Category: Forestry & Land-use

Though the increasing urbanization in many parts of the world, developments of rural regions in the developing countries and the conservation of forests and wildlife remain to be essential for achieving sustainable socio-economic developments. Mitigation of climate change and promotion of green- and eco-technologies, and agro-industries for food, feed, fibre and fuel production are very much dependent on forestry, agriculture and land-use activities which would require increasing investment and infra-structures especially in rural areas, e.g. in Africa, South America and Asia. However, this doesn’t necessary mean less increase in urbanization but rather increasing integration of rural areas with urbanization, e.g. roads, small industrial and agro-facilities, and community services. Such trends should, also, benefit from the accelerating use of wireless technology ICT, off-grid solar panels and the expansion of small-scale farming, trade and land-use activities. The vast areas of forestry, agriculture and land-use will further require adaptation to new conservation and water management technologies, e.g. surface and groundwater, and rainwater harvesting.

Yacouba Sawadogo – The Man Who Stopped the Desert

An African farmer, who out of nothing, created a whole bio-diversity in a dry desert. An innovation “Yacouba’s Zai-techniques” that proved effective for fighting against desertification. The word Zai comes from the original word Zaigre which means to left up the land and dig holes, a simple approach that can very well compete with high-tech solutions. Yacouba’s innovation, also, a revolution that can be used for mitigation of climate change by bringing people together in friendly mobile workshops to turn the desert, and stony land, to cultivated land where farmers can invest in trees, improve there food security and also help people to adapt to climate change. These are emerging new possibilities for young people.

However, illiteracy is major obstacle in developing countries that brings with it new threats for any new idea thus are endangering what has been achieved so far. Whenever threats appear wise people without power always appeal to intellectuals and authorities rather that verbal violence that doesn’t benefit anybody rather than damage and losses for everybody including authorities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wezxNnkcsW8&feature=youtu.be

Food-Energy-Water Nexus

Feed-Food-Fibre-Fuel from agriculture, forest and farming are all dependent on landuse and water resources. However in arid and semi-arid areas, unlike temperate regions, water scarcity can be a major problem and energy are frequently required to use underground water for agriculture and farming. In all cases, i.e. even when water is available, waste from agriculture, farming and associated household applications can result in degradation of water quality. Energy is, always, required for treating used water and because of this “food-energy-water” are usually treated as essential policy-components for achieving sustainable socio-economic developments in many countries around the world and whenever necessary. This requires long-term and large-scale coordination of inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial solutions with involvement of all stakeholders both on vertical and horizontal levels. These policies and solutions require appropriate public awareness, capacity building and skilled expertise with the suitable monitoring and management infra-structures and assessment instruments. These combined actions will have long-term positive feedback on economy, affordability and accessibility of food. An example on the interplay between food, energy and water is given below.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/04/120406-food-water-energy-nexus/#!

Sustainability – A “Metanoia rather than Affluenza”

The journey of science, to understand the very secret of the universe and the natural evolution of life, and the behavior of humans and the feedback impacts of technology on the fundamental drivers of life and its quality, never stops. A journey that fuels itself to complete Darwin’s “Unfinished Business”, and to search about a new vision of nature, a “Metanoia rather than Affluenza”. A journey directed by science and technology for sustainability and preservation of life, rather than for consumption and collapse of life, would help nature to resume rather than to relapse from the natural path of evolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff1Z8nGGebs&feature=youtu.be

Visit, Share and Contribute in Promoting Global Sustainability.

A new BLOG about applied global sustainability is available now. We will be gradually working with developing, interacting and promoting all issues relevant to applied global sustainabilty. With the NEW YEAR of 2014, you are kindly invited to visit, share and contribute in this BLOG.

ABOUT Sustain-Earth.com

ABOUT Sustain-Earth.com

How Would Science Break the Tyranny of the Luxury Journals?

Scientific discoveries and production of new knowledge involve a long chain of systematic steps where publication of science work in top-tier journals is becoming an essential step. Randy Schekman, a US biologist and Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine 2013, is warning the scientific community about the role of leading academic journals in distorting the scientific process. There have been long-standing debates about assessment of scientific publication especially in terms of originality, quality and credit. Scientific journals have grown in number dramatically in the past decades. However, only few journals, e.g. Nature, Cell and Science, have kept very high reputation through their restricted referee and publication policies, in particular the number of papers they accept. This, however, has promoted high “impact factor” for these well-established journals. “Impact factor” is very widespread for judging the quality, originality and credit of scientific publications, also, in the process of judging the quality/standard of scientific applications for funding. Randy Schekman, and many others, are very critical about the existing rules for judging science as the “impact factor”, which is used for marketing top-tier journals and for ranking scientific applications for funding, can not be regarded as an absolute indicators and a fair instrument in these aspects.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals

Africa – Would Solving Poverty Lead to More Poverty?

How would new Africa look like? Africa is not the poorest continent on earth. Though there is poverty and hunger in Africa, it has a huge capital of natural resources, enough to provide sustainable socio-economic growth if properly managed. Trading Africa’s natural resources against its poverty and hunger is a shortsighted strategy. It would in the long-run lead to more poverty and hunger.
http://www.africaw.com/the-future-of-africa-the-new-africa

History of World Population

At the onset of the ancient Egyptian civilization the world population was somewhat more than 15 million people, i.e. the current population of the Netherlands only or fifth of the current of population of Egypt today. Ancient Egyptians had therefore enough natural resources to create a civilization on their own and within their boundaries. So, peak population had passed very long time ago!
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm

The Chinese Need to Clean-up Is A Major Challenge

Everywhere on our planet, waste management is of major concern. Life quality is very much related to successful waste-management policies. Reducing, Collecting, Sorting, Processing and Re-cycling of human and industrial waste is becoming a major industry. But do we have proper scientific and technology approaches for such vital and important industry. Waste problems have costed humanity decades, if not centuries, to understand the enormous threats of waste and pollutions that have degraded all forms of life qualities of earth.
http://theferkel.co.uk/2012/05/30/worst-examples-of-pollution/chinese-migrant-workers-sort-through-industrial-and-household-waste-at-a-recycling-centre-in-beijing-china/

The Global Concern of Water and Consumer’s Responsibility

Water conservation is of global concern and water issues are not only about water scarcity. Quality is essential and without public awareness and the consumer’s responsibility one would expect many new additional threats for the environment, the ecosphere and for humans.
http://www.ec.gc.ca/eau-water/default.asp?lang=en&n=344B115B-1#why

How Septic Systems Work

In many situations household can build simple systems for water “purification” through improving and developing the existing knowledge. These systems can be of interest for people that have limited access to public services, in remote areas and in cases of water scarcity where re-use of water becomes a necessity. http://www.clearchoicescleanwater.org/septics/septic-impacts/

Ghana, Excellent Example of a Fast Growing African Nation

Ghana, the gate to Africa and a model of success! Unbelievable fast progress within many sectors of activities, energy, education, health, ICT, agriculture, tourism, … . An amazing safe and peaceful society with a high-level of democratization brought about by international trade, cultural exchange and expansion of small and medium enterprises.

http://www.theafricareport.com/component/option,com_videoflow/id,72/sl,play/task,play/

Appearing Soon “Sustain-Earth.com”

Coming Soon “Sustain-Earth.com”. An interactive BLOG with a global overview of the past, present and future progress of the concept of “Sustainability”. The evolution of “Sustainability from the very individual, narrow and fragmented understanding to a holistic and applied global prospective. Wandering of humans in the “Sustainability” landscape for secured living for themselves confronted with the very fundamental life processes on earth and resulted in major threats for survival of the earth-systems. The BLOG is organised in explanatory “Categories” for different society sectors and it will provide “Services” and “Noteboards” to Stakeholders.

Click to access ABOUT%20Sustain-Earth.com.pdf

Holistic Assessment Approaches for Sustainability

Holistic assessment approaches for developing and implementing sustainability strategies for shaping strategic policies are needed on all levels of different public and private sectors. Such approaches would require Key Performance Indicators for quality assessment analysis of the three main pillars of sustainability, i.e. social, environmental and economic. How would such approaches and indicators look like?

See, this example on a partial approach

http://reliabilityweb.com/index.php/articles/measuring_sustainable_change/

Food – How Good is Good?

Information on the quality of food we are eating, i.e. not only in terms of nutrition value but the levels and contents of toxic compounds also, is not always available for the citizens. How do we know that the food we are eating is free from toxics, or at least will not damage the organs of our body. Is it the responsibility of the citizen to find out if the food is safe or is it the responsibility of the producers or is it the responsibility of the shops selling the products or is it the institutional organizations that have to take care of the safety of the products circulating in the global “free market”?
The control mechanisms and the rules are getting diffuse and the looser are definitely the consumers!

http://oracletalk.com/10-foods-sold-u-s-banned-elsewhere/?shared=email&msg=fail

World Water Markets

The world water markets are facing several challenges. The growing population of the world is causing increasing pressures on food, energy and services related to basic consumption. Investment in water infra-structures around the world to satisfy the increasing needs will be different in different countries. Water is needs in all society and investments will vary from one country to another depending on existing conditions, technologies and needs. Countries in arid and semi-arid regions, and countries with high population will need relatively much more resources to invest in water infra-structures.
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/Calion/world-water-markets

Why “Sustain-Earth.com”

Currently, sustainability is generally treated in a theoretical manner with demonstrations of the negative impacts of over-consumption and the miss-management of natural resources. However, in a world with increasing population we can hardly continue with “business as usual”. We need to go over to practical solutions, i.e. “Applied Sustainability”. Transformation to more sustainable approaches worldwide and in all society sectors will not take place over-night.

Sorry for poor updating and interruption in Blog activities.

You may have felt poor up-dating of the Blog “farideldaoushy.wordpress.com” and major interruptions in the activities. The wide-range of interests within the Blog “farideldaoushy.wordpress.com” made it necessary to up-date the layout and construction of the Blog. Also, to have own domain with representative name that reflects the content and extent. The new “Sustain-Earth.com” will also allow us to fulfill our wish to improve the communication with the visitors and readers and to provide new services. It will, also, provide platform for professionals and expertise within society sectors to share knowledge and contribute in topic discussions.

Change of Blog Address

This Blog “farideldaoushy.wordpress.com” will get a new address “sustain-earth.com”.
The change to the new address will take place within one week.

We have a new layout and construction of the Blog to make it easier to follow the Posts and the content much easier as well as to contribute in discussions as well.

The new construction will involve a number of new interactive functions where guest Bloggers, expertise and professional will contribute as well as interacts with the media to discuss and answer their questions. The Categories of the Blog are kept wide enough to deliver solutions and approaches in all society sectors.