The Nokero bulb at night. One GREAT feature is that it turns itself off in bright light -- so you could leave it on and hanging up, and it would go on at night when it gets dark.

We just got in three Nokero solar light bulbs today, and they are amazing.  I heard about this a few weeks ago, and contacted the company and ordered three to check out.

It is a very simple design — four small solar cells collecting energy, with a NiMH battery to store the power in, and a 5 LED “bulb”.  It looks (and feels) very rugged, and super durable.  I hung it outside today, and then turned it on this evening and it is decently bright — certainly enough to read by if you need to, or carry out other jobs at night.

This would be great on our expedition field courses — just clip it to a pack or canopy of a longtail boat during the day, and hang it up at night for light. As a study abroad program working in remote areas, these look to be a great addition to our bag of tricks.

We’re going to be stress testing it over the course of the next few months, but we can already see some great applications beyond just our own expedition field courses:

• Imagine airlifting thousands of these into places hit by a natural disaster (like Haiti) where the grid is down…
• Handing them out to IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in Burma or other war zones…
• Giving them as gifts to village host families who are away from the grid…

I’ve camped in the jungle at night, and it is REALLY dark.  Just think about how much better than trying to keep a fire burning for light one of these would be if you’re an IDP fleeing to the border?  No fire to worry about, no worries about running out of fuel, no need to buy batteries.  Getting them out there isn’t going to be easy — but it IS possible.

So we’re going to see about doing that, and maybe set up a way for folks to sponsor solar light bulbs for IDPs in Burma through ISDSI…

For more information (or to order one yourself) go to www.nokero.com.

The final course of the spring semester study abroad program at ISDSI is our course on Coastal Ecology and Culture.  This is the capstone of the semester, and brings together leadership skills, cross cultural and language skills, as well as expedition skills so that the students can study the reefs, sea grass, mangroves and local communities in Trang, Southern Thailand.

Here are a few photos taken by our instructor, Pi Ben, to give you a bit of a feel of what the course is like.

The prow of a new longtail boat on Mook island.

Krissy and Nikki paddling in on a double seakayak.

Ben sea kaking, leaving the beach for the crossing to Mook island.

Ben and Karen, leaders of the day, explaining the day's route by sea kayak.

Ben landing on the beach and pulling up his kayak. The ISDSI support boat in the background.

Dinner with a view. Camping on the beach in Trang.

Karen padding into the beach.

A longtail crossing by after a storm.

Karen and Ben, leaders of the day, sorting out the kayaks after a day's paddle.

Riley identifying different types of seagrass during a study of seagrass ecology and dugong feeding behavior.

A real pirate cave -- a great location for a seminar by Bang Hed, a village elder, about mangroves and community. (The pirates have been gone for a long time... at least that's what Bang Hed says...)

Jack and his host family, Baan Iet, Ja Mai, Nong Chock, and Nong Lin.

Pi Noi, usually in the office, but also working the occasional field course, and Pi Toto, field instructor.

The host families of Jao Mai village with their students.

Mid-course seminar with Ajaan Mark. ISDSI field seminar rooms don't have WiFi, but we like them!

Ben watching the sunset over the Andaman Sea.

Pi Kat, businesswoman, climber and occasional ISDSI Field Instructor, climbing at Crazy Horse. (Photo credit: Josh and Dan Morris)

A core part of what we do at ISDSI is to teach students about teamwork, leadership, and decision making. We believe that part of creating a more sustainable world is equipping students with practical skills in how to work and lead, so that their passion for sustainability can be transformed into action.

A great way to combine these lessons is through the challenge of rock climbing. We are fortunate to be near a world-class climbing destination, and have helped a bit over the years to develop Crazy Horse, from crag clean-ups to trail building to some initial meetings with local officals. Crazy Horse is a community effort spearheaded by the folks at Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures.  Each semester, ISDSI students go out to Crazy Horse to climb and have an amazing time. Josh Morris and Khaetthaleeya Uppakham (Pi Kat) have done a great job developing the crag into not only a world-class climbing destination, but also an example of how to develop a sustainable ecotourism destination. We’ve worked with both Josh and Kat, and Kat is a field instructor for ISDSI when she has time.

Climbing Magazine has featured them in an article, The Other Thailand, talking not just about the climbing, but also the history and unique development of Crazy Horse.

Leave behind Thailand’s farang-packed Tonsai, and you’ll discover Crazy Horse, a quiet crag that’s redefining sustainable tourism in Asia…

Crazy Horse Buttress rises above rice paddies 25 miles from the culturally vibrant city Chiang Mai. Named for its principal formation’s striking resemblance to an equine head, Crazy Horse comprises a cluster of 15 quiet cliffs first climbed in 1998 and now boasting 97 single-pitch and 15 multi-pitch routes. Spanning 5.6 to 5.13c, the climbs tackle everything from technical slabs, to overhanging tufas, to multi-chambered, stalactite-dripping caves — not to mention the wealth of untapped rock.

However, the cliff’s true essence lies in the tight-knit community of locals and foreigners who’ve developed it. With an emphasis on social and ecological sustainability, the motley Crazy Horse crew has endeavored to keep this a quality destination for the long haul. In fact, many climbers now hold up Crazy Horse as a case study on how climbing tourism can positively affect a foreign community. Turns out, one of the most important factors is for the locals to come to love climbing, too.

If you’re interested in sustainability, ecotourism and (of course) climbing, jump over and read “The Other Thailand.”

Each Expedition Field Course has a mid-course seminar — a chance to reflect on what is being learned, summarize, and prepare for the next phase of the expedition.  Ajaan Abram, teaching the rivers course, met the students in Nong Khai and traveled with them to the seminar site.

Students working on their posters in the guesthouse overlooking the Mekong river.

For the Rivers course, the seminar took place in the riverside town of Chiang Khan, in Loei province.  Chiang Khan used to be a sleepy town of wooden buildings built along the banks of the Mekong river, across from Laos.  Now, the old wooden buildings are being converted into guest houses, Internet cafes, and funky restaurants — as it is only a day’s drive from Bangkok. It is a great place for mid-course on Rivers, as it is half way between Issan (the Northeast of Thailand) and the Northern Thai province of Phrae, where the students paddle the Yom River (go to our maps page to see the course locations).

A street in Chiang Khan.

During the seminar the students ha a chance to talk through what they had learned from the communities of fisherfolk along the Mun river, the impact of the Pak Mun dam, as well as what they had observed on the transect of the Mekong river up from Ubonratchathani province.

Filling in the details before presenting.

Two of the key questions that were discussed were about connections and interactions taking place in and around rivers in SE Asia.

Taylor and Karen talking about the “Bangkok Monster” and its impact on the river, villagers, ecosystems and other players in resource management.

Students were asked to draw the spatial, environmental, economic and sociological connections of major players in and around the Mun River before and after the construction of the Pak Mun dam. They were also asked to reflect on transboundary interactions of players on the Mekong including the spatial, environmental, economic and sociological connections.

Jill, Emily and Kadilyn (with the Mekong river behind them).

Here are some photos of the day, along with their posters and explanatory text, to give you a feel for the course.

Exploring the connections between environmental, social and economic impacts of the Pak Mun dam.

Women in Chiang Khan selling “popia tot” (fried spring rolls).

Karen and Taylor discuss the Mekong as a chocolate river (more below).

Transboundary issues -- as water flows down the river, each user takes out some, leaving less for the downstream countries.

Vested interests of different actors in managing the Mekong river.

Motorcycle with rattan basket in front of the guesthouse. (You can see the Mekong River and Laos through the window out the back of the guesthouse.)

The Mekong represented as a giant catfish — with each group trying to take a share (eat the fish).

The Mekong river as the chocolate river in the Willy Wonka factory, with each user (country) drinking from the river, the ompa-loompas as the Mekong River Commission trying to get everyone to cooperate, and consumerism floating down the river.

The village and their livelihood before the dam and “development” — with villagers self-sufficient in fish, and earning money from a very rich fishery. After, they loose their self-sufficiency and are forced to migrate to the city to work.

Sunset over the Mekong river -- Thailand on the left, Laos on the right.

We got back from our recon of the Yom River late Monday night for our Rivers course. It was a good chance to learn more about the river, test out our new canoes, check on gear and rigging, and see how the canoes performed in both swift water as well as some of the long shallow sections of the Yom. Not the usual prep for study abroad courses, but standard practice for ISDSI Expedition Field Courses.

Unloading the canoes for the recon.

The Yom is an interesting river.  The section we paddle (about 48 km) flows through forests, and along some fields, but not through any villages or under bridges — so it has a much more “wild” feel than many rivers in Thailand.  There are no weirs or dams on this section of the river, and it supports a vibrant ecological and human community — people fishing, birds hunting fish, etc.  It also flows through the last remaining stand of golden teak in Thailand. The reason we paddle this section is that this is the part that will be lost if the government goes ahead with plans to dam the river (and cut the teak). So the village elders and youth activists we paddle with treasure canoeing down the river as much as we do.

A section of the topographic maps we used. We use digitized versions we customize and print out for the course.

For the recon we had three goals.  First, we needed to assess how low the river really was.  The data that we had from the Thai Hydrology and Water Management Center (hydro-1.com) showed that the Yom was running at about 60 cm.  Last year when we ran the river a month further into dry season, the river was running at about 80 cm.  That is a pretty significant drop from last year, and we wanted to see what that meant.

The Yom river tends to have three distinct types of river topography — long and deep sections without much current, short drops with rapids (cobble stones or larger rapids), as well as sections of braided river flowing through willow thickets. Even in very dry years, the long deep sections can be paddled, but we weren’t sure about the rapids and willow thickets.

Pi Pu (with Pi Carrie in the stern) checking out the willows and reeds up close and personal...

The second reason to do the recon was to check out how the new Mad River canoes performed. We’ve used two other types of canoes in the past, PakCanoes and SOAR canoes. The PakCanoes are a skin-on-frame design, and while exceptionally lightweight, running them over rocks and rapids (especially limestone) and through willows eventually wrecked them. They are great canoes for remote wild rivers with bigger water, or lakes, but for the rough conditions we encounter didn’t really work.  The SOAR canoes are amazing — they have taken the same technology for river rafts and created a two person canoe. They inflate, and are thus very easy to transport (and are, in fact, very popular in remote locations in Alaska and similar places).  We used them for a few years, and then had problems with the floor welds (that kept the floor tube flat) failing. The company was fantastic, and fixed the boats for free. We’re holding on to them to use in bigger water (they are terrific whitewater boats) as well as to use if we run courses in more remote locations.  In the meantime, we purchased 15 Mad River canoes (Explorer 16s).

No advanced materials for this guy's boat -- just a hewn log and hand carved paddle!

The Mad River canoes we used performed very well.  The polyethylene hulls stood up to a great deal of abuse, and slid over the cobbles and river rocks (where the other canoes would have stopped).  We also found that due to their hull design, you could edge the canoe (lean up on one side) and get through or over tight rocky sections. The canoes also tracked very well (were easy to keep straight) and moved very quickly in the long slack sections of the river.

Pi Noi taking a break from being office manager and dealing with paperwork to get out in the field.

The final reason we did the recon was a combination of the first two.  We needed data on how fast we could expect the group to travel on each section of the river. This is a combination of the specific river topography (slack water, shallow rapids, braided willows) and the specific boats we are using (shallow “v” hulled polyethylene canoes).  We used topographic maps with a 1 km UTM grid and a GPS to determine our location, and then calculated our average rate of travel for each section.  That way the instructors and student leaders of the day can gauge their progress, and know when to stop, and how fast to pace themselves to accomplish the academic objectives of each day — studying the river ecology, local knowledge and community efforts to conserve the river and the fish.

Ajaan Mark and Pi Ben working out location and pace off a map and GPS (with Pi Carrie and Miriam cooling off in the background).

The recon went well.  We started paddling on Saturday at 3, and started looking for a campsite as it was getting dark.  The next morning, we got up early, had breakfast and broke down camp, and paddled through the day with a few rests and a lunch break.  Paw Sanguan, one of the village elders, met us at lunch, and we were able to talk over the logistics for the course more, as well as how the boats handled. Paw Sanguan is expert fisherman and river paddler (in the old style dug-out canoes the villagers use as well as our new ones), and is a key instructor for our course.

We pushed hard  until just before dark through lots of rock gardens, rapids, braided willow channels, and slow deep sections.  We camped, ate dinner, and fell to sleep sore but happy.  We were making amazing time, and would probably be able to make the take out at the Kaeng Sua Ten (Dancing Tiger Rapids) sometime the next day.

Paddling late into the day.

Up early on the river, and a cold breakfast to help with a fast start, and into our first set of rapids right away. Along the way we ran into one of the village elders (or “Paw” — meaning “father”) who was out fishing and recognized us. He figured we’d make Dancing Tiger Rapids and the national park office by mid-afternoon at our pace.

Mist on the river in the morning, with a local fisherman pulling up the night's catch just ahead of us.

We were able to push hard through some long rocky sections, and made it to a place the students will use as a campsite in time for lunch, and made a quick satellite phone call to set up our pick up. Then a couple more hours of deep slack water, and then a kilometer plus of rapids, including the Dancing Tiger Rapids.  With the water level as low as it was, it involved a bit of pushing here and there, and was really technical and tricky — threading through rock gardens, and navigating the final “S” turns of the Dancing Tiger Rapid with a lot more rocks than usual (but a lot less water volume).

Ajaan Mark and Miriam (who was taking a break from Chiang Mai International School) in the midst of the Dancing Tiger Rapids.

We made it by about 3 in the afternoon — just about 48 hours total, three days, two nights.

Pi Carrie and Pi Pui pleased to be out of the willows, with a clean run down the final rapids.

We hauled gear and boats out of the river, got picked up later that afternoon, and then had a long van ride back to Chiang Mai, where we arrived late at night. The trip was great, we learned a lot about the gear, the river and the current state of the Yom.  We also have enough valuable information to pass on to the instructors and students so they can make the most of their time on the river, starting on Friday, March 5th.

Each time we run the Yom, we wonder how long it will last, and how long the community can keep the river wild and undammed. Every rapid, every willow thicket, every campsite — and their home village — will all be inundated if the dam is ever built. Each run on the river helps makes their case stronger — two years ago they used photos of ISDSI students paddling the river in testimony before Thai Parliament to argue that the river was not only ecologically significant, but also internationally important — not just valuable for “only” local people (the argument of those who want to dam the river). So while our role in saving the Yom might be small, we’ll do what we can.

We’re also donating one of the Mad River Canoes to the village activist group to help them in their on-going work of studying the river and documenting its ecological significance. Paw Sanguan already is looking forward to paddling it to his favorite spots, and teaching the younger generations about the Yom.

A Karen host-mom prepares a meal in the family kitchen.

Right now our students are up in Mae Hong Son, living and learning with the Karen (Ba’ken yaw) people. A large part of the Forests Course is learning about the ecosystems of upland Northern Thailand, including how upland rotational farming as practiced by the Karen fits into that. It is a complex issue, as practices which are ecologically sustainable at low population densities face pressure with growing numbers of villagers, and as the Thai State moves to further extend control of mountain areas. (There have even been efforts to remove tribal people from the mountains by force, thwarted only by NGOs and journalists exposing what was happening.)

But it is hard to fight corrupt officials and powerful commercial interests bent on extracting the last tree, log or flower from the forest, since the Karen are marginalized by language, culture, and the remoteness of their mountain villages.

As James Fahn, author of the book Land on Fire points out, in Southeast Asia, environmental issues often have a human rights component.

That’s true in America as well.

I’ve often been struck with the similarities of marginalized mountain peoples of both Thailand and the United States, particularly in Appalachia. There, human rights violations, corrupt government officials, and powerful private interests are not only displacing already marginalized people, but literally destroying the mountains to profit, not from logs, but from coal.

A great movie has been produced by Yale 360 on mountaintop removal mining (MTR), Leveling Appalachia.

During the last two decades, mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia has destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of forest and buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams. Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, a video report produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, focuses on the environmental and social impacts of this practice and examines the long-term effects on the region’s forests and waterways.

If ISDSI was in the United States, those are the communities our students would be living in right now.  That would be our Forests Course.

If you are in the US or not, watch Leveling Appalachia, then get involved in helping stop mountaintop removal.

At least in Thailand the trees have a chance to grow back.

Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles

One of the big issues facing a transition to sustainability is for businesses to figure out how to run more ethnically and be environmentally sustainable.  No one, of course, is all the way there yet, and most businesses are aware of that.  There are a lot of different approaches, and that’s great — we need a lot of different ways to figure this out.

Two interesting examples are Apple and Patagonia.  Both take very different approaches to sustainability, as they deal with different industries and products.  By their own admission, neither one is perfect, but I think they serve as good thought provoking approaches.  Rather than focusing on a critique of their efforts, here are some of the good things they are doing.

Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles

Patagonia is one of my favorite companies.  They have done so much to advance sustainability in business, from developing recycled fleece to starting 1% for the Planet.  They’ve really worked on being ethical and sustainable on a number of levels, and it is worth jumping over to their website to see all the different environmental initiatives they have going.

One of the more recent initiatives they have started is The Footprint Chronicles.  In their own words,

Build the best products and cause no unnecessary harm. This is our mission. Yet we’re keenly aware that everything we do as a business — or have done in our name — leaves its mark on the environment. There is still no such thing as sustainable business but every day we take steps to lighten our footprint and do less harm. The Footprint Chronicles allows you to track the impact of a specific Patagonia product from design through delivery.

When you choose a product, a map of the world show you how it travels — from factory to warehouse. There is a discussion of each element of the product (including energy use, CO2, water, etc.) as well as “The Good” and “The Bad” — essentially what they’ve got done so far, and what they are still trying to do.

They don’t have every product on the site, but enough diversity to give you a good idea of the type of manufacturing they do. Doing all the products would be close to impossible, and be so overwhelming it would actually be difficult to sort through.  They’ve done the hard work of sorting out what matters, and how it all fits together.  The product profile is supported with photos, videos (including interviews in the factories) and other information.  You could spend a lot of time clicking through what they are doing with each product, and come away with a really good understanding of the challenges and struggles it takes to be a sustainable business.

Apple

Life cycle impact and energy use.

Apple has taken a somewhat similar approach with Apple and the Environment. They lay out their overall approach to the environment and sustainability, and you can download a report on each currently shipping product.

We account for everything.  Including our products. Apple reports environmental impacts comprehensively. We do this by focusing on our products: what happens when we design them, what happens when we make them, and what happens when you take them home and use them.

Apple has been criticized in the past for not communicating well about what they are planning on doing for the environment.  Now they are communicating, and are trying to focus the discussion on what they are actually doing, not what they are promising to do.  A lot of companies come up with great plans for being more sustainable, but Apple in this case is focusing on what they are doing and have done.  They’ve got some great comparative data on their site, looking at past products and how things like changing packaging impacts their carbon footprint, etc.  Clearly they’ve been working on these initiatives for a long time, and it is good to finally see them doing a good job communicating about it.

They do a good job working through their carbon footprint, looking at manufacturing, shipping, facilities (including retail spaces), recycling, and the impact of consumer use. They deal with the issues of toxic substances in manufacturing, and are open about what they still need to do.  The focus on the life cycle is especially good, as they are thinking about and taking into account the product once it leaves their stores — working toward cradle to cradle accounting, including the environmental impact of consumer use and taking products back for recycling.

There is still a long way to go for both, and neither Patagonia nor Apple is all the way there yet.  However, it is very encouraging that two very different companies care enough about sustainability to put the resources behind not just doing it, but communicating well about what they are doing.

If you’re interested in sustainability, both of their websites are a good place to start to understand how it can happen in the real world!

Learning about forest ecology firsthand.

Seth Godin has a great post up today about learning versus schooling, Education at the crossroads.  Good food for thought.

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is ‘getting it’. It’s the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn’t care about workbooks or long checklists.

For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.

Seth’s got a good point, which I would modify a bit.  Schools are not necessarily organized around encouraging learning in the sense of “getting it.”  The good ones, however are organized around learning.  I think the distinction might be better if understood between good schools (where real learning is happening) and others that just push student through.  If all that is happening is testing, then clearly there is a problem!

His primary point, however, is the distinction between scarcity and abundance in education.

MIT and Stanford are starting to make classes available for free online. The marginal cost of this is pretty close to zero, so it’s easy for them to share. Abundant education is easy to access and offers motivated individuals a chance to learn.

Scarcity comes from things like accreditation, admissions policies or small classrooms.

For us at ISDSI, we have an inherent scarcity for our semester programs – we can can only take so many students a semester, based on class size and how many students our partners in the villages we work in can accomodate.  Recognizing that not all the students who would like to come can come, we’re in the process of exploring ways in which to share classes, experiences and our understanding of culture and ecology in Thailand.  As one step in that direction this last year we put all of our syllabi online, and are now exploring video, photos essays and other options for sharing what we’eve learned. We hope to have some lessons and other materials up over the next year.  If you have ideas of things you’d like to see or learn about, let us know in the comments!

Sustainability has a long history in SE Asia

Good overview of the growing importance of sustainability in higher education by Jillian Berman in USA Today, “College students are flocking to sustainability degrees, careers.”

Several schools are mentioned, as is AASHE (The Associate for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education).  Both undergraduate programs, graduate programs, majors, minors and other initiatives are surging in popularity.  I know that last year at the AASHE conference it had grown enourmously from the first one I attended six years ago – from 300-400 people to close to 1,800 participants, 400 presenters and 130 exhibitors!

This growth in interest is across the board – from undergraduate majors, to MBAs, architecture degrees to student life. Not content to just focus on sustainability in the classroom, there is a lot going on outside the classroom as well – with campus organic gardens, LEED certified buildings, recycling, etc.

What is most exciting about this is that the initiatives are largely student driven – as students get together to push the (sometimes reluctant) school administrators for more green / sustainable initiatives on-campus.

We’ve noticed the trend ourselves – we’ve got a record number of students enrolled this fall, and are seeing the students who do come have a deeper understanding of sustainability issues than in the past. It is enourmously encouraging to see the growth over the last 10 years at ISDSI, as sustainability has moved increasingly to the center of higher education!

Great new movie out in the theaters in the US.  I’ve not seen it yet, but am working on getting a copy and hopefully we can get a screening here in Chiang Mai.  The folks involved have a deep understanding of food systems, and for anyone interested in sustainability this is really required viewing.

Several of the people in the trailer are authors we read on our courses, and this is a great fit with our course on agroecology as well as several of the other courses that link into food systems issues, such as our forests course.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Go to the website here for the trailer and other information: http://www.foodincmovie.com/

Any movie with a bar-coded cow has to be good.

If you see it, let us know what you think in the comments!