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Howie Choset's robot snakes are remarkably mobile.

The Evolution of the Bioinspired Robot

<div class="related"></div>
<p>
 If you’re not prepared for the sight of them, Howie Choset’s robot snakes can make you jump. They slither between chairs and tables in his Carnegie Mellon lab, rear their heads to peer into crevices, and inch their way along pipes on the ceiling. When dropped into a pond, they switch over to sea serpent-mode, twisting tightly as they skim through the water. Like an ophidiophobe’s worst nightmare, they will even wrap around your leg and inch their way up toward your groin, if given the chance. “The benefit of the snake is that it’s able to reliably get to locations that people and machines can’t,” Choset says.
</p>
<p>
 These undulating machines may move like living snakes, but they can do things no ordinary serpent can. They can be launched through the air toward a tree or pole and, upon contact, will swiftly wrap around it, unharmed, in a tight coil. Cameras on their heads transmit footage back to their operators. Their length can be quickly changed by adding or removing joints, and those same segments endow them with a greater range of motion than any real-world snake could manage. That’s in part because snakes are burdened with over 100 million years of evolutionary baggage.
</p>
<p>
 But if nature isn’t perfect, neither are robots. Robots may be devoid of pain, endowed with skeletons of steel, easily modified, and adroitly controlled by humans, yet nature, with its versatility and adaptability, continues to outperform the most high-tech bioinspired machines available today.
</p>
<p>
 Nothing makes that point more clearly than Choset’s snakes, which despite their prowess, life-like grace, and extraordinary abilities, were utterly helpless when confronted with an ordinary mound of sand.
</p>
<h2>
 Superlative Start
</h2>
<p>
 If you were to trace the origins of bioinspired robotics, a good place to start would be the office of biologist Robert Full, circa 1986. Then, Full was a new professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and he had a problem. He was hoping to undertake a new study on cockroaches—not the most beloved creature in the animal kingdom—and like so many researchers, he desperately needed funding. Sifting through page after page of rules and funding requirements, he found what seemed like a loophole. If he teamed up with industry researchers, he could get more grant money.
</p>
<p>
 By chance, he soon met robotics pioneers Marc Raibert and Rodney Brooks. (Raibert would later found Boston Dynamics, arguably one of the most advanced robotics company in the world, while Brooks would go on to found iRobot, the company behind Roomba.) After talking, the trio decided to join forces. Full got to work on what he assumed was a flamboyantly embellished grant proposal. “I said, ‘We’re going to be able to create the fastest robots that can climb and go places that no other robots can go,’ ” he recalls. “I felt so guilty, thinking ‘I’m totally making this up!’ ”
</p>
<p>
 They ended up getting the grant.
</p>
<p>
 Full, Raibert, and Brooks’s initial collaboration—which stressed the importance of rudimentary control and mechanics in insect-like legged robots—proved much more than a one-off. “When I look back, I laugh,” Full says. “We wound up doing so much more.” As it turned out, the three were the vanguard of an entirely new field referred to by any number of names—biomutalism, locomotion systems science, computational neuromechanics, or robiophysics. Despite the diversity of monikers, its practitioners all have one thing in common—they team up with other like-minded, but differently trained, scientists to create autonomous and artificial approximations of living systems.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 As biologists have lifted the veil from one biological enigma after another, they have been welcomed into robotics.
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Scientists like Full occupy a unique space in the academic community. They are renaissance researchers whose work falls somewhere within the intersection of biology, physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and robotics. Their work is also informed by a sprinkling of materials science, neuroscience, design, and even philosophy. That’s because building a robot requires solving myriad problems. Researchers in different fields bring different perspectives, in part because each is seeking to answer a different question. The discoveries that emerge from these collaborations are more than any single field could ever manage on its own. Ultimately, everyone wins.
</p>
<p>
 As biologists like Full have lifted the veil from one biological enigma after another, they have been welcomed into robotics, a field traditionally stocked with engineers and physicists. Now, it’s practically de rigueur for a new robotics project to look to nature as a muse.
</p>
<p>
 But those researchers aren’t simply trying to build an exact machine replica. Instead, they wrestle with nature, stripping it down to its most functional elements, and then improve upon it. Biomimicry—what some refer to as “nature worship”—is frowned upon by this community. If biomimicry was truly an effective strategy, researchers are fond of saying, planes would look like giant birds with flapping wings and submarines would have flopping fish tails.
</p>
<p>
 “We’re careful not to practice bimimicry since it could lead us to some strange design that’s irrelevant or worse,” says Daniel Koditschek, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s extremely easy to go wrong.”
</p>
<h2>
 Biological Basics
</h2>
<p>
 Few bioinspired robots are as famous as Stickybot. You may not know it by name, but you might recognize the whirring gate it uses to scale vertical glass walls. Stickybot is a robot gecko.
</p>
<p>
 Geckos have dazzled scientists with their ability to scamper up walls, zip across ceilings, and perch on slick window panes. If you manage to catch one of these nimble lizards and take a closer look at its toes, you’ll see a plethora of thin ridges, almost like a tightly packed file drawer. Take an even closer look—at about 700 times magnification—and the ridges blossom into a thick rug of forest-like tubes. Even closer, at about 30,000 times, and you’ll notice that each of these tubes are covered with 100 to 1,000 nanoscale split ends. There are around 2 billion of these microscopic tendrils on every gecko.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/gecko-foot.width-990_yRkSdiD.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Gecko feet are covered with thin ridges, which each contain millions of nanoscale bristles.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 For years, scientists were convinced that these tiny structures were responsible for the gecko’s gravity-defying acrobatics. But they had no idea how, exactly, until Full and his lab solved the biological riddle. They tested hypothesis after hypothesis, from velcro-like behavior to suction and glue. One by one, Full and his colleagues shot them down until they discovered that those hairy tips used the van der Waals force, which is the subtle attraction and repulsion between molecules. Following that breakthrough, mechanical engineer Mark Cutkosky and his colleagues at Stanford University created Stickybot. The robot’s footpads sport hairs that are much larger than the gecko’s 200 nanometer threads, but they work using the same principles.
</p>
<p>
 Stickybot took the robotics world by storm, inspiring dozens of other labs to look at everything from kangaroos to cheetahs, moths, cockroaches, crabs, and flies. From those studies, researchers learned the basic principles of movement in the animal kingdom. All legged animals, for example, run by using a spring-loaded inverted pendulum pattern, similar to that of a pogo stick or bouncing ball. And lizard tails and ant feet, they found, both work as tripods to keep their owners stable on walls or in steep tunnels.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 For now, Stickybot largely remains a laboratory curiosity.
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Cutkosky’s robot was a success, but its utility was limited. It proved that researchers could build a robot that could climb like a gecko, but since it lacked a flexible spine, it could only manage to climb flat and gently curved walls. Also, it didn’t work well on rough or dirty surfaces. In other ways, its design hewed perhaps a little too closely to that of its real-world muse—the early generation Stickybot I mimicked the way geckos flex their toes to peel away from the wall, a burdensome feature that researchers have abandoned with Stickybot III.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/stickybot3_h.width-990_SoW3vRQ.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Stickybot can scale slick vertical walls with ease.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 For now, Stickybot largely remains a laboratory curiosity, though researchers are using it to develop the next generation of wall-crawlers. Now that they’ve built an approximation of the real thing, they can tailor the next versions—some of which will not resemble their living lizard inspirations. This next generation will be able to march up walls with loads that are far heavier than any gecko could manage. They’ll also be tailored for specific tasks, from snatching space debris out of orbit to forming landing perches for unmanned aerial vehicles.
</p>
<p>
 “You’re peeling away all the layers of biological details that are not important for locomotion, only getting at the essence,” explains Young-Hui Chang, director of the comparative neuromechanics laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Engineering can surpass biology, but the key is to search wisely, not just imitate for the sake of imitating.”
</p>
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<h2>
 Terrain Travails
</h2>
<p>
 Back at Carnegie Mellon, Choset was having no problem sending his snakes slithering—or springing—across a tiled floor. But he knew that if his robot was to succeed in the real world, it would have to contend with all sorts of terrain. For example, a snake robot sent through a collapsed building on a search-and-rescue mission may need to navigate tight pipes, uneven rubble, steep inclines, and even water. Many real-world snakes could do that if they needed to, improvising where they had to, but a robot snake needs its movements to be preprogrammed. “Snakes are really the masters of taking advantage of surface topography,” says David Hu, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “But people still don’t understand why snakes can do all the things they can do.”
</p>
<p>
 To bring his robots up to par with real-world snakes, Choset has distilled snake locomotion into a set of equations. By tinkering with the models’ parameters, he can emulate different snake gaits. Until recently, Choset’s snakes had mastered three of the
 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake#Locomotion">
  four main gaits
 </a>
 that real-world snakes use to slither through the environment. (They could also perform several more gaits that muscle and bone-bound animals cannot.) He has developed various models, including one that went inside a patient’s body to assist in mapping the outside of her heart. Another of Choset’s snake robots specializes in manufacturing and is being commercialized by a major company. Still others have explored archeological sites in Egypt, and he’s putting the final touches on another that can dive 200 feet down in the ocean.
</p>
<p>
 Yet for all of those technological feats, Choset’s prize snake robot, the Modsnake, could not easily scale a sandy slope. That elusive fourth gait—sidewinding—still eluded him.
</p>
<p>
 To crack the puzzle, Choset drew upon a friendly rivalry with Dan Goldman, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Goldman’s diverse background—a childhood spent collecting snakes and lizards, a graduate education in chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, and granular media, and a postdoctoral stint in Full’s lab—provided him with a unique mix of tools. Back when he began working with Full in 2003, Goldman found that researchers knew very little about the way animals move through soil and sand, so he took that on as a speciality. He has since worked with a variety of sand-loving creatures, including sandfish lizards, ants, Zebra-tailed lizards, shovel-nose snakes, baby sea turtles, and solpugids, an order of arachnids.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/sidewinder.width-990_4BslfGn.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Climbing sandy inclines is easy for snakes, but proved difficult for Choset's robot snakes.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 “I realized there’s this entire universe out there that people know very little about, and my interest and skill sets happened to be useful for that,” Goldman says. “Climbing up a sandy hill sounds like a pretty boring task, but once you understand the principles, you can implement it in other ways and into other systems.”
</p>
<p>
 When Goldman heard that Choset’s lab was struggling with subtleties of the sidewinder’s movements, he, Hu, and two of their students decided to take a stab at this latest sand-related problem. “Their snake robot was loosely based on a snake in the sense that it was long and skinny, but that was it,” Goldman says. “Until our study, they had no insight from biology on how to make it better.”
</p>
<p>
 So Goldman and his collaborators approached the problem from a different perspective. They convinced the Atlanta Zoo to build a special facility for housing venomous sidewinder snakes from the Arizona desert, bringing 300 pounds of sand from that same desert along with the animals. Then they pored over hours of footage of snakes crawling up various sandy inclines to determine the kinematics and physics that underlie sand-body interactions.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 “This is an example of robots, biology, and physics coming together.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Soon, they picked up on a “cool trick” that sidewinders use to mitigate slips when climbing granular surfaces: they flatten themselves out like an ellipse, increasing their contact with the ground. With the added friction, they can wiggle their way up steep slopes, effectively making the shifty sand behave more like a solid.
</p>
<p>
 Choset seized upon this new data. He altered the parameters in his snake models, tweaking the Modsnake’s gait to approximate the key flattening motion. Rather than directly flattening, the robot simply changes its degree of contact with the sandy surface. “We were able to adjust parameters in our gait model to copy the behavior that Dan observed,” Choset says. “This is an example of robots, biology, and physics coming together to better understand the animal, as well as make the robot work better.”
</p>
<p>
 Without these sorts of interdisciplinary projects, “computer scientists end up with very beautiful factory robots that can move over hard floors, but those that can exist in nature are very limited,” Goldman says. “Studying organisms in their natural environment is a critical feature for creating the next generation of high-performing robots.”
</p>
<h2>
 The Next Generation
</h2>
<p>
 Ten years from now, Choset and several other researchers I spoke with predict a proliferation of bioinspired robots that will do everything from slink through the rubble of collapsed buildings searching for survivors, rove the planet’s deserts collecting data on climate change, buzz over war zones collecting intelligence, and labor in the homes of the elderly who can’t live alone. They might even make it to Mars, where engineers won’t have to worry about their billion-dollar rovers getting stuck in a crater.
</p>
<p>
 As Choset’s growing repertoire of robot snakes demonstrate, some of these creations are coming along quickly. With an additional $5 million investment, he says, he could have a robot ready to inspect nuclear facilities in about two years.
</p>
<p>
 Despite the field’s furious pace, there’s still a long way to go. While robot designers can free themselves from limitations imposed by nature, they must also deal with the shortcomings of machinery. Take sensors, for example. “The difference between real animals and things that seem life-like is that animals can really sense the environment and respond,” Hu says. “The smallest ant may have 1 million times more sensors than the most complicated robot.” Energy, too, is a limitation. Batteries can only hold so much power, but more vexing is that robots tend to move less efficiently compared with animals. “We’re so far behind nature,” Choset says. “It’s humbling and sad, but it’s a good goal for us to strive for.”
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 “This is just about the most exciting field of science there is.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 As more universities create melting pots of disciplines, additional minds and collaborations will likely accelerate the process of discovery. “I tell my students, this is just about the most exciting field of science there is,” Koditschek says. Many of them are now seeking training in biology, engineering, or physics, fields that were once largely separated from one another. Biologists are now finding jobs in physics departments and vice versa. Some universities are formally blurring the lines, creating interdisciplinary graduate programs that offer biologists the quantitative training they need to understand engineering while giving engineers the foundation in evolutionary science to help them understand why animals look and behave the way they do.
</p>
<p>
 Taken together, they amount to a sea change in the way we envision, develop, and deploy machines. “I think it’s going to be a crazy time in the next 20 to 30 years,” Goldman says. “Once we have better models, then we can really take our gloves off and design.”
</p>
<div class="newsletter"></div>
<p>
 Photos courtesy Howie Choset,
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/furryscalyman/3830578747/">
  furryscalyman/Flickr (CC-BY-SA)
 </a>
 , Stanford University, and
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/eiswuerfel/6039349928/">
  eiswuerfel Flickr (CC-BY-NC)
 </a>
</p>

<p>To build a better robot, engineers are turning to an experienced problem solver—nature.</p>

Forecast for the Floodplains

<p>
	It wasn't just winds that wreaked havoc, either. Around the same time, the county had been busy altering and draining 150 wetlands to accommodate a boom in new development projects. As the rains came, the waters rose.</p>
<h3>
	A Broken System</h3>
<p>
	Had Manatee County's wetlands and other natural areas remained intact, rains from those hurricanes likely would have been less of a problem. Water craves nothing more than to flow downstream, whether that path leads to a river, stream, ocean, or wetland. Along its journey, soil soaks the water up like a sponge. Trees and grass sip at it and form natural speed bumps that slow its downhill flow. Wetlands act like swampy sinks, collecting and storing any remaining precipitation. Then—slowly and gradually—the soil, vegetation and wetlands release the excess water.</p>
<p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/forecast-floodplains-01.width-990_YdXZarK.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A house flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
        
        <div class="credit">Courtesy U.S. National Park Service</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</p>
<p>
	Frequently, when humans enter the scene they tamper with this balance. Forests are felled to build impermeable roads. Agricultural fields are carved out of grasslands, exposing soil to runoff and erosion. Wetlands are drained to make way for subdivisions and super center parking lots. These decisions come with costs, both environmental and human. In the Gulf Coast counties like Manatee, for example, wetland alteration translates into approximately <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X12000192" target="_blank">$1.5 million per year</a> in additional flood damage.</p>
<p>
	That's because when heavy rain falls on manmade structures, runoff gains more volume and velocity than it would in nature. Upstream developments can place existing downstream communities at greater risk for flooding. "When we pave, we take away the all-important function of naturally-occurring wetlands," says Samuel Brody, a professor of marine science and urban planning at Texas A&amp;M University. "We create a dual effect of compromising the system and putting people in harm's way."</p>
<h3>
	Of Rain and Runoff</h3>
<p>
	In addition to coastal flooding, hurricanes and tropical storms often bring severe rains that extend well inland. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped 30 inches of rain on the Houston area—one of the largest continuous swaths of impervious surfaces in the country—turning the entire region into a stagnant bathtub. Elsewhere, flooding can occur even in areas that aren't covered in concrete. With enough water, natural systems can be overwhelmed. Hurricane Irene, for example, poured <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2011/h2011_Irene.html" target="_blank">nearly 9 inches of rain</a> into the Northeast and parts of the Carolinas, causing significant downstream flooding that contributed to around $15 billion in damages.</p>
<p>
	"When a storm like Sandy rolls over a region and dumps 8 to 12 inches of rain on the landscape, you're going to have flooding, that's just how it is," says Derek Booth, a geologist with a joint professorship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Washington. The difference between altered and natural watersheds, he says, counterintuitively becomes most apparent in small to moderate storms that bring half an inch or so of rain. "The more we pave, the more frequent the flooding events will be," he explains. "Storms that would have produced very little change in river or stream levels before will now be very influential because so much more of that water is going directly into the stream channel."</p>
<p>
	Historically, much of our development occurred in floodplains—or places susceptible to flooding—that normally act as buffers for managing and distributing floodwaters. In response, we've built structures to protect our investments located in flood plains. But that's now always a good thing, says Wesley Highfield, an assistant professor of urban and regional sciences at Texas A&amp;M University. "When we build levies, we create a false sense of safety," he says.</p>
<p>
	Dams, levy and dykes—which cost tens of millions to build—are only as good as their design and construction. In the past, the U.S. tended to prefer these strategies over non-structural mitigations, such as discouraging floodplain development or preserving wetlands, but the events of the past decade are slowly shifting that attitude. Eventually, manmade fixes break or are topped by rising waters, as Hurricane Katrina so disastrously showed in Louisiana.</p>
<h3>
	Gambling with Disaster</h3>
<p>
	For people living in flood-prone areas, high waters take a toll both emotionally and economically. Flooding costs the U.S. $2 billion each year, yet long-term hazard mitigation hasn't been a priority. Houston, for example, took some measures to improve drainage and bolster flood resistance for some of their buildings after Allison struck, but Brody still doesn't thinks the area is adequately prepared. Per capita, the greater Houston area remains one of the most flood-damaged places in the country.</p>
<p>
	The U.S. is not alone. Three-quarters of the global population lives within a coastal zone, and worldwide more than half a billion people live within <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/36881304/battling-save-worlds-river-deltas" target="_blank">flood-prone river deltas</a>. Models of future climate change impacts predict a rise in severe weather events. "There's no doubt that the number of people who are impacted by these flooding events will increase," says Marcel Marchand, an expert in coastal flood risk and management at Deltares, an independent research institute in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/forecast-floodplains-02.width-990_D3kScsU.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Houses in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, after Hurricane Floyd.
        
        <div class="credit">Courtesy NOAA</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</p>
<p>
	Figuring out who those people are is a top priority for emergency management officials. The standard in the U.S., for example, is the 100-year floodplain, or any area that has a 1 percent chance in any given year of succumbing to a flood of equal or greater magnitude to previous ones. But that concept is problematic: the popular interpretation is that 100-year floodplains will only flood once every hundred years. People become complacent, assuming they won't have to worry about a disaster within their lifetimes when in fact 100-year floods can and do occur in sequential years.</p>
<p>
	Unfortunately, it's hard to say just who is and isn't vulnerable to floods these days. Floodplain maps are years out of date as a result of rampant development combined with the effects of climate change. "Floodplain maps should change," Highfield says. "As impervious surfaces increase, floodplains will extend and those fringes will spread out." Though floodplains may be expanding, the process of continuously surveying and updating maps is <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22616684" target="_blank">so time consuming</a> that we've quickly fallen behind. The lack of up-to-date information impacts the ability of communities to develop flood mitigation plans that reflect reality.</p>
<p>
	Meanwhile, taxpayers shoulder much of the post-disaster cost burden for damaged communities, says Philip Berke, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The <a href="http://www.fema.gov/national-flood-insurance-program" target="_blank">National Flood Insurance Program</a> covers 5.5 million residential and commercial policyholders for coverage totaling about $1.2 trillion. Since 1978, the program has paid more than $38 billion in claims. Although the program is meant to be self-supporting, as of 2004, repetitive-loss properties cost taxpayers around <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-04-401T/html/GAOREPORTS-GAO-04-401T.htm" target="_blank">$200 million annually</a>. "How much is the public going to keep spending on this?" Berke wonders.</p>
<h3>
	Receding Waters</h3>
<p>
	Though natural disasters bring tragedy and loss, they also present an opportunity. They open the window for policy reform, and communities are more willing to consider proactive change, ranging from more extreme measures such as relocation to smaller steps like improving warning and preparedness systems.</p>
<p>
	In an unpublished analysis Highfield and Brody conducted of 18 different FEMA flood mitigation strategies, the researchers identified the best strategies for mitigating damage. They found that, on average, nation-wide, communities that elevate structures above the projected flood levels save $960,800 in expected flood damage per year. Protecting open space in floodplains ranked second in their analysis, saving $547,000 per year per jurisdiction.</p>
<p>
	The U.S. could take a hint from Holland for implementing this strategy. The Netherlands—some parts of which lie nearly 20 feet below sea level—are renowned for their centuries-old dyke system, but the country recently adopted a program called <a href="http://www.roomfortheriver.nl/" target="_blank">Room for the River</a> to address their freshwater flooding concerns. The project attempts to relocate people out of the Rhine river floodplain in order to return the area to its historic function of flood mitigation. "I understand that if you live in a floodplain area maybe the last thing you want to do is move out, but sometimes that's the only way," Marchand, the Dutch coastal flooding expert, says. "We just cannot afford any flooding."</p>
<p>
	Restoring wetlands and natural floodplains, even if it means moving some families away from the water, would help the situation in the U.S., too. "In some of the coverage of Sandy, reporters are saying things like, 'Wow, people are going to have quite a job of rebuilding homes here,'" says Nancy Grimm, a biogeochemist and ecologist at Arizona State University. "But nobody is saying that maybe they should not rebuild at all." It is an extreme option, but is only one of many.</p>
<p>
	"I think there's going to have to be some hard looks at how we actually make decisions about the use of land," she continued. "We need to think about repurposing land in ways that are not only economically beneficial but also beneficial for an environmentally and socially fair future."</p>
<h3>
	The Sunshine State</h3>
<p>
	Ultimately, the public and the decision-makers who represent them must decide how to respond to disasters like floods. Back in Manatee County, residents and the local government took action.</p>
<p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/forecast-floodplains-03.width-990_Qd7wT7o.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Restoration efforts in Manatee County, Florida.
        
        <div class="credit">Courtesy NOAA</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</p>
<p>
	To prepare for future floods, decision-makers changed their zoning laws to preserve natural areas and worked hard to maintain their storm water drainage system. The county also committed itself to outreach, offering workshops in wind mitigation to harden homes against storm damage, for example, and providing centers dedicated to <a href="http://www.mymanatee.org/home/government/departments/public-safety/hurricane-readiness-center.html" target="_blank">hurricane readiness</a> and <a href="http://www.mymanatee.org/home/government/departments/building-and-development-services/building/floodplain-management/building_flood_protection_information.html" target="_blank">flood protection</a>. Though developers filled in some wetlands, the ecosystem still comprises around 35 percent of Manatee County's total area. The county government also tries to limit development in flood-prone locations. Because of that commitment to flood mitigation, losses remain comparatively low despite numerous severe storms that continue to pound the area.</p>
<p>
	"When a big disaster hits, there's an opportunity to learn," Brody says. "Usually those town and cities that are more adaptive and open to learning, sharing information, and thinking systematically tend to do really well."</p>

Urban development coupled with intense hurricanes is causing storm damage to ripple beyond the coastline.

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<p>Hookworms once sapped the American South of its health, yet few realize that they continue to afflict millions.</p>

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<p>The Przewalski&#x27;s horse would have gone extinct were it not for the obsessive devotion of three young Dutch activists.</p>

To Communicate With Apes, We Must Do It On Their Terms

<div class="related"></div>
<p>
 On August 24, 1661, Samuel Pepys, an administrator in England’s navy and famous diarist, took a break from work to go see a “
 <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1661/08/24/">
  strange creature
 </a>
 ” that had just arrived on a ship from West Africa. Most likely, it was a chimpanzee—the first Pepys had ever seen. As he wrote in his diary, the “great baboon” was so human-like that he wondered if it were not the offspring of a man and a “she-baboon.”
</p>
<p>
 “I do believe that it already understands much English,” he continued, “and I am of the mind it might be taught to speak or make signs.”
</p>
<p>
 Humans and apes share nearly 99% of the same DNA, but language is one thing that seems to irreconcilably differentiate our species. Is that by necessity of nature, though, or simply a question of nurture?
</p>
<p>
 “It could be that there’s something biologically different in our genome, something that’s changed since we split from apes, and that’s language,” says Catherine Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “But another possibility is that they might have the cognitive capacity for language, but they’re not able to physically express it like we do.”
</p>
<p>
 In the centuries since Pepys’ speculations, scientists and the public alike have only become more enamored with the idea of breaking through communication barriers separating our species. “It’s every scientist’s dream,” Hobaiter says. “Instead of having to do years of tests, we could just sit down and have a chat.”
</p>
<p>
 Hobaiter’s work shows that chimps have their own rich world of communication—it’s sort of like a secret sign language.
</p>
<p>
 This not only would allow us to find out what our closest relatives are thinking, but also to potentially learn something about our own evolution and what it means to be human, says Jared Taglialatela, an associate professor at Kennesaw State University and the director of research at the Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative. “We shared a common ancestor just 5.5 million years ago with both chimpanzees and bonobos,” he says. “That’s useful for making comparisons and answering questions about human origins.”
</p>
<p>
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 Apes and humans are even more similar than we ever imagined.
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Scientists have been trying to teach chimps to speak for decades, with efforts ranging from misguided to tantalizingly promising. Now, however, they are coming to realize that we’ve likely been going about it in the wrong way. Rather than force apes to learn our language, we should be learning theirs.
</p>
<p>
 Researchers have only just begun to understand the rudimentary fundamentals of ape communication, but already the results are exceeding expectations. Apes and humans, they are discovering, are even more similar than we ever imagined.
</p>
<p>
 “Pretty much all of the capacities we thought of as being uniquely human—learning socially, using communication to reach a goal, shifting our communication depending on who we’re communicating with, being able to plan for the future, keeping record of friends and enemies—actually are not,” Hobaiter says. “They’re all present in chimps.”
</p>
<div class="ad"></div>
<h2>
 All in the Family
</h2>
<p>
 The story of modern research into ape communication begins in 1931, when Winthrop and Luella Kellogg, a husband-wife psychologist team, decided to raise a chimp named Gua alongside their biological son, Donald. The goal was to see if Gua would pick up language, just as a human child would. The landmark experiment inspired many similar efforts—but research with Gua herself lasted less than a year. She was failing to pick up language. (Donald, on the other hand, was reportedly making chimpanzee sounds.) So the Kelloggs called it quits and gave her to a primate center. Less than a year later, she died from pneumonia.
</p>
<p>
 Similar sorts of real-life
 <i>
  Curious George
 </i>
 projects continued in the 1940s and 1950s, when another husband-wife team, Keith and Catherine Hayes, tried to teach a chimp named Viki spoken human language. After several years, Viki could only use four words: mama, papa, cup, and up. The experiment was cut short when Viki died of meningitis at the age of seven, but many interpreted her lack of progress to mean that apes were not capable of sophisticated communication.
</p>
<p>
 Shortly after the Viki experiment ended, however, Jane Goodall’s groundbreaking research on chimpanzees began to hit the news. Goodall showed that chimps are highly intelligent, emotional beings with individual personalities and capable of constructing tools—discoveries that challenged assumptions about their limited abilities.
</p>
<p>
 In 1967—the year before
 <i>
  Planet of the Apes
 </i>
 was released—yet another husband-wife team, Allen and Beatrix Gardner, decided to give communication experiments another try. But they went with a different approach: rather than spoken language, they would teach a chimpanzee named Washoe American sign language. Washoe—who wore clothes, sat at the dinner table, brushed her teeth and played games—quickly began to learn and seemed to understand the meaning of the signs. A few years into the project, the Gardners moved on to other work and gave their adopted chimp daughter to a primate center. But scientists there continued to work with Washoe, and by the end of her life, she had learned around 250 signs and had even taught her son to sign.
</p>
<div class="newsletter"></div>
<p>
 Sign language, researchers agreed, seemed the way to go. Nim Chimpsky, another chimp raised by a human family in the 1970s and taught to sign, showed similar progress—as did Koko, the gorilla who understood more than 1,000 signs of “Gorilla Sign Language” (GSL) and was exposed to English at an early age. But the work on Nim was cut short when Nim’s adopted father and experimenter, Herbert Terrace, became convinced that Nim had not learned sign language at all, but had rather been imitating the trainers. Terrace abandoned Nim—who continued to try to sign for the rest of his days—to a life of animal testing, cages, and solitude.
</p>
<p>
 Nim’s sad end also cast doubt on whether Washoe had in fact learned to sign. “Debate went back and forth about Nim Chimpsky and others, and the whole field began to implode,” Hobaiter says. “But that also coincided very much with the animal rights movement, and the idea of growing awareness that apes are extraordinary individuals.”
</p>
<p>
 Indeed, some researchers were not ready to give up, and they decided to try yet another approach. In the mid-1970s, Emory University scientists created a symbol board—essentially, a primitive computer—and taught a chimp named Lana to string together different keys to mean different things. Spinning off from there, primatologists discovered what is likely the most talented ape of them all, a bonobo named Kanzi.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/bonobo_2048x1152.width-990_W1BvClq.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha with psychologist and primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 Kanzi, who currently lives at the Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative in Iowa, learned to communicate by observing scientists trying to teach his mother. “Kanzi basically surprised everyone when he started using the symbols on the board,” Taglialatela says. “Not only that, he seemed to be showing proficiency for understanding spoken language that researchers were just using around the apes while trying to train them.”
</p>
<p>
 By 1993, Kanzi could pass rigorous language comprehension tests, performing at about the level of a 3.5-year-old human child. In controlled tests, he shows proficiency in about 90 symbols, and his keepers say he can use around 250 symbols in more natural environments. He also seems to understand complex sentences: In
 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1166068?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">
  one experiment
 </a>
 , he correctly responded to three-quarters of 660 spoken instructions.
</p>
<p>
 Kanzi is no doubt an exceptionally intelligent individual. But researchers continued to wonder whether his knack for communication was a result of his time with humans—or represented a deeper ability, something that scientists, until now, have overlooked. In trying to force apes to learn our language, have may we blinded ourselves to theirs.
</p>
<h2>
 Into the Wild
</h2>
<p>
 Researchers continue to work with captive apes to try to answer questions about how they communicate with one another and how that relates to the complexity of their social and emotional lives. But focus is also increasingly turning to directly observing apes in their natural environment. As Hobaiter says, “If we want to know if humans are unique in our language use, we must look at what apes are doing naturally.”
</p>
<p>
 While some researchers attempt experimental studies in the field, Hobaiter prefers a fly-on-the-wall approach. For the past 11 years, she has stalked her subjects—a group of chimpanzees in Uganda—in the most unobtrusive way possible, allowing them to slowly get used to her. She videotapes their interactions and later analyzes the recordings, noting every gestures the chimps make while also trying to parse the wider social context in which individuals are interacting.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 “If we want to know if humans are unique in our language use, we must look at what apes are doing naturally.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Like humans—who regularly communicate with a simultaneous mix of spoken words, tone, facial expressions, and gestures—Hobaiter and other researchers have found that apes seem to use concurrent modalities, or different, overlapping means of getting their point across. It’s a discovery that hints at the complexity of ape communication, but it also makes deciphering seemingly simplistic movements laborious. “If there’s an arm raise gesture, you need to see dozens of cases from dozens of individuals” to fully understand its intent, Hobaiter says. “Like human words with multiple meanings, you need context to know what’s going on in communication.”
</p>
<p>
 So far, she and her colleagues have translated what they believe are the chimps’
 <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-011-0409-2">
  basic 60–80 gestures
 </a>
 , plus a number of facial expressions and vocalizations. She believes that, together, these things make up ape language phonics. Distilling the meaning of those various sounds and gestures when put together, however, will be a much more challenging and drawn-out task.
</p>
<p>
 “We have this whole system of communication that looks very language-like,” Hobaiter says. “Definitely, we are only beginning to scratch the surface.”
</p>
<p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chimpanzee_mother_and_child_(14682690082).jpg">
  Magnus Johansson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
 </a>
 ,
 <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonobos_Kanzi_and_Panbanisha_with_Sue_Savage-Rumbaugh.jpg">
  Wcalvin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
 </a>
</p>

<p>Scientists have long tried to teach apes to speak or sign in human language. But what if we studied their language?</p>

Boosting Desalination with the Sun

<div class="related"></div>
<p>
</p>
<p>
 “Welcome, this is paradise!” declares Galgalo Abdi, sweeping his arms open in a dramatic gesture.
</p>
<p>
 For a moment, I think he is being sarcastic. This parched swath of wilderness in northern Kenya certainly does not look like paradise to me. In fact, it appears downright hostile to human life. All around us, leafless grey bushes shaped like giant tumbleweeds form a thorny obstacle course, while a few scraggly palm trees sprouting around a bone-dry riverbed offer the only hint of green. All else is orange dust and pale rock, whitewashed by the sun’s inescapable glare.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="dry riverbed" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/dry-riverbed.width-990_8glBGVI.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Galgalo Abdi and Ibrahim Wario walk to a dry riverbed near Biliqo-Bulesa Community Conservancy in northern Kenya.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 Abdi’s earnest expression, however, conveys no hint of jest. To him, this harsh landscape is paradise on Earth—his beloved home.
</p>
<p>
 I’ve met Abdi, a ranger at Biliqo-Bulesa Community Conservancy, at an outpost made up of a few barebone buildings where he and his colleagues live while on the job. Abdi spends his days and nights protecting elephants and other wildlife from poachers and also helping to maintain peaceful relations between nomadic herders who pass through this historically conflict-prone region. He insists that he absolutely loves the job and the place except for just one thing: for half the year, there is no water.
</p>
<p>
 Like much of Kenya, Biliqo-Bulesa receives virtually no rain during the dry season. Although wells here produce ample water, like throughout much of northeastern Kenya, the sulphate-rich soil renders it highly brackish. While it’s less salty than ocean water, it’s still undrinkable for humans. (Elephants, on the other hand, have no problem digesting it and even dig their own wells). Twice a week, Abdi and his fellow rangers drive 45 miles each way on rutted dirt roads to fetch freshwater. The roundtrip journey takes some five hours, Abdi says, and is an unbelievable hassle.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/biliqo-bulesa-2.width-990_hPzYjxZ.jpg"/>
<figcaption>The Biliqo-Bulesa Community Conservancy
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 As of September 2017, however, he never again had to make another of those grueling runs. His ranger station just became the first site in Kenya to receive a new, ultra-efficient solar powered desalination unit. Each day the suitcase-sized device transforms 211 gallons (800 liters) of salty well water into freshwater. It’s more than enough to meet the needs of the dozen men working and living there, who need about 2.6 gallons (10 liters) of freshwater per day—and to share with visiting nomads, too.
</p>
<p>
 “Before, the water here was not good for us, but now we have very nice water, very sweet water,” Abdi says, leading me to an overhanging porch sheltering two large black plastic tanks. Salt water pumped from the well enters into the tank on the left and, after undergoing reverse osmosis, becomes freshwater deposited in the tank on the right. The whole thing is powered by a few solar panels, situated just above us on the blazing tin roof.
</p>
<p>
 “The machine is very smart,” Abdi says. “It’s helped us a lot.”
</p>
<p>
 To demonstrate, he twists open the tap on the freshwater tank. By this time sweat is pouring down my face and neck, and I eagerly lean over to drink directly from the faucet. Cool liquid fills my dry mouth, indistinguishable in taste from a fancy, overpriced bottled. I would gladly pay money for this water—even if I wasn’t in a desert.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="Galgalo Abdi and Ibrahim Wario desalination tanks" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/galgalo-abdi-and-ibrahim-wario-desalination-ta.width-990_dGioN1u.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Ibrahim Wario and Galgalo Abdi draw water from the storage tanks fed by the desalination equipment.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 This small unit is just the first in a grand plan to eventually bring water to thirsty communities throughout arid regions in Kenya and beyond. The program will soon be expanded to a handful of other remote ranger stations, and in January, a much larger commercial unit will be installed in a drought-plagued village near the Kenyan coast.
</p>
<p>
 The project comes courtesy of
 <a href="http://givepower.org/">
  GivePower
 </a>
 , a California-based non-profit organization co-founded by Lyndon Rive, former CEO of SolarCity. Rive initially wanted to bring clean energy to Haiti and other places devastated by natural and manmade disasters, but eventually, the plan expanded to include electrifying communities in developing countries and, now, to bringing clean, affordable water to drought and disaster-stricken places. Traditionally, desalination hasn’t been an option for places like Biliqo-Bulesa because it tends to be expensive to install and energy intensive to run. That may be changing, though.
</p>
<p>
 “The technology is now hitting this inflection point where we can produce water at a much lower cost than you can buy bottled water,” Rive says. “If you don’t have access to running water and you have to travel long distances to get bottled water, then bringing in a clean source that’s a lot cheaper will have a big impact.”
</p>
<p>
 Indeed, whether serving 12 men in the bush or an entire town of 5,000, desalination can free up time, energy and funds formerly drained in the constant search for water.
</p>
<p>
 That has certainly been the case at Biliqo-Bulesa. As Abdi emphatically tells me, “This water has changed our lives.”
</p>
<h2>
 Turning Tides
</h2>
<p>
 Desalination—the process of rendering undrinkable water drinkable by extracting salt and minerals—is not a new concept. One of the first known
 <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/23659/chapter/14#56">
  references
 </a>
 dates back to the 6 th century BCE in the book of Exodus when Moses, confronted with “bitter” water and disgruntled followers, threw in a holy log into the source “and the water became sweet.”
</p>
<p>
 As a modern, scientific process, though, desalination took off in the late 1950s, when engineers developed reverse osmosis membranes. A pump exerts pressure of 600 to 700 pounds per square inch (psi) on salt water, forcing fresh water molecules to squeeze through the membrane, leaving behind a briny discharge.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 “The technology is now hitting this inflection point where we can produce water at a much lower cost than you can buy bottled water.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Today, an
 <a href="https://ensia.com/features/can-saltwater-quench-our-growing-thirst/">
  estimated
 </a>
 300 million people get some or all of their freshwater from nearly
 <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aic.15726/abstract">
  18,500
 </a>
 desalination plants operating around the world.
 <a href="https://www.sdcwa.org/seawater-desalination">
  San Diego
 </a>
 , for example, relies on “drought-proof” desalination to reduce dependency on the Colorado River, while
 <a href="https://ensia.com/features/water-desalination-middle-east/">
  Israel
 </a>
 has used the technology to transform its nation from water scarce in 2008 to water abundant today, producing 55% of its water from desalination. The results are considered such a success that Israeli scientists are
 <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/">
  in discussions
 </a>
 with drought-plagued neighbors like Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey about exporting the technology, in the hopes that desalination may pave the way for improved diplomacy in the region.
</p>
<p>
 The technology, however, is not suited for every environment. For starters, access to groundwater or seawater is a prerequisite, and desalination can’t be significantly more expensive than other available options. Then there’s the matter of cost and infrastructure. “Will desalination help if it’s the right system of the right size for the right use in the right location? Absolutely it will,” says Yoram Cohen, director of the Water Technology Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But there’s no such thing as one magic solution that works for all.”
</p>
<p>
 There are ways around those obstacles, however.
 <a href="https://www.spectrawatermakers.com/us/us">
  Spectra Watermakers
 </a>
 , the California-based company that manufactured the Biliqo-Bulesa desalination device, specializes in small-scale, energy efficient units that can run on solar power. Originally dreamed up by an avid offshore sailor who wanted such a contraption to use on his boat 20 years ago, the company offers models ranging from a small unit that produces up 40 gallons per day to a much larger one that churns out 14,000 gallons per day—all of which operate on about a quarter of the power required for conventional systems.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="solar desalination" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/solar-desalination_7HrdlQT.width-990_MKa6Wr7.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A small set of solar panels atop the roof powers the destination device.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 The key to that efficiency, says Michael Anderson, an applications engineer at Spectra, is a process called energy recovery. Whereas standard desalination systems immediately release the high pressure brine discharge to the atmosphere, Spectra’s technology recirculates the discharge to help pressurize new water coming into the system by pushing up on a piston pump incorporated into the design. This minimizes energy loss by up to 75%.
</p>
<p>
 Despite the lower cost to run, even the small Spectra units are typically too expensive for people in developing countries to purchase themselves. Instead, any desalination units that do find their way to such communities are usually one-off projects arranged by an individual donor who perhaps passed through on vacation or by a company that installed it in exchange for something—such as the right to drill for oil nearby. But the problem with those kinds of donation-based projects, Anderson says, is that once the unit is installed, it’s usually forgotten about. When it inevitably breaks, it will stay broken.
</p>
<p>
 “When you give someone something but there’s no one around who can fix it, it never works,” Anderson says. “We’ve had cases where we’ve gone to install a watermaker and there’s literally three or four other makers already there in various states of decay.”
</p>
<div class="ad"></div>
<h2>
 Water, Water, Everywhere
</h2>
<p>
 There is, however, another way—which is where the GivePower model comes into play. While small watermakers like the one I saw in Biliqo-Bulesa are being brought in on a philanthropic basis solely to support the men in the field, the large units to be installed in villages are meant to evolve into self-sustaining businesses. That requires both trained operators and repairmen with access to spare parts and a way to make a profit off of the water—meaning it must be competitively priced. GivePower believes their machines, training, and support will satisfy all of these points, and they plan to test that hypothesis with the first large-unit installations at the beginning of 2018.
</p>
<p>
 In addition to providing water to communities, the Spectra machines will save people money by eliminating the need to pay outside companies to truck in expensive water. Whereas villagers current pay 20 cents per liter, the cost of production for the desalinated water will hover around three cents per liter, allowing them to pay just a fraction of what they are currently charged. Meanwhile, they can also charge higher profit-generating prices to outside groups such as the army or navy who seek to purchase their water while passing through.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/nomad-at-biliqo-bulesa.width-990_agmuhBd.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A nomadic herder stops by the station for some water and a shady spot to rest.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 “Twenty-thousand gallons of water won’t satisfy the needs of the entire Kenyan coast, but the demand is so great and the supply is so scarce that the underlying economics look really good,” says Barrett Raftery, executive director of GivePower. “Turning this into a viable business that can make money is the only thing that will enable a solution at a regional level.”
</p>
<p>
 GivePower will cover initial installation and equipment costs for such units, and over the next five years, the community will purchase back the loaned equipment through profits made from the water. After that, all money generated will stay within the community, to be reinvested into building schools, setting up microloan programs, or sending kids to college. GivePower’s financial role in the project is finite, which it argues will allow it to install more units elsewhere.
</p>
<p>
 “The ultimate goal is scale,” Raftery emphasizes. “For us, that means looking at the community as a partner and ground operator.”
</p>
<p>
 That partnership is made all the easier because Biliqo-Bulesa and 32 other communities in northern and coastal Kenya have already formed their own self-governing conservancies, all of which fall under an umbrella organization called the
 <a href="http://www.nrt-kenya.org/">
  Northern Rangelands Trust
 </a>
 (NRT). Not only do the NRT conservancies have a 14-year track record of managing their own resources to the benefit of their residents, but they also put wildlife conservation—which brings in tourist dollars and Western donations—at the heart of what they do.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 On the coast of Kenya, says Ian Craig, “freshwater is gold.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 However, rather than install the first large desalination units in the most stable and successful NRT conservancies, Raftery and his local partners instead selected the one that needed it most: Kiunga Conservancy. Located on the coast, Kiunga is intermittently plagued by political insecurity, terrorist visitors from neighboring Somalia, and tribal violence exacerbated by drought. Despite these challenges, in January, a village there will become the site of the first two larger-scale desalination units, capable of producing nearly 5,300 gallons (20,000 liters) of freshwater per day and meeting the needs of 5,000 people. The units, which will run off Tesla Powerwalls, will also mark the first known Tesla products in Kenya.
</p>
<p>
 While the desalination units will not be able to green the arid savannah for improved cattle grazing or to irrigate largescale crops, those involved in the project are convinced of its merits. “On the coast, this technology has the potential to change so much, because the availability of fresh water is a major limiting factor in people’s lives,” says Ian Craig, director of conservation at the NRT. “Freshwater there is gold.”
</p>
<p>
 Raftery also believes that affordable water can make the region more peaceful. Currently, people often compete with each other as well as with wildlife over limited water resources. “Intertribal violence is based on scarcity of resources,” Raftery says. “Extremist groups also benefit from poor quality of life and lack of basic infrastructure there, because recruiting is much easier when people are destitute.”
</p>
<p>
 Mark Zeitoun, a professor of water security and policy at the University of East Anglia, warns, however, against overestimating water’s ability to provide a quick fix for violence-plagued regions. While headlines tend to state that drought leads to conflict, he points out that water scarcity and other environmental issues are generally subordinate to political tensions and asymmetries in power and privilege. “Yes, water is definitely a part of conflict in Kenya as elsewhere,” he says. “But digging a few wells and getting water everywhere won’t resolve anything—except to stop a few people from dying, which of course is a good enough reason to do it.”
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="desalination tanks ground" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://staging.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/desalination-tanks-ground.width-990_ZmF2NwC.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Two tanks store water produced by the desalination unit, which is kept inside in a case the size of an old trunk.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 That said, Zeitoun adds, “if we get to the point where we can mass produce water through solar desalination at rates competitive to current cheaper solutions, I do think that will be a technological breakthrough that will change the equation for lots of people.”
</p>
<p>
 Whether GivePower, Spectra Watermakers and other similarly-minded ventures can make that happen is yet to be seen. It is the ultimate goal, however. Anderson, for example, imagines sending containers filled with parts to build 1,000 watermakers to various locations around the world through philanthropic funding or a public/private partnership, thus eliminating the need for communities to rely on large-scale municipal projects. “Ultimately, we want the technology to be completely supported and sustained locally, which means assembled, installed and maintained by the community,” he says.
</p>
<p>
 In the meantime, though, the project has at least brought Abdi and his ranger colleagues a little bit closer to paradise.
</p>
<div class="newsletter"></div>
<p>
 Photo credits: Rachel Nuwer,
 <a href="https://imaggeo.egu.eu/view/897/">
  Andreas Kallioras/imaggeo (CC BY-NC-SA)
 </a>
 (listing image)
</p>

<p>Solar power could open the floodgates for desalination, giving people access to clean, cheap water.</p>

Rachel Nuwer

Articles