India's Water Revolution #1: Solving the Crisis in 45 days with the Paani Foundation

Also, I missed you asking about sharing what I found. Permaculture was the gateway into the world of what is possible. Consider, for example, the 3 permaculture ethical principles: - Care of Earth - Care of People - Fair Share This is all voluntary. It’s not about making people change, or changing the masses. The design principles shows a way of decentralizing food production in a way that is more resilient, adaptive, and also works with the culture (and not just the technologies or methods, hence “perma-culture”)Although the two people who originally put this together doesn’t address Consciousness or spirituality, I have found that these design principles can lead to way of life that has room and integrates cultivation of consciousness. That also lead me to Carol Sanford. You look around at articles and podcast, and then at some point, you see her mentioned all over the place in the permaculture world. As a hint of what is possible, with just better management of water, this series of video talks about implementing better use of water in India, and how it not only restored watersheds, but also helped people socially and addressed economic inequality: Episode 1: “Solving the Crisis in 45 Days” ▶ this video Episode 3: “From Poverty to Permaculture” link Episode 7: “50 Years of Permaculture at Auroville” link There are more. We can chat about it by email — talktohosh at gmail

> At scale? Yes, of course, all lifeforms reproduce exponentially. Literally the biosphere would (re-)vivify the Earth automatically if we just stop destroying it. It's been doing it for four billion years. > Can this be implemented globally in a few decades? That I cannot say, but I believe the limiting factors are social/political rather than biological or physical. In other words, yes, if we have the will we could probably turn things around, go from destruction to regeneration, within three decades. It would be unprecedented but I don't see any intrinsic physical reasons that we couldn't do it. The revitalization of the Loess Plateau took less than three decades, and as a side-effect it now produces all the material needed to repeat the process in a new place. > What about making it work in places going dry? Yes. Not only can we do this in places going dry, we can convert desert to (productive food) forest where ever we need it. E.g. "Greening the Desert" link project in Jordan. People are using ecological principles all over the world to regenerate large areas. > Desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants have existed for decades, but are expensive. Today, many people don't have access to clean water because of this. It's a huge problem, it's true. But progress is being made. E.g. check out the projects described in "India's Water Revolution" ▶ this video We can transform the deserts into paradise. The rains will fall. (I'm going to stop now before I start quoting

All those problems are systemic problems where the system enters a state of degeneratiom. Those “act big and fast” are not sustainable (not enough resources, time, effort, will — political or otherwise). Those same degenerate processes can be reversed by taking advantage of the very second-order effects and feedback loops. Do things that will regenerate and restore the land. Regenerative agriculture has a much bigger impact than reducing carbon emissions. Even stuff like, modifying the “slash and burn” for clearing out to Amazon to “slash and char” taps into that feedback loop. Buying local — or better yet, growing local, like in your backyard — isn’t just to develop resiliency for what is to come. There are specific practices local people can do to restore and regenerate the local ecosystem. They are highly specific to the local area. Everytime you buy from outside the local area, you are contributing towards overharvesting, but you can’t see it because it doesn’t give you the feedback loop that locality does. It is the same with potable water. We have very poor water management practices. As an example, Tucson sits on a plateau. It pumps water from the canals (sourced from the Colorado River; Arizona is at the bottom of water rights among four states). That water gets purified to drinking water standards all so that residents can flush their toilet and water their lawns. Meanwhile, the local aquifer has been depleting, and rainwater was not being captured in the soil. Tucso

I live in Phoenix and have heard some of the local discourse about this. Fabs need a lot of water, like a swimming pool. Once you fill it up, then you need comparatively less to stay operational. Intel has invested in both recycling water as well as partnering with organizations on water conservation and ecology projects. Arizona does draw water from the Colorado River, but among the four states, Arizona is at the bottom of the water rights. We get what is left over after Colorado, California, and Utah get their legal share. The biggest user of water here in Arizona are the commercial farmers. (The Hopi people practice dryland agriculture and so don’t irrigate at all; most everyone else irrigates using inefficient and destructive land management practices). Aquifers here have been draining, and it has been a big issue. Farmers are already getting restricted on water use this year (despite an unusually wet monsoon season), and water restrictions has not hit residential users yet. It is on the radar for policymakers though. Both TSMC and Intel are attracted to Arizona because it is seismically stable. They each had to invest an enormous amount in the more seismically active Taiwan and California, and it gets more sensitive the smaller the chips get. If we want to conserve more water, the most effective way is to change commercial farming practices. Fabs have already invested a lot to reducing ongoing water use. For an example of what I mean by better land management practices i

A great start is the Paani foundation; they move thousands of villages from water tank dependency to self-sufficiency in their annual competition. ▶ this video