The Great Green Wall initiative is a multi-billion dollar environmental effort designed to combat desertification and restore degraded landscapes across the Sahel-Sahara region of North Africa. Originally adopted by the African Union in 2007, the project aims to reverse land degradation and hold back the expansion of the Sahara Desert through an integrated approach to ecosystem restoration.
The initiative focuses on the Sahel, a region where millions of people live on land undergoing desertification. This process is driven by a combination of climate change and poor land management, including unsustainable farming practices and overgrazing. These factors have led to a significant decline in the quality of arable land and have endangered more than 9,000 plant and animal species.
Project Goals and Scope
The project was initially conceived as a literal wall of trees stretching from Djibouti City, Djibouti, to Dakar, Senegal, with planned dimensions of 15 kilometers wide and 7,775 kilometers long. However, the concept has since evolved into a more complex strategy to create a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across North Africa.
Current objectives for the initiative include the following targets to be met by 2030:
- Restoring 100 million hectares (250 million acres) of degraded land.
- Capturing 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
- Creating 10 million jobs.
To achieve these goals, the initiative has moved beyond simple tree planting to promote water harvesting techniques, the protection of greenery, and the improvement of indigenous land use techniques.
Participating Nations and Implementation
Eleven countries in the Sahel-Sahara region have joined the effort to restore native plant life and combat land degradation. These participating nations are Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.
Implementation involves various interventions to support farming and protect vital resources. In Kaou, Chad, for example, women have installed barricades to stop shifting dunes from swamping oases that serve as the only source of farmland for their villages. Local elders note that these oases have been shrinking steadily due to stronger winds and hotter temperatures.
Challenges and the 2021 Accelerator
Despite its ambition, the project has faced significant obstacles. These include inadequate coordination among the participating countries, ongoing conflicts within the region, and a lack of sufficient funding.
In 2021, African organizers revamped the project with the introduction of the Great Green Wall Accelerator. This updated plan was developed based on United Nations findings and was authored by other leaders and Gilles Amadou Ouédraogo, the leader of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The Accelerator is specifically designed to ensure the initiative’s goals are met by 2030.
The urgency of the project is highlighted by the fact that temperatures in this region are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth, posing severe threats to food security, agricultural productivity, and the general quality of life for the population.