Green Shoots

While I'm pretty convinced that the general arc of our political/social/economic history is bending toward decline, if not outright disaster, I have not stopped looking for things that provide reasons for hope, on at least the individual scale. From time to time I hope to refer to those things in these blogs, and this posting will look at two examples: a look at how farmers in Africa's drought-stricken Sahel are using traditional techniques to re-green their land, and a way to use a plentiful, non-uranium, vastly cleaner fuel source for nuclear power-generation.

The Sahel, stretching the width of Africa, has been a poster child for desertification, especially in the west. It has been for most of human history a transition zone between the tropics and the Sahara, with a mix of pastoral herders and farmers finding a way to coexist on marginal rainfall. Historically prone to variations in rainfall, the long-term drought that began in the early 1980s can be seen as an early manifestation of global climate change. Couple that with the political upheavals that have unsettled whole populations and cultures, and over the last few decades the images of the Sahel burned into our minds were of starving cattle and camels, and dust blowing through bedraggled villages. Many countries of the region put in place laws and programs designed to criminalize tree cutting and to reforest the area with plantings. Nothing seemed able to slow the growth of the desert and the retreat of the trees.

An article in the December 7 issue of The Nation paints a somewhat different picture. It looks at the experience of local farmers who have applied an old approach, and learned some unexpected lessons. Farmers in that area used to dig pits, called zais, to collect and concentrate rainwater. A few modern farmers did the same, and some did something that made sense to them -- adding manure to the pit. The fertilizer and water definitely added fertility to the millet and sorghum, but the farmers also found that tiny trees also sprouted in the pits. And, as the trees grew, the crop yields also increased, and the practice spread.

In fact, enough farmers have learned from this experience that large parts of the Sahel are showing up on satellite images as newly green, while neighboring land, often in areas that get even more rain, is showing more and more brown. And this is where it gets really interesting. By and large, those countries that tried to halt deforestation by making trees public property and outlawing tree-cutting are also the countries that are still losing trees. Large-scale tree-planting programs have also proven ineffective.

One of the key changes in farming practice was giving ownership of trees back to the landowners -- "They stopped seeing trees as weeds and started seeing them as assets." At the same time, the success of "farmer managed natural regeneration" made the case that changing their environment was really possible and more and more farmers adopted the practices.

The article quotes Chris Reij, a Dutch geogrpaher who has worked in the region for 30 years, as saying,

"This is probably the largest positive environmental transformation in the Sahel and perhaps in all Africa."

The article also makes the point that the farmers are not planting trees. They are protecting the trees that grow naturally when they use manure to fertilize their soils. To me, it's a perfect example of working inside a natural system -- all the parts (people, animals, plants and environment)  work together. Whereas about 80% of planted trees die, the ones that naturally sprout are from parents that have already adapted in that environment. And they're free.

Just to be clear, these new-old techniques would not have spread through the area without the support of large organizations, both governmental and NGOs. But it is not a top-down "program", driven by "experts" with money, like other well-meaning but ineffective (or worse) programs like the Millenium Villages Project. But maybe even the big boys will start to pay attention. Especially when it's becoming visible from space.

On the energy side, there's an article in the January Wired that identifies a proven way to generate power from a nuclear reaction that does not rquire uranium, and produces less waste, with a half life of decades rather than milennia.

The material is Thorium, a close relative of Uranium (232 protons to 238, in their naturally occurring forms), but about four times more abundant. With an added proton it becomes U233, which is fissile. Enriching it for fission is relatively simple. It can be handled differently than Uranium in a reactor, and is much less likely to cause any kind of melt down or run-away reaction. The textbook on Thorium reactors was written in 1958. Several Thorium reactors have been built and operated in the past, and currently Russia, Dubai, India (at least) are considering or planning Thorium reactors.

There are certainly technical challenges to building a Liquid Flouride Thorium (LFT) reactor (considered the most efficient approach). It will take a large investment and the time to test the design, which needs to stand up to the corrosive salts that control the reaction. But there are clear benefits, as well. Compared to a Uranium-Fueled Light Water reactor, an LFT reactor requires 0.4% of the fuel, at 0.2% of the cost, on 1% of the footprint, to produce the same amount of energy. And it produces a small fraction of the waste, which itself has a much shorter half-life -- decades rather than millennia. It may seem like a no-brainer, but ....

It's worth remembering that one reason we (and the Russians, et al.) went down the Uranium path was because we wanted that dangerous stuff. Nuclear power meant nuclear weapons. And we had a lot of Uranium lying around, and a lock on the technology. Today Uranium is getting scarcer and there are a lot of other players who like the idea of nuclear power, and not just for light bulbs. And we still don't have a way to dispose of the waste. At the same time, we are polluting the planet with the by-products of fossil-fuel-fired generating plants. So maybe it's time to rethink this.

In fact, in 2008, the unlikely bedfellows of Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008, which would mandate a US Department of Energy initiative to examine the commercial use of thorium in US reactors. Although the bill did not go to a full Senate vote (in fact, it was deep-sixed by the Bush administration), it was reintroduced in 2009, and is one of three bills now circulating.

All this said, not a lot of people are optimistic about anything happening soon on the Thorium front -- politics and entrenched economic interests have a way of avoiding any kind of change, even (especially?) when it could clearly be beneficial. Which is why we need to be aware of this issue, and make sure we are openly debating and planning for the kind of world we want to be living in.  Thorium may not be the answer, but at least we should be asking the right questions.


Both these stories represent ideas or approaches that are not exactly new, but have been ignored by those who are caught up in the conventional wisdom. I'm going to keep looking for more similar stories, and hope you will, too, and that we can find a way to share with others. Just like the trees in the Sahel growing out of the shit.