5 Outside-the-Box Solutions to the World’s Big Environmental Problems

Living Breakwaters

Instead of trying to build massive seawalls against rising ocean levels, SCAPE/Landscape Architecture has created the Living Breakwaters project to protect coastlines by creating a “necklace” of breakwaters to buffer the coast against wave damage, flooding, and erosion. A system of underwater concrete breakwaters reduces wave action while creating new habitat for marine life. Oyster beds and other fisheries infrastructure, meanwhile, create physical barriers to rising water and offer recreational opportunities too.

(Photo: Courtesy SCAPEStudio.com)

Bonobo Peace Forest

Located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bonobo Conservation Initiative has been weaving together a network of community-managed forests with a strategy it calls “viral conservation.” BCI’s conservation strategy has steered away from traditional “parks and fences” or “guards and guns” policies that can alienate local communities. Instead, the group works to empower local leaders to take ownership of the conservation work and allows neighboring communities to duplicate that effort in their areas. The result is a network of protected forest habitat for the endangered bonobo.

“While BCI is focused on protecting bonobos and their rainforest habitat, the broader vision for our work is that we are addressing two of the most critical crises facing humanity today—climate change and species loss,” said BCI executive director Michael Hurley.

(Photo: Jeffrey Oonk/Bonobo Conservation Initiative)

Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic

How do you get health care to remote areas along the Congo River in Africa? Build a floating medical and research facility able to reach areas where roads don’t lead. Organizers at Water Based Aid, Value, Engagement (WAVE) have been working since 2009 to create a mobile hub that connects isolated communities and provides health care training and ecological education.

(Photo: Courtesy FloatingClinic.org)

El Fuego del Sol Haiti

Haiti has a deadly addiction to charcoal: Nearly all of its stoves run off the dirty fuel source that has led to the deforestation of nearly 98 percent of the country. El Fuego del Sol Haiti is working to recycle and reuse the country’s paper waste as ecological fuel briquettes. It is introducing improved stoves and is working to train Haitian women in use of the devices and eco-briquettes.

(Photo: Courtesy El Fuego del Sol Haiti)

AskNature

How do owls fly without making a sound? How come cactuses can survive in the desert? AskNature.org wants to provide the answers to such questions through a massive database of nature’s solutions to humanity’s pressing challenges.

“A knowledge divide exists for millions of non–biologically trained innovators for whom nature’s strategies would be a deep source of design inspiration. AskNature helps to bridge this gap,” Ethan Smith, AskNature project director, said in a statement. “The Fuller Challenge would help us expand AskNature’s sustainability design tools so that people around the world have access to knowledge and resources that could literally change the way we innovate.”

(Photo: Courtesy AskNature.org)

5 Amazing Weekend Trips for Wildlife Spotting

If you’ve never seen an alligator up close and the only armadillo you’ve ever met is a stuffed tourist souvenir, now is the time. Fall is prime wildlife season, as animals come out of their remote hideaways to feast and get ready for winter. Here are five wildlife-centered weekends perfect for pursuing your own personal wildlife quest.

— Melanie Haiken

Been thinking of ways to save the planet?

So have this group of designers, architects, activists, entrepreneurs, artists, and planners from around the world who have been working on solutions to some of the globe’s most vexing problems.

Their proposals—20 in all—have been named semifinalists in the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s 2014 Fuller Challenge. The contest searches for the best strategies for addressing a pressing global issue, ranging from sanitation, health, food, and poverty to water systems, conservation, and design.

The Fuller Challenge judges look for ideas that can be applied globally. The first-place winner takes home a $100,000 prize.

The award is named after the inventor and neo-futurist architect Buckminster Fuller, famous for his geodesic domes and distortion-minimizing world map—outside-the-box ideas that are the inspiration for today’s challenge.

We’ve highlighted five of the most intriguing ideas.

—Taylor Hill

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