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Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara
- MR4D 3y agoSide effect of this in the long term if it is successful is that there should be fewer hurricanes on the Atlantic. (Hurricanes are believed to caused by dust blowing off the west coast of the Sahara)
- 1letterunixname 3y agoMagical thinking. It ain't gonna happen.
- lancetipton 3y agoThanks for sharing. Super interesting video. Never spent a lot of time with it, but I've always been curious how people could rebuild an ecosystem. I think it was the dune series, that I read a number of years back that touched on this idea a bit in the second or third book? It was not something I ever really thought about before that. It's cool to see a real life example of it.
- kadoban 3y agoYeah there's a lot of that even in the first Dune book. The Fremen's leader is an ecologist and they're explicitly collecting water and preparing to change the entire world to be greener and more livable.
- sophacles 3y agoThe linked channel has a lot of good videos it, and Mossy Earth is another. They aren't going to make you an expert by any means, but they provide good introductions to various projects that are underway doing ecological restoration. They're nice introductions to the topic.
- bluGill 3y agoUniversities all over the world are asking that question - and have been for centuries. They have come up with some great answers over time. It takes years for farmers to learn - agriculture (like science) advances on the death of old people who continue their unsustainable practices to the grave - but things are overall much better than the past and getting better.
- legitster 3y agoFascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture. It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jermaustin1 3y ago> It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture. I think that is already the population. What the attempt seems to be is to create a green belt that prevents further desertification of semi-arable land that they are already subsistence farming on, because if the desert keeps moving, these people will cease to exist. Captialistically/economically, there is questions as to whether these people should continue to subsistence farm, but if they want to, and it can help keep the desert at bay, then I say more power to them.
- bluGill 3y agoThese people right now don't have good options. Get them enough food locally and they no longer need to chase all over trying to find enough work to afford food. In turn that means they can send their kids to school and those now educated kids can in turn apply modern things. Some of that is those kids - the ones who don't love farming - leave to better jobs in the city, while others - those who love farming - apply modern farming techniques (which is sustainable, contrary to popular myth) and produce a lot more food while building up the soil even more. But if you don't have enough food it all fails. History has taught us that in every corner.
- krmboya 3y agoCan you expound a bit on sustainability of modern farming techniques? It has always been my understanding that modern farming is reliant on a large industrial outlay and global trade for things like fertiliser and pesticides. And that it also affects the soil in a way that is hard or impossible to reverse (extraction of certain nutrients that cannot be easily replenished naturally)
- animal_spirits 3y agoI've been following Andrew Millison's work for a while, he's got a lot of really wonderful introductory lessons on permaculture. He's got an online course at the University of Oregon, I'm planning on taking it sometime soon
- fuzztester 3y agoFirst saw this a few years ago. Permaculture - from forest to farm | Clea Chandmal https://youtu.be/KI3haUOkP-I?si=v_z8xCOKzwLO-May https://youtu.be/KI3haUOkP-I?si=v_z8xCOKzwLO-May IMO this is one of the most succint and clear explanations of why permaculture is so important - because it tries to mimic nature, which has had (m|b)illions more years to evolve and create much more intelligent and efficient growth, energy conversion, creation and destruction processes than we stupid and arrogant humans have had in the few tens of thousands of years (at most) that we have been doing agriculture, or should I say, monoculture or even better, stupidiculture.
- fuzztester 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472378
- xref 3y agoLooks like Millison is with Oregon State University https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/osu-permaculture-design https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/osu-permaculture-design
- sparrowInHand 3y agoI abhor these projects, because they are seasonal- as in dependent on outside funds and thus hyper-fragile. Also usually propped up by colonizers, to detract from some ressource extraction destruction. Same with wildlife preserves. One bad coup with corrupt politicians, one recession in the west - and its all gone, poached and ruins. Its worthless feel good photo OP, monetary potemkin zoos and forrests, providing the worst kind of hope, the one that has no chance to last in a storm. What is their solution against nomads and there goat herds which are still a status symbol and in conflict with the farmers of the region? Poisonous plants? Guards? Landmines? How does it prevent building up resentment, when obviously a green landscape is more important to the foreigners, then the starving locals? How does it solve the hard problem of exponential mankind vs civilizational allmende protection? How do the plants survive in the climate change storms yet to come?
- alephnerd 3y ago> I abhor these projects, because they are seasonal- as in dependent on outside funds and thus hyper-fragile. Also usually propped up by colonizers, to detract from some ressource extraction destruction. It depends on the institutional experience of each country. There's a reason this initiative is being done in Senegal instead of neighboring Mali. WFP funding is fairly consistent and less whimsical ime. It's private donors like the Gates Foundation that tend to be flaky, as they only answer to the whims of the Gates family. Programs like the WFP, WB, IMF, ADB, USAID, etc need to be auditable as significant amounts of public and private money are invested, leading to demands from multiple donors, compared to family foundations or smaller non-profits.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoI dunno, maybe watch the video and get your answers from the people who literally answers them in the video? They're not "planting trees", they're basically just running the normal progression of how sand forests develop at a faster, but still slow enough to take years, rate. Nothing particularly "it'll never work" or "it won't survive" about that.
- sparrowInHand 3y ago
- hacker_youtube 3y ago[flagged]
- bradleykingz 3y agoAfrica is a country
- girafffe_i 3y agoLol
- dumbomon 3y ago[flagged]
- beezlewax 3y agoWhat?
- canadiantim 3y agoVery amazing work. Syntropic farming, hadn't heard the term before but glad to do more research into it. Also the half-moons is very smart, very interesting. Interesting they went for half-moons instead of swales like in permaculture design, both aimed to increase water-retention. I guess in such very arid conditions half-moons may work better for water retention
- dappermanneke 3y agowho is africa also, this is geoengineering. the same kind the soviets used to do and the chinese do now. it would never be allowed to happen in a western country because someone with deep pockets for a lawsuit would find an endangered species of worm living in a dune or two
- insider-trade 3y ago[flagged]
- fuzztester 3y agoCheck out land imprinting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_imprinter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_imprinter
- neontomo 3y agoIf you're interested in the trials and tribulations of regreening a desert landscape, I recommend this YouTuber with an ambitious dream: https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas
- carapace 3y agoI hate to be negative, I do, but Shaun Overton is a fool. He's wasting an enormous amount of money, energy, and time to achieve approximately nothing when he could do so much more if he expended those resources on a non-idiotic project. It's his time and money to waste, but it hurts to see it when he could really do a lot of good with it instead. His heart's in the right place.
- neontomo 3y agoI'm not familiar enough with the topic to know if you're correct or not, but I don't watch his channel to see his project work out, seeing him learn small things along the way and share that journey but also him connecting with himself and the community around his land in unique ways through his project is intriguing and hopeful. A mad dream pushed forward by a mad man, which may not come to fruition, but it's a whole lot more entertaining than watching people take on small projects that are guaranteed to succeed.
- canadiantim 3y agoVery cool to see he's using prickly pear cactus. I'm currently working on a project for regreening arid regions in California using prickly pear on degraded water-restricted former agricultural fields. The prickly pear really is optimally suited for regenerating desert landscapes because they are one of nature's great survivors of extreme conditions. Furthermore, they can produce impressive biomass yields which helps drive significant amounts of carbon underground which helps to structure the soil and feed the soil microbiome / establish mycorrhizal networks for other plants to be subsidized with. Plus all parts of the prickly pear cactus are edible, the fruits are delicious (great at reducing LDL cholesterol too). They are prickly as a mfer tho, my goodness, watch your hands! Plus in the America's they are native and so have natural biological controls in these ecosystems that help prevent unwanted runaway growth. Lots to love about prickly pear!
- chrsw 3y agoOr just wait a few thousand years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
- fuzztester 3y ago3 words. "Geoff Lawton videos." You know, that Strine permaculture guy. Watch at least 15 to 20 of them. Many are short. Only then talk, people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Lawton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Lawton https://youtube.com/@DiscoverPermaculture?si=XVjdWpJk5ZIVTnLP https://youtube.com/@DiscoverPermaculture?si=XVjdWpJk5ZIVTnL... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strine
- anh690136 3y agothis is interesting! thanks for sharing
- wudfar 3y agoI have money please..