NLCC Brad Lancaster

Brad Lancaster
Water Conservation Advocate and Practitioner, Tucson, AZ
Keynote Address

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 book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. He is also a co-founder of Neighborhood Foresters, which strives to repopulate Tuscon’s urban core with rain-irrigated, native food forests.

Brad has taught throughout North America as well as the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. His hometown projects have included working with the City of Tucson as well as other municipalities to legalize, incentivize, and provide guidance on water-harvesting systems, demonstration sites, and policy. 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 rainfall a year, Brad and his brother’s family harvest 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 water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape that incorporates wildlife habitat, beauty, medicinal plants, and more. The overall goal of his work is to empower individuals and communities 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 much more. 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.

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond