, and the country’s exceptional beauty and diversity continue to startle. The National Park of Nuquí, Chocó stands out in the memory, with pristine rainforest bordering the Pacific ocean; so too the glories of Colombia’s relatively intact Amazon Rainforest, visited by boat and on foot from Leticia, and the astounding setting of Parque Tayrona and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Atlantic Coast.

The countryside surrounding the ruins of San Agustín was memorable too, and the 12-hour road journey from Bogotá to Popayán for ‘Semana Santa’ in March 2009 was one of the most glorious road journeys I’ve taken in a long time, seeming as it did to encompass so much of Colombia’s variety of landscapes and climates: the green hills of Cundinamarca in the cold morning air; the ‘Eje Cafetero’; endless rivers; the vast sugar fields of Cali and the Valle del Cauca; and then the red clay as we ascended into the hills of Cauca and the outskirts of Popayán.

Discovering Colombia’s natural beauty and national parks has become something of an obsession: I hope to discover all 55 of the latter in my life-time, continuing next year with Cocuy, Los Katíos, Chiribiquete, Sumapaz and several others.

The City Paper tends to dwell on Colombia’s positive aspects – an editorial focus I value and which I think is uplifting and worthwhile. And there is indeed much to celebrate! But there are negative aspects of life in Colombia a year on which worry me deeply.

The achievements of President Uribe in his first two terms are now threatened by the worrying development of a second re-election. I feel this is anti-democratic and a risk to Colombia’s democratic history and strong institutions. There are good potential Presidents in the waiting, with interesting propositions, who deserve a hearing in 2010 and the chance to stand.

I worry too about the widening gap between rich and poor, particularly acute in cities. I worry about the hard lives so many people lead, both those working informally in the cities, and poor farmers in rural areas. I am appalled that there are over 3 million displaced people in the country and that so little is being done to provide a meaningful, lasting response to their plight.

I worry about corruption in much of the political class. And finally, on the environment, from a professional and personal point of view, I am acutely concerned by several worrying developments which indicate that Colombia’s uniquely beautiful and biodiverse environment will be put seriously at risk in years to come.

But I don’t want to end on a negative note: rather, simply highlight points which are of serious concern from a personal point of view. It has been an extraordinary year in Colombia, and I feel a depth of gratitude to the country and its people which it is difficult to convey adequately in words. I look forward to 2010 very much!

Handel's Alcina

2009-10-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

This week's Handel Opera in Radio 3's glorious year-long cycle of the whole lot is Alcina. Catch it while you can!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n7m29/Handel_Opera_Cycle_Alcina_Alcina_(Act_3)/

The blurb says it's possibly his best. I've just listened to it and it is truly glorious: as always, 3 hours of melodies which lift the spirits and speak of the deepest human emotions.

But the best? Ariodante seemed to me the best when I heard it last week; Rodelinda is glorious; and 'Giulio Cesare' remains my favourite ... etched immortally in my mind by the Glyndebourne David McVicar production which continues to flourish.

'Va tacito' from Giulio Cesare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CJXlJCJSH4

The point is that they're all wonderful and endlessly rich. It's been a great joy to follow the Radio 3 cycle this year from Bogotá. Thank goodness there's 2 months left...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hnn4z

A tale of two Ambassadors

2009-10-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

I have been fortunate in the past months to get to know two excellent Ambassadors: Ambassador John Dew, 'our man' in Bogotá, and Ambassador Mauricio Rodríguez, Colombia's new man in London...

I met John at the Hay Festival in Cartagena in February, of which I blogged at the time for Prospect, and he kindly invited me for breakfast at his Residence last week in Bogotá. We had a rich and interesting conversation about Colombian history, politics, culture and literature, over delicious bacon and scrambled eggs and good coffee, in a lovely home reminiscent of a country house in Somerset in the heart of Bogotá. John was Ambassador in Cuba before, and must have many tales to tell - which I hope to hear on a future occasion! - of encounters with Fidel and all the rest. Jon is also known as the Climate Change Ambassador in Bogotá, given the Foreign Office's work on this issue here, something he laughed about knowingly when we met.

Mauricio, meanwhile, I met in June in a hot and sultry Acción Social national encounter in a glorious rural retreat in Girardot, a few hours from Bogotá. Mauricio, a long-standing friend of my former boss in Acción Social, Luis Alfonso Hoyos, now Colombia's representative to the Organization of American States in Washington, had come to give a presentation on leadership to my (several hundred) colleagues and I. It was a deeply engaging and inspiring talk and I rushed to note down Mauricio's email address at the end, which he gladly announced, inviting comments and suggestions. There begun a correspondence and now, several months on, Mauricio is to be found working in Colombia's elegant London Embassy, off Sloane Street, quarter of an hour on the 137 bus from my beloved home in Tennyson Street, SW8.

Both men are very impressive, erudite, open and well informed. My home and adoptive countries alike are both well served...

Rembrandt

2009-10-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

The Rembrandt picture, 'Aristotle with a Bust of Homer', currently serving as frontispiece to the blog, and reproduced in miniature in this post, is to be found in the Met in New York.

I was amazed by the picture when I saw it in September, and bought the poster, which is now being framed by my framer friend in La Candelaria, and which will soon adorn my desk.

The quality of the painting, and the humanity of the depiction of Aristotle, bowled me over -- and as a reflection on ethics, on poetry, and on power, it is hard to beat.

The following is the description of the picture from the Met website.

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653 Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, 1606–1669) Oil on canvas

In this imaginary portrait of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher rests his hand reflectively on a bust of Homer, the epic poet of an earlier age. A medallion depicting Alexander the Great, whom Aristotle tutored, hangs from the gold chain. This extravagant decoration must be an award for service and recalls the gold chains that princely patrons gave to Titian, Rubens, and van Dyck. It is generally supposed that Aristotle is contemplating the worth of worldly success as opposed to spiritual values. The gestures of the hands, accentuated by the cascading sleeves, and the shadows playing over Aristotle's brow and eyes support this interpretation. The picture was painted for the great Sicilian collector Antonio Ruffo. His inventory dated September 1, 1654, lists the canvas as a "half-length figure of a philosopher made in Amsterdam by the painter named Rembrandt (it appears to be Aristotle or Albertus Magnus)." In the early 1660s, Rembrandt sent Ruffo companion pictures of Alexander and Homer, which suggests that, despite his much later costume, this figure must be Aristotle. In any case, the study of a figure lost in thought is characteristic of Rembrandt, whose achievement here reflects his longstanding preoccupation with visual and emotional experience.

Inglourious Basterds -- Tarantino

2009-10-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago, I saw the 2009 Tarantino film 'Inglourious Basterds' in Bogotá. I've been meaning to write about it ever since, but have not yet managed to -- in part because of time, and in part - I suspect - because I've still been reeling from the experience, and not yet been able to put it into words.

As a piece of cinema, irrespective of ethical considerations, I found it powerful, exciting and well done. The film has all the hallmarks of a Tarantino script: tense from the beginning, painfully violent (scalpings, beatings, shoot-outs, and all the rest), at times funny, at times disturbing, and increasingly nerve-wracking as the plot progresses.

From an ethical point of view, I feel there are three possible readings, perhaps not mutually exclusive. The first is that the counter-factual history, in which Hitler and co. are finished off in a Parisian theatre in 1944 by a brave Jewish survivor and a group of American Resistance fighters, is hurtful to survivors of the Holocaust, as of course it did not happen like this, and many more hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the remaining year and a half of the Second World War.

A second reading is that the film is a powerfully cathartic - if vengeful and vitriolic - 'Jewish wish fulfilment' film, in which the conflagration in the Parisian theatre, instigated by the Jewish heroine, is a kind of reverse living-out of the entrapment and killing of the concentration camps. As Hitler and the collection of senior Nazis die a horrible death, I felt preoccupied by my own feelings in the cinema at this moment: a kind of powerful 'schadenfreude', a simultaneous revulsion and exultation at the scene. Perhaps I should not say Jewish wish fulfilment here -- more, the wish fulfilment of all who are appalled by the Second World War and the aberration of the Holocaust, whether Jewish or not.

A third reading - and doubtless there are many more - would perhaps focus more on the final part of the ending. The egregious Nazi whose scheming interrogations and intelligence play a key role throughout, has the swastika carved bloodily into his forehead by the American Resistance fighter (Brad Pitt) despite having colluded with the Resistance fighters at the last minute to allow the killing in the theatre to go ahead. It is as if to say that nothing can be done to reduce or forgive the extent of his (and the Nazi's) crimes -- and that the world should never forget, nor be allowed to forget. The film then becomes a wider reflection on the horrors of what happened, with the counter-factual wish fulfilment elements becoming less important, and more a necessary invention to fill the plot.

I've read the reviews and listened to Tarantino discuss the film; many reviews felt it was weak, and Tarantino seemed preoccupied about his creation in an interview with Jonathan Ross I caught on the TV with my family in England in July 2009, as if troubled after the event by the implications of the creation in which, it seems, he had spent ten years of his life working and reflecting.

I also went to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' website to see whether he had written, in his characteristically thoughtful way, about the film -- but there is no sign that he has. Nor Rowan Williams, whose deep thought on these sorts of ethically problematic creations I also seek out and value ...

I would also like to know how the film was received in Israel, where it was shown recently, with Tarantino present, and to know more in time about the other impacts it has had. For those who can stomach the violence, and who have not yet seen it, I really recommend it -- and would be glad to discuss it further.

It is definitely one of the most troubling and powerful films I have seen in a long time.

a sleeping fisherman in his stall in Manaus, Brazil

2009-10-18T15:33:00.000-07:00

The Chocó

2009-10-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

There was another powerful article in Sunday's El Espectador on life and violence in Colombia's Chocó region: a good piece of investigative journalism, which can be read below.

http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/nacional/articuloimpreso165926-relatos-de-miedo-negros

The article was a powerful reminder of what life is like in this extraordinarily beautiful and tragic area on Colombia's Pacific Coast, where Colombia's conflict - and the battle for access to national resources - continues to have a devastating impact on the livelihoods and well-being of the Afro-descendant and indigenous inhabitants of the region.

I don't know the Chocó well and would like to explore it at length in 2010.

Earlier in the year, I had a day in Riosucio, an impoverished town by the river, to visit social projects with Afro-descendant communities aimed at ensuring the sustainable use of local wood -- instead of the current patterns of destructive deforestation which characterize the region, and which one could see from the helicopter flight to the town. An article about the visit was written in Spanish and can be seen in my earlier blog entry (and photos of the visit can also be seen here.)

I want to write more about this experience in another blog entry soon: it will form part of a wider reflection on a year spent in Colombia.

My second, more recent visit was to the spectacularly beautiful national park of Utría, about which I have also written in earlier entries, here, here and here. This was one of the most beautiful places I think I have ever seen: tropical rainforest in a myriad of greens alongside the Pacific Coast, with heavy rains followed by sunshine amid the lapping waves, schools of dolphins, and all the rest. It was quite extraordinary.

My third, albeit distant, experience of this region of Colombia, comes through my dear friend Peter Cousins who works in the peace community in Apartadó (north of Chocó) -- an experience about which Pete has written powerfully in emails to friends and on the following website too. Peter's experience of human rights abuses and violence in this community have given him a vivid and direct sense of the kinds of injustices reported in the newspaper article above.

Life in Bogotá feels very removed from the realities of life in this region of the Pacific Coast. I sincerely hope to gain a better first-hand sense of the region next year.

Earthquake simulation in Bogotá

2009-10-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

This week, at 11am one morning, the whole of Bogotá - and many other parts of Colombia - ground to a halt as an impressively detailed trial run of a major earthquake was carried out. Preparations for the 'simulacro' had preceded the event for weeks on end, with ever more detailed and peremptory instructions being sent round the office email list.

The event seemed to be a major success and it was remarkable to see how seriously it was carried out.

I was on Bogotá's landmark Seventh Avenue at 11am that day, coming from a meeting and on my way towards the ACCIÓN SOCIAL office in the historical centre. It was one of those wonderful Bogotá days where the sky is an intense blue and the sun shines bright, with a clarity and lucidity of light of a city at almost 3000 metres above sea level.

The 'séptima' is a large thoroughfare through the city, replete with polluting buses, a plethora of yellow taxis, and all the buzz of this big city of 8.6 million inhabitants.

But, for a brief period of ten - fifteen minutes, it was as if the whole world had come to a magical standstill. The buses and motorbikes stopped at the lights, at the police's request, and turned their engines off, while the earthquake simulations were carried out. All was a blissful silence and I walked down the middle of the road where normally this would be to put oneself in mortal peril.

A brief moment to reflect on how life was not so long ago, pre-industrialization and mass transport, and how - just conceivably - it could become again in a post-fossil fuel, climate change affected world (without being as apocalyptic as McCarthy's haunting novel The Road).

But the moment passed -- at some point, a whistle blew, I scuttled over to the payment, and Bogotá's relentless traffic resumed in all its (noise-)polluting racket.

Gerald Martin interview (in Spanish)

2009-10-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

There was a long interview in today's El Espectador -- Colombia's closest equivalent to The Observer and a really good read (with two particularly good columnists, both of whom I would love to meet in Colombia, writer Hector Abad Faciolince, and novelist and poet William Ospina) -- with Gerald Martin, the British academic whose biography of Gabriel García Márquez is published in Spanish next month.

I met Gerry in Cartagena in February and we had two or three lovely conversations, the longest of which culminated in a full-length interview with him that was published in the City Paper here in February 2009. I worked hard on the interview and wrote it with warmth and sensitivity towards Gerry, whose intelligence, kindness and dry sense of humour left a lasting impression. I had already read the biography in English, hot off the press via Amazon from England, and was deeply impressed by it. I also share his love and fascination with 'Gabo', a fascination I have had since the age of 13 when I first read and studied a Gabo short novel - 'El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba' - in school.

Gerry has devoted much of the past seventeen years to writing about and studying García Márquez; the biography is an enormously enriching account of the author, his personality, impact, his work, and the history of Colombia and Latin America over the Twentieth Century. It reads very well and, despite the evident affection of biographer for subject, maintains its independence and critical voice throughout.

Andreas Scholl in Bogotá

2009-10-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

A fortnight ago, I was reading Saturday's newspaper to discover Andreas Scholl was in Bogotá and had been giving masterclasses to young Baroque musicians and singers throughout Latin America. That night, he was set to perform in my favourite musical venue in Bogotá, the concert hall of Luis Angel Arango Library in La Candelaria.

I ran straight down to the Library and joined the returns queue where we were fortunate to get tickets at the last minute.

It was a beautiful programme: a Corelli orchestral piece to begin, played with ebullience by the musicians on baroque instruments; then an Italian cantata sung by Andreas Scholl and a lovely Argentinean soprano; and then Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in the second half.

I add the concert to my list of highlights in a year here: with no. 1 in that list remaining the memorable performance of Gluck's Orfeo led by Adrian Chamorro and his wonderful musicians in 2008, of which I wrote in a blog at the time.

City Paper Article on 'los páramos'

2009-10-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

'Los páramos'

Colombia is home to one of the world's most precious and complex ecosystems: the 'páramos', or 'high wetlands', of the central Andean plateau of the country. The 'páramos' -- big, bleak sponge-like expanses of both dry and wet land at high altitudes -- play a critical role in the provision of drinking water to Colombia's big cities, principally Bogotá and Medellín, and are at risk from local environmental degradation, the pressures of human settlement and from changes in global temperature caused by climate change. The latter threat is now particularly severe: if global temperatures increase as predicted in the 21st Century, there is a real danger - backed up by a growing scientific consensus - that the ecological balance of the 'páramos' will change irrevocably, and with it their capacity to generate the water supply on which upwards of 10 million Colombians in urban areas currently wholly depend.

One of Colombia's most accessible páramos, Chingaza, is an hour's drive from central Bogotá. The road to Guasca and Guatavita, two important indigenous settlements from the pre-Colonial period, spirals upwards out of Bogotá, affording dramatic views of the ever-burgeoning city until it disappears from sight and one arrives at the green, undulating, fertile fields of Cundinamarca. Passing langorous cattle, greenhouses full of flowers and strawberries, and roadside restaurants selling piping hot 'arepas' at every stage of the journey, it is an agreeable drive to reach first Guasca and then the outskirts of the National Park of Chingaza.

Here, by prior agreement with the National Parks Authority in Bogotá, entry to the 'páramo' is granted by the solitary National Parks Guard in his cabin at the gate. Dressed in an all-encompassing raincoat and thick wellington boots, Juan seems pleased to see us and happy for our few words of conversation before my guide Iván and I begin our ascent. The panoramic view from the hut towards the plains is dramatic: a wide vista of distant villages and agricultural land, speckled with forest, and the reservoir created by Chingaza's dam a distant sight to the East.

The abundant silence and overwhelming melancholy of the 'páramo' is what then becomes apparent as we walk further up towards the 'Lagunas de Siecha', a scattering of twelve beautiful, mystical lakes which were revered by the indigenous communities and each held to symbolize different life forces and deities. The landscape is stark, with different shades of green, grey and brown as the vegetation becomes more sparse and arid the higher we go. The páramo's distinctive 'frailejones' -- palm-like plants a few metres high - provide relief to the eye and reveal the moistness of the land from which they grow.

After early sunshine, heavy rain clouds approach and engulf us, with a cold, biting wind excoriating our faces as we reach the seventh of the lakes in the circuit of twelve. The air here is alive to the sound of croaking frogs and to the call of an eagle, out hunting in these favourably obscure conditions. Mulitiple flowers are to be seen, in rich reds, purples, violets and blues, and the water of the lake is crystalline and pure to taste.

An hour later, and the circuit of the lakes complete, the rains ease as we begin our descent towards Guasca and the fertile plains beneath.

Colombia's 'páramos' have been acutely affected by the country's long-standing civil conflict: for many years, Sumapaz - the country's largest páramo - has been the theatre to violent confrontations between Colombia's Armed Forces, the guerilla and paramilitaries, a state of affairs powerfully documented in sociologist Alfredo Molano's recent book 'Ahí les dejo los fierros'. Chingaza has been similarly affected. Incursions of cattle ranching, mining concessions, and the burning of pastures for the sowing of potatoes by 'campesino' communities, have also had a negative impact on these delicate ecosystems and their endemic species of flora and fauna.

Local and international civil society organizations have established important initiatives to protect the 'páramos', and government efforts - led by the Ministry of Environment and the Instituto von Humboldt - have also been long-standing. Colombia's negotiating position in the international negotiations on climate change, culminating in Copenhagen in December 2009, stresses the threat that global climate change, predominantly caused by industrialized countries' historical emissions of greenhouse gases, poses to the 'páramos', and seeks international support in efforts to protect and safeguard these ecosystems. The potential humanitarian implications of a deterioration of the 'páramos' in terms of scarcity of water supply in the future are particularly clear, as well as the potential impact on Colombia's capacity to supply energy to its population, given the country's 75% dependence on hydroelectricity for its energy use.

The survival of these unique, and eerily beautiful, ecosystems into the 21st century will depend on a host of local and global factors, and their future is by no means guaranteed. But many good local efforts are being taken to protect the 'páramos': please write to edwardleodavey@gmail.com to find out more, and to support. To visit Chingaza, write to Parques Nacionales Naturales: ecoturismo@parquesnacionales.gov.co. Two excellent walking groups also organize frequent visits: Caminantes del Retorno (caminantesdelretorno.com), and Clorofila Urbana (clorofilaurbana.org).

Edward Davey
30 September 2009

Antanus Mockus' new campaign

2009-09-26T13:52:00.001-07:00

Bogotá's celebrated former mayor, Antanus Mockus, has launched a very interesting new political campaign, entitled 'Confianza Electoral'. The thrust of the message was set out in his article in today's El Tiempo on the subject.

Florencia, Caquetá

2009-09-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

A day trip today to Florencia, Caquetá, in the South-East of Colombia, for an international cooperation meeting organized by the Government. I presented our work on the Colombian Amazon in the meeting, which seemed to be well received, along with a presentation made by my colleague Rodrigo Botero who works for Colombia's National Parks Agency, on that entity's vision for the conservation and sustainable development of the Colombian Amazon.

The Colombian department of Caquetá has often felt neglected by the central Government -- and it does feel like a distant outpost, after a 1-hour flight over rainforest and agricultural land to get there, in a small and rickety plane. Many of Colombia's problems are viscerally felt here, and have been for decades. And from an environmental point of view, the region's strong commitment to livestock raising is posing a definite challenge to the conservation of the rainforest -- with ever more encroachment towards the Amazon as a result. It was a good meeting in searing heat, and I was glad to get a sense of life and reality in this area of Colombia.

Manaus, Brazil

2009-09-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

A week after Washington, I was off to Manaus, Brazil for a 2-day conference organized by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme on payments for environmental services projects and the Amazon Rainforest. It was a good meeting and fascinating to meet Brazilian, Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Colombian counterparts working on the rainforest in each of these countries. Also good to spend more time with my friend Martin von Hildebrand, the distinguished environmentalist and anthropologist who has lived an extraordinary life in the Colombian Amazon for which he has been rightly recognised internationally.

At the meeting, I also fell in love with Portuguese - not for the first time - and hope to start to learn it soon. Manaus is fascinating, too: a city of 2 million people in the heart of the Amazon, completely dependent on weekly oil imports and wholly unsustainable environmentally -- a precursor of what could happen in the Colombian Amazon if the same pattern of development is followed here. Manaus is also home to a remarkable Classical opera house built at the end of the 19th Century by rich caucho industrialists who felt snubbed by haughty folk in Sao Paolo and Rio who perceived Manaus to be a backward, colonial outpost. The story goes that the marble was brought all the way from Italy, and the wood carved in Portugal, and all shipped at immeasurable expense up the Amazon.

It is a remarkable place, set in a handsome Republican square, and is home to a yearly opera festival. A Ring Cycle was held there in 2000, which must have been a mean feat given Manaus' stifling heat.

There were two more highlights of the trip: swimming in the Amazon where rivers from different countries meet, and spending time with Mandar Trivedi, my dear friend whom I met on the Inca Trail in Peru in 2000, and with whom I have been in touch ever since. Mandar organized the conference. Swimming in the river was exciting: the point we chose was where the 'black' and 'white' rivers meet. Within a metre of one another, as one swam, the temperature of each varied by a good 5 degrees -- an eery feeling.

I liked Brazil and found Brazilians kind and fun to be with.

Washington

2009-09-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

Finally, a chance to update the blog -- to the sound of an exciting performance of Haydn's The Seasons experienced in the thrilling medium of Berlin's Digital Concert Hall: an extraordinary experience for those who have not yet discovered it.

I will begin with 4 days spent in Washington on work and for pleasure a fortnight ago, shortly after the New York trip. This was my first discovery of Washington, and I found it an exciting place to be -- walking from one meeting place to the next, past the White House often, and feeling that this was indeed a centre of power, politics and intrigue. And this without discovering the atmosphere on Capitol Hill itself...

I could imagine myself living and working in Washington at some stage in life -- if not forever, then certainly for a few years ... and preferably with Barack Obama still in power (I found his UN speech earlier this week inspiring). I think there is a lot of scope to do good there, both in influencing US policy towards the UN and the wider world, and to be involved in a plethora of other good international causes too -- all in the company of interesting kindred spirits from around the world.

a recent article on Bogotá in the City Paper

2009-09-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

Mission possible: branding Bogotá?

Edward Davey

Two important figures in Bogotá’s public life, Yuri Chillián Reyes, the City Mayor’s Secretary General and Richard Griffiths, an American marketing guru are working on establishing Bogotá as an international city and a brand for the 21^st Century.

Yuri Chillián Reyes, the Secretary General of Bogotá’s Mayoral office, cuts an elegant, serious, affable figure in his handsome office looking out over the Plaza Bolívar one Saturday morning. The square has been closed off in advance of the President’s involvement in the annual cultural processions, with security officials everywhere to be seen and the sound of whirling dancers and booming salsa filling the high-ceilinged, 19^th Century office.

Chillián has been a close friend of Samuel Moreno’s since their days studying together at Rosario University. Their paths diverged after their undergraduate years, with Moreno studying in Harvard while Chillián’s career took a European course, with protracted stints in Biarritz, London and Madrid. When Moreno was elected Mayor, he called upon his trusted friend to become Secretary General, a position Chillián has occupied throughout the Moreno administration.

We start, predictably, with the Metro. Chillián sets out the initial plans, the solidity of Bogotá’s financial structures necessary to make the project a success, and emphasizes that the Metro is conceived as only part of a wider integrated transport system for the city (with small bus networks and an improved Transmilenio being equally crucial elements of the overall plan). With a twinkle in his eye, Chillián reminds his interviewer – in response to a question about how long the project would take to implement – that the London Underground was begun in 1870 and continues to develop 140 years on, with new lines and developments every year, in keeping with an evolving city.

Bogotá is also the only city in the world of over 7 million inhabitants, he claims, which is currently without a Metro, and also stresses that the existence of a functioning Metro would have a very positive impact on reducing inequality, improving the life chances of Bogotá’s poorest communities, and fostering social cohesion throughout the city.

With regard to poverty, Reyes argues that one of the Mayor’s principal achievements to date – and consistent with his centre-left political campaign – has been the rolling back of the remaining contributions that poor communities have had to pay towards education and health care in Bogotá’s poorest areas. This requirement has been removed, and the knock-on impact on the lives of the poor substantial, argues Reyes, with particular impacts on young children and the lives of the elderly and handicapped in the city.

On Bogotá’s environment, Chillián sets out a series of measures which have been adopted by the current administration to improve Bogotá’s environment: stricter legislation and an improvement in the quality of the city’s diesel, attempts to prevent illegal expansion into Bogotá’s hills; significant reforestation programmes in different areas of the city; and ongoing attempts, valiant if futile, to clean up ‘Río Bogotá’ and the city’s other polluted rivers.

The city’s critically important ‘páramos’ and ‘humedales’, on the outskirts of the city, have an ecological importance which is valued and understood by the current administration, argues Chillián: and where property developments have illegally incurred into these areas, the Administration has sought to sanction and recuperate these areas.

Chillián speaks with conviction of La Candelaria and Bogotá’s historical centre, laying out plans to pedestrianize many of the area’s key streets; to ensure street café life and an ever more agreeable atmosphere in the centre; to promote the upkeep of the area’s over 1,500 historical houses; and to try to ensure that it feels ‘lived-in’, with a sizeable and authentic community, both during the weekdays and at weekends.

On security, Chillián compares Bogotá’s low homicide rate with the equivalent figures from Medellín, Pereira and elsewhere, to counter the perception in some quarters that Bogotá’s security situation has been worsening of late. A larger and better-equipped police force, one in keeping with the city’s size, is clearly called for, he argues, and efforts have been made to strengthen numbers and training in this respect.

After several other subjects have been discussed, we end with a conversation about what is hoped will be Samuel Moreno’s legacy. Chillián replies that he believes Moreno’s legacy is set to be two-fold: the continuation and strengthening of previous commitments to the city’s poorest communities; and the modernization, administrative reform and effective management of the city’s infrastructure, to the benefit of this and future generations.

Branding Guru

In the Omá Café in Parque 93, far from the Republican grace of the Mayoral Office, a flamboyant, engaging Richard Griffiths speaks with feeling of his love for Bogotá and his experiences here over the past year.

After ten years’ of significant achievement in a variety of different contexts (the electric car industry in the United States, in which he was an early pioneer; in start-up internet companies; and in and out of the Hollywood scene), this American man in his thirties found his way to Bogotá and to an informal advisory role in the city on its future brand and international positioning.

One of his first efforts came in partnership with Asocolflores, one of Colombia’s principal rose trading associations, and New York City, in which dozens of Colombian Americans distributed over 100,000 Colombian red roses labeled ‘From Colombia with Love’ to commuters in the city – a way of raising interest and drawing attention to other aspects of Colombia and its image overseas.

There has followed a spate of initiatives, which Richard recounts with glee: most recently, the visit by Hilary Duff to Bogotá during August, which he organized, in which the young pop star was named Youth Ambassador for Bogotá by Samuel Moreno, and spent four days visiting some of the city’s poorest areas, and a variety of children’s projects in different areas of the city. “Hilary fell in love with Bogotá”, recounts Richard, and has been keen to support good causes with children here actively since she left. Particularly affecting was her night visit in the company of the city’s child rescue organization, IDIPRON, to one of Bogotá’s harrowing orphanages.

Richard hopes that the good will and energy that visits such as Hilary’s generate will have many good knock-on impacts on the city and its international reputation. Leonardo DiCaprio is another possible candidate for such a trip at a future date, he hints. Meanwhile, all efforts are being made to convey – through Bogotá’s involvement in international forums, the appearance of positive articles in the international press, city partnership schemes and other initiatives – that the city has a bright future, and that it is already proving an amenable and attractive place in which to live and to invest.

The substance of Chillián’s analysis and vision of Bogotá, and the achievements he claims his Mayor to have made to date, form the basis of Griffiths’ parallel efforts to promote the city at the global level through a mixture of celebrity events and other eye-catching schemes. Critics – of which there are many – may question both the extent of the Mayor’s achievements, as set out by the Secretary General, and the light approach which Griffiths seems perhaps to be adopting in his branding efforts. But both men, like the city, are a force to be reckoned with, with plenty of work ahead in the coming years.

a great article by Tony Juniper on Rainforests

2009-09-13T18:33:00.001-07:00

In New York, I had the good fortune to spend time with Tony Juniper at the Rainforests Meeting. He has always been a hero of mine, but in this - our second meeting - it was wonderful to get to know Tony better. He is a very charming, delightful, intelligent, irreverent and funny man; frequently bursting into gales of laughter whilst at the same time being very serious and committed to the environmental cause. It was great to see him, and then to read his article based in part on the meeting at which we were at shortly afterwards.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/07/deforestation-brazil-guyana

Of all the things I admire about Tony Juniper, the fact that he that is working on many different levels to bring about the changes in the world we all want to see is what inspires me most: local politics; book-writing; speaking; high-level political involvement and advice; business advice; teaching; journalism, both Guardian and Sunday Times; and concerned citizenship.

A lecture in Tadeo University

2009-09-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

On Monday last week, I gave a lecture on the subject of Conflict and the Environment in Colombia. The lecture was part of a series of lectures organized at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá on Global Conflict and its Humanitarian Implications.

130 students were in the auditorium, and a further 50 watching live via link in the beautiful Colombian province of Santander.

I spoke for one hour and twenty minutes, and then answered very interesting and challenging questions for 4o minutes more.

It was quite an invigorating experience, as I had done a lot of research on the subject, and indeed lived and breathed it for much of the past year. I tried to be even-handed and give a balanced picture of all the different actors involved in environmental damage, both in contemporary Colombia and in a potential post-conflict situation in Colombia in the future.

I also spoke about my experience of the same subject in Iraq, which was formative, and gave an introduction to the key academic debates on conflict and the environment which I studied at the LSE.

In a strange way, talking to 130 eager students in a big auditorium was less nerve-wracking than walking into one of the other classes I have taught over the past year or so: between 6 or 12 students in a small room. Perhaps it is something to do with the intimacy of the smaller space in which one actually feels more exposed than in the bigger space of a lecture hall.

New York

2009-09-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Dear All

I will write a proper entry on NY next weekend but wanted to do a brief update immediately.

I travelled on Thursday in advance of a day´s meeting on Friday on the international tropical rainforests and financing mechanisms for their protection, in representation of Colombia.

It was a fascinating meeting, and a good attempt by rich and poor countries alike to hammer out the makings of a mechanism designed to encourage tropical rainforest countries to protect their rainforests in return for financial support.

New York has been gripping. We dined on Friday night in the 4 Seasons Restaurant, where JFK held a campaign dinner in the early 60s. I have been reading, meanwhile, the TIME commemorative edition on Ted Kennedy -- substantial achievements, his, throughout his long career in American public life.

A weekend´s walking with hours in the Met and MOMA; two open air operas at the Met Opera Square, in the Lincoln Center, both glorious -- Peter Grimes and Orfeo ed Euridice; much coffee, good food, huge portions, hot dogs and smoothies; and blazing sunshine throughout.

Back to Bogota tomorrow for a week´s work and then a long weekend next weekend in Washington, again combining work and play, as the discovery of this small part of the USA continues...

More to follow soon - and one photo above of many to follow.

a recent photo

2009-08-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

Life in Bogotá

2009-08-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy week in Bogotá. Much work on rainforests; on a big series of projects with the Spanish Government on potable water supply and sanitation; and on the European Commission's new round of funding for environmental projects in the region in the coming years.

A possible visit to New York on 4 September for a meeting on forests approaches; and a regional meeting in Manaus, Brazil, on 17 - 18 September, on the same subject, and on 'payment for environmental services'.

In my free time, I am writing a piece on Bogotá for next month's City Paper, interviewing a man named Richard Griffiths in charge - it seems - of trying to salvage and transform the fortunes of the current Mayor's administration; marking the essays of my Master's students; pottering in my new flat in northern Bogotá; walking up a new and rather lovely path up the hills near where I now live, named Quebrada La Vieja (see photo); and catching up with friends here, and family by phone. This morning I had a wonderful conversation with Eric, now 100 years and 1 month old: lucid as ever, although sounding frail, and kind, warm, concerned and generous as he always is. He said he was feeling a bit lethargic after a rather preoccupying nightmare involving a fountain overflowing with stone statues...!

Love to one and all and hope to speak and exchange more emails soon; not to mention putting up more posts on my rather neglected (of late) blog.

Leticia

2009-08-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

No sooner had Simon left, than I went - for the first time - to the heart of Colombia's Amazon, in Leticia. The flight is almost two hours from Bogotá, and truly glorious: first, a stretch of high altiplano, with lakes in the mountains shimmering silver in the sunlight; and then a gradual transition, with winding rivers galore, into a sea of green rainforest as one approaches. It was spell-binding and I sat glued to the window for the duration.

It was a wonderful long weekend in Leticia, with long trips on river boats along the Amazon, into Peru and Brazil too (the boundaries overlap and intertwine seamlessly, such that one suddenly finds oneself in a village where Inca Kola, the quintessential Peruvian drink, is being sold, or Portuguese is being spoken); memorable sunrises and sunsets; good food; a burning hot sun; monkeys and rainforest and national parks; lovely people...

On Tuesday I spent a day with thirty indigenous people and representatives of local communities and organizations discussing the future of the Colombian Amazon: people's visions, worries, perceptions of the threats, and suggestions of what should be done. It was a privilege to learn from these people and to gain a better sense of the diffuse and multi-faceted reality of this region, at once so removed from Colombia's centre and yet so intricately connected to its future (and that of the planet's).

The photos above show more of Leticia and the Colombian Amazon: it was such a treat to be there, and an abiding love for the place and its people was born there this weekend.

Prince's Rainforest Project

2009-08-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

No sooner back from London than Simon Rietbergen, Senior Project Manager of the Prince's Rainforest Project, arrived in Bogotá for a week of high-profile meetings here. I was in charge of coordinating his visit, the purpose of which was to seek (successfully) Colombia's inclusion in a group of tropical rainforest countries which, from early 2010, are set to receive substantial financial support from a select group of OECD countries to protect their rainforests from deforestation.

We rushed around all week and had meetings with Colombia's Vice President, Francisco Santos; the Director of the country's National Planning Department, Esteban Piedrahita; the Acting Director of Acción Social, and my wonderful boss, Sandra Alzate; and the Cambridge-educated and impressive Minister for the Environment, Carlos Costa (in addition to a host of NGOs, civil servants and others).

The people we met were unfailingly impressive and Simon was charming, knowledgeable intelligent and delightful company. I learnt a lot from him, and we became good friends over the week: with breakfast strategy meetings, dinners and drinks in the evenings, and much solidarity and good humour as we bombed around in Bogotá in taxis, ran across streets through roaring traffic, and all the rest.

The upshot was Colombia's committing itself to the mechanism, which is very encouraging, and the distinct possibility that the country will benefit substantially - provided it continues to take the protection of its rainforest seriously - in the years ahead.

London (a belated account)

2009-08-19T20:36:00.000-07:00

The photos below tell the story, of course, but I never wrote up my visit to London from 21 July - 2 August 2009. The moment seems to have passed, but suffice it to say that it was truly wonderful to catch up with Mum, Dad, Anna, Nick, Nick, Kirsten, Kerstin, and my darling grandfather Eric, who turned 100 on July 23 2009. This was a lovely day, with all Eric's family in attendance, and a very nice recital by Catherine Bott of Bach, Handel, Purcell and others, all cleverly chosen in light of Eric's tastes, the composers' anniversaries and so on.

There was lots of lovely music throughout the fortnight, as the entry below shows -- and it was wonderful to see London in all its summer glory, to catch up with many dear friends, and to touch base with home and all life there.

reviews of the 5 lovely concerts/operas we saw

2009-08-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

It was a musical fortnight in London and in Glyndebourne. On arrival, I went straight to a wonderful performance of Mahler's 9th symphony conducted by 80-year old Bernard Haitink and brilliantly played by the LSO. There was a late-night concert after the Mahler of Haydn's Seven Last Words on the Cross, beautifully sung by our family friend Liz Watts, whose career we are following closely (Liz sang at my grandmother Pauline's funeral a few years ago, and we've stayed in touch ever since). The next night, my dear friend and former Spanish tutor at Oxford, Ron Truman, kindly invited us to a staged performance from Glyndebourne of Purcell's Fairy Queen, also at the Proms. This was long, gorgeous, funny and riotous, and we enjoyed it hugely. Some of the instrumental music is truly divine, and the aria in the last act -- 'O let me weep' -- is one of the most moving of all arias. (It features wonderfully in Almodovar's film 'Hable con Ella'...) There was then a break for a week for Eric's birthday, Dad's birthday and a trip to Suffolk. The following week, I went to another gorgeous late night Bach prom -- 4 motets beautifully sung by the Monteverdi Choir, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner: heavenly stuff. We then finished with a trip to Glyndebourne with our very dear friends Joana and Felipe to see a lovely, humane, moving production of Donizetti's L´Elisir d'Amore. It was very cleverly set in authentic, rural Italy; the singing was superb; and 'O furtiva lagrima' really hit home, as did the soprano aria which follows it shortly after.

All in all, it was rich musical pickings for a fortnight, with these five treats. Reviews of all follow below.

Bach Motets:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/29/cbso-nelsons-monteverdi-choir-gardiner

Mahler 9, Haitink:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/26/bbc-proms-un-ballo-maschera

The Fairy Queen, Glyndebourne:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/22/prom-7-fairy-queen-review

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/reviews/the-fairy-queen-glyndebourne-festival-opera-glyndebourne-1715672.html

L'Elisir d'Amore, Donizetti, Glyndebourne:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/24/lelisir-damore-review

Haydn Seven Last Words on the Cross:

http://www.elizabethwattssoprano.com/

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_prom_review.php?id=7287

UK photos (20 July -- 2 August 2009) - text to follow!

2009-08-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

good new WRI report on climate change

2009-07-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

http://pdf.wri.org/climate_science_2008.pdf

a few photos of a young me!

2009-07-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

Mum very kindly dug these out: my colleagues are organising a party and have asked each member of staff to provide a photo of this kind...

lovely Renaissance drawings

2009-07-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/jul/15/italian-renaissance-british-museum?picture=350296495

update (Tuesday 14 July 2009)

2009-07-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Eric Avebury said it would be ambitious to post five blogs a week, which was the target I told him I had when I started. And so it has been in the past month...

The basic news is that I am very excited about our forthcoming visit to London. We travel this Sunday and will be there for a fortnight. Birthdays approach, as readers will know: my Dad's on the 22nd, my grandfather's 100th birthday on the 23rd, and mine on the 30th. I can't wait to see my family and to walk through Battersea Park with my dear Mum! I am also much looking forward to Catherine Bott's recital at Eric's birthday party on the 23rd.

In Bogotá, the past fortnight, it feels like I've been working harder than ever before: long days, early starts and late nights. I have been churning out documents and proposals on 'green markets' and on water in Colombia, for Acción Social and for the Spanish cooperation department, AECID, respectively; working a lot on the Colombian Amazon; and preparing my Externado University Master's classes on Sustainable Development in my spare time.

Last weekend, though, Natalia and I had a lovely restorative time in the countryside outside Bogotá. We walked for hours and caught up with life in the sunshine and the green fields near Guasca, Chingaza. Photos to follow soon.

Tony Blair in El Tiempo on climate change

2009-07-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

A very long and good article by Tony Blair (of all people!) in El Tiempo today on climate change...

http://www.eltiempo.com/opinion/columnistas/otroscolumnistas/destrabando-el-atolladero-climatico_5582415-1

Natalia in Cambodia

2009-07-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

photos of Subachoque (June 2009)

2009-07-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

With many thanks to our friend Angelica for the lovely trip to Subachoque a month or so ago. As you can see, we were blessed with glorious sunshine and the countryside of Bogota's 'sabana' is magnificent...

article for The City Paper (July 2009) on Ciudad Bolivar

2009-07-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

FUNDACIÓN NUEVA VIDA PARA TODOS -- CIUDAD BOLIVAR, BOGOTÁ

A children's charity in Bogotá, the New Life for All Foundation, is celebrating its ninth anniversary this year with a recruitment drive for volunteers who would be willing to participate in the charity's activities every Saturday in Ciudad Bolívar, one of Bogotá's poorest slums.

The City Paper went to visit the charity's operations in 'Paraíso', one of the furthermost communities in Ciudad Bolivar. It was a fascinating journey to get there: one takes the Transmilenio all the way to ‘Portal El Túnal', at the end of the route, and then a little green connecting bus, also operated by Transmilenio, for half an hour all the way up into the heart of the community.

Here the charity has operated with love and devotion since its creation by a group of university friends from Los Andes in the 1990s. During the week, the Foundation provides pastoral and practical support to over 150 children from poor families: help with school meals, the costs of education, psychotherapeutic support for children with emotional difficulties, and support for families in difficult circumstances. The funds come entirely from 'padrinos', godparents, both in Colombia and overseas, who make a monthly payment of 70,000 pesos to the charity to support one child.

At weekends, volunteers from a wide range of professions head up to the Foundation 'en masse' to participate in fun educational and other activities with the children involved, who range in age from 4 - 18. On the day of The City Paper's visit, there were six groups of fifteen children all participating in different activities: art and play with the younger children, a discussion of a novel with the teenagers, a reading class for the 6 - 8 year olds. The Foundation was alive with the chatter and laughter of the children, attentively looked after by a group of volunteers for whom it seems going to the Foundation on a Saturday morning is an unshakeable commitment.

Talking to the coordinator of the charity's operations in Ciudad Bolívar, a psychologist and social worker from the community, it is clear that the needs of the children involved are immense: stories of family breakdown and of domestic violence are tragically common, and in some cases malnutrition is a substantial problem too. Margarita Rosas, the Director and Founder of the charity in Bogotá, concurs: 'we set up the Foundation precisely to provide additional support, love and friendship to children for whom life has often not been easy. It has been a real way to make a substantial commitment to their lives, to learn a great deal about the reality of this area, and of course to learn and grow as individuals too'.

Natalia Pérez, a long-standing volunteer who currently works with the teenagers in the Foundation, also speaks with warmth of her experience: 'I began volunteering for the Foundation when I was at university, and have got to know the children here so well. It is always a joy to come, and we always learns so much from the time we spend here'.

The charity is always open to the involvement of new volunteers, and was thrilled at the The City Paper's visit. If there are volunteers in Bogotá who are here for a period of a few months or more, and who wish to become involved, they are immensely welcome. The foundation's website gives more details about the charity -- www.fnvpt.org -- and, to register your interest and to coordinate a visit to the foundation, you are encouraged to write to edward.davey@brasenose-oxford.com. There is also a need for new ‘padrinos’ who are willing or able to make the financial commitment to support an individual child. Whatever your interest, a rich and rewarding side of life in Bogotá is only a step away.

article for The City Paper (July 2009)

2009-07-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

At the heart of Caribe

Edward Davey explores Barranquilla’s new Museo del Caribe, a stylish museum dedicated to the 'costa' and all its marvels.

The austere façade of the Museo del Caribe gives little sense of the breadth, exuberance and joy of the contents within; a moving and thrilling tribute to the cultural, historical and environmental richness of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Architect Giancarlo Mazzanti’s award-winning design emerges gracefully from the heart of Barranquilla’s Parque Cultural del Caribe, a symphony of glass, metal and stone reminiscent of some of his best-known and recent work with the public libraries in Medellín.

The museum’s content is arranged in an engaging fashion, with each of the five floors devoted to a particular theme. One begins the visit with “Nature” on the top floor, the door opening to a wide-screen projection of some extraordinary scenes from the rich biodiversity and landscapes of the Caribbean coast: mangroves; tropical rainforest; the mountains and coast of Tayrona and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; sunsets over the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta; rich bird and animal life. As throughout the museum, one’s visual and auditory senses are engaged simultaneously: vivid colors and visual displays demand attention, while the cacophonous sound of the audiovisual installations – the sound of crickets, indigenous prayers, local dances and the spoken word – all make similar claims. The “Nature” floor gives a helpful insight into the formation of the Caribbean coast, and the environmental factors, which have conditioned its development.

Moving down to the fourth floor, named simply “People”, an insight into the variety and richness of the Coast’s people awaits the visitor, with portrayals of the multiple indigenous cultures who have lived in the Caribbean coast. Among various highlights, one can sit in a recreation of an indigenous hut and listen to a recording of the prayers and reflections of one of the elders; learn how to prepare local dishes at an interactive cooking table with the help, as throughout, of the local guides who speak with striking love and warmth of their culture and traditions; and watch recorded interviews with different members of each community. This section gives a sense of the fusion and harmony with which these different cultures have existed over the centuries.

The floor of the “Word” is devoted to the Colombian Caribbean’s love of all forms of the spoken word. Here one listens to recordings of poetry, and can read excerpts from many of the region’s distinguished authors, not least Gabriel García Márquez, to whom one further room will be explicitly dedicated in the Museum (to be opened later in the year). Amusing recordings of the rhymes and verbal jousting sessions which form the basis of ‘vallenato’ are to be heard, in addition to love poetry and the Negro spiritual-esque ballads of Caribbean housewives going about their daily lives.

Approaching the second floor, a glimpse from the staircase up and down reveals a dark, stylish museum with dozens of people enjoying the exhibits in every direction. On the day of my visit, visitors were mainly from the different towns of the Caribbean coast, and there was a striking atmosphere of wonder and enjoyment at the museum’s exhibits. This is a vision which the Museum’s Director, barranquillera Carmen Arevalo, exults: “one of the aspects of the Museum of which we feel most proud is the involvement of the whole of the community of the Coast in the conception and imagining of the Museum’s content and layout. People here really feel they own it, and many of our visitors have come from Cartagena, Santa Marta and other coastal areas. We are working on establishing a new partnership with local and national schools to ensure that as many children as possible also come to see the Museum, and to learn about their unique cultural heritage.”

The second floor, named “Acción”, gives an insight into the daily lives of the Coast’s inhabitants, both historically and to the present day. Cabinets of tools and instruments show the different forms of agriculture and manual labor to which coastal communities have dedicated themselves: subsistence agriculture, small-scale fishing, the emergence of livestock in the nineteenth century as a key source of income, and the development of industries in the twentieth century associated primarily with the ports of Barranquilla and Santa Marta. Here, as before, recorded interviews with different workers from a cross-section of the population give a vivid and moving insight into the working lives of the inhabitants of the Caribbean coast. There is also a tender section of photographs and diaries revealing the openness with which Colombia’s Coast has welcomed foreigners over the past centuries: with whole communities of Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, Turks and Europeans settling in Barranquilla at the turn of the twentieth century.

Fittingly, the first and final floor, devoted to ‘Expression’, explodes into a rich and exuberant celebration of the identity and the cultural traditions of the Coast: there is a central space on the floor where the Barranquilla Carnival is projected in all its spiralling glory, and in which visitors get swept up in dance; on the panels surrounding the same room, different dancers and singers emerge playing, singing, dancing and laughing – elegant costeños dressed in spotless white, matched with glorious costeñas in florid costumes. There is a further room dedicated to the music of the coast, with the walls piled high with album covers from the famous vallenato recordings of Rafael Escalona and all.

Carmen Arevalo explains that the Museum has been “the fruit of a very long process,” ten years of work in which the idea has matured. “The Museum has had a huge impact on the self-esteem of the people in this region of Colombia, one of the poorest and most neglected and yet one of the country’s most extraordinarily culturally and environmentally rich areas.”

Stepping out of the Museum into Barranquilla’s blazing sun, one feels a sense of marvel at the achievement, and an exultant sense of the richness, variety and essential human warmth of this region of Colombia and of its kind and welcoming people. It is one of the best museums of its kind, both in Colombia and elsewhere, and is set to become a ‘must-see’ for all visitors to the country.

update from Bogota (5 July 2009)

2009-07-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

Our friend Arry Fraser arrives in Bogota tomorrow to stay in our flat for a month. Arry was my first ever boss post-university: at Oxfam, where I had a stint as a research assistant for her for three months in 2004.

Her husband Keith and I have been friends since Oxford days, where we worked together on multiple campaigns of an internationalist nature: People & Planet, the Oxford Campaign Against Large Dams (which we co-founded!), the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the West Papua Campaign, and several others...

Arry will be in Bogota writing her LSE PhD thesis on climate change and adaptation in Bogota and Cartagena: two cities which are set to witness severe impacts as a result of CC. It will be lovely to have her in our midst.

I wrote two articles for the City Paper last week, copies of which follow in the posts above: one on the Museum in Barranquilla, of which I have written earlier, and the other on the work of the children's foundation in Bogota with which we are involved.

There is also a post above on a lovely visit to a village an hour outside Bogota that we made with our LSE friend Angelica last month. Angelica owns an idyllic cottage in Subachoque and has always invited us, ever since LSE ... it was a treat to go, and we were blessed with the bright blue skies that characterise the mountainous plains outside Bogota.

I have been walking up Monserrate again (see my other blog for photos and more details), which has made me fitter and happier for the exercise. The views from the top in the early mornings, over Bogota and the mountains in the distance, are splendid.

We travel to London soon: 20 July. My dear grandfather Eric's 100th birthday approaches, and a programme for the day's festivities prepared by my uncle Adrian. We are all so hopeful and looking forward to it.

More to follow soon.

update from Villavicencio

2009-06-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

I write from Villavicencio where we are having a restorative Bank Holiday Weekend.

Our visit to London for a fortnight approaches (20 July -- 2 August), which is very exciting: my dear Dad's birthday on the 22nd, my dear grandfather Eric's 100th birthday on the 23rd, and my 28th birthday on the 30th, amongst other dates to look forward to. I can't wait to see my family and to catch up with everybody face to face.

I approach my six month anniversary in Accion Social too: it has been a wonderful and very positive experience to work there so far, and I have learnt a great deal. I will be writing up a report on what I have done so far over the next fortnight, which will be a good chance to reflect on what I've been doing and what next steps could and should be.

A tiring class on Friday night on deforestation and population to my Sustainable Development Master's students at the Externado. The good news was an inspiring and enormously illuminating one hour guest lecture from my great friend and colleague , Jose Luis Gomez, on the Colombian Amazon, global financial mechanisms to reduce deforestation (REDD, etc.) and the challenge that setting up such a project poses in real terms with indigenous communities in the heart of the rainforest. Fascinating stuff, and a welcome new insight for my students in the class.

I am about to write two articles for the City Paper, the Bogota newspaper which has been my most loyal publisher for the past eight months: one on the marvellous Museum of the Caribbean in Barranquilla, subject of an earlier blog, and the other on the children's charity with which we are involved in Bogota, Fundacion Nueva Vida para Todos.

These two pieces, plus a strategy document for Accion Social on 'green markets, fair trade and organic agriculture' will be keeping me busy on Bank Holiday Monday in Bogota.

Love to all and, for London-based readers of this blog, hope to see you soon!

letter in International Herald Tribune (October 2008)

2009-06-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

A prisoner of paranoia

I recently spent one and a half hours in detention by "Homeland Security" at Newark Airport, New Jersey, on the grounds of my possession of work and tourist visas to a handful of Middle Eastern countries (Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, etc.). As a result, I failed to make my transfer flight out of the country.

I contend that - if Barack Obama wins next month's presidential election - one of the many positive aspects of his period of office may be the renewal, tangible and intangible, of America's trust and confidence in the outside world, and its relationship to it.

The treatment I received, and the questions I was asked, revealed the mindset of a country both deeply mistrustful of - and actively aggressive toward - much of the rest of the world. I hope this changes for the better soon.

Edward Davey, London

update on recent weeks

2009-06-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Finally, a chance to update on life in recent weeks.

Medellin was fascinating: a long weekend in the company of my wonderful friend Peter, exploring the city and its many museums and parks on foot (and on the city's superb Metro). It is quite a thrilling place city: poverty and a distinctly threatening feel in the run-down city centre; symbolic and uplifting use of public space in other areas, with Botero statues in public parks, the city's Metro Cable reaching the most distant and poorest slums, a wonderful botanical garden, a new and exciting science museum with a good aquarium; abundant public libraries and a real civic spirit...

The people -- Medellin's 'paisas' -- I found very open, courteous and warm-hearted, and Peter and I felt very much the object of attention on our travels round the city, as if there are not yet that many foreign visitors.

Peter and I caught up with life and he told me much about his current work as a human rights defender in one of Colombia's most remote villages, a day's travel (plane, bus, and then a two-hour walk up the hill from the nearest village, wading through rivers and so on) from Medellin. I will write more about his work and experience elsewhere: a recent article he wrote on the subject can be found here meanwhile. It is, as ever with Peter, thoughtful and beautifully written.

Back in Bogota, it was a rich and interesting week at work. The main news was the hosting of the inauguration of an event on the Colombian Amazon. The 'Direccion de Cooperacion Internacional' of Accion Social, where I work, has established a Round Table of International Donors on the Colombian Amazon. There are two principal aims: 1) to highlight the importance of the Amazon Rainforest from an international perspective in the context of global efforts to mitigate climate change: and 2) to identify good initiatives and projects within Colombia which aim to protect the rainforest, either through conservation initiatives with indigenous communities, or through government initiatives to expand and consolidate the national parks in the region.

It is a fascinating, nascent initiative, which - with luck - will have a good impact both on the national debate within Colombia on the Amazon, and a practical positive impact on the work of the many good local organisations currently trying to protect the Amazon.

A press release on the event can be found here (in Spanish): and a couple of photos of the event, and of Medellin, are above.

My dear cousin Oliver Phillips was in Bogota this week, and we dined with friends to discuss the Colombian Amazon. Oliver is a real expert, who has been visiting the Amazon for over twenty years, and he told us much of interest in advance of the Round Table meeting the following day.

Natalia has returned from Cambodia where she had a fascinating two weeks visiting projects throughout Cambodia aimed at clearing mined fields, and helping landmine victims to recover from their horrific experiences. She was part of a delegation of 3 Colombians, and it was clearly a moving and interesting visit. Cambodia has the highest number of landmines, and landmine victims, in the world; Colombia comes 3rd.

There is so much to learn, it seems, from the experience of each country, and the outcome of the visit was the signing of an agreement, supported by the Japanese Government, in which the two countries will support one another in the years to come with training, support, technology and by learning from the experiences and policies of each country. In brief: a great example of 'South-South cooperation', in which two poorer countries help one another in a very concrete way, distant perhaps from the prevailing model of top-down, developed-to-developing world aid.

Finally, I taught my second class on Sustainable Development to the Master's students at the Externado University: two hours on climate change and the global energy situation, followed by an interesting hour's discussion and debate. I like my students: a nice group of twelve or so. The only snag is that Friday 6 - 9pm is about the worst possible time for a class, not least because both teacher and taught work full-time. But we are managing it with the help of the occasional break throughout the 3 hours, and - I hope - as a result of the enthusiasm of the teacher...

Excellent new Oxfam report on global climate change negotiations

2009-06-20T13:00:00.001-07:00

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/climate_change/fair-climate-deal-copenhagen.html

It's very clear and morally compelling...

Dani Rodrik LSE lecture

2009-06-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

Well worth watching.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/live/LSELive_previous.htm

The resource itself -- all LSE's lectures on line -- is magnificent too.

Aung San Suu Kyi

2009-06-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

Aung San Suu Kyi birthday celebration/protest photographs from across the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/jun/19/aung-san-suu-kyi-burma?picture=349092570