What is truly global?: Bucky Fuller, Mongolian/Siberian lakes and African telco policy

Recently, I've spent a little spare-time (who has any of THAT these days) looking into lake areas of northern Mongolia (Lake Hovsgol) and Siberia (Lake Baikal). They've got to be some of the most fascinating and extraordinary places. It's all got me thinking . . .

The Lakes
Lake Baikal (famously) holds 20% (one fifth!) of the world's unfrozen fresh water and is larger (in volume) than the United States' five Great Lakes COMBINED. This shocks me - even though it shouldn't. Baikal has it's own, incredibly unique eco-system (the world's only fresh-water seals, among other things) and has recently been declared a UN World Heritage site, which should provide some much needed protections. The Russian Government even seems to have begun to see the value in preserving the ecology of the area. Despite this, uber-rich oligarchs have built foundations for enormous houses on its shores and a paper-mill at the southern end continues to be a problem (according to many environmentalists).

Lake Hovsgul is in Mongolia, near the border with Russia - in fact, very near Lake Baikal. From what little I've read, it seems to be much more environmentally undamaged (permafrost damage from climate change being one of the principle issues in the area). The lake is nicely situated between Siberian forest and Mongolian pasture, with mountains to the West and rolling hills and valleys to the East. Moreover, it's part of the Lake Baikal watershed basin - so it essentially feeds into Lake Baikal.

Water-sheds and Africa
So, after doing a lot of Googling and reading, I emailed Marc (my brother) about these places. One comment he made in response (focusing on the "politics" section of a UNESCO report I'd sent) concerned the idea of organizing political 'units' around water-sheds. It's a fascinating approach that jibes nicely with some thoughts I'd been having about global politics

I was listening recently to a Berkman Center podcast featuring Eric Osiakwan and Ethan Zuckerman talking about African telco policy and how various submarine fiber schemes had emerged. The most interesting of which was a plan called "AfricaOne" that would've built a "ring" of fiber around the continent. It was a fascinating discussion. At one point, Zuckerman referred to someone's work on Africa (can't remember the name off-hand, but I'll find it) in which they placed much of the blame for lack of development on the lack of INTER-national infrastructure. I think the analogy made was something along the lines of, "imagine how the State of Mississippi might faire if it were an isolated nation?" Answer: not too bloody well. The talk then moved to a discussion of emerging trade-blocks. But, for me, the infrastructure point was the MOST IMPORTANT observation made in the talk. It addressed exactly the problem that, I think, interests both my brother and me when we think about policy. Zuckerman's point is very like - though not the same as - the point Marc was making about watershed politics. Namely, that in order to produce good policy, you must have political units (or strong alliances perhaps) that reflect shared interests - whether those interests are telecommunications, environmental sustainability, trade, or whathaveyou - and contemporary national (and corporate) entities are often the poorly arrived-at result of (usually unfortunate) historic and/or geographic fortunes (see Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel).

Bucky's Perspective
So, what to do?

At this point it occurs to me that "AfricaOne" would've been a major contribution to the global grid proposed by Bucky Fuller (though Bucky's grid was ostensibly for electricity, there's no reason to believe it couldn't be done for fiber). Here's his grid as proposed on his (patented) dymaxion map:

(pretty f-ing cool if you ask me - W22C4M - Hey Google! Build us a Bucky fiber network!)

We might even ask (as Bucky might have), what would a Dymaxion projection of major global watershed basins look like? I couldn't find one. But, heres a Robinson projection:

And how might a collection of strong, watershed-based, political alliances (or - as I'm being fanciful - nation-like entities) affect global development???

That's my question/thought for the day.

Any thoughts? All comments welcome (after all, you read it . . . why not comment?)