"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Mexico City.
I currently live in Guadalajara but I was born Mexico City where It´s also where I lived most of my life so I will focus on Mexico City which is also where I plan to open a pilot model of this Evokation. Mexico City has at the same time great problems and huge potential. Most of this problems come from the massive growth of the population in Mexico City
This image shows the exponential growth Mexico City had since the year 1700 with the purple representing the size of the city at the time and red representing the size of the city in 2000. The Metropolitan Area has a population of 18,131,000 people according to http://www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm but other studies say there is more people. Megalopolis add a lot of complexity.
This density of population can lead to food, water and energy scarcity. Also it can lead to social unrest and even violence due to the global
economic crisis, high unemployment rates and political conflict in
Mexico. Our solution again is to build resilient community solutions
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/copying-the-internet
Earthquakes
Earthquakes are in my opinion one the biggest threats to Mexico City, if not the biggest. I still remember when In 1985 an Earthquake of 8.1 killed 10,000 approximately and destroyed many parts of the City. It was my birthday and I was turning 8 years old. It was a tragedy but tragedies are here to make us stronger, wiser and more resilient. The corrupt government in Mexico was not doing much, but people organized themselves. Everyone I knew was volunteering in some way:
People started looking under the rubble risking their own lives, with no professional training or equipment other than a lamp and a rope that would pull them in case the rubble would collapse. I don´t use the word Hero lightly, but this group of people deserve it. They are now an NGO of Heroes called Topos http://www.brigada-rescate-topos.org/sitio/ Now anywhere there is an emergency in the World they travel paying their own expenses to rescue people in New York after the 9/11 attacks, Indonesia after the Tsunami or recently in Haiti or Chile for the Earthquakes. I don´t know how many lives they have saved but they are well known internationally for their courage and effectiveness. What they lack in equipment they compensate with Courage and Heart. http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/my-heroes-topos
If Mexico City survived it was NOT thanks to the inefficient corrupt government. It was thanks to students that were collecting food, water and medicines and searching for people under the rubble together with factory workers. Stay at home Mom´s where cooking food for the rescuers and talking to everyone that we should save water because water was scarce. Mexico is unfortunately a very class divided society, but all those artificial borders where erased after the Earthquake, everyone had common goals: To rescue people, save lives and reconstruct the City. It was a tragedy, but Mexico City citizens learned that we didn´t need the government to do anything, all we needed is each other.
Mexico City raises up again
Today in 2010 the City is alive, despite all the problems it´s a vibrant business and cultural hub. Construction codes have changes and areas of danger have been maped:
This next image shows the danger of buildings from 1 to 3 stories high where gray is low risk and red high risk
Danger for buildings 6 to 10 stories high
http://www.proteccioncivil.df.gob.mx/mapas_sgm/sismos_1_df_d_400_42...
Danger for buildings 13 to 20 stories high
Earthquakes are still a big threat to Mexico City. This links are in Spanish http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=706... y http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/539530.html http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/09/19/index.php?section=sociedad&am...
http://noticias.universia.net.mx/ciencia-nn-tt/noticia/2008/09/23/n...
It´s about a Mexican scientist developing an earthquake alarm for cellphones. Mexico City Earthquakes have the epicenter on the Pacific Coast. That means that this alarm could detect an Earthquake and give from 60 to 200 seconds in advance to people in Mexico City that an earthquake is coming. Those extra seconds mean thousands even millions of lives in Mexico City given the scale of the population.
Volcanoes
Another threat is Volcanoes and that is monitored through CENAPRED (National Center for Disaster Prevention) http://www.cenapred.unam.mx/es/Instrumentacion/InstVolcanica/MVolcan/
Water Scarcity
Water scarcity is another problem: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279761 and again this is how I interpret the problem http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/food-energy-water-patterns and how we would solve it http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/copying-the-internet and brilliant ideas by Evoke member Vinay Gupta proposes http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/emergencies-and-infrastru...
Mexico City has this systems for emergencies: http://www.proteccioncivil.df.gob.mx/# and the federal government has this http://www.proteccioncivil.gob.mx/Portal/PtMain.php?nIdHeader=2&...
Redundancy
Ushahidi + HAM radio could work for Mexico City but we need to take this measures:
1- Expand the use of HAM radio´s and build more resilience around the way we are going to power them. Batteries, hand-cranked, solar, wind, bio fuels, friction . . . everything
2- Build resilience for Ushahidi. We need to build regional Ushahidi
centers where again they can get energy from every possible source.
3- Build resilience for cellphone towers, satellites, and again make
them dependent on more than 1 single source of power.
Mexico City has so many challenges ahead. That´s why I want to start a pilot program of the Global Network of Community Urban Farms http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/copying-the-internet in Mexico City. If it can survive in Mexico City it can survive anywhere.
Agent Patricio.
Views: 244
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Comment by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 16, 2010 at 10:27pm
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It sounds like Mexico City will be a great place to start a pilot program-- but I hope it will start in many other places at the same time.
I agree about the need for increased redundancy-- but I think one of the simplest and most important things to do for disaster preparedness is simply to get people to think about it in advance-- and perhaps provide some simple training courses like the Red Cross does for First Aid.
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Comment by Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys on April 16, 2010 at 10:51pm
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I totally agree with you on First Aid. We should all learn First Aid.
Let´s hope enough agents want to start their own Community Urban Farm and that the World Bank provides funds for everyone :-)
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