Published on May 14th, 2008
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How many heroes can create a revolutionary gadget that has changed the lives of poor farmers and costs only $28 and refuses to get rich from it? In the life of Jock Brandis, just a cursory look at the bloody fingers of women peanut shellers in an impoverished village in Africa is all it took to create the universal nut sheller from locally available sustainable materials.
A Canadian of Dutch descent, he has since passed on the skill to local farmers in Mali, where he first presented his model, and elsewhere on the continent where he trains them for free and still refuses to patent the cheap gadget which has impressed even infamous peanut farmers like Jimmy Carter. A Gift to the World, he calls it.
Mama, I promise to look this Brandis guy up for you and bring him to our village. My mama, in her 55 years, still finds time from her teaching job in the village school to employ farm hands to shell peanuts for her. And she reaps an impressive twenty 50 kg sacks a year. Not bad for her agrarian moonlighting, hmm…
Feted as a CNN Hero for his innovation, Brandis has worked with communities in 17 countries across four continents through his Full Belly Project to make hundreds of machines locally at minimal cost resulting in health benefits and increased family incomes.
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Published on May 9th, 2008
A safari adventure to Africa to view corals? This might sound interesting to many people including eager adventurers like myself.
I have always marveled at the wonders of the sea; beautiful marine creatures that are awe-inspiring to watch. But one trip on a glass-bottom tourist boat a few months ago made me promise to go back for more, and I hadn’t found the time until now. I wanted to see the coral bed under the cool waters off the Indian Ocean coast again.
Coral reefs are among Earth’s most diverse, productive, and beautiful ecosystems, and have become exciting spots for tourist who admire water life and sports. Its now not uncommon to see tourists in glass bottomed boats being ferried to coral gardens for viewing.
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Published on May 2nd, 2008
They couldn’t have chosen a more fitting name because the development of an eco-city in Kenya’s tourism hub of Mombasa is the country’s first and probably the boldest in this part of the world.
Mimicking the beautiful haciendas of the Spanish countryside, the developers are looking to something even more spectacular - the design of the buildings will make best use of the sun, wind and rainfall to supply the energy and water needs of the residents and will also involve planting of more than 10,000 trees to complete the picture.
Works have already begun and hacendados (or hacienda owners) are buying into the prime real estate, having seen a sample house in this complex that will consist of a hospital, school, playgrounds and recreation facilities, a police station, commercial centers and office blocks, among others.
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Published on April 10th, 2008
For every Muslim, Halal or ‘permissible’ in Arabic means that it passes the test, as far as food is concerned. This will certainly include correct handling procedures and many more practices.
But the question that has dogged Muslims for centuries has always been how to catch fish, using permissible methods that do not damage the environment.
“Lawful to you is the pursuit of water-game (fishing) and its use for food, for the benefit of yourselves and those who travel” (Surah Al-Maida, v. 96)
Dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, and bottom trawling are all fishing techniques that may cause habitat destruction. A 2006 article in Science magazine said bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area’s seabed life on a single run.
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Published on April 2nd, 2008
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so goes the old adage. But in Africa, green innovations by very creative and eco-imaginative minds seem to be turning this adage around, and perhaps we will soon hear of: “All work and play combined sustains a green Africa”.
It all started with the PlayPump, the water system that is a children’s merry-go-round attached to a water pump and storage tank that featured on Ecoworldly a while ago.
A see-saw that generates electricity when played on by children? Now there is this simple looking see-saw which when played on by children in Africa, generates electricity to help power up their school. It has no name yet but if this trend continues, it looks like Africa will be one very big playground for green play, literally.
You wanna play, somebody?
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Published on March 17th, 2008
If I were to lay my hands on $48.6 million, I would probably go bonkers trying to figure out what to do with it. But I am no Sir Paul McCartney, neither can I guess what Heather Mills does for a living. However, now that I know this figure separates the two on their divorce, I also know what $48.6 million can do for drought in Africa.
It is ironic if not a coincidence that on the same pay day in a London courtroom, the European Union was also announcing a grant of a similar sum to fight drought in Africa. The European Union package of Euro 30 million (US$47 million) will help African countries in the northeast of the continent fight the effects of drought.
Drought fighting initiatives in countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and even Sudan, always face funding shortfalls, affecting emergency relief for millions facing acute food shortages in the drought-hit Horn of Africa, in turn threatening to exacerbate already dire conditions. The effects of drought on people’s lives are devastating and not always visible to the rest of the world.
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Published on March 11th, 2008
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. - Genesis 2:15
Jim Lackey is not amused that the media - new media bloggers included - keep churning out misleading headlines on what the good old Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti actually said about sinning environmentally.
If you’re wondering who the hell the Lackey fellow is, Jim Lackey is the general news editor of the Catholic News Service and he says there is nothing new about environmental blighting as a sin. He says editors are just having fun and are committing another sin in the process - adulteration of the original ingredient! But the CNS website itself has “NEW SINS” as the sub headline to the big story. Perhaps he means it’s an old sin with a new definition?
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Published on March 6th, 2008
There is no recent conflict in Africa that has elicited so much debate around the world and in the United States, in particular, as Darfur. Not even the post election political skirmishes in Kenya drew so much attention. Kenya, once the darling of the continent, the erstwhile adversaries are today sharing a cup of tea as well as power, something unthinkable only two months ago.
In a 2007 newspaper article, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”
What does this mean? The Darfur conflict inflicts even more damage on Sudan’s environmental degradation with nearly two million internally displaced people putting pressure on the fragile environment as they clear land and source ground water to survive.
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Published on March 1st, 2008
On this take-life-simple site that I like to visit, one blogger who goes by the name Brani put a petition asking people to promise that they were to shun going out shopping with new plastic bags each time they visited a supermarket.
The petition: “Promise to reuse bag” read: “I will re-use plastic supermarket bags or get a pretty plastic/cotton bag that I can carry everywhere in case I need it but I want 10 other people to do the same.” It attracted 11 more people who made a similar commitment.
Writing from somewhere in the UK, Brani was inspired by documentaries on sea life being swamped with plastic rubbish. That supermarkets are one of the largest contributors to the plastics menace goes without doubt.
In countries with little or no legislation, non biodegradable plastics are choking life out of flora and fauna in urban areas and slum communities are bearing the biggest brunt. In South Africa, plastic bags have been dubbed the “national flower” because so many can be seen flapping from fences and caught in bushes.
A visit to the one-million population Kibera, arguably Africa’s largest, or Mathare Valley across the city of Nairobi, once touted as the “Green City in the Sun”, is an eye-opener to the effect of plastics to the environment.
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Published on February 25th, 2008
Chances are the next time you are served tea with sugar, it probably may interest you to know that both commodities passed through green and sustainable processes to reach your breakfast table.
And what’s more - small holder farmers in east Africa who worked hard to put a more environmentally friendly cup of tea in front of you not only reaped a bumper harvest from their labor, they also got to sell excess electricity generated to local grid operators.
The green funding mechanism, Global Environment Facility or GEF and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) are collaborating to implement small-scale hydropower projects and cogeneration power projects in several East African states in two initiatives.
The projects are meant to reduce the tea industry’s energy costs, enhance global competitiveness of the region’s tea industry. It hopes to increase the share of global tea revenues, flowing to the region’s tea farming community as well as provide opportunities for extending clean electricity to rural communities.
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