In the mid-1980s, a terrible drought ravaged the Sahel, a strip that crosses Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and lies between the Sahara desert and the savannas and jungles of the Gulf of Guinea and central Africa. The inhabitants of the Sahel, an area where around 150 million people live, suffered a terrible famine and many had to emigrate.
It was not the first drought suffered in this area of Africa, and for years the problem of desertification had been talked about. In 1996 the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification came into force, which defines it as “ the degradation of the lands of arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones resulting from various factors, such as climatic variations and human activities ”.
This definition is important, as it expressly indicates that the overexploitation of resources and intensive grazing were also responsible for the recurrent droughts suffered by the Sahel, an idea that FAO had already influenced when the 1984 famine broke out: “… drought alone does not lead to resource degradation in the short term. Other factors are at play, such as population growth, the expansion of agriculture leading to deforestation and rapid urbanization (which increases the demand for fuelwood). Furthermore, changes in political, economic and social institutions, both at the national and regional levels, have reduced local autonomy and the ability to undertake joint projects ”, indicated an article, signed by Jean Gorse, director of the Bank’s working group. World Report on Desertification in West Africa, in the International Journal of Forestry and Forest Industries edited by FAO.
The Great Green Wall
The Great Green Wall is an initiative that was launched in 2007 and that aims, literally, to create a great green wall of more than 8,000 kilometers that runs through the Sahel and contributes to slowing down the advance of desertification, restoring damaged ecosystems and recovering fertile lands. The idea came from the African Union and has been supported by FAO, the European Union and the World Bank, and partly reflects the heritage of the Kenyan environmental leader Wangari Maathai (1940-2011), who received the 2004 Nobel Prize for La Paz and founded the Green Belt Movement, a project that has African women as the protagonist and thanks to which millions of trees have already been planted in Kenya.
As explained in this Nobbot article, since its inception a little more than ten years ago, the initiative has managed to cover about 15% of the land, millions of hectares of degraded land have been restored and many jobs associated with it have also been created. The Great Green Wall project.
The recovery of fertile lands, the possibility of recovering grazing, the function of trees as regulating agents of temperatures and carbon sequestration as a measure to mitigate climate change with some of the benefits derived from this macro-project.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals
As explained in the project page The Great Green Wall , this initiative contributes directly to the achievement of almost all the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN for the year 2030. “ The creation of a green wall across the Sahel is a lot rather than restoring degraded lands. This initiative combats poverty and hunger, generates local resistance to climate change, improves health and well-being, creates jobs, increases economic opportunities and a long etcetera ”, it is explained on its website.
Criticism of the Great Green Wall
One of the main criticisms that the project received in its origins came from the scientific community, which recalled that, although in the collective imagination it seems that planting trees is the solution to all environmental problems, the reality is that natural vegetation in many areas of the planet is made up of non-tree species. Rather than planting trees haphazardly, it is more advisable to identify the local flora to protect it and promote the natural regeneration of these species.
Similar criticisms have been received in our country by the project “La Gran Acorned Ibérica”, an initiative that aims to sow millions of acorns throughout the peninsula. It is a project full of goodwill and which makes current environmental problems highly visible but, as indicated by a panel of experts in this article from The Conversation , “ fails to communicate that neither all places need trees nor all ecosystems they are wooded. This can lead to confuse restoration with afforestation (although both may imply improvement of ecosystem services) ”.
Ultimately, the solution would be to carry out ecosystem restoration actions, planned with the advice of experts in the field, something that The Great Green Wall project has been able to integrate because, as we have already commented, in recent years not only have there been trees planted, but millions of hectares of degraded land have also been restored.
An inspiring project
In August 2019, those attending the Venice International Film Festival were able to attend the premiere of the documentary The Great Green Wall , directed by Jared P. Scott, which has contributed to giving the initiative more visibility.
A few weeks later, FAO announced a new plan to support nature-based solutions to climate change: The Great Green Wall for Cities , which aims to restore and create new urban forests in various cities in the Sahel and Central Asia.
It has just been 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but many human rights organizations denounce the existence of many more walls that divide the world in the 21st century. With its pluses and minuses, and in a context of world politics and international relations as convulsive as the current one, perhaps the creation of more green walls and fewer concrete walls is the solution to our problems.
