Tucson's water ethic: Blueprint for Minnesota?

A greenhouse that is cooled by seawater and the wind is allowing farmers in Somaliland to grow crops like tomatoes and vegetables despite extreme heat. By creating an environment that is higher in humidity and cooler in temperature, plants don’t need to drink as much water — almost 10 times less water because of the cooling system. There are challenges to scaling the response, but these greenhouses offer farmers the potential to increase their revenue in Africa.

The Indigenous Foods Knowledges Network (IFKN) connects Indigenous scholars, community members, and leaders from tribes in the Arctic and the U.S. Southwest to work together on achieving food sovereignty. By visiting each other’s lands, they share their traditional knowledge on farming practices and river restoration. Because of the network, they received a grant to study the effects of COVID-19 on food access for Indigenous communities. “We can learn from one another, teach each other, and also work together on finding different solutions,” said a member of the IFKN steering committee.

A group called Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, now 36,000 strong, is bringing together people from different political and ideological backgrounds over a common interest in the preservation and conservation of public lands and waters. Bucking stereotypes, the group spans the political spectrum, with 33% Independent, 23% Republican, 20% Democrat and 16% unaffiliated in a recent survey. The BHA's recent promotion of the Land and Water Conservation Fund shows that bipartisanship is possible.

In 1976, the Costa Rican city Hojancha preserved only 2% of its land as forest, and as a result their water supply (the Río Nosara river basin) dried up from the lack of vegetation. Sixteen years into the crisis, two friends conceived and ran an initiative to reforest the land by asking every family in the city to donate ¢1,000 a month until they could buy back the land in full from the ranchers who owned it. Now, the land is thriving again, though the project of regrowing the forest continues still today.

In agricultural communities across Kenya, global warming has led local farmers to turn to camels -- as an alternative to cows -- for dairy products both to feed their families and take to the local markets to sell. Furthermore, with an uptick in demand both regionally and nationally for camel milk, farmers are finding themselves with new purchasing power for various goods and services.

Environmental refugees in Ethiopia flee their country because there are no jobs without healthy land. A group of former refugees have returned to Ethiopia with a business venture in Gergera to improve the land by regreening efforts, foresting, and building water conservation systems. The new businesses demonstrated such positive effects that the region is now on the brink of resettlement due to improved environmental conditions.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, Louisiana and federal officials launched an audacious $50 billion master plan to rebuild the receding coast in an effort to mitigate the effects future storms. These are expensive and massive in scale, and although success is not guaranteed, they're attracting interest from cities around the U.S., and low-lying countries like Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Moving beyond engineered “solutions” of the past, many of these efforts focus on rebuilding land through methods that mimic natural processes for building land mass and vegetation.

Tucson has slashed its per capita water consumption by more than a third, and one of the more startling ways it's done that is by reusing water after it's flushed down the toilet or run through a washing machine.

Lake associations in New Hampshire are using a combination of chemical herbicide treatments, manual diver removal, and volunteer Lake Host inspection programs to manage invasive variable milfoil. Since 2002, their work has achieved up to 100% reduction in treated areas, and more than 1,500 invasive species intercepted at boat launches statewide.

In Benin, indigenous beliefs, knowledge, and traditional governance systems are helping communities protect biodiversity and adapt to climate change. Vodun, a spiritual practice that protects fragile and vital ecosystems, has enabled the preservation of more than 1,200 acres of mangroves over the last decade.