The motor hums as the boat glides through a totora reed passageway to the floating islands of Lake Titicaca.  The Uros people have been living on islands constructed of dried totora reed for thousands of years, yet have also experienced a close relationship to the modernizing landscape around them.  From the floating islands one can still easily see the port town of Puno, complete with dirty streets and fossil fuel emissions.  In contrast, the immediate surroundings are built with carbon-negative materials, are 100% solar powered, and exist in harmony with the dynamic equilibrium of nature.

The Uros people have been using photovoltaic (PV) technology for the last decade or so to meet basic refrigeration, lighting, and information technology demands.  With no other electricity generation source, each household is typically able to run a small refrigerator, a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), a radio, and cell phone chargers.  Interestingly, there are no inverters utilized, but rather the PV system uses only direct current (DC) technology.  The entire system is made up of a panel, a battery, conduit cables, switches, and the end-use devices.

Some of the Uros people would like to have access to grid-tied power sources to enable further “quality of life” improvements such as fans and television sets.  However, the historical importance of independence in combination with design constraints inherent to floating reed islands, prevent the Uros from growing beyond a distributed renewable energy system.  Their society has functioned with a high level of satisfaction for thousands of years in the relatively closed system of Lake Titicaca.  The Uros people just consider it normal life, but they have designed an adaptable and clean energy system that meets their needs.

This is the meaning of sustainability by default.  Designing the most cost-effective energy system from scratch within the context of modern technology, resource limitations, and the necessity to limit the externalities of production led the Uros people to create a sustainable energy system.  This was not a choice based on moral impetus, but rather one based on hard economic realities of what will work now with the least upfront cost.

The floating islands are just a slice of life where traditional people meet relatively simple demands with distributed renewable energy.  However, the concept of islands in a relatively closed system can certainly be extrapolated to form an analogy of continents and the earth.  The useful lesson is to imagine communities, cities, and even nations as fragile islands that are too small to burn toxic materials for energy.  From this viewpoint, one may be able to more creatively design strategies to meet future demand with modern clean technology.  To summarize, if one looks at the earth as a series of islands in a closed system with resource limitations and modern technology, sustainability becomes the default development choice.

Note: The author plans on expanding the article after further research. Stay tuned!