SOUTH AFRICA: Local research on show at COP17

You only had to attend a few events at COP17 to know that this mammoth annual climate-focused happening is in effect a great big academic gathering, all the way from the scientists who provide climate impact facts and figures to students protesting the tardiness and vested interests of government negotiators and researchers called on to provide the data NGOs need to raise sustainable project funding.

The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol (CMP7) brought more than 20,000 delegates and participants to Durban, on South Africa's east coast, between 28 November and 9 December.

The world's governments might not have achieved that much, but a great deal happened on the ground at COP17, much of it involving universities from across the planet, including the large local University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).

It was fitting that Durban would showcase its many green initiatives, and that UKZN would feature prominently in research partnerships and collaborations.

On one muggy day in Durban last week about 20 men and women - Asian, European, African, Canadian - each wearing a photo ID with COP17 accreditation status dangling from a powder-blue lanyard displaying the letters 'UNFCCC', alighted from a small bus at the Bisasar Road landfill site 'Gas to Electricity' project.

They had come to see one of the eThekwini municipality and city of Durban's showcase green initiatives, a partnership with UKZN. Seven engines were flaring off methane gas from the 44 hectare landfill to produce electricity, which is fed into the local grid, in turn reducing the site's carbon footprint.

Back in 2003 Professor Cristina Trois, head of UKZN's school of civil engineering, surveying and construction and project leader at the Centre for Research in Environmental Coastal and Hydrological Engineering, began doing World Bank-funded research, implemented by eThekweni municipality, which saw methane gas produced at three Durban landfill sites converted into electricity.

Trois' work as a result of the partnership became the framework for the first biogas-to-energy project in Africa.

The evening before the Bisasar Road trip, hundreds of COP17 attendees gathered at Durban's International Convention Centre, site of the global conference, for the launch of Momentum for Change, a UNFCCC initiative supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The goal of the Momentum for Change project is to recognise 'exemplary change solutions implemented through public-private partnerships'.

Among the 10 'Lighthouse Projects' showcased was Durban's Buffelsdraai landfill site Community Reforestation Project, initiated in 2008 as part of a greening programme implemented by the municipality to offset the carbon footprint that came with Durban being a 2010 Fifa World Cup host city.

Vocational training at Buffelsdraai results in employment of so-called 'tree-preneurs' who collect and cultivate seeds and grow indigenous trees to form a buffer zone between the landfill site and the community.

The COP17 group visiting Bisasar Road learned that it will close to waste dumping in 2014. The plant will continue to run on existing landfill for an estimated 10 years, said Durban University of Technology electrical engineering graduate Marc Wright, who oversees the plant.

At that point a similar conversion plant will become fully operational at Buffelsdraai, which by then will be reforested and buffered with indigenous trees, creating a sustainable conservancy area.

As is the case with Bisasar Road, Buffelsdraai is a collaboration between the city of Durban and UKZN, overseen by environmental engineer and anaerobic digester expert Trois, a member of an international network of experts advising the UN Commission for Sustainable Development, and student researchers and other staff from her department.

Back at COP17 Dr Riaan Stopforth, a lecturer in the school of mechanical engineering and a member of its mechatronics and robotics research group, was in the public-access section showing off a selection of urban search and rescue robots, an unmanned aerial vehicle and a wandering robot let loose to showcase the navigation and obstacle detection capabilities of robotic systems.

"The robots are used to assist rescue personnel to locate victims in disaster areas," said Stopforth. "We work closely with eThekwini and the Durban Metro Fire Department around disaster management." The Municipal Disaster Management Centre was activated in June 2010 to coordinate risk management and disaster response - including to severe storms and extreme heat.

Clive Greenstone did his masters on green rooftops through UKZN's school of architecture, planning and housing. For that, he created a temporary green roof at Durban's Howard College campus. Greenstone, now researching for his PhD, provides the green fingers behind Durban's 'green roof pilot project', another initiative showcased by the city during COP17.

Since 2008, this project has been reintroducing biodiversity into the city centre via experimental plantings of indigenous species on rooftops at the City Engineer's office. The project attracts birds, bees, spiders and a whole host of creatures to what was previously a hot, flat roof and is a blueprint for the implementation of green roof technology.

Professor Chris Buckley, head of the pollution research group in the UKZN department of chemical engineering, is happy to wax lyrical on two other Durban green projects showcased during COP17, the Decentralised Wastewater Treatment System (DWATS) and a sustainable pit latrine management strategy. The municipality has about 80,000 pit latrines.

The DWATS project, researching the use of treated and recovered wastewater for urban horticulture, has facilitated a multidisciplinary approach, said Buckley.

Along with the city, his department is collaborating with crop scientists, soil scientists and microbiologists from UKZN's Pietermaritzburg campus. "A lot of what we do is about making communities resilient against climate change by facilitating productive use of water," he said.

Sociologists, meanwhile, are doing research on people using the communal ablution blocks Buckley's team and various research partners are installing at informal settlements in the Durban municipal area. Figures suggest around one million of the city's three million residents live in informal settlements.

"About five years ago we [his UKZN project] formed a memorandum of agreement with the city. It has been the most useful thing that has happened in my 35 years of research," said Buckley.

"eThekwini is the leader and authority in Africa, if not in Asia as well, on water and sanitation. What we do is mutually beneficial. We support and provide the scientific credibility around the decisions they make; they in turn provide us with interesting problems, money and resources."

So, for example, eThewini's strategic engineering team was responsible for the concept of introducing 75,000 urine diversion toilets. The pollution research group helped them address scientific problems.

Work done in partnership with the city has advanced direct dialogue between science and policy-makers, and informed national policy, said Buckley.

The idea of managing pit latrines by putting in biological additives (micro-organisms), for example, was attracting a lot of money until pollution research group team member Dr Kitty Foxon came up with the science to show that the products simply do not work.

Foxon was also quick to credit the eThekwini collaboration. "The municipality doesn't always do what people like, but they are world-class," she said.

Megan Spires, a climate protection scientist with the city's department of environmental planning and climate protection, who accompanied the Bisasar Road group to answer questions, said her department had recently formed a partnership with the biological and conservation sciences department at UKZN's Westville campus.

"The idea behind it is that we often have questions we can't answer and we don't have the time or human resources to get the answers. They do a lot of work on biodiversity and climate change adaptation so it makes sense that we should draw on their academic knowledge, experience and resources.

"For them, it means we provide funding, their masters and PhD students get to do relevant and applicable work - and in turn we get our research questions answered."

On the eve of COP17, by way of introducing his university to visitors, UKZN Vice-chancellor Professor Malegapuru Makgoba made the point that universities worldwide are increasingly being recognised as drivers of knowledge for social and economic development.

"Being a repository of existing knowledge and the generator of new knowledge puts the university in an unique position of leadership in relation to its society," he said, adding that universities had a responsibility to identify the most pressing issues of the time, anticipate the challenges of the future and respond sensitively and intelligently to each through research, teaching and outreach.

"Universities have a moral obligation and indeed a responsibility to take the lead and explore workable solutions."

UKZN, said Makgoba, had identified the development of technology for renewable and sustainable energy as one of its research focus areas and had entered into partnerships with industry and government to pursue the Integrated Renewable Energy Advancement Programme, the aim being to provide a comprehensive energy solution for South Africa using biomass and waste.

"And there are a host of other cutting-edge projects, which range from the use of design robots to reduce the effects of climate change and perform search and rescue operations arising out of climate change disasters, to the cryopreservation of plant germplasm as a means to preserve biodiversity."

Cristina Trois agreed. "Here in South Africa our work as academics inside and outside the classroom has a big impact. Maybe it sounds a little idealistic to say we're changing lives, but it's a fact. I tell you every single person with a degree in engineering walks straight into a job and immediately begins contributing to the economic growth of our country."