Redirecting (Asynchronous Session)
"Be Prepared to Bounce Forward Better": Building Sustainability and Community Resilience Through Local Businesses View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Linton Wells Ii, Annie Mustafa - Ramos
Resilient organizations and people can anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to disruptions. In addition to recurring natural disasters such as hurricanes and flooding, Puerto Rico recently has faced the most damaging earthquakes in a hundred years, as well as COVID-19 and a financial crisis. Sea-level rise and intensifying storms from climate change compound future threats. National and territorial government responses have been inconsistent, and so a public-private initiative has been teaching small and medium-sized Puerto Rican enterprises to anticipate stresses and shocks and leverage them to emerge stronger and better adapted to the “new normal.” The goal is not just to “bounce back,” but to “be prepared to bounce forward better.” This can benefit individual businesses, while helping to make communities more resilient and sustainable. Resilience has three components: cultural—is the organization willing to keep fighting when under stress; operational—do communications and coordination channels keep functioning; and infrastructural—are critical services like power, water, etc. available? This paper presents a practical approach, informed by theory. It draws on lessons to be learned from a project beginning in May in Puerto Rico as a collaborative effort between the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities at George Mason University, and the Puerto Rico Science and Technology Research Trust. The project is designed to build local capacity so that results can sustained indigenously. Long-term objectives are aligned with the SDGs. Lessons learned are developed into a more general model for use in other cultures and communities.
Improving Legal Mandates for Innovations in Sustainable Technologies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kalpana Murari
Biomimicry has often been used in inventing new technologies starting from developing an aircraft and submarines. Climate change calls upon technocrats to innovate and invent new forms of technologies that produce zero waste and reduce depletion of natural resources. Is it possible to redraw the rules imposed by intellectual property law and laws governing technological innovations to imitate nature and create new dimensions in environmentally sound technologies or ESTs as they are known? In this study, we explore how legal mandates should be designed to enforce such compliance universally and make them available to all nations for the purpose of globalising uniformity across industrial sectors.
Furniture Design and Sustainability: Project and Production of Medium Density Fiberboard Prototype Stool View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Laura Alves, Tomas Queiroz Ferreira Barata, Victor Augusto Vieira
In contemporary times, it is a priority that designer's activity ground yourself on sustainable actions aiming at low environmental impact of the product production chain, especially considering use of local materials from renewable sources and materials with potential for reuse and recycling. Among several relevant aspects to be examined in the conception of environmentally friendly design are extraction of the raw material, ways of transformation of the materials, ways of use, useful life, and the possibilities of disassembling and recycling the product. Therefore, the objective of this study is to present the projective and productive process of experimental furniture using Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) sheets, assembled and stabilized only by fittings and locks. The methodology started from a specific literature review focusing on the delimitation of design guidelines based on the concepts of Design for Sustainability (DfS), taken up at different times in the creation and production process. Subsequently, a mood board was added to the projective process, followed by a step of generating online alternatives with aid of paper mockups and design of the furniture planning on MDF sheet. Prototype's production was fundamental to analyze formal and aesthetic design of the product, as well as to validate the assembly system based on fittings and locks, in the same way, to prove the feasibility of future series production of furniture on 4.0 manufacturing platforms. From the results obtained, it observed that the prototype met sustainable guidelines defined initially and inserted in the context of DfS products.
Identifying Hot Spots in Nomadic Areas: Livestock Mobility and Fodder Supply-demand Balances in Nyangatom, Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Adane Kebede Gebeyehu
The Nyangatom, in South Omo, Ethiopia, are group of agro-pastoralists whose access to land is affected by dam construction and large-scale sugarcane development projects. Informed selection of appropriate measures requires a spatially explicit representation of prevailing and changing supply-demand relationships for livestock herds among the Nyangatom. This study aims to address this caveat and identifies seasonal and location-specific ‘hot spots’ in Nyangatom where fodder demand exceeds supply. Assessments of fodder production are based on primary data collected through focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and field observations. Overall, annual fodder availability was estimated at 508,967 tons against the requirement of 584,204.6 tons, resulting in a deficit of 12.9% annually after out-migration. Under the implementation of the Omo-V sugarcane project and climate change, the fodder supply is expected to be reduced further to -219,977 tons annually. The critical dry matter hot spot was found in the western and central parts of Nyangatom near to the Kibish River, which shows the highest livestock density. In contrast, better fodder supply was estimated around the south-western and north-eastern parts. Change in policy, the frequency of droughts, conflict, and the dam-induced decline of the Omo River floods were accounted for the changes. Thus, there are strong signals to the local community and government to collaborate to reduce the potential constraints that affect sustainable rangeland management and food security; and need to account for the interests of the agro-pastoralists.
Trail-Building: Habitat Destruction by a Different Name View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mike Vandeman
Scientists are generally honest, in what they say – but not in what they choose to study. Despite a diligent search in one of the world's best libraries (the University of California, Berkeley), I wasn't able to find a single book or article on the harm done by trail-building. I notice that whenever I see a picture of a trail, I think "Oh, a trail – so what?" It takes an effort of will to think about the wildlife habitat that was destroyed in order to build the trail. And the habitat destruction isn't restricted to the trail bed. As Ed Grumbine pointed out in Ghost Bears, a grizzly can hear a human from a mile away, and smell one from five miles away. And grizzlies are probably not unique in that. In other words, animals within five miles of a trail are inhibited from full use of their habitat. That is habitat destruction! If there were no trails, we would be confronted by our own destructiveness every time we entered a park. It is only because the habitat has already been destroyed for us, that we can pretend that we are doing no harm. That leaves only one option compatible with wildlife conservation: minimizing the construction, extent, and use of trails.
