Desert Spiral Initiative: How you can turn a story into reality

Now that you have finished reading Desert Spiral Initiative by Howard Gaukrodger, it’s time to turn the story into reality.

All the solutions proposed in our COP27 Anthology are realistic, they have been verified by experts in their field but they will require financial investment, policy changes, research and/or time to become reality and/or scale up. If we start acting now, we can make it happen. This page is designed to give you the tools and information you need to get started on implementing the solutions presented in the story.

Combination of technology and community input with existing and government-proposed methods in Egypt to:

The sequestration of 1,000,000 tonnes of CO2 by planting 50 million trees in 1,737 spirals across 1,000 km of the Western Desert, Egypt, with the option of the innermost spirals being crops to sustain a community in the centre of each spiral. This story presents a complete self-sustaining solution in the form of a fictitious story.

This page contains all the resources and research the author conducted when writing this story, we hope you will find it useful to discover how you can bring this solution to life.

Navigation

• How to turn this story into a reality
• Next steps to make this a reality
• Solution 1: Sustainable Farming
• Meet the author: Howard Gaukrodger

How to turn this story into a reality

This is a story, not a scientific report. However, based on research, we believe the Desert Spiral Initiative is capable of accomplishing the goal of sequestrating 1,000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year when the trees are mature (10 years). We believe this is feasible as a result of the combination of:

• proven, existing technologies
• the desire of the Egyptian government to:
  • re-green the Sahara, to expand habitable land, reduce the country’s dependency on imported grain, to construct and/or complete massive engineering projects (Toshka, Qatarra) and to win foreign investment,
• the involvement of the community (all classes, races, religions)
• the recognised global need to plant trees and the support such projects attract
• the rewards for Egypt and the world of even partial success of the Initiative.

The author has compiled a wealth of resources for further reading on the topic.

Online resources

The author has provided all of these sources to research the solution proposed in the story further. Gaukrodger used all of these sources when writing the Desert Spiral Initiative. Click Read More below to view all the links.

Interested in progressing this solution further?

Here are a series of steps you can take to progress this climate solution further. You can also contact us at greenstories@soton.ac.uk and we’d be happy to connect you with experts in these solutions to discuss further.

Meet the author: Howard Gaukrodger

Howard Gaukrodger. A full-time author, Howard has been involved in writing all his life. He taught English, studied translation, then operated a language consultancy in Norway, though it was his experience cycling, hiking and flying around the globe that inspired his first novel – a humorous travelogue, recently rewritten under the title Campervans Gone Wild. Howard has now turned his attention to climate change, and his second novel, Lufianblid: Global Dawning – the countdown begins, aims to impassion young adults to engage in this crucial issue. Through climate fiction, Howard is convinced we can increase our awareness of the world’s fragility and foster greater efforts to mitigate climate change. LinkedIn ; Gaukrodger.com.

I’ve been interested in the idea of re-greening the Sahara since childhood. When I learned of the aquifer beneath the desert many years ago, I was so struck by the discovery that the knowledge remained with me. It is purely serendipitous that I should be invited to contribute a story on climate change mitigation at the precise and convenient moment of having just finished my first novel on the subject, and that I should choose the topic of re-greening the desert of Egypt when the next COP conference is to be held in that country this November.

Howard Gaukrodger, author