Green in the Face

As I return to the USA after about 15 months, it seems to be a very different place. The moment I landed in Chicago, the first thing that caught my attention were large banners advocating a more sustainable lifestyle. It included the recycle bins which were everywhere in all shapes and sizes including my hotel room. The common trouble however with multiple bins is where to throw what. Our garbage is more complex than the set of three bins and it is impossible to segregate it under 'paper', 'plastic' or 'cans'. For example, this morning, I was carrying my breakfast in a brown bag (100% recycled) from Starbucks for breakfast. When I wanted to throw it, its waste contents included paper wrappers, a plastic knife, plastic cap and few food leftovers. Now the question was, how do i throw it in the three bins. Segregating was a task and top of that I was'nt sure where to put the food, where to put the paper wrapper lined with plastic film and can an already recycled bag be re-recycled. Do I need to separate out the stuff? While these questions did rounds in my mind, i came across anpther interesting bin at Chicago O'hare. This time it came with a compartment to throw any liquid waste separately.

Then there were big posters everywhere, in buildings, taxis, trains and buses suggesting a greener lifestyle. While in Chicago, I saw a transit center with park and ride facility that had two zipcars which were parked closest to the bus stop. At Boston Logan there was even a choice between a gas or a hybrid taxi. I also saw number of bicycles parked on train stations in chicago in months when it wasn't particularly warm and had been raining often. During the conference, I learnt that bike lane program in NYC has seen an increase in ridership by 3-4% in a short time of less than a year.

And this green movement extended all the way to my hotel room. It felt like every action by me was under observation. The hotel came with all amenities but made one think twice before splurging. It had two showers of which one was turned off, but then it's only in USA that a bathroom has two showers next to each other. I could get $5 coupons for each day I would reduce room cleaning service.

It's all good because soon the worst environmental performers in the world wont have any place to escape but to give in.

Environmentally Displaced Migrants: when a name is not a status

Climate Refugees Trailer

Never before in the history of human kind has the population doubled in just forty years. Overpopulation is probably the factor that is multiplying the catastrophic effects of climate change, causing unparalleled tension over the search for new land for people to relocate.

The looting of resources, necessary to feed the insatiable consumerism that has characterized any country in its developing process, has gone too far too fast. Today we are too many, we keep wanting more and more but we are still unable to accept the ”inconvenient truth” that only by sacrificing some and making the best of the technological and economic progress reached so far will the world population be able to avoid devastating conflicts over basic resources such as water and food.

Actually, this is already happening. Millions of people are forced to leave their land because of major environmental catastrophes exasperated by a changing climate. Human migration is nothing new and natural disasters are not a novelty of the 21^st century; however, in present era these two processes have increased in quantity and frequency to such an extent that is unlikely the Earth and societies around the world will stand the present, worsening situation for much longer. “People have always fought for resources, but not to this degree.” said Michael Nash, the director of “Climate Refugees”, a documentary about the “human face” of climate change. “People have always relocated, they have always migrated. There used to be places for them to go; now these people are crossing borders and creating conflicts.”

After travelling in more than 40 countries to make this film, Michael Nash has seen with his own eyes and documented on video for his skeptical fellow citizens back home that millions of people around the world are already suffering the consequences of climate change in their daily life. “If there were a billion people on earth right now we would not be talking about climate change. It's the collision of overpopulation, over consumption, lack of resources in a changing climate that is causing all these people to relocate.” he said. 

The humanitarian consequences of climate change are creating an urgent need to react; in fact, today there are 25 to 50 million climate and environmental refugees, more than political or religious refugees. Certainly, it is necessary to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle and to rely more and faster on alternative sources of energy in order to limit the damages and to buffer what seems like a hopeless situation. However, at the moment the emergency concerns the urgent need to give a legal status to these “new” migrants, people who are currently not taken into account by any of the international agreements on the protection of refugees.

“In Africa, people are crossing the Mediterranean and a lot of them are considered economic refugees, but when you dig into what caused their economy to collapse, you will find that they can no longer grow food. Either through deforestation, climate change...

I believe that when you add it all together, these people are partially economic, partially environmental refugees, and there is not a single law that gives these people protection.” Michael Nash added. Climate refugees are left at the mercy of unstable weather conditions, unstable governments and societies and not only are they ejected from their own country, but they are also rejected by all the other countries in the world because of a legal void and simple logistic reasons: how to accommodate them all? “It's a mess and nobody has a solution to this issue. For instance, what to do with an island that is mathematically going to be submerged by water in the next 20 years? Do you give its inhabitants some million dollars to buy a piece of land and move to this new property? But where? Or do you bring in engineers and start build a sea wall so that these people can live there for another 100 years?” Michael Nash argued.

The adaptation and mitigation of policies in an already very delicate and unsolved issue, namely the implementation of migrants’ and asylum seekers' rights, is creating unprecedented tensions. The lack of legal recognition has so far allowed many governments to simply ignore the problem or to tackle it as an “ordinary” matter of cyclic mass migration. Nevertheless, this is no ordinary physical process and it will reach higher and higher figures that demand imminent action.

It seems the international community is finally realizing there is a new wave of displaced people who do not fit into any category and there starts to be the need of a specific approach to this issue. In fact, the UN has recently given climate refugees an official name, baptizing them Environmentally Displaced Migrants. In our institutional system having a name is the first step towards getting recognized and acquiring an identity. However, a name does not give a status and neither does it give basic human rights. 


Article by collaborator Marcella Segre (www.margeye.info)

Interdependence is Sustainability

The Mesh by Lisa Gansky is a recent book on the business of sharing. The consumption economics is being rewritten in the current global scenario where everyone is looking for an answer that could sustain the future of mankind. This book gives numerous practical examples where new business models are reducing human consumption, increasing community usage and improving quality of the products. The planet should move away from use and throw tendencies which are a drain on our resources and reuse/ recycle is making sense more and more sense. In poorer countries it happens naturally as the very poor of society can make a living out of trash collection and recycling (though the methods adopted may not be very sustainable). While in the rich world, it is hard to make recycling feasible with higher costs and lack of will associated with it. The Mesh talks about products that are essential but seldom use and can therefore be brought into the public domain for sharing from the private domain of individual use. The book gives examples of old product types from cars to clothes to tools to real estate being available for shared usage. 


A recommended read to keep oneself updated with business strategies in the new cyber-age.

Green Roofs as strategy to mitigate city problems (Part 2)

Following to what we said last week, about how good green roofs worked to mitigate Heat Island Effect, one of the biggest challenges of cities nowadays, we want to continue explaining how good they perform as well, when we talk about another huge city problem:
Water Storm Management.

Climate change is altering the natural water cycles and the rain patterns in mostly every part of the planet. It is increasing the seasonality of rainfall and risk of flooding. When this happens in a natural environment, the native soil by absorbs and filters the water thru its permeable condition, but in urban areas the impervious flooring materials and buildings structures send all the water directly to the underground drainage causing peak flows that damage dramatically the infrastructure. The risk of localised flooding effects is bigger therefore in the cities. Images of flooding all around the world are common now in our daily newspaper cause climate change, and the amount of them will just increase.

Green roofs reduce the amount of storm water run-off and mitigate the peak flow rates. In summer a green roof can typically retain between 70-80 % of the rainfall run off. (Living Roofs and Walls Technical Report. London 2008)

In cities, "green roofs" are a great method to help out reduce the Heat Island Effects and the Water Storm Effects, but beyond that, green roofs are excellent for other reasons. They increase the biodiversity of a place and they enhance the quality of the space. If combined with Solar Panels, they increase the efficiency of the photocells as they help keep them cooler thru the evapotranspiration. 

The fact that there are being installed mostly in temperate climate places such as Germany, doesn’t mean though that they perform worst in desserts or in other climates. In fact, as insulators, green roofs have a very high efficiency in hot climates, reducing the cooling loads of a building that would save energy demand.
The cost of the green roof in this case with the irrigation system that needs should be measured against those potential annual energy savings and the reduction of the cooling system. Intensive roofs perform as good as extensive roofs, but the cost, the irrigation demand and the maintenance is so high that is not recommended on dry climates.
In tropical climates, in places such as Singapore, green roofs will be great efficient since there will be no need for irrigation system and very little maintenance. Intensive roofs are more cost efficient here and they will provide their own benefits as enhance biodiversity and amenity space to increase the value of the property.
In cold climates such as Germany, green roofs are not so efficient as insulators but in a city context and done extensively they do contribute to mitigate heat island effects, water storm discharge and in the summer time help to reduce the cooling loads of the building. They don’t need irrigation system but they need insulation panels. Extensive roofs can be used as much as intensive roofs as they are both liable.

In Mediterranean climates, if done in a large scale, green roofs can help thru evapotranspiration to increase the amount of precipitation inland, as they raise the amount of humidity in the air, which is another big consequence of the dense urbanization in the coast areas. (Estudios Ambientales del Mediterraneo studies done by Millan Muñoz)

In general terms, we can say that Green Roofs are good for many reasons and they should be considered to be used almost in every situation. 

Go to www.livingroofs.org for further information. 

Image from ACROS Fukuoka Project in Japan.
Source: http://www.metaefficient.com/architecture-and-building/amazing-green-building-the-acros-fukuoka.html#more

Green Roofs as strategy to mitigate city problems (Part 1)

In the 21^st Century, the human species have chosen cities as the dominant place to live. In 2008 it was the first time in history of human kind that urban population equalled rural population. By 2050, urban population is expected to be the 70% of the total. This data means that nowadays almost 4 billion people live in cities and by 2050 will reach 6’5 billion. (Source: United Nations “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision)

Giving the number of issues most world cities present, and knowing that they will continue to increase in size, it is essential to research and work on possible strategies to mitigate city problems. 

The use and promotion of green roofs right now is essentially focused on the mitigation of two mayor city challenges: Heat urban effect and water storm effect.

Heat Island Effect is essentially the result of an increasing of temperature within the city area due to the high mass paving and the buildings covering the natural soil. Recent studies done by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2008) show that the temperature of urban areas rises up directly proportional to the number of people that live in them.

When choosing materials to cover the urban grid and to rise up its buildings, human have created a very extended impervious surface that act as radiators absorbing sun heat during the day and radiating it at night. Nowadays with climate change and the increase of the world’s temperature, urban heat island effect is becoming so much more prominent and intense. It causes in humans a high level of thermal discomfort and is directly proportional to the increase in the usage of Air Conditioning systems in the cities.

Green Roofs are presented as one the best solutions to mitigate Heat Island Effects. They provide a pervious surface that traps the heat and thanks to their evapotranspiration they cool up the air.

The design and installation of a green roof, must be done by a professional who would recommend what type of green roof to use, extensive, semi-extensive or intensive, what type of plants to use (better native adaptive species) and what are the extra needs for it to work properly. Normally in a cold climate, it is necessary to install insulation panel in addition to the green roof. And in hot and dry climates, it is necessary to intall irrigation system that can collect water from the rain.

If every city in the world had this ancient technique, which romantically means that you return the stolen soil to the Earth after placing a building over it, the temperature peaks would be more moderate reducing the cooling loads during summer, and the heat island effect would not be the big problem it is now.

Green Roofs are worth it. 

Review the climate chart with green systems benefits and conditions that GUASL has prepared after doing an extensive research on how well Green Roofs perform in different climates to make sure you know what you will get depending on your region.

Will Shrinking Our Wealth Shrink Our Footprint

While on a recent trip to Mumbai, I found myself stuck in a traffic jam. Nothing unusual about the traffic jam, but unusual was to find my compact taxi surrounded by three luxury cars. This strange congregation of cars was a reflection of the change India has seen in the last decade by generating immense amount of new wealth. This prompted the driver to break into a conversation. He sighed with a little frustration on not being able to move and remarked,” Saheb (for Mister), you know these rich guys sitting in these big cars, they must have spent millions to buy large apartments in high rise towers, and their homes must be stuffed with all kinds of expensive items, but still unsatisfied, they come down in their big cars and jam the roads. Why don’t they enjoy their large air conditioned apartments and leave the roads for the taxis.” (This sentence has been edited for a few abusive words which show his level of frustration).


It took me a while to understand the real meaning of what he meant. This uneducated (this I found in further conversations along my trip) driver had understood the crux of our problem, which is our ‘consumption footprint’. And as the world economies are generating more wealth, lead by the Asian economies, their environmental footprint is swelling tremendously. In 2007, China overtook USA to become the leading emitter of carbon-di-oxide in the world, much faster and earlier than anyone had predicted.

The relationship between increased wealth and consumerism is a no brainer. When we have more money, we will spend more. A report published in Women of China magazine shows that Chinese women (in 10 Chinese Cities) spent 63% of their income on shopping last year as opposed to spending only 26% of their incomes in 2007. I left India for higher education almost 7 years ago. And in this short time, most middle class urban families now have homes that are air conditioned, equipped with flat screen televisions, dvd players and music systems, have multiple cellphones, own a car or two and travel on vacations more often. Even though the cars have become more fuel efficient with stricter emission norms, but their numbers have risen phenomenally keeping the city air quality still at dangerous levels. I on the other hand have moved across three countries in this period of time and have tried to keep my consumption similar as before. However, my footprint has still increased substantially on a per capita basis by living in consumption oriented economies. My ecological footprint increased by 11 times when I moved from India to the United States and is currently 5 times that of India when I am in Singapore.


The point is that as consumption increases, production follows to fulfil the demand. Environmental degradation is an externality of this process of consumption and production. The most visible of this externality is the increased deforestation and industrial pollution. According to a study by Norwegian University of Technology, a 100% increase in per capita expenditure, increases the CO2 footprint by 81%. In a world where a mere 2% of individuals hold more than 50% of the global wealth ( 2006 study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University), imagine their environmental footprints and the impact of which is borne most by the poorest 50% who own only 1% of the global wealth.

Now, the other side to this is the book titled Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalist: A Conservative Manifesto. Published in 1999, Peter Huber’s hypothesis is that wealth leads to environmental conservation. According to him, this is primarily achieved because wealthy nations and wealthy individuals spend their money on environmental conservation. There can be some degree of truth here, but the fact remains that the spending on environmental conservation comes only after one has amassed the wealth through production processes which are environmentally damaging. A recent list by CNN on top 10 green corporate giants has Honda, Continental Airlines and Suncor on top. CNN defines these as firms that have gone beyond law and reulation to operate in an environmentally responsible way. The irony is that all these firms for decades have either produced energy in a harmful manner or have given us options to consume the same by causing environmental damage. Taking similar analogy forward, the United States has for decades enjoyed a lifestyle of extreme consumerism and has been the biggest contributor to environmental harm in the world. At the same time, it has come to establish a system of environmental laws which are amongst the most stringent in the world and has institutional bodies that are leading global research on eco-friendly technologies. India, China and other growing economies are going through a similar cycle of generating wealth and increased consumerism. As per Huber’s hypothesis, they may someday in future start to spend a fraction of their wealth towards environmental conservation and mending the damage to the planet. A recent study by the National University of Singapore rates Singapore as the worst environmental offender amongst 179 countries. According to the study, in past 30 years of economic growth in Singapore, it has lost 90 percent of its original forest cover, 67 percent of its bird species, about 40 percent of its mammals and 5 percent of its amphibians and reptiles. At the same time, Singapore is also a model for other global cities for sustainable development with its affordable public housing, greenery, cleanliness, efficient public transportation system and high quality of life.


Can the entire world afford to take the same path to development which the countries in the past have done? In 2008, 1.2 billion people resided in regions defined as more developed by the United Nations. We know what has it cost the planet earth to give these people their current lifestyle. Can the remaining 5.5 billion people go through the same cycle of consumption, production and environmental damage? Many like me fear the consequences of our aspirations. Should we then stop generating new wealth and let the world be in a status quo of rich being rich and poor being poor? Or should we all start to get poorer and arrive at the threshold of sustainability? None of these are correct answers and possibly there isn’t one. There may be a way out if we can redistribute our wealth and overcome our desires to consume.

Credits: Mumbai Traffic image by tr!ckster. http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrick_tully/277283831/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Why Architecture must move towards sustainability? (Part 2)

A few weeks ago we started this “post series” explaining the big impact architecture had in the environment and the reasons why we must work on designs that recover its architectural essence and avoid the big emissions buildings produce now a days.

But, the question is:

HOW DO I MAKE A SUSTAINABLE BUILDING?

Besides the conditions and premises that any building with different uses states (is not the same to design a single house than a hospital building), there are several identical rules every architect should be able to apply to any of their designs.

1.    Understand the environment of the site. Climatology, orientation, local available sources for materials, traditional local construction techniques, etc. and design in order to adapt the building to those surroundings. Usually, the traditional local construction techniques have been improved and developed thru years to adapt the buildings to that area in particular.

Please, abandon the idea that you can design anything you want and then fill it up with high consuming machines to acclimatize the rooms. This is a mistake. We must consume less energy in our buildings.

2.    Never over dimension a building just for the fact of making the “King Size” effect. Bigger doesn’t mean better.

3.    Investigate deeper on design strategies that help to make buildings more and more efficient and environmental friendly. There are thousands of amazing solutions and techniques, and thousand more that are coming up everyday. In the Diagrammatic Section GUASL has made for this post, you can find a few of them, some very basic, some more sophisticated, but all of them out in the market to be used and improved.

4.    You can go for a Rating System such as LEED, BREAM, GREEN MARK, GREEN STAR and let them guide you thru the process of making a sustainable building. Those Certifications are made to standardize and give you a rating based on the performance of your building compared to a baseline. Taking a look thru any of its checklists and reference guide books will give you a very extended idea of how could you design greener. After achieving an award on any of this rating system, your building will be internationally recognised for its sustainable performance and you will save a lot of money afterwards in consumption.

5.    There are other fields that are actively investigating on new things for design strategies. Biomimicry Guild is a science that takes solutions from nature and applies them to solve human problems. They have fascinating stuff. Here you can find an example and see what I am talking about.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/12/10/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/

The Architecture Revolution has begun. Come on in.