What We're Reading: Oaxaca’s Clever, Low-Tech Drought Fixes
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected].
Holding water
When we think of climate solutions, we often think of large-scale, expensive initiatives. But as a story shared this week by RTBC Executive Editor Will Doig from Earth Island Journal shows, sometimes the solutions that best serve communities in need are simple, cheap to implement and created from local materials.
Will says:
Earth Island Journal explores how Indigenous communities in Oaxaca are using a variety of low-tech methods to keep the water flowing during droughts, from fog catchers to “micro-tunnels.”
Dam good
Here at RTBC, we’ve run a few fun stories (including this one from London) about restoration efforts centered on bringing talented ecosystem engineers — namely beavers — to places where they can use their skills and thrive. This week, Editorial Director Rebecca Worby shared a story about another such effort from the Revelator.
Becca says:
More beaver rewilding, this time in Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southern Oregon.
What else we’re reading
🎣 The Whole Fish Is Sacred — shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas from Ambrook Research
🧑🎨 Brooklyn Welcomes a New Center for Formerly Incarcerated Artists — shared by Rebecca Worby from Hyperallergic
📈 The Volunteer Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge — shared by Michaela Haas from The New Yorker
In other news…
We’re sending big congratulations to Jess Ruliffson and Ernesto Barbieri, the illustrator-writer team behind the beautiful and informative comic about whole-person health that we published last year as part of our “A Patient Is a Person” series: They were Pulitzer Prize finalists for the illustrated reporting and commentary award for their Boston Globe series “True Stories From an ICU,” described as “a beautiful, funny and frequently haunting depiction of the fragility of human life, with each frame perfectly paced over a seamless scroll.”
Proud to know you, Ernesto and Jess!