Three green roof conferences in April, the first in Qatar

In the Northern hemisphere things are looking green...or they will be soon and it's time to start planting again. If you have time for some conferences, there are three great ones this month.

First up on Wednesday, April 1 at Qatar University is a joint Qatari-Swiss one day conference entitled "Landscape as Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Food Security: Perspectives from Switzerland and Qatar".

Next, from April 6-12 is Greenroofs.com's annual virtual summit. Over 300 people tune in and participate from over 125 countries.

Later in the month is the fourth annual Green Roof Congress in Istanbul. From April 20-21 at the Zorlu Center's Raffles Hotel green roof folks from around the world will gather. The Zorlu Center has over 775,000 square feet of green roof!

A desert harvest, courtesy of desalinization

A couple of quick, but captivating stories for this Wednesday:

-The most tantalizing of the bunch comes from deserts of Australia (and Qatar), where a group is desalinating sea water with solar energy and growing fruits and vegetables for the continent.

-Citizens of Detroit are grappling with selling 1,500 parcels of city held land - almost 140 acres -  for urban agriculture...they think, as there’s no development plan yet!

-Dakar, Senegal supplies 45% of its city’s food supply via urban agriculture, generating over 450 million dollars last year alone! Land and water issues threaten to slow progress, let’s check in on this next year to see what is new.

-Kickstarter has been a boon to many smaller businesses, here’s an aquaponics one who has made it big! They have an attractive system, good luck to them!

Catching up

The first week of January has brought a ton of news and stories.

-On the local education front, in Detroit a high school will offers kids a chance to learn about urban agriculture via their new training center, complete with solar hoop house, photovoltaic labs and more.
In Edmonton high schoolers can now learn about raising fish and veggies and serving them to their classmates in the cafeteria. And a Vancouver university is rolling out a four year degree in small scale, sustainable agriculture!!!

-On the city level, Cleveland announced funding for several green projects, look for more community gardens and other projects designed to mitigate stormwater and flooding.
Ottawa was considering a green roof bylaw and now they are not so sure. Thanks to freedom of information requests, intrepid reporters dug up earlier drafts which reiterated mayor Jim Watson's support of green roofs and then, for some reason, mention of the bylaw didn't make the final speech. We'll see what happens in the spring!

-Let's go bigger, country big. Qatar is developing a food sufficiency plan. Makes sense when 90% of your food is imported. Or does it???
And lastly, check out Lebanon's first green wall.