[HN Gopher] Regenerating Jordan's native forests
___________________________________________________________________
Regenerating Jordan's native forests
Author : zeristor
Score : 157 points
Date : 2023-03-19 08:41 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| luckylion wrote:
| These articles always seem strange to me. There was another story
| a few years ago, also from Jordan if I recall correctly, where
| some member of the royal family did some permaculture thing with
| some Western group. Great success, look at all the plants,
| amazing, greening the desert and all that, fancy YT videos, and
| they were celebrating some anniversary.
|
| Now here's another one, and they're creating a forest on 250sqm.
|
| It feels like they're starting over and over, but either there's
| other successful projects "next door" which the articles never
| really mention, or the other projects were shut down or failed
| some time before. Did they? If so, why?
|
| The same thing happens in Saudi Arabia where they had some
| amazing results by (oversimplified, yes), digging some swales and
| putting some rocks on steep hills. The grass was coming back,
| trees were growing. And that's it, cut, no more info. You'd think
| that this would be naturally adopted by each neighboring
| community immediately, and the whole desert would be greened in
| no time. But somehow it isn't. Why?
|
| These countries are fairly autocratic, and obviously these
| projects have the blessing of the rulers, or they wouldn't
| happen, and surely the rulers would love to have the forests
| restored and the desertification stopped and all that, and it
| makes for great photo ops, too. Why then, don't they decree these
| projects to happen at scale?
|
| I'm not saying it's all bullshit, maybe it's just journalists who
| need a new story every other years, but these are, to me, obvious
| questions, that I'd answer if I was writing an article about
| these things, and it's suspicious that they aren't being
| answered, ever.
| sampo wrote:
| > The same thing happens in Saudi Arabia where they had some
| amazing results by (oversimplified, yes), digging some swales
| and putting some rocks on steep hills. The grass was coming
| back, trees were growing. And that's it, cut, no more info.
|
| You are probably talking about Al Baydha. As far as I
| understand, the project ran 2009-2016, and last information in
| Wikipedia is from 2020.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Baydha_Project
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8
| baud147258 wrote:
| The pictures in the Wikipedia article are supposed to date
| from January this year.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| After the PR piece is done, actual work is just superfluos
| steps. It can only bring unneccesary risks to everyone
| involved. If it fails, heads must roll, and nobody is
| interested in that for its own sake.
| zeristor wrote:
| There's Geoff Lawton's work mentioned. The idea being that
| referencing a desert being a real test of permaculture:
|
| https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/
|
| I think it isn't a trivial thing to scale, people need skills.
| Geoff Lawton himself was inspired by the 2000 year old Green
| valleys in Morocco which alas appear to be threatened:
|
| https://youtu.be/wd-b_C7a_es
| luckylion wrote:
| But they've been doing it for some 15 years, right? With
| those types of success, I'd expect the map to look like those
| virus-spreading maps where it starts somewhere and then
| expands to all directions at exponential speed.
|
| That it doesn't hints at there being some issue. Do you need
| to tend to each plant constantly with someone who has learned
| some special skills and that doesn't allow for scaling?
|
| The advantage to having trees instead of desert seems so
| obvious, I can't see why everyone isn't jumping on it, unless
| there's some not-talked-about problem that limits these
| projects to touristy projects and YT filming locations. And
| with the amount of money that's going around for
| environmental projects in the developing world, I can't
| imagine that it's about lack of funding.
| carapace wrote:
| It's purely _inertia_.
|
| These systems work. They scale (which is not surprising
| when you think about it, they are made of four-billion-
| year-old self-improving nano-technology that optimizes for
| exponential reproduction at all levels simultaneously, aka
| "life".)
|
| If there's one systemic problem it's that Permaculture is
| diametrically opposed to _extractive_ economic systems.
| (E.g. modern agriculture is /was more akin to mining than
| ecosystem design.) Monsanto (just to pick on them) has no
| place in a tessellation of ecological small-holdings.
|
| Another factor is that many Permies elect to charge money
| to teach Permaculture, and even the main textbook
| "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual" has been scarce on the
| ground and hard to get for years. I think it's a little
| better now? You can order it online and get it delivered. I
| think Permaculture et. al. would have spread faster if
| people taught it for free (and made money from selling the
| surplus they developed on their Permaculture farm, eh?)
|
| These days it has reached "critical mass" and the concepts
| of applied ecology are rolling out all over. You can search
| the Youtube for videos of massive projects in India, for
| example.
| luckylion wrote:
| I'd understand completely if they were up against regular
| western-style industrial farming operations: I can farm
| this land traditionally, the soil is okay, there's money
| to be made, it works, that new idea is a risk, who knows
| what the future will bring, and oh Monsanto mailed me a
| coupon, how nice.
|
| But they're up competing against the desert. Who has a
| commercial interest in keeping the desert the way it is,
| besides some tourist industries around the pyramids in
| Egypt? Shouldn't it be trivial to convince people? "Hey,
| you have this land that is a desert where nothing grows,
| would you like to turn it into a food forest that'll feed
| you and offer you shade and make you loads of cash?"
| might induce some skepticism initially, but when you can
| point to their neighbor who's had a huge success with it,
| shouldn't everyone just jump on it?
|
| Are these desert-projects commercial and they're asking
| for large fees to work on them? That'd make sense to
| explain why they aren't spreading like wild fire, but at
| least from the videos most of them seem like friendly
| plant hippies that get a huge kick out of restoring land,
| so I don't know -- is that just a sales pitch?
| carapace wrote:
| I was reading a book about the genesis of, I want to say
| the Nature Conservancy.
|
| These folks had done the numbers and they realized that
| Pacific Gas & Electric (the company that supplies most of
| the electricity in California) could meet their growth
| targets by improving efficiency rather than opening new
| plants. Literally the company would make more money by
| building fewer power plants and everyone would have
| enough energy. A classic win-win situation. The PG&E
| execs just wouldn't listen. They had to taken to court,
| sued, to even begin to look at, let alone understand, the
| economic and technical advantages that were being
| presented to them. That's how strong the "building new
| power plants is what we do" culture was at PG&E.
|
| Frankly, you're preaching to the choir. I dream of buying
| a few acres of desert land in e.g. NE California or
| Nevada and building a Permaculture food forest from
| scratch. I have a couple of obligations that make it
| unrealistic. I have no idea what people with actual
| capital and ability are waiting on really.
| zeristor wrote:
| I guess the economic vested interests that have to be dealt
| with. From what I understand if there's a large amount of
| sheel and goat agriculture that eat so much vegetation
| there's little chance to survive, and if that is how people
| earn their living they'd need to be won over, or have some
| other way of making a living.
|
| I'm a Data Engineer in a different continent so armchair
| farming is no doubt insulting.
|
| But these things don't seem to be common knowledge, so much
| comes from studying how rain falls on the land, how to slow
| it down so it can penetrate into the soil, and raising the
| groundwater level which can take years.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Geoff Lawton's project is still going
|
| https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| You can actually peak and get a realistic picture. Google maps
| shows lots of those greening projects (like the green wall of
| africa)
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/bxpneCxBeMvXMELt9
|
| Also most of these programs are basically wood plantations,
| that regularly fail and continue existence just as propaganda.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)#Criti...
|
| Its overall not very effective.
|
| Better outcome would be had by planting diverse dessert-adapted
| plants and trees at locations were the landscape protects them,
| so they form "islands" of recovery without needing human
| intervention.
|
| You compute were water in the landscape is most likely to exist
| and assemble, while protected from dust storms. Then you fire a
| seed shell from a drone towards the location, similar to this.
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90504789/these-drones-can-plant-...
|
| A alternative approach is to use robots to 3d print sand into a
| watercollecting structure that supports a plant seeded nearby
| while it drives its root towards ground water.
|
| https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-09/you-built-what-se...
| luckylion wrote:
| Thanks, Google maps is a great idea. Is there a list of these
| locations with historical images?
|
| The approaches you mention are basically what I'd expect:
| mass-scale efforts that are hit and miss but will overall
| result in large effects. I suppose the end goal is different
| between this and other groups: one is "we need trees, lets
| plant trees" the other is "we need trees but we also need to
| repair our relationship with nature and create sustainable
| projects", and the latter probably has scaling-problems
| built-in.
|
| I assume there's a lot of unrelated problems doing that in
| Africa, but North America has deserts too. What's keeping
| tech-loving tinkerers with a passion for drones and robots
| from transforming Arizona?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| American deserts aren't anthropogenic.
| luckylion wrote:
| Human actions certainly play a role in the expansion
| though.
|
| But that aside: Is it "Nature can't be changed, so it's
| not worth trying"? "Nature knows best, better not
| interfere"?
|
| Neither attitude is something I associate with the US, so
| I'm not sure what the status has to do with them trying
| or not trying.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Doesn't mean they can't be
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
| eecc wrote:
| You don't need fancy 3D printers. I remember watching a
| documentary about a man building a seed bank and reforesting
| a huge swath of land somewhere in Africa. At first he was
| ridiculed, fought against but eventually he succeeded. Very
| simple tools, traditional methods.
|
| I think this is the guy, much respect:
| https://www.lifegate.com/yacouba-sawadogo-the-man-who-
| stoppe...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The entire article reads like some sort of religious parable.
| It hits all the woke undertones. Man bad, nature good. Man kill
| nature. But one woman will save nature. Give birth to forest.
| Almost ready for a Hollywood movie.
|
| I've seen Dubai growing grass in the desert, and it literally
| requires almost always on sprinkler. They can grow trees too,
| but they water them daily. Which necessitates taking water from
| the ocean, and desalination. Which requires tons of energy and
| chemicals, and industry. Which costs tons of money. So keeping
| a tree, might be similar costs to what keeping a horse is here.
| All of it requires lots of money, and cheap labour from
| developing countries. Skinny malnourished men, from some poor
| village in India, and Pakistan working in scorching heat in the
| middle of the day.
|
| So yes they can they can grow trees in the desert, because
| every time you fill up with gas, they get a large cut from the
| oil, and thus the money to grow them. So you filling up your
| car, grow trees in the desert. Reality.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| HN discussed desertification about a week ago here,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35100771.
| timellis-smith wrote:
| How much of the global greening is occurring naturally due to
| increased co2?
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| For a success story take a look at Jordans neighbour, Israel. The
| pioneers there planted millions of trees in the semi arid
| wasteland and it is today the only country in the world where
| desertification is happening in the reverse. What was 120 years
| ago rocky hills and barren wastelands are now covered in forests
| and fields.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Doesn't Israel tend to drip water it's trees using from the
| river Jordan for this?
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Not initially, drip water is a modern invention.
| ars wrote:
| Actually they use reclaimed gray water. They don't waste any
| water in Israel.
|
| They also desalinate a lot of water and are actually
| refilling the Jordan River with desalinated water.
| eitland wrote:
| Possibly more interesting should be the country next to Jordan
| that has gone from desert, barely producing enough for itself to
| net exporter of agricultural products.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It is unclear which country you're talking about. Saudi Arabia?
| somecommit wrote:
| No, the other one over the "green line", which can be seen
| from space, thanks to decades of reforestation
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Still unclear because Israel is _not_ a net food exporter
| while Saudi Arabia _is_. Unless we 're talking about some
| other way to slice it (which I was unable to find any data
| on).
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I love these projects.
|
| But i find they do not often communicate of the fragility of the
| endeavor or outcome. Human society is like a ablative sandstorm
| that wither the outcome down to zero in the long run. Same goes
| for wildlife parks. One economic downturn and donations drying up
| and poachers. One drought and the nomadic tribes drive there
| cattle/goat into newly planted, already struggling green. The
| project leading person dies and the whole tribe/idea vanishes,
| the very structure ground to the traditional society, which is
| basically embracing ecological catastrophe to spread the
| individuals genes.
|
| My longterm hope for ecological preservation is actually on
| genetic engineering.
|
| Make treewood give off a awful smell, so its lumber and fireworth
| goes to zero. Make it grow strands of kevlar that blunt saws.
| Make bushes grow leaves that are poisonous for goats. Pre spread
| the bananna fungi, to make burning it down for plantations
| unviable. Make djungle-mosquitos reservoirs for bovine diseases.
| To touch a nature preserve must be something similar to wishing
| for death.
|
| Its horrific, but the only way.
| tariksbl wrote:
| they will incur the wrath of Shai Hulud!!
| Gys wrote:
| I have some background knowledge on the subject but never heard
| of The Miyawaki Method. Thank you for posting.
| steanne wrote:
| https://www.scribd.com/document/415337338/Miyawaki-English-B...
| briantakita wrote:
| John D Liu made a documentary which covers Jordan's efforts among
| others titled "Regreening the Desert".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDgDWbQtlKI&ab_channel=vprod...
| dbingham wrote:
| This is permaculture done right, focusing on recreating native
| conditions using native species and rooting it firmly in the
| science.
| briantakita wrote:
| My PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) instructor was of the
| opinion that Permaculture focuses on designing ecosystems for
| the benefit of people. While he had a preference for native
| organisms, he was against using chemicals or efforts to
| eradicate so-called invasive species. He instead promoted us to
| find the beneficial properties of the invasive species. For
| example, in the US North East, Japanese Knotweed is an invasive
| species, yet has incredible healing properties such as being
| rich in Resveratrol.
|
| A principle of Permaculture systems design is that organisms
| act to benefit the ecosystem. So called weeds, like dandelions,
| remediate the soil & also have strong nutritional properties.
|
| A good 2 volume set is "Edible Forest Gardens" by Dave Jacke.
| He details the lifecycle of an ecosystem from grasslands all
| the way to mature forest from growth back to a cycle from a
| "growing forest" to "mature forest" as disruptions such as fire
| occur.
| dbingham wrote:
| Hey Briantakita,
|
| I spent quite a bit of time embedded in the Permaculture
| movement and have heard all these arguments before. I have
| read all the key Permaculture texts (both volumes of Edible
| Forest Gardens, Mollison's original Permaculture: A
| Designer's Manual, and many more).
|
| They do not mesh with ecological science.
|
| The problem with Permacultrure is that if you pay attention
| to the design system, it's effectively a return to pre-
| science individualistic naturalism. It's entirely based on
| individual personal observation, and removes a lot of the
| checks against personal bias that science introduced to
| improve upon individual naturalism.
|
| Thus it's entirely possible for a Permaculturist to observe
| invasive species doing useful things for their ecosystem and
| completely miss all the damage they're doing. It's easy to
| see the the squirrels who use the Honeysuckle for cover and
| the birds eating its berries and completely miss all the
| Lepidoptera species that would be eating the plants the
| Honeysuckle displaces, and all the birds that depends on
| those species for protein. This is what Permaculturists
| _consistently_ miss, but the ecological science is very clear
| about. Invasive species do far more harm to their biospheres
| than good.
|
| So when Permaculturists discount controlling those species
| they are failing to do the very thing they claim to be
| attempting to do: build healthy ecosystems.
|
| All too often with Permaculture it's much worse than just
| writing off the need to control invasives. I have seen
| Permaculturists become so obsessed with designing novel
| ecosystems that they even introduce invasive species.
|
| The goals of the Permaculture movement - building a society
| that exists in harmony with the natural world and is thus not
| only sustainable, but regenerative - are sound. Many of the
| ideas - building agricultural systems that act like
| ecosystems - are good and worth exploring. But the methods
| and approaches taught by Permaculturists in PDC courses are
| _deeply_ problematic.
| ccooffee wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this (novel-to-me) viewpoint. I've
| been attracted to permaculture by the calm-but-optimistic
| tinkering that so many content creators in that space
| espouse.
|
| Is there a good starter resource you would point to as
| being more in line with modern ecological science? Thinking
| about my yard as an environment in the local ecology makes
| yardwork/gardening feel like it matters (much more than my
| terrible tomato yields, at least).
| baxtr wrote:
| What's the Alternative then?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Well, you could just do permaculture with native species.
| aaron695 wrote:
| > Greening the desert: the architect regenerating Jordan's native
| forests
|
| This article is just a lie.
|
| These forests are the size of a average house in the US
|
| Better article explaining what they are doing -
|
| https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/in-jordan-the-middle-easts...
|
| What they are doing is important, it's about mental health in
| cities.
|
| If you truly care about large scale native forests comments by
| Elon Musk when discussing his CO2 sequestration moonshot are more
| relevant.
| uoaei wrote:
| What "moonshot"? He announced he was funding an XPRIZE for such
| technology, but I haven't seen anything develop from that.
|
| If Musk ever said anything about carbon sequestration, it was
| as an uncited reference to others' ideas. He is the human
| incarnation of clickbait blogspam.
|
| It occurred to me though while attempting to research this that
| such grandiose and incredulous statements about Musk drive
| "organic" viral search patterns (as it drove me to do) which
| could reinforce his standing as knower of things despite him
| not actually knowing a lot of things.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Musk isn't relevant for anything related to environment, and
| things get solved from small scale, like a sand heap
| carvink wrote:
| Some have ambitions to green the Sinai Desert:
|
| https://www.greenthesinai.com/back-to-the-garden-john-d-liu
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-bigg...
| fractallyte wrote:
| Forests also have the potential to create their own micro-
| climates, with clouds and precipitation. (That's why
| deforestation in the Amazon will possibly lead to desertification
| in the region.)
|
| Afforestation is far better than cloud-seeding to produce short-
| term rain. It's self-sustaining, takes carbon from the
| atmosphere, and creates new ecosystems (or rather, revives old
| ecosystems, hopefully with native wildlife).
|
| Perhaps Australia - not just a country, but an entire continent!
| - doesn't have to be so arid.
| eecc wrote:
| Well, reforestation of the Australian Outback would be such an
| awesome geo-engineering monument! Though I wonder about the
| ethical implications of the destruction of the current desert
| ecosystem
| myshpa wrote:
| > Forests also have the potential to create their own micro-
| climates, with clouds and precipitation
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump
|
| > Perhaps Australia - not just a country, but an entire
| continent! - doesn't have to be so arid.
|
| Perhaps even Sahel, Sahara and large parts of USA and Asia as
| well.
| sampo wrote:
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump
|
| I don't think that Wikipedia page makes a good job in
| communicating how controversial and outside of mainstream
| that theory is.
|
| Here is a 2020 _Science_ article which - while very
| sympathetic to the possibility of the theory being correct -
| makes a better job in describing how controversial it is.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/controversial-
| russia...
|
| The mainstream view can probably be described with some
| quotes from the review process of one their early (submitted
| 2010, published 2013) papers:
|
| NOAA's Isaac Held:
|
| "The authors make an extraordinary claim that a term that is
| traditionally considered to be small, to the point that it is
| sometimes neglected in atmospheric models and, even when not
| neglected, rarely commented on, is in fact dominant in
| driving atmospheric circulations. The effect concerned is
| that of the mass sink associated with condensation. This term
| is of first-order importance in some planetary atmospheres,
| such as Mars, where the total mass of the atmosphere has a
| substantial seasonal cycle, but for Earth the standard
| perspective is that the heat release associated with
| condensation dominates over the effect of the mass loss."
|
| Editor's decision:
|
| "The authors have presented an entirely new view of what may
| be driving dynamics in the atmosphere. This new theory has
| been subject to considerable criticism which any reader can
| see in the public review and interactive discussion of the
| manuscript in ACPD. Normally, the negative reviewer comments
| would not lead to final acceptance and publication of a
| manuscript in ACP. After extensive deliberation however, the
| editor concluded that the revised manuscript still should be
| published - despite the strong criticism from the esteemed
| reviewers - to promote continuation of the scientific
| dialogue on the controversial theory."
|
| https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/13/1039/2013/acp-13-1039.
| ..
| myshpa wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump
|
| "The theory predicts two different types of coast to
| contentinental rainfall patterns, first in a forested area
| one can expect no decrease in rainfall as one moves inland
| in contrast to a deforested region where one observes an
| exponential decrease in annual rainfall."
|
| https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/4/341/346941
|
| "Life depends on Earth's hydrological cycle, especially the
| processes that carry moisture from oceans to land. The role
| of vegetation remains controversial. Local people in many
| partially forested regions believe that forests "attract"
| rain, whereas most modern climate experts would disagree.
| But a new hypothesis suggests that local people may be
| correct."
|
| Mainstream or not ... people are right, and recent droughts
| seem to confirm this. The theory may not be right or wrong
| entirely, however continuing with discounting the role of
| vegetation will be done at our peril.
| user070223 wrote:
| Currently they're fighting desertification in africa(and
| china) with the "Great Green Wall".[0] [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)
| hgomersall wrote:
| Also take a look at the referencing the Sinai peninsula
| project: https://www.greenthesinai.com/home
|
| That draws on the China example and there's some really
| inspiring content on the site.
| baq wrote:
| $8B. This is like, a couple days of Pentagon spending?
|
| Sometimes politics just make no sense whatsoever.
| ccooffee wrote:
| I am regularly surprised at how "cheap" mega-engineering
| projects are compared to the things we (USA) already
| spend money on.
|
| Here's some examples of expensive things:
|
| * USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier: $13.3 billion [0]
|
| * F-35 jet program (covering expected lifetimes of all
| aircraft through 2070): $1.5 trillion (> $150 million per
| aircraft) [1]
|
| * TARP funds during 2007-2010 crisis: $431 billion [2]
|
| * PPP loan forgiveness (during covid): $742 billion [3]
|
| It's very tempting to declare these other expenses an
| exorbitant waste of potential when mega-projects come in
| so much cheaper: greening Africa ($8bn), using
| desalination and up-gradient pumping to re-hydrate the
| Colorado River ($15bn)[4], the large hadron collider
| ($5bn - $13bn)[5], and James Webb Space Telescope
| ($9.7bn)[6] to name a few.
|
| Sources:
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-of-navy-uss-
| ford-aircra...
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20191206140954/https://ww
| w.thena...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_P
| rogram
|
| [3] https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/
|
| [4] https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-
| need-more-w...
|
| [5] https://en.as.com/latest_news/how-much-money-did-
| cerns-large...
|
| [6] https://www.planetary.org/articles/cost-of-the-jwst
| MrVandemar wrote:
| >Perhaps Australia - not just a country, but an entire
| continent! - doesn't have to be so arid.
|
| One limiting factor is that the soils are pretty gutless in
| many areas - as the settlers discovered when they arrived and
| found that the bushland was highly evolved to survive in those
| conditions (we have a great diversity of carniverous plants
| because of this), and farming wound up being much, much more
| challenging than they thought.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Apparently a big part of the solution is introducing a bit of
| organic matter into the desert soil which is one of the
| factors to kick start the process. I don't know much about
| it, but that's my understanding.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Another issue that would only be discovered later was that
| the trees in Australia kept the water table low. A couple of
| years after the deforestation and farming of a plot, the
| water level would rise, bringing with it salt from deep
| underground and depositing it on the surface. Effectively
| this permanently destroys the soil. Not only that, but i
| believe that the water also disappears a while after wreaking
| all this havoc. This is just something from a vaguely
| remembered lesson so i might have forgotten some detail.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Surprised to see no mention of the book _Greening the Desert_ by
| Rakesh Hooja, given they appropriated the title for this article.
|
| The book is a deep look into a successful permaculture endeavor
| in India. It talks about all the hard parts related to
| permaculture. That is, not the planting, not the irrigating, not
| the carefully lunar-timed execution of the pagan cow-horn-manure
| fertility ritual, but the social and political factors involved
| in getting a lot of different people on board with a long-term,
| large-scale, and risky agricultural project.
|
| A dry, kind of boring read, but useful.
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