Island Press Field Notes

Well-designed spaces are not just a matter of taste or a question of aesthetics; they literally shape our ideas about who we are and what we deserve. Design impacts our health, our education, our community, our sense of self-worth, and more, yet all-too-often design is viewed as a luxury. To address critical problems of access and inequity at home and around the world, good design must transcend the endless coverage of multi-million dollar homes and Silicon Valley office spaces to become a key means of uplifting those who need it most.

Back in April 2001—a time in-between the contested 2000 election and the 9/11 attacks when the Bush Administration seemed just like a bad joke and not yet a flag-draped war machine—Vice President Dick Cheney quipped, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” A friend of mine was so incensed by this that he immediately disconnected his bathroom sink from its drain and threw a bucket underneath—the beginnings of what would become a fairly ambitious (and not badly designed) home greywater reclamation project.

View from a mountain top in Khan Khentii Protected Area, Khuh Nuur, Mongolia. Photo © Nick Hall A mysterious and untimely death is not what first comes to mind when I think about wildlife conservation. But the death of conservation ranger Lkhagvasumberel (Sumbee) Tumursukh, who worked with the Mongolian Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, is a mystery indeed.

Growing energy demand could threaten 20 percent of the world's remaining natural land by 2030. But one TNC scientist has a vision for getting the energy we need without sacrificing nature.