Greening the Desert II – Final

Aid Projects, Biological Cleaning, Compost, Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Fungi, Irrigation, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Salination, Soil Biology, Soil Conservation, Trees, Water Harvesting — by Craig Mackintosh December 11, 2009

The Greening the Desert II video I shared with you recently was edited in Jordan. Now that I’m back at my desk again I’ve had time to edit it slightly. I’ve added the original five-minute Greening the Desert clip in to the front of it, to ensure viewers have context for Part II (and we’ve also had requests for both to be made available together), as well as cut a few minutes out of Part II to keep it flowing a little better. You can not only watch online below and embed on your own websites (click for embed code at top right of video screen), but it’s also available for download, so those who’d like to have a ‘hard copy’ to circulate are welcome to download, burn to disk or transfer to USB key, etc., and circulate freely.

Download: You’ll see the option to download the 913 megabyte MP4 file at bottom right side of this page.

YouTube: The video can also be watched on YouTube, in four segments, here, here, here and here.

Greening the Desert II (including Part I) – Greening the Middle East
(Duration: 36 mins)
Tips for playing: If it’s slow to load, turn off High Definition (HD) on the player.
If you still have problems, click play (on low or high def) and then after it’s started,
click on pause. The video will then continue to buffer into your computer.
Play once fully loaded.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Kelly Kellogg at this juncture. Kelly donated initial funding that enabled the purchase of the land for the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project site (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’). But, upon watching the Greening the Desert Part II video, Kelly was inspired to donate an additional $20,000. These gifts are very encouraging to us as we try to solve problems at source (teach a man to fish…). Others who may feel inspired to donate to help us move this work forward faster can do so here.

A little background on the video follows:

Click for more…

Greening the Desert

Food Forests, Fungi, Land, Rehabilitation, Salination, Soil Biology, Swales, Trees — by Craig Mackintosh March 1, 2007

This is just one example of how permaculture can transform the environment, and, in so doing, dramatically change lives. By evidencing the dramatic transformation possible in the world’s worst agricultural scenarios, we hope to make people stand up and listen.

Greening the Desert – the original. Duration: 5 minutes

Big Agribusiness would convince us that continuing with fossil fuel dependent monocrop systems and genetically modified crops is the way of the future, but with fuel, transport and fertiliser costs skyrocketing, and growing evidence that genetic tinkering is causing far more harm than good, we, instead, advocate tried and tested methods of working with nature for the benefit of man.
Below is a behind the scenes look at Greening the Desert.

Update: Watch Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East, where you’ll learn about the current state of the original Greening the Desert site, and learn more about the work in Jordan and the new PRI project site there.

Use of permaculture under salinity and drought conditions

Aid Projects, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Salination, Swales, Water Harvesting — by Administrator February 1, 2005

Jordan is an arid country with limited water resources. The available renewable fresh water resources dropped drastically to an annual per capita share of 155 m3 in recent years compared to 3400 m3/cap/year in 1946. It is considered also as one of the 10 poorest countries worldwide in water resources (Countries with less than 500 m3/capita/year are regarded as having “absolute scarcity”).

In 2004, the total water use in Jordan was 866 million cubic meters (MCM) at the total population of about 5 million people. The total renewable resources in Jordan is estimated at 780 MCM include ground water at 275 MCM/year and surface water at 505 MCM/year of which only 70% is of economic use. An additional 143 MCM/year is estimated to be available from fossil aquifers. Brackish aquifers are not yet fully explored but at least 25 MCM/year is expected to be accessible for urban uses after desalination.

The demand on water use has been increased with increasing the socioeconomic development in the country. Agriculture consumes the major parts of water resources of about 62.5% of the available resources, domestic use consumes about 32.5% while industry about 4.3% and rural uses is 0.8% of the available water resources.
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