One of my personal heroes, Maude Barlow, recently gave a great speech at the Environmental Grantmakers Association entitled: We are Facing the Greatest Threat to Humanity: Only Fundamental Change Can Save Us. The full speech is a long, but moving read, about the challenges the world faces and what we can do. It has been published in full online at AlterNet. Here are two excerpts:

Part of the problem:

The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity has ever faced…I do not think it possible to exaggerate the threat to our earth and every living thing upon it. Quite simply we cannot continue on the path that brought us here. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them…From the perspective of the environmental movement, I see two problems that hinder us in our work to stop this carnage. The first is that, with notable exceptions, most environmental groups either have bought into the dominant model of development or feel incapable of changing it. The main form of environmental protection in industrialized countries is based on the regulatory system, legalizing the discharge of large amounts of toxics into the environment…The second problem with our movement is one of silos. For too long environmentalists have toiled in isolation from those communities and groups working for human and social justice and for fundamental change to the system.

Part of the solution:

The global water justice movement (of which I have the honour of being deeply involved) is, I believe, successfully incorporating concerns about the growing ecological water crisis with the promotion of just economic, food and trade policies to ensure water for all. We strongly believe that fighting for equitable water in a world running out means taking better care of the water we have, not just finding supposedly endless new sources…Similarly, a fresh and exciting new movement exploded onto the scene in Copenhagen and set all the traditional players on their heads. The climate justice movement whose motto is Change the System, Not the Climate, arrived to challenge not only the stalemate of the government negotiators but the stale state of too cosy alliances between major environmental groups, international institutions and big business – the traditional “players” on the climate scene…

I deeply believe it is time for us to extend these powerful new movements, which fuse the analysis and hard work of the environmental community with the vision and commitment of the justice community, into a whole new form of governance that not only challenges the current model of unlimited growth and economic globalization but promotes an alternative that will allow us and the Earth to survive. Quite simply, human-centred governance systems are not working and we need new economic, development, and environmental policies as well as new laws that articulate an entirely different point of view from that which underpins most governance systems today. At the centre of this new paradigm is the need to protect natural ecosystems and to ensure the equitable and just sharing of their bounty. It also means the recovery of an old concept called the Commons…

A central characteristic of the Commons is the need for careful collaborative management of shared resources by those who use them and allocation of access based on a set of priorities. A Commons is not a free-for-all. We are not talking about a return to the notion that nature’s capacity to sustain our ways is unlimited and anyone can use whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want. It is rooted rather in a sober and realistic assessment of the true damage that has already been unleashed on the world’s biological heritage as well as the knowledge that our ecosystems must be managed and shared in a way that protects them now and for all time.

Barlow continues talking about solutions with sections on “Inspiring Successes Around the Globe” and “What Can We Do Right Now?” And in reference to Tolkein, another one of my heroes, she ends with a quote from the Lord of the Rings:

This is Gandalf speaking the night before he faces a terrible force that threatens all living beings. His words are for you.

“The rule of no realm is mine, but all worthy things that are in peril, as the world now stand, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair, or bear fruit, and flower again in the days to come.

For I too am a steward, did you not know?”

Read the full speech here.

(Thanks to Jay Walljasper for the tip!)

More stories about or from Maude Barlow in the Worldchanging archives:

• 3 World Water Wins | Maude Barlow, Anil Naidoo, and Meera Karunananthan, 23 Jun 10
  
• The Next Decade’s Top Sustainability Trends | Warren Karlenzig, 5 Jan 10
  
• Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water | WorldChanging Team, 11 Aug 09
  
• CanadaChanging: Tell us who you listen to | WorldChanging Team, 19 Jul 06

Help us change the world – DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Amanda Reed in Water at 10:45 AM)

Dr. Dickson Despommier, a former professor at Columbia University and champion of vertical farming, has released a new book on The Vertical Farm Project. The book puts forth his argument about the future of urban agriculture through vertical farms.

Worldchanging has covered the debate over vertical farms quite a bit (see the list at the end of this post for links), and the idea is certainly a controversial one. I’ve not yet read the book, but it would be interesting to know if Despommier addresses some of the challenges to the concept pointed out by others, such as the need for a proven business model for wide-scale application, and how vertical farms can grow food without herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers and operate in a low-carbon way despite high energy needs.
/
The video below shows Despommier introducing his ideas about vertical farms as a “closed loop agricultural cycle” that provides safe food and water to growing urban population:

See these stories in the Worldchanging archives for more on the worldchanging potential of vertical farms, an actual small scale application, and some of the criticism the concept must address to really be brought to scale:

• LA Half-Way House Starts Vertical Farm | Sarah Kuck, 25 Aug 08

  Since moving into the Los Angles half-way house two years ago, residents of the Rainbow Apartments have been devising a plan to start their own urban garden. After a few trials and errors, the novice gardeners have now succeeded in creating a 34-foot-long plot bursting with strawberries, tomatoes, basil and other herbs and vegetables, which grow vertically against their cinder block building. ¶ In addition to providing them with fresh, nutritious food, the residents have found that the garden has given them a way to connect with each other and build a supportive community…



• Cities are for People: The Limits of Localism | Adam Stein, 8 Aug 08

  Columbia Professor Dickson Despommier has generated a fair amount of attention with his concept for “vertical farms,” stacked, self-contained urban biosystems that would — theoretically — supply fresh produce for city residents year round. The New York Times showcased outlandish artists’ conceptions of what such farms might look like. Colbert did his shtick. Twelve pilot projects are supposedly under consideration, in locations as far-flung as China and Dubai. ¶ The concept has captured the imagination of at least the sliver of the public (including the editors at Worldchanging), who laments the enormous resource demands of our food production system and yearns for something easier on the land, easier on our aquifers, and less demanding of fossil fuels. Vertical farms seem to promise all that. ¶ Promising, of course, is different than delivering. Construction requires a lot of energy. Keeping vegetables warm in winter requires a lot of energy. Recycling water requires a lot of energy. Generating artificial sunlight requires a lot of energy. In other words, the secret ingredient that makes vertical farms work (assuming they work at all) is boatloads of energy. No one seems to have actually done the math on the monetary and environmental costs of such a scheme, but they would no doubt be considerable. ¶ Perhaps those costs pencil out (although they almost certainly do not), but the plausibility of the idea itself is in some ways beside the point. Whatever the merits of vertical farms, the enthusiasm with which this idea has been received suggests that we’re becoming mightily reductive in the way that we think about sustainability…



• Rewilding Canada | Karl Schroeder, 01 Jul 2007

  …to focus on just one technology, let’s look at the potential impact of vertical farming. ¶ There’s a great site introducing the concept called, logically enough, the vertical farm project. This site will give you an extensive introduction to the idea of doing intensive hydroponics agriculture in urban hi-rises, and it includes a lot of architectural plans, systems analyses and hard numbers. Cost is somewhat skirted-around, but doesn’t appear to be prohibitive when you factor in the fertilizer, pesticide, transportation and storage costs of our current mode of production. ¶ It seems crazy to talk about farming in a hi-rise; the vision it gives rise to is of a kind of student-residence crammed with pot-smoking hippies who’ve traded their carpets for wheat. In fact, the approach is pretty hard-nosed and industrial, with very high outputs as its aim. And here’s where it gets interesting from the point of view of our ambition to rewild the country: in the study entitled “Feeding 50,000 People, Anisa Buck, Stacy Goldberg and others conclude that a single building covering one city block, and up to 48 stories high depending on the design, can grow enough food to sustain 50,000 people. This calculation doesn’t require any magical technology; there’s no fairy-dust being evoked here, we could build such a structure now. ¶ So, let’s do the math…



• More Infrastructural Greening | Sarah Rich, 9 Apr 07

  It’s hard to tire of projects that involve wallpapering, paneling, and roofing urban structures with plant life. Though it’s becoming a more common design approach for enhancing air quality, catching runoff, highlighting the “green” aspects of a building, and sometimes even providing food, it always has an unexpected effect, accustomed as we are to surfaces made with impermeable and dull materials…[the concept of vertical farming] had a recent update in New York Magazine.Since we discussed the concept, developed by Dickson Despommier, who teaches environmental science and microbiology at Columbia, a whole lot more people are on board with the climate change issue. So his proposal to put agriculture into skyscrapers and reallocate land to forests in the interested of sequestering carbon and slowing global warming now has the attention of more than just design junkies and eco-imagineers. It’s become an attractive possibility to venture capitalists from all over the world. The idea factors in not only the climate aspect, but also impending population explosions, looking at taking food cultivation upwards instead of outwards as it grows to accommodate greater numbers of people



• Vertical Farming | Alex Steffen, 26 Jun 05

  On an urban planet, closing urban resource and energy loops — creating zero-waste systems for meeting the needs of people who live in highly dense cities — floats in front of us, grail-like, as a goal. ¶ No one quite knows how to get it done, yet. But more and more interesting pieces of the puzzle are piling up, like smart places, smart grids and product service systems…Here’s another piece of the puzzle — vertical farming:…it’s a provocative idea, and might fit together with some of the innovations discussed above in novel and worldchanging ways.

Help us change the world – DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Amanda Reed in Green Building at 1:45 PM)