Greening The Desert

This is a sobering thing to read. "Several years ago, I travelled around Europe. It seemed to me that Europe was very nice and beautiful, with lots of nature preserved. But three feet under the surface I felt desert slowly coming in. I kept wondering why. I realized it was the mistake they made in agriculture. The beginning of the mistake is from growing meat for the king and wine for the church. All around, cow, cow, cow, grape, grape, grape. European and American agriculture started with grazing cows and growing grapes for the king and the church. They changed nature by doing this, especially on the hill slopes. Then soil erosion occurs. Only the 20% of the soil in the valleys remains healthy, and 80% of the land is depleted. Because the land is depleted, they need chemical fertilizers and pesticides."Masanobu Fukuoka - Greening The Desert:

Desertification, Climate Change and the Developing World

"In particular, it seems like the Sahel could prove fertile ground for such efforts. For one thing, we suspect the changes in the Sahel to be particularly extreme; for another, there are already some amazing pilot efforts underway there to build greenbelts and preserve farmland. Research into turning hard-hit fallow lands into carbon forests shows promise. In addition, many of the world's future refugees are expected to come from the region, so working now to preserve people's livelihood has an air of preventive medicine to it. Why plant a billion trees to help refugees, when we might plant a billion trees to save communities... and cool the planet in the process?"
WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Desertification, Climate Change and the Developing World:

Permaculture greening the desert

This seems to be miraculous and could have huge implications for other parts of the world.

This video tells the story of a seemingly impossible feat achieved by permaculture designer, Geoff Lawton, in which he trained a group of locals in the principals of permaculture, and together they transformed the "hyper-arid" land until it bore fruit, desalinated water, and created fertile ground which requires very little water to be productive.

As the guy says, "We could regreen the middle east ... you can fix all the world's problems in a garden".
Inspiring! Watch!


WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Greening the Desert, A Step-by-Step Video

Technorati Tags: irrigation, desert, permaculture, Jordan, desalination