Connecting Operation OASIS to potential stakeholders and Matched Funding
Operation OASIS is seeking partnerships with Shipping companies, Water Companies, Oil Companies, Environmental Groups and organisations, Government departments and appropriate directorates within the European Union to begin the process of moving towards achieving our first pilot project in Andalucia.
We aim to introduce to shipping operators an alternative use for their ballast capacity that does not involve the sea route for disposal that has the potential to convert arid land into self sustaining useful productive fertile land.
Operation OASIS is a plan to ship treated waste water as ballast to arid coastlines to irrigate and increase the fertility of the land by planting forests to induce regular rainfall, fog and mist, providing a sustainable replicable approach to combating deserts and desertification.
The Operation OASIS pilot project proposes to demonstrate sustainably how 1500 hectares of arid coastline in Andalucia Spain can be irrigated and planted with combined forestry and agriculture to the point where the local climate is altered to induce sufficient rainfall and condensation on the trees and crops to become self sufficient in water after year 4.
Spain currently faces severe desertification and water pollution issues, in certain (central & southern?) areas.
We are therefore preparing an application to the European Commission for funding towards putting the two problems together in order to resolve both. The first project involves applying treated wastewater to an unused strip of arid Andalucía coastline in order to convert sand into a water-retaining soil gel and irrigate a new tree belt. This will draw in moist air from over the sea, restoring rainfall and permitting self-sustaining agroforestry to proceed inland.
Once this solution has been demonstrated successfully, the next project will process and tanker plentiful wastewater from the shores of Venice in order to expand the Spanish coastal desert reclamation. We have explored ‘Operation Oasis ‘ (this project) with the help of very eminent scientists and specialists working in the fields of irrigation, shipping, waste water and engineering, who have all confirmed the plausibility of this project, and if you require any further immediate information please look up our website, www.operationoasis.com. In order to demonstrate this Pilot project to the EU we need to secure match-funding from them through an application by the end of June 2011.
The ultimate objective of Operation OASIS is to sustainably treat and transport excess European wastewater as ballast in returning oil supertankers (VLCC’s & ULCC’s) and all bulk shipping which currently transport sea water around the worlds ocean at great cost and risk of introducing alien marine life to distant coastal waters, using mutually beneficial global outlets that are already in place to resolve the major global problems listed below:
1) Global Coastal Waste Water Pollution
2) Marine sea water ballast discharge
3) Uneven distribution of annual rainfall (floods and drought)
4) Famine and poverty in developing countries
5) Desertification and loss of arable land with the world’s extensive and rapidly expanding arid deserts. The Sahara Desert for example now exceeds the land mass of the United States.
6) Impending Global Water and Food Shortages.
7) Dwindling timber and fuel resources.
8) Unsustainable Energy Resources
9) Loss of land for expanding populations to live
10) Biodiversity, species and extinction of Global Flora and Fauna
11) Excess Carbon Emissions
12) Political instability, civil unrest and resource based wars
14) Climate Change
All of these situations standing alone pose serious problems for our very survival, yet when put together each problem in turn resolves the others through establishing peaceful international teamwork, developing economies can then reclaim land to absorb CO2, offsetting carbon emissions from transport, water and energy and grow enough trees & crops to stabilise the world climate providing food, water, fuel, safe materials & employment desperately needed by our communities and industries.
For the initial pilot project funding application to proceed, we need to find matched-funding partners, identify a suitable coastal strip totalling not more than 1500 hectares,and secure a source of treated wastewater (e.g. from nearby water treatment plants) and would be very grateful for any introductions to relevant Spanish, North African and Middle East contacts who have the necessary motivation, resources and connections or authority.
Andrew K Fletcher
Tel: 00441803 524117