– Thank you for joining us for this evening’s lecture, The Great Lakes to Great Lakes Initiative: Mutual Interests in Africa. I’m Paul Robbins, I’m the director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I cannot tell you how excited we are to host Senator Russ Feingold this evening. Given his history of service to the people of Wisconsin, as well as his international renown, we’re really lucky to have him here to provide what I know is going to be an outstanding lecture. As it turns out, Russ and the Institute have something in common, which is that we’re interested in water management, and we’re interested in partnerships in Africa. Many of you attended our Earth Day conference last year, where we hosted T.K. Khama, the Minister of the Environment, Wildlife, and Tourism from the Republic of Botswana. We’ll recall that he was incredibly passionate, a dynamic speaker, who moved many of the audience literally to tears with his remarks about conservation. And his commitment to the African nation, its natural resources underpins a drive to growing the relationship between UW-Madison and states throughout eastern, central and southern Africa. We just sent a bunch of UW researchers as a contingent to Botswana, where talks of collaboration and action took root. I think we’re going to be hearing a great deal more about Africa and the Nelson Institute.

And I would add that many of our impacts here on campus, not just the Nelson Institute, but the UW-Madison, are sometimes indirect. For example, we have a contingent here from the International Crane Foundation, and these are the folks who are saving species in East Africa and Southern Africa, and they’re connected to the Institute in myriad ways. We train students who go on and work at The Crane Foundation and organizations like it around the world, so the UW has a lot to be proud of, and a lot of its alums are out there in Asia, in Southeast Asia, in South Asia, and in Africa making an incredible difference. I’d also like to thank our partners in tonight’s effort, the La Follette School of Public Affairs. La Follette has been a really great partner for the Nelson Institute for many years, and we’ll be partnering with us in the future around the Nelson Institute’s 50th anniversary celebration. 50th, 50 years of the Nelson Institute. It sure feels like it to me, and 50 years, actually, on the anniversary of Earth Day. In addition, I also want to thank Wisconsin Public Television for being here tonight to video record the lecture.

So without any further ado, I have the honor of introducing our speaker. Senator Feingold served as a US senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011, and as a Wisconsin state senator from 1983 to 1993, that is a lifetime of public service. He’s known for his firm commitment to bipartisan cooperation and action, for which we should all feel a great nostalgia. (audience laughing) Senator Feingold is currently a visiting lecturer here at UW-Madison, in the International Division’s African Studies program. Former to that engagement, he spent this summer lecturing in the Nelson Institute’s environmental conservation professional master’s program. The students in that program had access to Russ Feingold. This is a good place to go to school. Having access to an expert of his stature was really a thrill and an enormously valuable experience for our students. Senator Feingold has also taught at Stanford University and served as visiting lecturer in law and as the Martin R. Flug visiting professor in the practice of law at Yale Law School. From 2013 to 2015, Russ served as the United States special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is what brings him here tonight. In this capacity, he worked for peace in the long-troubled region, and was successful in helping broker a peace agreement between regional governments and a militia group known as M23. And I think the peculiar and fantastic genius of what Feingold achieved is that while he was working on some fairly grim issues of war and strife in a region, he had the vision to see that what mattered to people most were the things that they share, which is the lakes and the water and the wildlife. And by bringing together conflict resolution on a parallel track with preserving the environment that everyone valued, I can only hope that the former process was benefited by the latter.

Russ also spearheaded the Great Lakes to Great Lakes Initiative, which brought American experts together with African lake specialists. This was a very important exchange because of the similarities between these two gigantic lake systems. While he served in office, I’m closing, Russ was a champion of environmental issues and worked to protect our treasured natural resources, including his beloved Wisconsin Apostle Islands. He combated climate change by expanding clean energy, and supported efforts to safeguard the water we drink, and he keeps doing that today, as you can see. It is my personal, great honor to welcome Senator Russ Feingold here tonight. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage. (audience applauding)

– Hello everybody. Paul, thank you so much. I am awfully pleased to be back on this campus, 47 years later from the first time I walked up Bascom Hill, for my first class. And I can tell you, despite all the interesting places I’ve had a chance to go, there still is no better place than this campus anywhere, I love this place. (audience applauding) I’d like to thank the Nelson Institute for making this possible, for allowing me to get to know the program there and Paul Robbins is a dynamic leader of the Nelson Institute. I have just been delighted to see him and work with him, and I want to thank Emily Reynolds for all the help in making this lecture work tonight. My work here this semester is combined especially with the African Studies Program, in the IRIS Program, the International Studies area, and I’m teaching a course on the Great Lakes region of Africa there as well, so this is the perfect setup for the topic I’m going to cover tonight, and naturally, I can’t really begin without acknowledging who that Nelson Institute is named after, the great Gaylord Nelson. Obviously, Gaylord was a great governor and a senator. He was a leader on land conservation, air and water pollution, wilderness preservation, and, not to mention, of course, one of the biggest things is the founder of Earth Day.

But he also is somebody I got to know a little bit. He actually advised me, I was so thrilled when he endorsed me for the United States Senate in 1992 against better known opponents. And after I won, of course, one of the first calls I made was to former Senator Nelson to thank him for his support. And what Gaylord said to me, is he said, “Listen, now, when you get out there on the floor of the Senate, these guys,” and it was, of course, almost all guys then, “these guys really know their stuff. The people that get up there and talk, they are very familiar with it, so be careful.” He said, figure out some things that you know the most about, and that will really serve you in terms of the way your colleagues respect you and work with you. So I remembered that advice, and you know, I never thought, of course, that it would end up being a situation where I was involved with Africa, but it ended up that way. In fact, I didn’t know a lot about Africa when I became a United States senator, despite the excellent education I had. A lot of the education wasn’t about the continent of Africa. In fact, I didn’t know much about the Great Lakes region at all, in fact, I didn’t know the term, and you know, when I actually got the position to be the special envoy, I had to call up a lot of political people and say, “Look, thanks for everything you’ve done for me, but for a couple years, I can’t do any politics.” And I remember calling up a guy that had been very helpful from the Democratic Party in Tennessee, and he said, “Russ, it is so wonderful that you’re doing this for President Obama.” He said, “This is great work you’re going to be doing. What are you going to do, be measuring lake levels in Lake Michigan?” And I said, “No, no, it’s a different Great Lakes region,” but it was a mistake that, of course, everybody naturally would make.

But how did I get interested in the African issue at all? It really happened because I went to the Senate, thanks to many of you, in 1992, and I had to get committee assignments. And I had the opportunity to join the Foreign Relations Committee, which is something I always had hoped to do, if I ever had a chance to be a United States senator. And a number of people came up to me and said, “Well, this is terrific. You’re going to really enjoy this committee, it’s exciting.” They said, “But you know, at first, as a freshman, you’re probably going to get stuck with the Africa subcommittee.” And I heard that and I thought, I think that Gaylord’s talking to me. If that’s the attitude of United States senators about the continent of Africa, somebody needs to go on that committee and stay on that committee as long as they are a United States senator, so I took the Africa subcommittee, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made, in terms of the opportunities I had in the Senate and as they continue, and I owe that to Gaylord Nelson. Now, I became known as the expert in the Senate on Africa. It took about three hours. One of the– the way it works there is that if you’re a member of the subcommittee, after a while, you’re either the chairman or the ranking member.

For a while there, the Republicans were in the majority, of course, so I was the ranking member, the top Democrat. And one of the new Republicans was appointed to take over the committee, a guy that I got along with, and he said, “Can I come to your office and talk to you about Africa?” I said, “Absolutely, I’d be delighted.” So he comes over, and he says, “Russ, my first question is, is Africa just one country?” So I thought, okay, there’s some work to do here. The truth is, though, it took me six years of holding hearings and a number of topics related to Africa to even begin to sort of make some interconnections or comparisons, to really understand the nature of the continent, which has some 54, 55 countries. And of course, while I was doing this, I was also doing other things too, campaign finance reform, going to every one of the 72 counties, learning the nuances of the dairy pricing system based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and fighting some dumb wars, so I didn’t have the chance to always work on these issues, and I want to tell you, I am fully aware that I am not an expert, that’s my disclaimer. These acres here are loaded with experts on Africa, so there is no need for that, but as chairman and ranking member of the committee, this subject of the future of Africa really has become a part of me. And especially the part, the Great Lakes region of Africa, which, let’s see if I can do this.

So, this is the area, right here on this side of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is the Great Lakes region. That was the focus of the work I did as special envoy, but the truth is that as chairman of the committee, I didn’t know much about this region at all, and I’d had a few memories of it, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I remember as a– you might not believe this– but as a seven year old, seeing a news flash on the TV. Remember when news flashes were actually, breaking news was actually breaking news? It wasn’t after a bathroom break at a hearing? And it said, “Patrice Lumumba assassinated in Congo.” Well, of course, our CIA was involved in that. That country, finally, after a brutal rule by Belgium, had a free election and Patrice Lumumba was elected, and within a few months, the United States and others managed to have him killed. And then, for those of you that have ever read the book, King Leopold’s Ghost, the brutal story of the reign of King Leopold the Second over the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the great tragedies, some 10 million people died, as they exploited the people of that country to collect the rubber for our car tires and bicycle tires. And then, of course, this is also the region of one of the most horrific modern tragedies, the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Rwanda is one of these two tiny countries. So talk about a place that has suffered enormous tragedy, all the way through 1994.

And I assumed, after I had left the Senate in 2010, that I would not be working on Africa again, but one day, I was at Stanford Law School, enjoying the view, the palm trees, the hummingbirds and everything, and the phone rings. It’s the Secretary of State, John Kerry. He said, “The President and I would like you to go to Africa and work on the situation in the Great Lakes region of Congo.” What had happened is that even after the genocide in Rwanda, in eastern Congo, right over the lake, there had been two Congo wars. And in these Congo wars, six million people died. Over two million women were sexually attacked. 500,000 boys, basically, 10, 12, 13 year olds, were forcibly conscripted to join militias. All of this had happened in the 1990s in this part of the world, after the Rwandan genocide. And so, by the time I got this call asking me to take a role in trying to resolve the military conflict there, there were now 45 armed groups just in the eastern Congo alone. So this was a different kind of assignment. Instead of sort of looking at Africa from 30,000 feet as I did as a senator, looking a little bit at each of the countries, this was an intensive effort to work on one part of the region. And in fact, this was a place where I went 15 times in less than two years. But our efforts on this, the US government efforts, were not isolated, we actually had an international commitment to this. A group of special envoys were appointed and we actually came together as a team to try to influence the region.

Here’s the gallery of rogues, the very tall guy is not a special envoy, that is Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, the subject of a great deal of our attention and pressure, ’cause of concerns about Rwanda backing some of these armed groups in eastern Congo. But in addition to me, and by the way, I thought that suit actually fit me. It obviously did not. Of course, on the left of the president is Mary Robinson, the first woman president of Ireland, who was the special envoy for the UN, there was an African Union special envoy, there was an European Union special envoy, and the special representative of the Secretary General for Congo. So we acted as a team, and we were able, because we acted together and ’cause we traveled together, to put pressure on these presidents to stop interfering in eastern Congo. We were more effective that way. But how do I get to this topic of the Great Lakes in this context? It was primarily a focus, of course, on trying to resolve these violent conflicts that were going on. And there were many other and are many other topics relating to conservation and wildlife and others, that needed attention, of course, mammal wildlife, elephants, gorillas, rhinos, chimps.

There was just a horrific incident in Botswana, involving elephants. Cranes, as was mentioned, I take great pride in the fact that just a few miles from my home is the International Crane Foundation. Almost every morning I go out, and am thrilled, in Pheasant Branch Creek to see the sandhill cranes and wonder how they get along with the geese. But, this is a big deal in Africa. They are very, as you know, interested in cranes, and in fact, on the Ugandan flag that is their– That is actually on their flag, the cranes that you are helping to preserve. So that’s one of the issues. Forests, they call the Great Congo Forest the second lung of our environment in the world. And the issues of abuse there, the national parks in Africa and particularly in the Congo are a place of tremendous exploitation and violent groups and poaching, even though they are some of the greatest parks in the world, agriculture issues, eastern Congo is a place of great agricultural potential, tremendous farmland, but overwhelming population density, and of course, the huge issue of conflict minerals. The exploitation of this particular region, the richest region in the world of minerals, all of these are issues that deserve attention. So, how did I get to the point of wanting to work on the lakes issue? I managed to get over there all these times, and we had to stay in relatively safe, relatively modest hotels, but I noticed that they were on these gorgeous settings on these Great Lakes. And the more and more I saw these Great Lakes, and then came out, and these armed convoys, where we’d go where we were going and see the tragedy and the devastation, I started to think more about what role the Great Lakes themselves could play in resolving the conflict, and future potential. I started saying internally to my staff, “How come nobody ever talks about the lakes themselves?” That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but compared to, obviously, the armed groups, forestry, mining, and economic possibilities, the only time anybody said anything about the lakes was about the potential for oil and gas exploration as a part of the economic development idea for the future.

But as I got there more often, I started to think about this region in particular. This is the more specific map of the Great Lakes region. And you see some of the larger lakes there, but there are also smaller lakes, this Lake Kivu, that I was just talking about, is the place where, after the Rwandan genocide, two million refugees, as well as the people that committed the genocide, fled Rwanda across a little bridge here, between Rwanda and Congo, and two million of them settled in a refugee camp in Goma. And that’s where all this horror began, when this became an international situation. So, obviously, I was looking at the lakes positively, and the biggest of the lakes, of course, is Lake Tanganyika, it is the longest lake in the world. It is the oldest lake in the world, it is the second deepest lake in the world, and it is the second greatest volume of any lake in the world. I will be corrected on this if I’m wrong, but at least we have one distinction here, Lake Superior has the greatest surface area, which I always emphasize with great pride, but this is a major, major lake of importance, as are many of the other great lakes in the region. And, you know, it’s funny, because there was something called the Peace, Security and Cooperation Agreement that was signed when all the international communities started putting pressure on the region, saying, we need to get rid of these armed groups, we need to make sure the Democratic Republic of the Congo has elections and takes care of its military problems, but we also should have a positive economic dividend for the region, people should come together with an economic conference, but frankly, none of those documents ever mentioned the lakes themselves.

So this is where the idea of a Great Lakes to Great Lakes Conference comes from. The idea actually crystallized for me while I was having dinner with my longtime friend from Wisconsin and DC, who is here tonight, I believe, Susan Hedman. She was working in the EPA, I was working in the State Department. To me, this is a great example of not what you know, but who you know. For me it was knowing her, or I would not have had any idea about how to proceed with this. And she was clearly the stronger side of what you know on this topic, and especially the relevance and comparison to the Great Lakes of our part of the world. Susan, at the time, was the head of the Region Five administrator of the EPA, and also, President Obama had appointed her to be the Great Lakes program manager. So, we’re old friends, in fact, we got to be friends up on Lake Superior, but we started joking around a little bit about how different our jobs are, even though the Great Lakes is in both of our titles. And so, it was sort of funny, but then we started talking. And she told me that she had already done outreach to a big South American international lake, Lake Titicaca, where she actually worked with the Canadians to create some understandings, trans-boundary understandings between Bolivia and Peru. So she already had an idea about how to do something like this, and it didn’t take much for us to see if we could pull off an initiative that would connect the Laurentian, the Great Lakes of our area, with great lakes in the African Great Lakes. We got to work, in terms of the internal US government, she at the EPA and I at the State Department, and meanwhile, I started including, in my face to face conversations with, what I like to call, the forever presidents of the region, because these guys have all been presidents the whole time I was in the United States Senate and beyond, unfortunately.

But they didn’t always like seeing me, because a lot of the conversations were about pressuring them on things like stop smuggling minerals, please stop arming illegal militias, how come you’re going to run for re-election even though the constitution says you can’t, why have your political opponents disappeared? You know, it wasn’t always fun for them. So I, one time, surprised them by, as President Bush would have said, “looking into their eyes,” and I said, “What about the lakes here, what about the Great Lakes?” Well, they sort of visibly relaxed and smiled. Maybe they just were glad they didn’t have to talk about the other stuff, but I felt there was real warmth and affection, and genuine affection for the lakes. And they invited us to have meetings with their environmental ministers. I think in the best sense, even though some of these presidents have done awful things, maybe they realized there was an opportunity that there could be some kind of a peace dividend for them and the people of the region, if they would stop the fighting in the region. It was also an opportunity for the United States to advance our interest in science and environmental issues, and to show our intentions in the region beyond conflict resolution. The Chinese and the Russians and others are very active there, especially for purposes of exploiting the resources for their own benefit, and the United States, actually, is held in high regard.

I saw a poll just the other day from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the United States is still the most popular country in the region, but the comment I got time and again is, we appreciate what you’re doing, Russ, but you guys aren’t here, you’re not really present like these other world powers are. So the benefit I saw here was all about peace creating and the value of conflict resolution in a more concrete way. So the planning began, and we came up with a good location for it, right on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in Kigoma. Here is the invitees, we have had three or four days in this wonderful setting. You may recognize Kigoma because it’s just a few miles away from where Henry Morton Stanley walked into a hut and said, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” This is where that happened, because these explorers at that time were particularly interested, and the whole of Europe was enthralled with the question of what was the source of the Nile? And there was a big debate between whether it was Lake Tanganyika or Lake Victoria. So this is where the conference was held, and it was on this Great Lake, Tanganyika. Before I say a little bit about what we found in the findings at the event, I’d like to say a little bit about a comparison of these two lake systems.

As Susan Hedman pointed out at this conference, in the initial formal presentation, the two systems taken together, Great Lakes region here, the Laurentian system, and the African one, hold nearly half of the earth’s entire fresh surface water. The Laurentian Great Lakes has greater surface area, but the African Great Lakes has much greater volume, as Lake Tanganyika alone holds 19,000 cubic kilometers of fresh water. It’s 17% of the world’s supply on its own. By comparison, I think Lake Superior is about 10%. And I think you’re generally aware of what these lakes are, but the big ones are Tanganyika, Victoria, and Malawi, but there are smaller ones that I’ve mentioned, such as Lake Kivu, Lake Albert, Lake George, that are part of the general region, and Lake Edward. And if you think these aren’t relevant, there recently were conflicts and soldiers died in battles just north of this region between Uganda and a province known as Ituri. So the lakes are not just a body of water that are not involved in these conflicts, they become involved. One of the facts that Susan Hedman pointed out is that parts of both of these systems, the Great Lakes, the Laurentian Great Lakes, and these Great Lakes in Africa, actually flow, discharge, into the Atlantic Ocean. That is not surprising when you think about our Great Lakes, but it’s a little counterintuitive, but as she tells me, Lake Tanganyika, and I think Lake Kivu, flow in part into the Lualaba River in Congo, which, if you look at Congo here, and of course, the Congo River is an enormous river, so it flows here, Lualaba River goes up to Kinsangani, which I don’t know if you ever read Naipaul’s book, A Bend in the River, that’s the bend in the river, and then the river takes a big bend and goes all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean.

And so, you don’t think of this as something to do with the Atlantic Ocean, but it is. But the outflows are less than 1% a year, so pollutants can be very persistent in both systems. Both systems are very complicated because of international and internally having many jurisdictions, and Canada and the United States, of course, for ours. And numerous African countries there, so you need a binational or international commissions and agreements, like the Great Lakes Compact. And the International Joint Commission was created already in 1909, and of course, the participation of tribal authorities is very important. And the same goes in the African region as well. Of course, they have a problem we don’t have, which is the presence of these militias, and also activity, sometimes illicit activity by groups or people sponsored by China or Russia, and others, uncontrolled actors in the region who can do great damage as well. But the lakes here, the Laurentian lakes have had to be updated in terms of our regulations, many times. Susan led the negotiation for the amended Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the US and Canada, and the same kinds of things have to happen in the African Great Lakes. But of course, they lack some of the infrastructure, some of the scientific capacity, and the ability to do that, but having said that, it’s just a very exciting place to think about. When you think about Lake Tanganyika, the deepest, second deepest lake in the world.

As I understand it, nobody’s ever been down there. No one has ever been able to penetrate or have the technology to actually see what’s going on at the bottom of this lake. I mean, it’s a little bit like the frontier of the source of the Nile, and when I sort of expressed my fascination with it, I worry about making sure we don’t get into that old colonial syndrome, where we as Westerners are very interested to find out what’s down there, and it’d be an adventure, but we have to make sure we don’t bypass the people that live there. Those explorers who described this region as empty, as if the people that were there didn’t count. Well, they do count, and they have been prevented from having the benefits of the great resources of that region for a terribly long time. My favorite way of looking at this occurred at the conference, when we were standing, overlooking at the lake, and Professor David Lodge, who was then at Notre Dame, said to me, he said, “Senator, how old do you think the Great Lakes, the Laurentian Great Lakes are?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “10,000 years.” He said, “Guess how old this lake is? 10 million years,” and so to think that nobody knows for sure everything that’s going on in that lake is, to me, fascinating and the source of interest for many people. So, the conference got together with experts, scientific experts, political representatives from the United States and Canada and some of the local regions, some of the authorities, and it was a very interesting series of days.

I have to admit that I didn’t understand all of the science, but I did the best I could. But the major topics were the past, current, and future climate change issues concerning us, stresses on fisheries, food supply and economic stresses, controlling invasive species, the protection of watersheds and catchment areas, and the positive possibility of ecotourism. Some interesting takeaways to highlight from the report, we recognized common problems. The African Great Lakes is one of the most endangered freshwater ecosystems, and their fisheries are in decline. It’s not unlike the Laurentian Great Lakes challenges of toxic contaminants and contaminated sediments, nutrient loading and runoff, the impact of exotic species, and of course, climate change. If you want to get a book that is wonderful that has just come out that discusses this in terms of Laurentian Great Lakes, Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal has just put out a book called, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, and it is a fabulous, almost novel like account of all the problems and mistakes that have been made, particularly since the St. Lawrence Seaway was created in the 1950s. Another issue is the comparison of the lakes within the region. Less remote and far more affected is Lake Victoria, between Uganda and Tanzania, where there are linkages of poverty and environmental degradation.

It’s the largest inland fishery in the world, but it is in decline because of soil erosion, nutrient runoff, they introduced, intentionally, Nile perch, which is a delicious fish, if you ever get over there, but it eats everything else in the lake, causing enormous problems environmentally. And there is the choking by water hyacinths. And water hyacinths, I understand, are beautiful plants, but they are native or indigenous, only to the Amazon, but the Belgians decided, well, these would look good here in Rwanda, and they ended up choking some of these lakes. I understand that it was also done in Louisiana, around the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, and a congressman came one vote short of getting a proposal through to have hippopotamuses brought down there to eat the water hyacinths. So, nothing like Wikipedia, right, to give you this kind of information. You can double check it. But you know, to compare, Lake Superior, I just read a report that people at Nelson Institute are well aware of, that Lake Superior is the least affected, negatively affected, of the Great Lakes here, and Lake Erie is probably the most greatly affected. The comparison there would be Lake Victoria is the most affected, and Tanganyika, for the reasons I was just describing, is probably the least affected at this point, and we have an opportunity, working together, to try to make sure that that lake will not suffer in the same way that others have. On the climate front, obviously, both systems are affected. This has enormous relevance to international issues, the warming that is occurring is having an impact on the nutrients coming up in Lake Tanganyika and hurting fish populations, and I guess, it’s been volatile in the past, but this is at a level that is enormous, and especially when there is more rainfall because of climate changes, the evaporation increases.

In terms of fisheries, on a number of occasions, when we were trying to get the situation in Burundi, which is just south of Rwanda, the capital is Bujumbura, I remember sitting at a cafe and hoping that the hippopotamuses would come out, which they were supposed to do every day at 5:00 p.m., but they didn’t that day, but I was thinking, how can it be that this incredible lake is here, and everybody is living right near the lake, and Burundi is the most food insecure country in the entire world? It just didn’t make sense, but, apparently, it has something to do with climate change. The greater heat, there’s a debate, actually, between whether it’s climate change or overfishing practices. And climate change, it could be a greater heat reduces the potential for vertical mixing and limiting nutrient fluxes, on the other hand, overfishing can occur by the use of destructive fishing gear and methods. Underwater lamps, gill nets, and, sadly, malaria nets, and this is particularly sad for me to think about, because when I was a senator, I went there to Tanzania, to, in part, work on the malaria issue, and the ambassador was Mark Green, the former Wisconsin congressman, Republican congressman from Green Bay. And Mark and I went around for a couple of days looking at this wonderful initiative to make sure that everybody had a malaria net, to protect themselves from malaria.

And it worked, it got down to 1%, in Tanzania. What do I find out, then? People realized you could use those malaria nets for fishing, but they’re too fine a mesh, which scoops up things that it shouldn’t. So, it’s sort of like no good deed goes unpunished, but it is another example of where unintended consequences can occur. Invasive species, the African Great Lakes do not have the big commercial shipping and ballast issues that we have here, but it could arise with smaller boats, and you know, when we start talking about the greater tourism opportunities there, and commercial fishings, again, it’s like the irony with the malaria issue. The greater activity there could lead to more invasive species. Prevention is better than eradication here, and again, David Lodge has warned of the economic, as well as the ecosystem damage and greater in-connectedness of the world that happens between air travel and shipping. So we have to be on guard if we’re going to encourage these other activities, commercial fishing and others, to make sure that we do not introduce, either intentionally or unintentionally, these invasive species. There is the danger that we know about here, for the protection of catchment and watersheds from pollution, in particular, algal blooms. The danger of the kind of thing we have in this state, the blue-green algae, which is, to me, one of the great horrors that has occurred in this state, where people can’t swim in their lakes. The same thing is possible, if it happened in Lake Victoria and this region, if we don’t get ahead of it.

I understand from my friends that we actually even have these blue-green algaes now, for the third year in a row, on Lake Superior, which is really disturbing. These are dense, sometimes these dense blooms decrease light penetration, which damages aquatic vegetation and climate change may accelerate this. And then, the African experts listed the top pollution sources, and here is where you remember that it’s not just what happens in the water, it’s what happens on the shore, the human activity on the shore, and effect it has on the water. Erosion due to deforestation, fertilizer and pesticides, mineral extraction, palm oil extraction, small industry near water, port activities, wastewater, and possible offshore oil extraction. The challenges of water treatment facilities in communities on these waters is overwhelming and is something that we were told about. In fact, I’m pleased to say that The Nature Conservancy, well before we even did this already had something called the Tuungane Program, where they are actually working, not only with the water issues, but with agriculture issues, with forestry issues and others to recognize the impact that all of this human activity has on the watershed.

Finally, there is that potential of ecotourism. This is a magnificently beautiful place, and in fact, there are more varieties of cichlids, these gorgeous fishes, than anywhere in the world. 1,500 varieties in the Great Lakes of Africa, 250 alone in Lake Tanganyika, and the pretty amazing thing about it, although I didn’t get a chance to do the snorkeling. I chickened out. I should have done it. But when you go from one cove to another, this lake is so old that there are different species in each cove because of the natural selection that has occurred, and this is very near, just a short distance from Jane Goodall’s famous work on monkeys and chimps, so there is a possibility here of a wonderful tourism opportunity. Now, this could be an opportunity for employment, and is already an opportunity for employment. One of the speakers was from the Lakeshore Lodge, a young, I think, German couple, who actually had created a lodge there to allow people to have the opportunity to travel there, enjoy it, and provide opportunities for the people there, but that creates issues. How do they deal with waste management and power issues? How do the staff members get the skills they need? Because this is, in fact, a very remote place. This is not like going to one of the coastal areas in Africa, this is very deeply inland, and is a challenge from that point of view.

So the recommendations and the next steps that were recommended are somewhat evident from the points I made, the urgent need to do environmental assessment on the possibility of oil drilling in Lake Tanganyika, the need for a data management system led by the Lake Tanganyika authority, the capacity for environmental monitoring, and the need for a plan for fisheries or management control of invasive species. And I’m pleased to say that when I did talk to The Nature Conservancy, who took the lead on moving forward, this after the conference, they said that our conference had really given them the kick that they needed to go forward on this. I like to think that we were a catalyst. I think it shows that the slightest US involvement can stimulate a great deal of non-governmental activity, especially when it has international characteristics like this. The Nature Conservancy held a conference in Entebbe, in Uganda, in 2017, and they created an information sharing website as a top priority for that kind of information sharing. And, of course, there are financing challenges. The US government wasn’t financing this, but fortunately, the MacArthur Foundation, which participated in our conference in Lake Tanganyika, provided funding for this. Sadly, they have changed their priorities now, and so that funding is no longer there, and so I can’t say that this is a complete success story, it needs to be rejuvenated.

But this is why I was eager to share this story with you. It’s a shame that it isn’t moving more quickly, but I hope it shows people here the fascinating things and careers that people can have. The African Great Lakes have been around for a long time, so despite the challenges, there is a great opportunity to do good for people there, people that are interested in science and economic development and population issues, environmental stewardship and innovation, as well as the enjoyment that is possible. We can benefit from this work on climate change, and the Laurentian Great Lakes will benefit from lessons learned as well, as will the Great Lakes of Africa. There are other places in Africa where these kinds of challenges are enormous, such as the Niger River delta. I remember being in Nigeria on that trip and going with the Nigerian Navy, such as it was, and we went all the way down and saw these oil flares along this great river, and you know what? I never saw a bird, there were no birds. Just oil flaring, and so, these are enormous challenges that are still out there, and the motto that I used in the job I had, was that this region needs sustained attention. Sustained attention from us, sustained attention from the world. And it can affect us, the failure to do this can greatly affect us– if this is going to go back for me, maybe not, yeah, there we go. So, if you don’t think this has relevance to today, meaning today, NPR this morning.

You heard about this Ebola outbreak? There is a significant outbreak of Ebola virus right here in North Kivu. This is where all this occurred. This is where the six million people died. And you know why they can’t control it? It’s not like what had happened in Equateur, over here, which is not exactly a place in great shape, but it wasn’t a conflict area. They can’t get in there because of the armed groups. It’s because of the inability to do conflict resolution that we are facing what could be one of the most serious Ebola outbreaks of all time. And so, this does affect everyone. And I think I’ve reached the point in my life now, where, like Gaylord Nelson gave me advice, maybe I can give advice now. I’m old enough and have made enough mistakes. And my advice to those of you, especially younger people is, you have no idea what things you’re going to be working on in your life. You know what you’re workin’ on now, maybe you know what you’re workin’ on for the next 10, 15 years, but life has many surprises, especially since we live a lot longer now, if we’re fortunate. I didn’t know a thing about Africa. I knew a little more than the guy who had asked me if it was one country, but I didn’t know a thing about Africa ’til I was 40 years old, and now, 25 years later, it’s one of the most important things in my life. It’s an opportunity for careers.

It’s an opportunity for activism, for bipartisanship, for nonpartisanship, for science and for politics, and it reminds me, to conclude, of one time when I was about 10, 11 years old. You know what, my sister’s here, she’ll know that I would’ve said something like this. I said to my dad, I said, “I think someday, I’d like to be United States senator and work on these kind of things,” I said, “but Dad, we’ve already got the two best senators in the country, Bill Proxmire and Gaylord Nelson.” I said, “I’m worried there’s not going to be anything left to do.” (audience laughing) And he said, “I remember when I was about your age, and I had the same concern about Fighting Bob La Follette.” He said, “You don’t have anything to worry about.” And you don’t have anything to worry about. Good luck on taking on these challenges, thank you.
(audience applauding)