In Ethiopia's South Omo It Hasn't Rained for Five Years

We need to do more research on land managenent. We hardly know anything about it. But there are some luminaries around the world who have shown what is possible, and these people have performed miracles. One is Zimbabwean Allan Savory:

Another is Australian Peter Andrews. See Soaking up Australia's drought:

At 22 mins 42 secs. "I am so sick of ..." At 23 mins 50 secs "It's great to have .."  Peter Edwards?

Another is American David Bamburger

In Ethiopia, some progress has been made in the highlands, but different techniques are needed in the lowlands.

It is only through being able to share knowledge and resources internationally that we stand any chance of reversing these processes globally. Ecologist and film-maker John D Liu has been studying such initiatives all over the world.

But we need much more than just knowledge of ecology, sociology and cultural anthropolgy. We need technologists, computer scientists, materials scientists, economists and engineers to all work together in interdisciplinary teams.

At 40 mins 33 seconds there is an important message for Evo Morales and his associates, about the value of money, and about economic development in Bolivia. See What is Socialist Economic Development? which I wrote over four years ago now.

See also What is the Sixth Estate? which I wrote over five years ago (around the time of the last rains in South Omo,) trying to inspire computer programmers and engineers to work together on the development of secure computing and communications technology. I imagined what would be the result of such cooperation:

This awe-inspiring acceleration of the technological advance took all the sciences along for the ride, and all the arts too. So Geometry, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Typography, Graphic Design, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology, Geography, Hydrology, Speleology, Geology, Astronomy, Meteorology, Psychology, Botany, Ecology, Sociology, Language, Literature, Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Chemical, Civil, Structural, Electrical, Electronic, Photonic, Automotive, Manufacturing, Transport, Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering, Ceramics, Glasswork, Textiles, Aquaculture, Agriculture, Forestry, Town Planning, Logistics, Landscape Architecture, Children's Toys, Carpentry, Boat Building, Couture, Cuisine, Coiffure, Music, Ballet, Opera, Cinema, Theatre, EVERYTHING creative went into overdrive. But Medicine and Religion were no longer needed.

And all that spare technology and the stock-piles of material resources came in very handy, because every last gram of it was needed for The Task:

Global Climate Governance

Which will turn out to be just THE MOST fun anyone could dream of having. Beautifully orchestrated scientific expeditions to every known place on Earth, and a few that weren't hitherto known. These expeditions will be multi-disciplinary, and they will take decades to complete. They will study the people, the music, the art, the technology, the ecology, the biology, the geology, the botany, the agriculture and the archaeology, all together. And they will be beautifully documented, with beautiful music, beautiful cinematography and beautiful books.  The purpose of the expeditions will be to make connections; mainly to make connections between the actual knowledge of people from different places on Earth, because it is only through understanding the connections that we understand the whole. These expeditions will have just as much of an effect on the world at large, as they have on the places they visit.

Then, on the basis of this actual knowledge of those things better known to us, we can proceed to actual knowledge of those things better known in themselves, and perhaps only then we will be able to make sense of our own History.

Since the day I published that, I have been unable to do anything that I would call productive or useful work. Instead I have been fighting against covert resistance from a ridiculous number of different quarters, including, amongst inumerable others, the Vatican, the Mormons, the CIA, the NSA and the British government. The idea however, is simple, but it needed a fifteen-year-old child to explain it in terms simple enough for people to understand. See  Climate Action.

Progress in China has not kept pace in recent years:

The essence if intelligence is not having and using existing knowledge. It is the capacity for adaptation, or the ability to acquire new knowledge, and new knowledge comes from sharing what we learn with others.

This sharing of knowledge does go on naturally, but it is far, far too slow ...

For example, almost everything mentioned in this video, about Tajikistan, was done by Helena Norberg Hodge with LEDEG, over thirty years ago, in Ladakh, India.

What we urgently need to do is to create the infrastructure to allow us to accellerate the sharing of human knowledge across cultural and national boundaries. See the piece starting at 22 mins 43 seconds in the following excellent discussion on architecture:

The basis of shared knowledge is communication. See Why is Telecommunications Security Important? We need secure communications, people.