Game Changers
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Urban Ocean Lab. Illustration by Nourie Flayhan.
Meet the innovators who are pushing change forward from the lab to landfill
Words by Dr. Maytha Alhassen
As we face an uncertain future due to the effects of climate change, where can we turn for solutions? Where are some of the innovative answers coming from? Dr Maytha Alhassen spoke to three innovators who are developing solutions by invoking a circular economy philosophy, harnessing Najavo ethno-agriculture and redesigning cities to prepare for rising sea levels. Through their work each of these scientists and agriculture experts are innovating their fields and decolonising scientific and social practices with a view to creating a more sustainable future at scale.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Urban Ocean Lab
As a society, we are completely unprepared for rising sea level and intensifying storms. 40% of Americans (and rising) live in coastal cities. Sea levels have risen a foot over the last century and some places will no longer be inhabitable in our near future, so it’s time to consider moving people and infrastructure out of harm's way (as in a managed or planned retreat). We need to think for, plan and design the future we want with the knowledge we have of what is taking place.
At the Urban Ocean Lab, we cultivate climate and ocean policy around restoring coastal ecosystems, adapting to sea-level rise and developing offshore energy.
Climate change requires us to transform how we live our lives. This requires a massive cultural shift. However, right now we are asking far too much of individuals, and not nearly enough of governments and corporations. Right now we are relying on voluntary actions and goodwill of corporations to save the planet. That is not a winning strategy; we need accountability and policy change at a government level.
Thinking about Hurricane Dorian’s devastating impact on The Bahamas, these disasters are becoming increasingly unnatural. When a small boat of people trying to escape their storm-battered homeland comes to the US (as it did from the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian), what will we do? Turn them away? We need to have a conversation about climate refugees because the people who did the least to cause the climate crisis are exponentially impacted by it and it is profoundly immoral to turn our backs on that. We should follow the lead of the youth climate strike movement—their moral clarity is not naive, it’s exactly what we all need.
Sudeep Motupalli, CiCLO Textiles. Illustration by Nourie Flayhan
Sudeep Motupalli Rao, PhD, Chief Scientist, Intrinsic Advanced Materials
CiCLOTextiles.com
CiCLO meaning “cycle” is a biomimetic technology designed to eliminate microfiber pollution in oceans and unrecycled textiles in landfills. Synthetic materials like polyester or nylon offer great technical performance as textiles, but that same property makes them persistent and refractory in the environment. They will remain unchanged for centuries if not more.
The old model of what was thought of as good was “cradle to grave,” which suggested a comprehensive outlook. But designing materials for the grave, i.e. landfill is really bad design. Circularity is inspired by nature where there is no waste. Architect William McDonough and German chemist Michael Braungart developed the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) framework, calling for ecologically intelligent design. Materials that are technical nutrients can be recycled and kept in the loop while biodegradable materials can be broken up by living systems including microbes.
The challenge is that 99% of textiles end up in landfills and a lot of plastic microfibres originate in textiles. With CiCLO, these fugitive plastics in the landfills and the oceans can be broken down to either extract energy from them or eliminate the pollution.
Nature and living systems have been doing R&D experiments for about 4 billion years. Nature has crafted and evolved into a system that works beautifully. However, we’re incarcerating our textiles in our landfills, like we are discarding and disposing of people in jails. CiCLO mimics nature’s mechanisms to break down materials. With CiCLO, we are liberating molecules so they are part of a new life. We are providing a new karmic cycle for these landfill materials. In the oceans, we’re taking pollution away by bioremediating it.
It has become crystal clear that we are impacting our environment on a geological time scale where 10,000 years is the smallest unit of measurement. We are seeing the landfill not as a wasteland for centuries but as a resource. That’s a lot of chemical energy that could be utilized. With CiCLO we leverage microbes to convert that colossal waste into energy.
Nonabah Lane, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture. Illustration by Nourie Flayhan
Nonabah Lane, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture
Navajo Ethno-Agriculture harnesses traditional practices to expose a generation of Navajo youth to food growth knowledge and practices. This interdisciplinary organization which partners with academic institutions like Diné College, Navajo Technical University, MIT and Navajo Preparatory School; centers education and community at the root of our process, and offers an extensive background in science, responsible social investing, family land and farming skills. The Navajo Ethno-Agriculture project is a family-run organization that offers access to irrigable farmland and irrigation where students learn as they work the land. It’s a bilingually operated (Navajo-English) teaching farm. The students are almost 100% Navajo students (some are mixed with tribal nations) and are welcome year-round.
We teach our students identification of the plants, seeds, crops and Navajo terminology specific to agriculture and ceremony. The crops we focus on are adaptive to our climate, specific to our region (as in tailored to high desert and rainfall level because we are at the foot of the rocky mountains), and have been in our family for generations. We also explore the herbs and medicines that the land provides.
Throughout the programme there’s a deep focus on traditional lectures/emergence stories and conversations that align: the atmosphere, climate, stars and weather patterns in relation to the land and plants. These lectures sometimes come in story or song form and are used in ceremonies that require the preparation of specific traditional foods. We also teach basic Indian water rights and irrigation methods, while offering students the opportunity to access the water (being on the San Juan River). The primary reasons for our teachings are so our future Navajo generations are aware of the cultural value of our heritage crops and the value of water and land in the Navajo context.