 |
| 'Providing a source of clean water would remove one of the main causes of conflict.' – Farouk El-Baz, Center for Remote Sensing Tom Peter |
How a desert detective found water in Darfur – from half a world away
Farouk el-Baz heads to Sudan next month to site wells over what he believes is a vast reserve from an ancient lake.
By Caitlin Carpenter | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the October 17, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 3
Farouk el-Baz has been peering into the deserts of the world for 21 years – from hundreds of miles up and 10,000 miles away. The Egyptian-born geologist and his staff pore over satellite imagery at Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing, seeking clues to deserts' most precious resource: water. The water reserves he announced in April may increase an even more precious resource: peace in Darfur.
"Providing a source of clean water in this region would remove one of the main sources of conflict," Mr. Baz says, sitting in an office lined with bookshelves, awards, photos of him with various world leaders, and a giant image of the Arabian desert.
So important is the potential Massachusetts-size underground aquifer, the remains of a lake that dried up 5,000 to 11,000 years ago, that when the news broke, Baz got a call to speak to the head of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon.
"I briefed the secretary-general personally," Baz says. "He doesn't have 10 minutes for some heads of state, but I gave him a 10-minute presentation, and then he asked questions for 40 minutes. He loved it."
A United Nations Environmental Program report released this past June said "serious water shortages" in Darfur, combined with population growth and environmental degradation, "created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained" between Arab militias and farmers in the region. Some 3.5 million people in Darfur are living without reasonable access to water, says Craig Miller, president of Thirst No More, a humanitarian group based in Texas that is working on water projects in Darfur and Peru.
Now the UN, Egypt, and even the Sudanese government – which has been accused of complicity in the attacks – have signed on to finance the Baz-initiated "1,000 wells for Darfur" project. First, the UN will dig 24 wells to test Baz's premise once safety conditions on the ground permit, most likely next year. If those wells are successful, they will supply water for the 26,000 UN troops headed for Sudan.
Baz has done this before; he found an ancient lake in Egypt in the early 1980s.
A find in Egypt yielded 500 wells
It took him 15 years, though, to persuade his homeland to dig the first well and another few years to convince them that the water was plentiful there. Today Egypt has 500 wells yielding enough water to last an estimated 100 years and support 150,000 acres of agriculture in the area around an ancient lake.
RSS feed
