Environment & Sustainability

Category: Environment & Sustainability

25 March, 2007

Cultural Conditioning

I have had a number of air-conditioning related comments to my last blog post, so I feel the need to try to explain myself a bit better. The following critique could be aimed at any country and discusses cultural aspirations for the built environment.In many cases these aspirations lead to inappropriate use of materials and technology with scant regard for sense of place or community. This is represented in Sabah by gridiron rows of concrete air conditioned boxes with mirrored glass windows and faux stone columns.

Often the stylistic aspiration comes from perceptions of what a modern developed country should look like. It’s a delicate exercise telling someone that their new office building should not look like a Dallas mansion and that instead it should respond to the regional environment in a similar way that local traditional buildings are a response to their culture, materials and climate. The paradox is that in a developing country these traditional buildings represent the subsistence agriculture that they want to move on from. In their rush to embrace the ‘new technologies’ of air conditioning and tinted glass they forget basic considerations such as orientation and sun shading that were intrinsic to traditional buildings.

Air conditioning is not automatically a bad thing, but it is when used as a panacea for poor thermal and solar design. My point is that it’s possible to reduce the reliance on air conditioning through simple methods such as orientation, shading and insulation. If this point can be made successfully then other interesting things can also start to happen, like connection between the building and its environment. By that I mean for example; that natural east and west light is allowed to illuminate breakfast and dinner respectively, that fresh air be allowed into the building to remind you that it’s just stopped raining outside and that you can still look at the view through clear glass and accurately judge what time of day it is.

To complete the circle I’ll come back to an observation that many local people do not like to sit on the veranda and look at the view. They’d prefer to sit in a dark, air conditioned box watching Sky TV. I’m not sure why there is a pervasive culture of turning your back on the environment, Perhaps it has something to do with the speed at which Sabah has been developing over the last couple of decades. The attitude still persists that the forest is either to be feared or overcome.

Unfortunately new technologies mean that the relationship with the forest is not as sustainable as it once was. As a metaphor; one of my clients explains that most people can still remember wrapping their rice cake packed lunch in a leaf. They still eat rice cake packed lunches but now it is wrapped in plastic. There is a big difference between throwing away a leaf and throwing away plastic.

Luckily there is a growing culture of environmental awareness and people placing a recreational value on nature. You only need to look at the number of locals heading out to enjoy the cool climate of Kinabalu Park at the weekend to see this in action. With this should follow a greater pride in the natural and cultural heritage of the country and a will to conserve it. I’m hoping that more environmentally responsive buildings will start to become part of this heritage.

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13 November, 2006

Mengaris Tree

I was stripped down to my boxer shorts and with my bare hands was clawing great clods of mud out from under the wheel arch. Occasionally I would take a rest from cleaning and lie down in the shallow water to cool myself off. Even with the help of a second tow truck it had taken us nearly an hour to free an old Landcruiser that had got stuck on the way into Imbak Canyon. All three vehicles were now parked in the middle of the Imbak River to receive a much needed wash.

By way of taking a holiday from Maliau Basin I had decided to pay a visit on my old friends in Imbak Canyon. A lot had changed since I was last there, not least the troublesome new access road extension. At the end of these three kilometres of mud I was pleased to find the rangers happily ensconced in their expansive new basecamp quarters. The shiny tin roofs and plywood floors were a big improvement on the tarpaulin and packed earth that they had put up with for the previous three years. Apart from a few new faces they were much the same if not slightly more mature than I remembered! Maybe this was due to the more homely feel (two of them had even moved in their wives and children), or maybe it was because my visit fell during Ramadan. No doubt after the end of the fasting month they’ll be back on the beer and fags and cheating at cards all night long.

Some readers may question that all this new road and basecamp construction may seem at odds with a pristine virgin rainforest. However think of the infrastructure as a big rubber stamp which says ‘conservation area’. This stamp needs to be as strong as possible because worrying changes are taking place in the world at large.

On this trip I was dismayed to see the encroachment of palm oil plantation right up to the boundary of Imbak. The change had taken place on land which I had had to walk through to reach Imbak on my first visit. On that occasion we had followed an overgrown logging road through mature secondary forest. In order to make way for palm oil any existing vegetation must be clear cut, then burned and finally hillsides are bulldozed into terraces. Trees which I had first known for their protective shade were now charred stumps on naked earth.

With Malaysia’s hardwood exports fast diminishing, palm oil is a viable economic alternative. It will grow almost anywhere and will start to bear fruit three to five years after planting. The market for palm oil is huge, particularly in China where there are a lot of people who like to fry their food. It also sees widespread use in cosmetics and lately in an ironic twist palm oil is being marketed as a bio-fuel that will help reduce our dependency on carbon emitting fossil fuels!

I have spent enough time driving for hours through seemingly endless palm oil plantations to have become almost inured to their presence. Occasionally on the long drive from Lahad Datu to Kalabakan the numbness of the plantations is broken by tall slender mengaris Trees. The Mengaris is an emergent species which means that they rise above the main rainforest canopy, often reaching heights of seventy metres or more. They have broad spreading crowns and smooth silver bark and are said to be the strongest of the rainforest trees. Rangers will happily build their camps under them secure in the knowledge that they are not likely to fall down. Their strength is said to derive from the potent spirits which they harbour. It is out of respect for these spirits that logging contractors will never fell a Mengaris tree. Even once a forest has been logged two or three times and finally clear cut for plantation they will not fell a Mengaris tree. The spirits of a Mengaris tree you see are exceptionally cunning as well as strong; they have ensured that the timber is brittle and of little commercial value and that the high silica content wears a chainsaw blade at a dangerous rate.

Sadly when seen emerging from a canopy of oil palms these magnificent trees are now a symbol of what has been lost. That this is now so close to Imbak gives me fresh cause for concern.

It seems to me that the proliferation of oil palm should be checked immediately. Of course it’s existence is now irreversible but it is not too late to enforce sensible controls on where it is planted and how it is farmed.

Some key concerns that should inform this legislation are; biodiversity conservation, wildlife corridors, riparian reserves, visual amenity (Planner speak for nice views), water catchment protection, soil erosion, siltation and above all protection of remaining primary and secondary forest. There is also a strong economic and agricultural science argument which says that monoculture tends to result in more resilient pests and diseases specific to that crop. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Unfortunately legislation that exists is often not enforced and calls for consumer led regulation, such as to introducing sustainably certified palm oil, are going unhindered.

Of course all of the above concerns are potentially outweighed by the global climate change issue and the question of where are we going to get our energy from? We know that burning fossil fuel produces greenhouse gasses and that this is bad for the climate, but what are the alternatives?

One of them is use biofuel i.e. fuel oil that comes from plants. Burning biofuel still produces carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) but the emission of CO2 is exactly equal to the amount of CO2 absorbed by the plant as it grew. This is called carbon neutral i.e. there is no net increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

This would be great if all biofuel crops were grown on existing agricultural land. Unfortunately they are not. In Sabah most biofuel (in this case Palm Oil) is grown on land that was formerly rainforest. The subsequent re-absorption of CO2 by oil palms will not equal the amount that was released by chopping down the rainforest in the first place. In this case the biofuel is neither carbon neutral nor environmentally friendly.

To exacerbate matters, much of the lowland rainforest grows on thick peat swamp. By planting oil palm here you also loose the peat due to fires and erosion. Peat is effectively young coal and destroying it releases an enormous quantity of additional CO2. In this case the net emissions of CO2 by the biofuel may actually be greater than that of coal or petroleum!

The alarming twist is that the European Commission is advocating a switch to biofuel as a means to meet our obligations to cut carbon emissions. Actually this may cut emissions from Europe but unless the biofuel can be certified carbon neutral, there may be a net increase in carbon emissions elsewhere.

Unfortunately this point seems to have been missed by a large number of people, even some of those very clever bureaucrats, politicians and climate change scientists who dreamed up the Kyoto Protocol and Mechanisms such as Carbon Trading.

If you’re interested to read more there is a very good online resource at http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/ which also includes stuff you can do to help if you’re so inclined.

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13 October, 2006

Prof. Ho

When I first met Prof Ho Coy Choke he was hunched over his plate clumsily shoveling rice into his mouth. He spoke in a loud abrupt tone without looking up. Once his meal was finished he straightened up, slid a pair of heavy rimmed glasses onto his nose and transferred his attention to me. I tried hard to return the scrutiny but between his heavily squinted eyebrows I was not even able to determine the colour of his pupils. That he was a man of powerful intellect was immediately apparent by the chain of his questions. That he loved talking about his work to someone who was interested was equally obvious.He works at Universiti Malaysia Sabah in the department of biotechnology. I have mentioned that one of the many values that we can place on the rainforest is the chance that there might be something useful to us there. My conversations with Prof Ho were my first first-hand evidence of this in practice.

On this visit he had brought a group of students to research correlation between tree diversity and microbe diversity. Microbes are essential to the ‘decomposition’ stage of the nutrient cycle. In a tropical rainforest very few nutrients are stored in the soil, instead they are cycled endlessly between the dead and the living using the processes of composition and decomposition.

Prof Ho explained that different kinds of dead things will be decomposed by different types of microbes. He is therefore looking for rare trees and in particular byproducts such as resin that are difficult to decompose. It seems reasonable to me to accept his assertion that these in these environments you might find extraordinary microbes.

The microbes in question are mostly bacteria and yeast type fungi. What Prof Ho is so excited about is that these microbes produce complex chemical compounds that may be useful to medical science. For example there is a compound called avermectin that is partially effective against incurable nematode infections such as elephantiasis and river blindness. This was originally found in Japanese soil and is now being synthesised commercially. In Sabah Prof. Ho has personally isolated a compound from lowland dipterocarp forest soil that is finding applications in cancer research. I would love to explain more but the science gets a bit beyond me at this point.

What I did understand is that the more rare the microbes, the more unusual and potentially useful their chemical byproducts are likely to be. The fact that the rainforests are quickly disappearing is of great concern to Prof. Ho. This is because microbes evolve something like an order of magnitude faster than larger plants and animals so any changes in ecosystem are going to become apparent at the microscopic level first.

Prof. Ho is therefore on a mission to find stuff that no one else has found in the hope that it might prove valuable both to his reputation, to medical research and to the survival of primary forests in Borneo.

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13 October, 2006

Background

‘Ripe Hairy Red Fruit’ introduces several subjects and questions that have been cropping up over the last two years:
Imbak Canyon, Maliau Basin and Danum Valley conservation areas, the ‘economic value’ of rainforest conservation and forest rehabilitation and management.

On the Arkitrek itself we had an architectural design brief to work to but in many ways this was secondary to the bigger picture that we were involved in. All of these above mentioned themes will crop up in subsequent posts but first a little background is relevant.

A year before the Arkitrek came about, I was invited to participate in a Raleigh International expedition to Sabah, Malaysia. Raleigh posted me to the fledgling Imbak Canyon Conservation Area where my role was to coach a team of young volunteers to survey the site and generate design concepts for a rainforest Field Studies Centre. Our partner in this project was Yayasan Sabah (Sabah Foundation).

Yayasan Sabah is a Malaysian Non Government Organisation (NGO) that aims to raise the standard of living of Malaysians living in Sabah. To generate income for this mission the Malaysian Government granted Yayasan Sabah a large forestry concession which is to be managed over a period of 100 years. Whilst most of this concession is designated ‘production forest’ Yayasan Sabah has voluntarily set aside over 1300 square km of primary rainforest for research and conservation. This area is divided between the three conservation areas mentioned above.

After the success of the Raleigh International Imbak project I pursuaded Yayasan Sabah to take me on directly as a volunteer architect. My intention had been to pursue the Imbak Canyon project but in reality a whole variety of projects came out of the woodwork in all three conservation areas. There was even a little side project in a tiny fourth conservation area known as Tanjung Tumonong Hullo.

Thus my second trip to Sabah came about and kept me busy from September to December 2004, during which time I wrote ‘Ripe Hairy Red Fruit’ and the following post ‘Prof Ho’.

12 October, 2006

Ripe Hairy Red Fruit

To get things moving I’ll publish an edited version of an email that I originally sent on 17 Oct 2004

* * * * *

I knew when I took on this job that it would involve chopping down a few rainforest trees, the justification being that you’ve got to loose a few to save a lot. This still did not prepare me for the tearing destruction of a big tree falling to the ground. The tree in question was probably over 50m tall and was undoubtedly a small ecosystem of epiphytes, lianas, frogs, insects, mosses etc all in itself. Its only crime was that it had a few large dead branches and was growing on the site that we had selected for the new Imbak Canyon Conservation Area basecamp.As if that wasn’t enough I then instructed the clearing of a large wedge of forest for the sole purpose of providing a nice view of the Imbak River from the veranda of the basecamp. In mitigation I have successfully germinated some seeds from a selection of tasty fruit that I bought in a local market. These are currently being nurtured by my ranger friends with a view to planting them in front of the veranda when the basecamp is complete.

The inspiration for this tree planting was my friend Banardus AKA Mike. 20 years ago he planted a rambutan tree at the nearby Danum Valley Field Centre and just last week I watched a young orangutan enjoying the ripe hairy red fruit of his foresight.

Back at Danum Valley I have also met a bunch of researchers from all over the world and am trying to learn from them about tropical rainforest ecology and resource management. One of their ongoing projects is the Sabah Biodiversity Experiment. This is trying to prove that if you replant logged forest with a greater diversity of indigenous tree species you get faster and more abundant re-growth.

The significance of this research is tied up in the concept of carbon trading; a development mechanism of the Kyoto Agreement. Forests sequestrate carbon dioxide and in an overheating world this is of value to us. It follows that the more carbon a forest can sequestrate the more value it has. The Kyoto carbon trading mechanism provides a means for the global community to pay for this ‘ecosystem service’.

The term ‘logged forest’ is important as there are different levels of logging, ranging from clear-cutting to reduced impact selective logging. Most of the forest that I see around the conservation areas has been selectively logged. This means that only the most valuable timber species have been taken out. The residual secondary forest has the potential to absorb additional CO2 if these large trees can be re-grown.

Obviously a virgin forest is in balance and of no value for additional carbon sequestration. Interestingly if countries have the legal right to log virgin jungle they can still claim carbon credits by opting not to log and going for conservation instead. Conservation may also bring with it many other benefits which we are only just beginning to appreciate. An example is conservation of biodiversity.

Somehow we know that biodiversity is good but it is very difficult to prove or evaluate this in absolute terms. The issues are highly emotive or speculative; such as species extinction and the possibility that we might destroy something essential before we’ve even discovered it! It is difficult to make a strong case for biodiversity conservation on these grounds alone. The Sabah Biodiversity Experiment scientists are therefore trying to prove that biodiversity has a measurable and relevant economic value in terms of carbon sequestration that can feed back into current forest regeneration and management practice.

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