Month: May 2008

SMS Helps Rural Farmers

- Adam Clare

Cell phones are handy devices and can be used for seemingly endless purposes. Indian farmers are using SMS to help them earn more money from their crops.

Standing in a grove of lush green banana trees I find Kapil Jachak.
He’s busy checking his mobile phone for text messages containing practical information for farmers.
It’s a new service called Reuters Market Light, and he was one of the first to sign up in this area.
The first message every morning is a daily weather forecast for his area.
“By getting the weather reports we can see exactly how much water our banana plants need,” he says, “I keep my cost down, and get the best crop I can.”

Canadian Environmental Art

- Adam Clare

The CBC has a neat article that examines the state of Canadian art that tackles how we look at the environment. Art is so fun!

Anyone who’s driven down Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway has seen Noel Harding’s most famous public artwork. Elevated Wetlands consists of large, plastic, tooth-like sculptures that serve as planters for wetland vegetation. In addition to fashioning whimsical, inverted storage sheds that act as birdhouses (A Chirp), Harding has recently moved into full-scale environmental planning with a project called Green Corridor. This collaboration with University of Windsor visual arts professor Rod Strickland will see the gradual construction of a two-kilometre “regenerative green zone” surrounding the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor and Detroit. The corridor will feature numerous science and art projects, including wind turbines, “botanical interventions,” pedestrian walkways and water gardens.

Proof That Rain Forests can be Saved

- Adam Clare

Costa Rica is establishing itself as a fantastic spot for eco-tourism and to ensure that they continue to be so awesome they need to protect their natural environment. Costa Rica is trying to reclaim land that was taken away from their tropical forests and replant the natural species in hopes of revival – and it’s working.

When the researchers planted worn-out cattle pastures in Costa Rica with a sampling of local trees in the early 1990s, native species of plants began to move in and flourish, raising the hope that destroyed rain forests could one day be replaced.
Ten years after the tree plantings, Cornell graduate student Jackeline Salazar counted the species of plants that took up residence in the shade of the new planted areas. She found remarkably high numbers of species — more than 100 in each plot. And many of the new arrivals were also to be found in nearby remnants of the original forests.
“By restoring forests we hope not only to be improving the native forests, but we are helping to control erosion and helping the quality of life of the local people,” said Carl Leopold, the William H. Crocker Scientist Emeritus at BTI. He pointed out that drinking water becomes more readily available when forests thrive because tree roots act as a sort of sponge, favoring rainwater seepage and preventing water running off hills and draining away.

Eco Mombassa

- Adam Clare

Mombassa is going to be home to Kenya’s first eco-city. The spread of the eco-cities is fantastic news because urban living is fun and is becoming more environmentally awesome!

Construction of Kenya’s first eco-city — a residential settlement that is environmentally, socially, economically and culturally self-sustaining — has commenced on the outskirts of Mombasa, with the first phase expected to be ready for occupation by the third quarter of this year.

The whole project will take four to five years to complete.

Going by the name Hacienda, the development, located in the Mwakirunge area of the North Coast, off the Mombas-Malindi highway, will have 6,250 housing units — of two- and three-bedroom flats, and three- and four bedroom bungalows — to be developed in 10 phases.

The plan also includes a hospital, school, playgrounds and recreation facilities, a police station, commercial centres and office blocks, among other vital amenities.

According to Urban Ecology Australia, a non-profit organisation promoting people- and nature-friendly urban settlements, an eco-city is a human settlement that enables its residents to live a quality life while using minimal natural resource

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