UNDP Travelling Seminar: Environment and Development | Mongolia 1998

As head of communications for UNDP/UN Mongolia, I organised and led press tours across the country for international journalists in 1997 and 1998.

A book published by UNDP chronicled the press tour in 1998.

Asian Factories Starting to go Green

Media headlines have recently highlighted the growing air pollution crisis in Asia’s expanding cities. This is caused by a mix of factors – the growing number of vehicles, coal-powered factories, people burning dirty fuels to heat their homes, and poor enforcement of standards – and has severe consequences for human health. If it’s not tackled, more and more countries will see large rises in respiratory problems, cancers and early deaths from pollution-caused illnesses (http://www.nrdc.org/air/).

The World Health Organization (WHO) says air pollution is the world’s largest environmental health risk, killing 7 million people every year. Asia has the largest number of air pollution deaths in the world, with 3.3 million deaths linked to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million deaths related to outdoor air pollution (Clean Air Asia).

While most of the Asian countries where this is a problem are also aggressively growing their economies in order to get richer and raise living standards, there is a rising awareness of the need to balance a modern, industrial economy with human health and the environment.

One solution is to adopt green and sustainable building standards when constructing new factories. This is more than just a public relations exercise: the energy savings possible from building smart pay off in the long run. And green factories not only pollute less, they save lives and the environment.

Asia plays a critical role in producing the world’s consumer products, from the small and simple to the highly complex components used in 21st-century computing technologies.

Intel (intel.com), the manufacturer of electronic devices and the computer chips that go inside them, is trying to lead the way. It has built a US $1 billion manufacturing plant 16 kilometers outside Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and it is designed to exceed Vietnamese environmental and sustainability guidelines and laws.

Opened in 2010, it boasts the country’s largest solar power system. It is also currently working on a water reclamation system to reduce water consumption at the plant by 68 per cent, according to The New York Times. It is hoping to receive certification from the US Green Building Council (usgbc.org).

It is all part of a wider trend that is starting to reverse the damaging, short-termist approach of the past. More and more Western multinationals and their Asian suppliers are building environmentally sound factories in the developing world.

According to the US Green Building Council, around 300 manufacturing facilities in Asia are either certified or are awaiting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The LEED certification recognizes the building has met certain standards in becoming a ‘green’ building.

Going green is more and more part of corporate policy for companies that want to avoid the bad publicity of disasters such as the garment factory collapse that killed 1,135 people in Bangladesh in April 2013.

But it is not just driven by a desire to avoid bad publicity: large corporations that build factories in the global South are also realizing there are big financial savings to be made.

Intel has been able to reduce its global energy costs by US $111 million since 2008. It did this by investing US $59 million in 1,500 projects to boost sustainability across its facilities worldwide. The projects have reduced carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the amount produced by 126,000 American households per year.

Intel’s solar array in Vietnam, which cost US $1.1 million, offsets the equivalent of 500 pollution-belching motorbikes every day.

How effective are LEED-certified buildings? The New York Times reported that a 2011 survey compared a typical shoe factory with a LEED factory run by the American sport shoe maker Nike. It found the LEED factory used 18 per cent less electricity and fuel and 53 per cent less water.
And this trend is creating a new economy unto itself. As an example, a new marketplace for industrial efficiency upgrading is developing in India. Power outages are frequent in India, so finding a way to save electricity and alternatives to dependence on the national power grid is attractive to any economic enterprise.

Prashant Kapoor, principal industry specialist for green buildings at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), believes demand for upgrades is strong enough that various companies can specialize in this field and profit from it.

And things are also happening in the notoriously smog-choked cities of China. By the end of 2012, China had certified eight factories and 742 buildings as LEED, according to the China buildings programme at the Energy Foundation (ef.org) in San Francisco.

Damien Duhamel of Solidiance (solidiance.com), a firm that advises businesses on how to grow in Asia, believes avoiding risk caused by environmental accidents or scandals is heightened by the growing presence of social media, which amplifies negative publicity.

“The next battle will be here” for higher corporate environmental standards, Duhamel believes. “This is why some smart companies – Intel, for example – took the steps of being proactive.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: April 2014

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Time-Tested Iranian Solutions to Cool and Refrigerate

Keeping food cool is critical for human health. No matter what the climate, a cool environment will prolong food preservation, stave off spoilage and lower the risk of food poisoning. This is crucial for the poor because it means they can reduce food waste and avoid illnesses caused by food poisoning. Diarrhea is a common problem when people do not have access to refrigeration for their food.

Food security is also enhanced, as more can be stored and less thrown away as waste. Keeping food cool also means less need for preservation techniques, such as using salt, spices or smoke. Salt and smoke both can have adverse affects on human health. Salt increases sodium in the diet, which leads to high blood pressure, and smoke is a carcinogen which can lead to various forms of cancer.

It is healthier to keep food in its natural state – and keep it cool.

While the invention of the electric refrigerator was a major breakthrough, it requires a steady supply of electricity, which is expensive and difficult for many people.

Various pre-electric refrigeration technologies have been developed over the centuries. Among them was a pioneering technology used in Persia (modern-day Iran) as far back as the 11th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna). And now, it is being looked to once again today as a sustainable refrigeration solution that does not damage the environment.

Iran’s solution involves creating a domed ice house made from earth bricks. Many ancient ice houses have been discovered on the edge of deserts, where ice was scarce and supplies remote. The solution was to create a dugout channel at the rear of a domed house and then flood the channel with water. When the temperature dropped at night in the desert, the water would freeze into ice.

Rising early in the morning, the resident would break up the ice into blocks and store them inside the ice house. This was repeated night after night until there was enough ice in the house that it could last the summer months.

The water was drawn from elaborate irrigation systems used for farming.

The ice houses were cone and dome-shaped and included some with underground structures. To date, a project headed by Dr. Hemming Jorgensen has documented 129 centuries-old ice houses at the fringe areas of large deserts in Iran. Jorgensen, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, has documented the use of these structures on his “Ice Houses of Iran” website (http://www.hemmingjorgensen.com/).

In 18th and 19th century England, ice houses were also common place in country estates to keep food cool in kitchens. Today, there are growing numbers of people around the world who are turning to technologies such as ice houses to find sustainable, non-electric, low-carbon alternatives to electric refrigeration.

Another environmentally friendly cooling solution from Iran involves using wind catchers to circulate air during the hotter months. Called bagdir wind towers, or windcatchers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher), they have been used in Yadz, Iran since the 19th century.

Profiled in Green Building Magazine (http://www.greenbuildingpress.co.uk/product_details.php?category_id=10&item_id=235), the wind towers are made of stone, and channel wind down into a shaft to cool or heat the rooms below. It is an air circulation solution that does not take any energy – because it uses the wind – and is carbon neutral. In summer, the wind is drawn down into a stone chimney by low air pressure zones in the ventilation system. It is cooled, and then is circulated through the dwelling, rising as it warms up through the house. This is combined with a strategy of moving rooms depending on how hot or cool they are, adjusting clothing based on the temperature, or even placing water on the floor to cool the air.

In Nigeria in West Africa, a cooler called the zeer (http://practicalaction.org/zeer-pots) has been developed. It works like this: two ceramic earthenware pots of different sizes are arranged one inside the other. The space between the pots is filled with wet sand and kept moist. The user then places drinks or vegetables inside and covers it with a damp cloth. As the water from the moist sand evaporates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporation), the air inside the centre pot is cooled several degrees, enough to preserve some foods and drinks.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: June 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Mapping to Protect Kenya’s Environment: the eMazingira Solution

 

Powerful new grassroots crowd-mapping tools have sprung up in the past few years across the global South, from Brazil’s Wikicrimes (www.wikicrimes.org) real-time crime mapping technology to the now famous Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.com) – a non-profit company making the free and open source Ushahidi software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping – from its base in Kenya. They share some common features. All draw on the widespread use of mobile phones in the global South combined with growing access to the Internet, either through 3G mobile phone services, WiFi wireless connections, Internet centres or increasingly available broadband Internet services.

They then connect the mobile phones to the new mapping services available either on the phones or on the Internet. One example is Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

These mapping services are revolutionary in what they bring to poor communities. They allow people to quantify in real time what is happening in their area, as well as see what is happening around the world. Where in the past this sort of mapping and statistical data collection was chiefly the domain of government departments and private services for wealthy corporations, individuals can now participate in the collection of data and map what is happening in their area. This can include mapping actual crime as it occurs, or slum-mapping, where a visual snap-shot of a slum area is made to better target aid and development.

This is a game-changer for human and sustainable development. It has the potential to close the gap between the collection and analysis of data and action. Accurate, real-time data makes it easier to push government agencies to deliver on their promises, especially during a crisis.

Kenya’s eMazingira website (www.emazingira.org) is showing the difference these tools can make. It allows people to identify potentially destructive practices that harm the environment – unregulated forestry, pollution, dangerous animals, land degradation, climate change – and alert others to what is happening. This level of awareness, it is hoped, will in time reduce the destruction of local environments and improve the quality of life for both humans and wildlife.

Mazingira means “environment” in Swahili. The website’s motto is “Keeping the environment clean for the future generation”.

The eMazingira website is a visually simple affair with a leafy banner image and an interactive map showing what is happening. It is in its first iteration and future upgrades are on the way. A rolling list of incidents keeps readers briefed on what is happening, from “Fire burning” to “Sewer burst” to “Rogue elephant”. There are five main categories to choose from and users can file reports by text message, email, sending a Tweet (www.twitter.com) or filling in an online form on the website.

“We got to know about Ushahidi during its first deployment which was in Kenya, when it was used to map post-election violence incidents in early 2008,” explains Dunston Machoka, director of BTI Millman Limited (www.btimillman.com) inNairobi,Kenya, a custom software development firm leading the project.

“We were inspired to develop eMazingira, on one hand, because of the passion we had for environmental conservation and on the other hand, from the success stories we had observed of Ushahidi deployments inKenya,HaitiandJapan.”

Machoka believes this is a critical time forKenya’s environment: “eMazingira comes at a time when environmental conservation is a huge concern inKenya. Our key observation was that there was no effective reporting mode for environmental incidents for citizens.”

The website hopes to better engage citizens in tackling the country’s environmental problems and sees this as a way to spur further government action.

One of eMazingira’s proudest moments came when it won the World Summit Youth Award as the 2011 Runner Up for the use of ICT towards attaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

But how easy is it to work with this technology? Machoka advises those starting out to turn to the Ushahidi team for support.

“I would advise them to get in touch with the Ushahidi team through their website and by doing so the deployment will be easy, fast and there will be adequate assistance in case of any challenges,” he said.

For the next two years, eMazingira will be focusing on rolling out the service to the country, from the main towns to rural areas.

“At the end of the period we hope to start similar programmes in East Africa based on the lessons learnt in Kenya,” confirms Machoka.

And that isn’t where the eMazingira story will stop: its creators also want to deploy the technology globally, if countries have the right conditions.

“The key necessity for the application would be good mobile and Internet infrastructure and government that can promote citizen participation in environmental conservation,” Machoka said.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: December 2011

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Kenyan Safari Begins Minutes from Airport

Many people find the prospect of staying in airport hotels dreary at best. They tend to be located in industrial parts of cities or far from city centres. They can be surrounded by roads and highways and are built to move lots of people, not to look nice. The surrounding areas can be very common to all nations – warehouses, office parks, nondescript restaurants and hotels – and give few clues to where you are apart from the weather and the languages on the sign boards.

In short, they are the last place you would choose to stay to get a flavour of a country or culture. But in Nairobi, Kenya, this experience has been turned on its head. While many people travel to Africa to take in the breathtaking beauty of the continent and absorb the fascinating cultures and people, they usually wait to do this once they are far from the airport. But not in Nairobi, where it is possible to begin an African adventure right at the airport.

The Nairobi Tented Camp (www.nairobitentedcamp.com) opened in December 2010. It allows tourists to sleep in the open savannah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savanna). The experience is properly wild, with game animals roaming near the camp. Started by Kenyan Guy Lawrence and drawing on his years of experience running safaris and adventure travel, he partnered with Will Knocker, Marian Mason and Ibrahim Ali Abayo, an elder from the Boran tribe who works as assistant camp manager.

The business makes effective use of its website, interlinking good design, photographs and a blog with other social media to make the camp appealing to tourists using the web.

Tourists can expect to see rhino, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, leopard, antelope and possibly lions while listening to the yelps of hyenas at night.

Located just minutes from Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport (www.kenyaairports.co.ke/kaa/airports/jkia/), Wilson Airport and Nairobi City itself, the camp is nestled in a forest in Nairobi National Park (http://www.kws.org/parks/parks_reserves/NANP.html). It is the first accommodation to be allowed in this part of the park.

In total, it takes 30 minutes from landing at the airport to be settled in the camp. The last 20 minutes of the drive to the camp takes place in the park, and gets the wild game adventure started early.

In real estate people talk about “location, location location”: find the right place, and you reap the benefits. And you cannot find a better location than Kenya’s oldest national park – 12,000 hectares in size – located beside East Africa’s dynamic regional hub of Nairobi, Kenya. The business is a good example of how a twist on the traditional safari camp and resort can attract attention.

The camp is surrounded by savannah plains on one side, and the city of Nairobi on the other.

The tented camp pitches itself at travellers looking for a better option than just staying in a nondescript airport hotel, or who are looking for a great way to begin a longer journey into Kenya.

“Safaris in Kenya used to start after a long five-hour drive down to the Maasai Mara,” camp owner Gary Lawrence told Monocle magazine. “But now your safari can start 10 minutes after leaving the airport.”

Kenya has been in recovery mode since its tourism industry was hit hard by a combination of events in 2008. Kenya experienced violent rioting during the 2007 and 2008 elections and a body blow from the 2008 global economic crisis. Both events caused a severe drop in tourism.

In 2007, the country received more than 2 million foreign tourists and close to US $1 billion in revenue, but numbers fell the following year. However, tourism grew 15 percent from 2009 to 2010 in Kenya, putting the country on course to meet its 2012 goal of returning to 2 million tourists a year.

Tourism is a critical foreign currency earner for Kenya and saw growth in revenues of 18 percent in 2010 from 2009 (Kenya Tourist Board).

Kenya’s strategy has included aggressive marketing campaigns in new markets to attract tourists. The country is billing itself as a “high value for high spending tourists” and it has seen increasing numbers of visitors from the booming emerging economies of India, Russia, China and the Middle East. Most of Kenya’s tourists come from the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy and Germany.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: July 2011

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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