Water, our most valuable resource, is rapidly disappearing. The global demand for water is growing while at the same time the world’s available freshwater levels are dropping at alarming rates. 40 percent of the world’s population is lacking water; 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 2/3 of the world’s population will live in water scarce regions in 2025.
Currently, the Middle East is drying up—the water scarcity is causing severe political and regional tensions and presents a potential danger to the internal stability of the countries in the region. In the words of King Hussein of Jordan: “The next war in the Middle East will be a water war.”
“Green Deserts: The Saltwater Revolution” is a film of hope and optimism about the water crisis. It’s a story about actively engaged people of the Sahara Forest Project that truly believe the challenges posed by global warming can be overcome and that plants and food can actually be grown in severely arid areas. By focusing on re-vegetation, they are creating green jobs through profitable production of food, water, clean electricity and biomass in the desert.
So far, we have countless hours of footage documenting the obstacles of bureaucracy, technology, and the work of the Sahara Forest Project. For a year now, we’ve been following the people behind it—engineers, scientists and environmentalists from all over the world as they experience ups and downs while establishing the first green desert in Qatar. But now, we want to follow the Qatar facility, as that it is up and running. We also want to document the establishment of a facility in Jordan.
Through our Kickstarter project, we want you to come along for the ride and help us answer the most important question of all: will the people behind the Sahara Forest Project succeed in bringing this technology to market and sharing it with local desert communities in water scarce regions? Will they benefit from this revolutionary technology economically, environmentally and socially?
We have planned additional trips to follow the Sahara Forest Project team in Qatar and Jordan for another year and then we have months of post-production work ahead of us. Meeting our Kickstarter goal will enable us to finish the filming. There is no doubt in our minds that this unique environmental project and the amazing people behind it will attract viewers all over the world. If you believe in informing a wider audience about a project that could transform how people source food and water, please support us.
This project is part of GOOD’s Saturday series Push for Good—our guide to crowdfunding creative progress.
