Once a largely rural country, China now has more than 100 cities with populations of over a million people, and all that building on former farmland has led to a major downside, flooding. But instead of constructing big barriers like others have done, China is turning back to nature for the solution, upgrading its cities so that they welcome the water rather than hold it back.
China is rebuilding the Great Wall of China. However, now they build not with stones, mortar, sand and rubble, designed to stop the enemy hordes. Nowadays they build with trees. Just like the wall erected many years ago, the world’s largest man-made forest should stop the enemy that China has been fighting for many years and which is no less dangerous than the problem of overpopulation. This enemy is the desert that occupies most of eastern China and continues to grow non-stop.
During the spring and summer months, the birdsong on Knepp estate is a glorious cacophony of sound.
Walking through the scrubland of this 3,500-acre estate in West Sussex in the south of England, it’s hard to believe the tangled thickets and rugged pastures were once orderly arable fields.
The estate, which includes a 19th century castle, has belonged to the Burrell family for over 200 years. Charlie Burrell inherited it in 1985, when he was just 21.
“I came out of agricultural college incredibly enthusiastic about farming,” he says. “We’d been taught that conventional farming can work.”
But by the late 1990s, with the farm producing low yields and costs rising, the estate was facing serious financial trouble.
Burrell realized that the farm occupied “very poor agricultural land” and was destined never to produce high yields.
“I got to the point when I just felt that I couldn’t go on, because we actually were beginning to lose serious money,” says Burrell. “I needed to change and to change radically.”
Burrell and his wife, Isabella Tree, decided to turn to nature for a solution and in 2001, set about “rewilding” the estate. Knepp is now home to an astonishing array of biodiversity and has become a celebrated conservation success story, attracting many rare species and transforming the landscape from English country farm to untamed wilderness.
“We were living in a biological desert,” says Tree. “Now, ecologists are blown away all the time by just the amount of life here.”
Read the whole article by Hazel Pfeifer in CNN.
REV Ocean is focussed on reversing negative environmental conditions in the ocean by increasing knowledge and developing concrete sustainable solutions.
From understanding to sustainable solutions with four unprecedented ocean initiatives:
1) Exploring our blue planet with the world’s largest and most advanced research and expedition vessel.
https://www.revocean.org/vessel/
2) Connecting data, people & technology to drive sustainable ocean governance and blue economy. Constructing an intelligent, all-encompassing and open-access Ocean Data Platform.
https://www.oceandata.earth/
https://www.revocean.org/platform/oceandata/
Video: https://vimeo.com/367752466
3) Gathering decision-makers, NGOs, scientific communities and other key stakeholders at the World Ocean Headquarters at Fornebu, Oslo.
https://www.revocean.org/headquarters/woh/
4) The Plastic REVolution Foundation has been established to find the best opportunities to support Ghana and pilot solutions that can be scaled-up globally.
https://www.revocean.org/plast_ghana/
The circular economy is more than just a buzz phrase. With the global population predicted to approach 9 billion people by 2030, we are using more resources than the planet can provide. Our future depends on reusing what we have in a sustainable way. Fortunately one resource that is unlimited is innovation, and many companies are developing ingenious ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Image: Ellen MacArthur Foundation
The World Economic Forum and the Forum of Young Global Leaders, in collaboration with Accenture Strategy, recognized the best of them at The Circulars. There were 450 applications from 45 countries. Here are 12 of the best:
Winnow
We’re used to smart meters measuring electricity and water. But now British start-up Winnow has developed smart meters that analyse our trash. They are used in commercial kitchens to measure what food gets thrown away, and then identify ways to reduce waste. Up to a fifth of food purchased can be wasted in some kitchens, and Winnow has managed to cut that in half in hundreds of kitchens across 40 countries, saving its customers over $25 million each year in the process. That is the equivalent of preventing one meal from going to waste every seven seconds. This innovation earned Winnow the Circular Economy Tech Disruptor Award.
DyeCoo
The textiles industry uses vast quantities of water and chemicals and produces huge amounts of toxic waste, which is a major problem in countries like China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Thailand. But Dutch company DyeCoo has developed a process of dyeing cloth that uses no water at all, and no chemicals other than the dyes themselves. It uses highly pressurised “supercritical” carbon dioxide, halfway between a liquid and a gas, that dissolves the dye and carries it deep into the fabric. The carbon dioxide then evaporates, and is in turn recycled and used again. 98% of the dye is absorbed by the cloth, giving vibrant colours. And because the cloth doesn’t need to dry, the process takes half the time, uses less energy, and even costs less. The company already has partnerships with major brands like Nike and IKEA.
Read the rest of the article by Alex Thornton in World Economic Forum.
From Nas Daily:
I put my heart and soul into this video. I hope you it inspires you like it inspired me.
It’s the story of the country that impressed me the most out of all the countries I’ve been to. I hope their story gets you more excited like it got me more excited.
Because if they can, then we can.
About Nas:
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I put my heart and soul into this video. I hope you it inspires you like it inspired me. It's the story of the country that impressed me the most out of all the countries I've been to. I hope their story gets you more excited like it got me more excited.Because if they can, then we can. INSTAGRAM: @NasDailyGROUP: Nas Daily GlobalThank you to every single Singaporean for helping make this video possible. And thank you to Project Nightfall and Dear Alyne for going on this journey with me.
Slået op af Nas Daily i Søndag den 16. september 2018
Science has a long and storied history of looking for one thing but finding something better instead. Penicillin, radioactivity, science boxes…I mean microwave ovens — all of these discoveries came in the the search for something else. Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee announced that they too had unintentionally discovered something incredible: a means of transforming carbon dioxide directly into ethanol using a single catalyst…
Read the rest of the article by Andrew Tarantola in Engadget.
A physicist in Fermilab, Arden Warner, has somehow managed to come up with a brilliant solution, one that does not involve chemical agents. The method is so simple and non-destructive way of collecting oil spills and uses abundant and naturally occurring earth minerals – Magnetite.
Though oil is non-magnetic, adding powdered magnets, they were able to get them attracted in clumps as magnets adhered to the sticky mess. In turn, the magnetites carried the oil, cleaning the spill in a way that was so simple and yet so effective.
Read the whole article by Ronie Bayron in The Green Optimistic.