How Africa is Turning the Sahara Desert Green

The Sahara Desert is like nowhere else on Earth. For some, the vast emptiness of the desert landscape offers a welcome escape from the hustle of the everyday world, while for others, the punishing sweltering heat all but bakes their lives away. The accumulation of windblown and rippled sand, however, presents one of nature's most interesting and beautiful phenomena. The spectacular terrain, however, does not tell the full story of the Sahara. You see, the Sahara Desert is one of the harshest environments on Earth. The hottest temperature ever recorded is 58 degrees Celsius, that is well over 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Rainfall ranges from to about 3 inches of rain per year, with some locations not seeing rain for several years at a time. Nearly a third of the African continent, it covers 3.6 million square miles or 9.4 million square kilometers, about the size of the United States, that is, including Alaska and Hawaii. This expansive wilderness is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic, which are cold deserts. The desolate expanse comprises almost all of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean seacoast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna. The enormity of the desert spans 10 countries, Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia. While all deserts, including the Sahara, increase in size during the dry season and decrease during the wet season, human-caused climate change in conjunction with some natural climate cycles are causing the Sahara Desert to grow more and shrink less. Since 1920, the Sahara has grown beyond its initial boundaries and gobbled up more space, growing by nearly 10%. The desert is advancing south into more tropical terrain, turning green vegetation dry and soil once used for farming into barren ground. Despite the global north being the most significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, it is people like those living in the Sahel who are paying the price. The Sahel community are on the front lines of the climate crisis, dealing with persistent droughts, famines, and rapidly depleting natural resources on an ongoing basis. As a result, millions of people across the region, from Senegal to Djibouti, are being left to handle the severe repercussions of the climate emergency. The continent as a whole is least responsible for human-caused climate change but is the most vulnerable to its effect because of its geography. It is, for example, a landmass almost evenly divided between the southern and northern hemispheres, creating a wide variety of climate zones. It is for this reason that African governments are fighting back. Ten African countries are moving ahead with an ambitious pan-African effort to protect arable land from the encroaching Sahara by planting trees from Senegal in the west all the way to Djibouti in the east. Dubbed the Great Green Wall of Africa, it is an African-led movement with an ambition to grow an 8,000-kilometer newest natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa. Designed to trap the halt the advance of the desert and restore 100 million hectares of land, it was initially intended to be just a line of trees stretching east to west to help tackle the Sahara expansion down south. However, the project quickly evolved into a tapestry of different environmental interventions using a range of ecological tools to construct a belt of greenery across the continent. Although trees are still the primary focus, other methods are being used to help restore the land based on specific biogeographical needs of an individual area. Once complete, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef. More than 10 years in and roughly 15% underway, the Great Green Wall looks to not only rein in climate change but also improve food security, create green jobs, and offer young people an alternative to migration and extremism. The United Nations predict over 50 million people will be at risk of being forced from their homes by unchecked desertification in the next decade, equivalent to the entire population of South Africa or South Korea. One major indirect effect of land degradation is the forced migration of humans. If the land in one area isn't providing the resources that people need to survive, such as adequate food supplies and clean water, then they will have to relocate. These migrations often begin as internal movements within countries, often from rural areas into cities. However, these types of internal migrations can lead to civil unrest as communities move from one area into another and come into conflict with the populations already there. This is where the Great Green Wall comes in. It has become the world's most ambitious reforestation agenda and could save an entire region from ecological collapse. The 15-kilometer-wide Green Wall is hoped to restore land. Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia have so far seen the most significant gains across the Sahel region. Over 17 million trees have been planted in Burkina Faso, equal to an area of about 31,000 acres. Nigeria has seen over 12 million acres of degraded land restored and 20,000 green jobs created, while Senegal has had more than 11 million trees planted, making 25,000 hectares of land fertile again. Mali and Niger have jointly created a green belt on more than 2,500 hectares of deserted land and planted more than 2 million seeds and seedlings of 15 native tree species. Ethiopia, in particular, has made great progress since 2007, reportedly restoring around 15 million hectares of desolate soil. In 2019, the country undertook a major national reforestation program with the ambitious target of planting 4 billion trees in just three months. The highlight was a single day on which it is reported people across the country turned out to help with planting 350 million tree seedlings. Ethiopia has reportedly lost nearly 70 percent of its native forests due to a growing population, which is the second largest in Africa, and an increased need for land for food production. By combating desertification in the area, the regions have begun to see increased rainfall as well as a more resilient and fertile agricultural space. One major problem the initiative is facing is insufficient monitoring. Individual nations provide their own estimates, but there are doubts as to how many of the 11 million trees planted in Senegal, for example, have survived. To reach the target of restoration of 100 million hectares of land by 2030, the Great Green Wall countries need to restore on average 8.2 million hectares of land every year at an annual financial investment of 4.3 billion U.S. dollars. The initiative also aims to create 10 million jobs in the process. Today, the project has grown from 10 countries to 21 African countries participating, with pledges of more funding piling up to get the wall completed fast. Desertification is the persistent degradation of dry land ecosystems by human activities and by climate change. It translates into scarcer rains and decreasing soil quality, which leads to less grazing for livestock and lower crop yield. What makes it so deadly is that it sort of creeps up on you. If a hurricane or a tornado hits, it gets all the attention from the government and communities galvanized to take it on. A desert's advance over a long period of time might capture many countries unawares. For instance, Lake Chad, once one of Africa's largest lakes, is in distress. The lake is shared by Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. Its basin, which extends as far as Algeria, Libya, and Sudan, offers a lifeline to nearly 40 million people. Over the last 60 years, the lake's size has decreased by 90 percent as a result of extended drought and the impacts of climate change. The surface area of the lake has plummeted from 26,000 square kilometers in the 1960s to less than 1,500 square kilometers today. The shrinking lake, which has been called an ecological disaster, was once Africa's third largest body of water and is a graphic example of expert warnings of how human activities can cause climate change that impacts the planet. Globally, droughts are getting more severe, frequent, and widespread, and can amplify tensions within and between communities. Dry lands account for about 41 percent of the world's land area, ranging from deserts such as the Sahara to croplands in Central Asia, the U.S. plains, and much of Australia. Many regions are becoming steadily more arid. Critics of the Green Wall Project say that Africa needs to diversify solutions to push back the Sahara. Some scientists have expressed skepticism about creating walls of trees when grasslands can be more effective in certain regions. There is also greater political support for investing in soil restoration and water management of productive areas rather than planting trees in remote, sparsely inhabited areas. This criticism has affected the objectives, if not the enthusiasm and the effectiveness of the Great Green Wall Project. It will take a combination to stabilize the sand and protect communities and livelihoods, and the Great Green Wall Initiative is listening to experts and adapting its approach. In order to prevent and reverse desertification, major policy interventions and changes in management approaches are needed. Such interventions should be implemented at local and global scales, with the active engagement of stakeholders and local communities. The Great Green Wall of Africa is a bold and ambitious idea and could be Africa's best bet. I hope you've enjoyed watching this video as much as I enjoyed making it. If so, why not hit the like button and consider subscribing. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.