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Innovation
8 Native Species for a Changing Climate in the Maritimes.
The 8 Acadian Forest species most likely to thrive as the climate changes
Climate Change in the Acadian ForestHere in New...
Can we grow spice like a forest?
Navigating the gulf between idea and reality - Pemba Island, Zanzibar. Photo: Zach Melanson
In the...
How Can We Help the Bees? Three Methods We Tried.
Creating a Bee Field – Method 1: Plantings
Choose a site with poor soils and good sun exposure - a fallow field, ditch, wet spot,...
What’s your process?
“Share everything." – Harold JarcheWords of advice on work and learning in the network era from...
3 Lessons in Successful Crowdsolving
Sun Catcher by Max Rymsha of Ukraine, 2016.
...
Can a building clear the air?
Smog over Almaty city, Kazakhstan - Igors Jefimovs
The competition is now closed. Thank you to all who contributed. Please check...
How to write proposals
Here are 8 tips to make sure you get fundedNo one gets 100% of the proposals they write. No one.
So what can we do to ensure that we are as successful as possible,...
How can we see the greatness in others?
5 ways to build a great teamSomeone recently told me that being an entrepreneur is all about seeing greatness within yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I love a hero as much...
Can a campus grow like a startup?
Handmade yurt - Rural Innovation Campus, Whaelghinbran Farm, New Brunswick, Canada
Sometimes running a startup feels like a bit...
What came before permaculture?
Before Permaculture there was this…Have you ever wondered what a centuries-old, tried and tested permaculture system might look like? How it would influence the...
How does CFI design a project?
Boiling down good project design into a set of simple rules and tools is like trying to define good farming by a list of best practices and machinery. In both cases the...
How to Grow a Perennial Food System Part 2: Hardwood Cuttings
STEM CUTTINGS
Cuttings are clones of a plant and are genetically identical to the parent plant. This is an easy way...
A new permaculture for Pemba island – will you help us build it?
The problem . . .Tanzania’s Zanzibar islands were once a bastion of the global spice trade, an exchange that drove the world’s economy from the Middle Ages into...
Will the next generation inherit our problems or our solutions?
The next generation won’t look back at us and wonder how we dealt with a prolonged economic recession, a deficit or the question, to frack or not to frack? Future...
What is the rural advantage?
If you’ve been following the work of Community Forests International recently you may have noticed an increasingly ‘rural’ focus. We built a
How to build your own portable microgrid
The problem . . .
The rise of renewable energy has to be one of the most inspiring revolutions of our time. It offers hope for transitioning to a low-carbon...
Is failure a part of adaptation?
Building community isn’t simple. As we adapt and pilot new technologies in an ever-changing world how do we hope to achieve success when the variables are unknown?...
Can nature protect us?
How do we protect nature? It’s a longstanding question of conservation, maybe even the question of conservation. But I’d like to see it...
Can We Grow Food When it Snows?
Building a cold frame or greenhouse bed in your backyard will allow you to have instant access to fresh vegetables in both the early spring and late fall. The...
How to Grow a Perennial Food System Part 1: Seed Propagation
As part of CFI’s Plant Nursery project, we will be sharing our adventures in propagating plants (or reproducing) by seeds, cuttings, potting up and...
Can we reverse engineer development?
We often get asked how we choose the communities we support in Pemba. It’s a great question with a simple answer – they choose us. We’ve worked...
What’s in a name?
One of the more innovative features of the Nomadic Cabin is in its name: its transportability.
The Nomadic Cabin is designed to be able to move around. The cabin is...
Climate changes everything – so who’s leading change?
Today’s richest nations, the economies which have been leading global development and innovation for hundreds of years on end, bear responsibility for contributing the...
How does a dream become a reality?
by Madeleine Smith
Since I was a small child, I've had the dream of building my own house. Back then I envisioned something between a castle and a log-cabin with...
Can climate change finance a more equitable world?
It’s no secret – we need a concerted effort among rich and poor nations and a whole lot of precious money to properly address climate change. The wealthier...
Can coevolution teach us how to adapt with climate change?
A relationship between two things in which each exerts pressure on the other, shaping each other’s development over time, is a coevolutionary relationship. It's...
What is a Rural Innovation Campus anyways?
"You have the ability to create narrative, to create mythology through these buildings."
- Jane Thompson
At...
We adapted before – can we adapt again?
It isn’t the first time that humans have been forced to adapt to a changing climate. On countless occasions throughout history we have innovated our culture or,...
Can you Restore Land and Produce Food in the Same Place?
Five Ways to Help the Natural World by Growing Food
We are going to continue to restore the...
Can Canadians Adjust their Priorities for a Better Future?
If there’s anything I’ve learned since I’ve been with CFI, it’s that you’re going to meet some serious roadblocks when you’re trying to save...
What do you see when you think of conservation?
When most people think of ‘conservation’ they think of pristine landscapes; nature at the epitome of ecological health, unchanging and unblemished by human...
How to fundraise for your social enterprise, charity or not-for profit.
CFI's Executive Director, Jeff Schnurr, shares some hard lessons learned. 6 Fundraising MythsWe started Community Forests International from scratch. We saw a...
Can Africa save rural Canada?
Often development flows from the so-called “developed world” to the undeveloped. Experts and volunteers from countries like Canada are supposed to have all the...
Can we get back to the land in the 21st century?
Whaelghinbran Farm - South Branch, New Brunswick
Work for yourself. Buy land. Take over the family farm or woodlot. If you...
Can We Blur the Lines Between Economics and Nature?
There are many people who believe that we are approaching the end of growth, notably
Innovating energy: How can we make clean, democratic energy from trash?
We’ve been talking more and more about innovation here at CFI.
There are fewer systems in our world that need huge innovations more than our energy systems:
...
Can we solve Tanzania’s big charcoal question one small answer at a time?
'Earth-mound' charcoal production. US-PD.
Tanzania has enormous potential for a diversified renewable energy...
What do values have to do with innovation anyway?
'The daily grind' - Andrew Moore of Navigator Stove Works.
I recently reached out to Andrew Moore, founder...
Can Our Method of Food Production Sustain Us in an Uncertain Future?
Circle Pivot Irrigation, Satellite Image of Crops in Kansas USA, NASA (2001)
A drought across the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies that...
What’s the trouble with voluntourism?
Every time I give a talk about our work in Pemba the question comes up.
What do I think about
Can a little more free market mean a lot more fair value for NB’s forests?
You may have heard about the recent announcement by the New Brunswick government to provide an additional 660,000 cubic meters of softwood to industrial licensees from...
How does a forest-keeper turn wood into heat?
Salty aboard W. Atkin "Ingrid", Washington State, USA - Copyright 2001 Navigator Stove...
Can a community harness climate change for positive change?
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, but this massive problem presents an equal opportunity to transform struggling communities and society. ...
How can we grow more farmers in Atlantic Canada?
You may have seen headlines, maybe you read an article, but there is a stark...
Can we hack bicycles to build better machines?
THE BICYCLE is a 100+ year-old technology – and maybe the best we’ve got. It's a combination of several basic mechanisms, known by Renaissance scientists as...
How to start an international NGO
The Pemba tree-planting project grew very quickly. As more and more villagers joined the movement and more trees were planted I realized that we needed to put an organization...
Can a rural Canadian town think like a city?
At the CFI office over the past few months we’ve been talking a lot about how we can bring innovation into rural communities. Although the focus is global, Community...
Can a building blur the lines between humans and nature?
Winning Designs Selected!1st Place – The Whaelghinbran Nomadic Cabin (Entry #014)
Designer: Nathan Fisher, B.Arch Sci, M.Arch
...
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