The Sahara Forest Pilot Project
The Pilot Project will be the first built example of the Sahara Forest Project and will be realised on a one hectare site outside Doha, Qatar during 2012. The scheme will demonstrate all the key technologies that are being brought together in a synergistic cluster.
Conventionally, human-made systems tend to be fossil-fuel dependent, linear and wasteful, mono-functional and engineered towards maximising one goal. Here the aim is to pursue a different paradigm - that demonstrated by mature ecosystems which run on current solar income, operate as zero waste systems, are complex and interdependent, and have evolved toward an optimised overall system. The Pilot Project will demonstrate concentrated solar power, seawater-cooled greenhouses, evaporator hedges creating conditions for restorative agriculture, halophyte cultivation and algae production in an interdependent cluster that achieves significant increases in productivity for all elements of the system.
Partner - Yara / Qafco
Client - Sahara Forest Project AS
Architect - Exploration
Environmental Engineer - Bill Watts
Scientific Partner - The Bellona Foundation