Novel Intel: The Sahara Forest Project
National Geographic spotlights an innovative idea, which features an ecosystem of technologies designed to bring green living to the desert and biofuels along with it.
Planned community? Lowell’s mill town dressed up in green innovation? Maybe.
The project is part of a planned research center, which will create food, fresh water, renewable electricity, and biofuels while offering green jobs. The plan calls for replicating these green oases in deserts around the world to create self-contained communities.
The idea was first floated in Copenhagen during the climate conference last December. Project co-leader Frederic Hauge, founder and president of the Norwegian environmental nonprofit the Bellona Foundation, notes:
From my perspective as an environmentalist, this could be a game changer in how we produce biomass for food and energy, and how we’re going to provide fresh water for the future.
Governments seem to be open to the idea, especially in African countries where desertification is a critical concern. Programs across the continent, notes Patrick Gonzalez, a forest ecologist at UC Berkeley, have successfully demonstrated that local communities can be effective environment stewards of the desert’s ecosystem when granted rights to existing natural resources.
More information about the Sahara Forest Project is available here.
