Makoko is a fishing village located in the Lagos Lagoon. Due to the weakness of the nearby soil and its proximity to water, much of Makoko rests on structures constructed on stilts above Lagos Lagoon. Traditionally this area has been self governing so schools are funded and provided by the village.
The ingenious adaptation of building a structure that floats came from growing concerns with climate change and rising water levels. This adds to its versatility not just from an environmental standpoint but from a political and practical standpoint as well. The area of Makoko is consider a poor area and one of the slums of the city. The necessity to create a school that is not only low cost and sustainable but that also mobilizes as needed to serve the children of the village is significant. Additionally recent land reclamation efforts and commercial developments in the area have reclaimed much of the lagoon from the residents of Makoko. Their homes on stilts must be deconstructed and reassembled elsewhere, while the school’s maneuverability eliminates this process.
Built in 2013 with locally sourced wood and electrically powered with solar panels, the floating construct is designed to house about 100 students and even has a playground and green space. It is entirely sustainable due to the application of solar cells to the roof and incorporating a rainwater catchment system. The structure is also naturally ventilated and aerated. The barrels used to help the structure float are also used as water reservoirs from the catchment system. The floating schools are an ingenious design that serves the needs of the community in a cost effective and eco-friendly way.
This is actually a test showing how sponges pump water through themselves for filter feeding! They simply colored the water around them so you could easily see the process.
On this day, 29 August 1970, Ruben Salazar, US Army veteran and the first Mexican-American mainstream media journalist to write about the Chicano community was killed by police during a protest against the Vietnam war. Due to his support for the Chicano movement and coverage of police racism, Salazar became a target of the FBI. On the day of the protest, Salazar had gone to a bar to get a beer, when an LA County sheriff’s deputy fired a 10-inch teargas projectile made to blast through walls at his head, killing him instantly. Police claimed the wrong type of projectile was fired accidentally. But the county later reached a settlement of $700,000 with the Salazar family, the highest ever paid out at that time.
Learn more about the Vietnam war in our podcast with Noam Chomsky and a member of the Vietnamese Women’s Union: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/10/31/e14-the-vietnam-war-with-noam-chomsky/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1198971120288036/?type=3
How much longer until the utopic Solarpunk future where Capitalism is dead and we all live in ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities? Asking for a friend.
Until we make those ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities ourselves. It’s going to take a lot of us to do it though, so best to spread the word (and gather native tree seeds).
And, like, get started now. Then our “weirdo houses” will be the only thing functioning when everything falls apart!
The only reason why we don’t live in a solarpunk world right now is because no one has bothered to make it yet.
We’ll have to make it ourselves, and we’ll have to help each other make it. That’s why it is solarpunk.
Some resources to consider creating or joining or doing:
Repair cafes - create or join your local repair cafe! Repair stuff, learn how to repair stuff, teach others how to repair stuff.
Map of Makerspaces - make some things! learn how to make some things! teach others how to make some things!
Community Garden Map (note that this is US-only, and not a complete list) - join a local community garden
Learn some basics on passive solar design - clever use of the sun can create extremely energy efficient homes and buildings. You can use these principles to save on energy bills, even if you’re renting.
Free USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision - cut down on personal food waste! Learn how to safely preserve food. Very useful if you suddenly harvest / purchase for crazy cheap in season / dumpster dive a ton of perishable food.
Donate to One Acre Fund, which provides training and capital to farmers (making them more productive and pulling them out of poverty) in various east African countries
Donate to Bridges to Prosperity, which provides technical expertise, money, and volunteers, to help local people build and maintain their own footbridges in extremely isolated rural areas
joining r/solarpunk, and sharing links/ideas/art/music with the community. Also, upvoting stuff for greater visibility. There’s over 900 members!
They say the early bird catches the worm. For native songbirds in suburban backyards, however, finding enough food to feed a family is often impossible.A newly released survey of Carolina chickadee populations in the Washington, D.C., metro area shows that even a relatively small proportion of nonnative plants can make a habitat unsustainable for native bird species. The study, published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to examine the three-way interaction between plants, arthropods that eat those plants, and insectivorous birds that rely on caterpillars, spiders and other arthropods as food during the breeding season. Based on data collected in the backyards of citizen-scientist homeowners, the researchers arrived at an explicit threshold: In areas made up of less than 70 percent native plant biomass, Carolina chickadees will not produce enough young to sustain their populations. At 70 percent or higher, the birds can thrive.
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Debbie Hollander, of Arlington, Virginia, was similarly moved. In the first year of the study, her backyard was home to four chicks, only one of which survived to fledge. In the following years, there were no Carolina chickadee nests at all. “I always knew that native plants were important, but actually seeing these scientists walking around and counting caterpillars on the leaves really brought it home to me,” says Hollander. “I would never, ever plant anything now that’s nonnative.”
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“We often think about the areas that we live in as being lost souls for nature,” says Marra. “That’s not the case at all. Some of the last frontiers that we can think about restoring are these urban, suburban settings. There are subtle things that we can do in human-dominated habitats to try to make them better for wildlife, and it’s totally worthwhile to do”
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
