“A man has planted over 200 hectares of trees in a north China desert over the past 30 years to halt encroaching sand from a nearby desert.”
degraded land
Transition Forest Gardens Part 2: Alley Cropping
In my first blog post about Transition Forest Gardens I outlined some of my ideas about how to make a forest garden on degraded land. Today’s blog post covers some of my newest ideas for a transition forest garden.
Tamera Community in Portugal
Another excellent video by John D. Lui, the journalist who covered the restoration project on the Loess Plateau in China.
“The example of Tamera shows how a decentralized and natural water retention landscape can heal a disturbed landscape and create the prerequisites for modern subsistence.
Al Baydha – Another Greening the Desert Project
Arid Swales Update 20 Months After First Planting
This is another important video that shows how to restore hopeless looking desert land into productive land. This is an ongoing series about restoring degraded land that includes inspiring stories such as Greening the Desert (classic example), restoration of the Loess Plateau in China, Miracle Water Village, Water Man of India.
‘Water Man of India’ Rajendra Singh
Stories like this give me so much hope that they’re starting to change my life. The ‘Water Man of India’ reminds me of the Miracle Water Village that we posted about last year and some other related ideas about Restoring Degraded Land. In every case, the ideas are very simple and yet surprisingly effective. Rajendra Singh rediscovered the ancient practice of building check dams to restore the aquifer. This simple method is turning wastelands into productive farmland and enabling rivers that were dry for decades to flow once again. The Guardian named him among its list of “50 people who could save the planet”.
Restoring Degraded Land
Urban areas have strict building codes that often make it difficult and costly to build with natural materials. Good rural land is expensive and hard to come by. So where can you live? Pinyon-juniper scrub land is very abundant, cheap and worth considering.