The International Competition A HOUSE IN LUANDA: PATIO AND PAVILION, promoted by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale together with Luanda Triennale, with the goal of selecting the best proposal for the conception of a family unit house in Luanda, was the most participated International Competition of Ideas ever to take place in Portugal, thus showing that the Lisbon Architecture Triennale completely fulfils its international calling. We received 599 proposals, 588 of which were accepted to the competition. Architects from 44 countries applied their proposals, coming from all the 5 continents.

WINNERS “A HOUSE IN LUANDA: PATIO AND PAVILION”

• 1º PRIZE Work nº64 – Coordinator Pedro Sousa + Tiago Ferreira + Tiago Coelho + Bárbara Silva + Madalena Madureira (PORTUGAL)
• 2º PRIZE Work nº275 – Coordinator Cristina Peres + Diogo Aguiar + Teresa Otto + Tiago Rebelo de Andrade (PORTUGAL)
• 3ºPRIZE Work nº194 – Coordinator Pablo Allen Vizán (SPAIN)
• 4ºPRIZE Work nº307 – Coordinator João Navas + Fernando Reis Martins + Filipe Zumáran + João Ribeiro da Fonseca + Eduardo Viana + Luís Leocádio (PORTUGAL)

Silva + Madalena Madureira

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It seems impossible, but biofuel startup Joule Biotechnologies claims that it has successfully produced fuel out of thin air–sort of. The company’s mysterious engineered microbes require just sunlight and CO2 to squirt out ethanol, diesel, or other hydrocarbons.

Joule’s Helioculture process uses photosynthetic microbes placed in a non-freshwater solution. The organisms capture sunlight and produce “Joule liquid energy,” which is similar to biofuel but isn’t derived from biomass.

According to the patent, Joule’s secret sauce is an engineered cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) containing “a recombinant acyl ACP reductase (AAR) enzyme and a recombinant alkanal decarboxylative monooxygenase (ADM) enzyme.” That witches’ brew of cyanobacteria and enzymes allows for hydrocarbon production in a single step. The organisms just capture sunlight to produce “Joule liquid energy”, a biofuel-like substance. Joule liquid energy can be an ethanol or diesel fuel replacement.

Unlike similar algae fuel solutions, Joule’s process doesn’t require feedstock or fresh water and can be conducted on non-arable land. The process also produces a whopping 20,000 gallons per acre, compared to 400 gallons per acre for corn ethanol. According to Joule, this is all possible because of the discovery of genes inside its proprietary microbes that allow for the direct synthesis of alkane and olfin molecules–the chemicals involved in the composition of diesel fuel. From there, it’s easy to generate ethanol and other types of fuel.

Inside specially designed reactors, Joule’s engineered microbes thrive off of sunlight and CO2. In return, depending on the type of organism, they can produce straight ethanol, diesel or a number of other types of hydrocarbons.

Although the process sounds similar to algae-produced biofuels, the Joule process is incredibly (and beneficially) different for several reasons:

• Doesn’t produce biomass
• No agricultural feedstock needed
• Can be conducted on non-arable land
• Doesn’t need fresh water
• Produces fuel directly without the need for extraction or refinement

Apparently Joule has discovered some unique genes inside these microbes that produce the enzymes responsible for directly making the molecules found in diesel. From there, engineering organisms to make other fuels was a simple step. At this point, production of the fuels has only been done in the lab, but Joule has plans to open a pilot plant in early 2011.

Spotted in biofuels digest

Image credits:  U.S. Geological Survey

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See in our channel a short video that captures some of the issues of slum relocation from Kamgar Putala to Hadapsar in Pune.

BACKGROUND:

There are numerous housing delivery systems, slum upgrading and slum prevention approaches to tackle the urbanization of poverty in developing countries. Many adaptive and proactive measures have been implemented through a variety of slum upgrading projects, however there has been limited investigation of the longer term sustainability of such interventions.

Multi-sectoral and partnership approaches often involve external actors who plan and implement a project, successfully engaging with the community and facilitating participation. However, after project completion, these actors may leave the scene, community groups may break up and poor people’s priorities may change with time.   Many slum upgrading projects are standalone, pilot, innovative practice projects which are not always scalable or sustainable.  Such projects may incur high delivery costs and the technologies, processes and institutional structures involved need ongoing resources which limit their scalability and therefore sustainability.

Current good practice literature states that community participation is vital for long term project success and latest thinking highlights the need for integrated approaches which simultaneously generate livelihoods alongside physical improvements while reforming government capacity to repeat or scale up projects. 

APPROACHES TO URBAN SLUMS

Many slum upgrading programmes are initiated and funded by external organizations, multi-lateral agencies, bi-lateral agencies, the private sector and NGOs which initiate collaboration with the recipient governments and civil society communities.  Some good practice approaches to urban slums can be generalised as being ‘top-down or centralised’ and some as ‘bottom-up or decentralised’.  Each approach has had successes, each has an alternative delivery method and each can result in a sustainable development.

Some good practice slum upgrading takes the form of city wide programmes which engage with governments to ensure state control of the upgrading while seeking to reform centralised, institutional structures which enable the scalability of a programme to reach the maximum number of beneficiaries.  These practices aspire to sustainability by building the capacity of the state to be pro-poor, to take ownership, to repeat and to extend the upgrading while being responsible for ongoing operation and maintenance.

Other good practice slum upgrading engages at the individual community level.  External actors such as NGOs work with the community to support the formation of community based organizations to represent and strengthen the voice of the poor with an aim to influence governments to take notice of their constituency.  Such de-centralised, bottom-up approaches may initially be more small scale but if successful can have a powerful influence upon government policy.  Such community based approaches may be more participatory, have strong local networks, understand the real needs of the poor and so can also result in a sustainable upgrading project.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE – INVESTIGATING IMPACTS AND SUSTAINABILITY

There are various approaches to physical slum upgrading, each with their own merits and aspirations for sustainability. This research will investigate the long term impact, outcome and sustainability of different approaches to slum upgrading through stakeholder perception. 

The research results and observations will be posted on Greenwabii.  See  in our channel a short video that captures some of the issues of slum relocation in Pune.

For further information contact Victoria Hickman.  Victoria.Hickman@cantab.net

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 It took me a while to understand the real meaning of what he meant. This uneducated (this I found in further conversations along my trip) driver had understood the crux of our problem, which is our ‘consumption footprint’. And as the world economies are generating more wealth, lead by the Asian economies, their environmental footprint is swelling tremendously. In 2007, China overtook USA to become the leading emitter of carbon-di-oxide in the world, much faster and earlier than anyone had predicted.

 The relationship between increased wealth and consumerism is a no brainer. When we have more money, we will spend more. A report published in Women of China magazine shows that Chinese women (in 10 Chinese Cities) spent 63% of their income on shopping last year as opposed to spending only 26% of their incomes in 2007. I left India for higher education almost 7 years ago. And in this short time, most middle class urban families now have homes that are air conditioned, equipped with flat screen televisions, dvd players and music systems, have multiple cellphones, own a car or two and travel on vacations more often. Even though the cars have become more fuel efficient with stricter emission norms, but their numbers have risen phenomenally keeping the city air quality still at dangerous levels. I on the other hand have moved across three countries in this period of time and have tried to keep my consumption similar as before. However, my footprint has still increased substantially on a per capita basis by living in consumption oriented economies. My ecological footprint increased by 11 times when I moved from India to the United States and is currently 5 times that of India when I am in Singapore.

 The point is that as consumption increases, production follows to fulfil the demand. Environmental degradation is an externality of this process of consumption and production. The most visible of this externality is the increased deforestation and industrial pollution. According to a study by Norwegian University of Technology, a 100% increase in per capita expenditure, increases the CO2 footprint by 81%. In a world where a mere 2% of individuals hold more than 50% of the global wealth ( 2006 study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University), imagine their environmental footprints and the impact of which is borne most by the poorest 50% who own only 1% of the global wealth.

 Now, the other side to this is the book titled Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalist: A Conservative Manifesto. Published in 1999, Peter Huber’s hypothesis is that wealth leads to environmental conservation. According to him, this is primarily achieved because wealthy nations and wealthy individuals spend their money on environmental conservation. There can be some degree of truth here, but the fact remains that the spending on environmental conservation comes only after one has amassed the wealth through production processes which are environmentally damaging. A recent list by CNN on top 10 green corporate giants has Honda, Continental Airlines and Suncor on top. CNN defines these as firms that have gone beyond law and reulation to operate in an environmentally responsible way. The irony is that all these firms for decades have either produced energy in a harmful manner or have given us options to consume the same by causing environmental damage. Taking similar analogy forward, the United States has for decades enjoyed a lifestyle of extreme consumerism and has been the biggest contributor to environmental harm in the world. At the same time, it has come to establish a system of environmental laws which are amongst the most stringent in the world and has institutional bodies that are leading global research on eco-friendly technologies. India, China and other growing economies are going through a similar cycle of generating wealth and increased consumerism. As per Huber’s hypothesis, they may someday in future start to spend a fraction of their wealth towards environmental conservation and mending the damage to the planet. A recent study by the National University of Singapore rates Singapore as the worst environmental offender amongst 179 countries. According to the study, in past 30 years of economic growth in Singapore, it has lost 90 percent of its original forest cover, 67 percent of its bird species, about 40 percent of its mammals and 5 percent of its amphibians and reptiles. At the same time, Singapore is also a model for other global cities for sustainable development with its affordable public housing, greenery, cleanliness, efficient public transportation system and high quality of life.

 Can the entire world afford to take the same path to development which the countries in the past have done? In 2008, 1.2 billion people resided in regions defined as more developed by the United Nations. We know what has it cost the planet earth to give these people their current lifestyle. Can the remaining 5.5 billion people go through the same cycle of consumption, production and environmental damage? Many like me fear the consequences of our aspirations. Should we then stop generating new wealth and let the world be in a status quo of rich being rich and poor being poor? Or should we all start to get poorer and arrive at the threshold of sustainability? None of these are correct answers and possibly there isn’t one. There may be a way out if we can redistribute our wealth and overcome our desires to consume.

 Image credits by patrick tully

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Wearing a brown cotton robe and white skullcap, Sawadogo sits beneath acacia and zizyphus trees that shade a pen holding about twenty guinea fowl. Two cows doze at his feet; bleats of goats float through the still evening air. His farm is large by local standards–fifty acres–and much of it has been in his family for generations. The rest of his family abandoned it after the terrible drought of 1972-84, when a 20 percent decline in average annual rainfall slashed food production throughout the Sahel, turned vast stretches of savanna into desert and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths from hunger.

For Sawadogo, leaving the farm was unthinkable. “My father is buried here,” he says simply. In his mind, the droughts of the 1980s marked the beginning of climate change, a term most people here do not recognize. Sawadogo, however, says he has been adapting to a hotter, drier climate for the past twenty years.

“In the drought years, people found themselves in such a terrible situation they had to think in new ways,” says Sawadogo, who prides himself on being an innovator. In this case, he revived a technique local farmers had used for centuries, but he adapted it to the new climate conditions he faced. It had long been the practice among Sahelian farmers to dig zai–shallow pits–that concentrate scarce rainfall onto the roots of crops. Sawadogo increased the size of his zai to capture more rainfall. But his most important innovation, he says, was to add manure to the zai during the dry season, a practice his peers derided as wasteful.

Sawadogo’s experiments worked: by concentrating water and fertility in pits, he increased crop yields. But the most significant result was one he hadn’t anticipated: tiny trees began to sprout amid his rows of millet and sorghum, thanks to seeds contained in the manure. As one growing season followed another, it became apparent that the trees–now a few feet high–were further increasing crop yields while also restoring soil fertility. “Since I began this technique of rehabilitating degraded land, my family has enjoyed food security in good years and bad,” Sawadogo says.

Sawadogo’s struggle may seem small, but it is part of the most important test humanity now faces. No matter what happens at Copenhagen or beyond, the world is locked in to decades of temperature rise and the associated climate impacts: deeper droughts, fiercer floods, more pests. How populations in the global South adapt to these changes will help decide whether millions of people live or die.

The tree-based farming that Sawadogo and hundreds of thousands of other poor farmers in the Sahel have adopted could help millions of their counterparts around the world cope with climate change. Already these practices have spread across vast portions of Burkina Faso and neighboring Niger and Mali, turning millions of acres of what had become semi-desert in the 1980s into more productive land. The transformation is so pervasive that the new greenery is visible from outer space via satellite pictures. With climate change, much more of the planet’s land will be hot and arid like the Sahel. It only makes sense, then, to learn from the quiet green miracle unfolding there.

“This is probably the largest positive environmental transformation in the Sahel and perhaps in all of Africa,” says Chris Reij, a Dutch geographer who has worked in the region for thirty years. Technically, these methods are known as “agro-forestry” or “farmer managed natural regeneration” (FMNR). Scientific studies confirm what Sawadogo already knows: mixing trees and food crops brings a range of significant benefits. The trees shade crops from overwhelming heat, act as windbreaks that protect young crops and help the soil retain moisture. When their leaves fall to the ground, they act as mulch, boosting soil fertility and providing fodder for livestock. In emergencies, people can even eat the leaves to avoid starvation. “In the past, farmers sometimes had to sow their fields four or five times because winds would blow the seeds away,” says Reij, who advocates for FMNR with the zeal of a missionary. “With trees to buffer the wind and anchor the soil, farmers need sow only once.”

Equally important, the zai and other water-harvesting techniques have helped recharge underground water tables. “In the 1980s water tables were falling by an average of one meter a year,” Reij says. “Since FMNR and the water-harvesting techniques began to take hold, water tables have risen by five meters, despite a growing population.” In some areas, the water table has risen by as much as seventeen meters. Some analysts have credited increased rainfall beginning in 1994. Reij says that can’t explain it: “The water tables began rising well before that. The effect is felt within one or two years’ time.” Studies have documented the same replenishing effects in Niger.

Over time, Sawadogo grew more and more enamored of trees; now his land looks less like a farm than a forest, albeit one made up of trees that, to my California eyes, often seem rather thin. “In the beginning I mixed trees and crops,” he says. “But later I came to prefer trees, because they provide other benefits.” Trees can be harvested–their branches pruned and sold–and then they grow back, and their benefits for the soil make it easier for additional trees to grow. “The more trees you have, the more you get,” Sawadogo explains.

Wood is still the main source of energy in rural Africa, and as tree cover expanded on his land, Sawadogo was in a position to sell wood for cooking, furniture-making and construction, thus increasing and diversifying his income–a key tactic for adapting to climate change. Trees are also a source of natural medicines, no small advantage in an area where modern healthcare is scarce and expensive. And of course, trees keep people and livestock cooler than they otherwise would be in the brutal heat of the Sahel.

“I think trees are at least a partial answer to climate change, and I’ve tried to share this information with others,” Sawadogo adds. “I’ve used my motorbike to visit about a hundred villages, and others have come to visit me and learn. I must say, I’m very proud these ideas are spreading.”

To be clear, these farmers are not planting trees, as Nobel Prize-winning activist Wangari Maathai has promoted in Kenya with her Greenbelt Movement. They are simply growing and nurturing the ones that sprout naturally. Planting trees is much too expensive and risky for really poor farmers. Studies in the western Sahel have found that about 80 percent of planted trees die within a year or two. By contrast, trees that sprout naturally are native species and thus more resilient. And of course they cost nothing.

In Mali, too, I saw trees growing amid cropland seemingly everywhere. For example, in the grindingly poor village of Sokoura, the houses are made of sticks covered in mud; there is no electricity or running water; children wear dirty, torn clothes; and many of them have distended bellies from malnutrition. Yet to hear locals tell it, life is improving, in large part thanks to trees.

It’s a five-minute walk from the village to the land of Oumar Guindo. Missing a front tooth and wearing a black smock over green slacks, Guindo says he owns fifteen acres, where he cultivates millet and sorghum. Ten years ago he began taking advice from Sahel Eco, a Malian-British NGO that promotes agro-forestry. Now Guindo’s land is dotted with trees, one every five meters or so. Most are young, with such spindly branches that they resemble bushes, but there are also a few specimens with trunks the diameter of fire hydrants.

We sit beneath a large tree known as the “Apple of the Sahel,” whose twigs sport inchlong thorns. The soil is sandy in color and consistency–not a farmer’s ideal–but water availability and crop yields have increased substantially since Guindo began nurturing trees among his crops. “Before, this field couldn’t fill even one granary,” he says. “Now it can fill one granary and half of another”–roughly a 50 percent increase in production.

Back in the village we examine the oblong granaries, which like the houses are constructed by slathering mud over stick frames. Their sides are six feet wide and fifteen feet tall. A notched tree trunk serves as a ladder to an opening near the top. All contain good amounts of millet: food security until the next harvest or even beyond.

“Twenty years ago, after the drought, our situation here was quite desperate, but now we live much better,” explains one of the farmers. “Before, most families had only one granary each. Now they have three or four, though their land has not increased. We have more livestock as well.” He adds that all the farmers in this area are cultivating trees now.

The agro-forestry that is greening the Sahel is not only the product of farmer-to-farmer information-sharing and small-scale NGO assistance. Changes in government policy have also been very important.

In Mali, tree management had been part of traditional agriculture. Salif Guindo (no relation to Oumar), a farmer from the village of Endé, explains how they revived an ancient voluntary association of farmers, called Barahogon, that had encouraged tree stewardship for generations. But using trees was abandoned when cutting wood became a crime. First the French colonial government declared all trees to be state property, enabling government officials to sell timber rights to woodcutters. Similar arrangements continued after independence. Meanwhile, farmers caught pruning or cutting trees were punished. As a result they would uproot seedlings to avoid later hassles. Needless to say, several generations of this left the land denuded and increasingly desiccated.

In the early 1990s, a new Mali government–perhaps mindful that farmers furious about mistreatment had killed Forestry Agency officials in some villages–passed a law giving farmers ownership of trees on their land. Farmers did not hear about the law until Sahel Eco mounted a campaign to inform them via radio and word of mouth. Since then, FMNR has spread rapidly, including across borders. Salif recalls a recent visit from twenty mayors and provincial directors of agricultural and environmental agencies from Burkina Faso. “They seemed astonished to hear our story and see the evidence,” Salif says. “They asked, Is this really possible?”

In Niger, too, FMNR had a hard time gaining traction, in part because it involves some counterintuitive elements: namely, to grow trees farmers must be allowed to cut them down as well. Tony Rinaudo, an Australian agronomist and missionary and one of the original champions of FMNR, explains that only after Niger government officials suspended enforcement of regulations against cutting trees did tree-growing gather momentum. “Once farmers felt they owned the trees in their fields, FMNR took off,” he says. “They stopped seeing trees as weeds and started seeing them as assets.”

The pattern has been the same throughout the western Sahel: FMNR has spread largely by itself, from farmer to farmer and village to village, as people see the results with their own eyes and move to adopt the practice. Thanks to agro-forestry, satellite photos analyzed by the US Geological Survey can now discern the border between Niger and Nigeria. On the Niger side, where farmers are allowed to own trees and FMNR is commonplace, there is abundant tree cover; on the Nigeria side, where big tree-planting schemes have failed dramatically, the land is almost barren.

When these images became available in 2008, even FMNR advocates like Reij and Rinaudo were shocked: they had no idea so many farmers had grown so many trees. Combining the satellite evidence with ground surveys and anecdotal evidence, Reij estimates that in Niger alone farmers have grown 200 million trees and rehabilitated 12.5 million acres of degraded land.

What makes FMNR so empowering, and sustainable, is that Africans themselves own the technology, which is simply the knowledge that growing trees amid crops brings many benefits. What’s more, this knowledge is free. It’s hard to overstate how important that is to poor farmers–and nations. It means they can use the technology now, without waiting or relying on capital infusions from foreign governments or humanitarian organizations.

This makes FMNR very different, says Reij, from the Millennium Villages model of development promoted by Jeffrey Sachs, the high-profile director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Millennium Villages provides villages, free of charge, with what are considered the building blocks of development: modern seeds and fertilizer, boreholes for clean water, clinics. “It’s beautiful, their vision of ending hunger in Africa,” says Reij. “The problem is, it doesn’t work. Millennium Villages require a heavy investment per village, as well as a flow of external support for some years, and that is not a sustainable solution. It’s hard to believe the outside world will provide the billions of dollars necessary to create tens of thousands of Millennium Villages in Africa.” Indeed, foreign aid flows collapsed after the financial crash of 2008.

Outsiders do have a role, however. They can encourage the necessary policy changes by national governments, such as granting farmers legal ownership of trees. And they can fund, at very low cost, the grassroots information-sharing that has spread FMNR so effectively in western Sahel. Although farmers have done the most to alert their peers to FMNR’s benefits, they have received crucial assistance from a handful of activists and NGOs such as Rinaudo, Reij and Sahel Eco. These advocates hope to spread FMNR to other African countries through what is called “African Re-Greening Initiatives,” says Reij, who has briefed the president of Ethiopia on the idea. The point is that tree-based crop systems are a win-win: they help farmers adapt to climate change even as they boost food security and reduce rural poverty.

Above all, the world must act in Copenhagen and beyond to reverse the global warming that is making the Sahel such an inhospitable place. Every form of adaptation has limits; if the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not reduced, increasing temperatures will eventually overwhelm even the most ingenious coping mechanisms. Trees help on this front as well: as they grow, they remove carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis. Thus the Copenhagen talks must include a strong commitment to protecting and expanding forests under the REDD program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, a UN program).

Meanwhile, Sawadogo is putting his faith in trees. “My conviction, based on personal experience, is that trees are like lungs,” he says. “If we do not protect them, and increase their numbers, it will be the end of the world.”n

 About the author

Mark Hertsgaard (markhertsgaard.com), a fellow of The Open Society Institute, is The Nation‘s environment correspondent. He has covered climate change for twenty years and is the author of six books, including the forthcoming Generation Hot: Living Through the Storm of Climate Change.

Spotted on The Nation

Image Credits millenniumpromise  

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Saving the planet one plateful at a time does not mean cutting back on meat, according to new research: the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies.

The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the world’s farmland and generates 20% of all the greenhouse gases driving global warming. As a result, the United Nations and senior figures want to reduce the amount of meat we eat and the search is on for alternatives.

A policy paper on the eating of insects is being formally considered by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The FAO held a meeting on the theme in Thailand in 2008 and there are plans for a world congress in 2013.

Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in Belgium and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages.

“There is a meat crisis,” he said. “The world population will grow from six billion now to nine billion by 2050 and we know people are consuming more meat. Twenty years ago the average was 20kg, it is now 50kg, and will be 80kg in 20 years. If we continue like this we will need another Earth.”

Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO, he can’t be dismissed as a crank. “Most of the world already eats insects,” he points out. “It is only in the western world that we don’t. Psychologically we have a problem with it. I don’t know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable.”

The advantages of this diet include insects’ high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content. Van Huis’s latest research, conducted with colleague Dennis Oonincx, shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts, crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas, and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming.

Being cold-blooded, insects convert plant matter into protein extremely efficiently, Van Huis says. In addition, he argues, the health risks are lower. He acknowledges that in the west eating insects is a hard sell: “It is very important how you prepare them, you have to do it very nicely, to overcome the yuk factor.”

More than 1,000 insects are known to be eaten by choice around the world, in 80% of nations. They are most popular in the tropics, where they grow to large sizes and are easy to harvest.

The FAO’s field officer Patrick Durst, based in Bangkok, Thailand, ran the 2008 conference.

Durst helped set up an insect farming project FAO project in Laos which began in April. This involves transferring the skills of the 15,000 household locust farmers in Thailand across the border. “There were some proponents of a bigger dairy industry in Laos to improve a calcium deficiency,” says Durst, whose favourite is fried wasp – “very crispy and a nice light snack”. “But this is crazy when most Asians are lactose intolerant.” Locusts and crickets are calcium-rich and 90% of people in Laos have eaten insects at some point, he says.Durst says the FAO’s priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted but has been in decline due to western cultural influence.

He also thinks such a boost can provide livelihoods and protect forests where many wild insects are collected. “I can see a step-by-step process to wider implementation.”

First, insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally. Then, they could be used as ingredients.

Van Huis adds: “We’re looking at ways of grinding the meat into some sort of patty, which would be more recognisable to western palates.”

One of the few suppliers of insects for human consumption in the UK is Paul Cook, whose business Osgrow is based in Bristol. However, no matter how they are marketed or presented, Cook is not convinced they will ever become more than a novelty. “They are in the fun element … But I can’t see it ever catching on in the UK in a big way.”

LOCAL TREATS

Thailand Dishes include fried giant red ants, crickets and June beetles

 Colombia “Fat-bottomed” ants are a popular snack, fried and salted

 Papua New Guinea Sago grubs in banana leaves are a local delicacy

 Ghana Winged termites are collected and fried, roasted, or made into bread

 Japan Dishes include aquatic fly larvae in sugar and candied grasshoppers

 Mexico The agave worm is eaten on tortillas, and grasshoppers are toasted

 Cambodia Deep-fried tarantulas are popular with locals and tourists

 South Africa Locusts lend interest to the staple dish of cornmeal porridge

 Australia Witchetty grubs are a traditional part of the Aboriginal diet

Spotted on Guardian

Image Credits jazzpic

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This example from Indonesia is true for most remote communities where people naturally learn to live within their means. This sustainable lifestyle is fast changing with increasing connectivity and need for new products. More and more products, once a luxury, are now becoming essential to power and run our daily lives and of course, Indonesia, is not an exception. This increasing consumerism could include anything from a beauty cream to a smart phone. Though the products themselves serve a positive purpose for its consumer, the discarded packaging has negative impacts on the environment. The consumer typically gets so engrossed in enjoying the product, that he is completely unaware of  all the packaging and discards it as a useless biodegradable product. Waste management systems may exist in cities but in remote location they are non-existent. Some of these locations may never even get them due to their small populations and low scale of economic potential.

Traditionally, most waste produced in remote locations has been organic. It is either thrown outside the village perimeter or into the sea/ river where it self-decomposes over time. With plastic, Styrofoam and other synthetic materials becoming key ingredient of the attractive new age packaging, they retain their industrial forms for decades and do not go back to the earth. Adding to this is the issue of e-waste. What does one do when the computer or iPod has lived its life and will not work anymore? Even a world class city of 4million inhabitants such as Singapore lacks proper systems to manage this waste, how long will it take for them to reach the far corners of the world is anybody’s guess. We have heard about the highest garbage dump on Mount Everest, a garbage island in the pacific or even the extra-terrestrial space waste. Cradle to cradle, a book by McDonough and Braungart aptly states, “There is no need for shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes, juice containers, etc. to last decades or even centuries, longer that what came inside them”. If we are not going to install waste management system in a remote community so they can safely dispose their waste, then we must reconsider the system and begin to use only “worry free” packaging.

With so much garbage thrown around the entire planet and beyond, what can we do to decrease the environmental impacts of this increasing trash? Here are a few suggestions:

• To buy less and consume what is necessary. Be aware that marketing is trying to make you consume more.
• Design “worry free” packaging that is essential for the products to reach safely and without damage or do not overdesign.
• Product manufacturers should be responsible for collecting all hazardous waste and responsibly disposing it. Needless to say, they should also take back the products when they are no more usable. All products should therefore be returnable to the companies who manufacture them.
• Make all packaging self-degradable so it becomes a part of the biological cycle.
• Design packages with alternative uses after the product has been consumed or that can be reused for the same purpose again and again. Where are those glass milk bottles we had to send back to the milkshop?
• Products and their packages should carry a label stating their environmental effects. All packaging which is non-biodegradable should have a clean label stating this.
• Spread awareness in local communities about the environmental impacts of harmful waste and potential of recycling

 The image of a wonderful beach buried under plastic bags was taken by Paula, a GUASL founder, on her recent visit to Indonesia.

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This work, I developed by at the GSAPP (Columbia University in New York), explores the forms of swarm intelligence these populations show and their living conditions, to produce devices that emit light without consuming electricity. It analyzes the behavior of glowing micro-organisms populations and the relationships between them, as well as the conditions that make them glow better. To do so, a population of unicellular alga named  Pyrocystis Fusiformis is studied under different living conditions and tested inside different shapes.

Pyrocystis Fusiformis is a species of dinoflagellates, which are marine unicellular planktonic organisms. It is a mixotroph, meaning that it conducts both photosynthetic and heterotrophic metabolism. Pyrocystis Fusiformis lives in sea water and produces bioluminescence in a circadian rhythm. It photosynthesizes during the day and produces bioluminescence when mechanically or chemically stimulated at night. It emits blue-green light from microsources found evenly distributed throughout the cytoplasmatic layer surrounding the large central vacuole.  According to the “burglar alarm theory” Pyrocystis Fusiformis emits light to attract attention to its predator. Whenever a predator approaches a population of dinoflagellates, it moves the water exciting them. Hence they glow and the predator is illuminated increasing the chances that it is itself preyed upon.

This project takes advantage of this natural glowing effect to generate lighting devices without consuming electricity. To do so it is necessary to cultivate Pyrocystis Fusiformis. Hence four 50ml bags containing dinoflagellates were ordered along with nutrients and vitamins for them to grow. Artificial salty water was created using distilled water and adding marine salts to it (35gr of salts for every liter of distilled water). Then nutrients, minerals and the dinoflagellates were poured in the water in 1:3 proportion; 10ml of minerals and 10ml of vitamins for 1500ml of dinoflagellates in 500ml of salty water. They were put inside an incubator at 25ºC with a timer that controlled a lamp to light them in cycles of 12h on and 12h off.

Then different kinds of geometries were used to host dinoflagellates populations and test their behavior. The first one was a pixel-pocket structure that would allow each pixel to glow independently if they were excited by movement. It was made injecting 10ml of sea water, containing Pyroscystis Fusiformis, in each pixel-pocket. It worked pretty well and each pixel could be excited to glow. Based on this prototype there is the possibility to think about a screen or billboard that emits light and at the same time, displays information like images or text. It can be done controlling the movement of each pixel individually to be on or off. The pixels can be excited by a mechanical device or by sound waves. This sort of geometry can be used for façades or for commercial purposes.

Designing a prototype that emits light without consuming electricity taking advantage of Pyrocystis Fusiformis glowing properties, means the recognition of a living form of wealth translated into an architectural outcome. Moreover controlling the density of a population of dinoflagellates helps to regulate its quorum sensing mechanisms. That means manipulating the kind of swarm intelligence a population of dinoflagellates shows to improve its glowing properties; and therefore the architectural outcome. Furthermore there is a way to achieve a design that is not only consuming energy to glow but transforming the one that uses into something else besides light.

Following this logic a bar field design containing salty water with populations of Pyrocystis Fusiformis could be design to meet these requirements. This bar field would be moved by the wind. This movement would excite the algae inside the bars and they would glow. At the base of each bar, a device could be placed to use the kinetic energy produced by the movement of the bars for different purposes depending on where the prototype is placed. It could be built in public plazas, rooftops or building façades. In the two first cases the kinetic energy could be used to warm the ground, for pavement lighting, or to set up an electricity network with plugs that could be used by people. In the third case it could be transformed into electricity to supply the building.

Here you can see a population of Pyrocystis Fusiformis glowing:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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In India, The Acorn Foundation India Trust aims to organise ragpickers and train them in scientific methods of waste handling, segregation and recycling, bringing a measure of respect to their work. If it wasn’t for the ragpickers Dharavi’s would be one giant toxic waste dump.

Now there’s an initiative afoot to help the ragpicker groups. The Acorn Foundation India Trust is set to organise these workers and train them in scientific methods of waste handling, segregation and recycling. Highlighting their work in protection of the environment, so the government can set up a board whereby polluters pay a cess of about one per cent which and can go towards giving these ragpickers a proper income with safe equipment like gloves and other amenities. They want them to be trained in how to handle toxic waste and expertise in recycling goods in a non-hazardous way.

For a start, all members of the Dharavi Project are being given identity cards. They have formed their own committee which is involved in waste awareness programmes. In one programme, young ragpickers are partnering with schools in waste management. Currently there are some 350 members of the Dharavi Project.

The foundation has also undertaken another initiative— to organise health clinics, programmes and workshops from which young children engaged in ragpicking can get some kind of informal education in music, photography and other arts. We hope such cultural events will help them develop.

Read more at India Together

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Seventh largest among the world’s metropolises and the linchpin of Brazil’s booming economy, São Paulo presents a globally relevant case study of stepped-up efforts — but continued deep challenges — if cities are to correct the deep poverty and environmental perils of massive slum settlements.

Close to a third of São Paulo’s 11 million people — in a metropolitan region of almost 20 million — live in slum-like conditions. There are some 1,600 favelas (private or public lands that began as squatter settlements), 1,100 “irregular” land subdivisions (developed without legally recognized land titles), and 1,900 cortiços (tenement houses, usually overcrowded and in precarious state of repair).

Government response has progressed light years from the brutal “eradication” — bulldozing of favelas — that began with Brazil’s military dictatorship of the 1960s and continued for years as millions of rural families poured into São Paulo seeking industrial jobs. Today policy makers recognize that upgrading is a far wiser course — socially, economically and politically.

But the environment complicates the task: São Paulo has a monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate with steep hillsides that create severe drainage problems, especially when storm water flows through sewerless slums, picking up loose debris that clogs drainage channels and can imperil local drinking water supplies. Environmental laws were passed in the 1980s to protect watersheds from construction projects — but settlements sprang up there anyway.

A toolkit for action – but key questions

Official Brazilian policy shifted in the 1980s toward slum upgrading instead of its eradication — recognizing it’s easier and cheaper, not to mention more humane, to improve the conditions in a slum rather than try to remove it. But the new policy lacked much weight until the federal enactment, in 2001, of a “City Statute” requiring that cities enact master plans. It also provided a set of tools that municipalities can use to control land transfer and seek to assure legal tenure for tenants — a process São Paulo formally integrated into its own master plan a year later. One of the most useful tools is letting cities create “zones of special interest” for disorganized slums, formally recognizing their existence and qualifying them for social services. Another tool authorizes joint citizen-government management councils both in new and more settled areas.

Moving to more legal tenure, experts on Brazilian slum upgrading suggest, requires three elements to be workable. First, is the location OK for human settlement — not a water pollution risk because its location is too steep or on a flood plain? Second, is the settlement legally registered, or at least in the database of city properties? And third, do its residents have legal title to the land? And if not, what can be done to assure them secure tenure?

There are clear rewards if a full process of regularization – providing clear legal tenure – can be achieved. If families can have their land title confirmed, or at least secure a certificate recognizing their occupancy rights, some taxes can be levied. Rules can be set (and enforced) to prevent building collapse. Regular streets, schools and clinics can be brought in, attracting investment. And it’s easier to reduce litter by organizing residents to bring their own household waste to collection points for city pick-up.

But going the whole way continues to be difficult. While the city government works hard to give land tenure, property rights are only conceded by law once this possession is recorded in a register office. According the Nelson Saule, an Instituto Pólis lawyer, the complete process has occurred only with a few properties. In most cases dwellers received a document without clear legal value.

Allies make a difference

São Paulo government has clearly become more activist and attuned to long-term slum upgrading in recent years. It’s also been aided since 2001 by Cities Alliance, a global alliance of national and city governments, UN-Habitat and the World Bank, focused on scaling up urban poverty solutions.

The São Paulo Municipal Housing Secretariat in 2006 created a management information system that’s now able to track the status of favelas, other precarious settlements and site/flooding/water hazard areas citywide. With a priority of serving the city’s most vulnerable populations, the tracking (developed in technical cooperation with Cities Alliance) provides a basis for effective targeting of upgrading efforts and environmental clean-ups. Before the system was implemented, notes Elisabete França, São Paulo’s secretary of low-income housing, “data about our favelas and irregular private land subdivisions was unreliable, not reflecting the reality of these precarious settlements. The input of the new system resulted from a big field campaign, performed by our own technical staff in record time. The effort showed how people are as important as hardware and software. Now we can follow the dynamics of urban settlement. It is a new culture.”

In 2008, São Paulo and Cities Alliance invited high-ranking officials from five other major cities — Cairo, Lagos, Manila, Mumbai and Ekurhuleni (South Africa) — to convene in São Paulo, examine its efforts, and discuss the broad challenges of slum upgrading. “The passion of São Paulo’s technical staff in the slum upgrading process was clear for all to see,” Godfrey Hiliza of the Ekurhuleni delegation noted at the end of the sessions.

Challenges

Still, São Paulo’s reforms haven’t come easily. Brazil’s legal steps to establish clear land title are murky, unreformed nationally because of powerful rural land-holding interests fearing loss to squatters on their properties. Other pitfalls and barriers have included the high cost of land for building new housing, millions of families’ lack of any credit history, and urban crime compounded by Brazil’s notorious drug gangs.

And while the flow of new families from the countryside has subsided dramatically in recent years, São Paulo’s deep social divisions and tenacious poverty, stemming from the late 20th century’s immense in-migration of poor rural families. Still, the city claims that the housing issue in São Paulo can be “solved” by 2025 at current rates of city budget expenditure.

Islands of Progress

One example that inspires hope that Sao Paulo’s slum upgrading works is Paraisopolis (literally Paradise City), São Paulo’s second biggest slum, with 60,000 people. Residents express a strong desire to stay, not be relocated, says Violêta Kubrusly, senior technical adviser at the Municipality of São Paulo Social Housing Department. Upgrading solutions are working and the city’s long-term goals have shifted from 50 percent removal of the neighborhood’s population to just 10 percent (those in risky areas like sharp slopes or drainage facilities).

One of São Paulo’s goals is to bring electricity, sewage and clean water services to as many areas as it can afford. It is also seeking to enable “domicile swaps” so that the shack occupied by a family moving to a government-built apartment can be made available to a family living in a crowded, dangerous slum area.

There’s a strong plus in Paraisopolis’ location next to a high-income neighborhood that provides easy access to jobs (such as maid or watchman work).

Citywide, São Paulo is consciously seeking to recycle city areas left by relocated families into such common spaces as parks, playgrounds, soccer fields and skate parks — ways to help people socialize and build a sense of citizenship for remaining residents. With luck, community leadership emerges.

For example, the Jardim Iporanga neighborhood is located in a protected watershed with a stream that feeds São Paulo’s main water reservoir. Before slum upgrading, the neighborhood’s scattered housing without sewage treatment had been causing pollution. Then, following the environmentally-attuned upgrading, one resident constructed a house on the newly-protected space. But he quickly heard from Sandra Regina, the community’s association president, that he was threatening the common good. He agreed to demolish his structure.

“Nowadays it’s paradise here,” Regina says. “There is clean, treated water, while before it was all sewage.” The main need now, she says, is jobs — indeed across São Paulo, income generation is seen as a main challenges to a successful urbanization process. And there are some conscious job-creation efforts, with citizen groups playing a key role. In Jardim Iporanga, for instance, 30 women produce “ecobags” made of recycled rags; they are mostly sold to the city government which uses them for booklets at seminars and congresses.

Key to success: a voice for the community

There’s growing agreement in São Paulo that local communities must themselves take part in the upgrading process, with a community leader acting as a mediator between the local residents and the government. Social worker Rosana Aparício says this mediation is crucial for slum upgrading to be successful.

Anaclaudia Rossbach, Cities Alliance regional advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean, reckons that to have a complete slum upgrading process, social work with the communities should continue after the construction and urbanization process is fully implemented.

There is a question: the array of housing and environmental cleanup policies in slum upgrading demand large investments. The outlays have been rising progressively over the past five years, thanks to combined effort of federal, state and city governments, as well as contribution from international organizations.

But will they endure politically — through one or more changes of municipal administration? Rossbach believes the answer is yes. And why? Because, she insists, there’s a Municipal Housing Council, created by the city in 2002, which acts as a watchdog and also has a direct role in deciding how housing fund moneys will be spent. Its members come from government agencies, unions, from socially attuned non-government organizations and from the universities. They’re popularly elected in polls open to all São Paulo citizens. “The council helps to guarantee the policies’ continuity,” she notes.

Written by Fernando Serpone Bueno and Veridiana Sedeh for Citiscope

They are São Paulo-based freelance journalists. Bueno is also national politics editor at a news website; Sedeh is executive manager of Abraji (Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism).

Image Credits to transitoaovivo

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