Watery 2024 review & 2025 launchpad

There were stirrings of motion in the water cycle restoration movement. That’s what Nick Steiner and I both noticed together some time last year when we shared notes. This year those stirrings have turned into a flow, there is more discussion, more social media, more blog posts, more podcast interviews, more connections, more projects, more investments, more people in the mainstream climate movement noticing. My guess is that we are about where the regenerative soil movement was ten years before it exploded into a wider consciousness. We can learn from them strategies to grow a movement. In my podcast with Koen van der Seijin we discuss strategies.

There is an urgency to what we do. With each year, more forests burn, more topsoil is washed away in floods, more vegetation dies from droughts, more groundwater is drained. Each of those losses makes it that much more difficult to do the task of restoration in the future. Water cycle regeneration is that much more easier when we have more intact old forests, and groundwater to tap into. The more we can restore now, the easier path we will have in the future.

I got a chance to meet people in various sectors of the movement this year - from regenerative farming, to permaculture to business, to investment, to academia, to hydrologists, to the hospitality sector. I feel one of the key things that is still needed in this regenerative water movement is for the people from different sectors to connect more. When I wrote/edited a book awhile back called “Open Collaboration Encyclopedia” and I got to see how networks for collaboration, and the bringing together of multistakeholders can accelerate projects to an astonishing degree. Right now there is a lot of sector silo. For example, in the eco-world, there are people who would like to see more work from scientists on this topic (and sometimes complain about this). At the same time I got to meet a lot of professors and people in academia this year, and asked one what they thought about the water movement beginning to happen now. He said a lot of important water knowledge has been being discussed in academia for quite awhile, but no one was listening. As another example of sector silo, in the sustainability business world and investment world, many have no idea that there are these water and land restoration networks happening, and how they would greatly benefit from more investment. As a third example, there are sustainability lawyers who are unaware of what changes to the law that people working in water restoration would like to make their work easier, and so they are unable to help fight for them. And there are water restorationists very frustrated with certain laws, unaware there are possibilities to change them. As a fourth example, Nick Steiner and I were surprised, as were the hospitality people in brainstorming sessions we had with them about how useful it would be if the hospitality sector could synergize with the regenerative water/land farmers sector. A fifth example, we talked to county hydrologists who said they had problems with too much water in the winter, and too little in the summer. They were surprised we had solutions. They didn’t know about regenerative water methods. A lot of us have a foot in more than one sector. We can help bridge those sectors we are connected with.

I’d like to try an experiment here to use this platform as a way to launch more regenerative water/land projects. After the discussion in each article below, is a project proposal. People can put down their interest to work on those projects in the comment section below. Others can then offer to help with a financial contribution and investments. Others can offer knowledge, skills, or organizational help in the comment section. For some of these projects, volunteers might be enough, for others projects, someone willing to put up a couple of hundred dollars would be enough to get that project up and running, and for some other projects, larger investments would be helpful. This would thus be a kind of minimum viable product version of a mini-mini regenerative water incubator/accelerator.

Heres a chronological run through of essays, projects and other interesting happenings this year

Slow water I had the pleasure of interviewing Erica Gies, who wrote the book “Water always wins”, which describes amazing water projects around the world. Slowing water is the essence of how to restore water cycles. Erica proposes creating a slow water movement.

Project: Begin organizing a Slow Water local chapter. Each chapter reads books, watches videos about slow water. Then it can start activating projects in their local area, and educate businesses and local government about slow water. Then we can connect chapters to form a network.

Millan Millan passed away. It was touching to hear how many people were moved by his life and work. Rob Lewis wrote a wonderful ode to him and about his dreams of restoring the rains to Spain. Little did I know at that point, that latter in the year, I would be in Iberia launching a project to restore Iberian rain, to try and make his dreams come true. (for more on this see later in this post)

Did you know that the Amazon and Congo forests ‘call in’ the rain? The wet season starts earlier than it would otherwise because the trees start transpiring so much they initiate large atmospheric circulations to bring in the ocean moisture. I continually stumble on wonderful people doing amazing research, and wonder why I, or the eco-movement have never heard of them before. Rong Fu, is an atmospheric scientist from UCLA doing important stuff.

Interestingingly, the 23 unsolved problems of water, was one of the most viewed articles of the year, given its technical nature. I think there is a lot of interest in research programmes, because that’s what defines what is studied. Many people were probably people going back and reading this article many times digesting and pondering the issues. The article also gave an overview of the hydrology field. While important, I am not sure that these 23 problems are most interesting and significant problems. I think we can collectively come up with a better set of questions. As an example, some of the questions posed here this year would be candidates e.g. how much does groundwater depletion affect wildfire risk, how much can beaver restoration increase the rain, or how does land use change affect bioprecipitation?

I think it would be good to build better connections between academics and eco-people. As an example why - if academics hear from a lot of eco-people how important soil restoration is to the water cycle, perhaps they will run climate models where the variable being changed is the soil sponge capacity. In climate models variables that affect climate, like emissions and pollution, are called climate drivers. Imagine if soil restoration and beaver restoration became known as key climate drivers. A cross-sector collaboration could come up with a more interesting set of questions that could then define the academic agenda. There are a lot of graduate students (who I got to know many of this year), that are looking for good research topics.

Project : Organize online meetings where we bring together graduate students and people in the eco-world to collectively come up with research topics, and to work together….

I wrote about new scientific disciplines I think that will emerge to guide us to a deeper understanding of the connection between climate, life, and water.

Stephen Miller discussed how our responses to climate change are sometimes maladations. I titled the piece “Maladaptations in the time of water crisis”, playing on the title of the book “Love in the time of cholera” by Marquez. In Arizona, the building of aqueducts has encouraged more people to move there, which then puts more pressure on the Colorado river, a river that is in danger of collapsing in two or three decades, with the demands seven states put on it.

I was in the bookstore, and saw this really cool book Beaverland. One of the neat things about having a podcast is I can reach out to cool people. We happily discussed the importance of beavers to our water cycles.

Last year Koen van Seijen of ‘Investing in regenerative agriculture and food’ interviewed me on his podcast, and our talk became his most listened-to podcast of the year. Clearly the idea of restoring the water cycle to heal our climate was hitting a nerve. This year I returned the favor and interviewed him. We talk about facilitating investments into the regenerative water movement and discussed various strategies for growing the water movement. The interview gives a good overview of the regenerative water movement.

Project : Is there a way to organize the flow paths for investment money to come into the regenerative water field? Can we organize a regen water fund? Is there someone/group who wants to take on the task of enabling/accelerating regenerative water investments?

Your generous contributions in the form of paid subscriptions have helped me spend more time, and make things happen in the water projects that otherwise would not have happened. The money has had a lot of good ripple effects beyond me…………….

I’ve been trying to put together the many pieces of the water puzzle together this year, and reading hundreds of papers to find the different elements and clues. I’ve been drawing little diagrams about different aspects of the puzzle. Some of these get published on my instagram….. As I was trying to integrate the many parts together, I got a gestalt feeling that something was missing from our dialogue on the water cycle. The missing link was that groundwater creates rain. It seems readers felt this was an important missing link too. The article was the second most read of the year. I then wrote about a connected idea which is that groundwater, surface water, and atmospheric water couple.

Last year I spent over 100 hours researching the history of research into the small water cycle for an article ‘The quest to figure out the origin of rain’. At the end I wrote about this super-important small water cycle map made by Hubert Savenije and Ruud van der Ent, but because the essay was so long, and because I did not emphasize its importance, I am not sure many people noticed. So I did a longer piece on it this year. Their map shows where countries get their rain from, i.e. which other countries evapotranspire water in order that they gets rain. This time around the idea got noticed, and the essay became the most read article of the year. I noticed that other blogs referenced it too, and people proposed projects based off of the map.

Project: A lot of people in the eco-world have heard of only a handful of scientists looking at the importance of water and land-use to climate, if they have at all - Makarieva, Millan, Kravcik, Jehne, possibly Nobre and Ripl. We can spread the word about the scientists portrayed here this year - Hubert Savenije and Ruud van der Ent who came up with the small water cycle map, and also Rong Fu, Eneas Salati, Axel Kleidon, and Ronny Meier, and get them, and their research, like the small water cycle map, some much deserved fame.

I shared a distinction between regenerative, sustainable, and extractive water that some of you have said was quite useful.

I got into this field, because wildfires were raging around me in California, and I pondered how restoring the water cycle could lower wildfire risk. This essay “Groundwater lessens wildfires” touches on something I care a lot about. Everywhere around the world we are draining groundwater while wildfires rage, without people making the connection. This is an urgent situation that no one is talking about.

Project i) Launch a marketing campaign around how groundwater and other aspects of water restoration can lessen wildfires. ii) Find a researcher to study how groundwater lessens wildfires.

I interviewed Nick Steiner. His excitement about working in the field to restore water cycles is palpable. He runs a land-water consulting operation, and is also a part of Zach Weiss’s Water Stories group that educates students in the ways of water, and does ecorestoration work around the world. Our podcast together laid the groundwork of combining forces in Spain.

I have been teaching about water in PDC (Permaculture Design Courses) this year. Its nice to connect with students, who want to do work on the ground. There are many PDC courses happening around the world, and are over a hundred thousand world-wide alumni, if not more. I discuss the idea of developing a network to connect PDC alumni with water restoration projects. This could turbo-charge water restoration happening around the world.

Project : Organize this network.

The regenerative economy is key to bringing money into the regenerative water field. Just like the yoga movement was through grown through concurrently creating a yoga market, yoga jobs and yoga businesses, the regenerative water movement needs to figure out how to create market, jobs and businesses. This should happen in conjunction with also building and growing a commons around water.

Project : Organize a think tank on this topic. Then launch some of these regenerative economy projects.

A pattern language is a create way to organize all the different regenerative water solutions and problems

Project : Finish the pattern language project, and publish it in a book form. Perhaps there is someone out there who wants to invest in this project in exchange for a share of the royalties.

The creation and growth of local watershed communities is important. This essay contains some ideas of how-to-do this.

Project : Get a local watershed community going in your area.

What would happen to the rain if the world was all desert, and how would it be different than if the world was all vegetation? Axel Kleidon did simulations that showed a vegetated world had three times the evapotranspiration, and twice as much rain as the desert world.

I enjoyed a lot writing the three part series on biological based matter that nucleated rain. The field has advanced quite, and there is more data on it now. There are cool stories of the people behind the discoveries. Bioaerosols (part I, II, III) play a huge, and often overlooked role in creating our rain. Restoring our rain may happen by restoring bioaerosols like bacteria, fungi, and BVOC’s. The Gaia hypothesis proposes the earth behaves like a living organism. I put forward the idea of bioaerosols as the earth’s hormones system, both as a metaphor, and as, maybe, more than just a metaphor. Probably my most outside the box idea of the year. Also one of my most read articles.

I took a graduate class in atmospheric science this year. I was continually amazed doing my homework, to put in these abstract sounding equations, and get out values that correspond to actual real life measurements. Science! In class, the professor showed a graph of rain from nucleating, and noted that most rain came from ice nucleation, as opposed to liquid water nucleation from non-organic aerosols. ‘Is it true’, I asked, ‘that ice nucleation is mainly plant based?’ ‘Yes’ he said. ‘So rain comes mostly from plants?’ ‘Yes.’ Wow I thought, so this bio-aerosol concept is now standard atmospheric science. ‘So if we have altered the land, and lessened plants that will have affected the rain?’ I ask. ‘I will have to think about that’ he said.

Emotions about Millan’s passing were still with me, as I took off to Iberia in the summer. I had some idea of restoring watersheds there, but no concrete plan. I put out the idea of restoring the Iberian rain. Someone from the hospitality sector was interested in helping out with the project. Suddenly this project had legs, not just a thought in my mind. I invited Nick Steiner along, who would end up working on the hospitality related part of the water restoration project. Then we brought Neal Spackman for his experience in restoring large degraded landscapes. We would get a chance to connect as water geeks. We presented on a panel together about water restoration there at a small, amazing sustainability gathering, that weaved people together into collaborations, and helped further a number of our regenerative water intentions.

If we were to restore Iberian rain a better understanding of Millan Millan’s research would be useful. I wrote a piece explaining his ideas, and also about my Iberian adventure. I contacted Ali Bin Shahid who did some calculations on where and how much to restore to bring back the rain. I wrote about research that showed in Europe when comparing forests and farms near to each other, more rain happened downwind of the forests. This implied switching to agroforestry could help bring back Iberian rain.

Anna Pollock, a leader in birthing the regenerative tourism movement, was interested in helping with the bridging of hospitality and regenerative water in our project.

In the southeast corner of Spain, in the altiplano, the highland plateau, is a farm which has done a lot of amazing regenerative work. Silva Quarta leads the Ecosystem Restoration Camp project on the land. The farm is part of a several hundred multistakeholder, decade-long network, called Alvelal, made up of farmers, businesses, researchers, that are working to shift the area to more regenerative activity, and restore land at the scale of 100,000 hectares.

Alvelal thus forms a wonderful prototype of how we can restore land at scale, which would then help bring back rain. As I became connected with more people doing restoration work in Iberia, I was happily surprised to see there were others with ambitious plans to restore land at ten thousand plus hectare levels. There were people in Algarve, Andalusia, Balearic Islands, and Northern Spain looking to turn these areas into large scale bioregional restoration projects. As more of us were connected into this Restore Iberian Rain group, we soon we had this amazing network of farmers, water restorationists, lawyers, professors, business people, hoteliers, scientists in our mix. People were excited to find each other, and I think surprised at what other sectors could contribute by working together.………… We are looking for investors and philanthropists to help us with funding for various parts of the Restore Iberian Rain project….. A number of projects have birthed or are being birthed at various size scales, local, county, and Iberian peninsula level, out of the diverse connections that have been formed, and that are being formed. Stay tuned in 2025 to hear more.

Spain also happened to experience massive floods there at the time that Nick, Neal and I were there. Silvia’s farm managed to absorb more of the rain, and thus lessen landslides. Research has shown how land restoration can lessen floods. Ali Bin Shahid had calculated how much land restoration would be needed to lessen massive floods in his native Pakistan in 2022.

Isotopes can help us track how much the small water cycle is increasing, which will makes it a very useful metric to have. It also helps us tell how water moves through rivers and groundwater. I experimented with going into more technical detail than normal in this essay, in part because some readers may want to learn and use these methods in their watershed restoration projects. There were some interesting characters and stories behind the development of this field. Part I and Part II

I put together a list of the seminal papers in water. Some people were very happy to have this list. ‘A great early christmas present’ one said.

Earlier in the year it occurred to me that beavers brought a lot of extra rain to North America and Europe. I sat on this idea - strange ideas need percolation. I started thinking more about it again in December. Pondered the idea from numerous directions. The idea made logical sense.

Other podcasts interviewing me this year

Regenerative agriculture with John Klempf

Ecojustice radio

Farm Gate

Most read articles this year.

1. A map of the small water cycle

2. The missing link : Groundwater creates rain

3. Restoring Iberian rain

4. 23 unsolved problems of water

5. Millan Millan: he helped us understand rain

6. Hormonal metaphors of rain

7. The seminal papers in water

8. Absorbing rains to bring landscapes back to life: Neal Spackman

9. Beaverland: Leila Phillips

10. How eco-tourism can help the regenerative water movement : Anna Pollock

Messages from readers :

"I've been studying the water cycle and how to fix it for years. Your articles are fantastic at explaining things in depth without getting too technical in the language. Thank you for the work you do." Michael Lynn.

“I think the work you are doing is VERY important! Thank you for grounding it in the known science." - Josh

"I am subscribing out of regard for your solid research and writings. It's important educational material - especially for those of us seeking to mitigate against the tsunami of pain about to be wreaked when the world realises that the obsession with 'net-zero' carbon will come to naught. Revegetation, building soil OM, small water cycles are all plausible and necessary options, with no downside." - Andrew Wollen

"I supported your work because you are exploring and disseminating information that is crucial to humanity’s understanding of the world we live in. Information that for some reason, either intentional or not, is never mentioned or discussed in the climate debate." - Anne Rycroft

"Your work is thought-provoking. It's helpful for everyone. But it's a godsend for those of us working with ecosystems. Thank you in particular for the interview with Erica Gies, Water Always Wins. Bowing to you,🌱" -kbw