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By Alice Rawsthorn
May 20, 2012 

When their prototype cooking stove passed its first trial with flying colors in Ghana, the American designers Jonathan Cedar and Alex Drummond expected it to be equally successful in the next round of tests in India. But then they discovered that very different types of food would be cooked on it.

“The staple dish in Ghana is banku, a starchy mass of corn or cassava dough, and luckily it suited our stove,” Mr. Cedar recalled. “Where we got stuck in India was with flat breads, which need a very hot, very diffuse flame. When people saw the stove, they were like: ‘Oh no, no, no.’”

There was a simple solution: designing different tops for the stove to suit the cooking requirements of various regions. But other problems have proved less tractable … Mr. Cedar and Mr. Drummond started to develop a zero-emissions wood-burning stove, initially to be used for camping, five years ago when they were employed by Smart Design, a New York design consultancy. They worked on it in their spare time, although Smart allowed them to use its resources. Not until they entered their design in a “clean stove” competition, which it won, did they realize that it could be adapted for use in off-grid communities in developing countries, where it would have far greater impact.

The technological key to their design is a thermoelectric device, which converts the heat produced by burning wood or other organic fuel into electricity. Most of the electricity powers a fan that makes the stove more efficient, thereby saving fuel. The rest can be used to charge portable devices like cellphones and L.E.D. lights. Typically, it takes 20 minutes of charging to produce an hour of talking time on a phone.

By Mireya Navarro
April 26, 2012 

The new regulations would encourage better insulation by allowing buildings to add up to eight inches of thickness to exterior walls without its being counted in the building’s maximum footprint. Other changes would relax height limits and facade restrictions to make room for equipment like solar panels, wind turbines, awnings, green roofs, recreational decks and skylights.

Solar installations, in particular, have the potential for significant growth: under the new rules, panels would be allowed on flat roofs anywhere below the parapet regardless of building height. On sloping roofs, the panels could be mounted flat. Rooftops could also accommodate boilers and other equipment that might operate more efficiently there than in the basement, officials said.

But some changes apply only to certain buildings. Wind turbines could rise up to 55 feet above roofs, but only on buildings taller than 100 feet or those near the waterfront, where winds are consistent enough to generate power reliably. And the greater latitude for rooftop greenhouse installations would apply only to nonresidential buildings, including schools, that promote education or year-round food production. BrightFarms, a private company that develops greenhouses, said this month that it planned a 100,000-square-foot commercial greenhouse on the roof of a city-owned warehouse building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The operation is expected to yield a million pounds of produce a year.

By Mort Rosenblum and Mar Cabra
January 25, 2012 

Jack mackerel, rich in oily protein, is manna to a hungry planet, a staple in Africa. Elsewhere, people eat it unaware; much of it is reduced to feed for aquaculture and pigs. It can take more than 5 kilos (11+ pounds) of jack mackerel to raise a single kilogram of farmed salmon.

Yet stocks have dropped from an estimated 30 million metric tons to less than 3 million in two decades … An eight-country investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of the fishing industry in the southern Pacific shows why the plight of the jack mackerel foretells the progressive collapse of fish stocks in all oceans.

Their fate reflects a bigger picture: decades of unchecked global fishing pushed by geopolitical rivalry, greed, corruption, mismanagement and public indifference … The South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization was formed in 2006, at the initiative of Australia and New Zealand along with Chile, which often shuns international bodies.

Its purpose was to protect fish, particularly jack mackerel. But it took almost four years for 14 countries to adopt 45 interim articles aimed at doing that. Only six countries have ratified the agreement.

Meantime, industrial fleets bound only by voluntary restraints compete in what amounts to a free-for-all in no man’s water at the bottom of the world.

From 2006 through 2011, scientists estimate, jack mackerel stocks declined by 63 percent. 

By Fiona Mackay
November 27, 2011 

“Our aim is to connect children back to the ecosystems that support them,” said Leigh Brown, [Schools Environmental Education and Development]’s co-founder and director. “And with permaculture comes the added benefit of food security, which is critical when the statistics are that 25 percent of kids in townships go to school too hungry to learn.”

SEED is working with 34 under- resourced schools around South Africa to deliver its Organic Classroom Program, a three-year-long primary-school curriculum. Facilitators are contracted to work alongside teachers after their training, helping instructors to plan lessons that follow the national curriculum, as well as the development of the garden.

Many schools in South Africa are critically understaffed and SEED is conscious of teachers’ workloads. The design of the garden feeds into math lessons on measuring and mapping; building indigenous windbreaks becomes a lesson on meteorology and plant species. At harvest time come classes on health and nutrition.

By Nate Berg
December 1, 2011 

The Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition [is] a local group that encourages the reduction of light pollution to make it easier to observe the night sky—both for astronomers and for everyone else … A growing number of advocates are behind a movement to transform cities and communities into better places to observe the night sky. Streetlights are the main target for unnecessarily emitting light directly up into the sky, which reflects off the atmosphere and prevents people and scientists from seeing clearly. This ambient light tends to be greater in concentrated urban areas, but even small towns can suffer from light pollution.

The village of Homer Glen, Illinois, has joined Flagstaff and Borrego Springs, California, as the third “International Dark Sky Community,” a designation awarded by the International Dark-Sky Association. The village has adopted and implemented a new lighting ordinance that focuses on reducing sky glow. Officials have replaced 184 light polluting street light fixtures with lower wattage lights that have shielding to block light from pointing up into the sky … Another target is lighting that’s too bright … The new lights in Homer Glen are about 70 watts, which is a significant drop from the typical 200-watt streetlight bulb … They’re also using less energy, which helps offset the costs of installing new lights and shades.