How Africa is Reforesting the Sahara Desert into Forest - The Great Green Wall

The Primus presents how Africa plans to stop the Sahara from spreading. The Sahara Desert is expanding and turning Africa into a desert. The Sahara is one of the driest and hottest regions of the world, with a mean temperature somewhere over 30 degrees Celsius, so by no means is it welcoming. The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and the third largest desert overall, but its thirst for becoming even larger is yet uncovered. The desert itself isn't expanding as much as the Sahal is shrinking. Due to decades of overgrazing, climate change-induced drought, and poor farming practices that have stripped the once lush greenlands of the fertile topsoil needed to regenerate, cattle herders resort to the few remaining trees for animal fodder, denuding the landscape even further in a downward spiral of desertification. The Sahara Desert is expanding, and here is how researchers got to know about this happening. Deserts typically develop in the subtropics due to airflow that rises from the hotter equator and descends around the tropics. The Sahara Desert has been growing as tropical latitudes are shifting poleward at a rate of 30 miles each decade. A review of rainfall data reveals that since 1920, the now dry Sahara has been expanding, taking up 10% more space. How do you prevent a desert from expanding? The idea is quite simple. You plant more trees when you are dealing with degradation of lands. To deal with the issue, many African countries joined hands and thought of a plan to save their lands from desertification. It is called the Great Green Wall that acts as a smooth gradient between the desert and the arable land. The Great Green Wall is 10 miles wide and 4,350 miles long, bisecting a dozen countries from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. The solution sounds quite simple, but its practical implementation became an insurmountable task for the stakeholders. Funding was the first major issue as the country started this project based on the $3 billion they had raised, but the UN projected that it would cost at least 10 times more. After the official launch of the project in 2007, the project has hardly been able to achieve against its highly ambitious deadlines. It's impossible to call the UN's September 2020 status report optimistic. Only 4% of the Green Wall's 2030 goals have been met so far, and only one nation, i.e. Ethiopia, which has an extensive forestry effort, is home to half of that number. At the One Planet Summit in Paris in January 2020, donors pledged to raise $14.3 billion over the next five years for the project. For French President Emmanuel Macron, the Great Green Wall has to see the light of day. This project is of utmost importance for the farmers because once it's completed, Africa's Great Green Wall will reportedly be the largest living structure on the planet. This title would bring a lot of its benefits to the people involved, especially for the farmers. Analysts of agricultural and environmental policy predict that the additional funding provided by the French government, African Development Bank, World Bank, European Commission, and other sources will give the initiative a new lease on life. However, the initiative has less than 10 years to accomplish its objectives of creating 10 million green jobs, sequestering 250 million tons of carbon, restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land, and protecting Africa's biodiversity while lowering poverty. Farmers had more good news when it was revealed recently that the Great Green Wall Umbrella Program was an investment project in the works by the Green Climate Fund and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. It would ostensibly increase climate and would provide financial support for the rural inhabitants. Additionally, it would make sure that small-scale farmers and agribusinesses have improved access to markets and enhanced value chains. Finally, it would increase the use of solar energy and construct climate-resilient infrastructure, which would open up new business opportunities for jobs. So far, more than 5 million hectares of degraded land have been restored in Niger and 12 million trees planted in Senegal. Some 15 million land hectares have been restored in Ethiopia, 29,602 hectares in Burkina Faso, 52,930 hectares in Eritrea, and 120 hectares of land in Mali, among other places. Funding is not the only reason why this project is failing to flourish. By all accounts, lack of technical support and trained professionals is an equally big issue. Another problem is monitoring. Due to lack of monitoring services, a lot of expensive trees planted as a part of this project have already perished, which means millions of dollars are already wasted. Countries lack the capacities and financial means to report and evaluate the progress. Insufficient reporting causes donors to lose confidence in the project and become less likely to fund it. Moreover, the Great Green Wall lacks political support or the environmental policy agenda from the government of the respective countries. Together, these problems have hampered the whole project a lot. However, if you take a hard look at the situation, there is some reason to be optimistic, particularly following the funding from the France event. People now have examples like Niger, where trees suited to the soil were planted using scientific knowledge. Farmers also gained a lot of knowledge from this practice, which will later prove beneficial for the country's agricultural-based economy. With that, guys, it is time to wrap up today's video. If you have any opinions, feel free to tell us in the comment section down below. 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