WiserEarth Area of Focus Stewards

Problem: The Challenge:  implementing an efficient and effective program to provide free support for many working groups with many projects. Long-standing problems such as declining natural resources and deteriorating watersheds, prove how challenging it is to build effective collaboration across governments, civic groups, and business. To address this, new independent programs are being formed to focus collaboration by several agencies on a specific problem.  Suddenly, people in different agencies an...

Action: Move from talk to action, effectively. Design, implement, and deliver a web-based collaboration workspace to help a community of working groups to manage their strategic program and to measure their progress toward mandated goals. The S4S workspace is not a free-form environment; it provides structured collaboration with accountability. This business-like approach supports: designing strategy and process, tracking internal and external projects, coordinating participants, reporting progress, ...

Problem: A Woonerf in the Netherlands and Flanders is a street or group of streets in a town or city where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists. Woonerfs were popularized in the Netherlands in the 1970s as a reaction to the growing dominance of the automobile over bicycles. Blurring the boundary between street and sidewalk, woonerfs combine innovative paving, landscaping and other urban designs to allow for the integration of multiple functions in a single street, so that pedest...

Action:   During the first few years after World War II, Dutch transportation engineers began to emphasize relocating bicycles onto separate paths to accommodate the growing number of vehicles on the streets. This created a backlash, and the country soon moved in the opposite direction. Motorists were now forced to make accommodations for everyone else. The intent of this new approach was not to make cars disappear, but rather to integrate motorists and other users of the street into a shared space. ...

Problem: The current transportation system - particularly in mega-cities (such as Mexico City) - is already starting to become obsolete, un-efficient, as well as a significant source of air pollution; it is a problem with many social & ecological consequences. Visit www.ecosite.ws/nuestroporque or www.climatecrisis.net to get a deeper description about this issue.

Action: EcoSITE - Soluciones Integrales de Transporte Ecológico (Integral Solutions of Ecological Transportation) - is a movement (originated in 2003) that joins talented engineers, industrial designers, urbanists, ecologists, researchers, volunteers, among other experts, specialists and professionals in different areas (specially from the main colleges and universities, starting in Mexico). The main objective is to design prototypes, distribute and offer leasing services through individual ecologica...

Problem: How can we help to kick-start the future energy efficiency development of the 3rd World and in the same manner approach helping US owners of foreclosed houses become self-sufficient and profitable small local green businesses?

Action: http://www.wiserearth.org/uploads/file/bfc2d4ddf476eddca901b6dab2b18b98/Beyond%202%20copy.pdf       New Ways out of the Housing Crisis                                 Ways out of the Mortgage crisis (Beyond a Citizen's suggestion)   What does it take to Change the World? Nothing! The World is always changing! What does it take to move the World toward where most would like it to be, ...

Problem: Small cities and towns across America face many challenges. Towns that are close to significant natural resource amenities face increasing development pressures from urban professionals plying their trades via the Internet and enjoying the great outdoors, and from burgeoning retirement populations seeking the high quality, low stress way of life found in these picturesque and desirable places. Other communities suffer from youth exodus, crumbling infrastructure and antiquated economies, and a...

Action: A community is a special place full of stories of the people who live there. Collectively, these stories are a big part of the community’s character: its heart and soul. In a way, planning is like writing the next chapter in a community’s story. As we enter the 21st century, there are signs that citizens expect to have a greater role in community decisions. In The Next Form of American Democracy, Matt Leighninger wrote, “[C]itizens seem better at governing, and worse at being governed, than e...

Problem: Substantial reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be achieved by encouraging mass transit. Traditional mass transit is better suited to urban areas but less well suited to suburban and exurban areas, and builds hub and spoke rail and bus networks with either expensive fixed rights of way or labor intensive bus routes with significant investment in rolling stock. Smart highway infrastructure is a standards-based approach to technology development for universal mass transit, with t...

Action: How to do it: • Promulgate, in cooperation with industry, open standards for hi-tech companies to design vehicle guidance and collision avoidance systems • Start by deploying standardized fixed transponders along sections of Interstate highway as a test bed that private companies can use for development of such systems • Allow IP backhaul, or use of transponders in conjunction with intra-vehicle communications, provided that compliance with standards is maintained • Establish open standards f...

Problem: The Problem Arizona’s juvenile corrections system, behavioral health services, and educational environments are lacking successful programs to meet the needs for at-risk or challenged youth across all ethnic groups. It is likely that this situation can be applied nationally. Patterns of abuse continue to plague our society in growing numbers. Emotionally and physically jailed juveniles are simply not available to learn coping skills that help them survive and thrive as community member...

Action: The Solution The analogy of taking a fish out of a dirty fish tank, cleaning it off, and throwing it back in with expectations of survival and success applies here. We need more than a clean fish tank, we need a new aquarium. Spectrum Academy is that new aquarium, equipped to meet the needs of habilitating at-hope youth with skill and precision for the 21st Century, by harvesting historical values and restoring cultural and traditional foundations. 21st Century youth need 21st Century ...