‘What if it were possible?’ is a new series I want to write every week or so to share inspiring projects around the world, led by people like you and me who’ve decided to stand for active hope and planetary regeneration. I hope to share my enthusiasm that if this can be done, then nothing is impossible!
‘What if it were possible?’ is a new series I want to write every week or so to share inspiring projects around the world, led by people like you and me who’ve decided to stand for active hope and planetary regeneration. I hope to share my enthusiasm that if this can be done, then nothing is impossible!
In this series, we will look at different ecosystems, question why they were degraded, investigate how they were transformed back to life, meet some experts who made it possible and explore the world of possibilities that lies ahead of us.
This is largely inspired by an online course I am taking with Gaia Education and Ecosystem Restoration Camps, two leading actors in the field of regenerative education.
Part 1 – RESTORING DESERT ECOSYSTEMS
The first part of the series highlights Neal Spackman, co-founder and CEO of the Regenerative Resources Corporation and co-founder of the Al-Baydha Project in Saudi Arabia.
Now most of us would think of deserts as lost causes of land restoration: with less than 50mm of rainfall per year (sometimes no rain at all for years), flash floods, extreme temperatures, and little to no vegetation, how can we ever hope to bring deserts back to life?
Well, this is the challenge that Neal and his team have taken on the western coast of Saudi Arabia, with fantastic results! Their goal is nothing less than to transform degraded land (coastal desert in this case) into productive ecosystems: mangrove wetlands, seawater agriculture, aquacultures, freshwater lenses, dry-land agroforestry… The potential outcomes of this include climate control (temperature and rainfall mitigation), topsoil building (stopping erosion), local food production (in a desert!), and creating livelihood for the people of the region!
What caused the desertification ?
While this question is hard to answer, we can identify a few factors that have led entire regions such as this into desertification. Some natural phenomena include cold water currents and air flows on a planetary scale, which explain why some regions are drier than others. But there are also many human factors to understand if we are to reverse the desertification and restore such ecosystems to their natural production capacities:
- Deforestation: the Mayans are one amongst many historic examples of civilisation whose land became deserts because of deforestation, which eventually led to the fall of their empire.
- Plowing: plowing the soil has been a staple of modern agriculture and has led to dramatic soil erosion: it is estimated that over the course of the 20th century the earth has lost more than half of its top soil, the layer upon which all living things depend! The US midwest is a tragic example.
- Mismanagement of grazing: while animals play a crucial role in the mineral cycle and the establishment of biofertility, they can also cause massive degradation when not well controlled including young shrubs being unable to get established and the soil getting compacted.
- Irrigation: flood irrigation provokes evaporation that leads to salinisation and loss of fertility: the Euphrate river basin in the middle east lost most of its fertility to this phenomenon.
What can we do?
The strategies that people like Neal Spackman implement are very simple: they all stem from a thorough observation of the local conditions, small and slow solutions to gather energy and the facilitation of natural processes to take over. Here are a few examples:
- Swales and stones dams were built to avoid the flash floods to swipe through the valleys and take all the water back into the sea. By physically slowing down the water it is being forced into the ground, thus replenishing shallow water tables and being available for trees/plants.
- The rock dams also catch silt and organic matter in one place, thus creating conditions for natural composting into soil rather than letting it turn to dust. This in turn supported biological processes to build supporting the growth of plants and trees.
- Caves were built to attract bats in one place, allowing their team to gather their rich excrement for use as fertilizer!
What does this mean?
What this story shows, like so many others I will be sharing soon, is one key thing: there is so much we can do to stop the degradation of our ecology. If the loss of services provided by natural ecosystems is the main cause of climate change, it is by restoring them that we will stop this drama.
On top of regenerating degraded ecosystems, we have the opportunity to recreate local economies, to support personal livelihoods, to feed people, and to create an overall abundance within only a couple of generations!
Seriously, if this can be done in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, isn’t this living proof that we can regenerate any degraded environment?
Conclusion
I hope this sparked some hope in your heart and some understanding in your head!
The success of the restoration effort also relies on each and every one of us to act at their level: as citizens of the earth we can all do something, and my hope is that this series will help you find where and how you can join the movement!
What are you going to do for your environment?