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Located
near Ismailia, about two hours from Egypt’s capital, Cairo, Serapium
Forest is nothing short of an environmental miracle – a 240-hectare
forest of both native and non-native trees thriving in the middle of the
desert.
Advancing desserts have become a serious problem throughout the African
continent, but a team of German and Egyptian researchers has come up
with a very efficient way of stopping desertification and even
reclaiming land from the dry sands. While forests have been used to stop
the spread of deserts into fertile land for a very long time, the
absence of rainfall makes nurturing the trees and keeping them healthy
an almost impossible task in most African countries. But it turns out we
don’t have to rely on water falling from the sky, as waste water works
even better for plants and trees not intended for human consumption.
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Serapium Forest is a research collaboration between Egyptian and German
scientists that started during the 1990’s. They knew Egypt had important
advantages over European countries, like the absence of harsh winters
that could interrupt growth and fast-growing local tree species like
eucalyptus, so provided they had enough water, trees would theoretically
thrive even in a harsh desert environment. But compared to countries
like Germany, Egypt has very little rainfall, so researchers had to come
up with a sustainable solution to provide the trees with the necessary
nutrients. They found the perfect answer to their problem at a nearby
sewage treatment plant.
Using mechanical filters and biological processes, the sewage plant
cleans the wastewater from Ismailia, although not completely. Total
water purification would cost too much, so compounds like phosphates and
nitrates remain in the water, as do some toxins. But while the water is
still contaminated for human use, for the plants it’s as good as any
commercial fertilizer. You couldn’t use it for crops intended for
consumption, as the bacteria in the water could potentially contaminate
fruits and vegetables, but for a forest, it’s perfectly safe. The water
is pumped from the sewage treatment plant to Serapium Forest via hose
pipes strewn across the sand dunes.
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Researchers found that thanks to the intense sunlight and the nutrients
in the water, trees in Serapium Forest grow four times faster than they
do in Germany. In only 15 years, the valuable trees are ready for
harvesting, with a production of 350 cubic meters of wood per hectare.
The same amount would take 60 years to harvest in Germany.
That is actually one of the particularities of Serapium Forest – not
only is it helping the country regain desert land, but it’s also
providing a valuable economic resource that Egypt would have otherwise
had to import, while providing much needed jobs. That is key to
sustainable forestation, according to Hany El-Kateb, a silviculturist at
Munich Technical University, one of the masterminds behind the Serapium
Forest project. “We need to make it economically-viable, otherwise we
can’t achieve sustainability here, and that’s why we’re also planting
valuable wood here” he told DW.
Although 240 hectares of lush forest reclaimed from the desert may not
seem very much, compared to the rate at which deserts are advancing
across Africa, the phenomenon Serapium Forest serves as an example of
what can be achieved through human ingenuity. |