|
|
Biography |
|
|
Hany El Kateb is a Member of the Presidential Advisory Council of Scientists and Experts – Egypt, a Senior Scientist at the Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany and an international senior consultant. He leads the Egyptian Scientific Center for Innovation, a center consisting of a multidisciplinary team of scientists and experts to support the development in Egypt. He is a German citizen of Egyptian origin. He is a Forest Biometrician who has obtained his academic degrees in Agriculture, Forestry, and Biometry in Egypt, Germany and South Africa, respectively. He has over 40 years experience in teaching and research at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Technische Universität München. He has research activities in land use, forestry and resource management in all continents and has long international experiences in resource management, forestry, agri-business, and implementation of interdisciplinary projects. He led an International Resource Management Consultancy for five years. He designed a large organic farm in arid regions, a concept to nature-based architecture in rural and urban areas with international experts, a waste management concept and a compost plant in tourist areas in arid regions, a project to rehabilitation of degraded land ecosystem in mountainous area in China, many projects to rehabilitations and management of forests in Africa, Asia and South America. He initiated the development of a sustainable forestry in desert lands of Egypt using sewage water and established collaboration between the Egyptian government and the Bavarian State for this purpose. He has been awarded the first prize from the German Science Centre for outstanding support of German-Egyptian Collaboration in Science and Innovation in 2014. His interest lays in resource management, forestry, agro-forestry, organic farming, green urbanism, and human resource development. He believes that appropriate solutions to the challenges the world facing today should be based on the sustainable management of the available recourses, while incorporating the scientific knowledge and innovative technologies to build a brighter future.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Abstract |
|
|
|
|
Sustainable Agroecosystems in Arid Regions |
|
|
|
|
|
Sustainable agroecosystems as well as climate change resilience strategies are necessarily required to ensure food security in arid regions, where resources are scarce, human demands are increasing and vulnerability to climate change is high.
The Egyptian Government has initiated a large-scale reclamation of desert lands, with the objective to establish new communities in various areas of desert lands of the country offering new residential areas and job opportunities, where emphasis is laid on farming. A new community in desert land should be considered as a complete integrative system and includes all services and facilities that make daily life easy and enjoyable for each individual. A new community contains an attractively designed urban area surrounded by an agriculture area; an agro-industrial zone is located at the outskirt of the urban area.
The urban areas with different use zones should have efficient and effective urban mobility, allowing walking or using bicycles, electrical vehicles from one zone to another. To attract national and international eco-tourism in a desert environment, the urban areas have charming architecture and include nature-based buildings that utilise design and technology to passive energy-savings in order to promote natural lighting, ventilation, cooling, and heating. Such buildings produce energy, hot water and fertiliser sludge and make use of treated grey water for toilet flush and of sewage recycled water for gardening or greening the landscape. Buildings are equipped with solar hot-water panels, wind/solar electricity, water recycling unit and rain water catchments, if applicable. They also incorporate waste sorting and management system, which in turn supports composting-plants of the bordering farms.
In desert climates, the urban and agricultural areas must be well-protected from wind and sand by effective windbreak systems of living trees. These will, in addition to many other advantages, create favourable microclimate for the agricultural and urban areas, lessen temperature fluctuation between day and night, increase infiltration rate and decrease surface runoff.
Worldwide, current farming practices are mainly focussed on increasing crop and livestock production by the use of synthetic fertilisers and agrochemicals. Such farming practices are sources of greenhouse gas emissions. An emissions-reduced systems in arid regions can be achieved by agroecosystems resilient to climate change and have high stability in terms of high resistance and high resilience. Adaptation to climate change is a chance to efficient resource management and is not anymore a choice. Adaptation practice does not need inventing fully new-systems, but requires building and maintaining soil fertility, raising diversity, and integrating different farming and production units (e.g., livestock, aquatic and bee farming, field crops, vegetables, fruits, palms and timber and non-timber products) that support the fulfilment of the entire-system requirements, without need for any additional imported-inputs or agrochemicals. Each unit serves the other and there is no production of waste as the waste is always used or recycled (zero-waste system). Such an integrated system supports managing the water, nutrient and energy cycles in a sustainable way. Organic fertilisers are generated from the livestock and aquatic farming. Water management is the key factor. The choice of a proper irrigation system is fundamental and should be based on considerable reduction in water consumption, efficient control of soil moisture and prevention soil degradation by salinisation. Sub-surface irrigation systems fulfil these criteria.
Post-harvesting practices and technologies with high efficiency and lower processing costs are necessary to add value to the raw materials and to maintain and enhance quality and safety of products. Developing agro-based value chains and agro-industries will support generating employment and additional income.
|
|
|
|
|