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Water from Air: An engineered solution to water scarcity

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Around 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water. Out of the total fresh water on earth, 2/3 is tucked in glaciers and the 1/3 available for use is being polluted, exploited and wasted every single day. 

Rivers, lakes, and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared. Irrigation for industrial agriculture is highly inefficient and results in massive water waste across the world. Climate change is altering patterns of weather and water around the world, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others. At the current consumption rate by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages. Modern-day developments in technology are actually trying to help solve this crisis. One proposal: magically extract water out of thin air.

Atmospheric water generators use condensation (not magic) to extract water from warm humid air (relative humidity over 50%). Their functioning is similar to that of a dehumidifier (air is moved over a coil in order to condense water), but the end goal of AWG’s is to generate potable water. These systems decrease air temperature, which in turn reduces the air’s capacity to carry water vapor. This is the most common technology in use, but this system uses huge amounts of coal-based electricity it has one of the worst carbon footprints amongst all the water purification sources (3 times more than reverse osmosis of seawater)

Low impact alternative technology uses “wet” desiccants such as lithium chloride to pull water from the air via hygroscopic processes. Solid desiccants, such as silica gel and zeolite, with pressure condensation, are also used. Direct drinking quality water generating devices using solar energy is also under development. Overall there is scope for improvement, but in places with water scarcity, this is an extremely viable solution that ensures a constant water supply, even today.

Consider how Permaculture talks about learning from nature. The concept of AWG’s is also considered a great example of biomimicry. The beetle Stenocara gracilipes has a natural ability to extract water from the fog and accumulate it on its wings.

GoSun  is a brand working on revolutionary solar appliances to help you cook (day or night), cool, charge, light or purify water with only the power of the sun. Their idea of independence and resilience is further propagated by their AWG’s 

Each modular Tsunami 500 can produce up to 200 gallons of freshwater per day. Perfect for home or small business, Tsunami, first creates then delivers potable water to your storage tank, appliance or dispenser, with nothing but a 240VAC electrical connection.

Functioning of the AWG:

Step 1:  Air Intake – Moist ambient air is pulled into the Tsunami® unit by fans. A multi-layer air filter removes dust, pollens, and other airborne particles.

Step 2:  Water Extraction – Next, the air is drawn through a series of condensing coils, where water vapor is cooled down sufficiently to reach the dew point. This converts water vapor into droplets. Water is then extracted and collected into a storage tank.

Step 3: Water Purification – Collected water is purified through a multi-stage filtration system, where all the possible impurities and pathogens are removed. At this point, water is completely pure and safe to drink. What’s more: unlike tap water, it’s chemical-free.

Benefits

  1. Supplies Water on demand: Atmospheric water generation works anywhere, even in draughts- mimicking conditions inside a cloud
  2. Ultra-Pure : The multi-stage filtration process produces the highest quality drinking water
  3. Scalable: Systems can be expanded to meet the fresh water needs of any facility.
Tsunami 500]

If you are interested in more products that make your life easier without taking a toll on the environment, visit our online Permaculture shop! We have joined up with various small and large ethical businesses all across the world to offer products and services any Permaculture Designer or homesteader might need. After years of living a regenerative life, we realize the importance of a curated marketplace that caters to our community’s distinct needs.  When making purchases, we want to give our money to people that do not harm the planet or other people.

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Flip the Script

Going from trash to treasure

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ENERGY & TRANSPORTATION

How can we lower our battery footprint?

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Activism

A conservation market could incentivize global ocean protection

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The system might make it easier for countries to meet 30×30 conservation targets

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA BARBARA

Ocean collage
IMAGE: COLLAGE OF OCEANIC ORGANISMSview more 

CREDIT: HARRISON TASSOF

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The countries of the world agreed: Our planet needs more protection from human activity. And with the globe facing an assortment of environmental crises, they realized the plan needed to be ambitious. Thirty-by-thirty was their proposal: protect 30% of the planet by 2030. But while conservation is popular in principle, the costs of actually enacting it often stall even the most earnest efforts.

Three researchers at UC Santa Barbara have proposed a market-based approach to achieving the 30×30 targets in the ocean. They tested whether a system that allowed countries to trade conservation credits could reduce costs, incentivizing nations to actually meet their goals. Allowing voluntary trade always reduced the cost of conservation, sometimes by more than 90%. The study, published in Science, is the first to draft and analyze a conservation market for achieving 30×30 targets in the ocean.

The 30×30 initiative is one aspect of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a multilateral treaty developed in the early 1990s. In fact, it’s target No. 3 of the larger Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) adopted by the 196 countries that convened for the UN Biodiversity Conference in 2022. It calls for the effective protection and management of 30% of the world’s terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine areas by the year 2030 — a goal that many scientists say humanity must achieve to secure our planet’s long-term health. And while the GBF requires countries to commit to conservation targets, it does not outline which areas should be protected, how to do so inclusively or how to pay for it.

“This project started just over four years ago,” said co-author Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez, who completed his doctorate at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. At this point, countries were falling short of the 10% protection benchmark as they drafted plans for 30% protection. “It seemed like most nations were genuinely committed to marine conservation, but that the costs of conserving were preventing some from engaging in it at all.

“At the same time,” he added, “a lot of research had already shown that if you could get nations to cooperate around conservation, you could substantially reduce the costs of conserving.” He and his co-authors realized the world needed an institution, policy or framework that could support this.

Uneven costs and benefits

The cost of protecting acres of ocean is not the only aspect that differs from place to place. The ecological benefits of conservation also vary based on location. Achieving 30×30 in the ocean will require coastal nations to consider potential trade-offs associated with these protections. Because high-value fisheries can coincide with important marine ecosystems — such as coral reefs, seagrass meadows and kelp forests — meeting the obligation could come at a high cost for some nations but not others. “Without an innovative policy solution, the cost of conservation for many nations could stall progress toward 30×30,” said Villasenor-Derbez.

This variability means that trade could incentivize additional gains. Instead of investing in areas with high conservation costs, or low benefits, nations could exchange their duties to double down on regions where protection yields higher returns.

Environmental economists and scientists at UC Santa Barbara’s Environmental Markets Lab (emLab) wondered if a conservation credit system could help meet 30×30 targets in the ocean. They devised a system whereby nations could trade their conservation obligation with other nations through a “transferable conservation market” policy built around ecological principles.

“Like existing mandates, this approach requires every country to protect a certain fraction (say 30%) of its marine habitat,” said Distinguished Professor Christopher Costello, emLab’s director. “But unlike other approaches, we allow those obligations to be traded across countries, within strict ecological constraints.” In this way, countries with higher conservation costs pay others to increase their conservation efforts. This study estimates the potential global cost savings under various trading constraints.

“For example, Norway, which has valuable fisheries, might pay Palau, a country that has already invested significantly in coastal conservation, to conserve additional areas on Norway’s behalf,” Costello said. This enables Norway to fulfill its conservation obligations in another part of the world.

Achieving 30×30 in the ocean

Costello, Villaseñor-Derbez and co-author Professor Andrew Plantinga developed a model to estimate the potential costs and benefits that could be achieved through a conservation market like this. They combined distribution data for 23,699 marine species with fisheries revenue data to build conservation supply curves for the world’s coastal nations.

They then defined “trade bubbles” based on biological and geographic factors. A country could trade conservation credits only with other nations within these predefined bubbles in order to ensure conservation was equitably spread across Earth’s different marine habitats. The authors examined five bubble policies that allow nations to trade within hemispheres, biogeographic realms, provinces, ecoregions, or globally, to determine potential costs.

Regardless of how they tweaked this setup, a market for marine conservation always reduced the costs of conservation. The model estimated savings could range from 37.4% all the way to 98% under the 30×30 target.

“It just highlighted how inefficient it is to require uniform conservation obligations from each nation,” Villaseñor-Derbez said. “After all, national boundaries don’t really overlap or line-up with the distribution patterns of marine biodiversity.”

Savings were highest in a global market, where every nation stands to gain from trade. But a global market could inadvertently focus conservation efforts on only a single type of habitat, neglecting others. That was precisely why the team introduced the trade bubble constraint.

“When nations facing large costs are allowed to trade, they can ask themselves ‘should I conserve in my waters at this high cost, or can I find someone in my bubble that has habitat just as good as mine but at a lower price?’” Villaseñor-Derbez said. The same would be true for a selling nation. They could decide whether to conserve more than they are required depending on the trading price.

Of course, a country could always go it alone, fulfilling their conservation obligations (and theirs alone) entirely within their own territory. Indeed, this is precisely how the 30×30 initiative currently looks. But the authors’ analysis suggests that very few countries will. Most find it far more economical to either buy or sell conservation obligations.

Conservation colonialism vs fair compensation

If a market system were established, some might wonder what would prevent wealthy nations from simply “paying off” their conservation obligations and offloading them onto poorer nations. For Costello, Villaseñor-Derbez and Plantinga, the market itself offers a solution. “All such exchanges are purely voluntary,” said Plantinga, who heads emLab’s Productive Landscapes Group. “The selling nation (the poor country in this example) only engages in trade if they find it advantageous.”

In fact, the market could be a boon for developing nations. The current 30×30 scheme requires even a cash-poor country with high conservation to conserve 30% of their territorial waters.  The market approach offers a degree of flexibility: The country can weigh their finances against their conservation costs. They can then decide how much of their obligation to fulfill within their own waters, how much to buy from another nation, and how much to offer up for sale. This flexibility is not possible under the current approach to 30×30.

This system could also incentivize habitat restoration, target No. 2 of the GBF. Nations that tend to specialize in exploiting marine resources could compensate those who specialize in conserving marine biodiversity.  “Our approach provides an explicit payment for conserving marine ecosystems,” Costello said. “Under the current system, there is rarely a payment to conserve.”

Lowering costs incentivizes action. This measurable effect is a central tenet of economics employed by governments, companies and industries across sectors and countries. So why not harness this principle for conservation? According to the authors, these savings could be redirected towards solving other pressing issues.

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