upworthy

water conservation

Sustainability

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

The half moons even help replenish the water table.

Credit: Andrew Millison/YouTube

Half moons allow water to be retained for agriculture and even replenish the groundwater table.

When the Great Green Wall initiative began in 2007, it was just a vision of a big, beautiful wall of greenery spanning the width of Africa to keep the Sahara Desert from encroaching on the rest of the continent. Despite years of successes and failures, celebration and criticism, we can see the progress being made as an inspiring example of how local and global collaboration can help counter the effects of climate change.

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.

climate change, desertification, dry, global warming, barren A barren desert.Canva Photos

How do you hold back the world's largest hot desert?

According to Andrew Millison, a permaculture designer and instructor at Oregon State University, the Sahara desert has expanded by about 10% in the past 100 years. The idea behind the Great Green Wall is to build a barrier of vegetation to stop that expansion, which threatens the ecosystems and economies of the Sahel—the region south of the Sahara that separates the desert from the savanna.

In a video from February of 2024, Millison shared the collaborative nature and progress of one Great Green Wall project in Senegal, including the rejuvenation of 300,000 hectares (about the equivalent of 600,000 football fields) of seemingly unusable land.

- YouTube youtu.be

"The process started with the community-based participatory planning," WFP program policy officer Bakalilou Diaby shares in the video. "By the end of this process, it was agreed that one of the major actions is the land reclamation or land recovery project."

At first, it took some time to convince the community that the regreening of the degraded landscape was even possible, but after learning about how to improve the land, "the people believe and they are convinced, and they are also committed," says Diaby.

The "forgotten" half-moon method of harvesting water

One of the keys to this particular regreening project is using long-forgotten techniques for harvesting water. When soil is crusted and sunbaked and hard as cement, rainwater doesn't penetrate and it's impossible for plants to take root. The solution? Half-moon shaped ditches dug in such a way that water flows into them on the straight side with an embankment built on the rounded side to hold the water in. Each half moon is four meters in diameter and takes about a day for one person to dig.

Local vegetation domesticated on the Sahel thousands of years ago, such as sorghum and millet, are planted in these half moons, rehabilitating the land and feeding the local community at the same time.

"This is nothing new—we have not invented a technology here," explains Sebastian Muller from the WFP resilience team. "The half moon technology is actually an endogenous technology to the Sahel and has been forgotten over time. We have rescued it from the past."

Not only does capturing water in the half moons help with the immediate need to grow food and contribute to the Great Green Wall, but 10%—15% of the water will actually soak into the ground to replenish the water table, creating a more sustainable agricultural process.

"That way we actually achieve a balance of water. So we are not depleting the water resources, but we're making sure that we keep enough water in the ground for future generations," says Muller.

Other crops such as okra and tomatoes are grown in horizontal horticulture beds, and between those ditches grow trenches with fruit trees in them.

fruit trees, sustainable farming, agriculture, horticulture, regreening, climate change Fruit trees.Canva Photos

Engaging indigenous wisdom for sustainable farming

"This is just a very first step in this pilot," adds Muller. "We'll also be using other native species that will be planting in the pits that will drive the rejuvenation of the soil and the protection of the soil as the system starts growing into abundance and producing food and life for the people here."

According to Muller, the "syntropic farming" methods being employed were developed in Brazil and are based on global indigenous practices that mimic the way natural forests grow and thrive. These natural growing dynamics make agriculture more sustainable, continually replenishing the land rather than continually depleting it—truly a testament to global collaboration carried out at the local level with local community support.

"This project was really, really interesting because the World Food Programme wanted to demonstrate how you could take the most devastated areas and turn them back into resilient, food-producing locations," says Millison. "And they specifically placed their project on a very degraded landscape that had been taken down to bare, compacted earth."

If this desertified "wasteland" can be rejuvenated so successfully, it provides hope for recovering other land that many people might write off as useless or barren. As climate change continues to alter the Earth's landscape—literally—we'll need to keep working together both locally and globally to find solutions like the Great Green Wall and support their implementation.

You can learn more about successful permaculture practices on Andrew Millison's YouTube channel.

This article originally appeared in January.

From Your Site Articles
sustainable farming
SustainabilityScience

7 things humans can do to save the planet, as told by delightful claymation animals.

True
League of Conservation Voters

Saving the earth is, well, a big job.


Thinking about the sheer scale of the problem can be overwhelming.

And while there are some major steps we need to take collectively on a global scale to solve climate change, there are a few things each of us can do to make a personal impact.

Because you gotta start somewhere, right?

So start right here, and let these charming animated animals, the stars of a series of videos from Animal Planet, give you a few pointers on how to do your part.

Because it's their home too, you know.

1. Go easy on the showers.

All GIFs via Animal Planet/YouTube.

You don't have to convince me that long, hot showers are totally awesome. But they also are one of the biggest chunks of our residential water use. In the U.S. alone, we use almost 1.2 trillion gallons of water just for showering. That's enough to supply New York and New Jersey with all of their water for the whole year! Clipping just two minutes off your shower can personally save 10 gallons of water each day.

But if cutting down on shower time just isn't gonna happen (again, I totally get it) consider replacing your showerhead with a more water-efficient model. It costs between $10 and $20 and requires minimal handyman skills.

2. Unplug those devices.

Even when you're not using them, phone chargers, coffee makers, cable boxes, and other electronics draw power. They're known as energy vampires, for the way they drain electricity and money. A typical household has 25 electronic devices plugged in at any given time, so it's no surprise that energy vampires can account for around 20% of the average electric bill. Ouch!

3. Recycle your plastic bags the right way.

According to the Clean Air Council, an estimated 102.1 billion plastic bags are used in the U.S. each year, and fewer than 1% of those are recycled. Instead, much of the waste winds up in landfills or worse, our rivers and oceans. Birds, turtles, and other marine animals are dying from intestinal blockages, choking, and starvation.

What can you do? Recycle your bags whenever you can, and call on plastic producers to create more eco-friendly and recyclable solutions.

Or better yet, BYOB: Bring your own bag.

You can avoid plastic altogether, and many stores give shoppers a discount for bringing their own bag.

4. Get your home winter-ready.

Pumping up the heat is one way to stay warm this winter, but it also a way to burn lots of natural gas and money. If your health allows, consider setting your thermostat to 68 or lower. In the 60-degree-to-70-degree range, you can save 5% on your your energy costs for every degree you lower your heat.

You can also winterize your house or apartment, checking for leaks around windows and doors and making sure your furnace filters are fresh and clean. These simple steps can save natural gas and potentially lower your bills this winter.

5. Pick up after yourself.

As this angry cartoon leopard, or this very real disfigured turtle will tell you, litter is THE WORST. Litter harms animals both directly, by choking, strangling, or poisoning them, and indirectly. These indirect incidents occur when animals eat trash or food thrown to the side of the road and risk running into traffic.

But tragedies like this are 100% preventable. And properly disposing your trash is one of the easiest things you can do to make a difference right this second.

And while you're at it, recycle too.

6. Consider swapping out a few lightbulbs.

Traditional incandescent bulbs use more energy and burn out faster than compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs. While CFL bulbs are a little more expensive upfront, they last six times as long and provide a quick return on investment. In fact if every home in the U.S. replaced one incandescent bulb with an Energy Star-qualified CFL, it could prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to over 800,000 cars each year.

Speaking of which...

7. Give your car a break.

In an effort to reduce congestion downtown during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, car travel restrictions were put in place. During the games, traffic declined an estimated 23%. In that time, ozone concentrations dropped about 28% and acute care visits for children with asthma fell 41%. More recently, check out what happened to the sky when Beijing put driving restrictions in place for two weeks.

While limiting traffic citywide is likely a no-go, making the personal commitment to drive less is something each of us can do. Replacing short automobile trips with walking, biking, or public transit is a simple way to cut down on our personal CO2 emissions and perhaps improve our air quality in the process.

You don't need to be Captain Planet to do right by the earth.

Small acts can make a big difference. You can do your part by making even just one or two of these changes. You can also point and click your way to a better world by signing this petition to support America's Clean Power Plan.

This is the only Earth we've got. And since it's the only place humans (and claymation animals) can call home, every positive step, even a small one, is a step worth taking.

Trending Stories