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Thousands
of organizations around the world are trying in big ways and small to
confront the challenges of climate change. Here are 10 examples.
Coral
reefs are beautiful to look at, but they also play a crucial role as
coastal barriers when storms or flooding hits, absorbing about 97
percent of wave energy.
But because
of rising temperatures, coral cover in the Caribbean is estimated to
have decreased by about 80 percent in the last few decades, said Joseph
Pollock, Caribbean coral strategy director at the Nature Conservancy. He
added that in 2016, a marine heat wave was estimated to have killed
about a third of the shallow corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The Nature Conservancy in partnership with Secore International,
a conservation organization and a leader in coral restoration, are
using an innovative approach to address the problem: helping coral
reproduction.
Coral
mating works this way, Dr. Pollock said: Many coral species spawn by
putting out bundles of eggs and sperm one night a year.
“It’s like the craziest singles bar ever,” he said.
Researchers
know when those nights are, so they go out, collect the eggs and sperm
and then mix them together to cross-fertilize, grow them for a few days
or weeks until they become coral juveniles, then place them back in the
sea.
The
survival rate is about 10 percent, Dr. Pollock said, but that’s much
better than the survival rate without the help of the scientists. And
compared with other restoration techniques, the cross-fertilization
creates greater genetic diversity, and that creates more resilience.
The work is focused on the Caribbean now, but Dr. Pollock said the hope is that it can be used throughout the world.
“The
aim of the work is to develop tools and techniques that are low cost
and don’t require a huge amount of super specialized personnel and
infrastructure,” he said.
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A New Kind of Power
After
Hurricane Maria swept through Puerto Rico last year and knocked out
almost all of its power grid, most residents were left without
electricity for months. Jonathan Marvel,
one of the founders of Marvel Architects, was born and raised in Puerto
Rico. He wanted not only to help bring back power but also do it in a
way that would be more environmentally sustainable than it was before
the storm.
So, with colleagues and friends, he created Resilient Power Puerto Rico, to develop and install solar microgrids for
as many people as he could in the most efficient way possible. The
organization, which received an early donation of batteries from Tesla,
focused its efforts on areas with high-density, low-rise housing and
installed the grids on rooftops of community centers that typically
serve 3,000 to 4,000 people.
Their work complements other efforts not only to rebuild the island but also to make its infrastructure more resilient and environmentally green.
One
benefit of the solar microgrids is that they can store solar power —
allowing them to operate if the main power source is disrupted — which
solar panels alone can’t do.
So far,
28 microgrids have been installed, serving close to 100,000 people, Mr.
Marvel said, and 30 more are almost finished. The cost, covered by
donations from companies and individuals, is about $25,000 to $30,000
per solar hub.
Almost
all of the power on the island is supplied by fossil fuels, but Puerto
Rico is “an ideal locale to use solar power and renewable energy because
it has so many more solar days than in many parts of the world,” said
Mr. Marvel, whose offices are based in Manhattan and San Juan. “We want
to keep the candle burning with solar energy, not fossil fuel.”
The
role that soil plays in climate change is often ignored, but changing
the way it is managed could have a big impact on global warming.
Unfortunately,
most soil has become less productive, with environmental consequences,
said Michael Doane, managing director for agriculture and food systems
at the Nature Conservancy. That’s because it has been eroded through too
much tilling, lack of adequate ground cover and a failure to diversify
crops.
“This living ecosystem has become dead and we’re trying to bring it back to life,” Mr. Doane said.
One
pilot program, now taking place on more than 100 American farms in
about six states, is focused on reducing or eliminating the amount of
tillage done on farms. It is done under the auspices of the Soil Health Partnership, a collaboration of environmental groups, farmers, academics and industry working to alter soil health practices.
“Tillage
is actually detrimental to soil,” he said. One of the main problems is
that tilling releases carbon stored in the soil, which becomes carbon
dioxide when exposed to air and contributes to global warming. Tilling
also makes the earth more susceptible to erosion and less able to absorb
heavy rainfalls.
One solution is
using plants — either rotating crops or using ground cover such as
grass, depending on what’s needed to repair the soil — to cover the soil
before and after the main cash crop is planted. Diverse plant cover has
been found to make the soil healthier and helps control weeds, Mr.
Doane said.
“We want to try to avoid
soil bare of plant cover,” he added. “Instead, our vision is a
continuous living cover.” Calling it “nature’s solution to climate
change,” he said the process of photosynthesis — where plants store the
carbon in the soil and release oxygen — could be “a very cost-effective
way to mitigate climate change.”
This
won’t work on every farm, because each is different, but “we know this
works for many farmers in many situations — we have good data on that,”
Mr. Doane said.
And the process can
make farms more productive by creating soil that can better hold water
and recycle nutrients, meaning farmers can spend less money on
fertilizer.
“If we’re going to solve
climate change,” he said, “We have to find economic solutions for people
who don’t know they’re solving climate change.”
Keeping
cool is becoming more and more difficult as temperatures across the
world spike. In addition, air-conditioning uses hydrofluorocarbons,
which contribute substantially to global warming.
One
solution, which numerous cities around the world have embraced, is
called cool roofs, which is simply painting dark rooftops with a
reflective white paint or wrapping them with a light membrane that
reduces the absorption of heat. This not only addresses the “urban heat
island” effect — urban areas tend to be significantly warmer than
surrounding rural areas due to human activities — but also helps
decrease strain on electric grids and alleviate air pollution.
A Yale University study
cites a finding that if every roof in the United States were painted
white, the urban heat island effect would be decreased by one-third.
New York City, for example, has a CoolRoofs Initiative.
Since 2009, 5,000 volunteers have painted more than five million square
feet of rooftops in the city, according to the Mayor’s Office of
Sustainability.
In India, where only 10 percent of the households have air-conditioning units,
two cities — Hyderabad and Ahmedabad — ran cool-roof demonstration
projects. In Ahmedabad, volunteers and others painted 3,000 roofs in
slum areas with white lime paint, said Anjali Jaiswal, director of the
Natural Resources Defense Council’s India program. The environmental
organization worked on the projects with local partners.
DuPont,
which has a research center in Hyderabad, owns Tyvek, a synthetic
material that is often used in construction and can cover dark roofs.
The company donated the material to cover 25 roofs in the city. Both
paint and the coverings are considered equally effective, Ms. Jaiswal
said.
Cool roofs can reduce indoor
temperature by three to nine degrees Fahrenheit, she added, for as
little as seven cents a square foot or $4 a home.
As
incomes and temperatures rise, so is demand for air-conditioning, she
said. An important aspect of addressing climate change will be both
developing more environmentally friendly units and reducing the demand
for them.
Both Indian cities are now
developing a citywide cool-roofs policy mandating them for all municipal
buildings and working with business leaders’ corporate responsibility
programs to expand them throughout the cities.
For
relatively little cost, Ms. Jaiswal said, cool roofs are “saving lives,
reducing temperatures and responding to climate change.”
Collecting plastic to recycle as a way to earn money is nothing new. But David Katz, founder and chief executive of the Plastic Bank, has created a virtuous cycle of buying and reselling the plastic.
The company’s idea, which last year received one of the United Nations’ “Momentum for Change” climate solutions awards,
aims to stop plastic before it even gets to the ocean by having
collectors pick it up around canals, waterways and other areas that lead
into the ocean. Through partnerships between the Plastic Bank and major
corporations such as the German-based Henkel, the plastic is then reused. That cuts down on the emissions that cause greenhouse gasses used to make new plastic.
According to research
from the nonprofit Earth Day Network, about eight million metric tons
of plastic pollution are discarded into the ocean every year, equivalent
to one garbage truck full of plastics being dumped every minute.
Plastic
Bank, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, started its work in Haiti
three years ago; now about 2,000 collectors there can either receive
cash, buy goods or services — such as cooking oil, LED lights or topping
off pay-as-you-go cellphones — at one of the 40 recycling outlets
around the country. They also have the ability, through the Plastic
Bank’s app developed in partnership with IBM, to transfer the money into
an online savings account.
In Haiti, where more than half the people live on less than $2 a day, a full-time collector can receive several dollars a day, Mr. Katz said.
The company also trains and supports local people who run the recycling outlets.
The
Plastic Bank has expanded to Brazil, and Indonesia; this month, it
opened its first site in the Philippines and in the first week, Mr. Katz
said, collected around 120,000 bottles.
Constance
Okollet had never heard of climate change, but she knew that her
village in Uganda had been devastated by a 2007 flood that affected most
of the country. She knew the weather was growing increasingly
unpredictable, making the farming of the typical crops such as maize,
sorghum and millet ever more difficult and sending a population that had
been poor but self-sufficient spiraling into destitution.
“We
thought God was punishing us,” Ms. Okollet said. She suggested to her
neighbors that they form a group to help one another and was elected to
lead what was soon called the Osukuru United Women Network.
At
first, they helped each other in small ways, such as pooling their
savings. Then in 2009, Ms. Okollet heard on the radio that Oxfam, the global relief organization, was holding a meeting focused on food insecurity in the area, and she decided to go.
Once
at the meeting, she said: “They kept talking about climate change and I
asked, ‘What are you people talking about? What do you mean by that?’”
She
learned. And she and other members of the network (which now includes
some men) have since begun awareness education about climate change —
its impact and how to adapt — through workshops in churches and wherever
people gather.
They have undertaken numerous larger projects as well. The network received a $5,000 grant from the Global Greengrants Fund,
a nonprofit that provides small grants to local groups working on
environmental issues. The money went to buy six teams of oxen, which are
much faster than the traditional hand tilling. An acre can be tilled in
two days, compared with a hoe, which can take four weeks. Ms. Okollet
said. This makes it easier to time the planting to good weather.
Two
years ago, 60 members of the network were also flown to Nairobi, Kenya,
to learn how to make and sell charcoal briquettes; deforestation means
firewood is scarce and the briquettes in any case are greener. They mix
ash, dry leaves and water, which when dried, actually even cook better
than wood, she said.
“We also sell
the briquettes to make money — even $1 can help,” she said. “You can pay
your school fees or start a small business, and you don’t have to take a
loan from the bank.”
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Restoring Peatlands
Peatlands
may not be the first thing people think about when focusing on climate
change, but the abandonment of drained peatlands in parts of Russia has
created not only widespread land degradation, but also huge quantities
of carbon dioxide, through peat oxidation. And carbon dioxide
contributes to global warming.
Over
the decades, millions of acres have been drained and used for
agriculture, forestry and the extraction of peat, a fuel used for
heating and electrical energy. But when it was no longer profitable to
dig out the peat, many of the areas were deserted, said Jozef Bednar,
project manager for Wetlands International.
“Peatland
ecosystems play a crucial role in global climate,” said Dr. Bednar,
noting that they store several times more carbon dioxide, the leading
greenhouse gas than any other ecosystem. As such, he added, “the world’s
peat bogs represent an important ‘carbon sink’ — a place where carbon
dioxide is stored below ground and can’t escape into the atmosphere and
exacerbate global warming.”
Dr.
Bednar offered one staggering number: Peatlands cover only 3 percent of
the global total land area, but emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the
world’s forests, which cover more than 30 percent. The peatlands
drained by people are prone to fires and the accompanying smoke spreads
long distances, creating serious health problems.
Wetlands International, along with its partners under the International Climate Initiative of the German government,
began a major restoration of the peatlands after the extensive peat
fires in the Moscow region in 2010. The goal is to return the peatlands
to their original waterlogged state. With the help of experts, this is
done by correctly blocking drainage ditches and channels so the
peatlands’ water-storage capacity is re-established, Dr. Bednar said.
The project was awarded a United National “Momentum for Change” climate solutions award
last year and, to date, about 100,000 acres of drained peatlands have
been restored in Russia and the process can be replicated in other
countries facing the same problem, he added.
Climate
and climate change are complicated, and while schools are a good place
to learn about it, not all teachers have the knowledge and resources to
teach the topic. That’s why the United States National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and a partnership of federal agencies,
education-focused nongovernmental organizations, teachers and scientists
wrote “The Essential Principles of Climate Literacy,” a curriculum guide for teachers.
Available
since 2009, but in the process of being updated for release at the end
of the year, it is for at all ages and all forms of education, said
Frank Niepold, a senior climate education program manager for NOAA and
lead author of the guide.
“In the
1990s, less than 1 percent of the national standards for science
education was related to climate change. Now about 30 percent is,” he
added.
At the same time, the partnership established a website, Cleanet.org, that offers climate and energy educational resources — including quizzes- and guidance for teachers.
Mr.
Niepold estimated that over 50 percent of children in kindergarten
through 12th grade nationwide are learning from all or some of the
climate literacy framework, and “we’re on our way to 75 percent,” he
said.
Other countries are also using
the guide in creating their own curriculums and standards, he added, and
this month the National Science Teachers Association released its position paper on teaching climate science, referencing the Essentials of Climate Literacy as one of its sources.
“Students
are aware of climate change and want to know more and want to be part
of solving it,” Mr. Niepold said. “And they know that requires an
understanding of the fundamentals.”
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Fighting Energy Poverty
When
Laura Stachel, an obstetrician, took a two-week trip to a remote
hospital in Nigeria 10 years ago, she was interested in maternal health,
not solar energy. But what she saw there changed her mind and her life.
She
knew maternal mortality was high: Worldwide, Dr. Stachel said, about
300,000 women and two million newborns die every year from pregnancy and
childbirth complications. But she did not realize the extent of what
has been called energy poverty.
The
hospital in northern Nigeria that she visited did not have electricity
for 12 hours a day. Daytime cesarean sections were done by ambient
light, and once, when it occurred in the middle of the night and the
power went out, one was performed by the light of Dr. Stachel’s
headlamp.
She told the stories to her
husband, Hal Aronson, who holds a doctorate in environmental sociology
and has focused on solar energy issues for years. He designed and built
what is now called a Solar Suitcase: solar equipment that is easy to
transport, install and use in areas where power supplies are unreliable.
The
kit, the size of a suitcase, comes with everything needed from solar
panels to medical lighting to fetal monitors. As news about the Solar
Suitcases was spreading, Dr. Stachel and Dr. Aronson also started the
nonprofit WeCareSolar, which has received grants from foundations, corporations and individuals. Last year, it received a United Nations “Momentum for Change” climate solutions award.
Working
in partnership with nonprofits and United Nations agencies, about 3,500
facilities in 27 developing countries around the world have received
the Solar Suitcases. It costs $3,000 to support a clinic with a Solar
Suitcase for five years, Dr. Stachel said, including all the equipment,
transportation and training.
The organization also works to train local people to install and maintain solar power.
The
health impact is clear, but so is the impact on the environment, she
said. Diesel fuel generators and kerosene lamps are polluting and
generate carbon dioxide. But perhaps even more important, the move
toward solar would reduce the reliance on fossil fuel — something that
some major American hospitals are now trying to do.
“We could leapfrog right past that and go right to clean, green electricity,” she said.
Supermarkets
around the world are major users of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants,
which contribute to ozone depletion and global warming — and in Chile,
they are the biggest user. So, it is fitting that a supermarket chain
called Jumbo has become the first in the country to adopt new
refrigeration technology that is far more climate friendly than
traditional methods.
The new refrigeration technology uses transcritical CO2,
which is a refrigerant that has a much smaller effect on the ozone
layer and global warming. Hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants had replaced
ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, but because their effects on global
warming are so severe, there has been a worldwide effort to find a
replacement. Hydrofluorocarbons have 1,000 times the heat-trapping
potency of carbon dioxide.
Under the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment,
countries must meet specific targets and timelines to replace
hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants with more environmentally friendly
alternatives.
So far, Jumbo has
installed the systems in three supermarkets in Chile and will convert
four more stores in the near future, said Claudia Paratori Cortés,
coordinator of the Ozone Unit in in the Office of Climate Change in
Chile’s Ministry of Environment.
Ms.
Cortés said comparisons between two types of refrigeration —
transcritical C02 and one containing hydrofluorocarbons — found that the
transcritical C02 systems were 20 percent to 40 percent more energy
efficient, saving around $20,000 annually.
In addition, she said, the residual heat from the transcritical CO2 systems can be used to heat water and therefore save energy.
Links
- Climate change was seen as a threat for the future. Increasingly, it is a reality of the present.
- Rwanda Eyes Biogas to Help Curb Deforestation
- Reaching for a Zero-Emission Goal
- Saving Hummingbirds Is One Small Step in Saving the Planet
- G.E. Steps Into Europe’s Offshore Wind Market
- In Sweden, Trash Heats Homes, Powers Buses and Fuels Taxi Fleets
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