Termites

This is a cross section of a termite nest. It consists of two parts. The outer skin is made out of thick ground and absorbs the heat of the sun. The nest itself is lifted, and is cooled by air that first is led through the ground water. As a result of the heat produced inside of the nest by thousands of termites, the air rises and escapes the nest through a hole in at the top. True sustainable building.

Did you know by the way, that the total biomass of all the ants on the planet is larger than the total of human biomass? Ants however blend in the planetary organism. We disturb it. We’re not overcrowding the planet. We’re just not blending in. Yet.

Blacksmith Institute

The Blacksmith Institute, an NGO that maps pollution around the world, published a list of the 10 most polluted places in the world. It is quite encouraging the Brazilian city of Cubatão, which I wrote about here and which was considered to be the most polluted city in the 80s, does not longer appear on the list.

More: Blacksmith Institute, Treehugger

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Destructive vs. Constructive Collaboration

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Swarm Theory and Organic Urbanism

In National Geographic this month I read an interesting article about swarm theory and self organising systems. It describes how for example a school of fish is able to make quick decisions by making use of collective intelligence. Basically they apply to three basic rules: 1) avoid crowding nearby fishes, 2) swim in the average direction of nearby fishes, and 3) stay close to nearby fishes. This results in the typical behaviour of a school of fish (or a swarm of birds) that we know from TV. Robots that were operated by the same rules showed similar behaviour, and the logarithm is now being used for animation too.

It would be interesting to see what swarm theory would mean to informal urbanism (slums) as a self organising system. Previously I already concluded that slums show fractal behaviour, and that slum structures, when they connect to an existing urban grid, have more chance to grow into mature city neighbourhoods. We could stimulate the self organising tendency of slums development to impose some basic rules to the dwellers when they build their homes. Connecting to the existing urban street grid could be one of them, as well as connecting to a main street of a certain minimal dimension for easy access of sanitary and emergency services (or police for that matter). Also, maximum dimensions of a city block could be defined as well as a percentage of green or open spaces. This way, swarm theory could provide in a basic framework that can potentially grow into a mature city, without too much policy or pre-investment.

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Eco tour Campo Grande – Bonito – Miranda (2/2)

See here for part 1

We had rented a Volkswagen Gol (aka Golf) for our tour from Campo Grande to Bonito to Miranda and back, respectively 295 km (5 hours) 154 km (4 hours) and 234 km (4 hours). The stretch from Bonito to Miranda was rough terrain, especially for a Volkswagen Gol and not surprisingly the few cars we met during our journey were all pick-ups. But even though we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere sometimes, at every gas station, however remote, we were able to take ethanol for our car. Our car was Brazilian built and Total Flex, which means it ran both fuel and ethanol, and in any mixture. This made quite an impression on me, especially as the first ethanol pump in my home country (The Netherlands) was opened just last year. As I already mentioned here ethanol can be considered sustainable in particular because it is less polluting than other bio fuels like bio diesel produced out of soy. The only concern is that sugar cane for ethanol production could contribute to the further destruction of the Amazon, especially now the Lula governement has announced it wants to be a world leader and -exporter in ethanol production. Let’s just hope sugar cane production won’t have the same effect on the Amazon as soy production had.

In Miranda we stayed at a farm that was specialized in eco tourism. It was surrounded by 4000 hectares of wetland with a rich population of passaros (birds), arara’s (papagaios), jacare’s (kaimans) sucuri’s (anaconda’s) aranja’s (spiders), ariranja’s (giant otters), capivara’s and macaco’s (apes). It is interesting to see many of the animal names are indians names that are still in use. One of our guides was of Indian descendent and it was impressive to see how he was able to spot animals miles away and was able to communicate with them.

The history of the farm was quite interesting. The family owning the farm had started about 12 years ago cultivating rice in the Pantanal with money of a government program. But in rain season the water rose, leaving the farm on an island and all the rice paddies in deep water. Soon it became clear the effort of the family was failing and they plummeted into debts, as they had to pay the government money back. Their next try was cattle, but once again the rain spoiled the effort. Almost in despair the third choice of the family became eco tourism and the farm started to prosper. Nowadays the farm on the island is a refuge of tranquility. It is an interesting example on the important role tourism can play in the preservation of nature.

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Eco tour Campo Grande – Bonito – Miranda (1/2)

I’ve been spending some weeks in Brazil, and took a week to do some eco tourism in Mato Grosso do Sul state, near Bolivia’s border. The region is primarily known for agriculture and the Pantanal, a nature reserve area. Pantanal literally means swamp and is said to have more biodiversity per square kilometre than the Amazon has. We left for Bonito by car from state capital Campo Grande.

The route lead us through vast fields of soy and sugarcane and along the route we were trying to spot some wild animals. We did meet some, like wandering groups of emu’s, toucans passing by and an ant eater trying to hide for us. Soon it became clear to us that we had most chances to spot the animals in the messy roadside bushes, rather than the road shoulders along the soy and cane fields. I might be rather obvious but for an urban dweller like me it was quite a revelation to realize that these vast fields of crops had little to do with nature or diversity. Instead, it was monoculture on a large scale, with no place for animals. These were just to be found on the small and isolated parts of ‘wasteland’ in between the enormous fazenda’s (ranches), or at the spots where the terrain was too steep to cultivate.

Also, along the road shoulders, we would meet many dwellings made of wasted wood or clay with roofs made of palm tree leaves. These were the homes of the landless workers, usually working on the fazenda’s as day workers. The landless workers fight for the right to cultivate land, usually radically, embracing communism, this way alienating themselves from mainstream politics.

We just met another car every half an hour while we moved on and my mind started wandering. Mono cultural and large scale agriculture seemed to result in an imbalance for both man and beast at Brazil’s countryside. It would be interesting to know what small scale agriculture would mean for both problems. The rural workers would be able to cultivate land individually and independently. Similarly the bushes at the small pieces of wasteland would be distributed more equally, which would stimulate animal diversity. Diversity is nature’s strategy to survival and provides flexibility through interdependency. Any fluctuation in the environment, for example as a result of climate change, could be dealt with. It would make Brazil’s nature less vulnerable, as well as its rural social fabric.

It proves the statement of William McDonough when he says all sustainability, like politics, is local.

To be continued…

Picture: Blue sky, green soy, red dust. A crossing with signs for fazenda’s in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state.

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