by Bruna Ciulli
The Sahel, which stretches from Senegal to Djibouti, is a semi-arid, ecogeographic region between the southern border of the Sahara Desert and the north of the savannahs. The Sahel has been particularly vulnerable to climate change, experiencing pronounced droughts since the late 1960s. Since then, the Sahel has experienced a process of rapid desertification. Mismanagement of land in the Sahel began under French colonial rule, when laws – which were then inherited by the independent nations of the Sahel – distinctly separated cleared land for crops from forest land. This practice destroyed the topsoil through exposure and erosion in the region, leading to poorer crop yields and plummeting biodiversity.
“Mismanagement of land in the Sahel began under French colonial rule”
The solution? To ‘regreen’ 8000km of land along the Sahel creating a Great Green Wall which will restore the land. Large-scale reintroduction of flora reduces aridity and soil erosion, thus halting or even reversing the damage of desertification. First imagined by Thomas Sankara 4 decades ago, this ambitious, albeit flashy project (“the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, 3 times the size of the Great Barrier Reef,” the Great Green Wall website notes), has evolved from a 2007 co-operative tree-planting program between 11 Sahel countries without much basis in environmental science.
Now involving 21 African nations, the project has taken on a more holistic social and environmental strategy. The Great Green Wall no longer aims to plant an entire forest along the Sahel, as originally imagined, but rather fosters the practical regeneration of farmers’ land using native plants, such as the Faidherbia albida tree, and native practices throughout the Sahel. As such, the aims of the project have become more explicitly humanitarian. Regeneration of land means regeneration in the economy, with 80% of the population of the Sahel reliant on some form of agriculture for income generation. The project would strengthen local economies, reducing social issues such as poverty and forced migration.
“The Great Green Wall no longer aims to plant an entire forest along the Sahel, as originally imagined, but rather fosters the practical regeneration of farmers’ land using native plants… and native practices”
The Great Green Wall has been lauded as a pan-African movement, but progress has been contingent on national and local governance, and monitoring has been a challenge. For example, it is unknown how many of the 12 million saplings planted in Senegal have survived. The Guardian noted that the project was a success in Ethiopia, where “5.5bn seedlings on 151,000 hectares of new forest and 792,000 of new terraces” were planted, versus the far lower scale of Burkina Faso’s 16.6 million plants.
“the ‘Great Green Wall’ may mean different things in different places, as such aims and action may have fragmented slightly within the 21 nations involved.”
However, this may not paint a full picture. As Elvis Paul Tangem, coordinator of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative notes, “large-scale restoration” has been achieved in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, ahead of other nations. In these nations the focus has been on water-management and integrated replanting on farms. It is clear that the ‘Great Green Wall’ may mean different things in different places, as such aims and action may have fragmented slightly within the 21 nations involved.
“Estimates suggest that approximately 4.3bn USD would have to be invested annually to complete the project by the desired year of 2030.”
Still, most experts agree that progress must be accelerated. As of 2020, 18% of the ‘mosaic’ had been completed and 4% of the land, about 4 million hectares, had been fully rehabilitated. UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed, a great proponent and supporter of the project, blames the lack of progress on a lack of funding from both the private and public sectors. Estimates suggest that approximately 4.3bn USD would have to be invested annually to complete the project by the desired year of 2030.
Financial partners tend to support nations directly, so as to have more control over the spending of their donations. While there was the potential to establish a trust, this will likely not go ahead. The money may exist, but the realities of organising the funding for such a large, pan-African project prove difficult. This exacerbates the varying results by nation. Hopefully as the project progresses and economies along the Sahel improve, momentum for regreening will naturally gather.
“When complete, the project will sequester approximately 250m tonnes of carbon”
In the inaugural decade of the project over 350,000 jobs were created, 10m people were trained in ‘sustainable land and water management,’ and 90m USD was brought in revenue. The project aims to create 10m jobs and bring in 16.2bn EUR in revenue, committing to climate resilient infrastructure, investment in local value chains, markets, and enterprises, ecosystem management and governance capabilities. When complete, the project will sequester approximately 250m tonnes of carbon. This is vital to regenerating life in the Sahel, as climate models highlight that when it comes to rainfall and drought, it is warming oceans, not poor land management practices, that are to blame.
The Great Green Wall may no longer be the headline-snatching, cure-all solution it was once touted to be, and progress may be slow, but it is an undeniably worthwhile initiative. Whether it reaches its 2030 goals or not, this reformed Great Green Wall encourages a variety of local agricultural practices, invests in the economies of the Sahel, encourages biodiversity, and provides a much-needed carbon sink for the greenhouse gas emissions that provoke a lack of rainfall.
Evergreen Trinity 