Desertification has negatively affected the area south of the Sahara Desert, but one initiative is fighting back.
Desertification management in Morocco. Richard Allaway. CC BY 2.0.
Desertification is defined as the human-caused permanent degradation of land that was once arable. It usually takes place in areas with low rainfall called drylands, which comprise over 40% of the earth’s surface area. While desertification has always occurred throughout earth’s history, the rate is increasing due to climate change, since changing precipitation patterns has made more land susceptible to it.
There are several methods where land can degrade. Erosion can degrade the land; the loss of soil fertility can do the same as well. A decrease in soil fertility can occur when farmers plant the same type of crop repeatedly, and those crops take in all the nutrients from the soil, leaving it barren after a number of years. Traditionally, crop rotation, where a different crop is planted in the same plot year after year, has been used to replenish the nutrients in the soil.
The Sahel, the region immediately south of the Sahara Desert, is particularly vulnerable to desertification today. The region cycles between periods of abundant rainfall and periods of low rainfall, with the latter contributing to famine. The effects of droughts are magnified by poor land-use management, such as overgrazing, which leads to the degradation of the land.
Because of that, the Sahara Desert is slowly creeping south, threatening land that was once home to farms and pastures. The land of the Sahel is yielding less, and water is becoming more scarce. People cannot live in those areas without a stable supply of water, causing mass migrations out of the region and forcing many to lose their traditional way of life.
The Great Green Wall initiative aims to plant trees across the African continent to stop the spread of the Sahara Desert. goTraveltipster. CC BY 2.0.
However, there are efforts being made to fight back against the desertification of the Sahel. The Great Green Wall is an initiative designed to stop the encroachment of the Sahara Desert into the Sahel. That initiative entails planting trees along a 8,000-kilometer (5,000 miles) stretch of land south of the Sahara, which will impact 22 countries. The African Union started the project in 2007, and it is about 15% completed as of right now. It will be the world’s largest living structure, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Green Wall will also provide benefits other than simply stopping the growth of the Sahara Desert. It is projected to improve millions of lives, providing opportunities to one of the poorest places in the world. According to their website, “since the birth of the initiative, life has started coming back to the land, bringing improved food security, jobs and stability to people’s lives”. The Great Green Wall will also directly impact the attainment of several Sustainable Development Goals set up by the United Nations.
While desertification has sapped the livelihoods of many in the Sahel, the Great Green Wall aims to plant a wall of trees to limit the spread of the Sahara Desert and can contribute to the rebound of the region.
Bryan Fok
Bryan is currently a History and Global Affairs major at the University of Notre Dame. He aims to apply the notion of Integral Human Development as a framework for analyzing global issues. He enjoys hiking and visiting national parks.