https://archive.md/giHNs
"High in Spain’s southern mountains, 40 or so people armed with pitchforks and
spades cleared stones and piles of grass from an earthwork channel built
centuries ago and still keeping the slopes green.
“It’s a matter of life,” said Antonio Jesús Rodríguez García, a farmer from the
nearby village of Pitres, population 400. “Without this water, the farmers
can’t grow anything, the village can’t survive.”
The extreme heat sweeping across much of southern Europe this week is just the
latest reminder of the challenges that climate change has foisted on Spain,
where temperatures reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, putting half of
the territory on orange and red weather alert. Such heat and extended droughts
have presented the threat that three-quarters of the country could be engulfed
by creeping deserts over this century.
Faced with that reality, Spanish farmers, volunteers and researchers have
reached deep into history for solutions, turning to a sprawling network of
irrigation canals built by the Moors, the Muslim population that conquered and
settled in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages.
The channels — called “acequias,” from the Arabic “as-saqiya,” which means
water conduit — have made life possible in one of Europe’s driest regions,
supplying the fountains of the majestic Alhambra palace and turning the region,
Andalusia, into an agricultural powerhouse.
Many acequias fell into disuse around the 1960s, when Spain turned to an
agricultural model that favored reservoirs and pushed many Spaniards to leave
rural areas for cities. As use of the network faded, so did the ancient
knowledge and traditions that had brought water to the remotest corners of
Andalusia.
Now, the intricate system, seen as a low-cost and effective tool for mitigating
drought, is being revived, one abandoned acequia at a time."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-endometriosis-poverty-mexico-indigenous-canada/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
