Creating an 'OASIS' with seawater

“The world isn’t short of water, it’s just in the wrong place, and too salty."-Charles Paton

According to the World Health Organization, by 2025, half of the world's population will be living in water-stressed areas, where the demand for clean, useable water exceeds the supply available. But what if freshwater is not the answer? What if there is an infinite source of water for agricultural irrigation?

Desalination of seawater might be a revolutionary solution to increase food and water security for water-stress countries in Africa. In simplistic terms, it is the process of removing salinity from seawater and making the water safe for consumption (Khawaji et al., 2008). Rather than relying on the common way of obtaining water from areas of surplus, water is created, and this can provide incredible precious sources of water supply for water-scarce nations enabling them to be self-sustainable in water and food.

How to grow food from seawater?

Rows of fruit and vegetables- juicy cucumbers, plump tomatoes, and brilliant red raspberries now appear in a desert. To grow food and attain food security, the Seawater Greenhouse project in Somaliland harnesses the power of two resources that we have in plenty on Earth: seawater and sunshine. Water can be reused efficiently in these steel frame and glass buildings with modified pad and fan technology. The fans in place force air through the water-soaked pads, which are vertically hung layers of the corrugated board creating a vapor that adds moisture to the greenhouse, and this further lowers the temperature by roughly 15 degrees Celcius. Furthermore, salt in seawater is separated from freshwater when the water is forced through the pad, and the high salinity water that remains is used to cool the greenhouse (Akinaga et al., 2018). This desalination by-product, brine, helps to chill the air around the pads, as well as revegetate the surrounding terrain outside the greenhouse and provide clean drinking water. Differentiated from traditional desalination processes, which may be expensive and discharge vast amounts of salty brine back into the sea, destroying sensitive ecosystems, the seawater greenhouse approach is environmentally beneficial.

Challenges of desalination projects

Without a doubt, the use of desalination technology is quite expensive in terms of both energy and financing. The significant investment required for machinery means that not all countries can use this technology, and the operation of such devices is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, putting another layer of pressure on water-stressed nations. The seawater greenhouse project, like many other green industries, was regarded as a danger to established agriculture policies and partnerships. Financing was withdrawn, forcing the initiative to shut. Nonetheless, farming is not part of Somaliland's major trend culture, and there is a significant obstacle to local engagement and investment in the effective implementation of seawater greenhouses.

Global desalinization capacity by country (Hamiche et al., 2018)

Like the implementation of any new green industry and desalination technologies, scaling these tools will mean overcoming obstacles- cultural, economic, and others. Such innovations have been a valuable tool for water-scare countries to increase water and food security, but on the other hand, it remained as the tool for only countries with capital and access to large bodies of water.