2d ago

'Forgotten' water harvesting system transforms 'barren wasteland' into thriving farmland

www.upworthy.com

Just a few years ago, the Sahel region at the northern edge of Senegal was a "barren wasteland" where nothing had grown for 40 years. But the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and local villagers teamed up to regreen the area, bringing back agriculture, improving the economy of the people who live there, and preventing the climate migration that desertification ultimately leads to.

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Thanks for sharing! This.makes me think of how vacination existed as cultural knowledge in Asia and Africa way before modern medicine adopted it.

I’ve seen a few posts on this and it’s always exciting to see this mix of cultural wisdom and environmentalism.
But I’m always left wondering why we aren’t supporting these communities with some heavy equipment to do this. From the article it takes a person an entire day to dig one of these moons. Surely some construction equipment could work order(s?) of magnitude faster. I can’t help the hinting feeling that we’re offloading all of the burdens of addressing global climate change onto the communities that are already paying the steepest price.
Is it the climate? How remote the locations are? Challenges with sourcing parts? Hope someone can clarify why heavy equipment would be prohibitive.
- Surely some construction equipment could work order(s?) of magnitude faster.
  You have to supply the support network for the equipment. For a lot of less developed areas, it isn't worth it to supply a tractor which will become a statue.
  
  And part of the project is to employ local labor
  
  Digger plus a tank of petrol a day is absolutely feasible no matter where you are in the world. There is no "less developed" area that they don't have this. Everywhere has cars, everywhere has petrol powered boats and generators.
- These are always only pilot projects with limited funding. And who do you think is more likely to maintain this infrastructure and proudly tell their neighbours about them so that they can replicate it? Surely not the person that is annoyed that some rich guy from the capital with a digger came and did all the work and took all the money that they would have happily earned. These largely subsistence communities are cash starved and projects like that are a welcome opportunity to earn some money on the side.
  
  The difference in efficiency is so high, you could run through with the backhoe and then give locals the money anyway.
- I can't say for certain, but I'll take a stab at an answer that isn't just "to cut costs obviously lmao".
  Part of the purpose of these ecological initiatives is to figure out ways to do things at scale without the need for industrial waste/pollution.
  Second, it is best practice in most any industry to create and optimize the process by hand BEFORE figuring out how to optimize it with heavy industry. If you begin the design under the handicap of a machine, then your entire design is founded on that crutch. You can always incorporate machinery, but it's often more difficult to remove it from any process once it's been integrated.
  
  I know absolutely nothing about living in the desert but I bet driving heavy equipment on sand (hard-packed or not) is a risky business.
- But I’m always left wondering why we aren’t supporting these communities with some heavy equipment to do this.
  From the different videos I've seen on this it's also because they are both teaching people to do this themselves and pay them for doing it at the same time. Thus supporting the local economy and sort of kick-starting it. Getting one outsider to do it with a tractor doesn't create local attachment to this.
  
  Why can't the locals be trained to operate and maintain the tractor?
- The biggest factor is that the cost of labour is extremely low. If the machinery costs €200 in fuel a day, you could instead pay 40 people in these rural and impoverished areas.

Thanks for sharing, Steve. This is such a cool fucking post.

30 comments