Global Earth Repair Summit with John D. Liu and Ties van der Hoeven - The Weather Makers

So, Thijs van der Hoffen from The Weather Makers, welcome to the Global Earth Repair Summit for 2022. Hello everybody, and thanks on having me. Salaam alaikum. Let me take you guys along in my journey of the last 6 years, and it all started actually with this image. When in 2016 I was still working with a dredging company a little bit before we set up the Wettermakers and got requested to look into the disappearing fish stock in Lake Bodeweel. And here on this image you see the Nile Delta and you see the Sinai Peninsula on the right-hand side. And very on the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula you see a lagoon, a lake with that sand spit surrounding at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. And I will tell you more about our whole initiative and the different steps and what we have learned still so far, and hopefully soon with Egypt can start on restoring this ecosystem. And what I told you, it all happened in 2016 and via John D Liu, he connected me to lots of different ecological pioneers and of course took me along to the L'Esprit Tau, and more and more I actually started to understand— wait, I'm just trying to understand more about what's needed in this strange world. And here it's very much summarized in one slide, but we call it the living system approach. And where it actually— many of the people that I got connected to, like Mian Mian, John Todd, and everything, I think The majority of what I learned from them is that the current crisis we're now heading as a species are very much connected to our destruction on the living systems on our planet, on the biosphere. And we can all think in doing less things to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other things to tackle climate change, but we could also more think on a an holistic living approach where the base of it really starts with ecosystem regeneration. So the percentage of biomass that grows, which creates the dead organic matter on top of your soil, where you're actually going to change your biophysical and biochemical composition of these soils. And with it, you will naturally start changing your water management of your land. And what it will actually do, it will retain and infiltrate moisture. And based upon the availability of moisture, your ecosystem can start flourishing. But not only that, the moment water is there to evaporate, you will start changing temperatures and wind speeds just above your land. So you're changing your weather. And if you're changing your weather, if you sum that up on a longer period, you will positively stabilize and change your climate. That's what you see on the left-hand side on this beautiful circle of the approach. And we call that the weathermaking approach. And that's connected to this beautiful pyramid showing all the different SDGs. We started to realize that every proper functioning society where equality should be in the heart of it finds her roots in a proper functioning biosphere. And if that works, you improve the quality on land, in the water, stabilize the temperature, and increase the availability of fresh water. And these are the bases for a proper society to be built. And later on, a regenerative economy can really flourish this civilization. So rough overview of our initiative. As what I told you, you clearly can see here on the northern side of the Sinai Peninsula, which herself is approximately 60,000 square kilometers in size, and very much on the northern Mediterranean coast, you see Lake Bataweel, on which the initial request came, and I will tell you a little bit more about it later on. And our focus of the initiative is really on the watershed that flows towards the Mediterranean of the Sinai Peninsula, which approximately is 35,000 square kilometers in size. And can we regreen a desert? If we would use the industrial capabilities there now are to actually support the local communities to restore their ecosystems. And the good thing about this industrial support is that you can start thinking on a different scale, and you can start reusing much more materials in her surroundings. Because I guess that's one of the most important things I've learned, is by restoring or regenerating an ecosystem, you got to use local materials, and everything you touch you can place somewhere else where it can have a new function. So what we have been doing in the last 6 years are different tracks of development, I would call it, and I always like this deviation of our project just to take you along in the different parts we are developing. Of which the first track I will explain to you how you can regenerate a tidal lagoon and how this can increase the natural productivity and create a regenerative fish catch and restore the wetlands. And next to that, we will be focusing more on the materials, the marine sediments which need to be dredged, how you can actually use those indigenous soils to start regreening a desert. And if you have those basic principles in your hand where you can start thinking of a decentralized regreening, so no, not only large-scale regreening efforts, but very much brought back again to farmer level. You need a kind of water cycle approach of a watershed to ensure that you use the positive feedback loops that nature holds within her own natural systems. And that's the last track where we very much start focusing on how to restore the water cycle and how a local water cycle again is then connected to her surroundings. So let us start with track 1, the regeneration of Lake Bodewil. And I start this image of a beautiful natural inlet. This inlet is located in Tunisia, and for us was a source of inspiration, because many of the work we do is we mimicking nature. With other words, you don't need to fully understand everything to be able to let nature take over and build her own robust systems. And by analyzing and understanding a natural system, it's much more easier to create one. So let us dive into Lake Bodewiel. Here you see it. She's approximately now 600 square kilometers in size and has highlighted here on the both sides two artificial made inlets. Those inlets have been dredged in the 1920s and in the 1980s have been created breakwaters around to actually increase the inlet stability.. But with these inlets, they actually destroyed the natural spiral flow of the tide coming in, which really handicapped the natural productivity of the system. Not only that, the lagoon currently is only 1.3 meters deep on average, and as being a morphologist, Bahar, we know that this system is going to be gone if we don't do anything. And that can be out of two reasons. It either kept on siltating further and further, so she's actually being filled up by the sand coming from the desert or by the sand coming from the ocean, which then will reduce her volume and less water will come in by the tides. And again, this will create a negative feedback loop of the system to siltate. But not only that, you can see that the edge of the system is actually a natural sand spit, and mainly on the western side you can see that she is being eroded by the northwestern storms on the Mediterranean. And now already in big storms, the offshore waves are overflashing the sand spit, and if we don't carefully watch out, they will break through, and all the marine sediments stored within this lagoon will then disappear into the ocean and sink towards the deeper locations where they will actually slowly oxidize, heat up the water and take out the oxygen and could potentially cause an ecological disaster. But what are these marine sediments? As you see here is a little graph on the, on the the left top corner. And what we see is that this lagoon used to be 20 to 40 meters deep. Partly is being filled up by sand coming from the ocean due to most likely the destruction of these ecosystems long, long times ago when forests were chopped, wetlands were destroyed, and less water was cycling through the water cycle. And that fresh water supply into the lagoon was actually causing higher tidal currents. And when that water cycle was gone, tidal currents were reducing and the lake was filling up from the sand coming from the ocean. And then you actually see the upper 5 to 10 meters, we see sub-gas. And sub-gas are very salty but very fertile marine sediments. They're actually the indigenous soils that has been flushed out from the watershed above. And then you're going to realize that the salinity in the lagoon, which will increase if the tidal flushing of the Mediterranean will reduce, is actually causing a natural flocculator. So it's actually the salt itself that preserved the sediments to siltate on the bottom of this lagoon. And these sediments are very, very fertile. You gotta be a little bit crazy, but I guess I'm from the Netherlands and we know we reclaimed so many lands from the sea that those marine sediments, when properly flushed there by the rain, are really fertile sediments for agricultural lands or for ecosystems to flourish again. And that's what we figured out when we did a large soil campaign and got all different types of sediments where we investigated them on the biochemical composition and actually figured out that we had all nutrients and minerals available except there was a lack for phosphorus. So then the question could be, if we have to dredge this to get the fish stocks back, can we use those sediments in a later stage to restore the ecosystem? So let us first dive into how can we regenerate A tidal lagoon. Well, you got to understand that twice a day a tidal wave is coming from the west and traveling to the east where the high water comes into the Mediterranean. And yes, the tidal elevation is limited in the Mediterranean basin ranging from 20 to 45 centimeters, but due to the fact that the size of this lagoon is relatively so big, there are still lots of volumes of water coming in. They're actually coming in, and here you can see a tidal inlet. So what we realize that if we open up the door towards the tidal waves, we can trap more water to flush this lagoon. So during the flood tides, more water of the Mediterranean comes in, which is lower in temperature, lower in salinity, and can actually increase and improve the water quality.. But next to the inlets, you also need the gullies. So these are actually tidal channels in a lagoon that have reduced friction so that tidal wave can further penetrate into it. And when you have this water which comes in in a larger volume, your current velocities will increase, and your current velocities will resuspend the fertile sediments into the water column. And during the high water, it will be transported to your tidal flats where it will then can settle. And microbial bacterial activities on your mud flats, so with low water they're above water and with high water they're under, they're actually the big decomposers of your lagoon. And with it, they are improving your water quality. The sediments will settle again, but also improving your nutrient loadings in this lagoon. And then your primary production can kick in. But they will also do remineralization and more silica will come available. And you can actually guide that primary production towards the diatom alky type, which are— I normally call it the baby milk of an aquatic ecosystem.. And this is how we see how a morphological regeneration and an ecological regeneration go hand in hand. So how would a zoom-in of this tidal lagoon look like? So here you can see now instead of 2 we have 4 inlets where we're actually dredging the material from the inlet. So we're opening the door and that sand will be placed on the leeward side of that lagoon, which you can beautifully see here. And this little bump sticks out and actually is capturing more of the tidal wave. So we're increasing with the reuse of that sand, your tidal prism. And with it, you see that we connect the different inlets in the beginning with some gullies. So you're reducing the friction and you can increase your out-of-phase of your tidal elevation which very much increase your tidal flushing. And with it also is we try to generate spiral flows or upwellings so that we're actually improving the resuspended material to be brought into the higher parts of the columns where she can feed the primary production. And here you see how we have worked. So we've worked for 5 years on a design methodology where we really look into mimicking nature. Understanding where your up gullies, your flood gullies are, and seeing indeed that curved channels, which you always see in nature, can actually increase your upwellings. And creating a submerged sand engine and an emerged sand engine, we can actually create a natural sand bypass. So determine how much sand we want to get into the lagoon and also get out of there. So with it, you can really start using, as what I showed you before in the picture, a natural system and start to understand in the simplistic ways how she functions. And then you can start copy-pasting that to your own inlet design. So here I'm just going to show you a numerical model of the current situation. What you see here in coloring is the high velocities, the current velocities, and when it's red, the current velocities are high, and when it's blue, they're low. You're actually seeing here on an average tide 30 million cubic meters of water penetrating from the Mediterranean into this lagoon. But the volume of the lagoon is currently approximately 700 million cubic meters. So you can see a kind of hyperventilating system. I will repeat it once more time and just have a look on what's happening around these inlets. You actually see that the water comes in, but due to the different densities of the different temperatures and the salinities, she doesn't really flush anymore, this lagoon. And the concept is, can we change it by opening up that door and by creating more inlets? Can we have a change into the system. And here you see a system with 4 inlets and with coolies. And if you understand that only when she just becomes a little bit light blue, a current velocity of approximately 0.15 meters per second, those very fine sediments in the lagoon will be resuspended, which actually means that we can completely change the energetic loading in this lagoon. So now a tidal prism changes from 30 million, what I said to you before, now to 170 million cubic meters per tidal cycle. So that actually happens twice a day. And by mimicking nature and creating this natural inlet, we also let that water come in with that spiral flow, which can break through stratified layers of different salinities in this relatively shallow lagoon. And what we see is not a very sharp increase of the water quality, but we also see a natural deepening process. So every little tidal cycle there are suspended sediments which partly will settle on the flatlands, but the other part will be flushed outside in the ocean where it actually starts feeding the nearshore, which will attract fish. And then the fish again can start migrating in this lagoon. And now we're talking in such large volumes that you can see that within a year or a little bit longer, the salinity levels can go back to the Mediterranean. And the temperamental differences in the season are very much stabilized. So with other words, they're becoming much smaller in between the summer and the winter, and you're actually opening the lagoon again for a much larger biodiversity of the Mediterranean to come in and restore this lagoon. And this is when I started to work together with John D Liu, how we were using the last 100 years of fish catch data to start understanding and building a key species food web of Lake Bariwil. So at the bottom you see the dissolved organic matters, the bottom sediments, the phytoplankton, the seagrasses, the microalgae, and step by step you can see life getting more complex and having different functions. From the mussels that can filter the water, or the crabs and the worms that really can revitalize the mudflats, going up to the more migrating fish coming from the Mediterranean. And on the end you see the fisheries and the birds. So what we started to understand is that we fully have to understand the whole envelope is of this aquatic food web to make her productive again. And what I very quickly started to understand, that the natural system is not efficient in every little step, but it is the full food web that makes it a very efficient system. And that's how we could start to create a very powerful food web based upon the biodiversities which are currently there in the lagoon, but also seeing the potential more migrating fish coming from the Mediterranean, which could quickly very much energize this whole food web and make it very productive. And then we started to look at the potential regenerative fish catch. With regenerative fish catch, we mean the following: if an ecosystem builds herself, She needs time and sometimes she shoots out of the corner and grows too much algae or grows too much of a type of fish. That is required to successfully ecologically evolve into a more productive functional system. But if you carefully look into those things as a human, we can also support it. We can reduce the time of an ecosystem to create their own functionalities. And I just give you a very easy example. If we would step by step start increasing this tidal prism, more and more migrating fish from the Mediterranean would come in into this lagoon. But we need some time for the wetlands, for the seagrasses, for the whole bottom of this ecosystem to become productive and to become robust. So if we have too much large fish migrating in the beginning, this could actually destroy or reduce the speed of this ecosystem to restore. So in the beginning, it might well be very smart if the local fishermen start catching these higher ranked fish to support the bottom of this ecosystem to grow. And that's how we have created the regenerative fish catch, which actually looks on that full food web. And now just look at this graph, because I, when I started to work together with John D Liu to predict the potential natural productivity, we were flabbergasted because we were understanding that we would bring in by the tidal energy way more energy into the system. The energy can be used to, to take the salt to the sea, to resuspend the sediments, or put the sediments on the mudflats. So what we knew is that, and this was from the work from John D Liu, the energetic input you will put in will on the end feed this primary production. And then we started to make on different system analyses predictions on what this fish catch could be. And we could see on a very conservative basin basis that we could increase the fish catch on a regenerative way more than 10 times, which would potentially mean that there will not be any unemployment around this lagoon. And of course we were like, whoa, is this potential so big? So what we then started to do, investigate different lagoons in our surrounding and in the surroundings of the Mediterranean. And we started to realize that we're actually bringing Biodewheel back to the productivity of existing lagoons around the Mediterranean. Which, don't get me wrong, the majority of them are also well under their potential productivity. So we started to understand that this potential fish catch of Butterweald was tremendous. Again, do we exactly know upfront what we need to do on the long term? The answer is no. So what we have created, and we call it the proactive adaptive realization, a stepped approach, where we use simplistic models and all the parameters that are fit into the models, we're going to monitor and we're going to validate and to calibrate. So in the beginning, we don't spend too much time on, on trying to find every little detail, but we start a numerical, simplistic numerical model, do a first change, and very much validate and calibrate, um, the changes what we then see in the monitoring.. And based upon that, we can improve the models and step by step we can then see what the best new step is. This could be that we first start dredging 2 inlets or 3 inlets, or if we see that the water improved that big and the ecosystem needs some support to grow, we can better after the first inlet start focusing on a new inlet. And that's what you really see a little bit here. It was based upon a Bent and Brink methodology, which was actually able to show a whole food web in a, in a certain circle and comparing the different fish types on towards a relative population you would like. And here we created the proactive adaptive realization where you can look on the right top corner on your tidal prism, your tidal range, your equilibrium velocities, towards your water quality, towards your different habitat development, and then towards your aquatic biodiversity, which is the veld. And with it, with all the different stakeholders ranging from a dredging company to a fisherman to maybe a fish trader which needs a fish, an ice factory, or etc., we could start thinking on a very much holistic approach where all the different stakeholders are part of the decision-making process And every little step you make, the next step you can decide yourself. And with it, you can really create a methodology where you can work in the unknown, because the natural complexity is sometimes so complex, it takes too long to understand her. But if an ecosystem grows, you see her growing. So you let yourself step by step be surprised by that natural complexity being built up. And based upon your new insights, you can then improve your next step. So that was track 1. Let me take one sip. So let us now dive into how could you potentially regreen a desert. Very quickly on my path, actually, John D Liu introduced me to John Todd and his new Alchemy Institute. And I was flabbergasted how he could build natural systems and how he could explain me that by building natural systems, you don't need to fully understand it. The only thing you need to understand it, how can I let nature build their own complexity back again? And he worked on his eco-machine where you here see some different types. And the eco-machine was actually rather simple. It were transparent cylinders where lots of solar energy could fall in and could step by step from cylinder to cylinder change that water quality by life. So algae could form, which could absorb carbon dioxide, phosphor, nitrogen, change the environmental conditions, and then the next more complex little step could come in to the next cylinder. And I never forget it that at a certain moment he said to me, "Diesel, you just build it." And at a certain moment you start seeing the different cylinders trying to communicate with each other. You can literally see your snails or your fish or your algaes going to support these other systems. And after a while, nature is building a food web. And you can do that with plants integrated with it, and you can purify water with it. And I was flabbergasted with the methodology he created. And very soon we ask him to join us and start building the concept he created for us because he said he's regreening a desert. He can make it complex or can just simplistic look on how nature does it. So here you see what he did. He said, what do you have in Badiouwil? We have saltwater and we have marine sediments. So this what we gotta do is we gotta build transparent cylinders an Eco-Machine with salt water and we build a salt water food web which can feed the people by the seaweeds and by the fish and etc. And in between, during the day in your geodesic dome, when you can close her off, you're going to generate a natural water cycle. So the sun is heating up this seawater and that seawater is going to evaporate fresh water. And that will condensate on the sides of your dome. And every morning somebody comes to it and tips it, it starts to rain. That rain can then infiltrate the desert and plants can grow and can shoot roots big enough so at a certain moment you can take it away. We were loving this approach. The thing is, what we needed to do, to do it on a larger scale, are we really going to do it step by step? By placing the dome on a certain land, or are we able to regenerate an ecosystem principle where you have ecological function within? It's a mini ecosystem. You have your aquatic parts, certain parts to actually reduce high levels of nitrogen or phosphorus, which create then more complex algae, which can then feed your plants. And next to it you can have your diatom train that can feed your aquatic fish stack and create a kind of aquaponics, which can then— the manure of the fish can then feed again your plants. And this is our own ecosystem laboratory in the Netherlands, where we are really learning the synchronicities of different habitats and different parts of this ecosystem. And again here, what I said before, an ecosystem by herself The ex— every little step she takes isn't that efficient at all, but the full system which is developed is very, very efficient and powerful. And it's funny, if you then now look on our current societies we have created, you see that, that we now think that every little step has to be very efficient, but the overall system we create is completely not efficient. And that very much inspired me with working with this ecosystem to really see that sometimes, if not every step has to be that efficient, it's much easier to build an holistic system. And that's what we're doing here. And based upon that, we could start thinking on how to restore a water cycle. Because if the marine sediments hold all the nutrients and minerals and still inactive microbial biomass, and the seawater still holds the phosphorus which we can harvest with the diatoms, can we start thinking of using those sediments which we need to dredge to improve the aquatic productivity of the lagoon to start regenerating this ecosystem? And the interesting thing is an aquatic ecosystem is much quicker in producing food So by improving this lagoon, we are improving the food security. So we're actually improving the life on land with those marine sediments and the Eco Oasis principle. We're actually ecologically creating a succession. So going from marine sediments with different saline trains, flushing the soils to reduce the salinity. With it, you also flush parts of the nutrients which then go feed into an aquatic train, and then that water of the aquatic train can then fertilize again those sediments. So actually, by revitalizing these marine sediments to fresh biosphere, we're producing all different types of food. So with it, we're creating food security, fresh water security, and we're creating a methodology that we can start ecologically restoring the land with indigenous soils. And what we very quickly start realizing, could it be that the water infrastructure is a much more important infrastructure for the future to come? Because now we can start thinking on transporting hydraulically the marine sediments to all different parts, take out all the nutrients from salt to freshwater ecosystems, produce the food and then start restoring this ecosystem. And then the salt water we have left can flow back and we can regenerate the energy back from it again to very much reduce the cost price of transporting this. And yes, we have to very carefully think on not contaminating the land with the salt, but this is doable. We have done this before. And that then created into this right bottom corner when we can start thinking of restoring the wadis into river systems and create actually on the first cloud elevation level, which is the first mountain ranges above the 700 meters, to restore this forest. And how would then a decentralized ecosystem look like? And again, listen, I'm from a dredging industry. So what we realized, and I had massive talks with John D Liu, that if we want to fundamentally change our current society, everybody should join. So for me, the people that were building windmills or building pipelines could now very much, by changing their purpose, become very close to us. And here you actually see an example on how such a decentralized regeneration could look like. You create eco oasis where you can revitalize the marine sediments and produce food on a farmer level or a community farmer level, and we could have a little windmill. And this windmill doesn't have a dynamo in the top, but it actually has an hydraulic pump in the top. With that hydraulic pump, we can first of all create hydraulic heads so we can transport water and sediments through pipelines, small ones, but we could also with reverse osmosis produce fresh water, which is then very dead. But with that Eco Oasis system, we can revitalize that water also in the same time. But also this water pressure can generate electricity. So there we can actually create the basic needs for resettlers that can start regenerating an ecosystem. This is just our current concept, and we can think of many different ways.. But in an holistic design process, you want your circle to be closed before you dive into the next further detailed circle. And that's what we have been doing here. Just show, yes, we can do it. And it's a reference way. Can it be done better? I hope so. And let us find out. But for now, we know we can close that circle. And then just another crazy idea. We came into touch with people that were actually working for shipping companies, and it's in this strange world now where all globalization and geopolitical tensions cause big changes in our transport needs. So many larger seagoing vessels will be out of work. So many that you cannot sell those boats because then your financial investor has a problem. So they started to think about, can we sail green water, melted green water from Greenland, which is now actually causing a threat. And again, I'm not going to say we need to do this, but if we want to involve everybody, we can start thinking on sailing fresh water, melted water which has a memory, which has a history, full of silica. We can start using this as an accelerator temporarily just to boost our ecological regeneration. And you can start thinking of old oil tankers which you clean up with little eco machines on top, so they will be carbon dioxide zero in emissions and on nitrogen.. And those oil tankers could come in and could temporarily for the people that are going to regreen fill up natural eco fires as strategic freshwater supply. So the people that are actually willing to do the hard work of the regreening know that whatever happens, they always have fresh water to drink. That was how to regreen a desert. Let us now step into restoring the hydrological cycle. And really diving a little bit into what a functional ecosystem in the Sinai could potentially mean for the region. Here you see a little bit of the blow-up of the watershed which flows with their river systems towards the Mediterranean. The highlighted part, if there are still no flash floods in the Sinai which occurs every couple of years, you will see that that whole wide basin flushes out in el-arish, really creates floods there. But you can also see the other river systems flowing up to Badawil, where there are strong reasonings that actually all of that part will later on be the same watershed, but simply due to sand transportations of sand dunes in this desert. This is the current flow of the water there is. And then what is actually the role water on the land. If there is a lack of water, which you see on the left-hand side, the solar radiation it receives a day is too much, and 60 to 70% is transferred into sensible heat. And sensible heat is nothing else than thermic flows going up. The air heats up, so relative humidity goes down,, and then she's rising up again till she will cool off. With other words, a hot desert land will have very high cloud condensation levels, whereas this land would have a vegetation cover, of course, uh, with a whole ecosystem function around it. She will be able to retain and infiltrate moisture and actually store water. So when the sun comes up and that excess of solar radiation is falling on that land during the day, now the majority of that energy goes into evapotranspiration and only 5 to 10% of sensible is transferred to sensible heat. So lower temperature, so relatively higher humidities and less thermic flows added with water vapor will very sharply reduce your cloud condensation levels. And that's what you see in this image, because what happens when a cloud condensates? She frees up that energy which was given to her on the land surface by the sun, and she condensates the water and heats up that atmosphere. So what you actually see is that functional ecosystem has much less temperamental differences in a lower atmosphere and in a higher atmosphere. And that simply means less extreme weather. And when those clouds are condensating on a lower location, they can really create shade and again cool off the land. So the water has a very special energy transfer role. And actually During the day, that excess of too much solar energy is transferred into evaporation, condensates, and falls back onto the land, and again increases very much the energetic density on your land. And the same as in Baderwil, this will be the basis of your ecosystem to flourish. So what does that mean in a watershed? Right, the same principles we just discussed. There's a lack of water, so the sun comes up and she very quickly starts heating the lowlands of the Sinai where you create those thermal flows. So there's a low pressure, so she starts pulling a sea breeze low on elevation because that's where your low pressure occurs, just right on top of your land, and you get a sea breeze. During the day, further and further into your watershed, the mountains are heating up and you see everywhere the thermal flow. So your sea breeze again finds a low pressure a little bit further into your watershed and Mian Mian would call it this mountain breeze. And she accelerates during the day till the moment she reaches that highest point of your watershed. And then she's gonna fall down. Into the Red Sea, and there again she creates a low pressure. So this lack of this watershed results in a very dramatic vacuum breeze transporting the evaporated moisture from the Mediterranean towards the Red Sea. And what we've learned from Yamiyan is that during an average day on the Mediterranean, when it's 26 degrees relative humidity of 70%, 14 grams of water vapor is in a cubic meter of air. And you only need 21 grams to go to cloud condensation when the mountain range is approximately 2,000 kilometers long. That's only one-third of additional moisture you need to get rain. Which means to say, if you don't add it, you're losing two-thirds, 14 grams a cubic meter in the very strong winds from the Mediterranean and catchment basin towards the Red Sea. So what happens then if you have a functional watershed? If you have a functional watershed, there's water to evaporate, so you have reduced temperatures. So reduced thermal flows show a lower low pressure. Temperature is lower, higher relative humidity, less wind speeds, and you're adding water vapor. So we can all start imagining, um, that that 14 gram can then again build up to approximately 21 grams. And when that happens, you get cloud condensation. The far end side of this catchment basin, which flows to the Mediterranean, is approximately 1,700 meters high. So if that cloud condensation happens, the air implodes and she starts pulling more water vapor from the ocean on a higher elevation. The water vapor, the condensation occurs, she heats up her surrounding air. So you see how the cauliflowers types of clouds where those droplets go in cycles and is feeding in her size till a certain moment. The thermal heating of the condensation process will lose it from gravity and the droplet will fall to your land. And if she falls, she creates a drag force. So she's changing the wind. That's what you see here. The wind on your land surface is now not anymore directed to the Red Sea. But if that cloud condensation happens and the rain starts falling, she will go back again to the Mediterranean. So here you see the basic principles of a functional water cycle. Now, what does that mean? When I got to Mianmian, he showed me this map, the catchment basins of the world. And here what you see, all his work he did was on the continental divide in Spain. And for me, a continental divide is nothing else than a mountain range high enough to let the water flow to the different oceans, and the mountain range high enough to cool down the air, let the water vapor condensate and fall and change the winds. With other words, a mountain range high enough to separate weather systems. This is the work he did in Spain. And he said, "Ties, look at it. Look on this map." This map, to be clear, is generated from DNA, from sediment findings from all over the planet. And what you see here is that you used to have an encatchment basin ranging from Europe to the whole Nile Valley in the northern parts of Africa, with having a continental divide on that Sinai. So could it be that if we would restore the water cycle in the Sinai, we could restore our catchment basin. With other words, if you restore that, the wind is not leaking anymore in towards the Red Sea, but she can flow back into the Nile Valley. So let us a little bit in a 3D view get that process again. I showed you the cross-section. You now have this beautiful triangular shape a wider lowland, low pressure, wind starts up and the sea breeze connects towards your mountain breeze and is very much funneled into this beautiful triangular shape of the Sinai. And then at all the moments she starts falling over and creates that vacuum breeze and very much generate this powerful wind into the Red Sea. And here you see it again. I'm an engineer, not a scientist. So I was drawing these wind patterns which I could see from the wind tabs, which you see here. So there you see the Sinai and you see this very strong southern directed wind, what we saw. So if we would change the temperamental temperatures during the day in the Sinai, where we change the low pressure, could we change the winds? Now the first question as an engineer is, wait a minute, in the summer it's hotter than in the winter, so let us already look what we see in the summer month. And here you see July 2008, the Sinai up north and a very strong breeze on average 4 Beauforts reaching up to 4 Beauforts during day and night on an average of a month. So if you create a vegetation cover, you roughly reduce the temperature by 10 to 15 degrees. That's also what happens in the winter. And that's what you see here. And here you can already see the pressure of this Indian Ocean coming up because you reduce your vacuum cleaner force. So could it be that the Sinai has a much larger function? Many of the people in the beginning were saying, aren't you not stealing water from other parts? And we call this a disturbed water vapor distribution. Now look on these The red dots you see here, these are the registered bad weather systems in the world. What climate change does is that more and more the bad weather systems are now approaching into the Arabic Peninsula or in India or in Southeast Asia. But if climate change is heating up the Sinai, which she does a lot, she's pulling more moisture from the Mediterranean. That's why we have all those boost— fires, and she's injecting that water into the normal cycle of the Indian Ocean, and she creates bad weather systems. So are we stealing water from other people? No, we're changing a disturbed water vapor distribution. And that's what you see here again, that 3D image. You now have sufficient amount of water to evaporate during the day, to have that increased relative humidity from 14 grams pick up to 21 grams where she can rain out, and she changed the winds. That's what you see here. So if you change the wind, you take out the pressure of that wind, um, dropped into the Red Sea, and then the Indian Ocean moisture can come back again. And she's now being cut into parts by that Sinai, so part of it goes into the Gulf of Aqaba And part of it goes into the Gulf of Suez. And what I've learned from the Chinese was that we have to much more look back at our history to understand things. And I never forget, I was on Corsica doing the GR20 hike, and when I was ending on the southeast side of the island, you had all the Levante roses. I'm like, Levante roses, what's that? Yes, in the winter the Levant winds would bring rain. And the Sinai is the Levant tectonic plate. So what we started to understand is that we saw way more references to this functional water cycle where actually the buildup water vapor pressure from the Indian Ocean could feed back again into the Mediterranean in the right seasons.. But not only that, because if that wind in the right seasons is now changing in direction in the Red Sea and in the Suez, you can see that that water vapor could reach Athens, Constantinople, and all those places where we found pollen records of the old days, which was strongly related to the Indian biodiversity. But not only that, now that water vapor from the Mediterranean is not going into the Red Sea anymore, but she can now pop into the Nile Valley exactly how that content and catchment basin used to be. So could it be that we could increase the water vapor content in the Mediterranean basin and actually bring back water vapor back into the northern parts of Africa? And I'm not gonna say that every, we understand every little part of it, but again, mimicking nature. Can we regenerate ancient weather, which we have lots of proof how it used to be? And for me, it was really, really mind-blowing. I didn't know that it wasn't that long ago that the Sahara was green, less than 10,000 years. You have cycles of it. We call it the African Humid Period, which is connected to the orbital changes of our planet towards the sun. But if you dive into it, and you can find some further details in our perspective paper, you see that that's not the normative relation that only is. Could it be that ecological destruction by our growth of a species, and now zoom into that Sinai, when we destroyed her approximately 7,000 to 4,000 years before Christ, We created that vacuum cleaner that pulled out so much moisture from this catchment basin. Could it be that human-induced climate change by ecological destruction could have a much bigger impact on the region? I don't know, and I don't want to go into this blame situation, but let me transform that same question I just gave you. Could it be that ecological regeneration on certain hotspots could have a much profound, bigger impact than we ever thought of. Could it be that if we as human species start work together on hotspots, and the hotspots are not only on the large scale, they're also on the small scale, that we can have a much more profound impact on ecological planetary regeneration, and that this could be an holistic way out the current crises we're in, from climate change to loss of biodiversity to energy to lack of fresh water to whatever it is. Could it be that ecological regeneration is the way out? And the cool thing is, if that's the case, we're gonna need to work together. And let me end this presentation. And when I say we need to work together, I don't only mean as a species. That's what I hope for. That would be my biggest dream. But I even hope that we start to work together with all of our organic family. The Sinai is naturally connected to the world. It's the biggest migrating route of birds. They used to be. So is it difficult? Should we spend a lot of time in all which plants we need to plant, which I fully agree on because you can manipulate system, or should we attract the birds which can bring out seeds from all over the planet? And that natural system, like John D Liu taught me, but the permaculture does it as well, you don't need to fully understand, you just need to trigger it. Could it be that the migrating fish from the Mediterranean and these birds will start helping us in building a robust ecosystem? There's lots more to share and I'm already looking at the time, so I think I well overspent the time. I'm available for a Q&A, but I'm always available for whatever people have questions, want to learn more on the ways how we're doing. We're very much here to share, and I hope all together with everybody on this planet that's pushing for ecological regeneration, we can support and help each other. And inshallah, thanks a lot for showing what we have been working on and Hopefully, our paths will cross in the nearby future. Thanks.