cognitivejustice

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William Karatibu is a lifelong bean and maize farmer. Like many in his region, he grew up learning to read the land. His parents taught him how to interpret ant patterns, cloud movements, and the feel of the wind to predict rain. But Tanzania’s climate is changing, and weather patterns have become erratic. Heatwaves scorch the earth, followed by unexpected floods. Rains either arrive late, or not at all. 

“I’ve been doing exactly what my parents taught me – following their methods just like they showed me. But recently, it became more difficult because the traditional ways of observation are less valuable with the current conditions. The methods my parents taught me are not working anymore” says Karatibu. The signs he once trusted stopped working, his crops failed, his income dropped and food became uncertain.

This is not a unique story. Across Tanzania, the impacts of climate change are intensifying. 

While Karatibu’s challenges aren’t unique, what is unusual is how he responded. One evening, while searching online for solutions, he came across an ad for Rada360: a precision agriculture company. The platform leverages satellite earth observation data and AI analytics to help smallholder farmers with real-time crop monitoring in Tanzania adapt to climate risks.

“I was experiencing so much loss that I tried to look for a solution. I went online and found out about Rada360 and understood that they were doing precision farming. To me ‘precision’ means high accuracy,” he says. With Rada360’s hyperlocal weather forecasts, Karatibu changed how he farmed and saw results from one season to the next. “With Rada360,” he says, “I’ve never counted any loss. Because through their technology I now know my soil status and nutrition. I now know when I should plant.”

Now, neighbouring farmers ask him how he gets his plants so shiny and green. His income increased, and his family has more food security. Stories like Karatibu’s offer a glimpse of what is possible: when local knowledge is paired with targeted innovation, communities can adapt, thrive, and address the dual urgency of climate change and information gaps.

Essa Mohamedali is a Tanzanian AI strategist, community builder, and start-up mentor dedicated to shaping inclusive, responsible, and locally grounded AI ecosystems across Africa.

“One key insight is that AI in Africa is being driven by grassroots communities – passionate individuals, recent graduates, and first-time founders,” he says.

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Communities striving to recover from hurricanes must incorporate lessons from the past, realities of the present, and an understanding of future challenges to intentionally create places that can persevere.

Climate adaptation is the process that enables communities to adjust and prepare for the observable and predicted effects of climate change.

This report examines the myriad ways that the city of New Orleans and its surrounding parishes have deployed ingenuity and passion to address these impacts in the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore in 2005, leading to the failure of the federal levees.

From bioswales to managed stormwater runoffs to amphibious architecture to cope with flooding, and from compact fluorescent lamps and solar powered Community Lighthouses to provide resilient light and power, New Orleanians are coming together to adapt at record speed to the challenges before them.

More specifically, this report documents climate adaptation in metropolitan New Orleans with a focus on urban green restoration, increased housing security, and workforce development initiatives in climate-adaptation professions.

Also see:

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Women helping communities adapt to climate change: Anti Rohey Ceesay, The Gambia   

In Gambia, climate change is causing more severe flooding. Fishers in the countryside sometimes lose their lives because they lack reliable forecasts and receive no alerts of when to avoid open water. Anti Rohey Ceesay, a forestry expert from the Central River Region, decided to take matters into her own hands a few years ago. After nine weather stations were built in her district with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Ceesay was able to gather weather alerts and travel via motorbike from village to village sharing vital warnings.

In Ceesay’s culture, knowledge is often passed on through song and dance, so she organized ‘climate theatre’ performances in villages to educate her community about climate change and how to adapt. Since Ceesay began providing advanced warnings, the number of deaths from climate impacts has fallen in her community, Ceesay said. 

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Chad: a circular economy plan to reduce waste by 40%

Chad, an African nation often associated with climate and humanitarian emergencies, is now joining Africa’s circular economy movement. 

Chad is not just recycling; it is rethinking growth. For years, informal collectors in N'Djamena have asked a familiar question: “Do you have any bottles?” The collectors gather and resell reusable waste at low prices, unwittingly perpetuating a circular economy model driven by necessity. Today, this popular practice is being scaled up, structured, and integrated into national policy, with the official publication, on 9 July 2025, of the Roadmap for the Circular Economy 2025–2035. The document promotes practices that have been largely overlooked and places them within a structured framework with governance, financing, and quantified targets. 

“This initiative is not a luxury, but rather a vital necessity for the future of Chad,” said Hassan Bakhit Djamous, Chad's Minister for the Environment. “It’s about conserving our natural resources, fighting pollution, creating sustainable jobs, and supporting local innovation. It also offers us a path to diversify an economy still heavily reliant on oil.” 

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Women helping communities adapt to climate change: Louise Mabulo, the Philippines 

When Typhoon Nock-ten ripped through the Philippines in 2016, chef Louise Mabulo noticed cacao trees still standing amid the wreckage. It was at that moment that she realized cacao trees were relatively resilient to storms and she launched “The Cacao Project”, training over 200 farmers in agroforestry and planting more than 150,000 trees. By focusing on cacao’s climate resilience and high market value, her initiative combats deforestation, revitalizes farmland and empowers communities to withstand future storms, which are expected to become more common as the climate changes.  Recognized as a Young Champion of the Earth, Mabulo was said to exemplify how women’s leadership can transform adversity into opportunity. 

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From the NPS (National Park Service)

What is scenario-based climate change adaptation?

Climate change is having far-reaching impacts on natural and cultural resources, facilities, operations, and the visitor experience. However, parks face a major challenge in anticipating future impacts: not knowing their exact timing and nature. A single forecast is likely to be inaccurate, so it is risky to rely on any one prediction of the future to make management decisions.

Scenario planning—a longstanding military and private-sector tool adapted by the NPS and partners in recent years for NPS purposes—addresses this challenge. It offers a framework for working with uncertainty and preparing for a wide range of plausible future conditions. This structured process identifies a small set of scenarios—descriptions of potential future conditions that characterize a broad range of critical uncertainties—and uses them to inform planning.

Climate change adaptation that incorporates scenario planning to work with climate uncertainty is known as Scenario-Based Climate Change Adaptation.

Scenario-based climate change adaptation vs. forecast planning

Forecast-based planning (left) uses predictions of a single future. Scenario-based climate change adaptation (right) works with a set of plausible futures that capture a broad range of conditions, providing a framework to support decisions under conditions that are uncertain and uncontrollable.

A useful set of scenarios is plausible (based on best available science), relevant (focused on the management question), divergent (characterizes a range of future conditions), and challenging (effective for examining established practices and assumptions and fostering creative thinking). Working across scenarios, managers can identify:

current practices likely or unlikely to succeed in the future,

critical uncertainties around which monitoring or new science could be developed, and

updated goals or actions that are robust to an uncertain and dynamic future.

Read more

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Women helping communities adapt to climate change: Ahumwire Justine, Uganda 

In southwestern Uganda, banana farmer Ahumwire Justine lost 300 trees and two cows during a devastating hailstorm a few years ago. With no insurance, she faced food shortages, unpaid school fees and an uncertain future.

Now, a new digital crop insurance system, introduced by NDC Action Project, offers protection. Farmers use smartphones to document healthy banana plants and submit damage photos after storms, allowing quick assessments by agroeconomists.

Justine, a ‘champion farmer,’ shares this tech with fellow smallholders—nearly half of whom are women—boosting resilience and productivity. This innovative approach provides financial security across Uganda’s growing network of banana farmers. Bananas are integral to Uganda’s economy, with 47 per cent of farmers involved in their cultivation in 2019, according to Uganda’s statistics bureau. 

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When it comes to sustainability, no city does it like Vienna.Only 1 in 3 Viennese owns a car as three-quarters of all trips in the city are made on foot, by bicycle or public transport, according to the Vienna Climate Guide.Vienna’s 1,500 water fountains — about one for every 1,334 residents — reflect the city’s deliberate effort to reduce reliance on bottled water, according to the Vienna Smart City Strategy. 

Today, Vienna’s waste management system has saved more carbon dioxide than it emits by implementing a circular economy, which focuses on waste elimination and extending a product’s life cycle through recycling and repurposing, essentially turning waste into resources.

But Vienna’s sustainability efforts extend far beyond waste management, cementing its plan to become the world’s most livable city.Since 2020, the city of Vienna has been on a path to achieving climate neutrality, a goal it set out to accomplish by 2040. The city aims to recycle 100% of its non-avoidable waste by 2050.

By 2030, Vienna expects to increase the average life expectancy by two years and cut down 50% of all food waste. Many Viennese entities, such as MATR, a mattress company and pioneer in circular economy solutions, welcome these ambitions. MATR produces mattresses using recycled polyester fibers that visibly reduce emissions at each manufacturing stage.

Four years ago, when MATR co-founder Michaela Stephen learned that 30 million mattresses end up as waste every year in Europe, she decided it was time for change.“If you put them on top of each other, it’s 20,000 times the Eiffel Tower,” Stephen said. “We were like, ‘Oh my God, what is going on? Why does this huge mountain of waste exist and why does no one seem to know about this?’ And that’s how MATR was born that weekend.”

In recent years and specifically after the pandemic, Vienna’s startup ecosystem has bounced back stronger than ever with technologically advanced creations, such as smart mattresses and virtual reality training, combining modern solutions to global challenges with sustainability.

Startups that center around climate resilience have been incorporating green concepts in their operations to continue fostering a sustainable future. Spanning various sectors like arts, business and technology, enterprises like MATR are helping the city create change from the heart of Austria.

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Women helping communities adapt to climate change: Marine Baponampoze, Rwanda

With support from the Rwanda Environment Management Authority, local communities in the Kirehe District came together to launch beekeeping businesses –which are less reliant on rainfall – and conserve forests.

Leading the charge is Marine Babonampoze. As a team leader in the local beekeeping cooperative, she shows beekeepers how to use modern equipment to increase production. Having restored over 600 hectares of ecosystems to provide foraging ground for the bees, the project is simultaneously reducing the impacts of flood and drought while increasing honey yields. 

“In general, cooperative members work together and care for one another, and everything becomes better when we unite,” she says

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The International Court of Justice has delivered its much-anticipated advisory opinion on states’ obligations to tackle climate change, confirming that international law requires states to prevent significant harm to the climate—and failure to do so can trigger legal responsibility.

On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its landmark advisory opinion on “the obligations of states with respect to climate change” at the Peace Palace in The Hague. 

The ICJ determined that the 1.5°C temperature target is legally binding under the Paris Agreement and that all states, in particular the largest emitters, must take ambitious mitigation measures in line with the best available science. The opinion arrives 6 years after a group of 27 students from the University of the South Pacific began campaigning on this issue, and more than 2 years since the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution requesting the advisory opinion.

The court rejected arguments from some high-emitting states that climate treaties are the only applicable law to the climate crisis, excluding broader international law. It found that multiple sources of law impose legal duties on states to prevent “transboundary environmental harm,” act with precaution, and take due diligence measures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.

Answering with striking clarity, the court said that states must act to prevent foreseeable climate harm or face international legal responsibility.  While the ICJ’s opinion itself is not binding—neither on itself nor on domestic courts—it carries considerable legal weight and political legitimacy.

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Ethnic minority communities — who make up roughly nine per cent of China’s total population and often inhabit ecologically sensitive regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia — are experiencing the transition in ways that involve significant trade-offs.

Where they live, how they work and the cultural practices they depend on have all been shaped by state environmental policies, often without meaningful input or representation.

Research examines the lesser seen consequences of China’s environmental agenda, focusing on how it affects the lives of ethnic minority communities across four critical dimensions: traditional livelihoods, internal migration, economic well-being and cultural identity.

In Yunnan’s borderlands, ancestral farming practices persist amid shifting environmental policies and rising ecological pressures. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

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Patricia Molina oversees the City, Territory and Environment pillar within this unit. An urban planner by training, her practice has evolved with technological breakthroughs - bridging economic, social and other silos, and knitting together different scales to produce a dynamic analysis of the city. 

“If you can see almost life on one hand and on the other hand you can make scenarios and anticipate those scenarios and take the measures in advance, I think this is going to completely change the urban planning system,” she says. 

Her team can map cities in extraordinary detail. Including, for example, whether an apartment block has an elevator or air conditioning.  Combined with demographic stats, it helps them to see where residents are most vulnerable during extreme heat. 

Given Bilbao’s vulnerability to river flooding, they have also mapped the city’s sewage system and road network, including the number of vehicles and access to alternative routes if a flood strikes.

And with digital twins - virtual replicas of cities - they can test the efficacy of nature-based solutions, even down to which tree species will have the fastest growth rate under climate change.

Climate proofing, explains Efren Feliu Torres, head of the climate change adaptation programme, is a crucial concept within their modelling. It means taking into account the fact that the climate is dynamic and will alter the outcome of adaptation measures.

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Industrial Designer releases Precious Plastic DIY recycling center design open source; a global recycling community is born

Everything the project makes - from machines, tutorials and tools to product designs - is shared freely online under open-source licenses, enabling anyone, anywhere, to start a plastic recycling project. Machines can also be purchased and shipped globally, or, for the DIY-savvy, replicated, repaired and improved upon with off-the-shelf materials. 

It all started in 2014 when Dave Hakkens, then a student at the Eindhoven Design Academy, released his design for a plastic recycling machine to the world for free. 

The aim was to make plastic recycling available to local communities at scale by lowering the technological threshold for success with easily replicable and repairable machines. 

That year, three people independently replicated Hakkens’ machine. Within a short time, the Precious Plastic project was born. 

As a result, several startups and businesses around the world are scaling plastic recycling at the local level.

In Singapore, Plastify has kickstarted a PET-bottle collection scheme and collaborates with hospitals to turn medical packaging waste into products, including official merchandise for the F1 Grand Prix. 

In Turin, Italy, Plastiz turns everything from old traffic lights to coffee pods into sheets for architecture and interior design projects. 

And amidst war, No Waste Ukraine is “trying to make waste sorting a cultural norm and to replace the old Soviet-era shame, when recycling was seen as a sign of poverty, with a new sense of pride and identity,” says project lead, Khrystyna Baranovska. 

Since opening a Precious Plastic workshop, No Waste Ukraine has been able to manifest café furniture, notebook covers and branded gifts made from recycled plastic.

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Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous

In Sen̓áḵw’s case, it’s Indigenous by design, whatever it might look like to others. The project offers exciting architectural possibilities which could be replicated elsewhere by Indigenous leaders: a focus on communal public spaces rather than private yards, walking paths over parking spaces and the incorporation of Indigenous languages and designs reflecting thousands of years of site-specific history.

And rather than taking an incremental approach to development, with concessions to nearby homeowners, the projects at Sen̓áḵw, Iy̓álmexw and Heather Lands consider the entire community—including those who don’t yet live there, and those often marginalized by city planning, such as renters, non-drivers and, obviously, Indigenous people. (250 affordable homes will be set aside at Sen̓áḵw for Squamish citizens, and managed by the nation’s non-profit society Hiy̓ám̓ Housing.) On the Sen̓áḵw website, the Squamish Nation emphasized that rental housing will provide economic benefits for the next seven generations of its citizens. The chiefs of all three nations emphasized that Iy̓álmexw is for both “current and future residents of the region.” 

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"Fifteen years ago, solar power was nearly four times the cost of fossil fuel alternatives. 

For context, 2010 was back when the iPad was first released, Instagram was launched, and “TiK ToK” by Kesha was the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. 

Needless to say, a lot can change in 15 years — including the affordability of solar power. 

According to two new United Nations reports, renewable energy has passed a “positive tipping point,” and solar power is now 41% cheaper than fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel age is flailing and failing,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech on July 22, as the reports were released. “We are in the dawn of a new energy era. An era where cheap, clean, abundant energy powers a world rich in economic opportunity.”

“The sun is rising on a clean energy age. Just follow the money,” Guterres said frankly, pointing to the figures in the reports which found that green energy outpaced fossil fuel investments by $800 billion in 2024 alone. 

Last year is evidence of a decade-long trend towards renewable energy — despite federal attempts to slash it under Trump’s second presidency. 

“The year 2015 marked a turning point in global climate governance, with the adoption of the landmark Paris Agreement at COP21,” One report, titled “Seizing the moment of opportunity” said, in reference to the promise 195 countries pledged to hold the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius. 

“The cost of utility-scale solar PV has fallen by 80–90% each decade since 1960, whereas the costs of fossil fuels are highly volatile and show no long-term decrease,” it continued. 

“New solar PV has been undercutting new coal- and gas-fired power plants in most of the world for six years, and the gap in their average lifetime electricity generation costs continues to widen in favour of solar. Meanwhile, global manufacturing capacity of renewable energy technologies is outstripping demand: Announced solar PV and battery projects can already cover the global deployment needs of the tripling renewable capacity by 2030 goal.” 

For example, the report noted, electric vehicles are up from 500,000 to 17 million since 2015. 

Other astounding figures from the UN reports stated a 74% growth in electricity generated globally from wind, solar, and other green sources — just in the last year. 

And 92.5% of all new electricity capacity added to the grid worldwide came from renewables in the same time frame. 

“Countries that cling to fossil fuels are not protecting their economies, they are sabotaging them,” Guterres said in his speech, pointing to countries like China, India, and the United States, which still rely heavily on coal, oil, and natural gas.

“[They’re] driving up costs, undermining competitiveness, locking in stranded assets.” 

Guterres’ impassioned speech came to a head as he said that there is security in renewable energy. 

“There are no price spikes for sunlight,” he said. “No embargoes on wind.” 

“This is not inevitable. We have the tools, the instruments, the capacity to change course,” Guterres said. “There are reasons to be hopeful.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, July 26, 2025

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Help Granny Finish her PhD !

Help me curate this blog for a few months!

Submit your contributions here

Now that I am on the Dean's payroll to finish writing my thesis I can't put it off anymore and have to dive into this work. My deadline for submitting my PhD dissertation is November 2025. I'm not going to be able to keep surfing for content as regularly as I do - your contributions will help us keep the blog/s alive while I disappear into the writing cave.

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Harnessing the Sun Transforms Camel Herders Livelihoods

For many years, farmer Sree Ram Raika lived on an income as low as ₹10,000 (~$119.12) per month until he discovered a new way of life. He now earns more than four times his previous income by selling chilled camel milk using solar energy. The chillers can cool up to 500 liters of milk every day. Today, more than 200 farmers are using solar-powered chillers

“I can now provide high-quality camel milk with solar-powered instant milk chillers. This sustained income gives me hope that future generations will continue our tradition of camel rearing.”

The 100% solar chillers generate 3 kW per chiller. “We have four chillers installed in different areas. We have about 200 farmers collaborating with us,” said Ojha.

Discussing how the technology works, Akshatha says, “Once the milk is poured from the inlet at the top of the chiller, it instantly chills the milk to below 7 degrees Celsius, and the farmer can collect it immediately through the outlet.”

The community of farmers, along with SELCO, looks after the upkeep of the chillers. The solar chillers are connected to a cloud, and any discrepancy can be fixed remotely. The machine also has a regular cleaning mechanism. During the installation, the farmer is trained to use the technology and its operation and maintenance.”