SustainaBrazil

SustainaBrazil is relocated !

2007-10-12T15:12:00.000+02:00

I have been exploring Brazilian sustainable issues for a while because I think the developments in Brazil are defining for the way we design things and communities.

Gradually, however, I have come to explore issues that also have to do with design, but not necessarily to Brazil. That is why I relocated this blog and merged its content with a new blog with a wider scope: PreDesign. It explores the preconditions to design.

Please visit my new blog at http://predesign.wordpress.com and feel free to leave comments.

Blacksmith Institute

2007-09-17T21:27:00.000+02:00

The Blacksmith Institute, an NGO that maps pollution around the world, published a list of the 10 most polluted places in the world. It is quite encouraging the Brazilian city of Cubatão, which I wrote about here and which was considered to be the most polluted city in the 80s, does not longer appear on the list.

More: Blacksmith Institute, Treehugger

11th Hour

2007-09-16T09:24:00.000+02:00

In addition to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' and 'Architects for a Better World', which I wrote about before, yet another movie will is apparent. As in the previous movies, it deals about the modification of the current industrial model into a sustainable model. About 50 scientists, thinkers and leaders appear in the movie, amongst whom two people I like: Bruce Mau (MASSIVE CHANGE) and William McDonough (Cradle to Cradle).

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2006: YOU

2007-09-06T14:13:00.000+02:00

The first edition of Time Magazine in 2007 presented ‘You’ as person of the year 2006.

“…The “Great Man” theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year. (…) Look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. (…) The new web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon valley consultants call it Web 2.0 …”

It's all about collaboration.

CANSEI – I AM TIRED

2007-08-15T16:31:00.000+02:00

Cansei – I am tired – is the name of a new movement in Brazil that came into existence on July 26th. It was initiated as a reaction to the country’s worst-ever airplane disaster of TAM flight 3054 at Congonhas Airport, São Paulo on July 17. The movement is an initiative of the Sao Paulo branch of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB-SP), the organization established by the constitution to test and certify Brazil's lawyers.

Cansei demands accountability for everything that is wrong in Brazil, from the failing air traffic control system to street children to corruption at every level to the shadow narco states in the favelas of the big cities. The movement claims not to be political. Though largely a movement of individuals the Brazilian subsidiary of Holland's Royal Philips Electronics decided to join the group on July 27. August 17 a rally will be held on the square of Sé Cathedral in the center of São Paulo, as well as at the crash site at Congonhas airport and a number of other places throughout the country.

Addition: Critics say Cansei is an elitist movement and does not represent the people. This was reflected in the little enthousiasm that was generated for the rallies as stated above. Let's see if the movement will be able to increase its supporter group.

More: Cansei, Stratfor, OAB-SP

City Engine

2007-08-14T14:51:00.001+02:00

Surfing on Youtube I ran into CityEngine. It is an architectural modelling tool and a project of PhD candidate Pascal Mueller, who is research assistant at the Computer Vision Lab at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Einstein studied there as well).

CityEngine is software for the creative and efficient creation of digital architecture and is focused mainly on the procedural modelling of architecture. The eventual goal is to create a tool which allows efficient digital content creation of detailed large-scale 3D models for a variety of applications including urban planning, entertainment, archaeology and simulation. To do this it is essential to define the syntax and vocabulary of a design grammar for computer generated architecture. Buildings can then be generated automatically by following the given aesthetic and statutory architectural rules.

Imagine what this tool could mean to city planning. Rather than trying to plan every street and to define every parcel, we could define a number of parameters to which city (slum) dwellers would have to apply. They would be able to build their own houses, and it would mean the liberation and democratization of design. We would be able to speak of an Open Source City.

With a tool like CityEngine, the municipal urban planning department would be able to calculate possible growth patterns of the city. The model could be fed with demographic data. This way, the size of an average family could directly be translated to the size of a building and through it, to the appearance of the city. This way municipal planning departments would be able to anticipate by investing in infrastructure. This in turn would avoid traffic congestion and pollution related problems, which would significantly improve the liveability of the city.

Looking at the software of Pascal Mueller, the solution is just around the corner.

More: ETH, Pascal Mueller, CityEngine
Previous posts: fractals, swarm theory and the end of urban planning

Brazil Network Society

2007-08-10T16:36:00.000+02:00

Brazilians are natural networkers. Brazilians usually know where to find the people that might be able to help them, how to approach them, and how to connect with them. When Brazilians are outside of Brazil, they usually keep track of their compatriots. Not because it is a particular close group, but they need to know just in case.

Claudio Prado, coordinator of digital policy of the ministry of culture of Brazil argues this is what Brazil has been for centuries. In his words: "In a Brazilian favela, that's the way it works. You go and help your neighbor build their house. (…) That's what you do when you don't have money. You collaborate."

It is no coincidence Internet social network service Orkut is mostly a success in Brazil. Orkut was launched on January 22, 2004 by Google. It is named after its creator Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer who developed it as an independent project while working at Google. Orkut was designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships and is similar to Hyves, Friendster and MySpace. Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called "communities") of users. Of its currently about 60.000.000 users, the number of Brazilians participating is an estimated 55 to 72 percent.
In Brazil, this collaborative aspect of society was intentionally just part of the collective subconsciousness, until it was formalized recently by the decision of the Brazilian federal government to be the first country in the world to use open source software for governmental institutions. Although this decision was partly taken on economic grounds, the real argument was the acceptation of a development model of which a large part of the population can take profit.

As it seems, this decision was nothing more than a logical step in the Brazilian tradition of collaboration.

More:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-brazil-loves-orkut/3082/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut

Architects for a Better World

2007-08-09T09:47:00.001+02:00

This trailer is about a movie to be released in November which will deal about sustainable architecture. Architect/mayor/governor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Paraná State (Brazil) will also appear in the movie.

Gatos - Energy Thieves

2007-08-06T18:34:00.000+02:00

In the poorer areas in Brazil’s cities, you might run into an image as is shown above: streetlights with numerous cables attached to it. Gatos (cats) have been at work here, tapping electricity illegally from the city grid in order to light their houses. Of course, this is a crime, and the criminals are traced easily just by tracing the cables from the streetlights into the houses.

In Rio’s favela Rocinha we would be talking about 150.000 energy thieves. But the power company prefers to talk about potential customers instead, and is acting accordingly. It is trying to convince the slum residents to install a meter to get charged for the energy. Strange as it may seem, the pragmatic approach paid off, as in the first three years the energy company reported to have saved 210 gigawatts, enough to power 100.000 houses for a year.

Once again I’d like to quote Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil in this context: “The Brazilian government is definitely pro law, but when the law does not apply to reality, the law has to be changed. That’s not new. It is civilization as usual”

Sources: Shadow Cities – Robert Neuwirth; We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin – Wired Magazine

Creative Commons Brazil

2007-08-05T15:14:00.001+02:00

This is a video about the Creative Commons movement in Brazil. Creative Commons is about a new interpretation of copyright, about "some rights reserved" rather than "all rights reserved". This way, creativity and development should be stimulated. Interesting detail is that Bill Gates renamed the movement 'Creative Commies', referring to the communists and inherently saying that sharing is a dead ideology. In Brazil they apparently don't agree to this point of view. Minister of Culture and pop star Gilberto Gil of the current government is backing the initiative and donated some of his songs for free use and sampling, and Brazil adopted the open software model for all governmental institutions, as I already mentioned here.

I already gave to attention to the subject here.The content of this blog is also free to reuse under some restrictions, which are explained when clicking on the Creative Commons logo to the right.

The video is about the Creative Commons movement in Brazil and provides a quick introduction into the activities of the organisation.

For more information check the Creative Commons wiki, or the official Creative Commons website.

Destructive vs. Constructive Collaboration

2007-07-31T07:44:00.000+02:00

Swarm Theory and Organic Urbanism

2007-07-24T08:50:00.000+02:00

In National Geographic this month I read an interesting article about swarm theory and self organising systems. It describes how for example a school of fish is able to make quick decisions by making use of collective intelligence. Basically they apply to three basic rules: 1) avoid crowding nearby fishes, 2) swim in the average direction of nearby fishes, and 3) stay close to nearby fishes. This results in the typical behaviour of a school of fish (or a swarm of birds) that we know from TV. Robots that were operated by the same rules showed similar behaviour, and the logarithm is now being used for animation too.

It would be interesting to see what swarm theory would mean to informal urbanism (slums) as a self organising system. Previously I already concluded that slums show fractal behaviour, and that slum structures, when they connect to an existing urban grid, have more chance to grow into mature city neighbourhoods. We could stimulate the self organising tendency of slums development to impose some basic rules to the dwellers when they build their homes. Connecting to the existing urban street grid could be one of them, as well as connecting to a main street of a certain minimal dimension for easy access of sanitary and emergency services (or police for that matter). Also, maximum dimensions of a city block could be defined as well as a percentage of green or open spaces. This way, swarm theory could provide in a basic framework that can potentially grow into a mature city, without too much policy or pre-investment.

Eco tour Campo Grande – Bonito – Miranda (2/2)

2007-07-23T13:11:00.000+02:00

See here for part 1

We had rented a Volkswagen Gol (aka Golf) for our tour from Campo Grande to Bonito to Miranda and back, respectively 295 km (5 hours) 154 km (4 hours) and 234 km (4 hours). The stretch from Bonito to Miranda was rough terrain, especially for a Volkswagen Gol and not surprisingly the few cars we met during our journey were all pick-ups. But even though we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere sometimes, at every gas station, however remote, we were able to take ethanol for our car. Our car was Brazilian built and Total Flex, which means it ran both fuel and ethanol, and in any mixture. This made quite an impression on me, especially as the first ethanol pump in my home country (The Netherlands) was opened just last year. As I already mentioned here ethanol can be considered sustainable in particular because it is less polluting than other bio fuels like bio diesel produced out of soy. The only concern is that sugar cane for ethanol production could contribute to the further destruction of the Amazon, especially now the Lula governement has announced it wants to be a world leader and -exporter in ethanol production. Let’s just hope sugar cane production won’t have the same effect on the Amazon as soy production had.

In Miranda we stayed at a farm that was specialized in eco tourism. It was surrounded by 4000 hectares of wetland with a rich population of passaros (birds), arara’s (papagaios), jacare’s (kaimans) sucuri’s (anaconda’s) aranja’s (spiders), ariranja’s (giant otters), capivara’s and macaco’s (apes). It is interesting to see many of the animal names are indians names that are still in use. One of our guides was of Indian descendent and it was impressive to see how he was able to spot animals miles away and was able to communicate with them.

The history of the farm was quite interesting. The family owning the farm had started about 12 years ago cultivating rice in the Pantanal with money of a government program. But in rain season the water rose, leaving the farm on an island and all the rice paddies in deep water. Soon it became clear the effort of the family was failing and they plummeted into debts, as they had to pay the government money back. Their next try was cattle, but once again the rain spoiled the effort. Almost in despair the third choice of the family became eco tourism and the farm started to prosper. Nowadays the farm on the island is a refuge of tranquility. It is an interesting example on the important role tourism can play in the preservation of nature.

Eco tour Campo Grande – Bonito – Miranda (1/2)

2007-07-20T17:34:00.000+02:00

I’ve been spending some weeks in Brazil, and took a week to do some eco tourism in Mato Grosso do Sul state, near Bolivia’s border. The region is primarily known for agriculture and the Pantanal, a nature reserve area. Pantanal literally means swamp and is said to have more biodiversity per square kilometre than the Amazon has. We left for Bonito by car from state capital Campo Grande.

The route lead us through vast fields of soy and sugarcane and along the route we were trying to spot some wild animals. We did meet some, like wandering groups of emu’s, toucans passing by and an ant eater trying to hide for us. Soon it became clear to us that we had most chances to spot the animals in the messy roadside bushes, rather than the road shoulders along the soy and cane fields. I might be rather obvious but for an urban dweller like me it was quite a revelation to realize that these vast fields of crops had little to do with nature or diversity. Instead, it was monoculture on a large scale, with no place for animals. These were just to be found on the small and isolated parts of ‘wasteland’ in between the enormous fazenda’s (ranches), or at the spots where the terrain was too steep to cultivate.

Also, along the road shoulders, we would meet many dwellings made of wasted wood or clay with roofs made of palm tree leaves. These were the homes of the landless workers, usually working on the fazenda’s as day workers. The landless workers fight for the right to cultivate land, usually radically, embracing communism, this way alienating themselves from mainstream politics.

We just met another car every half an hour while we moved on and my mind started wandering. Mono cultural and large scale agriculture seemed to result in an imbalance for both man and beast at Brazil’s countryside. It would be interesting to know what small scale agriculture would mean for both problems. The rural workers would be able to cultivate land individually and independently. Similarly the bushes at the small pieces of wasteland would be distributed more equally, which would stimulate animal diversity. Diversity is nature’s strategy to survival and provides flexibility through interdependency. Any fluctuation in the environment, for example as a result of climate change, could be dealt with. It would make Brazil’s nature less vulnerable, as well as its rural social fabric.

It proves the statement of William McDonough when he says all sustainability, like politics, is local.

To be continued…

Picture: Blue sky, green soy, red dust. A crossing with signs for fazenda's in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul state.

Live Earth Rio

2007-07-05T15:19:00.000+02:00

On Rio de Janeiro´s Copacabana Beach a Live Earth concert will be held on 07 07 2007 featuring artists like Macy Gray, Vanessa da Matta, Xuxa, MV Bill, Jota Quest, O Rappa and (my personal favourite) Marcelo D2. The Live Earth concerts aim to get attention for the climate crisis and will be simultaneously held in the US, the UK, Brazil, China, Australia, South Africa, Japan and Germany. The statement on the website says:

" Live Earth is a monumental music event that will bring together more than 2 billion people on 7/7/07 to raise awareness about global warming. With 24 hours of music across 7 continents, and performances by more than 150 of the world's top musicians, Live Earth will engage, connect, and inspire individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve the climate crisis. "

Sustainable Policy in Brazil

2007-07-03T17:58:00.000+02:00

In this and this post I mentioned that governments in Brazil on local and federal levels are facing problems in relation to poverty only in unsustainable ways. I need to make an addition to this comment. Yesterday president Lula announced a governmental program (PAC) that will invest in the infrastructure of the country on several levels to stimulate development. This includes the slums, that have already become shadow states out of reach of the government. Lula´s comment:

"If the state doesn't fulfill its role and does not provide (adequate) conditions for the people, drug traffickers and organized crime will."

It seems that an alternative will be provided for poverty and violence to the slum dwellers. It provides sustainable development in addition to the repressive police actions and the Zero Hunger program, which can only be considered as temporary programs to bridge the current situation, while building on structural solutions.

Looking at the site It seems to be an ambitious program. Let´s hope it will not appear to be too ambitious.

More: BBC, Reuters

Banning Advertisements: Foolish or Visionary?

2007-07-02T17:05:00.000+02:00

Gilberto Kassab, the mayor of Sâo Paulo, has decided to ban all commercial ads from the public realm. It is a decision that can be considered either foolish or visionary. Foolish, because visual polution is the least of the problems the city has to deal with. Traffic jams, air pollution, water pollution, insufficient water management which leads to regular floodings, carjackings, prison upheavals, slum violence, all these problems seem to be much more urgent that an occasional advertisement on a building.

But there is another interpretation. São Paulo can be considered the materialized market economy, unplanned, organic, chaotic, polluted. Consequently, it is a city that was built by capital, not by humans, a city hardly fit to live in. In this metropole of about 20 million inhabitants there is just one reasonable public parc to provide some breathing space, Ibirapuera, but the typical refuge for the Paulista citizens are the shoppings, which are usually overcrowded on Sundays. Unsurprisingly the first hit for Ibirapuera on Google is the shopping that was named after the parc. Consequently it is a city that I experience to be suffocating. The many ads that scream to you from the buildings (curiously, predominantly about plastic surgery) just add to this impression. In this context, the decision of the mayor is a small but certain first step to make the city more liveable and human. In this context the decision of the mayor is a visionary one.

It reminds me of this quote that has been contributed to graffitti artist Banksy:

"The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you're never allowed to answer back. Well, they started the fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back."

More: ni9e, Worldchanging, Business Week,

Picture: Tony de Marco

Lula´s Unsustainable Government

2007-07-02T15:55:00.000+02:00

Allthough I like to focus in this blog on the positive, and try to avoid politics as much as possible, sometimes it is necessary to make an exeption, especially when negativity and politics intersect.

Last week, Lula´s government decided to resume the construction of a third nuclear reactor at Angra dos Reis, which had been put on hold since the 1980s because of security issues and a lack of funds. As I mentioned before, Brazil´s only commercial nuclear reactor has been haunted by problems eversince it was built, but even though the ambitious plans of the government provide in the construction of eight new reactors by 2030. One of the main arguments is a future lack of water, as Brazil is largely dependent on hydro electricity . But for a country that has currently about 20% of the planet´s clean water within its boundaries, this can hardly be an argument. Instead, the desintegration of the hydro electric network (which I already mentioned here) as a result of commercialisation is more likely to be the problem. Nuclear power cannot be regarded sustainable, not only because of the numerous accidents that have occured at Angra, but also because the generation of nuclear energy does not form a closed system. In sustainability, the output of one system should be fit to be used as the input for another system, or in the words of William McDonough, Waste = Food. But with our current state of technology, nuclear waste cannot be reused. Therefore nuclear energy is not sustainable.

One of the biggest successes of Lula´s government is the Zero Hunger program, providing the country´s poorest a minimum income to stay alive. As poverty is widespread in Brazil, the program has made the government extremely popular. But even though the program is very necessary, it is not sustainable. As in the case of Angra, it does not form a closed system, as it does not generate output. An educational program for example would eventually result in tax paying professionals, taxes that could be used for new investments. In contrast, the Zero Hunger program can only be seen as a temporary solution in addition to structural investments like an educational program. But programs of such kind have not been initiated upto now.

Lula´s government has been the first that has been formed by the people and not by the elite, and so the government had been provided a historic chance to build a sustainable society. It all started off promising, as could be seen for example with the introduction of an open source program as a new model for development (as I commented here). But the man responsible, Sergio Amadeu, has resigned desillusioned as Lula´s special adviser. Instead of executing a visionary policy, the government relaxes and enjoys its re-election, to borrow the words Marta Suplicy, minister of tourism. (She spoke these words to airliner passengers that had been stranded as a result of an air traffic controllers crisis that has been unsolved since September last year. More on the passivity of the government is discussed in this article of The Economist.)

It seems the government is loosing momentum but there is still a light in the dark. Like in Israel, numerous scandals have been surfacing lately in Brazil about corrupt politicians. This is not necessarily negative. Like the Israeli author Amos Oz said: "sewers just stink when they´re cleaned up". Corruption has long been deeply rooted in Brazilian society. If Lula´s government will be able to deal with this problem, it will all have been worthwhile.

Favela´s: The Shadow Side

2007-06-30T16:40:00.001+02:00

Though I generally regard favela´s (slums) as grassroots neighborhoods being designed by its inhabitants and therefore potentially sustainable, there´s also a shadow site. This is shown by an action of the police of Rio de Janeiro last week on the Complexo do Alemão (German Complex), one of Rio´s poorest neighborhoods, in order to gain controll over drug trafficing activities. 44 Kills were reported up to now, and Human Rights Watch is asking critical questions about the attitude of the police of Rio.

I already mentioned before that the situation in Rio is comparable to a small scale civil war according to UN standards. The intensity is made painfully visible on this website, which counts the wounded and killed in the favela´s of Rio. Though last week´s action is exeptionally intense (problably related to the upcoming Panamerican Games in Rio within two weeks), it is typical for the way the local government deals with the problems in the favela´s. Sadly, there are hardly alternatives presented to the inhabitants in the form of social programmes or infrastructural investments. This results in a pressure cooker situation, where there is no way out to the citizens, and no alternative except for violence. We can only hope this tendency to violence is temporary, and that the focus will shift to sustainable solutions once the Panamerican Games are over.

Remains of the Mata Atlântica

2007-06-29T18:06:00.000+02:00

In addition to my post on the Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica this picture shows what remains of the Mata Atlântica, the non-tropical rainforest near the coast. Once it used to cover 15% of Brazil, now it is diminished to only 1%.

Source: Ambiente Brasil

Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica

2007-06-29T16:59:00.001+02:00

Henry David Thoreau used to say "that government is best which governs not at all". This is certainly visible in Brazil, where NGO´s fill up the vacuum that the government leaves behind. The Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica is one of those examples. It was created in 1986 and sees it as its mission to defend the remainders of the Mata Atlântica, the non-tropical rainforest near the coast. The forests around Rio are an example of these Atlantic forests. This TV commercial is currently shown on Brazilian TV and stresses that the law on the protection of the Mata Atlântica doesn´t stay just on paper.

More information on http://www.sosma.org.br/

(virtual) architecture

2007-06-08T14:21:00.000+02:00

Lately there has not been a lot of activity on SustainaBrazil as I am working on a book that will be titled (virtual) architecture - retail banking and information management. Though not related to Brazil directly, it is about a Dutch retail banker that also operates in Brazil. The book deals about collaborative design, innovation and information management.

A pre-publication will be made available online for free. It wil be downloadable in PDF from this site by June 15 [the publication is delayed until August in order to provide a more complete picture] after which I will be off to Brazil for a visit. Any feedback on the book is welcome. For more information on the subjects the book will deal about, please check the site of my employer.

The Scale of Itaipu Hydroelectric

2007-05-31T22:42:00.000+02:00

From MEGABLOG I borrowed these images that give an impression of the scale of Itaipu hydroelectric dam in relation to Manhattan Island and the Hoover Dam. For more on Itaipu see here.

2007: Tipping Point in Urbanization

2007-05-27T12:34:00.000+02:00

2007 is a tipping point in history: for the first time more than half of the world's population lives in cities. Before most of the world's population lived in rural areas. It is the theme of the 3th Architecture Bienal Rotterdam, The Netherlands, which will be held on several location in the city from 24.05.2007 to 02.09.2007

This picture that is used for the Biennale painfully shows the contrast between the rich, with a pool on each terrace, and the poor next door. The divide between rich and poor in Brazil is the biggest in the world.

Nodes

2007-05-25T13:34:00.000+02:00

In my post 'The End of Urban Planning?' I discussed with a reader that the connections between the nodes as well as the contents of the nodes themselves are of importance to a network. If we visualize this picture, it could look something like this:

This image (like these) was created by an algorithm written by Jared Tarbell called Node Garden. Except for a number of connections we also see nodes that vary in size, representing the amount of content of that particular node.

Source: complexification

Fractal Urbanism

2007-05-22T16:59:00.000+02:00

This is favela Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, Latin America’s biggest slum. The squares, streets and alleys can clearly be seen.

These images are generated by an algorithm called Substrate, written by Jared Tarbell. In the fractal pattern streets, boulevards, squares, blocks, and alleys can clearly be seen.

Maybe we can, by adding more parameters and demographic data to the algorithm, predict the organic growth of a city in order to anticipate to it. Or maybe we could work backwards, to see what impact an intervention could have on an existing urban fabric. Anyway it would be a new approach to design.

Sources: bldgblog, complexification

Brazil's Hubs

2007-05-21T08:39:00.000+02:00

What distinguishes a metropolis from a regular city is the number of relevant connections to the hinterland. Metropolises are gateways to regions and cities with their own expertise. What Google is to the Internet, São Paulo is to Latin America. It is the most important hub in the sense of industry, trade and infrastructure.

In this next image the importance of São Paulo as a hub to national airliner Varig is obvious.

[Hub: São Paulo as a hub to Varig airliner]

The next image surprisingly shows Rio de Janeiro as a hub for a national research network of fibre optical cables.

[Hub: Rio as a hub to the national science network]

As concluded before, networks have the tendency to organize themselves. To study the dynamics of a mouse’s brain, the galaxy, the Internet, or the global economic network all comes down to the same thing: network dynamics. It would be interesting to understand these dynamics in order to be able to influence their efficiency and effectiveness. We could apply these lessons to the physical world of urban planning and the social networks of society. Getting in phase with these natural dynamics would be the definition of sustainable design.

What is very interesting is that Brazilian society appears to be extremely network oriented. In this sense, Brazil, like the Internet, is a laboratory to network dynamics. I’ll get back to this later.

Hubs

2007-05-21T08:27:00.001+02:00

Within a network, a hub is an interesting phenomenon. A hub could be defined as a node that is important to the network because of its number of connections. In a social network, a hub would be an important person. Within an infrastructure network, a hub could be an airport.

[Hub: Congonhas Airport, São Paulo]

Within the physical structure of the Internet, a hub is a server.

[Hub: Google servers]

And to the flow of information on the Internet, search engines are hubs as they connect the users to the information they need. Like Google.

[Hub: Google Search Engine]

In the physical world, Google would be a metropolis like Tokyo or São Paulo.

Cities as the Nodes of a Network

2007-05-20T14:27:00.000+02:00

In response to a number of comments on my posting “The End of Urban Planning? (1)” I would like to focus a bit more on the importance of cities to the global network. In this posting we saw the relevance of cities to the physical network of roads, illustrated by a picture of Brazil by night. In response to the comment of Erik on this post I would like to quote sociologist Manuel Castells:

“… A network has no center, just nodes. Nodes may be of varying relevance for the network. Nodes increase their importance for the network by absorbing more relevant information, and processing it more efficiently. The relative importance of a node does not stem from its specific features but from its ability to contribute to the network’s goals. However, all nodes of a network are necessary for the network’s performance …”

In this perspective there’s a parallel with Erik’s comment. Cities or regions have to have a certain added value to the global network, be it industry (like São Paulo), service (like Bangalore) or an innovative environment (like Silicon Valley). All are a matter of infrastructure, to be defined and provided by policy and the local government.

But what might be even more important to a node’s relevance is not what it contains or can do, but what it connects to.

The End of Urban Planning? (2)

2007-05-18T20:06:00.000+02:00

Informal urban development takes shape without governance or design. These are shadow societies with shadow economies. Yet the world’s slum population mixes more concrete than any developer and lays more brick than any government.

(Source: Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities)

The End of Urban Planning? (1)

2007-05-16T11:11:00.001+02:00

The picture below shows three neuron cells (two red and one yellow) of the brain of a mouse, with their connections.

The picture below was generated, and shows a large cluster of galaxies (bright yellow) surrounded by thousands of stars, galaxies and dark matter (web).

The relationship between these two pictures was reported in The New York Times, August 14, 2006. The next picture shows Brazil by night.

The picture below is a cutout from the picture above. I turned it upside down in order to show the striking resemblance with the pictures of the mouse's brain and the galaxy. The bright spot at the upper left, near the coast, is Curitiba. The middle spot, with the roads radiating out, is São Paulo. The white spot at the bottom left of the picture, near the coast, is Rio de Janeiro. It is said that the chain Campinas - São Paulo - Santos - Rio de Janeiro is the world's biggest urban agglomeration . It includes a 500 km long transport axis of all medium sized cities between São Paulo and Rio and is commonly known by geographers as the Rio/São Paulo Extended Metropolitan Region (RSPER). With a current population of 37 million this megalopolis is already larger than Tokio-Yokohama. (Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, p. 5)

Seeing these pictures, it seems spontanious networks are a law of nature. Consequently it would mean that urban planning is pointless, as the urban configuration seems to be self-organizing.

Does this mean the end of design? It is an interesting theme to explore. I will get back to this later.

What does SustainaBrazil have to do with Architecture?

2007-05-11T14:18:00.000+02:00

What is this blog actually about? What does an architect like myself have to do with ethanol, energy, social innovation and Linux? Most of the topics discussed in SustainaBrazil don’t have a very obvious relationship with my profession. So I'll try to make it more obvious.

Goethe said once: ‘Architecture is Petrified Music’. Architecture is petrified process as well. Architecture literally provides a roof to human activity. But in order to provide a roof, or to design one, an architect has to have an understanding about underlying machinations and processes. Actually architecture primarily deals with process rather than matter. It deals with dynamics rather than space. Space and matter are only just tools. Architecture is a service, not a product.

This does not match the traditional understanding of architecture. As a matter of fact ‘design’ is a better description as it has a broader connotation. It is not just about the world of matter, but also about society, dynamics and interaction. Design is part of every aspect in life. Mitch Kapor, software architect and father of Lotus 1-2-3 said ‘Architecture is Politics’. Design is architecture as well as politics.

Architecture cannot be a job with a narrow focus on a product. Rather it has to be a profession with a preoccupation with society as a whole. If an architect does not take the responsibility to understand the motivations behind human intention, architecture becomes hollow. Architecture then will become a brand.

For more information about architecture related to process I would like to recommend the blog of my collegue Martin Smit, which is launched today: Cyclical Iterative Design Process.

Rio: Fashion From Favela Rocinha (2/2)

2007-05-09T13:08:00.000+02:00

By 1990 Tetê, initiator and guardian of COOPA ROCA, was able to get the attention of the fashion industry and by 1994 they began to produce clothes for the catwalk. A new strategy was adopted: Tetê started to contact factories to convince them to hand over their waste luxurious fabric to the cooperative, and with this new approach a new concept came into existence. The traditional sewing techniques that were used by the women applied on the luxurious fabric resulted in an interesting combination for the fashion industry. As Tetê said, the secret is to surprise the buyer, a surprise which in this case is achieved by the unexpected combination of ‘poor’ (or culturally rich) traditional techniques with ‘rich’ (but actually recycled) luxurious fabrics.

Tetê was able to convince fashion designers to give workshops to the women of the cooperative on skills and trends and one day after their first workshop, both Elle and Vogue magazines reported on COOPA ROCA. Through the 2000 and 2002 exhibitions of REtalhar (‘patchwork’ or ‘to shape’), organized by Tetê, partnerships were formed with fashion designers to provide designs to the cooperative, like for example with Dutch designer Tord Boontje and French artist Stephen Dean. While the sales of the clothes started off in kiosks in shopping malls and at local markets, nowadays COOPA ROCA collaborates with big fashion brands like M.Officer, Eliza Conde, Amazonlife, Dautore, Osklen and C&A.

But COOPA ROCA is not only about income and fashion. It is also about perspective. There is a ‘New Generation COOPA ROCA’ project, that educates the art of sewing to girls in the ages from 16 to 21. Also, the girls receive education in dance and get sexual education. Quite an important issue, as Rocinha is the community with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. COOPA ROCA has the ambition to educate the future leaders of the community.

The group has grown from about 20 in the beginning to about 150 nowadays and still growing. But there is still a lot to be done. The cooperative does not have access to the Internet yet, so it is still hard to keep their website updated. And the central office has become too small, so small in fact that the Next Generation initiative had to be put on hold. But in 2006 the construction started of a new headquarters on a plot of land in the middle of Rocinha, that was a gift of one of the collaborators in fashion of COOPA ROCA.

It represents the start of a new phase in the life of COOPA ROCA.

Rio: Fashion From Favela Rocinha (1/2)

2007-05-06T21:54:00.000+02:00

Somewhere in 1981, Maria Theresa Leal, or ‘Tetê’ visited the Rio de Janeiro slum of Rocinha with her domestic helper, who was living there. The visit was quite unusual as people like Tetê, an art teacher from middle class background with a college degree in social sciences, are barely to be found in the favelas. Visting Rocinha, the largest slum of Latin America with somewhere between 150 to 500 thousand residents, she mentioned that there were a lot of women with sewing skills, but with no skills in marketing or commerce. And so she took the initiative to organize the women in order to provide them income and perspective. From this group, in 1987 the cooperative COOPA ROCA was formed.

The seamstresses of the cooperative, which vary in age from 18 to 65, work at home and define their own workload and deadlines. This way they continue to be able to take care of their domestic responsibilities. The cooperatives share responsibilities on production, administration and publicity that are discussed and decided upon in a meeting once a week in a central office. This office is also the central point to distribute new orders and fabric and to collect the finished clothes.

[ Some of the women of COOPA ROCA, Tetê to the far right in yellow]

Initially, old clothes that had been collected by children in a local recycling projects were recycled into new ones. As most of the favela women came from the Brazilian rural areas, there skills were traditional, such as Fuxico (broidering with pieces of fabric), crochet, and patchwork (with recycled fabrics). But as the fabric was recycled and the techniques traditional, the sales fluctuated and the prices stayed low.

To be continued…

São Paulo: Transformation Without Destruction

2007-05-01T08:57:00.000+02:00

To the southeast of the São Paulo neighbourhood of Morumbi is favela Paraísopolis, that came into existence in the 1970s. With about 84 thousand inhabitants it is one of the larger slums of São Paulo. Paraísopolis has been subject to an urban renewal project by Vigliecca & Associados Architects Office, who designed a solution based on transformation of the slum without destruction.

The fact that the slum was structured around an orthogonal grid of roads gave the favela the potential to evolute to a mature urban neighbourhood. In fact, because of this street grid the slum looked more like a poor neighbourhood than an actual slum. It is known that Periuvian slum dwellers anticipate in a similar way on future developments by adopting a comparable orthogonal grid. Slums in Peru are called pueblos jovenes (young towns).

Though the limits of the blocks in Paraísopolis were relatively developed and urbanised, the inside of the blocks represented a typical slum labyrinth with meandering streets and alleys. The main trick with the project of Vigliecca & Associados was to redefine the edges of the building blocks and create open space by condensing the building volume. The open space is designed to act as a meeting point for the community.

The valleys have been given special attention, especially where there were streams present. In these locations, parks were created to stimulate circulation in the neighbourhood. With the introduction of the new building blocks the architects have tried to stimulate and structure the urbanisation of the young neighbourhood without destroying the existing community.

Sources:
Vigliecca & Associados
Arcoweb

Brazil and Independence

2007-04-30T19:10:00.000+02:00

“...Before the continental networks of reinforced-concrete highways commenced half a century ago, human civilization, as seen from a low-flying air plane, was always strung out along the brooks, rivers, ponds, lakes, seas and ocean fronts. Vast real estate developments and their underground- hidden, long-distance pipelines now tend to obscure this absolute dependence of humans upon water...” - R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

"…The Amazonian basin, where ten of the twenty largest rivers in the world are to be found ... represents one fifth of the entire fresh water reserves of the planet…" - Brazilian Government’s Ministry of External Affairs, 2002

While fresh water gets increasingly scarce, about 20% of the world's fresh water supply exists in the Amazon basin. Brazil is independent in energy as a result of the use of hydro electricity. And in April 2006 it declared itself independent from oil from the Middle East as a result of domestic exploitation of oil and the use of bio fuel. Even the uranium for Brazil's only commercial nuclear plant is won within its countries borders. Brazil is also independent in food production, and it has proven to be independent intellectually in the field of intellectual property in relation to her social and economic development.

Brazil is in all senses a country that can define its own agenda, and can therefore have a leading role in sustainable development. Time will tell if Brazil will be able to cash such a future, so it will no longer be the country that Stefan Zweig once described: 'The land of the future, and it will always be...'

Sete Quedas Waterfalls, Brazil

2007-04-27T13:22:00.000+02:00

The waterfalls of Sete Quedas were once as impressive as the ones at Iguaçu. Now they are submerged in the bassin of Itaipu Hydro Power plant.

Architect/Mayor/Governor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Brazil (2/2)

2007-04-26T12:16:00.000+02:00

The transformation of Curitiba was initiated with the realisation of a car free city centre as an icon for the city of the human scale. It was a controversial plan because there where no precedents in Brazil. Though IPPUC initially thought of a trial period of two months, this was brought back to one month to one week because of the expected protests. Eventually the planning institute could convince the local entrepreneurs to accept a trial period of only one weekend. Prior to this weekend the street in question, Rua Quinze de Novembro, got totally refurbished, streetlights and kiosks were placed and tens of thousands of flowers were planted, an investment with which Jaime Lerner as a director of the planning institute took a big risk with which he put his career in jeopardy. The test however was successful and when the local automobile club announced a protest the following Monday, schoolchildren were mobilized for a street drawing project to stop this protest. This way, the first pedestrian zone in Brazil was a fact within 72 hours.

Actions like this are typical for the way Lerner operates, and are typed by him as ‘Acupuntura Urbana’ – Urban Acupuncture. This is a strategic intervention with quick results that generates enthusiasm and support for further developments. In other words, momentum is generated. This working method made Lerner popular during his career as an architect, but was blamed on him as being populist in is career as a politician. As a politician, he could replace binary political thinking with complementary architectural thinking. Politics became design with the idea that the same dynamics, processes, limitations and systems influence both politics and architecture. With this approach it became possible to get maximum effect with limited resources. This got compensated by mobilizing the population, which became an alternative architectural resource.

“…The city is not the problem, it is the solution…” - Jaime Lerner

Architect/Mayor/Governor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Brazil (1/2)

2007-04-24T11:32:00.000+02:00

Architect Jaime Lerner (1937) played a central role in the development of Curitiba. As a student he was involved in the first ideas about an alternative plan for Curitiba and after his graduation as an architect in 1964 he got involved in the founding of the Instituto de Persquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC – Institute of Urban Planning and Research of Curitiba). After his first successes as director of the IPPUC Lerner was appointed by the military regime as mayor (prefeito) of Curitiba (1971-1975), aged 33 years old. In 1979 a second term followed (1979-1984) and in 1988 he ran for the third time, now in a democratic Brazil. He announced his candidacy 12 days before the elections and got elected for his third and last term as a mayor of Curitiba (1989-1992). In this position Lerner had the opportunity to implement and refine the reforms that he himself had suggested in the masterplan before. After being a mayor Lerner was elected in 1994 as a governor of the state of Paraná, and got re-elected in 1998. Since 2002 he is active as an architect again and he advices the United Nations in the reconstruction of Kabul and New Orleans, for which Curitiba is taken as a reference.

Abraham Maslow said: “…If you just have a hammer, you’ll approach every problem as a nail …”. Lerner looked further than the usual architectural toolbox and regarded architecture as a materialized system. In his words: “…If you present the solution as a bus, than it is a bus. If it is presented as a system however, people will understand…” Lerner considered architecture not to be product based, but service based.

Photo: Lerner (Center) at the inauguration of the Bus Express System in 1974.
Reference: www.jaimelerner.com
Book: Acupuntura Urbana

Public Transport System of Curitiba, Brazil

2007-04-21T10:41:00.000+02:00

Sustainable History of Curitiba, Brazil (3/3)

2007-04-20T21:10:00.000+02:00

In the development of Curitiba, also the management of green areas and water resources were important aspects, next to infrastructure. In 1971 a start was made with the construction of squares and parcs, by buying bits of land, surrounding them with walls and planting trees, until it was realized that this solution was too expensive. Around that time, Brazilian federal government founded the construction of canals in cities for the drainage of water. Water management in Brazilian cities basically means constructing a concrete canal like an open sewer on the lowest point of the city. Because the sewage usually do not have enough capacity, or are absent totally, it can happen during the short but severe showers that rapid rivers form in the streets that flow to the lowest points of the cities and that result in floodings. In São Paulo in particular, where rain water can not absorbed in the soil because of all the asphalt and concrete, this is a common phenomena.

[Rua Quinze de Novembro after the reconstruction]

In Curitba a radical stop was put to this practise by constructing parcs that would also functionate as water buffers. This way, 28 water rich nature parks came into existence of about 5000 acres in total, with rich ecosystems and biodiversity. This meant about 51m2 of green space per inhabitant, which is more than the WHO standard of 12m2. Before the implementation of the masterplan there was only 0,5m2 of parc available per inhabitant in Curitiba. In the parcs, the graslands are maintained by the 30 sheep of the municipal sheperd. The parcs have also a meaning for society as a number of parcs are thematic and dedicated to the diverse ethnical and migrant groups in Curitiba. The city dwellers themselves participated in the construction of the parcs as well by planting about 300.000 plants and trees.

[The municipal sheep of Curitiba]

Also in other fields inhabitants and government collaborate actively in Curibiba. In the slums, where the dump trucks cannot enter, inhabitants get a sack of food in exchange for every bag of waste they bring in. The schools play an important role in the relation between the civilians and the municipality as the kids have teached the city how to recycle. And by supplying meals in the schools it is stimulated to attend classes. As a consequence, juvenile delinquency and begging was put to a halt. This way Curitiba has developed itself through time as a sustainable city, a dynamic concept that is still in process.

Brazil Stock Exchanges

2007-04-19T16:18:00.000+02:00

Source: www.mapsofworld.com

Brazil: Stock Exchange Sustainability Index

2007-04-19T16:06:00.000+02:00

I read an interesting article about the Brazil stock exchange and sustainability on www.mba4success.com. I mirrored the article below.

Brazil: Leader in Sustainability

In these days Brazil begins its annual Carnival season, and the whole economy practically stops working, except for the oil extraction and refining facilities. And it’s probably a safe guess that most of the world’s population harbours an image of Brazil as fun-loving, growing as an economy, but an emerging market behind in areas such as modern management. In fact, at least part of this image is outdated.

In today’s highly visible trend of sustainability and social responsibility, Brazil is up front, way ahead of the USA and in many respects ahead of ecology-conscious Western Europe. The country recently inaugurated ISE, on of two sustainability indices worldwide as part of its Ibovespa Sao Paulo stock index. Johannesburg is the only other financial center with a similar index. Brazil´s top companies, including oil multinational Petrobras, the big banks Bradesco, Itaú and Banco Real (ABN Amro) rank among the top in sustainability, according to Management & Excellence, the Madrid-based sustainability research agency. Ethos is Brazil’s ethics foundation with over 600 corporate members, and the Novo Mercado (New Market) has some of the strictest corporate governance regulations worldwide. Gazeta Mercantil, the country’s leading daily business newspaper, dedicates an entire page every day to governance and an additional page per week to social responsibility. The volume of advertising involving sustainability and social responsibility is one of the largest worldwide. Brazil’s biggest company, Petrobras, offers its own MBA in sustainability and the country’s most famous business school FGV (Fundaçao Getulio Vargas) offers various programs in sustainability and social responsibility.

Where this explosive commitment comes from? One reason social responsibility is not new to Brazil. As a country with relatively weak social programs, the big companies have gotten used to pick up the slack and help society. Bradesco, Brazil’s biggest private bank, inaugurated its social foundation 50 years ago. Today it celebrates having built 40 schools that have produced well over 600.000 alumni, many of whom work for Bradesco. The foundation even supports itself with dividends from the Bradesco stock it owns. The company recently joined the coveted Dow Jones Sustainability Index and received a sustainability rating of AAA+.

Another factor is certainly Brazil’s heightened awareness of ecology issues. The country once known for cutting down its own rainforest is reacting vigorously and becoming more ecology oriented than most. It is now recycling old tires, using the material to construct more durable roads, and is the only industrialized country which achieved self-sufficiency in energy last year. Much of its energy comes from biological sources, not petroleum.

Education in sustainability not only happens formally, but broadly. Not only do all professional organizations, such as associations of investor relations executives, of analysts, of corporate governance, of pension funds and of communications companies dedicate their respective annual congresses to sustainability & co., the broad media breath the term in virtually every other sentence. The recent Paris report of scientists giving a bleak outlook on the issue of climate change was just another reason to treat the topic of sustainability and environment (meo ambiente) even more forcefully.

While the USA is still debating Kyoto and ExxonMobil, reporting record results of nearly $40 billion for 2006, drops out of the current ranking of most sustainable oil/gas companies, Brazilian companies are stepping up their investments and career possibilities in sustainability and social environmental responsibility. At ABN AMRO’s division in Brazil, called Banco Real, 60 people work in sustainability and social responsibility at this bank alone. Petrobras annually invests over $100 million in cultural events alone.

William H. Cox is Managing Director of Cox Communications Consultants in Germany, a strategic consultancy founded in 1985, and received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.

Mirrored from www.mba4success.com
More: www.bovespa.com.br

Curitiba: The new Brazil

2007-04-19T08:28:00.001+02:00

This nice video explains the Curitiba bus system in 4 minutes.

Sustainable History of Curitiba, Brazil (2/3)

2007-04-18T19:25:00.000+02:00

In anticipation to traffic congestion and mono cultural development (sprawl) the bus system played a mayor role in the master plan of Curitiba. In this plan, the significance of the bus system was bigger than that of public transportation only. The centrally positioned bus lanes, with one way streets on both sides, were designed to be main axes radiating out of the city center. These axes form the core of the transportation system concept and also define the development of the urban fabric. The domestic areas have a higher density in the vicinity of the axes, and a lower density in the areas between the axes, and demographic variety is being stimulated.

In retrospective the bus system can be compared to a surface metro system. Passengers don’t have to wait longer then one minute for a bus, in every bus there is place for 270 persons and boarding can take place within 20 seconds. Passengers pay before entering the glass tube shaped terminal, so there are no delays because of payment problems at the drivers seat. As a consequence, 20.000 people can be transported on a single bus line in one hour. For the disabled passengers, the platform floor and the bus floor are brought to the same level, and there is a wheelchair elevator at hand. Every bus ticket is also a city lottery ticket as the use of public transport is being stimulated.

So by optimizing the existing bus system her economic advantages - an important aspect in a third world country – could be combined with the functional advantages of a metro system, like speed and efficiency. As a result, the bus system has been realized for only 1% of the budget of a metro system, or 5% of the budget for a light rail, or 10% of the budget of a streetcar, and has been realized much faster. Also the absence of lengthy undergrounds strolls and the aspect of social security are advantages in relation to an underground metro system.

The successful transport concept has been copied to a number of cities like São Paulo, Los Angeles (Orange Line), Seoul and Bogotá (TransMilenio). Although Curitiba has the biggest percentage of cars per inhabitant after Brasilia, about 75% of the population uses public transport. This is more than 2 million passengers a day, more than the daily use of the New York City metro. As a result, Curitiba uses 20% less fuel in relation to other big Brazilian cities.

Sustainable History of Curitiba, Brazil (1/3)

2007-04-17T14:03:00.000+02:00

Curitiba, capital of Paraná State, can be seen as an exponent for collaborative design. As an agricultural market and a regional centre of trade, Curitiba experienced explosive expansion as a result of industrialisation in the second half of the 20th century. The city increased by about 900 people per week for a period of 40 years, from 300.000 inhabitants in 1950 to 2,1 million inhabitants in 1990, an increase that took Paris about 250 years. The urge to canalise growth was recognised in Curitiba already in the early 60’s, contrary to for example São Paulo. During the mandate of mayor Ivo Arzua Pereira (1962-1967) this process was initiated.

[Rua Quinze de Novembro in 1971, just before the transformation of Curitiba]

Initially the masterplan to prevent traffic congestion provided in the construction of a fly over on top of the central shopping street, Rua Quinze de Novembro, and the demolition of existing historic buildings in order to widen the roads. Of similar solutions there are plenty of examples in São Paulo, which resulted in unordered, undefined and socially unsafe urban spaces. Therefore it is no surprise that the plan was protested against, especially by a group of architecture students of the Universidade Federal do Paraná. The group came with an alternative plan, with the preservation of the historic centre of the city as a starting point. From this group a number of now graduated architects got an advising role in 1965, and from this group the Instituto de Persquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC, Bureau of Research and Urban Development) was formed. The IPPUC designed a new masterplan for Curitiba, which was presented in 1970.

Brazil Power Grid

2007-04-16T15:52:00.000+02:00

Aids, Linux and Intellectual Property in Brazil

2007-04-15T17:49:00.000+02:00

Involving the patents for Aids medicine and the initiative for the use of Free and Open Source Software in Brazil confronted the world with a new approach on intellectual property. It was for the first time a country came so close to the violation of a patent. Even though it is not a matter of a third world country with an underdeveloped system of justice that can allow itself the freedom to ignore international laws on IP because it has nothing to lose anyway. The principle of ignoring international laws on IP is not new. Already in the 19th century the United States ignored the copyright of foreign authors to give the young nation the freedom to develop itself. [1]

IP was defined initially to allow inventors to share the details of their inventions under protection of the law, that guaranteed a certain monopoly for the commercial exploitation of her or his invention. This way innovation and development, and as a consequence economic growth, would be stimulated. But as the years passed the aspect of development got less important, and issues of property and exploitation have gained importance, which made the issue predominantly a juridical one. This can lead to surreal situations, as was proved in 2001 when the Japanese Asahi Foods Company patented Cupuacu, [2] a Cacao-like plant from the Amazon. This way the absurd issue raised that the Brazilian and Peruvian locales, that had been cultivating the plant for generations, could be accused for the violation of IP. A comparable case of ‘bio piracy’ was reported in the case of Basmati rice in India.

[Minister Gilberto Gil at Berkeley University]

As the aspect of development lost priority in the discussion about IP, the possibility to react efficiently to emergencies, like the Aids epidemic and poverty, got more difficult. This is why the leaders of the country decided to change their view on IP. As pop artist, minister of culture and protagonist of FOSS Gilberto Gil said: “… The Brazilian government is definitely pro law, but when the law does not apply to reality, the law has to be changed. That’s not new. It is civilization as usual …” [3]

The Brazilian attitude on IP is fundamentally not a matter of blackmail or cost efficiency, but a choice for a new model of development. As Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira said: “… We are not talking about one product against the other – like Ford against Fiat. We are talking about different models of development …”. [4] It is the difference between a model based on economic development and a model based on development in general. It is a model of the collaborative design and shared responsibilities.

[1] Patently Problematic - The Economist - September 12, 2002
[2] http://www.amazonlink.org/biopiracy/cupuacu.htm
[3] Minister of Counterculture – Oliver Burkeman – The Guardian – October 14, 2005
[4] We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin – Julian Dibbell – Wired Magazine – November 2004

Discovery Channel on Ethanol in Brazil

2007-04-14T21:46:00.001+02:00

This nice 7 minute documentary (in Portuguese) shows about the production and use of ethanol in Brazil.

Brazil: Linux by Policy

2007-04-14T11:49:00.000+02:00

“… Every licence for Windows and Office in Brazil – a country where 22 million people starve – means we have to export 60 bags of soy beans. For the rights of use of one and a half year, until the next upgrade, for one copy of Windows and Office, we have to cultivate, sow, reap and export that much soy. When I tell this to the farmers, they go nuts …” – Marcelo Délia Branco, coordinator of the Free Software Project. [1]

This argument made the Lula da Silva administration decide in 2005 to concentrate policy involving digital development around one key aspect: Free and Open Source Software. Linux is an example of FOSS and is a computer operating system, just like Windows. The difference is that the source code is available to everyone, and can be improved by everyone. The result is a program that is more stable then corporate Windows and with less bugs, which is the main reason why it is used at servers of big corporations like Google. The principle of FOSS was defined in 1989 by Richard Stallman in the General Public Licence as a part of the GNU project. So FOSS is in fact everyone’s property, and there are no licences involved.

These principles made the Brazilian government decide in 2005 to switch to FOSS for all governmental institutions, for which a letter of intent was signed with IBM. Also a demand was put to all institutions or corporations that are subsidised by the federation to develop their software as FOSS. Brazil is fertile ground for FOSS. The grassroots movement that promotes the use of FOSS is strong and there are a number of companies that already make a thorough use of it. Petrobrás, Brazil’s biggest company, and also Banco Real (ABN AMRO) and HSBC [2] are some examples. There are even cash dispensers that are operated with FOSS.

Microsoft is rightly worried about Brazil’s policy on information technology. Bill Gates has tried on several occasions to speak about the matter to president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, like at the World Economic Forum in January 2005 in Davos, Switzerland. Also, Microsoft reacted by offering a cheaper, more simple version of Windows XP, but after the government rejected saying the program was not suitable for their purposes Microsoft started to issue the program for free to local authorities and computer projects for the poor. The relationship with Microsoft plummeted when the coordinator for the use of Linux within the government, Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira (a sociologist, like Cardoso), of the National Institution of Information Technologies marked the strategy of Microsoft as “… drug dealer practices, a Trojan horse, the insurance of critical mass to keep the country strangled …“. [1] Initially Microsoft protested against the accusations, but under public pressure the protest was retrieved.

[1] We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin – Julian Dibbell – Wired Magazine – November 2004
[2] The Penguin Advances – Marineide Marques

Ethanol in Brazil in 1928

2007-04-13T09:53:00.000+02:00

Brazil: HIV versus medicine patents

2007-04-13T08:25:00.000+02:00

To the combined oil and sugar crises Brazil reacted with a characteristic pragmatism and with a strong focus on social aspects. In a land with severe cultural and economical contrasts, every
problem is a social problem by definition. The role of then minister of finance Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), former professor sociology, is and example in this perspective. He was able to win control over hyperinflation with the introduction of a new valuta, the Real. [1]

In 1990 the same Cardoso, now Brazil’s president, was forced to take action against the further spreading of the Aids virus. In those times the percentage of HIV infected was a about 1% of the population, comparable to that of South Africa at that moment. Though Brazil is the world’s biggest Roman Catholic country, the campaign was characteristic not for its moralism but for its pragmatism. The taboos about sexual relationships were confronted in a preventive campaign aimed at prostitutes, drug users, truck drivers, prisoners and street children but also married women, an important group as they consider themselves safe for the virus within their marriage. The government started to spread 10 million condoms during Carnival 2005 in cooperation with nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and minister of health Saraiva Felipe announced the construction of a federal condom factory. [2]

Next to prevention another focus point in the campaign was medication, which started with the free distribution of an anti Aids cocktail of 12 medicines. In 2001 the cocktail was issued to about 100.000 people, which took about 28% of the available buget (USD 88,5 M). The limited budget, a growing amount of infected people combined with the fact that some medicines in the cocktail were disproportional high, made an efficiency check necessary. For those medicines for which the patents were expired, Brazilian laboratories were contacted in order to develop cheaper versions of the medicines. For the patented medicines, then minister of health José Serra took the initiative in 2001 to contact a number of pharmaceutical industrials to urge them to give a discount on the delivered medicines. In exchange stability in the market was offered for a period of six years. This way the producers would have a guaranteed market and the patent would be respected. [3]

The proposal was met with great indignation. The United States took the initiative at the World Trade Organisation to protest the act of disrespect for intellectual property. Under public pressure, the Americans were silenced in June 2001, the day the UN Aids convention opened in New York. Ultimately the American producers Abott (producer of Kaletra) and Merck, Sharp & Dohme (Efavirenz) issued substantial discounts on the medicines, the latter even up to 64%. Also an agreement was made with Abbott for a technology transfer for the produce of medicine, once the patent would expire in 2015. [4]

[Aids has barriers - protect yourself - use a condom]

Apart from these agreements the Brazilian government considered it important that also the Swiss producer Roche would issue a substantial discount, as their medicine Viracept (or Nelfinavir) was responsible for about 25% of the costs of the cocktail. Roche refused, even when Serra reminded them that Brazilian law permits the violation of intellectual property when an emergency is involved. When preparations were made to allow a Brazilian laboratory to start the production of the medicine and de facto actually breaking the patent on Nelvinavir, the Swiss resigned and reduced the price with 40%. Finally the WTO agreed with India and Brazil for a more flexible interpretation of IP law with the TRIPS protocol (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). It was acknowledged that public health and national emergency have priority over the protection of free enterprise.

As a result of the campaign Brazil counted 597.000 HIV infected patients in 2001, when the
campaign was five years in progress, half of what was predicted by the UN 10 years before. Also the amount of Aids victims were halved, an the number of hospitalized patients was diminished by 80%, with help of improved medication. Today the percentage of infected is 0,3%, contrary to a dramatic 20% in South Africa, where the situation was comparable to Brazil’s in 1990. [5]

[1] The Accidental President of Brazil - Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Public Affairs Books – 2006
[2] Brazil plans massive condom drive – BBC News – December 1, 2005
[3] Swiss giant bows to Brazil over pricing of anti-Aids drug – Alex Bellos – Guardian Weekly – September 6,
2001
[4] Defiant Brazil gives go-ahead for copies of anti-Aids drug – Alex Bellos – The Guardian – August 24, 2001
[5] The Accidental President of Brazil - Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Public Affairs Books – 2006

Rivers of Brazil

2007-04-12T17:31:00.000+02:00

Brazil - U.S. agreement on ethanol

2007-04-11T17:25:00.000+02:00

Brazil and the U.S. agreed on collaboration in the production of ethanol [1]. The use of ethanol instead of fossil fuels is in itself a good thing, but the agreement can be met with some reservation.

What is concerning is the effect that mass production of sugar cane, the source of ethanol fuel, can have on the Amazon rain forest. [2] The cultivation of soy for biodiesel has proven to be a disaster for the rain forest. Extensive production of sugar cane for foreign markets could have the same effect.

All problems, like all solutions, are local. [3] Brazil should meet its 'problem', in this case mobility, which is local, with a solution that is local. Therefore, Brazil should produce ethanol for its own market, and maybe a bit beyond, and should share its knowledge through licensing. This way, mass exportation and exploitation can be avoided. If the export of ethanol will expand, the deforestation of the Amazon will go into hyper drive.

[1] Bush hails biofuels pact in Brazil - International Herald Tribune - March 9, 2007
[2] Brazil farmers boost land for sugarcane - BusinessWeek - April 9, 2007
[3] Cameron Sinclair - Architecture for Humanity - TEDtalks - July 25, 2006

Flex Cars in Brazil

2007-04-11T13:59:00.000+02:00

Because of the tradition in the use of alternative fuels, expertise was built in the produce of cars that are customized for these fuels. Flex cars can use several types of fuel, or a mix of them. By now, in Brazil it is obligatory to mix 25% of ethanol with any other fuel, and of all fuel about 33% is made out of sugar cane. In 2004 the amound of flex engine cars was 17% of all newly produced cars, in 2005 it was 80% and the estimates are that it will be 100% in 2007. [1]

As a result of the use of hydro electricity and ethanol, in combination with efficient use of energy, the carbon emission rate per inhabitant is about half of the world’s estimate at 0,5 tons. In comparison: for a North American this is 5,58 tons. But 80% of the Brazilian carbon emission is a consequence of deforestization, [2] where soy production an ground speculation can be held responsible for. Brazil is the world’s second soy producer, after the United States, and a part of the production is used for making biodiesel. Biodiesel doesn’t produce substantially less carbon then fosil fuel, contrary to ethanol. So however biodiesel is organic, her sustainable value is questionable because of the pollution and the effect on the rain forest.

1 Sugar Powers a revolution on Brazil’s roads – Tom Phillips, David Gow – The Guardian – November 23, 2005
2 Soya is not the solution to climate change – Giulio Volpi – The Guardian – March 16, 2006

A Brief History on Ethanol in Brazil

2007-04-10T11:17:00.000+02:00

Not just in the field of electricity, but also in the field of fuel Brazil has a leading position in sustainable energy. Between 1983 and 1988 about 90% of all Brazilian cars were ethanol fueled.[1] The initiative for the use of ethanol was taken in 1975, as a reaction to the oil and sugar crises that coincided. In those times Brazil was dependent on foreign oil for 38% [2] and had a substantial sugar industry, so the crises could potentially bring the country’s development to a halt. But governmental project Proalcool transformed the disadvantages of both crises to an advantage by adding distilleries to the existing sugar industry plants. This way ethanol could be produced from sugar for car fuel. Additional advantages: more energy is created per unit in comparison to fossil fuel, and it is less polluting. This way the use of ethanol contributed to cleaner air in the urban areas, where 80% of the 180 million Brazilians live. When the oil market recovered though, oil became more cheaper again, and the use of ethanol dropped to 20%.

Currently the oil prizes rise again and as the prizes of ethanol are about 70% cheaper than fossil fuels, so the expertise from the 80’ is in focus again. By now, Brazil is producing 2 billion litres of ethanol each year, which is about 40% of annual global production. Factories are being opened for refinement of ethanol from sugar cane, like for example one in the favela of Cidade de Deus (City of God) in Rio de Janeiro, the slum where the awarded movie with the same name from 2002 was based on. Alvaro Barreto from the National Technological Institution, responsible for the project, thinks these developments will help to fight poverty.[3]

[1] Sugar Powers a revolution on Brazil’s roads – Tom Phillips, David Gow – The Guardian – November 23, 2005
[2] A brief history of energy biomass in Brazil – Marco Aurélio dos Santos – Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro
[3] Sugar Powers a revolution on Brazil’s roads – Tom Phillips, David Gow – The Guardian – November 23, 2005

Brazilian Water Resources

2007-04-09T18:43:00.000+02:00

"The Amazonian basin, where ten of the twenty largest rivers in the world are to be found ... represents one fifth of the entire fresh water reserves of the planet. " Brazilian Government’s Ministry of External Affair, 2002

Source: Worldmapper

Brazil and the use of Nuclear Power

2007-04-09T18:31:00.000+02:00

The choice for the use of nuclear energy seems to be an unnatural one for a country that contains 10 of the world’s 20 biggest rivers. The use of hydroelectric power is almost a natural consequence.

Maybe the desintegration of the hydroelectric interconnected system of canals and lakes (see previous post) is the reason why president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s government is considering the construction of a third nuclear reactor in Angra do Reis, [1] which is the only commercial nuclear plant in Brazil. This plant generates 4% of the electricity that is generated by uranium from Brazilian soil. The plant resulted from an IMF demand and is supplied with two old German reactors – Angra I and Angra II – which already have caused lots of trouble. In September 2001 radioactive water was spilled in Paratí Bay (around the time I took a swim there) and in total the plant has been switched off for thirty times between 1985 and 1993. This has given her the popular name ‘Firefly’. [2]

We can assume that the plant is most valuable to the military. Brazil ratified the non proliferation treaty for nuclear arms, but the navy for example has a huge program for the development of nuclear powered submarines. [2]

[1] Brazil expected to announce plans to complete stalled nuclear plant -The Associated Press - March 24, 2007
[2] Brazil Nuclear Programs – April 1997

Brazil and the use of Hydro Electricity

2007-04-09T17:57:00.000+02:00

Until the Three Gorges Dam in China came into operation in May 2006, Itaipu Binacional, on the border between Brazil and Paraguay, was the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world. Itaipu provides in 95% of the energy of Paraguay and 20% of Brazil’s, including the mega cities São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.[1] Itaipu is not the only hydroelectric plant in Brazil, about 91% of all electricity is generated by water, which is unprecedented in the world.[2] As a consequence Brazil has become world leader in hydroelectric plants. The turbines of Three Gorges Dam in China are made in Brazil. [3]

Hydroelectricity may be a clean way to generate energy but it is not sustainable by definition. The construction of the dam, and in particular the basin can have a negative influence on the ecology of the dammed river and its surroundings. In the case of Itaipu special attention was given to this aspect. With the formation of the basin in 1982, with a length of 170 km, not only 42.000 inhabitants were evacuated (including their graveyards and archeological sites), but also the alligators, tapirs, dears, raccoons, panthers, monkeys and snakes that lived in the area (rescuers had to be vaccinated in anticipation of possible poisonous hazards). Usually these kinds of operations are merely cosmetic, with no further action involved, but in this case a new habitat of about 65.000 acre was created for the animals.[4]

To be able to deal with droughts, an integrated system of channels and basins was constructed. This way water shortages in one area could be compensated with water from another area. As a result of privatization of the hydroelectric plants this system has slowly disintegrated, which has made the energy grid more fragile.

[1] www.itaipu.gov.br
[2] Brazil Nuclear Programs – April 1997
[3] IMF and Energy Pirates made Brazil’s Electricity Crisis, ‘California Style’ – Nilder Costa – Executive Intelligence Review – July 20, 2001
[4] Brazil makes huge lake, mindful of man and beast - Warren Hoge - The New York Times - October 15, 1982

Sustainability in Brazil: an Introduction

2007-04-09T17:41:00.000+02:00

In Brazilian cities, favela’s and condo’s seem to be in a peaceful coexistence, but make the gap between rich and poor, the biggest in the world, painfully visible. This gap results in social tensions with an intensity that, according to the UN, is comparable to a small scale civil war. [1] São Paulo, Brazil's biggest city, is polluted and chaotic, the concretized market economy and the engine of South America, an organism that came into existence without any planning or policy. Nearby São Paulo lies Cubatão, in the 1980s the most polluted city in the world, with high percentages of miscarriages, deformed children and cancer patients. [2]

[Cubatão]

From this perspective it seems irony to be talking about a sustainable Brazil. In the northern hemisphere, it is at best seen as an emerging market, a country with potential but still Third World, and for a long time ignored because of hyperinflation of sometimes 2500% a year. [3] Brazilians are Indians, Africans, Europeans and Asians and the ethnic and social coherence of the population of Brazil is both her strength and her weakness. It is a country with extreme contrasts, between the rich and the poor, nature and industry, past and a potential future. Contrasts that may end up crises, but that also seem to trigger sustainable development.

This blog aims to learn from Brazil as a sustainable role model. Upcoming issues: Fuel, Aids, Software Libre, Intellectual Property, The Amazone, Movimento Sem Terras, Rodrigo Baggio, Coopa-Roca, etc. Contributions and meaningful discussions are welcome.

[1] The Accidental President of Brazil - Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Public Affairs Books - 2006
[2]In Acrid Brazilian Factory Zone, a Fear of Disaster - Marlise Simons - The New York Times – May 18, 1985
[3] The Accidental President of Brazil - Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Public Affairs Books - 2006