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One of the world’s most ambitious environmental projects, the Great Green Wall, which covers the entire width of the African continent and was built to combat land degradation, has completed nearly 20 percent of its work and created thousands of jobs. greens in the region.
About 20 million hectares of land have been restored greening degraded land, creating more than 350,000 jobs and generating $ 90 million from 2007 to 2018, the project’s first status report released Monday said.
The green jobs created by the project include 120,000 jobs related to agricultural activities, helping to alleviate poverty to some extent in the region. More than 220,000 people received training on the sustainable production of agropastoral and non-timber products.
By the end of 2030, the project aims to build a 15 km wide green belt by planting trees in the Sahel region that extends up to 8,000 km. The plantations will create 10 million jobs and sequester more than 300 metric tons of climate-damaging carbon dioxide gas.
“It’s not just about planting trees,” said Abdoulaye Dia, executive secretary of the project’s Pan-African Agency. “It is about having a multisectoral initiative where trees will be planted, but at the same time, economic development must also be included within the activities, so that we can have sustainable development.”
Since more than 80 percent of the region’s population depends on rainfed agriculture for work, land degradation, which affects soil fertility, has resulted in the loss of livelihoods. As a result, families risk their lives to migrate to neighboring countries. Almost 65 percent of the African land has already been degraded.
Climate change has led to droughts, loss of fertile land, over-agriculture and unsustainable land management practices have further devastated soil fertility in the region, experts say.
The Great Green Wall, which requires strong collaboration between 11 African countries, will be a “game changer”, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Droughts (UNCCD), one of the three conventions involved in the draft. .
The project is generating immediate benefits for local communities and long-term ecosystem benefits internationally, said Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD. “It shows that when countries dare to dream, work together and make the right decisions, we can thrive and live in harmony with nature.”
The African initiative was first thought about in 2004 but saw the light of day in 2010. “So we’ve been exactly 10 years in the process,” said Louis Perroy, lead author of the report, while briefing online media.
But to meet the 2030 deadline, the project will have to complete 80 percent of the remaining work in the next 10 years, requiring the restoration of 8.2 million hectares of land each year with an investment of 4.3 thousand. million US dollars.
Ensuring the survival of planted trees is another major challenge, requiring regular monitoring and planting work in rainfed areas. “If you plant trees for three or four years, you want them to be there 20 years from now, and that’s not necessarily the case,” Perroy added.
Difficult terrain, collaboration between a dozen African countries and ensuring the flow of funds are just some of the obstacles. The experts involved in the project say that it is possible to meet the project deadline if governments join. But “I don’t have a crystal ball” to predict the future of the Great Green Wall, Perroy said.
“However, it is definitely an extremely challenging goal, which was set more than a decade ago. We have to understand that it was extremely ambitious. Can we reach the goal? It will take a lot of effort,” he said.
The ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic has slowed the momentum of project work, and policymakers are trying to include viral outbreaks as a component of the green wall. “It’s a setback, but it certainly provides clues to think of ways to rebuild better,” he added.
(Cover: The Great Green Wall would help bring about positive social and environmental change in Africa in the coming years. / UNCCD)
