Natalie Topa's case study of a community on a mountain in Burundi and how she along with Daniel Lawton and the community turned the yearly fatal floods into fertile soil and food.

In 2019, the Danish Refugee Council provided Natalie Topa with an internal grant of $100,000 from DANIDA funding to establish an agroecosystem restoration demonstration site. Nataliewas working as the Regional Resilience and Livelihoods Coordinator for the East Africa and Great Lakes (DRC EAGL) office at the time. Burundi suffers water disasters in the form of land slides and flash floods as a result of massive deforestation of the country’s undulating landscape. This pilot project was invited to demonstrate how a community can take small and simple steps across the system to reduce extreme water events. The community of Kabingo Hill in Giharo province in Burundi was selected by the local government of having acute risk as 5 people had died over the years during flash floods that are ripping deep gullies in to the hill. Through a series of trainings lead by Natalie Topa, the community members, local leaders and the DRC team installed numerous strategies to deliver water in to productive systems and off of destructive paths. By pacifying water and delivering it to various types of contour-based water harvesting systems, the flood pressure has been reduced and land reclaimed where production was no longer viable in the paths of the flood waters.

If you're interested in learning more about erosion control check out the course below or sign up for the waitlist for an upcoming course with Natalie Topa and Regenerative Living.

Low Tech Erosion Control SELF PACED Course
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Designing for Displaced Persons in Extreme Environments with Natalie Topa (Working Title) Interest List
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Time Codes
0:00 Introduction to Natalie Tops and topic of Flood to Food
3:23 Landscape Erosion Forest Development:
4:24 Displacement Affected Population
4:51 Host Communities
5:28 Regenerative Design for Disaster Resilience and Food Security in Burundi
6:55 Sponge Gardens, Farms,Camp/Village and Watersheds
9:18 Four Main Types of Soil Erosion,Splash, Sheet,Rill and Gully
13:08 Elements of Design for Regenerative Resilience
16:08 Trees help build and protect soil structures
17:40 Organic matter and dead soils flow or blow away creating bare ground and evaporation which leads to drought
18:24 Ecological Infrastructure destroyed creates disaster dominoes
19:13 Geology, Hydrology and Soil
19:48 Addressing the mountain as a System
23:34 Foot path
24:13 Water behaviour on the Mountain
26:11 Alluvium - Compromised Infrastructure
27:13 Costly Destruction
27:45 Water path becomes straighter
29:01 A gully is born
31:00 Extreme erosion
31:09 Deadly Erosion Gullies
31:41 Evelinas' Farm
33:13 Stoney Rocky Mountain Top
33:52 Evelinas’ Permagarden
33:58 Gravity, Biology and Citizen Engineering
34:37 Capture Destructive Water
35:34 Ingredients for Resilience
36:44 Bioswale
37:28 Evelinas’ Permagarden Completed
38:38 Unpacking the problem - Community Engagement
40:09 Evelinas’ path water harvesting - Sponge Garden - Smile Berms
41:42 Discussing the Path Erosion and Gully Sequence
42:05 Training on Slowing,Spreading and Sinking Water
43:12 Getting water off the Path
44:36 Evelinas’ SPonge Farm - Microclimates
46:10 Smile Berms
47:37 Planting the Rain
50:29 Starting at the Top of the Mountain
52:44 Chop and Drop - Building the Forest Floor
53:20 Retrofitting existing trees and crops
53:49 Small Path Water Harvesting into unfarmed fields
54:01 Path Water Harvesting
54:02 Stone Check Dams
55:14 One Rock Dams - Poor Mans’ Swale
56:51 Pacifying water - plug the ravines with local leaky weirs
58:08 Immediate Results
59:17 Remote Coaching due to COVID
59:33 Halting the exit of nutrients
1:00:20 Land Restored and Reclaimed for new production of food, fodder and fertility
1:04:12 Biointensive Permaculture Gardens - NO Seed slavery, NO GMOs
1:06:53 Primary Swales across the mountain with foot bridges
1:08:40 Secondary Swales
1:09:10 Sponge Gardens - Parking Lot for Water
1:12:40 Demonstration, Demonstration, Demonstration
1:13:59 Shared learning dialogues
1:14:43 Nothing is as it Seems
1:15:00 Lessons Learned
1:22:48 Permacultures’ middle name is DEPENDS
1:25:15 All Hands on Deck

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