 One of the first things that is on my mind is the economy of love. So we have to think about this because we're looking at some quite serious economic disruptions, potentially, and finding methods for local organizations to be able to participate and encourage positive activity is really important. So we're going to learn a little bit about that, I'm pretty sure. And I'm excited because I'm going to see Max and the other people at SECIM in Egypt soon. So that's exciting for me. I have been there before, but it's always good to go there. And there's also the other camp that we have in New Weba called the Habiba camp, which is exciting. And then we have the COP 27 in Charmnell Shake, which I have gotten accreditation to. So I'll be able to go in there and communicate from the COP. And, you know, I'm not expecting too much from COP because I have too much experience. And it is the 27th COP. And I think if you really take the climate change issues seriously, you only need one COP. But now 27 COPs later, we're still not really, we don't really have an agreement. But as I understand it, Peter is going to share some camp information with us. And then we're going to go to Maximilian for a presentation from him from the Wahat new community and the new camp in Wahat in Egypt. It's going to be exciting. Thanks for coming, everyone. And welcome to the Fireside Chat. And for those of you who think, John, that's short, we're not used to that being that short. There will be plenty of the opportunity to talk to John after the presentation, because he will probably stay around for the further conversations that will follow. Indeed, I am to present what the camps are doing. I will share my screen. I'm sure there's a video clip and we'll find out. I hope everyone can see it without weird gray boxes everywhere. Just a quick update from what's happening in this, in the, in the, in what we now call the mighty movement around the world to restore our degraded ecosystems and our degrading ecosystems. First, our program and our household announcements to hold your questions until after Max has presented, you can ask things in the chat and we will record them and then use them. But best probably we're only a group of 30 people is to raise your hand. There's a little icon you can find somewhere in your Zoom interface that will raise your hand. We'll see it and we'll give you the floor and we can have a real conversation instead of just repeating what people typed. The session will last an hour, but do feel free to stay on for a longer and open discussion. I promised my family I will cook at seven, so I will have to leave at seven my time. It's currently five o'clock, so we have plenty of time left. So that's probably what's happening now within the camps movement and things you can participate in. If you're an Ireland or if you're willing to travel to Ireland. Should decree is organizing quite a few things in the next few weeks, return to farming course for local farmers. I guess then you'll have to be a local farmer to participate that there is a herbal medicine course, and there's a plant propagation course being planted show to create for people to participate in. The plant plano is going to get very busy with planting trees. They have to put 10,000 of those in the ground before May and is inviting people to come and help. Every single hand is very welcome to come and help plant those trees. Amber Coombe is running another really interesting and in-depth rewilding course this weekend already. I don't know how flexible you are, but if you're willing and able to participate, it's quite an experience. In South Africa, Toledo is facilitating a permaculture course, and I guess the word recognized means you can get a certificate. And then in California, Camp Coyote with Leo is running a workshop between the 13th and 15th of November with education action and connection at Indian Canyon, including fire mimicry and insides into traditional ecological knowledge. If you're interested, you'd be welcome to join them. John just mentioned Habiba Community. They invite you to come to the, and I've been there, really, very beautiful Sinai Peninsula for an educational program in environmental restoration. In the first two weeks of December, all of these events can be found on our website. And I will immediately admit that it might be a bit laborious to find these things right now, but the team is working very hard to building a new interface between you and what the camps are doing, where you can search on date location and whatever else you're looking for, and it should make it much easier to find relevant events you can go to. And quite happily in the post, hopefully post pandemic world, we'll see how the winters go. It is possible to participate in restoration again, we haven't been able for such a long time. The big announcement from our side is that the Global Earth Repair Summit is taking place this month. It's an online and offline event, planning to bring together the grassroots ecosystem restoration movement from around the world in a four day event. There will be talks, workshops, networking, circles. There's even something called an unconferencing schedule where you can basically schedule your own conference during the conference without having to go through some scrutiny committee first. And there's a special aid of action at some of the ecosystem restoration camps around the world on the 23rd of October and all that will be listed on the Global Earth Repair Summit site. I will share the link to that event site in the chat as we speak. We as ecosystem restoration camps are also organizing a symposium during the Global Earth Repair Summit on a situation that many around the world are facing. And that is water scarcity, quick runoff, very little water falling, droughts are causing quite some problems. And on the screen you'll see all the different times you could join. We've tried to pick a time where most people are awake to participate in that symposium on repairing the Earth in times of water scarcity. Put it in your diary. More details and our speaker lineup, which we're still working on, is coming through to you via our email newsletter and our social posts. Hopefully this week. Then some other news from times. Pachacuti in Peru is helping new land owners see and understand the value of preserving the old. I was muted by someone by accident, I assume, Kath. I don't know where I was muted, but local farmers and community members helped the new land owner see and understand the value of preserving the old growth forest instead of logging the wood for economic purposes. Which is still a problem in many places. And then in South Africa. And I know the Pachamama, there's someone here. Welcome, by the way, Camp Green Pop and Camp Pachamama have joined forces for a massive tree planting day on the 5th of October. Which can't be true because that's that's six days ago. As part of its news, sorry, as part of Green Pop's annual Eden Festival of Action. And 1500 trees were planted. So you can't participate anymore. Then in California, the land and Camp Paradise are expanding their restoration efforts by purchasing new land in their surroundings. If you know of any opportunities, please reach out to us through the email address listed here. It will also be in the chat. That's our general email address. And then in Belgium, Pacha land hired a soil lab manager who is and I've seen her work really working very well also with the community to teach them how soil micro life works and how important that is. And then in the Philippines, good news. The 2022 Permaculture Magazine Award went to Camp Regenesis. And that's very welcome because they were hit by a typhoon not too long ago and need to repair quite a few things. So I think this is the final slide, but I'll say it, if you have friends who haven't joined the movement yet, please do invite them. And I'll just be very honest with you. The inflation rates, crises are actually causing quite a few people to stop being donor to what we're doing, which is not what we were hoping for. So if you have or if you know someone with the means and aren't donating yet, please persuade them to join us. I will repeat that at the end because all these wonderful people do need also financial support, not just a thumbs up. That's it for me. Stop sharing. And I would love to give the desert floor in this case to Max, all the way from Egypt. Max. Hello, hello, everybody. Salam Alaikum from Egypt, western desert, the Wahat farm. I want to just quickly introduce people around me. We have Xenia here. Hello. She's from Russia and joined more than a year ago and helping also with the sustainability work. We have Nicolas from France and we have Victor from Netherlands. And who is missing is one of our team members here, the farm manager, but he's on a well deserved vacation for some more days. And I want to really show you this beautiful view around us. This is the, this is the great valley of the Wahat desert and the Baharaya region in the western desert. It's a really inspirational moment sitting here with the campers, the volunteers coming to join us through the network. I'm really happy actually they landed three days ago in Egypt and just yesterday we arrived here on the farm. But now let me please share the screen about the presentation that I'm going to hold just one second. So can you see it? Yes. So here we go. This is the second farm, the camp in Wahat. And there's an automatic slide. I don't know. There is an automatic slide skipper. And that is a little bit a technical issue here, but I hope that, yeah, I will manage somehow. So I wanted to say that we are actually inspired from the sake and vision and see life always in four dimensions. It is an important point to make because as an ecosystem restoration camp, we are active in different spheres of life. You can say that in the beginning of course the ecological life is very critical as a basis for the rest. But it is also very important to mention that we are embedded in a value creation stream that can provide finance for investments that are needed to develop the land and to reclaim desert land. And of course the profits that are made are reinvested into cultural life and into an expansion of the reclamation areas. And in all these fields, we have different goals. And working together and expanding into the villages around us is not only a task that we tackle in our mother farm at Sikkim, nearby Cairo in the delta, but also here. So this kind of this kind of holistic development approach is something that we're trying to replicate here on the desert farm. And we have the huge chance to learn from the experience from the last years. And the logic is of course that everything needs a vision and then we need some research to create prototypes and these prototypes are then being upscaled. And what you see here is part of our upscaling momentum because some things that we do here we already prototyped somewhere else. This is a farm and this is a context for upscaling and showing that this is not only a one shot in history, but this is possible to replicate with other people and other places in the desert. Sikkim has a wide institutional ecosystem. I want to mention that because I don't want to create the impression that this is happened in the last 10 years just from scratch. Now we are building on a strong ecosystem where this farm here around me is embedded in and this ecosystem, like I say, is coming from or is active in the four main areas of life. So we have a university helping us. We have a holding company that is producing products and creating value out of the raw materials. And we have an association of farmers that delivers technical assistance to our engineers. And we have students coming around to support our community life here and engage in community based learning. So and there's Sikkim Friends associations around the world also in the Netherlands who are supporting us to make this work possible. And I wanted to highlight how important this network is, how important it is to have partners who go hand in hand to make this possible. So Wahat is a place in the western Egyptian desert, which is really far away from Cairo. Actually you need almost six hours from our main farm to this oasis here. And this oasis has roughly 2000 square kilometers and is kind of surrounded by a valley or is a valley. So it has a very precise geographical setup. Around 30,000 people live here and it's in a very arid climate zone. Sorry, just to interrupt you for a second. We're really loving what you're sharing with us but it's quite difficult to hear. Is there a way you could place something next to the mic just to try and shield it a little bit from the wind? It's challenging. Maybe just try and shield the mic a little bit with your hand or if somebody else could do that for you. We don't want to miss anything you're sharing with us. Okay, so maybe we just try to go inside and you give me just one second and then we will do it from the room and we hope that the network is keeping intact, okay? John suggested in the chat that if you have a book, place it around the mic on three sides and the open side have the mic there. Can you take that? Wow, Max is moving to a less interesting but wind-free place. There he is. May I invite you to write down in the chat where you are. Be really curious. Some people have done it. We are quite curious to see who else is here. I don't hear the wind but the sound didn't improve. Say something else Max, you froze. I think outside and wind is a better choice because now we hear nothing. Check, I'm back. Yeah, but your connection did not improve. Check again, microphone? Yeah, no background noise but your connection is poor. Okay, we are replacing the mobile internet. It hopefully works. You're solid now. Better? Yes, much better. Okay, sorry for that interruption. Yeah, bear with me my dear friends from all over the world. I think everyone of you knows about these situations and we are indeed on a desert farm so what can we do? But thank you for your patience. Yeah, so far so good. We are currently really here in the middle of nowhere and the important fact here which comes later also as a challenge is that this is based on a water that is fossil at the Nubian Aquafair and it is the biggest aquafair in the world but this is good to know for a context situation. Then what we have as a next slide is a typical before and after setting when you see on the upper right it's really looking like bear sand and after years of testing also with different irrigation methods. We have found out that the pivot irrigation system, the circular irrigation system is a very robust system that allows for large scale restoration and can deal very well with the high iron content in the water that is making it difficult for any kind of tubes to survive. We have to realize that every irrigation is artificial and every irrigation needs to be driven by the human intention and between the pivot systems you have rooms to make a tree planting possible and on the borders etc. But we can see that this is part of our strategy to reclaim larger areas here. On the community front or on the camp front there are some facts I want to share. We have around 1000 hectares that are laying in front of us and around 50 employees are working with us and there is a significant amount of daily workers helping us for seasonal work. Of course now happy to announce that we have two volunteers here with us. The reclamation work started technically in 2008 but then the revolution came and so on. So there was somehow a stagnation in the first part of the farm and then 2019 we took another effort also driven by partner support and by crowdfunding to move into the new areas of the farm with the circular pivot irrigation that you have seen. All what we do here on the farm is based on biodynamic principles and part of the economy of love value creation stream. The first as we are we can say we have reclaimed one third of the area so far and planted around 350,000 trees and we have much more room for more trees in between the pivots and on some of the boundaries or borders to the mountains. So we have become somehow experts in planting a mix of trees in a larger let's say scale based on artificial irrigation and this is a very good element for windbreaks and for attracting biodiversity but also for capturing carbon as we will see later. We're planting a lot of seasonal crops like mint or chamomile or lemongrass sometimes even calendula or thyme or aromatic herbs and so on aromatic plants. But we also have perennial crops, Jojoba namely or date palms. Date palms are actually the most spread crops here in the Oasis. Farmers traditionally rely on date palms. When we have had a look on biodiversity we could see that on the one hand of course when we are getting active here somehow the desert ecosystem that has existed here for maybe the thousands of years that somehow this ecosystem is kind of replaced by a more rich, biodiverse ecosystem. So we like to think more about of ecosystem development and not so much about ecosystem restoration. And what we can see here in the first years that we have a high increase of insects, birds and plants. And we are also engaged in introducing here the local domestic Lamaki bee that we know from the delta also here with some support of our experts. In the beginning when we started this farm it was also driven by diesel generators. Now since maybe 2018 and onwards it was very good and financially feasible to only expand by renewable energy and to replace existing generators with renewable energy panels, PV panels in order to run the solar pumping systems. And right now we have around one and a half megawatt installed all with the help of our local partners including the Heliopolis University and our vocational training center who has managed to come up with a local design for these chaussées and for the design of the electric wiring and so on. One of the bigger projects that we are currently doing is to try to use a mountain elevation for storing water over the day to irrigate at night by mechanical by gravity because when you're using renewable energy it only functions during the day and that's not the optimal time for irrigation but our aim is to find out how we can irrigate by night without using batteries. Over the course of the time more and more community spaces have been created. We have set up recreational areas, we have set up a farm cafeteria or enlarged it to host more than 200 people and we have a local bakery for making our own bread. We also have created a community space from the beginning on because that's what we really see as a very important element in community building. When Ibrahim Abulaysh, the founder of Sikkim started Sikkim and he got his first loan from a bank. He was investing into a tractor and he was also investing into a piano because he knew how important cultural life is for the development of a community and hence for the basis for desert reclamation. And here you see also parts of our students and artistic team to make a show or an event with a so-called space of culture that is also active here on this remote part of the desert. Here you see some work in progress. These are buildings that we are using for a new school at the new kindergarten that has been built. It's almost finished now. The children are already enrolled in classrooms that are still improvised but what you can see here is really an amazing work of some research done to build local materials from local building materials. So from rammed earth because in the whole region here education is not so much available for people in an adequate setting so more schools are needed and our community always had this as part of the design and educational elements. As I said before Nicholas and Victor are here with us and I hope to give them also the floor and have enough time in the end so they can share their first impressions. The economy of love that John mentioned is something you can find out yourself. You just have to screen the QR code here on the bottom left. It's a standard that is combining cultural economic social and ecological life into a framework that makes consumer decisions more feasible and ensures integrity to our values because we want to show that the impact of your consumers choice of the products to the consumer. And hence we have a transparent kind of documentation from every step in the value chain from the farm to the final product. And under this economy of love you also have the integration of carbon credits that I will mention now. Carbon credits can be viewed as a critical but also as a promising development but without focusing now too much on the risk of having carbon credits kind of perpetuating let's say industries that are polluting and kind of seeing the risk that those people and companies who strong polluters can kind of offset their emissions and do not change. I want to highlight the opportunity behind for those companies who still have unavoidable emissions and want to neutralize themselves. Actually, when you're doing a biodynamic agriculture in the desert or anywhere else, and you're using compost and renewable energy, you have a wonderful fantastic way of removing carbon from the atmosphere and put it into the soil and put it into the trees. And while doing compost you avoid emissions and they are internationally recognized methodologies and also accredited ways that are standardized to measure those emission avoidances or removal of carbon from the atmosphere. And it's a fantastic opportunity to create a value for the farmer that is recognized by the market because what we can see is actually that these carbon credits come along with a lot of co-benefits. It's not a carbon credit that is generated somewhere and depending on the states of this carbon credit. It is a carbon credit that comes as a good co-benefit from a farmer doing their work. So it's a recognition of the value of a farmer's work and it comes hand in hand with a lot of co-benefits. So for one carbon credit you have a certain amount of soil sequestered, you have a certain amount of compost produced and some trees are planted and it's wonderful because an average farmer can increase his or her income by 30%. And this is a breakthrough for an economic barrier that has been always an argument in the conversion from conventional to organic. So there's actually now the possibility that this extra income stream is available for farmers, which is a great game changer. We actually experienced that ourselves and I come in a minute to the dynamic to come. We have done it in our own farm here sitting now on the farm in Wahat. We have reclaimed this 830 acres and with all the elements of planting trees and soil carbon and compost and so on. We have generated 12,000 carbon credits per year, which is a value of 300,000 euros per year that we have to invest into a reclamation activity that was before not profitable. And not easy to finance and you have to understand that for desert reclamation you have to invest some years before you have the richness of the soil before you actually become profitable. But with carbon credits it's possible from the first year on to finance that expansion. And it's something that we want to make available to all our farmers and we are prototyping it with our 2100 farmers that work with us in all Egypt. And of course when the cop doors are opening we are telling the story of you can do this for not only our farmers, you can do that for a lot of farmers. I mean these numbers are a little bit constructed but if you just played through and say 250,000 farmers with 1.6 million acres which is maybe around 15% of the area of Egypt. You can actually help them to convert to organic and plant more trees and do more compost with a certain amount of investment and you can generate a lot of funding. Funding that is available from industries or companies that are willing to pay for their unavoidable emissions. And that's a real argument for climate change mitigation and let's say the industry or the economy and the science are recognizing this. And we hope that COP 27 will be a breakthrough for this message because it will have so much benefits for the farmers. Of course you cannot tackle 250,000 farmers from scratch. So one approach is to go by regions. And as I said in the beginning we are sitting here in a region called Bahreya, the Oasis of Bahreya. And together with common land we are developing, we use the common lands for returns approach and framework that is very much connected to the economy of love to build a road map for this whole region to develop. And just tomorrow and after tomorrow we have a workshop here where we invite around 1890 stakeholders from the region in order to create a first kind of dreaming map of how could this region look like in 20 years or more and how can we create inspiration? How can we use our social capital? How can we develop nature and ecosystems? And how can we do this with the financial also return? So we are creating a huge momentum here in this region with the help of our partners. Of course as I mentioned the challenges are there. The water source is for sale but this aqua fair is very huge. The water is available for more than 100 years even under the scenario of reclaiming half of the desert here in this region. And so there has been models that show that this is possible. And yeah I think if ecosystem functionality is valued then the technology and funding should be available also to pro launch this availability of water. I'm talking about desalination or even large scale restoration that can change weather patterns. Right now we have huge climate extreme climate conditions with a lot of temperature changes fluctuations especially in the winter. But with a large scale restoration we can tackle that and it has to go hand in hand with education and basic infrastructure like for example waste management etc. And what we can see is that the whole market here is not really functional. The anonymous market is not helping. You need partners who trust and who pays the right price for commodities that come from the farm. So we have to also engage in such an economy of love paradigm shift in order to make this region move ahead. And we hope that the people will understand this and will like this and will contribute to it. So far so good. I leave it with that. I thank you so much for the attention. And of course I would like to invite also now my dear colleagues here and to share a little bit of first impressions because they just landed yesterday and maybe they want to share a little bit. Well hello everyone my name is Victor like Mark said I'm from Netherlands. A few days ago we arrived on the main farm of Zekum in Cairo. It was very impressive what they've done there since the late 70s. And yesterday we arrived here in Mahat. Also very impressive what have been done so far. And yes I'm very excited to contribute to several projects which are going on here. So yeah very excited for coming times. Hi I'm Nicole from France and this week we're going to be brought here for yeah here at the wild farm and yeah just arrived yesterday here and very impressed by this environment which is brand new for me. I've never been to a desert so yeah pretty excited to discover this and yeah as Max finished there is a lot of challenges but as well as a lot of opportunities that we'll be investigating with Victor and with the dual team here in Mahat. So yeah very excited to start this journey and yeah it's good let's go for it. Yeah I mean I can share a little bit also because it's actually only my second time in this farm though it's still my second almost a year. And my first excursion here was kind of brief and short just couple of hours to look around and this time I came here for like five days so I have more chill time to explore more things and still I think for me it's the landscapes here I would describe as breathtaking because it's something about the desert itself. I know you can compare it to the sea it's limitless you look at this and you experience everything that I don't know I can't compare it to any other landscape that exists. And yeah the way the job that's second down here is incredible as well because everything you see here it's full of green spaces and the birds are singing around in the desert and you can find I don't know frogs here again in the desert and just mind blowing so yes for me it's incredible as well. I hope that gives some of you appetite to come by and say hello and the local team here is doing their best to prepare the grounds for more people to come and join this endeavor and yeah I hand over back to Peter and welcome for further discussions. Thank you Max. John you writes in the chat that's a heroic choice to go to such an extreme place to volunteer and congratulations on your choices. So you can take that take those congratulations. There is no space and time for questions. If you're shy. I've been told you can use the chat. If you would like to use your voice you can raise your hand you can go to this reactions button on the menu below in zoom. There is a raise your hand functionality there. That'll tell us that you would like to ask a question and then I'll be happy to give you the floor. In the chat so far only one real question, which is the one asked by John about survival rate and it's just been seconded as a good question survival rate of trees. Do you have any information on that Max or someone else. Yes, it depends on the irrigation system. If if I'm thinking about our experiences of planting trees with with irrigation holes. The survival rate is maybe 20 80 70%. But we have invented for larger tree beds a method with sprinkler irrigation that is more robust and the survival rate went up to 90 or so. So because of this extra care where you plant and you have an irrigation system and you put some compost and you have people walking walking around. It's it's quite the probability is higher than trees are staying in the in the ground and if they survived for the first three months then it's good to go. Okay, I don't have many more questions still but I do have one. You spoke a lot about the economic goals that you see before you and I think those are quite crucial for the sustainability of any project that you are visioning how to fund it in the future. I'm kind of curious and maybe people in the audience are also curious about your vision of what it will look like from an ecological viewpoint, say 10 years from now around 230 2030. You have any any vision there any, you know, dreams around what it will look like. Well, I would say the more diverse the better. If I looked now at Sikkim farm, you have to imagine a complete different setting where it's much more and the feeling of dense oasis with more density of different places for for trees and everything that are already developed. So, right now, when you come into the farm, it's quite dominant that you see are this is also an operation that is as driving towards creating financial income because you have the need to cultivate cash crops. And of course, it's happening in a rotation, according to by dynamic principles, but the more in some years the more economic ecosystem functionality will be recognized. I'm talking about carbon credits, biodiversity credits or the more you can do things that are more appropriate maybe in terms of water and so on for the environment here. So I'm looking forward to what's more broad diversity, but still a very healthy mix of what the market needs in terms of good products for your health, for your food needs and nutrition, etc. Because that's the basis for for for a value creation. It's creating products that are actually needed. So I'm looking forward to what's more diversity in the end. Great. Thanks. There's a raised hand, which I'll prioritize Sheila. Yes, thank you. I was just, are you hearing an echo? Yes. Oh, I think that's because I there are two pictures of me here. Yes, you're you're in the call twice. So I'll put my question in the chat. I'm so sorry. Sorry. Okay, well, it's not my twin either. It was a heroic attempt, but put it in the chat. There are a lot of questions in the chat. One of them is from calf. Are you still accepting volunteer applications? You said it already you're open to more people to come. Are you? I would say one step after the other. I think that we need now half a year for for lending these to a great volunteers and for establishing a system. But from quarter one, quarter two, I would say let's dream about taking another 10 volunteers on board. Fantastic. Rob asked, do those volunteers need any experience before coming to seek him? Do they need specific skill sets or training? The more skills you offer the better. I mean, in the end, you can also then apply for a job. But the thing is, what is needed is initiative and enthusiasm and some of critical thinking but also cultural adaptivity. You have to be very open for a new experience. And when this mix comes to the table, the rest can be solved, I would say. Okay. Thanks. Going through the questions, John has another one which has been seconded as an important question. If you're measuring surface temperatures, as he writes, this will be important to measure on the untreated sands and in the agroecology landscapes. Are you measuring that differentiation? No, only subjectively, when I'm walking barefoot on the ground, I really feel that it's too hard to do in certain times of the day, but there's no structured way of measuring that yet. It's not easy because you do need to have data loggers and measure at the exact same time to get some scientific validity on that. And I can tell you that we're trying to figure out if we can get some engineering company to give us a few hundred of those to spread around the camps so that we can start measuring those differences. And there's some interesting studies from the Las Porto emerging also about warming and cooling, now that that's been going on for a while. Another question, more technical, is do you integrate swales, this is from Brent. Do you integrate swales to help retain water? Well, actually, we have absolutely almost no rainwater falls or flooding situation or something where this would be needed. What is actually happening is that we have a situation that around six meters below the ground, there's a clay layer which makes the run of water that is sinking lower to move laterally to the lowest point of the farm and probably also taking water from the other farms around us. So we want a natural lake that was built. And we are trying to capitalize on that because we make this lake as a source for new irrigation and lake. It's not maybe what you think about of a lake, it's like 5,000 or 10,000 cubic meters high. And from that one, you can irrigate again. So that's a promising water capturing thing or technique that would be also highly relevant for the whole oasis in order to reuse some of the extracted groundwater. Okay, great. I'm just going to dump questions on you, Max. And you just, I hope you can answer them all. There's one that is from Nick. I haven't heard of this, but any thoughts on the proposal to refill the Katara depression with Mediterranean sea water? I don't know if you've heard about it. Not specified, sorry. No, I cannot answer on that. Okay, and maybe Nick sends us a link where that plan is posted and we can all look at it through the chat. Then Chris from our brand new member of the movement, Pachamama in South Africa asks, and I understand this question, if you're brand new, do you have any advice for new camps with limited organizational capacity regarding the balance between the value chain development and organizational networking and partnerships? And I think that I know where that comes from, Chris, because we are quite in your face with questions as you see. But anyway, Max, how do you balance these things? You have to work on all the fields. As I said, the piano came with a tractor. The first trees came with a medicinal plant in the desert that was contracted to a company that wanted to buy the extracts and so on. I don't know where the sweet spot is. I'm sure that life will come to you with an opportunity to have an economic business lead for any value creation on the farm. And then can be flanked with biodiversity or ecological functions with culture and so on. So I think that a good entry now or to test my theory would be have a look at karma credit generation. It can kickstart a very good mechanism of you starting it or finding investments. Okay, great. I'm taking note of the time. We promise this will be an hour. We're nearly at the hour, but I have a few more questions. Max, are you okay with more questions? Are you willing to stay longer? Great. Sheila. If I could add just something frozen. Everybody else? Oh, okay, okay. Sorry, John, may I complete the questions and then come back to you? Hopefully. Sheila put her question after we heard the echo in the chat, which is she's with Facing Future TV. John's connected to that also for the copper accreditation. There's quite a few people being featured on Facing Future TV and she would like to be in touch with you. Is it okay that she approaches you? Sorry, I should have read it to the end that we could have done that offline. Max, is that okay? You want to be on TV? Okay. Sheila, we'll get you in touch. Peggy asks, when the trees are large enough, will rain be possible? This is, of course, the theory of weather makers. If ecosystems start to grow, it starts to rain again. Have you any thoughts on that, Max? No, I was inspired by John and the weather makers and someone, I don't know, said somewhere, maybe that you need a hundred square kilometers in order to start really to have some impact on the weather cycle. I don't know how that feels like, but it's much, much bigger. This whole Bahrain Oasis is the first step in this direction. But I'm really keen on hearing the outcomes from the Sinai project. The weather makers are active there. I hope to see a breakthrough and I hope to benefit on a regional level. I think then we can kind of create an effect. At least that's a crazy scenario and I think we have to be crazy for that. Yeah, there are studies on the last plateau and there was an effect. Climate conditions changed precipitation, but the last plateau revegetation also significantly changed precipitation. But I'm going to continue the questions and then I know John has a response to Chris's question. So I'll give you the floor soon, John. Hans Schutz, whom I think you know, asks, does this lake offer any chance of trees surviving without irrigation in the longer term? I guess this is a reflection on the 100 year water supply. Yes, indeed. There were some, I forgot the name of the species, but we just drove by some Acacia, I think, that was sitting there. We have planted it in the beginning of 2010 or 11 and then during the revolution and all that, it didn't get water. So after three years of getting water, five years of getting no water, it's still alive. It's promising. We don't know why. We have two, three of these trees. We have to find out what happened. And I don't say that's a usual scenario. Usually that doesn't work, but we have certain anomalies here that we investigate further. And I think there are some tree species that really can make it a long time without water. But expanding this farm without water, I think it's very, very unlikely. It's a stubborn tree. John, you wanted to break in, I think, in response to Chris's question. Who answered in the chat that he or she is not the version. Thank you, Chris, but John. Actually, I wanted to talk about a couple of things. On the one hand, there is a non-native plant, a non-native tree, chaserina pine. And it's salt tolerant. It's very hardy. And it has one phenomenon where it basically sheds its needles whenever there's insufficient water and then returns it. So it creates a huge amount of biomass below, you know, on the surface of the sand in this case. And I saw this in Habiba camp. So if you do have a chance to talk to Maget again, you might discuss with this. And I'll try to document it further when I'm in New Aba this time. But it created, so the Israelis built a farm in New Aba that no one could run after the Sinai peninsula given back to Egypt. So what was interesting is that underneath the chaserina pine, which they completely circled the farm with. So it's a complete gallery. Actually, Maget just joined the cult. Oh, okay. Well, that's wonderful. So together with Maget, we went to visit this Israeli kind of kabut's farm or community farm that had been put up. And the chaserina pine completely surrounded it. And below it was almost a meter high. And you know that they came in 67, so probably 68 was when they planted it. And I think they returned it. I don't remember when they returned the Sinai too. But anyway, it would be from 68 until now. That's how long it took to grow a meter of organic material. And there's another finding that I saw in Kenya that there is a symbiotic insect called the red-legged millipede, which loves to eat chaserina pine needles. What was the name of this company? The red-legged millipede. You can find it in the film I did on Rwanda called Forests of Hope. But it's actually looking at what happened in Kenya in Mombasa at the Holler Park. This is Renee Holler's inspiration. And it was very seriously studied by a number of masters and PhD students back in the day, 25 years ago. But it works. So those are very hardy plants. And then I wanted to mention and speak to that question of the 100 square kilometers. This comes from Professor Mian Mian's work about how do you reach critical mass for condensation and precipitation. And so this is a question of whether you have available moisture in the air. And obviously in the desert, you have very little. But if you reach 21 grams of moisture for a kilogram of air and you have nucleation. So you need to have something that the droplets or the clouds can form around. And that's generally bacteria which is exhaled by plants. And if it's not that, what is it? It might be sand or dust and like a dust storm or you know. So if you have the situation where it rains and everything is covered with dirt, then the nucleation is coming from a sandstorm or a dust storm. But if you have clean water raining down, this is more to do with nucleation from bacteria exhaled from plants. So there's quite a lot of work on this. But I don't know exactly how it fits for, you know, Wahat. But it'll be fun to continue to follow that. And then the other thing would be about the temperature differentials. I think this is going to be hugely important. I was just meeting with having a senior moment now that I've turned 70. Let's see. Just one second. While you're searching, there's stuff happening in the chat also. First, I realize people are joining us now. This is the usual time zone confusion. I apologize, but we have been together for an hour. So you will have just missed Max's presentation. This is, John just showed something in the camera. But because of the blurring, we just see a face and you've disappeared. That's Tony Ronaldo, who's working with World Vision. And he's gotten what they call the alternative Nobel Prize for his work with farmer-led natural regeneration. So if there's existing root systems, this is his new book called The Forest Underground. And it's interesting because in West Africa and many places in Niger where he worked for 17 years, most of the trees had been cut down, but they didn't take out the stumps. And so they were still alive. And when he managed to allow coppicing to take place and then selected specific branches to save and kind of remove the others and use those for mulch, he lowered the surface temperatures and he's finding quite interesting changes there, which is bringing back perennial springs in the area. So study the work of Tony and learn about his work with World Vision. And they're trying to spread this. So I think you could work very closely with them at the moment. Maybe you can share that book title in the chat, John. Paula Phipps in the chat says that when it comes to water used by trees, that Akira Miyawaki's method of creating fast-growing biodiversity species, many forests found that water for three years was necessary, but after that it was no longer needed. I'm not sure if that was in desert circumstances where there's very little water in the air, as John just said, but maybe you already know of that. The short answer to what John said, the Kazarina tree is really excellent, especially as a first mover to make windbreak systems available, and it's fast-growing and very good. So we are using it, I would say, more than 50%. What you can see beautifully is after 45 years in the main farm, you see these Kazarina trees being already very big and huge, and it's like a standing of an older generation of the first movers now fading a little bit out and other species are coming in much more prominently. And it's a really beautiful scenario how you see that those species are really good for the beginning. And yes, they produce a lot of biomass, but it's also acid biomass. So you have to have a trade-off in the end with the species, but it's very good for the start, very good for the first two, three decades to hold a space for new species to arrive. And it's a wonderful thing and just short info. Our water ground level is at 40 meters and higher in the depth, so it's really difficult to get roots to access that at the moment. Okay, yeah, that will be difficult. The official hour has ended, and before we throw another tree on the campfire for us to sit around and chat some more, maybe I will tie it up for now. Thank you very much, Max, for that presentation. And when I see how complete you think about a project with culture, education, economic development, revenue streams, new forms of finance that you're pioneering, just the whole economy of love concept as you describe it, that full circle of activities that are there on finding that path for humanity to fit on this planet. And it's every single time I hear about it, I'm completely impressed. I hope everyone else was too. Before people start to sign off, thank you so much for that presentation, Max. And I wish your volunteers a great journey in the world of Seekham and look forward to going to the planet after you've done that journey, because the planet needs many people to participate. In the chat we have, but we will do it again, we have the economyoflove.net URL. And I will, because I've been asked to, but I also believe in this, and I think John will support me in this, if people like every other, every day people start supporting this work. And right now in the media, people are forced to choose between eating and eating in England and also in the Netherlands. And we're noticing that people are choosing between eating, eating and donating. We're getting fewer and fewer donations and people tell us that's because financially things are difficult. Hopefully people are willing to do one cup of coffee per month less and help with this. And if you aren't donating yet, please think of that. If you have friends who aren't donating to this movement yet, please tell them, because it's not getting easier to support this work. Seekham will be fine, but many others aren't as well thought through yet as Seekham is and we're helping them on that pathway. So do think of that and Katha shared a link where you can lead people to. It's quite important. Again, thanks Max for this wonderful presentation. Do stay along for the fire that will reheat with more conversation. I want to thank Kath of the team for preparing this. Christina who in her journey back to Jordan got sick. She's in Jordan now and couldn't host this meeting. That was the plan. Thank you also for all the work you've put into it. And John again for being here. The fire isn't out yet. The zoom isn't turned off yet. So please, if you wish, continue to be part of the conversation. I think we should stop spotlighting people so that everyone can turn on their cameras. And if you have anything you would like to bring in, ask, consider variations or share. That's what you do at a fire. We meet each other and happy to meet all of you. And let's have a conversation. And then we'll close and we'll see hopefully all of you again next month at our next fireside moments.