Dear Times Evoke,

Akansha Tiwari’s article (24th July) was very important. I’ve grown up along Mumbai’s shoreline and seen fi sh, algae, etc., stuck in nets discarded by trawlers. We must make our regulations far more stringent. Times Evoke is doing great public service by increasing socio-environmental awareness.

—Dr Yogesh Ghalsasi, Thane

READERS WRITE As a teacher, I really look forward to Saturdays for the brilliant Times Evoke! Akansha Tiwari’s stunning-looking article on ghost nets made me think of how casually we discard our surpluses. Thanks, Times Group, for this great section — I add Times Evoke to my class notes to make my students informed.

—Monika Singh, Delhi

Times Evoke truly inspires. I was intrigued by Akansha Tiwari’s write-up. Human carelessness is taking a huge toll on biodiversity but marine life gives us oxygen to breathe. The authorities must protect our environment in air, land and sea.

—Lalit Bharadwaj, Panchkula

Being an ex-naval aviator, I’ve served in many coastal bases. I’ve seen aquatic habitats and coastal areas badly affected by plastic and non-biodegradable debris. From 2004 to 2006, I worked in a war ship and travelled widely. I saw endangered hawksbill turtles, small dolphins, crustaceans, etc., caught in discarded nylon nets. Not many people know about this concerning issue in India. Akansha Tiwari’s striking article was in public interest. Thank you for highlighting it, Times Evoke.

—Nirmalya Chakrabarti, Jamshedpur

Share your thoughts at: timesevoke@timesgroup.com

TIMES EVOKE

The core of my research looks at technologies for climate resilience. These are not high-tech solutions or

carbon credits but understanding indigenous technologies as sustaina-ble options. I was teaching climate resilient technology at Columbia when I found these innovations, informed by traditional ecological knowledge. No one was studying them — it was more common to find studies of the technology of collapsed Western civilisations than living indigenous innovations. I became fascinated with these. Through them, I began trying to balance the climate change conversation between the Global North and Global South, where these alternative technologies exist.

When we talk about technology in the West, we mean high-tech which is born from an abundant

amount of resources, money and unrestricted scalability. These are embedded in high-tech. But it is these principles of infinite resources that make this tech inherently unsustainable. In contrast, lo-tech is born of finite resources and an understanding that ecosystems have limitations. Indigenous innovations evolved over thousands of years while deal-ing with climatic extremes like tidal surges and floods. This technol-

ogy has inherent principles which make it truly sustainable.

These innovations show diverse ways by which indigenous communi-ties understand ecology. There isn’t a distinct construct of Nature and Man or an idea of nature as being separate from human beings. In this worldview, we are all part of nature, so we should work with natural systems like water, trees and sunlight. These technologies also value stewardship — these are not about always extracting from nature or showing a superiority complex regarding biodiversity which often reflects in Western ideology. Instead, lo-tech emphasises symbiosis, working with different life forms and preserving diversity because that makes resilience possible.

I’ve found incredible examples of this — one is Meghalaya’s living root bridge system. This region has some of the highest rainfall in the world. When the monsoon comes, the rivers rushing by take out all the bridges, except for the living root bridges grown by the Khasi and Jaintia people.

These are built out of rubber fig trees planted near rivers by the community. They train the trees to grow across rivers and then, using bamboo scaf-folding, they weave their secondary root systems together — after some years, you get a living root bridge. There are about 30 such bridges today and the Living Bridge Foundation is

doing great work teaching people how to keep this technology alive. I’ve done studies

with engineers in the US who tested these root bridges — they concluded these were the most structurally efficient system possible.

Another resilient technology is Kerala’s kuttanad system — it’s like the Dutch polder-dike arrangement, with a polder or lake lower than sea level and a dike or barrier which keeps the water out. This helped the Dutch make low-lying lands agricul-tural. Kerala’s kuttanad is similar — it allows saltwater in where shrimp is farmed. When the monsoon comes, this changes to a freshwater system which grows crops. For people trying to mitigate sea level rises on land, this

is an important innovation. Kerala’s technology is better than the Dutch because it deals with an intense weather system like the monsoon.

There is also the Philippines’ rice terrace aquaculture, made by the Ifugao people in Banaue. These fields are sloped at 80 degrees, so they’re near-vertical. These are thousands of years old and incredibly biodi-verse, supporting birds, aquatic and terrestrial life, including humans, through the growing of rice. They’re acknowledged by UNESCO as some of the most important habitats on Earth. I’m working with engineers now to see whether, with the West’s tall buildings, we can study this integrated system of food production and biodiversity and create the next generation of g reen façade technology, inspired by the Ifugao.

Conversations about climate resilient technology therefore don’t need to be dominated by the West — we need site-specific technologies to deal with sea level rise, food scarcity, water shortages, etc. Locally developed tech will mitigate these challenges. We must stop this reluctance to see indigenous innovations as technology — we can ignore living indigenous science only at our peril now.

Climate change will force us to rethink ideas like infinite growth, expansion and per manence. In fact, permanence will increas-ingly be an illusion because with climate change, transformations will intensify. We must think about adaptability, flexibility and how to integrate with natural systems — only indigenous technology lets us do this. We should study the deeper principles of such technology to understand its key features and learn what makes it sustainable.

We cannot solve climate change with the same approach that created the problem. We need to move from polluting technology to nature-based science — the bridge enabling this important step is indigenous technological innovation.

Climate change is upon the world — 2021 alone has seen extreme heatwaves across North America, extraordinary

rainfall in China and flooding in Germany, with torrents even tearing through medieval castles. As global warming heats the Earth, extreme weather events will grow more frequent and powerful. Their impacts on non-resilient infrastructure are huge — 2021’s floods have cost Germany six billion euros. The US has seen eight climate disas-ters upto July — each one, from flooding to drought, cost over one billion dollars. Weath-er upheavals in 2018 cost the US $160 billion while economists estimate climate disrup-tions to assets and businesses could impact 10% of global GDP annually. No country will be spared the economic costs — India lost $14 billion with 2020’s Cyclone Amphan — or the loss of immeasurably valuable lives.

Much of this devastation stems from the architecture of our lives — builders globally have buried nature’s natural grid in concrete and carbon. Urban architecture often defies logic with skyscrapers towering on paved-over marshes and flood barriers like mangroves cleared in cities facing rising seas. There has been relentless building in ecologically fragile areas and reckless block-ing of nature’s safety valves — 2000 onwards, the world cut down 10% of its tree cover, a bulwark against heat, floods and pollution.

However, we can still build climate resilience. As Times Evoke’s global experts emphasise, respecting our ecological canvas can help planners use nature’s tools against weather ravages. Immediate measures like building sea walls and raising housing in coastal areas — New York redeveloped thus, following 2012’s Hurricane Sandy — while adopting weather-proof infrastructure, like permeable paving and city farming for uninterrupted supplies, are vital. In the medium term, planners must shift from a frenetic consumption of more land and ecosystems, to nurture carbon zero develop-ment within existing habitations, braiding renewable energy, efficient transport, smart housing, etc., into cities. In the long term, architects must envision new cities, founded both on safer ground and more sustainable lives. But first, humanity must build bridges with our ecology. Join Times Evoke on a vibrant journey of learning from the world’s most resilient planner — nature.

The core of my work is helping cities adapt to climate change. We do this with Columbia’s

Resilience Accelerator program which brings together climate research and local leadership to design innovative and replicable

projects and policies. The IPCC calls this ‘climate r e s i l i e n t development pathways’ . We call it the

systemic change needed to build and operate cities now.

All cities must change to survive the climate crisis. Fast-growing coastal cities are in particular danger because of sea level rise, increasing storms and the global addiction to concrete and asphalt which exacerbate flooding. An important step would be moving away from an endless consumption of land. This means using the land we’ve already developed to build more dense and walkable neighbour-hoods, connected with mass transit. It also means living with nature instead of fighting against it — we need to allow natural systems like rivers, marshes and beaches to work with our cities. In New York City, we’ve taken steps to increase access to park space for all — that also creates more room for water to be absorbed and decreases the likelihood of flooding.

Solutions for a city’s climate future also lie in the past. We’ve worked in the Vietnamese city of Can Tho, part of a rapidly urbanising region around Ho Chi Minh City. People here existed for centuries in a very watery landscape. Real estate speculation led to highways being built over the canals and paved urban development replacing this riverain society — the result is, the region has experienced nearly constant urban flooding. Our group has been working to integrate canals back into the development pat-terns of the city. We can’t afford more petrochemical urbanisa-tion — the ‘cars, highways, sub-urbs’ model got us where we are.

Our design studio also visited Pune where local leaders want to remake the Mula-Mutha river. So

much of Pune’s energetic culture revolves around its life-giving force, its water. But this is threatened by urban expansion and pollution. So, we’ve worked to create an incremental approach to water as a precious resource, to be kept clean, to be stored by diverse water-holding bodies and linked landscapes and to be shared by everyone, includ-ing biodiversity. This needs long-term planning but also local stewardship, which is often the

brains of climate resilience, people who understand how the climate has functioned locally year to year, how it’s changing and how natural systems are responding — such knowledge holds the key to escaping major environmental events.

Cities will also need to develop resilience stewardship. In the US, we now have a Climate Resilient Core, modelled on environmental programs of the New Deal of the 1930s when young people needing careers became stewards managing America’s ecological crisis. Today, young people can plant trees, manage ecosystems with selective cutting, seed wetlands, etc. This combines understand-ing science and nature with local community interactions and learning peoples’ strengths and needs. Such work can make young people very rooted.

I’ve helped to rebuild New York City after Hurricane Sandy. Scientists had long warned NYC, which has 520 miles of coastline,

that storms would become more frequent and powerful due to warmer ocean temperatures and our infrastructure, from water treatment plants to subways, highways and housing, was very vulnerable. We faced huge risks but it was hard to make people discuss that in daily decision-making. Ironically, post-disaster recovery is when a lot of people understand that climate disruption is not a one-off event, it’s part of an escalating pattern.

We did take significant steps after Sandy — major investments were made in safeguarding energy and transport infrastruc-ture. I focused on housing. Private housing, often owned by people just entering the middle class, was in the flood zones, cheap lands on the outskirts. I was on a $3.4 billion program to help rebuild these houses. We spent considerable effort elevating houses — the whole look of NYC’s coastal neighbour-hoods has changed in the last seven years. If you walk through southern Queens, Staten Island or Brooklyn, you’ll see buildings that are now up on piers over the water. It reflects how much our cities will inevitably change as we meet the climate crisis.

I saw images of floods in Germany and Belgium recently. These were awful but the truth is that the poor suffer more from the climate crisis. We have huge flooding in poorer countries but when floods hap-pen in NYC or Rhineland, the conversation is elevated in Wash-ington DC and Brussels. I wish it didn’t take that — climate com-passion must be globalised now.

‘NYC put coastal housing on piers — every city must adapt’

Thaddeus Pawlowski teaches urban design at Columbia University. Discussing his work in building climate resilience from America to

Vietnam, he tells Times Evoke the steps every city will soon have to take:

Julia Watson is an urban designer. She teaches at Harvard and Columbia and has written ‘Lo-Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism’. Sharing her insights with Times Evoke, she highlights the lessons indigenous innovations offer the world seeking extreme weather adaptation:

Picture: Amos Chappel; Courtesy: J Watson

INDI-GENIUS

THE BELL TOLLS FOR ALL: As recent floods in Germany and Belgium show, climate change will also impact Europe and the USA

KEEPING IT NATURAL: Kerala's kuttanad waterways system manages saline and freshwater farming systems, circulated by the monsoon

A SUSTAINABLE BRIDGE: Meghalaya's Khasi community weaves together tree roots to make living bridges that can withstand monsoon storms and floods

iStock

iStock

‘Meghalaya’s living root bridges and Kerala’s kuttanad show indigenous climate resilience’

Is climate change reshaping architecture?Absolutely. Today, even the most

advanced countries are not being spared by nature. It’s like the pandemic — it doesn’t know political boundaries. Climate change will also not recognise rich nations from poor. And it will alter

architecture globally. Until now, architecture operat-ed as an autonomous subject. It’s often been dis-respectful of context. In many situations, it’s been the problem, not the solu-tion. Architectural solu-tions have become easily

universalised, forgetting context. But with climate change, context is critical.

Will architecture have to renegotiate its relationship with nature now?

Architecture will have to completely flip its imagination. As architects, we privilege the built environment. Nature finds its place in the interstices. This will have to be reversed — nature will now command strongly. We will have to

learn to not disrupt nature and instead privilege its systemic integrity. What drives the built environment should not determine how we make settlements. Instead, this should be determined by how we safeguard our natural systems.

What changes do you foresee with climate-resilient architecture emerging?

The notion of time must have much more presence in architecture and plan-ning now. Around the world, we’re seeing diverse responses to climate change. Manhattan is taking the approach of fortification, making barriers around its edges, trying to mitigate surges, etc. It is a solution with a shorter time span in mind. The other approach is managed retreat, a longer-term solution. Importantly, climate change implies both slow and rapid disasters. Flood surges,

tsunamis and heavy rainfall are quick disasters. But there are also slow disasters, including the oceans rising annually, temperature deviations, etc. Planning a managed retreat is about reorienting our cities over a generation or two, developing the ability to move to safer land and reorganising human settlements with the long view of time.

Do Indian architectural traditions hold lessons for climate resilience?

Our historical examples, from stepwells in Gujarat and Rajasthan to temple tanks across India, show how societies in the past took environmental constraints and responded with innovative solutions. Such solutions were not mono-functional, which is how we build infrastructure today, bridges and flyovers ripping through cities and, despite the amount of material and space they take, serving only one limited function. Indian infrastructure in the past, from town squares to water tanks, served more than one function. They conserved resources and brought people together. We must think of infrastructure

in this manner, giving us sustainable solutions and community engagement.

What is your vision for a sustainable Goa?About 20 years ago, my firm in

Mumbai, along with experts like Sanjay Prakash and Aromar Ravi, participated in an international competition with our vision of ‘Goa 2100’. We looked at how a

town could make the transition to sustainability over 100 years. We explored Panaji speculatively and organ-ised strategy around different domains, like energy, mobility, lifestyle, urban form, food and water. We interrogated ways to make each domain sustainable. We proposed wind farms in the sea, a solar-powered water transport system, urban form to maximise rainwater collection, etc. We imagined the urban system as an ecology, comprised of interdependent domains, compliment-ing each other or compensating for stress on another domain. This was thought of 20 years ago — it seems very relevant and urgent today.

You’ve designed across South Asia. What are its greatest climate vulnerabilities? Can architecture mitigate these?

In the 1970s, Charles Correa wrote a seminal piece called ‘Form Follows Climate’. Till then, the dictum was, form follows function, but Correa’s was a profound thought. Today, even with sustainable architecture, a whole green industry has emerged — you can make the dumbest glass box. Then, a green industry is at your disposal to fix it with double insulated glass, efficient air-conditioning, solar panels, etc. But of-ten, the very form of the building itself is flawed.

Again, returning to our wonderful building traditions from Rajasthan to Kerala, that architecture had huge ecological constraints, but they turned their master buildings into innovative solutions. Responding to context is fundamental — a hot, dry desert climate in Delhi, Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat is very different from the tropical climate of Kerala. How can we apply the same stylistic overlay in Ahmedabad and Kochi? Context matters.

You've built Hathigaon, a Jaipur village for elephants — did you design this with an elephant’s view of the world in mind?

Yes, very much. In fact, the entire project was propelled by making the

elephant the central protagonist. We saw the elephant as the least empowered — the mahout was next. The project became about how to create a landscape where one could collect water which is central to the elephants’ well-being. They are deprived of water bodies in Rajasthan which has a desert climate. The elephants are there by accident, brought by the Mughals, then kept by the maharajas for ceremony and battle. But elephants are tropical beings. The only way we could ensure their well-being was by creating an environment containing a microclimate of the tropics — water became central to this. So, we designed the landscape first and then located the housing on higher land where we didn’t need to collect water. If we’d gone by the business as usual ap-proach, we’d have put the housing right where the water should be. We reversed the paradigm — and we realised that by privileging nature, not architecture, we actually improved the lives of those who occupy the land.

‘With climate change, nature will command us — sustainable architects must respect that’

Rahul Mehrotra teaches urban design and planning at Harvard University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he discusses how climate change will impact architecture and sustainable planning:

ECO-LOGICAL

Pictures Courtesy: R Mehrotra, RMA Architecture Foundation

Once relentlessly hunted for its fur, the otternow fi nds its home growing shakier. Almost half

of all otter species, found across North and South America, are threatened by urbanisation— their wetland habitats face logging and pollution from urban contaminants which

impact fi sh, their food source. Often, their marshy homes are drained, paved-over and

developed into towns where they have no place

The lion-tailed macaque is endemic to the forests of the Western Ghats in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu— as the forests grow more fragmented with urban sprawl cutting into them, the reclusive macaque faces an existential threat. Scientists estimate there are less than 2,500 mature macaques left in the wild and the species could suffer a 20% decline over two decades as it loses its habitat to accommodate more humans

Research: National Geographic, IUCN, WWF

Photos: iStock

The vividly painted common box turtle is found across eastern USA and Mexico. The turtle has a hinged shell resembling a box inside which it can enclose itself — however, that isn’t enough shelter for this turtle which faces habitat loss due to expanding urbanisation and traffi c accidents when trying to cross concrete paths. The shy species is now classifi ed as vulnerable, facing threats to its survival

Building New Bridges

Can They Have Resilient Homes?

A HOME FOR AN ELEPHANT: Hathigaon village in Jaipur was designed to accommodate an ecosystem for elephants and their humans

GREEN SHOOTS: The KMC corporate headquarters in Hyderabad has been sustainably designed with inner and outer green walls, tended constantly by plant engineers

THE NEW URBAN

NATURE IS SPEAKINGGlobal warming and the disruption of ecosystems are causing a rise in

natural disasters worldwide

Data Courtesy: Our World In Data

400

300

200

100

0

Global reported annual natural disasters by type, 1970 to 2019

1970 20001985 2019

ImpactMass movement (dry)Volcanic activityWildfireLandslide

EarthquakeExtreme temperatureDroughtExtreme weatherFlood

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2021NEW DELHI