AAAS Fellows Play Key Roles in Tsunami Relief Campaign

Jeff Albert began his AAAS/EPA Environmental Fellowship last year with extensive knowledge about water resource science and policy, and during the two-week orientation session in September, he was especially interested in a briefing on an emerging water purification product.

At the time, he had no inkling that his background and the briefing might mean life or death to thousands of people. But on the morning of Sunday 26 December, just hours after an earthquake and tsunami had slammed into shores all around the Indian Ocean, Albert found an urgent use for his expertise. He phoned a contact at Procter & Gamble, sent some emails, and within hours, he was busily raising funds for an effort to bring millions of packets of the company's water purification powder to tsunami survivors.

After reading the first news accounts that morning, "I had the suspicion that this was going to be truly horrible," Albert said in a recent interview. "I just immediately thought to myself, 'What can I do? What can I do?' From imagining this wave of destruction to imagining that there was going to be a need for water and no infrastructure to deliver it—it wasn't a difficult jump to make."

Albert spent the past weekend at home in Washington D.C., awaiting clearance to fly to Indonesia, where he planned to join in the effort to distribute millions of packets of the PūR water-purification sachets. Like a half-dozen or more current and former AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows, he has taken on a crucial role in bringing scientific and technical knowledge—and humanitarian concern—to bear on one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.

"AAAS Policy Fellows are a very special group of people," said Al Teich, AAAS director of science and policy. "Like Jeff Albert, they are highly qualified scientists who are eager to apply their knowledge to benefit society. We are fortunate that Jeff was not only in the right place at the right time, but he also knew exactly what to do. As Louis Pasteur once said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.'"

"Science and technology play a critical role in addressing natural disasters and alleviating human suffering," said Cynthia R. Robinson, who directs the S&T Policy Fellowship Program. "The program enabled Jeff to establish a link between private sector product development, government environmental efforts and NGOs in a way that will make a critical difference in the Asian tsunami crisis."

At the U.S. State Department, AAAS Diplomacy Fellows Anish Goel, Winnie Roberts, Tom Wang, Jenelle Krishnamoorthy and Eric Bone all have joined in round-the-clock operations of the Asian Tsunami Task Force, which is coordinating federal response to the disaster.

Goel has served in the role of task force deputy coordinator. The task force is working to locate missing Americans and organizing U.S. relief and recovery effort; it has worked to provide Secretary of State Colin Powell with up-to-date information about the affected countries, especially during his recent visits to the tsunami zone.

Goel knows first-hand the complexities of coordinating the government's disaster response. For example, agencies with diverse duties must work in harmony to provide relief. Their activities must be closely monitored to prevent both oversights and duplicate efforts. As part of his fellowship work in the Office of Regional Affairs in the Bureau of South Asian Affairs, Goel also will assist in development of long-range policy on issues such as possible debt relief to the affected countries and the establishment of a tsunami early warning system.

Roberts has worked in the development of a U.S. and international effort to expand the tsunami warning system globally by building upon the existing system operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and UNESCO's International Oceanographic Commission. That effort has been joined by former AAAS Diplomacy Fellow Shira Yoffe (2002-3).

Wang, assigned to the Office of Economic Policy at the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is coordinating efforts in his office on tsunami-related activities in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. APEC comprises 21 governments around the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia and Thailand, both of which sustained enormous losses in the tsunami.

In addition, former AAAS/EPA Environmental Fellow and current Revelle Fellow Joseph Helble is involved with early warning legislation in the office of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

These are just a few examples of the tsunami-relief efforts mounted by current and former AAAS S&T Policy Fellows.

Albert, 35, earned his Ph.D. from Yale University and holds an adjunct appointment at the Global Environment Program of Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. As a AAAS Environmental Fellow, he has been assigned to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development in the Global Change Research Program. That office has no direct tsunami-relief responsibilities, but Albert said he and others have been interested in technical innovations that can be used as people adapt to climate change.

During the September orientation for AAAS fellows, Albert said he learned of Procter & Gamble's PūR water purification product, and was immediately struck by the role it could play globally in a variety of situations.

Each sachet—about the size of a disposable ketchup packet—holds enough powder to disinfect and clarify 10 liters of water. PūR has been tested for the past five years, but has been used in emergency relief only since the start of the Iraq War and the devastating earthquake last year at Bam, Iran, said Gregory Allgood, director of safe drinking water for the Cincinnati-based company.

Even before the Indian Ocean disaster, Albert had been in discussions with Allgood and others at Procter & Gamble about the product and possible applications. But then, on the morning of 26 December, the need was obvious.

"I don't know why, but I just rolled out of bed and got on the Internet that morning," Albert explained. "I saw the early reports in the New York Times—it was only a few hours since the tsunami had hit." Where initial reports were vague about the damage, Albert, a water resources scholar and a veteran surfer, knows the power of the ocean, and knew of Indonesia's dense coastal population. Water systems were going to be badly damaged; supplies were bound to be contaminated by destroyed drinking water and sewage infrastructure.

Clearly, he realized, the toll of casualties, damage and dislocation was going to be enormous, and disease resulting from foul water could drive the toll far higher. He phoned Allgood, and later that day, Allgood returned the call.

"I just asked him, 'What's going on? What can I do?'" Albert said. In response, Allgood told him about past P&G collaborations with the disaster relief agency AmeriCares, and he urged Albert to raise money for the agency that could be used to purchase PūR. Procter & Gamble was selling the powder at 3.5 cents per sachet, roughly half the production cost.

Albert responded by drafting an email appeal to family, colleagues and friends—everyone in his address book—asking them to contribute to AmeriCares or the American Jewish World Service. To date, they've responded with over $85,000 in pledges, Albert said.

That's provided a crucial boost to the international effort to bring 10 million to 15 million sachets of the water purifier—enough to purify 150 million liters—to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other hard-hit regions.

"There are millions of sachets already on the ground, and millions more we know are going on planes," Allgood said in an interview. "There are millions more where there's work to be done to figure out exactly where they're going… Jeff's efforts, his fund-raising efforts, have been instrumental in making that happen."

Albert said his friends and family have passed his note on to their friends and family—by now, he estimates, it may have reached several thousand people. A similar effect is evident at Procter & Gamble, Allgood said.

"The story is inspiring other people to give," he said. "We've been letting our employees know what he's done and soliciting our employees to give, and we've been matching their gifts."

Today, Albert is packed and ready to fly to Indonesia, site of some of the most severe destruction. And, he says, he's gotten solid support from supervisors and colleagues at the EPA. He's going to monitor the distribution, but, he adds, there's also a research component.

"I'm not going just to give technology away," he said, "but to help advise how technology should be distributed and to monitor how the distribution is going. That's important not just for future disasters, but for figuring out how people adapt to difficult situations, and also how to follow up disaster relief with long-term water resources development, both in Indonesia and elsewhere in the developing world."

— Edward W. Lempinen

11 January 2005