To combat the threat posed by the Sahara desert on the economies of countries in the Sahel region, 21 African nations are now committed to build and maintain the “Great Green Wall,” a chain of forests and woodlands spreading across the entire continent at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert.
According to a report on kindling.xyz , an online medium, the project was initially launched in 2007 by 11 countries, the initiative has now been joined by ten more. It is considered the world’s largest ecosystem restoration project by the UN Environment Programme.
The project aims to address many of the continent’s core challenges at once. Most directly, it provides a physical barrier to ward off the spread of the Sahara. The Sahara has been moving gradually south for millennia, encroaching on and disrupting local livelihoods.
However climate change has accelerated this process, creating a major economic and environmental threat to the nations of the Sahel, many of which are already among the world’s poorest and least developed.
The wall will reclaim 247 million acres of land by the year 2030, which can then be used for more economically productive purposes like agriculture and livestock. More trees will result in more rainfall being diverted back into the land, and therefore more water available to communities and ecosystems.
The new trees will capture around 250 million metric tons of carbon every year, roughly equivalent to removing all of California’s cars from the road for more than three year. The process of planting and maintaining the wall will also create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the course of the next several years.
The effort is estimated to cost $8 billion USD and be completed by 2030. It is currently about 15% complete.
According to data released by United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Economic Analysis, most countries involved in the Great Green Wall project in the continent are among the least developed nations.
The least developed countries (LDCs) are low-income countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable development. They are highly vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks and have low levels of human assets.
The LDCs have exclusive access to certain international support measures in particular in the areas of development assistance and trade.
