Solutions Volume 8, Issue 1

January-February 2017, Volume 8, Issue 1

For a sustainable and desirable future

Solutions Scaling Up Education in a Climate of Crisis

by Molly Bernstein Poverty, Violence, and Women: Talking Gender Equality with the Head of UN Women

by Christina Asquith Postcards from Paraguay

by Robert Thornett Zika is Infected with Sexism

by Jennie Spector Envisioning an Ecopolis in the Heartland

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Farley, J. (2017). Market and Non-market Solutions to Ecological Crises. Solutions 8(1): 1-2. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/market-non-market-solutions-ecological-crises/

Editorial by Joshua Farley

Market and Non-market Solutions to Ecological Crises

Sascha Voss

Food prices at a grocery store in Barcelona, Spain.

E

cological crises ranging from climate change to biodiversity loss arise when self-interest outweighs the common good; for example, people aware of the catastrophic social costs of carbon emissions drive anyway because it is personally convenient.

Markets, in theory, channel selfinterested, competitive behavior towards the common good, leading an increasing number of economists and environmentalists to argue that market mechanisms offer the most efficient solutions to environmental problems.1 People respond to higher prices—a tax on carbon—by using less. Industry responds to profit incentives—monopoly property rights to patented information—with environmentally-friendly innovations.

These market mechanisms are certainly better than ignoring the costs of ecological degradation or investing nothing in green technology, but they

remain highly inefficient. Demand for essential resources, such as food and energy, is only responsive to price when expenditures account for a large share of the household budget. Internalizing the full ecological costs of agriculture would cause food prices to skyrocket.

Yet, when food prices did soar from 2007 to 2008, rich countries scarcely noticed. Americans actually increased wheat consumption even as the price tripled.2 In contrast, in poor countries where food expenditures account for more than half the household budget, people slashed consumption,3 resulting in rising malnutrition, rioting, and political breakdown.4,5 Allocating the last loaf of bread to the overfed American who throws a third in the trash, rather than to the destitute African mother desperate to feed her starving children, is clearly inefficient.6 If society develops a clean, decentralized, dependable, and inexpensive

alternative to fossil fuels, it is equally inefficient to limit use to those who can pay monopoly prices, leaving others to burn coal. True, patents become part of the public domain after twenty years, but can we afford to delay the adoption of green technologies for that long?

Most of the ecological problems we currently face are prisoners’ dilemmas: even when universal cooperation is clearly the best strategy for society as a whole, individuals are better off acting in their own self-interest regardless of what others do.7,8 Prisoners’ dilemmas can only be solved through institutions that successfully promote cooperation.

Several articles in Solutions have called for one very promising cooperative institution: common asset trusts (CATs), designed to manage our shared natural and cultural heritage for the common good of this, and future generations.9-15 CATs can even use market mechanisms, such as auctioning off rights to resource extraction or waste emissions, and can use the resulting revenues to address the undue burdens on the poor and invest in the common good.

Most global CATs will require detailed and complicated international agreements, which can be time consuming and difficult to negotiate.

In contrast, a green technology CAT could be developed unilaterally and help pave the way for other CATs. A single wealthy nation, or even an individual, could start a CAT in green technologies by funding research— especially for sustainable agriculture and alternative energy—with results made freely available to all on the condition that any improvements are also open access.16 Unlike CATs for resource extraction or waste emissions, where the goal is to ration access to ensure sustainable consumption, the optimal property rule for information is open access—free, unlimited use for all.

The major input into developing new technologies is information, so open

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 1

Editorial by Author 5. Ball, P. Acting on the global food crisis. The Lancet 386(10000): 1231 (2015).

6. Gustavsson, J, Cederberg, C, Sonesson, U, Otterdijk, RV & Meybeck, A. Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Exent, Causes and Prevention. (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2011).

7. Nowak, M & Highfield, R. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed.

(Free Press (Simon Schuster), New York, 2011).

8. Hardin, G. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162(3859): 1243–1248 (1968).

9. Barnes, P & McKibben, B. A Simple Market Mechanism to Clean Up Our Economy. The Solutions Journal 1(1): 30–38 (2009).

10. Costanza, R & Farley, J. What Should Be Done With the Revenues From a Carbon-Cap-and-Auction System? The Solutions Journal 1(1): 33 (2009).

11. Steffen, W, Rockström, J & Costanza R. How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth. The Solutions Journal 2(3): 59–65 (2011).

likeablerodent

12. Cooperstein, B. How Can We Fix Our Legal System to Protect the Environment? The Solutions Journal

LCD price tags at a market in Japan.

2(6): 96–98 (2011).

13. Cerrato, A. Levelling the Playing Field:

access lowers the costs of technological advance. Once a green technology exists, its value is maximized when adoption is maximized, at a price of zero. Furthermore, compared to profitdriven innovations, those funded by a CAT are more likely to help the poor or protect, restore, and create public goods.17-19 While all countries would ideally contribute funding to the best of their abilities, free-riding on the CAT would be impossible; more widespread adoption of green technologies benefits the funder, and will almost certainly lead to improvements in the technology.

A fossil fuel economy is inherently competitive, since one person’s use of fossil fuels leaves less for others.

In contrast, one country’s use of solar technologies does not leave less sunshine or technology for others.

The energy transition required to avoid runaway climate change favors a more cooperative economy. Abundant research from across the sciences shows that humans are among the most cooperative species to have ever evolved, and identifies cultural

mechanisms that stimulate cooperation. One important mechanism is group membership, another is reciprocity stimulated by generosity.20-24 A green technology CAT achieves both of these. Anyone who chooses to use the technologies becomes a member, and initial generosity would undoubtedly stimulate reciprocal contributions. Technology alone will be unable to solve global ecological problems, but future negotiations for CATs that reduce waste emissions and resource extraction would be among members of the same group, and more open to reciprocal cooperation.

References 1. Muradian, R et al. Markets for biodiversity and ecosystem services and the fatal attraction of win-win solutions. Conservation Letters 6(4): 274–279 (2013).

2. Wheat data. USDA [online] (2013). http://www.ers. usda.gov/data-products/wheat-data.aspx.

3. Farley, J, Schmitt Filho, A, Burke, M &Farr, M. Extending market allocation to ecosystem services: Moral and practical implications on a full and unequal planet. Ecological Economics 9(117): 244–252 (2015).

4. Berazneva, J & Lee, DR. Explaining the African food riots of 2007–2008: An empirical analysis. Food Policy 39: 28–39 (2013).

2 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Strengthening Common Property in Honduran Legislation. The Solutions Journal 6(4): 69–75 (2015).

14. Costanza, R et al. The Perfect Spill: Solutions for Averting the Next Deepwater Horizon. The Solutions Journal 1(5): 17–20 (2010).

15. Costanza, R et al. The Future We Really Want. The Solutions Journal 4(4): 37–43 (2013).

16. Mustonen, M. Copyleft: the economics of Linux and other open source software. Information Economics and Policy 15(1): 99–121 (2003).

17. Mustonen, M. Copyleft: the economics of Linux and other open source software. Information Economics and Policy 15(1): 99–121 (2003).

18. Kubiszewski, I, Farley, J & Costanza R. The production and allocation of information as a good that is enhanced with increased use. Ecological Economics 69(6): 1344–1354 (2010).

19. Farley, J & Perkins S. Economics of Information in a Green Economy. In: Building a Green Economy (ed.

Robertson, R). (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, 2013).

20. Nowak, M & Highfield, R. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed.

(Free Press (Simon Schuster), New York, 2011).

21. Sober, E & Wilson, DS. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998).

22. Wilson, DS. Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. (Delacorte Press, New York, 2007).

23. Wilson, EO. The Social Conquest of Earth. (Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, 2012).

24. Henrich, J & Henrich, N. Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation. (Oxford University Press, New York, 2007).

Thank you to all of the reviewers who contributed their time and expertise to making Volume 7 of Solutions a great success. We are trying to make our review process transdisciplinary and constructive, and our reviewers are an essential part of ensuring the quality, relevance, and unique perspective of Solutions. Here is a list of those who reviewed papers published in 2016.

Bob Smith David Roberts Michael Knight Bram Buscher Elaine Wethington Rachel Sona Reed Kate de Medeiros Gina S. Warren Megan Johnson Oswald Schmitz Houston Wilson Jean-Pierre Sarthou Ross Cullen Lene Sigsgaard JosĂŠ M. Rey Benayas Neville Crossman Mariam Akhtar-Schuster Wafa Essahli David Bernell Joseph Sarkis Navin Ramankutty Jamie Gerber Deepak Ray Kevin Noone Oran Young Steve Hatfield-Dodds Adrien Vogt-Schilb Robert Webb Will Steffen Eric Chu Garima Jain Sumetee Pahwa Gajjar Corrine Cash Ryan Anderson Debbie Reed

Robert Parkhurst Paul Stock Virginia Murphy Sean Gillon Melissa Marschke George Wenzel Catherine Pirkle Tiina Kurvits Evaristo Haulle Frances Cossar Paul Hebinck Jochem Zwier Jilde Garst Meine Van Noordwijk Norman Fenton Richard Coe Simone Quatrini Ralf Barkemeyer Klaus Kellner Steven Smith Dosteus Lopa Shiva Polefka Ritesh Kumar Dan Longboat Sheri Longboat Lisa Guppy Susan Elliott Christina Barstow Alycia Overbo Jennie Barron Andrew Lo Stuart Taylor Nelson Sewankambo Donald Wagner Greg Lestikow

VOLâ&#x20AC;&#x2030;7 REVIEWERS

Contents

January/February 2017

Features

The search for real answers begins with Solutions Join the Solutions Team Become a part of the global Solutions Team. Have Solutions delivered to your door or devices with our new PDF subscription.

Keep up to date on our latest articles and gain exclusive access to online and face to face Solutions events.

Submit Join the dialogue.

Submit your thoughts in the form of articles, news stories, features, or online comments.

What are your solutions?

44

Securing Knowledge of Sustainability in 21st Century Higher Education by Gord Stewart

54

Climate Change in Cities: An Atelier Approach for Municipal Action by Luuk Masselink, Hasse Goosen, Vincent Grond, Pier Vellinga, and Rik Leemans

Municipalities are key parts of the puzzle in a world adapting to climate change. To leverage this, the Climate Atelier Approach offers a workshop method to interactively design municipal climate adaptation as an alternative to large-scale global actions.

66

Multifunctional Agriculture: A New Paradigm of Mixed Cropping by Stephen F. John and Gregory F. McIsaac

The ongoing emphasis on increasing crop yields without consideration for the environment is unsustainable. To achieve healthy agro-environments that still keep pace with production, multifunctional agriculture is a promising alternative, using perennial and cover crops alongside annual crops to produce both agricultural goods and ecosystem services in a sustainable agricultural landscape.

Become a Partner Your contribution will help bring together people from all walks of life in creating innovative solutions.

Education integrated with sustainability awareness must be embedded across university level curricula to prepare students for life and work in a resource-constrained world. Progressive and innovative universities are beginning to combine top-down and bottom-up approaches, achieving remarkable results.

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www.thesolutionsjournal.com

4 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

He Tangata: It Is People by Vicky Forgie and Marjan van den Belt When the government tried to sell a stretch of pristine beach in Awaroa to private investors, New Zealanders mobilized to reclaim the land for the public through a crowdfunding campaign, proving that crowdfunding can demonstrate the non-market value of ecosystem services to the public.

On the Web

Perspectives

www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Envisioning

Scaling Up Education in a Climate of Crisis by Molly Bernstein

24

Seafood in the Future: Bivalves Are Better

by Jennifer Jacquet, Jeff Sebo, and Max Elder

27

Zika is Infected with Sexism by Jennie Spector

33

Finding the Middle Ground: Social–Ecological Farming as a Solution to a Polarized Debate by L. Jamila Haider and Wiebren J. Boonstra

36

Conflict-Free in the Congo by Jennie Spector

39

Israel and Palestine: Boycotts, Divestments, Sanctions, and The Future

by Kendall Bousquet

42

12 On the Ground

Ecopolis Iowa City: Envisioning a Regenerative City in the Heartland

by Jeff Biggers How did Iowa City become an ecopolis, the first regenerative city in the heartland?

It all began with the 500-year flood in 2017. After this great crisis, the community came together to collectively change their lifestyles, starting a journey that they would one day tell stories of to their grandchildren in a future, and a city, that they had saved for them.

91

Postcards from Paraguay 2.0: Under Renovation by Robert Thornett Paraguay is rapidly

transforming itself. With new Master Plans for transport, urban renewal, and the national power grid, the capital city of Asunción is being reborn as a green metropolis, leading the way for Paraguayans towards transparency and sustainability.

Solutions in History

85

After the Plantations: The Past and Future of Agriculture in Hawai i by Lawrence H. Kessler

Can a return to pre-plantation food sovereignty in Hawaii solve the problems that monoculture agribusiness has caused?

Idea Lab Noteworthy

08 Interview

Holding Stitches: A New Company Repairs Discarded Clothing for the Good of the Earth Once Persecuted, Alligator Gar Now May Drive the Fight against Invasive Asian Carp Computer Model Predicts Wealth Distribution through Satellite Images Emergency Cash Funding Can Prevent Homelessness

21

Poverty, Violence, and Women: An Interview with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women Interview

by Christina Asquith The rhetoric around women’s rights and gender equality is at an all-time high, but do actions meet words? Former school teacher and now head of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka draws from her experiences in South Africa and worldwide to give us the truth about challenges women face.

In Review

82

Academic Activism: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

by Amitai Etzioni

Editorial

01

Market and Non-market Solutions to Ecological Crises

by Joshua Farley How can we solve the prisoners’ dilemmas plaguing our global ecological problems? Creating a common asset trust for green technology offers a pathway to increasing cooperation while reducing waste emissions and resource extraction. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 5

Solutions Editors-in-Chief: Robert Costanza, Ida Kubiszewski Associate Editors: David Orr, Jacqueline McGlade

Contributors 1

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Managing Editor: Colleen Maney Senior Editors: Christina Asquith, Jack Fairweather History Section Editor: Frank Zelko Book & Envisioning Editor: Bruce Cooperstein Editors: Naomi Stewart, Dana Rawls Photo Editor: Marc Fader Graphic Designer: Kelley Dodd Copy Editors: Anna Sottile, Nadine Ledesme

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Business Manager: Ian Chambers Editorial Board: Gar Alperovitz, Vinya Ariyaratne, Robert Ayres, Peter Barnes, William Becker, Lester Brown, Alexander Chikunov, Cutler Cleveland, Raymond Cole, Rita Colwell, Robert Corell, Herman Daly, Thomas Dietz, Josh Farley, Jerry Franklin, Susan Joy Hassol, Paul Hawken, Richard Heinberg, Jeffrey Hollender, Buzz Holling, Terry Irwin, Jon Isham, Wes Jackson, Tim Kasser, Tom Kompas, Frances Moore Lappé, Rik Leemans, Wenhua Li, Thomas Lovejoy, Hunter Lovins, Manfred Max-Neef, Peter May, Bill McKibben, William J. Mitsch, Mohan Munasinghe, Norman Myers, Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir, Bill Rees, Wolfgang Sachs, Peter Senge, Vandana Shiva, Anthony Simon, Gus Speth, Larry Susskind, David Suzuki, John Todd, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Alvaro Umaña, Sim van der Ryn, Peter Victor, Mathis Wackernagel, John Xia, Mike Young

Subscriptions: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/subscribe Email: solutions@thesolutionsjournal.com

Sponsoring Inquiries: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/sponsor Email: ida.kub@thesolutionsjournal.com

On the Cover The Children at Risk Foundation keeps Brazilian children from living on the streets through sports activities, artistic and cultural development, and vocational training. Here, a child named GuiGui learns about Brazilians’ African heritage by using natural materials to dress as a member of the Surma tribe of the lower Omo Valley in East Africa. For more information, visit http://www.carfweb.net. Photo by Children at Risk Foundation.

Solutions is subject to the Creative Commons license except where otherwise stated.

1. Gord Stewart—Gord is an environ-

mental sustainability consultant based in Matamata, New Zealand. His academic involvement has included teaching MBA students and supervising their research projects relating to sustainability issues. His own education includes a BA in Economics from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and an MSc (with Distinction) in Environmental Management from Imperial College London. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, where he is researching sustainability in higher education.

2. Luuk Masselink—Luuk has

a Masters in Climate Studies from Wageningen University (the Netherlands).

Since graduation, he has worked at Wageningen University. Many of his projects are closely linked to the climate adaptation services foundation, directed

by Hasse Goosen. Luuk’s work focuses on the development of tools and methods to support adaptation planning at various governmental scales. For example, he was involved in development of the ClimateAdapt portal for Europe, the Climate Atlas in Bangladesh, and the Hi-aware project in the Himalaya countries. He was closely involved in developing and organizing the described Climate Ateliers.

3. Stephen John—Steve is the

co-founder and executive director of the Agricultural Watershed Institute (AWI), a nonprofit organization established in 2003. AWI’s mission is to conduct research and educational programs on practices and policies that improve water quality, maintain or restore

6 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

ecosystem health, and conserve land and water resources in agricultural watersheds. Prior to AWI’s formation, Steve was an environmental consultant specializing in water quality planning.

From 1987 to 1995, he served on the Decatur (Illinois) City Council. He serves on the steering committee of Green Land Blue Waters. He has a BA in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame.

4. Vicky Forgie—Vicky is an

Ecological Economist based at Massey University, New Zealand. Vicky has worked on a number of research projects that seek to better understand links between economic activity, the social and cultural fabric of society, and environmental quality. Research interests include the modelling of environment-economy interactions, valuing the benefits humans derive from ecosystem services, analytical tools for progressing sustainability, sustainability theory and measurement, alternatives to Gross Domestic Product as a measure of progress, the interconnectivity of indictors used to measure well-being, analysis of supply-chain responsibilities, economic structures of regional economies, and public participation in local government.

5. Joshua Farley—Joshua is an

ecological economist, Professor in Community Development & Applied Economics, Fellow at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at UVM, and Special Visiting Researcher at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. His broad research interests focus on the design of economic institutions capable of balancing what is biophysically possible with what is

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socially, psychologically, and ethically desirable. Specific projects currently focus on agroecology, farmer livelihoods, and ecosystem services in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest; redesigning finance and monetary systems for a just and sustainable economy; and, the just distribution of wealth and resources.

6. Amitai Etzioni—Amitai is a

University Professor and Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University. He can be reached by e-mail at etzioni@gwu.edu.

His most recent book, Foreign Policy: Thinking Outside the Box, was published

by Routledge for Chatham House’s “Insights” series. Amitai’s five failed missions and one relatively successful one are detailed in his memoir, My Brother’s Keeper. He served in the White House and has taught at Columbia University, Harvard, and Berkeley. His leading current cause is avoiding war with China.

7. Robert Thornett—Robert is

a Geography professor at Northern Virginia Community College, American Public University, and Trinity Washington University. He has written previously in Yale Environment 360 about environmental and social innovations in Kenya and Brazil. He has also presented twice on Bolivia’s migration patterns and Kenya’s wildlife wars at the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers.

8. Christina Asquith—Christina

joined Solutions in 2009 as one of the founding editors. She has been an investigative reporter, war reporter, and narrative nonfiction author; working both as a staff writer and freelancer for

The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Her articles have been read by millions of viewers, and she has reported from Afghanistan, Jordan, Dubai, Oman, Qatar, and South America. Christina is also author of two books, including the critically acclaimed Sisters in War (2009 Random House).

9. Molly Bernstein—Molly has

worked as a journalist in Amman, Jordan and as a fellow at the Fuller Project for International Reporting in Istanbul, Turkey. She is currently studying for a graduate degree in Global Human Development at Georgetown University.

10. Jennifer Jacquet—Jennifer is

an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU interested in large-scale, transboundary conservation dilemmas.

She has a particular interest in climate change and the protection of wildlife, and works on issues related to overfishing and aquaculture. She received a Sloan Research Fellowship in ocean sciences in 2015 and was named a Pew Marine Conservation Fellow in 2016.

11. Jamila Haider—Jamila is a PhD

candidate at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, where her thesis focuses on the dynamics of persistent poverty in biocultural landscapes. Her research seeks to identify linkages between social and ecological systems integral to resilience during a transformation process. She also works part time with the Resilience and Development Programme, currently using food as a lens to specify biocultural indicators in resilience assessments. She is co-author of the book With our hands: A celebration of

food, and life in the Afghan and Tajik Pamir Mountains, documenting traditional knowledge in a rapidly changing biocultural landscape.

12. Wiebren Boonstra—Wiebren

is a rural sociologist working at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He studies social-cultural diversity and resilience in fisheries and farming from a sociological and sustainability scientific perspective.

He is also an associate editor of AMBIO: A journal of the human environment.

13. Kendall Bousquet—Kendall

is a senior at Northeastern University majoring in International Affairs. She has previously reported from Istanbul as a student fellow at The Fuller Project for International Reporting, an organization dedicated to producing investigative journalism on issues related to women.

14. Jennie Spector—Jennie previ-

ously worked as a student research fellow with The Fuller Project for International Reporting and with Foreign Policy Interrupted. She is completing her undergraduate studies in International Affairs and Political Science at Northeastern University. She has previously written for the Northeastern University Political Review, and assisted Dr. Jessica Stern with the publication of her 2015 book ISIS: The State of Terror. Previous work and studies in conflict resolution, human rights, and arts education have taken her to South Africa, Chicago, the Balkans, Paris, and Istanbul.

15. Jeff Biggers—Jeff is the

American Book Award-winning author of several works of history, journalism, and theatre, including Reckoning at Eagle

Creek, which received the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting.

He serves as the Writer-in-Residence in the University of Iowa Office Of Sustainability, where he founded the Climate Narrative Project.

16. Lawrence Kessler—Lawrence is

an environmental historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

His current project is a history of the Hawaiian Islands and the Hawaiian sugar industry. Lawrence has published essays in the Pacific Historical Review, World History Bulletin, and Southern California Quarterly.

17. Daniel McCormick—Daniel’s

experience as a multi-disciplinary artist in the fields of sculptural installation and environmental design brings the artists’collaboration Watershed Sculpture both a public art and ecological trajectory. For over 25 years, he has been using art to restore and affect a positive ecological balance in damaged environments. He was educated at the University of California, College of Creative Studies in Santa Barbara and has a BA from the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley.

17. Mary O’Brien—Mary’s 20 years

of experience in creative direction of film and media projects brings a research and design emphasis to her work. She is a sculptor, photographer and writer and adds to the collaboration of Watershed Sculpture her experience and engagements with specialized communities.

She has a BA in Political Science from Marquette University and a postgraduate Certificate with Distinction in Studio Arts from UC Berkeley.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 7

Noteworthy. (2017). Solutions 8(1): 8-11.

Idea Lab Noteworthy

Dave Russell / Renewal Workshop

Jeff Denby and Nicole Bassett, Renewal Workshops’ co-founders, at the company’s factory.

Holding Stitches: A New Company Repairs Discarded Clothing for the Good of the Earth Textiles have the worst recycle rate.

Only 20 percent of donated clothes are sold through charity stores, with the rest either shipped overseas or placed in landfills. Consumers are not the only ones stuffing landfills, either.

Manufacturers toss out around 10 to 12 percent of clothes due to minor damage, reports The Guardian.

As a result, every year, about 13 million tons of textiles are dumped

into landfills in the US, according to the latest data from the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s equal to about 150 million cubic yards of landfill space.

Clothing items then take anywhere from three months to 80 years to decompose, all the while releasing methane as well as dyes and chemicals.

A new eco-friendly company based in Oregon, called Renewal Workshop, offers a solution. Founded in June, Renewal Workshop aims to correct light damage to clothing and sell items back to consumers through a dedicated website. They also plan to sell some of the repaired items back to manufacturers.

8 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

“[Our company] is one that will help bring about a circular economy for the apparel industry. It is redefining our relationship to products, how we make them, how we use them and what their overall journey looks like so they don’t end up in a landfill,” says Renewal Workshop co-founder Nicole Bassett.

As a principle, they only work with sustainability-focused companies, such as PrAna, Ibex, Toad & Co., and Indigenous. Here’s the process: once the team receives the damaged items from these companies, they sort them and start repairs. The renewed clothes bear both the brand logo and a “RW” tag.

Idea Lab Noteworthy “All those products that can’t be repaired, we reuse the material to create something else,” explains Bassett. “And then only when that piece of apparel is truly finished does it need to find its final resting place — and we believe that should either be composting or recycling.”

Once Persecuted, Alligator Gar Now May Drive the Fight against Invasive Asian Carp

by Devin Windelspecht

Once derided as a “trash fish,” a nuisance that was driven to extinction in parts of the country in order to make room for angler-favored “sportfish,” the huge, toothy alligator gar may

at last be returning to the northern waters that it was once eradicated from decades ago. A new drive to reintroduce the once-maligned species is part of a last-ditch effort to halt the spread of one of the fastest growing invasive fish species to threaten US rivers: the Asian carp.

“Asian carp” refers to a group of four closely related species—silver, bighead, grass, and black—that were first brought to the US in the 1970s for the purpose of filtering pond water but by the early 1980s quickly began to infiltrate the American freshwater river system. According to the National Wildlife Federation, the huge fish, which can grow up to 100 pounds, makes up around 97 percent of the biomass of some sections of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers and can today be found in the waters of 27 US states.

Asian carp aren’t a harmless introduction, and in fact have proven to be a major disruption to local river ecosystems. With no natural predators that can compete with their massive size and reproductive capability—a single female carp can lay as many as half a million eggs at one time—the Asian carp have over the years started to outcompete many other native species by gorging themselves on a singular food source that many freshwater fish rely on: plankton.

This is where alligator gar comes in.

The gar, whose range used to span as far north as Illinois but today inhabits only the warm coastal waters around the Gulf of Mexico, is one of the few native species that can compete with Asian carp in terms of size: the gar can grow as large as 300 pounds, making it the second largest native fish in the

Charlene N. Simmons

An alligator gar at the River Giants exhibit at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 9

Idea Lab Noteworthy

Malawi, estimated daily per capita expenditure (2012–2015)

United States. As a predator, the alligator gar can also target the carp when they’re most vulnerable: after they’ve hatched from their eggs but before they grow old enough to spawn, without being forced to challenge adult carp for plankton as a food source.

It’s not just local environmental groups fighting to bring the alligator gar back into northern waters. Statelevel lawmakers have begun to take up the cause, with Illinois lawmakers passing a resolution in May 2016 urging state natural resource officials to speed up the gar’s reintroduction program, as well as adopting regulations to protect all four gar species native to the state from the same kind of persecution that decades ago drove them from their natural habitats.

This move comes none too soon.

Today, only a thin electric barrier separates the carp-infested waters of the Mississippi and its tributaries from the Great Lakes. These barriers have been shown to be permeable in the past.

With Asian carp moving further north with each passing year, the reintroduction of the gar into its natural habitat may prove to be one of the few checks possible to keep this massive invasive fish at bay.

Computer Model Predicts Wealth Distribution through Satellite Images Stanford University experts have developed an inexpensive and accurate way to predict village-level wealth. Their computer model uses publicly available satellite images to identify exactly which neighborhoods or villages are home to the poorest communities in a given country. The findings were published in Science in July 2016.

1.5 2 3 4 8 Average daily per capita consumption expenditure ($) Data from: N. Jean, M. Burke, M. Xie, W.M. Davis, D. Lobell, S. Ermon., “Combining satellite imagery and machine learning to predict poverty”. Science, 2016 For more info, visit sustain.stanford.edu Jean et al.

A “map of poverty” in Malawi.

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Idea Lab Noteworthy Nighttime satellite images give a clear picture of wealth distribution around the world: the less light at night, the poorer the region. However, detailed and accurate local information is needed in order to create policy and distribute aid. This would mean spending millions of dollars to send thousands of survey-takers into these areas.

The new program promises the same information through a machine learning technique (the science of designing computer algorithms that learn from data) called convolutional neural network and high-resolution satellite imagery.

“Using the final model that has been trained on survey data, we can estimate per capita consumption expenditure for any location where we have daytime satellite imagery,” the team said on the study’s dedicated website.

The team tested their model in Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Rwanda—five African countries for which there is reliable information about distribution of poverty.

“Without being told what to look for, our machine-learning algorithm learned to pick out of the imagery many things that are easily recognizable to humans—things like roads, urban areas, and farmland,” said Neal Jean, the study’s lead author.

The program also learned how to distinguish between metal rooftops and those made of grass or mud. The team then used statistical methods to determine the significance of these items to income.

Eventually, the computer model was able to predict average spending by households and average household wealth. The results matched the available data in these five countries. In some cases, it even offered more accurate results than currently available data.

Emergency Cash Funding Can Prevent Homelessness Can a small amount of no-stringsattached cash prevent homelessness?

Yes, according to a new study by University of Notre Dame’s James Sullivan and William N. Evans. The study, published in Science in July 2016, suggests that a person who receives USD$1000 right when they’re about to lose their homes are more likely to stay off the streets.

This is the first study establishing that emergency financial aid actually reduces homelessness, noted Notre Dame News, the university’s official news outlet. For many years, critics argued that cash distribution would only postpone homelessness. “That appears not to be the case” said Sullivan.

The researchers tracked 4,500 people who called the Homelessness Prevention Call Center in Chicago between 2010 and 2012. The program distributes cash to those who are on the verge of homelessness. The people who receive funding usually have similar backgrounds: under normal circumstances they can sustain their

lifestyles but are no longer able to due to losing their jobs, a death in the family, or an unexpected medical bill.

However, funding is not always available. So Sullivan and Evans, along with Melanie Wallskog, a grad student from Stanford University, tracked both the people who received the emergency funding (on average USD$1000) and the people who did not, although they qualified for it.

The researchers found that the people who ended up receiving the cash were 88 percent less likely to become homeless within three months of their call to the center and 76 percent less likely to become homeless within six months. “There is evidence that it’s a sustained impact up to two years later,” said Sullivan.

More than 600,000 people are homeless in the US alone. There are unofficial estimates suggesting that the actual number is anywhere between 1.5 and 3.5 million. The United Nations describes homelessness as “an egregious violation of human rights occurring in all countries, threatening the health and life of the most marginalized.”

Quinn Dombrowski www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 11

Biggers, J. (2017). Ecopolis Iowa City: Envisioning a Regenerative City in the Heartland. Solutions 8(1): 12-20. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/ecopolis-iowa-city-envisioning-regenerative-city-heartland/

Envisioning

Ecopolis Iowa City: Envisioning a Regenerative City in the Heartland

by Jeff Biggers

This article is part of a regular section in Solutions in which the author is challenged to envision a future society in which all the right changes have been made.

“Ecopolis” Central city

Navigable river

Market gardening and community supported farms Nature park and community orchard Mixed farming and renewable energy

This is an abbreviated version of the multimedia “Ecopolis” theatre show performed in the spring of 2016 by author Jeff Biggers and the Awful Purdies musical group in the historic Old Capitol in Iowa City.

“Ecopolis” has also been adapted and performed in Chicago, in various cities in Iowa including Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Cedar Falls, and in Carbondale, Illinois.

Act I: Nebi I don’t get to see my grandchildren very often, but we never miss the Ralston family reunion in Iowa City.

The kids always want to know how it happened. How did Iowa City become an ecopolis, the first regenerative city in the heartland?

There’s only one way to answer that question, of course. When we return home to Iowa City now, we arrive at the train station, where kinetic panels power the electrical grid, and while the kids always want to take the kayaks into town along the river, or race their bikes downtown along the green wave without a traffic light or car, I feel there’s only one way to understand our city—and that is by walking.

Iowa City began as a vision on foot; one of the first cities west of the Mississippi that was named, surveyed,

Grazing and forests

Air imports/exports

Road imports/exports

Sea imports/exports

Global communications

Renewable energy

Renewable energy

© copyright Herbie Girardet/Rick Lawrence

Herbie Girardet / Rick Lawrence

Ecopolis

and laid out before a single limestone was lifted from the river to build this historic capitol.

The capital of Iowa, Iowa City was envisioned before it came into existence—envisioned as a laboratory of democracy. My great-great-grandfather, Robert Ralston, was one of the three commissioners who picked this spot; he stood right on this bluff above the river, gazed out at the amphitheater of limestone, the Big Grove of 20 square miles of hardwood forests, and had the audacity to envision a city of risk takers, innovators, and visionaries.

As Robert Ralston always told the story, Iowa City was not unoccupied— it was on the edge of the so-called Black Hawk Purchases. Purchase, of course, is a misnomer; with Black Hawk in prison, the surrender of Iowa by the Sauk and Meskwaki came easy.

That is why I first take my grandkids

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to Black Hawk Park and show them the solar road memorial to the Sauk and Meskwaki.

The past is always a presence, as Mexican poet Octavio Paz once wrote, and the spirits of the past—of the people, the landscape, and the river— still speak to us, if we listen.

Grandpa, grandpa, my kids shout, tugging at my shirt: Look, I created a sail on my canoe, just like the Meskwaki did on the Iowa River.

The Ralston family reunion, of course, takes place on Ralston Creek.

It’s a troublesome creek—but we were a troublesome family. The city staff just wanted us to go away, so they could do their jobs. The Chauncey was always a problem—Chauncey Swan that is. He was a towering presence, another administrator who wanted to grow our river town into a Midwestern city.

Envisioning

University of Iowa Libraries

Mildred Augustine Benson diving into the Iowa River at Iowa City in the mid-1920s.

At the creek that bears our name, we play a game: What’s that? A freckled madtom. And that? A spotted bass. And that? An American eel. And that? A redear sunfish—and oh, the paddle fish—the shark of the Iowa River, squeals my little grandkid. Not all sharks are in the city hall.

What a wonder: the native fish have returned to the creek and river, and along Iowa Ave, I take them to the mineral springs site that once brought visitors to our town. Ralston Creek had healing waters. But didn’t they know how to protect them, my grandkids ask? Yes, but they needed lights in those days, gas lights manufactured at the gas plant on Burlington Avenue, and the coal tar bled into Ralston Creek, along with cyanine, lead, and arsenic, until it became a Superfund site in 2002.

This kind of oversight, of not understanding the river valley, led to the “great crisis.”

You see, the town leaders said it would never happen again. We could mitigate the flooding. Didn’t even need flood insurance. That we could mitigate climate change—adaptation, we called it. But what if you are adapting to a failed system?

The city council had voted to use USD$60 million dollars of concrete to raise the main road one foot above the 100-year flood plain. But that didn’t matter much with a 500-year flood.

And the rain came. And it came hard. When it rains in Iowa, thanks to industrial agriculture, three out of every four inches runs, runs hard across the erosion, with no native prairie or forests to stop it and the natural drainage system gone. The water runs through the gateway into the river, into our city. First, it was 1.5 inches in a day. Then, 2.5 inches in a day. Then up to five inches in a day. For days.

And the waters rose.

Nebi. Nebi. The Meskwaki warned us about nebi—water. You must understand the water. You must understand our watershed—that trees and native prairie are your only gateway to a future.

Over a hundred years before, in the 1890s, the President of the University of Iowa had always warned the town.

President Thomas MacBride declared: Iowa’s woodland should be religiously preserved and in a thousand places extended. Every rocky bank, every steep hillside, every overhanging bluff,

every sandhill, every clay-covered ridge, every rain-washed gully should be kept sacredly covered with trees; every gorge, sinkhole, should be shaded, every spring be protected, every streamlet and every stream and lake bordered and overshadowed…The question is whether we do the right thing now or wait until the expense shall have increased a hundredfold.

Macbride was ignored.

Soon we will be gone, the Meskwaki told Robert Ralston, and your people will plant corn where we bury the dead. And you will regret it.

In 1827, a flood wiped out the riverfront; boats topped log cabins in the 1872 flood; 300 tons of coal spilled from a barge on the 1885 flood; and after the floods of the 1940s, we came together to build that little dam and all those drainage systems. The engineers told us that they could control nature.

Until the next flood. In the great flood of 1993, the water reached 26.81 feet, then 30 feet in 2008, and then 50,000 cubic feet per second of water raised the river 45 feet high, and raw sewage came knocking on our doors.

Iowa City was wiped out.

A crisis is never a crisis until it’s validated by disaster—and that is exactly what happened when the 500year flood hit. It was 2016 or 2017—I forget now, the year doesn’t matter.

No, it was 2016, because a new group of people came to power with some exciting ideas to create a regenerative future.

At first, we waited for city hall to act. I mean, I recycled my beer bottles.

My wife drove a Prius, and we bought organic (most of the time, well, sometimes, well, at least the first week of the month). But we knew we were part of the problem—that 60 percent of the grid, burning fossil fuels, came from coal. We didn’t pay attention to the waterways or the retreating land. We were trying to do less bad.

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Envisioning My grandchildren don’t believe me when I tell them about my generation in the year 2016.

They mock me. Grandpa, Iowans knowingly dumped five billion gallons of hog manure as fertilizer, even though you knew it ran off into your waterways? You burned toxic fossil fuels, even though you knew it had huge health care and environmental costs, and produced the highest CO2 emissions, and even though you knew Germany, Scotland, and Denmark already had 100 percent renewable energy regions? You imported 90 percent of your food in the heartland? You couldn’t even eat the fish in your river because of mercury and other problems?

Grandma said you ate asparagus imported from Chile? And tomatoes picked by the hands of a 7-year-old migrant worker in Mexico?

Yes, yes yes…but we changed.

Thanks to the “great crisis,” the 500year flood. And thanks to Ayman, a father and University of Iowa student, originally from Sudan.

I’ll never forget Ayman and the crowd huddled at the Tim Dwight Solar Stadium—I think we used to call it Kinnick Stadium. We were standing in line for rations—you see the flood had knocked out the roads of commerce, and therefore the food stores.

But Ayman didn’t need rations. He brought a box of food from his farm.

And so did another man, David Burt, who brought loads from his community garden, and then farmer Shanti Sellz brought sacks of potatoes. And Miriam Alarcon arrived from the food coop, and said, ellos tienen que comer. I will make tamales.

Gars me greet, David said, the best laid plans gone aft agley.

Yalla’ naaquel, Ayman said. Yalla’ naaquel. Come let us eat. It’s time Iowa City sits down and has a shai magreb.

Ayman commented, if you can get 60,000 people to fill a football stadium

University of Iowa Libraries

View of Iowa River from the President’s House at the University of Iowa, September 25, 1908.

to watch grown men chase a pig skin, now is the time to sit and eat and talk about our future.

And David, Ayman, Miriam, Shanti, and everyone else set a table.

And the table grew. And people brought food. A food truck arrived from the Mennonites in Kalona. And the table grew across Burlington Avenue, across the river, across our segregated neighborhoods. And Kurt Freise, the pioneering slow food author and chef, offered recipes. And Iowa City came together at the same table, black and white and Indigenous and newcomer, for a table that grew three-miles long.

Let us talk about our future, Ayman said, as a regenerative city. Khalena nict quellem. An mostakbelna.

And then I heard a voice: Dianne Dillon-Ridgley, the great environmental justice activist in our town, stood up, rang a bell, silenced the table, and said, it’s time for Iowa City to rethink our ways in an age of climate change, to rethink ways that regenerate our energy, our food, our land, our ways of getting

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around—beyond sustainability, we must heal our damage to this land.

We need to go back to our roots as a laboratory of democracy on the river.

Act II: The Laboratory They made the declaration on a beautiful June day in 1840 in Iowa City. “From this day forward, a new era will commence in the destinies of our neighborhoods. We are no longer dependent upon others for our imports nor are we subjected to the labor and expense of drawing across the country all articles brought from abroad. From this day forward, blessed with this beautiful river, we shall depend upon ourselves for our livelihood.”

This capital town, the great laboratory of democracy, would become self-sufficient.

We lived in an agropolis in those days. It was a circular town with a navigable river; houses adjoined by gardening, ducks, and dairy; surrounded by woos, three-tier diversified farms, and livestock.

Envisioning

The University of Iowa

Flooding on the University of Iowa campus, when the Iowa River was about 31 feet high. Flood stage for the Iowa River at Iowa City is 22 feet. The previous record was set in 1993 at 28.5 feet.

Agropolo—what you see in Italy today. La citta, circondata dall’agricola, allevamenti, le vacche, le pecore, poi il bosco. This is why we spend thousands of dollars and love to tour Italy—this ancient, beautiful rapport between people, the city, and nature. Oh, look, people hang out their laundry. Take a photo, John. Look at those buildings made from rock and stone and wood that last centuries, not just years like dry wall. Walking. Eating real food from the open markets. Oh, Agnes, I’ve never eaten so much food and drank so much wine—and I still lost weight.

Who has a problem with that?

Well, Thomas Edison and Francis Peabody the coal baron did. So did Wall Street, bankrolling their

coal-fired plants and factories, keeping the dirty secret of coal mines and their burial grounds from the world. Henry Ford had a problem with it, too, and built his cars, as we took a dragline to our communities, widened the roads, built the suburbs, segregated ourselves from people who didn’t look like us, and created the Petropolis. Petro-towns. Petroleum states of mind.

The circle was gone. The road became linear. We brought in our energy and spewed out the waste, like coal ash. We brought in our food and goods, we spewed out the waste and created landfills. We started cutting our grass in tidy squares and using pesticides to stamp out evil dandelions.

We lost the circular metabolism of the city.

And we lost our contact with nature, the Big Grove, the oaks, the hickories, the diversified farms, and the native prairie. Over 99 percent of the Iowa prairie has been ripped from its roots, making us the most altered state in the union.

Suddenly, the Old Capitol no longer faced the river, but now faced the highway. The river was behind us, next to the garbage dump and coal-fired plant.

The Iowa River, which used to define us, was gone from our view—and ways.

Of course, we weren’t the only people facing this realization. Back in the 1990s, the Germans, among others,

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Envisioning

The University of Iowa

Flooding on The University of Iowa campus on June 15, 2008.

began to rethink this linear relationship, especially with their energy. And they asked a simple question: Why don’t we produce our own energy, especially electricity? In the US, of course, there were plenty of reasons— namely, the powerful lobbies of big utilities and oil and coal companies whose profits depended on subsidized fossil fuels.

Yet, the Germans, thanks to the ragtag efforts of the Greens, passed a feed-in tariff, the first seed of energy independence. The first step back to the Ecopolis. A feed-in tariff allows you to sell back to the grid any excess energy you produce. And here in Iowa, we were starting to understand this. There were 136 municipally owned utilities, and towns like

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Bloomfield had declared their intention to become independent from fossil fuels. Thanks to the Eagle Point Solar company’s Supreme Court decision in 2014, even towns like Iowa City finally had a chance to purchase solar energy from third-party providers, breaking the grip of the utility companies.

So, in order for Iowa City to make the first step, we created a model eco-district, based on 100 percent renewable energy, as a living laboratory for the residents to not only envision but experience a clean energy way of living.

We sent an Iowan down under.

Do you know that a decade ago, Adelaide, Australia convened the town to rethink its use of energy, committed to a regenerative city, put solar panels on 120,000 households, and created the model Lochiel community, among other neighborhoods, that use 100 percent renewable energy? Do you know that there are hundreds of total renewable-energy communities in Denmark and Germany, like the Vaudan district in Freiburg. Last October, dark, dreary, cold Germany got 60 percent of its electricity from clean energy—and 65 percent of that came from small, decentralized producers.

In 2016, Iowa City realized it had an incredible opportunity. Rising from the mud, the Riverfront Crossings District, the very neighborhood that had been wiped out because of extreme weather and flooding in 2008, could become the eco-district. One developer, Kevin Hanick, made the first step, putting hundreds of solar panels on his Riverfront Crossing apartment complex. An ordinance was passed that all new buildings had to meet energy efficiency standards set by local expert Martha Noerbeck, and all were required to be equipped with solar and geothermal energy.

Envisioning Funny enough, the walkable neighborhood along the river, with its solar-lit bike and walk paths, solar sculptures, and green infrastructure and gardens became a national attraction.

But it wasn’t as simple as just putting solar panels up. It needed to be a lifestyle change.

Now, I didn’t want to live in Iowa City’s first eco-district. It was my wife.

She’s said we had to do something about this climate change. And I’m like, can we wait until the game’s over? This is a big game. Iowa is in the quarterfinals of March Madness.

And she turned off the TV. Climate change ain’t no game, she said. Do you know where your electricity comes from? And I said, yeah, the plug, can you turn the game back on? And she said, no, not until you realize your juice comes from a utility company, and while they get brownie points for wind energy credits, they mainly burn fossil fuels like coal and fracked-up gas that release global warming-inducing methane that makes CO2 emissions look like cool whip. So, no game until you get off the grid.

She wasn’t done. But there’s a catch, she added. We have to use less energy—a load limit, we have to commit to a capacity-based tariff.

You have to get rid of your electric toothbrush, your mixer, and your large screen TV. She said, this is your new batting average: 2,000 watts a day.

That’s all you’re getting—a bunch of Swiss people figured it out. That’s all you can consume to keep this Titanic planet from going down. Capito? Just 2,000 watts.

Out of curiosity, I asked, how many watts do I typically use now? The answer was 12,000 watts, she told me, so open the windows and start getting some fresh air and light.

Of course, the eco-district had to pay more to retrofit homes, build more

efficient and smaller homes, commit to green roofs, solar water heaters, or revamp some of the area for geothermal and energy-efficiency measures.

But the savings paid off.

Still, it wasn’t enough to generate our own electricity and reduce our carbon emissions. The answer wasn’t just blowing in the wind. It was also under our feet.

hoop houses that allow for year-round gardening. In hot and sunny Detroit, an urban agriculture ordinance led to a widespread revival of urban farming throughout the year. In London, thanks to breakthroughs in hydroponics and LED light advances, organic vegetables were grown in underground bomb shelters and delivered to restaurants within hours.

We didn’t just envision the future; we cultivated it, ate it, and took comfort in it.

Act III: Food So, we moved into the Ecopolis district. It required some adjustments.

Energy efficiency means density and walkable neighborhoods. We sold our car. It was like selling our dog. I saw our SUV disappear into the wide lanes near the mall in Coralville, getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

We learned to bike in cold weather— and like it. We had to give up our 2,500 square-foot home and grass lawn.

Windows opened. And we had neighbors, lots of neighbors. One neighbor, Javier de Guatemala, was always badgering me to do more in the community garden.

Oye, como amanecio, have started your gringo kale garden yet? The Swedes across the street are already into their third harvest. And his wife was always shouting for food—oye Javier, traigame mas huevos. That would make Javier turn to me: You’re not buying huevos, are you? It’s really stupid to buy huevos when you can send your kid to collect them in the chicken coop. His kid taught my kid how to use goats instead of the lawn mower.

My other neighbor, Leroy, kept talking about hoop dreams—those

And our kids kept running off and getting dirty with this guy, they called him the Cedar Rapids Man. He always had dirty hands. My kids would come home and start a mantra: The soil will save us, the soil will save us. The Cedar Rapids man said we must feed the soil with our compost.

We created an edible trail from Coralville to the hospital to the campus to the east side, where anyone could get an entire meal by picking. I preferred the berries. We talked about being a healthy community, not a medical community. We planned to build a farm-acy from medicinal herbs.

We recognized the time spent outside and in the soil as part of our daily workout and stress relief—no less important than the gym or yoga.

You see this patch of our community garden, my neighbor Leroy told me one day: 10’ by 10’ can provide you with the nutrients for your family through much of the year. You just have to learn the stories of the food, he said—like our grandparents who came north on the great migration of African Americans from Alabama. We brought food knowledge and food stories. The collard greens, the varieties

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Envisioning

Preparations for flooding at the University of Iowa on June 14, 2008.

of beans, the chickens in our backyard, the role of canning and preserving, the spices from Africa. Your hillbilly banjo is African, man.

In 2016, we set local food benchmarks: we imported 90 percent of our food back then, but within five years, we imported only 50 percent, then only 25 percent, and now we produce 75 percent of our food. But we also knew urban farming, even with the breakthroughs, would not feed everyone in our cities.

In a regenerative city like Adelaide, in those days, a diverse semi-urban farmbelt surrounds the city as a food network to meet local demands. With a “zero waste” strategy, 180,000 tons of compost are converted annually from urban organic waste, with 50,000

acres of nearby land dedicated to vegetable and fruit crops. Again, the city has a circular function, a circular metabolism. The food comes daily into the center markets, is consumed, and waste is reused as compost. Solar buses deliver the goods.

Here’s the punch line: regenerative organic farming, including diversified crops and rotation, vegetable mulching, and organic compost, doesn’t just produce food. As the Rodale Institute recently showed in a study, regenerative organic farming is crucial in soil carbon sequestration. Farmers can play a huge role—perhaps more than anyone—in regenerating our soil and reducing CO2 emissions. We’ve lost 80 percent of the carbon stock in our soils.

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Which brings us to our crap. It was a great day when Iowa City signed the Zero Waste Ordinance. No more landfills. We committed to reducing our waste by 80 percent. Oakland, California, among other American cities, had long committed to a zero waste agreement. Oakland’s waste management principles emphasized a closed-loop production and consumption system. Redesigned upstream strategies reduced the volume and toxicity of products and materials and promoted low-impact lifestyles.

Local mandates for food, energy, and efficiency, waste reforestation, even goats—the eco-district unfolded like a recipe.

My other neighbor, Malik, had a row of vegetables in his hoop house

Envisioning that looked like a quilt from Somalia, with carrots, peas, beans, bell peppers, potatoes, cabbage, and cloves—what he called the Iowa City Sambusa.

Act IV: Restoration Perhaps before we could say what kind of regenerative city we wanted, we had to ask: What kind of city do we want?

What kind of university? What is our relationship with our hinterlands and nature? Did we recognize Iowa City as a melting pot, or as a smorgasbord where all of our cultures are recognized?

How could we put the roots of culture back into our neighborhoods?

Culture. From the Latin root, colere.

Cultivare. Cultivate. Food. Nature.

Diversity. Restoration. Regeneration.

By restoring our relationship with nature—not simply in a series of more parks and ball fields, but a deeper commitment to healing and restoring our surroundings—we also found our sense of place, our sense of community. Adelaide planted three million trees—that’s stunning—not only as a carbon sink, but as a roadmap on how we orient our lives. So, we took the challenge: we planted 400,000 trees.

Less than five minutes from Iowa City, Versaland farmer Grant Schultz and his crew planted 30,000 trees in a couple of years and restored a once eroded corn and bean farm. It’s now a living farm, evolving, regenerative, and productive with fruit, vegetables, and livestock—a carbon sink.

Grant never talked about sustainability—nothing is sustainable, of course. He asked how we moved beyond doing less bad and actually do something that enhances rather than harms our environment. To begin the healing process. That climate action was not just pulling the plug, but it was first and foremost about putting carbon back into the soil.

The soil will save us, my kids kept repeating in their mantra.

To marvel at planting acres of milkweed to bring back the monarch butterflies, the symbols of climate change today. To marvel at planting 400,000 trees in the county, as a collaboration between the city, campus, and various communities.

At that same long table, always with food, we asked ourselves: how do we heal and restore our waterways and neighborhoods, the new strata of segregation? How do we protect ourselves from unacceptable levels of nitrates and industrial run-off in our water?

How do we make sure those who can least afford the changes in electricity rates, the cost of food, and the vectorborne illness from climate change, are in the forefront of our plans?

The eco-district along the river—as a collaboration between the campus, hospital, and city—began the process of answering the question of who we are today in Iowa City in different ways.

No true eco-district could emerge without inclusionary zoning: lowincome units mixed with higher income and older communities with new communities. Immigrants. Urban immigrants. Students. And most importantly, senior citizens, the ranks who bring so much experience and wisdom and chutzpah. The Iowa City 100 Grannies planted a solar tree in every neighborhood.

In 2016, in the year of the great crisis, a new opportunity opened up again in an area called Mosquito Flats, which had been flooded and destroyed in 2008. The city owned scores of properties. So, people simply asked: Why not follow the river, and plant native trees for soil and green absorption, and why not get some food in the process?

Mosquito Flats became the Paw Paw Patch. At its planting celebration,

the mayor of Iowa City stood on the riverfront, chanting, Asimina triloba, Asimina triloba. I said, Jim, are you OK? And he said, since Iowa City was the first UNESCO City of Literature, he thought using Latin, instead of “paw paw” tree, gave it a literary touch.

Just like Robert Ralston—we had to re-envision ourselves.

The Vauban eco-district in Freiburg ultimately concluded they needed to reduce the use of cars—to the point of creating a walkable environment that didn’t need them. Within three years of living in Vauban, 80 percent of the residents gave up their cars.

Reviving the historic tram, the walkable eco-district in Riverfront Crossings did the same.

In its mission to make regenerative city studies a part of the required freshman curriculum, all on-campus university students were required to learn by living, like students at Berea College in eastern Kentucky, in 100 percent renewable-energy dormitories, powered by solar, wind, geothermal, and recycled materials. Special credit was given to those who tended to the garden and compost.

In the tradition of university president and nationally recognized ecologist Thomas MacBride, the university president, mayor, city manager, and city councilors turned over their homes as showcases of permaculture, with edible lots, energy efficiency renovations, and renewable energy. The town and campus leaders got their hands dirty in a community garden.

We didn’t just envision the future; we cultivated it, ate it, and took comfort in it.

I tell my grandkids that the regenerative city didn’t happen overnight. It took ages just to talk it out, across the long table. Other cities, like Adelaide, even hired a “thinker in residence.”

But every day, new breakthroughs

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Envisioning

Miriam Alarcón Avila

Jeff Biggers and the Awful Purdies Band—Katie Roche on accordion, Sarah Driscoll on guitar, Nicole Upchurch on banjo, and Katie Senn on cello—perform The Ecopolis show in the Old Capitol Chamber in Iowa City.

reminded us that we needed to think anew and recognize watershed events as turning points. To not defer the pressing realities and mounting costs of climate change but embrace them as opportunities.

How many floods did it take? How many billions did we lose? How many lives?

Economics lose meaning when we calculate the price of our own demise, of the declining hopes of our own futures and that of the next generations.

The best way for my grandkids to learn this, like my generation of crisis, was to talk to our new neighbors from Sudan, who understood resiliency and adaptation, or those from Mexico who left drought conditions, and even those from Decorah, who had created an amazing river

town in northern Iowa. To bring the mayor of Dubuque here and ask why he went to the Paris climate summit in 2015—and how he brought its mandates home.

And then I asked my kids the same question we asked ourselves during the great crisis: How can you be a catalyst for this regenerative city? What is my role—and the role of artists, innovators, engineers, and entrepreneurs?

What is growing in my garden? And can I walk there? Where does your electricity come from?

It could begin with a simple act, like that of a concerned school parent like Geoff Lauer, who worked to get Iowa City schools to halt the use of toxic pesticides on school grounds and start using goats.

There are so many examples, but I keep seeing this image in Iowa City:

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the endless line of volunteers filling six million sand bags in 2008 in an effort to hold back a great flood on the river—a record beyond New Orleans.

A record of resilience. But resilience, in this situation, was a state of loss, surrender, and ultimately, ruin. After the great crisis in 2016, we asked those same people who were heroes in filling six million sand bags in a vain attempt to hold back a flood, to do the same for climate action now, in a real and possible way. To create the regenerative city.

So, back to our family reunion on Ralston Creek. The grandkids laugh.

What’s that?

An American eel. And that? The madtom. There’s a redear sunfish and a northern hog sucker. What’s that? The paddle fish. The lovely sharks of Iowa River.

Asquith, C. (2017). Poverty, Violence, and Women: An Interview with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women. Solutions 8(1): 21-23. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/poverty-violence-women-interview-phumzile-mlambo-ngcuka/

Idea Lab Interview

Poverty, Violence, and Women: An Interview with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women Interviewed by Christina Asquith

A

former school teacher from South Africa, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has served as the Head of UN Women since 2013. Prior to that, she was deputy president to Thabo Mbeki and the most senior female politician in South African history. Under the apartheid regime, Mlambo-Ngcuka led a gender-equality organization. This interview took place in Istanbul, Turkey during the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit.

A recent McKinsey report said achieving gender equality will add USD$12 trillion to global growth and the global economy, as women enter the formal economy for the first time. What issues arise for women and society when women enter into the workforce?

Firstly, I think that it’s important that governments, employers, and society make the adjustments for women. It’s not women who must adjust to society, because it’s the structure of society that makes it difficult for women to go into the labor force in large numbers.

For instance, accessible, affordable childcare is probably the single biggest issue that would unleash the power of women in most economies. And that needs a collaboration between government employers who could subsidize and societies making the necessary cultural adjustments that facilitate. It also means employers need to accept that it is ok for men to be a father and to be at home. In that way, we redistribute care work that would enable more women not to feel guilty about not being at home with the children.

So it’s an all-around adjustment of society. Sometimes women are expected to become super women—you must be a good mother, a good wife, a good worker, a good this and that.

We were surprised at the data showing that only 0.4 percent of UN funding goes to women’s groups and women’s ministries. How is that possible? Were you surprised?

Saddened. But not surprised. Women’s organizations have one thing in common: they are all underfunded.

When women need a truck, they get a bicycle. Only 10 percent of necessary funding has been given for most national action plans that have been approved. There is an expectation that gender inequality is not an expense, it’s a past time. It’s not a hot issue for society. That would be infrastructure or schools. Those are important, but if you do not have gender equality you won't reap the full benefits. The penny has not dropped.

If we just do incremental funding increases, then we’re always chasing and running behind the targets and we’re never on top of our game. And yet there’s a cost in not supporting women. If you don’t invest in girls’ education, then you have the drop outs and the early pregnancies, and then we have to fund the problems that come out of that. If we do not fund the economic well-being of women at the household level, so they are not destitute, you then have compromised the nutrition of the children, and you have left the woman at risk

Marco Grob

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

of being in an abusive relationship, which is a cost to society and the state.

So it’s a vicious circle.

The fact is that a woman on Wall Street, in a factory in India, and on a farm in South Africa are all being underpaid. Undervaluing women’s talents is so ingrained in the most sophisticated countries. And these men have not sat together in Wall Street and India and decided to do this. It is so ingrained, this concept that women are care givers and have a breadwinner who supports them—we do not have to pay them a lot.

It’s industrial revolution logic— women stayed at home and men worked. It doesn’t exist. One of the areas the women’s movement has not invested enough energy is the transforming of attitudes. It’s hard.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 21

Idea Lab Interview It’s not easy to think—I have talked to a person and they have changed their attitudes. We have focused on some of the things that were more tangible to deal with, but this issue is the big elephant in the room.

It’s really when we need communications within families, country, and societies in order to change attitudes between each other, we have a long way to go. But we need every one within their own countries and institutions to really help us to get this message and win over those diehard sexists—that is why we have the #heforshe campaign, so we have to realize we need the men speaking on this issue and on their own terms—dude to dude—about the challenges and benefits of gender equality for men and women. We don’t have enough yet, but it’s growing.

There’s a big push now to collect more data on women, from Gates to UN Women to The Womenstats Project— is that playing into this communications push to change attitudes?

Firstly, we always want to mention that we have to address gender equality, because it’s the right thing to do. It’s the woman’s right. But that argument does not get the right response from everybody. We still have to prove that discriminating against a woman is a bad thing financially and in every way.

We can do that when we provide data.

It’s also important for us for our own work, so we can take lessons and share our work and have baseline studies. If by 2030 we want to achieve substantial equality, how will we know we’ve done that?

If we talk about equal pay, how have we closed the gap, what worked, what else do we need to do? If we’re talking about redistributing paid care

work, where will we redistribute it, how will we do so?

Here at this summit, we want to look at the number of girls that currently don’t go to school because they’re affected by crisis. How will we know we are bridging the divide in conflict when it comes to girls accessing education? We will know because we have counted. Obviously we don’t want the boys either out of school, but we want the data to know and to track. Fifty percent of maternal deaths are preventable—what should we be doing to prevent these deaths, and what opportunities are there for us?

If we do provide those interventions, what percentage are we able to reproduce and share so that they become part of the way the life and health systems? So data is essential to monitor ourselves, cost better, share better, and also to convince the skeptics—and there’s a lot of them.

country. Because when we say violence against women is a global issue, it’s because it happens in every country, rich and poor. Integration of men and women in the police force is a problem in every country. And some countries are better able to increase and fast track the integration, but it’s not happening.

We need a global campaign.

Would having a female president of the US play a role in any of these efforts?

Well if you judge by the trends—how many people in the world follow the US trends? On all kinds of things—I think this would have the same impact. The same with the UN, if the UN had a female Secretary General.

Women and people look up to role models. Young women will aspire to be doctors because they’ve seen a female doctor. Voters will vote for women because they’ve seen women presidents in other countries, and because the US is so visible.

What lessons have been learned in combating domestic violence?

The culture of reporting is important.

There should be an enabling environment within law enforcement and social workers. When all of these service providers work together, and when women’s appearances in courts are managed in a tasteful way, and not treated like they’re being accused for having brought this on themselves, it works. So it has to do with the training of the law enforcers, and the systematic connection of the services to ensure that social workers, police, and prosecutors work together.

Policy-wise, has Hillary Clinton been an advocate for global women rights?

Just go back to Beijing when she said, “women’s rights are human rights.” I rest my case there. There’s a track record there. We have worked with her, and we supported and collaborated with the data collaboration initiative. And during the 20-year anniversary of the Beijing speech, she was one of the people who came to mobilize and motivate and encourage the implementation of the Beijing platform and that we shouldn’t drop it.

What about better integration of women into police departments?

Absolutely. We haven’t had a country that has reached the level of integration that is desirable. But this is a global campaign that we need in every

There’s been criticism of the effectiveness of aid and development, and I suspect UN Woman has its own criticisms. What are they?

In some cases, the intended beneficiaries are not targeted in the most direct way.

22 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Idea Lab Interview

UN Women / Christian Mulumba

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka visits the Tomping Internally Displaced Peoples camp at the UNMISS compound in Juba, South Sudan.

The pipeline is problematic. There could be better coordination for impact. Say child marriage, which we recognize as a big problem in some countries. It would be helpful to have a coordinated strategy by different donors in countries that are most affected.

When donors act individually, the impact of bringing down these pillars of patriarchy is not felt. Because if each one of us with limited resources tackles this issue and that issue with low intensity, we reduce the possibility of us clamping together with maximum

intensity to bring down a structure and do it decisively. We take longer and slower.

If you could get in a time machine and go ahead 50 years to a world where gender equality had been achieved, what would that world look like and what changes and decisions happen today to get us there?

To me the biggest thing is poverty. The fact that poverty is the face of women and girls sums up everything, because in that poverty-stricken existence is violence, disease, disempowerment,

etc. So a world where poverty—if it still exists—is not just the burden of the women but is distributed in society, would be my first prize. Once women have overcome poverty, the freedom for them to live a life that is more fulfilling and meaningful takes care of itself.

Women do not want people to look after them. They just need opportunity and circumstance. So to remove all these circumstances that bring women down, then women could be whomever they want to be and make choices, bad ones sometimes, but choices nevertheless.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 23

Bernstein, M. (2017). Scaling Up Education in a Climate of Crisis. Solutions 8(1): 24-26. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/scaling-education-climate-crisis/

Perspectives Scaling Up Education in a Climate of Crisis

by Molly Bernstein

A

s their rickety boat approaches shore, sending ripples across the surface of the glossy river water, 17-year-old Filipe and a handful of his classmates hop off and head to class.

Teachers are scarce in this remote swath of the Brazilian rainforest. But Filipe’s classroom now has a television screen, and as he arrives, a teacher standing hundreds of miles away appears via live stream to greet him.

Across the world, 250 million children do not have even basic reading and math skills.1 In September 2015, 193 countries committed to the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) 17 Sustainability Development Goals for 2030.2 The fourth item on the list is inclusive and quality education for all.

The Media Center where Filipe studies is the focus of one of the 14 case studies featured in an April 2016 report entitled “Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education in Developing Countries,” released by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education.

Filipe is one of the lucky students benefitting from the progress made in education over the last decade. If countries across the globe remain committed to pursuing the UNDP’s Sustainability Development Goals, then he will join the ranks of millions more children with access to quality education where none exists today.

Filipe’s school, called the Media Center, is among 1,000 local government schools built in recent years by the Amazonas State Secretary of Education (SEDUC) to make education accessible to children living in rural Amazonas areas, many of whom are in school for the first time.

“We hope the impact will be more attention and investment in scaling,

Dominic Chavez/World Bank

Syrian refugee children participate in a religion class in the Ketermaya refugee camp outside of Beirut, Lebanon.

and not just in pilot ideas, which usually get most of the attention,” says Jenny Perlman Robinson, a Nonresident Fellow with the Center for Universal Education and one of the report’s primary writers.

Filipe’s story at the Media Center stuck out to Robinson and her colleagues as a confluence of the strategies they see working best to scale education. As a project initiated by the state, the achievement of the Media Center is an example of central government granting autonomy to the state level. The program also utilizes technology and reaches the most marginalized communities.

“I didn’t appreciate how remote it really is,” Robinson explains. “To get from these villages to the capital can take weeks if not months by boat.”

The Media Center in Brazil is an example of what’s working in education. How can these successes be scaled up to reach other students, especially those living in conflict, and those who are currently being failed by the education systems in Syria and Turkey?

24 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Countries like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan face challenges in providing quality education to their own youth populations. According to an October 2014 UNICEF Report, more than 76,000 children are out of school in Jordan, and an additional 50,000 are at risk of dropping out.3 By the end of 2015, close to a million refugees had arrived in Jordan from Syria, adding immense pressure to an already strained education system.4 In nearby Turkey, Mohammad would be in 11th grade if he was able to go to school. Instead he works in a small auto repair shop in Istanbul in order to help support his family after fleeing from Syria last year. Even if he could afford to go to a nearby Arabicspeaking school, he’d have to enter 6th grade, the grade he was in when he last entered a classroom.

Five years after the start of civil war in Syria, more than three million Syrian children are not in school.

Injaz Jordan, founded in 1999 and featured as another case study in the Millions Learning report,

Perspectives

Ismar Borges de Lima

A classroom in the Jamaraquá community in the Brazilian Amazon.

works to fill these cracks in Jordan’s education system. By creating youth empowerment programs and curricula that develop skills missing in the evolving job market, Injaz helps to keep students in school and to increase employment opportunities for a youth population that reached a level of 28.8 percent unemployment in 2014.5 “We’re noticing more and more that there’s a gap in education itself for the kids in private schools and those that can’t afford them,” says Deema Bibi, CEO of Injaz. “The root of all other problems we are seeing is a lack of equal opportunities in basic services—mostly in health and education, the right to live a healthy life and to have a healthy future.”

The organization has reached 1.2 million Jordanian youth to date, but they do not have any programming today for refugees outside of existing education institutions. Developing

countries like Jordan and Brazil are struggling against longstanding inequalities to provide quality education to those that have long been left behind. Even in developed countries like the United States, the inequalities are staggering.

Recent research conducted by NPR’s Ed Team and 20 member station reporters exposed stark imbalances in spending per student in school districts across the United States.6 One school district in Chicago, Illinois spent USD$9,794 per student in 2013, while a wealthier suburban district less than an hour’s drive away spent $28,639. The difference and its implications cannot be ignored, and yet the national average for the same year is USD$11,841 per student, far above the average annual amount of approximately $1,000 spent per student in Jordan.7 The Millions Learning report refers to a “100-year gap” in

educational outcomes between developed and developing countries.

This means that students in developing countries will need 100 years in order to reach the same levels of reading, math, and science of students in developed countries as they stand today.

The task of closing this “100-year gap” between developed and developing countries is an overwhelming one. The idea that students like Mohammad in today’s world are forced to take steps back instead of forward is like a slap in the face to the progress made elsewhere towards more equitable education worldwide.

Why isn’t Mohammad in school?

Mohammad’s family lost many of their assets in the violence of their country’s civil war. Mohammad and his family moved to Istanbul to survive, and in order to keep surviving, every member of their family works.

They cannot go to the public Turkish schools because they do not speak the language. Mohammad would not be able to afford the costs of attending an Arabic-speaking school, which are privately run, and he doesn’t live close to any of the temporary education centers set up by the Turkish government.

Mohammad’s older brother is 22, and he also stopped studying in the 6th grade. Just months ago, this brother married a 17-year-old girl who also fled Syria for Istanbul with her family last year. His bride is the oldest of six children, and not one of them has gone to school since the war began in Syria five years ago.

If governments and nongovernmental organizations do not adapt with urgency to the reality of millions of refugee youth worldwide, then the gap for millions of children—Syrian and otherwise—will deepen by the day.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 25

Perspectives

Dominic Chavez / World Bank

Syrian refugee children found temporary safety in the Kafar Kahel informal settlement in the Koura District of Lebanon.

Robinson believes that lessons learned in the Millions Learning report can be applied to refugee populations. “It shouldn’t be a burden placed on host communities. We as an international community need to ensure that parents, private sector, civil society—all actors—have a role to play in creating opportunities for education.”

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” she says. “These case studies prove that large-scale change is possible.”

References 1. Teaching and learning: achieving quality for all.

5. Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force

UNESCO [online] (2014). http://unesdoc.unesco.org/

ages 15-24) (modeled ILO estimate). The World Bank

images/0022/002256/225660e.pdf.

[online] (2016). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/

2. Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP [online] (2016). http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/

SL.UEM.1524.ZS. 6. Turner, C et al. Why America’s schools have a

home/sdgoverview/post-2015-development-agenda.

money problem. NPR [online] (April 18, 2016).

html.

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-

3. Jordan: country report on out-of-school children.

americas-schools-have-a-money-problem?utm_

UNICEF [online] (October 2014). http://www.oosci-

source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_

mena.org/uploads/1/wysiwyg/reports/150114_

campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_

Jordan_report_English_Preview.pdf.

4. Jordan. UNHCR [online] (2016). http://reporting.

content=20160418.

7. Mansur, Y. Regulating private schools. The Jordan Times

unhcr.org/node/2549#_ga=1.206094995.1849415784

[online] (April 27, 2015). http://www.jordantimes.com/

.1466517500.

opinion/yusuf-mansur/regulating-private-schools.

26 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Jacquet, J., J. Sebo, and M. Elder. (2017). Seafood in the Future: Bivalves are Better. Solutions 8(1): 27-32. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/seafood-future-bivalves-better/

Perspectives Seafood in the Future: Bivalves Are Better

by Jennifer Jacquet, Jeff Sebo, and Max Elder

Photo by Jason Wishnow. Prepared by Chef Or’el Anbar

(Left to right): Kumamoto oysters, East Coast oyster (Riptide), Belon oyster, cockles, Topneck clam, East Coast oyster (Plymouth Rock), and PEI mussels.

T

he first animals we domesticated for food were sheep, around 9000 years ago, followed soon after by goats, cows, and pigs, and then, as recent as 2000 years ago, chickens. As human population expanded rapidly, these animals became part of a highly industrialized food system that destroys habitat, pollutes, and is unsustainable.

Now, humans are making similar mistakes in water that we made on land.

We are currently witnessing the fastest and most poorly thought out expansion of domesticated animals ever to occur—the expanding domestication of aquatic animals. Nearly 190 different countries now raise around 550 different aquatic animal species for human consumption.

Aquaculture—the farming of aquatic animals and plants for food—is the fastest growing food production system in the world. But it is growing in the wrong way. We are farming carnivores, like salmon,

that need us to catch additional fish to feed them, which is putting additional pressure on wild ecosystems.

We are also completely ignoring welfare concerns.

If done correctly, aquaculture could provide sustenance for our growing planet as well as reduce overfishing. But if we want to avoid repeating the same mistakes, we need to make changes now, including changing our diets generally to include more plants and fewer animals, and eating more bivalves— oysters, mussels, and clams—instead of fish, shrimps, and octopus.

We argue here for an expanded evaluation of aquaculture that would consider the industry’s broad range of ecological, social, and animal welfare impacts. If these issues were taken into consideration, we would make different decisions about whether or not we should domesticate and farm aquatic animals at all and, if we do, which species we should prioritize.

In 1974, farmed aquatic life only accounted for seven percent of the officially reported quantity of aquatic animals eaten each year. The remainder was caught in the wild. However, today, farmed aquatic animals represent roughly half of what we eat each year.

That’s over 60 million tons, excluding aquatic plants such as seaweed.

While 253 aquatic animal species were farmed in 1986, by 2014 that number had more than doubled to 543 aquatic animal species, almost two-thirds of which are fish, that is, vertebrates (Table 1).1 Nearly 90 percent of aquaculture occurs in Asia (with China reporting over half of global production). A little more than two-thirds of aquaculture occurs in freshwater, while the remainder is farmed at sea (Table 1).

The rates of domestication are occurring most rapidly for marine species.

For some species in some markets, farming, rather than fishing, now provides the vast majority of

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 27

Perspectives Number of species

Mariculture (million tons)

Finfishes

362

6.30

43.56

49.86

Mollusks (including bivalves)

104

15.84

0.28

16.11

62

4.17

2.74

6.92

Other invertebrates

9

0.37

0.52

0.89

Amphibians and reptiles

6 26.68

47.10

73.78

Species Group

Crustaceans

Total

543

Freshwater (million tons)

Total (million tons)

Source: The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2016).

Table 1. Number and tonnage of aquatic animal species under cultivation by species group (2014)

animals. Farmed Atlantic salmon, for instance, represents more than 99 percent of Atlantic salmon on the market (and two-thirds of all salmon), while farmed marine shrimps contribute to 55 percent of the total world market.

Domestication is “a long and endless process that is in its infancy for most farmed fish species.”2 Society needs to take advantage of this infancy by seriously considering a wider range of criteria for aquaculture.

Ecology The ecological concerns associated with intensified aquaculture have received the greatest amount of research and scrutiny.

Aquaculture as it currently exists adds to the exploitation of wild fish, as additional fish must be caught to feed many of the farmed animals.3 Farming carnivorous fish (e.g., salmon, seabream, and tuna), omnivorous fish (e.g., tilapia and catfish), and certain crustaceans (e.g., shrimp) requires catching more fish to use for feed and oils.

The aquaculture industry has tried to reduce the amount of wild fish and oils in feed, but the problem is far from solved.4 While about one-third of global fishmeal production in 2012 was obtained from the trimmings and other residues from seafood processing,5 the remainder has come from capture fisheries. An estimated 27 percent of the global marine fish catch each year goes to feeding farmed aquatic species.6 The ‘forage’ species (e.g., sardines, anchovies, and krill) that are caught for feed are not the only group affected—species that depend on these forage fish in the wild, such as seabirds, marine mammals, and larger finfish, are now competing with aquaculture for their food supply.7,8 Scientists have been calling for aquaculture to focus on species lower on the food web that require little to no feed (e.g., freshwater carps, bivalves, and aquatic plants) for more than 35 years, and there is widespread scientific agreement that aquaculture, among other things, must reduce its reliance on capture fisheries for feed.4,9-11 In stark contrast

28 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

to widespread scientific agreement and recommendations, the percentage of fed farmed aquatic species has actually increased since the 1980s,12 in part due to perverse market incentives, such as cheap feed. Aquaculture in the Mediterranean, for instance, has shifted toward higher trophic level species that require more, not less, fish feed.13 The trend is similar globally, with fed species accounting for an even greater percentage of production.5 The issue of the dependence of farmed aquatic species on wild aquatic food is just one of many ecological concerns. The Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI) assesses finfish aquaculture across ten ecological criteria.14 In addition to the reliance on captured fish, other criteria include the sustainability of the feed, amount of energy farmed fish divert from marine ecosystems, antibiotics use, the use of chemicals, waste contamination (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorous; the pollution from finfish aquaculture in China has contributed to the poor state of coral reefs),15 farm escapees (which can

Perspectives

Photo by Jason Wishnow. Prepared by Chef Or’el Anbar

(Left to right): East Coast oyster (North Haven) with grape, Manzanilla sherry, and Fresno foam; East Coast oyster (Riptide) with stone ground mustard cocktail sauce; and Belon oyster with cucumber salad and celery chili mignonette.

interbreed, outcompete, or transfer parasites to native fish species),16 industrial energy demands, and an estimate of the pathogen rate on farms.

The GAPI index is only for finfish, but there are also ecological concerns related to invertebrate farming, such as saltwater intrusion, sedimentation, pollution, disease outbreaks, and habitat loss. A recent study, for instance, compared satellite imagery from the mid-1970s to images from the present to estimate that commercial shrimp farming has led to a 28 percent decline in mangrove cover in Indonesia, Brazil, India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Ecuador.17 This is by no means intended as a comprehensive list of the ecological impacts with aquaculture but does demonstrate the growing body of research and concern.

Food Security In addition to the ecological impacts, aquaculture also raises social concerns, ranging from public health issues such as antimicrobial resistance

(especially common in shrimp cultivation) to human rights issues such as forced labor (also common in shrimp farming), particularly in developing countries.18 Some of these issues are dictated less by the species being farmed (although admittedly some species are more suitable for certain regions of the world) than by policy and governance. One social concern that has a strong relationship with the species under cultivation is food security.

Aquaculture is often touted as a solution to food insecurity, which is used as justification for continued growth and intensification in the sector. However, aquaculture’s net effect on food security is unclear. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the international organization mandated to collect global statistics on food production, states that “at present little or no hard statistical information exists concerning the scale and extent of rural or small-scale aquaculture development within most developing countries.”19

While aquaculture undoubtedly plays a role in food security in certain areas of the world, in some cases its food security benefits are greatly exaggerated. For example, the International Salmon Farmers Association released a 2015 report titled, “Salmon Farming: Sustaining Communities and Feeding the World.” In reality, most salmon farmed in Scotland stays in UK markets.20 Similarly, the British Columbia Salmon Farmers claim on their website that, “B.C. farm-raised salmon is the right choice for sustainability, food security, and our oceans.” But salmon farmed in British Columbia is a luxury food destined mainly for the food-secure markets of the EU, Japan, and North America.21 Not only is farmed salmon sold to a food-secure market, but, due to its reliance on fish feed, farming salmon is also potentially exacerbating food insecurity by relying heavily on captured fish, which are often caught in developing countries (the largest fishery in the world is the Peruvian anchovy fishery, and most of the anchovies there are

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Perspectives

Photo by Jason Wishnow. Prepared by Chef Or’el Anbar

(Clockwise from toast): Topneck clam shell; Kumamoto oyster with preserved lemon and shallot mignonette; Kumamoto oyster shell; East Coast oyster (North Haven) with stone ground mustard cocktail sauce; East Coast oyster (Riptide) with grape, Manzanilla sherry, and Fresno foam; Belon oyster with cucumber salad and celery chili mignonette; East Coast oyster (Plymouth Rock) shell; Topneck clam with white asparagus in yuzu kosho beurre fondu; East Coast oyster (Riptide) top shell; Cockles with white wine, tomatillo, and pearl tomato; East coast oyster (North Haven) shell; and PEI mussels with Gochujang Korean chili sauce and burnt Meyer lemon.

30 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Perspectives turned into fishmeal) and could instead be eaten by humans directly. The UN FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (Article II) advises that capture fisheries “promote the contribution of fisheries to food security and food quality, giving priority to the nutritional needs of local communities.”22 Under these FAO standards, the practice of feeding forage fish to farmed animals is clearly irresponsible.

Aquaculture production that truly considers food security would be concerned not only with the end use of the animals but also with the compromises to food security that occur when raising these species. As with environmental concerns, the conclusion is that we should not be farming species that rely on captured fish for feed.

Animal Welfare Finally, aquaculture raises animal welfare concerns, which are commonly discussed in the case of terrestrial animal farming but almost never discussed in the case of aquaculture.

One important area of research is whether and to what degree fish and aquatic invertebrates experience pain and suffering. Over the past 15 years, scientific evidence has revealed that vertebrate species including fish do experience pain and suffering.23 (Examining why so many people have assumed otherwise would require a much longer essay.) For example, many fish (e.g., trout, cod, carp, goldfish, and salmon) respond to harmful stimuli both behaviorally as well as physiologically, for instance, with increased heart rates, increased breathing rates, suppression of hunger, and a loss of focus on other aims, and there is strong reason to believe that these findings will generalize.24 Granted, there are expected variations among fish species. Evidence for feeling pain is most robust for bony fish (and

thinner for cartilaginous fish). Fish are not the only vertebrate species under cultivation—soft-shell turtle farming, for instance, is also on the rise.12 Still, at this point, we can be confident that most if not all of the farmed vertebrate aquatic species do experience pain and suffering as a general matter.

There is less certainty about invertebrate aquatic species since they are behaviorally, physiologically, and evolutionarily distinct from vertebrates. Many aquatic animals, vertebrates and invertebrates alike, react to helpful and harmful stimuli, exhibit withdrawal behavior, and suspension of normal behavior in favor of behavior that enhances protection and healing.23 However, scientists have not yet identified pain receptors in groups such as crustaceans (e.g., shrimps) or even researched this question much at all in groups such as echinoderms (the farming of sea cucumbers, which are echinoderms, is also on the rise).12 Meanwhile, mollusks (a large phylum of invertebrates that includes cephalopods and bivalves) are a highly diverse group, members of which likely have highly diverse experiences. On one end of this spectrum, cephalopods (e.g., octopuses) perform exceptional behaviors and possess highly developed brains and nervous systems, to the extent that some people even refer to them as “honorary vertebrates.” In a review paper on pain in mollusks, for example, Crook and Walters state, “one must seriously consider the possibility that cephalopods can experience some form of pain.”25 On the other end of this spectrum, bivalves (e.g., oysters, mussels, and clams) seem to be considerably less complex, though they do show some behavioral and physiological responses to harmful stimuli (e.g., escape swimming in scallops).

In addition to asking whether and to what degree aquatic animals are

likely to experience pain and suffering in general, another issue is whether and to what degree these species are likely to experience pain and suffering under cultivation in particular. As with terrestrial animal agriculture, we should raise animal welfare concerns at every step of the process, including but not limited to breeding, growth, rearing (especially related to species density and mobility), capture, handling, transport, and slaughter.

The current scientific understanding is that the welfare concerns raised by these activities are likely to be much more acute for vertebrates and invertebrates such as cephalopods than for invertebrates such as bivalves, given that vertebrates and cephalopods have much more need for space and enrichment than bivalves do.26 In addition, welfare concerns will be greater for motile, migratory animals like salmon than for sessile animals like mussels.

This is not to say that no welfare concerns exist for bivalves or sessile animals. But it is to say that there are fewer welfare concerns about these species groups than about others, especially in conditions of captivity.

Any complete examination of aquaculture practices must take these considerations into account. Yet, the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries,22 which has a large section on aquaculture including a long list of ecological considerations, makes no mention of animal welfare. FAO does not publish the numbers of individual aquatic animals slaughtered annually, as they do with mammals and birds.5 Similarly, FAO hosts a participatory website dedicated to farmed animal welfare,27 but aquatic species receive only marginal representation. Animal welfare should become a much bigger part of the aquaculture discussion, and FAO could be one of the many organizations to assist in facilitating this discussion.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 31

Perspectives The Solution?

Current industrial animal farming practices are designed to maximize economic benefits, with significant costs for the environment, food security, and animal welfare (among other negative impacts). Industrial aquaculture poses many of the same risks as terrestrial animal agriculture, yet because this industry is still in its early days, humans have an opportunity to chart a different, more responsible course.28 It is imperative that we take advantage of this opportunity by questioning, right now, whether or not we should be farming aquatic animal species at all and, if so, which ones.

Based on the criteria we discussed here—environmental impacts, food security, and animal welfare—what would an ideal species group look like?

Quite simply: plant species. Assuming, however, that we insist on farming aquatic animals, then the answer becomes species that are as plant-like as possible. It should be a species group that does not require fish feed, does not require conversion of habitat, does not contribute to pollution, and has very little potential to be invasive. It should consist of animals who are either not likely to experience pain and suffering at all, or not likely to experience significant pain and suffering in captivity in particular—animals whose health and well-being is at least somewhat compatible with industrial methods.

In general, non-fed invertebrates are likely better than fed invertebrates or any vertebrates. Of all the aquatic animal species groups that we eat as food, bivalves appear to be the most promising in terms of minimizing ecological harm (in some cases they may even be beneficial), minimizing food security harm (as highly nutritious organisms that do not rely on outside food sources), and minimizing animal welfare concerns related to captive rearing.

Bivalve farming is not free from ecological and welfare issues.

Ecological impacts are already documented in some places (e.g., some bivalve species can become invasive).

In terms of welfare, granting bivalves the ability to experience pain errs on the side of caution. However, even assuming they do experience pain, they are still likely to experience less pain in captivity than other, more active animals. Yet, despite bivalves being the species group with the most promise, and the fact that their absolute numbers keep increasing, they make up less and less of total aquaculture. Bivalves accounted for almost half of global aquaculture in the 1980s, but due to the explosion in finfish farming now account for only around 30 percent.5,12 This is precisely the wrong trend if we want animal aquaculture to lead to a more food secure, sustainable, and humane future.

References 1. Mood, A & Brooke, P. Estimating the number of farmed fish killed in global aquaculture each year.

Fishcount.org [online] (2012). http://fishcount.org. uk/published/std/fishcountstudy2.pdf.

2. Teletchea, F & Fontaine, P. Levels of domestication in fish: implications for the sustainable future of aquaculture. Fish and Fisheries 15, 181–195 (2014).

3. Naylor, RL et al. Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies. Nature 405, 1017–1024 (2000).

4. Naylor, RL et al. Feeding aquaculture in an era of finite resources. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 15103–15110 (2009).

5. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [online] (2016). http://www.fao.org/3/ai5555e.pdf.

6. Alder, J, Campbell, B, Karpouzi, V, Kaschner, K & Pauly, D. Forage fish: from ecosystems to markets.

Annual Review of Environment and Resources 33, 153–166 (2008).

7. Cury, PM et al. Global seabird response to forage fish depletion—one-third for the birds. Science 334, 1703–1706 (2011).

8. Piroddi, C, Bearzi, G & Christensen, V. Marine open cage aquaculture in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: a new trophic resource for bottlenose dolphins.

Marine Ecology Progress Series 440, 255–266 (2011).

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9. Ackefors, H & Rosén, CG. Farming aquatic animals: the emergence of a world-wide industry with profound ecological consequences. AMBIO 8, 132–143 (1979).

10. Diana, JS. Aquaculture production and biodiversity conservation. BioScience 59, 27–38 (2009).

11. Duarte, CM et al. Will the oceans help feed humanity? Bioscience 59, 967–976 (2009).

12. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2012). http://www.fao.org/ docrep/016/i2727e/i2727e00.htm.

13. Stergiou, KI, Tsikiliras, AC & Pauly, D. Farming up the Mediterranean food webs. Conservation Biology 23, 230–232 (2009).

14. Volpe, JP et al. Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI): The First Global Environmental Assessment of Marine Fish Farming. Sustainability 5, 3976–3991 (2013).

15. Hughes, T, Huang, H & Young, MAL. The wicked problem of China’s disappearing coral reefs.

Conservation Biology 27, 261–269 (2012).

16. Krkosek, M. Sea lice and salmon in Pacific Canada: ecology and policy. FREE 8, 201–209 (2010).

17. Hamilton, S. Assessing the role of commercial aquaculture in displacing mangrove forest. Bulletin of Marine Science 89, 585–601 (2013).

18. Tacon, AG. Climate change, food security and aquaculture. Advancing the Aquaculture Agenda, 109–119 (2010).

19. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [online]. www.fao.org.

20. Salmon Farming: Sustaining Communities and Feeding the World (International Salmon Farmers Association, Boston, 2015).

21. BC Salmon Farmers Association [online]. www. bcsalmonfarmers.ca.

22. Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [online] (1995). org/docrep/005/v9878e/v9878e00.

HTM. 23. Sneddon, LU. Pain in aquatic animals. The Journal of Experimental Biology 218, 967–976 (2015).

24. Braithwaite, VA. Do Fish Feel Pain? (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010).

25. Crook, RJ & Walters, ET. Nociceptive behavior and physiology of molluscs: animal welfare implications. ILAR J. 52, 185–195 (2011).

26. Bergqvist, J & Gunnarsson, S. Finfish aquaculture: Animal welfare, the environment, and ethical implications. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 26, 75–99 (2013).

27. Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare. FAO [online] (2016). http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/themes/ animal-welfare/aw-awhome/en/?no_cache=1.

28. McWilliams, J. Just Food (Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009).

Spector, J. (2017). Zika is Infected with Sexism. Solutions 8(1): 33-35. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/zika-infected-sexism/

Perspectives Zika is Infected with Sexism

by Jennie Spector

Master Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force

The Aedes mosquito can spread diseases such as dengue fever, yellow fever, the Zika virus, and chikungunya. Aedes mosquitoes have black and white markings on their bodies and legs.

I

t may take two to tango, but governments, religious leaders, and health officials seem to feel that containing Zika is a one-person dance.

The beginning of 2016 brought with it a flood of global attention to the mosquito-transmitted virus that is rapidly spreading throughout the Americas. While the full scale of the disease’s damage remains unclear, focus has rested on infected pregnant women, who are at risk of passing on infant microcephaly, a condition that causes the skull of an infant to be unnaturally small, leading to defects in brain development.

Consequently, women are being framed as both the primary victims of Zika and its lonely combatants.

Solutions provided by governments and health officials ask women to ward off Zika with weapons to which they have no access. Strategies that can only be implemented with the assistance of outside resources and male cooperation go unmentioned.

Instead, women are facing restricted abortion, limited access to contraceptives, a void of economic or material support from their governments, and a narrative that implies that preventing pregnancy is a solo activity. This

orientation is only furthering the harm caused by Zika.

As news of this latest outbreak came to light, one of highest risk countries, El Salvador, offered a recommendation to its female citizens: don’t get pregnant. Many obstacles exist in the path of women who would seek to follow this deceptively simple request.

El Salvador is a country that offers little in the way of sexual education.

Girls under the age of 18 need parental permission to access contraceptives, which are often low in stock. Gang warfare and machismo culture lead to high rates of sexual violence. Last year,

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Perspectives

Conred

Ministry of Health workers do pest control in Guatemala City to combat the mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus, dengue, and chikungunya.

five sexual crimes against girls under 18 were reported to the national police every day.1 Still, the government asked women of a “fertile age” to take steps to avoid pregnancy until 2018. The governments of Brazil and other at-risk countries followed suit, though recommending smaller time frames. It seems these governments have no concept that for many women, whether or not they become pregnant is a matter over which they have little control.

Adding to the problematic language used by governments, Pope Francis was lauded for his remarks that seemingly changed the Church’s stance toward birth control in the face of Zika—though all he truly said was that, compared to abortion, the use of contraceptives was not

an “absolute evil,” a remark that shouldn’t earn him a place on Planned Parenthood’s honoree list. The CDC recommended that pregnant women avoid travel to the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics, adding that if a pregnant woman’s partner attended the games, the woman should “either use condoms or abstain from sex for the duration of [their] pregnancy.”

The language used by these parties squarely places preventative responsibility on women’s shoulders and offers recommendations that are often impossible to follow. By June 2016, there were a reported 12,000 pregnant women with Zika in Colombia alone. For these and the thousands of other infected women, options are incredibly more limited.

34 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Of the 53 countries currently under a CDC travel warning for Zika, only four—Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guyana, and French Guiana—permit legal abortion without qualification. Other countries’ rules vary, with some permitting abortion in the case of rape or danger to the mother. Mexico, Colombia, and Panama are the only countries that allow abortion due to a fetal impairment. El Salvador, the very country that told women to avoid pregnancy, does not allow abortion under any circumstance. The gravity of this law is plain—women who have obtained abortions, or even suffered miscarriages, have faced up to 40 years in prison. The lawyer for one of these convicted women has characterized El Salvador’s law as a “witch hunt against

Perspectives poor women.”2 Brazil is even drafting a new legislation that would increase the prison sentence for women who obtain abortions due to infant microcephaly to 4.5 years, and put the doctors who performed the abortion behind bars for 15.

Statistics on contraception prove equally grim. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s report on access to abortion and contraceptives in the region describe a range of access to modern contraceptives—in Costa Rica, 75.7 percent of women have access, while in Haiti, access drops to 33.6 percent. The associate director of global health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, Josh Michaud, noted that the contraception statistic may “mask what are large disparities between rural and urban areas and across different income classes. Poor rural women have the least access to contraception.”3 Other solutions offered by health organizations and governments are weak. One look at an image of a Brazilian slum is enough to know that the government urging citizens to avoid the build-up of waste, trash, and still water, all ideal breeding grounds for mosquitos, is laughable. Another suggestion, that pregnant women keep to rooms with air conditioning, is even less feasible for women with limited incomes. In 2015, only 13 percent of Mexican households had air conditioning.

As the virus travels northward, Latin American women no longer bear this pressure alone. The United States has already seen multiple cases of pregnant women infected with Zika, at least one of which has resulted in a child born with severe microcephaly.

Some of these women have opted to abort their pregnancies. December 2016, over 4,300 cases of Zika had been reported in the US, 38 of which were transmitted sexually.

In Southern US states, women with increasingly obstructed access to birth control and abortion options may be left without the means to prevent pregnancy in the face of the virus or terminate their pregnancies should they learn of the potential severe brain defects, which can lead to still-births or a lifelong debilitating disability for their child. American women’s legal right to abortion, and their access to contraceptives, remain under attack. Zika may have prompted the Pope to budge on birth control, but politicians in Louisiana, Texas, and Florida do not seem likely to follow suit.

Women on the Web, a Dutch “digital community of women who have had abortions and individuals and organizations that support abortion rights,” is responding to the Zika-fueled abortion need by providing free medical abortion pills to pregnant women infected with Zika.4 Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the founder and director of the organization, reported an influx of messages from women in Zika-affected regions begging her for abortion pills. In response, the organization has started offering free consultative and medical services to eligible women with the virus. In an interview with Buzzfeed Health, Dr. Gomperts said that “after the news about Zika and the connection with microcephaly, we noticed there were increased consultations from affected countries…

It’s a public health emergency and finances should never be an obstacle to prevent an unwanted, risky pregnancy.” The abortion medication is only sent to countries where abortion is not entirely illegal, and is effective in ending pregnancies up to nine weeks along.

Zika is being challenged by women in other ways as well. One Brazilian woman is literally dumping buckets of

mutated male mosquitos out of her car window in order to decrease the population of Zika-carrying insects. In her must-read account of the landscape of Zika in Brazil, journalist Stephanie Nolan’s interviewees were 90 percent women—researchers, doctors, and victims—who are speaking out and taking action on Zika.

Zika is not leaving the public conscious, or travel warnings list, anytime soon. New infections and studies occur daily and concern is only growing.

Now is the time to strive for a more evolved approach to our language and our solutions. In addition to the ongoing effort to create a vaccine and a cure, time and money is needed to provide citizens with contraceptives and other family planning resources.

In addition to warning women of the risks associated with pregnancy in a Zika region, there must be a grassroots campaign against sexual assault, as well as a crackdown in punishment.

Women are stepping up to fight Zika, but access to contraceptives, abortion laws, language choices, and economic barriers to health are all single strands in the tangled web of the struggle for women’s rights. We must strive for a more evolved approach to our language, and our solutions, if we want to make it through this health emergency with the least harm done.

References 1. Indicadores de Violencia Sexual. Ormusa [online] (2016). http://observatoriodeviolencia.ormusa.org/ violenciasexual.php.

2. Guevara-Rosas, E. El Salvador and ‘Las 17.’ The New York Times [online] (March 2, 2015). http://www. nytimes.com/2015/03/03/opinion/el-salvador-andlas-17.html?_r=1.

3. Chart: access to contraception and abortion in zika-affected countries. NPR [online] (February 11, 2016). http://www.npr.org/sections/ goatsandsoda/2016/02/11/465614065/chart-accessto-contraception-and-abortion-in-zika-affectedcountries.

4. Women on Web [online]. https://www. womenonweb.org/.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 35

Haider, L.J. and Boonstra, W.J. (2017). Finding the Middle Ground: Social-Ecological Farming as a Solution to a Polarized Debate. Solutions 8(1): 36-38. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/finding-middle-ground-social-ecological-farming-solution-polarized-debate/

Perspectives Finding the Middle Ground: Social–Ecological Farming as a Solution to a Polarized Debate

by L. Jamila Haider and Wiebren J. Boonstra

Stockpaard Producties/Natasja Bekkers

Arjan Wijnstra cuts grass with his Fjord horses.

O

ur global food system has two opposing faces. It has almost one billion people suffering from hunger, while nearly the same number suffers from obesity. This is also a world where people struggle daily to obtain enough food, and where people waste more than that same amount every day. Global warming and extreme weather events are expected to increase the volatility of ecosystems and thereby stunt the productivity of agriculture. One recent study estimates that even a 1°C increase in global temperature will reduce wheat yields worldwide by six percent.1 The question of how to secure global food production is thus as pertinent as ever.

Yet, the proposed solutions are often contradictory, creating a polarized debate represented by stark trade-offs.

Maintaining global food security is for some primarily a technical question of doubling or tripling food

production.2 Solutions such as precision agriculture that use satellite technology for maximum efficiency and sustainable intensification that aims to increase food production on existing farmland are not really solutions – they don’t address the issue of the vast levels of fossil fuels needed to produce a limited number of crops and animal varieties.3,4 The loss of agricultural diversity in turn contributes to global food insecurity as harvests become increasingly vulnerable to price fluctuations and extreme weather events. And often, it is the poorer members of the global population that suffer from spikes in food prices.5 Faced with these ecological and social issues, some agronomists urge a return to small-scale and diversified food production.6,7 These opposing visions in the debate over the future of food production are mirrored in a bipolar structure of agriculture worldwide, which

36 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

includes a small number of very large modernized farms with high levels of specialized output and a larger group of small scale, family-owned, mixedoutput farms. In the general debate, these groups and associated visions for agrarian development are often pitted against each other: small-scale versus large-scale agriculture,8 sharing versus sparing land for ‘nature,9 industrial versus family farming, agroecology versus biotechnology. But these stark contrasts blur when we move down to consider how individual farmers are creating working solutions by patching together traditional and modern knowledge and tools to create a social– ecological balance between land, plants and animals, farm households, and rural and urban communities.10,11 Farming is an inherently contextdependent and hybrid coproduction between humans and ecological resources and services. One example of this is the use of horse power, a seemingly out-of-date technology that’s being rediscovered in the Netherlands as a way to help farmers find a balance between economic, social, and environmental needs.

Take the farm of Arjan and Natasja between Vorden and Ruurlo in Eastern Netherlands. Arjan and Natasja rely on horses to power farming on their small eight-hectare plot where they produce milk, cheese, butter, meat, and fruit for the local community (they also have careers as professional photographers and journalists.) The Fjord ponies make hay (including moving, turning and tedding, windrowing, and carting), spread manure, seed and plant, haul loads, and do other odd transportation jobs. By going back to horses, Arjan and Natasja are not going back in time, because horse-drawn equipment has kept up with time. Thanks to the work of Amish farmers in the United States, tools and machines for horses have continuously been innovated and

Perspectives improved. They still use the tractor for jobs that require a lot of power (baling hay) or speed (getting the hay in the barn when rain is coming), and working the plots that are located at some distance from the farm. The combination of modern and traditional technology has obvious economic and material benefits, but there are also more intangible reasons why Arjan and Natasja like working with the Fjords, explained Arjan: They are really the solution to problems we faced with higher costs of fuel and the compaction of our soils due to the use of heavy machines. The horses cost very little because they live off the land they work, and horse feet do far less damage to soft ground compared to a 3.5-ton tractor. And of course we like horses. They give a tremendous pleasure working with them, and a sense of purpose, of farming right. And we became fed up with having to deal with machinery that we couldn’t fix ourselves. Horse-drawn equipment is relatively simple in design. It can be repaired with our own tools and know-how.

Horses, in this example, offer a solution that’s perhaps not optimal from an economist’s point of view—it requires long working hours against a modest income—and it is contextspecific solution. This means, in other words, that a return to horses is surely no overall cure for the problems that come with our current food production.

But rather, what this example highlights is how integrating and connecting modern and traditional ways of farming can be a local solution to global problems.12-15 There are other farming solutions that bring the same philosophy to an urban setting. Over 50 percent of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and this is expected to double by 2050,16 as more young

people all over the world fail to see a future in farming and move to urban centers. In Thailand, some of the factors that drive young people off the land are lack of job opportunities, back-breaking work for very little pay, and the promise of an easier life in the cities.17 A group of young Thai women have sought to buck this trend by connecting urban and rural landscapes to produce food that is safe, organic, and sustainable.

Kanya Duchita and Mathana Aphaimool both left their rural homes to move to Bangkok where they pursued university degrees and landed good jobs in the nongovernmental sector. Yet, city life did not suit them very well. They spent all their free time commuting, the money they earned was used on food, which they found neither delicious nor nutritious, and they missed being in nature.

After a few years, both moved back to the communities in which they were born to take over their families’ farms. Many young women followed Kanya and Mathana back to their villages and have established alternative opportunities for on-farm livelihoods.

On their farms, they now combine modern marketing techniques and agronomy that they were taught at university with centuries-old knowledge passed down through their families.

Today, Kanya goes to her agroforestry plot every day to collect various foodstuffs that she and her family and friends eat, and which she trades with her neighbors for rice—something her family has done for generations.

Unlike her ancestors, she not only farms for food; the agroforestry plot also supplies her organic ingredients to make natural beauty products, which she sells for additional income.

Moreover, she also helps run the Wanakaset (agroforestry) Learning Centre.

Mathana currently runs a small community farm in Chang Mai and has initiated a local seed-saving bank together with a center of learning and knowledge exchange. The center attracts visitors from as far as Europe, who come to learn about the techniques of organic farming. This solution offers organic products for regional consumption, has ecological benefits compared to the intensive conventional rice farming, and creates a strong sense of social and cultural identity for a place and group of farmers.

Both the Dutch and Thai examples show how farmers can escape the polarized dichotomy that congeals the debate on global food security and the future of farming. The examples demonstrate that the differences between traditional and modern, small and large-scale farming, or family and corporate farming are not as incommensurable as often is believed.

Framing agrarian development as a global question invites black-andwhite answers. What we are missing in this debate is an appreciation of farming and agriculture as the hybrid and improvised results of coproduction between local, social, and ecological resources.19 What we need is more attention to the diversity and hybridity of solutions. Solutions of middle-ground farming are never optimal but come with different trade-offs.20 Which solution works is highly context-dependent, making the assessment of the global performance of agrarian development a recurrent empirical and local investigation.

Acknowledgements Jamila Haider is grateful for funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/20072013)/ERC grant agreement no. 283950 SES-LINK. Wiebren Boonstra is supported by the FORMAS Project Grant

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 37

Perspectives (No. 2013-1293) ‘Working knowledge in Swedish coastal fishery—Making cultural capital visible for sustainable use of coastal sea and landscapes.’

Mistra supported this research through a core grant to the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

References 1. Asseng, S et al. Uncertainty in simulating wheat yields under climate change. Nature Climate Change 3: 827–832 (2013).

2. Godfray, HCJ et al. Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science 327: 812–818 (2010).

3. Lowenberg-DeBoer, J. The precision agriculture revolution. Making the modern farmer. Foreign Affairs 94(3), 105–112 (2015).

4. Tilman, D, Balzer, C, Hill, J & Befort, BL. Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(50): 20260–20264 (2011).

5. Tomlinson, I. Doubling food production to feed the 9 billion: a critical perspective on a key discourse of food security in the UK. Journal of Rural Studies 29: 81–90 (2013).

6. Pretty, J. The living land: agriculture, food and community regeneration in the 21st Century (Earthscan, London, 1999).

7. Altieri, MA & Rosset, P. Ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment, or reduce poverty in the developing world. AgBioForum 2(3&4): 155–162 (1999).

8. Tomlinson, I. Doubling food production to feed the 9 billion: a critical perspective on a key discourse of food security in the UK. Journal of Rural Studies 29: 81–90 (2013).

9. Phalan, B, Onial, M, Balmford, A & Green, RE. Reconciling food production and biodiversity conservation: Land sharing and land sparing compared. Science 333 (6047): 1289–1291 (2011).

10. Berkes, F & Folke, C. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000).

11. Berry, W. The gift of good land. The Gift of Good Land (North Point Press, San Francisco, 1981).

Dome/ Earth Net Foundation

Mathana Aphaimool works on organic seed production on her family farm in Maetha village, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

12. Pinney, C. The case for returning to real live horse power, in Before the Wells Run Dry: Ireland’s Transition

[online] (2013). http://modernfarmer.com/2013/05/

to renewable energy (Douthwaite, RJ, ed.) (FEASTA,

farm. The New York Times [online] (2012). http://

retro-farming-horsepowered-logging/.

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Dublin, 2003).

13. Shute, J. Heaven is a horse-drawn plough on Harbridge farm. The Telegraph [online] (April 15, 2014). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/

15. Veblen, T. Absentee ownership: business enterprise in recent times: the case of America (Transaction Publishers, New York, 1923 [1945]).

16. United Nations Department of Economic and Social

agriculture/farming/10765523/Heaven-is-a-horse-

Affairs, Population Division. World Urbanization

drawn-plough-on-Harbridge-Farm.html.

Prospects: The 2014 Revision, Highlights (ST/ESA/

14. Jenner, A. Forget diesel – when it comes to logging, horses are cheaper and greener. Modern Farmer

SER.A/352) (2014).

17. Fuller, T. Thai youth seek fortune away from the

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youth-seek-a-fortune-off-the-farm.html?_r=0.

18. Earthnet Foundation [online]. http://www.greennet. or.th/en/about/earthnet.

19. Levi-Strauss, C. The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, London, 1966).

20. van der Ploeg, JD. Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto (Fernwood Publishing, Halifax, 2013).

Spector, J. (2017). Conflict-Free in the Congo. Solutions 8(1): 39-41. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/conflict-free-congo/

Perspectives Conflict-Free in the Congo

by Jennie Spector

Sasha Lezhnev / Enough Project

U.S. Special Envoy Tom Perriello Visits a gold mine in Eastern Congo in January 2016.

W

hile humanity’s use of electronics is tainted with unpleasant aspects—ranging from the need for “suicide nets” under the windows of Chinese iPhone factories to the numerous op-eds lamenting the loss of face-to-face connections—perhaps no consequence has been as dire as the brutal violence seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This devastation, manifesting in warfare over mineral mines, has been long underamplified. A new wave of hope, however, may be rising as the positive impacts of a provision in the United States’ 2010’s Dodd–Frank Act, requiring businesses to publicly disclose any

use of conflict minerals originating in the DRC or an adjoining country, come to light.

If you own an electronic device, you own minerals that were mined in the DRC. The country is said to have a “resource curse,”2 and the contents of its land have been usurped by Belgian colonization in the 1870s, “Africa’s World War” from 1998 to 2003, and the death of 5.4 million people in the last 10 years, with an estimated 1,500 perishing daily.3 What could be valuable enough to claim the lives of so many? The minerals tantalum, coltan, tungsten, tin, and gold are in massive supply in the DRC; 50 percent of the world’s tantalum

is found in the region. These minerals hold enormous worth in the current age, as laptops, video game consoles, cell phones, and numerous other devices could not function without them.4 Tantalum and coltan store electricity, tungsten enables devices to vibrate, gold is used to coat wires, and tin is used as a suture on circuit boards.5 The mines containing these minerals are fought over and controlled by an “innumerable” number of armed militias.6 These militias are composed of Rwandan, Ugandan, Zimbabwean, Angolan, and Namibian men, remnants of their home countries’ invasion (Rwanda and Uganda) and attempted protection (Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia) of the DRC in 1998. Once mined, the minerals are smuggled into Rwanda or Uganda.

The plunder of the militant groups are most often purchased by Asian-based corporations that assemble much of the world’s electronics. Congolese minerals are incorporated into the global raw material supply and can be found in the final products of Apple, IBM, Nintendo, Dell, Canon, Samsung, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, and other major electronics brands.7 The manner in which the minerals are obtained has created the foundation for cruel conflict. In order to maintain control of and work the mines, militants require citizen labor and cooperation. Children are often kidnapped and used as soldiers or miners, men and women are underpaid and overworked on the mining grounds, and rape has become the most common control tactic used by the militants to assert their authority over the Congolese.5 A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that two million women had been raped in the DRC, and at a rate of one woman raped every minute, that number has only continued to swell.8,9 Rape is a common, if scarcely

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Perspectives

Holly Dranginis / Enough Project

Daphrose, a miner from Rubaya, Congo.

combated, weapon of war, and the level of violence in the DRC displays how dependent militant groups are on rape to fracture families and communities.

Rape has evolved into such a norm for all militant groups that women are able to tell the affiliation of their attackers by the style of their rape.

The ability of the Congolese to reclaim control of natural resources and the economy is hindered by an AIDS health crisis; an estimated 30 percent of women have contracted HIV due to a 60 percent infection rate amongst the militant men. Many women suffer from fistulas (rips in the vaginal wall) due to gang rape, mutilation with objects such as sticks and bayonets, and the firing of guns into their genitals. Numerous organizations

attempting to bring aid to men, women, and children in the DRC are struggling to survive. Dr. Denis Mukwege, the sole gynecologist at the Panzi Hospital in eastern DRC notes that, “We treat one, and send her home to the village, and she returns with five more.”10 The sovereignty of the DRC over its land, resources, and people has always been rocky. The end of Belgian colonization in 1960 was followed by a string of dictators, corrupt elections, assassinations, and UN interventions. The 1990s saw destabilization of the frail country due to the influx of refugees from neighboring Rwanda.3 A civil war from 1996 to 1997 set the ground for the invasion by Rwanda and Uganda, a war that lasted from 1998 to 2003, and saw the involvement of eight African countries whose interests were represented by over 20 armed groups.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame called the war “self-sustaining,” as the profits earned from Congo minerals gained the Rwandan army up to USD$20 million per month. Since the official end of this war in 2003, little has changed for the Congolese. Taxes are frequently demanded by and paid to militant groups, and the DRC government is underfunded, overwhelmed, and carries a fraudulent history. In February 2013, 11 African nations signed a statement declaring and promising their support for the end of violence in the DRC, but the underfunded Congolese government has had little ability to support its people over the last several years.3 The demand for what is buried in the earth of the Congo is so high, the profit to be made so great, that it is hard to conceive change unless the nature of the demand shifts to one that will no longer allow the supply to be tainted with these atrocities.

The dim spotlight shining on the Congo conflict was enough to earn a mention in the US’ sweeping Dodd–Frank reforms, enacted in 2010

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to address the causes of the financial crisis. The multistep process outlined

by Section 1502 includes investigating supply chains, declaring the minerals’ impact on products, filing annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and making information available to consumers online. Though it is a notable step toward increasing awareness and diminishing the profitability of these horrendous practices, the rule contains a notable flaw. There are no consequences for businesses who refuse to comply, save for the possibility of negative public opinion. For the first two years of enforcement, companies are also able to merely report that their use of conflict minerals is “undeterminable.”11 This lack of knowledge may be excusable due to how low the raw minerals are found on the supply chain. Minerals from the DRC go through as many as 10 intermediary corporations prior to being sold as finished products.

A check in on the progress of the reforms, however, has produced a pleasant surprise. Potential did not at first seem promising; in the spring of 2013, a year out from a May 2014 reporting deadline, the results of a survey concluded that one-third of company executives remained unsure as to whether the law applied to their ventures. Few had created plans to investigate their supply chains, and a study by Tulane University Law School’s Payson Center for International Development estimated that the first year of enforcement would cost nearly USD$8 billion. However, this year the Enough Project found that, despite underwhelming enthusiasm from participating companies, the rule has provided a catalyst for change.12 Nearly 200 mines have been assessed in the last several years, with 163 passing the process. From 2013 to 2015, there was a 357 percent increase in

Perspectives the recorded amount of conflict-free tungsten exported from the Congo.

This statistic is particularly significant, as one of the main critiques of the legislation has been that it will take away desperately needed industry from the already economically poor region, as manufacturers who are unable to certify minerals from the region as conflict-free will abstain from the region altogether.13 Individual companies have also taken it upon themselves to lead the conflict-free movement. Intel partnered with the Conflict Free Sourcing Initiative to create an audit and verification system implemented at smelting sites that work the raw minerals into metal. A large section of the Intel website is dedicated to information on the background of the conflict in the DRC and how Intel is going about its efforts to “lead the way toward conflict free.” These efforts have resulted in the world’s first microprocessors that are validated as conflict-free for tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold.

In its progress report, the Enough Project spoke to Daphrose, a woman living in a Congolese mining town.

She reported that since the Dodd– Frank reforms have begun making an impact, “more or less, it’s better now” in the Congo.14 Celebrating the success of a seemingly unlikely solution provides an opportunity to look toward an even better future. The DRC needs a transparent government with a strong rule of law to work hand-inhand with manufacturers and citizens who require protection from militant groups looking to turn Congo’s resource wealth to their advantage. A complete end to this style of violence is only feasible with a massive shift in global production norms. However, as corporate action is spurred by consumer demand, the actions of the average consumer are also vital to progressing toward a conflict-free electronics supply. The results of the

Sasha Lezhnev / Enough Project

A day’s work worth of gold extracted from the Kaniola mine in eastern Congo.

conflict minerals rule has shown corporations that change is possible, and now it is up to consumers to tell corporations, with their dollars, that responsible change is profitable.

8. Gettlemen, J. Congo study sets estimate for rape much higher. The New York Times [online] (May 11, 2011). http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/world/ africa/12congo.html?_r=0.

9. Theophile, M. Why they rape: DRC child soldier spout. Safeworld Field Partners [online] (2012). http://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/fpdrc/cofapri/ cofapri-blogs/3031-former-child-soldiereaks.html.

References

10. Nolen, S. Not women anymore: the Congo’s rape

1. Intel. Conflict-free processors [online] (2014). http:// www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporateresponsibility/conflict-freeminerals.html.

2. Lalji, N. The resource curse revised: conflict and

survivors face shame, pain, and AIDS. Ms. Magazine [online] (2005). http://www.msmagazine.com/ spring2005/congo.asp.

11. Bowman, R. Companies need to step up to meet

coltan in the Congo. Global Policy Forum [online]

new conflict-minerals reporting rule. Forbes [online]

(2007). http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/

(December 10, 2013). http://www.forbes.com/sites/

content/article/198/40150.html.

robertbowman/2013/12/10/companies-need-to-step-

3. Democratic Republic of Congo profile. BBC News Africa [online] (2013). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

up-tomeet-new-conflict-minerals-reporting-rule/.

12. Dodd–Frank 1502: impact update. Enough! Project [online] (February 26, 2016). http://www.enough

world-africa-13286306.

4. Gettlemen, J. The price of precious. National

project.org/reports/dodd-frank-1502-impact-update.

13. Berlau, J. Dodd–Frank is hurting those who had

Geographic [online] (2013). http://ngm. nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/conflictminerals/

nothing to do with the financial crisis. The New York

gettleman-text.

Times [online] (April 14, 2016). http://www.nytimes.

5. Prendergast, J. Conflict minerals 101. Enough!

com/roomfordebate/2016/04/14/has-dodd-frank-

Project [online] (November 18, 2009). http://www.

eliminated-the-dangers-in-the-banking-system/

youtube.com/watch?v=aFsJgcoY20.

dodd-frank-is-hurting-those-who-had-nothing-to-

6. Congo’s wars: peace they say, but the killing goes on. The Economist [online] (March 27, 2003). http://

do-with-the-financial-crisis.

14. Dranginis, H. Boom town: what happened when Wall Street reform came to Congo’s frontier mining

www.economist.com/node/1667129.

7. Ma, T. China and Congo’s coltan connection. Project

towns. Enough! Project [online] (February 11, 2016).

2049 [online] (2016). http://project2049.net/documents/

https://medium.com/@EnoughProject/boom-town-

china_and_congos_coltan_connection.pdf.

afe0075ce163#.3yr0n2a2k.

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Bousquet, K. (2017). Israel and Palestine: Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions, and the Future. Solutions 8(1): 42-43. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/israel-palestine-boycotts-divestment-sanctions-future/

Perspectives Israel and Palestine: Boycotts, Divestments, Sanctions, and the Future

by Kendall Bousquet

Mary-Katherine Ream

Graffiti on a wall in Bethlehem.

I

s a boycott of Israel an effective strategy for changing the government’s policy? Those in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement think so. BDS has seen several victories in recent years. In academia, 12 US universities’ student governments, including those of Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford, voted to divest from Israeli companies in 2015. That year also saw the National Women’s Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies all endorse boycotts of Israeli academic institutions. The United Methodist Church and the US branch of the Presbyterian Church voted overwhelmingly to boycott Israeli settlement products. Over 1,100 black activists,

artists, scholars, and organizations issued a statement entitled “2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine,” intending to link the black struggle in America with the Palestinian struggle.

Signatories included Black Lives Matter cofounders Patrisse Cullors, Angela Davis, and Cornel West. R&B singer Lauryn Hill canceled a performance in Israel in response to calls for her to boycott the country. In August, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers became the first national union in the US to endorse BDS. At the highest level of influence of any of these examples, 60 members of the US Congress publicly elected to boycott Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 2015 speech to Congress, after demands from constituents that they skip the speech.

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Widely supported by Palestinian activists, civil society, and trade unions, some see the movement as the nonviolent solution to ending occupation in a political climate where Palestinians are accused of using violence to achieve their goals.

Others see the movement as hardline and militant despite its nonviolent strategies. Pro-Israel group The AntiDefamation League claims that “the BDS campaign is a global effort to isolate and punish Israel because of its policies towards the Palestinians” that “place[s] the entire onus of the conflict on one side: the Israelis.” Opposition to the movement by the Israeli rightwing is self-evident, but opposition to BDS is shared by liberal Zionists alike. J Street, a self-described liberal

Perspectives Zionist organization, states that BDS is anti-Israel in that it “does not support the two-state solution, recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state, or distinguish between opposition to the existence of Israel or…to the occupation of the territory beyond the Green Line.” J Street goes on to describe the movement as “a convenient mantle for thinly disguised anti-Semitism.”

specific measurable and achievable goals…it allows Palestinians to resist in socially approved, nonviolent ways that have actually lead to some tangible results,” says Ayah, a Palestinian student at Northeastern University involved in the campus SJP group, who asked that her last name be withheld for safety reasons. “As a Palestinian woman with a Saudi passport, it is

“For BDS in particular, I take inspiration from a legacy of Jewish women’s nonviolent resistance.”

–Liza Behrendt, JVP However, Jewish BDS activists deny the claims of the movement being anti-Semitic. “Once someone compared my rhetoric to that of a Nazi hate group,” said Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) member Marlo Kalb. “As a Jewish woman and a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, this was extremely painful and deeply hateful.” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a national organization dedicated to promoting human rights for Palestinians from a Jewish perspective, actively promotes the tactics of BDS in pressuring the Israeli government. “For BDS in particular, I take inspiration from a legacy of Jewish women’s nonviolent resistance,” says Liza Behrendt, an organizer with JVP. Many of those who oppose the movement favor dialogue and discussion in place of a boycott, such as Israeli author Etgar Keret, who told Newsweek that “there’s nothing easier than boycotting. Boycotting is basically saying I’m going…to do nothing.”

Palestinian activists, however, feel more optimistic. “[BDS] is a way of raising awareness, strengthening unity, and renewing hope by having some

difficult for me…when you don’t have the freedom of speech, you have to pick and choose your words and align them with your country’s approach to the topic,” said another member of Northeastern SJP, who asked to remain anonymous. “[Boycotting] allows me to perform…a form of resistance without putting myself or my family at risk.” In response to the call for dialogue, Fida Adely and Amahl Bishara, members of the American Anthropological Society and supporters of the society’s BDS resolution, argued that dialogue fails to take into account power asymmetries between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Dialogue that takes place under the current system is simply not a free exchange of ideas,” they argue. “Many dialogue initiatives…act as a kind of marketing tool rebranding the reality of separation and apartheid as a fantasy of co-existence.”

The BDS movement models itself on the South African divestment movement organized in the 1970s and 80s. The movement saw universities, corporations, and government localities divest from holdings in South Africa in an attempt to wage a campaign of

economic attrition against the apartheid state—something BDS activists are hoping to recreate in the case of Israel/ Palestine. The demands as outlined by the official BDS declaration state that Israel end expansion of settlements in the West Bank, acknowledge the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and remove the wall separating Israel from the West Bank, a wall referred to by Israelis as the “security fence” and by Palestinians as the “apartheid wall.”

Given current attitudes, many of the challenges presented to BDS seem insurmountable: according to a March 2016 study from the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Israeli Jews say that Arabs, regardless of religion, “should be expelled or transferred from Israel, including roughly one-in-five Jewish adults who strongly agree with this position.”1 In light of this, BDS activists turn towards the precedent of the past.

In 1985, nine years before its end, only 45 percent of white South Africans described themselves as being unhappy with apartheid. Groups like J Street are right in their statements that the principles of BDS run counter to a two-state solution, and the ADL is right in saying that the movement and what it represents present an imminent threat to the status quo in Israel. In order for BDS to serve as a viable solution, the broken promise of the two-state solution would have to be discarded, with the movement advocating for the space where Israelis and Palestinians can conceive of a future—a democratic, rights-inclusive future—together.

References 1. Israel’s religiously divided society. Pew Research Center [online] (March 8, 2016). http://www. pewforum.org/2016/03/08/israels-religiouslydivided-society/.

2. Clymer, A. Poll in South Africa shows a rise in whites’ distaste for apartheid. The New York Times [online] (August 3, 1986). http://www.nytimes. com/1986/08/03/world/poll-in-south-africa-shows-arise-in-whites-distaste-for-apartheid.html.

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Stewart, G. (2017). Securing Knowledge of Sustainability in 21st Century Higher Education. Solutions 8(1): 44-53. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/securing-knowledge-sustainability-21st-century-higher-education/

Feature

Securing Knowledge of Sustainability in 21 Century Higher Education st

by Gord Stewart

Plymouth University

Students at Plymouth University in the U.K. participate in a Sustainability and Global Citizenship Program.

In Brief International conventions, such as Agenda 21 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, confirm an important role for higher education. The Talloires Declaration and others like it commit signatory institutions to standards around sustainability in the curriculum. Various regional organizations provide resources and support to institutions striving for curricular change and improvement.

In spite of all this, many facets of the university/college structure and management practice conspire against weaving sustainability into the curriculum, and change has been slow to come. Yet progressive and innovative universities and colleges are combining “top–down” and “bottom–up” approaches to achieve some remarkable results.

Examples from selected universities and colleges serve as a guide for change and give a sense of what’s possible when key drivers line up and the will is present.

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“The glaciers are melting faster than the curriculum is changing.”

–David Blackstein, National Council on Science and the Environment

U

niversities and colleges have an opportunity and a responsibility to prepare all graduates for thoughtful and appropriate living in the 21st century. Graduates who go on to assume influential roles in their working lives will need particular knowledge and skills—and values and attitudes—to help create the sustainable and desirable future we so need.

Education for sustainability, properly delivered, guides people in making decisions and taking action for a more socially just, economically sound, and ecologically responsible future.1 This will require a rethinking of the purpose, policies, and practices of higher education to fit current realities and conditions.2 A UN Global Compact survey, including responses from 1,700 companies worldwide, confirmed education as an urgent development priority, noting that sustainable development should be included in curricula at all levels.3 A study in the UK found that nearly half of employers consider social and environmental responsibility in the selection of recent graduates, while 55 percent feel universities needed to do more to prepare students in these areas.4 A UK study of more than 5,000 first-year students found that sustainability-related skills were considered significant for employability and some two-thirds of those surveyed felt that sustainability issues should be addressed throughout the curriculum (rather than as a separate module).5 A large US university establishing a sustainability major experienced immediate, strong demand. When enrollment was capped, the number of students

seeking places meant that the entry standard was among the highest of any program in the university.6 A Canadian University establishing an undergraduate Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) program experienced similar interest. A survey of the first-year class indicated that for two-thirds of them, the ESS program was influential in their

Key Concepts • Universities and colleges have a role to play in preparing graduates for life and work in a resource-constrained world. Student demand and a call from employers suggest the response from higher education must be stronger.

• The endorsement, commitment, and leadership of senior administrators can help to create a nurturing environment supportive of change.

Recognition of sustainability in institution vision/mission statements, in stated graduate competencies, and in the incentive structure for faculty advancement are all important.

• Establishment of a ‘neutral arena’ and use of the campus and surrounding community as a living laboratory will help students become complex problem solvers capable of meeting sustainability challenges.

• Properly embedding sustainability across the curriculum will lead to improved quality and relevance of education for all enrolled students, better prepare domestic students for meaningful work at home and abroad, and strengthen offerings to attract foreign students in a competitive international education marketplace.

decision to come to the university.

For nearly half the students, ESS was a major or primary reason for their choice of university, while one-fifth said they would not have enrolled had the program not been available.7 There are clearly both ‘pushes’ and ‘pulls’ for increasing attention to sustainability across the curriculum.

Driving Change Over the years, a variety of international conventions have addressed the role of higher education in the pursuit of sustainable development. Likewise, there are numerous international and regional declarations relating specifically to sustainability in curriculum.8 UNESCO’s Stockholm Declaration in 1972 was the first to reference sustainability in higher education. The Tbilisi Declaration followed in 1977 with an emphasis on environmental education initiatives. Agenda 21, with its focus on environmental sustainability, resulted from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio. Chapter 36 covered sustainability in education, with main points including the reorientation of education towards sustainable development and promoting proper training among educators.

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015 aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Goal 4 addresses quality education and includes a 2030 target relating to sustainable development knowledge and skills.

The Talloires Declaration, signed in 1990 by 22 university presidents, vice-chancellors, and rectors, was the first to focus on sustainability in the curriculum. It called for the creation of “programs to develop the capability of university faculty to teach environmental literacy to all undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students.”9 Other similar initiatives include The Halifax Declaration (Canadian universities) in 1991, Swansea Declaration (Commonwealth universities) in 1993, and the CRE Copernicus Charter (European universities) in 1994. Common principles or themes in the declarations include moral obligation, ecological literacy, and the development of an interdisciplinary curriculum.8 In spite of the honorable intentions of these declarations, the number of institutions becoming signatories to

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Deanna Dent/ASU Now

Arizona State University biochemistry junior Marie Dela Cruz collects Seville oranges on Cady Mall. Oranges harvested in this eight-year-old program by the ASU Arboretum and ASU Cares are made into “Devil-ade” that is served in student dining halls at all ASU campuses.

them is limited. And of those that have signed on, many have failed to work towards sustainability in a meaningful way, or struggled to fulfil their commitments.10-12 Many institutions embark on the sustainability journey without signing on to one of these declarations. For those contemplating such an effort and choosing to make a start, help exists from regional organizations such as EAUC (The Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges) in the UK, the U.S.-based AASHE (The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education), and ACTS (Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability). Resources and support include sustainability assessment tools, publications, and training workshops.

Even with this kind of support, examples of interdisciplinary, institution-wide sustainability initiatives are still rare.13 UNESCO’s Decade of Education for Sustainability drew attention to the issue, but some suggest there is still widespread indifference and in some cases even active resistance to change.14, 15 With all of this, it remains highly possible for students to complete a university or college degree and have little idea of the kind of world they are graduating into.

Embedding Sustainability

‘steps’ are discussed briefly below, and include ‘top–down’ initiatives of senior management that help create a nurturing environment conducive to change.

Meanwhile, ‘bottom–up’ responses from involved faculty include creative approaches to staff development, curriculum content, and delivery methods.

Whether change will be slow and incremental or sweeping and transformative, each institution needs to set a course that suits its own particular situation. The action steps included here are meant to provide a guide for change and give a sense of what’s possible.

In spite of the generally slow uptake, there are pockets of real progress and innovation and much can be learned from their efforts, including factors critical to success (see accompanying table) and active steps institutions can take to address them. Ten such

Vision, Mission, and Goals Integrating sustainability into a vision or mission statement, or declared goals, allows the institution to progress in a way that is consistent with its culture and values. Here is

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Critical Success Factors ••Informed, committed senior leadership ••Good ‘fit’ with the institution’s ethos and culture ••Academic legitimacy ••Passionate, credible ‘champions’ ••Adequate financial and administrative support ••Effective, appropriate faculty development ••Proper incentives and rewards ••‘Owned,’ developed, and delivered by involved faculty

one example: “Middlebury College as a liberal arts institution is committed to environmental mindfulness and stewardship in all its activities.

This commitment arises from a sense of concerned citizenship and moral duty and from a desire to teach and lead by example.”16 The statement was adopted by trustees of this Vermont college some two decades ago. Throughout its history, Middlebury had demonstrated sustainability leadership through campus operations, curriculum innovation, and community involvement.

As a continuing part of this, in 2010 Bill McKibben, renowned author and environmentalist, was appointed Schumann Distinguished Scholar at the college.

Beyond statements and goals, sustainability can be woven into working documents that direct and regulate institutional practices. ‘Sustainability education’ is part of the sustainability policy at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and embedded in its strategic and academic plans.17 A commitment to sustainability in the curriculum is reflected in the vision, mission, and strategy statements for the entire 33-campus network of Mexico’s Monterey Institute of Technology.18

Getting it down on paper is a start.

Acting on it—living it—in daily operations is the key.

Graduate Competencies Considerable effort has gone into establishing key competencies (also called abilities, attributes, or capabilities) for problem-solving and task performance associated with sustainability.19-21 One approach organizes competencies under three headings: ‘Knowledge and understanding of…,’ ‘Values and attitudes,’ and ‘Skills in…’

Another divides competencies into a strategic knowledge cluster, a practical knowledge cluster, and a collaborative cluster.

At RMIT, the graduate attribute, ‘environmentally aware and responsible,’ commits the university to developing in all students the requisite knowledge, attitudes, and skills.17 At Oakland Community College in Michigan, a concerted effort was put into having a list of 10 general education attributes include three relating specifically to sustainability. They were as follows: acquire interpersonal and personal development skills, develop a strong commitment to social responsibility, and understand the global environment. This approach led to some faculty integrating sustainability into courses so they would qualify as a general education credit and thus be open and attractive to students from all disciplines. This helped gain support for sustainability in the curriculum in two ways: it was attractive to those concerned about enrollment numbers in their courses and it avoided the addition of (threatening) new courses in what is often perceived as an already crowded curriculum.22 The undergraduate sustainability specialization at Michigan State University is based on eight competencies, four relating to content and four based on process. The latter include civic engagement, critical and systems

thinking, and personal development.

Seven to eight tasks guide learning in each competency area.23 A comprehensive set of competencies plays a part in curriculum planning at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability (SOS). Basic competencies (relevant for all of the university’s graduates) include critical thinking, communication, and data management. Layered on top of this for SOS students is interpersonal competence, and above this a combination of systems thinking, anticipatory, normative, and strategic competencies.20 Single-discipline knowledge will not be enough to tackle sustainability challenges. Graduates will need to be “complex problem solvers, capable of synthesizing information across disciplines.”24 Neutral Arena One study comparing sustainability transformation at seven universities worldwide found the existence of ‘connectors’ to be an important driver for change.25 A connector is an active network that reaches across a university, such as an interdisciplinary group. The study also established the importance of a coordinating unit to keep the change process going.

John Holmberg of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden has similarly emphasized the value and role of an organization with scope and responsibility across the traditional disciplines. He terms this a ‘neutral arena,’ an “engine for the issues that otherwise often become everyone’s interest but nobody’s responsibility.”26 The Gothenberg Centre for Environment and Sustainability was formed to serve as such an arena, involving faculty at Chalmers and Gothenberg universities and external stakeholders. The Chalmers Learning Centre was subsequently launched to support the quality of learning at the university.

Important characteristics of these

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centers include being open, inviting, and service oriented, with a focus on lowering barriers and building trust.26 The College of Sustainability at Dalhousie University in Canada, offering the university’s ESS program, could also be considered a form of neutral arena. There was no move to hire sustainability ‘specialists’ when the College opened its doors in 2009.

Instead, professors from faculties and departments across the university move into and out of the College on one-third time, three-year appointments. They bring in new ideas from their own discipline, team teach, and take back new perspectives to their specialty area—cross-fertilization at its best.

In all cases, activities of the neutral arena are not meant to replace comparable initiatives. Instead, they serve to complement and build on the institution’s other sustainability-related programs.7

management, purchasing decisions, and transportation (commuting practices and service vehicles), and the ecological and social footprints of all these activities.27 In a modest and simple effort, an undergraduate course at the University of Wisconsin–Madison focusing on energy management uses campus buildings and resident halls as the ‘setting’ and changes taking place on campus as the ‘script.’ Those delivering the course remind us that facilities and operations staff have a wealth of knowledge and expertise that should be drawn upon for the benefit of all. On a grander scale, students at Warren Wilson College near Asheville, North Carolina spend regular weekly time on crews supporting all campus operations, including a six-acre garden, 300-acre working farm, and 700-acre managed forest.

Professor David Hamilton of The University of Waikato in New Zealand says, “Universities should act as

Sustainability can be woven into working documents that direct and regulate institutional practices.

Campus Operations ‘Greening’ campus operations, as a movement, has led by some margin greening of the curriculum. Where good practice has occurred, the campus can serve as a venue for meaningful experiential learning. Termed the ‘informal’ curriculum, this aspect of courses can include field trips, interactions with staff, and projects linking campus operations with formal study.14 Campus facilities and grounds offer tremendous opportunities for sustainability research and learning. Students can be engaged in understanding the ‘institutional metabolism,’ looking at energy and water use, waste

practicing models of sustainability.”28 When they do, they serve at once as inspiration, example, and laboratory for student experiences.

Community Connections Beyond the campus, real-world learning opportunities await in the community, in local businesses, and with government organizations.

Problem- and project-based learning, service learning, and internships allow students to work collaboratively with community stakeholders and link knowledge to action for sustainability.19 The Sustainable Future, an introductory course at Roosevelt University

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in Chicago, uses the city and its suburbs as an outdoor learning laboratory.

Students explore and study important architectural and cultural sites and natural areas, learn from experts in the field, hear about the work of nonprofits, and contribute to the likes of beach and waterway clean-ups.

The Oberlin Project in Ohio is a joint effort of the city, Oberlin College, private investors, local businesses, and regional economic development agencies. Its aim is to improve the resilience, prosperity, and sustainability of the community. Launched in 2009, initiatives include the development of a central Green Arts District in the city as a driver for community economic revitalization, shifting the city and college to renewable energy sources, and creating a robust local foods economy to meet 70 percent of the community’s needs. College students are actively involved in these initiatives, and the project is further focused on integrating sustainability into education at all levels.29 Resources and Support The general structure of higher education, organized into traditional disciplines focusing on specialized areas of knowledge, is at odds with the holistic, complex nature of sustainability. Resources and finances are typically linked to disciplines, which acts as an impediment to interdisciplinary work and collaboration amongst departments.

Adequate resources and support, and a true spirit of cooperation, are needed to embed sustainability across the curriculum. This may require modifying administrative systems and structures, and individual roles, to ensure lasting change.30 The use of fixed-term appointments and rotating faculty into and out of the ESS program at Dalhousie, for example, was seen as a way to infuse sustainability into instructors’ home departments.

Sustainability ‘champions’ can lead the way and draw others into the

cause, so putting someone in charge makes good sense. The Sustainable Universities Initiative (SUI), a collaborative effort of three universities in South Carolina, saw the president of each institution appoint an SUI fellow.

The fellow, receiving a small stipend, was seen as an opinion leader capable of finding collaborators and engaging faculty keen to be involved.31 Reporting at the highest level is important, too. To this end, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand has appointed an assistant vice-chancellor (sustainability) with a mandate including teaching, research, and operations.

Faculty Development Efforts to engage faculty face a number of challenges. At a very basic level, there may be a need to spark an interest in sustainability, demonstrate its connection and relevance to different disciplines, and overcome concerns about any disruption it might cause to the current curriculum. It will also be necessary to convey a proper understanding of the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability, provide information for inclusion in courses, and promote new delivery methods.

Group workshops, one-on-one training, and resource materials can all play a part in this.

In the U.S., early work of Tufts University’s Environmental Literacy Institute (TELI) and the nonprofit organization Second Nature was instrumental in developing an effective workshop format. The Ponderosa Project at Northern Arizona University (NAU), launched in 1995, used this format to assist faculty in revising or preparing new courses to cover a broad range of sustainability topics.

Other institutions followed suit, with the Piedmont Project at Emory University in Atlanta becoming a model for faculty development and curricular innovation.32 A longterm study of participants in TELI

Ciprian Gorga

Challenge Lab students at Chalmers Campus Lindholmen, the location for the Challenge Lab 2014–2015.

and Piedmont workshops showed significant benefits. In addition to the effect on teaching (new topics and new teaching methods), many participants reported it led to new research directions, grant proposals, and publications. Interdisciplinary cooperation increased and personal engagement

with environmental issues was enhanced.33 AASHE now offers “Sustainability across the Curriculum” leadership workshops based on the Ponderosa/Piedmont model.

In the UK, both vision and leadership have come from the Centre for Sustainable Futures, established at

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Paul Warwick

Students at Plymouth University in the U.K. volunteer to green the campus and increase biodiversity.

Plymouth University in 2005. More than 40 Centre Fellows from all schools and faculties play a role in helping to embed sustainability across the curriculum and faculty have written guides to help other institutions do the same.34, 35 Individual interaction is a further way to engage and involve staff. This method has been used effectively at Chalmers University of Technology.

Informally interviewing instructors and discussing how their topics relate to sustainable development leaves them in control of their course and open and receptive to change.36 Engaging faculty developers and others involved more broadly in professional development—including the various academic discipline associations and their continuing education schemes—can add to the cause and bring legitimacy to it.

Incentives and Rewards Progress will be limited if it relies solely on the passion and commitment of a few keen individuals.

Intrinsic rewards such as knowing that one is doing meaningful work and satisfaction gained from student engagement only go so far. In time, efforts to weave sustainability into the curriculum must be fully integrated into the incentive (salaries, promotion, and tenure) structure of the institution.

Providing a small stipend to faculty who attend workshops and develop new modules or courses has been common and is a good start. While it doesn’t fully compensate for the time involved, it is an acknowledgement in principle. In efforts to change at RMIT, part of the budget provided those involved relief from some of their daily activities. At ASU’s School

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of Sustainability, with its problemand project-based learning, there is recognition of the additional effort required for the network- and relationship-building involved in engaged research and learning. Incentives and rewards include faculty stipends and paid student assistance to develop problem- and project-based learning courses.37 At Dalhousie, every course in the ESS program is team taught by at least two faculty. Recognizing that co-teaching is often as much or more work than teaching alone, faculty receive full credit for the teaching load. Change and innovation at Plymouth University is supported by a teaching fellowship award scheme.

Initiatives like these increase legitimacy and address an issue that is often a real barrier to change: time constraints.

Course Content There is no shortage of topics to cover.

Climate change, biodiversity, land use changes, air quality and pollution, water use and quality, energy use and transportation, and natural disaster management are on the list.

So are agricultural practices, fisheries management, food safety and security, tourism management, and corporate social responsibility. And then there’s health and well-being, human rights, social injustice and poverty reduction, income and gender inequality, preservation of indigenous cultures, and population growth.

With this long and varied topic list, it’s important to structure a curriculum that goes beyond traditional resource conservation issues to consider society, the economy, and the environment together. Where sustainability is integrated into existing courses, issues most directly related to the core topic can be emphasized to ensure relevance and interest.

A stand-alone course that all students must take can cover the issues, but it may be unpopular simply because it is required. It also risks ghettoizing sustainability if there isn’t sufficient coverage of these themes elsewhere in the curriculum.

Alternatively, an (introductory) optional course that is truly engaging and inspiring could draw students in and see its popularity grow through word-of-mouth.

An introductory, specialist course can be complemented (and built on) by integrating sustainability into a broad range of subjects across the curriculum. There are successful examples of this in, among others, law, business, engineering, nursing, sociology, theology, dance and drama, media and communications, and economics.38 Introductory economics is suggested as an important subject to infiltrate. In North America, at least, some 40 percent of undergraduate students take an introductory economics

course, so it’s a sizeable audience.

Sustainability concepts injected here can help counter the view that the economy exists in isolation of the environment, and can encourage questioning of traditional economic teachings, such as consumption is good, economic growth is desirable, and there are no resource limits, just externalities.15 Sustainability coverage is truly impressive at some institutions. A legacy of the Ponderosa Project at NAU is more than 260 undergraduate and 90 graduate courses on offer through

“sustainable curricula” have also taken root in China and other emerging countries.39 Some take it a step further. At Green Mountain College in Vermont, for example, all students complete a 37-credit environmental liberal arts sequence, regardless of their chosen major. Unity College in Maine has reorganized its curriculum around five sustainability-oriented centers housing 16 well-defined majors, with a focus on three academic strengths of the college: science, service, and sustainability.

“Universities should act as practicing models of sustainability.”

–Professor David Hamilton, University of Waikato

departments across the university.

Emory’s Piedmont Project has worked with more than 230 faculty. All of them have integrated sustainability into at least one course (and some as many as four). Over half of all departments in the arts and sciences colleges and the professional schools have at least one sustainabilityrelated course. Sustainability issues are now integrated into the nursing curriculum, emergency medicine, mathematics, statistics, and many language courses—not disciplines one would normally expect. At the UK’s Plymouth University, 49 percent of courses have an embedded or major sustainability element. In addition, 50 percent of research funding and 25 percent of publications are sustainability related.

Elsewhere, undergraduate and graduate programs in sustainability are offered at The University of Tokyo and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, among others.37 The concepts of a “green university” and

Delivery Methods The simple transmission of knowledge is obviously not enough. Education for sustainability should “aim to be experiential learning, starting from real problems, grappling with the multidimensional, transdisciplinary nature of these in an attempt to come to real, rather than reductionist, solutions.”40 The options and approaches discussed above all play a part. This includes connecting with the campus and community beyond, problem- and project-based learning, hands-on projects and internships, and meaningful interaction with practitioners.

These provide opportunities for group and peer learning, collaborative work, community involvement, civic engagement, and a chance to reflect on all of these experiences. In sum, it involves applied learning with an emphasis on positive community impact.41 ASU’s School of Sustainability follows what they call a functional

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and progressive model to build sustainability competence through real-world learning opportunities. This involves a four-part, staged approach: bringing the real world in (addressing real-world issues in class), visiting the real world (through field trips, for example), simulating the real world (peer-review activities or role games), and engaging with the world (through applied case studies on campus or in the community).19 Professor Stephen Sterling, of Plymouth University, proposes a model of progressive engagement and deeper learning that includes education ‘about,’ ‘for,’ and ‘as’ sustainable development and change. Education ‘about’ focuses on information and content. Education ‘for’ goes further to examine existing values and beliefs and facilitates reflection on alternatives. Education ‘as’ emphasizes capacity building, empowerment, and action competence.2 Knowledge, values, and competence—all are important and have their part to play.

Making Real Gains Properly embedding sustainability across the curriculum will have a number of important benefits. Among them, it will lead to improved quality and relevance of education for all enrolled students. It will better prepare domestic students for meaningful work at home and abroad. And it will strengthen offerings to attract foreign students in a competitive international education marketplace.

To benefit more students and more institutions, government financing of tertiary education and agencies supporting research will need to pay greater heed to sustainability issues and challenges and allocate funds accordingly. Senior administrators at universities and colleges that are leading the way on sustainability could help by reaching out to inform and educate key government and agency decision-makers on this crucial role

and responsibility of higher education in the 21st century.

Higher education is facing rising costs, funding challenges, and disruptions through the likes of open online courses. With all of this, a focus on sustainability can provide a source of hope and opportunity for institutional change and a renewed sense of mission.42 Professor David W. Orr of Oberlin College put it nicely when he said, “Educational institutions committed to the real work of building a sustainable and decent human future and willing to learn what that requires of us would be exciting and challenging places. More to the point, they would equip the rising generation to see that the world is rich with possibilities and prepare them to act competently in that light.”43

9. The Talloires Declaration [online] (2016). www.ulsf.org.

10. Calder, W & Clugston, RM. Progress toward sustainability in higher education. Environmental Law Reporter 33, 10003–10023 (2003).

11. Wright, T. The evolution of sustainability declarations in higher education in Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability: Problematics, Promise, and Practice (eds Corcoran, PB & Wals, AEJ) Ch. 2, 7–19. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004).

12. Bekessy, SA et al. The failure of non-binding declarations to achieve university sustainability: A need for accountability. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 8(3), 301–316 (2007).

13. Wyness, L & Sterling, S. Reviewing the incidence and status of sustainability in degree programmes at Plymouth University. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 16(2), 237–250 (2015).

14. Winter, J & Cotton, D. Making the hidden curriculum visible: sustainability literacy in higher education. Environmental Education Research 18(6), 783–796 (2012).

15. Green, TL. Lecturers’ perspectives on how

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Achieving a closer relationship between education and SD, post-2015. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 8(2), 89–112 (2014).

3. United Nations Global Compact. Corporate sustainability and the United Nations post-2015 development agenda: Perspectives from UN global compact participants on global priorities

Higher Education 16(1), 44–56 (2015).

16. Jenks-Jay, N. Integrating sustainability at Middlebury College in Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability: Problematics, Promise, and Practice (eds Corcoran, PB & Wals, AEJ) pp. 265.

(Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004).

17. Holdsworth, S & Thomas, I. Framework for introducing education for sustainable development into university curriculum. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 9(2), 137–159 (2015).

18. Lozano, FJ et al. An integrated, interconnected,

and how to engage business towards sustainable

multi-disciplinary approach for fostering

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5. Bone, E & Agombar J. First-year attitudes towards, and skills in, sustainable development (The Higher Education Academy, United Kingdom, 2011).

6. Redman, CL & Wiek, A. Sustainability as a transformation in education in Higher Education for Sustainability: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities from Across the Curriculum (ed. Johnston, LF) Ch. 15, 214–222. (Routledge, New York, 2013).

7. Wright, T. Stepping up to the challenge—the Dalhousie experience in Higher Education for Sustainability: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities

Sustainable Development in Action Technical Paper No 3, 2006).

19. Brundiers, K. et al. Real-world learning opportunities in sustainability: from classroom into the real world. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 11(4), 308–324 (2010).

20. Wiek, A et al. Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development. Sustainability Science 6, 203–218 (2011).

21. Thomas, I et al. Education for sustainability,

from Across the Curriculum (ed. Johnston, LF) Ch. 14,

graduate capabilities, professional employment:

201–213. (Routledge, New York, 2013).

how they all connect. Australian Journal of

8. Wright, T. Definitions and frameworks for environmental sustainability in higher education.

Environmental Education 29(1), 33–51 (2013).

22. Rowe, D. Building political acceptance for

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sustainability: degree requirements for all graduates,

Education 3(3), 203–220 (2002).

in Sustainability on Campus: Stories and Strategies for

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Greg Richardson Photography, courtesy of Fowler Buald & Mitchell Architecture

The Mona Campbell building at Dalhousie University houses the College of Sustainability. Constructed using leading-edge technology, including solar panels and smart lighting, it’s one of only three buildings in North America to use “BubbleDeck” technology, a revolutionary building method based on the use of hollow, recycled plastic balls.

Change (eds Barlett, PF & Chase, GW) Ch. 7, 139–155.

for sustainable development. Journal of Education for

(The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2004).

Sustainable Development 3(1), 75–85 (2009).

23. Schrand, T. Teaching Sustainability 101: how do we

31. Calder, W & Clugston R. Lighting many fires: South

structure an introductory course? Sustainability 6(4),

Carolina’s Sustainable Universities Initiative in

207–210 (2013).

Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability:

24. Flood, M. Sustainability as leadership ethos

Problematics, Promise, and Practice (eds Corcoran, PB

in Sustainability in Higher Education: Stories and

& Wals, AEJ) Ch. 20, 249–262. (Kluwer Academic

Strategies for Transformation (eds Barlett, PF & Chase,

Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004).

GW) pp. 179. (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2013).

25. Ferrer-Balas, D et al. An international comparative analysis of sustainability transformation

37. Wiek, A et al. Integrating problem- and projectbased learning into sustainability programs: a case study on the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 15(4), 431–449 (2014).

38. Jones, P et al. Sustainability Education: Perspectives and Practices across Higher Education (Earthscan, London, 2010).

32. About the Piedmont Project. Emory University [online] (2016). www.piedmont.emory.edu.

33. Barlett, PF & Rappaport, A. Long-term impacts of

39. Yuan, X et al. Green universities in China—what matters? Journal of Cleaner Production 61, 36–45 (2013).

40. Jucker, R. “Sustainability? Never heard of it!” Some

across seven universities. International Journal of

faculty development programs: the experience of

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26. Holmberg, J & Samuelsson, BE. Drivers and barriers

Sustainability in Higher Education 3(1), 8–18 (2002).

34. Sowing seeds: how to make your modules a bit

41. Shriberg, M. Building sustainability leaders:

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SowingSeeds20June2008.pdf.

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27. Cortese, AD. The critical role of higher education in creating a sustainable future. Planning for Higher Education 31(3), 15–22 (2003).

28. Hamilton, D. Personal Communication (2008).

29. The Oberlin Project [online] (2016). www. oberlinproject.org.

30. de la Harpe, B & Thomas, I. Curriculum change in universities: conditions that facilitate education

35. Sterling, S. The Future Fit Framework: An Introductory Guide to Teaching and Learning for Sustainability in HE (The Higher Education Academy, United Kingdom,

Universities—New Horizons (ed. Leal Filho, W) Ch 1.

(Peter Lang Ag, Frankfurt, 2012).

42. American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. Leading Profound Change: A Resource

2011).

36. Holmberg, J et al. The university and transformation towards sustainability: the strategy used at Chalmers University of Technology. International

for Presidents and Chancellors of the ACUPCC (Second Nature, Boston MA, 2009).

43. Orr, DW. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment

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219–231 (2012).

DC, 2004).

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Masselink, L., H. Goosen, V. Grond, P. Vellinga, and R. Leemans. (2017). Climate Change in Cities: An Atelier Approach for Municipal Action. Solutions 8(1): 54-65. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/climate-change-cities-atelier-approach-municipal-action/

Feature

Climate Change in Cities: An Atelier Approach for Municipal Action

by Luuk Masselink, Hasse Goosen, Vincent Grond, Pier Vellinga, and Rik Leemans

Vincent Grond

Participants discussing adaptation possibilities for their spatial adaptation vision. CAA workshop in Kleve (Germany) on June 4, 2014.

In Brief Adapting societies and natural systems to climate change moderates harm and/or can exploit beneficial opportunities.

Municipalities play an important role in setting it up in practice. The Climate Atelier Approach (CAA) is a method for the interactive design of municipal climate adaptation and was created as an alternative to top-down approaches.

The CAA shows municipalities how local adaptation can be addressed by developing an integrated vision for 2050 for selected municipal spatial plans. Municipalities gain insight into local climate impacts in a regional context, and understanding of how integrated spatial planning helps counter these impacts. The approach was co-developed in the Netherlands with municipalities, water boards (governmental bodies for water management), and several provinces through trial and error. The CAA focuses on creating climate-proof municipal spatial plans in four steps: 1) goal definition, 2) natural systems’ analysis, 3) climate impact analysis, and 4) interactive workshop—an atelier—designing a spatial vision for climate-proof development. The CAA was applied in 19 cases in the Netherlands and five European ones. Since applying the CAA, 12 Dutch municipalities have initiated adaptation plans.

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C

limate change has consequences for both natural and human systems.1 Adjusting these systems in order to moderate potential harm or exploit opportunities is called adaptation.2 This is facilitated by spatial planning that optimizes (future) land use.3-6 Local and regional spatial planning is particularly important for successful adaptation, as climate conditions and impacts vary at both these scales.7-10 While varied, many current approaches to adaptation are top– down and focused on sectors in an area instead of the area as a whole.11-13 These characteristics often do not link well with municipal practices.

In light of this, the Climate Atelier Approach (CAA) was developed as an alternative. The four distinct steps of the CAA are developed with stakeholders through iterative discussions and designed to link into existing municipal practices.

The development of the CAA started in 2011, when the Dutch province of Gelderland sought to support its municipalities in initiating adaptation strategies. Building on positive experiences of organizing adaptation workshops under Dutch research programs such as Climate Changes Spatial Planning and Knowledge for Climate, a workshop—or atelier—was organized with a focus on spatial aspects of adaptation and participants from several municipalities.14 Feedback on these workshops showed that a single representative is insufficient to initiate municipal adaptation planning. The decision was taken by the Province to organize one-day workshops at individual municipalities where every actor relevant for climate adaptation could join. This was the start of a series of CAAs in the Netherlands, as well as several in Belgium and Germany. Here, we explain the approach and then provide examples of successful implementation.

The Problem: A Science– Policy Mismatch Two types of adaptation approaches can be identified: top-down and bottom-up, both having advantages and drawbacks.15 A typical top-down approach uses global development scenarios—

Key Concepts • Climate adaptation is best addressed at the local or regional level, as climate conditions and impacts vary in context. Municipalities, as local authorities, often face difficulties getting started and are not well served by existing approaches that mismatch with municipal realities.

• Alongside local and regional authorities, like municipalities, Dutch water authorities (water boards), and several provinces, we developed the Climate Atelier Approach (CAA) as a way to integrate with ongoing municipal practices.

• The CAA shows municipalities how local adaptation can be addressed by developing an integrated vision for 2050 for selected municipal spatial plans, like new housing developments. The goal of the CAA is not to design a municipality’s vision but to provide quick insights on how to get there. In collaboration with local experts, the approach involves an analysis of ambitions, landscapes, projected climate impacts, and observed weather extremes.

• The CAA has been applied in 19 Dutch cases where adaptation was previously not high on political agendas. Of those, 12 have initiated additional adaptation strategies. We conclude that the CAA is an effective alternative to existing adaptation approaches.

for example, where different societal and technological developments are described with associated greenhouse gas emissions and climate models to figure out climate impacts at various scales and define adaptation needs.16,17 This provides insight into a range of future changes but often produces results less relevant for municipal

contexts. Bottom-up approaches focus on understanding root causes of local vulnerability to climate change and use participatory processes to address these in adaptation strategies.18 This can give less importance to physical factors but provides legitimacy through the involvement of people on the ground. They are also less reliant on climate models—which can have limited value at the municipal scale—and take current local vulnerabilities into account.15,19,20 Most current approaches are top-down and focused on large-scale technological interventions,11,12,21 dominated by natural sciences,22 and are monodisciplinary or sectoral.5,23 This is often in conflict with municipal practice where local adaptations that integrate social elements are central. While both approaches play important roles in planned climate adaptation, merging best practices can be beneficial.15 Unfortunately, few combined approaches exist and practical examples are even more limited.16,22,24,25

Theoretical Background In setting up the CAA approach, a literature review and stakeholder consultations helped to identify characteristics of effective adaptation approaches. Research shows that the way climate change issues or events acquire different meanings from different perspectives plays an important role in presenting and approaching it.26 De Boer et al. established a framework to provide insight into four typical ways of framing climate adaptation (Table 1).27,28 In municipal adaptation, the inspirational strategy is often considered most appropriate for two reasons.

First, municipal adaptation goals are often unclear, partly due to a lack of climate change considerations in existing standards, codes, regulation, or legislation.30-34 Some extreme weather policies do have climate considerations, like normative

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Adaptation goals

Clear Unclear

Clarity on climate impacts

Clear

Unclear

Computational strategy Decision-making is relatively straightforward but data is often voluminous

Compromise strategy Identification of an acceptable course of action for all stakeholders

Judgmental strategy Nature and the relevance of scientific uncertainty can lead to difficult discussions

Inspirational strategy Avoidance of discussion on the issue, inspiration needed to introduce new vision

Table 1. A framework of decision strategies, based on the clarity of climate impacts and on adaptation goals at the municipal level. Adapted from de Boer et al (2011).29

precipitation standards for drainage systems, but other phenomena, like the urban heat island effect, do not.

However, instead of setting standards, the Dutch government encourages municipalities to explore climate impacts and think of their own standards. The CAA can help this explorative process. As stakeholder consultations have identified, this lack of standards and legislation can be a reason why municipalities experience difficulties in addressing adaptation. Initially, municipalities are challenged to justify allocating means to addressing issues that have low legislative priority. However, the CAA can show how adaptation can be addressed in plans without much additional expenses and makes clear that sometimes investments can be made to prevent additional future costs. Second, local climate impacts are often unclear. Interviews with the CAA participants indicated that before applying the CAA, many only had general climate change knowledge and lacked insight in local impacts and vulnerabilities. Impact and vulnerability analyses typically work with high spatial resolutions, so when zooming

in to municipal resolutions the value of existing studies decreases.35 Implementing these strategies requires appropriate social settings, methods, and tools. The inspirational strategy is best served by creating a long-term vision in an informal setting that includes the development of learning scenarios, which the CAA supports.27

The Climate Atelier Approach Explained The CAA aims to develop an integrated vision for 2050 for selected municipal spatial plans, puts adaptation in a municipal context, provides local insight into climate impacts, and shows how integrated spatial planning helps counter these impacts and capitalize on arising opportunities.

Spatial developments—like constructing a residential area—are at the heart of the approach. This contrasts most other approaches where climate change is central. It uniquely presents complex geospatial data into easily understandable maps, which are effective communication tools for spatial planning.35,36 The approach consists of four linked steps (Figure 1):

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Step 1: Define municipal spatial ambitions Step 2: Analyze landscape characteristics Step 3: Assess climate impacts Step 4: Create spatial adaptation vision in an interactive workshop/atelier Results from Steps 2 and 3 are currently presented in maps created in the graphics program Adobe Illustrator® so different sources and formats of information can form a coherent image. However, these maps are difficult to adjust once new information becomes available. Thus, the CAA’s goal is to familiarize municipalities with adaptation processes, and once they start developing strategies, other methods might be better.

The maps are important for developing the spatial adaptation vision in Step 4. In the Netherlands for example, many current municipal practices use the layers approach in designing spatial plans.37,38 This approach looks at the landscape in three cross-sectoral layers. A ‘ground’ layer represents the soil and water systems and a ‘network’ layer includes

Water Green Soil 1 Municipal ambitions

2 Landscape

3 Climate impacts

4 Atelier

Spatial vision

Luuk Masselink

Figure 1. The CAA framework to arrive at a spatial adaptation vision.

physical and invisible routes and links, like roads, waterways, and ecological and energy networks.

Finally, an ‘occupation’ layer consists of habitation, employment, and recreation patterns.38 Visualizing the landscape in these layers instead of separate sectoral functions improves coordination between sectors and contributes to integrative planning.39 The first workshop was in the province of Gelderland, with following workshops at Gelderland municipalities such as Barneveld, Doetinchem, Ede, Wijchen, and Winterswijk focused on natural

systems, which are still very visible in the maps and process. As more workshops take place, new elements and other systems are added and old ones adjusted, in an adaptive process that will itself continue. The CAA has grown through iterations in almost 20 case studies this way already.

Municipal Spatial Ambitions Municipal spatial ambitions or planned developments are at the heart of CAA, which creates plans to achieve them while incorporating climate considerations. An example is the region

of Rheden in the Netherland, where CAA was applied. This municipality has a high elderly population that is expected to decline over the coming decades.40 The municipality’s goal is to maintain city structures while keeping it attractive for new generations and stimulate local economies. A neighborhood to be constructed was also analyzed. Goals are discussed during a preparatory meeting and, if feasible, are adopted for application in the CAA. Once these plans and goals were identified and discussed, the landscape analysis began.

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Vincent Grond

Figure 2. Hydrological analysis map of the municipality of Rheden, adjusted for publication. (1) Floodplains; (2) River system; (3) Current waterlogging areas; (4) Heavy runoff areas; (5) Water fluctuation zone; (6) Ground water protection area.

Landscape Analysis tableDifferent sources, spatial resolutions and (model) assumptions make it challenging to integrate this knowledge on a single landscape map, so three maps are made. For accuracy, the information is discussed and interpreted with municipal experts who know the local system well.

This exchange also increases mutual understanding amongst experts and supports integrative planning. The water systems (Figure 2) and landscape map (Figure 3) for Rheden are shown.

Climate Impact Assessment Making local climate impact assessments is a challenging task for municipalities because of mismatches

between supply of information and municipal needs, scientific information visualization and provision, municipal knowledge, and resource constraints.22,23,35 After an initial data gathering phase, the CAA, alongside scientists, landscape architects, and municipal experts, creates a single regional climate impact map (Figure 4).

Developing such maps has proven to be a positive experience of co-creation with stakeholders.35 This process combines scientific information and local expert knowledge to provide insight into potential climate impacts on the city and its surrounding area and is easily understandable for non-experts.

These impacts are visualized in a similar fashion as the landscape map.

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The climate information used in these maps originates from both top-down and bottom-up sources.

The top-down information is from the Climate Adaptation Atlas,41 an online portal with a wide range of climate change and impact model results. The data can include changes in mean temperature, flooding extent, urban-heat-island extent, risk of water logging, etc. Where possible, the atlas visualizes these for different scenarios.

Most European countries have a similar portal available or more generic portals like ClipC, SWICCA, and ClimateAdapt. 42 Bottom-up sources include municipal experts and climate scientists who explore regional and local consequences of climate

Vincent Grond

Figure 3. Integrated landscape analysis map of the municipality of Rheden, adjusted for publication. (1) Moraine; (2) Heathland corridor; (3) Dry valley (steep); (4) Heathland; (5) River system; (6) Floodplains.

impacts and determine sensitivity to climate change. Indicators of sensitivity include sandy, drought-prone areas, elevation related to flooding, and dense urban areas that create urban heat islands. Current extreme weather vulnerability data is also gathered. This information is often well-known at the municipal level.

In the Netherlands for example, fire departments pump water from streets or residential basements after extreme flooding. They often record these occurrences, inadvertently creating a database of flooding vulnerability.

With the CAA, this local knowledge is

then linked to the top-down climate information to determine local climate impacts and create a map providing an overview of relevant climatic themes and locations in the region.

Both landscape analysis and climate maps can be generated before the workshops and are usually discussed at the beginning with all participants.

These discussions help to identify any missing information and allow people to exchange ideas and perspectives on climate change. The following two examples of adaptive information these maps provide are from Rheden (Figure 4).

• Flooding: analysis shows greater future river discharge fluctuations that (without adaptation) will increase dyke breach risk.

The maximum flooded area is determined using an elevation map and indicated on the impact map with blue. No quantification is given to probability, flow speed, or depth, solely an indication that this area is flood prone.

• Wildfires: The atlas shows higher frequency of heatwaves and longer periods of drought, changes associated with increasing wildfire risks.43 The eastern area is part of

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Vincent Grond and Luuk Masselink

Figure 4. Integrated landscape analysis map of the municipality of Rheden, adjusted for publication. (1) Urban Heat Island effect (indication); (2) Floodplain dike breach; (3) Soil subsidence; (4) Wildfire risk; (5) Erosion risk; (6) Dike locations.

a national park, much of which is mixed deciduous/coniferous forest and heath. This risk area is indicated on the map with green.

As softwood is more at risk for fires, this area is highlighted.

The Atelier and Creation of a Spatial Adaptation Vision In a workshop/atelier, municipal experts design an integrated vision for 2050 and beyond, providing guidance for climate-considered spatial developments. Spatial planning can support adaptation,3-5 making regional and local spatial planners important

workshop participants. Climate change also influences other municipal policy fields, and other experts should be invited, including from mobility, green maintenance, water management, and housing departments. If relevant, external provincial or other water board actors are invited. This multidisciplinary group forces participants to think outside their own field and seek new links. Between 10 and 40 people have participated in each workshop, with groups of six people of mixed backgrounds designing their own spatial vision. The workshops last six to eight hours and consist of three

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phases: discussing available information and maps, spatial vision design, and a closing discussion. With some exceptions, citizens or NGOs were not invited to these initial workshops, as the goal is to first discern possibilities for integrative adaptive planning. Once municipalities start to actually develop plans, we promote the inclusion of all interested parties and stakeholders.

Discussing available information and maps. Discussion topics include the

following: What are climate change consequences for specific policy fields?

What are links with other fields? Does

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Figure 5. An example of a long-term vision for climate-proof spatial developments. (1) Continuous streams and stream valleys north to south for storage, recreation, and nature, with wind corridors for cooling; (2) Large-scale green and water storage; (3) Water basin for peak precipitation storage; (4) Fire break between forest and urban developments, with green clusters at outskirts; (6) Tree-lined avenue.

everybody recognize problems and opportunities? The goal is threefold.

First, discussions aim at providing all attendees with knowledge of municipal goals, landscapes, and potential climate impacts. Second, it aims at improving or adjusting knowledge visualized on the map, as certain topics of importance might be missed in first analyses. For example, soil subsidence due to mining activities was missing in a first map for a German municipality. Even though this subsidence is not caused by climate change, it can play an important role in determining future vulnerability to climate impacts like flooding. Finally, discussing all information creates mutual understanding of others viewpoints. Adaptation measures for one sector can cause problems in others, and this aids in arriving at a mutual vision.

Spatial vision design. Most of the

time is spent on (re)designing spatial plans to achieve municipal ambitions while incorporating climate change considerations. Part of the focus is on maintaining or restoring natural system functions to increase robustness,23 as current methods to design climate adaptation in a spatial planning context are limited.35 Guiding models are thus used to link the two.

These models represent landscape principles and connections between hydrology, geomorphology, climate change, and suitable adaptation measures.35,38,44 For example, connections between soil types and surface water bodies become apparent. The adaptation suggestions might include, based on soil types, where water infiltration zones can be constructed.

The models, which have already been developed for every major Dutch landscape type, allow participants to identify suitable adapation actions, after which ideas for climate-friendly spatial developments are suggested.

Designs are captured with pencils on a paper of the background image of the region. These illustrate how climate change adaptation can be integrated in spatial plans—often with no or little additional financial investments—and create opportunities for livability, nature, recreation, and economic pursuits. It can also be used in future spatial developments to maintain a consistent vision.

Results from the town of Velp, within the Rheden municipality, are shown in Figure 5. An integrated adaptation strategy with no-regret

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measures—those that are beneficial regardless of climate change—was created and included the restoration and extension of streams into residential areas. This improves water storage in periods of drought, helps counter urban heat islands, and acts as a buffer after heavy precipitation. Designs for water and green structures within one neighborhood also improve livability.45 The orange structure represents a firebreak between the neighborhood and the forest. All these measures increase livability, improve the functioning of natural systems, and ultimately buffer climate change impacts.

Closing discussions. The different

groups come back together to present and discuss their designs, as exchanging ideas often shows how there are multiple solutions. Lessons learned are also discussed: Have new insights emerged? Should particular practices be reviewed or changed? Is this the appropriate direction for municipal adaptation? Creating a climate-proof spatial vision is a first step, but moving it towards implementation is the next goal. Can new development plans be adjusted? Is new policy or legislation part of this vision and can it be realized? Who is responsible for the implementation? How will plans eventually be implemented?

Is mainstreaming—integrating measures into ongoing planning processes—the way to get them implemented? The motivation and inspiration emerging from the CAA also stimulates a plan of action for subsequent steps towards this.

Practical Application and Evaluation of the Climate Atelier Approach The CAA has been applied by 15 Dutch municipalities, two groups of collaborating municipalities, one water board, and once at the provincial level. As part of cross-border municipal collaboration projects,

the approach was also applied in one Belgian and four German municipalities. After each workshop, the CAA was evaluated through discussions with participants, digital questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. As the CAA is developed through iteration and all workshops were different, systematic evaluations are difficult. However, some trends emerge from these evaluations.

Firstly, the CAA is well received.

About 80 percent of questionnaire respondents think that it can facilitate adaptation planning. About half indicate that they have general knowledge of climate impacts but expect to obtain knowledge on local climate impacts and opportunities.

After the workshops, participants did note better understandings of the impacts as well as regional adaptation strategies. Of the generated maps, the regional climate map was considered most informative and usable, as it provides a clear overview of potential climate impacts and is an excellent discussion initiator.

However, some commented that for actual planning, more detailed analyses are required. That is, all maps can be used during agenda and policy setting but not all are useful in the decision and implementation phase of the adaptation cycle.

Collaborating with a range of experts and scientists on a single plan contrasts with the sectoral approach municipalities usually work with, and the CAA’s focus on spatial planning can still be considered sectoral, albeit a broad one. However, interviews showed that the CAA was nonetheless considered useful in its aim to give municipalities insight into the consequences of climate change and dealing with threats and opportunities.

Discussing different views and ideas resulted in integrated plans that were highly valued. About nine out of ten participants said they would recommend the workshops to colleagues.

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Final Thoughts Determining whether the CAA results in climate-proof municipalities is difficult as those are long-term processes.

Nevertheless, the approach can be considered a success. Most municipal agendas barely included climate adaptation. However, 12 of the 19 CAA municipalities have taken up additional adaptation processes. This adaptation takes many forms: some integrate the results in spatial visions, others organize conferences to discuss the topics, and others have moved to involve citizens in the adaptation process. No matter how the process was formalized, in the 12 municipalities, the CAA helped to initiate additional adaptation processes. Seven municipalities have not continued adaptation explicitly. Perhaps these municipalities need more time to initiate these processes, or adaptation is already integrated in ongoing processes but not made explicit, or perhaps the conditions were not right. For an overview of the municipalities that have and have not taken additional steps after CAA application, see Table 2.

Is the CAA the right adaptation approach for all municipalities? As addressed, framing plays a role in choosing an appropriate approach.

We believe the CAA links well with inspirational strategies, and is not necessarily suitable everywhere.

Examples of this were found in the pilot studies. For example, a water manager did not want to participate in the workshop, as it was not specific enough and he felt it would result in ‘empty’ plans. This person might be better served with a quantitative computational strategy. The CAA is designed as an alternative to available adaptation approaches, not to replace them; municipalities should work with what fits their context best.

Step-by-step guidance is available to walk municipalities through this process without external help.

However, experience has shown that having an external facilitator fuels the

Type

Name

Description

Municipality

Amersfoort

Integrate results in spatial vision, intensified water board collaboration

Municipality

Apeldoorn

Applied the CAA to two additional neighborhoods

Municipality

Breda

Development of detailed climate analysis and possible adaptation strategies

Municipality

Den Helder

Organization of municipal adaptation conference

Municipality

Groesbeek

Integration of climate map in spatial vision

Municipality

Harderwijk

Making more detailed climate maps, incorporating approach in municipal practices

Municipality

Renkum

Organization of municipal workshops to involve citizens in adaptation strategies

Municipality

Rheden

Drafting climate agenda, linking mitigation and adaptation

Municipality

Tilburg

Drafting climate agenda, linking mitigation and adaptation

Collaboration

Steden3Hoek

Finalizing regional climate agenda for climate adaptation mainstreaming

Province

Gelderland

Co-initiator of approach, (financially) supporting municipal adaptation

Water board

Vallei en Veluwe

Propagating method to municipalities

Municipality

Almere

No clear continuation after CAA

Municipality

Barneveld

No clear continuation after CAA

Municipality

Doetinchem

No clear continuation after CAA

Municipality

Ede

No clear continuation after CAA

Municipality

Wijchen

No clear continuation after CAA

Municipality

Winterswijk

No clear continuation after CAA

Collaboration

Zuid Flevoland

No clear continuation after CAA

Table 2. Dutch municipalities, collaborating municipalities, water boards, and provinces that have applied the CAA. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 63

creative process. The national government has made funds available for more pilot studies, where all necessary data is provided and a consultant firm guides the process. The results of this exciting new approach were not available at time of writing.

The Dutch national government also recognizes the value of the CAA and has incorporated it into their new Spatial Adaptation Program, which aims to support municipal adaptation to climate change. The CAA has also been adopted in the Natural Alliances approach, a spatial planning approach available for municipalities. This approach takes a broader perspective not only aimed at preparing an area for climate change but other aspects of sustainable development as well. The foundation for the Natural Alliances approach was laid in 2008 in the city of Nijmegen, where the focus was on the integration of water in spatial plans. Within this, the CAA can be seen as a starting point for people to understand how to use landscape and climate analyses in spatial planning.

The Natural Alliances approach further develops this with guidance for developing integrated sustainable spatial plans, a long-term process.46 Ultimately, the most important feedback that came from the CAA participants is that through the atelier, climate change and adaptation planning can change from an elusive problem into something that could actually be integrated into municipal spatial planning. The municipalities, water boards, and provinces that have continued with the CAA-identified climate adaptation strategies show that it can be an effective alternative to top-down planning.

the European Interreg IV A program, called Klimakommunen in der Euregio Rhein-Waal (KliKER). These German ateliers were organized in collaboration with the FiW Aachen. The authors would like to thank everyone involved in developing the CAA and facilitating workshops.

1, 29–58 (2014).

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Acknowledgements Part of this research is funded through the European Climate–KIC program.

The initial Ateliers described in this paper were financed by the province of Gelderland. The German municipal Ateliers were partly financed through

Adaptation. Smart and Sustainable Built Environment

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13. Roggema, R, Kabat, P & Dobbelsteen, A. Towards a Spatial Planning Framework for Climate

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19. Kwadijk, JC et al. Using adaptation tipping points to prepare for climate change and sea level rise: a case study in the Netherlands. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1, 729–740 (2010).

20. Stucker, D & López-Gunn, E. Adaptation to climate change through water resources management: capacity, equity and sustainability (Routledge, United Kingdom, 2015).

21. Eakin, HC & Patt, A. Are adaptation studies effective, and what can enhance their practical impact? Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2, 141–153 (2011).

22. Groot, A, Bosch, P, Buijs, S, Jacobs, C & Moors, E. Integration in urban climate adaptation: Lessons from Rotterdam on integration between scientific disciplines and integration between scientific and stakeholder knowledge. Building and Environment 83, 177–188 (2015).

23. Roggema, R. Design Adaptation to Climate Change (Springer, The Netherlands, 2009).

24. Girard, C, Pulido-Velazquez, M, Rinaudo, JD, Pagé, C & Caballero, Y. Integrating top–down and bottom– up approaches to design global change adaptation at the river basin scale. Global Environmental Change 34, 132–146 (2015).

25. Mastrandrea, MD, Heller, NE, Root, TL & Schneider, SH. Bridging the gap: linking climateimpacts research with adaptation planning and management. Climatic Change 100, 87–101 (2010).

26. Dewulf, A. Contrasting frames in policy debates on climate change adaptation. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 4, 321–330 (2013).

27. de Boer, J, Wardekker, JA & van der Sluijs, JP. Framebased guide to situated decision-making on climate change. Global Environmental Change 20, 502–510 (2010).

28. Wardekker, J. Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation under Uncertainty (Utrecht University, Utrecht, 2011).

29. de Boer, J, Wardekker, A, van der Sluijs, J & Kolkman, R. Frames in climate change communication and decision-making (IC10)– Synthesis. (Climate Changes Spatial Planning Report KvR15/11, 2011).

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Gathering ideas and highlighting important landscape elements are integral steps in designing the spatial adaptation vision. From the CAA workshop at the Province of Gelderland (Netherlands) in November 2011.

30. Peltonen, L, Haanpää, S & Lehtonen, S. The challenge of climate change adaptation in urban planning. FINADAPT Working Paper 13. (Finnish Environment Institute, Finland, 2005).

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32. Keskitalo, ECH. in Developing Adaptation Policy and Practice in Europe: Multi-level Governance of Climate Change (eds Keskitalo, E & Carina, H) Ch. 5, 189–232 (Springer, The Netherlands, 2010).

33. Lorenz, S, Dessai, S, Forster, P & Paavola, J.

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(eds Vose, JM, Peterson, DL & Patel-Weynand, T), 249 (USDA, Oregon, 2012).

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44. Grond, V, Koning, dR & Groenhuijzen, P. Testrapport Gidsmodellen Water (Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu, Den Haag, 2011).

39. Assche, KAMV & Jacobs, M. Kwaliteit in Complexiteit.

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John, S.F. and G.F. McIsaac. (2017). Multifunctional Agriculture: A New Paradigm of Mixed Cropping. Solutions 8(1): 66-76. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/multifunctional-agriculture-new-paradigm-mixed-cropping/

Feature

Multifunctional Agriculture: A New Paradigm of Mixed Cropping

by Stephen F. John and Gregory F. McIsaac DoKyoung Lee

University of Illinois Associate Professor DoKyoung Lee has developed a cultivar of Prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) as a bioenergy crop. Its tolerance of seasonally wet conditions makes it a promising grass for planting in saturated buffers or poorly drained soils to reduce nutrient loss from adjacent row crops.

In Brief The dominant agricultural paradigm in prime cropland areas of the American Midwest are farms producing corn and soybeans. Within this region, some states in the Mississippi River Basin have developed nutrient loss reduction strategies aimed at decreasing nutrient loading in rivers that contributes to the hypoxic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.

While several conventional conservation practices applied to corn-soybean fields can reduce nutrient loss, converting annual crop acreage to perennial biomass crops would be far more effective.

New and expanded uses and markets for perennial biomass crops are needed in order for them to gain wide adoption. Bioenergy grasses can be used for various bio-based products and for renewable energy in the form of heat, electricity, or transportation fuels. Many of the high-yielding grasses that will be used for bioenergy in the future make good forage for livestock.

U.S. energy policy encouraging cellulosic biofuel production could drive the adoption of perennial biomass crops.

Biomass crops are unique among the sources of renewable energy, in that they can also provide a suite of ecological benefits such as clean water, soil health, greenhouse gas reduction, and wildlife habitat. Policy mechanisms to incentivize farmers for these benefits may be necessary for the economic viability of perennial biomass crops in prime crop areas.

Over the next 20 years, multifunctional agriculture featuring perennial biomass crops can become a new paradigm to produce the agricultural goods that society needs, plus important ecosystem services. For that to happen, engagement of a wide range of stakeholders is needed, including farmers, landowners, scientists, conservation professionals, policy makers, entrepreneurs, industrialists, investors, and philanthropists.

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A

griculture in much of the Midwestern United States is dominated by farms that produce two annual row crops—corn and soybeans—and have no livestock.

Such grain-only farming operations became the norm roughly between 1950 and 1970. They produce a bountiful harvest for many food and non-food uses, but are heavily reliant on fossil fuels. And, even when conscientious farmers follow management practices recommended by Land Grant universities and conservation agencies, farmland dominated by annual row crops contributes to a number of environmental problems including greenhouse gas emissions, loss of wildlife habitat, and hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.

As farmers, scientists, and policy makers seek to remedy adverse impacts associated with annual row crops, it is time to change how we think about farms at a field and watershed scale. The shift from fossil fuels to renewables, and the urgency of mitigating and adapting to climate change can be the main drivers of a landscape transformation.

Bioenergy is controversial because it is seen as competing for land with food production and long-term carbon storage in trees and soils.1 Current federal energy policy calls for ramping up production and transitioning from first-generation biofuels, made from corn and soybeans, to advanced biofuels, made mainly from cellulosic plant material.2 Cellulosic feedstocks include dedicated bioenergy crops and crop residues, such as corn stalks and leaves, that are generally left in the field when grain is harvested. How the transition to advanced biofuel is accomplished can significantly affect, for better or worse, the environmental outcomes.

The vision presented here is known as Multifunctional Agriculture because it is designed to produce both agricultural goods and environmental benefits.3 A key feature of this concept is often the inclusion of perennial

crops and cover crops—sometimes called continuous living cover—that can enhance soil health and reduce dependence upon fertilizer and pesticides while also producing the food, feed, fiber, and fuel that society needs.

Key Concepts • The dominant agricultural paradigm in much of the American Midwest is farming operations that produce corn and soybeans.

• This intensive row crop system is associated with environmental impacts, including soil erosion and depletion, loss of habitat and biodiversity, nutrient loss impacting surface waters and the Gulf of Mexico, and greenhouse gas emissions. Existing conservation practices for corn and soybeans are not sufficient to meet the nutrient reduction targets established to shrink the Gulf “dead zone.”

• Perennial biomass crops can be sited and managed to produce harvestable biomass and reduce soil and nutrient loss. Polycultures of grasses, legumes, and other forbs can produce biomass and create wildlife and pollinator habitats.

• Perennial biomass crop systems can be part of a virtuous cycle of innovation to produce renewable energy and reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions while meeting society’s needs for agricultural goods.

• Multifunctional agriculture systems featuring perennial crops involve the co-production of agricultural goods and ecosystem services. In prime row crop areas, policies to provide incentives for water quality improvement, greenhouse gas reduction, and conservation benefits may be needed for economic viability.

To think creatively about how to achieve desirable change, lessons can be drawn from a selective look back at how farming changed in Illinois and neighboring states during the 20th century.

Back to the Future A century ago, farms in this region typically grew corn, small grains (e.g., oats, wheat, barley), and hay, and managed pasture for livestock and draft horses. Soybeans, which had been brought to the United States from China many years earlier, were just beginning to attract interest as a forage crop and rotational legume. Charles Meharry was one of the soybean pioneers. He first planted soybeans on his Champaign County farm located near the University of Illinois campus in 1909, and, within a few years, began hosting field days on his farm with presentations by university scientists and extension specialists such as W.L. Burlison and J.C. Hackleman.4 Adoption of the new crop was slow at first. In 1921, a total of 32,000 acres of soybeans were planted in the entire state of Illinois. Potential food and nonfood uses of soybeans were coming to be recognized, but there were no industrial facilities for processing soybeans into animal feed or food products.

A. E. (Gene) Staley ran a corn milling company in Decatur, Illinois. In November 1921, Staley announced that, “In response to the general and urgent desire on the part of the farmers of Central Illinois,” his company had decided to build “a plant for grinding and extracting the oil from the soya bean.”5 The next year, Illinois soybean acreage more than quadrupled to 135,000. Between 1922 and 1925, the Staley soybean plant operated intermittently, with shutdowns due to equipment problems, limited quantity, or poor quality of beans. Staley persevered and overcame these hurdles.

The company’s research department developed many new uses for soy oil and meal.

Soybean production, markets, and uses grew steadily from the mid-1920s into the 1940s, changing the Midwestern landscape and agricultural economy. While many other individuals and organizations contributed to this growth, Charles

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 67

Meharry, William Burlison, and Gene Staley stand as suitable exemplars for the essential roles of farmer, scientist, and industrialist, respectively.

As soybean acreage climbed, farm mechanization reduced the need for oats and hay to feed draft horses.

Through the 1940s, beef cattle and dairy cows remained an integral part of agriculture, even in prime row crop areas. But that was about to change, driven in large part by a truly disruptive technology—manufactured nitrogen fertilizer.

Nitrogen Fertilizer and Grain-only Farming The Haber-Bosch process, named for its inventors Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, uses high temperatures and pressures (and therefore high energy) with catalysts to combine atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen from natural gas (methane) to form ammonia, which, when applied to the soil, is readily available to plants. Prior to Haber-Bosch, conversion of atmospheric nitrogen gas to biologically-available forms that are essential for the creation of proteins was largely limited to biological nitrogen fixation by soil bacteria often associated with leguminous plants. The Haber-Bosch process was used to manufacture nitrogen-based munitions during World War II. As the U.S. returned to a peacetime economy, some munitions plants switched over to production of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers, and plants dedicated to ammonia production were built on a scale that would eventually increase the amount of biologically reactive nitrogen globally by 50 percent.6 Michael Pollan described the implications of manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer using “prodigious amounts of electricity” and natural gas: “When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen, the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel…

What had been a local, sun-driven cycle of fertility, in which the legumes fed the

corn which fed the livestock which in turn (with their manure) fed the corn, was now broken.”7 Ruth DeFries called this a pivot point that, “smashed open the bottleneck of soil fertility.”8 Inexpensive nitrogen fertilizer and new hybrid corn varieties caused corn yields and total grain production to skyrocket and also affected what people ate.

“More grain meant more animals at the trough, which meant more people enjoying meat, eggs, and dairy more often… There is no mistaking that the Haber-Bosch process was one of humanity’s all-time pivot points, changing diets and ratcheting up the number of mouths that the world’s supply of food could feed.” In beef feedlots and other animal feeding operations, cattle, swine, and poultry ate primarily grain-based rations. With manure no longer essential for corn production, many farmers in parts of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and neighboring states became corn-soybean specialists, supplying grain to livestock operations in areas less suited to annual row crops.

Pasture and livestock declined sharply in areas with fertile prairie soils and plentiful rainfall.

Figure 1 shows crop acreage in three Central Illinois counties since the 1920s. The transition from mixed grain-livestock operations to grain-only farms after World War II represented a paradigm change in U.S. agriculture. By 1970, crop patterns were much like they are today.

Corn and soybeans dominate the Midwestern landscape, with acreage of each crop fluctuating in response to market and policy signals. Perennial forages and sod-forming small grains account for a small fraction of total farm acres. In the three-county area of Central Illinois, which is representative of prime cropland in the Upper Midwest, corn and soybeans have accounted for at least 95 percent of total reported crop and pasture acreage since 1978. This large-scale conversion of vegetation on the landscape has

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resulted in unintended and undesirable environmental consequences: degraded water quality, greenhouse gas emission, and loss of biodiversity.

Managing Environmental Impacts In the half century since grain-only farming became dominant, the impacts of intensive row crop agriculture on soils, habitat, and water quality have been recognized and federal policies have attempted to mitigate these impacts.

In an effort to alleviate the negative environmental impacts of cornsoybean agriculture, the 1985 Farm Bill introduced Sodbuster, Swampbuster, and Conservation Compliance provisions, and established the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Subsequent Farm Bills added new conservation programs.9 CRP and similar programs provide financial incentives to take land out of annual row crop production and plant perennial vegetation for wildlife habitat, clean water, and soil conservation. In prime corn-soy areas, land enrolled in CRP accounts for much of the perennial cover on the farm landscape, but usually represents a small percentage of farmland—less than 1.5 percent in the three-county Illinois illustration. With limited exceptions, CRP rules prohibit harvesting hay or grazing enrolled acreage.

In addition to Farm Bill conservation programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), federal Clean Water Acts since 1972 have created a framework administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address “nonpoint source pollution,” including agricultural runoff. Point sources, such as municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants, are regulated and must meet pollutant limits in their effluent discharge permits.

Except for large animal feeding operations, nonpoint sources are addressed through the promotion of voluntary Best Management Practices, such as

Crop Area in Macon, Piatt, Champaign Counties, IL 700

Staley Company soy promotion

Transition to Corn-Soy system

ADM begins ethanol production

600

1000 Acres

500

400 corn soy

300

pasture + hay

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oats wheat

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0 1922

1932

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2012 Greg McIsaac

Figure 1. Crop area changes in central Illinois, illustrating the rise of soybeans in the 1920s and ’30s and the shift to grain-only farming in the 1950s and ’60s.

grassed waterways, terraces, and nutrient management plans While some conservation programs provide incentives for planting perennial vegetation (but not harvestable crops) for conservation, other farm and energy policies have provided incentives for planting more acres of corn and soybeans. Since 1980, federal tax credits, import tariffs, and more recently, the Renewable Fuel Standard have supported the domestic production of ethanol and other biofuels.

More than one third of the US corn crop has been used for ethanol production in recent years.10 Rather than changing the agricultural landscape, incentives for corn ethanol and soy biodiesel have largely reinforced the corn-soy system, but the mandate for second-generation biofuels has the potential to support a more diversified

landscape by creating a market for perennial bioenergy crops.

Current federal policy is designed to drive development and deployment of technologies to produce secondgeneration biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks, including crop residues, perennial grasses, and woody biomass, rather than from corn and soybeans.

The 2007 Energy Bill expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard to mandate 36 billion gallons per year by 2022, including 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel.11 The 2008 Farm Bill introduced incentives for production of cellulosic feedstocks, including perennial biomass crops. Macro-analyses of scenarios to achieve federal bioenergy policy goals, such as the “Billion-Ton” reports issued by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), typically conclude that corn stover—the stalks, leaves,

and cobs left in the field when corn is harvested—will be the major cellulosic feedstock produced in Illinois and much of the Corn Belt.12 If this comes to pass, increased production of cellulosic biofuels may, like first-generation biofuels, reinforce the corn-soy system, rather than leading to significantly more continuous living cover on the land.

It is noteworthy that the latest Billion-Ton report issued in July 2016 pays more attention to perennial energy grasses and short-rotation woody crops.13 DOE has recently held workshops and issued grants to address water quality and other benefits of sustainable landscape design for bioenergy feedstock production.

The USDA is also supporting research on synergies between bioenergy and enhanced water quality. These actions suggest that executive branch agencies

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Steve John

University of Illinois graduate student Andy Wycislo, in orange shirt, talks with visitors to the Agricultural Water Institute University of Illinois bioenergy grass plots at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois.

are thinking about the challenge of developing multi-objective policies and programs explicitly intended to combine renewable energy targets with additional environmental goals.

A New Paradigm A new agricultural paradigm could be designed to address two pressing environmental concerns facing the U.S. today. One significant driver is the nutrient enrichment of surface waters causing algal blooms and hypoxia in estuaries and coastal waters, such as the northern Gulf of Mexico. Under pressure from the EPA, states in the Mississippi River Basin have developed nutrient loss reduction strategies that aim to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in rivers by 45 percent. To meet this target in Corn Belt states, including Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, significant amounts of row-crop land need to incorporate cover crops or be converted to perennial crops (i.e., adopt continuous living cover).

A second, and arguably more urgent driver is the complex, interconnected set of issues associated with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to climate change, and the shift from fossil fuels to renewables.

EPA estimates that nine percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are from the agriculture sector, with more than half of that represented by nitrous oxide (N2O) from agricultural soils.14 Our argument, in brief, is that implementation of standard conservation practices for reducing nutrient losses from annual row crops is not a cost effective approach to reducing nutrient loss and shrinking the greenhouse gas footprint of agriculture. The nature and magnitude of these challenges call for consideration of solutions outside the current corn-soy paradigm.

Agricultural systems featuring perennial biomass crops offer a promising approach to address these concerns, and also enhance other aspects of U.S. agriculture, food, and energy systems.

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The model of paradigm change set forth by Thomas S. Kuhn for the physical sciences offers a useful way of thinking about transformational change.15 A generally-accepted scientific paradigm effectively limits the set of questions and solutions considered by scientists. A paradigm change occurs when they encounter anomalies that defy explanation within the current paradigm, and begin to look at problems from different perspectives and explore alternative solutions.

Kuhn describes a scientific revolution as a change in world view.

Transformational change in economic sectors results from a variety of causes that may or may not involve deliberate efforts to solve thorny problems. Today, as society addresses major issues, including hypoxia and climate change, it is time for scientists and policy makers to work with farmers, industry, and other stakeholders to chart a course toward an improved agricultural future.

Vermilion #1 Saturated Buffer Section 7 of S. Homer Twp. Champaing County, Illinois T. 18 N. - r. 14 W.

Drainage Ditch

Existing CRP Filter Strip Proposed Warm Season Grasses 7.5 acres

Stop Log Control Stand

Existing Dainage Tile

4" Distribution Line

Tim McMahon, AWI

Preliminary layout by the Agricultural Watershed Institute for proposed harvestable saturated buffers to produce saturation-tolerant forage or bioenergy crops and reduce nitrate loss from crop fields via drainage tiles.

Next Steps So how to begin? A Multifunctional Agriculture paradigm featuring perennial crops and farming systems can meet society’s needs for agricultural goods and also improve environmental, social, and economic outcomes. To start making the case, consider that perennial biomass crops, including grasses, forbs, and short rotation trees can help to reduce nutrient loss, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance ecosystems in agricultural areas.

Nearly all water quality improvement plans for agricultural watersheds focus on adoption of conservation practices and implicitly assume there will be little or no change in what crops are grown over an implementation timeline stretching 20 years or more into the future. Some state nutrient strategies note that converting from annual to perennial crops is an effective way to reduce nutrient loss from farmland, but do not project a significant increase in perennial crop acreage.16,17

As Midwestern farmers and conservation agencies address nutrient loss impacting drinking water supplies and the Gulf of Mexico, nitrate loss from tile-drained farm fields poses a special challenge. Subsurface drainage tiles are installed in level, or nearly level, soils where ponding or a high water table would otherwise inhibit field operations and row crop production. This is the case in much of the fertile prairie soils of Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Drainage tiles carry nitrate under vegetated buffers designed to remove pollutants from surface runoff, which largely defeats the purpose of the buffer. Rather than draining water and nitrate from every acre, planting perennial crops that better tolerate saturated conditions could reduce nitrate pollution and produce biomass for animal feed or cellulosic bioenergy. The ability of some perennial forage and bioenergy crops to tolerate wet conditions makes it feasible to design harvestable saturated buffers or seasonal wetlands in which nitrate that would otherwise reach surface waters, fertilizes a biomass crop lower on the landscape.

Scientific research and practical experience from working farms are needed to assess the potential of new cropping systems and bioenergy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural and energy sectors. The paradigm shift concept offers a lens through which to consider alternative agricultural futures. The global challenge of climate-related mitigation and adaptation calls for a deep rethinking of agriculture. Perennial cropping systems, including grass-legume polycultures producing animal feed and bioenergy feedstock, can be a first step in a virtuous cycle of innovation to produce renewable fuel, reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural land, all while meeting society’s needs for agricultural goods. Field- and watershed-scale studies of multifunctional perennial systems can provide a sound basis to model food-energy-water nexus scenarios, and

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Paul Wever, Chip Energy Inc.

Participants in a Department of Energy Sustainable Bioenergy Landscapes workshop tour a prototype biomass processing facility under construction by Chip Energy in Goodfield, Illinois. The facility is designed to process 100 tons per day of biomass feedstocks (bioenergy crops, crop residue, and woody biomass) for shipment to end users. Recycled shipping containers form the walls of the facility and will store chopped and densified biomass.

to design policies to achieve multiple environmental and social objectives.

Existing Farm Bill conservation programs provide models of public payments for ecosystem services.

They also illustrate the basic fact that agriculture designed to produce environmental benefits as well as harvestable crops inherently involves synergies and trade-offs. Through CRP and related programs, the USDA essentially “rents” farmland and takes it out of agricultural production in order to obtain the soil, water, and wildlife benefits of perennial vegetation. The newer Conservation Stewardship Program provides incentives for whole farm conservation activities, such as cover crops and rotational

grazing, “built on the belief that we must enhance natural resource and environmental protection, as we simultaneously produce profitable food, fiber, and energy.”18 A large-scale shift to increase harvestable perennial crops could combine elements of each model. On-farm research and development can evaluate synergies and trade-offs among agricultural goods and a menu of ecosystem services, thereby providing a scientific basis for next-generation farm programs that increase the net societal benefits.

While there is an expanding body of research on the benefits of more perennial-based agriculture, bringing about an agricultural transition comparable in scale to the post-war

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shift to grain-only farming is clearly an ambitious undertaking. Green Lands Blue Waters (GLBW) is a consortium of university scientists and nonprofits with a mission to support the development of and transition to multifunctional farming systems featuring more perennial and cover crops.19 GLBW members and partners see this as a long-term project for the transformation of the agricultural landscape and food system.

Member organizations are concentrated in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, with active partners in other states.

Collaboration among farmers, scientists, and other stakeholders to expand markets and develop new enterprises based on perennial cropping systems is a key feature of the GLBW theory of change.

The GLBW scope encompasses several categories of continuous living cover: perennial grains, perennial forage, perennial biomass, agroforestry, and cover crops. These categories overlap synergistically.

One noteworthy example is that grasses and legumes can be managed to provide both forage and bioenergy feedstock. The scale of GLBW’s longterm transformational vision is grand.

Wes Jackson, one of the co-founders of GLBW, has proposed a “50-Year Farm Bill” during which annual row crops would be largely replaced by perennial versions of wheat, rice, corn, soybeans, and other annual grain crops.20 Aided

by GLBW, the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, founded by Jackson in 1976, is in the process of improving and expanding the plantings of its KernzaTM intermediate wheatgrass as the first perennial grain to move from research institutions to working farms and restaurant tables.

Clearly, perennial biomass crops offer opportunities for production of environmental services, as well as agricultural goods. This fits squarely within the GLBW vision, but there are major obstacles to wide adoption, with market development and farm economics high on the list. What follows are preliminary thoughts on a collaborative initiative to overcome the obstacles.

The 20th century agricultural landscape transformations described took place largely in response to a new crop with new uses and markets (soybeans) and technological innovations (mechanization and manufactured fertilizer).

Government policy, including ethanol subsidies, significantly affected crop choices and farm economics. Lessons from this history are instructive for a potential 21st century transformation involving bioenergy crops. Farmers, entrepreneurs, and established industries—the Meharrys and Staleys of today—will be key participants if this change is to happen. Policy innovations will be needed to support the transition.

Expanding Markets The soybean story highlights the essential role of farmer-pioneers willing to try new crops and see how they fit into a production system and farm enterprise.

New crops can pose a chicken-and-egg problem. Why plant a crop for which there is no existing market? Why invest in facilities to process or use a crop that hardly anyone is growing? Meharry and others began growing soybeans as a forage crop and rotational legume (adding nitrogen for the following corn crop) more than a decade before Staley provided an industrial outlet to process soybeans for food and non-food uses.

Today, switchgrass, Eastern gamagrass, and other native grasses and forbs are grown for forage and conservation purposes. Biomass crops, such as Miscanthus, that have little or no forage value, can be used for animal bedding or mulch. In the early stages of a new paradigm featuring perennial crops, forage and bedding markets can be a pathway for testing coproduction of grass biomass and ecosystem services before bioenergy markets develop. Even after markets are in place, two-cut systems may be desirable to produce both feed and fuel. Some grasses can be harvested in spring or summer for forage, and the regrowth harvested after senescence as bioenergy feedstock.

As with soybeans, both productionside “push” and market-side “pull” are needed, that is, both Meharrys and Staleys. For illustration, here are a few of the entrepreneurs now seeking to fill a niche in the start-up of a bioeconomy using dedicated perennial crops. Fred Circle, of FDC Enterprises, has developed new methods for the establishment of bioenergy grasses and supply chain logistics for harvest, storage, preprocessing, and transport to energy end users. Paul Wever, of Chip Energy, is constructing a proof-of-concept facility in Illinois to pre-process waste stream biomass and dedicated biomass crops to meet end users’ specifications. One day, such biomass conversion facilities can take their place alongside grain

elevators as part of a cellulosic bioenergy infrastructure. Rudi Roeslein, of Roeslein Alternative Energy, is constructing a large-scale project in Missouri to mix prairie biomass with hog manure in an anaerobic digestion facility producing renewable natural gas. He was a leader in the formation of the Midwest Conservation Biomass Alliance to promote native grassland polycultures for commercial use plus wildlife habitat.

University researchers and university-sponsored projects are also paving the way for commercial use of grass biomass. Examples include a Michigan State University team working on ammonia fiber expansion as a pretreatment process for cellulosic biomass for use as animal feed or bioenergy feedstock, and a University of Iowa project to co-fire coal with Miscanthus to heat the campus.21,22 For perennial biomass crops to assume a significant role, bioenergy markets as well as forage markets need to ramp up. The Renewable Fuel Standard focuses on large-scale production of cellulosic transportation fuels, but small-to-medium-scale heat or Combined Heat and Power systems may be important uses for bioenergy grasses, both initially and in the longterm. Properties of herbaceous biomass, such as its relatively high ash content, pose a design challenge for densification equipment and heating appliances to handle grass and meet EPA air quality standards. Reliable, affordable equipment would facilitate on-farm biomass space heating and grain drying and biomass-fueled district heating systems. Community Supported Energy farmers or co-ops could employ a modified version of the Community Supported Agriculture business model.

Corn and soybean growers need not feel threatened by the prospect of perennial biomass crops integrated into farm fields. Perennial farming systems can share the agricultural landscape quite compatibly with corn-soy production. Strategic placement of perennial crops, combined with drainage system

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modifications, can capture and use nutrients lost from row crop fields.

Even in prime cropland, there are erodible slopes, poorly drained depressions, and irregularly-shaped parcels where perennial biomass crops would make economic and environmental sense.

In the future, grain farmers and grass farmers could share a landscape managed to produce annual (and eventually perennial) grain, perennial forage, and bioenergy crops plus clean water, wildlife, pollinators, and healthy soils with increased organic carbon.

Scientists interested in the future of agriculture have modeled alternative scenarios in two Iowa watersheds.

They found that scenarios with more perennial crops can produce significant environmental benefits including enhanced water quality and biodiversity, and that farmers are likely to accept them if policies are adopted to maintain farm income.23 Research and demonstration projects are needed at the watershed and fuelshed scales to move beyond modeling exercises to realworld assessments of a perennial-based paradigm. Experimental watersheds or “landlabs” have been proposed as places where farmers, universities, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, private businesses, and other stakeholders test new cropping systems and create agricultural enterprises with high performance in economic, environmental, and social terms.24 Experimental watersheds can also test policy innovations to inform future farm and energy legislation.

Perennial agriculture integrated with annual crops represents a promising new paradigm well suited to sustainable coproduction of agricultural goods and ecosystem services in a climate and energy-constrained world. But, there are significant challenges that must be overcome. Twenty years—roughly as long as it took for the post-war shift to grainonly farming—seems a reasonable time frame to achieve a comparable level of adoption of perennial biomass crops.

While 20th century landscape transitions

offer useful lessons, development and wide adoption of multifunctional perennial cropping systems will involve additional complexity, notably including economic and policy innovations to internalize environmental costs and benefits that are now unpriced.

Perennial biomass crops represent the only source of renewable energy that can also provide a suite of landscapebased environmental benefits including, but not limited to, reduced nutrient loss and greenhouse gas emissions.

Just as soybeans became an important new crop with new uses nearly a century ago, perennial biomass crops grown for animal feed, bioenergy, and bio-based products can become part of the 21st century agricultural landscape.

Collaboration among farmers, scientists, and industry—with an important role for policy makers—can make it happen.

Renewable energy from dedicated perennial crops that also reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emission from cropland can be included in future U.S. Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. However, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has stated his intention to withdraw from that global agreement. With U.S. government participation in climate efforts and perhaps other environmental initiatives in jeopardy, the role of pioneering farmers, business leaders, researchers, investors, and philanthropists in the early years of a transition to more perennial cropping will be even more essential. Stakeholders that value the climate, energy, water, soil, and wildlife benefits of perennial biomass crops can demonstrate sustainable production, develop uses and markets, and advocate for policies to support wide adoption.

A landscape transformation comparable in scale to the “big ratchet” associated with Haber-Bosch and hybrid corn would bring perennial grasslands back to the level of pasture and hay acreage circa 1950 in equilibrium with the existing corn-soy system. In the prime croplands of east-central Illinois,

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that would be about 10 to 15 percent of farmland acreage. That level of land-use change, combined with naturalization of agricultural drainage made possible by saturation-tolerant perennials, can be expected to go a long way toward meeting the 45 percent nutrient loss reduction targets established to reduce hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

A virtuous cycle involving breakthroughs in production, processing, uses, and markets for perennial biomass crops, plus advances in perennial grains and agro-forestry food production, could push the perennial-annual equilibrium point even higher, with major opportunities to reduce agricultural sector greenhouse gas emissions.

The 20-year Plan The first ten years of the transition period are seen as a time to overcome technological challenges, explore agroecological synergies and trade-offs, demonstrate perennial farming systems at field and landscape scales, create supply chains and profitable enterprises at a range of scales, and adopt policies and programs to support the multifunctional agriculture paradigm.

Here are some broad-brush thoughts on goals, actors, and actions: Years 1 to 5 Conduct research and development on multifunctional perennial crops and systems.

• University, government, NGO, and corporate researchers continue and expand work to improve yield and other attributes of perennial biomass crops grown in monocultures or polycultures.

• Pioneering farmers collaborate with researchers and NGOs to demonstrate and evaluate on-farm performance of forage/bioenergy crops and modified drainage systems to achieve reductions in nutrient losses and greenhouse gas emissions, and improvements in soil health, wildlife habitat, and other ecological functions.

Net profit ($/ac)

Nitrate in the subsurface

Credit: Cris8na Negri, Argonne Na8onal Laboratory Cristina Negri, Argonne National Laboratory

Comparison of intrafield net and subsurface nitrate by Argonne and National Laboratory for a research site near Illinois. Na8onal This type of analysis is Comparison ofprofitability intrafield net profitability subsurface nitrate

by Fairbury, Argonne beginning to be used to integrate perennial bioenergy crops (Contour Strip) into corn-soy fields to produce cellulosic feedstock while improving both economic Laboratory for a research site near Fairbury, Illinois. This type of analysis is beginning to be and environmental outcomes.

used to integrate perennial bioenergy crops (Contour Strip) into corn—soy fields to produce cellulosic feedstock while improving both economic and environmental outcomes.

• With NGO and university assistance, producers implement local bioenergy demonstration projects to provide replicable models of Community Supported Energy, farmer-owned bioenergy cooperatives, and related business enterprises.

Make equipment available and increase market development.

• With government and philanthropic support, forprofit businesses and missiondriven entities, such as Benefit Corporations (B Corps), formed for profit and environmental goals develop equipment and systems to process and use grass biomass for small- to medium-scale heat or cogeneration.

• Large-scale cellulosic bioenergy enterprises partner with producers and other stakeholders to ensure that feedstock production meets sustainability standards.

• Innovative companies in the agricultural, energy, and manufacturing sectors assess opportunities to profit from production, processing, and use of perennial biomass crops for animal feed, bioenergy, and bioproducts.

Demonstrate integration of multifunctional systems with appropriate program and policy innovations.

• Scientists and economists use research results to add new perennial cropping and naturalized drainage systems to models, and to include multifunctional

agriculture scenarios in plans to achieve water quality, renewable energy, and climate-related objectives.

• With public, private, and philanthropic funding, watershed projects engage local stakeholders, researchers, NGOs, and business entities to serve as landlabs to test sustainable landscape design, biomass supply chains, energy conversion technologies, and policy innovations.

Years 6 to 10 Ramp up multifunctional perennial systems.

• Research continues on improved perennial crops and polycultures for coproduction of bioenergy feedstock and ecosystem services.

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• Multifunctional perennial crops and systems gain acceptance, and begin to be widely promoted by universities, conservation agencies, and crop advisors.

Ramp up equipment, supply chains, markets, and enterprises.

• For-profit and mission-driven businesses take the lead to improve equipment and supply-chain logistics to use grass biomass and short rotation coppice woody biomass for heat and cogeneration of electricity.

• The number and visibility of Community Supported Energy operations, bioenergy cooperatives, and related enterprises increases.

• Growing numbers of large and small enterprises make the use of perennial biomass crops for a variety of energy, animal feed, and bio-based product applications an integral part of their business model.

• More cellulosic biorefineries and related enterprises come online, using perennial feedstocks and applying the principles of sustainable biomass production and landscape ecology.

Incorporate multifunctional agriculture into plans, programs, and policies.

• Multifunctional agriculture landlabs continue to innovate to improve social, economic, and environmental outcomes, and to provide testing grounds for policy and program innovation.

• Knowledge gained from perennial biomass R&D is used to design programs and policies for inclusion in energy and agricultural legislation, implement state nutrient reduction strategies, and the U.S. nationally-determined contribution of greenhouse gas reductions under the Paris Agreement.

multifunctional agriculture goes mainstream. If the action plan outlined above is successful, by around Year 10 the new paradigm should reach a tipping point beyond which increased adoption becomes self-sustaining and perennial crop acreage climbs in the S-curve characteristic of diffusion of innovations until a new annualperennial equilibrium is reached.

10. Foley, J. It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System.

Acknowledgements The coauthors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the City of Decatur, Illinois, Walton Family Foundation, Lumpkin Family Foundation, and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for work related to the development of the ideas expressed in this article. We also benefited from helpful comments and criticisms of Carol Williams, Nicholas Jordan, Eugene Turner, Cristina Negri, Jeremy Martin, and John Graham.

13. Langholtz, MH, Stokes, BJ and Eaton, LM. 2016

www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-torethink-corn/.

11. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. US GPO [online] (2007). http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/ BILLS-110hr6enr/pdf/BILLS-110hr6enr.pdf.

12. Perlack, RD & Stokes, BJ. U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Biomass Supply for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry. ORNL/TM-2011/224. US Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory [online] (2011). http://www1.eere.energy.gov/bioenergy/ pdfs/billion_ton_update.pdf.

Billion-Ton Report: Advancing Domestic Resources for a Thriving Bioeconomy, Volume 1: Economic Availability of Feedstocks. U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory [online] (2016). 448p. http://energy.gov/sites/prod/ files/2016/07/f33/2016_billion_ton_report_0.pdf.

14. Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Environmental Protection Agency [online] (2016). https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sourcesgreenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture.

15. Kuhn, TS. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962).

16. Illinois Department of Agriculture & Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy [online] (2015). http://www.epa.illinois.gov/Assets/iepa/water-

References 1. Searchinger, T & Heimlich, R. Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land. Working

quality/watershed-management/nlrs/nlrs-finalrevised-083115.pdf.

17. Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land

Paper, Installment 9 of Creating a Sustainable Food

Stewardship, Iowa Department of Natural Resources

Future. World Resources Institute [online] (2015).

& Iowa State University College of Agriculture

http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/avoiding_

and Life Sciences. Iowa Nutrient Reduction

bioenergy_competition_food_crops_land.pdf.

Strategy [online] (September 2014). http://www.

2. Program Overview for Renewable Fuel Standard Program. Environmental Protection Agency [online] (2016). https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-

nutrientstrategy.iastate.edu/sites/default/files/ documents/NRSfull-141001.pdf.

18. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

standard-program/program-overview-renewable-

[online] (2016). http://sustainableagriculture.

fuel-standard-program.

net/publications/grassrootsguide/conservation-

3. Jordan, N & Warner, KD. Enhancing the Multifunctionality of U.S. Agriculture. BioScience 60 (1), 60–66 (2010).

environment/conservation-stewardship-program/.

19. Green Lands Blue Waters [online] (2016). http:// greenlandsbluewaters.net/.

4. Unpublished letters and field day programs.

20. Jackson, W. The 50-Year Farm Bill. Solutions 1(3), 28–

Meharry Family, Courtesy of Scott Reifsteck.

35 [online] (2010). http://www.thesolutionsjournal.

5. A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company. Pioneering a New Industry: A History of the A. E. Staley

com/node/649.

21. Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. Michigan

Manufacturing Company’s Activities in the

AFEX Pilot Plant Provides Fodder for Cattle Feed Trials

Soybean Industry (circa 1936).

[online] (2013). https://www.glbrc.org/news/michigan-

6. Fowler, D et al. The Global Nitrogen Cycle in the st

21 Century. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 368 (2013).

7. Pollan, M. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press, London, 2006).

8. DeFries, R. The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis (Basic Books, New York, 2014).

9. Cain, Z & Lovejoy, S. History and Outlook for

Years 10 to 20 Broadly, these years are seen as a period in which perennial-based

Scientific American [online] (March 5, 2013). http://

Farm Bill Conservation Programs. Choices [online] (2004). http://www.farmdoc.illinois.edu/policy/ choices/20044/theme2/2004-4-09.pdf.

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afex-pilot-plant-provides-fodder-cattle-feed-trials.

22. University of Iowa. Biomass Fuel Project [online] (2016). https://sustainability.uiowa.edu/initiatives/ biomass-fuel-project/.

23. Nassauer, JI, Santlemann, MV & Scavia, D (eds.) From the Corn Belt to the Gulf: Societal and Environmental Implications of Alternative Agricultural Futures (Resources for the Future Press, Washington, DC, 2007).

24. Jordan, N et al. Landlabs: An Integrated Approach to Creating Agricultural Enterprises That Meet the Triple Bottom Line. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 17, 175–200 (2013).

Forgie, F. and M. van den Belt. (2017). He Tangata: It Is People. Solutions 8(1): 77-81. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/he-tangata-it-is-people/

Feature

He Tangata: It Is People

by Vicky Forgie and Marjan van den Belt

Grant Stantiall

Awaroa Inlet at Able Tasman National Park

In Brief In some situations, the public can take direct action rather than rely on the government, experts, or designated stakeholders to make decisions on their behalf. A recent crowdfunding example from New Zealand, where the public bought a beach on behalf of the nation to add to the conservation estate, shows the scope that technology now provides to shift decision making. The beach and associated land was strategically positioned adjoining a National Park. When the beach was put up for sale, two concerned citizens brought to the attention of the nation the potential this had to restrict public access and limit environmental protection. The government stance was that the national budget was insufficient to cover the purchase cost. So, using a crowdfunding platform, more than 40,000 people donated money to show the value they placed on protecting this extraordinary ecosystem for the benefit of both current and future generations.

When people vote for a government, their decision is generally based on the broader political ideals they represent rather than a targeted policy (e.g., ecosystem services protection). Digital technology now allows people to be informed and provides a viable and democratic alternative that facilitates a new type of public decision-making and governance.

With crowdfunding, people voluntarily support a targeted project or cause, promoted online and/or in the media, by giving a donation or pledge. People use their own money to express preference. Donations are often made in small amounts, so that voice is not limited to the wealthy. In crowdfunding, it can be argued that value is determined by the number of people willing to contribute as well as the amount collected. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 77

Q

uantifying the benefits humans derive from ecosystem services is important if they are to be taken into account in the current political climate. Such valuation provides an appreciation of the magnitude of the scale of the benefits derived by humans and recognition of the importance of protecting the “non-market” and intrinsic goods and services ecosystems provide. While there has been some progress, value is still mostly defined by Gross Domestic Product, with a narrow focus on the “market” and economic activity. The good news is that technology now allows people to increasingly take matters into their own hands, such as the example of crowdfunding the purchase of a beach at Awaroa to add to the conservation estate in New Zealand.

This type of crowdfunded project is one option for pushing governments to respond to the public’s desire to protect ecosystems for posterity.

The trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection is generally determined using economic tools such as cost–benefit analysis. This requires placing a monetary value on non-market ecosystem goods and services. A commonly used method for estimation is Contingent Value, or CV. Surveys of individual respondents are used to estimate what people are willing to pay for specified changes in the quantity or quality of goods, or what they would be willing to accept in compensation for wellspecified degradations in the provision of these goods.1,2 The former assumes that ecosystem services are not owned by the citizenry, who must instead pay for them. The latter assumes that the citizenry does own them and must be compensated for their loss.

Survey respondents nominate a bid amount they would be willing to pay in any given time period. To ensure realistic valuations, CV places importance on who pays and how funding is generated and administered. Respondents have to consider their income and other financial

commitments (budget constraints), the benefits they could derive, alternative sites that may exist (substitution), and discuss their answers amongst other household members if the survey is household-based. Demographic information about respondents is sourced as part of the survey. A benefit of the CV method is that it allows respondents to learn about the issue at hand.

Key Concepts • The contributions ecosystems services make to well-being need to be more explicit. People will not value or fight to protect ecosystem goods and services if they do not understand their importance. As ecosystems, and the goods and services they produce, are put under greater pressure by population expansion and increased consumption, new ways need to be found to increase the appreciation of the role ecosystems play in maintaining well-being.

• Crowdfunding is one way to inform people of the value of ecosystems and to raise money for their protection.

• A New Zealand example is the crowdfunded purchase of a beach at Awaroa and its addition to Abel Tasman National Park. Rather than allow the seven hectares of pristine beach and coastal bush to go into private ownership, NZ$2,278,171 was pledged by more than 40,000 donors to buy the beach for the nation.

• Digital technology such as crowdfunding can be used to foster direct democracy by allowing people to decide what is important to them.

The weaknesses of CV are well documented.3-6 The first major debate that arises with CV is the conceptual use of a hypothetical situation that does not involve real market transactions or decisions. As a result, strategic overbidding can occur as there is no actual binding payment for the provision of the goods. The hypothetical situation can also be problematic when people

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have no experience valuing non-use benefits and public goods, so there is a lack of understanding as to what respondents are being asked to value.

It is also possible for information bias when the hypothetical situation is misrepresented or incomplete (especially when trying not to make the survey too complex), or value cues are inadvertently suggested.

The CV technique is an expensive and time-consuming technical process.

When carrying out a CV, there is scope for multiple sources of error to be introduced into the process. The risk of the sample population being unrepresentative is high as CV response rates are typically low. Non-response bias occurs when non-respondents’ preferences differ significantly from those of respondents; self-selection bias occurs if only the respondents to whom the issue is of importance reply to surveys. This data extrapolated across the entire population can result in an over or underestimation. How to deal with zero bids is also an issue with CV studies. The majority of studies discard them as protest bids, but if included, the overall value can be significantly reduced.

Bias can also stem from interview bias; anchoring and starting point bias, which influences bids; strategic bias, where respondents intentionally overstate or understate their willingness to pay in an attempt to influence the outcome or results in their favor; yea-saying, where people don’t really consider the hypothetical scenario presented and instead fill in the surveys without thought, but rather to get them out of way quickly; scope and embedding effects; and payment vehicle bias, where, as an example, the cost is added to utility accounts and the respondent does not pay any utility accounts. Value estimates using CV are controversial and the reliability of the non-use values estimated is disputed when used for litigation purposes and natural resource damage assessment.

Amount pledged $3,000,000 $2,500,000 $2,000,000 $1,500,000 $1,000,000 $500,000

Fri 22 Jan Sat 23 Jan Sun 24 Jan Mon 25 Jan Tue 26 Jan Wed 27 Jan Thu 28 Jan Fri 29 Jan Sat 30 Jan Sun 31 Jan Mon 1 Feb Tue 2 Feb Wed 3 Feb Thu 4 Feb Fri 5 Feb Sat 6 Feb Sun 7 Feb Mon 8 Feb Tue 9 Feb Wed 10 Feb Thu 11 Feb Fri 12 Feb Sat 13 Feb Sun 14 Feb Mon 15 Feb Tue 16 Feb

$0

Vicky Forgie

Figure 1. Accumulated pledges from start to end of the Givealittle crowdfunding campaign for the Awaroa beach (NZ$).

Digital technology can overcome many of the problematic issues associated with CV by providing a direct means by which people use their own money to express preference. When people vote for a government, their decision is generally based on the broader political ideals they represent rather than a targeted policy (e.g., ecosystem services protection). Digital technology provides a viable and democratic alternative that allows people to have a direct say and more influence in a specific policy area. Platforms such as crowdfunding provide opportunity for a new type of public decision-making and governance. With crowdfunding, people voluntarily support a targeted project or cause, promoted online and/ or in the media, by giving a donation or pledge. Donations are either collected after a set period of time or, alternatively, a target amount can be set, and unless the amount is reached by a given date, no payment is required.

A recent New Zealand example demonstrates how crowdfunding can provide a way for the public to get directly involved in expressing the value they put on ecosystem services.

A spit of land and beach at Awaroa, located next to the Abel Tasman

National Park, was up for sale, with offers starting from NZ$2 million.

The seven-hectare strip is strategically located, filling a gap in the continuity of the park. It also has riparian rights giving legal title to the water’s edge and, therefore, an owner has the power to prevent people landing a boat or walking across the beach. The Abel Tasman National Park is very popular with New Zealanders and tourists due to its accessibility and natural beauty, including clear, warm water and white sands. The spit is a nesting place for sea birds and the shifting sands provide a natural defence for the coastline. When the government was asked to purchase the land to add to the conservation estate, the response was that the biodiversity of the land was not sufficiently unique to use tax-payer money. Rather than seeing public access to the spit lost permanently, two brothers-in-law (after a Christmas day barbecue discussion on what a tragedy this would be) instigated a crowdfunding campaign to buy the land on behalf of all New Zealanders.

The campaign galvanised New Zealanders (and some overseas people) of all ages to action. Over a 22-day period, 39,249 donations were made and a total of NZ$2,278,171 pledged.

Figure 1 shows the accumulated pledges made from the start of the campaign on January 22 to its end on February 15, 2016.

The most widely held view expressed for why people were donating to the campaign was that the inlet was a precious asset that should be protected for both current and future generations to enjoy. Some of the donors were regular visitors who enjoy the area and want others to also be able to do so. Others accepted they won’t ever go there but wanted their children and grandchildren to have the option to do so. There was a strongly held view that beach access should not be just for the rich (often foreigners), but for all New Zealanders and future generations. The rate at which land in New Zealand is being sold off, coastal land subdivided, and access restricted was a common concern. Such actions were considered as denying people their heritage.

Other reasons given for supporting the campaign included the following: the sense of control over ownership of a small part of country it gave; it provides a way to show the collective love of the beautiful and unique country and care about the environment; the sense of independence that being able to take personal action provides; it was a positive story about making a difference for the future and greater good of the nation; it showed the collective commons at work, and that everyone giving a little can make a difference; and the campaign provided a space for likeminded people to come together.

Crowdfunding is an empowering form of valuation that gives all people an equal voice. Most donations were small. Many donors wished they could contribute more, but said it was all they could afford. There were 345 donations of NZ$1, more than half (52 percent) of the donations were for NZ$20 or less, and 95 percent were NZ$100 or less.

With crowdfunding, it can be argued that value is determined by the number of people willing to contribute as well as the amount collected.

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The crowdfunding action brought the sale of the beach to the attention of the country and communicated a strong message to the government about the value New Zealanders place on their unique environment. The level of public support for the campaign (there were more than 39,249 donors as many donations were made on behalf of families, workplaces, groups of friends, and schools) resulted in pressure on the government, who made a last minute U-turn and contributed NZ$350,000. This was enough to clinch the sale.

As a democratic process, the campaign was empowering, and proved that the power of the public is an independent force. It gave ordinary people a voice on a matter of national significance and demonstrated that the average citizen can act in a collective way to express how they value their environment. The campaign built on a sense of ownership as a nation rather than individual property rights and brought New Zealanders together (with a few people from overseas) to do something positive and achieve an outcome that could not be accomplished individually.

While many donors expressed disappointment in the government’s lack of commitment to conservation, this was not considered a sufficient reason by those who participated to not act.

One of the big questions about CV is whether it has any relation to what people would actually pay. Past investigations indicate CV respondents overstate their intention to pay.7 The 99.15 percent collection rate on pledges to the Awaroa campaign shows what people are actually willing to pay to preserve their ecosystems and way of life—both of which are precious and difficult to replace if lost.

Simply through the koha (gifting) of money, a priceless taonga (treasure) has been retained as a common asset for all current and future New Zealanders.

Many donors expressed the view that they would always feel that this

is their beach, as they contributed to saving it from development. Others were keen for the crowdfunding campaign to be a precedent and inspiration for other similar ventures, some of which have already followed suit. For example, one campaign raised NZ$1.25 million to protect and keep public a 37-hectare forested block in Auckland’s Bethells Valley that is home to many rare wetland species.8 While there is a risk that crowdfunding for the environment may suffer from fatigue over time, there is an equal chance it may continue to appeal to the many people who want to pass on a heritage to future generations but are not wealthy enough to make philanthropic endowments on their own account.

Public involvement can be difficult to manage for a number of reasons.

Regardless of incentives, publicity, and effort, many citizens are excluded.

With this crowdfunding campaign, older people were disadvantaged as no provision was initially made for people who wanted to make a donation by non-electronic means.

Transparency is required and especially important for nonprofits.9 The mass media played a critical role in raising awareness and getting people behind the campaign. At the same time, media attention has its downside and can result in value distortion.

The Awaroa crowdfunding campaign resulted in over 100 private buyers expressing an interest in a property that had been on the market for more than two years. With the Awaroa campaign, after NZ$2 million was reached, public updates on the amount raised were not published.

Ideally it would have been good to be able to compare the crowdsourced valuation with a CV survey for either Awaroa or a similar location elsewhere in New Zealand. How to extrapolate across the entire population for ecosystem valuation when using crowdfunding requires further research. It cannot be assumed that not making a donation means that

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individuals place no value on the ecosystem in question. This outcome could be due to any number of different factors including things like being unaware of the crowdfunding campaign, not having access to or being confident with online technology, people feeling they have already paid via taxes and therefore unwilling to pay more, or people knowing they cannot be excluded having no incentive to contribute voluntarily (the free rider problem). There has been a concerted effort to overcome the weaknesses of CV.10,11 Incorporating crowdfunding data may provide new possibilities if CV continues to be used.

Final Thoughts Crowdfunding is a transparent process that allows expression of values as well as knowledge transfer in a process that builds trust, accountability, and legitimacy. A broad understanding can be constructed of not just ecological functions and services but also the property rights, institutional arrangements, fairness criteria, and what people care about.

The Awaroa crowdfunding campaign indicated that government priorities do not always align with the values of a large proportion of citizens.

Crowdfunding was implemented to protect unique ecosystem services for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

In this instance, public expression, backed up by a willingness of the donors to spend their own money, resulted in the government changing its position.

Digital technology enhances the scope for direct democracy.

Crowdfunding shows that people like having an impact on decisions and forges a way towards participatory budgeting where people have a direct say in how taxes are spent.12 Such empowerment might encourage people to engage more with democracy and reverse the present worldwide trend of political disillusionment and low voter turnout.

Givealittle.com

The online page for the Awaroa beach Givealittle crowdfunging campaign.

In the words of the Awaroa campaigners: “He tangata, he tangata, he tangata (it is people, it is people, it is people). The more we act with initiative as people, the better government we will get.”13 References 1. Carson, RT et al. Contingent valuation and lost

4. Cummings, RG & Harrison, GW. The measurement

9. Gleasure, R. & Feller, J. Does heart or head rule

and decomposition of nonuse values: a critical

donor behaviors in charitable crowdfunding

review. Environmental and Resource Economics 5(3),

markets? International Journal of Electronic Commerce

225–247 (1995).

20(4), 499–524 (2016).

5. Arrow, K et al. Report of the NOAA panel on

10. Morrison, M & Brown, TC. Testing the effectiveness

contingent valuation. Federal Register 58(10), 4601–

of certainty scales, cheap talk, and dissonance-

4614 (1993).

minimization in reducing hypothetical bias in

6. Birol, E, Karousakis, K & Koundouri, P. Using economic valuation techniques to inform water resources management: a survey and

contingent valuation studies. Environmental and Resource Economics 44(3), 307–326 (2009).

11. Carson, R. Contingent valuation: a practical

critical appraisal of available techniques and an

alternative when prices aren’t available. Journal of

passive use: damages from the Exxon Valdez oil

application. Science of the Total Environment 365(1–3),

Economic Perspectives 26(4), 27–42 [online] (2012). http://

spill. Environmental and Resource Economics 25(3),

105–122 (2006).

257–286 (2003).

2. Bateman, IJ et al. Economic Valuation with Stated

econweb.ucsd.edu/~rcarson/papers/Carson_JEP12.pdf.

7. Christie, M. An examination of the disparity between

12. Dias, N. Hope for democracy – 25 years of

hypothetical and actual willingness to pay using

participatory budgeting worldwide. Democracy Spot

Preference Techniques: A Manual (Edward Elgar,

the contingent valuation method: the case of Red

[online] (2014). https://democracyspot.net/2014/06/10/

Cheltenham UK, 2002).

Kite Conservation in the United Kingdom. Canadian

3. Diamond, PA & Hausman, JA. Contingent valuation - is some number better than no number. Journal of Economic Perspectives 8(4), 45–64 (1994).

Journal of Agricultural Economics 55(2), 159–169 (2007).

8. Matuku Link. Givealittle [online] (2016). https:// givealittle.co.nz/project/matukulink.

new-book-on-25-years-of-participatory-budgeting/.

13. Abel Tasman Beach Crowdfunding Campaign.

Givealittle [online] (2016). https://givealittle.co.nz/ project/abeltasmanbeach2016/updates.

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Etzioni, A. (2017). Academic Activism: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Solutions 8(1): 82-84. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/academic-activism-no-good-deed-unpunished/

Reviews Book Review

Academic Activism: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

by Amitai Etzioni REVIEWING The Public Professor

by M.V. Lee Badgett, NYU Press, 2016

T

he United States has allowed very few Syrian refugees to enter the country. The Republicans argue that they all pose a security risk; and, the Democrats respond that several screening procedures—employed by the FBI, CIA, the State Department, and immigration authorities—are more than sufficient to allow a large number of Syrian refugees to be allowed into the US. As so often happens in the US these days, no compromise could be found, and the US gates remain largely shut to Syrians.

I suggested that the US allow 25,000 children, younger than ten, to be hosted by American families until the end of the civil war. In this way, the US could make a humanitarian contribution without any security risk. I called a reporter to check whether she could help air this idea in order to call attention to it by public leaders and my fellow citizens. When one of my colleagues heard about this, he was quite troubled. “You called a reporter? Not she, you?” Professors, he felt, should do their research and publish it in academic journals, and not formulate policy ideas about matters they have not studied, and surely not promote anything anywhere.

Professor M.V. Lee Badgett strongly believes otherwise. She published a delightful, highly useful guidebook for activist professors: The Public Professor.

I write “delightful” because the book is full of very telling and evocative anecdotes that illustrate the point she

is making—a text that no academic journal would dream of publishing.

Professor Badgett has the credentials to write such a book, being an activist professor herself. She has written for publications such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and has appeared on NPR and CNN. She dedicates the book to “the activists, organizers,

tremendous knowledge and insight, but who do not know how to connect to policy debates. She offers several suggestions, ranging from teaming up with community organizations, to designing a research project, to writing a letter to heads of agencies to show how one’s recent research might be of interest to their work.

Public debates often revolve around what should be done, only a short step from academic debates about why things are the way they are. lawyers, politicians, protestors, funders, teachers, staffers, writers, and voters working to change the world, and the scholars working alongside them.”

These professors, and those who seek to understand the ways they work, would greatly benefit from this thin volume.

Each chapter covers one major part of what it takes to be an active scholar, as well as a table (or two) of specific tips.

Professor Badgett begins in Chapter 1 with a call to academics to reach beyond their normal circles and to engage in public debates. She recognizes that this is a challenge for professors throughout their career cycle: recent PhDs who are eager to change the world, but who are facing the pressure to publish or perish; and, senior colleagues who have

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In Chapter 2, Badgett encourages scholars to understand the terms of the public debate, noting that questions about which the public is concerned will be framed very differently from scholarly debates. Actually, though, public debates often revolve around what should be done, only a short step from academic debates about why things are the way they are.

Having understood the public debates, scholars next need to learn the “rules of the game,” which Badgett takes up in Chapter 3. Identifying the important decision makers is paramount, and Badgett encourages scholars to consider not just policy makers and legislative chambers, but also the courts, private sector foundations, and social movements, among others.

Reviews Book Review Chapter 4 addresses the question of how to build a network with the relevant decision makers. Badgett uses the metaphor of a garden to help readers think through how to build a vibrant network: planting seeds by identifying and establishing the right contacts, cultivating the network through effective and meaningful communication, but also pruning and weeding the network of weaker ties.

In Chapter 5, Badgett turns to a challenge that will be familiar to many scholars: how to transition from writing liking an academic to writing for a popular audience. The following chapters explore how to communicate in different media, with Chapter 6 addressing traditional media, and Chapter 7 (co-authored with Scott Swenson) discussing social media and blogging.

In the final two chapters, Badgett turns to some of the potential pitfalls of public engagement, and how to handle them. Chapter 8 discusses how to manage (rather than merely avoid) conflicts that can arise when academics expose themselves to controversial public debates. She offers advice on how to develop a thicker skin and how to build a strong ethical foundation.

Chapter 9 turns to the problem of managing the balance between being, as Badgett puts it, “an effective and engaged scholar,” while remaining a “respected and employed scholar.”

The chapter not only includes tips on time management and balancing competing demands, but also on how public engagement can benefit one’s research and teaching, and how it can be leveraged in advancing one’s academic career.

Many readers, who may find these ideas and suggestions as not necessarily ground breaking, will nevertheless benefit from having a systematic and inclusive list of the various options

Julie Knight

M.V. Lee Badgett, author of The Public Professor.

available to them once they choose to become activists, or even if they have already been active for quite a while.

One caveat: the book is exceedingly optimistic. Badgett reports that becoming an activist professor is “personally and professionally rewarding.” She adds: “The bad news? There really isn’t any.” This is hardly my experience. My first attempts at public activism (in the early 1960s, granted) almost got me fired from Columbia University. Later, I found myself on Nixon’s enemy list, my loyalty to the US was tested by an FBI

sting operation, and the CIA kept its eye on me. My first five public drives failed; I was too early (when I wrote about bioethics in the 1970s), too late (when I criticized Project Apollo), and became burnt out in seeking to stop the war in Vietnam as it dragged on for eight years.

Only at the tender age of 60 did I find a foothold when I urged communitarianism. I’ve shared these experiences in my own book, My Brother’s Keeper. But perhaps, if I had had Badgett’s book to guide me, my success as an activist professor would have come earlier.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 83

Reviews Media Reviews

Global Fishing Watch

Fishing activity, as shown at globalfishingwatch.org.

Global Fishing Watch: A Public Check On Overfishing

by Devin Windelspecht Over the past 40 years, the number of recorded marine species has decreased by around 39 percent, according to the World Wildlife Fund. This extreme extinction rate is, in many ways, due to overfishing.

The UN’s 2016 The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report reveals that one third of the world’s commercially-fished stocks are fished at biologically unsustainable levels.

In some regions, those percentages are even higher: in the North East Atlantic, 39 percent of fish stocks are classified as overfished, and in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, an estimated 88 percent of stocks are unsustainably harvested.

Last September, Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google unveiled a free, publicly accessible platform that allows global citizens to serve as a check against overfishing. The program, called Global Fishing Watch, allows anyone with an Internet connection to see, in real-time, the activities of fishing ships around the globe.

Using data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which commercial vessels are required to possess, Global Fishing Watch identifies fishing vessels based on their behavior and movement over time. From there, the system presents every identified fishing ship on a worldwide heat map to be freely viewed by governments, businesses, and global citizens alike.

By clearly labeling restricted and prohibited fishing zones, as well as the exclusive economic zones of each country’s territorial waters, users can

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see when vessels are violating fishing regulations, or the intensity in which fishing is occurring in certain ocean regions.

The platform has additional uses beyond accountability. Global Fishing Watch identifies the ability for seafood suppliers to monitor the vessels from which they buy fish. Researchers also use the data to study fishery management techniques.

AIS information has already been used to track the movements of fishing fleets in government territorial waters for years, but by presenting this information freely and on a global scale, Global Fishing Watch allows for this valuable information to be placed into the hands of the global public, who can use this data to call for improved accountability, and to advocate for policies that can decrease overfishing worldwide.

Kessler, L.H. (2017). After the Plantations: The Past and Future of Agriculture in Hawaii. Solutions 8(1): 85-90. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/after-plantations-past-future-agriculture-hawaii/

Solutions in History

After the Plantations: The Past and Future of Agriculture in Hawai i

by Lawrence H. Kessler

Anissa Wood

Sugarcane growing on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

I

n the early morning of Monday, September 9, 2013, a leak in a shipping pipeline spilled 233,000 gallons of molasses into the blue waters of Honolulu Harbor, about five miles from the beaches and resort hotels of Waikı̄kı̄. Unlike oil, which floats on the water’s surface and can be cleaned with dispersants and skimmers, molasses sinks, sucking oxygen from the water as it dissolves. Officials could

only watch helplessly as the dark, gooey mass descended to the harbor’s bottom, suffocating everything in its path. Within 48 hours, more than 26,000 fish and other marine animals were dead. Gary Gill, deputy director for the Environmental Health Division of the Health Department, told journalists it was, “the worst environmental damage to sea life that I have come across.” Gill went on, “this

is a biggie, if not the biggest [environmental problem] that we’ve had to confront in the state of Hawai‘i.”1,2 The molasses spill, devastating enough on its own, points to an even bigger and more vexing problem: why was all that molasses at the harbor in the first place? The molasses originated from the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company plantation on Maui, and was on its way to California, where it was to be used as an additive to cattle feed. It is one of the absurdities of the modern economy that Hawai‘i, which, according to the USDA, maintains at any given time only a seven-day food supply for its inhabitants, was dedicating arable land to the production of molasses for export to California’s cattle ranches.3 Typical of many regions with a history of plantation agriculture, Hawai‘i’s agricultural economy has been oriented for more than a century and a half towards outside markets rather than domestic consumption.

Native Hawaiians grew sugarcane for at least a millennium before European contact, but an export-based plantation system only developed in the mid-19th century. From the Hawaiian sugar industry’s height in the early 20th century, when the archipelago was a world leader in the production of sugar per acre of cane and per worker, U.S. production quotas and competition from other sources of sugar caused the industry to contract. By the time of the 2013 spill, only a single plantation remained: Maui’s HC&S, whose inability to compete with table sugar production on the world market meant that its operations were almost entirely devoted to producing molasses for cattle feed, transported through an aging infrastructure at Honolulu Harbor.

To contemplate a future for agriculture in Hawai‘i after the decline of the sugar industry, we might do

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Solutions in History well to remember that the dominance of sugarcane was neither a natural nor an inevitable occurrence. In the early 19th century, Presbyterian and Congregationalist missionaries from New England at first opposed the development of cane plantations.

Though different opinions existed within the missionary community, several influential missionaries argued that planting cane would lead to the oppression of workers, and, perhaps even more to their displeasure, to the distillation of cane juice into rum.

Yet, as their influence in the Native Hawaiian monarchy grew, these early critics of cane planting came to embrace the enterprise—as long as it was led by moral Christians.

Missionaries lent their support to the islands’ first cane plantation because they considered the founders to be “pious merchants.” By creating wage labor opportunities, planters and missionaries argued that plantations would promote Protestant values such as industry and thrift among Native Hawaiians, and would provide Hawaiian communities with the cash necessary to support local congregations.4 The Native Hawaiian monarchy also had good reason to support the development of the sugar industry.

Hawai‘i’s two main sources of income in the 18th and early 19th centuries— whaling and the sale of sandalwood to China—were in drastic decline.

France and England, meanwhile, were flexing their imperial muscles, and establishing colonies in the Pacific.

Outstanding national debt could serve as a pretext for the countries’ assault on Hawaiian sovereignty. Seeking to increase sugar’s profits, Hawai‘i’s cane planters and its government, now under the rule of King Kalākaua, worked together to lobby the United States for a treaty of reciprocity that would let Hawaiian sugar into the U.S.

without the onerous tariff that was in place at the time. They secured the treaty in 1875, and the islands’ sugar industry began a remarkable ascent.

Even with political support, growing sugarcane did not come easily to Hawai‘i. Following the 1875 treaty opening U.S. markets to cane planters in Hawai‘i, agricultural science, technological innovation, and appropriation of Hawai‘i’s natural resources were essential to the rise of the archipelago’s plantation system.

Cane planters adopted cutting-edge practices in agricultural entomology, cane-milling technology, irrigation, and sugarcane breeding. Their heavy investment in agricultural research and development had dramatic consequences for the islands’ environment. Cane planters’ efforts at biological pest control—the use of insects and parasites rather than chemical insecticides—were particularly transformative. Dozens of new species were introduced to Hawai‘i, profoundly altering its remote island ecosystems. Advances in milling also led to complex changes for the islands.

Technologies such as centrifugal mills and advanced mill rollers increased production capacity and demanded increasing acreage of cane, while irrigation projects diverted more of Hawai‘i’s limited freshwater supply.

Smaller and under-capitalized plantations often could not compete with larger operations and sold out, which, in turn, consolidated the sugar industry, and control of natural resources, in the hands of a smaller number of sugar magnates. Meanwhile, sugarcane breeding programs developed hardier and sweeter varieties of cane, which also increased mill output. Together, these innovations catalyzed the development of a simpler, more homogeneous monoculture plantation system at the expense of Hawai‘i’s biodiversity and diversified agriculture.

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Understanding the history of the Hawaiian sugar industry serves as a reminder that plantation agriculture is much more than an economic enterprise, but a cultural and political process too. Hawai‘i’s plantation system was based on a view of land and labor as commodities for distant markets, on political agreements that prioritized that outlook, and on the power to claim and control an increasingly larger share of Hawai‘i’s natural environment. As the molasses spill demonstrates, the impact of the plantation system did not stop at the edges of the cane fields, nor did it end with the heyday of Hawaiian sugar in the 20th century. Rather, its impact and legacy continue to extend throughout the islands.

In the aftermath of the molasses spill, Hawai‘i’s sugar industry, already much reduced from its former size, declined further. Matson, the shipping company responsible for the spill, halted its molasses operations. Maui HC&S scrambled to find alternatives.

As an indication of how tightly the sugar industry was still controlled, both the shipping company and the plantation had been owned by Alexander & Baldwin, a sugar firm established in 1870 by the sons of two missionary families, until Alexander & Baldwin spun Matson off into a separate company in 2012. Finally, in early 2016, Alexander & Baldwin announced that it would stop planting sugarcane and that Maui HC&S would close.

With the end of Hawai‘i’s sugar industry, one might hope that Hawai‘i can transition to a more diversified and sustainable model of agriculture that can do more to meet the food needs of Hawai‘i’s inhabitants. This goal, however, does not appear likely.

The agrochemical seed industry has claimed sugar’s place as the dominant agricultural sector, accounting for 45 percent of the value of Hawai‘i’s agricultural commodities, and nearly

Solutions in History

Brother Gabriel Bertram/Hawaii State Archives Digital Collections

The Kahului Railroad began operating on Maui in July 1879 to transport sugar more rapidly across the island.

25 percent of agricultural jobs as of 2009.3 Agribusiness giants such as Monsanto and Mycogen make use of Hawai‘i’s abundant sunshine and year-round growing season, as well as the agricultural infrastructure and agribusiness-friendly politics left behind by the sugar barons, to raise genetically modified seed corn.

The seed corn developed and grown in Hawai‘i is transported out of the islands for use on mainland farms, doing nothing to alleviate Hawai‘i’s underlying food security problems.

Moreover, the corn grown on Hawai‘i relies on chemical pesticides; part of the genetic modification of much of the corn is directed toward making

it more resistant to pesticides so that farmers can apply more chemicals to control weeds and insects without damaging the corn. Even without the old plantations, agriculture on Hawai‘i remains geared toward off-island interests at the expense of local food systems and environmental health.

But, can an alternative exist in which Hawaiian agriculture turns toward diversified production for local markets? Such alternative land ethics and forms of agriculture, indeed, already exist. Even at its apex of power and geographic expansion in the early 20th century, cane planting never erased Native Hawaiian pre-plantation agriculture from the land. Communities based

on subsistence farming, hunting, fishing, and foraging persisted through the 20th century in places both near and far from plantations, such as, respectively Kı̄pahulu and Ke‘anae, two areas in the Hāna district of Maui. On Moloka‘i, which was relatively untouched by sugarcane planting, but is now home to several seed corn farms, a strong culture of subsistence activity remains.5 These communities act as reminders that plantation agriculture is a relatively new way of interacting with the land in Hawai‘i. If we can imagine a past before the plantation system, we can see that it is a recent creation and not a monolithic way of ordering agricultural economies.

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Solutions in History

The abandoned Koˉloa Sugar Mill on Kauai.

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Solutions in History

Steve Shupe

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Solutions in History This is not a call for a return to an imagined past or a romanticized infatuation with what historians have called the mythic “ecological Indian.”6 Species extinction and environmental inequality took place in Hawai‘i well before the arrival of Euro-Americans, and old as well as new forms of resource management can result in unsustainable practices.7,8 Yet, since the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s, activists and scholars have begun placing greater emphasis on the ideas of food sovereignty, sustainability, and the Hawaiian concepts of aloha ‘āina (love of the land) and mālama ‘āina (care for the land). Attention to these values is a crucial step toward redirecting politics and the economy to finding solutions for Hawai‘i’s environmental and social problems stemming from plantation agriculture.

Knowledge is essential for raising awareness of the problematic history of agricultural production in Hawai‘i.

Academic programs in Hawaiian Studies have helped bring greater attention to Hawaiian culture, history, and agricultural practices. Work in ethnobotany has likewise investigated earlier systems of production in the islands. These programs can provide the basis for the knowledge that will help ensure that a history and culture of small-scale agriculture for local consumption is not lost. Along with this academic attention to the cultural aspects of agriculture, research in regenerative agriculture, which combines old techniques, such as contour farming and cover cropping, with innovations in the study of soil microbiology indicate a path away from agribusiness.

Knowledge of production must be accompanied by activism for change, and this has, indeed, been present and effective in Hawai‘i. What began as a small political movement in the late 20th century has developed into

a culture of advocacy for sustainable agricultural and food sovereignty.

Grassroots organizations have mobilized to rein in the seed corn industry and make greater opportunities for small farmers. Chefs, restaurateurs, markets, and farmers’ co-ops support local agriculture, and add to its cultural resonance. Political advocacy for a more sustainable agricultural system is also prominent. Activists have succeeded in passing moratoriums against GMO farming, but still face legal challenges regarding their implementation. Hawaiians are now also raising civil rights complaints that pesticides from agribusiness are causing particular damage to Native communities. This connects the issue of food sovereignty to the greater struggle for political sovereignty that is ongoing in Hawai‘i. The recent decision of the U.S. Department of the Interior acknowledging the Native Hawaiians' right to form a sovereign government provides the potential for both greater political autonomy and greater political power to control land use. Much remains in question, especially regarding the need for well-paying agricultural jobs, but it is clear that a growing contingent of people in Hawai‘i are working toward a future of agriculture that breaks from the islands’ plantation past.

Is it naïve to think that promoting food sovereignty can solve the problems that monoculture agribusiness has caused in Hawai‘i? Maybe not.

It was, after all, a particular mode of thinking that caused the sugar industry to flourish: an emphasis on private property, on the idea that the value of land was tied to capital investment, on the insistence that wage labor would create the sort of tractable citizenry that an economy based on subsistence could not, and on engagement with global markets rather than local

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networks of exchange. All these were relatively recent imports to Hawai‘i, and while these ideas will not disappear, they might be tempered by a renewed focus on sustainability and diversity.

When we notice how drastically our industrial food systems have changed the environment, and remember how recently those systems were established, we can begin to see that alternatives exist. Land use is part of a values system, and values can be more dynamic than we realize.

An economy that takes questions of food sovereignty seriously, and that acknowledges the importance of local values such as aloha ‘āina, is easier to stomach than 233,000 gallons of molasses and 26,000 dead fish at the bottom of Honolulu Harbor.

References 1. Joaquin, T & Gutierrez, B. Underwater Video Uncovers Mass Kill from Matson Molasses Spill.

Hawai‘i News Now [online] (September 12, 2013). http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/23409767/ underwater-video-uncovers-mass-kill-from-matsonmolasses-spill.

2. Joaquin, T. 25,000 Fish Killed in Matson Molasses Spill. Hawai‘i News Now [online] (September 16, 2013). http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/ story/23448407/25-thousand-fish-killed-in-matsonmolasses-spill.

3. United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency. Hawaii State Fact Sheet (2014).

4. Kessler, LH. A Plantation upon a Hill; Or, Sugar without Rum: Hawai‘i’s Missionaries and the Founding of the Hawaiian Sugarcane Plantation System. Pacific Historical Review 84(2), 129–162 (2015).

5. McGregor, DP. Na Kuaʻāina: Living Hawaiian Culture (University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2007).

6. Krech III, S. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2000).

7. Culliney, JL. Islands in a Far Sea: The Fate of Nature in Hawai‘i (University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2006).

8. Gupta, C. Aloha Aina as an Expression of Food Sovereignty: A Case Study of the Challenges to Food Self-Reliance on Molokai, Hawaii in Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue International Conference (Yale University, New Haven, September 2013).

Thornett, R. (2017). Postcards from Paraguay 2.0: Under Renovation. Solutions 8(1): 91-100. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/postcards-paraguay-under-renovation/

On The Ground

Postcards from Paraguay 2.0: Under Renovation

by Robert Thornett

Carlos Moreno

Opened in 2013, Asunción’s Costanera is restoring the lost connection between Asunceneros and the water. It is one of many riverfront restoration projects throughout South America in the past decade.

I

n Bar San Roque, the oldest restaurant in Asunción, the waiter returns.

Humming a tune, he drops the lunch check.

“Gracias. Are you a musician?” I ask in Spanish.

“Sí, guitarra. The song ‘Sultans of Swing,’—you know it?”

“Dire Straits?”

“Eso. The singer, he wrote a song about Paraguay.”

“Really? Mark Knopfler?”

Turns out, Mark Knopfler did write “Postcards from Paraguay.” It’s about a guy who “robbed a bank full of dinero,” took off, and “won’t be sending

postcards from Paraguay.” That’s all it says about Paraguay.

Paraguay is known for not being well-known. Hot, landlocked, and mostly flat, it sits between some of the remotest regions of Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. Its celebrated novelist Augusto Roa Bastos called it “an island surrounded on all sides by land.”

I drop the tip and climb into a taxi, headed for the bus station. Ahead is a five-hour journey to see Itaipu Dam on the Paraguay–Brazil border, the largest renewable energy generator on the planet.

On the taxi stereo, the DJ slings jokes. “El Paraguayyy... is a global giant in energy. Yet we don’t have traffic lights.”

Nodding, the white-haired driver points at the radio, then turns it up.

“In Brazil, in Bolivia,” says the DJ, “their ‘Welcome’ signs stand straight, planted firmly in the ground. Ours stand like a drumstick that went through the drum.”

“A drumstick?”

“Through the drum—falling over,” explains the driver in a big hoarse voice, demonstrating with his hands. “It’s to say, many things don’t work here, they

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On The Ground need repair, you know? For sure, it’s the truth. This is a very backward country.”

Paraguayans are used to hearing ideas for improvements that never materialize. For over half a century, corruption has siphoned funds from public works and deterred foreign investment. Transparency International ranked Paraguay 130 out of 169 countries on its 2015 Corruption Perception Index, calling it “an important case study of a state seeking to recover from decades of an authoritarian state that institutionalized corruption.” The 35-year dictatorship from 1954 to 1989 under General Alfredo Stroessner was the longest dictatorship in modern Latin American history. In 2012, Paraguay replaced its president in a coup.

But today, something is changing.

Big plans are not only being made, they are getting done—fast. Paraguay has a new Master Plan for Transport, a Master Plan for Urban Renewal, and a plan to modernize its national power grid, laying a foundation for new industries. These plans are supported by aid from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and South Korea.

In many ways, Paraguay has been a backward country for a century, but now things are moving forward.

“Korea makes Asunción stop living in 1975” The taxi zooms through another red light. The DJ was right: most of Paraguay has no traffic lights at all.

The capital, Asunción, has been the exception... sort of. It first installed traffic lights in 1975, but over the four decades that followed, most were never maintained. Today most do not work and/or cannot be seen easily from the road.

But a gift from South Korea is transforming the capital’s intersections

from chaotic to cutting edge. In 2015, the Korean International Cooperation Agency donated a USD$5.3 million worth of traffic lights and an Intelligent Transport System (ITS)

a success in keeping traffic to the speed limit of 40 km/h. Most of all, for the first time, drivers are gradually becoming accustomed to stopping at red lights.

A new reliable grid fed by cheap, renewable electricity creates more sustainable possibilities for Paraguay’s future.

using the same technology found in Seoul, one of the world’s most modern cities.

ITS software optimizes the length of green lights, based on statistics collected by radars that monitor the number and velocity of vehicles.

South Korea sent technical trainers to jumpstart Asunción’s new Traffic Control Center, where the city now monitors traffic 24/7 using high definition cameras at major intersections.

After a successful test period, all 420 new intelligent traffic lights began working in April 2015. “Korea makes Asunción stop living in 1975,” announced a headline in Ejemplo newspaper.

“We’re going to have the best traffic light system in all of the region,” said Asunción mayor Arnaldo Sarmaniego Gonzalez. “If it can work in Seoul, it can work here.”

Asunción has not yet reached its goals of providing “green waves” of consecutive green lights for peakhour commuters and reducing wait times by at least 25 percent. In June 2015, the city reported that a “hacker attack” caused 31 lights to malfunction, sending 6:00 a.m. traffic into chaos. But transit manager Victor Peña says the system will continue to improve and has already been

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Staging a Bus Revolution The radio DJ rolls on: “The city, they’ve tried to put in fixed bus stops, with fixed times. But the people, they didn’t want them. They tried to put in a real bus system; but the people, they didn’t want it.”

Buses are a matter of national concern in Paraguay. In 2015, President Horacio Cartes presented his ambitious Master Plan for Transport on national television, standing in front of a line of brand new buses—which, as he pointed out, were air conditioned. In a country with just over one vehicle for every twenty people, buses are the main transport lifeline.

But Paraguay’s buses have been dysfunctional and often dangerous for decades. Most buses have no marked stops or fixed times. There are thousands of privately owned buses, and riders must remember the spots to catch one—on this corner, in front of that bank—or just wave their arms when they see it coming. Tourists have to ask a lot of questions.

Several bone-rattling rides in 2015 confirmed that, until recently, the average bus in Asunción was 20 to 25 years old. Of 2,500 buses citywide, 1,415 were “buses chatarras,” that is, “junk buses,” unreliable and uncomfortable, with broken glass, bad

On The Ground

City of Asunción

Digital traffic lights donated by South Korea now hover over intersections in Asunción. Meanwhile, the old, non-functioning stoplights stand as relics on street corners, first installed in 1975 and left unmaintained since.

brakes, shaky seats, worn out tires, body damage, and no air-conditioning in a city with an average January high of 92°F. Many were “sardine buses,” undersized microbuses typically packed to double capacity, with half of the passengers standing like sardines.

Paraguayans share photos and videos of junk buses online. Wheels and whole axles literally come off.

Some keel heavily to one side. A passenger side dashboard is completely missing with a spaghetti of wires exposed.

Junk buses have been a serious public health hazard. Many videos show junk bus accidents in which people were hurt or killed. One from 2013 shows the aftermath of a crash that knocked over a two-story streetlight, shown wrapped over the bus,

sending two passengers to the hospital.

The driver had lost control when the brakes stopped working. “How can the government let a bus like this drive through the streets endangering people’s lives?” a female passenger in the video asks.

The lack of reliable buses combined with the unaffordability of cars has made inexpensive motorbikes the most common personal vehicles in Paraguay. But motorbikes are Paraguay’s primary cause of fatalities, according to Dr. Aníbal Filártiga, director of Asunción’s Emergency Medical Center. “Motorbikes are a deadly weapon,” he says. “For every 100 accidents, 75 are on bikes.” Filártiga says the solution is to improve public transport options. “The first horseman of the apocalypse is the lack of a decent public transportation.”

A 2014 investigation by Paraguay’s transport authority, Setama, uncovered a “bus mafia” operating in Asunción. It had falsified the ages of approximately 350 buses owned by 30 different companies to keep them on the road. Some were 30 to 40 years old. Many had never cleared customs when entering the country.

Now Paraguay is responding. In 2014, President Cartes initiated a rapid National Bus Modernization Plan. In August of that year, the national government offered transport companies a USD$30,000 nonrefundable loan for each brand new “zero kilometer bus” they added, required to have airconditioning and wheelchair ramps.

To get the deal, companies also had to agree to continue renovating 10 percent of their bus fleets each year.

Within three months, 42 companies

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On The Ground

Colectivos Chatarras de Paraguay

Above, one of Asunción’s “junk buses,” from which the wheels have fallen off. Below, in a nationally televised broadcast in 2015, President Cartes presents his Master Transport Plan, pointing to new “zero kilometer” buses.

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On The Ground had agreed to purchase 559 new buses.

In December 2015, under heavy rains, the city proudly presented 148 of them along its riverfront, parked end to end for all to see.

In return for new buses, companies taking the deal had to agree to turn over an equivalent number of junk buses to the government, and 325 were delivered to junkyards and destroyed. The government also removed 292 buses lacking proper legal documentation and 136 sardine buses deemed too small. By June 2016, 726 of 1,415 junk buses had been taken off the road.

The Bus Modernization Plan required companies not taking the deal to replace 20 percent of their fleets with new buses by the end of 2015. Five did not and were put out of business. “If a company doesn’t renovate, it’s gone,” said Vice Minister of Transport Agustín Encina. He projects that by 2019, 100 percent of buses citywide will be less than 10 years old—a remarkable feat by any measure for what had for decades been a city of junk buses.

The next stop for the Bus Modernization Plan may be its most challenging: to finally implement mandatory fixed bus stops in Asunción. In April 2016, the city started by gradually installing bus stop signs and bus shelters along a few major routes. The Ministry of Transport is enforcing the stops with USD$900 fines—astronomical for Paraguay. So far, they have shown they mean business: in one 72-hour period in June, officials fined 75 buses from 34 companies for not complying with the new stops, impounding the buses.

Observers say the change will require an “evolution” in mentality, both by bus operators and by passengers, who have been accustomed to hailing buses informally but will now

have to get used to walking to the new stops. “Some complain,” says Encina.

“But we’re talking about a change in culture. You can’t catch a bus on every corner anymore. This is real necessity; it’s unthinkable to have a city without bus stops.”

BRT: Very Fast Paraguay’s Master Plan for Transport has more in store for Asunción. The government is now constructing a new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system scheduled to open in 2017 that will serve over 300,000 passengers, some 30 percent of the city’s public transport ridership. Project leader José Tomás Rivarola calls it “the most important transportation project in Paraguay since its first railway was created” in 1861. “This is a project that transforms the structure of cities,” says Rivarola.

“It will help to restructure and develop areas of Asunción that have been hard hit by the low quality of transport service.”

Called Metrobús Pya’e Porã (translated as “very fast” in Guaraní), Asunción’s BRT will connect 18.4 km between the downtown Port of Asunción and the major suburbs of San Lorenzo and Fernando de la Mora.

At a cost of USD$200 million, it is supported by a USD$100 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as USD$19 million from OPEC. BRT systems, also known as surface subways, are bus-based mass-transit systems combining the speed and capacity of subways with a much lower cost and time of startup and expansion. BRTs’ ease of scalability is particularly advantageous for fast-growing developing cities like Asunción. Today, BRTs carry over 30 million passengers daily in over 160 cities worldwide, including megacities such as Istanbul, Mexico City, and Guangzhou.

Asunción originally planned to use diesel buses but, after much pressure from the press and citizen groups, instead chose 175 new electric trolley buses. These will leverage Paraguay’s cheap renewable hydroelectricity, lowering operating costs and reducing local emissions from buses to near zero.

In BRT systems, buses travel in a network of dedicated bus-only lanes in the center of the road, away from the curb and thus unimpeded by cars parking, turning, or standing. Turns across bus lanes are prohibited for regular traffic, and buses have priority at signals and intersections. To prevent delays and free drivers from handling transactions, fares are collected in a station beforehand, not on the bus.

Passengers board and exit via a station platform already level with the bus, easily accessible for wheelchairs, strollers, and carts.

Of hundreds of systems advertised as “BRT” worldwide, not all adhere to these principles. To establish a common global definition, the Institute for Transportation Development and Policy published its “BRT Standard” in 2012. It now rates systems based on how well they meet the BRT Standard’s scorecard: gold, silver, bronze, basic BRT, and non-BRT. Of seven cities receiving a gold rating in 2014, six were in Latin America and one in China. Overall, over 45 cities in Latin America have invested in BRT systems, serving over 63 percent of BRT ridership worldwide.1

Plugging In to Leverage Renewable Energy The taxi whizzes by streams of pedestrians, street vendors, and dilapidated shops along the avenue. The driver turns back toward me, stuffing his right hand in his pocket and steering with the left. “The politicians, they sell our electricity and pocket the money.

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On The Ground They don’t use it to take care of the people,” he says, waving his hand 360 degrees.

Paraguay is one of the world’s top exporters of electricity. Thanks to the behemoth output of Itaipu and smaller dams, it is able to sell 90 percent of its electricity to Brazil and Argentina for USD$400 million each year and still run its national grid using the remaining 10 percent. It is one of very few countries worldwide running entirely on renewable hydropower.

country’s energy is provided by biomass, mostly wood, burned in industrial broilers and homes. As more widely available electricity mitigates the need for biomass, it will help reduce deforestation in Paraguay—which has the second highest deforestation rate in the world.4 Expanded access to renewable electricity will also give Paraguay the potential to become a global “beacon” of electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing and use, according to a 2015 exploratory

Exporting EVs would give Paraguay a high value hightech niche in global trade—which it has never had in modern times.

But ironically, despite its surplus, Paraguay is one of the lowest consumers of electricity in Latin America.

Eleven percent have no electricity at all. Blackouts are common and a startling 32 percent of its domestic electricity is lost in transmission and distribution.2 The problem is the country’s antiquated power infrastructure, a legacy of decades of lack of investment—not taking care of the people.3 But now, Paraguay is building a smart grid to finally leverage its overflowing electricity, funded by a USD$100 million loan from the World Bank for the Paraguay Energy Sector Strengthening Project. The project will double the overall energy volume supplied by Paraguay’s grid and improve distribution and transmission, using smart meters, smart substations, and 3,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cables.

A new reliable grid fed by cheap, renewable electricity creates more sustainable possibilities for Paraguay’s future. At present, nearly half the

study by Brazilian energy experts.5 Fortuitously, its neighbor Bolivia holds by far the world’s largest stores of lithium—the key component of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries—and began making lithium batteries in 2014. Led

by Dr. Ildo Sauer of the University of São Paulo, the study suggests Paraguay should invest heavily in creating an EV manufacturing chain, sourcing lithium batteries from Bolivia. Paraguay already has burgeoning industrial parks, where in 2014 Hyundai invested USD$40 million in new auto parts manufacturing plants, bringing 3,000 new jobs. The study recommends Paraguay first transform its national vehicle fleet to EVs over a 10-year period, then export EVs to the South American and global markets.

It calculates that the domestic conversion to EVs would reduce Paraguay’s local vehicle emissions to near zero and save USD$996 million. Exporting EVs would give Paraguay a high value hightech niche in global trade—which it has never had in modern times.

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La Costanera is the Place to Be Past the stark inequality and crumbling buildings of historic downtown Asunción, down the hillside, is the water’s edge, where the Bay of Asunción looks out on the Paraguay River. The city turned its back to the water long ago, leaving the riverside to slums, crime, and garbage. But today, something in the air changes here, and not just because of the onshore breeze. There is a new dimension for public life in the capital city: La Costanera, a four-kilometer riverfront promenade completed in 2013. Sleek, modern, and dotted with clusters of palm trees, La Costanera is restoring the lost connection between Asuncenos and the water.

Thousands stroll its length every day.

Forty meters wide, it includes both a pedestrian walkway and the two-lane Costanera Avenue, where runners, bikers, and rollerbladers cruise. On a Sunday afternoon in Paraguay’s capital, there is no question that La Costanera is the place to be.

“We’ve waited 400 years for this opportunity. For many years it couldn’t be done, it was just a dream,” said Asunción’s former mayor Enrique Riera Escudero. Part of the city’s Master Plan for Urban Renewal, the USD$125 million Costanera project is partially funded by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Asunción’s Costanera is one of a profusion of recent riverfront restoration projects in the heart of South America, creating seaside environments far from the ocean. Just along the Paraná River alone, seven Paraguayan and Argentine cities have restored riverfronts since 2000.

Decaying empty shipping warehouses, abandoned train tracks, thieves, drug deals, prostitution, and trash have been replaced by monuments, beaches, and parks, and events including stage concerts, fireworks, and marathons.

On The Ground

City of Asunción

Asunción’s new Bus Rapid Transit system, Metrobús Pya’e Porã, will use high-capacity electric buses, with local emissions of near zero. Passengers only board and exit via a station platform.

Another Costanera, in Encarnación, Paraguay, was completed in 2010. Last October, it hosted a show by Grammywinning Mexican singer Marco Antonio Solis. Santa Fe, Argentina restored an historic lighthouse along its Costanera Santafesina in 2014, with a new beacon flashing signals that mimic seaside environments. Not far from the lighthouse is an Artisan’s Walk with 35 craft stalls.

On a continent marked by inequality, South America’s new riverfronts are creating much-needed inclusive public spaces. Here, along La Costanera in Asunción, kids from the slums play soccer near wealthy

businessmen talking shop. First dates and families with babies pass kite flyers, kids doing bike tricks, beach volleyball, cotton candy and souvenir vendors, and dozens of police officers—who clearly have no problem socializing with passersby.

Economically, La Costanera is a magnet drawing Asunceneros to their historic but vastly underdeveloped downtown, and the city hopes business investment will follow. “Our overall aim is to revive downtown Asunción holistically and reactivate the city center,” said architect Yona Muñoz. “This is necessary to improve the urban dynamics in Asunción,

which are now polarized in an imbalanced way.” In 2018, a USD$200 million complex will open at the renovated Port of Asunción at one end of the Costanera, with a riverside park, fine art museum, and ferry terminal.

The city projects privately funded hotels, restaurants, and apartments at the port by 2023.

River flooding is a major concern in Asunción, where in December 2015, El Niño forced 100,000 citizens to evacuate their homes. The city is now constructing a USD$4 million floodable linear park alongside the La Costanera, due for completion in 2017. Engineers are filling the existing

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On The Ground floodplain with over 400,000 cubic meters of sand extracted from the bed of the bay, while adding drains and culverts. The three kilometer linear park will be forty meters wide with 90 percent green public space, including bikeways and athletic spaces. In April, Mayor Mario Ferreiro and citizens began planting 700 trees along the park from over 110 species provided by the National Botanic Garden— including fast-growing pink lapacho trees, the national tree of Paraguay.

polluted runoff and provide water for the city. The World Resources Institute’s web-based Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer shows 21 million people are affected by river flooding each year, which could increase to 54 million by 2050 with climate change and urbanization.6 On this heavily stratified continent, the success of social inclusion along Asunción’s Costanera is not to be taken for granted. Many riverfront restoration projects have taken a different

Along La Costanera kids from the slums play soccer near wealthy businessmen talking shop.

Rather than building walls of concrete to protect from floods, disrupting natural ecosystems and hydrological processes, floodable parks cooperate with natural processes to absorb floods. The parks are designed not only for protection but to create usable green public spaces and new ecosystems, and they are typically clear of water and usable again within 24 hours after a storm or flood. The presence of water allows increased ecological diversity and the introduction of new species.

Floodable parks are seen as a means of creating “climate resilient” cities and are part of the current “sponge cities” movement in China—where the number of cities affected by flooding has doubled since 2008. Sponge cities “hold, clean, and drain water in a natural way using an ecological approach,” says Kongjian Yu, dean of Peking University’s College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. They employ design elements such as permeable roads, rooftop gardens, and artificial lakes and ponds to prevent

trajectory. A prime example is the Puerto Madero Waterfront project in Buenos Aires, Argentina, often cited as a pioneer and model of South American waterfront restorations. Through the 1990s, the city renovated the decaying neighborhood of Puerto Madero, which had been lined with decaying shipping warehouses along the Rio de la Plata.

The original intention was a public space for the whole city. But over time, things changed, as Argentine architect Alfredo Garay writes: “The market strategies of private developers colored the project discourse, diluting socially inclusive public policy objectives in favor of creating an exclusive neighborhood.

Wealthy citizens and high-end entrepreneurs covet Puerto Madero’s residential and commercial spaces.

[Project managers] have had difficulty protecting the public character of even the district’s new open spaces, such as the ecological reserve, as Puerto Madero’s affluent residents strongly discourage entertainment and sport activities that would appeal to all

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citizens citywide. [The project] limited itself to articulating the interests of private entrepreneurs and current residents and ignored policies designed to benefit many inhabitants of the city.

Affordable housing and [inclusive] social programs did not materialize, isolating Puerto Madero as an elite development area.”

Today, Puerto Madero is a sterile, oversized concrete expanse of global chains, luxury high-rise apartments, offices, and hotels. As real-estate writer Patrick Duffy puts it, Puerto Madero is “basically a compound for the wealthy.” By contrast, the Costanera de Asunción is an outdoor parade of the Paraguayan spirit.

Asunción is now extending La Costanera from 4 to 22 total kilometers in both directions along the coast, vastly increasing spatial connectivity between the historic downtown and outlying zones. As it expands, the project has potential to make the riverfront a green, inclusive focal point for social life for hundreds of thousands of citizens.

The Future In strange ways, many of Paraguay’s longstanding dysfunction is now working to its advantage. Its crumbling and nonexistent infrastructure leaves little to uproot, and there are few barriers to innovation.

To be sure, there is much work to be done. Much of Paraguay’s growth is due to large-scale cattle ranching and genetically modified soy monoculture, which have elevated GDP and FDI statistics while giving Paraguay the worst land inequality in all of the Americas. While 27 percent of Paraguayans are employed in agriculture, just one percent of the people own 77 percent of the farmland.

Protests by small farmers are a regular occurrence. Agricultural reform needs much more attention.

On The Ground

City of Asunción

Not long ago, Asunción’s Costanera waterfront was lined with slum housing, garbage, and criminal activity. Current development is adding green spaces, bikeways, and recreation areas for community activities such as this dance class.

But billionaire President Horacio Cartes, once the target of US investigations into narcotics smuggling and money laundering, is pushing to diversify the economy and traveling the world in search of foreign direct investment, which grew by 230 percent between 2013 and 2014. He is making strides toward transparency—including appointing a Finance Minister from the opposing party.

American Airlines started direct flights from Miami to Asunción in 2012. In my guide book, it says there are no hostels in Asunción, except now there are five, and the one I stayed in was packed. If it completes

even half of its Master Plan for Urban Renewal, in 10 years, Asunción will have finally, after a century of neglect, leveraged its rich historic architecture and vast waterfront to create a beautiful, green city center.

As the transformation of this country continues, many more curious travelers will be sending postcards from Paraguay.

2. Jiménez, R et al. Power lost: sizing electricity losses in transmission and distribution systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. Inter-American Development Bank [online] (2014). https:// publications.iadb.org/handle/11319/6689.

3. Toledano, P & Maennling, N. Leveraging Paraguay’s hydropower for sustainable development.

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment [online] (2013). http://ccsi.columbia.edu/ files/2014/01/Leveraging-Paraguays-Hydropowerfor-Economic-Development-Final-CCSI.pdf.

4. Hansen, MC et al. High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science 342(6160),

References

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1. Rodriguez, DA & Tovar, EV. Bus rapid transit and

5. Sauer, I et al. Bolivia and Paraguay: A beacon

urban development in Latin America. Lincoln

for sustainable electric mobility? Renewable and

Institute of Land and Policy [online] (January 2013).

Sustainable Energy Reviews 51(51), 910 (2015).

http://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/

6. World Resources Institute. Aqueduct Global Flood

sistemas-transporte-publico-masivo-tipo-brt-bus-

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work/project/aqueduct.

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | January-February 2017 | Solutions | 99

On The Ground

Turenscape

Yanweizhou Park is a floodable park in Jinhua, China designed by Turenscape, shown here during dry (top) and wet (bottom) seasons. It won World Landscape of the Year in 2015. Asunción is now constructing a floodable park along La Costanera.

100 | Solutions | January-February 2017 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

EARTHACTION

Gund Institute

for Ecological

Economics

University of Vermont

The Alliance for Appalachia

National Council for Science and the Environment Improving the scientific basis for environmental decisionmaking

Associated Socie<es International Society for Ecological Economics

Watershed Sculpture / www.watershedsculpture.com

Flood Plain Wall Carson River, 2014. The Nature Conservancy’s River Fork Ranch Preserve, Minden, Nevada.

270 feet long. Woven and live-staked Coyote Willow harvested from the river.

Photographer: Mary O’Brien.

Watershed Sculpture, the team of Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien, create art installations with a biological trajectory and remedial outcomes. Flood Plain Wall along the Carson River in Northern Nevada was one of five sculptures that Watershed Sculpture created on the Truckee and Carson Rivers in Northern Nevada. This 270 foot woven willow wall is designed to intensify the natural processes at work at a former dredging fill site. The sculpture retains seasonal flood waters from snow melt-off in the surrounding Sierra Nevada Mountains. It provides additional wetlands, allows for a seasonal recharge of the riparian zone, and concentrates avian resources for species such as the Western Fly Catcher, migrating warblers, and Sandhill Cranes. The artists’ design for this installation creates a riparian buffer that also addresses the habitat needs of endangered Western Pond Turtles and Monarch Butterflies. Community volunteers contributed 2,300 hours to complete the artists’ projects.