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solarpunkbusiness · 1 day ago
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"This is nothing new—we have not invented a technology here," explains Sebastian Muller from the WFP resilience team. "The half moon technology is actually an endogenous technology to the Sahel and has been forgotten over time. We have rescued it from the past."
Not only does capturing water in the half moons help with the immediate need to grow food and contribute to the Great Green Wall, but 10% to 15% of the water will actually soak into the ground to replenish the water table, creating a more sustainable agricultural process.
"That way we actually achieve a balance of water. So we are not depleting the water resources, but we're making sure that we keep enough water in the ground for future generations," says Muller.
Other crops such as okra and tomatoes are grown in horizontal horticulture beds, and between those ditches grow trenches with fruit trees in them.
Engaging indigenous wisdom for sustainable farming
"This is just a very first step in this pilot," adds Muller. "We'll also be using other native species that will be planting in the pits that will drive the rejuvenation of the soil and the protection of the soil as the system starts growing into abundance and producing food and life for the people here."
According to Muller, the "syntopic farming" methods being employed were developed in Brazil and are based on global indigenous practices that mimic the way natural forests grow and thrive. These natural growing dynamics make agriculture more sustainable, continually replenishing the land rather than continually depleting it—truly a testament to global collaboration carried out at the local level with local community support.
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cognitivejustice · 4 months ago
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By accepting as inevitable humanity’s demise by its own hand, post-apocalyptic fiction places no responsibility on the living to course correct.
Solarpunk looks towards a post-capitalist future of renewable energy. It rejects climate “doomerism” and shows what our collective future could look like if we heal our relationship with the natural world.
Far from Star Trek’s “full luxury space communism,” where humans race across galaxies via endless sources of energy, the technology in solarpunk is imminently achievable. In the anthology Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias, science fiction writer and democratic socialist Kim Stanley Robinson describes this genre as rejecting “the inevitability of the machine future.”
Instead [solarpunk] asks, “What is the healthiest way to live? What is the most beautiful?”
Rather than Elon Musk’s tent cities on Mars, these fictional worlds “cobble together aspects of the postmodern and the paleolithic, asserting that we might for very good reasons choose to live in ways that resemble in part the ways of our ancestors.” 
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cognitivejustice · 2 months ago
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Learning from the land: Using indigenous knowledge for climate-sensitive circular lifestyles
Indigenous techniques like natural resource renewal, tree-based farming, traditional mud-and-wood housing, and consuming local, uncultivated foods, can address some aspects of climate change and also bring about a sense of responsibility and connection with nature. Promoting agroforestry and integrating trees into farms can improve biodiversity and soil health. Adopting drought-resistant crops and traditional methods like rainwater harvesting, mulching, and using organic manure is vital for conserving moisture, enhancing soil fertility, and minimising external inputs. Building on these approaches, there is a powerful social dimension that further amplifies their impact.
But before proposing viable solutions, we need meticulous landscape mapping: understanding community environments, traditional knowledge systems, and specific vulnerabilities. Fully understanding these dimensions can pinpoint exact strategies to reduce our ecological footprint, and promote lifestyles that minimise electricity consumption and resource use, while drawing on ancient wisdom to enhance our modern lives.
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solarpunkbusiness · 5 months ago
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Solarpunk Innovations from Africa
Africans innovate— a lot. To a large extent, it’s because their environments are dysfunctional enough to spur improvisation. When improvisation becomes culture, innovative outliers often emerge. Those outliers, like The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, permanently move the needle in their communities and, in some cases, the world.
The world seems so busy with the AI hype train. It’s great, but it could make us miss out on the many innovations around us. In 2023, Africa was home to some of the most remarkable and inspiring innovations in various fields, from health to energy and even artificial intelligence. Some of them got recognised, while others are still underhyped. Here are seven innovations from Africa we’re excited about this year.
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cognitivejustice · 2 months ago
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The shelters, called "X-Wings," are made of four containers in an "X" configuration. Each container has multiple sleeping compartments with a bed (or two, in double rooms), desk, outlet and storage shelves. Each room is individually air conditioned.
The entire unit is solar powered so it doesn’t need to be connected to the electric grid, making it easy to move where needed.
The unit doesn't have bathrooms or kitchens, so it needs to be near a facility that does.
"We're all architects and have been doing traditional buildings for 30 years now. No project that I've ever been involved with feels as good as this one," said Steel + Spark lead architect Zach Burns.
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solarpunkbusiness · 4 months ago
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“Art has the power to bring diverse groups of people together to have both individual and shared experiences,” says Wolovich. “We need more people to not only know about environmental issues — but we need them to become inspired and actively engaged in building solutions. Creative people and processes will be critical to help us get there.”
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cognitivejustice · 2 months ago
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Beginning her career as an environmental engineer who designed rural and city water supply systems, Ismawati switched careers when she realized that the work she was doing wasn’t helping those most in need. She decided to redirect her expertise to design safe waste management initiatives, founding her own NGO.
BaliFokus is a community-based urban environmental management program that partnered with a rookie trash company collecting trash from nearby hotels. Ismawati taught sustainable waste management techniques and those that initially picked up trash for pigs learned how to professionally process trash.
This not only helped the environment but improved businesses where they went from having to pay for waste removal to being paid as waste managers. This also increased the number of employees and reduced waste by almost 70%
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cognitivejustice · 3 months ago
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The floating homes of Lake Titicaca
Created by the indigenous Uros people as protection against attacks from the Incas, the Uros Islands are one of the world's most innovative feats of human engineering.
The man-made floating islets, which are home to the indigenous Uros people, are created by stacking layers upon layers of totora roots and reeds. This water-resistant plant grows in the lake and is the lifeblood of the Uros community: it is used to make boats, houses, roofs, mattresses and more. The plant is also eaten (playfully called the "lake banana") and applied as medicine, and its flowers are used to make tea.
"There was something very haunting and appealing about this wide array of creation from a single material," said Amorós, whose art often draws inspiration from Peruvian cultural legacies and communities.
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"The structure of the totora is cellular. It's a very hearty, stable material that's also flexible but prevents kinking," explained Vranich. "People often used to make skis with just a single piece of wood. Nowadays, they replicate the interior form of a cross-section of totora."
To build the islands, each of which is home to two to six families, the Uros first gather large blocks of totora roots, which often float to the surface during the rainy season. Multiple blocks are pulled together, and the roots and reeds mix naturally to form a layer about 1-2m thick, called khili.
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To make sure the islands do not drift away, eucalyptus rods are stuck into the bottom of the lake as anchors and are tied to the root blocks using rope. Every 15 to 20 days, the totora reeds rot and need to be replenished with fresh ones. It's a laborious, endless cycle that is essential to the islands and the Uros' survival on them. "What struck me the most was how the islands and homes are in a constant state of flux, of creation and decay," said Amorós. "This ephemerality is magical."
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Today, solar panels power bedroom lights and small TVs; a radio station operates on the main island; and Uros offer their homes or private hospedajes (lodges) on Airbnb.
"They already have called us from Lima, saying that we're in the process of becoming an official wonder of the world," he said.
Whether or not that happens, it's evident that these modern changes and tourism have altered the Uros' life on the lake. One thing remains certain, though: as long as there is totora growing at Lake Titicaca, the islands' rooted foundation will stay the same.
BBC
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cognitivejustice · 5 months ago
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“If we used to use oil-powered machines to flow water from irrigation canals to your fields, now we power it with electricity from sunlight. Free electricity from the sun so we can provide free irrigation,” said Marcos Jr at the inauguration ceremony. “Certainly because of the construction of this solar-powered pump irrigation project, in your barangay there will be a continuous flow of water in the irrigation systems, crops will be well taken care of, your harvests will increase, double to the product.” 
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The project is the first in the Philippines to be constructed over an irrigation canal, meaning that the land cultivated by farmers will not be reduced.
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cognitivejustice · 4 months ago
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Solarpunk is a futurist movement that began in speculative fiction and sci-fi films and has since spread to architecture and design. Practitioners envision a clean and green future built on principles of sustainability, social justice, and collective action.
The name spells it out.
"Solar" signals optimism and a strong association with renewable energy, while "punk" reflects a DIY ethos and an anti-capitalist philosophy.
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solarpunkbusiness · 2 months ago
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The CoolCycle Project is the combined effort of Youth Sustainable Development Network and KAMIM Technologies, led by Damilola Hamid Balogun and Adekoyejo Kuye.
The CoolCycle Project repurposes parts from disused generators to create affordable, energy-efficient solar-powered cooling systems, addressing generator waste and cooling needs to transform waste into wealth for Nigerian farmers.
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The cold storage systems will be deployed at farm clusters, first-mile distribution/ aggregation centres, local markets and other critical points across the food supply chain. This solution simultaneously tackles post-harvest losses and environmental challenges associated with end-of-life generators.
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cognitivejustice · 2 months ago
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Food, energy and water insecurity are ongoing concerns in East Africa, agrivoltaic systems address all three
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This paper shows data for agrivoltaic systems in Tanzania and Kenya that generate power, produce food and conserve water, demonstrating their viability for both grid-tied agribusinesses and rural, off-grid projects. 
The research indicates that certain crops such as maize, Swiss chard and beans thrived in the partial shade offered by solar panels.
“The positive yield results for Swiss chard have promising implications for growing nutritious crops with agrivoltaics. The control plot was sufficiently irrigated, with yields comparable to those in a rainfed study in South Africa, so drought stress does not explain the lower yields compared to the agrivoltaic plot.
“Instead, the partial panel cover is potentially creating a more suitable growing environment by protecting the crops from heat stress and/or UV damage,” the report said. 
It notes that some crops produced more food using less water, “valuable in a region where water scarcity threatens food security, most farmers rely on rainfall for their crops, and climate change is likely to make rainfall less predictable.”
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solarpunkbusiness · 6 months ago
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Nigerian Inventor Samuel Yakubu Is Lighting Up Homes With Simple Salt and Water Solution
Yakubu said his WATTer Lamp evolved from being powered with kerosene, unripe fruits and rechargeable batteries to ordinary salt and water.
The lamp uses a light-emitting diode (LED), which provides the light once the salt and water solution has been added. This solution, a mixture of one teaspoon of salt and water, can last up to 70 days before it is replaced.
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Yakubu is hoping to produce powerbanks that use the same salt and water solution to charge mobile phones. He also hopes to set up his factory in Nigeria so he won’t have to always send his raw materials to China.
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solarpunkbusiness · 4 months ago
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What started as an idea for a new approach to science fiction has evolved into a worldwide community
There are people all over the world who believe a just and sustainable world is possible. Maybe you’re one of them. Oh, the details of how that world works will vary according to our individual priorities and values, not to mention the physical and political climate of where we live. But we share the same vision: a future in which we’ve tackled the environmental and social justice issues of our time in a way that brings humanity, nature, and technology into harmony. We dream of green, community-centered cities; of high-tech, ethical farms; of pollution-free skies and plastic-free oceans. We dream of a world of abundance and inclusion, with equitable resource distribution and flattened hierarchies. We know we can’t achieve this by following the same path we’ve been walking; we must work together to blaze a new and better trail.
We are artists and writers and musicians. We are activists and community organizers and urban planners. We are architects and scientists and engineers. We are gardeners and gamers and makers.
We are the solarpunks.
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cognitivejustice · 4 months ago
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Figure 1. Indigenous populations’ distribution in the Arctic (blue circles); the AMAP Arctic boundary is shown in red Source: AMAP, Natural Earth
In popular imagination the Arctic is a harsh, dark wintery landscape, hardly the first place one associates with sunshine as a resource. Yet solar power has been increasingly taking hold above the Arctic Circle, in particular among indigenous communities with some of the strongest motivations to become energy independent and reduce the carbon emissions exacerbating climate change.
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cognitivejustice · 5 months ago
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‘The onus is now on us to innovate our way out of a problem we did not create.’
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So says Nkwo Onwuka, founder and Creative Director of Nigerian artisanal clothing brand NKWO Official, and a pioneer of sustainable fashion on the continent. On 15 August 2024 at Workshop17 at the V&A Waterfront, the designer will headline Africa Textile Talks, an educational journey into the heart of sustainable textiles, slow fashion and design.
I have named my presentation 'The Last Square Loom'. Without giving too much away, the loom serves as a metaphor for the restrictions we impose on ourselves or that have been imposed on us and how we need to break out of these confines to build up our communities and ensure the preservation of our culture and heritage.
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