What makes technology and products so interesting for us?
Is it their complexity and intricate wiring?
Or rather, is it simplicity and that “why-didn’t-I think of that” moment that flashes through your head.
There are countless technologies we could start to list that have had the latter effect on us. However, putting the latter into a climate change context would veer us into sustainable technology comparisons.
What are sustainable technologies when talking climate change?
Anything and everything that helps a country, organization or person transition into the low carbon economy.
In plain English please?
Carbon footprints are able to measure what our overall carbon equivalent emissions are.
According to most scientists, if we stay on a business-as-usual consumption pattern — we’ll soon be going the way of the dodo. So we need technology that helps keep emissions low and prepare for the inevitable side-effects of climate change.
Contrary to common Hollywood belief, it’s not going to be a dooms day scenario. Climate change effects will slowly encroach onto all walks of life. Start burning our forests, expanding deserts, melting fresh water banks and infecting the economy by a plagued natural resource economy.
Hey! It’s already happening!
Take Pakistani floods, famine in Somalia, forest fires in Russia, storms in Australia and drought in Chile’s Copiapo area. Add up all the economic effects of the latter events and you’ll have a good idea of how massive a need there is to transition into a low carbon economy.
British Embassy financed a Universidad Catolica/ECLAC report about Climate Change effects for several South American Economies in 2008.
The verdict for Chile?
Chilean scientists suggested climate change could pose huge challenges for the country. Their models show projected temperature increases of at least 1C to 1.5C and a drop in rainfall of at least 10 to 30% in the next 40 years.
These changes could have a particular impact on agriculture in Chile’s central zone, home to a large part of the country’s population. However, in northern areas mining and copper production contribute a large portion of Chile’s economic sustainability.
And guess what? Mining needs water.
Considering copper is a valued commodity, mining companies will always have the means to dig deep in their pockets and import more water when needed. It is local residents and their food crops, however, that will soon find Chile’s water market throwing unaffordable water prices at them.
And that’s just it — mining wins over agriculture, and local residents either need to be employed by a mining company or move to another part of the country!
At a macro-economic level, can we talk about sustainable development if we are not producing the type of environment that is modular enough to sustain itself without externalities?
If copper prices go down (which they probably won’t in the near future unless China stops growing), can Chile really say mining is providing sustainable development for future generations?
As in other Andean countries, the rate at which many of Chile’s glaciers are melting has increased significantly in recent years, due mainly to temperature rises. Climate scientists say Chile is probably less dependent on glacial melt for water supplies than some areas of neighboring Peru or Bolivia.
However, they worry that the combination of more demand, less rainfall, less melting snow, and less water trapped in glaciers could combine to cause a serious decline in water availability, particularly in the summer months.
Sebastian Vicuña, executive director of the Global Change Research Centre at the Catholic University in Santiago, has calculated that the Maipo River — by far the largest source of irrigation and drinking water for the central region — could suffer a severe decline in its flow in the summer months.
Based on hydrological simulations, he says that by 2065 the water in the river could have fallen by 70%, from 170 cubic meters per second to no more than 60.
Special atmospheric conditions occur along the arid coast of Chile and southern Peru, where clouds settling on the Andean slopes produce what is known locally as camanchacas (thick fog). The clouds that touch the land surface can be “harvested” to obtain water. “Freshwater Augmentation Technologies” or fog harvesting sounds like something straight out of a science fiction movie. Draining air to squeeze out drops of water in the middle of the desert! But that’s just what Chileans did! Who? The Aymara’s.
Many years ago, the story was told of an Aymara Indian who planted a tree in the foggy desert and how it thrived. A more modern story began in 1967, when a cypress tree was planted in the foggy desert of Norte Grande province in Northern Chile. As far as rainfall is concerned, this area, near Antofagasta, Chile, may be the driest area in the world — receiving less than 5 mm of rain per year. Initially, a fog trap made of nylon mesh provided moisture for the tree, but as the tree grew, it was able to capture the moisture on its own, enough to contribute to undergrowth and even to groundwater (Gischler, 1991).
The Aymara’s fog harvesting technology has been researched and praised by many scientists. I mean fresh water from clouds, in the middle of the desert? Nobel Prize winning material that! It’s equivalent to electricity from the sky (solar panels)! Obviously, the production of water required for mining does not make fog harvesting a big development prospect for mining. However, think about it for just one second. If we were able to massify cellphone technology so that everyone can walk around and call anyone at any time, is it so crazy to think we could optimize Aymara technology so that it helps provide sustainable amounts of fresh water for coastal and northern desert communities?
Technology Transfer: Chile to Africa
The Aymara would have probably been surprised to know that they would one day be helping Tshanowa Junior Primary School in Limpopo, South Africa. The school is frequently shrouded in dense mist and rain, but the nearest water sources are 2 km away and there is a dam, 5 km away.
Most water sources are contaminated and the quality of the dam water is suspect. 130 school children rely on what water they can carry with them to school each day.
The school is located on the ridge of the easternmost points of Soutpansberg 1,000 m above sea level. Here, fog collection is ideal. Moist maritime air from the Indian Ocean moves over the escarpment and against the mountains during the night and early morning. The cloudiness sometimes persists throughout the day, it’s an African camanchaca.
In 1999, permission from local tribal leaders to erect a fog water collection system was granted. Vacant land adjacent to the school was demarcated for the purpose and construction commenced with local inhabitants employed to assist.
Each fog collector consists of three 6m-high wooden poles, mounted 9m apart. Steel cables stretch horizontally between the poles, and from each pole to the ground. A double layer of 30% shade cloth is draped over the cables, and fixed to the poles on each side. Water dripping from the net into the gutter runs through a sand filter and is then emptied into a tipping bucket. From there, it flows into a 10 kl storage tank further down the slope. Two additional tanks were erected at the school to collect the overflow from the first. An automatic weather station was also installed to record rainfall, wind speed and wind direction.
Results?
Within four days of completion, school children and members of the local community were drinking water collected by the fog screen. Although weather conditions have made accurate data collection difficult, daily yields of as much as 3,800 liters of rain and fog combined, have been recorded. The average collection rate from March 1999 to April 2001 was over 2.5 liters per square meter of fog screen.
Tshanowa Junior Primary School’s giant fog screens provide pupils and members of the community an average of between 150 liters and 250 liters of water a day. That’s 250 liters of water they get for free and had no access to before! So when thinking of great Chileans I am inclined to put my vote out there for the Aymara. Looking at how water prices are rising in Chile (ie. In Copiapo the cubic meter of water is now 1,000 pesos) we will be soon realize how important water efficiency really is.
The Aymara developed fog harvesting out of need.
However, instead of improving this kind of technology we have ignored them and undermined them for centuries; after all how could “they” know better than “us”, right?
As our generation inherits the planet’s most challenging environmental crisis of all time we will need sustainable solutions to survive climate change. As cliché as “sustainable solutions” may sound — we need to promote, ask and apply the latter with more ease then it is currently happening and being permitted by market mechanisms. Chileans must listen to their people. Listen to those who guided them before and continue to live from what the Earth has to offer today. Integrating into the low carbon economy must not necessarily require importing expensive western technologies: research and development focused on what we know works for us may be a wiser strategy…
Like many developing countries, Chile and its people has a lot to teach and offer the world. Nevertheless, Chile still needs to teach itself about all the gifts it harboring inside.