Green Terraces

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Green Terraces

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Green Terraces

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Green Terraces is an initiative that combines urban agriculture tools and simple engineering practices to make hilly urban sums more stable and sustainable at the same time. Community input is a great part of the the success of this initiative, which makes Green Terraces a flexible and adaptable project available to any mountainous poor region in the world. This project was a finalist of AECOM's 2012 Urban SOS student competition. In 2013, the project will start to grow in Bogota, Colombia, in partnership with local NGO TECHO- Colombia. For more information about Green Terraces entry in Urban SOS click here. For more information about TECHO, click here. Your donation will help us expand urban agriculture practices in the poorest slums of Colombia, helping thousands of families have an extra source of food and income and at the same time help make the land around them more stable and less prone to landslides. Green Terraces is a project that aims to grow to other regions after its contribution in Colombia. For more information on how to contribute to the project please contact one of the cause leaders.STARTING IN COLOMBIA In Colombia more than 5 million people have been displaced since 1985, most of them forced to move to the fringes of big urban areas, such as the Bogota-Soacha border. The locality of Ciudad Bolivar in Bogota is the area that has accommodated most of the migrants arriving to this city. A mountain range divides Ciudad Bolivar from the town of Soacha. This area has been home to gravel extraction industries for many years and the land is heavily degraded. Displaced migrants have found a home in this border zone for many years and now thousands of families live on these hills. The border nature of the area has made it a neglected zone by both Bogota and Soacha. In recent years the area has been continually affected by landslides and flooding, putting many people in dangerous living conditions. In Bogota alone, 10,000 people were affected by the rainy season that hit Colombia between 2010 and 2011 due to landslides and floods, most of them residents of Ciudad Bolivar. Green Terraces addresses these contemporary threats, which have affected many sectors of Colombian society but especially the vulnerable communities, which are the displaced people and people living in fringe settlements. The project aims to target eroded and dangerous slopes in the Bogota-Soacha border and convert them into agricultural terraces, giving the rural migrants that settle down in the border zone an economic opportunity in an urban area with little job availability and at the same time preventing environmental catastrophes. The main objectives of Green terraces are to reduce the impact of erosion on the vulnerable houses and infrastructure of this area; to reduce the impact of downhill floods and to increase the soil capacity to retain water; to enhance community living, food security and the economy of the area; and to provide opportunities for water and waste management in an area with poor service provision. The integral use of the terrace system will have a great input from the local community to adapt the design to their specific needs. Every community has a different background, not all migrants have the same needs and not all border residents have the same concerns.Green Terraces is a versatile project. Landslides in poor urban mountainous areas are a problem not only common in Colombia but in many other Latin American cities and especially cities in The Andes mountain range. Although the project is aimed to start in Colombia, it is a versatile idea, implementable in any other country or region.With just a click you can join this Cause and help spread the word about the importance of urban agriculture to face poverty from different angles, including landslide prevention. Click on the following link to join the cause!http://www.causes.com/causes/812388-help-prevent-landslides-through-urban-agriculture/about