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
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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
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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
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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
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you