No more vast, barren deserts.
Because we are going to turn them all
into lush, green farmlands.
With global population growing
and a decrease in healthy land to farm on,
now is the time to create
new agricultural technologies.
Deserts cover one-third
of all land on Earth.
They are the driest ecosystems
on the planet.
With each receiving less than
25 cm (10 in) of rain every year.
So maybe it's time we turned these barren lands
into something more useful.
But could transforming an entire ecosystem
create an even bigger climate crisis?
Growing anything in these sands is tough
because some deserts can lose up to
33 times more water than they receive.
This happens through the processes
of evaporation and transpiration.
Or as they are known together evapotranspiration.
If you wanted to transform deserts into farmland,
you'd need to help the land retain more water.
One method would be
a revolutionary way of mixing very small amounts of clay into the soil.
Nanoclay is extremely tiny particles of clay,
500 times smaller than a single strand of hair.
If a layer of this clay surrounded each particle of sand,
it would allow water and nutrients to stick.
In the United Arab Emirates,
tests found that this process reduced water usage by 47%.
In just 40 days, a barren plot of sand
was able to grow watermelons.
And the only two components you'd need
are water and clay.
Two things that farmers have been adding to soil for thousands of years.
But it wouldn't be so simple for you.
"It's not that simple."
Working with thick clay would be extremely labor-intensive.
You could also disrupt the underground ecosystems
by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide.
Or even creating a waterproof seal over the surface.
If you added this liquid nanoclay
into water irrigation systems like sprinklers,
then it could make its way down to the roots.
If succesful
the desert sands would now retain more water.
From that the entire desert could be transformed into
high-yield healthy soil.
But here's the thing,
you'd need a lot of clay.
And even more water.
If you aimed to terraform all deserts on Earth,
that would be about 6.7 quadrillion L (1.7 quadrillion gal) of water.
That's nearly half of the water volume of Lake Superior,
the largest of North America's Great Lakes.
And could your budget handle a bill
for $336 trillion.
Well, that’s what spraying every single desert would cost.
That’s four times the GDP of the world.
And did I mention you’d have to repeat this every five years?
On a positive note,
you'd now be able to grow a lot more food
and transform life on farms
and villages located around deserts.
No more sand or dust storms shutting down roads and railways.
On a bad note,
we might just lose the entire Amazon rainforest.
Let me explain.
The Amazon acts as a carbon sink.
It absorbs carbon dioxide and by doing so
it helps fight off climate change.
It also releases much-needed oxygen.
Now, how is the Amazon connected to greenifying deserts?
Well, the sand from the largest hot desert on Earth,
the Sahara,
gets picked up by the winds and crosses the Atlantic Ocean
all the way to South America.
On its way to the Amazon,
the dust particles pick up moisture.
Then, they fall over the Amazon in the form of rain.
And that sand and water combo also works as a fertilizer.
Turning the deserts green
would disturb this fertilization process
to the point we could lose the Amazon rainforest forever.
This would be bad news for the climate
thanks to the disruption of the Earth's natural balance.
All the new plants we'd grow on the newly terraformed land
might not be enough to prevent the crisis.
Not just in the Amazon,
but across the entire planet.
Liquid nanoclay is just one idea to help bring
sustainable agricultural growth
to the planet's most extreme environments.
But every step forward in one location
can come at a cost to somewhere else.
Unless we figured out how we could completely control the climate.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.