Combating disinformation

Asad Baig 

Published October 14, 2023


VELES, a small town in Macedonia, came into the global spotlight in the context of the 2016 US presidential elections, albeit for all the wrong reasons. This small factory town appeared to be an epicentre of political disinformation targeting the American population ahead of the polls.

At times, the hoax news stories emanating from Veles even trumped those from credible journalism outlets. From ‘Pope Francis Endorses Trump’ to ‘ISIS Calls for Muslim Voters to Vote for Hillary’, the imaginative Macedonian ‘content writers’ apparently gave the 19 leading American journalism outlets a run for their money.

Studies suggest in the months leading up to the elections, 20 top-performing hoax election stories generated more engagement on Facebook than the 20 top-performing credible stories from the top news outlets combined, including the New York Times and Washington Post. Many came from Veles.

Political disinformation isn’t merely for political gains. Hoax stories from Veles were created to garner traffic by triggering emotions and generate click-based-revenue. The revenue was in the millions.

Mirko Ceselkoski, the ‘mentor’ of the youth behind this operation, proudly claimed that more than 1,200 of his ‘students’ were earning upwards of $10m a month. One can only imagine the profits that social media companies had made from the traffic generated by these hoax stories.

The influx of organised disinformation in the 2016 election amply demonstrates the potential impact of MDM (misinformation, disinformation, mal-information) on elections in general. MDM can be massively profitable for most parties involved. Similar trends have been noted in Pakistan.

The revelations of the former ‘troll-in-chief’ and investigations published by various journalists and researchers unpacking hate campaigns and identifying the political actors behind them, indicate a heavy potential influx of organised political MDM in the run-up to the elections in 2024, especially considering the factors that make Pakistan’s population susceptible to hateful MDM.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that “influencers” are overtaking credible journalists as news sources, and fewer people trust traditional media, whereas more people are turning to TikTok for news.

Recent studies by Media Matters for Democracy have made similar findings — 64 per cent of surveyed news consumers indicated they use ‘social media platforms’ as their go-to ‘trusted medium’ for news. This shift towards influencer-based content could substantially contribute to creating a conducive environment for political MDM.

There is ample evidence to prove that ‘hate sells’ in online spaces.

Firstly, in the context of journalism, a vast majority of influencer-based content in Pakistan is, at best, political commentary. However, this distinction between commentary/ opinion-making and journalism is often conveniently blurred, making it harder for consumers to identify MDM, especially if it comes from their trusted ‘influencer’.

Secondly, the practice of engaging social media influencers and engaging troll networks for social media campaigns, unlike political ads, has zero transparency.

‘Paid influencers’ masquerade as political supporters, creating a classic echo-chamber effect, furthering polarisation, regurgitating political MDM, and presenting a distorted worldview to consumers. Add our existing cultural, religious and political prejudices to this mix and we have a recipe for disaster.

To top all this, whistleblowers and researchers have produced ample evidence to prove that ‘hate sells’ in online spaces. The Facebook Papers, a trove of Facebook’s internal documents made public by whistleblower Frances Haugen, reveal that the platform has been failing in dealing with hate and incitement, and the results are most harmful in countries with pronounced fault lines and conflicts.

In India, for instance, “Facebook has been selective in curbing hate speech, misinformation and inflammatory posts, particularly anti-Muslim content”. Failure to act aside, serving personalised content on timelines based on individual consumption patterns, an intrinsic characteristic of AI-based algorithms, even if the content in question comprises credible journalism stories, could create a distorted worldview.

Among potential responses to counter MDM, the worst idea is “regulating or criminalising fake news”. A ‘law’ to deal with misinformation and associated harm is touted as a one-stop-shop solution to curb all forms of MDM.

A similar thought process is reflected in the Prevention of Election Crimes Act (Peca) Ordinance, 2022, a law promulgated to curb free speech under the garb of ‘combating fake news’ by the PTI, and the Pakistan Media Development Authority, a legal framework proposed to centrally regulate all forms of media.

Any law enacted specifically to make information practitioners accountable cannot function without substantially harming free speech. More importantly, Pakistan currently has many legal provisions to deal with the harms associated with MDM. Most also have a history of being abused, including criminal defamation under the Pakistan Penal Code, and Section 20 of Peca.

A potential response that could work is ‘inoculating’ masses for misinformation, and community-based ‘proactive’ fact-checking. The inoculation theory “explains how an attitude or belief can be made resistant to persuasion or influence”, similar to how a biological body becomes resistant to a viral contagion.

The concept can be used to inoculate the population against a certain kind of MDM — such as gendered disinformation — by pre-exposing them to ‘weakened doses’ of misinformation and techniques that go into its production and distribution. Researchers have also been experimenting with a ‘broad-spectrum’ vaccine for MDM through gamification of this process, putting users in the shoes of misinformation producers and encouraging a critical reflection on the tactics used, such as impersonation and the use of fake imagery to trigger emotions.

The inoculation approach has had a high success rate. Well-designed, targeted media and information literacy campaigns in all major local languages, and the translation and distribution of existing gamified tools — such as ‘Fake It To Make It’ or ‘Bad News’ — and their mass distribution through popular platforms, including TikTok, could make a substantial difference.

However, an intervention on this scale would require substantial resources that perhaps only governments can pull together. CSOs, while they can help in the effective design and distribution of such content, can only play a supporting role. This might sound clichéd, but the responsibility for inoculating masses for electoral disinformation ahead of election 2024 lies on the ECP and the caretaker governments. Are they doing enough?

The writer is a media strategist and trainer, and founder of Media Matters for Democracy, a media development organisation.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2023

Secret Belief Means Wagner’s Most Dangerous Men Won’t Back Down

Will McCurdy

The Daily Beast
Mon, September 4, 2023

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters

All eyes are on the Russian mercenary group Wagner in the aftermath of a mysterious plane crash that presumably killed the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, last week. Angry over what many suspect was an assassination plot ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, many factions within the infamous mercenary group are now emerging with shadowy threats of vengeance and violence.

The “Rusich” Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group, a Wagner-linked unit of fighters that have received additional sanctions for “special cruelty" in battles in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine, has recently taken to Telegram to post one such ominous warning. “Let this be a lesson to all. Always go all the way,” the group said in a statement after the plane crash.

There’s good reason for Vladimir Putin to take threats from Rusich, and other like-minded Wagner fighters, seriously.

That’s because behind the headlines, many of the Wagner units most known for their violence—including the Rusich battalion, and even the now-deceased commander Dmitry Utkin—are fighting what they believe is a spiritual battle, taking religious and ideological inspiration from sources far removed from the Russian mainstream.


These soldiers are shunning Jesus, Mary, and the Russian Orthodox patriarchs, and instead booking to Gods such as Perun— the ancient Slavic god of thunder and lightning—for protection and inspiration.

Members of the far right Russian paramilitary unit Rusich take a walk in the Kremlin square during a break in their participation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
STR/NurPhoto/Getty

The “Rusich” battalion is formed almost entirely of adherents of a variant of Slavic neopaganism known as “Rodnovery,” according to former unit commander Alexei Milchakov’s interviews with local Russian media. Marat Gabidullin, who served in the Wagner group from 2015 to 2019 and rose to the rank of commander in Syria, also confirmed these reports to The Daily Beast.

Members of the Rusich group, which has been active in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Africa, and Syria since 2014, have often adorned their badges, tanks, and banners with images of what’s known as the ‘kolovrat’. This spinning wheel—one of the critical symbols of the pagan revivalist belief system—could be easily mistaken for a swastika by the untrained eye. Pagan symbols such as the ‘Valknut’ and ‘Black Sun’ have also frequently appeared on the groups’ uniforms and banners.

These pagan symbols have prompted disgust and confusion in several news outlets, in both Ukraine and Africa, due to the symbols bearing a distinct similarity to the SS imagery of Nazi Germany. Outside of the Rusich unit, these pagan beliefs are common among members of the Wagner Group, and the Russian military more widely, according to several sources who spoke to The Daily Beast.

‘Rodnovers’ practice polytheism, the belief in multiple gods, roughly seven, all said to be manifestations of the one true god Rod. These ideas began to take root in the ’90s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and state atheism led to a revival of religious faiths of all kinds, including Christianity.

Men are hugely overrepresented in Rodnovery, particularly those involved in martial arts clubs and the heavy metal community, where its imagery often crops up. A core text of Rodnovery, “The Book of Veles” places the Slavs as a type of chosen people, with a unique destiny. Though texts like the above have proven likely to be 19th-century forgeries and much of the faith represents guesswork based on incomplete records from Medieval scholars, that hasn’t stopped these beliefs from slowly rising in popularity.

There are estimated to be between several 100,000 to several million Pagans in Russia, divided between different sects with quite diverse beliefs. The deity that receives the bulk of the attention, at least among male devotees, is Perun, a deity who in the Book of Veles engages in constant war against the forces of evil, not unlike the popular Norse god Thor. The belief in reincarnation is also common among believers.

Gabidullin, the ex-Wagner soldier, told The Daily Beast the practice of Rodoverny within the group as merely a type of “fashion hobby” for a marginalized community of soldiers.

The ex-mercenary says the popularity of these beliefs stems from the “laziness to study the scientific school of history” and the desire to find a justification “for self-aggrandizement in the past.” He terms the vision of the history of Rodverners in Wagner as an: “invented version with great ancestors and achievements.”

Expressing sympathy with Rodnovery may even get you promoted within the Wagner Group. A group of anonymous informants, who served in the Wagner group in Syria, told a Ukrainian publication Radio Liberty in 2018 “it is desirable to be a Rodnover” to progress in the Wagner group.

Hundreds of Wagner Men Vanish From Putin’s Designated Exile

Gabidullin, in a previous interview with a Russian language publication, has alleged that Dimitry Utkin, the group’s recently deceased commander, has Pagan beliefs of his own, alleging the general has multiple Rodnovery-inspired tattoos.

Portraits of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin are seen at a makeshift memorial in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia August 27, 2023.
Anastasia Makarycheva/Reuters

The insider also alleged that there was “an ideological department within the Wagner PMC (private mercenary company),” formed back in 2019 that is promoting the movement, which he derides as merely a “disguised form of Nazi ideology.”

Denys Brylov, a Ukrainian scholar focused on religion in the Slavic world, believes that the actual specific religious practices of the Rodnovers serving in Wagner may come secondary to the wider ideological component it can provide for soldiers.

Brylov believes that for Wagnerites neo-paganism is attractive due to its ability to provide a spiritual justification for the “cult of force”. In these types of fringe, hardline interpretations of pagan beliefs, the very act of battle or the shedding of blood can be “considered as an act of sacrifice to the pagan patron deities of warriors and war.”

That said, Brylov feels that in many cases persons “inclined to cruelty” may simply gravitate to neo-pagan ideology to justify these instincts, rather than the beliefs themselves being inherently warlike.

Rusich commander Alexei Milchakov, for instance, went viral on VK—effectively Russia’s Facebook—for beheading and eating a puppy, while barely out of his teenage years, and well before he joined the army. He would later joke he respected canines' rights to be “1-tasty, 2-fried, 3-not have a lot of veins and bones.”

Neopaganism in the West, which started to first grow in the 1960s, has yet to shake lingering associations with flower power and the hippie movement, though this hasn’t always been the case. Norse Neopaganism, the revival of old Viking and Northern European religious traditions, has often been co-opted by the far right, both in Scandinavia and in the U.S. Popular heavy metal musicians such as the Norwegian Varg Vikernes, who has served a 15-year jail sentence for murder, employ long-winded, fairly academic descriptions of Nordic paganism as a justification for antisemitism and a protest of what they view as the corrupting influence of Anglo-American liberalism. In the U.S., Norse revivalist ideas have become popular in Neo-nazi or skinhead groups, and there are even seen Asatrú ministries—a type of revivalist Norse paganism—popping up in jails across the country.

Western neo-pagans, at least between the 1960s and early 1980s, generally but by no means always, leaned left, anti-war, and pro-environment, and were seeking a more earth-centric religious philosophy. Now, western neo-pagan movements have shifted to include large numbers of individuals from across the left and right of the political spectrum.

Still, there is a definite bent towards libertarianism, according to Adrian Ivakhiv, a professor at the University of Vermont who has conducted research into Ukrainian pagan revivalism, which includes 'Ridnoviry,’ among other overlapping traditions.

Rodnovery, in contrast, tends to be marginally more socially right-wing than Western forms of neo-paganism and may portray Western liberalism and consumerism as a corrupting influence.

Rodnovers, according to Ivakhiv, ‘definitely’ often have a streak of Western anti-liberalism, because they see liberalism as a secularizing force that threatens traditional social institutions such as families and communities.

Ivakhiv feels that Rodnovery, in some but certainly not all manifestations, can play into the vaguely esoteric, right-wing sort of spirituality you can find the world over, uniting the Steve Bannon wing of the American right with the “Alexander Dugin wing” of Russian conservative politics that is intensely anti-secular.

Alexander Dugin, a Russian far-right political philosopher, is primarily known for conspiratorial rhetoric. He promotes neo-imperialist viewpoints known as ‘Eurasianism’ and characterizes Western liberalism as a spiritual evil. His popular book, The Foundations of Geopolitics, has been attributed by some sources as having some influence on Russian foreign policy and Vladamir Putin, even being called “Putin’s Brain,” although these claims are heavily disputed.

According to Ivakhiv, you would find certain strains of this anti-western thinking in both Ukrainian and Russian pagans. Ivakhiv believes this is more common among Russian pagans than in Ukraine, and many Ukrainians still see Russians as fellow slavs and blame Putin’s regime, not Russians in general, for the war.

Ivakhiv admits it is difficult to generalize, but that Ukrainian Rodnovers will tend to see as much commonality with Polish, Czech, Slovak, and South Slavic pagans as with Russian or Belarusians.

No area better demonstrates the appeal of Rodnovery among young Russian males than combat sports. In fact, these beliefs are held by some of the most successful Russian athletes. Heavyweight boxer Alexander Povetkin, who at one time held the WBA belt and had a high-profile title bout against Vladamir Klitschko in 2014, is a self-admitted pagan. He regularly wears a necklace of the Axe of Perun on his chest and on his left shoulder, and he has a tattoo of the star of Rus, another popular symbol in Rodnovery.

Povetkin has expressed some of the nationalist views that are so often parceled up with Russian interpretations of Rodnovery, telling a Russian sports publication: “I am a person who loves his homeland and his people. Therefore, consider myself a nationalist.” Though he shoots down the idea that nationalism necessarily means fascism or Nazism.

Denis Aleksandrovich Lebedev, who was also a WBA champion and was ranked as the best cruiserweight in the world at one point in 2016, has also come out as a believer, though he may have pivoted back to the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years, at least in public. Alexander Pavlovich Shlemenko, who has successfully competed in the middleweight division of UFC-competitor Bellator, has expressed pagan sympathies to local sports media.

In a collection of photos posted on the Russian social network VK, we can see members of the popular Moscow MMA club “R.O.D.b.,” potentially named after the supreme deity Rod, celebrating the key pagan festival the ‘Day of Perun.’ The aforementioned world-famous boxers are pictured wearing Rodnover garments.

Though it may be an overstatement to call combat sports clubs a recruitment pipeline for the military, there is certainly a connection there. These clubs are popular targets for Russian military advertising due to their core demographics of young males. It’s also not uncommon for the coaches and founders to have served in the Russian military, as is the case with the founder of the ROD MMA club.

Ivakhiv feels that young men involved in fields such as boxing, MMA, and military service all might be attracted to Rodnovery in part because of its traditional representations of masculinity, such as the god Perun, because it can provide a source of inspiration for hard training, a type of intense motivation that seems rooted in traditional ‘martial arts.’

Magda, a practicing Slavic pagan from Poland, who is attempting to reconstruct pagan traditions as part of the Witia Project, has her own theories about why Rodnovery might be popular with young men.

“I think that men are really lost in modern times. I think that masculinity, nobody really knows what it is anymore. Men are just looking for something that will tell them how to be.”

Magda also believes that Rodnovery may also appeal to young men because, at least in comparison to the Russian Orthodox church, it is pro-sex and physicality.

“In Slavic Native Faith, there's absolutely no question that physical stuff is part of it.”

“During Kupała, the Slavic pagan celebration of summer solstice, you are supposed to be in couples. You have the whole tradition of going off into the forest, which is where the couples were intimate. Men likely find this appealing.”

Russian language message boards dedicated to paganism, blocked to Western IP addresses, generally contain conservative viewpoints on most social issues such as homosexuality, abortion, and women’s place in society. There is also a clearly anti-establishment bent, with a number of posts critical of the Russian military's abuses of power as well as government censorship of the populace.

“A part of the searching for their own identity was basically just making up stuff,” Magda said. “You have all these crazy people nowadays, mostly men, and they get it in their head that they are the sons of Perun. Whether they are these fighters or these warriors, they have to gain fame or honor on the battlefield.

“It is just crazy,” she added.

Though many within the movement may use Rodnovery as a way to justify Russian nationalist ideals, so do many followers of the Russian Orthodox Church. There are likely more Muslims serving in the Russian army than Pagans, and yet many more Christians or Atheists. The Orthodox Church has arguably provided just as much backing for Russian Nationalism as Rodovery ever has, with Patriarch Kirill even personally blessing the invasion of Ukraine.

Still, it’s not surprising that a faith based so much on guesswork surrounding a long forgotten way of life, and with no central hierarchy, can attract devotees of questionable morals. For those who go into with a pre-existing tendency to be violent, bigoted, or nefarious, it’s a blank slate that offers a justification to do what they please.

And considering the current instability within Wagner and the Russian military more widely—that spiritual justification could spell trouble ahead.

The Daily Beast.

Gone to Croatan

I will not be blogging for the next few days as I am off to present a paper on; The Book of Vles and Ukrainian Neo-Paganism at the Gaia Gathering; The Canadian National Pagan Conference in Winnipeg over the long weekend. This is the third year this conference has happened.

Abstract

Discovered in a Ukrainian bombed out home at the end of WWI a set of wooden boards inscribed in runes was translated in the 1950’s and transcribed into English in the 1970’s. Known as the Book of Vles (or Veles[1]) the translator purports it to be the oldest known written account of pagan pre-Christian beliefs in the Ukraine.

The pagan traditions of the Ukraine being largely undocumented meant The Book of Vles was mired in controversy. Its discovery by a White Russian officer associated with the counter-revolutionary forces of Denikens[2] White army has led critics to devalue its authenticity. More modern writers use this dubious origin in an effort to associate it with modern racialist nationalists and Anti-Semites.

With modern research being conducted in the fields of ethnography, anthropology, archaeology, religious studies, and the opening up of the Ukraine to Europe as a democratic regime, the pagan lore in the Book of Vles is being validated by new discoveries.

This paper looks at the Book of Vles in light of the information we have on pagan traditions in the Ukraine, and in light of the work of Maria Gimbutas who herself was no stranger to controversy.

---

[1] Vles or Veles refers to a particular Ukrainian pagan diety.

[2] Deniken led the White Army a counter revolutionary force against the Ukrainian Anarchist Army of Nestor Makhno and the Bolsheviks Red Army under Trotsky, another Ukrainian, in the Russian Civil War 1918-1921.

See ya next week.


Oh yeah about Croatan;

TAZ: "Gone to Croatan"

The Search For Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture

Preface to Gone to Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of American Dropout Culture. - book reviews

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Defining Anarcho-Primitivism with John Moore

Interview--John Zerzan

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Ancient bone sheds light on Slav alphabet history

An inscribed cow bone dating back to the seventh century proves that Germanic runes were the oldest script ever used by the ancient Slavs, Czech scientists said Thursday.

© Jitka Janu The rare bone find appears to prove Germanic runes were used before a Slavic alphabet was invented in the ninth century

Up to now, it was believed that the oldest Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic, invented by Byzantine monk St Cyril in the ninth century.

Cyril and his brother St Methodius came to former Great Moravia, covering today's Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia and parts of Austria, Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the Balkans, on a mission in 863.

But the broken bovine rib found in the southern Czech Republic in 2017 and examined by an international team of Czech, Austrian, Swiss and Australian scientists proved the assumption about the alphabet wrong.  

© HANDOUT The Germanic runes belong to the so-called Elder Futhark script

"The team discovered this was the oldest inscription found with the Slavs," head researcher Jiri Machacek from Masaryk University in the city of Brno said in a statement.

The team used genetic and radio-carbon testing to examine the bone.

"These sensitive analyses have shown the bone comes from domesticated cattle that lived around the year 600 AD," said team member Zuzana Hofmanova, an analyst at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

Robert Nedoma from the University of Vienna identified the inscription as so-called Elder Futhark runes, used by the German-speaking inhabitants of central Europe in the second to seventh centuries.

The Elder Futhark alphabet comprised 24 signs, and the last seven were inscribed on the newly-found rib, according to the researchers.

"It is probable that the bone originally comprised the whole runic alphabet. Hence, it is not a specific message but rather a teaching tool," the scientists said.

frj/dt/mas/tgb

GIVING MORE CREDIBILITY TO THE BOOK OF VELES WHICH USED RUNES

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for VELES (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

Commentary: Water may soon be a tradable commodity on markets

"A globally integrated market for fresh water within 25-30 years" was predicted by this American professor a decade ago, and it is currently on track to becoming an accurate prediction.

Water flows in the Taynoye Reservoir near the city of Kholmsk, Sakhalin Island, in Russia's Far East, (Photo: AP/Igor Dudkovskiy)


Willem H Buiter
25 Dec 2021

NEW YORK CITY: Just over a decade ago, I predicted the arrival of water as an asset class.

I foresaw a massive expansion of investment in the water sector, including the production of fresh, clean water from other sources (desalination, purification), storage, shipping, and transportation of water


This would result in a globally integrated market for fresh water within 25 to 30 years. Once the spot markets for water are integrated, futures markets and other derivative water-based financial instruments – puts, calls, swaps – both exchange-traded and OTC (over-the-counter) will follow.

There will be different grades and types of fresh water, just the way we have light sweet and heavy sour crude oil today.

In fact, I believed that water would eventually be the single most important physical-commodity-based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities, and precious metals.

Ten years later, the future is now – though not quite what I expected.

A FUTURES MARKET IN WATER

In December 2020, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group created the first futures market in water. Cash-settled water futures with a maximum contract period of two years are now traded on the CME Globex electronic trading system.

I view this development as somewhat premature. For futures markets (and markets for other derivatives like put and call options) to function properly, the underlying spot market – in this case the spot market for physical water or water rights – should be liquid and transparent.

CME Group’s futures market is based on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, which tracks the cash price of physical water rights in California, based on transactions in surface water and in four groundwater markets.

Because the local and regional water supplies often are not connected, let alone fully integrated, the spot market underlying the futures market is too segmented; it does not represent a single, homogeneous commodity or asset.

Today’s spot markets for water and water rights thus are too illiquid and non-transparent to support an economically and socially useful futures market.

But there is hope. The regional and global integration of physical water supplies – and the associated spot markets for water and water rights – is making spectacular progress.

NEW PROJECTS IN WATER SHOW A BRIGHTER FUTURE

Two ongoing developments stand out. One is Project Greenland, created and sponsored by Thomas Schumann Capital, in partnership with North Atlantic Research and Survey.

Under its Iceberg Management and Water Extraction Programme, suitable free-floating North Atlantic icebergs weighing 1.2-1.4 million tonnes are towed to an operational location in Scotland, where the ice and water are prepared for international transportation.

The target markets are in the water-deprived Middle East and North Africa. The project is scalable and relies on established technologies and infrastructures being deployed in an innovative and disruptive manner.

Given time, additional technological advances, and proper spot-water pricing, icebergs from Antarctica also could become viable sources of fresh water.

A second fascinating entrant to the global water markets is SkyH2O’s Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG) system, a proprietary technology that extracts clean fresh water from the atmosphere.

The business model here is flexible and scalable, because AWG capacity can be deployed in a distributed manner to reach the ultimate customers, be they governments, households, or industrial, commercial, and agricultural users.

Its cost effectiveness, relative to alternatives like desalination and distillation, depends on atmospheric humidity and the price of energy in the proximity of the customers.

A drop of water falls off an iceberg melting in the Nuup Kangerlua Fjord in southwestern Greenland, Tuesday Aug. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

The future of water as a significant asset class depends on the willingness of governments – and ultimately of society at large – to price water at its long-run social marginal cost as a scarce renewable resource (including the cost of addressing the negative environmental externalities associated with its production and distribution).

Globally, over 70 per cent of fresh water is used in agriculture, and most of this usage is either free or heavily subsidised. Households in many countries also pay but a small fraction of the long-run social marginal cost of the water they use.

GROWING RECOGNITION OF FRESHWATER SCARCITY

I hope and expect that both these anomalies will soon end. There is growing recognition of deepening freshwater scarcity crises around the world, as well as a greater willingness on the part of policymakers to price negative environmental externalities appropriately.

To recognise water as a scarce renewable resource, a tradable commodity, and a marketable asset is not to diminish its unique significance as a good that is essential to life and viewed by many as a gift from God.

When socially efficient water pricing creates economic hardship, an appropriate fiscal response through targeted income support is required. If this fails – perhaps because the state cannot identify who is adversely affected by proper water pricing – a two-tier tariff may be required.

While a social subsistence level of water should be provided for free or at a heavily subsidised price, all additional water usage could be priced at its full long-run social marginal cost to preserve the right incentives.

Water is indeed becoming an asset class. Give it another decade, and exchange-traded funds for water and water rights will be part of the new normal for investors.

Willem H Buiter is a visiting professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University.

 PROJECT SYNDICATE.

‘Embrace discomfort’ to save planet says N Macedonia pioneer

By AFP
October 21, 2023

Going back to the land: Dimche Ackov inside his circular home 

made from clay - Copyright AFP Hector RETAMAL

Darko DURIDANSKI

One day Dimche Ackov had enough of the stress and pollution of urban life and chucked in his job and headed out into the North Macedonia countryside for a fresh start.

Nearly 10 years later, Ackov has channelled his burnout into a fully-fledged mission to educate people about living closer to nature.

His home, constructed entirely from locally-sourced, natural materials, is now a kind of workshop and school, where hundreds visit every year to learn the ways of sustainable living.

“When I came here to live this way, I didn’t have any knowledge. I started to research natural building and I saw that those workshops for natural building were very expensive,” said Ackov, who lives near the former industrial town of Veles, once branded one of the most polluted in the world.

“I promised myself that if I ever learn to build those houses, I will share that knowledge for free.”

The journey has not been without its pitfalls, with a steep learning curve.

“I didn’t even know what a hoe was,” the dreadlocked Ackov said of his tentative attempts to live off the land.

But the effort paid off, and Ackov built himself a beehive-shaped home from bags of soil that is cosy in winter and cool in summer. It has its own well, solar panels, vegetable garden and a fridge made from clay.



– ‘Make one small change’ –



To share the knowledge he has accumulated along the way, Ackov has hosted more than 40 workshops in the last eight years.

After the workshops many people “see the environment with different eyes”, he told AFP. “Then you can’t destroy it anymore. You feel a part of it.”

Ackov believes in embracing the “discomfort” of living in nature.

The goal is “tо give up something harmful, to make one small change. If today, millions of people don’t take a plastic bag, a huge change will be made,” he said.

Tiny North Macedonia, with a population of only 1.8 million people, is facing some steep environmental challenges.

Air pollution, inadequate waste treatment and illegal logging are major problems.

A recent international study found it had some of the worst air pollution in Europe, with almost two-thirds of people living in areas with more than four times the World Health Organization guidelines for dangerous air particles.

Despite the hurdles, Ackov believes “now is the time to fix what was damaged before”.

“We are now small streams, but we will all get together in one river and make huge changes. I am a big optimist, otherwise I wouldn’t live this way.”