Where the Sun is Used to Freeze

 

Skills training by Solar Freeze for Kakuma youths/credit: Ashden

With temperatures soaring across most of Africa due to climate change, preserving agricultural produces, medicines and other perishables is increasingly challenging. In eastern Kenya, a group of young people from smallholder families have created a pay-as-you-store solar cooling service, benefiting small-scale farmers, as well as health clinics and small businesses in Kakuma refugee camp, the oldest refugee camp in East Africa.

“Like many people our age, we watched our parents and grandparents work tirelessly, toiling in rural farms, only for a huge chunk of their fresh produce to rot away due to lack of proper cold storage units,” says Dysmus Kisilu, 27. “Often times, middle men would quickly swoop in and offer dirt cheap prices, and farmers would be forced to sell for a song out of fear of post-harvest loss,” says Kisilu.

Kisilu and many of his friends sought a better life in the city, but in 2016, some of them pulled their skills together to create Solar Freeze, a social enterprise harnessing solar power to offer off-grid small-scale farmers portable and affordable cold storage units in which to preserve their fresh fruits and vegetables.

“The growing seasons are now erratic and produce goes to waste because it cannot be stored. Whole communities are being destroyed as climate is changing. I knew I had to do something.”

Two years later, after meeting refugees in the huge Kakuma camp, Kisilu decided to expand into the humanitarian context. Kakuma, located in Turkana County, one of the poorest counties in Kenya, is home to 160,000 refugees from South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The camp has no access to energy from the national grid. Only 20% of its clinics have electricity and it is produced by polluting diesel generators, which operate only during specific times. Solar Freeze allows Kakuma’s clinics to store their medical products and vaccines, such as Covid, yellow fever, measles and rabies. The company has since diversified to include cold storage to food and drink shops, fishing and other businesses and households in the camp — a much needed service in the heat of the camp, and particularly as global warming increases.

Options for customers include buying cooling units on a lease-to-own basis or renting space in them on a pay-per-crate basis. This helps even worse-off individuals access cooling, as there is no upfront cost and the fees are low.

Solar Freeze team also launched an ‘Each One Teach One’ programme to train youth from agricultural families, especially women, to install, operate and maintain their units. The initiative was expanded to Kakuma and now also includes operation and maintenance of other solar products like solar-powered irrigation equipment, and sales.

“The education was super — it was not discriminatory to me by saying that I could not do it as a woman,” says Sakina Kariba, a refugee in the camp from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was trained as a solar panel installer and now works freelance installing throughout the camp. “I am happy that even if I leave the camp today and I decide to go to back to Congo or another part of Kenya, I now have a skill that I can use.”

So far, Solar Freeze is working with 3000 smallholder farmers — reducing waste of fresh produce by 95% — and has 180 cold solar units in Kakuma.

Solar Freeze’s model is replicable to combat harvest loss and provide clean energy to off-grid small-scale farmers and vulnerable populations in sub-Saharan Africa. About 470 million smallholder farmers in developing countries lose an average of 35% of their income to food spoilage. The company plans to expand its work into other refugee camps, and to nearby nations including Rwanda and Uganda.

Last year, it has won the prestigious Ashden Awards in the Humanitarian Energy category. The Awards highlight some of the world’s most impressive climate pioneers and innovators and help them power up their impact.

The climate solutions charity is now calling for entries from similar climate innovators for their 2022 Awards. The application deadline is 15 March.

#GlobalGoals - Dear World Leaders, This is an Emergency

Dear World Leaders,

This is an emergency.

We are activists for different causes from across the world, writing as one for the first time to demand your immediate action in this critical year…

So starts an unprecedented open letter launched today, signed by 20 leading global activists, calling out world leaders to act faster to end extreme poverty, defeat inequality and fight climate crisis.

This open letter marks the first time that activists fighting for global causes have been united by one single voice. Ranging from ages 10 to 94, the leading gender, climate, environmental, equality, justice and human rights campaigners include Malala Yousafzai, Obiageli Ezekwesili (Bring Back Our Girls, Nigeria), Tarana Burke (Me Too), Patrisse Cullors (Black Lives Matter) and Dr. Jane Goodall. 

The activists’ open letter has also been signed and supported by a network of 2000 campaigners and public figures across the arts, business and philanthropy from over 140 countries, including Emma Watson, Bono, Danny Boyle, Keira Knightley, Christiane Amanpour, Idris Elba, Femi Kuti and Spike Lee.

The letter declares a state of “emergency” for people and planet. It comes one week on from UN Secretary-General António Guterres calling on the international community to make the 2020s the “decade of action” and 2020 the “year of urgency”.

The letter stresses the need for immediate action, including at key 2020 moments, if the world is to meet the Global Goals. These key moments, include COP26, the Gavi replenishment, Generation Equality Forums in Mexico and France, the UN General Assembly and a landmark biodiversity conference in China.

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development are a historic plan adopted at the UN in 2015 to tackle these world problems. 193 countries (yes, including yours) have committed to achieve them by 2030.

Richard Curtis, SDG advocate, screenwriter and co-founder of Project Everyone, says:  “We are in an emergency for people and planet - the solution to which is the Global Goals  - the historic plan to defeat poverty, fix inequality and combat the climate crisis. In 2020, leaders will be watched by people all around the world who expect them to deliver dramatically. It’s also a clear commitment that this diverse and deeply committed group will themselves press hard throughout this crucial year to kickstart a Decade of Action for the Goals.”

The activists demand sustained innovation, financing and action over the crucial decade ahead to 2030. Recent reports underline the need for swift action; at least half the global population does not have access to essential health services, hunger is on the rise after a prolonged decline, and at the current rate of progress, it will take almost 100 years to close the global gender gap. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions are reaching record levels and key ecosystems are on the verge of collapse with one million species in near-term danger of extinction.

The open letter is accompanied by a public campaign asking citizens to show their support by sharing the letter and to join this effort for people and planet by using #GlobalGoals. The full list of signatories can be seen at www.globalgoals.org. A campaign film has also been directed by Richard Curtis.

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Generation Z fears climate change more than anything else; lives in failed system

Credit: Rosa Castaneda

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Greta Thunberg today called upon world leaders to stop using "clever accounting and creative PR" to avoid real action on climate change.  Thunberg’s chiding of world leaders seems to chime with young people’s beliefs, according to a major new study by Amnesty International.

The Amnesty poll, released yesterday on Human Rights Day asked more than 10,000 people aged 18-25 - also known as Generation Z - in 22 countries across six continents, to pick up to five major issues from a list of 23.

Of those, four out of 10 young people (41%) selected climate change, making it the most commonly cited issue globally, ahead of pollution (36%) and terrorism (31%).

“For young people the climate crisis is one of the defining challenges of their age,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International.  “This is a wake-up call to world leaders that they must take far more decisive action to tackle the climate emergency or risk betraying younger generations further.”

Global warming was also most commonly cited as one of the most important environmental issues facing the world (57%), out of 10 environmental issues such as ocean pollution, air pollution and deforestation.

In their own countries, Generation Z’s concerns extend beyond the climate crisis, reflecting the everyday struggles and concerns young people are facing and the feeling that they are  “living inside a failed system”.

At a national level corruption was most commonly cited as one of the most important issues (36%), followed by economic instability (26%), pollution (26%), income inequality (25%), climate change (22%) and violence against women (21%).

“This generation lives in a world of widening inequality, economic instability and austerity where vast numbers of people have been left behind,” said Kumi Naidoo.

“The message from young people is clear. The climate crisis, pollution, corruption and poor living standards are all windows on an alarming truth about how the powerful have exploited their power for selfish and often short-term gain.”

The survey’s findings come at a time of widespread mass protests around the world, from Algeria to Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Lebanon, and Sudan. Many of these movements have been largely led by young people and students, who have angrily called out corruption, inequality, and abuse of power and faced violent repression for doing so.

Extinction Rebellion Art and Design at the V&A

Extinction Rebellion posters. Photo credit: Chris J Ratcliffe Getty Images

Protest movements have always used art to carry and amplify their messages. The Climate and Ecological emergency is THE issue of our time, and the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement is skillfully using art and design to galvanise public concern for the planet with maximum impact. Their flags, banners and flyers in punchy colours with carefully worded slogans and woodblock prints are now immediately recognisable across the globe.

Extinction Rebellion, as many might already know, is a global activist group calling for urgent action on climate change through acts of non-violent civil disobedience and disruption. Since its first public action on 31 October 2018, urging the UK government to declare a climate and ecological emergency and commit to reduce emissions to net zero by 2025, XR has grown into an international movement with over 363 groups active in 59 countries around the world.

XR’s graphics balance joy and menace with a bold, tongue-in-cheek approach, and are characterised by four core design elements. These include the use of the Extinction Symbol, the XR logotype, a colour-palette of 12 playful tones including ‘Lemon’ yellow and ‘Angry’ pink influenced by pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, and the fonts ‘FUCXED’ and ‘Crimson’. Often juxtaposing imagery of the natural world with more sinister images of skulls and bones, XR’s urgent visuals articulate hope, while outlining the grave consequences the group feels failure to act will bring. 

Recognizing the importance of the movement and the value of its unique designs, the London V&A has acquired a series of objects exploring the design identity of Extinction Rebellion.

The pieces produced by the Extinction Rebellion Arts Group, a coalition of graphic designers, artists and activists responsible for XR’s Design Programme, range from the open-source Extinction Symbol created by street artist ESP in 2011 and adopted by XR in 2018, to the Declaration that accompanied their first act of Rebellion, and flags carried during mass demonstrations. They are on display in the V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting Gallery (gallery 74a).

The objects have been acquired through the V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting, an innovative programme that enables the acquisition and immediate display of design objects that address questions of social, political, technological and economic change.

“Design has been key to Extinction Rebellion’s demands for urgent action on climate change. The strong graphic impact of the Extinction Symbol alongside a clear set of design principles have ensured that their acts of rebellion are immediately recognisable,” says Corinna Gardner, Senior Curator of Design and Digital at the V&A.

“Extinction Rebellion have galvanised public concern for the planet, and their design approach stands in relation to earlier protest movements such as the Suffragettes who encouraged the wearing of purple, green and white to visually communicate their cause.”