Planting the rain

Investing rain to harvest regenerative ontogeny

De: Sivakumaran Sivaramanan

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The study revealed that rapid urbanisation has changed the world in many ways that result in several environmental problems and elevated occurrences of natural disasters. For instance, cities like New Delhi experience severe air pollution, extreme drought, deadly heatwaves in the dry season, and intense flooding in the wet season. This is mainly due to the fact that the cities converted stormwater percolation paths into impervious concrete, clay (roofs and tiles), asphalt, or tar and gravel structures. Due to this, natural percolation into the soil and groundwater aquifers fails. This situation creates dry, dead soil with no microbial, plant, or animal life, which leads to soil erosion. The lack of moist water vapour above the ground also leads to drought and deadly heatwaves during dry seasons. On the other hand, wet seasons are affected by floodings and landslides (since water percolation is prevented in the regions where the rain falls), and cemented (impervious) canals collect the water and pass it to rivers in different regions. This causes overflowing of rivers such as Yamuna (in the case of New Delhi). But the blame goes to climate change alone. Though the Indian government is involved in establishing active rainwater harvesting systems and tanks, it further increases the cost of using the same water (actively harvested) to deliver in bousers during the deadly heatwave events. Active rainwater harvesting system hardly nourishes the soil because rainwater fails to nourish the soil at the site where it falls. Therefore, passive rainwater harvesting systems can only provide a cost-free solution to the aforesaid scenario. This book reveals the benefits and methods of passive rainwater harvesting from a theoretical perspective. It also recast the findings of pioneers such as award-winning Zimbabwean passive rainwater harvester Zephaniah Phiri Masek’s earthworks and Brad Lancaster’s revolutionary earthworks in the dryland city of Tucson, Arizona, United States. The review also handled several internet-based documents for references (with appropriate citations). I strongly believe this miniscule effort on passive rainwater harvesting will establish a remarkable impact on society, which often blames climate change for every (natural) disaster event without realising other human causes hidden behind.