Climate activist Bill McKibben led the charge against the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo: niOS (flickr)

Proponents of the proposed pipeline from Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands to the Gulf of Mexico claim that its construction would create jobs. But while the long-term employment prospects are debatable at best, the resulting long-term economic devastation is far more certain.

The recent decision by the Obama administration to deny a permit for the construction of the pipeline has received much press and been touted as a victory for environmentalists. But as climate activist Bill McKibben and his organization point out, stopping the extraction of the tar sands would be a victory for those far removed from the American environmental movement as well.

McKibben said in an interview with Green Prophet that “Any place that is already living close to the margins is in the greatest danger” when facing climate change.

This means the world’s poorest, already suffering from food shortages and decreased agricultural production, would be hardest hit by this carbon bomb. And scientific consensus backs up McKibben’s view.

Country Ranks, Estimated Percentage of Agricultural Productivity Loss by 2080: Potential Carbon Emissions from Canadian Oil Sands. Photo: Center for Global Development

David Wheeler, senior fellow emeritus of the Center for Global Development, compiled a recent study specifically tying the exploitation of the Canadian oil sands to increased agricultural losses.

Wheeler concluded that “full exploitation of Canada’s oil sands deposit would impose significant agricultural productivity losses on over 3 billion people in the developing world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.” He calculates that “combustion of the Alberta deposit would increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 99 ppm, or 21.3 percent of the increase already projected to occur by 2100.”

Or, as reputed climate scientist Jim Hansen of NASA put it, tapping the tar sands would be “essentially game over for the climate."

Wheeler's findings show a "game over" scenario in poor rural regions, in particular, predicting agricultural productivity losses of up to nearly 13 percent in Africa and 9 percent in Asia. Wheeler, who also created a ‘Climate Vulnerability Index’ by country, sums up his findings powerfully and succinctly, stating "Put simply, the potential destructive power in Canada’s oil sands exceeds anything modern civilization has witnessed to date."

“This new report puts into stark relief exactly what ‘game over’ looks like: Millions upon millions of starving people across the planet," says 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn.

On the ground, countries projected by Wheeler to see further damaging impacts are already struggling with agricultural losses. Another 350.org co-founder, Phil Aroneanu, told Global Envision that “we have a plethora of anecdotal and story-based thoughts from our organizers around the world” of agricultural devastation and food shortages linked to changing climate patterns.

Drought-stricken countries in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Sudan, among others, provide some of the most poignant images of climate-related suffering. An Oxfam International report points out that 85 percent of Ethiopians depend directly on agriculture. And as a local farmer told Oxfam, “The rain doesn’t come on time anymore. After we plant, the rain stops just as our crops start to grow. And it begins to rain after the crops have already been ruined.”

And with the projections from scientists like Hansen and Wheeler, Africa’s farmers and communities appear unlikely to recover soon.

While McKibben writes that “Blocking one pipeline was never going to stop global warming,” and Obama’s denial of the Keystone permit may well not kill the project in the long run, the scientific and anecdotal evidence is clear: Vulnerable populations are suffering at the hands of carbon kings already, and tapping the tar sands will exacerbate their problems.

So the Keystone proposal may or may not be dead. But the political discourse around potential job-killing has mostly left out an important aspect: the killing of crops and livelihoods elsewhere in the world.

McKibben has said that extracting Canada’s tar sands would mean lighting the “fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” For now, at least, that fuse remains unlit.

A wax lined sleeping bag could save the lives of thousands of underweight infants born in the developing world. Photo:ladybugbkt (flickr)

In the developing world, many children’s lives end before they have a chance to begin. The developers of Embrace—a portable and cost-effective incubator—believe they have hatched a solution to infant mortality.

With a design similar to a doll-sized sleeping bag, Embrace uses a removable wax insert that requires only hot water for heating. When the warm wax is inserted, the sleeping bag can maintain a consistent temperature of 98 degrees for 4 to 6 hours, allowing low-weight infants to maintain a warm body temperature as they would in an electronic incubator. However, unlike a traditional incubator, which on average costs a hefty $20,000, the Embrace weighs in a much lighter $100. Extensive research was done in both India and in U.S. hospitals on over 170 babies to verify Embrace’s efficacy and safety.

Today, nearly 450 infants die every hour and more than 20 million children are born premature or with a low birth weight each year . If this new product is embraced by the developing world, more will have a chance of living a meaningful life.

The use of technology in humanitarian aid planning is on the rise. Photo: Esther Gibbons (Flicker)

2011 is over, but the impact technology had on humanitarian aid planning last year could be just beginning to emerge.

Humanitarian issues demand immediate solutions. In 2011, a lot of solutions to crises placed heavy emphasis on technology. Here are three notable examples:

Disaster prone Bangladesh turned to GPS to provide early weather warnings to fishermen.

Airtel, a private mobile operator in Bangladesh will provide early weather warnings to fishermen using its global positioning system via cell phones in partnership with the Center for Global Change, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and two international NGOs, according to IRIN.

More than half on Bangladesh’s population uses mobile phones. Early weather warnings could prove to be a life-saving tool. "75 percent of the country’s population lives in rural, disaster-prone areas, an ideal environment in which to exploit the potential of mobile phones to mitigate disasters," IRIN reported.

Technology has helped put Kibera on the map, literally.

Finding Kibera, a district of Nairobi, on a map before 2009 was not an easy task because it wasn’t on one. The location of schools, medical facilities, water points and other basic information was simply not available. As a result, The Map Kibera Project was created in order to provide this information. The goal: to train nine Kibera residents in using GPS devices to gather geographical information in a "citizen mapping" project.

Now this information is available on OpenStreetMap, a global map anyone can view and edit. Organizers plan to continue adding information on the map and eventually start mapping other communities.

Mobile phones have turned ordinary people into extraordinary philanthropists.

This past year, one of the worst famines in modern history struck the Horn of Africa. Humanitarian aid and donor government assistance poured in from all over the world. One campaign, "Kenyans for Kenya," set a goal to raise $5.28 million dollars in one month. Within 10 days, the goal was met and a bigger goal of $10.56 million set. By September 1, more than $7 million was collected, $1.6 million through private donations.
Contributions, most of them from Kenyan citizens and organizations, were made through a mobile phone money transfer service operated by telecom firm Safaricom. The money collected has been used to send money to affected areas through the Kenyan Red Cross Society, IRIN reports. This has been one of the most successful humanitarian fundraising campaigns Kenya has ever seen, and its efforts are ongoing.

These are only a few examples of how technology has positively impacted humanitarian responses to crises. Technology isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems, but it’s proving to be an effective tool.

Medic Mobile works with the simplest of cell phones to help provide health care to those far away from their nearest hospital. Photo: Fabiola Coupet/Mercy Corps.

In rural communities around the world, the virtual doctor is in.

The distance between far-flung communities and their nearest hospitals can be fatal. Medic Mobile bridges the gap using a common household item: the cell phone. It’s not the same as a living, breathing doctor, but Medic Mobile comes pretty close, and it does so using a list of platforms that is strikingly similar to what you might find on a smart phone. These seemingly-sophisticated technologies can work on even the most basic of cell phones and computers, just like those found all over the developing world.

Medic Mobile’s Sim Apps, in addition to open-source platforms like FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap, allow hospital staff sitting at a computer to communicate with multiple health workers in rural areas. The health workers’ phones are basic, but Medic Mobile uses a tiny parallel SIM card that fits between any GSM phone and a carrier’s cell phone to allow these phones to run the necessary apps. The Medic Mobile website provides a more in-depth description of the many technologies it employs. In a 2009 interview with GOOD magazine, co-founder Lucky Gunasekara described Medic Mobile’s importance:

We can communicate need in real time. Say I am a community health worker in rural Malawi and one of my patients gets really sick. Before this system came along, for a lot of clinics, the patient would die, because even though I have some basic health training as a community health worker, there is nothing I can really do. They're still just as disconnected as the communities they live in. Now with our system clinicians see things in real time and they communicate back.

In addition to saving lives, the program saves time: its website says that in six months, the pilot program in Malawi “saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel” and cut 900 hours of travel time for antiretroviral therapy monitors by eliminating their need to hand-deliver reports to the hospital.

Since its inception in 2009, Medic Mobile has expanded to Honduras, Haiti, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, India and Bangladesh. The platform is adaptable to different situations: it was used in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake to link first responders and locals in need of help. As a result of its successes, Medic Mobile was recently named one of the Top 11 in 2011 mobile health innovators of the year by mHealth Alliance.

The proliferation of cell phones is sparking a revolution in developing-world health care. Innovators from all reaches of the globe have used the near-ubiquitous technology to increase health care affordability and access. By adapting sophisticated platforms to basic devices, they’re turning $15 cell phones into invaluable lifelines.

Editor’s note: For more information on the connection, check out A Medical Lab in the Palm of Your Hand, A Dose of Cell Phone Surveillance Helps Aid Workers Save Lives, and Paging Dr. Smartphone, to name a few.

Yesterday's news could be tomorrow's biofuel. Photo: Lisa Batty (Flickr)

Why not do something useful with those stacks of holiday cards languishing at home? Like re-charge your cell phone.

Japan has taken recycling to the next level: Sony recently unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype. How does it work? Engineers use the enzyme cellulase to break down paper matter into glucose sugar. Combine a few more enzymes with a dash of oxygen and you get a bona fide biofuel.

The process is pulled right from nature, researchers explained: it's used by white ants and termites, which use digested wood as a form of energy.

The paper-fueled battery is still in the early stages of development, but even low-output experiments have big potential. If brought to market, the prospect of using paper waste to recharge mobile phones or run small devices such as fans or lights is a bright spot on the innovation frontier. Whether off-the-grid in rural Africa or struggling with energy payments in the U.S. or Europe, turning paper waste into usable energy can play a part in alleviating poverty.

Perhaps the newspaper industry can capitalize on this green initiative to generate a little green of its own.

Industrial emissions are a major source of CO2 contributing to climate change. Photo: United Nations Photo (flickr)

The ongoing global financial crisis should not impede the fight against climate change. That's the concern coming from a surprising corner of the world: China.

As the latest round of UN-sponsored climate talks continue in Durban, South Africa, Chinese officials warn that financial hardships in Europe, the United States and elsewhere are no excuse for inaction on climate change.

With the Kyoto Protocol about to die, the global financial crisis could add another dimension to the already complex relationship between rich and poor countries when it comes to climate change.

China’s top climate official said a global pact to fight climate change should be a top priority for developed countries, even as they face severe economic challenges at home. "After the financial crisis, every country has had its problems, but these problems are just temporary," Xie Zhenhua, vice-director of the National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters, according to Reuters. He expressed concern that rich countries will break their promises to help poor ones mitigate and adapt to climate change.

According to The Economist, the vast majority of ‘climate finance’ for developing countries comes from western nations. Over $75 billion a year, or more than 75 percent of climate finance to the developing world, comes from a combination of private donors and multilateral and bilateral banks funded by taxpayers in wealthy countries. These sources have been hit the hardest by the global financial crisis.

"Climate change hasn't become less important because of the international financial crisis, but it has become less prominent," Xie said.

Developing countries, meanwhile, would be hit hardest by climate-related disasters. They lack the infrastructure and financial resources to deal with problems they have had less of a hand in causing. The 2010 climate talks in Cancun included a commitment of $30 billion to poorer nations to adapt to impacts of climate change, and an increase to $100 billion a year by 2020 for this ‘green climate fund.’ Now, says China, even the initial $30 billion commitment seems unlikely to be met.

China might seem an unlikely voice of support for carbon cuts, as it has surpassed the United States as the world’s leading producer of CO2 emissions. Under the Kyoto protocol, China was deemed an emerging economy, and not bound to the stipulations placed on developed countries. Yet China has pledged to reduce its emissions intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, and hopes western countries sign on for an extension of the protocol’s commitment period. Kyoto signatories Canada and Japan have already refused to extend the protocol’s requirements. The United States has also said further negotiations are off the table.

That means the Durban discussions themselves may well determine the direction of climate funding and its impacts. And without climate action, the financial crisis could soon seem like a small-scale problem.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Women farmers in Africa produce over 60 percent of all food crops. CIMMYT (flickr)

Women comprise 43 percent of the world’s farmers. In Africa, it’s 80 percent. Women plant, harvest, process and sell their crops, but men continue to dominate agricultural science and research. This may be about to change.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is trying to close the R&D gender gap. Their program fast-tracks female science careers in agriculture, empowering them to contribute more effectively to hunger and poverty alleviation in their own communities - a model that could be replicated internationally.

Although African women produce 60 to 80 percent of food crops, they receive significantly less (5% as of 2008) of the agricultural training and tools available to men, says the United Nations. A 2010-2011 research report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows that women could produce 20-30 percent more if they had equal access. This creates a subsequent increase in household income, health, and community food supply. The East Africa Report emphasizes that research is also pivotal in fostering innovation. Without a seat at the table, women cannot influence practices. Who better to innovate than the farmers themselves?

PepsiCo and Cambridge University recently unveiled the i-crop, a web-based system that could reduce agricultural water waste by 50 percent. Photo:zekasaur (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

"More Bounce to the Ounce.” In the 1950’s, it was a cola slogan; thanks to a new partnership with Cambridge University, it could become the catch phrase of PepsiCo’s i-crop, a web based program that helps farmers reduce water waste.

Here’s how it works: data systems collect information on local weather conditions, farming activity, and soil moisture from underground probes and compiles them online. With a few keystrokes, farmers can eliminate the guessing games about water consumption, resulting in more precise and environmentally-friendly farming. In October, PepsiCo publicly announced its goal of reducing carbon emissions and water usage from their largest UK farms by 50 percent in five years. So far i-crop is testing well: preliminary reports from 22 farms in the UK show farmers have achieved 90 percent efficiency in water usage.

"Farming is in the DNA of our business - we rely on fresh produce everyday," said Richard Evans, President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland, according to PR Newswire. "Finding ways to produce more food with less environmental impact is essential to our future." He added, "i-crop has the potential to revolutionize the way we farm, enabling our farmers to save costs and [reduce] water and carbon consumption, while at the same time improving their yields.”

PepsiCo’s potential to revolutionize water efficiencies in farming is sizable. Netting approximately $43.3 billion annually and employing more than a quarter million people, PepsiCo is the second largest food and beverage business in the world.

Ever enjoyed Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Lay's, Gatorade, Tropicana, 7Up, Doritos, Lipton Teas, Quaker Oats, Cheetos, Ruffles, Aquafina, Tostitos, Sierra Mist, or Fritos? If the i-crop can deliver as hoped, those products will soon be made with less water waste than most competitive grocery items (and who doesn’t want something positive to hold onto after downing a bag of Cheetos?).

Although the i-crop is only accessible to UK farmers, PepsiCo hopes to introduce its technology to farms in India, China, Mexico, and Australia by 2012. However, speculation about i-crop’s availability has raised some eyebrows and provoked the question: Will the i-crop technology, owned privately by PepsiCo, be withheld from those who most need it?

Brain Pickings editor Maria Popova argues that owning such coveted technological rights will put PepsiCo in the middle of an often tense relationship between profiteering and humanitarianism. “The technology is currently only available to PepsiCo-affiliated growers, which raises interesting questions about the relationship between corporate interests and social good in innovation, as well as bespeaking the disconnect between the value of open-source software and the fact that the best-funded research initiatives, most competent scientists and highest-grade technology tend to be subsidized by private corporations.”

If, how, and with whom PepsiCo shares i-crop technology has yet to be determined. In any case, PepsiCo has taken corporate social responsibility by the horns, hopefully luring other influential corporations to recognize that being green is achievable. "Every Generation Refreshes the World," Pespi ads claim. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that PepsiCo can do so for the next generation’s water supply.

Even in the driest of deserts, there’s a hidden water source: the air.

That's the insight of this year's Dyson Award winner. The annual prizes call on “design and engineering students from 18 countries to create innovative, practical, elegant solutions to some of humanity's greatest challenges,” according to The Huffington Post. This year the award went to Edward Linacre for his groundbreaking solution to agricultural catastrophes caused by drought. He won £10,000 for his invention—the Airdrop—and so did his school, Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology. The Airdrop pulls air into a network of tubes underground, where it is cooled to extract moisture and then funneled down to plants’ roots. See his “elevator pitch” for the project below:

Harvesting water from the air isn’t a new idea; National Geographic reported on the ancient technique of fog harvesting back in 2009. Linacre told the Daily Mail that his design is a unique solution for agricultural issues because “other systems of harvesting water from the atmosphere usually require massive amounts of energy, as they run refrigeration units. Airdrop simply uses the temperature difference between the air and the cool earth beneath the surface.” The Airdrop, he says, is a good solution for rural farmers because it’s low-tech: they can install and maintain it themselves.

Whether or not this design can practically translate to the developing world is still up in the air and probably depends largely upon its cost. Still, the simple idea of tapping into the water that’s present in the air in even the driest of environments could be very promising for increasingly parched areas of the globe.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria. Scientists have genetically modified a mosquito that could potentially stop the spread of malaria. Photo:Gravitywave (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

Bloodthirsty? Yes! Pesky? Absolutely! Malaria transmitters? Possibly not anymore.

Mosquitoes are getting a genetic makeover, which could potentially halt the endemic spread of malaria, according to a group of Johns Hopkins University researchers.

Mosquitoes have been nibbling away at birds, reptiles, and humans for nearly 30 million years. They hold primary responsibility for infecting approximately 300 million people with malaria and causing 1 million deaths a year in more than 100 countries. Scientists have been able to activate a gene that blocks these tiny insects from developing the malaria parasite in their guts. While this discovery seemed promising initially, researchers struggled to design a mosquito that could out-survive their malaria-infected counterparts.

The answer, they discovered, lies in controlling a protein called SM1 peptide. When this protein was activated, studies found that “after nine egg-laying cycles, the mix of genetically-modified (GM) mosquitoes and wild had changed to 70/30,” according to How Stuff Works?.

In spite of the promising findings, scientists remain leery of releasing the GM mosquitoes into the wild. These tests have only been done on malaria-carrying mice; the long term effects on humans are still unknown. Releasing tens of thousands of mosquitoes into the wild has never been done before, and there is a possibility that the GM mosquitoes could eventually develop immunity to the malaria parasite.

Perhaps the most compelling argument against releasing these mosquitoes comes at the heels of recent findings of an anti-malaria vaccine, largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. When 6,000 African children were tested with the vaccine, “it reduced the risk of infection with severe malaria by 47 percent during the year after the shots,” reports the New York Times.

As President Obama stated earlier this year, “Africa’s future is up to Africans.” Finding an end to malaria has the potential to lift African nations out of poverty by spurring educational advancement, market productivity, and economic growth. And ending malaria would certainly hold great promise for Africa’s future by cultivating healthy young minds of students who can sustain their educational development. In fact, studies done in Kenya by the World Health Organization found that the “disease kept children out of school for 11 percent [of the school year]."

While the long term impacts of GM mosquitoes and vaccines currently elude us, dispersing these scientific discoveries could save the lives of millions of impoverished people. The end to the means has yet to be uncovered, but these findings could pave the road to a usable solution. And that is something to buzz about.

Last year's devastating quake in Haiti created a pressing need for new, durable housing structures. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.

Part of a Global Envision miniseries about Portland State University's effort to become the "Consumer Reports" of developing-world technology. Read the introduction.

With the specter of Haiti’s hurricane season looming, everyone involved in the 1000 Homes for Haiti project wanted to get the sustainable, earthquake-proof shelters to the island nation as soon as possible.

But there was a catch: when the houses got wet, they leaked.

The story begins with Charles Fox of Portland’s Pacific Green Innovations (PGI), who came up with the idea for the project after a trip to Haiti in 2010, when he recognized the country’s need for low-cost, sustainable and permanent housing, according to the Portland Tribune. “If you give someone a transitional house, it becomes permanent,” he told the paper. As of August, more than 600,000 Haitians were still living in makeshift housing and tent camps, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

PGI bought building panels of resin-soaked recycled paper from a German building-material manufacturer called SwissCell, which PGI's website bills as earthquake-resistant, fire resistant, weather and temperature resistant.

In June 2010, PSU students actually assembled one of PGI's model homes in a campus park. This was partially to demonstrate another of the homes’ aspects that made it seem perfect for Haiti and the developing world in general: the building panels are modular and can be assembled quickly and simply. PGI says all of the houses’ materials can be produced in Haiti by Haitians.

Things went swimmingly until a curious detail caught the eye of a PSU researcher: the home had water damage. If sitting outside in Portland made the house leak, how would it hold up amid Haitian squalls, humidity and hurricanes? To test it, they tossed some of the panels into PSU’s state-of-the-art Thermotron, a device that, according to Senior Fellow Sergio Palleroni of PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions, "can create any environment on earth, any weather condition." They cranked up the heat and humidity to Haitian summertime levels, and let the panels stew for a couple of weeks.

The results confirmed their initial suspicions: Palleroni says that on average, the material lost 60 percent of its structural capacity to resist breakage. In high-wind, high-humidity conditions, the houses could actually fall apart. And for a Caribbean country far more prone to hurricanes than earthquakes—there were four in 2008 alone, according to The Guardian—that’s a big problem.

PGI stands by their product despite Palleroni's criticism. PGI’s manufacturer, Magnum Building Products, wrote in an email to Global Envision that PSU's testing may not have been reliable.

"When installed properly and finished per the guidelines also found on our website, Magnum Board structures will be in use far longer than most any other building product on the market today,” wrote Daniel Armstrong. His full response can be found below, in the comments section.

PSU researchers don’t say the houses have no use, but they don’t think they are a good permanent solution for Haiti. Palleroni pointed out that while the building materials may have passed the manufacturer’s test, they were tested as separate components; the problems showed up when they were fully assembled. PGI disagrees, with its manufacturer arguing that PSU made “no distinction as to what elements of the assembly were the primary contributor(s)" to the homes' failure.” PGI has already implemented their housing program in Haiti.

While there’s no consensus over the houses’ suitability for Haiti’s climate, the fact that there’s a debate at all is unusual. Intensive testing like the kind done at PSU is not often performed on products for the developing world. All too often, potential design problems aren’t identified until after a product is in use. Sending flawed products abroad wastes money and other resources, and in some cases the products might even hurt those that they are intended to help. Improved technologies and testing procedures allow for a longer revision period and result in better products that do more for people in need. And since that’s really the goal of humanitarian design, hopefully intensive product testing will become the norm.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

The Ganges River Delta, in Pakistan, could be feeding a lot more people. Photo: Lunar Planetary Institute (Flickr)

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

The next century is going to leave the planet parched for drinking water. But a new study asserts that the problem isn't water scarcity -- it's water efficiency.

The global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says we need to increase food and water production by 70% if we are to feed that population. Can we do that with the resources we have?

Yes, says the study, published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Researchers looked at 10 major river basins to assess how the world uses its water, and concluded that with refined practices, we can sustainably exceed the needs of current and future generations.

It is not how much water we have, but how we use that water, that will drive resource politics. According to CGIAR, most of the world considers different uses of water in isolation from one another. A more integrated approach to the water needs of food, industry, and energy would lead to more efficient allocation.

Dr. Simon Cook, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture described the current practice as one of “complete fragmentation of how river basins are managed amongst different actors and even countries where the water needs of different sectors – agriculture, industry, environment and mining – are considered separately rather than as interrelated and interdependent.”

Today, for example, water rights are allocated to hydroelectricity in the Mekong, leaving farmers and fishermen up and down the river bereft of water. There's no shortage of Mekong water. It's just being unevenly distributed. CGIAR recommend water institutions take a more integrated approach, one the total needs of water within a region, rather than having compartmentalized institutions working independent from one another.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the land is regularly parched and massive droughts like the current one in East Africa may become more commonplace, improving methods to save and store rain for agriculture use would also boost food production.

So the problem may not be an issue of resource scarcity or carrying capacity. But with this news comes responsibility: if the problems lie with us, then so must the solution.

Developing countries are determined to foster stronger domestic science communities. Photo:NASA (flickr)

Developing countries are shooting for the moon.

No longer willing to follow in the technological footsteps of developed nations, Fast Company reports, developing countries are launching significant space programs to subsidize and promote in-country technological innovation.

From Tanzania to Brazil, governments of developing countries are investing billions into building domestic science institutions, as well as funding science and technology scholarships. The aim is to form cohesive space programs of their own without relying on the previous accomplishments of Western nations. On they way, they'll foster a stronger homegrown science community while strengthening education and promoting industry.

But most importantly, says José Goldemberg, a professor at the University of Saõ Paulo, this fledgling investment is an effort to “adapt and develop technologies appropriate to our local circumstances." Some developing countries are pioneering their own paths, exploring technologies relevant to their countries' unique needs.

The programs focus on everything from energy and bio-engineering to environmental science and water resource management. Some, such as the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (which has institutions located in various locations across Sub-Saharan Africa), will begin to offer master's and Ph.D. degrees.

In April 2010, one of the more ambitious developing-world projects was established. Mexico’s Agencia Espacial Mexicana, working with 45 partner countries from around the world, launched the development of a space program with an agreement by all parties to share financial, scientific, and technological resources in their space exploration efforts.

Though the goal of space exploration may seem far-fetched for countries that often struggle with domestic and economic stability, the growth of national ideas and talent are essential to any nation's progress. Even if space exploration is not in the cards for these countries for many years to come, technology developed in the process could prove to be vital. NASA’s space research led not only to man's first steps on the moon, but provided the technology behind everyday-use inventions like ear thermometers and smoke detectors, long distance telecommunications and cordless devices.

Small steps in the development of domestic science and technology programs could lead to a giant leap for the future of a country. From advanced education and job creation to new technologies that simplify complex problems, these programs promise much for millions across the globe.

Wind catchers on a cistern near Yazd, Iran, that help to keep the water cool. Photo: birdfarm (flickr)

Part of a Global Envision miniseries about Portland State University's effort to become the "Consumer Reports" of developing-world technology. Read the introduction.

Sometimes, it turns out that the wisdom of the ages is wrong. Portland State University’s Green Building Research Lab is out to tease science from superstition.

Cultures around the globe have adopted unique tricks for coping with the peculiarities of their local environments. But how much of the wisdom behind conventional designs and survival methods is rooted in real science?

That's the question that led PSU researchers to the Persian wind catcher.

Long before the unprecedented heat waves of the last decade, whose increased frequency National Geographic links to climate change, both the Middle East and the American Deep South developed building styles that allow for greater air circulation. The American dogtrot house, recently profiled in an article by The Atlantic, is a bit hard to find since the advent of air conditioning, but Persian wind catchers have been around for several hundred years and still dot the arid landscape around the Persian Gulf. The idea is that open-faced towers on the ends of a building draw in cooler, moving air from high above the ground; the air is pulled through the lower portions of the house and then up and out another tower.

Both the dogtrot house and the wind catcher are culturally accepted ways to beat the heat, but PSU asked: How well do they actually work? They put tiny models of each house into a self-constructed wind tunnel that can measure exactly how—and how well—they work to circulate air. A machine attached to the tunnel creates bubbles that lack an electromagnetic charge, which means that they simply float along on the air currents, providing a seemingly magical way to visually track airflow through the models. Researchers hope they can use the test results to help develop new building designs.

Testing traditional solutions to timeless problems like this one not only tells us something about other cultures; it also shows how old design principles could be melded with current technology to produce more efficient, livable, and sustainable spaces. And if the PSU labs are onto something, maybe your children—or grandchildren—will grow up in a house with a wind catcher.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Assistant Professor Evan Thomas, director of Portland State University's SWEET lab, demonstrates the way that the lab measures the output of two different low-fuel stoves. Photo: Megan McMorran/Mercy Corps

Brilliant ideas don’t always pan out. In the realm of humanitarian development, innovations that fall flat affect more than just investors’ bank accounts.

That's why a small team at an Oregon university has set out to become the testing ground for the world's possibly brilliant humanitarian inventions. This post is the first of a Global Envision series on how they're doing it.

While promising products like self-adjusting eyeglasses or low-fuel stoves generally undergo some sort of lab testing prior to introduction, they often perform differently than expected once they’ve reached their destination due to environmental or cultural differences. Rather than waiting to see results after the fact, Portland State University is working on a grand plan to evaluate magic bullets like these before they hit the developing world.

It's a mission that straddles two separately funded PSU programs. The internationally focused Sustainable Water, Energy, and Environmental Technologies Lab shares a roof with the domestically focused Green Building Research Lab. The latter is stocked with equipment that, as PSU architecture professor Sergio Palleroni put it, "can create any environment on earth, any weather condition." PSU researchers can use the equipment to closely mimic the environmental conditions of the destination country and closely measure products’ performance in all sorts of climatic conditions.

The SWEET lab, meanwhile, focuses specifically on putting low-cost sustainability products through a battery of tests.

"We want to become the Consumer Reports for the developing world," said Palleroni, standing in a lab room devoted to the subject. That means not only ensuring that products function as they should, but also measuring how well they function — and how similar products stack up against one another. Two small, low-fuel, low-emission stoves burned side-by-side when we visited, various sensors measuring their ouput and rate of fuel consumption.

In forthcoming posts in this series, we’ll be exploring a few of the PSU labs’ projects. Stay tuned.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.