Old School Resilience: Going Back to Nature

Old School Resilience: Going Back to Nature – Deadly flash floods from Texas, Guizhou, South Korea to Pakistan show just how fragile current defences are against escalating extreme weather. So this month, we were privileged to talk to the “Father of Sponge Cities” Dr. Kongjian Yu on his groundbreaking approach of designing landscapes with nature, not against it. Also, we learn from ancient architectural design and Indigenous farming methods on how to adapt to hotter and drier climates. Ultimately this paradigm shift begins with ourselves and so we turn to Hong Kong-based eco-educator Jenny Quinton on ways to reconnect with nature. Yes, it’s possible, even in a concrete jungle.

Modern cities may be fortified in concrete, but hard-engineered landscapes are ill-equipped for extreme rainfall and flash floods. Dr. Yu realised this as early as 1998 when he witnessed the Yangtze River floods destroy grey infrastructure and inundate paved-over settlements: “we had turned water into an enemy.”

Going against conventional wisdom in urban development, Dr. Yu proposed a new way of designing for resilience – sponge cities. By slowing down the flows of water, sponge cities reduce the intensity of flash floods, as well as provide many other ecological, social, and economic benefits. Today, this transformational approach has become a national policy in China.

But sponge cities are more than design tools – they spark a cultural shift to reclaim the lost wisdom of living in rhythm with nature. Since ancient times, humans have been adapting to their local environments with low-tech, ecologically sound methods, like Yunnan’s rice terraces and the Pearl River Delta’s fishponds.

We’ve long been admirers of Dr. Yu’s work and designs by Turenscape, the firm he founded. They are transformative, inspiring, beautiful and functional so be sure to see these works and his vision of a “sponge planet.” For coastal flooding and nature-based solutions enthusiasts, he also walks us through the “Breathing Sea Wall” as an alternative model.

Further away from southern China’s wet and rainy climate, ancient civilisations like the Sumerians and Mayans developed ingenious ways to cope in a hot, dry desert environment. How did they do this without electricity or modern engineering? Architectural designer Adriana Zuniga-Teran explores passive cooling and water management techniques of the past.

The lessons from Egyptian wind catchers, Puebloan cliff dwellings, and Mayan aqueducts may be more important than ever today. Modern buildings rely on air conditioning to stay cool, but extreme heatwaves, droughts, and storms can wipe out power right when it is needed the most, as we saw in Spain and Portugal earlier this year.

Droughts, also on the rise, impact rural areas even harder. In water-scarce South Africa, there are about 2mn small-scale farmers who eat what they grow. Drought meant that there was not enough food to go around. Indeed, Southern Africa has been identified as a drought hotspot in the recently released UNCCD report “Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023-2025.”

To adapt to farming in drier conditions, small-scale farmers are using Indigenous knowledge. Researchers at the University of Zululand, Dr. Jabulile Mzimela and Prof. Inocent Moyo share strategies from the ground.

From planting drought-resistant crops to conserving soil moisture, they find these adaptations draw on “knowledge that has been built up over hundreds of years about actions that are useful in a specific local area.” See why they say climate adaptation needs to be grounded in local understanding of local ecology.

These lessons shared on cooling & farming in hotter & drier conditions may prove useful for some countries in ASEAN which have also been identified as drought hotspots.

All this tells us we should work with nature but many city dwellers have forgotten how to listen to nature, or worse – they have come to fear it. In Hong Kong, the problem of “biophobia” or the fear of nature can be pervasive especially among young people.

Children growing up in the age of AI may feel more comfortable alone indoors with a tablet than playing outdoors with new friends in the forests. Even many adults struggle with anxiety and have lost their connection to nature and place.

To reconnect, who better to talk to than Jenny Quinton? She founded Ark Eden 20 years ago as a “green haven” for Hong Kong people looking for a breath of fresh air in the busy city. She shares how activities like tree planting, nature camps & wellness programmes can help people reconnect with nature – and more importantly, reconnect with each other.

Can a week at Ark Eden be transformative? Does spending a day in nature bring joy & play back into your life? If you are hanging out in shopping malls to cool down this summer, why not get out of your comfort zone and get back to nature. Check it out.

It might feel frivolous to be smelling the flowers when we’re faced up against the daunting climate threats of extreme weather and temperatures, rapid sea level rise and more. But learning to ground ourselves in our environments might actually help tackle the root of the problem.

Modern technological innovations give us a false sense of security that we can engineer our way out of climate catastrophe. But these modern means use more resources and require more energy to make. As fossil fuels still dominate our energy supply, such adaptations will only lead to more emissions and greater threats. There must be a better way.

To get out of this vicious cycle, we say it’s time to build old school resilience. Back then, we harnessed nature to cool buildings, irrigate farmlands and sail around the world – we did all this without electricity. We can do that again today – let’s rethink modern methods through “old school” ways and make modern tech work with nature rather than against it.

As climate risks rise, adaptation action is inevitable, so is the market for old school resilience. So, go with the tide – let’s go back to nature to save our future.