The Saguaro Solution

Eight years after a mercaptan spill in Eight Mile, Alabama, its mostly black and working class residents still suffer from respiratory issues, rashes and headaches.

The fate of the Southeast's longleaf pine forests, and the endangered woodpeckers that depend on them, is in jeopardy. Fort Bragg, a station of the US military, is trying to save their local environment.

After record-breaking rainfall and flooding, the city of York was at a loss for relief and reconstruction ideas. They turned to the Dutch city of Nijmegen, which had experienced similar flooding and found a solution in building a relief channel.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

In a country of limited resources — and perhaps for that very reason — preparing for natural disasters is top of the agenda in Bangladesh. Various grassroots, collaborative programs have been put in place over the years to help address many facets of the calamities caused by cyclones, from improved emergency shelters to long-term support for those who lose their livelihoods in the storms.

Haiti suffered tremendous losses after the 2010 earthquake, exacerbating the devastation in an already impoverished country. In 2015, agriculture in Haiti is a growing business backed by the United States’ Feed the Future Initiative. Nourishment and health of mothers and babies has also improved with the encouragement of breastfeeding and sweet potatoes.

After once again being granted rights to their native land, the Martu people are bringing back the bioregenerative technique of small-scale land burning. In the past century, wildfires have ravaged the areas these people call home and has lead to the loss of over 18 species of animal. They hope that imparting this traditional method of ecological maintenance will decrease the number of wildfires and in many cases, the resulting extinction of other animal species.

Threatened wildlife co-exists with poverty stricken communities who inhabit the Arizona-Mexico border region. Borderlands Restoration's conservation scientists are hoping to alleviate poverty while repairing the local environment by providing jobs that help preserve and renew the environment.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has left the city in dire straits without funds or political will to replace its lead pipes. Less than fifty-miles away, the city of Lansing has managed to replace almost all of its pipes, even during the Great Recession. Between Flint and Lansing, divergent approaches to management of utilities, funds, and citizen health provide extraordinary lessons about what worked and what caused the failures.

As climate change continues to threaten the survival of native plants species and the health of the eco-systems they support, the North Carolina Arboretum’s Germplasm Repository is taking a clever new approach to the preservation of native plant seeds: pushing to capitalize on their commercial value. Plant physiologists like Joe-Ann McCoy know that the best method for saving many species may also create jobs and boost local economies, when businesses start leveraging the medicinal uses of native plants for products like herbal supplements.