[Guardian] Van der Hoeven is a co-founder of the Weather Makers, a Dutch firm of “holistic engineers” with a plan to regreen the Sinai peninsula – the small triangle of land that connects Egypt to Asia. Within a couple of decades, the Weather Makers believe, the Sinai could be transformed from a hot, dry, barren desert into a green haven teeming with life: forests, wetlands, farming land, wild flora and fauna. A regreened Sinai would alter local weather patterns and even change the direction of the winds, bringing more rain, the Weather Makers believe – hence their name.“If anybody doubts that the Sinai can be regreened,” Van der Hoeven told the Egyptian delegates, an assortment of academics, representatives of ministers and military top brass, “then you have to understand that landing on the moon was once thought unrealistic. They didn’t lay out a full, detailed roadmap when they started, but they had the vision. And step by step they made it happen.”
| Long interesting article at link. Last graphic would look more natural if it went all the way to the bottom corner of the Sea of Galilee |
| A valid approach, especially for a local population that has neither the education nor the attitude to maintain a high-tech system. The question is whether the Bedouin tribes and the jihadis will be able to resist raiding for profit and fun. Israel has been taking a different approach to the desert, hard on the heels of their invention of drip irrigation in the 1960s: |
Turning sand into land. Desert farms in Israel grow lush crops from sand and salty water (1987)
Jewish National Fund: Turning the Desert Green since 1966
| I suspect that if the Egyptians really do start changing the ecosystem, the Israelis will be seized by the spirit of cooperative competition, seeing what improvements they can make to the techniques while reapplying them on their side of the border. To establish a baseline, this video shows what happens in the Judean desert when it rains, once every few years: |