This is Rob Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with an extraordinary gentleman, Kishore Mabobani, who's currently the head of the Asia Peace Program. He's written many, many books. He served with the United Nations and with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singapore. He has, how would I say, he inspired me to read Ajay Chibber's book, who we made a chapter with because he had such monetary comments on the book jacket. I've learned a great deal from him over time, and I wanted to share his perspective on the 21st century Asia with you all. This is a book which I was alluded to by Singapore Straits Times. The Asian 21st century, in my mind, is at the center of very, very important geopolitics and what I would call challenges for humankind. And whether we're talking about climate or monetary systems or trade or intellectual property, it's all going to be embedded in the context that he explores brilliantly in this book. Kishore, thanks for joining me here today. Let's talk about, you've written a number of books, has China won many, many things, many articles I followed your work for a long time, but this compilation seems to be saying something which you might call bigger and bolder. What inspired you to write this book at this time? The reason why I wanted to have this book out at this point in time is that we are often preoccupied with what's happening this month, this year, maybe even this decade. But we're not taking a longer look at the arc of human history and asking how the 21st century will be different from the previous two centuries. And it's very clear that the 21st century will be, as I say, the Asian 21st century. And this is a natural return of Asia, which I also emphasize, because from the year 1 to the year 1820 or 1800, I thought the last 2,000 years, the two largest economies of the world were always those of China and India. And it's only in the last 200 years that Europe has taken off, followed by North America taking off. But the past 200 years of world history, when you put it against the backdrop of the past 2,000 years of world history, have been a major historical aberration. All aberrations come to a natural end. So what we're going to see in the 21st century, the biggest theme will be the return of Asia. And as you can know from the Western media, it pays very little attention to it. But I'm very happy to learn, Robert, that the rest of the world is very interested in this story because this book is a free book. It's an open-access book. You can download it for free. It was released in January. And after 2 months, there had been 1 billion downloads of the book in 90 countries. 1 billion downloads of the book in 2 months in 90 countries. And that made me aware that actually there is a deep hunger in the whole world to understand, hey, we know the Asian century is coming. Well, why isn't anybody talking about it? So which is why I hope my book and serve as a kind of guide into how Asians view the world very differently. And if it's going to be the Asian 21st century and I'm certain it's going to be the Asian 21st century, then let's try and step into Asian perspectives and understand them. And I hope that's what my book will contribute towards in terms of developing a better understanding of our contemporary world. My experience through various coincidences became friendly years ago with the gentleman, Charles Johnson, who was at the time at Berkeley. And he had a person that he turned me on to who sometimes goes by the name Patrick Smith. Others, Patrick Lawrence. And in about 2011, he wrote a book called Somebody Else's Century. And he was alluding to where you're filling in the gap, but he was seeing that changing of the guard as a very, very powerful thing. And I know Charles was very enthusiastic about Patrick's vision and his work. In the first part of your book, you spend a lot of time on something that I think is very important. The United States has been a world leader since World War II. And as we approach the Asian 21st century, the question is, what is it about America that you would expect people to want to emulate or not? And I thought that your perspective from the vantage point of Asia, you know, to put it in a silly way, is this the better mousetrap that we should try to become for given the deep philosophical history that's somewhat, how would I say, intention with Cartesian enlightenment? It's a broader sense of, I guess, we and a little bit less of me. But when I look at that first part of your book before we go into Asia, what is it that you see about the United States that would either attract or push away emulation by people everywhere, but particularly Asia? I would say the United States of America is still a great society. And it is still a greatly admired society around the world because there are many aspects of American society that make it incredibly admirable.  You have so many great universities. And you also have a remarkably entrepreneurial society.  And you're also the society that is best at bringing in migrants and integrating them into your society. So you can have two of the largest corporations in America, Microsoft being run by Satya Nadella, an immigrant from India, or Google being run by Sundar Prichai, an immigrant from India. That kind of openness you will not find in China or India or Japan, as you know. So all these aspects of American society are truly amazing. That's why the world continues to admire United States of America. That's why many young people around the world aspire to go and live and work in the United States of America. But at the same time, there's also a growing awareness in the rest of the world that the United States is now developing some structural weaknesses. And I'll mention a few. One is, of course, the United States is clearly becoming a plutocracy. It's a government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. And I have an essay on that in my book. And in the plutocracy, basically all the public policy decisions that are made benefit the 1% and the rest are not benefiting at all. And that's why this is the second aspect of the United States, which I highlighted in the book. The bottom 50% in America have seen a stagnation in their incomes and standard of living for three decades or so. And that's created what the Nobel laureate Angus Deaton calls the deaths of despair. And it's very sad. So you have, on the one hand, some aspects of the United States that are amazing, that the rest of the world continues to admire, and some aspects of it that shock the rest of the world. And I think if John Rawls, the great American philosopher, were alive today, he would be actually quite shocked to see how far the United States has deviated from his vision which has to create a socially just society where even people at the very bottom would aspire to reach the very top. And that's not happening in the way that it used to happen in American society. In the context of this what I'll call plutocratic structure, how did the, how do you say, experience of COVID-19 affect that? Did it seem to be that America is starting to shift gears or did it seem to highlight the concentration of wealth and power and the suffering? Therefore, for many, it was exacerbated from your perspective. Well, I would say that, you know, the record of the United States and America on COVID is mixed. On the one hand, you know, when the word came out that there had been a new virus in China, and after the Lancet magazine published an article in January 2020 warning that a new virus was emerging, that we should start preparing for it. And the rational response by the United States, which is after all still, you know, a modern, rational, well-managed society should have been to say, hey, what can we do to prepare for this and deal with it? But as you know, President Trump, who was your president then, was in the state of complete denial about COVID-19. And what shocked the rest of the world? Is that the United States has always been a leader in the field of science and to have a president who refused to listen to scientific evidence on COVID-19, like, for example, that wearing masks would save lives. You know, something very simple as that. You know, he's something that he's always been a leader in the field of science and to have a president who refused to listen to scientific evidence on COVID-19, because science would save lives. You know, something very simple as that. You know, he's something that he resisted, or that stay at home or isolation would help. Again, he resisted that for a long time. So that was, that was, and that's why as a result of that, the United, the number of deaths that United States had from COVID-19 was amazingly high, because as you know, it had over 800,000 deaths or so when China had less than 5,000 deaths from COVID-19. So that's the negative side of the ledger. But on the positive side, of course, the United States showed that it's still a scientific superpower because it came out with vaccines and record time. And indeed, you know, I myself got three Pfizer shots. And I actually believe that it was American technology that saved my life personally. I'm very grateful that the United States of America produced the modern vaccines. And these vaccines have made a huge difference to save a lot of lives around the world. And now actually, as you know, finally, after the stumbles and all that, the United States is emerging out of COVID-19 and then surprisingly, China is still struggling to get out of COVID. So, you know, it's funny that some parts of United States on COVID-19 where it did badly and other parts where it has done very well. But it's a mixed record. Yeah. Well, and I agree with you about the onset and Donald Trump. And I think the dread of acknowledgement of the challenge of that scope when you were up for reelection was probably very daunting. But it's not a basis or an excuse for avoiding the responsibility. Yeah, and I can say he was more focused on his reelection rather than being focused on the lives of the Americans and saving their lives. Let's talk a little bit about Trump. In the latter part of the first section of the book, you talk about how Trump affected China. I'll just start with a touch of background from my own experience. I was watching after the China 2025 vision came out, which was not what you might call just fall in line in a position of subordinate comparative advantage to American companies or European companies and multinationals. I saw the China 2025 as a vision of creating knowledge intensive industry and building on their own and moving to, which might call the front row of high value added. But I saw the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, people like Blackwell and Campbell and so forth, even before Trump's campaign, writing what I will call nationalistic concerns and obviously the lack of penetration perhaps for cybersecurity reasons of the Internet platforms, companies from the United States into China was another facet. But I saw a great deal of resistance even on Wall Street because they weren't getting enough access to the development of the Chinese internal financial markets. So there was a tension, what I'll call the changing of the guard in the role that China wanted to play relative to the role America wanted them to play. And it was evident even in 2014 and early 2015. But it seems like when Trump became president, there was something that there's an economist, Dean Baker in the United States who emphasizes, he turned on the suffering that white blue collar workers in the Midwest had experienced and energized that and blamed it on China and Mexico, rather than on the lack of adjustment assistance within the United States to the transformation related to globalization. So we have this context in where Trump seemed to motivate the people with the despair that Angus Deaton and Ann Case wrote about. But how did he affect US-China relations and what's the residual impact of his, which you might call accelerating or amplifying the discord between those two major powers? I would say history is very strange. We often focus on individuals and individuals do matter. But I've written a book, as you know, has China won on US-China relations. And in the very first paragraph, I say that this US-China contest has been started by Donald Trump, especially when he launched a trade war against China in 2017-2018. But I said, it will outlast him. And sure enough, Trump lost the election, Biden won, he's reversed many of Trump's policies, but he's actually reversed almost none of Trump's policies on China. And so, therefore, the fundamentally to understand the US-China contest, it's important to understand the structural forces that are driving it. And clearly, it's been driven by the fact that the United States, having been the number one economic power for 130 years plus since about 1890, cannot accept the fact that it's going to become the number two economic power sometime in the next decade or two. And so, it is quite natural for the United States to try and stop China's rise, because that's what all great powers have done for thousands of years. It's logical, great power behavior to retain its number one position. And I have no doubt that if Hillary Clinton had won, she wouldn't have been as... Her administration wouldn't have been as rude and as insulting towards China as Mike Pence was or Mike Pompeo was, you know. But nonetheless, I think the US-China contest would have continued to gain momentum. And we see this in the fact that Joe Biden is one of the nicest guys you can possibly have as president. But his hands are tight and he cannot reverse many of Trump's policies, including, you know, you're a very distinguished economist, Rob. You know better than I do that tariffs don't hurt Chinese producers, tariffs hurt American consumers. And, you know, it's sort of bizarre that this trade war was launched against any kind of sensible economic advice, you know. So that was, of course, that's something that Donald Trump did. And of course he did it only for domestic political reasons and also because sadly he doesn't understand economics, I think, Donald Trump. And doesn't understand the danger of tariffs. And I actually heard a podcast with one of his economic advisors, Gary Cohn, of Goldman Sachs. And I've actually been with Gary. And Gary said he tried so hard to explain to Donald Trump why tariffs didn't work, why they were hurting American consumers and why it wasn't good for the American economy. And he said he just couldn't change his mind. And so he one day he finally asked Donald Trump, so why, why, why are you insisting on tariffs? And Donald Trump replied, I like tariffs. I mean, it's actually quite shocking that the president of the world's most advanced society, the world's most educated society, and as I mentioned earlier, the world's best university just didn't understand economics one-on-one on tariffs, you know. And I think that's the damage. And of course, the really sad part is that Trump is gone, right? A year and three months have gone by and none of these tariffs have been removed. In fact, he would serve America's national interests to remove them. And right now, when the United States, as you know, is worrying about the threat of inflation, which is real, one of the few policy measures actually the United States government can take to fight inflation actually is to remove the tariffs on Chinese products. And by the way, have not worked to reduce the trade deficit within U.S. and China. In fact, the trade deficit within U.S. and China has gone up since the tariffs were introduced, you know. So it is sort of very, very strange to the rest of the world that, you know, for the United States, there's one more Nobel Prize in economics than any other society has. And the fact that you have the most number of Nobel Prize winning economists seems to have no impact at all on your public policies. I think Donald Trump, as you suggest, may not be a master of economics, but he is a master of political theater. And I do think the, how would I say, this a man who came to America with a message, I'm running against essentially both parties and the system is rigged. And the system is rigged. That's the plutocracy that you're referring to. People can feel that. They don't themselves. Perhaps this is a lack of our education system, not our Nobel laureates, but the breadth of understanding. Our population wants to alleviate that despair. But the techniques of doing so, as you say, probably don't include much in the way of tariffs. So as I could see it, Joe Biden comes to town and he doesn't have other ways of reassuring people that he's going to alleviate their despair. So they can't rescind the tariffs because the political theater of distress is what's dominant context. And he's got, I would, I would, how would I say, as a matter of patience, he's got to find a way out. And perhaps, as you're suggesting, rescinding those tariffs along the way is, well, I think it is overdue. His hands are tied by the fact that a very strong consensus has built up in the American body politic that the time has come for the United States to stand up to China and to stop China's rise. And what I find sad about the United States today is that even though in private, many of your more thoughtful American policy makers, many of your more thoughtful American opinion makers realize that this zero sum contest approach to China is not a wise one. And that if you need China's help on things like climate change and earlier on on fighting COVID and now dealing with a possible global economic recession. And in that case, you know, you need to work out a more balanced approach towards China, which is what I look at in my book, where you compete with China in areas where you have to cooperate with China in areas where we should benefit ordinary Americans. Ordinary Americans would be better off with a combination of competition and cooperation. But as you can tell, that doesn't get votes at all in the United States. And so it's almost impossible to find a politician that can make a reasonable speech on China today. And this is why quite often, as you know, that's why economics alone is not enough. You need good economics and you need good politics if you're going to have good public policies. That's one of the premises of this organization, INET, which is politics and economics are inseparable. They cannot be looked at. The world needs you. Well, we'll keep putting our shoulder to the wheel. Let's talk a little bit. The next phase we talked quite a bit now about the challenges in the United States. Paint the picture for us of the Asian Renaissance, the next phase of your book, the dawn of the Asian century. What's happening with ASEAN, the role of India, and then we'll come back to China. Well, I think, you know, I was born and brought up in Singapore. And, you know, when I was born, Singapore's per capita income was about the same as Ghana's, about $500, you know. And Singapore was a poor third world country. And I lived in a poor family in a poor third world country. So at the age of six, I was put in a special feeding program because I was technically under the roof. And I can tell you that I always say in my life, the biggest turning point came when we got a flush toilet at the age of 13. Because the sense, you know, the dignity, the sense of dignity in your life improved dramatically when you could just flush it away, instead of having to wash this mound grow in the course of a day in a can that never moved. So, you know, so that that's the kind of escape from poverty that I personally experienced in my life. And that's what hundreds of millions of Asians are experiencing. You know, and since I actually experienced, you know, real third world poverty, I understand how emancipating it is to be liberated from poverty. And the fact that China has, you know, saved 800 million people more than double the population of United States from poverty is a remarkable achievement. I think when future historians write about our era, that's what they will write about. And so in my lifetime, I've seen remarkable changes. In Asia, you know, including especially in Singapore, which has gone from a world developing country to having a per capita income, which I think may even be higher than that of the United States, you know. So you can see what a remarkable journey Singapore has done. But Singapore is like what they call the tip of the iceberg. So what Singapore has accomplished the rest of Asia is now accomplishing. And of course, as in as in sort of what we have seen through all of human history, first, you have a kind of economic rejuvenation of societies.  And that's what's also happening throughout Asia. And one of the biggest facts about Asia that many in the West are not aware of is how diverse Asia is. You know, you have China and of course the related Confucian societies like South Korea to some extent, Japan to some extent. But then you have Southeast Asia, which is the most diverse part of planet Earth because among 680 million people, you have 250 million Muslims, 150 million Christians, 150 million Buddhists, Mahayana Buddhists, Inayana Buddhists, you have Hindus, Taoists, Confucianists, and even Communists in Southeast Asia. So it's a very diverse region and all these regions are doing well. And let me just give you one one statistic to illustrate this. In the year everyone knows that Japan is a major global power, economic power, right? It's a really significant global economy. In the year 2000, Japan's economy was eight times the size of the 10 ASEAN countries in Southeast Asia in the year 2000. By 2020, it was only 1.5 times larger. By 2030, ASEAN will become larger than Japan and in 30 years, right? Isn't that amazing? That is extraordinary. Nobody knows about it. Nobody knows. That's right. No, I've never heard that comparison before. At the same time, the middle classes, new middle classes are being built and there is a tremendous sense of optimism for the future among many young people all through this region. You will find this optimism in China, you will find this optimism among the 1.4 billion people in China, among the 680 million people in Southeast Asia and among the 1.3 billion people in India. And you just add those three figures I mentioned, you come to almost half the world's population. And almost half the world's population is now enjoying a new kind of optimism which they haven't experienced in centuries, right? And that again is a massive change in world history. And unfortunately, because Western societies do a lot of neighbor gazing, they feel their own pessimism and they don't understand that a population that is like four, five, three or four times the size of the West combined has now suddenly begun to feel optimistic. And they don't understand that. They don't see it. They're not aware of it. That's why I think this book is so critical because it opens windows into big developments that are happening that many in the West are not aware of. Yes. I've, Mike Spence in Montec sing all while he and I did a talk one day about the ramifications of the lessons, these really extraordinary experiences in Asia for African development, because there's so much concern. You were talking about population growth. International office of migration is protecting an enormous increase in African population between now and 2075. A lot of good portion of the continent is what you might call an equatorial region. Global warming threatens subsistence farming. So social stability migration. Even the, what you might say, East Asian development model, if an industry protection learning by doing is threatened by global supply chains and automation. But Mike in Montec had some very, very insightful perspective on there are other ways to develop in Africa now and we can learn from Asia. And I think that's, I think that's a very important contribution to another large portion of mankind is the, the example that you've set and the kind of things you've underscored here in the last few minutes. That's why I was very happy when I saw that among the over one million downloads of my book in two months, there were quite a few downloads in Africa too. And the Africans, I think, are particularly appreciative of the fact that China is coming to them with concrete projects on how to improve their societies. So the Chinese are building roads, bridges, railways, and at the end of the day, all these things make a huge difference. And your sense of self esteem improves a lot when you see your infrastructure improving in your society. And China is the only country going around building this new infrastructure all over Africa. And that's why you notice that whenever China hosts a China African leaders summit, which we all the African leaders turn up, they understand that they can now cooperate with China in a positive some game. And also it gives, and to be fair, it gives the Africans alternatives because when the West was dominant, the West either colonized and trampled on Africa. But even after they were decolonized, the African states were bullied. You know, I think you must know that Joe Stiglitz has a story in one of his books about how the Ethiopian government was penalized by the World Bank because it would be paid and alone early to American banks. Yeah, I remember when Joe Stiglitz was talking that when a poor country pays a high interest rate early to an American bank, it gets punished by the World Bank. Now that's the kind of thing that Africans know about. So when China comes along and provides an alternative, it's positive for Africa. By the way, it's also very positive for Europe because one statistic I give the Europeans is that in the year 1950, Europe's population was more than double that of Africa's. Today, Africa's population is more than double that of Europe, much more than double. And by 2100, Africa's population will be 10 times the size of Europe. And you know, if the Europeans really thought long term about what is the number one challenge to European societies in the long run. The number one challenge to Europe in the long run is that if Europe doesn't export jobs to Africa, Africa will export Africans to Europe. I mean, it's inevitable. You can't stop it, you know. So therefore, when China invests in Africa, it is actually doing the Europeans a major favor because it is leading jobs in Africa that will keep Africans in Africa. And I'm glad actually in some ways there's a new competition among the Asian states within China and India and Japan and South Korea to invest more in Africa. And I think that's very positive for the Africans. And actually the biggest beneficiaries of this paradoxically will be the Europeans. And if the Europeans were wise, they will partner the Asian countries in investing in Africa. I'm reminded of the feature film in China Wolf Warrior II, which talked a great deal about that brutish colonialism and metaphorically the role of the Chinese in lifting up the spirits of the Africans. And at one point that was people told me they thought that film partly because of the scale of the Chinese population, that that film would be seen more than Star Wars or ET humanly. It would hit the all time top five list. And I know it got off to a very good start in the spirit that you're describing. Let's talk a little bit about India. You had some very interesting sections in your Asian Rise chapter. India may be the best bet for moral leadership. Let's discuss where does that vision derive from? What do you see? You know, when we talk about Asia, as you know, and to some extent, we are guilty of it. We've talked a lot about China, but there are two big stories in Asia. I would say three big stories. I would say China, India and ASEAN. I would call it the new CIA, China, India, ASEAN. In the Indian story, I think it's equally important. And India is also undergoing a major transformation. Now, the Indian economy clearly hasn't grown as fast as the Chinese economy because in the year 1980, the Indian economy and Chinese economy was about the same size. In 1980, India may have been slightly bigger too. But today, China's economy is five times the size of India. And that, on the one hand, can be a source of despair. On the other hand, it can be a sign of hope because then what China has accomplished today, India can accomplish tomorrow because by any sense. And I say this, you know, I'm not a Chinese. I'm actually ethnically Indian. So as an Indian, I know that Indians are capable of being as productive in economic terms as the Chinese are. And so I'm also equally bullish about the prospects of the Indian economy. Of course, if the right economic policies are put in place. And my only criticism of India is that it refuses to plunge into the ocean of globalization in the same way that China has done so. Because if India did so, India would do as well as China. And I think one of the saddest things that's happened is India's refusal to join the regional comprehensive economic partnership, the world's largest free trade agreement, which actually just took off in January 2022, two months ago. I think if India could take that switch, India would have tremendous potential to what despite that, I think India's economy will still do well. And of course, India today has the advantage of having a new kind of political stability because, you know, as you know, India is at lots of changes in government and political instability of various kinds. Now you have a leader, Narendra Modi, who commands a tremendous amount of popularity in India. And just recently he won the elections spectacularly in Uttar Pradesh, the most popular state in India. So it's likely that, you know, Modi will remain the prime minister of India for the next five to 10 years. And as you know, what's interesting about Prime Minister Modi is that on the one hand, he relates well with the Western world. But on the other hand, he never wears a Western suit, never wears a Western gown. And he's very keen to revive traditional Indian culture. And that's also part of the renaissance that is happening. And you know, the thing about India is that if you're looking for a country that can be a bridge between the East and the West, that country is probably India because obviously it's got very deep Asian roots. It's linked to its fellow Asian countries. And yet it has a Westminster style parliamentary democracy. A large part of its population speaks English. Indian migrants have done very well in advanced Western societies like United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and so on and so forth. The treasurer of the United Kingdom is an Indian Rishi Sunak. So you can see how Indians have done very well in the West too. So there's one society that can build bridges between the East and the West in the 21st century. It's India. And I think that's why the West, that's why that's another reason why the West should be working very closely with India in the 21st century. And how do you see the role of India in the challenge of climate change? Obviously, given the size and scale, they're a very important dimension. But how would I say asking people to stop burning carbon and perhaps stop the pace of development while others are burning a lot more carbon from having like the United States already been there. What is the role of India in this in this challenge? Well, I think really if India is not part of the solution, India is clearly part of the problem. And what I notice is that many Western analysts point to the fact that all the new flows of greenhouse gas emissions are coming from China and India, which is true. But as you know, climate change is happening not just because of the new flows of greenhouse gas emissions, but because of the stock of greenhouse gas emissions that have been put up to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. And if you look at the overall stock, my figures may be wrong, but they're roughly right. I think the United States has contributed about 25% of the stock. I mean, the European country is probably another 20% to 25%. I think China is still about 11% or 13%, and India is only about 2% or 3%. So I think it's a bit unfair to penalize India and ask India to do more in climate change because many Indians still don't have electricity. And you notice that many countries are happy to fight climate change as long as they don't have to make any sacrifices. I mean, if you look at the two of the richest countries in the world, like Canada and Australia, on a per capita basis, they contribute a tremendous amount of climate change. But Canada is one of the richest countries in the world will not give up its tar-sense project in Alberta. And you know, that's not fair. I mean, why are you asking a poor country like India whose per capita income is still very, very low to make sacrifices when rich countries like Canada and Australia with very high per capita contributions to climate gas emissions are not willing to make economic sacrifices. And that's why you notice that on the issue of climate change, I think there has been lots of political differences within China and India in many areas. But on climate change, they both have been cooperating with each other to try and persuade the West to be more reasonable in what it expects. But the good news is that the Indians accept the fact that they have to do something about climate change and they're trying to try and make a contribution. We see, you know, as the United States, as you described the plutocracy, we have a rich and poor country at the same time. And what many are seeing here, Robert Paulin or John Paul or manual pastor, is that the fear of transition is a really, really big, how do I say, obstacle to transformation of the U.S. energy structure. In West Virginia, coal miners have said to people like Robert Paulin, well, look what they did with globalization and so forth to Detroit and Cleveland. Are you going to sit by and say, oh, we're going to join the team for climate change and watch them trample us. In other words, the transformational assistance so that we're all on the team is missing in the United States. And I think that some of these scholars who I just mentioned are really at the vanguard of talking about removing the obstacles through greater social justice. This is where frankly, you're absolutely right. I mean, if you objectively analyze why the jobs have been lost in the United States, and it's very sad that jobs are lost in the United States, it's partly because of globalization. It's also because of technology. And the most importantly, public policies in the United States do not provide support to employees who have to retrain themselves.  Singapore understands that if you want to compete in the global world, some industries will succeed, some industries will fail. And for the ones that fail, don't try and support them by subsidizing them. They have to let them die because they cannot compete. But what you do is you provide support for the workers so that they can retrain themselves and join new industries. And that's something that is very, very difficult for the United States to do. And it's a bit sad, you know, but that's a result of plutocracy where you provide funding, for example, to very rich American farmers. You provide huge subsidies to them because they have a lot of political clout. But you provide very few subsidies to poor workers in Detroit and Michigan who need to be retrained to try to take on new jobs. I think that's a formidable part of our challenge, not to mention we've turned what used to be called tax evasion into tax avoidance, meaning people can keep their money offshore and then they can complain we don't have the means to improve the public school programs. So the younger generations, many of the diseases of despair are the older talking about their children do not have the rungs in the ladder to move out of this rut. And so there's a great deal of, which might call structural challenge. I remember years ago, and I won't mention the person by name, but a very high level Chinese leader and I met. And he said to me, you know what's really, really troublesome to me with it? Well, yes or what? He said, it's that we don't have the power to create the adjustment assistance that American needs to deal with, as you said, technology and globalization and we're being demonized. And what really should be demonized is the American political system for not taking care of its people. We have no power over that. And I was a fascinating observation. It was quite, it wasn't, it wasn't anger. It was humble when he was saying. I think the United States can still, you know, American workers can still compete with the rest of the world if they're given the right training and assistance to do so. But as you come to the last part of this book, what's the peaceful rise of China? Where is China now? And how are they operating in this context? We see Hong Kong. We see the Ukraine, which, but we see the aftermath of Trump. We've alluded to some of these things through this conversation. But what's the picture of China at this juncture in your, in your mind? Well, I think 2022 is proving to be a very difficult year for China. And it's got two major challenges this year. The first major challenge is that it is struggling to get out of the zero COVID policy. I mean, there is zero COVID policy in many ways, work well for China because it saved frankly millions of lives. Because if, if, if China had had the same number of deaths per million people as the United States, instead of having 5,000 deaths, it would have probably had a 5 million deaths at least because its population is more than four times that of United States. So clearly zero COVID policy of China has saved a lot of lives. But right now they have to come out of it because there's no way you can keep an economy close for so long. And so that's going to be number one challenge for China in 2022. And then the second challenge it faces is a result of Ukraine because in many ways Ukraine has been a major setback for China on several counts. Number one, its partner, strategic partners, number one strategic partner to balance in a sense United States and Europe was Russia. Now clearly Russia has been weakened, is bleeding in Ukraine. So that is a setback for China. Secondly, the Ukraine war has also destabilized the global economy. And as you know, growth prospects for countries around the world are going to come down because of the aftershocks of the Ukraine war and the sanctions that have been put on Russia. And so at a time when China is already struggling to achieve 5.5% growth, the Ukraine war is going to make it even harder to achieve that goal of 5.5% growth. And then thirdly, China has been trying very hard to deal with United States and Europe as two independent poles in a multi-polar world. And it's easier for China to deal with United States and Europe separately rather than as a combined force. But one of the results of the Ukraine war has been a complete, has been a tremendous regalvanization of Western solidarity. And United States and Europe have come together very, very forcefully and of course the Europeans are very grateful for American assistance. But at the same time, the United States will say, hey, we saved your bacon on Ukraine, please join our side on China. And that's clearly another setback for China. And then falsely, the United States itself was feeling a sense of uncertainty about the future, about where it's heading and so on and so forth. But the fact that it is now succeeding, it has succeeded in crippling Russia so effectively as enhanced the self-confidence of American policymakers or so. And here, this brings me to one of the other important things, the fifth point, which is that I think what's really shocked the Chinese more than anything else is not the military assistance that the West has been given to Ukraine, because that has obviously damaged the Russians clearly. But the fact that the United States and Europe could seize half the assets of the Russian central bank and over $320 billion business gone, just like that. Now, if Russia has got $640 billion in reserve, China has got $3.2 trillion in reserves. So suddenly, all those U.S. Treasury bills that China bought, thinking this provided China leverage against the United States or America, that these U.S. Treasury bills can now become hostages to fortune. And that's a major reversal and setback for China. So I think this huge weaponization of the U.S. dollar has, on the one hand, revealed a major asset for the United States, but on the other hand, it's going to lead to the Chinese and many other countries thinking how do we reduce our reliance on the U.S. And that's going to become the next big thing. And this is why I thought it's very unwise of the U.S. to weaponize this U.S. dollar because if ever the day comes, may not be my lifetime, that the U.S. dollar is no longer the global reserve currency, then as you know, United States will lose an exorbitant privilege because it can no longer print money to buy Chinese goods. Yes. When we, in my imagination, I envision bringing you to Washington and we walk into the White House and you sit down with President Biden. You may have already done this, but in my imagination, what would you tell him, given your understanding of what's happening in Asia? I don't mean like you and I talked about earlier with Trump, the political theater, though that's a dimension of it, but deep down inside, how does the United States make a better American and better world in light of what you understand about Asia? The big message I would convey is that the world wants to see a strong United States and not a weak United States. So the world wants to see him succeed in his mission of strengthening and rejuvenating the United States. But the best way to do it is not to engage in a trade war with China, not to engage in a zero-sum contest with China, but actually to work with China and the rest of East Asia to boost the global economy. Because by doing that, then he will be creating jobs in the United States and he will be creating a stronger United States of America. And the real tragedy here is that the reason why many Asian countries now believe in free trade is because they learn the virtues of free trade from the great American universities. These are American ideas that are propelling the rise and return of Asia. And the United States should believe in its own ideas of free trade and come back and rejoin the trans-Pacific partnership. But all this, of course, you need to explain to the American people that they shouldn't be afraid of the return of China. They shouldn't be afraid of the return of the rest of Asia because in the Asian 21st century, the Asians will send a big thank you note to the United States of America and say thank you very much. It was your ideas that have enabled us to succeed and do so well. And many of the countries in East Asia and South Asia want to partner the United States and work with the United States, but more in the economic realm. And that's where the United States should focus on. Well, I'll give a little backward looking congratulations to our friends in Great Britain as well because people like Adam Smith and David Ricardo got these things moving. But what I really like, I'm thinking in the analogy to the current health situation, I see this book 21st century Asia that you've written and distributed freely as a vaccination for the minds of the world against the disease. Of the breakdown of trade and the nationalistic brutality that might emerge. And so I think everybody should receive this mental vaccine and read your book. It's an extraordinary achievement. It really relates to the depth and the breadth of your experience and your wisdom. And in particular, I'd really like you to come back and at some point do a big lecture with my young scholars initiative because that's who we're passing the button to in the next chapter and getting them vaccinated in the mind. I think would be very good for the health of this world. Thank you. I'll be very, very happy to do so. I remember very fondly my visit to your institution when we did our first dialogue together and I'm very happy to have the second dialogue with you. And I'm very much looking forward to that dialogue in New York. Well, thank you for making this additional chapter with me today. We'll keep an eye on your writing and elevate that as I think is it, like I said, it's extraordinary. But thanks for giving me an hour of your time today to continue to nourish our audience. Thank you.


First of all, I had a great and an insightful session. I was part of the gender discussion and it certainly was interesting. And we will now hear from our reporters slash panelists. And let me quickly introduce them to you. First, we have Frida Frida-Hituko. She's the Executive Director of Groots Kenya, which is a national movement of grassroots women and girls. She's a Vocal Champion for Gender Justice in Land Governance, an awardee of the 2018-1 Campaign Woman of the Year Award for Advocating Equal Land Rights for Women and Men. She's the Global Co-Chair of the ILC and she's also a member of the London Professional Learning Program. Then we have Marco Lankhorst, the Strategic Program Development Advisor for ITLO. And Marco is also a member of the Advisory Committee of Land at Scales, so we're very happy to have him here too. Then Lorenzo Cotula, Head of Law, Economies and Justice Program at IIED. And his work focuses on land governance, particularly in the context of international investment and trade. Fourth, we have Rick DeSatre, a Senior Research Associate at Puglesani NPC and also Knowledge Engagement Researcher for the Land Portal Foundation. He has long been involved in land and tenure reform with a focus specifically on Southern Africa.  He's a land governance specialist based in Chad. Maloum has worked with Cadastral International in the Land at Scale Intervention there. And he's currently working with the FAO on Chads Land Policy Development. So I will give each of the panelists about three to four minutes to report back on and share the results of the discussions. So first of all, I'll give the floor to Frida to share the results of the discussion with her group on gender and her thoughts on the tenured security study. Frida. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think there was consensus that the theme is gender and marginalized groups, not weak group. I hope that can be corrected in the report. And thank you to Japan who's for that wonderful report that was presented. I had the opportunity to read it before. And it's really informative. So on the number one on the major, the main courses of insecurity for our theme, gender and vulnerable groups, we discussed that cultural law still privileges men. During marriage, even after divorce, making it very hard for women to claim their rights. So they are big contributor to the tenured insecurity for women. The investors, especially in the extractive sector, they are also a contributor to the insecurity of land tenured for women. And also because that in their businesses, they are likely to co-opt men as workers more than women. So women lose both their land and they lose opportunity to benefit in the new land use. Change of land tenured regimes due to land scarcity again. Things around underrepresentation of women in the whole land administration system, meaning the experience of women are rarely taken into account when designing this kind of the intervention that would promote secure land tenor. The registration process is also a very expensive process and considering that there are already existing gender income inequality that can again enhance those insecurity. The issues of literacy because of inequality in education, sometimes women are not aware of this right. And even when they are, they do not know how to claim them across that value chain. The issue of accountability, especially in states where we have a very weak judicial system, they are then impunity tends to drive because people think they can do things just because they can do them. And the fact that they will not be held accountable because the system is weak. In terms of what are the enabling conditions that if they are put in place, they could lead to tenor security. One of the things that we discussed, if you look at the interventions like mapping and registration, mostly they are done by corporate companies. They are using technologies and both the corporate space and the tech space is not the space where women are driving very much at this point in time. So if we could relook at those approaches and adopt more bottom-up approach, then that process will aid a better gendered outcome. Again, taking into account the voices and representations of women, we've seen experiences where women are represented from the onset of such intervention at policy and even when they are being implemented that we are likely to achieve the better security for both men and women. We did discuss about looking at these interventions from both the technical angle and the social angle because if we see the social angle of this kind of intervention, then we are more likely to invest in community organizing and reaching out to different community groups, women, men, people living with disability, even before we get to the technical part, we already have the aspiration and their wishes and how that security will be reflected in their own life. So it's very important that we look at both angles. That could be a good enabler. We also discussed about the state and other non-state actors looking at themselves and the role they are playing in that process and calling out acknowledging and addressing and overcoming their own biases because the problem is that we tend to assume that as actors in these processes, we are neutral and we are free of biases, which is not true because we come from the same society that is perpetuating the patriarchal biases. What are the greatest risks for certain group if we do land registration in your context? That was the other issue that we were discussing. Some of the risk that we identified is of course the over-consolidation and concentration of power in men. Some interventions could resort to that and they have, we have such experiences, not just to men but also to those who are already powerful in the community, commodification of some different categories of land, especially matrimonial property, making it more available for land grabbers and for transfer, even if that is, that was not the original intervention. We also know that the market perceives, sorry, I know I'm taking extra time, I'm about to wind up. We also know that the market perceives women as men as better market actors. And so the moment we equip them with this registered land and the market is already in favor of them as better actors than women, then we have layers and layers of privileges that are going towards one gender and not the other. Of course the risk around conversation and resettlement, I will not overdo it in that because I know it's an old conversation that have been heard by people in this call. We can mitigate this risk but by having women participating, including what we define as technical roles as education mapping and registration, adopting the bottom-up approach, investing in community organizing that precedes even the registration and mapping intervention and building much more strong women movements, movements for other populations that are left behind because when they are together, they are able to articulate their rights more strongly and they are more likely to be heard. Thank you and sorry. Thank you Greena for wrapping up so much into so little time. Let me now hand the floor to Marco to tell us about the land and conflict discussion. Marco, to you. Thanks so much. And I'll say at the outside, this is going to be challenging because we had 22 very vocal participants in our group from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, all giving examples, very rich discussion, no room for Hema or myself even to insert any idea. So I'll give it my best try. That's what I can promise you. So one, our session was on tenure security and conflict and I guess one of the lessons or realizations for me was first that we need to start unpacking a bit what we mean by conflict because we spoke about conflict in many different ways at the level of disputes between neighbors or family members. We spoke about intra-community and inter-community disputes and we spoke more about societal level, historical conflict, impacting on land-people relations and all of these are often connected in different ways and through different directions of causality. And as I said, one of the realizations is that we may need to delve into this a bit deeper to understand how actually they impact things. Also mentioned that there are conflicts, conflicts that are out in the open but there are groups of people who can be affected by changes in laws or policies relating to land who are disenfranchised or have little rights to begin with and who may not immediately run to a court or start drumming on making noise but are in a situation of a sort of a frozen conflict where they cannot enforce their rights. So that's just one. And then two, this was about tenure security and conflicts but I guess very quickly and perhaps this is also because of how we framed the session, we started looking from the beginning at land tenure registration and conflict which is obviously not necessarily the same. And it was very helpful for me that the point was raised in our session that there are other ways of trying to improve tenure security that our field should concentrate perhaps on more and that some of those might be more adequate in given situations and less prone to produce conflict. Then a point that was made that I think is important also is that there are, having a high level of land disputes or land conflict can be a reason for starting land tenure registration but it was mentioned that it's important to realize that there is a range of different factors contributing to dispute and conflict levels, not all of which you will be able to influence through registration. So there are socioeconomic factors like demographics and what have you that prove pressure on land resources and whether you register or not, those will continue to exert that pressure. There are also conflict factors or societal conflict rifts between society having led to displacements or dispossession that you cannot necessarily take away through. Oh, that's going to be very difficult, point two of six. I will go fast. So just to say that registration can be part of a solution but it will not solve the issue of there being disputes on the whole. The question was asked, so do participants recognize that there is a tension between land registration and land conflict in the sense that it may be aimed to reduce it in the long term, but it can certainly contribute to additional dispute or a worsening of disputes in the short and medium term. I guess overall our participants gave us a resounding yes to that and we had examples from all regions that I mentioned of disputes emerging during registration, disputes emerging after registration. And the conclusion in this regard was that we should look at the interrelation between conflict and registration as a very dynamic one that starts well before registration where there can be conflicts and frictions and land tenure registration happens in that context and can either contribute or reduce it. I fear that on the issue of what can we do to prevent and mitigate? It's my final point of each guy, I promise. We didn't have quite enough time for that but I'll mention two important points that were raised. First, several participants mentioned the importance at the start of these kind of initiatives to adopt a broad participatory approach to ensure that people are aware of what is happening and have agency in the process and could perhaps also say, well, this is not the most suitable thing for our circumstances, we actually don't want it. And two that are situations also on the side of government or development organizations who are contemplating initiating these type that there is an obligation also to inform yourself very well and to conduct the necessary analysis, risk assessment, conflict sensitivity assessment to make sure that there aren't too big risks involved to actually not want to do this. And for me, a final point if you allow me, which I think the difficulty if you want to make that kind of assessment for me is how are you going to make a judgment on a situation where likely you're going to get a good number of people in an area where you register who may derive some form of economic benefit from the fact that they have their land registered or at least they sleep more quietly because they know they have a certificate. And some groups in the same society who will have been disenfranchised or don't see their land, some people who get into a conflict because of this. So the effects are never going to be uniform throughout the community, but it's going to be different for many people depending on their starting situation. And how do you make a judgment as to whether that is something that you can go ahead with, yes or no? Yeah, very difficult question that you leave in our middle here, Marco. Thank you for reporting back on such a dense discussion. Let us now give the floor to Lorenzo. To talk more about economic development, production and productivity discussion. Lorenzo, please. Yes, thank you very much, Witzke. And before maybe starting with the report back, I just wanted to highlight, I guess on a personal note, that the discussion about this topic has been going on for a long time, partly because of the strategic importance of this question for many national policy processes, where governments are looking to harness land for economic development, but also I think because of the complexities that are involved here, what do we mean by development or economic development? How do we measure production and productivity, tenure security for whom, in what form, et cetera? And these questions are often very highly contested, so there's significantly different views as to what these terms mean or should mean. And also it's important to note that many actors do not frame land issues primarily in economic terms, but rather in terms of sociocultural values, in terms of questions of justice, historical redress, the importance of securing the rights of indigenous peoples as part of strategies to tackle climate change, just to mention a few examples. But coming to the specific question that we were tasked with to address as a breakout group, we had a good discussion relying on both reflections and also very concrete experiences that were shared in the group from Columbia, San Lucia, South Africa, Namibia and so on. And we really focused on two strands of exploration, both relevant to the question of the relationship between tenure security on the one hand and economic development on the other. The first strand is whether and through what channels there are different forms of tenure security can contribute to economic development. So it's effectively acquisition question and it's a question about the modalities through which tenure security can contribute to economic development. And we had a discussion about that, that also problematized that sort of, the assumptions that underlie that question. So for example, a question was raised as to whether the causation could be the other way around. Does economic development increase demand for land registration services, for example? How about looking at aspects broader than just economic? There was one experience that was shared where stronger land rights enable certain groups to more effectively engage with local government bodies, for example. And also strong emphasis on the issues of winners and losers in land governance interventions. So well known issue. And particularly as was mentioned that particularly because land titling itself can increase land value and land values and as such, potentially also increase competition for land. And there we had a couple of experiences that were shared. One contribution from South Africa highlighted the specific challenges that women's groups face in accessing land and related services. And then we also had one experience relating to Namibia where most of those involved were in fact women due to proactive efforts of design and implementation stage with women representatives highlighting different priorities compared to those articulated typically by men. So really problematizing that notion of this linkage, this direct linkage between tenure security and economic development by highlighting the distributive aspects, the wider issues of relations to government and so on. One particular point that we discussed was the issue of collateralization. So the notion whereby formalization of land rights would enable landholders to secure a bank loan through using the land as collateral. There is interest in this in Colombia. For example, we heard during a discussion but there was also some skepticism in our group about this effect in particular. It was felt by some that banks are often more interested in income and bank statements than small plots of rural land. So the evidence of us whether this collateralization effect that materialized was debated. So that's the first strand of thoughts and the first strand of exploration. The second one is which approaches then are most effective in strengthening tenure security with a view to promoting economic development. And so here the discussion was much more about the practical side of land tenure interventions. There was an emphasis on the fact that land title and registration is not the same as tenure security. Mixed evidence, it was felt on the effectiveness of conventional land registration approaches and also a distinction drawn between land reform narrowly focused on certain land issues on the one hand and on the other a more comprehensive agrarian reform approach that would also address issues of credits and so on. The experience of San Lucia was mentioned in that it seems that there was a shift in the 1980s from a digital registration system to a torrent system which led to significant increase of the scale of registered land in the country, the number of parcels at least but there were also challenges associated with that. It seems particularly the ability, the pressure on the administrative structures to handle the conflicts that arose partly in connection with that process, not just the process itself but also the outcomes of the process. And then finally, and I'm from the city. Yeah, finally the issue of risks we spent a fair amount of time discussing the issue of risk and the fact again we linked to the winners and losers aspect the fact that the design of the project and the fact that the better connected people are able to essentially secure deeds while others cannot. And so the question of how does one ensure that the rights of more vulnerable groups socially, politically, juridically marginalized groups are protected in land formalization processes and the issue of local ownership and participation has already been mentioned sort of connects to some of the other speakers was seen as very much a key to achieving that and yet felt it was felt this often neglected particularly in top-down interventions. So those are some of the issues that came up and yeah, I'm happy to elaborate more in the discussion if there's time. Okay, thank you Lorenzo and I understand that there's a lot to put into a very small amount of time and even the interpreters are struggling to keep up. Rick, next with you on the role of the state and yeah, please try to keep it as short as possible. I'm gonna keep it as very short as possible. Thank you. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna zoom into our discussion and then try to zoom out to some bigger reflections on the conversation as a whole. In our discussion, we started from the assumption that the state was often seen as the key agent for the formalization of rights and we asked the question, how does the state contribute to 10-year security or conversely insecurity? And we had a range of participants and we went to a range of different countries and I don't have the time to like profile all of those different country examples but I'm just going to try and pull out some key issues that emerged. So we went to Namibia and we looked particularly at flexible land tenure, the role of the state there and we looked at some conflicts between the state and communities in communal areas given the fact that in Namibia, the constitution recognizes both customary and statutory law. And Royal Manare, who was in our panel, gave us the example of where a group of people in the North of the country basically refused to register their land rights and said it would be in contravention of their cultural norms and the state had no alternative but to accept that. We also looked at the experience in Trinidad and Tobago, we went to Uganda, we went to Mozambique and we went to Canada. So each of these places, they are very, very different scenarios and I'm afraid in the three minutes I can't do justice to them but I have made notes and I'll make the notes available for the summary. From my own reflection, I'd like to zoom out now and in many respects, even take on a slightly more theoretical approach. My own reflection is that the state, we talk about the state all the time but it remains a remarkably slippery concept, one that we have to critically interrogate and think carefully about the normative assumptions and received wisdom about the nature of the state and the government and the distinctions between the two. So in the standard narrative, the state is permanent, it exercises sovereignty, it has a population, it's territorially bounded and has a government but when we start to look at this more closely, even these key elements are not as self-evident as one might first appear. So yes, the state has a population, the majority of whom are citizens. However, in our fast-changing world, this population is increasingly heterogeneous. Some may be farmers, others are pastoralists, artisanal miners or fishers. Many have urbanized and live in sprawling informal settlements. Populations though, increasingly contain a significant number of citizens who are either internally displaced as well as increasing numbers of non-citizens to economic migrants or who have fled across borders as refugees from conflict and climate change. Against this backdrop, many populations increasingly experience conflicting and overlapping rights in land and crucially to water and natural resources. The states have territory demarcated by boundaries but these boundaries themselves are often disputed and frequently porous. In much of the global South as we know, boundaries are almost always arbitrarily demarcated by the colonial powers which ignored realities on the ground. And of course, the South doesn't have a monopoly here if we look at a changing map of Europe. Over the last hundred years, we'd see massive territorial shifts. I'm getting there, I'm nearly there. So finally where there's government which exercises power on behalf of the state but which may or may not democratically represented citizens, the government is expected to play a significant part in securing their land rights. And these come in many different shapes and sizes from democracies, monarchies and dictatorships. And it would be a really interesting example if participants in this discussion wrote in the chat the first three words that came to mind to characterize the state and government in their own country. I'm from South Africa and where I'm based the words fractured, corrupted and untrustworthy would be first in the queue. And this is crucial to thinking about the state. How do we understand the state? How do we take a real world perspective on the role of the state? And if we pay much closer attention to understanding the particularities of the different context in which we work and the struggles for power and the way these are framed by history, this could help identify much more viable starting points to clarify how tenure can be made more secure for whom, for what purpose and against what threat. Thank you. Excellent, thank you very much, Rika, on those insights. Then lastly, I want to give the floor to Malum. There was a very lively French debate. Malum, if you can please try and wrap that up in three minutes, he will speak in French. So there will be translation available. I see that Malum is not in the panel list. Is Malum here? No, Barbara, can I ask you to very quickly wrap up? He's here, he's here. Is he? Can you allow him to talk, Neil? I allowed him to talk, I changed his permission. Okay, is Malum? Yes, Rika, can you follow me? Yes, yes, yes, okay. Two minutes, please. Is it possible? Malum is here. Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you Whisker. In fact, our group of francophones, we exchanged a particular accent on the French security. We started our exchanges regarding the perception of the security of the photos and we came to the conclusion according to which the concept of security is not static, it is dynamic. Our panel was not well-planned. We started at two, then we were barely at five. So we thought we were going to have time to say everything, but unfortunately, the subject was so interesting that we missed time, even though we were barely at five. So one of the questions we addressed was the cause of insecurity, what impact did the population have? The exchanges around, especially in Africa, are much more cultural. And we also specified because the French regimes do not exclude me, but it is the abuses that exclude some categories, especially young people and women. And these abuses are linked to the mutation of the French dynamic. More precisely, there is demographic growth, there is the HRCRS and so on, all these elements have made the status of the land to change and have passed from a patrimonial to a merchant. And beyond that, the main insecurity is not only women and young people are touching everyone, but particularly women. And there is the question of the difference of customs. So beyond that, we addressed the question of security in terms of registration or title. It is clear that there would be some debate on whether the security must be necessarily passed by registration, but registration is different. We cannot talk about the registration that can lead to the title and the registration that is specific to rural areas. So that's why our friend from Burkina, from Mali, talked about a disaster in a different instrument from that of the disaster. So the question of registration has also been addressed. The question of the people has been raised that we have to work a lot more on the mentality, on the change of mentality. We need to have a legal basis and negotiations, because the people also have questions that there are risks related to registration. Risks related to instruments. So it is a question of having an approach, a cooperative approach, an inclusive approach and a participative approach. That's about the different elements that I noted in relation to the exchange. As far as I am concerned, I think that the debates should be focused on who belongs to the land. I think that's a question that is at the heart of the debate in our society, especially in Africa. Does the land belong to the state or the land belongs to the community? And the question is to find a formula at that level. So I will stop here and then I think I could make another one. Thank you. Thank you very much, Maloum. Thank you very much. All the panellists, in the sake of time, I will skip the poll that we wanted to do again to see if any of you had changed your minds on some of these statements. And I would like to ask Yap to wrap up with some final reflections, please. Yap. Can you hear me? Yap. Thanks a lot, everybody. I jumped into all four groups. I didn't go to the francophone one, but I did listen into the translation earlier on. Very interesting discussions. And I think it shows how complex the issue is and how layered. And I'm glad with everything I hear. I'm not sure how we're going to make this into the next version of the paper. That still remains quite a challenge. I wrote a few things down. First of all, apologies for using this word weak. We are so focusing on the tennis security and we didn't have the time to good proof read. We shouldn't have used that and probably both are marginalized. We'll appear theirs. Apologies for that. And many of you said it and I'm very happy. And we might have to change even the order of some things. We have to start from insecurity. The real problem is insecurity for many people. And then who is threatened by whom or by what? As many of you said, internal and external pressures, sometimes mixed, sometimes layered. And I think that is really important. And that also makes it indeed dynamic as some of the people already reported back from their group. To my students, I always say the two biggest threats to land tenure security is actually big brother and the government and brother-in-law, the family especially, for women. And I think that both came by quite sometimes. The only thing I personally always miss in these type of discussions is the autonomous development in society. If we do not have an intervention, we are also not these groups losing out. And then the question is, does the intervention, when we make it as good as we can, make the most vulnerable groups in a better position? Or do we make those in the middle a bit safer at the cost of those at the bottom of the vulnerability ladder, if something like that could be said? I think that is one of the things we really struggle with. And this is exactly what Mark also said, the local diversity. And how do you then judge whose position should be prioritized? Unequality seems to be the key issue. There is unequality in how people are accessing land and the systems. And we talked a lot about registration and mapping, even though tenure security was really the topic, but somehow we always end up focusing a lot, even though we all say it's more, we still talk about it a lot. The intervention seems to go along with unequality. And I think that's where the most of the work has to be understanding the current inequalities and making sure the system makes them less and not more. And in practice, we often see they make it more because they are focusing on doing things more efficient instead of more equitable. And I think that came out also in almost every group. But when I listen to everything, and then maybe I'm too philosophical, I also thought in the end, yes, but interventions, mapping, pipeline, and anything we want to put around it, they cannot solve all the problems of the society. And that's what we always end up. We talk about everything. And in the end, yes, the government is corrupt. This doesn't work. So we need to get rid of government, corrupt government and inequality we don't want, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's this chicken and egg. Can we do some things in land registration, mapping that already improves the situation there and get the whole country in a better place? Or does the country has to be in a better place before we can actually do a fair and honest than your security improvement through an intervention? And I don't think we have the answers there. I think our audience was very nicely representing a broad range of these assumptions, and many of them were aware of it. I think that's also important to know. We will also go with a bit more depth with our colleagues in the different land scale projects to see on a more local level how things are. Thanks. OK. Thank you, Jaap. So, yeah, I see that we have gone slightly over time. So I'd like to wrap it up here. We could continue our discussions for hours, I'm sure. But a big thank you to all the panelists and thank you for joining us here today. We appreciate your participation, your engagement and your insights. Thank you to all the participants as well for sharing your thoughts and idea. We do, as I said, going to publish a study on this and we will take into account the discussions that have taken place today. We try to feed them in and we will make sure that we sense the final paper with you once ready. Then, lastly, I want to ask you to take a survey, especially with the new setup, but we would like to know how you like this webinar. There will be a link in the chat, I understand, where you can share your feedback on this particular event. With that, I want you to have a happy festive season and I look forward to engaging with you all in the new year. Thank you all and God bless. Thank you too, bye-bye. Thank you everybody, I know. I'll share the survey and a follow-up email. Thank you. Thank you.


SCP-815 is a novelty snake nut can, a common prank device that consists of a smaller canister labeled salted mixed nuts, while in actuality it contains four cloth-covered springs meant to represent snakes that fly out upon opening. X-ray and multispectral imaging have as yet determined no measurable unusual qualities of the can or snakes. Upon opening, the snakes instantaneously vanish from the can, and violently burst forth from the nearest person's, see note, face, with extreme force. High-speed video footage reveals that the snakes appear to emerge from the lower sinuses, typically shattering the nose, cheekbones, and upper jaw upon exiting.


We discussed the theoretical characteristics of centrifugal pumps in the previous lecture. And I have indicated the characteristic of a pump with a forward curved blade and a pump with a radial blade in red color. This is done to distinguish these two designs or characteristics from the backward curved blade characteristics. Primarily because these designs are inherently unstable even to the smallest disturbance in flow rate or input power. We will demonstrate this a little bit later but these are shown in a separate color to indicate this fact explicitly. So let us now look at the actual characteristic of a centrifugal pump. So here we have the actual head versus discharge characteristic of a centrifugal pump and the variational BHP with flow rate of the centrifugal pump. This is a backward curved design and backward curved blade design and you can see how it compares with the actual characteristic. The actual characteristic and the head versus Q is a falling characteristic throughout and the BHP curve or the power curve increases which is a maximum and begins to come down. Whereas here we notice that in contrast to the falling character, the theoretical characteristic here it increases then falls and BHP continues to increase monotonically. We have also plotted the efficiency. You may be recall that the efficiency was for the pump was defined as follows. The efficiency for the pump was defined as rho g Qh the hydraulic power divided by BHP and this increases reaches a maximum then it falls down as we can see here. So this point where the efficiency is a maximum is the design point. So this is the operating condition for which the pump impeller and dimensions are designed. So for a given omega and impeller diameter this is the design operating point at which you get the maximum efficiency. Efficiency falls off on both sides of the design point. Now why does the actual characteristic depart so much from theoretical characteristic? The reason for this or as follows at low flow rate some of the fluid in the that enters the impeller tends to recycle it within the impeller itself. In fact the flow rate is so low that the fluid pretty much stagnates in the impeller and doesn't really go through. So that is one reason why we see reduced flow rate at low heads. We see the flow rate beginning to come down at low values of flow rate. Number two, friction and leakage are also important factors. So the friction between the fluid and the impeller surfaces the no-slip surface actually can be quite high in the case of the centrifugal impeller because for the velocities that we are looking at the flow is likely to be very turbulent. So fluid friction is quite high and that has been neglected while deriving the theoretical characteristic. Perhaps the most important reason for the difference between the actual characteristic and ideal characteristic is due to the mismatch of the relative velocity vector between the impeller tangent at inlet and exit during off design operating condition. And this is called a shock loss and as we discussed earlier we assume V theta 1 to be 0 even for off design conditions and derive this theoretical characteristic utilizing that assumption. However it was made quite clear based on these velocity triangles that when the radial velocity changes magnitude at the inlet or at the outlet then CR both CR and VR change and the triangle will no longer be the same and C1 will no longer be tangential to the blade profile at inlet and C2 will also not be tangential to the blade profile at the outlet. Consequently the loss associated with this mismatch namely the shock loss can be quite high and that causes a significant departure of the actual flow characteristic from the theoretical flow characteristic. Now two portions of the characteristic are also highlighted here for special attention that is this rising portion of the characteristic which has been termed unstable and a part of the characteristic at very high flow rates which is also highlighted and shown indicated like this. Let us take this up first. Now cavitation is a phenomenon that occurs when the pressure at the inlet to the impeller goes below the vapor pressure of the liquid. So as we can see when the flow rate keeps increasing the overall head rise goes down and the dynamic head which is the static head plus the velocity head at the pump inlet also keeps coming down. So as a result there is a possibility that at very high flow rate this dynamic and this total head at the pump inlet could actually become equal to or maybe even become less than the vapor pressure of the liquid and when this happens then the liquid begins to boil and vapor droplets of the liquid begin to appear at the inlet. These droplets are then carried into the impeller where as the pressure increases the droplets collapse and the collapsing droplets can result in instantaneous values of pressure which are very high and if this collapse occurs in the vicinity of blade surfaces then this can cause a lot of pitting damage to the blade surface and also cause instability in the operation of the pump. So this cavitation is highly undesirable and must be avoided at all costs. So we will look at a way of quantifying the likelihood of cavitation occurring and then make sure that we know whether cavitation is going to occur or not and then adjust the operating point of the pump accordingly so that there is no danger of cavitation. This we will do next. The other portion of the characteristic that has been identified for special attention is the rising portion of the characteristic here. This has been termed or this has been indicated as being unstable for the following reason. If we take an operating point like this, let's say that this is an operating point and the pump is operating in a stable fashion at this operating point and there is a small disturbance in the flow rate. Let's say that a valve upstream of the pump is closed slightly causing a momentary reduction in the flow rate as indicated here by the arrow going to the left. The power to the pump, electrical power to the pump does not change and that remains constant because we have not changed that. So when the flow rate decreases momentarily like this, we know from the definition of power which is rho g q h that if q decreases slightly then the head is going to increase slightly with the power remaining constant. So that is indicated by this going up arrow by the arrow which is going up. So you can see that the pump when as a result of this disturbance seeks a new operating location where the flow rate is slightly less and the head is slightly more when compared to this point. But the actual characteristic looks like this, so there is no point in the actual characteristic that accommodates this requirement, namely slightly reduced flow rate and slightly higher head because when the flow rate is reduced because the characteristic looks like this, the head actually is less than this value. So there is no characteristic that the pump can latch onto. So the pump then enters a state of instability. Even the tiniest disturbance causes the pump to become unstable and the flow rate through the pump and the rpm everything becomes unstable and the pump struggles to operate under these conditions unless or until the flow rate is brought back to its original value or the input power is adjusted to accommodate the new operating or operating point which is the reduced flow rate. So if you reduce the power then you can actually bring the operating point down to a value here and try to get it going but this is also another unstable operating point. Now on the other hand if a valve upstream of the pump is open more let us say slightly then the flow rate through the pump actually increases slightly and by the same argument as we used to before the power supplied to the pump remaining constant causes the head to decrease because of the slight increase in flow rate. So when the head decreases the pump looks for a new operating point which matches these requirements namely slightly higher flow rate and slightly reduced head but the actual characteristic is in the opposite direction. So once again the pump enters into a state of instability and struggles to operate the operation is highly unsteady and can actually cause a lot of damage to the bearings to the shaft and to the impeller itself if it is left unchecked. So the only way to make it operate in a stable manner is to either reduce the flow rate bring it back to the previous operating point or change the power requirement so that we can get a new operating point which looks like this. So increase the power slightly so that for the increased flow rate the increased power will take us to an operating point which is here. So the rising characteristic as can be seen any part of the rising characteristic is or any operating point on the rising characteristic is an unstable operating point in the tiniest disturbance will cause it to become unstable and this is the reason why we marked these two characteristics in red colour and said that you know these are both unstable operating unstable characteristics and any operating point on this characteristic is an unstable operating point even this one here. So I leave it as an exercise to the student to convince themselves that both these characteristics are unstable using arguments similar to what we just made. So it is always desirable to operate the pump in the falling portion of the characteristic. The next concept that we are going to discuss is the so-called net positive suction head and the net positive suction head is defined as follows. It is equal to p1 over rho g plus v1 square over 2g minus pv over rho g where pv is the saturation or vapor pressure of the liquid corresponding to its temperature at the inlet. Notice that if the liquid is actually hotter or if you are pumping a hot liquid then the vapor pressure increases with temperature so pv will be higher than the value or the corresponding value at room temperature. So this is the net positive suction head. Now in the connotation of cavitation we talked about cavitation so in this connotation the net positive suction head is the minimum head that is required at the pump inlet in order to prevent the liquid from cavitating. So pump manufacturers usually provide the net positive suction head required which is usually denoted an additional R at the end. So the net positive suction head required is usually provided by the pump manufacturer as part of the pump characteristic. We can also evaluate net positive suction head if we know a few more details about the operating condition of the pump. And let us do an example to illustrate how we calculate the net available net positive suction head. Let us work out this example taken from Professor Coppola's book. A pump draws water at 20 degrees Celsius in density 1000 kilogram per meter cube at the rate of 20 liter per second from a reservoir whose surface is open to atmosphere at 101.3 kilopascal. The pump inlet is situated at the height of 4 meters above the surface of the reservoir. The pipe diameter is 7.6 centimeters and the suction pipe is 10 meter in length. The friction factor in the pipe may be taken to be 0.0187 calculate the net positive suction head available in PSHA. If we identify a streamline starting from any location on the surface of the reservoir and going up to the inlet of the pump and apply Bernoulli's equation along that streamline.  So the subscript P here refers to the inlet pipe. Now if we take our datum to be the surface of the reservoir I can set the ZS to be equal to 0 and we assume the reservoir to be sufficiently large that its level does not change. So consequently the velocity of the fluid at the surface of the reservoir is very very small so we can neglect this term and the static pressure at the surface of the reservoir is of course equal to the atmospheric pressure.  So if you recall it is that term of course divided by G minus the vapor pressure divided by rho G.  Now since the flow rate is given we can evaluate the velocity in the pipe as Q over AP this comes out to be 4.41 meter per second and the saturation pressure at 20 degree Celsius may be retrieved as 2.34 kilo Pascal from steam tables and so the NPSHA works out to 3.65 meters. Now this has to be compared with the net positive suction head required that is specified by the pump manufacturer to make sure that the available head is adequate in compared to the required NPSH.