John D. Liu interviews Ties van der Hoeven about the Sinai Peninsula ecological restoration project. The conceptual design is complete and handed to Egypt for local implementation. Funding from Western nations is close, with a 5-7 year timeline for meaningful regeneration. Van der Hoeven urges people to start restoring biodiversity in their own gardens and join restoration camps.
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It's quite inspiring. First of all, just to be with the whole group of our panel and being together and just discuss it further. And that was a beautiful thing. And I guess it's very good to see that finally here there's so many people busy and willing to change. So that's inspiring and you do feel the energy. I do also hope that next, from only talking, Action will come, and it's always a little bit the other thing of these kind of conferences is that you just hope it's not only talk but really action come out of it. But I really feel that the group that came together here on the Sinai Project is now really wanting to make the next step and really going for action. So I'm very happy.
So it's been several years since we met. It's been several years since you've been working on the design of the Sinai restoration of the Sinai Peninsula. What— tell us where you where you are now with that?
Well, I guess the design has been a learning path together with you, and you connected us to many of these ecological pioneers. And I guess from, like, say, over a year, we really are more focusing on how to monitor and how to create the governance around it. So really, the conceptual design has been delivered to Egypt, and it's now really up to them with the local communities to to go through it and really adopt and make it their own design and really bring it forward. And in that process, we're now with Egypt, and that looks very promising. Also here was important that next to the involvement of the local communities and Egypt itself was also that the Western world and later on also hopefully the Middle East is going to financially support the project and the local communities. And yeah, we're very close to that at this moment. So that's It's finally after 6 years, and I remember it very good, the first time I met you in a coffee bar in, in the most, you told me it takes 5 to 7 years to really start an ecological regeneration project. And I will do everything to keep it within that 7 years, but it looks very promising. So we're close.
Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think is important that you want to talk about?
Well, I guess what you didn't ask me is that what I've learned from you in those last 6 years, that it's not only a project and it's not only the bigger size, but it's all of us. And I guess what I've learned and what I'm now doing in my own garden, and I hope more and more people will start doing it or potentially join also ecosystem restoration camps, is that together we can change, but we really gotta, gotta do it, and there's no time to lose. And I know that lots of people sometimes are waiting for the international world to start really doing the change. But I urge everybody just to start doing it yourself if you have the opportunity. Create biodiversity, try to restore your own ecosystems, retain moisture, infiltrate moisture. We got to start. And I guess that's the main message.
