Press Kit

Brad’s bio

Longer version
Brad Lancaster is a dynamic teacher, consultant, and designer of regenerative systems that sustainably enhance local resources and our global potential. He is the author of the award-winning, best-selling book series Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond; the website www.HarvestingRainwater.com. He is also a co-founder of Neighborhood Foresters, which strives to repopulate Tucson’s urban core with rain-irrigated, native food forests.

Brad has taught throughout North America as well as in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. His hometown projects have included working with the City of Tucson and other municipalities to legalize, incentivize, and provide guidance on water-harvesting systems, demonstration sites, and policy. He has likewise collaborated with state agencies to promote practices that transform costly local “wastes” into free local resources. Brad’s aim is always to boost communities’ health—our true wealth—by using simple overlapping strategies to augment the region’s hydrology, ecosystems, and economies—living systems upon which we depend.

Brad lives his talk on an oasis-like demonstration site he created and continually improves with his brother, family, and neighbors in downtown Tucson, Arizona. On an eighth of an acre (0.05 ha) and surrounding public right-of-way, they harvest 100,000 gallons (378,000 liters) of rainwater a year where just 11 inches (280 mm) per year fall from the sky. In the surrounding neighborhood public rights-of-ways over a million gallons (4.5 million liters) of stormwater is annually harvested within tree-canopied and traffic-calming rain gardens. But it doesn’t end there. The potential of that water is then integrated with the simultaneous harvest of sun, wind, shade, and fertility. Brad is motivated in his work by the tens of thousands of people he has helped inspire to do likewise, go further, and continue our collective evolution.

Shorter version:
Brad Lancaster is the author of the award-winning Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond and co-founder of Neighborhood Foresters. Since 1993 Brad has run a successful permaculture education, design, and consultation business focused on integrated regenerative approaches to landscape design, planning, and living. In the Sonoran Desert, with just 11 inches (280 mmm) of average annual rainfall, he and his brother’s family harvest about 100,000 gallons (378,000 liters) of rainwater a year on an eighth-acre (0.05 ha) urban lot and adjoining right-of-way. This harvested water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape incorporating wildlife habitat, beauty, medicinal plants, and more. The goal of his book series and overall work is to empower his clients and community to make positive change in their own lives and neighborhoods—by harvesting and enhancing free on-site resources such as water, sun, wind, shade, community, and more. It’s catching on, as evidenced by tens of thousands of practitioners and demand for Brad’s work around the world.

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