For seven decades, AGRICO has been supplying produce to more than one thousand outlets. As chairperson, Ahmed Al Khalaf says, the farming company has addressed climate challenges by learning from experts worldwide whilst demonstrating local solutions to teach emerging farmers.
We have a difficult environment to grow fruit and vegetables therefore to produce all year round, we concentrate on developing smart farming. – Ahmed Al Khalaf – Chairman, AGRICO
Al Khalaf encourages businesses in the region to shift their focus to food security and sustainability which he says is the key to self-sufficiency. AGRICO’s seasonal greenhouses are used for different crops all year round using cutting-edge agricultural technology. One of their most innovative approaches is aquaponics, a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics where bacteria help change excretions from fish tanks to fertilise the plants that then absorb extra nitrogen, putting purified water back into the tanks. For the very first time AGRICO has also taken aquaponics and vertical farming with LED lighting, to a grocery store in Qatar. The farm’s general manager, Dr Fahad Saleh Ibrahim, explains: “Carrefour is a good point to educate the public about this way of farming. The plants are extremely healthy, we use less water and get more produce, harvesting only what we need.” The technology is capable of growing various plants including herbs but also fruit like melons and tomatoes.
Organic produce is gaining popularity in Qatar, and Torba Store is a haven for the health-conscious. It is also part of Torba Farms’ overall ethos of farm-to-table produce that includes two farmers’ markets. Founder, Fatma Al Khater, brought the concept to life, for the benefits of sustainable living, “We’re big fans of permaculture and the microbiome, so we’ve got fermented food ranging from kombucha to sauerkraut, and they really do help in fulfilling that holistic lifestyle that we try and educate people about.” Torba also seized the opportunity to connect people with food, which is what their Farmers’ Market aims to do, along with uplifting small businesses.
The buzz around honey farming
Since Qatar is well on its way to meeting its ambitious food self-sufficiency targets for 2023, honey production has been increasing over the past few years with local bees and their honey, beeswax and propolis, more popular than ever. There are thousands of bees at Umm Qarn Farm where beekeeper Arafat Hussain works, “I may be one of the first people to produce pollen in Qatar, royal jelly, propolis, and propolis products. Bees teach you sacrifice and sincerity in work.”
Al Waha Farm’s, Samir Abadi, says they aspire to produce two tons of honey annually to meet the huge demand for the golden nectar. Part of this passion involves teaching future generations how to farm bees which are vulnerable to pesticides and natural predators, as well as climate extremes. In their role as pollinators, bees are responsible for one-third of the world’s food production. Globally, the insects are on the decline, but Qatar is making a real effort to focus on beekeeping, pollination, and honey.
Building an apartment block on stilts over a public car park in central Nelson would help provide affordable homes, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help add “buzz” to the city, proponents say.
Unveiling a plan for 56 “eco” apartments above the open-air council car park in Buxton Square, city councillor Matt Lawrey said the model could help more people live in city centres across New Zealand – reducing the number of people having to drive in to work, and helping keeping cities alive.
The four-storey block would have trees and shrubs planted on its balconies and roof, with only timber columns, lifts, stairs, a toilet block and bike storage touching the ground.
Lawrey approached local architectural designer Pierre Hammond and landscape architect Ursula Bowman to create the design, after being “inspired” by urban regeneration developments in Europe.
Nelson City councillor, Matt Lawrey, (centre) architectural designer Pierre Hammond and landscape architect Ursula Bowman in Buxton Square in Nelson, where they propose building eco-apartments above the council-owned car park to help create more affordable homes and a “green corridor” in the city centre.
Hammond said the building’s main structure would be made from locally-grown pine, creating a much smaller carbon footprint than concrete and steel.
The one, two or three bedroom units would be built in a grid, allowing for the units to be made bigger or smaller once the block was constructed, reducing the need to build more homes when demand changed, Hammond said.
“Standardised” materials would be used, making the building more cost-effective and faster to build, with much of it able to be built offsite and craned in, minimising disruption, he said.
Bowman said plantings around the apartment block would soften the existing square, helping establish a “green corridor” through the city, tying in with the aim of the city’s spatial plan to create a pedestrian link across the CBD.
Sustainable features like rain gardens (where water flowed in and was treated there, rather than going straight into drains and the sea) would make the square a pleasant place to be, she said.
Hammond said flood modelling showed the square was at the “high point” of the coastal and riverside city, and not prone to flooding from sea level rise in the next 100 years.
He said 6000 people came into central Nelson to work, but only 50 people lived there.
Lawrey said the city missed the buzz, activity and spend that came with having people living in it all the time.
While it was a challenge to build a unit in town for less than $1 million, costs would drop if developers didn’t have to buy the land but could lease it from council – benefiting prospective buyers and renters, and creating a potential revenue stream for council, he said.
Buxton Square in central Nelson, where it is proposed an apartment block be built over the footprint of the car park. ANDY MACDONALD/STUFF
“If we get more people living in town, then it’s going to be good for businesses, because there will be customers walking around all the time, it’s going to be good for the life of the city, because there will be more happening, and it will be good for the economy.
“Cities are facing a challenge because of the way things are changing with retail, with people working from home. We need to get smarter about how we stimulate our city centres.”
The plan kept the existing car park because people “got concerned about parking” whenever change was proposed in the central city, Lawrey said.
The design allowed for the parking spaces to be changed to retail space if demand for parking fell.
This high-rise apartment building in the Italian city of Milan, named Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), is planted with around 20,000 trees, shrubs, climbers and perennials, which soak up about 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. BOERI STUDIO
While the apartments were aimed at people wishing to live without a car, a car share service could be included.
New Zealand car share company, Mevo, said projects like this were “more viable than ever”.
Tens of thousands of people in Wellington, Auckland and Hamilton accessed Mevo’s vehicles instead of private vehicles, and the company was looking to expand into regional cities, CEO Erik Zydervelt said.
“We need more projects such as this that are big, bold and sometimes even a little scary if we want our homes in New Zealand cities to be truly world-leading.
Eco-apartments that can be scaled up or down in size are being proposed for Buxton carpark in central Nelson, in what proponents say could be a blue print for inner city living across New Zealand. PIERRE HAMMOND/SUPPLIED
“The best cities in the world work hard to ensure people can live, work and play in their centres. This delivers the best outcomes for their environment, people and economies.”
Lawrey hoped the design would “open people’s minds to what might be possible”.
He, Hammond and Bowman intended to pitch the idea to Nelson City Council in the coming weeks.
Kotchakorn Voraakhom, 43, is a Thai landscape architect whose firm, Landprocess, focuses on social and environmental transformation through projects like canal gardens, water-storing parks and rooftop farms.
You grew up in Bangkok, received your master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked for landscape architecture firms in the United States before returning to Bangkok and starting your own firm. Your work combines both international and local perspectives. What is the advantage of this approach?
Responding to climate change is not something generic. We need to tailor each solution to a culture and a setting. Here in Thailand it is about drought and flood. This is not about melting ice. There are flash floods, and floods that come to stay. There are different patterns of nature. And they’re different than they used to be. We need to adapt.
Your designs explore both landscape and water. Can you talk about your connection to both?
I still remember sneaking into the canals as a child and seeing the greenery along them. Already there was less and less nature around them, but it was such a healing moment for me. My house was a rowhouse along the main road. We had no backyard, just the street. The only walks you could do were very hot, very dangerous and very polluted.
Ms. Voraakhom grew up in Bangkok and received her master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.Credit…Watcharapon Nimwatanagul
Bangkok is built on wetlands and prone to heavy rains. What can be done about the frequent flooding?
When my firm builds parks, we’re accepting that they will flood. Right now, when we build for floods in Thailand, we see it with fear. We’re building dams higher and higher. That’s how you often deal with uncertainty — with fear. You need to deal with uncertainty with flexibility, with understanding. It’s OK to flood, and it’s OK to be “weak.” That means resilience. With that mind-set, you create designs that talk with nature. That dance with nature. It’s very Buddhist — accepting the world as it is.
Your firm’s first major project was Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park, in the center of Bangkok, which you completed in 2017. Can you talk about that design and how it helps address flooding, overdevelopment and a lack of public space?
It was the first major park in the city in 30 years, and the university built it to celebrate its 100th anniversary. We said it’s not just about celebrating what’s been, but about helping the city and its citizens survive and thrive in the next 100 years. So, let’s try to define a new way of working with water and living in the city.
The whole park is inclined to collect water. On one end you have a series of sloping buildings containing museums, cafes, parking spaces and other functions, which we equipped with a green roof. Three underground tanks store the rainwater absorbed by the roof. The land slopes down from there to a main lawn and a series of wetlands and then continues down to a retention pond. When it rains, excess water from the green roof is filtered by the wetland, then it flows into the retention pond, which can double in size.
The concept comes partly from the idea of monkey cheeks. Our previous king [Bhumibol Adulyadej] saw that a monkey stores his food in his cheeks and then eats it when he’s hungry. This is a kind of monkey cheek for water in the city.
Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park was completed in 2017.Credit…LANDPROCESS
The whole park is inclined to collect water.Credit…Panoramic Studio, LANDPROCESS
This seems like a good example of how you work. You tend to push the boundaries of ideas that are already themselves pushing boundaries.
There are so many things to address when you talk about public space. So if you have one chance, you want to address several problems. I don’t think one design can serve just one client. It needs to serve the whole city, the whole population, and the whole ecosystem. Design is having unexpected clients — the birds and the bees. You’re serving clients well beyond the ones that pay you.
What are the biggest challenges you face in achieving this?
Change has happened so quickly here that it’s been hard to adapt. Not long ago there were ancient towns and rice fields. Then, boom, concrete, big buildings. All this density has happened in the last 50 years. The speed of change has been too fast, and much of the response has come without direction. That’s why we need professions like urban planning and landscape architecture.
You co-founded the Porous City Network, which addresses ways to naturally reduce the impacts of flooding in Southeast Asia. Explain this effort and its challenges.
Many people don’t understand what we’re proposing if they’re not trained as architects or engineers. They think if you just build walls and dams that’s the best solution. Being designers, we have powerful tools to create images and animations, to show them what the reality will be — the impacts of big walls that they’ll have to live with forever. Do you really want that when it only floods five days per year? We work to convince them there is another way.
What are some of the challenges of being a female designer in Thailand?
My identity is confusing. In Thai culture I’m a little bit American, and in American culture I’m very Thai. I don’t want gender to be another burden.
There are many benefits to being a woman; particularly the connection to nature. I think with motherhood, the cycles of the body, we’re more in touch with nature in our bodies and our hearts.
Another benefit of being a woman is that I don’t feel afraid to lose face, and I feel more flexible because of that. Male stereotypes are so strong. For women, there are fewer expectations; you can do whatever you want. You can be yourself.
Eleven stories high in the heart of the City of London, there is a hidden haven for wildlife. Around 159 species of plants are flourishing on the rooftop of Nomura, a Japanese bank. By day, orchids, daisies and wild herbs provide food to 17 species of bees. At night, the bright yellow flowers of mullein plants bloom in the moonlight, tempting London’s moths.
It is here that an orchid thought to be extinct in the UK was recently discovered growing among the roof’s solar panels. The small-flowered tongue orchid – so named because its flowers resemble protruding tongues – has only been found growing wild in the UK once before, in 1989.
It’s still a mystery how the orchids made it onto the roof, though ecologist Mark Patterson, who manages the bank’s 10-year-old rooftop garden, suspects that the flowers’ seeds hitched a ride on winds blowing over from the Sahara.
“Orchid seeds are as small as specks of dust,” he tells The Independent. “So my theory is they blew over before establishing themselves.” On the Friday morning when The Independent visited Nomura’s green roof, he was collecting leaves from the flowers to send to experts at Kew Gardens. “They’re going to analyse the DNA from the samples. That might be able to tell us what region the seeds originated from,” he explains.
A colony of small-flowered tongue orchids (centre and right) were discovered on a London rooftop after not being seen in the UK since 1989. SOURCE: Daisy Dunne
Nomura’s green roof is one of 700 spread across central London, with the capital boasting more such idylls than other parts of the country. According to the Greater London Authority, a “green roof” is a “a roof or deck where vegetation or habitat for wildlife is deliberately established”.
As well as providing a safe space for rare wildlife, building green roofs in cities can offer a host of other benefits, ranging from improving local air quality to helping build resilience against worsening extreme weather events, says Dr Michael Hardman, a senior lecturer in urban geography at the University of Salford.
“There’s clear evidence out there that green roofs can mitigate against things like the urban heat island effect and flood events,” he tells The Independent. “In terms of climate change, they are definitely an important tool.”
The “urban heat island effect” is a term for how cities are typically hotter than rural areas. Major UK cities, such as London, Manchester and Birmingham, can at times be up to 5C hotter than their surrounding rural areas, research shows. The effect is caused by a combination of densely packed buildings and roads, which trap in heat, as well as air pollution, industrial activity and high amounts of energy use by homeowners.
Research shows that the urban heat island effect is likely to intensify in UK cities as the planet continues to warm.
Green roofs can help to tackle urban heat by providing a local cooling service. This is largely because plants naturally absorb water through their roots and later release it into the air as moisture, which has a cooling effect on the surrounding area.
At Nomura’s rooftop garden, this cooling effect is largely enough to allow the bank to cut back on the use of air conditioning in the summer, Mr Patterson says. “If all the buildings in this area had green roofs, it would probably reduce the temperature on a hot day by a degree or two,” he adds.
Tortoiseshell butterflies are one of many insects found on Nomura’s green roof. SOURCE: Mark Patterson
The bank’s green roof also plays a role in reducing flood risk in the city. “Every inch of soil you have on a green roof absorbs five per cent more water, so that’s five per cent less water that’s running off into drains,” he says.
A study conducted in Newcastle in 2016 found that a “city-wide deployment of green roofs” could reduce travel disruption from flooding by around a quarter. The authors of the research say that green roofs, along with more traditional defences such as flood walls, must be part of plans to cope with more extreme downpours.
The need to prepare for worsening heatwaves and floods in the UK is greater than ever. Earlier this month, the UK’s independent climate advisory group, the Climate Change Committee, warned that the country is now less prepared for the climate crisis than it was five years ago as a result of government inaction in the face of rising risks.
Increasing the number of green spaces in cities will be key to helping the country’s urban populations cope with increasing heat and worse floods, according to their assessment.
Despite recognising the benefits of green roofs, the UK is currently behind other countries when it comes to building them, says Dr Hardman.
“We need to look to countries, like Denmark, which have both the financial incentives and the planning incentives,” he says. “In Denmark, if a building’s slope angle is under a certain amount, it’s actually mandatory to put a green roof on. We need to be more innovative with our policies.”
He added that, at present, not enough is being done to ensure that the social benefits of green roofs can be accessed by disadvantaged groups.
“All the green roofs in Manchester that I know of are very inaccessible, they are closed to the public and you need a health and safety person to take you up there,” he says. “To me that’s a huge barrier to green roofs. The social benefits just aren’t there at the moment, as they are for other types of green infrastructure like parks”.
An all-new eco smart city is now coming up in Singapore. Also known as a forest town, this new place is going to be nature’s true haven. The new city is aimed at improving the health and well-being of residents, paving the way for a better future.
The eco-city is going to be car-free, and its construction is taking place in Tengah, in the West Region. It is going to have five residential districts with 42000 homes, and help to reduce carbon emissions in the city. The forest town, as it is being often referred to used to be a military hub, with brick making factories all around. All that’s going to change when the new smart city is going to be built. In its new avatar, the forest town is going to be an example of good and clean living.
The car-free smart city is going to have safe zones for pedestrians, and also for cycling. The forest town without cars is going to be free from traffic, and as you can imagine, much of the day-time traffic stress is not going to be there. It is a sure way to develop wellness for the citizens, while keeping sustainability in mind.
Source: CNN
The five districts of Tengah are going to be Park, Garden, Forest Hill, Plantation, and Brickland. Even though the city is car-free, residents from here will be able to travel in buses in order to go into town. Tengah will also be connected with a water catchment area, and a nature reserve. Surely, it is going to be a one-of-a-kind place where you can breathe easy, and experience wellness like never before.
Of the 42,000 homes being built at Tengah, more than 70% will be made available through the HDB on long-term leases. Prices for two-bedroom apartments currently begin at just 108,000 Singapore dollars ($82,000), with the first apartments set to complete in 2023.
Source: Courtesy The Housing & Development Board
All residents will have access to an app allowing them to monitor their energy and water usage. (“You empower them to take control of where they can cut down their energy consumption,” Chong said.) Digital displays in each block will meanwhile inform occupants of their collective environmental impact, which could even encourage competition between residential blocks, according to SP Group.
Regardless of whether the use of smart technology can significantly dent greenhouse gas emissions or not, engaging residents with their own consumption could instigate behavioral change, according to Perrine Hamel, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment. This, she added, is a crucial part of Singapore’s goal of reaching peak emissions by 2030 and reducing them thereafter.
“Thinking about food consumption and thinking about the way people use air conditioning is all part of (achieving climate targets),” she said. “Changing behavior is going to be an integral part of it and, of course, urban design is the first way to affect and change behavior.”
Beyond promoting and protecting biodiversity, conserving nature on the site can lead to further behavioral change, Hamel said.
