Project Proposal: Flood Prevention and Disaster Mitigation ... · PDF filePRI Australia/PSC Pty. Ltd., 1158 Pinchin Road, The Channon, New South Wales 2480, AUSTRALIA Phone: +61 (0)

PRI Australia/PSC Pty. Ltd., 1158 Pinchin Road, The Channon, New South Wales 2480, AUSTRALIA Phone: +61 (0) 419 741 358, +61 (0) 266 191 442, +61 (0) 407 212 751 [email protected], [email protected], www.permaculture.org.au, www.permacultureglobal.com

15 January 2013

Project Proposal: Flood Prevention and Disaster Mitigation by Combating Land Degradation with Integrated Natural Systems Strategy

Introduction

Source: UNOCHA Yemen Flood Risk – Historical Events in Hadramaut & Al Maharah Governorates 2008

NOTE: The area in blue in the diagram above denotes areas highly susceptible to flood risk.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report on their Yemen Flood Response Plan of 2008:

Floods and heavy rains that affected eastern Yemen, particularly Wadi Hadramaut valley and the coastal areas, from 24 to 25 October 2008 resulted in one of the most serious natural disasters in Yemen in the last decades. Flash floods and surging waters killed at

http://unocha.romenaca.org/Portals/2/NewMapCenter/them_pdf/A3_flood_Hadramaut_10052011.pdf

https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/CAP/2008_Yemen_FloodsResponsePlan.pdf

https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/CAP/2008_Yemen_FloodsResponsePlan.pdf


least 73 persons and forced an additional 20,000 to 25,000 people into displacement. At least 3,264 predominantly mud-brick houses have been totally destroyed or damaged beyond repair, while hundreds of others are uninhabitable. This is of particular concern in several Wadi Hadramaut villages that have been listed as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites. In addition to houses, several health facilities and an estimated 166 schools were damaged or destroyed. The flooding and consequences, such as loss of livelihoods, impacted an estimated 650,000 people (half of Hadramaut Governorate’s population), as surging water caused extensive damage to the local agriculture and honey production, washing away crops, palm trees and soil from the fields.

The floods were the largest natural disaster in Yemen since 1996. The disaster was been sudden and severe, and affected a large area (one-third of the country).

The damages caused by the floods to houses, the agriculture sector and infrastructure were extensive. The landscape of eastern Yemen is dominated by rugged mountains and dry river valleys (wadis). The main valley of the area, Wadi Hadramaut, is densely populated and had been worst affected (70% of the damaged area), where the flood surge reached up to six meters in some locations.

Other areas, notably the Sah district, were hit by flash floods, while other towns received alert calls through the civil defence units. Damage further downstream and in the coastal areas was less extensive, yet many coastal districts of Hadramaut and Al Mahrah Governorates recorded considerable damage.

Floods and Droughts

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), too much water and too little water have always been the natural curse of agriculture. Today, despite greatly improved knowledge of weather systems, the use of meteorological satellites and advanced computer simulation of the climate, farmers are more exposed to climate extremes than ever before. While such extremes may be becoming more common as a result of climate change, vulnerability has increased for other reasons as well: population densities have increased; marginal land is increasingly used to grow inappropriate crops, leading to potential soil erosion and flash floods; deforestation has denuded steep land of its protective vegetative cover; powerful machinery has made it possible to strip land of its vegetation in a fraction of the time that used to be required; and economic pressures on farmers to increase productivity through high input farming have led to unstable and unsustainable farming practices. It will prove impossible to maximize agricultural production from limited water resources unless the factors that so accentuate the effects of natural disasters can be corrected.

Environmental degradation has made a substantial contribution to the devastation caused by flooding. So have poverty and marginalization, which often require the poor to live in unsuitable and exposed conditions.

Land degradation is a major cause of the increasing impact of floods and droughts on human populations and the environment.

The key to effectively breaking the cycle of destruction exemplified by the extremes of flooding and drought is to focus on reversing land degradation by restoring landscape function.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y3918E/y3918e06.htm#TopOfPage


According to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) study “Combating Land Degradation in Yemen – A National Report”:

The most effective means to combat land degradation in Yemen have proven to be measures to prevent water erosion, controlling pasture grazing, promoting good farming practices, encouraging fodder production, rehabilitation of degraded lands by using local species…and declaration of protected areas. In Yemen’s experience with land resource conservation, the use of conservation-based farming practices and soil and water conservation techniques have been effective in controlling land desertification.

Conservation farming has been effective (though not of widespread use) for reducing water losses from agricultural fields, and for decreasing soil erodibility while increasing its filterability and water holding capacity. Good farming practices to keep soil fertile have been zero tillage, crop selection and rotation, timeliness of cultural practices, manuring, and mulching. The use of indigenous technical knowledge has also been a valuable tool, but remains a highly underestimated resource used for land conservation. Policies oriented to initiating participation and rural community partnerships for land conservation have also been positive.

Education of the broader community is a vital factor in combating the desertification process of the land around them. The strategies implemented must be performed at a local level and regular monitoring and communication are required to ensure an understanding within the community has been achieved, that the results are being proven, and they are experiencing the benefits.

Overall Project Objectives & Design Strategies

Our focus will be on three (3) distinct, but complementary, design strategies:

1. “The Tree Pattern” - Harvest and direct rainwater from the canyon roof (functioning like tree leaves) above the escarpment (“scarp”) via small stone-formed swales gently diverted towards the opening of the highest gully, passively depositing its sediment through small hand-made gabions, progressively becoming larger in size and scale (in relation to the order of the gully). This flow of water will be subsequently directed to the main wadi flood channel, where swales can be added and desert-appropriate perennial polycultural tree-based systems (“food forests”) can implemented in small 20 meters cells.

2. “The Cleaning of the Arteries” - Flow channels for flood waters which have been clogged by the widespread Prosopis within the region must be opened to allow for excess water to escape into the wadi floor. Extensive water harvesting earthworks and re-fashioning of landscape, both performed by hand and machine, can accomplish a great deal in remedying this problem, providing local inhabitants with a safer environment in which to live. This task requires expertise which can be provided through PRI Tarim. Local capability may also be developed through training with our organization.

3. “H2O Traffic Flow” – Wadi flows of water originating in the escarpments must be redirected once reaching the wadi floor to minimize the destructive power of floodwaters. Local experts within Yemen have designed very effective strategies to accomplish this. Coupled with the use of water harvesting structures positioned higher in the watershed, this should allow for the successful management of water ultimately for beneficial use. Specifically speaking, the various wadi flows which converge on the valley floor collide, producing unpredictable – and often catastrophic – results. Large, jetty-like rock walls can be constructed to separate

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP179.pdf


competing flows of water by absorbing and dampening impact, allow for them to gently converge and dissipate without incident.

Similar project work is underway in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca Governorate with Al Baydha Project, which is also managed through PRI Australia:

http://permaculturenews.org/2011/01/14/permaculture-at-the-al-baydha-project-in-saudi-arabia-neal-spackman-video-1/


Background: Desertification

Desertification is the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, climate change, or inappropriate agriculture.

Although diverse views exist on the complex relationship between climatic change and anthropogenic causal factors of desertification, it has to be recognized that climate change is largely driven by environmental changes resulting from human activities which cause pollution and other negative environmental impacts.

The conventional modern paradigm often adapted for increasing agricultural production is to rely more heavily upon genetically modified food technologies, allocation of larger tracts of land to mono-cropping, dedicate scarce water resources to irrigation, and increased use of synthetic fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide and fungicide to boost productivity.

However, these conventional approaches bring many negative impacts. Developing large tracts of agricultural land focused on the mono-cultural production of annual crops results in widespread deforestation and habitat destruction; using chemicals and mono- cropping destroys biodiversity and causes soil degradation such as erosion, loss in soil fertility, and eventual loss of topsoil; diverting and using more water resources to irrigation drains precious groundwater reserves and ultimately disrupts the hydrological cycle.

A variety of field research work has reported and documented the root causes of land degradation historically. These factors have, in fact, resulted in the collapse of ecosystems’ capacity to produce food. They are:

1. Deforestation and habitat destruction 2. Soil problems (loss in soil fertility and erosion) 3. Water management problems

The current paradigm for generating agricultural output breaks the ecosystem’s natural cycle of production and ultimately ends in failure and eventual collapse. For example:

Deforestation and loss of biodiversity causes food production to be more sensitive to extreme weather patterns.

Chemical farming destroys the biological activity in soil, which results in a decrease in food production over time, instead of long-term increases.

Disrupting the hydrological cycle, coupled with poor water management, causes increases in droughts and floods and more extreme weather patterns, which cause loss of life, decreased economic capabilities, and billions of dollars of damage every year.

The cumulative effect of these activities has reached epic proportions. If civil society is to solve hunger and keep our modern civilization from collapsing, it must shift the current production paradigm from one that destroys ecological systems to one that re-constructs ecological systems. Practices must become sustainable and have a positive effect on the environment and the community at-large.


Project Strategy: Restoring Landscape Function through Soil Formation and Water Harvesting

The soil, the upper part of the earth’s “skin,” is a living environment. The top soil layer, typically 4 inches or less in our desert climate, includes billions of microorganisms per cubic foot. The top soil also includes plant roots, fungi, worms, and insects. One part of this living tissue grows into living organisms such as plants, mushrooms, and small animals, while the other part helps break down dead organic material into components that serve as nutrients (minerals and “vitamins”) for the regeneration of new life. To function well as a spawning bed for life, all soil needs is sun, air, water, and plant residue.

The soil plays a crucial role in the regeneration of life on earth. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the soil structure, composed of mineral particles, decomposing organic matter (humus), and microorganisms, is of optimal quality to help regenerate life.

One of the most important factors in the soil’s structure is its capacity, like a sponge, to absorb water and hold it in its pores. Degraded soils have lost their sponge capacity. Soil conservation and restoration in our desert climate must focus on restoring the sponge effect.

In many arid regions, soils have been seriously degraded by the impact of uncontrolled land uses, such as unmanaged grazing, mining, construction, pollution, and excavation. In many cases, these activities have led to a hardening or removal of the top layer of the soil. As a result, it is difficult for rain or snow melt to infiltrate the soil. Instead, precipitation runs over the land surface in large quantities. Poor infiltration depletes the soil’s ability to absorb water and sustain plant growth.

If we want to bring back life to degraded land, it is important to help the soil retain more water. One way we can do that is to direct water to sites where infiltration occurs or is enhanced. Once water is slowed down or retained, it is given more time to soak into the soil. In that process, the soil’s crusty structure softens and allows more water to soak in and cling to soil particles. In addition, it enlivens microorganisms, such as mycelium (fungi) that help transport water from the pores in the soil to plant roots. The roots “wake up” and become more able to absorb the water to strengthen the above-ground plant parts. In sum, water harvesting reinvigorates existing plant life.

In addition, if the moisture is retained long enough and if it is replenished effectively, dormant seeds in the soil may germinate. The renewed and reinvigorated plant life intercepts and slows down precipitation as it runs off along plant leaves and stems to soak into the soil. Plants also slow air movement and cast some shade on the ground, reducing evaporation, so that more water in the soil is available to plants. Plant stems and roots hold together the soil, dead plant matter adds to the organic components of the soil and stimulates the proliferation of microorganisms, and plant roots again support other microorganisms. In this way, plant life helps develop soil structure and biological activity (Figure 1):

http://quiviracoalition.org/images/pdfs/1902-Erosion_Control_Field_Guide.pdf

http://quiviracoalition.org/images/pdfs/1902-Erosion_Control_Field_Guide.pdf


This biological process also helps retain and catch soil particles, thus reducing soil loss due to erosive forces and reducing pollution of waterways with dirt. The result of “sponge” restoration is the resurgence of native plant growth and the reduction of unchecked runoff and erosion. With this, the native ecosystem receives an indispensable boost to its capacity to begin a new cycle of plant succession. Typically, plant diversity will increase, meaning the number of perennial plants, the percentage of ground cover, and with all this the resilience of the plant community to sudden, catastrophic impacts (fire, pests, flooding, drought). In addition, plant communities help create habitat for an increasing number of insects, arachnids, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Eventually, the landscape may become productive again for managed human use, such as a garden, farm, or pasture.

Land Degradation Processes

How do landscapes lose their water-storing capacity?

When the topsoil is disturbed, its plant cover destroyed, and its structure broken, microorganism life decreases, water is readily drained, and a crust forms on the soil hampering infiltration of water. As a result, seeds and microorganisms wash or blow away. Technically, soil erosion occurs when there is insufficient cover to protect the soil’s surface from raindrop impact or the shear stress of flowing water. Erosion worsens with increasing slope angle, slope length, and fragility of the soil.

These weakened soil conditions then increase the impact of raindrop splash, wind, and storm water runoff. Soil loss (erosion) in the form of sheet flow, rills (small erosional rivulets), and gullies will follow.

Eventually, the water table drops as a result of the draining of the soil. When water rapidly runs through clay soils, mineral compounds, such as salts, are leached out (deflocculation). The clay loses its structure and is blown or washed away. Too much air in the clay hampers plant growth and increases underground water drainage, causing tunnel erosion (piping). Eventually the soil collapses, which is the beginning of gully erosion.

Gullies occur when rills converge in a concentrated flow of surface runoff. As the soil surface steepens, the velocity of the surface flow increases and the energy of erosive forces increases exponentially.

Runoff causes an abrasive force on the soil. Where the grade steepens or where the soil hardness changes abruptly, runoff will scour more and create a headcut.

Headcuts travel upstream disturbing more soils, and gutting entire hillsides and pastures. Headcuts increase rapid runoff as a result of increased drainage patterns. The end is what is called “badlands”: a landscape with a multitude of gullies and headcuts, flat areas consisting of rock and gravel, and devoid of vegetation. The regeneration capacity of soils in badlands is minimal due to poor soil structure, very low water holding capacity, lack of seeds, and absence of microbial life.

General Soil Healing Techniques

Soils can be healed through water harvesting and soil improvement techniques.

In dry landscapes, effective rainfall for plant growth is scarce and often further limited due to unintended water losses. Therefore, it is important to harvest as much precipitation as possible and make it infiltrate the soil. Water that is stored in the soil evaporates slowly and flows gradually


downhill to the main watercourses and wetlands of the area, providing valuable flow to springs and seeps, which maintain riparian habitat. Water harvesting on slopes can be achieved best by placing barriers on contours, technically forming a small terrace. Regionally appropriate, low-cost harvesting techniques include:

Structures that retain or divert stormwater runoff, such as rolling dips, diversion drains, swales and berms, and micro-catchments. These structures are designed to hold the water back and water should not flow over them. They are, therefore, high enough to retain or divert the water flow.

Structures that slow the flow of water to give it more time to infiltrate, such as one-rock dams, rock lines on contour, straw wattles, and strawbale dams. These structures are designed to be overtopped by water flows and are therefore rather low.

Mulching: the spreading of a protective layer on top of the soil to protect and enrich the soil. Organic mulch protects the soil against wind erosion and evaporation, and adds organic matter while decomposing. Mulch also provides a more cohesive structure to the soil, which helps keep soil particles together. Mulching can be combined with other techniques, such as enriching the soil with compost.

The basic conceptual design is intended to slow, spread, and soak floodwater to facilitate retention and storage within landscape. Starting at the top of the catchment areas and working down, this will mitigate and pacify the damaging effects of rapid flow and large volumes of water. This will enable the establishment of a perennial, tree-crop based agro-ecological system creating significant increases in soil fertility, organic matter formation, and landscape stability. This will ultimately moderate the effects of large flood events in addition to addressing concerns related to local food and water security.

http://agroeco.org/


This system in its most stable, mature form will convert the destructive events of major floods to creative events that will increase soil water storage and continuously recharge the aquifers with fresh rainwater. Surface flows of water in acute flooding events will be reduced in both volume and speed with pacified flows ideal for agricultural irrigation. This will be greatly expanded over time.

In summary, water catchment features must be established originating at the higher elevations within the wadis:

Hand-built gabions beginning at the tops of the watersheds to serve as an initial means to reduce the speed & force of the water flow concentrating in the wadis. This effectively diminishes soil erosion and incisions caused by flood waters.

Gabions combined with the use of swales (water harvesting ditches on contour) progressively becoming larger in size and scale as they are placed and positioned in lower elevations moving towards the floor of the wadis. The work transitions from being hand-built to machine-built using earthmoving equipment in the lower, shallower slopes.

The floodplains themselves will need the removal of Prosopis in conjunction with additional earthworks features to better manage excess water draining from the wadis;

The removed Prosopis should be directed towards processing into products such as mulch, compost, and “bio-char”. These materials can be used to improve organic matter content, hydrological function, fertility, and production potential in local landscapes. This processing can also serve as a local industry to employ people engaged in much needed work.

In detail, the design would progress as follows:

On the top of each plateau, contour banks 0.5 meter tall made of uncompressed earth and stone positioned slightly off contour can gradually direct run-off water towards each wadi top headcut. The steep slopes at higher elevations are not accessible to machinery. At the top of each wadi, a succession of hand-built, rock-formed leaky weirs (gabions) can be built to a height of 1 - 1.5 meters as silt traps. As the wadi narrows and the slopes become shallower, the largest volume of silt for minimum rock infrastructure will be trapped:

http://www.biochar-international.org/


Each gabion will have a level spillway to release water during large rain events to minimize the possibility of these features from being overwhelmed. Rock-formed splash aprons will be used as an


erosion prevention measure for falling water below the spillway to prevent erosion. These features will be repeated for use in the steep slopes found in higher elevations within the wadi wherever the landscape profile requires it:


The lower slopes can be identified by accessibility to machinery. These areas have a gentler gradient and a narrow flat base within the wadi profile. In this section, the wadi narrows and becomes increasingly shallow, trapping the largest volume of silt for minimum rock infrastructure built across the base of the wadi. These features can be formed using large excavators (Size: 20 – 30 ton) and with a rock-grabbing attachment bulldozers (Size: D6 or D7 with 6-DOF blade).

NOTE: Machines of this type and size may require upwards of 1000 liters of diesel fuel a day.

Gabions on these slopes will be comparatively taller and larger rock structures of 1.5 - 3 meters in height with larger spillways and slash aprons. As mentioned previously, the aforementioned measures will be repeated throughout the wadi wherever the landscape profile allows while the wadi remains relatively narrow and less than 50 meters wide.

Sample Scarp & Wadi Drainage in Hadramaut – Area: approx. 3400 hectares


At the base of the wadi where the floodplains becomes wider than 50m with an incised channel, gabions can be built across the incised channels rising to the height of the floodplain at the flatter and narrower locations. Swales, which are large water harvesting soaking channels, are positioned across the wadi connecting to the silt fields positioned upslope of the gabion. These continuous water harvesting features placed on contour will have a soft earth mound on the lower downslope side. They will be placed higher in the landscape relative to the rock wall with a trench that is lower than the surface of silt field:


Use of terraces in steep slopes is a highly effective traditional technique in Yemen that will be of great use within the context of this overall strategy:


These will slow, spread, and soak water into the floodplain before the main channel overflows the primary gabion. The features will continue to soak water while water flows in the main channel. This will create ideal conditions to establish new tree plantings initially on irrigation that later will grow with minimum inputs of water and fertilizer. Floodwaters will become a benefit to the system by providing water for the hydration of landscape:



Swales should be planted with a diverse mixture of drought hardy, pioneer leguminous (nitrogen-fixing) trees and productive perennial fruit trees. Between each installation of flood control infrastructure, the wadi’s flow control channel will need to be widened and chamfered with a maximum slope angle of approximately 30 degrees. These slopes should be planted with a stabilizing perennial cover crop for erosion control (for example - vetiver grass, Chrysopogon zizanioides):

Project Implementation

To implement the project and introduce the concept of creating a sustainable environment to the Ministry staff and local communities at large, there are three action areas:

1. Training

Education and training at the ground level is vital for the success of this proposal. The systems will be introduced to each Ministry group or community participants and their relevant challenges and individual situations will be incorporated to ensure it is tailored to their specific environment.

Our proposed model is based on established training programs developed at the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia (www.permaculture.org.au), with whom we are partnered. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate the creation of local trainers to build the indigenous capacity within the region to initiate work within local communities.

Programs will include and cover the following topic areas:

1. Theory and Principles of Permaculture/Agroecology 2. Soil Rehabilitation and Erosion Control 3. Recycling and Waste Management

http://www.permaculture.org.au/


4. Food Production 5. Water Harvesting and Management/Earthworks 6. Ecological Pest Control 7. Drought-proofing 8. Eco-friendly House Placement and Design 9. Dryland Strategies 10. Livestock Management 11. Aquaculture + Aquaponics 12. Catastrophe Preparedness and Prevention (i.e. – Flood & Drought Mitigation) 13. Windbreaks and Fire Control 14. Composting, Soil Biology, and Natural Fertilizer 15. Urban Landscape Design 16. Holistic Management 17. Food Forests 18. Renewable & Energy Efficient Technology

We aim to utilize approaches such as Methodology for Participatory Assessment (MPA) for community-driven development programs that would include:

Regular visits to regional project work, Conducting periodic "Shura" gatherings that would allow community members the opportunity

to identify local challenges to work being done to realize the vision of what community members would like to see.

Project partners can subsequently help move participants toward stated goals by promptly responding to their needs and collaborating to serve and assist in attaining them.

2. Demonstration Sites

The design and approach for these demonstration sites will utilize the findings and experiences gathered from other case studies. For example the Iraqi “agricultural oases” model provides an excellent basis upon which to build.

Specific project details are proposed as follows:

The most critical factor to consider is access to water. The challenge is how it is utilised to its best capacity. A buried, gravity-fed drip irrigation system will create large wicking beds. Provisions should be made for the creation of water storage on elevated stands which have groundwater periodically pumped up to them and then slowly distributed through the buried drip lines throughout the landscape.

Mulch material is supplied & distributed over these areas using hydromulchers/hydroseeders. Over time, the biomass accumulated through re-vegetation of the demonstration site will eventually be the source of all the organic matter required.

These fields should be further prepared using livestock to drop manure, boosting fertility & organic matter content. Livestock may also be strategically managed & utilized in the scarification, inoculation, & distribution of seeds – especially multifunctional hardy leguminous pioneer species such as Acacia, Prosopis, and Leucaena .

The use of solar powered, mobile electric fencing for managing the grazing areas & will be critical. The utilization of Holistic Management/Mob Grazing will be a prominent feature of the integrated system.


Chippers/mulchers/shredders should be made available to "process" the organic matter we want to use on site. This would be an enormous help.

The planting of palm trees & fruit trees among the legumes is the primary focus concerning the establishment of a tree-based cropping system within the proposed production system.

With this orchestrated progression/succession, an effective tree canopy & windbreak can be established relatively quickly minimizing excessive evaporation and desiccation caused by the sun and wind, setting the stage for other food crops (perennial & annual varieties) to be grown. Additionally, more livestock can be introduced to the system with the improved management of water. If this arrangement is implemented over a large enough area, a more favourable microclimate will be generated within the region, helping to restore the proper functioning of the hydrological cycle.

The demonstration sites will be integrated with the training courses. We intend to perform three to five (3 - 5) trainings a year, each with a total of 25 students. The initial cohort will ideally comprise agricultural engineers and personnel from agricultural & environmental ministries. Each cohort will be allotted a demonstration site to design, develop, monitor, and maintain.

Most of the additional costs would be in the form of non-recurring capital equipment (as mentioned previously) such as:

Hydroseeders/Hydromulchers

Chippers/Shredders/Mulchers - Arboreal equipment/tools

Agricultural implements (i.e. - subsoilers, Yeomans Plows)

Tractors

Rubber tracks for tractors & trucks ( http://www.soucy-track.com/en-CA/home)

Earthmoving equipment (i.e. - excavators, bulldozers)

Trucks/transport equipment (i.e. - UNIMOGS from Mercedes Benz)

Compost (compost turners), Compost Tea (compost tea brewers), Biofertilizer, Micronutrient preparation equipment

Mobile solar-powered fencing to manage livestock

Each site should have staff to establish these systems and monitor progress in the initial stages. Staff would include:

Site managers Administrative office staff Field operators (includes possible use of interns onsite)

http://www.soucy-track.com/en-CA/home


3. Monitoring and establishing a historic data base

Using GIS remote sensing:

The magnitude and impacts of desertification vary greatly from place to place and change over time. This variability is driven by the degree of aridity combined with the pressure humans put on the ecosystem’s resources. There are, however, wide gaps in our understanding and observation of desertification processes and their underlying factors. A better delineation of desertification and degraded land areas through large scale monitoring would assist in the planning, rehabilitation efforts and enable cost-effective actions in affected areas.

The monitoring and analysis work of this component is considered and will be covered in the other information systems programs - the GIS and remote sensing program. The data produced from the GIS and remote sensing components will be utilized in the reporting and to provide recommendations and guidelines to prioritize future rehabilitation efforts.

Program Outline

Objectives:

Capacity building through Mutual Knowledge Sharing & Training Workshops

Train the Trainers

Initial Ag Experiments

Holistic Management Workshops

• Goal Setting

• Decision-Making

• Grazing Planning

• Land Planning

• Financial Planning

• Biological Monitoring

• Policy Design & Analysis

Broad-acre Permaculture Approaches

Agro-forestry, Silvo-Pastoralism

Watershed Restoration

Initial Ag Experiments

• Water features

• Tree Crops

• Implement Planned Grazing


APPENDIX

For 98.5% of farming history, humans have produced food from integrated perennial, polycultural systems. It is only in the last one hundred years, and increasingly since 1945, that the large-scale production of food in monocultural systems has occurred and this has been mainly in developed countries. The majority of the world’s farmers, particularly those in the tropical regions of the world, still depend for their food and income, on multi-species agriculture (Geno & Geno, 2001).

The productive landscapes are effectively complex agroecosystems. These systems are based on the application of ecological concepts and principles to design and manage in a sustainable way.

Its emphasis is on complex agricultural systems in which ecological interactions and synergism between biological components provide the mechanisms for the systems for their own soil fertility, productivity and crop protection (Altieri, 2000).

Nuberg et al. (1994) list five agroecosystem properties that have been suggested as being useful for analysing alterative agricultural ecosystems. These five agroecosystem properties are productivity, stability, sustainability, equitability and autonomy.

• Productivity refers to the outputs of the system that have direct market value.

• Stability is more qualitatively assessed as fluctuations of productivity around a long-term average or trend.

• Sustainability is taken to mean biophysical sustainability. It refers to the depletive or regenerative effects of the agroecosystem on the biophysical resource base.

• Autonomy refers to the degree to which materials, energy, and information flow between the agroecosystem and external ecosystems.

(http://foodforest.com.au/Agroecological%20analysis%20of%20a%20polyculture%20food%20garden%20on%20the%20Adelaide%20Plains.pdf)

A major proposed benefit of agroecological/permaculture/polyculture production is their yield advantage compared to monocultures. Geno and Geno (2001) found that polycultures were more efficient at gathering the essential requirements of light, water and nutrients than monocultures, particularly when tree based.

(Source: https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/01-034)

In an extensive literature survey, they found evidence to suggest that not only do polycultures yield more total production than monocultures; they do so with greater stability and lower risk.

They cite numerous examples where different polyculture methods have been found to yield 10% to 100% more than monoculture methods. Yield advantages of polycultures are often correlated with the use of a greater proportion of available light, water and nutrients or by more efficient use of a given unit of resource (Geno & Geno, 2001).

(Source: http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP179.pdf)

http://foodforest.com.au/Agroecological%20analysis%20of%20a%20polyculture%20food%20garden%20on%20the%20Adelaide%20Plains.pdf

https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/01-034

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP179.pdf


NOTE: The table above was created from information we provided to the contracting firm AECOM/EDAW for their involvement in th e MASDAR City project in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The same overall benefits would apply to Libya and the rest of the MENA Region.

Agroecology/Permaculture / Polyculture example:

In Pasadena, California, the Dervaes family has been working towards food self-sufficiency on their standard (American suburban) 1/5 acre lot. Their food garden occupies 1/10th of an acre or about half the lot. On that .1 acre, they are cultivating over 350 species of plant, and their annual food yields are worth noting: (2008) 4,300 pounds of vegetable food, 900 chicken and 1000 duck eggs, 25 lbs of honey plus seasonal fruits throughout the year net a total of 6,000 pounds.

Four people manage to get over 90 percent of their daily food from this 1/10th of one acre. That would suggest that over 40 people are able to eat from the productivity of one whole acre.

(www.urbanhomestead.org)

This existing system in California equates to 6.8 KG per square meter or 68,000KG to the hectare. This would indicate that close to 100 people could eat from the productivity of one hectare.

There are functionally identical systems being applied within the MENA Region currently.

In Iraq, the agriculture ministry has started work on a project to create green oases in various parts of the country as a way to combat increasing desertification due to water shortages, according to a report from AKnews.

(SOURCE: http://www.iraq-businessnews.com/2011/07/25/agricultural-oases-to-tackle-desertification/)

The oases will be planted with palm trees and cultivated for agricultural purpose with irrigation from wells. The total cost of the projects will be 5 billion Iraqi dinars ($4 million).

“The Ministry has started implementing 7 projects to create large agricultural oases each with an area of 200 to 800 dunums (50-200 hectares) of land” director of desertification control in the ministry, Mohammed Ghazi al-Akhras said.

http://www.iraq-businessnews.com/2011/07/25/agricultural-oases-to-tackle-desertification/


Five of the oases will be located in the desert areas of Anbar, Iraq’s largest province. Nineveh and Basra provinces will have one oasis each.

Large parts of Iraq that were once productive farmland have already turned into arid desert. The ministry says that between 40 and 50 per cent of what was agricultural land in the 1970s is now a barren wasteland.

The ministry of agriculture has so far completed 28 oases all over Iraq. It has announced plans to plant some 20 million trees as a way to address the issue.

Iraqi analysts claim that desertification has increased sharply in recent years as neighbouring countries Turkey, Syria and Iran take more and more water. The Iraqi government has been highly critical of these actions which mean that during the summer months many rivers run dry shortly after they pass into Iraq.

The collapse in the water levels of the rivers has been swift. In 2000, the flow speed of the Euphrates was 950 cubic meters per second, but by this year it had dropped to 230 cubic meters per second.


Sample Polycultural Production Arrangement




In summary, these systems typically progress as described below by researcher Vincent Dolle in his account of desert agroecologies studied within the countries found within the Sahara region:

The following table provides a sample arrangement of training programs that would be conducted:

“Agroecology Type”

Characteristics Animal Husbandry Associated Water Resource

1 Date palms; little or no associated agricultural practice

Non-existent to weak

2 Date palms alone; no other associated crops

Extensive associated husbandry

Weak and limited

3 Date palms with some associated crops

Extensive husbandry; Beginning of intensive husbandry

Average

4 Date palms with underlining associated crops; Increasingly intensified (cereals, horticulture/tree crops, vegetables, cash crops, fodder

Intensive husbandry; dominant associated crops; Several animal varieties; Sheep, cattle, camels (goats).

Abundance of good quality perennial


Examples & Case Studies of Agroecological Systems

There is compelling evidence that utilizing an agroecological systems approach is most effective in the long-term, with a very high return on investment and benefit to cost ratios, as evidenced on a large scale in China’s Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project, with funding provided by The World Bank’s International Development Association. With a total budget of approximately $500 million USD (over 10 years) applied over an area covering 35,000 square kilometres (3.5 million hectares), the investment per unit area for the Loess Plateau Project was just under $143 USD per hectare. In terms of the benefits reaped from the project, they include:

More than 2.5 million people in four of China’s poorest provinces – Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu, as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region – were lifted out of poverty, reducing the rate of poverty from 59% to 27% within a decade.

Through the introduction of sustainable farming practices, farmers’ incomes doubled or tripled, employment diversified and the degraded environment was revitalized, effectively eliminating the chronic problems of famine, drought, and flooding associated with the degraded landscapes.

The projects’ principles have been adopted and replicated widely. It is estimated that as many as 20 million people have benefited from the replication of the approach throughout China.

http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P003540/loess-plateau-watershed-rehabilitation-project?lang=en

By directly addressing the severe environmental degradation within this region of China, the social disruptions and insecurity it produced were reversed, creating greater regional stability, environmental security, and economic opportunity (http://youtu.be/z_xET5iZSy0). Yemen can replicate what was accomplished on the Loess Plateau provided the work is adequately resourced and guided in its initial stages, leading to an expansion of this project work throughout the entire MENA Region.



http://youtu.be/z_xET5iZSy0


According to University of Essex (UK) Professor Jules Pretty, it is in developing countries that some of the most significant progress toward sustainable agroecosystems has been made in the past decade. The largest study comprised an analysis of 286 projects in fifty-seven countries that had been implemented by a wide range of government, nongovernment, and international organizations.

In all, some 12.6 million farmers on 37 million hectares were engaged in transitions toward agricultural sustainability in these 286 projects. This is just over 3 percent of the total cultivated area (1.136 million hectares) in developing countries. The largest number of farmers was in wetland rice-based systems, mainly in Asia (category 2), and the largest area was in mixed systems, mainly in southern Latin America (category 6). This study showed that agricultural sustainability was spreading to more farmers and hectares. In the sixty-eight randomly re-sampled projects from the original study, there was a 54 percent increase over the four years in the number of farmers, and a 45 percent increase in the number of hectares.

Improvements in food production were occurring through one or more of four different mechanisms:

1. Intensification of a single component of farm system, with little change to the rest of the farm, such as home garden intensification with vegetables and/or tree crops, vegetables on rice field embankments, and introduction of fish ponds or a dairy cow.

2. Addition of a new productive element to a farm system, such as fish or shrimp in paddy rice, or agroforestry, which provides a boost to total farm food production and/or income, but which does not necessarily affect cereal productivity.


3. Better use of nature to increase total farm production, especially water (by water harvesting and irrigation scheduling) and land (by reclamation of degraded land), leading to additional new dryland crops and/or increased supply of water for irrigated crops, and thus increasing cropping intensity.

4. Improvements in per hectare yields of staples through the introduction of new regenerative elements into farm systems, such as legumes and integrated pest management, and new and locally-appropriate crop varieties and animal breeds.

(Source: http://monthlyreview.org/2009/11/01/can-ecological-agriculture-feed-nine-billion-people)

Here are pictures of a similar type of system we were shown at a site called Nkheila in Western Sahara (Western Algeria) that would form the basis of what could be implemented in Yemen, as mentioned earlier:

http://monthlyreview.org/2009/11/01/can-ecological-agriculture-feed-nine-billion-people


Profile: The Permaculture Research Institute of Tarim (PRI Tarim)

Our primary organizational affiliation is with the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia (www.permaculture.org.au). A vast global network exists through PRI Australia connecting us to a variety of experts and practitioners who can be made available in aiding the establishment and progress of this initiative.

There are also working relationships with the Environmental Education Media Project (http://eempc.org/eemp-profile/index.html) and What If We Change (http://www.whatifwechange.org/index.php#/home) which will prove to be very useful in chronicling the project and spreading the word about this vital work.

The proposal summarized here builds upon the greatest social resources of the MENA (Middle East North Africa) Region’s inhabitants; namely, the deep love for the land that is of great significance and value in the rich history, cultural identity and traditions of its people.

Both the old and the new adaptations of Yemeni life and culture can be built upon further through an introduction to and training in several recent proven approaches from applied sustainability science. These will include Agroecology, Permaculture, Holistic Management, and Keyline Design. Each of these holistic, practical approaches has much to offer the specific social and ecological situation surrounding the question of how to best proceed given recent developments within much of the MENA Region.

As such, the main broad goal of the project is to enhance and maintain the highly valuable Ecosystem Services (see Table below) provided by the region’s landscapes through a process of knowledge sharing and capacity building for long-term local stewardship.

Source: UNEP Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005

http://eempc.org/eemp-profile/index.html

http://www.whatifwechange.org/index.php#/home


In short, this is accomplished through increasing both natural and social capital

Developing stewardship capacity, leadership, and skills will be approached in the social realm by building further on already existing institutions, by ‘training the trainers’ in the land design and management sciences proposed, by expanding the diversity of livelihood strategies in line with stewardship principles, and through the practice and process of the proposed learning and implementation itself.

Interventions proposed will particularly focus on water cycle dynamics (water is perpetually life’s limiting factor in the world’s deserts). While increasing local capacity for integrated land use & management, the range of regenerative interventions suggested for adaptive experimentation, via the improvement in water use most notably through greatly reducing evaporation and desiccation by exposure to sun & wind, will impart substantial beneficial effects on food security, livelihood diversification and regional adaptive capacity.

In addition, this framing will help to develop greater adaptive capacity by increasing communication, responsibility, and accountability among the various social and governance institutions that already exist within the region.

Documents

Project Proposal: Flood Prevention and Disaster Mitigation ... · PDF filePRI Australia/PSC Pty. Ltd., 1158 Pinchin Road, The Channon, New South Wales 2480, AUSTRALIA Phone: +61 (0)