Whether constructed to manipulate societies or assert order over natural environments, humans have long loved walls. As literal barriers between areas, walls have the power to either stave off powerful forces or confine them.
In the Sahel, a semi-arid region between the Sahara Desert of North Africa and the savannas of West Africa, international experts, national leaders, and local officials have conceived of a wall to keep the desert out. With modern crises like desertification and land degradation calling for a grand solution, the idea of a Great Green Wall, a 10-mile-wide swathe of trees designed to stretch more than 4,350 miles across the continent, is one of the grandest ever considered.
However, despite its planners’ grandiose ambitions, a wide range of ecological and practical issues have prevented the this literal wall of trees from being built. Fortunately, alternative processes can fight desertification more effectively, but in order to truly ensure its success, international and local policymakers alike must adapt their thinking to consider local needs and invest more into the project. The consequences of failure range from the continued degradation of a unique ecosystem to an exacerbated migration crisis and a proliferation of extremist groups.
Worrying Issues
Currently, the Sahel region faces a number of serious issues, such as poverty and instability caused by Boko Haram, and experts have increasingly pointed to a pervasive underlying culprit: land degradation.
Myriad factors have contributed to this environmental problem. Mohamed Bakarr, the lead environmental specialist at the Global Environmental Facility, told the HPR that he blames much of it on “poor land use practices, especially trying to grow crops that are not suitable for that particular system.” Growing crops such as maize “can easily expose the fragile ecosystem” because annual crops do not hold the soil in place, and the overgrazing of livestock has further reduced perennial vegetation. Finally, French colonial policies, which declared all trees property of the colonial government, discouraged individuals from planting trees and allowing natural regeneration.
Beyond agricultural practices, climate change continues to alter global temperature and precipitation patterns, creating a hotter and drier Sahel capable of supporting less plant life. Collectively, these factors have led to increased wind erosion, which removes topsoil and other nutrients, leaving only poor subsoils in place. Under these conditions, poor plowing and tilling techniques have only increased the potential for water erosion in the brief but intense Sahel rainstorms.
Desertification and land degradation in the area have led to dire consequences. Sedentary farmers, such as the Berom in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, have clashed with nomadic Fulani herdsmen over the increasingly limited supply of arable land capable of supporting crops or livestock. Additionally, as previously arable lands become infertile, many farmers and herders find that they cannot continue their traditional practices and must give up farming or ranching. Unfortunately, they lack the skills to find other occupations, leading to greater regional poverty.
In turn, this poverty has led to fears of greater instability throughout the region. Already, lack of opportunity in the Sahel has driven many to either move to cities with inadequate services or seek opportunities in Europe, where European governments have struggled to deal with the ensuing migration crisis.
Also worryingly, extremist groups like Boko Haram are taking advantage of poverty to recruit young men to join their cause. These groups can provide these men with a steady paycheck and a sense of manhood, and as they expand in power and influence, they only foster greater instability and violence in the region. As a result, policymakers throughout the Sahel region have sought solutions to stem the tide of desertification. For many, the most obvious came in the form of a proposal first espoused over six decades ago.
Fighting the “Spreading Cancer”
In 1952, British environmental scientist Richard St. Barbe Baker proposed a continuous line of trees spanning the Sahel in order to block wind-carried sands and sediments from the Sahara, improve soil quality, and mitigate wind erosion. Although his ideas never gained popularity at the time, they gained new traction when Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo started promoting them to the international community in 2005.
In 2007, the African Union threw its weight behind the concept, with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade touting it as the solution to fight the desert’s “spreading cancer.” Three years later, the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification also backed the idea at the 2011 Bonn Conference, with goals similar to Baker’s original proposition.
The project has certainly grown, both in international funding and prominence: 21 countries have joined the Great Green Wall Initiative since 2011, and donors have pledged more than $4 billion towards the project. In May 2016, the GGWI reaffirmed its commitment with the Dakar Declaration, which pledged to speed up tree planting efforts. By September 2016, it claimed that it had already planted more than 15 percent of the planned number of trees. However, the initiative faces numerous problems, from ecological to financial.
Problems with the Solution?
Ecologically, the idea of a literal wall of trees makes little sense. As Professor Rosetta Elkin of the Harvard Graduate School of Design told the HPR, pressing “agriculture and forests in a prairie-like landscape” like the Sahel is inane, especially since it never supported a forest in the first place. Instead, Elkin argues that planting and cultivating native grasses would be more conducive to maintaining and managing the Sahel’s grasslands.
Bakarr agreed, telling the HPR that “when you have an ecosystem where it’s very dry … then it becomes a logistical challenge to create a belt of trees that stretches the entire length of the Sahel.” Practical results bolstered Elkin and Bakarr’s conclusions: as a consequence of the region’s dry climate, more than 80 percent of trees planted in past projects died within two months of being planted.
Additionally, because forests demand a large quantity of water, planting trees will significantly stress the region’s native aquifers, which already replenish at a negligible rate. Elkin told the HPR that the Great Green Wall is “ a great irrigation project, [but] you can’t have that many trees without pumping paleozoic water to the surface.” From an ecological point of view, therefore, the idea of a literal wall of trees stretching across Africa is impractical at best and counterproductive at worst.
A lack of clear data about the project has also hampered its success. As Elkin observed in the journal Urbanography in 2015, “the complicated network of actors makes it difficult to measure effectiveness.” She further explained that the project’s backers have touted “small projects that work locally, but may not take to scaling up.” Even when data about the project is available, it has shown that the project still needs a lot of work to accomplish its goals.
Dr. Moctar Sacande, a biologist at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, noted in an interview with the HPR that progress has widely varied by country. According to him, current progress is clearly insufficient when compared to the amount needed to make an impact. With the United Nations’ goals calling for the restoration of 10 million hectares per year, Sacande stressed that the undertaking “is a massive task, and countries are lacking funding.” While the issue of replicating success on a large scale continues to worry many experts, many are also tailoring their solutions to the needs and ecologies of individual communities without adopting a one-size-fits-all approach.
New Approaches to Restoration
International agencies such as USAID and the World Bank have adopted some of these new solutions, and current plans have shifted to the most salient alternative: the idea of farmer-managed natural regeneration. In an interview with the HPR, Chris Reij, a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute and one of FMNR’s leading proponents, defined the concept for the HPR as “farmers protecting and managing trees of species which regenerate naturally on their farmland.” A simple and cost-effective solution, FMNR has an advantage over actively planting trees because it avoids the depletion of natural aquifers, maintains the current ecology of the Sahel, and utilizes the right species that can help regenerate the land. Reij unequivocally stated the necessity for FMNR: “There is no future for drylands without increasing the number of unfarmed trees.”
Aside from the ecological benefits, FMNR also benefits the communities of the Sahel. First, the increase in trees has reduced wind speed, which previously destroyed young crops and forced farmers to plant crops many times. With the decrease in wind speed, Reij explained that local farmers “only plant once instead of two, three, four times,” which reduces costs and wind erosion. Additionally, some trees fix nitrogen in the soil, improving soil fertility and crop yields. In turn, this improves food supply in the region, which reduces famine and allows farmers to sell their food surpluses as an extra source of income. During drought years, trees serve as insurance policies: farmers can cut trees, sell them as firewood or construction wood, and purchase grain on the market, helping them to avoid starvation.
Furthermore, FMNR has empowered women, who generally care for children, cook meals, and gather water and firewood. As Reij told the HPR, “Twenty years ago, [they] had to walk two and a half hours a day to collect firewood. Now they walk half an hour a day on average, because they can collect firewood from their own fields, simply by pruning their own trees.” Sacande went on to explain how “non-timber forest production” can enable farmers to tap the international demand for shea butter and gum arabic, which are produced by the African shea tree and acacia tree, respectively, to make a living while also helping to restore the land. While the additional income helps all farmers, it helps female farmers specifically by enabling them to set up a financial safety net. As Reij said, the aphorism “the tree is our granary” perfectly sums up the benefits of FMNR.
Other practices can help reduce water erosion in the Sahel. For example, the system of contour plowing, whereby farmers plow parallel to the land or along its natural contours, can slow water flow and channel formation. These practices reduce soil erosion by lowering the amount of water flowing across fields, improve soil quality, and provide extra sources of income.
The Future of the Sahel
To actually implement these ideas, international organizations will need to adopt strategies that avoid the traditional Western top-down approach. Reij proposed several ways to incentivize farmers to adopt alternative approaches to farming. First, national governments should look at adopting forestry policies that encourage agroforestry and recognize farmers’ ownership of unfarmed trees. As Reij put it, “Ownership is key. If farmers do not perceive that they own the trees on their farmland, they will not invest in trees.”
Second, Reij proposed the development of “radio programs with experienced farmers” and “farmer-to-farmer study visits.” He elaborated that farmers might not trust foreign experts who come in to preach these reforms, but that they would trust fellow farmers in similar situations explaining the benefits of new land use practices.
Clearly, the new ideas of FMNR represent a massive improvement over the old idea of a literal wall of trees, which was infeasible at best and counterproductive at worst. However, governments must expand their work to incentivize FMNR and scale it up from a foundation of recent successes. They must devote more funding to the GGWI, NGOs, and local governments, all of whom work with the individual stakeholders on the ground. Additionally, governments must simplify organizational lines, consolidate committees, create more substantial data collection initiatives, and work carefully with stakeholders to develop individualized plans for each region. Above all, the Sahel must fully embrace FMNR and other practices that reflect the reality of the climate on the ground and create a mosaic of land use practices, not a wall.