Environmental News of the Day

Image Credit: Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo If you've been to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. lately, you may have noticed that they've been working on the first stage of their "Elephant Trails" project- a bold initiative to build a complex of indoor and outdoor habitats for the zoo's Asian elephants that will allow the endangered animals to thrive. Phase I, which opened to the public yesterday, includes two new outdoor yards and an elephant barn, which is Read the full story on TreeHugger

Handmade is becoming big business -- reeeally big. Etsy -- the online marketplace for handmade items -- announced earlier this week that it has raised $20 million in venture capital financing and has now tripled its valuation at $300 million (not including the funding). With sales up a whopping 72% from last year, business is booming -- not to mention ex-Google exec Adam Freed being roped in as Etsy's new chief operating officer. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Credit: Photos via facebook.com/meeteater. I like "Meet Eater," at least on Facebook. Not much happened after I hit the "Like" button to express my, um, admiration. Apparently, though, every time this plant makes a friend on Facebook, an electronic system delivers water and nutrients. No friends, no love? Dead plant. Unhappy Meet Eater....Read the full story on TreeHugger

The health differences may be more dramatic than you thought.

A tiny baby seahorse was measured off the coast of Dorset, England. Image via the Seahorse Trust. It must have been like finding a needle in a haystack, but somehow, in murky water conditions, diver Neil Garrick-Maidment, the executive director of the Seahorse Trust, spotted a single 1.5-inch-long female baby seahorse "clinging onto a piece of seagrass" off the coast of Studland, Dorset -- a finding so rare he said it was "akin to seeing a Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Sara Novak Down here in South Carolina we're known for our southern fried chicken, but what about our southern fried fuel? In a move that could have a big time impact on the way Carolina views the deep fat fryer, city council officials are calling on local restaurants and residents to donate their cooking oil to be turned into biofuel to run the city's garbage trucks. Right now it's just a test run on one of the city's trucks, but if it's successful, it could make a dent in the city's garbage pickup carbon footprint. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo via Nike In an attempt to honor the 29 coal miners who tragically died last year at the Upper Big Branch coal mine, the West Virginia University Mountaineers have teamed up with Nike to create new football uniforms that have the mark of coal. The uniforms are white, but have coal dust on the pants and shoulders. The yellow strip on the hemet is said to represent a miner's headlamp. In the photo featuring the new uniform a player appears to be emerging from a strip mine, leav...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Packing paper with recycled trim. Credit: Patti Robinson When Patti Robinson, a summer camp instructor at The Art Farm in Bridgehampton, NY, sent over some photos of recycled fashion, I was intrigued -- especially with the shape and design of the one, above -- and even more so when she told me that the young campers who crafted these designs ranged between the ages of eight and twelve. This summer, Patti, a self-proclaimed Project Runway fan, struck up a recycled fashion challenge; it quickly became a camp favorite and evolved into a summer-long program, called "Gene...Read the full story on TreeHugger

It appears that certain companies are intentionally overproducing a very potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23 or trifluoromethane solely for the purpose of destroying it in order to receive CER units. The substance is a by-product in the manufacture of HFC-22, a common refrigerant used in air conditioning systems.

There are three interesting conferences coming up in the design world this month (see below for details). If you are planning to go to any of these events (or even some others we haven't yet heard of), please consider submitting a "Reader Report." We'd love to get your 'inside scoop' and learn more about all of the cool, innovative projects and ideas likely to be presented at these conferences. Please email me at amanda@worldchanging.com if you'd like to contribute a report!

ASLA Annual Meeting: Friday–Monday, September 10–13 in Washington, D.C.
More than 6,000 landscape architecture professionals from across the U.S. and around the world will gather in Washington, D.C., September 10–13, to earn up to 21 professional development hours, to enjoy the fellowship of our profession, and to reconnect with the fundamental elements of design.

The talks and education sessions that I would love to learn more about include: "Landscape Architecture and Public Health"; "Green Roofs for Healthy Cities: Advances in Living Architecture"; "Redefining Water Management: Landscapes and Buildings Under Water "; and "Global Exchange: The Best Sustainable Codes, Standards, and Policies."

The Designers Accord Seattle Town Hall: Thursday, September 23 at 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm, in Seattle, WA
The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact. This town hall meeting is your chance to join fellow Seattle designers who care deeply about these issues, and share in the discussion of how we can make designing in sustainable ways a reality in our region.

Topics of discussion include: mapping the design process towards sustainability; the role of design in sustainability; and collaboration.

Green Building Festival 2010: Wednesday–Saturday, September 22–25, 2010 at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto, Canada
Sustainable Buildings Canada is pleased to present the 6th annual Green Building Festival. Join us for 3 days of speakers, training and building tours along with IIDEX/Neocon, Canada's premier architecture and design expo.

The seminar titles I find intriguing in the schedule include: "Sustainable Development: Policy, Planning and Infrastructure"; "Contemporary Architecture in Toronto - Past, Present and Where Are We Going?"; "Innovation through the Lens of Transparent Communications"; "Life Cycle Costing for Greenbuilding Design"; "SMART GRID Taking Our Cue From Nature"; and the "Design Panel on Sustainable & Healthy Communities."
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And of course, don't forget to register for Worldchanging's upcoming event on October 1: FUTURE CITY!

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For some examples of past "Reader Reports" see these posts in the Worldchanging archives:

• Reader Report: Skoll Social Forum | Grace Augustine, 19 Apr 10
  
• Reader Report: Low-cost Clean Tech for Rural Communities | Baskut Tuncak, 25 Feb 10
  
• Reader Report: Investing in a Bright Green Future | Lisa Chacón, 29 Apr 09
  
• Reader Report: Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship | Kristin Hayden, 1 Apr 09
  
• Reader Report: Notes from Greenbuild 2008 | Morgan Greenseth, 15 Dec 08
  
• Reader Report: Sustainability On Campus and Beyond at AASHE 2008 | Xarissa Holdaway, 4 Dec 08
  
• Reader Report: Solar Innovation in Costa Rica | Max Levin, 23 Oct 08
  
• Reader Report: Linking Cities and Climate at The Third International CEU Conference | Faith Cable, 16 Oct 08
  
• Reader Report From the World Cities Summit | Zufan, 18 Jul 08

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Green Building at 5:30 PM)

Melting and thinning ice in the Arctic has proceeded so rapidly that new sea routes are opening up, infrastructure is being imagined, and countries like Canada are working to assert their sovereignty in the north...

Last year, Beluga Shipping became the first shipping company to transport goods through the 'Northeast Passage'; two ships, escorted by a pair of Russian icebreakers, traveled from South Korea to Siberia via the newly broken up NE passage. Now, the sea is ice-free enough in the summer that it is projected to become a regular shipping route as early as next year. As a mark of this change, the Northeast Passage has even been renamed the "Northern Sea Route." Charlie Jane Anders has the story at io9: "2010 Will Be Remembered as the Year the Arctic Ocean Became a Trade Route"

The MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight traveling through the Northeast Passage, July 2009. (Source: The Boston Globe)

In addition to the new Northern Sea Route (the NE Passage), the 'Northwest Passage' is closer to becoming a viable shipping route connecting the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As the image below shows, the Northwest Passage was already ice-free in the summer of 2007.

(Image Source: NASA; Credit: Jesse Allen, using data obtained from the Goddard Land Processes data archives (LAADS))

As these Arctic shipping routes open up and Arctic communities become more connected to larger networks of distribution, local economies will likely change and new infrastructure will be needed to support a transition of goods distribution from air to shipping, as well as support growths in population. Infranet Lab explores the design challenges of this transition by looking at one conceptual design proposal for the community of Igloolik: "Frozen Cities/Liquid Networks: (air)Port and Infrastructural Autonomy"

The following project, developed by Amrit Phull and Claire Lubell, in the Frozen Cities/ Liquid Networks studio at the University of Waterloo, examines how new infrastructure can be produced in the Arctic that allows for the transference from air to shipping logistics and, while doing so, addresses the issue of food production and coastal erosion in the Arctic. It questions how remote coastal communities throughout Canada’s Arctic can establish self-sufficiency in anticipation of economic and environmental fluctuations. As stated by Lubell and Phull:

"The proposal seeks to provide a hard infrastructure which responds to the immediate needs of the community, but is also the root of growth in a context where change in landscape, resources and community occurs at varying speeds. In particular the project examines the potential development of Port Churchill as well as a major international port in the Northwest Passage and how this can create a network of small ports, at existing communities, along the west coast of Hudson’s Bay."

Rendering of New Infrastructure Typology in Igloolik by Lubell and Phull. (via Infranet Lab)

Canada has been preparing for an ice-free Arctic and asserting its sovereignty for a few years (the military operations in Resolute Bay were announced back in 2007), and this week Anita Dey Nuttall at the Edmonton Journal published an update on Canada's plans in the Arctic: "Canada Stakes a Claim to Arctic Power, Influence"

As the Canadian military exercise Operation Nanook 10 drew to a close this week and Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled in Canada's North, the federal government made two key announcements that sum up the country's main Arctic priorities.

Both the statement on Canada's Arctic foreign policy and confirmation of the location of the long-awaited High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay place Arctic sovereignty and Arctic science at the heart of Canada's resolve to exercise power and influence in the circumpolar region and indeed in the wider international community.

Added to this, the formal apology to Inuit last week for the government's controversial High Arctic relocation program in the 1950s suggests hope for a new chapter in relations with Inuit communities and organizations.

[...]

As climate change makes the Arctic more accessible, and as energy companies assess the oil and gas development potential in Canada's northern territories, the gaps in Canada's infrastructure in the North, both civilian and military, have been brought into sharp focus. This underscores the urgent need for Canada to organize and augment its defence, civic and scientific facilities in the North to enable good governance and responsible stewardship -- key pieces in exercising its sovereignty in the Arctic. Responding to this, recent moves by the government have therefore included plans for investing in new patrol ships, the building of a berthing and refuelling facility in Nanisivik, expanding the size and capabilities of the Canadian Rangers, and establishing a new Canadian Forces Arctic Training Centre in Resolute Bay.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Operation NANOOK 10 on August 25, 2010, a major sovereignty exercise conducted by the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Coast Guard and other government departments and agencies in Canada’s North. (via Prime Minister of Canada Website)

For more on the new Arctic Research Station mentioned above, see Hannah Hoag's story for Nature News: "Canada Picks Site for Arctic Research Station"

After months of deliberation, the Canadian government has chosen Cambridge Bay — a hamlet midway along the Northwest Passage in the country's far north — as the site for a world-class Arctic research station.

Once built, the station will house scientists all year round, giving them a modern space to study Arctic issues, including climate change and natural resources. It will host conference facilities and laboratories for research on marine biology and geophysics, provide ecologists with the space to do long-term ecological monitoring in aquaria and greenhouses, and give researchers in the health and social sciences a base for their studies.

Cambridge Bay, a hamlet in Canada's far north, is marked by the red point. (Image via Google Maps)

Related stories in the Worldchanging archives:

• Preparing for an Ice-Free Arctic: Part 1 - China's Growing Interest in the Thawing North
  
• Preparing for an Ice-Free Arctic: Part 2 - The Commercial Lure of Melting Ice
  
• Preparing for an Ice-Free Arctic: Part 3 - Charting Political Waters

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Climate Change at 3:30 PM)

We need a better understanding of the 'environmentalist's paradox' - Why is human well-being improving globally when our environmental woes appear to be worsening all the time?

by Leo Hickman

We hear lots of concerned chatter these days – not least, here on this site - about peak oil, peak water, deforestation, resource depletion and the like, but a popular riposte offered by those doubting such concerns is something commonly referred to as the "Environmentalist's Paradox".

The argument goes thus: "Why, despite resource depletion and the degradation of ecosystems, is average human well-being improving globally?"

People such as Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist, argue that environmentalists are needlessly downbeat about humanity's prospects. After all, we are a resourceful, adaptable, highly intelligent species more than capable of riding out any current concerns (if only we would de-shackle ourselves from free-market constraints).

As a counterpoint, we have the likes of Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, arguing that we should heed the lessons provided by failed civilisations of the past who extinguished themselves by over-exploiting their available natural resources.

The latest edition of the journal BioScience includes a fascinating paper which examines just this paradox. (hat tip: Scientific American.) "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox" (the PDF is available here free until it disappears behind a paywall in a month's time), co-authored by a team of scientists led by Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University, lays out in detail the conflicting indices which underpin the paradox. The editorial introducing the article sets the scene:

Studies including the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment have concluded that the capacity of ecosystems to produce many ecosystem services is now low. Depletion of ecosystem services is expected to mean fewer benefits to humans, thus decreasing human well-being. Yet the composite Human Development Index, a widely used metric that incorporates measures of literacy, life expectancy, and income, has improved markedly since the mid-1970s in both rich and poor nations. The index correlates strongly with other measures of prosperousness. Some measures of personal security buck the upward trend, but the overall improvement in well-being cannot, it seems, be denied. Does this paradox mean that concern about ecosystem services is overblown?

The authors then present four hypotheses that might help to explain the environmentalist's paradox. Here is their summary:

1. Critical dimensions of human well-being have not been captured adequately, and human well-being is actually declining. Measures of well-being that suggest it has increased are wrong or incomplete. 2. Provisioning ecosystem services, such as food production, are most significant for human well-being; therefore, if food production per capita increases, human well-being will also increase, regardless of declines in other services. 3. Technology and social innovation have decoupled human well-being from the state of ecosystems to the extent that human well-being is now less dependent on ecosystem services. 4. There is a time lag after ecosystem service degradation before human well-being is negatively affected. Loss of human well-being caused by current declines in services has therefore not yet occurred to a measurable extent.

The authors effectively dismiss the first hypothesis, arguing that there is a large body of evidence to support the notion that human wellbeing is, on average, improving. As might be expected, the authors support the second hypothesis. With the third, they conclude that the available evidence suggests that the "decoupling" argument can't be supported.

But perhaps the most intriguing hypothesis – for me, at least – is the fourth. Can the environmentalist's paradox be explained away by the fact that there is a time lag between when we degrade our finite natural resources and when our well-being begins to be negatively affected? If so, what is this period of time likely to be? And will the transitional descent - when/if it finally begins - be slow or rapid? The answers to these questions will surely be key to working out who will ultimately prove to be correct out of the Diamonds or the Ridleys of this world.

When I think about this time lag I can't help but be reminded of the set-piece scene from the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit cartoon, The Wrong Trousers. Gromit, Wallace's canny dog, finds himself having to lay track as fast as he can in front of himself to ensure the toy train he's riding on remains in hot pursuit of the jewel-thief penguin escaping with a diamond. (Go to 1:28 on this video.) Using this as a metaphor, can humans keep laying the train track in front of them fast enough to avoid a nasty derailment? Can we keep perpetually delaying our fall and decline? The authors of the paper seem to be suggesting that our chances of doing so are diminishing all the time as the world becomes increasingly globalised:

There is growing evidence of approaching resource collapses in certain regions of the world, but less is known about how system- or service-specific collapses may interact with one other and result in major impacts on global human well-being. Local or regional collapses may lead to cascading problems associated with forced human migration and resource competition, which could have global-scale effects on human well-being. Alternatively, market forces and trade rules could cause rapid destabilization in resource markets, leading to outcomes such as the multiple food, oil, and financial crises of 2008, which took the world by surprise. The global financial crisis of 2008 also demonstrates the connectivity of the global economy, and the capacity of globalized systems to undergo abrupt and surprising declines. Whether human well-being will suffer at the global scale will depend on how humans adapt to ecosystem degradation and its associated collapses over the next few decades…

Highly adaptable human societies have at times successfully staved off the effects of environmental degradation by importing ecosystem services from other regions, enhancing the supply of ecosystem services in some areas, exporting negative impacts to other locations, and making more efficient use of ecosystem services.

However, evidence suggests that future adaptation will be different and probably more difficult, as resources near depletion at the global scale. Previously available options for migration and translocations of resource use are increasingly constrained by the scope of human use of the biosphere.

As you might expect with any academic paper, there are the necessary caveats and calls for further research. As Timothy M. Beardsley, BioScience's editor in chief, says in his editorial:

"The authors' conclusions are limited by the geographically aggregated nature of their data, and BioScience will publish commentary on aspects of their analysis in a future issue. Yet the article clearly strengthens the case for research that integrates human well-being, agriculture, technology, and time lags affecting ecosystem services."

Agreed: it's certainly a subject that I for one would welcome much more nuanced, detailed research and discussion.

This post originally appeared on The Guardian

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Biodiversity and Ecosystems at 12:45 PM)

Editor's Note: A couple weeks ago we posted a piece by Alex Aylett reporting on Portugal's impressive percentage of renewable electricity supply. Below, we revisit Portugal's renewable energy success and explore how their planning policies helped them make such impressive gains in renewable energy production with a repost from Worldwatch...

by Alexander Ochs and Camille Serre

Typically, the Scandinavian countries and Germany have set the example in the European renewables field. Yet lately, a Southern country - Portugal - has attracted attention after delivering its National Renewable Energy Action Plan to the European Commission this June.

Portugal has made dramatic changes in its energy policy over the last five years under the government of Prime Minister José Sócrates. The country's installed renewable energy capacity more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from 1,220 megawatts (MW) to 4,307 MW, and renewables now represent roughly 36 percent of electricity consumed. Portugal currently ranks fourth in Europe in energy production from renewables.

Of course, Portugal benefits from favorable conditions for renewables: a strong wind resource, great hydropower, good tidal waves potential, and a high sunshine rate. After the country removed several dams in recent years, Sócrates' government has focused instead on wind power development, under most conditions the cheapest renewable energy source after hydropower. With more than 600-percent growth in wind energy production between 2004 and 2009, Portugal now ranks sixth in Europe in total installed capacity and third in capacity per capita, behind only Denmark and Spain. Some even expect Portugal to overtake its neighbor Spain in per-capita wind energy production as early as this year.

Additionally, Portugal is starting to exploit its solar potential. A photovoltaic (PV) power station located in Moura, operative since 2008 and expected to be fully completed by the end of 2010, will count among the world's largest solar farms. But despite a great progression of installed PV capacity in Portugal (from 1 MW in 2000 to 75 MW in 2009), solar power still lags far behind wind's installed capacity of 3,353 MW. Portugal also deploys other renewable energies, albeit at a much smaller scale. Biomass and biogas represented 3.2 percent of total consumed electricity in 2009, and the world's first shoreline wave power plant has been operating since 2005 on the island of Pico in the Azores, with 400 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of capacity.

How did Portugal assume such impressive leadership in the clean energy transition? The key, as usual, lies in ambitious supportive policies. Prior to 2000, Portugal's transmission lines were owned by private power companies that had no interest in investing in renewables, as the deployment of these technologies would require radical changes in the grid infrastructure and therefore raise costs. To address this barrier, the government bought the lines and began adapting the grid to renewables requirements, including more flexibility and a better grid connection in remote areas to allow the production and distribution of electricity from small generators, such as domestic solar panels.

A combination of incentives was implemented to attract investors. Feed-in tariffs (FIT) - which guarantee producers of renewable energy a specified price for every megawatt-hour of power fed into the grid - were first introduced in Portugal in 1988 and have increasingly evolved into a highly sophisticated system with individual prices for each renewable energy source. The latest tariff stipulations, issued in 2005 and 2007, take into account environmental considerations, the level of technology development, and the inflation rate. The government also integrated new technologies such as Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and tidal power into the system.

Today, all renewable energy sources in Portugal will benefit from the feed-in tariff for 15 years, and small hydro-power prices are guaranteed for 20 years. The tariffs vary from around 7.5 Euro cents (around 9.5 U.S. cents) per kWh for wind and hydro to more than 30 Euro cents (38 U.S. cents) per kWh for photovoltaic energy. Renewable heating and cooling is also supported under conditions by financial and fiscal incentives, largely for the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The European Commission plays a decisive role in setting targets for each Member State via its 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. Portugal is expected to reach a 31-percent share of renewable energy in its gross final energy consumption by 2020. Also, the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) encourages participating countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases and therefore move from fossil fuels to renewables, by requiring energy producers and energy-intensive companies to meet strict carbon dioxide emissions targets and to purchase additional permits for overshooting them.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Portugal became a net power exporter last year, delivering a small amount of electricity to Spain. Inspired by these good results, Portugal set more ambitious targets in its National Energy Strategy (ENE 2020), adopted by the Council of Ministers on April 15. The country now aims to reach a 45-percent renewables share in its electricity production by the end of the year, and a 60-percent share by 2020.

The main focus of Portugal's renewable policy will remain on wind power, a dynamic industry that represents a source of revenue and creates green jobs. The electricity operator Energias de Portugal even invests in wind farms located in the U.S. Midwest.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates' government wants to improve the reliability and efficiency of Portugal's renewables supply. Renewable energy production is often challenged by natural flows-including the common criticism that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, even in Portugal. By the end of the year, the government will set up a system to monitor on-going energy demand and potential supply from various available renewable sources.

What is driving Portugal to undertake such changes? One factor, of course, is the fact that the country does not possess any noteworthy fossil fuel resources, as illustrated by 2007 IEA data. Yet in 2005, the bulk of Portugal's gross electricity was generated by three fossil sources: coal (32.7%), natural gas (29.2%), and oil (18.9%). The country is therefore heavily dependent on imports that place a high toll on the national budget - amounting to 86 percent of spending in 2006, according to the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC). In its ENE 2020 strategy, Portugal aims to reduce fossil fuel imports 70 percent by 2020 and cut its energy import balance 25 percent, saving some US$2.55 billion.

In order to address initial local conflicts due to the financial costs of intense development of wind power plants, a unique mechanism has been set up. Under the current feed-in tariff legislation, municipalities that host wind farms benefit from additional financial support in the form of a 2.5-percent share of the monthly remuneration paid to local wind project operators.

Overall, the IEA's Shinji Fujino tells the New York Times, "So far, the [renewable energy] program has placed no stress on the national budget."

Alexander Ochs is director of the Climate and Energy program at the Worldwatch Institute and Camille Serre is a research intern with Worldwatch. They can be reached at aochs@worldwatch.org.

Photo courtesy Richard Gillespie: Portugal’s countryside has been dotted with new wind farms, increasing wind energy production by 600 percent from 2004-2009.

This article originally appeared on Worldwatch's ReVolt blog.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Energy at 11:30 AM)

Heather Blanchard, Noel Dickover and Andrew Turner from Crisis Commons visited the Berkman Center Tuesday to discuss the rapidly growing technology and crisis response space. Crisis Commons, Andrew tells us, came in part from the recognition that the volunteers who respond to crises aren’t necessarily amateurs. They include first responders, doctors, CEOs...and lately, they include a lot of software developers.

Recent technology “camps” – Transparency Camp, Government 2.0 Camp – sparked discussion about whether there should be a crisis response camp. Crisis Camp was born in May, 2009 with a two-day event in Washington DC which brought together a variety of civic hackers who wanted to share knowledge around crisis technology and response. The World Bank took notice and ended up hosting the Ignite sessions associated with the camp, giving developers a chance to put ideas for crisis response in front of people who often end up providing funds to rebuild after crises.

The World Bank wasn’t the only large group interested in working with crisis hackers. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft came together to found the Random Hacks of Kindness event, designed to let programmers “hack for humanity” in marathon sessions around the world.

While these events preceded the earthquake earlier this year in Haiti, that crisis was the seminal event in increasing interest in participating in technology for crisis relief efforts. A crisis camp to respond to the Haitian earthquake involved 400 participants in five cities and pioneered 13 projects. Over time, the crisis camp model spread to Argentina, Chile and New Zealand, with developers focused on building tools for use in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan. Blanchard explained that the events provided space for people who “didn’t want to contribute money – they wanted to do something.”

The camps had some tangible outcomes:

• I’m Okay, a simple application that allows people to easily tell friends and family that they’re okay, in an emergency situation, was developed at Random Hacks of Kindness
  
• Tradui, an English/Kreyol dictionary for the Android was developed during the Crisis camps
  
• Crisis camps also developed a better routing protocol to enable point to point wireless between camps in Haiti, writing new drivers in 48 hours that were optimized for the long ping times associated with using WiFi over multi-kilometer distances

Perhaps the most impressive collaboration to come from the Crisis Camps was work on OpenStreetMap for Port au Prince. Using satellite imagery released by the UN, a team created a highly detailed map, leveraging the work of non-programmers to trace roads on the satellite images and diasporans to identify and name landmarks and streets. As the map improved in quality, the volunteers were eventually able to offer routing information for relief trucks, based on road damage that was visible on the satellite imagery. A convoy would request a route for a 4-ton water truck, and volunteers would use their bird’s eye view of the situation – from half a continent away – to suggest the safest route. Ultimately, the government of Haiti requested access to the information, and Crisis Camps provided not only the data, but training in using it.

The conversation turned to the challenges Crisis Camps have faced in making their model work:

• About 1/3rd of the participants are programmers. The others range from the “internet savvy” to those with complementary skill.
  
• Problems and requirements are often poorly defined
  
• It’s challenging to match volunteers to projects
  
• There’s a shortage of sustainable project management and leadership
  
• Projects often suffer from undocumented requirements and code, few updates on project status.
  
• Little work focuses on usability, privacy and security.
  
• Code licensing often isn’t carefully considered, and issues can arise about reusability of code on a licensing basis.
  
• Projects can be disconnected from what’s needed on the ground
  
• Disconnection happens in part because relief organizations don’t know what they want and need and are too busy to work with an untested, unproven community
  
• Volunteer fatigue – the surge of interest after a disaster tends to dissipate within four weeks
  
• There’s a lack of metrics and performance standards to evaluate project success.

The goal is to move from a Bar Camp/Hackathon model to a model that’s able to build sustainable projects. This means bringing project management into the mix, and asking hard questions like, “Does this project have a customer? Is it filling a well-defined need?” It also means building trust with crisis response organizations and groups like the World Bank and FEMA, who can help bring volunteer technology groups and crisis response groups together.

Crisis Commons see themselves as mediating between three groups: crisis response organizations like the Red Cross; volunteer technology organizations like OpenStreetMap; and private sector companies willing to donate resources. Each group has a set of challenges they face in engaging with these sorts of projects.

Crisis response organizations have a difficult time incorporating informal, ad-hoc citizen organizations into their emergency response plans. There’s a notion in the crisis response space of “operating rogue” if you’re not formally affiliated with an established relief organization… which further marginalizes volunteer tech communities. Many CROs have little tech understanding, which means they aren’t able to make informed decisions about collaboration with technical volunteers. In a very real way, crises are economic opportunities for relief organizations – that reality doesn’t breed resource sharing, which in turn, gets in the way of sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Volunteer tech communities frequently don’t understand the processes used by CROs, and frequently fail to understand that there’s often a good reason for those processes. While VTCs provide tremendous surge capacity that could help CROs, if there’s no good way for CROs to use this surge capacity, it’s a waste of effort on all sides. At the same time, tech communities inevitably suffer from the “CNN effect” – when crises are out of sight, they’re out of mind, and participation slumps. This is particularly challenging for managing long-term projects… and tech communities have massive project management and resource needs. Finally, successful VTCs can find themselves in a situation where they have a conflict of interest – they’re seeking paid work from relief organizations and may choose to cooperate only with those who can support them in the long term.

Private sector partners are usually participating in these projects led by their business development or corporate social responsibility divisions… while cooperation with the other entities often requires technical staff. Response organizations are often the clients of private sector players – the Red Cross is a major customer for information systems – which can create financial conflicts of interest. And working with large technology companies often raises intellectual property challenges, especially around joint development of software.

Meeting with a subset of crisis response organizations, Crisis Commons understands that there’s a need for long term relationships between tech volunteers and relief organizations, tapping the innovation power of these charitably minded geeks. But this requires relief organizations to know what solutions are already out there and what are reasonable requests to make of volunteers. And volunteer organizations need to understand the processes CROs have and how to work within them.

The hope for Crisis Commons is to become an “independent, nonpartisan honest broker” that can “bridge the ecosystem and matrix the resources.” This means “translating requirements of the CRO to the crisis crowd, helping the public understand CRO requirements,” and the reasons behind them. This could lead towards being able to set up a service like “Crisis Turk”, which could allow internet savvy non-programmers to engage in data entry tasks during a crisis.

In the long term, Crisis Commons might emerge as an international forum for standards development and data sharing around crises. Building capacity that could be active between crises, not just during them, they could direct research projects on lessons learned from prior disaster relief, could build a data library and begin preparing operations centers and emergency response teams for future crises. Some scenarios could involve managing physical spaces to encourage cooperation within and between volunteer tech teams and providing support for future innovation through a technology incubation program.

---

Starting from the shared premise the Crisis Commons founders presented us with – “Anyone can help in a crisis” – the discussion at Berkman focused on the structure Crisis Commons might take. The goal behind a “commons” structure is to be able to be an independent and trusted actor in the long term, to be able to be objective source of tech requirements, and to be able to bring non-market solutions to the table. But the founders realize that this is an inherently competitive space, and that volunteer organizations might find themselves in conflict with professional software developers in providing support to relief organizations, or with relief organizations if volunteer organizations began providing direct support.

It’s also possible that another player in the space could compete with Crisis Commons in this matchmaking role. Red Cross could develop an in-house technology team focused on collaborating with technology volunteers. Google could use the power of their tech resources to provide services directly to relief organizations. A partnership like Random Hacks of Kindness could emerge as the powerful leader in the space. Other volunteer technology organizations – Crisis Mappers, Strong Angel – might see themselves providing this bridging function. FEMA could start a private-public partnership under the NET Guard program. What’s the sweet spot for Crisis Commons?

One of our participants suggested that Crisis Commons could be valuable as a developer of standards, working to train the broader community about the importance of standards, and on the challenge of defining problems where solutions would benefit a broad community.

Another participant, who’d been involved with several Crisis Camp events worried that “the apps, while neat, never really made it into the field,” suggesting that the problems raised are real, not theoretical. It’s genuinely very difficult for tech volunteers to know what problems to work on… and hard for relief organizations under tremendous pressure to learn how to use these new tools.

This, I pointed out, is the problem that could prove most challenging for Crisis Commons in the long term. When crises arise, people want to help… but it’s critical that their help actually be… helpful. Clay Shirky told the story of his student, Jorge Just, who’s worked closely with UNICEF to develop RapidFTR, a family tracking and reunification tool. It’s been a long, engaged process with enormous amounts of time needed for the parties to understand each other’s needs and working methods… and it’s easy to understand why it might be difficult to convince volunteers to participate to this depth in a project.

I offered an observation from my time working on Geekcorps – I meet a lot of geeks who are convinced that the tech they’re most interested in – XML microformats, mesh wireless, cryptographic voting protocols – are precisely what the world needs to solve some pressing crisis. Occasionally, they’re right. Often, they’re more attached to their tech of choice than to addressing the crisis in question.

As such, the toughest job is defining problems and matching geeks to problems. At Geekcorps, it often took six months to design a volunteer assignment, and a talented tech person needed to meet several times with a tech firm to understand needs, brainstorm projects and create a scope of work, so we could recruit the right volunteer. While that model was expensive – and ultimately, made Geekcorps unsustainable – I think aspects of it could help Crisis Commons find a place in the world.

I ended up suggesting that Crisis Commons act as:

• a consultant to relief organizations, helping them define their technical needs, understand what was already available commercially and non-commercially and to frame needs to volunteer communities who could assist them
  
• a matchmaking service that connected volunteer orgs to short term and long term tech needs, preferably ones that had been clearly defined through a collaborative process
  
• a repository for best practices, collective knowledge about what works in this collaboration.

Unclear that this is the right solution for Crisis Commons or the road they’ll follow, but I came away with a strong sense that they are wrestling with the right questions in figuring out how to be most effective in this space. Very much looking forward to discovering what they come up with.

This post originally appeared on Ethan's blog My hearts in Accra.

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Communications and Networking at 11:00 AM)

Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
Solar Panels To Boost Property Prices
Joe Romm argues that "as peak oil kicks in and the reality of human-caused climate change becomes painfully clear, energy efficiency, geothermal heat pumps, solar panels and the like will increasingly be seen as a desirable if not essential elements of a home, like an up-to-date kitchen, rather than just a cost...”

2009
If It Makes Money, It's Not a 'Cost'!
A vintage Worldchanging essay where Alan AtKisson writes that when it comes to spending money on the environment, it's not a cost -- it's an investment...

2005
XAccess
Jamais Cascio reports on the non-profit XAccess, which makes a cargo-bike add-on available at low or no cost to in the developing world...

Other recent "look backs":
August 31
September 1
September 2

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Energy at 10:30 AM)