Water is the Earth's Blood - The Old and New Water Paradigms to Restore Our Planet's Health

Water is the Earth's Blood - The Old and New Water Paradigms to Restore Our Planet's Health
-
13,980 views March 9, 2022
Water Stories
-
To Learn More, Join Us at Water Stories Visit our homepage --- https://www.waterstories.com/
-
Join the community --- https://community.waterstories.com/
-
Water is the Blood of Earth. If you draw the analogy between water and blood, the Earth and your own body, you can quickly understand a lot about the water cycle. You can see how the springs, creeks, and rivers mirror our own veins. But it’s not just the water in and on the ground but also in the air, the atmospheric rivers of water vapor that function as the arteries, with the forests as the lungs.
-
Water moves through the Earth’s circulatory system, bringing life to land. Much like our own body, when this system is disrupted, damage and loss is inevitable. When the water cycle is fully functioning we have a healthy environment. This is the Full Water Cycle.
-
If we look at some of these veins of the Earth, we quickly see how catastrophic recent human impact has been. River systems that used to flow year round now only flow in the rainy season. The Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of agriculture, is now a desert. Without the condensation nuclei the rains have been lost, and humid deserts created. This is the Watershed Death Spiral. The most concerning part is that we’re getting better at it, we’re doing it bigger, better, and faster than ever before.
-
The Old Water Paradigm As civilization arose, with poor sanitation and high concentrations, disease became a greater concern. Open water often meant disease, so the landscapes were altered to drain all of the water away. Waterways were dredged for transportation and with the then lower levels the banks were levied. The floodplains were developed making most of the world’s arable soils and cities.
-
These actions have hardened the landscape and disconnected waters from their floodplains. They have forced the flow to happen all at once, leading to massive flooding. Then because the water wasn’t able to infiltrate into the land, the flood is then followed by massive drought and fire. There are tremendous costs and consequences associated with these actions. We are now seeing these results first hand with catastrophic flood, drought, and fire all around the world leading to famine, refugees, and war.
-
The New Water Paradigm What we need now is a New Water Paradigm. We need to move from drainage to retention, exploitation to co-creation. This begins by changing our relationship with water and nature to one of love and respect - understanding that water is sacred, and is a common good for all life on this planet. By holding water in the ground, Decentralized Water Retention Landscapes, the vegetation will return and along with it transpiration and cooling. We need to terrace and revegetate the unused or less used lands, in order to infiltrate more water into the earth.
-
We need to find ways wherever and whenever possible to start offsetting all of the hard surfaces and drainage our ancestors have created. Right now the conversation about environmental footprint is all about reducing our environmental footprint. I want to have the biggest possible environmental footprint, because I understand that our footprint can be negative, or it can be positive. If we are only focused on having a less negative footprint, we will never have a positive one. So we are using the tools and resources available to us today in order to create a better tomorrow. When done well these natural systems last for generations, even till the next ice age. How do I know this is possible? Because I have seen it first hand from my mentors and in my own projects. I am eternally grateful to Sepp Holzer, who rewired my brain and showed me what is possible when humans partner with nature, instead of fighting her. He has led people to create paradise from desert. His farm, the Krameterhof, (now run by his son Josef) is the most incredible example of human potential in partnership with nature that I have ever witnessed. On a barren mountainside farm he created paradise, not just for himself but for all of his co-living beings as well. Then Rajendra Singh showed me what is possible through community action. Together we truly can quickly turn things around. The movement of Community Driven Decentralized Water Retention that he started has brought water back to 250,000 wells, impacting more than a 1 million people - reversing migration. Their work Revived 7 Rivers and reduced the local temperature 2 degrees.