>> today on "earth focus," the future, swedish style. building a model eco-district in stockholm, growing urban food in skskyscraper farmsms, expandinig organic eaeateries, and using sunlight to purify water. innovative solutions from sweden that may t transfo thehe wy wewe live, coming up on "eart fococus." sweden, in the heart of scandinavia and at the edge of the arctic circle, is the fourth-largest country in europe. in fall and winter, the

northern lights are on striking display here, and m much of the pristine landscape is shaped by mountains, forests, and lakes. most of sweden's 9 million people, over 80%, live in cities like stockholm, the capital. gateway to the baltic sea, stockholm spans 14 islands and is said to be one of the cleanest cities in the world. here, residents have more than adopted an environmental spirit; it's part of their culture. >> sweden being ahead of the curve in terms of environmental issues--i think it's because most swedes still have a real connection to the environment around us. >> swedes' concern about the enenvironment really dates back from our love of the nature and that we really want to preserve tthings for t the coming generation, which is a big thing for us here in sweden.

>> even here in stockholm, which is a big city, there is a park close by, so it gives individuduals a sense of connection wiwith the e environt around them that i i think a lot of us may have lost, particularly those of us that live in cities. >> the green issue is market-driven in stockholm. people are demanding green housing or sustainable housing. if you ask the stockholmers, "do you like or dislike that the city of stockholm has high ambitions in the environmental field?" 90% says it's very good. and if you ask the citizens of stockholm and the public in stockholm, "do you like or dislike that the c city puts upa demand on you to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle?" 75% likes it. >> in 2010, stockholm became the first city to receive the

european commission's green capital award for its exemplary environmental planning, effective reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and goal to be fossil-fuel-free by 2050. the city is continuing that legacy by transforming the stockholm royal seaport, a rundown district on the northeast edge of the city, into a model city of the future. formerly the king's hunting ground, the city purchased the area in the 19th cenentury and converted it to an industrial port with oil- and gas-handling facilities. today, empty buildings are reminders of the past industrial revolution. but by 2020, developers plan to turn this 583-acre area into a mixed-use eco-city, an attractive place to live and work. >> my name is staffan lorentz. i am head of development for the stockholm royal seaport project.

we are planning in transforming an old industrial import area into new areas for living for 10,000 new apartments and 30,000 new work spaces. the projects in this phase actually started in 2010.0. it was--we made a program togetethr with a port company to finind o, what ways should we use the area for in the future? the port company needed to have more space to develelop on, and also the city is rapidly growing. we need to have more spaces for houses and work spaces, so we needed to go together and find out, what things should we have inside of stockholm and what things should we have outside of stockholm?

we have certain focus areas within the environmental program for the project, one of them being energy, soso we are workig with the developers of this project in order to have them put up energy-efficient buildings, so we are focusing on finding out ways to make things as energy-efficient as possible, and one of the goals that we have in the first phases of the development is to have no more than 55 kilolowatt-hours per square meter a year in the residential areas. so that's the standards that the developers must fulfill in order to get land allocation. >> and that is half o the electrical consumptioion per square meter currently permititd in sweden, a country that already has some of the most stringent standards i in europe. the goal is to momove away from fossil fuels like coal and oil and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. in stockholm, about

4.5 tons of co2 are emitted per person per year. the royal seaport plans to blow that number out of the water. >> we are having goals that we should have no more than 1.5 tons of co2 emissions by 2020, and in order to get that, we are working in renewing the heating and elelectrical production facilitieses to makake it biofud instead of using oil or coal. >> the objective is to create an ecodistrict with h extremely low w energy consumption and providing all the facilities for a sustainable transport system--public transport, biking--to create, in every sense, environmental or green area or green residentitial district and absolute world-class.

>> we are rghght now in the gs worork area, , and this is where have started toto construct the first apartments, and they are going to be moving in as of october of this year. we are standing in front of the old gas container, which was p produced in the 1890s, and this is one of the buildings that are going to be preserved in the area and going to be transformed into cultural venues, et cetera. in the future, we are going to see only biofuel or solar cells or windmills, et cetera, so we are shifting out the oil from the production here. we need to be smarter in the future, because more and more people are moving into cities, so we need to have cities being constructed more smart and make people make smart choices in transport or in

energy consumption, et cetera, in order to actually save the globe e in the end. one of the things that we are trying to make here in stockholm royal seaport is installing a smart grid network. and we're working with a power company that supplies electricity, and if we have residential areas, energy being produced by solar cells or by windmills, et cetera, on days that there is no use for electricity, they should have ways to shift it back to the power company for use elsewhere in the grid. so that's what we are trying to find ways to make possible--to have a smart grid installed and also make it legal and also make it economical so that they should actually get paid for handing electricity to the grid.

>> by transforming a relic of its industrial past into a vision for sustainable living, the stockholm royal seaport could well become a model replicated by other cities around the world. as city populations grow, providing healthy, locally produced food efficiently and sustainably is an increasing challenge. hans hassle, the ceo of plantagon, is planting new seeds for the future of urban farming. plantagon, a leader in vertrtical urbaban agricultlturl consnstruct a cucutting-edgege greenhououse in the e swedish cy of linkopoping, southth of ststockholm. . the aim isis to e more e food usingng less space;o deliver fresh produce at lower cost by marketing directly to consumers; and to embody a new business model, one that makes money while doing good.

>> hans hassle, plantagon international. it's a new concept. what is it? >> we are trying to be part of finding technical solutions on how we're going to feed the future really huge megacities of the world. we are sure thatat we will have many reasons for growing food large-scale inside our cities, and we want to be part of developing those few solulutions for how to do that. we do believe that we will have 3 different problems to feed people living inside the city. one is the vast geographical sprawl of the cities. 2040, 2050--most scientists agree that 80% of 9 billion people will

live inside cities. and already today, we are using 80% of the arable land that we have on the whole planet. if y you put thehe two d developing g curves togog, then n you easilyly realize t tt what will happen i is that we he to grow food, large-e-scale, inside the city. a city is a dense e environmnment. the las really, really expensive, so if you want to grow things in the city, you have to go vertical. and to go vertical, then you have to develop new technical solutions, and that's what we are doing. >> urban agriculture, vertical farming--what does it look like? how does it work? >> vertrtical faarming is about getting a good ratio between the footprint on the ground and how much grorowable areaea you can t out t of a buililding. so growog things s vertical l makes onlyle if you don't have enough land where you want to grow your food. the way that we solve it is from constructing a building

where you don't work with horizontal stories. instead we have an open construction using an helical shape that lets much more sunlnlight into the coreref the building, and then we have a patented logistic system for how to move our crops at the same time as they grow inside this vertical building. >> when will l the plantagon greenhouse begigin producing, anand what wilill it produduce? >> the objbjective is to have te building in linkoping ready at the end of 2013. it depends on the local authorities. we're ready to start building at this stage, so we're just waiting for the approval. we will have a production of 300 to 500 tons every year, and on that building, the footprirint onn the ground is 400 square meters. that's the whole point of dodoig things v vertical. the footprint on thee ground of 400 square meters--thahat's like a normal

garden that you would have to your house--we produce 500 t tos of food every year. in linkoping, we will be growing pak choy, mizuna, and chrysanthemum. this is for the chinese market because our clients at this stage are in asia. >> the urban farm is not very labor-intntensive, is it? >> in a dirty city environment, you needed to grow thingngs in aa closed system or atat least semi-closed sysystem. that means that you h have to have as litte people going into t the system s you possibly cocould to protectt from havingng to use pesticides and o other things. what we and everyone else is developing is therefefore a systemem that is , everything goes around. you plant at the same place as youu harvrvest. that means that the whole farming machine that we are b building is much h more

efficient than if you wowould do this on free land because thehen you would move things around all the time. here, in a sense, you're actually moving the field that you're growing on. insteted of moving people and machines around, you move the things that are growing. that means that it gets much h less labor-inintens. this is both good and bad, of course, because you t take work opportunities away in n one s s. on the o other hand,d, if you 't compete wiwith the free-land growers, you don'n't disturb thr market and their jobs and you create new jobs inside the city, also opening up for sort of new people becoming farmers. if you would ask my children if it would be cool to become a farmer, i think they would say no. if you would ask them if they would be interested in workingngn this kind d of high-tech futuriststic building that are prooducing food inside the city, they might very well say yes. in india, for example,

one of our main markets, this is the main reason for them to work with urban agriculture--to get the young people interested in becoming farmers. when you have a normal greenhouse business, it's much less expepensive to bubuild a normal greenhouse e tn to build one of ours. on the other hand, to run a normal greenhouse is much more expensive than to run one of ours. the life cycle of one ofof ours--w-we are building r real eststate, real estate where you can grow food at the same time. a greenhouse,e, you build them, you take them away after 20, at the most 30 years, and then you build a new one. so we are just rationalizing an old industry and making it like a second generation greenhousing. and when you do things like this, whenen you automize andd industrialize an o old system,ou always have higher i investment costs and lower costs at

the end. so the payback time in linkoping, for example, it's about 5 years on the whole building. so the business case for ththis is rereally, really . you also have toto remember that the cost of a tomato--if you buy a tomato at the grocery store, about 60% is middlemen cost--transportation and the store selling the tomato. we're taking all that away. we're selling directly to the consumer. so even if we have to invest higher, , we have much ls costs at the end for our sales. >> why do youou call this climae smart? what are the processes you're going to make use of that are u useful? >> every vertical grgreenhouse s to be located where e you don't create new transport, because that's the second reason. it's not sustainable to transport all the food that we're eating inside the city. we have to cut away the transport. that's the best way, or one of the best ways to diminish the cararbon dioxide footprint that we're creating today.

>> if you're not g going to grgw yourur plants in soil, how do ou grow them? >> we w were represented byotota totally hydroponics system but a system where we use hydroponics but actually also volcanic stone that we can grow and get the same result as if we were growing in soil. the thing with tasty food is, if you g grow things in a liquid, then you don't get really, really good food. you c can get the same nutritious food, but it doesn't tastste as well. that depends on the roots not getting oxygen enough. but if you use hydroponics, then you will get ththe same taste and healthy f . if you would measure them, i think that ours will be even better. >> urban f farming wiill help provide e restaaurants with heay

locally produced food. some swedish restaurants are already memeeting consumer demand by gog local and organic.. >> my name is p per malmnas. i'm one of the 3 proprietors of restaurant nyagatan, and this restaurant is located in the middle of stockholm with a focus on not only organic food but traditionally food with local produce and local producers. when we opened the reststaurant, we e wanted to have something--serve food thahat was traditional in a way but with lolocal ingredients. we serve wd boar--local wild boar. we have goat cheese which is made outside stockholm. so when it comes to health issues regarding food, we think it's more healthy for people t to visit us whehere they know exactly where the produce is from, and you can always ask the waiter or waitress where the food is from, the meat is from. we can tetell them exactly where it is instead of going to the supermarket, where it's undefined where the meat comes from.

[ring ring] what we try to do with the customer is always to inform on the ingredidients--where the ingngredients comes from on the menu. so for instancnce, ife have a special dish, if we have special fresh-water salmon, we tell them where it's from, where it's been caught, and we try to make people awarere of what ththey're eatingng aththat te. e of the aims of the business is to have a lower carbon footprint. we try to have as few deliveries as possible and as many products produced locally as possiblble instead d of transportining and buying things ouout of season.n. if you buy ts out of season, it has to be transported a longer way. we hope to think so, as well, that people are making a choice while visititing us. even thouough thy don't have to take a big stand, but still, though, they can make a difference as well.

>> when it comes to addressing environmental challenges, new swedish technologies are making a difference, not only in sweden but around the world. in many parts s of the world,d,e water is hard to come by. over 1.1 billioion people lack access to safe drinkining water, a and that't's 12% of the world'ss population. >> solvatten!! >> technology can be a solutiti. solvatatten, or susun water, i s a new water purifier invented by swedish artist and micrcrobiologist petra wadadstr. >> the story begin in australia, where there was a lot of sun, and we were there. and now it's nearly 50 years ago. but unused

sunshine, and i thought, that should not be like that. now we are traveling a lot to different project areas, mainly to africa, and you u can reallly see hohow people struggling every day to get safe water. >> people aren't the only ones affected. the enenvironment pays a price a as well. mamaking watr safe to drink requires boioilin, and t that means using fuels lie wood, chaharcoal, coal,l, or du- fuels that contrtribute to deforestatation and to cacarbon emimissions. unlikeke these boig meods, solvavatten helps reduce carbon emissions. it is portable, requires no batteries, supplies, or spare parts. the supplply of energy for purification--sunlightht--is endless. >> and when you have filled it,

yoyou put it in thehe sun, so yu use the solar energy and create heaat. and witith the heat, you destroy ththe bacterial cell membrane, so that hurts, or destroys, the dna code, so they can't reproduce, and then n you leave it in the sun for a couple of hours, and then you know this water is safe. >> i myself am real grateful too solvatten. because of the tool which has greatly enhanced my health. . just as mom said, i'm the one who was--at least i was just sick of typhohoid. and nonw that we have that tool, i i can eeasily just use ianand th i i knknow that itit's s safe for drinkingng. that's why i'm r rey gratefulul. yeah. >> [singing in african language]

> to work on the solutionon i have donene so many years, to ce back to people who are ususing your solution and see the impact--it's just fantastic. >> i'm very proud of my mother, yeah. yeah, of course. how can you not be? solvatten is still a family company. it's a challenge. of course, we can make a big difference, a huge difference for the people actually getting solvatten. i see water being the key and the most important things that's to bebe looked afafter. we're in an interesting g position where we're working with both private companies wanting to be a part of the solution, and the not-for-profit world as well

as the for-profit world. >> so we always try to find good subsidies, to find possibility to rereach the people whoho need solvavatten the most, and that s a way of using a sustainable solution, that it's a high investment for poor people, but if you conceive just after 10 monthshs, you haveve the whole return of investment just you look at the energy savings. i think that's important to see if we can have solutions used for many years. it's a very important way to go to help poor communities. if you can have

high-quality solutions that are sustainable instead of making very cheap sosolutions that's a waste after a short usagage.

02/25/19 02/25/19 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> e every day we are dealing wh a lot of conflicts and challenges in the planet. made a statement regarding the situation that we hope violence will end in that respect for human rights will be part of the solution. amy: as the united nations calls for a peacefu