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Information Technologies in Sustainable
Development Charrette
28 - 30 August 2001, Aspen Club Lodge, Aspen, Colorado,
USA
Executive Summary
This report is released in a world greatly changed
from when the event that it records was held. The
topics discussed have gained a new immediacy and weight.
We hope that the ideas contained within can be applied
in a number of settings.
The Information Technologies in Sustainable Development
Charrette was held August 28 – 30 2001 with
the hope of exploring a basic question about emerging
technology — How will information technologies
help us rethink the formation of sustainable settlements?
This event was intended to explore the interface
of information technologies and the basic needs in
the development of any community — Shelter,
Water, Food, Energy, Healthcare, Education, Jobs,
and Access to Capital. The group participants used
the creation of a new town in the United States, and
establishment of a new community for a displaced population
in a Lesser Developed Country to bound the possibilities.
Participants came from a range of organizations and
backgrounds, for a process that asked everyone to
think across boundaries and disciplines to create
new solutions to address basic issues of all settlements.
Haymount, a new town for 9,000 people on the Rappahannock
River in Virginia provided one set of parameters,
while the Rwandan Refugee Camps in Ngara, Tanzania
provided the other. The concepts developed by four
working groups — Infrastructure, Economy, Wellbeing,
Sustenance — focused largely on the application
of information technologies to settlements for displaced
persons. This was not because the new town was felt
to be less important, but rather a reflection of Amulya
Reddy, of the Bangalore Institute of Science, comment
that “if you take care of the needs of the poorest,
the rest will be brought along.”
A series of brief presentations were made to set
the intellectual stage for the working groups. Amory
Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute, talked about Natural
Capitalism and key principles of rethinking the design
of economic activities. Mark Prutsalis, formerly with
UNICEF, described the formation and operations of
the refugee camps in Ngara, along with some of the
information technologies already in use. William Browning,
RMI Green Development Services, presented case studies
of green communities. John Clark, John A Clark Company,
described the thinking behind the design of Haymount.
Townsend Anderson, Orton Family Foundation, demonstrated
CommunityViz, a software system for visualizing physical,
economic and environmental changes in a community
resulting from new real estate projects. Michael Hawley,
MIT Media Lab, showed remote information gathering
systems used to monitor ecosystems in Hawaii, and
the development of schools with computers and internet
capabilities in Cambodian villages. Janine Benyus,
author of Biomimicry, described innovations learned
from looking to nature as a mentor. David Warner,
MD, Syracuse University, presented tools for visualizing
complex sets of data, and application of these information
technologies in a remote environment.
Possibly the most powerful insight to come out of
the group was that in some ways settlements for displaced
persons are analogous to ecosystems after a disturbance.
In the early stages the bare ground is colonized by
annual species that tend to be opportunistic and highly
competitive. This is called a Type 1 ecosystem, and
it begins the stabilization of soil and prepares it
for later assemblages of plants and animals. The Type
2 ecosystem is characterized by the introduction of
perennial plants, and shrubs. The nitrogen fixing
plants tend to enter the system at this stage, and
there are cooperative/symbiotic relationships becoming
evident in the Type 2 system. Later a Type 3 ecosystem
may then emerge. This is where larger trees and other
more ‘permanent’ flora appears. While
competition still occurs between the individuals a
high level cooperation is also evident. This process
has been called ‘succession’, and earlier
ecological views assumed that this series of stages
lead to a stable ‘climax’ ecosystem. It
now clear that a healthy system is a mosaic of all
three stages, and many of the plants that form the
basis of agriculture are found in Type 1 ecosystems.
However, the Type 3 ecosystem does not emerge until
the previous steps occur.
In the early stages of a new refugee settlement,
the displaced persons pour into a site. There is some
competition, water must be found quickly and all the
food is typically brought in from overseas relief
agencies by aircraft. The incoming population typically
strips the local forests for fuel and building materials.
This is described as the first stage of a camp. Later
food is bought form a regional network, with a more
stabilized distribution system in place in the settlement.
Basic levels of governance and communication are established
within the camp. This is the second stage, which may
last months or in some cases years. The final goal
is repatriation. The host country then is left with
a devastated site and in the case of Ngara request
$70M from the UN to help clean up and restore the
location.
In some ways this process is similar to an arrested
progression of ecosystem types. The group participants
wondered if it would be possible to introduce elements
of local food production, energy and infrastructure
measures, education programs and ecological restoration
efforts by the settlement population. In effect, could
the settlement begin to reflect the shift from a Type
2 ecosystem to a Type 3 ecosystem? Would this help
the operation of the settlement? Would this help alleviate
some of the boredom, suffering and social pathologies?
Could this help prevent the host country from having
to deal with a ‘moonscape’ after the camp
is no longer occupied? In the case of some African
locations, that have had multiple occupancies, could
it make the site more resilient? And, could it give
the displaced persons, new agricultural and ecological
restoration skills to apply once repatriated?
Refugee camps also illustrate what happens when dedicated
and capable organizations each address part of the
problem in a dis-integrated way—optimizing their
part but pessimizing the system. When one agency,
for example, provides drinking water dispensed from
holes bigger than those in the receiving distribution
vessels, water spills, mud is combated with a cement
slab and sump, and those coming to get water can also
get malaria, this dis-integration makes good intentions
into bad outcomes. This is a design problem. The charrette
began to frame creative ways to turn that design problem
into opportunities to make refugee camps cost less
and work much better.
These questions informed the ideas that were generated
in the four groups. While many of the outcomes focus
on the settlement for a displaced population, many
are also applicable to formation of a new community
in a developed country.
The work of this group was predicated on three concepts:
-
Create a mindset within agencies
that perform crisis intervention that there is more
than Stage 1.
-
Ecological design process that is
embedded into the planning.
-
Anticipation of evolution of bio-infrastructure
must be from the beginning, so that the successional
stages are implicit in and emergent from everything
that is built, thus avoiding backtracking, duplication,
and remediation.
The group envisions three assemblages of information
technology to reach these goals.
1. Create and apply a grid-based GIS framework for
data. This framework will structure the inventory
of the place (biome, soil, water, crops and uncultivated
vegetation, fuel, fauna and etc.); social intelligence
(culture, anthropology, census, skills, tools, and
etc.); and physical infrastructure (communications,
ports, roads, railroads, airports, and etc.) This
framework and associated data forms the basis for
planning and crisis response; land management; and
monitoring. The unpopulated framework would serve
as a basis for decision making in an emergency situation,
and as the basis for systematic collection of data
in anticipation of future crises.
2. Establish a methodology and process for developing
self-organizing and self-sustaining economic and security
systems in camps. The economic system forms the basis
for prestige for individuals. One facilitating technology
is the use of RFID tags as the basis for currency,
economic tracking, food and water distribution, skills
inventory, and compensation for work and products.
3. Create a global capability warehouse that consists
of a knowledge library and a component warehouse.
The knowledge library is a web accessible archive
of information including resources, problem solutions,
lessons learned and access to experts (e.g., the virtual
barefoot botanist, or solar techniques expert). The
component warehouse is a distributed collection of
tools and capabilities that can be assembled into
a scaleable kit-of-parts that is tailored for specific
situations and delivered anywhere in the globe. The
kit may contain such items as communications capabilities,
testing kits, biome augmentation, soil augmentation,
technology, designs, and etc.
4. Social/Nature Conservancies—Preemptively
acquire potential refugee sites in unpopulated lands
and ecologically restore them for subsequent habitation
by refugees and displaced persons. Similarly design
the process of maturation of refugee camps as vehicle
for ecological restoration, adding value to both occupants
and host populations. (Needs to be structured to avoid
appearance of slavery or exploitation of refugees
or displaced persons.)
This group would like to transform the settlement
process into a restorative act, spelled out in a contract
between the host locality and the new residents. When
humans move into a landscape, the expectation among
all parties should be that the act of meeting their
needs should not only do no harm, but actually improve
the area in better condition than it was found. Every
decision should be made with the dual purpose of meeting
immediate needs (for shelter or sustenance) while
creating an enriched landscape, a landscape that will
help future populations (of any species) support themselves
in a sustainable way. This will entail policy and
mandate changes, covenants between host localities
and residents, new sets of advisors, new tools for
assessing the opportunities and limits of the habitat,
and new tools for community building and adaptive
land management. A system that encourages economic
self- sufficiency within the community is an important
way to channel entrepreneurial instinct into community-enhancing
endeavors. We believe that this new approach to human
settlement would be equally useful for people moving
into a new town or into a refugee camp.
This group outlined a number of initiatives, the
most important being:
-
Establish a contract with the host
country and relief agencies. This is a medium term
item and would involve the creation of a contract
form, establishment of a database of treaties, agreements,
MOUs, covenants. Then the development of a template,
that includes guidelines and best practices.
-
Assess the carrying capacity to
establish the best land use. A long term project
that involves the use of GPS, assessment tools similar
to those developed by the Center for Maximum Potential
Building Systems, information on ecological carrying
capacity, SimCity, the use of PDAs for onsite data
collection, GIS imaging, and establishing a team
of host ecological experts.
-
Build the capacity of residents
and agencies to adapt their community for evolving
ecological/social/economic benefit whether or not
they will remain there. A long term project using
information and design tools like virtual neural
networks, games and simulations like SimCity or
CommunityViz for three dimensional visualization
of the settlement patterns, and active environmental
sensing systems for adaptive management of the location.
-
Build capacity for economic self
sufficiency of the residents (and the relief agencies).
This longer term project would have a number of
elements: the community centers – similar
to the Cambodian schools that Mike Hawley and Sandy
Choi described including job training via multimedia/
internet/ distance learning/apprenticeship. Other
elements would be establishment of micro-credit
lending, a local currency and the use of smart cards
to enable the system. Additionally this economic
system would use low tech inputs of locally grown
food, and human muscles as fuel.
The group conceived a “Phase Zero Network”
as an infrastructure to promote well being in a community
from its “Phase One” inception. At the
same time, the Phase Zero Network would provide a
framework for support, information flow and education
that can help communities in their evolution to a
more stable “Phase Three” state.
The Phase Zero Network would allow access to a global
network of information useful to the community to
be integrated immediately and continuously into the
community’s development, instead of following
the more conventional approach of collecting information
from the community first and reacting to it. This
frequently creates a time lag to addressing problems
and can limit the flow and usefulness of information
back into the community. In an abruptly established
community like a refugee camp with immediate and basic
needs, a Phase Zero network could provide proactive
support and an interactive flow of information.
The Phase Zero Network would provide:
-
Education and information flow
into the community from a global information network,
which supplies geographically appropriate expertise
and advice to the community; quickly and interactively,
via information technology;
-
Infrastructure for rapidly assessing
and understanding the needs of the community, as
well as local resources and skills of the community,
cultural intelligence, and potential problems;
-
An informational support system
for “training the trainers” within a
community that would allow an interactive flow of
information, aiding education and support initiatives
that informs and educates community members, a global
information network, and outside providers serving
the community;
-
A framework that allows information
from the community to provide information and expertise
back to the global database, improving the database
as a whole as well as the support it can offer back
to the specific community in question.
A key aspect of the development of any settlement is
meeting the important sustenance needs for food and
water. Even more important is meeting these needs in
ways that contribute to the sustainability of the communities
involved, both within and outside of the settlements
themselves. The goal of our charrette team has been
to ask the question of how information technologies
can give us new options and alternatives for ensuring
sustenance in ways that contribute to community sustainability.
We did this by focusing our analysis on two extremes
of the spectrum of communities – one a planned
community that is being established in a new area in
a developed country, and the other a community of refugees
or displaced people in a developing country.
To achieve this goal, we developed the following recommendations:
-
Develop information technologies
that rapidly assess the cultural and ecological
resources and opportunities for sustainable settlements
in a given locality, as well as serve as a baseline
for later impact assessment.
-
Build a system that meets sustenance
needs while simultaneously creating a “demand
pull” that promotes sustainable food systems
and links communities of consumers more directly
to producer communities.
-
Promote means that settlements can
use to move from being purely food consumers to
being food producers, using sustainable practices
and integrating more agencies and organizations
as early as possible in the development process.
-
Develop a telecommunication infrastructure
that is freely available for promoting communication
between providers and consumers, especially in developing
regions where host countries can be restrictive
of such services, so that food can be sourced, procured,
transported, and distributed by more sustainable
means.
What Is Next?
Our early concern was that maybe that none of this
could be accomplished in practice. But we have powerful
examples to the contrary. The Rishi Valley, near Bangalore
in India, is one. Rishi's common cycle of poverty,
degradation, and decline was arrested through uncommon
attention to husbanding local resources, restoring
local hydrology, and educating the local community
on the strengths and possibilities of the environment.
The consequent transformation was remarkable and is
serving as a model for restoration throughout southern
India. We also have the successes from Curitiba, Brazil
(as detailed in Natural Capitalism) and Las Gaviotas
in Colombia (as detailed by Alan Weissman in Gaviotas).
Within "Upsizing" by Gunter Pauli, we find
ZERI, the Zero Emissions Research Initiative, demonstrating
a superior method for efficient, sustainable, and
profitable business practices in a dozen places around
the world. The Rocky Mountain Institute can show successes
optimized for the people in each location. Michael
Hawley at MIT established schools in Cambodia that
have stimulated even the youngest pupils to teach.
John Todd's Living Systems produce fresh water from
sewage. Janine Benyus, in "Biomimicry,"
helps us understand what solutions nature has found
for succeeding in a harsh and unforgiving environment.
Importantly, there is a technological, informational
requirement in each idea she explains. Some "thing"
we don't yet know, but we'll someday need to communicate
to others effectively.
The key is a "whole systems" approach to
development, even within something as austere and
forbidding as a refugee settlement. ZERI's concept
of "concentric rings of utility," where
each process uses the waste products of a previous
industry until there is no final waste at all, may
be exactly the solution required when resources are
scarce, the population is fragile, and the initial
environment is unforgiving.
Now, acutely, much is at stake in the plight of a
newly-displaced Afghan population. The refugee camps
needed on the Pakistani, Iranian, Tajik, and Turkmen
borders are an ideal opportunity to establish sustainable
settlements, providing tools and techniques to support
and educate the refugee population in ways that encourage
their safe and productive return home as soon as possible.
With their new knowledge of appropriate solutions,
the refugees could return with a sense of hope and
capability in stark contrast to the conditions of
their departure. If we can design a sustainable and
reproducible way to meet the human needs of both new
arrivals and the local population, within the austere
conditions of an ad-hoc refugee camp, the way we do
it should also help billions of other people trying
to create sustainable settlements where they already
live.
To be blunt, most stopgap measures used by relief
agencies during an emergency response don't incorporate
a future, though they certainly may save those closest
to the brink. Most of the resources expended by relief
agencies to establish new camps usually vanish and
take local resources with them with more loss to follow,
if there is no effort to design a sustainable community
within the morass. Given the stakes, we should be
working closely now with current experts in disaster
relief to incorporate whole-systems design concepts
from the very beginning.
With a successful model of both agency cooperation
and sustainable settlement in the real world, host
nations may be less reluctant to offer refuge, and
the pain suffered by all participants could be reduced.
Improving resource use and outcomes would also ease
the ongoing burden and expense on the countries and
agencies taking responsibility for the displaced.
To our knowledge, no one has tried to implement such
a comprehensive design within refugee camps forming
in a crisis setting. The relief agencies have done
extremely well in relieving urgent needs in the face
of dwindling donor support, but their time and resources
are limited. We can, I think, bring to those agencies,
and to the donor governments, some hope for a system
that will become self-sustaining, providing the tools
for creative growth needed by any community. We can
help them with solar-powered water provisioning and
purification, novel and nutritious food crops, power
production, cooking fuel, disease surveillance and
response, effective sanitation from biological systems,
educational models that work in remote environments,
employment within the camps, better food production
techniques, non-violent communication skills, and
longer-term job opportunities and business development
largely independent of infrastructure.
Critically, many of the solutions, by design, use
the people in the camp and the environment that surrounds
them, decreasing their sense of helplessness, frustration,
and despair.
The attacks in the US were an agonizing blow, but
we have arisen stronger and more serious and more
thoughtful. Pushed by the images of waste and loss,
we should turn our energy toward the development of
a more just, equitable and sustainable society in
a corner of the world that badly needs that opportunity.
Martin Luther King said "If you want peace, work
for justice;" there are few more stark examples
of unjust inequality than the need for a refugee camp.
Afghan refugees were told that America wanted to ruin
them. A camp designed, built, and explained as a sustainable
system from the ground up could begin their broader
world-education in a powerful way. If propagated,
the ripples would benefit a large pool of the dispossessed
throughout the world.
The key is information. We need to know what the
refugees know, and what the host nation knows, and
what the relief organizations know, and then couple
it all with what we know. We need to discover what
an affected population is comfortable adopting, what
the local geography is like, the weather, the ecology,
the culture and the languages. We need to know what
the requirements are for food, shelter, and health,
and then design how best to meet those requirements.
We then need to move that information through an intelligent
circle that is constantly learning from the events
of the days and weeks before.
The information technologies required only exist
in part, but more can be developed, and some can be
adapted, if the desire is there. It's a difficult
task, but we're lucky; we have the urgent need, and
we've never had the tools to address it effectively
before. We should not lose the opportunity. The risk
for global violence is too great.
By Cameron M. Burns
©2001 Rocky Mountain Institute
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