Collaboration

Whale Shark Citizen Science Maldives Redux

/ Phil Karp / 2 Comments

Photo credit: Sommer Laettner

In honor of International Whale Shark Day, which is August 30…

I posted last year about my experience volunteering with the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme (MWSRP) and the great work they do.  Established in 2006, MWSRP undertakes research and monitoring of whale sharks and other marine megafauna in the Maldives and uses the associated findings and data to advocate for sound conservation policy in the country.

Throughout the year, the MWSRP team, together with volunteers, undertakes patrols along the reef in the South Ari Atoll Marine Protected Area and other locations in the Maldives to record sightings of whale sharks and other marine megafauna and to gather data on vessel traffic and behavior.  Whale shark encounters are documented via photos and video along with data on location, behavior, and ocean conditions.  Encounters are entered into the “BIG FISH network” database, an online citizen science platform developed by MWSRP as a monitoring network for awareness raising and stewardship of whale sharks in Maldives.

I returned to the Maldives this month to get an update on efforts to protect this iconic species and the livelihoods it supports, once again volunteering with MWSRP.  I found that there is both good news and bad news.

First the good news.  Continue reading →

Gardens As Havens For Wildlife

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Two frogs in a garden pond enjoying the sunshine on a bed of weed.

Common frogs and other amphibians will spawn in the most modest of garden ponds. Photograph: Brendan Allis/Getty Images/iStockphoto

There are many variations on the theme of garden as haven in our pages over the years. The common thread is that at the scale of a garden, there is much that the individual can do to support conservation. Thanks to Jules Howard for adding to the theme:

The frogs may be gone, but life goes on: how I regained my faith in gardening for wildlife

Wildflower field

Gardens allowed to grow a little wild can be a lifeline for struggling pollinator populations – in rural as well as urban areas. Photograph: kirin_photo/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The extremes of the climate crisis mean it’s harder than ever to provide a garden haven for birds, insects and other animals. Some gardeners are questioning whether trying to do the right thing is time well spent

More than two decades ago, I had the honour of running the world’s last (possibly only) frog telephone helpline. No, this is not a set-up for a punchline. Continue reading →

Emma Marris On Urban Shade

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
A man wipes his forehead under the hot sun as he walks under shade sail.

Matt McClain / The Washington Post / Getty

The science writer Emma Marris, here featured in The Atlantic, first came to our attention in a passing mention ten years ago, then again in full force six years ago. Whether or not you live in an urban area, you likely depend on urban areas for some part of your livelihood so her essay may be of interest:

Shade Will Make or Break American Cities

Trees are nice and all, but they’re not enough.

On a 92-degree Saturday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, I went looking for shade in Cully Park, which was built on top of an old landfill and opened in 2018. The city included plenty of trees in the design—I mean, this is Oregon. Continue reading →

Turning Tree Leaves Into Mats

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Emma Broderick, right, and her mother, Maile Meyer, under a pu hala tree on Oahu, a touchstone of Hawaiian culture. Its leaves are used to weave mats like the one they are sitting on. “To be a weaver is to be a healer,” said Broderick, whose group passes on ancestral knowledge about weaving and other practices. Daeja Fallas for The New York Times

Traditional weaving was a means to achieve our goal of strengthening biodiversity in our final work in Kerala. It is heartening to see handicraft coming back to life in Hawaii for other reasons:

In Hawaii, Weaving New Life Into a Nearly Vanished Art Form

The age-old practice of turning tree leaves into mats has been revived on the islands. “It teaches you how to weave relationships, past and present,” one master artisan says.

Just past daybreak, before they began to weave, Emma Broderick and her mother, Maile Meyer, gathered beneath a canopy of sinuous leaves to greet the pū hala tree, a touchstone of Hawaiian culture that for generations has provided the raw materials for weaving moena, the traditional floor mats that were once ubiquitous in Hawaiian homes.

Kainoa Gruspe, one of the young weavers who joined the group. Preparing the lau is laborious and begins by ridding the leaves of ants and centipedes before cutting, smoothing and drying. Daeja Fallas for The New York Times

Broderick introduced herself to the tree, with its lattice of stilt-like roots, addressing it as she might a loved one. “Of course, flattery never hurts,” she said. She had a pink plumeria blossom with an intoxicating aroma tucked behind her ear.

“You want to come with me?” she asked the tree, seductively. “Would you like to live in a house and be in a mat?” Continue reading →

The Ocean’s Depths & You

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
An illustration of sea creatures floating in outer space. The planet Earth is in the center.

Isabel Seliger

While Brisa surfs in Tahiti, the fate of our oceans will be on our minds. While not self-evidently important to most of us, most of the time, their scale on our planet gets us to pay attention when someone makes the case. Porter Fox, who reports on climate change, has come to the following conclusions with regard to those waters:

There’s a New Reason to Save Life in the Deep Ocean

Honey Long and Prue Stent

To most of us, the ocean is a no man’s land — a vast, bottomless and uncharted void. Three-quarters of the ocean has never been seen by humans, and only a quarter of its floor has been mapped in detail, which means we have a better understanding of the surface of Mars than we do of the seas on our own planet. It is this lack of exploration and appreciation — particularly of the layer of cold, dark water that begins where light fades, known as the ocean’s twilight zone — that has led us to a very precarious place. Continue reading →

Fighting Pollution With Garbage

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Image may contain Outdoors Flower Plant Nature Pond and Water

Photograph: Abir Mahmud, University of Dhaka

Our thanks to Hannah Richter for her reporting and writing, as well as to Wired for publishing what sounds not like garden variety too good to be true, but quintessentially ridiculous.

Kudos to Nepal for testing out this idea in spite of how it sounds:

Image may contain Lake Nature Outdoors Water Aerial View Architecture and Building

Groups of platforms installed in Nagdaha lake in Nepal. PHOTOGRAPH: SAMYAK PRAJAPATI/THE SMALL EARTH NEPAL

Polluted Lakes Are Being Cleansed Using Floating Wetlands Made of Trash

Platforms combining plants and recycled garbage could offer a cut-price solution for reviving polluted bodies of water.

ON THE BANKS of Nagdaha, a polluted and lotus-infested lake in Nepal, Soni Pradhanang is putting trash back into the water—on purpose.

Image may contain Plant Potted Plant Water Waterfront Boat Transportation Vehicle Outdoors and Food

A floating treatment wetland system loaded with plants. PHOTOGRAPH: SAMYAK PRAJAPATI/THE SMALL EARTH NEPAL

She carefully assembles a platform of styrofoam and bamboo mats, then weaves it together with zip ties and coconut fiber, refuse from nearby tech stores. Then, she pokes 55 plants lush with red flowers through 2-inch holes in the platform, each plant set 6 inches apart. Though Pradhanang’s creation isn’t high-tech, it is effective, and one of the most affordable water-filtration systems available. “I’m cheap,” she says, laughing. Continue reading →

Appalachian Solar & Remediation

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

A photo of solar panels under a blue skyThanks to Bridgett Ennis at Yale Climate Connections for expanding our coverage of brownfield remediation, which surprisingly has only featured in one previous post in our 13 years linking to environmental news stories. Now two:

Massive solar farm planned for coal mine site in eastern Kentucky

Solar developer BrightNight is set to transform the Starfire coal mine into an 800-megawatt solar farm, bringing renewable energy and jobs to southern Appalachia.

A massive solar farm is in the works at the site of one of the largest coal mines in southern Appalachia. Continue reading →

A Cleaner Seine Is A More Inspiring Seine

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
A photo of people swimming in the Seine in Paris on July 17 2024.

People swimming in the Seine, in July of 2024.Photograph by Raphael Lafargue / Sipa / AP

Skip the first half if you are short on time, but in the second half of this article you will find the fruition of imagination and courage we always hope to see more of:

The Unexpectedly Hopeful Paris Olympics

The Games have never lived up to all their ideals—some of which were dubious to begin with. And yet this year’s iteration, for all its flaws, has already inspired some positive change.

…Which brings me to the Seine. When the Olympics returned to Paris, in 1924, the swimming took place not in the Seine but in a pool, the Piscine des Tourelles. Swimming in the Seine was banned altogether one year prior. It was, after all, not merely a river but a road through Paris, crowded with barges. It was also a sewer, filled with refuse from houseboats and the untreated sewage that overflowed the city’s nineteenth-century system when it rained. Various attempts to clean up the Seine failed. When Paris was selected to host the 2024 Games, seven years ago, it was still illegal to swim in the river. Continue reading →

Big Buyer Power & Plastic Reduction Potential

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Two stainless steel cylindrical containers hold a few dozen disposable forks, knives and drinking straws.

The goal of the administration’s plan is to reduce demand for plastics and encourage a market for reusable or compostable alternatives. Eric Baradat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

We celebrate when individuals, or groups, do things they were not required to do when those things are in the common interest. Some things require rules, and rules also require imagination and courage to be effective. This is welcome news at the intersection of entrepreneurial conservation and rules set by those in a position to make them work:

The White House Has a Plan to Slash Plastic Use in the U.S.

The government said it would phase out its purchases of single-use plastics, a significant step because it is the biggest buyer of consumer goods in the world.

Calling plastic pollution one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, the Biden administration on Friday said that the federal government, the biggest buyer of consumer goods in the world, would phase out purchases of single-use plastics. Continue reading →

Cultivation Of A Plot, Considered Further

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
A painting of two gardens one outside and one contained within a walled garden.

Illustration by Lauren Tamaki

There is more to The Garden Against Time than we appreciated with the first review we read, so thanks to Katie Kadue for this:

The Paradoxical Paradise of the Garden

Olivia Laing’s memoir of restoring a garden unearths the politics and history of cultivating a plot.

The reader of “Paradise Lost” encounters the Garden of Eden at the same time that Satan does. Having leapt over the garden wall, Milton’s athletic antihero flies up into a tree to survey his new surroundings. “Beneath him with new wonder now he views,” Milton writes, Continue reading →

MycoHab & Other Namibian Wonders

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Desert in Namibia

Namibia has a severe housing shortage, with woody encroacher bush reducing the amount of land available for building. Photograph: Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group/Getty

Mycological options for solving problems are abundant. We had not considered odor as a key potential obstacle, so thanks to Ester Mbathera for this reporting from Namibia:

‘People think they’ll smell but they don’t’: building homes from mushroom waste and weeds

A sustainable project aims to repurpose encroacher bush to create building blocks to solve Namibia’s housing crisis

Oyster mushrooms in bags on a shelf with a woman using weighing scales

The remnants of the oyster mushrooms grown on weeds of encroacher bush will be used to create building blocks. Photograph: Ester Mbathera

People think the house would smell because the blocks are made of all-natural products, but it doesn’t smell,” says Kristine Haukongo. “Sometimes, there is a small touch of wood, but otherwise it’s completely odourless.”

Haukongo is the senior cultivator at the research group MycoHab and her job is pretty unusual. She grows oyster mushrooms on chopped-down invasive weeds before the waste is turned into large, solid brown slabs – mycoblocks – that will be used, it’s hoped, to build Namibian homes. Continue reading →

USA Environmental Policy Opinion Landscape

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

An illustration showing a corn field, a wind turbine and an electric car on top of a solar farmIt is political season, which can be overwhelming. But it has moments of inspiration. Karin Kirk at Yale Climate Connections summarizes the landscape of opinion on key environmental issues:

Six incredibly popular climate policies

The majority of registered U.S. voters support electrification and renewable energy.

An infographic showing strong support for climate-pollution reducing policies

A strong majority of registered voters support certain policies aimed at tackling climate change, according to recent research by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (the publisher of this site) and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

Here’s a summary of these results. Continue reading →

With Rewilding, Markets Are Not Everything, But Are A Key Ingredient

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Rewilding can support the development of a wide range of nature-based businesses. NEIL ALDRIDGE

Places can have a particular taste, maybe one that is even iconic, and coffee was the obvious tool in our taste of place toolkit for decades. When it came time to focus on these products as our primary work we drew on some earlier experiments.

One was with honey and the other was with wine. All that was long before coming home to Costa Rica to launch Organikos.

Lunch provided with products from the Wild Côa Network during the ERN-EYR event in the Greater Côa Valley. The Wild Côa Network, which now comprises over 50 members, is driving the development of nature-based enterprise in and around Portugal’s Greater Côa Valley. NELLEKE DE WEERD

We are about to introduce two new products, and one has a story that mixes conservation and rewilding. So, in this story  that follows we sense something akin to the Organikos products in our Authentica shops:

Nature-based business networks take off across Rewilding Europe landscapes

Helping nature heal can lead to prosperous local economies. Nature-based business networks are being developed in a growing number of our rewilding landscapes, enabling businesses and communities to benefit from nature recovery in a sustainable way. This, in turn, is generating more support for rewilding.

The network effect

Today, nature-based business networks are a growing feature of Rewilding Europe’s expanding portfolio of rewilding landscapes. These bring businesses together under a shared rewilding vision for the landscape, facilitating the creation of new tourism packages, helping to close gaps in tourism experiences, and creating new economic opportunities. Continue reading →

Groundwater Springs & Habitat

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
A spring in a forest in Bavaria, Germany.

A spring in a forest in Bavaria, Germany. IMAGEBROKER.COM GMBH & CO. KG / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Thanks to Yale e360 for publishing this article by Christian Schwägerl, whose influential book The Anthropocene was published one decade ago:

As World’s Springs Vanish, Ripple Effects Alter Ecosystems

Springs, which bring groundwater to the surface and support a host of unique species, are disappearing globally, victims of development and drought. Researchers are working to document and map these life-giving habitats in an effort to save them before they are gone.

A tufa spring in the Neumarkt region in Bavaria, Germany.

A tufa spring in the Neumarkt region in Bavaria, Germany. CHRISTIAN SCHWÄGERL

Strong winds sweep over the Rhön, a vast region of rolling, forested hills and pastureland in central Germany. Undeterred, Stefan Zaenker, leading a group of four volunteers, runs through his checklist alongside a forest road. Are rubber boots disinfected to prevent introducing potentially harmful microorganisms into the wetland? Are the team app and GPS functioning correctly? Have enough flags been packed?

Left: A flag marks a helocrene spring in the Rhön region of Germany. Right: Stefan Zaenker takes a sample from a spring.

Left: A flag marks a helocrene spring in the Rhön region of Germany. Right: Stefan Zaenker takes a sample from a spring. CHRISTIAN SCHWÄGERL

When all is in order, Zaenker, 56, leads the group into a soggy alder forest. Its mission for the day: to locate and map as-yet-undiscovered springs and document any species inhabiting them.

A senior conservation official for the state of Hesse, Zaenker considers springs so important for human life and biodiversity that he — along with volunteers from the Hesse Association for Cave and Karst Research — spends much of his spare time conducting large-scale searches for them in the Rhön, which includes the German states of Bavaria, Thuringia, and Hesse, and in a nearby national park. Continue reading →

The Garden Against Time, Reviewed

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

It always comes back to the commons. Thanks to Naomi Huffman at The Atlantic for bringing this book to our attention:

What Gardens of the Future Should Look Like

In her new book, Olivia Laing argues that the lives of all people are enriched with access to land they can use freely.

On a Sunday afternoon in May, the Elizabeth Street Garden, a serene public park wedged between Manhattan’s SoHo and Little Italy neighborhoods, was filled with people undeterred by the gray sky and spitting rain. Visitors sat at tables among fuchsia azaleas and yellow irises, and in the shade of loping old trees, talking, eating pizza, and drinking iced coffee. A painter faced an easel at the back of the garden and composed a watercolor. Continue reading →

Celebrating Voices Of The Americas

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Curved exterior of the National Museum of the American Indian in DC, pale bricks glowing as if during sunrise.We missed the 2024 INDIGENOUS VOICES OF THE AMERICAS –CELEBRATING THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN. Our calendars are already marked for next year, based on what we see from this year’s celebration:

Across the Western Hemisphere, thousands of Indigenous communities are sustaining traditional practices and contributing to a more equitable future. Today, these individuals and nations define who they are, through their own stories in their own words.

An illustration of the ingredients for Cherokee bean bread.In 2024, Indigenous Voices of the Americas: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian highlights living traditions of Indigenous peoples. At its core, the program honors contemporary and traditional creative expressions, celebrations, and community connections that feed new possibilities for Indigenous futures. The program is co-presented by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National Park Service.

We would not have known about it except for this article (thanks to National Public Radio, USA):

Bolivian skateboarders demonstrate their skills on the half pipe.

Bolivian women skateboarders — wearing traditional garb — demonstrate their skills on the half pipe. Ben de la Cruz/NPR

It’s a rather unusual skateboard lesson.

Little girls are lined up to learn to balance on a board on a half-pipe ramp. The teachers are young women from Bolivia, in their teens and 20s, wearing traditional garb as a tribute to female strength. Their outfits do not seem as if they are ideal for skateboarding: Each skateboarder wears a beribboned bowler hat and a poofy skirt. Among the eager disciples is Poppy Moore…

Fungi & Brownfield Remediation

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Researcher Danielle Stevenson digs up California buckwheat grown at a brownfield site in Los Angeles.

Researcher Danielle Stevenson digs up California buckwheat grown at a brownfield site in Los Angeles. PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Corporate irresponsibility abounds, so brownfield sites are abundant. And fungi sometimes offer relevant remediation options. Thanks to Richard Schiffman and Yale e360 for this interview on a topic we have cared about since launching this platform, and which we believe will be of increasing importance in our future:

Turning Brownfields to Blooming Meadows, With the Help of Fungi

California buckwheat that has absorbed lead at a contaminated site in Los Angeles.

California buckwheat that has absorbed lead at a contaminated site in Los Angeles. PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Toxicologist Danielle Stevenson cleans up carbon-based pollutants and heavy metals from contaminated sites using fungi and plants. She’s also training environmental justice and tribal communities in using these methods so they can remediate toxic sites on their own.

The United States is dotted with up to a million brownfields — industrial and commercial properties polluted with hazardous substances. Continue reading →

Adapting Maple Syrup Making

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
Students tap a tree for maple syrup in Randolph, Vermont, on 20 May 2024.

Students tap a tree for maple syrup in Randolph, Vermont, on 20 May 2024. Photograph: Olivia Gieger/The Guardian

Maple syrup is a good example of what we call taste of place products, and we are happy to see the next generation in Vermont adapting the making of this one for the future:

‘It’s the future of sugar’: new technology feeds Vermont maple syrup boom amid climate crisis

With tools as seemingly simple as these blue tubes, it’s easier than ever to extract sap from maple trees, as these young people demonstrated during a May Future Farmers of America convention on 20 May.

With tools as seemingly simple as these blue tubes, it’s easier than ever to extract sap from maple trees, as these young people demonstrated during a Future Farmers of America convention on 20 May. Photograph: Olivia Gieger/The Guardian

The season to tap trees is now earlier and longer, but new processes and generations are helping the industry thrive

On a warm May Monday, more than three dozen high school students took to the forest behind a former dairy barn at Vermont State University in Randolph.

In teams of four, they ran blue plastic tubing from tree to tree, racing to connect the tubes across three trees in 30 minutes. One student leaned back and pulled it taut with his body weight while another secured tube to tree. Quickly, they dashed to the next in what appears to be a twisted tug-of-war. Continue reading →

California, Solar Showcase

/ Organikos / Leave a comment


Workers install solar panels at a home in San Francisco, California.Photograph by Michaela Vatcheva / Bloomberg / Getty

McKibben’s essay in the New Yorker, showcasing the showcase for renewable energy, will brighten your day:

California Is Showing How a Big State Can Power Itself Without Fossil Fuels

For part of almost every day this spring, the state produced more electricity than it needed from renewable sources.

Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Continue reading →

Energy Observer In New York

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Illustration by João Fazenda

Our thanks to Adam Iscoe, writing in the New Yorker, for this:

An Around-the-World Eco-Voyage Makes a Pit Stop Near Wall Street

Energy Observer, a ship equipped with solar panels and a hydrogen fuel cell, has spent the past seven years circumnavigating the globe, powered by sun, water, and salads.

One phrase that describes New York’s waterways is “diesel-powered”: supersized container ships, megayachts, oil tankers, garbage barges. But not every ship that comes to town is on a Greenpeace watch list; there are also schooners, plus the odd outrigger canoe. And recently a hundred-foot-long former racing catamaran from France, which had been retrofitted with solar panels and a hydrogen fuel cell, docked near Wall Street. Continue reading →