Clean and replenish sources and cycles of water – Markus Dittrich about the Project Tamera in Portugal

Short summary:

Marcus Dietrich is working in Tamera as part of the ecological team. He is doing consultation, teaching, design for water retention inside and outside Tamara. Tamara is a land-based community in Odemira, Potugal, that aims to create healing biotopes (land-based cells of people living in community and living in healthy relationship among human beings and beyond the human sphere). The water retention project led by Marcis sits within this part of the project of creating healing biotopes. In this dry area of the south of Europe, he and his team are a building a water retention landscape, harvesting rainwater and aiming for zero runoff, so that they raise their groundwater table, providing drinking water for the community, growing food, doing reforestation work, pasture management, among others things. In the south of Portugal they are grappling with the effects of industrial agriculture and privatised water supply, which goes hand-in-hand with large dams that leave the landscape with the effect of desertification. People are leaving from the rural areas to cities to go for work. And land is being left to very degenerative practises of growing food and fibre for paper production. So within that challenging context Tamara is trying to create a model for a more regenerative way of life, of meeting their needs. They want to be a vibrant cell of life, to set another example.

“The water retention idea sits within this part of the project which is create healing biotopes which are land-based cells of people living in community and living in healthy relationship among human beings and also beyond the human sphere. And within that, having regenerative relationships with land, with how we grow our food, how we relate to water, how we relate to soil, plants, animals, everything”.

Markus Dittrich