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Jun302015

Time-Tested Iranian Solutions to Cool and Refrigerate

Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:48AM

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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Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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Protecting Threatened Fruits and Nuts in Central Asia

Monday, June 22, 2015 at 10:25AM

Between 94,000 and 144,000 plant species — a quarter to a half of the world’s total — could die out in the coming years, according to an estimate by Scientific American (2002). Among them are vital food crops, threatened by a world in which climate change is causing more weather turbulence and diseases and viruses can spread rapidly and destroy crops.

This scale of plant loss risks leaving the world’s food security dependent on fewer – and more vulnerable – domesticated species. The hunt is on for hardy plant species that can survive these ups and downs while protecting the world’s food security for this and the next generation.

In the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, conservation of trees and their fruits and nuts are being placed at the centre of the economic lives of people who had been unwittingly destroying the trees’ habitat. Two projects, one to preserve walnut trees in Tajikistan, and the other to preserve apple trees in Kyrgyzstan, are beginning to bear fruit.

The Red List of Trees of Central Asia published in April 2009 by the Global Trees Campaign (http://www.globaltrees.org/rl_centralasia.htm), identified the 44 species most at risk in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Growing in rugged, mountainous terrain, the plants have high genetic diversity and are thought to be critical in the development of disease-resistant and climate-tolerant fruit varieties.

The diverse environments of Central Asia are host to over 300 wild fruit and nut species that are ancestors to the fruits and nuts we eat today, including wild apple, plum, pears, pistachios, cherry, apricot, and walnut.

Many face extinction as local people — driven by the need for fire wood, or to earn an income — cut down this precious resource. The Red List estimates that over 90 percent of the trees in the fruit and nut forests across Central Asia have been destroyed in the past 50 years.

The importance of these fruits and nuts can’t be over-emphasized: all the common varieties of apricot come from one living ancestor, the species Armeniaca vulgaris, now very rare in Central Asia. Central Asia’s Malus sieversii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_sieversii) gave birth to today’s domestic apples. It spread its way around the world along the ancient Silk Road (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road). The name of Kazakhstan’s former capital city is Almaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaty), which literally means ‘Grandfather of Apples’.

Scientists have found genetic diversity and disease resistance greater in wild plant species that have not been domesticated, like Malus sieversii. Malus sieversii is highly resistant to Fire Blight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_blight), a nasty disease that turns the fruits black (USDA).

To stop this free-for-all in which resources are plundered to extinction and trees wiped out to be used for firewood, deals are being struck to guarantee local communities’ rights to exploit the trees as a resource, while also obligating them to preserve them.

In Tajikistan, the walnut trade is a critical source of income for some villages, with most of the crop exported to Turkey. The country shares with Kyrgyzstan the world’s largest natural-growth walnut forest. But the use of short-term land leases discouraged long-term management, while local people were lacking any other sources of income and over-exploited the trees.

Jilly McNaughton of British NGO Fauna and Flora International (www.fauna-flora.org), said the current situation “is not good, with use of the forest by local people both heavy and inadequately controlled.” “Collection of firewood and grazing are perhaps the biggest concerns,” she said. “There is very little natural regeneration of wild trees due to grazing and hay making in the forest. “As the walnut is valued as an income generating crop, other trees are cut for firewood and timber, meaning parts of the forest have become a park-like landscape with scattered large walnut trees.”

Fauna and Flora International, which specializes in species preservation, is encouraging local people to work towards long-term leases and diversify their sources of income. The strategy includes encouraging other ways to make a living, including raising chickens, making clothes and bee keeping.

As one villager said: “We have bought honey buckets and bees. Next year we will get a lot of honey – it will be a great income. We got a job.”

The Red List of Trees found the causes of species’ destruction are multiple: over-exploitation, human development, pests and diseases, overgrazing, desertification and fires. Since the break up of the Soviet Union, funds have been short to help reverse these threats.

The most threatened apple species in the Red List is the Niedzwetzky apple (Malus niedzwetzkyana) (www.globaltrees.org/kyrgyzstan_apple.htm).

In Kyrgyzstan, work to preserve the Niedzwetsky apple is directly involving the community. Projects are working with the village of Kara Alma in southern Kyrgyzstan and government forest services to encourage eco-friendly small businesses to earn incomes and protect the forests.

They have catalogued all 111 trees that still survive, and have set up a community-run nursery to grow more. The ambition is to expand this approach across the region, both preserving these great resources and bringing hope and employment to the people.