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How do you bring back the rain in a desert one and a half times the size of the Netherlands?
26-01-2022
“Restore nature and the rain will return”. That's what The Weather Makers say: a group of Dutch engineers. They have devised a major plan to make Egypt's extremely dry Sinai desert greener, to reduce rain and rivers and prevent further drying out.
More plants provide cooling, make the environment more humid and that brings rain. Ultimately, it may even contribute to the fight against climate change. But how do you grow a lot of plants and trees from dry sand in a sweltering desert? Three young entrepreneurs about their great mission and special invention.
It takes a lot of guts to dare to tackle the enormous problems of heat and drought and thus to combat climate change. “We are used to thinking big,” says Gijs Bosman (41 years old). Together with Ties van der Hoeven and Maddie Akkermans, he started The Weather Makers, a team of engineers with experience in the dredging industry: Dubai, the Maasvlakte, large ships, multi-million dollar projects.
“The dredging industry makes huge projects that you can see from space. Unfortunately, it also destroyed a lot,” he says. “Suddenly the penny dropped for me: with the skills and experience we have, we can also do something better for the world.” In addition to restoring ecosystems in the Netherlands, they are working on a plan to regreen ten thousand square kilometers of Sinai desert. But that's not all. They want to use this to combat global warming. A giga-ambitious plan by a small group of Dutch people.
The Sinai desert was once green
The desert in Egypt shimmers under a hot and dry climate. There is little fresh water or rain, so the soil is salty and dried out. Global warming is particularly noticeable here and is making these problems worse. Yet several studies show that the Sinai was once a green place full of life and water.
The Weather Makers want to reinstate that. They do this by creating ecosystems on a large scale to repair the water cycle. Planting trees is not enough, they say. An ecosystem consists of many different organisms, such as plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. “If we show the power of ecological growth, it can bring a lot and inspire others to do the same,” Bosman says.
How do you make it rain in the desert?
The air above dry and hot land rises faster and does not allow raindrops to fall easily. So once an area has become a desert, it is extremely difficult to make it rain again. In the Sinai, the moist air from the Mediterranean rises so high that the rain only ends up behind the mountains in the Indian Ocean. And that is of little use to them in the desert.
A green landscape means more clouds and more rain. Plants provide shade, cooling and more moisture. Twigs, leaves and roots make the soil richer, so that the water is better retained when it rains. If more rain falls on healthy soil, more and more plants get a chance to grow, which in turn provides more water and so on.
If it's up to The Weather Makers, this huge desert area will turn into a green oasis again. Image: The Weather Makers
Cooling the earth with greening
But wait, there's more. As parts of the Sinai become greener, cooler and wetter, the green area slowly expands further. Eventually the rivers and streams will also return, the engineers expect. Surrounding regions also benefit from this upward spiral.
The Weather Makers don't call themselves the Weather Makers for nothing: they expect that all the greenery will cause the wind to turn from north to south and bring more humid air from the Indian Ocean to the Sinai. Areas in North Africa and the Middle East could also become greener and cooler as a result. And this can help slow down global warming.
The rain came back
It has been proven before that it is possible to turn large tracts of parched land into a Garden of Eden. Collaboration partner John D. Liu is an ecologist and filmmaker and reported on the recovery of the Loess Plateau in China in the documentary Green Gold (can be viewed at VPRO Tegenlicht).
The eroded area was completely restored in about twenty years. Residents built terraces on mountain slopes and planted thousands of trees and other plants. The soil improved, the humidity increased, the heat decreased and the rain returned. Nature recovered and the area became green and habitable again.
The Loess Plateau in China before and after the restoration of the vegetation. Image: John D. Lui
Ready for step one
But back for a moment: where do you start such a mega operation? Near Lake Bardawil, in the north of the peninsula. The Egyptian government has asked a Belgian dredging company to restore the large coastal lake, which is extremely shallow and salty. There is hardly any life left now.
The government wants to bring back the fish and other aquatic animals by dredging the lake. This allows them to tackle poverty in the area and ensure food security. As partners of the dredging company, The Weather Makers are now negotiating with the Egyptian government about this first step of the larger plan. They can use the excavated mud from the lake for the rest of the mission: restoring the land.
Dredging as a kickstart for recovery
They want to use the dredged material from the lake to make the land fertile. The interior bordering the lake was once green. But due to erosion of the land, the fertile top layer has slowly but surely ended up in the lake. “We want to take that fertile soil back up from the lake and put it back on the land,” says Bosman. “That involves moving millions of cubic meters of soil. The idea is very old: just think of farmers who empty their ditches and use the fertile mud on the land.”
There are only a few factors in Egypt that make it, to put it mildly, a bit more difficult. The water and sediments from the lake are extremely salty and there is hardly any rain in the desert area. But The Weather Makers have come up with something clever: the Eco Oasis.
Ecosystem Restoration Invention: The Eco Oasis
The Eco Oasis is an ecological machine for purifying or desalinating water, stimulating life and creating fertilizers and fresh water. There is a prototype in a meadow just outside Hertogenbosch's: an impressive greenhouse with huge glass cylinders full of water from the nearby area. The water flows very slowly from cylinder to cylinder through pipes. Special micro-organisms are grown there that can purify water: diatoms, a type of algae that produce a lot of oxygen.
The test set-up of the Eco Oasis in Den Bosch. Photo: Pieter van Hout
The diatoms absorb the excess nutrients from the water and themselves form the food for fish, which also live in the cylinders. In addition, plants grow in the greenhouse. The fertile droppings of the fish can then be used as fertilizer for the plants. The evaporation released during these natural processes causes condensation in the greenhouse, which can be extracted as fresh water. And so you have a miniature ecosystem where each link contributes to the next. In short: a great invention that can be used anywhere in the world.
An explosion of life
The Eco Oasis provides an explosion of life, even in rugged, arid areas such as the Sinai. The use of the cylinders in the greenhouse of the test set-up can be widely applied in the desert. The plan is to transport the sediments from the coastal dredging work in pipelines to the area to be restored.
In the pilot of the plan, a number of large greenhouses will be placed in the desert, in which the salt water will be converted by the Eco Oasis into fertile soil, freshwater and plants that are suitable for greening parts of the desert in about a year and a half. “The greenhouses are, as it were, the nursery for ecological recovery,” says Bosman.
The greenhouse where the Eco Oasis in Den Bosch is located. Photo: Pieter van Hout
“Here we can show the power of nature”
What do they need to make the project a success? “Ten cubic meters of sediments from Lake Bardawil,” Bosman says with a laugh. This allows them to conduct research to show that their plan can work. And they would like to start with the first phase of the project: the dredging work in Lake Bardawil. Then they can simultaneously run pilots for greening the desert.
“If we start now, there will be changes at the lake after one or two years,” he says. Then the water quality improves, aquatic animals come back and the wetlands around the lake become green again. “Zoom in on Google Maps in fifteen or twenty years, hopefully you will see that the desert in the Sinai is a lot greener than it is now. The world needs these kinds of projects. Here we can show the power of nature.”
https://www.voordewereldvanmorgen.nl/artikelen/we-denken-groot-van-droge-woestijn-naar-groene-oase
26-01-2022
“Restore nature and the rain will return”. That's what The Weather Makers say: a group of Dutch engineers. They have devised a major plan to make Egypt's extremely dry Sinai desert greener, to reduce rain and rivers and prevent further drying out.
More plants provide cooling, make the environment more humid and that brings rain. Ultimately, it may even contribute to the fight against climate change. But how do you grow a lot of plants and trees from dry sand in a sweltering desert? Three young entrepreneurs about their great mission and special invention.
It takes a lot of guts to dare to tackle the enormous problems of heat and drought and thus to combat climate change. “We are used to thinking big,” says Gijs Bosman (41 years old). Together with Ties van der Hoeven and Maddie Akkermans, he started The Weather Makers, a team of engineers with experience in the dredging industry: Dubai, the Maasvlakte, large ships, multi-million dollar projects.
“The dredging industry makes huge projects that you can see from space. Unfortunately, it also destroyed a lot,” he says. “Suddenly the penny dropped for me: with the skills and experience we have, we can also do something better for the world.” In addition to restoring ecosystems in the Netherlands, they are working on a plan to regreen ten thousand square kilometers of Sinai desert. But that's not all. They want to use this to combat global warming. A giga-ambitious plan by a small group of Dutch people.
The Sinai desert was once green
The desert in Egypt shimmers under a hot and dry climate. There is little fresh water or rain, so the soil is salty and dried out. Global warming is particularly noticeable here and is making these problems worse. Yet several studies show that the Sinai was once a green place full of life and water.
The Weather Makers want to reinstate that. They do this by creating ecosystems on a large scale to repair the water cycle. Planting trees is not enough, they say. An ecosystem consists of many different organisms, such as plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. “If we show the power of ecological growth, it can bring a lot and inspire others to do the same,” Bosman says.
How do you make it rain in the desert?
The air above dry and hot land rises faster and does not allow raindrops to fall easily. So once an area has become a desert, it is extremely difficult to make it rain again. In the Sinai, the moist air from the Mediterranean rises so high that the rain only ends up behind the mountains in the Indian Ocean. And that is of little use to them in the desert.
A green landscape means more clouds and more rain. Plants provide shade, cooling and more moisture. Twigs, leaves and roots make the soil richer, so that the water is better retained when it rains. If more rain falls on healthy soil, more and more plants get a chance to grow, which in turn provides more water and so on.
If it's up to The Weather Makers, this huge desert area will turn into a green oasis again. Image: The Weather Makers
Cooling the earth with greening
But wait, there's more. As parts of the Sinai become greener, cooler and wetter, the green area slowly expands further. Eventually the rivers and streams will also return, the engineers expect. Surrounding regions also benefit from this upward spiral.
The Weather Makers don't call themselves the Weather Makers for nothing: they expect that all the greenery will cause the wind to turn from north to south and bring more humid air from the Indian Ocean to the Sinai. Areas in North Africa and the Middle East could also become greener and cooler as a result. And this can help slow down global warming.
The rain came back
It has been proven before that it is possible to turn large tracts of parched land into a Garden of Eden. Collaboration partner John D. Liu is an ecologist and filmmaker and reported on the recovery of the Loess Plateau in China in the documentary Green Gold (can be viewed at VPRO Tegenlicht).
The eroded area was completely restored in about twenty years. Residents built terraces on mountain slopes and planted thousands of trees and other plants. The soil improved, the humidity increased, the heat decreased and the rain returned. Nature recovered and the area became green and habitable again.
The Loess Plateau in China before and after the restoration of the vegetation. Image: John D. Lui
Ready for step one
But back for a moment: where do you start such a mega operation? Near Lake Bardawil, in the north of the peninsula. The Egyptian government has asked a Belgian dredging company to restore the large coastal lake, which is extremely shallow and salty. There is hardly any life left now.
The government wants to bring back the fish and other aquatic animals by dredging the lake. This allows them to tackle poverty in the area and ensure food security. As partners of the dredging company, The Weather Makers are now negotiating with the Egyptian government about this first step of the larger plan. They can use the excavated mud from the lake for the rest of the mission: restoring the land.
Dredging as a kickstart for recovery
They want to use the dredged material from the lake to make the land fertile. The interior bordering the lake was once green. But due to erosion of the land, the fertile top layer has slowly but surely ended up in the lake. “We want to take that fertile soil back up from the lake and put it back on the land,” says Bosman. “That involves moving millions of cubic meters of soil. The idea is very old: just think of farmers who empty their ditches and use the fertile mud on the land.”
There are only a few factors in Egypt that make it, to put it mildly, a bit more difficult. The water and sediments from the lake are extremely salty and there is hardly any rain in the desert area. But The Weather Makers have come up with something clever: the Eco Oasis.
Ecosystem Restoration Invention: The Eco Oasis
The Eco Oasis is an ecological machine for purifying or desalinating water, stimulating life and creating fertilizers and fresh water. There is a prototype in a meadow just outside Hertogenbosch's: an impressive greenhouse with huge glass cylinders full of water from the nearby area. The water flows very slowly from cylinder to cylinder through pipes. Special micro-organisms are grown there that can purify water: diatoms, a type of algae that produce a lot of oxygen.
The test set-up of the Eco Oasis in Den Bosch. Photo: Pieter van Hout
The diatoms absorb the excess nutrients from the water and themselves form the food for fish, which also live in the cylinders. In addition, plants grow in the greenhouse. The fertile droppings of the fish can then be used as fertilizer for the plants. The evaporation released during these natural processes causes condensation in the greenhouse, which can be extracted as fresh water. And so you have a miniature ecosystem where each link contributes to the next. In short: a great invention that can be used anywhere in the world.
An explosion of life
The Eco Oasis provides an explosion of life, even in rugged, arid areas such as the Sinai. The use of the cylinders in the greenhouse of the test set-up can be widely applied in the desert. The plan is to transport the sediments from the coastal dredging work in pipelines to the area to be restored.
In the pilot of the plan, a number of large greenhouses will be placed in the desert, in which the salt water will be converted by the Eco Oasis into fertile soil, freshwater and plants that are suitable for greening parts of the desert in about a year and a half. “The greenhouses are, as it were, the nursery for ecological recovery,” says Bosman.
The greenhouse where the Eco Oasis in Den Bosch is located. Photo: Pieter van Hout
“Here we can show the power of nature”
What do they need to make the project a success? “Ten cubic meters of sediments from Lake Bardawil,” Bosman says with a laugh. This allows them to conduct research to show that their plan can work. And they would like to start with the first phase of the project: the dredging work in Lake Bardawil. Then they can simultaneously run pilots for greening the desert.
“If we start now, there will be changes at the lake after one or two years,” he says. Then the water quality improves, aquatic animals come back and the wetlands around the lake become green again. “Zoom in on Google Maps in fifteen or twenty years, hopefully you will see that the desert in the Sinai is a lot greener than it is now. The world needs these kinds of projects. Here we can show the power of nature.”
https://www.voordewereldvanmorgen.nl/artikelen/we-denken-groot-van-droge-woestijn-naar-groene-oase
