Slow water is a path. Slow water is a clue, a pointer, a key, an injunction to how we can bring earth’s natural systems back to equilibrium. Slow is

Climate Water Project

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2023-03-18 00:30:02

Slow water is a path. Slow water is a clue, a pointer, a key, an injunction to how we can bring earth’s natural systems back to equilibrium. Slow is a directive, an abbreviation of the “slow it, sink it, spread it’ maxim of how we can work with rainfall once it hits land, to help it to infiltrate into the soil. The slowing of the water helps activate earth’s self-regulatory systems, helps increase the health of feedback loops that maintain the climatic conditions for life on earth - the small water cycle, the large water cycle, the groundwater-surface connection, and the vegetation-evapotranspiration thermostat mechanism. The enhancement of these feedback loops can lessen droughts, fires, floods and heatwaves, increase vegetation and biodiversity, and help guide the world out of water scarcity. Slow water is an anthem, a song of eco and climate restoration.

In Al Baydha, Saudia Arabia, where the vegetation had been destroyed by mismanaged grazing and firewood cutting, where rare rains come in flash floods that problematically rush off the land, villagers have been digging wide shallow swales and building traditional, granitoid-rock, check dams to slow the path of the rainfall on the land. The rain can then infiltrate into the land, and help grasses, mycelia, and acacia trees to once again flourish in the region.