Technical
The method was wrong for the place.
The failure is technical: planted seedlings died of siting and species selection errors, compounded by absent aftercare.
C4P-CST-0002T4E2Af/Am/AwPost-tsunami mangrove planting, Sri Lanka ▸15 interventions that were really built, really paid for and really measured: the good work nobody sees, the failures nobody publishes, and the climate zones where each one could work next.
DRAG TO ROTATE
One in three records is a documented failure. That ratio is the point of the registry, not an embarrassment in it.
132 days of verification window remaining. Next review due 2027-02-07.
Every intervention on file, deployed and graded.
Zurich has specified recycled concrete for its public buildings since 2005, at the same price or slightly cheaper than conventional concrete. By 2019 about 90 percent of the concrete in its public buildings was recycled concrete, and the specification had followed demand into the private market.
PRIMARY SOURCE Recycled Concrete and Low-Carbon Cement (Success Stories, Switzerland, Buildings and Industry), doc. 282/03-DO-2022/EN Agora Energy Transition (Agora Energiewende)
The shortfall is a compound of contract design, participation and governance, each documented separately.
PRIMARY SOURCE As tons of Chicago recycling go to dumps, a private firm is paid twice Better Government Association
The failure here is not of the mandate but of the outcome trajectory and of the measurement that reported it, and the record is graded degraded on that basis.
PRIMARY SOURCE C40 Towards Zero Waste Accelerator C40 Cities
The mechanism was commodity price, and the delivery mechanism that made the program cheap to run is also what made it cheap to cancel.
PRIMARY SOURCE Florida DEP County Reports, County Overview Report: Volusia County, 2018 Florida Department of Environmental Protection
No measured outcome of this intervention exists in any source.
No measured outcome exists in any source. Absence of measurement is a finding, not a gap.
PRIMARY SOURCE House Resolution No. 56: urging an inquiry into the necessity, cost, and environmental impact of the Manila Bay Rehabilitation Program, particularly the Manila Baywalk Dolomite Beach House of Representatives of the Philippines, 20th Congress
The failure is technical: planted seedlings died of siting and species selection errors, compounded by absent aftercare.
PRIMARY SOURCE Have mangrove restoration projects worked? An in-depth study in Sri Lanka Restoration Ecology, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 705-716 (doi:10.1111/rec.12492), Society for Ecological Restoration
Virginia's seaside lagoons lost all of their eelgrass in 1933 and had none for over 70 years. Between 1999 and 2018, 74.5 million seeds were broadcast into 536 plots covering 213 hectares, and 3,612 hectares of eelgrass were mapped across the four bays in 2018, with the seeded plots accounting for 6 percent of that area.
PRIMARY SOURCE Record-Breaking Eelgrass Restoration in Virginia's Eastern Shore NOAA Office for Coastal Management
Five mechanisms are documented, and they compound.
PRIMARY SOURCE Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, Final Phase II Restoration Plan #3.2, Louisiana Restoration Area (fact sheet) Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration, published by NOAA
Medellin turned 30 roads and streams into green corridors. The city measured cooler streets, and the program outlived an administration that cut its maintenance.
PRIMARY SOURCE Creating a greener, cooler and healthier Medellin (Story of Success) Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) / Cool Coalition
Ahmedabad wrote South Asia's first city heat action plan after a 2010 heat wave was followed by 1,344 excess deaths in a single month. A peer-reviewed evaluation estimated 1,190 fewer deaths per year in its first two full seasons, and the model has since been carried to 23 of India's 28 states.
PRIMARY SOURCE Building Resilience to Climate Change: Pilot Evaluation of the Impact of India's First Heat Action Plan on All-Cause Mortality Journal of Environmental and Public Health, vol. 2018, article 7973519 (doi:10.1155/2018/7973519)
The failure is political and institutional; the horticulture largely worked, with establishment survival comparable to or better than plantings in New York, San Francisco and Sacramento [3][4].
PRIMARY SOURCE Implementing Municipal Tree Planting: Los Angeles Million-Tree Initiative Environmental Management, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 227-238
PRIMARY SOURCE Bright is the new black: multi-year performance of high-albedo roofs in an urban climate Environmental Research Letters, volume 7, article 014029 (doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014029)
The dominant failure mechanism is institutional and social, not treatment technology.
PRIMARY SOURCE Review of Community-Managed Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems in Indonesia (WSP Technical Paper) Water and Sanitation Program, World Bank (study funded by AusAID)
Arcata has treated its own wastewater through oxidation ponds and constructed wetlands since 1986, built for US$5.3 million in 1985 dollars against a US$10 million projected share of the regional plant it declined to join. The finishing marshes are a public wildlife sanctuary, and the council re-chose the natural system in its 2017-2019 upgrade decision, backing it with a US$67 million renewal.
PRIMARY SOURCE Manual: Constructed Wetlands Treatment of Municipal Wastewaters (EPA/625/R-99/010), section 8.1.1 Arcata, California US Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Office of Research and Development, Cincinnati
Orange sends its own street runoff into the dam that supplies its drinking water, through a first stage on Blackmans Swamp Creek that cost $5 million and opened in August 2009. Between November 2017 and June 2020 it took 987 megalitres from Blackmans Swamp Creek, 12 per cent of the creek's flow over those days, and the council and the NSW Government now put its secure yield at about 900 megalitres a year, roughly a fifth of the city's water.
PRIMARY SOURCE Blackmans Swamp Creek Stormwater Harvesting: Review of Environmental Factors Prepared for Orange City Council
Every row opens. Grades are citable and each carries the reasoning that earned it.
A record of only successes is marketing. Failure records carry the same rubric as successes, and the climate zone a method failed in is usually the more expensive lesson.
The method was wrong for the place.
The failure is technical: planted seedlings died of siting and species selection errors, compounded by absent aftercare.
C4P-CST-0002T4E2Af/Am/AwPost-tsunami mangrove planting, Sri Lanka ▸Nobody owned it after handover.
The dominant failure mechanism is institutional and social, not treatment technology.
C4P-WTR-0001T3E2Af/Am/AwCommunity-managed decentralized wastewater treatment (SANIMAS), Indonesia ▸The mandate ended before the work did.
The mechanism was commodity price, and the delivery mechanism that made the program cheap to run is also what made it cheap to cancel.
C4P-CIR-0004T2E4CfaMunicipal curbside recycling collection (City of Deltona), Florida ▸Grades are citable. T1-T5 transferability across six axes. E1-E4 evidence.
change4planet is a working record of environmental interventions that have actually been deployed: what they cost, what they achieved, what went wrong, and where else they could work.
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