I can still remember my first visit to the underdeveloped Al-Furaa school backyard in September 2021. I was looking for a place to open a climate resilience center in the middle of this unrecognized Bedouin village. I was escorted by the principal and vice principal. At the beginning it felt like they thought I was crazy when I was explaining about my vision. How could a climate resilience hub be established in a village in the deepest periphery, on land designated to become a polluting phosphate mine run by Israel’s largest mineral and industrial conglomerate, where all the buildings are under threat of demolition?
I didn’t have solutions to any of these issues back then, but I felt that because of these challenges this Hub was of utmost importance. I told them that the very things that seem to make this plan impossible could actually be to our advantage. I started by mapping needs of the school, and finding technologies to answer them. To start, we dealt with the sanitation and hygiene threats of the wastewater at the school’s leaking cesspit, partnering with Laguna Innovation; then we connected with the Bedouin solar energy NGO Shamsuna to create a micro-grid that provides 4 classes with constant, renewable, and clean energy, as the school suffers from frequent power cuts. The next challenge was the inadequate supply of drinking water: the school has no running potable water, forcing students and staff to bring drinking water from their homes. We partnered with WaterGen to generate drinking water from the air at the school.
We continued to develop the Hub by building a greenhouse to grow aquaponic and hydroponic crops irrigated by atmospheric water from the WaterGen generators, giving students access to fresh organic vegetables that they grow themselves, and thereby promoting a healthier lifestyle. In addition, HomeBiogas systems were installed to allow students to cook their organic food with cooking gas produced from organic waste. Last, but not least, we established a pioneering research and development station for desert agriculture so that the students, the wider community, and researchers from all over the world could conduct cutting edge research to advance off-grid desert and agrovoltaic activities.
The place grew and became the first climate resilience hub in Israel without government involvement. This led to the surprising additional development of a community eco-tourism model, running educational visits to the sites for groups of students and teachers from all over Israel and other countries on an almost weekly basis.
Last week President Isaac Herzog officially opened the Hub with Israel’s Presidential Climate Forum, mentioning its importance to the “unrecognized village of Al-Furaa”, and thus giving a symbolic and historic first official recognition to this community. The atmosphere was full of joy and pride.
Now, the importance of the Hub is no longer questioned at the school and within the community, because it not only made them more resilient to climate change, but also to the practical challenges that they face daily. Climate resilience is a human necessity that needs to be democratized and delegated to the people of the world. Our pilot study in Al-Furaa shows that once you build climate resilience you also contribute to health, sanitation, hygiene, food, energy, education, research, and innovation.
That is once more proof that climate resilience is social resilience!
Fareed Mahameed, manager and founder of the Off-grid Technology Hub at Al-Furaa
