Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition
Piotr Yurchanka, Alexey Kunko, Vladislav Sidorenko, Dmitry Tkachuk
Belarus
In a pursuit of technological progress which allegedly improves our life we forget to pay due attention on what has supported our comfortable existence on this small planet for thousands of years.
Problem
Swamps are the”lungs of the planet”. The benefits they provide are comparable to the benefits of forests. Every swamp is an amazing organism. Like all life on Earth, it breathes, but how?
Swamps absorb carbon dioxide and constantly emit oxygen. Tons of pure oxygen.
The swamps are home to hundreds of different types of animals and plants. This is an unknown world, with its own laws and rules.
In the middle of the last century, the total area of swamps in Belarus was 2,940 thousand hectares (14.2% of the entire territory of the country). After 60 years, the area of swamps on the territory of Belarus has decreased by 3.5 times. Currently it is only 860 thousand hectares.
Unfortunately, mass swamp reclamation (drainage), which began in the middle of the last century, led to irreversible consequences, such as fires, drought, soil degradation and the complete destruction of certain types of animals and plants not only in Belarus, but also in all Eastern Europe. Read the rest of this entry »