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The Man Who Stopped the Desert: What Yacouba did next…

Those who watched The Man Who Stopped the Desert (trailer here), will want to follow up with this short video — What Yacouba did next….

Yacouba Sawadogo has learnt something we all need to realise — that we can be a positive element on this planet, through observation and working with natural systems. The methods Yacouba utilises could, if taken up with widespread enthusiasm, re-green the entire Sahel — and arid regions worldwide. These techniques are not complicated. Indeed, any permaculturist with a rudimentary understanding of soil science will appreciate the logic behind them. Only recently, after 30 years of stubborn perseverance, Yacouba is now getting some funding to enable him to train farmers in his local region. Let’s hope Yacouba finally reaches a tipping point in his soil-revitalising outreach.

9 Comments

  1. Was he able to buy his own land back? I really felt bad for him, having his ancestral land taken away from him, including the burial grounds of his ancestors.

  2. ———————————————————
    The greenhouse effect on Earth

    Some incoming sunlight is reflected by the Earth’s atmosphere and surface, but most is absorbed by the surface, which is warmed. Infrared (IR) radiation is then emitted from the surface. Some IR radiation escapes to space, but some is absorbed by the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases (especially water vapour, carbon dioxide, and methane) and reradiated in all directions, some to space and some back toward the surface, where it further warms the surface and the lower atmosphere.
    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
    ——————————————————————–

    When land is stripped of vegetation, it absorbs heat and radiates it back into the atmosphere. Vegetation absorbs solar radiation and carbon dioxide, while shading soil from solar heat and retaining that most powerful greenhouse gas, water vapor, as liquid water in soil and living organisms.

    Rather than enriching the bankers with their profitable but futile carbon trading scams, we humans urgently need to reverse the ongoing process of desertification that has been the hallmark of agricultural civilization.

    This humble man, with his simple techniques, has a far more to offer this planet than Al Gore his cadre of carpetbaggers.

  3. Andy, while in no way wanting to contradict your comment, I truly respect your right to your opinion, it strikes me that you miss the point.

    That point being that the only thing that matters now for the whole of humanity, god fearing or not, icon loving or not, is outcomes. If we don’t understand the need for each and every one of us to commit to outcomes than pull us back from the rapidly approaching climatic end-game then everything else becomes utterly irrelevant!

  4. Mollison once said, ‘choose your friends from people who you like what they do – even though you mightn’t like what they say.’

  5. Paul, I think you have hit it on the head with your comment, ‘then everything else becomes utterly irrelevant’. All the other stuff is just plain intellectualising. What really matters is when our backs are up against it. Just for example, it is very noticeable that while some people from the Moslem religion have been very upset by recent events, I have not heard of anyone in Syria protesting about that film. The Syrians are too busy fighting for their lives to be worried about insults against a belief system. (of course I am aware that a lot of the reporting about the protests are from the mainstream media with their eternally distorted agenda but perhaps a point can be made using that as an example).

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