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FutureEarth.org – An online platform to increase knowledge on the issues related to sustainable development

Ayoub Hameedi

Humans have a burning desire to design better things with creative ideas that would improve an individuals life and would also make the whole world a better place too. In 19th century, desire and curiosity to improve the status quo pushed us to our limits and we came-up with solutions to deploy coal and wood to run business-as-usual. The same urge lead us to the deployment of oil and gas to sustain our rapidly growing demands during the last century. Unfortunately, in this marathon to produce and consume things quickly, we disturbed the delicate balance of greenhouse gases that sustains life on planet earth. This disturbance together with the oil-supply crisis and market failures during 1970 – 80 made it absolutely clear to the policy makers that we need to replace fossil fuels with clean sources of power production to protect national economies and global environment. The development of internet made it fairly simple for masses to have access to information that matters the most when it comes to introducing and maintaining sustainable change in any place. This article is about Future Earth, a digital platform that is a source of information on the issues related to sustainable development. It is really important to have access to right information at right time to make right decisions that would then produce positive results for everyone.

Future Earth has recently released Exponential Climate Action RoadMap that places a huge emphases on peaking the greenhouse gases emission by 2020 and to reduce them from then on to 50% every decade till 2050. If the governments, companies, cities and individuals across the globe would achieve the already spoken emissions reduction target, we would achieve the goals of Paris Climate Agreement without any hassle. The roadmap also highlight the importance of having climate leadership in place in all companies, cities and governments across the globe. The aim of this climate leadership would be to enable swift transition to 100% clean electricity, divesting funds from fossil fuels and to peak the emissions by 2020 in order to reduce them by 50% each decade between 2020 to 2050. When it comes to business sector in general, Ericsson is an example as it has managed to reduce its greenhouse gases emission by 50% with the help of digitalization and 5G technology. It is aiming to bend the emissions curve even further. If Ericsson can reduce its emissions by 50%, every other company can do that too. Another extremely important point is to develop a platform to encourage collaboration and transfer of technology between companies to enable the bending of emissions curve in a swift manner.

The presented roadmap also pointed out the dire need to have strong policies in place that would at-least maintain the current growth ratio in clean sources of power production and would further paved the way for an exponential growth in clean energy technologies. Finally, it also reflected that the subsidies given to fossil fuels on annual basis must be phased out and a stronger mechanism to impose tax on carbon emissions must be introduced in countries across the globe. Unfortunately, fossil fuels received a hefty subsidy of USD 5.3 trillion in 2015 and if it is combined with an absence of tax on carbon emission, it will no wonder lead us to a situation where changing climate due to an increased concentration of greenhouse gases in atmosphere would cause a financial damage of USD 1.2 trillion on annual basis.  It is practically an amount sufficient enough to eradicate extreme poverty from the face of this planet.

All in all, Future Earth is an excellent platform to increase your knowledge when it comes to awareness creation on the issue of sustainable development. Visitors get the opportunity to empower themselves with the much needed information that could then be utilized for further awareness creation in schools, colleges, Universities and offices in countries across the globe. Finally, in my personal opinion, the digital platform itself represents too much information in a single glance. A modification in its appearance and theme to neutralize this effect would further improve the effectiveness of Future Earth for its visitors.

© Copyright 2018 Ayoub Hameedi. All rights reserved.

Earth Overshoot Day 2018

Ayoub Hameedi

Earth Overshoot Day is related to each and everyone of us living on this beautiful planet that we call our HOME. It is basically a day when we have used all of the resources that planet earth can sustainably produce in a single year. This year, earth overshoot day is 1st of August 2018. Beyond this date, we would consume resources in an unsustainable manner. A point to understand is how our lifestyle is negatively affecting planet earth. When we choose to consume more and more than we can either afford or need, we make ourselves vulnerable from social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development. On the contrary, when we choose to consume just enough resources that we really need, we leave the rest for our coming generations. Thus, we not only save money but also recognizes the fact that whatever ecosystem products and services we are enjoying today has been produced by Mother Nature in a span of 4.5 billion years. We as its creature were the last ones to arrive on earth as our existence makes only 0.004% of earth’s timeline. Our unsustainable lifestyle has disturbed the concentration of carbon dioxide in atmosphere and sky-rocketed it from 320 parts-per-million in 1950 to 400 parts-per-million in more recent times. As a result of increased concentration, the global average temperature is 0.9 degrees higher than the average.

Our over-consumption does the same to earth that unfortunately cancer as a disease does to our body. Over-consumption is a plague for planet earth as it pushes ecosystem products and services to limits and produces nothing but social, economic and environmental problems to deal with. The cure lies in the realization that we only have one planet. A dire consequence of our over-consumption is that we are leaving behind mountains and mountains of waste. A scary example of waste in this regard is that a truck of plastic waste ends-up in oceans each minute. Thus in an hour, around 60 trucks of plastic waste and in a day around 1440 trucks of plastic waste ends-up in oceans. Likewise, our unsustainable reliance on nuclear power produces waste that is meant to exist in our ecological system for the coming 100,000 years. Similarly, when we burn fossil fuels for transportation and power production, it also leaves greenhouse gases that are meant to stay in our atmosphere for at-least coming 12 – 200 years. Likewise, human induced climate change is causing us a loss of USD 1.2 trillion on annual basis that makes around USD 12 trillion in a matter of decade. The aforementioned figure is sufficient enough to practically wipe out poverty from the face of planet earth. 

A question that arises at this point is what can we do to live in harmony with nature. As an individual, I can choose to consume clean electricity to power my home. Likewise, instead of driving a fossil powered car, I can choose to take public transport. Similarly, I can choose to carry a cloth bag whenever I go for shopping or to take plastic bag from home for re-usage. I can also choose to recycle products that I consume especially prioritizing the ones made of plastic. I can choose to vote for political parties that are working as an agent of change to implement sustainability to make this planet a better place for us and our coming generations.

All in all, we cannot implement solutions through blaming one another as it will only make things even more complex. We need to consider each of us as an agent of change. We need to take charge of our own destiny to make positive things happen for the planet. The solutions exist in the fact that we enjoy an asset that was developed in a span of 4.5 billion years and we cannot be selfish with such a delicate system. The answer lies in looking ourselves in the mirror everyday and challenging ourselves that today just today, I will live on resources less than yesterday and to keep on repeating the same challenge almost everyday. We have made things possible in the past as we started our journey from caves and made it to skyscrapers. Again, we can make things possible by choosing to live sustainably within the ecological boundaries of this planet. Yes we can and I believe that together we will make it happen!

© Copyright 2018 Ayoub Hameedi. All rights reserved.

XPrize: A Platform to Design & Implement Innovative Models To Resolve Global Challenges

Ayoub Hameedi

Xprize foundation is working to promote the use of technologies to resolve global socioeconomic issues. It organizes competition between different teams to find solutions which could improve the world in a sustainable manner. Prizes developed under the umbrella of XPrize have 10 different types and are collectively shelved in 3 different categories namely (i) Past prizes (ii) Active prizes (iii) Future prizes. Xprize provides an extremely competitive environment to teams with innovative ideas to develop it further beyond what seems possible. All the competing prizes must satisfy a certain criteria with important clauses such as an ability to attract financial resources, reasonable time frame and skills to identify problems and offer solutions. 

One of the most interesting Xprize within the category of active prizes is Water Abundance Xprize. Australian Aid and TATA Group are the main sponsors of this challenge and 98 teams from 25 countries are participating in it. The aim of this challenge is to design an innovative solution to extract at least 2,000 liters of fresh water from thin air on daily basis. The solution must be powered by 100% clean energy and the water price should be 2 cents per liter. At present, water abundance Xprize is in solution development phase and the deadline for the submission of business plan is July 16, 2018. The prize distribution ceremony is expected to take place in August 2018. The whole process is comprised of two rounds which are expected to take place in January and July 2018.

The main sponsors and partners for Xprize foundation are Elon Musk, Australian Aid, Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and Deloitte Consulting LLP. Another interesting result achieved through Xprize foundation is Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup Challenge which started on April 2010 with the creation of the concept and ended on October 2011 with the distribution of prize to Team Elastec / American Marine. The solution offered by team Elastec improved the rate of oil cleanup efficiency to more than 3 times. In short, Xprize foundation aims to introduce innovative solutions and to improve already existing ones to create a sustainable world for us and our coming generations.

© Copyright 2017 Ayoub Hameedi. All rights reserved.