Dwell

AS THE WORLD faces an unprecedented environmental crisis, our cities must implement innovative, sustainable solutions to survive. But what if the forward-thinking fixes we need lie not in new technologies but in something older? 

“We commonly think of sustainability as bringing plants and trees onto buildings, but what if our most sustainable innovations were rooted in cultures that figured it out a millennia ago?” asks Julia Watson, author of Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism. “There are hundreds of nature-based technologies that need to be considered as potential climate-resilient infrastructures. It is possible to weave ancient knowledge of how to live symbiotically with nature into how we shape the cities of the future before this wisdom is lost forever.”

Here we present four case studies, taken from Watson’s book, that show how native peoples in mountains, forests, wetlands, and deserts have developed sustainable approaches to living. We also examine how they could be applied to challenges we face today.

MOUNTAIN | JINGKIENG DIENG JRI LIVING ROOT BRIDGES 

The Khasi people of northeast India cultivate living-root bridges to travel between villages during monsoon season. Their homelands experience some of the highest levels of precipitation on earth. Watson proposes that living bridges such as these could be used to reduce the urban heat-island effect by providing canopy cover over city streets. In cities where flooding due to sea level rise is inevitable, they could even retain their original use.

FOREST |KIHAMBA FOREST GARDENS 

In the forests sur-rounding Mount Kilimanjaro, the Chagga people grow many varieties of bananas—alongside some 400 other plants—in forest gardens, human-shaped ecosystems that behave like natural forests (above and left). Some of these gardens are as large as Los Angeles and can take two and a half hours to drive through. In contrast to industrialized agriculture, in which clearcut logging is followed by monoculture farming, this ancient agricultural system simultaneously supports forest biodiversity and human population growth. “The Chagga have figured out a way to retain the com-plexity of the natural rainforest but also integrate a really complex agroforestry system that is incredibly productive,” says Watson. “This has made them one of the wealthiest communities in their region.”

WETLAND | TOTORA REED FLOATING ISLANDS 

The Uros are a pre-Incan civilization who live directly on Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains. To protect their homes from hostile neighboring tribes in the past, they began constructing houseboats, islands, and platforms built from totora reeds, a local material, on the lake. They still live on them today, with some added modern conveniences, like solar panels. “Today’s commercial floating islands are typically composed of potentially harmful and unbiodegradable materials,” says Watson. “In contrast, the Uros’ technology is uniquely inhabitable and completely biodegradable.”

DESERT | WAFFLE GARDENS 

Waffle gardens were developed by the Zuni people of western New Mexico. Their grid shape and sunken plots can catch and hold enough water to support a family or a neighborhood for long periods. In a world where a third of the global population lives with limited access to water, Watson believes these systems could provide a sustainable alternative to monocropping and industrial irrigation, which deplete soil health and strain resources.