News

Geneva’s Rainwater Harvesters

by Rachel Nisbet | 29 September 2019

There are many private and cooperative rainwater harvesting initiatives in the Geneva region. While sharing information about rainwater harvesting at the 5th Alternatiba Léman Festival, in the city’s Parc des Bastions, we exchanged with local advocates of rainwater harvesting. We learnt about the collective and cooperative, Le Terroir, who harvest rain for watering their organic, market garden. They sell their produce in Présilly on Tuesday evenings.

We chatted with a local inhabitant, ...


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Poems about Rain

by Rachel Nisbet | 21 March 2019

Precious Rain

Emily Dickinson makes rain generous and loving, like a mother, in 'Rain Poem’.

Drops fall on a house 'half a dozen kissed the eaves/and made the gables laugh’. By accounting for raindrops, almost one by one, this poem introduces each one as something precious. The poet, in following the course of these falling drops, imagines 'were they peals/what necklaces could be!’. If we succeed in teaching people to value raindrops as much as pearls falling from the sky, we will b...


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Rachel Nisbet: As an architect, how did you come to focus on creating of low-tech structures, which are able to collect and store snow and ice?

Conradin Clavuot: When my architecture class at the University of Lichtenstein discovered Sonam Wangchuck’s Ladakian Ice Stupas, this was an important step in conceiving how we might initiate creative, meaningful, socioenvironmental architectural projects in our own water-stressed regions. That in creating ice stupas, natural processes can excl...


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Rachel Nisbet: Sálvano, you have spent a career working in nature conservation and environmental planning at the international level, focusing latterly on how communities can develop their resilience to natural hazards. We are very fortunate to benefit from your expertise as an IRHA board member. Thanks for your time in a few questions about your vision for IRHA.

What motivates you in supporting IRHA?

Sálvano Briceño: I believe IRHA performs an important function in promoting sustainabl...


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