3.3 WeFlant - Biomimicry Global Design Challenge 2020

WeFlant

Biomimicry Global Design Challenge 2020

awarDs: sEmi-final list achiEvEmEnt co-author: sofía PérEz-sasía (sPain); maría Paloma garcía aDánEz (sPain); srEErag chota vEEttil (inDia) YEars: JunE 2020

location: taiwan

From its beginnings, earth has been in constant change which is evidenced by the transformations and the evolution of species since life appeared in it. however, human activity has caused climate change that drastically affects the life and biodiversity on the planet.

The prototype of WEFLANT aims to reduce some of the impacts that are caused by the urbanization in the modern society and at the same time try to involve the advantage of biomimicry and achieve the sustainable development goals.

GOAL: ZERO HUNGER - FOOD SECURITY (AGRICULTURE)

Today, more than 820 million people regularly go to bed hungry, of whom about 135 million suffer from acute hunger due to man-made conflicts, climate change and economic downturns. To create a sustainable city and community, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) aims to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead an active healthy life.

As cities are increasing in population, rural areas are getting more abandoned, especially in Taiwan. This flux of people towards the cities is causing general inflation of the housing price in cities. This is making people rent smaller dwellings as prices continue inflating. How are we supposed to live or buy high-quality food if we cannot almost pay the rent? Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic could put an additional 130 million people at risk of suffering acute hunger by the end of 2020, according to the World Food Program.

Figure 3.3.1 Population with severe food insecurity

Food insecurity is defined by the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). Severe food insecurity is more strongly related to insufficient quantity of food (energy) and therefore strongly related to undernourishment or hunger.

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) ( OurWorldInData.org/hunger-and-undernourishment )

Figure 3.3.2 The concentration and distribution of food insecurity by severity differs greatly across the regions of the world

The distribution of food-insecure people in the world presented in Figure 11 shows that from a total of 2 billion suffering from food insecurity, 1.04 billion (52 per cent) are in Asia; 676 million (34 per cent) are in Africa, and 188 million (9 per cent) are in Latin Ameri-ca. The figure also illustrates the difference across regions in the distribution of the pop-ulation by food-insecurity severity level. For example, in addition to be the region with the highest overall prevalence of food insecurity, Africa is also the region where severe levels represent the largest share of the total. In Latin America, and even more in Northern America and Europe, the proportion of food insecurity experienced at severe levels is much smaller.

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

In 2018, Taiwan lacked proper food security, this led to double the number of hunger till the 7.8% of the population, were underfed or regularly go hungry. Moreover, there is only 34% of self-sufficiency referring to food production. This makes the country depend on importation, due to the limited existing arable land.

Figure 3.3.3 History of food self-sufficiency in Taiwan Figure 3.3.4 Applied SDGs

Zero Hunger means: - Achieving food security - Improving nutrition - Promoting sustainable agriculture - Reducing food waste.

ISSUE: FOOD SECURITY AND LIMITED LAND

Issue 1: Limited land

One of the biggest reasons behind limited land is urbanization. Urbanization has been underpinned by the rapid growth in the world’s economy, the proportion of gross world product, and workers in industrial and service enterprises. Globally, agriculture has met the demands from this rapidly growing urban population, including food that is more energy-, land-, water- and greenhouse gas emission-intensive. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of urban dwellers still suffer under-nutrition. Urbanization brings about (a) arable land is developed to be city area (b) decreased or wasted farmland and (c) people abandon agriculture and move to urban. The reasons cause limited land.

Figure 3.3.5 Arable land use per person, from 1961 to 2015

Figure 3.3.6 Population of Asia and the Pacific

Arable land is defined by the FAO as land under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow. It is measured in hectares per person.strongly related to undernourishment or hunger.

Source: World Bank / OurWorldInData.org/ land-use

Source: UN

Figure 3.3.7 Arable land area in Taiwan

Agriculture area in Taiwan is decreasing, especially after joining the WTO at 2002

Issue 2: Water shortage

Despite its high annual rainfall, Taiwan is only able to use 20% of it as a water resource, making it in the 18th place under the United Nations global ranking in terms of being water resource-poor region. Taiwan is vulnerable to water shortage from the start of fall to the arrival of the Plum Rains in May and June, and they have become the new normal over the past ten years. If the situation is not quickly addressed, the actual capacity of reservoirs for storing water will be down to half of their designed capacity by 2030 under the worst-case scenario, which would indeed trigger the nightmare of rationing. On the other hands, as the increase in the demand for water and the support from the government policies for Industry, agricultural water rationing is decreasing and being snatched.

Moreover, there will be more extreme weather with the stronger typhoon and shorter but heavier raining season in the future, according to the prediction under the climate changes. Except for the decreasing of water supply, water shortage is worsening because of the increase of live-water demand from population growth and consumption per person with higher standards of living.

Figure 3.3.8 Observed and projected changes in annual average temperature and precipitation in Asia.

(Bottom panel left) Map of observed annual precipitation change from 1951–2010, derived from a linear trend. For observed temperature and precipitation, trends have been calculated where sufficient data permit a robust estimate. (Top and bottom panel, right) CMIP5 multi-model mean projections of annual average temperature changes and average per cent changes in annual mean precipitation for 2046–2065 and 2081–2100 under RCP2.6 and 8.5, relative to 1986–2005. Solid colours indicate areas with the very strong agreement.

Source: IPCC (2014a), P.1335

Figure 3.3.9 The supply rate of agricultural irrigation water

The lowest supply rate of agricultural irrigation water area are Jia-nan Plain, Changhua and Yunlin, where are the largest agricultural area and main origin for produce in Taiwan.

Source: Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, ROC 中 華民國行政院農委會