by Professor Anthony J Ryan OBE Director of The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures
& The University of Sheffield

Zaatari refugee camp, where 80,000 people are squeezed into six square kilometres, is an inspiring place to work. The refugees’ legal status usually prevents them from taking up employment, owning property or moving freely, stripping them of agency. At home they were farmers, engineers, teachers, doctors, so not only have they been forcibly displaced, but also forcibly unemployed. And they can’t do anything that even looks like it might lead to permanence, like getting a job or fixing their house. Despite this, the eagerness to put a plan into action was truly astounding, it is incredible to see the resilience of the Za’atari folk.

Our research on hydroponics is focussed on the production of high-value crops close to market (urban farming) with a low carbon and water footprint using polyurethane foam as a synthetic soil. I will show how a design of experiments approach can predict the productivity of crops from the reagents used in polyurethane synthesis through the prediction of the structure and properties of the foam.

We connected our work on synthetic soils with a waste disposal problem posed by UNHCR - the UN's refugee agency.  They saw dirty unused mattresses, we saw an alternative growth substrate and more than that ‘a problem’ that could actually help. In doing so we developed small-scale hydroponics at the household and community scale.

There are benefits that come from the act of co-creation, not ‘smart ideas’ parachuted in, and the equality found in some academic humility and what happens between people when safety is taken away. We responded to the frequent cry of the Syrian refugees - that they miss the colour green - not only did we find a technical fix, but also an impact on well being. This meant their innovations enhanced our research in Sheffield, we now have an urban farm built using the low-cost technology developed in Zaatari with farmers from Syria.

The people who live in these camps face daily struggles that many of us cannot imagine. But those we met embodied values that are often forgotten by those of us in more privileged parts of the world: an adaptable approach to solving problems, an aversion to waste, a sense of community. As hard as we must work to live in a world where no one is forced to flee their home, there is much we can learn from Syria’s refugees.