Ancient Water: Permaculture in Egypt

so this is by far the most challenging landscape i've ever worked in and this is one of the driest places on earth the last time anybody remembers measurable rainfall was about 13 years ago when they had three days of rain so how do we do a permaculture design in this landscape i'm here at the dokla oasis in egypt's western desert this is the far eastern edge of the sahara desert they literally get zero inches zero millimeters of rainfall in the average year [Music] i traveled to the dokla oasis because i was invited by a group of families from cairo who purchased land to build a permaculture designed eco village the group is seeking to get out of the city and live a rural sustainable life which blends the best of age-old practices of the oasis with more contemporary ecological design principles the first stage in creating a permaculture design is to conduct a site assessment so this trip was meant to study the ecovillage design site as well as to understand the current best practices around water agriculture architecture village planning and energy at the oasis the most critical resource in this hyper-arid landscape is water because without water this whole place would be just sand so water is where we begin the journey to understand the dakla oasis we've visited one of the government wells that's using solar energy to supply a network of irrigation ditches that are being used to flood irrigate date groves alfalfa fields wheat fields and provide water for livestock this is one of the deeper wells in the oasis at 300 meters deep and produces 200 cubic meters of water per hour while the sun shines on the solar panels the water is hot to the touch and comes out of the ground at 40 degrees celsius so it's like a massive hot springs well all of the water pumped from underground in the oasis comes out hot we're sitting above the nubian sandstone aquifer and it's the largest fossil aquifer on the planet fossil aquifer means that this is water that was deposited during a different age they've radiocarbonated the water in this aquifer and they estimate that the water is anywhere from 100 000 to a million years old so the whole place this whole oasis at this point is being irrigated by wells that tap into this deep ancient aquifer the water is also very high in iron and you can see the iron residue everywhere the water flows this has made it difficult or impossible for most farmers to do any kind of drip or sprinkler irrigation because the emitters and piping gets clogged with iron residue so flood irrigation is the standard practice and the water runs through open ditches where the flow is split to different areas but flood irrigation uses a massive amount of water and this aquifer is finite it is ancient water that was deposited underground millennia ago is not being recharged by rainfall because there's virtually no precipitation in this part of the sahara desert that means this is non-renewable water and when it's used up it will be gone forever but the nubian sandstone aquifer has a vast amount of water and the international atomic energy agency estimates the volume of water underground to be equal to nearly seven times the u.s great lakes or about 500 years of nile river flow so although the aquifer is being lowered every year people here are not concerned with exhausting the supply in theirs or their children's or grandchildren's lifetimes permaculture means permanent agriculture or permanent culture but the design for a place like this challenges my notion of permanence how long will this aquifer last are we planning for 100 years 500 years 1 000 years 10 thousand years how will climate change affect the temperature and weather patterns will there always be solar panels or grid electricity to power these wells will the population boom out here as in the rest of egypt i end up with more questions than answers egypt is a really crazy place because 97 of the population lives on three percent of the land the vast majority of the populations all concentrated around the nile river valley and then the other 97 of the land is this open empty desert except for these oases these oases are places in the landscape where where the land is depressed it's sunken down and gets close to this nubian sandstone aquifer the government's actually creating incentives for people to move out here because the population pressure in the nile river valley is becoming too much cairo is a city of over 21 million people and egypt is a country of over 100 million almost entirely living along the nile the nile river is truly the lifeblood of egypt and the vast majority of egypt's landmass is expansive barren desert i previously thought of egypt as a large country because of its actual size but if you just look at the inhabitable land then it's actually not such a big place with high population growth it's inevitable that more people will move out of the nile river valley to these oases and their non-renewable groundwater and the water tables already lowering dramatically since the introduction of the electric pump the area under cultivation and the water use here has grown exponentially and water tables are currently dropping at a rate of about 50 meters every 10 years the local well drillers told me that the deepest government well in the oasis is 1700 meters deep people still have water at 150 meters so if we figure that there's at least 1500 meters of water left and the depletion rate remains constant at 50 meters per decade and that's at least 300 more years of available water and possibly more depending on how deep the aquifer actually is some estimates put it at twice that depth so people will still be pumping this water for centuries at the current rate and this is why i am here because contemporary permaculture design has decision-making tools to help figure out appropriate settlement and agricultural patterns for the long-term resilience and endurance of the region the dakla oasis here has been continually inhabited since 6000 bc right so that's 8 000 years that people have continually been having this settlement and you can see when we visit the ancient village of alcacer you can see the traditional methods that are on full display el casa is the oldest village in the oasis and has been inhabited for about 1400 years it's now a historical site that offers tours so we went to see how ancient people set up a settlement in this heat and wind during the worst heat wave it can get above 49 degrees celsius and ancient people design this village for comfort during extreme heat the thick walls of the buildings are made from adobe blocks and are stuccoed with clay buildings are up to four stories tall and are tightly packed in order to create narrow shaded laneways away from the wind and sun they create natural air conditioning in the form of wind scoops which formerly had palm fronds attached at a specific angle to settle out sand and divert the wind down into the lanes for passive cooling on average it's about 15 degrees celsius cooler within the sheltered maze of el casa where people were still practicing traditional blacksmithing and the ancient grain grinding and olive pressing machines were left intact in modern times a more contemporary village has grown up around the ancient core of el casa as well as in the other villages in the oasis there are 16 villages with the total population of around 90 000 people within the 1 000 square kilometers of the oasis in many places the traditional architecture of el casa is mimicked with buildings tightly clustered cool shaded laneways protected from the wind but there are also a lot of newer more modern buildings that don't take advantage of the very intelligent traditional desert architecture at all this is a real loss in my opinion because the heat and sandy winds are brutal permaculture design values traditional and time-tested strategies and in this environment it's common sense and age-old practice to create maximum shelter from wind and sand most places water is the dominant pattern that you're designing for where here the dominant pattern is wind and the winds are fierce and the sand dunes can just move across the landscape overnight sand dunes migrate the sand itself is like this snaking river that moves through this landscape the dhaka oasis sits at the southern end of the great sand sea where strong winds blow from the north to form an ocean of longitudinal sand dunes the dunes and winds are blocked by a mountain range and on the other side of the mountains is the depression that encompasses the oasis the dunes start to reform within the oasis constantly moving and encroaching on agricultural land an ongoing challenge for any farms in the path of the moving sand the design site had dunes up to 18 meters high that had blown in since the old fields were abandoned decades back and bulldozers were already busy flattening out the dunes to re-establish agricultural fields when i arrived i never experienced sandstorms like i did in dakla oasis our plane returning to cairo was actually canceled because of a sandstorm so he drove through the vast desert one thousand kilometers back to cairo wind breaks are crucial to halt the dunes and lessen the blowing force and i observed what species people were using where windbreaks were placed their size and structure and how effective they were the wind and sand was a whole new level to me so we visited some farms to see what established systems look like to get an idea for where this permaculture plan is headed our first visit was to one of the biggest date farms in the area owned by the local well driller where we were served an amazing feast of mandi sheep that was cooked underground and then toured around their 800 acres in the back of a pickup truck to arrive at a new planting that they were establishing after flattening the dunes they were attempting drip irrigation with a new type of emitter although they were not optimistic because of so many failures in the past with clogging from iron regardless of the drip the standard practice seems to be flooding the fields for three years to leach out salts from the soils at the bottom of every agricultural zone appears a salt marsh where all the excess water that's laden with salts drains to i was told that these salt lakes have been appearing and increasing in recent years as more land is taken from the desert and put under cultivation and more water applied via flood irrigation but others seem to be solving the iron and salt issue with different methods across the oasis we visited a smaller 30-acre farm that's using an electrified magnet attached to their water pipes to neutralize the iron this is allowing them to use drip and sprinklers without the iron buildup using radically less water than flood irrigation which will help to preserve the aquifer much farther into the future they were planting new date and mango groves on drip irrigation adding in sand to each planting because the soils in this area are so salty [Music] new private wells being drilled are limited by law to 600 meters for now but this farm's well is only 150 meters so they're more conscious of water conservation because they'd like to avoid the expense of sinking their well deeper to keep up with the dropping aquifer [Music] the real treat for me on this farm was to see the polyculture date orchards interplanted with olive mango and citrus seeing the traditional companion planting of tree species was like looking at a drawing from a permaculture book practices that look just like permaculture were common in the orchard surrounding people's homes which are dense and diverse with many species growing together where it's cool and shady and protected from wind and sand i was impressed by the diversity of products on this family farm and integration of prickly pear cactus hedgerows and nitrogen fixing trees and cover crops although they had never heard the word permaculture before they were applying the basic common sense of diversity that permaculture embodies the real dream that was fulfilled for me was to visit traditional pigeon rearing towers that are present on nearly every farm here the pigeons come and go as they please foraging on small seeds and bugs throughout the farm and surrounding area they're protected from predators in the high smooth towers they're easily harvested while they roost and pigeon is a delicacy here often serves stuffed with rice their manure drops down into the center of the tower and is collected as potent fertilizer it's a cycle that takes very little input as the pigeons forage and are not fed so they glean from the landscape and produce meat and fertilizer these are exactly the kinds of low maintenance productive cycles that we work to emulate in permaculture systems my work to create a design for an eco village here is really challenging to learn about the traditional practices assess the modern technologies and come up with a plan that uses the best aspects of tradition alongside conventional ecological design principles things are changing in the oasis and it's impossible to rely on the age-old methods that sustain this place for millennia because modern water and pumping technology changed all that and now the water lays far below the surface egypt also has millions and millions of people who need food water and livelihoods within a very limited land area it's a complicated equation to solve when we factor in an uncertain future of a changing climate with social and political challenges so permaculture has a certain perspective to offer to this equation we can look at practices from all around the world in similar environments and see how others are designing their settlement patterns in these same challenging conditions we can bring in important design elements that are not currently being used like biological wastewater treatment and alley cropping we can suggest bringing in other valuable plant species from similar climates that are not being grown here the great hope is to identify the key patterns of water use food production and social and environmental harmony and build these patterns into abundant systems that demonstrate the harmony [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 1,445,491

Keywords: permaculture, permaculture design, permaculture egypt, dryland permaculture, dryland permaculture strategies, greening the desert, permaculture in africa, permaculture sahara, ancient egypt, permaculture design basics, permaculture design for water, greening the desert permaculture, greening the desert africa, egypt water crisis, egypt water projects, dakhla oasis egypt, dakhla oasis project, sahara desert, sahara water project, nubian sandstone, nubian sandstone aquifer

Id: QBC5wOLF1hQ

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ominous_anonymous]

Accumulation of salt is a big deal, that's what caused the downfall of more than one civilization:

https://www.jswconline.org/content/40/1/48

Six thousand years ago, on the Tigris-Euphrates floodplain in Mesopotamia, Sumerian irrigation practices caused a salt build-up in water and soils that inhibited food production and no doubt contributed to the decline of Sumerian culture. In the American Southwest, the decline of Indian civilizations, centuries ago, is also attributed to salinization of land and water.

Also:

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-170-98/
https://faculty.bennington.edu/~kwoods/classes/enviro-hist/salt%20and%20silt%20in%20mesopotamia.pdf

Quite long, but talks a bit about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2lJUOv0hLA