Posted on 11/23/2007 2:34:18 PM PST by blam
Eden restored
An ambitious plan for the restoration of wetlands in Iraq will combine the ancient way of life of the returning Marsh Arab people with pioneering green technology. Stuart Coles reports
Guardian Unlimited
Friday November 23 2007
The marshlands restoration project covers an area of some 40,000 square miles. Photograph: Jonathan Tait-Harris
Saddam Hussein had scant regard for the largest wetlands in the Middle East, which teem with unique wildlife like the smooth-coated otter, Mesopotamian deer and Basra reed warbler. He saw them merely as a haven for hiding rebels and deserters from the Iran-Iraq War, and in the early 1990s, he ordered them to be drained.
By 2003, more than 90% of the Mesopotamian wetlands, dubbed the Garden of Eden, had been lost, and reduced to barren salt pans. Experts feared that the region, home to an ancient people considered the heirs of the Babylonians and Sumerians, would vanish by 2008.
Now, with a huge multibillion dollar restoration underway, funded by the US, Canadian and Italian governments and the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) many Ma'dan (Marsh Arabs) are returning to a life that has changed little in 5,000 years.
But, after years of urban exile, they are now accustomed to modern life's comforts, such as electricity, television, air-conditioning and wireless internet.
To meet old and these newly acquired needs, a two-and-a half-year feasibility study has produced a vision for "New Eden" – a bold masterplan which aims for an "intersection between green technologies and traditional environmental knowledge."
Iraq architects and designers have drawn up villages of mudhif – traditional reed houses, but which now have partitioned rooms, kitchens and bathrooms and use sewage collection systems instead of dumping waste.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
yup... his BDS goes sooo deep that Bush can do no good at all. even when it's staring at him in the face from a satellite image.
I wish Rep. Barton would have hit him with it during the Global Warming hearings in March...but hitting Gore with the CAFE question was funny enough. Too bad the media missed it.
I just spent 1/2 an hour at this USGS site. .... .the large canal is over a mile wide!
Your'e right; the nature nazis aren't interested in "good" changes. That would eliminate their gravy train.
Eden? lol....I think not.
like Reagan the Great once said... Amazing things can be accomplished, as long as you don't care who gets the credit.
I think that is more of a Biblical reference as they are mentioned in the Bible.
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