HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT Seed money. Want to create a new forest? The traditional way involves thousands of people digging and reseeding by hand, but as Asia struggles with massive deforestation, some are placing their hope in drones. Teams in Myanmar, Thailand and India are working on programs that use drones to drop enormous quantities of seeds, and then monitor the new forest’s progress. High winds and battery life currently limit what drones can do, but as technology advances, they’re likely to play a growing role in fighting deforestation. Dry death. Islands and coastal regions are often considered most at risk from global warming. But the most vulnerable nation is actually landlocked Chad, where 87 percent of the population lives in poverty and decreasing rainfall could devastate the agriculture the country depends on. The population has long depended on Lake Chad for water to survive droughts, but it has lost 90 percent of its volume since the 1960s. Now the country is fighting back, not with technology but with agroforestry and water-saving strategies that it hopes can revive the lake and stave off disaster. Past is prologue. Fiji and other Pacific Islands are on the front lines of climate change, with oceans rising, seas becoming more polluted and extreme weather like hurricanes being an ever-present threat. Many islanders are looking to the past for a solution, turning to traditional methods to create weather-resistant homes, to grow bananas and to build solar-powered canoes to replace fossil fuel-dependent ships. Unfortunately, officials across the region say much of this knowledge has been lost — or that younger generations aren’t interested in passing it on. Game on. In the 1960s, South Africa had three game ranches. Now it has about 12,000 — and while farmers caution that their primary motivation is still profit, the number of wild animals has also increased. As prices for livestock like antelope and buffalo rise, and hunting tourism continues to boom, game farming has grown more popular. That’s good for the environment too, as game farming is better than traditional agriculture at protecting the soil, maintaining genetic diversity and adapting to climate change. If the cab fits. Sri Lanka, an island nation of 21 million people, has about 1 million tuk-tuks — three-wheeled vehicles used mostly as taxis across South Asia. Professor Sasiranga De Silva doesn’t want to get rid of them, but he does want to improve them with his conversion kits, which can turn a gas-powered tuk-tuk into an electric, battery-operated vehicle of the future. The problem is the process costs thousands of dollars, and there aren’t many charging stations on the island, which means De Silva will have to convince skeptical drivers that the change is worth it. |
