community empowerment to face change

On Tuesday this week I wrote about the need for resilience in the face of trade tensions raised by the need to account for the carbon impacts of economic activity. On Wednesday I expanded on the related issue of adaptation that needs to take place as the effects of climate change start to hit home. A common thread here is empowerment. Whether it's negotiating a deal at the UN table, or ensuring that agricultural development is sustainable, individuals need to be willing and able to make decisions that are right for themselves and their community within the constraints imposed by limited physical resources and political realities. International agreements and national policies will come to nought if they fly in the face of what local communities are willing to accept.

So how to align the three perspectives of local needs, national interpretation of community aspirations, and global thinking on sustainability? Two examples are instructive.

designing cities for people

Truckloads of words have been written about how the modern lifestyle has alienated us from Earth and each other, leaving us "ungrounded". There are many interpretations of what it is about our lives that creates this disconnect, but technology features as a strong theme. I tend to think of technology not only as high-tech things like computers, cell phones and iPods, but as everything around us that is planned, designed and built.

As an engineer, I am at least partly responsible for shaping people's lives through design decisions that alter the built form. This influence can have a positive impact on quality of life, but I would hazard a guess that it is more often negative. The way a building is designed, where it is located in relation to other structures and spaces, how transport systems connect people with their destinations, what forms of energy are supplied - these all play an active role in determining the choices people have in going about their lives. There is nothing neutral about engineering, architecture or urban design; these disciplines come laden with the value systems of the people who apply them.

Trouble is, the application of design processes very rarely recognises the prejudices of their practitioners. If I don't understand the community that I am designing for, I can increase alienation, community dysfunction and poverty in its broadest sense. It's easy: as a professional, I know what's best for society as a whole. For one thing, we need more public transport and fewer cars - for a number of very good reasons. And we need more houses, because globally, there simply aren't enough. Oh yes, and we should have solar panels on the roof of every house, because distributed power systems are more effective and great for creating jobs.

adapting to climate change

On my trip to Botswana last week, I picked up a local magazine called Wena - Industry and the Environment. In Vol. 18 No. 28 (2008), editor Florah Mmereki notes that Botswana was to be represented at last December's UNFCCC climate change meeting in Poznan (COP 14), but sounds despairing:

During the preparatory meeting where stakeholders were putting together the Botswana country position on climate change, many important stakeholders, mainly directors of environmental departments, never showed up even once; but there were very technical issues being discussed. And I am afraid Botswana's position on climate change will not be articulated well. Already there are misunderstandings between experts and directors of some government departments on who is supposed to go and present the Botswana country position at the climate change meeting in Poland.

I have spent enough time on working visits to Botswana to know that government suffers from a shortage of skilled staff in sectors like transport planning that are critical to the effective management of the country. So it comes as no surprise that climate change would be low on the agenda in allocating staff resources. Which is a tragedy, because Botswana, like many African countries, is on the receiving end of climate change, and is feeling the effects already.

empowerment in the palm of your hand

For some inexplicable reason I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see project information georeferenced on Google Earth. Must be the anticipation of what we could really do if we got serious about it. Here's a map of projects that use cell phones in developing countries to provide mobile access to services or data. Seems to me there are more phones than people in developing countries, so this has got to be a way to help empower poorer communities. [via Patrick Burnett]

floral sabotage

If seed bombs are a protest against conformity, neatness and suburban monoculture, I wonder about the backlash if communities were to really roll up our collective sleeves and start transforming front lawns into wild squares of unexpected flora, or productive vegetable patches. We've been thinking of doing the latter, and in the meantime the weeds are getting out of control. I have experienced summers of neighbourhood discontent before, when weed seeds started to scatter in the wind, and the pressure to get out the lawn mower is intense. Yet something inside me says, "let's see what happens."

Guerilla gardening for a healthier and more beautiful environment is one thing, but what happens when the tables are turned and people start spreading genetically modified seeds where farmers are trying to stay GM-free? A Welsh agricultural saboteur has done just that. Will we have protest gardens in future that will compete against healthy green urban spaces? As I plant my organic seeds, will my neighbour start spraying pesticides around the neighbourhood, out of spite?

I really do wonder. Right now, we have neighbours with dogs that bark at all hours of the night. When one starts, it sets off others until there is a cacaphony of canine howling, seemingly for miles around. And just as they start to settle down, one of them blurts out a final bark and sets the whole lot off again. I have nothing against dogs, but I do have something against people who think that keeping other people awake at night is alright. We can't argue against this. We have had conversations with the neighbours about it, but there isn't a set of common community values that allows them to say "oh, I see what you mean," or us to accept sleepless nights in the name of fighting crime. They think they are doing us a favour by keeping burglars away, and they may even think that we are the ones who aren't doing our bit to protect the neighbourhood.

It's this lack of shared values that makes me think it's quite possible to have garden wars in the not-too-distant future. "You wanna grow lettuce? Heh, let's see how you like these snails." Maybe that's what I've already unleashed with my special patch of weeds. Watch this block.

lighting on demand

We are all encouraged to turn off the lights when we leave a room unoccupied - but how about turning off the street lights when nobody is around?

A village in Germany is pioneering a method of saving energy and reducing carbon emissions by switching off the street lights at night.

But local residents can use their mobile phones to turn the street lights back on again for 15-minute periods whenever they want.

cycling for health

In another example of moving closer to sustainable cities, health workers who used to visit patients on foot in Delft (Cape Town) were donated bicycles on Wednesday last week, enabling them to make twice as many house calls. BikeTown Africa, an international project started in 2006, donated 108 bikes to MaAfrika Tikkun healthcare workers to help them anti-retroviral medication for HIV patients and others who cannot get to clinics. Many of these workers haven't ridden bikes before, so they've been given some instruction and guidance about road safety.

What appeals to me about this initiative, apart from the improvement in productivity resulting from the use of a zero-emission transport mode, is that it's a great way to set an example that could start to transform perceptions of the lowly bicycle. Now we just need better cycling networks to make it easier, and a strong support network to make sure this isn't a shortlived success.

green bloggers unite!

If you are a "green blogger" and you're in Cape Town this Saturday, join us with Juliana Rotich, Environment Editor of Global Voices Online (she's paying a special visit to SA). This is an informal gathering, so feel free to come along this Saturday to see what the buzz is about and meet the faces behind the blogs.

When: Saturday, October 11th, 2pm
Where: Obz Cafe, 115 Lower Main Road, Observatory

Juliana thought we might like to plant some trees too, so if you have suggestions of a school or community project, then put your suggestions up on the wiki.

RSVP by putting your name on the wiki to know how many to expect.

crowdsourcing energy solutions

If we leave everything to the experts, we might never make progress. A new alternate reality game called World Without Oil has been developed to stimulate ideas on an oil-free future by engaging online gamers.

The premise of World Without Oil was simple and provocative: What if an oil crisis started on April 30, 2007 - what would happen? How would the lives of ordinary people change? Players were invited to imagine how their lives and communities would be different and how they would cope if the world’s oil suddenly dried up. The “plot” unfolded dynamically. First, the players read the “official news” and what other players were saying. Then, using a combination of blog posts, videos, images and even voice mails, they told their own stories of the challenges they were facing. As the crisis continued, players updated their stories with further thoughts, reactions and solutions.

The game ended after 32 days, having engaged thousands of players around world and woven the fabric of 1,500 stories into what [game designer] Ken [Eklund] describes as “living breathing mega narrative that presented some eerily plausible scenarios, complete with practical courses of action to help prevent such an event from actually happening.”

screw the spotted owl

Amateurs are more sincere than professionals. Rehad Desai, co-director of the film You Chuse: the future is free, reminded viewers at this month's Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, that a sex worker might deliver a technically good performance, but she will probably leave you less than satisfied. Why? Insincerity. Amateur sex - the kind that happens in the bedrooms of committed couples - might be less slick, but is likely to be more satisfying because of a greater emotional investment.

What has sex to do with the Spotted Owl? I'm coming to that, in a roundabout way.

You Chuse, which presents the case for the open source movement and restoration of the creative commons, makes the intriguing point that as intellectual property dominates more and more of modern life as a financially tradable commodity, there is less space for things to develop for reasons other than financial reward. The film suggests that science and most human endeavours advance by building on what went before. If "what went before" is copyrighted and unavailable for others to use, then advancement only takes place in the R&D departments of corporations, and is driven by financial returns alone. Individuals with little or no capital have no opportunity to contribute.