TerraformerAl Baydha Development Co.Rochester, MN, USAEducation
BA, Middle East Studies and Arabic, Brigham Young University
Neal is the director of the Al Baydha Project in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. He and local Bedou tribesmen designed and built an agroforestry system that restores ecological function, increases biodiversity, creates soil, improves water resources, and establishes agricultural production despite severe desertification. He is also the founder of Sustainable Design Masterclass, a webinar series that highlights global pioneers and experts working at the intersection of economy, ecology, agriculture, and entrepreneurship. Neal is passionate about regenerative agricultures and understanding the interaction between ecology and wealth.
Cofounder/CEO: Neal Spackman is an internationally recognized pioneer of hyperarid agroforestries. He was cofounder and Director of the Al Baydha Project in Saudi Arabia, where he lived and worked with tribes of bedouin to convert deserts into savannahs. He founded the webinar series Sustainable Design Masterclass, and has taught and consulted in the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Neal is an alumnus of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Here SDMC Founder Neal Spackman talks us through the ecological side of greening deserts and his general approach to design.
Neal Spackman’s series on terraforming. Here Spackman talks about how reforesting Saudi Arabia’s west coast could lead to increases in rainfall along with biodiversity and carbon sequestration.
SDMC’s founder Neal Spackman, from the Al Baydha Project Office in Saudi Arabia. Here Spackman presents his approach to understanding and operating in foreign cultures. This is informed by his years in Saudi Arabia as the first American and first Non-muslim to live and work with tribal groups south of Makkah. No matter how good any design, if you don’t account for culture and plan for who will manage them, it will not succeed.
In this session, Neal Spackman, director of the Al Baydha project and cofounder of Sustainable Design Masterclass, answers your questions.
How to Survey, Design, Build and Pay for your Pond with Grant Schultz and Neal Spackman. Grant Schultz has been able to turn a 145 acre corn and soy wasteland into a Permaculture Oasis with Modern Technology and Water Management. In this webinar, Grant will give you a brief, 30 minute overview of Pond Building that could save you Tens-of-Thousands of Dollars
Videos: Al Baydah project
The al-Baydha project encompasses many different aspects of rural development, but here project manager Neal Spackman talks about the main issue and its solutions.
Taken from one of the high points of the Al Baydha Project’s demonstration site, this shows the growth of the project’s agroforestry system. Two years were spent on constructing earthworks up in the mountains, and the first trees were planted in early 2012. The earthworks will catch and store up to 20,000 cubic meters in the earth, while the rate of irrigation is approximately 500 cubic meters per month. In summer of 2015, enough water was caught to irrigate the system for over 4 years. Thus if it rains within 4 years, the system will be passively increasing the amount of water in the water table and shallow aquifers.
The final update from Al Baydha Project Co-founder Neal Spackman, 9 years in. How desertification resulted from the loss of an indigenous land management system, and how the land has changed since all inputs to the project were ceased in 2016. Neal moved on from Al Baydha in 2018 and can now be contacted at regenerativeresources.co
