The controversial plan to turn a desert green | CNN

Dutch engineer wants to transform Egypt ’s Sinai Peninsula into green, fertile land teeming with wildlife.

He has spent years fine tuning an initiative aimed at restoring plant and animal life to roughly 13,500 square miles of the Sinai Peninsula .

The goal: to suck up planet-heating carbon dioxide, increase rainfall and bring food and jobs to local people.

Critics say the concept is unproven and could negatively affect water and weather in ways we cannot predict.

The idea of regreening what was once a “land of milk and honey” was “extremely exciting,” Liu told CNN .

The Great Green Wall in Africa , for example, was launched in 2007 to help combat desertification.

Some experts are concerned about unintended consequences of huge, transformative projects.

But there are those who warn of the dangerous consequences of such projects.

Van der Hoeven is firmly in the latter camp. Regeneration of the natural world “is the only way out of the mess we are currently in,” he said. “There is no time anymore not to act. We should act and accept that we don’t know everything.”.