The natural grasslands in the US were once grazed by large herds of buffalo. These hefty bovines stomped vegetation and activated the seeds within the soil while depositing manure, urine, and saliva, providing organic matter and nutrients for both plants and soils. The buffalo are long gone, hunted to extinction by Buffalo Bill and his ilk for their horns and hides. However their process of natural, cyclical soil restoration that the buffaloes produce has inspired a new generation of cattle farmers: the soil carbon cowboys.

These sustainable cattle farmers fence their livestock into small paddocks, allowing the stock to graze intensely. By moving them quickly through multiple paddocks, they keep the grasses growing by grazing then give the forage time to rest and regrow. The growing plants and expanding root systems take carbon from the air and place it in soil,  building soil and capturing carbon.

Peter Byck, filmmaker and professor of practice at Arizona State University, calls this adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP). He has directed a series of ten documentaries, filmed across the U.S. and Canada, that highlight the practice of regenerative grazing, which helps ranchers to raise healthy livestock while also providing one solution to climate change.

The first documentary, in a series of ten, “Soil Carbon Cowboys,” profiles three ranchers that changed from traditional ranching using significant amounts of high-cost synthetic products to manage weeds and insects and fertilizers to grow forages to a managed grazing system that improves their land and the health of their animals while decreasing their feed and input costs, helping them become economically sustainable.

The world beneath our feet is incredibly complex, containing more life than above ground. This underground life, the soil microbes, repackages nutrients utilized by plants, builds organic matter, stores unused nutrients, and maintains the porous structure of soil.  

To maintain healthy soils rich in organic matter, store large quantities of carbon, hold lots of water to combat both drought and storms, and stay in place without erosion, thriving diverse plants that cover and cool the soil are needed as is the addition of natural nutrients. The grazing action of livestock trims plants and deposits manure before they move on and livestock recycle plants they graze into organic material providing the energy for both plants and soil microbes to produce healthy soils that store more carbon. 

In a sense, these carbon farmers and ranchers are focused more on building healthy soils than raising crops and livestock, says Byck. “Using the natural interactions between cattle, plants, and soil, we can revolutionize the agriculture industry,” says Byck. “This can provide more nutritious food and provide a comfortable income for farming and ranching families while offering one significant solution to climate change, storing carbon in the soil.”

Byck’s films are also spreading a message: educating and inspiring agriculture producers to follow the AMP grazing method on their farms as the project supports research into the benefits of AMP grazing and soil carbon sequestration.

The research is providing data that supports what the ranchers are seeing: grazing livestock in the AMP method builds soil health and provides a sustainable process to store large amounts of carbon in the soil, improving the health of the livestock, us, and the planet. For more information – www.carboncowboys.org

Author: Denice Rackley, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Denice Rackley

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When in 1997, Dutch filmmaker Josepha Wessels arrived in Shallalah Saghirah, a small village on the fringe of the Syrian steppe southeast of Aleppo, it was like stepping back hundreds of  years. “There were all of these wonderful little, white-painted beehive houses,” she says. “It was very rustic and had no electricity supply.” The most remarkable historical artefact, however, was beneath Wessels’ feet. The village’s water arrived via a series of tunnels that were constructed not hundreds but 1,600 years ago. “To some people it sounds dull but the qanats really excited me,” Wessels says.

Qanats were first laid down during the Byzantine-Roman era (395 to 1453CE). They consist of a series of porous subterranean wells connected by gently sloping tunnels that use the force of gravity to transport water to the earth’s surface. They were traditionally used to provide a reliable supply of water to human settlements and to irrigate fields in hot, arid and semi-arid environments.

“In Greek and Roman times the qanats played a key role in the development of empires and thriving cities such as Palmyra,” Wessels, who went on to author a PhD on the topic, explains. Spreading with the Persian empire from south to Egypt and and as far east as India, qanats – also known as kariz – fell out of use from the 1960s on with the advent of diesel-driven pumps and private wells. 

But could they be the answer to the Middle East’s water woes? Today a combination of that 20th century over extraction and climate change has led to a crisis for water tables in the already drought-prone region. Although Wessels warns against a facile link between drought and political instability, a 2020 report by the University of California argues that a severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, helping to trigger today’s brutal civil war. 

In troubled Syria and in Iran, Jordan and Oman, water shortages are an increasing threat to both livelihoods and liveability.

Wessels’ chance trip led, in the summer of 2000, to a participatory project in which a small group of Shallalah Saghirah villagers cleaned and renovated their village qanat. Wessels, with colleagues including her hydrologist husband Robertus Hoogeveen, went on to lead similar community-led renovations of qanats in towns including in Al Dumayr, a city located 45 kilometers north-east of Damascus, and Qara near to the border with Lebanon with funds from, amongst others, the Netherlands Government. Wesssels soon found that although over pumping by mechanical means was a feature of qanats falling out of use, often they had simply become blocked with calcareous deposits or debris as communities lost to knowledge, or will to maintain them.

“Qanats are simple technology, but every ten years or so they need to be cleaned out, relined so they don’t collapse and desilted,” Wessels says. “Importantly, you cannot do this without the community working together.” Wessels adds that whilst Iran still boasts individuals capable of building qanats – known as muqannis, and often trained by their fathers – Syria now lacks these traditional skills, and thus relies on ancient qanats laid down hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of years ago.

There are obvious attractions in reverting to this ancient water extraction system in our turbulent, heating times. Qanats have the advantage of being resistant to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, and to deliberate destruction in war. Furthermore, they are almost insensitive to levels of precipitation, delivering a flow with only gradual variations from wet to dry years. The abandonment of qanats is a warning sign that groundwater in a region is being overexploited, says Majid Labbaf, who has worked on the reconstruction of qanats in Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan. “The drying up of the qanats is an indication of a disconnection between humans and their natural environment,” he says.

Sadly, the city where Wessels original renovation took place is today abandoned due to Syria’s long civil war, although qanats in Al Dumayr and at Qara are still in operation. Wessels hopes that should inhabitants return to Shallalah Saghirah, they’ll find its ancient qanats will still be able to provide sufficient water for community life. Wessels also welcomes bids to recognise qanats as prime examples of Islamic heritage for example in the case of the UNESCO world heritage listing of Persian qanats in Iran. For successful restoration, state actors also need to be involved, she says, as qanats have to work in tandem with modern piped water systems. This, she adds, is not just a case of returning to the ‘old ways’.

“By rehabilitating the qanat system in combination with efficient groundwater management measures water resources, in Syria and elsewhere, can be saved for future generations,” she said. “But for that you need political will, and you need peace.”

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Robertus Hoogeveen and Lund University

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When hurricane Delta hit the coast of Mexico on 7th October 2020, experts reckoned that repairing and replanting the ravaged coral colonies of the Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) and the coastline around Quintana Roo south of Cancun could cost about USD $800,000. Rapid response was critical as broken coral dies within weeks. But government funding, predictably, could take much longer to materialise. Conservationists and local businesses alike realised that the cost of not repairing the battered reef would be greater than the cost of restoring it, as the Mesoamercian Reef is second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and home to 500 types of fish, 70 different corals, sea turtles and whale sharks. Yet, 80 percent of the living coral along Mexico’s Caribbean coast has been lost or degraded in the past 40 years due to pollution, overfishing, disease and increasingly extreme weather events. A simple and cost-effective solution came to their rescue: insurance.

A pioneering nature-based insurance policy purchased in 2019 by the Quintana Roo state government in conjunction with environmental NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC) funded the efforts of Guardians of the Reef, a group of 80 trained snorkelers, fishermen, biologists, even local restaurant staff led by local diver Emanuel Quirago. They stabilised 1,200 affected coral colonies and removed storm debris from the beaches within 11 days. They also rescued and transplanted almost 9,000 broken coral fragments in artificial nurseries until they could be reattached to the seabed to regenerate new coral colonies. The work is ongoing and the guardians are poised to respond to future storm events if necessary.

The funds for the insurance policy came from the Coastal Zone Management Trust, set up by the state government with support from TNC and revenues were paid by beachfront property owners and hoteliers. A parametric insurance policy like this involves calculating pre-specified payouts depending on various potential trigger events – in this case, the payout varies according to wind strength. The restoration of these coral reefs, which attract over a million snorkelers and divers annually, has ecological and commercial benefits. Healthy reefs absorb 97 percent of each wave’s energy so they buffer the coast against storm damage and provide nurseries for breeding fish.

“Insurance plus government commitments paired with on-the-ground rapid response create the perfect formula to quickly repair critical coral reefs,” says Fernando Secaira, Mexico’s climate risk and resilience lead for The Nature Conservancy. TNC was able to enlist the participation of local businesses by making them aware that the health of this fragile coastal ecosystem was intrinsically linked to their economic success. “It’s a win-win and we look forward to identifying other parts of the world where this approach could work,” he says. They are exploring the feasibility of insuring reefs in regions like the Caribbean, Central America and Asia. Studies show that insurance policies like this could help protect coral reefs against natural disasters – perhaps to protect Florida reefs from future hurricanes and coral in Hawaii from marine heatwaves or coral bleaching.

Nature advocate and CEO of US-based fintech company Cultivo Dr Manuel Piñuela believes that this parametric insurance for nature-based projects will grow over the coming years: “We see innovation around insurance and reducing risk as a critical component to unlock investment into nature.”

Author: Anna Turns, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: 1. Daniela Zambrano The Nature Conservancy, all others The Nature Conservancy

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Turnips share their moist alluvial bed with leeks and chards, courgettes stroke the cheeks of plump pumpkins and yellow ears of corn reach for the cloud-scuffed Normandy skies beneath fruit trees heaving with apples and plums. In the middle of this picture of Eden, a 63-year old man is in charge of a piece of equipment that’s more like a giant hair comb than an agricultural tool. Gingerly he pushes the device forward, carving neat cultivation channels into an unplanted vegetable bed. “Worms, woodlice, beetles, microorganisms. The whole diversity of nature remains undisturbed,” Charles Hervé-Gruyer, a sailor turned permaculture pioneer, explains of his willfully rudimentary farming technique.

With tools that owe more to ancient peoples than modern Western agriculture, the Bec Hellouin farm in Normandy, northwestern France, offers a vision of what nature-inspired food production could be: not a mass-scale high-technology pursuit but instead a practice that draws on the manual, handed-down techniques of centuries of farmers from rural India to 19th century France.

“With tractor-cultivated land soil is exposed and requires external inputs in terms of fertiliser,” Charles explains. “With our dense planting and biomass method the farm self-fertilises, as it stores carbon and protects biodiversity.”

Only four souls farm Bec Hellouin’s 20 hectares: Charles, his wife Perrine, 46, a former lawyer, and two hired gardeners, yet their yields are so impressive they are the subject of a series of studies, including by the French National Institute of Agricultural Research.

Key to the Hervé-Gruyer method is dense and complementary planting: rapid-growing radishes provide shade for neighbouring carrots, which need a cool climate to thrive. In the space left by harvested radishes and carrots, winter cabbage is planted. Densely planted beds, interspersed with ponds and patches of woodland, also mean that nutrients and water are retained, with little opportunity for weeds to take hold. Ground-level clover, sorrel and mint, Charles adds, fix nitrogen and mulch and rotting plants nourish the beds in unplanted spots. The couple only use manual tools and boast they never have to water their farm, even in the climate-change induced summer heatwaves of 2019 and 2020.

This verdant picture is in marked contrast to the inhospitable tract of land the couple bought, on a utopian whim, in 2006.

“It took us two years to clear the slopes,” Charles recalls of the land that, with its meagre layer of humus, was only suitable for pasture. “It seemed like heresy to plant anything here.” It was the discovery of permaculture, an Australian philosophy that sees nature as an intelligent toolbox to mimic rather than master, and reading up on the farming methods of old Parisian market gardeners and Amazonian forest farmers that transformed the couples’, and Bec Hellouin’s fate.

“We’d started from a point where the earth was very poor, just grass, and nature responded very quickly,” Perrine says of the farm’s remarkable productivity. A 2018 study found that, by reusing using biomass from their own farm, the Hervé-Gruyers have produced the most fertile soil in their region, known for its poorly drained, calcareous soils: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2018.00116/full

Despite their successes, Perrine admits that they have faced some resistance to their methods from the French naysayers they call the ‘little grandpas’, who sometimes characterise them as bohemians, or cranks. And their model, they admit, is not suitable for all contexts due to the level of expertise and trial and error that it requires. But for the couple, who now tutor would-be organic farmers from across the world at the Bec Hellouin institute, it’s not if their method should be replicated across the West, but when.

“By using the wisdom of generations of farmers informed by the latest science, we can create a world of small farms that are carbon sinks, oases of biodiversity, a place to regenerate soil and to create abundance for local communities,” Charles says, adding: “As a friend of mine says, utopia is like spinach in the pan: it reduces so quickly we have to keep adding more.”

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: the Hervé-Gruyers and Luke Duggleby, the Climate Heroes Project

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In the 16th century, when the Portuguese sailed to the Arabian shores, they were enamoured by the plentiful, fresh seafood available along Oman’s 3,000 km coastline. Today, the sultanate of Oman is looking to revive this historic industry to reduce its dependence on the declining oil sector. “Fish farming has an untapped potential due to Oman’s geographical location. Agriculture and Fisheries is the second largest industry, therefore, it is natural that the government considered investing in it to decrease the reliance on oil and gas”, says Rumaitha Al Busaidi, an Omani environmentalist. The idea is sound, but its implementation has so far been marred by the lack of advanced technological implementations in Omani fisheries. Farmers still rely on the indigenous Falaj irrigation system, developed in 500 AD and used till date, which carries water from the natural springs to the mountain villages for farming and aquaculture. While it might have worked in the past, today this is problematic.

“Our fish production quality suffers because the water used for fish production and farming gets mixed with the saline water from the ocean, dramatically decreasing our income”, complains Khalifa Al Sahabi, a fish farmer in Bidiyah town in the Sharqiyah region.

To address this issue, Al Busaidi has introduced the concept of integrated Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) in aquaculture farms. These use mechanical and biological filters to reuse the water in production and minimise water resources for organic aquatic farming. “RAS technology also protects the marine environment”, she explains, “by restricting the effluent that reaches the ocean.” The Oman government had implemented this technology initially for the production of Tiger prawns. Food lovers and industry experts laud their size and quality. RAS technology has helped in increasing the production rate of these prawns even as it has made intensive fish production compatible with environmental sustainability. In May 2021, Oman invested in the construction of a 8,000 hectare aquaculture farm: the second largest in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

A number of barriers had to be overcome for the RAS technology to be implemented. Costs of installing temperature controls in the desert kingdom are high and it has been tricky to persuade local farmers to choose this newer technology over their traditional aquaculture methods. It has taken extensive educational drives by the Omani government to finally develop 21 integrated tilapia farms, one shrimp farm, and one marine cage farm in the country. Today, the figures speak for themselves. The production of tilapia has leapt from three tonnes in 2013 and five in 2014 to 20 tonnes in 2015 and 77 tonnes in 2017.

“With the help of RAS, we have successfully enhanced the fish quality by 66 percent across the country in the last six years”, says Nasser Abdullah, Assistant Project Manager of the Al-Wusta fish farming project. Next on the cards: using RAS technology for salmon production. While energy intensive, this sustainable aquaculture model is ensuring safer fishing techniques and lowered food miles for fish consumers across the Middle East.

Author: Rahma Khan, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Oman banner image – Richard Bartz/ Wikimedia Commons, Muscat fish markets – StellarD and Khalifa Al Sahabi
(Wikimedia License – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)

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The tiny ice crystals on the dark green leaves sparkle in the winter sun. Wolfgang Palme breaks one leaf off the palm cabbage to eat. “It tastes nutty, elegant and sweet”, he says, smiling. An icy wind blows over the fields. Wolfgang Palme pulls up the zip of his weather jacket. The agronomist and head of the Austrian Research Institute of Horticulture has come to enjoy the taste of winter. The cold does not seem to harm the vegetables in his field. Chard, spinach, purslane, radish, turnips, leek, herbs and many species of cabbage are surviving undamaged despite temperatures falling far below zero on the day we meet. Nearby, in unheated soft-plastic tunnels, salads, carrots, celery or pea sprouts are thriving. Wolfgang Palme and his team planted them in late summer last year. Now it is the end of winter. There is still snow on the mountains around the Zinsenhof, an experimental farm between Linz and Vienna. But the vegetables are ready to eat.

It is a boon for his community, where in winter, fresh vegetable consumption entails buying produce grown in faraway, warmer climates. In fact, this is how most of Central Europe sources vegetables in winter. These, however, come with hidden costs. According to WWF Switzerland, a kilogram of asparagus flown in from Peru results in 15 kilograms of carbon emissions, compared to less than one kilogram had it been locally cultivated in the field. Green beans arriving from Morocco emit more than 30 times carbon than those that are locally grown. And what is available in winter locally is typically grown in heated greenhouses. “On a cold winter night, a heated greenhouse of 1.5 acres emits as much carbon as a detached house in a whole year,” says Palme, adding, “mankind can no longer afford this”. His innovative farming techniques balance the need to save the environment with meeting the consumer demand for fresh produce.

Palme has identified and published nearly 80 varieties of veggies which stand the Austrian frost. The idea of growing them in sub-zero temperatures came to him by chance. In an experiment, Asian salad greens were surprised by frost. But in spite of minus 11 degrees they remained undamaged. The technical literature had stated that they could withstand frost of only minus three to five degrees. “Fortunately, the lettuce had not read the literature,” he quips. This experience made him realise that often the growing conditions listed on seed packets, especially about how much frost they can bear, is not wholly accurate. So he redefined it.

With his work, the scientist wants to provide practical knowledge to other farmers. He is presently working with seven vegetable farms all over Austria. “Winter vegetables are good for small and medium-sized farmers,” says Palme. “They can be grown on land and soft-plastic tunnels all year round and save energy. Even in winter, they can offer fresh produce from their own cultivation.” The all-important question is how these vegetables manage to survive the frost. Palme plucks a lettuce leaf and takes a nibble. “Many vegetables form a kind of frost protection in their cells, which is made of sugar.. ” he says, through happy chews. “This is the reason they taste so good…”

Author: Klaus Sieg, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Wolfgang Palme

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In Gangavaram village in the south Indian state of Telangana, G Anjamma alternates layers of cow-dung ash and fresh neem leaves in a basket. In each layer, she places seeds for long-term preservation. Then she seals it with cow dung and clay. “Seeds can be stored for up to three years this way,” she says. As the community seed banker of her village, her house is stacked with big barrels of these seed baskets. This is precious cargo, for all these seeds are indigenous and better suited for rain-fed farming, crucial in a region prone to droughts. Farmers, mostly Dalit, lower caste women from surrounding villages, source seeds from Anjamma. “There is no guarantee how seeds from the market will grow. The market mostly sells commercial crops, and there is little variety,” she says, showing the several regional and national awards she had won for preserving biodiversity and sustainable use of natural resources.

Anjamma is part of a movement led by 5,000 women initiated by the Deccan Development Society (DDS) in 1983. Women farmers gather in ‘sanghams’, groups of varying sizes, to learn sustainable farming. They grow multiple heirloom crops instead of cash crops like peanuts and cotton which need expensive inputs of irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. “This ensures we don’t have to buy anything from the market to keep our children and ourselves healthy,” says Anjamma. “Our survival also doesn’t depend on prices set by the market,” she adds. It has also ensured that she and other Dalit woman farmers are not at the mercy of government dole-outs, volatile market prices or vagaries wrought by climate change.

Their food and seed sovereignty has also given them resilience to survive the pandemic-induced economic crisis. The sustainable agricultural practices that women like Anjamma promote, allow farmers to practice multi-cropping.

“I grow 25 varieties of food crops in one acre. Even if ten fail, I still have enough to feed my family and sell the excess in the market,” says Mogullama, another Dalit farmer from the region.

The movement has now spread across 75 villages. Office bearers of DDS estimate that at least 5,000 acres in the district are free of chemical inputs. Every January since 2002, the society organizes a month-long biodiversity festival in which a parade of bullock carts showcases the variety of heirloom millets grown in the area.

The DDS model has been replicated in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo and elsewhere in Western Africa. “We started collaborating with women farmers in Africa as their geology and climate conditions are similar to those found in our region,” says CN Suresh from the society. DDS is also part of the All India Millet Sisters Network, launched in 2016, which promotes the use of millets amongst women farmers. In 2019, DDS won the Equator Prize for its holistic approach to climate change, food security, and empowering marginalised women and in 2020, the Society won the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Award: “in recognition of the work of DDS women to rehabilitate degraded lands and promote biodiversity.”

Meanwhile, DDS’ annual festival this year has seen enthusiastic participation. “Even from men!” exclaims I Mollumma, a Dalit woman farmer and the official videographer for the festival. “Perhaps the pandemic has reminded them of the importance of preserving our indigenous biodiversity in farming…”

Author: Karthikeyan Hemalatha, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Karthikeyan Hemalatha

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At almost 4,000 meters above sea level, the high-altitude grasslands of Peru, known locally as punas, are a complex and increasingly fragile ecosystem. Climate change, the melting of glaciers and unpredictable rain patterns have shrunken the wetlands, with alarming consequences for some of the country’s most vulnerable communities, who depend on them to graze their sheep, alpacas and llamas. Though Peru is home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, their size has diminished by 40 percent in the past four decades. As glaciers recede, the drying grasslands force herders to concentrate in smaller areas, leading to intensive grazing practices, which further degrade the puna.

In search of a solution, the residents of Miraflores and Chanchayllo, two small Andean villages in the Nor Yauyos reserve, decided to look back into the past; a bet that has yielded extraordinary results. With the help of the U.S. non-profit The Mountain Institute (TMI) and enlisting Colombian archeologist Alex Herrera, local authorities were able to bring back to life a 1200-year old ancestral hydraulic system. The complex network of waterways had been used for centuries, but it was abandoned in the 17th century when Spanish colonizers forced indigenous populations to relocate.

The silt dams, reservoirs and canals were used by ancient communities to slow the movement of water through the soil and grasses. The slower pace of water they produced mitigated the impact of both floods and droughts, created nutrient-rich soil and expanded the wetlands, allowing for rotational grazing. While livestock and crop productivity have indeed increased since the system was revived, Herrera explains that the success of the project should not be measured in terms of output, but of sustainability. “Andean knowledge is not about maximizing production, but minimizing risks,” he tells us, “and that can be antithetical to the current growth paradigm.

Ancestral technologies look to increment production to provide food for everyone over time, not to increase revenue.”

For the team behind the revival of the waterways, its success lies in its bottom-up participation and collaboration. The initiative was decided upon in community assemblies and relied heavily on local knowledge. The project is not an off-the-peg solution: combining, as it does, complex forms of social organization and an understanding of the ecosystem built over centuries and passed orally across generations.

Though the TMI believes the success of the project raises hopes for highland communities everywhere, Herrera is quick to point out that adapting it to different contexts might prove to be a complex endeavor. “Andean technology is not just material; it is also the capacity to organize work over time and space. This type of solution requires local knowledge and, more importantly, a local commitment to sustain it over time. And this can only come from the communities themselves, not from external actors,” he explains. Listening to indigenous populations, he adds, is a good place to start.

Author: Jimena Ledgard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Grassland banner image and 1. Alexander Herrera Wassilowski, 2. The Mountain Institute

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The future of global infrastructure is to be found on a humble stretch of motorway in the province of Zeeland, in the Netherlands. In 2010 the Dutch government donated a 400-metre strip of the A58 to Erik Schlangen and his team at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at the University of Delft, to test the radical idea of creating a road surface capable of healing itself.

The porous mixture of bitumen and aggregate stones used on road surfaces across the globe is a dream to drive on, but costly to maintain. Over several years UV light exposure and tyre pressure cause the binding bitumen to shrink, loosening the aggregate and leading to everything from potholes to damaged windscreens and road accidents. Schlangen realised that by incorporating into a novel asphalt tiny fibres of the steel wool that’s commonly used to scrub domestic saucepans and applying occasional induction heat from a modified vehicle, he could initiate a form of self-repair.

“When you heat up the steel, you melt the bitumen and the bitumen will flow into these micro-cracks and the stones are again fixed to the asphalt,” said Schlangen, demonstrating his self-healing asphalt with a sledgehammer and microwave, in a TED Talk that’s been viewed over a million times.

Repairing the material world that supports our modern lives is costly, both financially and it comes to carbon emissions. In 2009, EU governments invested €4.5 billion into the development and maintenance of EU road networks and corrosion of industrial and transport infrastructure is estimated to cost the global economy US $2.5 trillion a year. The arrival of animate materials promises to radically reduce these expenses as it revolutionises the way we understand our built world.

“Animate materials are more like nature,” says Mark Miodownik, Professor of Materials and Society at University College London in the UK and author of a 2020 Royal Society report into the potential of animate materials. “Nature makes materials, but these materials look after themselves, they harvest energy from the sun and can heal themselves. That is where the materials of the future will be.”

The revolution has already arrived in the lab, where design breakthroughs in recent years include a a coating for concrete that contains microcapsules that seal cracks when activated by sunlight, developed by researchers in South Korea; ‘living bricks’, made by mixing gelatin, calcite and sand with Synechococcus bacteria, which regenerate in response to temperature and humidity changes, from a team at the University of Boulder in Colorado; and a self-healing coating that can patch up imperfections on metal in matter of seconds from Northwestern University, an advance on the ‘self-healing’ polymers that are already used by Nissan to heal scratches on car bodywork.

One downside to the coming revolution in living materials, Miodownik points out, is that it disrupts established economies of ‘build and repair’. “Potholes drive economic growth,” Miodownik explains, “as companies have contracts to build roads and also repair the potholes in these roads.” The revolution, he adds, will require radical new business models.

Ten years on, studies on the samples from the A58 suggest that the life asphalt road can be doubled to 15 years if induction heat is applied every four years. Erik Schlangen’s road, he is happy to report, remains pothole-free. “Imagine buildings, roads, bridges, walls and perhaps entire cities that have qualities like these, composed of building blocks that can mimic some of the characteristics of cells and that operate autonomously together to promote growth, adaptation and healing,” the Royal Society Report concludes; daring us to dream.

Author: The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Marc Oliver Jodoin, Ian Taylor, Andy Kuo (Unsplash)

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It is estimated that 20 billion shoes are produced every year. Of these, about 350 million are thrown away every year in the US alone. And they are non-biodegradable. In 2014, athletes Shriyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami considered the several pairs of expensive sports shoes they had to discard every year and came up with an idea. Why not recycle the soles of their discarded sports shoes into new shoes? While they were no longer optimum for running, they would do nicely under a pair of slippers… Without any background or experience in shoe manufacturing, the duo probably didn’t even realise that their idea was novel and audacious. Soon, they were able to patent two of their industrial designs and roll out their first line of recycled shoes in 2015. This is how Greensole, a social startup that not only recycles old shoes into new footwear but also distributes them to the barefoot in 13 Indian states, was born.

“Going barefoot exposes people to injuries, parasitic infections and worse. Yet, while food, drinking water and shelter are considered basic to their well-being, wearing shoes is often overlooked,” says Bhandari. “Our retail business and corporate funding ensures that we are able to put shoes on the feet of countless people in the country.”

Here’s what happens to old shoes, once they reach Greensole’s manufacturing unit in Navi Mumbai. After a thorough wash, their uppers and lowers are separated. The lowers are resized; uppers cut for use as straps and laces used in shoe packaging. Even the shoe recycling has a low carbon footprint as it is manually done. The shoes, sold online with minimal advertising, have developed a cult following in India. They’ve featured twice in the India Fashion Week – last in 2019 in collaboration with noted fashion designers Abraham and Thakore.

Partnering with heavyweight corporates such as the Tata Group, Rolls Royce, international shoe brands like Adidas, Crocs and Skechers and over 60 others, Greensole organises old shoe collection and new shoe distribution drives across the country.

“In 2020, we distributed 400,000 shoes to those in need, including returning migrants at Mumbai’s railway stations,” says Bhandari. Corporates front the approximate US$2.7 needed to recycle a single pair of shoes, to be distributed in communities of their choice. Many of them have also organised shoe collection drives with their employees. Meanwhile, Greensole’s retail sales also contribute to their charity work, with a percentage from every shoe sold going into their charity arm. In 2018, Bhandari and co-founder Ramesh Dhami were listed in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list of Asian social entrepreneurs. The same year, they inaugurated their first skilling in Jharkhand, to train women to recycle shoes.

The Greensole model is replicable in countries where low cost manual labour is easily available. Most of all, it is timely. Not only does it reduce the load on the planet’s overflowing landfills, it makes for the barefoot and fashionistas alike, shoes that truly have a soul!

Author: Geetanjali Krishna, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images credit: Greensole

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