Climate Champ–SaveRivers.Org, Afforestt! Climate Champ–Gina Mosely

CLIMATE CHAMPIONS, SAVERIVERS.ORG

Since 2011, SAVE Rivers has supported and empowered rural communities to protect their land, rivers, and watersheds through capacity building, networking, research, education, and advocacy. It has promoted environmental and indigenous rights awareness and sustainable development solutions, with the belief that development can be achieved without destruction of livelihoods or rivers and forests.

Originally, Save Rivers was created to organize communities of Baram, along the Baram River in Malaya’s Borneo island, against the proposed Baram Dam. The organization scored a major victory in 2016 with the official cancellation of the dam. 

Now Save Rivers works with local and international partners to promote village-scale renewable energy systems, promote indigenous land rights and indigenous-led conservation, build capacity in rural communities, and further the protection of all of Sarawak’s rivers.  

Some of its recent projects include the Baram Peace Park, to promote sustainable agriculture and to prevent encroachment on the forests and land. And a petition asking Secretary General of the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification to cancel the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme. The goal for the petition is 10K signatures. Just over 7,000 have signed. If you’d like to add yours to it, visit saverivers.org/stopthechop/, or click on the link in the Deeper Dive section of this story at TheClimate.org/episiodes.

And why does Save Rivers matter to us? It’s all about local indigenous communities taking ownership and taking action to combat anti-climate policies, and win.

DEEPER DIVE: Save Rivers, Petition

INDIA’S AFFORESTT

Afforestt is a  Bengalore, India-based service provider for creating natural, wild, maintenance free, native forests. A for-profit social enterprise set up in 2011 by former Toyota engineer Shubhendu Sharma, Afforestt, employs the Miyawaki Technique, which is named after the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki. In simple terms, it’s a methodology that emphasizes the importance of high-density planting and native species.

Afforestt – which has worked in 10 countries and 44 cities, according to its website – combines the Miyawaki Technique with something called Heijunka, a system used by businesses to cut waste and boost efficiency. Toyota, which employs the Heijunka system at its facilities, has said the word translates to “production smoothing or levelling.”

On the company’s production line, this translates to assembling a mixture of models per batch, rather than one type of vehicle. According to Toyota, this ensures “there is an inventory of product proportional to the variability in demand.”

Afforestt applied these ideas to the natural world. “We could generate a list which would tell us how many numbers of each species you should plant in a sequence, and what … that sequence should be,” Sharma told CNBC’s “Sustainable Energy.”

“Once we know our climates for our species, we mix them in four different layers: shrub layer, sub tree layer, tree layer and canopy layer,” he explained.

Why does Afforest matter to us? After all, there are plenty of quality companies replicating the Miyawaki Method all over the world. Its application of the Heijunka system. One of the keys to Miyawaki is the ability to plant a variety of native trees together, simultaneously. The key to that is having the species on hand. Generating the list and having the appropriate number of tree varieties on hand speeds forest planting. Which the world needs.

DEEPER DIVE: Miyawaki Method Video

CLIMATE CHAMPION, GINA MOSELY

During a US military expedition to Wulff Land in the far north of Greenland during the 1960s –caves never explored due to the expense and difficulty of such an expedition were sighted far off, high in a remote cliff face. Until now.

British climate researcher and veteran polar explorer Gina Moseley intends to explore the planet’s most northerly unexplored Arctic caves seeking clues to the planet’s climate past.

Moseley decided the time was ripe to expose the caves’ hidden geological record – and so gain insight into the warming and cooling periods of the deep past and their effects on both the Arctic and global environments. From this she hopes to draw fresh conclusions about the likely impacts of today’s polar melting.

Says Mosely, “Caves are like time machines. Calcite forms layers, like tree rings. We can analyze each layer to get information about the past climate.” Why does Gina Mosely’s exploration of Greenland’s virgin caves matter to us? Greenland deeply influences humanity’s fate. Its ice is melting at record rates. In 2019, it added over 13 billion tons of water to the oceans in a single day. This is driving sea-level rise of more than a millimeter a month.

Greenland also influences rainfall patterns, ice formation, ocean currents and weather systems affecting heavily-populated regions worldwide. Among many of her honors, Mosely is a 2021 Rolex Awards Laureate.

DEEPER DIVE: Rolex, IQRG, Canadian Geographic