BY Kenan Atakishiyev Spanning across 11 countries in the Sahel region of Africa, the undertaking known as the Great Green Wall was envisioned in the global arena in 2005 and it soon gained ground in international organizations. In 2007, the African Union authorized the initiative and the countries to which it applied signed the documents affirming their commitment to build a wall against desertification. More specifically, the plan initially started centered around planting and growing a forest composed of millions of trees and other vegetation to create an 8.000km long and 15km wide barrier across the Sahel. However, some experts now think that the Great Green Wall has failed to take root. From the very first sapling planted in Senegal back in 2008, the project has had some hardships along the way— financial, logistical, and technical. Considering that the population of the Sahel region is expected to grow from 100 million to 350 million, the initiative sought to establish more viable, arable land to provide for the growing rural communities. When it was first signed to paper, the governments and international organizations mostly saw the deal as one that would simply require planting trees and other crops that in addition to stopping desertification would help combat climate change by absorbing the excess carbon in our atmosphere. However, as the project was implemented, many people saw that the trees planted were dying in large numbers and failing to meet their high expectations. Sometimes, promises to plant huge numbers of trees can be misleading. As Elvis Paul Tangem, the coordinator of the Great Green Wall Initiative for the African Union Commission, states, “You can plant a tree for $1, but you cannot grow a tree for $1.” After the details of the program had been scrutinized, the focus of the Great Green Wall shifted towards the concept of regreening, or “supporting small farmers in managing land to maximize water harvesting.” A major setback for the project was that after the trees had been planted in the barren lands, the residents of the communities nearby were not being paid enough to look after and care for these plants due to dwindling funds. Furthermore, saplings were sometimes planted in “uninhabited” areas, meaning that there was nobody around to tend for the organisms once they were planted. Aside from leaving the power in the hands of local farms and communities in the Sahel, regreening has promoted indigenous land use techniques and cooperation with the natural landscape. To provide some background on the bleak state that the project was developed to address, when France colonized parts of the Sahel in West Africa, there was a law in place that stated that any trees on a farmer’s property belonged to the government and that the farmers could be punished for cutting down the trees upon their own discretion. This of course led many Africans involved in agriculture to stay aloof from woody areas and in doing so left a countless number of trees alone without care. These detrimental policies resulted in the trees withering away and the topsoil consequently blowing away during dust storms, ultimately transforming the area into the desert next door. Once these issues were brought to light, international organizations and national entities understood that governments must take an approach that works in harmony with nature and gives farmers a level of independence to plant how they seem appropriate. With the new system of regreening and other techniques learned from trial and error, the Great Green Wall has a bright future not only for the region of the Sahel, but for the entire world. References
7 Comments
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