Africa’s Great Green Wall Of Trees To Fight The Sahara Desert

Posted on 24. Jun, 2010 by Ross in Africa, Climate Change

Despite the emphasis on developed countries to cut their carbon footprints, and the major developing nations such as India and China to reduce the carbon intensity of their growth, the biggest front in the war against climate change has opened up in Africa: the continent least responsible and most affected.

Planning for the Desertec Project - a giant network of solar power arrays across the Sahara set to provide the whole of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East with 15% of their energy needs - continues to gather momentum despite the gargantuan scope of the endeavour, but it is now not the only super-sized green project set to change the face of Africa. As well fighting the cause of climate change, though, Africa’s Great Green Wall will also help fight one of climate change’s worst predicted effects: accelerated desertification.

The spread of the Sahara Desert into ever-widened areas has been the biggest threat to the long-term economic prospects of much of north and west Africa. Increased temperatures due to climate change are expected to rapidly increase the process, destroying farmlands and towns and rendering greater tracts of the continent uninhabitable.

To stop the southwards advance of the Sahara, Senegal has become the main champion of an immensely ambitious landscape engineering project that would see the planting of a belt of trees from coast to coast across one of the widest parts of the continent. Dubbed the ‘Great Green Wall’, the drought-resistant native trees would stretch 7,775km across 11 different countries including Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali.

The primary goals of the Great Green Wall are to hold back further desertification by slowing soil erosion and helping water to filter into the ground. Local biodiversity will be maintained and stimulated by using trees native to the area, and the 11.6 million hectares of forest will provide fuel in the form of firewood for local people.

The reforestation of the Great Green Wall area also presents a huge carbon sequestration opportunity, and funding for the scheme will probably largely come through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism scheme which provides offsets for other countries or companies’ carbon emissions.

As well as creating national parks, botanical parks and other tourism-oriented protected areas, parts of the Great Green Wall would also see more direct commercial use. Some parts of the wall would function as orchards, managed forestries or farms, adding more to the local economies.

Image from the Great Green Wall website.