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ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE SAHEL

The Great Green Wall project was launched by the African Union in 2007 with the objective of combatting desertification by planting an enormous 8000-kilometre strip of vegetation across the entire Sahel, crossing 11 African countries from Djibouti in the east to Dakar in the west (Morrison 2016).

Image 1: Map depicting the Green Wall project plan. (Source)

The Sahel is a strip of land that spans 5,900-kilometres below the Sahara Desert from the Red Sea in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. The belt varies from several hundred to a thousand kilometres in width, covering an area of approximately 3-million square kilometres (Hill et al, 2017). The Sahel is home to a variety of ecosystems such as grasslands, savannas, steppes, shrublands and deserts (Prince et al 2007). It is a semi-arid region, known for its variable rainfall. The area has some of the world’s highest levels of poverty, and regular droughts and floods lead to shortages of food and drinking water. This can cause humanitarian crises leading to mass migration (Morrison 2016). In recent years, the Sahel has witnessed a deterioration in the quality of agrarian land due to environmental change and poor land management. This has resulted in widespread desertification and drought which has severely impacted the food security and livelihoods of communities living in the Sahel. The goals of the Great Green Wall project are to restore 100 million hectares of land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million green jobs in rural areas by 2030 (Morrison 2016).

This will support communities living along the Wall to:

1)      Grow fertile land.

2)      Grow economic opportunities.

3)      Grow food security.

4)      Grow community and ecosystem climate resilience.

 Environmental Change in the Sahel

Environmental change in the Sahel region is creating issues that are contributing to global warming. Poor land use practices such as over-farming and over-grazing have caused severe desertification, droughts and extreme weather events in the region (Favereau et al, 2009) Scientists predict that if desertification is not addressed through sustainable practices, Sahelian countries such as Niger could lose their whole landmass to desert due to unhindered untenable anthropogenic practices (Morrison 2016). Since the 1970s, the Sahel has experienced drought conditions on a regular basis due to anthropogenic pressures and climate change (Le blanc et al, 2007). The droughts have resulted in huge losses of cattle as well as famines such as the 2011 famine which endangered the lives of approximately 9.5 million Sahelians (Nicholson et al, 2012). Sahelians rely primarily on subsistence and agricultural farming as their main source of income making the region extremely vulnerable to rainfall variability. (Solidarités International, 2020) Extreme overuse of the soils by humans and cattle combined with shifting rainfall patterns as a result of climate change has caused largescale desertification in the Sahel region. The Sahara currently expands southwards at a rate of 0.6 kilometres per year. If desertification rates are sustained at this rate, it will adversely impact an estimated 500 million people who depend on the Sahel grasslands for survival (Prince et al 2007).

Can the Great Green Wall Initiative Halt Desertification?

In theory, afforestation could help to reverse desertification by preventing soil erosion and providing nutrients for other plants and crops to grow. However, the survival of tree saplings is determined by the level of care and water they receive. Approximately 80% of the trees planted in the Sahel region have not survived due to a lack of stable water resources (Tangem 2021). This is because a significant proportion of the trees were planted in remote areas away from towns and villages that could supervise the growing of saplings. However, the Great Green Wall project has evolved since 2007 and has now developed more effective methods of rejuvenating the Sahel through direct involvement and engagement with local communities. Through agroforestry, improved cropland management, agricultural diversification, integrated water management and forest management, local farms began to see trees emerging naturally (Tangem 2021).

Figure 2: Agroforestry in the Sahel. (source)

The Future of the Sahel Region

Scientists have projected that climate change will have a continued impact on the Sahel region in the future (Boulian et al, 2009). However, by helping local communities return to indigenous agricultural methods such as agricultural diversification and integrated water and forest management, desertification can be decelerated. Re-greening helps ecosystem’s maintain water and positively impacts local food production and famine. Therefore, well-managed re-greening could reduce the impacts of climate change for Sahelian communities.

 

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