What we can learn from the Great Green Wall

Though Africa’s Sahel region emits less than 3% of the greenhouse gases the United States does, it is facing severe challenges under a changing climate. Over the past decade, the region — with naturally a tropical, semi-arid climate — has experienced a sharp rise in temperatures and increased drought as oceans warm because of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

The Sahel is also impacted by desertification, the result of French Colonial land-clearing techniques that have been used in Africa for decades. These changes only exacerbated the region’s high poverty rates — more than 20 million people in the Horn of Africa in 2017 were declared on the verge of starvation after droughts and food crisis.

The Great Green Wall may be the answer. This initiative hopes to grow a wall of trees across the entire width of Africa — some 4,350 miles long and 10 miles wide — to stop desertification, promote rural development, strengthen natural ecosystems, and improve living conditions across North Africa. 

Why focus on trees?  Trees keep the ground fertile and absorb water. They can be pruned for livestock fodder and fallen leaves can fertilize soil. When trees grow old they can be cut for fuel — a project normally completed by local women who are accustomed to walking for 2 hours to find wood.

Trees have other community benefits, too. They help improve water security and serve as natural filters for larger bodies of water. Improved water security again helps women and girls provide healthy and available water for their families — they no longer need to spend hours fetching it everyday. Farming trees also provides more jobs to local families across the desert.

This initiative is vital in a region with one of the youngest and fastest growing populations in the world. While addressing climate change is critical, it is also urgent to combine climate-specific approaches with ones targeting the increasing rates of violence and militarization in the region. The Great Green Wall does just that by confronting issues relating to global warming, drought, famine, conflict, and migration. 

Beyond its domestic benefits, the Great Green Wall and projects like it are crucial steps in humanity’s confrontation of global warming. In a study led by Jean-Francois Basting of ETH-Zurich, it was found that if we plant more than half a trillion trees, we could capture about 205 gigatons of carbon, thereby reducing atmospheric carbon by about 25%. The Great Green Wall is projected to absorb 250 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the year 2030 and is, therefore, vital to mitigating climate change globally.

Right now, the project is more than a decade in and roughly 15% finished. In Senegal alone, more than eleven million trees have already been planted. The project has also become a global symbol for the power of humans in the fight against global warming.

Climate change affects everyone and the Great Green Wall is a lesson in the importance of an expanded view of proactive environmental protection. Though industrialized countries like the US are largely responsible for the rise in global temperatures, a collaborative effort must be made through projects like the Great Green Wall to help those who are most harmed by global warming.

Global advocacy to support this movement can include putting pressure on governments and pushing for long-term investment in the project. It can also include signing the Great Green Pledge to make lobbying for the project more powerful. Support for local partners like Ecosia—a search engine that plants trees for the initiatives including the Great Green Wall every few times you look something up—can also make a difference. So far, Ecosia reports that to have planted over 111 million trees globally, many of which have been added to Africa’s Sahel region. 

Though it can be easy to lose hope looking at grim predictions for our future and worry that there is nothing that can be done to address the problem, it is important to draw hope from local initiatives like the Great Green Wall. From projects like this, we can become inspired and learn about future mitigation techniques. The international community should look to the Great Green Wall project as an example of cooperation between countries to fight against a common enemy: climate change.