*THE GREAT GREEN WALL | Primary Case
Algeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, The Gambia, Tunisia, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, The Gambia, Tunisia
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, African Union, 50 other organizations
| The Great Green Wall is an international living landscape mosaic of agroforestry interventions to combat anthropogenic desertification and food insecurity across the inhabited Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa. The population of the Sahel region is growing, along with rising temperatures and extended periods of drought. To meet the increasing demand for food production, groups across the Great Green Wall work across scales to develop new agroforestry systems by planting tree and staple crops, composting, and building micro topographical interventions that harvest water during the monsoon season to store through the year. The project includes indigenous techniques of participatory forest management pioneered by Yacouba Sawadogo and other farmers, restoration agriculture and rotational grazing. The emphasis on farmer-supported natural regeneration prioritizes spontaneously growing vegetation over saplings, though a nursery trade has evolved across the project to support afforestation efforts on bare land, particularly in Burkina Faso. The project was first conceptualized in the 1950s by an English botanist as a border wall of trees beneath the Sahara Desert, and has shifted from a single line of vegetation to the current landscape mosaic, which is estimated to be 15% complete, and is an ongoing initiative. The project is managed by over 50 governmental organizations, international NGOs and local landholders organized by the African Union and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Each of the twenty-one nations across the 8,000 kilometers of the Great Green Wall bring their own set of practices and techniques to the project, which increase the resilience of the initiative, which is monitored by aerial imagery that compares the area of vegetation across time periods. |
2002 - ongoing
29652645 acres
600 - 1200 feet above sea level
tags: arboriculture, agroforestry, regenerative agriculture, silvopasture, afforestation, sequestration, retention, absorption, resilience, community, ecological, NGO-driven, community-driven, training program, erosion, windstorm, drought, extreme heat, soil infertility, deforestation, habitat loss, environmental justice, cultural preservation, poverty, indigenous rights, famine, indigenous and traditional knowledge, commons, Africa, Afrotropical, Savanna/Tropical Grassland
References:
Elkin, Rosetta. “Planting the Desert: Cultivating Green Wall Infrastructure.” In Revising Green Infrastructure: Concepts Between Nature and Design, edited by Daniel Czechowski, Thomas Hauck, Georg Hausladen. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2015. 10.1201/b17639.
Batterbury, Simon. “Reviewed Works: Burkina Faso: New Life for the Sahel? By Robin Sharp”. African Affairs 95, no. 381 (1996): 599-604.
Kabore-Sawadogo, Seraphine, Korodjouma Ouattara, Mariam Balima, Issa Ouedraogo, San Traore, Maurice Savadogo and John Gowing. “Burkina Faso: A cradle of farm-scale technologies.” In Water Harvesting in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by William Critchley and John Gowing. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Reij, Chris, Gray Tappan and Melinda Smale. Agroenvironmental Transformation in the Sahel. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009. http://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/15847/filename/15848.pdf.
Sawadogo, Hamado. “Using soil and water conservation techniques to rehabilitate degraded lands in northwestern Burkina Faso.” In Sustainable Intensification: Increasing Productivity in African Food and Agricultural Systems, edited by Jules Petty, Camilla Toulmin and Stella Williams. New York: Earthscan, 2011.