The Great Green wall of Africa

Imagine a green wall – 15km wide, and up to 8,000km long – a living green wall of trees and bushes, full of birds and other animals. Imagine it just south of the Sahara, from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in the east, all the way across the continent to Dakar, Senegal, in the west.

The building of this pan-African Great Green Wall (GGW) was approved by an international summit last february in the former German capital Bonn, a side event of the joint conference of the committees on science and technology and for the review of the implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The Sahel zone is the transition between the Sahara in the north and the African savannas in the south, and includes parts of Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.

“The Green Wall should be seen as a metaphor for the co-ordination of a variety of international projects, for economic development, environmental protection, against desertification, and to support political stability in the heart of Africa,” said Boubacar Cissé, African co-ordinator for the UN secretariat against desertification.

The GGW was first proposed in the 1980s by Thomas Sankara, then head of state in Burkina Faso, as a means to stop the growing of the Sahara. The idea was voiced again about 20 years later by the then Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who presented it to the African Union (AU) in 2005.

he GGW would have numerous advantages. Other than stopping desertification and erosion, the wall would protect water sources, such as Lake Chad, which has been drying up for decades, and restore or create habitats for biodiversity.

 In addition, the wall would provide energy resources; fruit, vegetables and other foodstuffs; support local economic development; and even political stability in the whole region, said Daniel André, of the UNCCD.

The famine in the Horn of Africa is the latest reminder of what scientists have been saying for years: Africa will suffer first and worst from the extra heat and drought from climate change over the coming decades. Famine is not the only reason that 750,000 people — half of them children — are likely to die in the Horn soon, according to the United Nations: Somalia, the epicentre of the famine, has been plagued by civil war and a non-functioning government for years. But this famine was brought to a head by the worst drought in 60 years, which has caused deprivation and hunger in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, both more stable countries.

 There has yet to be an international agreement of just how exactly to go about constructing the GGW while protecting ecology and the lives and social structures of the people that it would effect. The wall however is a step in the right direction and could prove to be mans greatest social engineering achievement.

Click for further reading and opinions for and against the GWW

Source: The Guardian