Powellian Central Reclamation Basin

The Powellian Central Reclamation Basin (PCRB) is an overarching federal government which enforces a draconian system of water rights, land restoration, and environmental protection over the Tigris-Euphrates drainage basin and the Arabian peninsula. Arabia long having settled into a relatively prosperous federation comprising the Gulf Arab states, the collapse of the oil economy in the 2040s due to cheap green energy caused enormous turmoil throughout the Arab world. A vast expulsion of guest workers and those who had lived in the area for decades without citizenship saw the population of the region plummet. With the Inundation and the subsequent collapse of the West, vast destruction took place among the crown jewels of the Arab states. Dubai, Kuwait City, Basra, Baghdad, Muscat, the entire Qatari peninsula, the island of Bahrain, and many other cities were lost to the sea.

The collapse of trade with developed countries providing food, and the energy-export market saw an unbelievable food scarcity take hold across the region. The corrupt world of cleric-supported monarchies and stale dictatorships was quickly swept away, and a revolutionary system of government took place dedicated to the restoration of the natural environment of the Middle East to provide the ecological basis for food production. The Powellian regime spread from the ground throughout the Tigris-Euphrates basin, where scientists and local leaders worked to reforest the areas, desalinate the leeched soil, improve fertility, and thus provide food for a starving population. Belief in Islam, once a hallmark of the region, is now looked upon as old-fashioned and offering little to a government and younger generation which has reorganized itself along geographic and hydrological lines. The drainage basin now forms the basic unit of local politics within the PCRB, and the primary demand of the citizenry is the restoration (or some would say, creation) of a Garden of Eden-like environment. Through geosculpting processes, genetic engineering, and large-scale political projects, the PCRB is attempting to remove the human footprint from the environment altogether and return the region to a state of pristine nature. PCRB scientists and political leaders speak of the need to remove the taint of human activity from the region altogether, and have spoken openly of moving most of the population offworld to turn the region into a garden. More radical leaders seek to turn all of the solar system into one vast garden, a realm of maximum biological diversity supported by cutting edge genetics. Earth-based PCRB Resources and Technology