The Great Green Wall: A Wall of Hope or a Mirage?

Conceived as a symbol of hope in the fight against environmental degradation in the Sahel region of Africa, the Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative aims to reverse the damage inflicted upon the fragile ecosystem through reforestation. However, the project has faced numerous challenges as its progress has been hindered by the complex interplay of environmental, socio-cultural, and political factors prevalent in the region.

—

In 2007, the Africa Union (AU) General Assembly adopted a resolution to implement the Great Green Wall (GGW) project across the Sahel region. The GGW – an ecological reclamation – aims to combat desertification and ecosystem degradation by restoring at least 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequestering 250 million metric tons of carbon, and creating 10 million green jobs by 2030. The project is expected to cover a landmass of nearly 8,000 kilometres (4,971 miles) with a width of 15 kilometres (9.3 mi), stretching from Djibouti through West Africa to Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. 

Over the last 60 years, the Sahel region has seen temperatures rise exponentially, owing to more frequent and intense heatwaves. These changes have contributed to famine, poverty, and armed conflicts that have plagued the region for four decades. Rapidly deteriorating natural ecosystems across the Sahel have exacerbated these issues, along with the effects of poor land and water management and unsustainable ecological practices. The region’s growing population, one of the fastest in the world, has also contributed to the problem by intensifying competition for food and water within the ecosystem that supports the lives and species of the region.

Beyond halting and reversing decades of ecosystem degradation across the Sahel, the project also aims to ensure food security, provide jobs, enhance livelihoods, and combat poverty in the region.

Making a Case for the Great Green Wall

The Sahel region experiences annual rainfall patterns that fluctuate between 200-800mm and is increasingly affected by flash and riverine flooding. These conditions results in crop failures for rainfed agriculture, which is catastrophic for the region, since about 80% of the population are subsistence farmers, pastoralists, and fishermen whose livelihoods heavily rely on crops, which, unfortunately, are extremely sensitive to variations in climatic conditions.

In 2020 alone, over 220,000 people were displaced, at least 45 were killed, and 10,000 hectares of cropped farmlands were destroyed in Niger alone due to droughts. The ecological implications of droughts are particularly significant for the Sahel, leading to desertification, reduced plant cover across the region, and the attenuation of key regional water sources such as the Lake Chad basin. The lake has shrunk to one-tenth of its original size since the 1970s, with the surface area contracting from 25,000 square kilometres (9,653 square miles) to just over 3,789 square kilometres in 2017, resulting in the loss of surrounding vegetation cover and rendering the ecosystem desolate.

More on the topic: Desertification in Africa: Causes, Effects and Solutions

Acute food shortages and rising poverty arose in the region in recent years as a consequence of environmental degradation, climate change, and an exponentially growing population. 

According to the World Bank, the population of the Sahel will grow from 200 million to 340 million by 2050, a growth that is seen as the primary driver of armed conflict in the region. Land productivity across the region has decreased, resulting in declining crop yields. Farmers have started seeking new fertile land for agriculture, encroaching on traditional grazing rangelands, and triggering conflicts between farmers and herders. 

Reports by the US Council on Foreign Relations and other researchers have also cited these local conflicts as a plausible alibi for the recruitment of vulnerable local farmers and herders by terrorist groups like the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP), a militant group and administrative division of the Islamic State (IS), and Boko Haram, an Islamist jihadist organization based in northeastern Nigeria but also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon, and Mali. 

Several experts attest that the socio-ecological problems in the Sahel have significantly eroded the ability of local communities to adapt. Against this background, the Great Green Wall initiative was established. 

Initially conceived as a reforestation intervention, the GGW has metamorphosed into a more ambitious strategy for regional ecosystem rejuvenation and a broader ecological, economic, and social enhancement vehicle for the Sahel. The project is now expected to lead to greater precipitation, a cooler surface temperature, and increased ground cover, which will protect the soil from encroaching desertification. 

More on the topic: The Great Green Wall Receives an Economic Boost, But Is It Enough to Save It?

Criticism of the GGW

The idea of the GGW is not entirely novel. A similar afforestation program was initiated in the United States in the 1930s, seeking to plant walls of trees from the Great Plains to Texas to slow the growth of the Dust Bowl. China also launched a Green Wall in the 1970s to halt the spread of sand dunes outside the Gobi Desert. 

Despite the potential of the GGW to restore ecosystems and stop desertification, it has been met with skepticism from several experts. They have raised concerns about the efficacy of this strategy and its capacity to halt and reverse ecological degradation across the Sahel region. The idea that the GGW is solely based on extensive tree planting as a form of ecosystem restoration has been contested by these academics. Critics of the initiative contend that the current complex ecological problems in the Sahel cannot be adequately addressed by a rigid wall of trees, arguing that livelihoods are better served through diversification and dynamic fine-tuning of strategies, as demanded by specific local risks and milieus.

According to Chris Reji, a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, the 20% survival rate of newly planted trees in the Sahara since the 1980s is evidence of the ineffectiveness and efficacy of the current afforestation approach of the GGW. Experts are also concerned that improperly managed afforestation could potentially result in the variation of biomes and the introduction of non-native and potentially invasive species, depriving local species of their habitats and causing a significant loss of agricultural revenue. 

In a statement to the Indigenous People of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), Sada Albachir, the head of a local Tuareg organization in Niger, criticized the introduction of non-native species, which led to the distortion of biodiversity and water scarcity in the region. For their part, indigenous pastoralist groups are worried that the GGW is disrupting the historical migration patterns of pastoralists, as they are presently unable to move as freely as they used to on account of this. In a socio-spatial context, growing expansive plantations as part of the GGW could lead to the displacement of people currently living on this land, a source of worry for most indigenous communities.

Scientific arguments have also been made against the initiative. Recent studies suggest that the project will significantly impact the regional climate and beyond. Palaeoclimatologist Deepak Chandan explained that the presence of thick vegetation in the Sahel region will result in a darker land surface instead of the blinding desert sands. This will cause the ground to absorb more heat. Moreover, denser vegetation affects the amount of dust in the atmosphere, reducing available dust particles’ ability to reflect sunlight into space. As a result, more solar radiation reaches the surrounding land, causing more heat and humidity relative to the ocean. This leads to larger differentials in atmospheric pressure, resulting in stronger monsoon winds.

Another major failing of the GGW, as indicated by another analysis, is the erratic monitoring of already implemented initiatives. The GGW initiative has been criticized for inadequate monitoring of already implemented initiatives. Experts have found that the metrics designed for monitoring progress do not fully grasp the specific socio-ecological frameworks and vulnerabilities of the communities involved.   

More on the topic: The Great Green Wall Is Failing, But its Legacy Could Still Be A Success

Progress 

Despite widespread criticism against the GGW, the project has achieved varying measures of success across participating countries: Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Chad.

.Unlike other ecological interventions in the region that often rely on international NGOs and civil society for traction, the GGW has maximized local knowledge to drive this ecosystem reclamation process. The initiative has grown beyond a mere tree planting campaign to one centred around sustainable indigenous land use practices. 

A 2020 report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) showed that the project has been split into smaller initiatives, promoting greater autonomy and biodiversity. This has allowed for a wider range of plant and tree species to be used in various sub-projects that are adapted to local social, economic, and environmental conditions. For example, subprojects in Burkina Faso and Niger have helped local farmers transform over 300,000 hectares of previously unproductive lands into arable land for food production. They achieved this by building deep planting pits (“zai”), which help retain water during the dry season, and stone barriers around planting fields to prevent runoffs.

However, in spite of this progress, the project has been encumbered by a paucity of funds, a reality that is presently hampering its ability to reach its target of covering 100 million hectares across the Sahel by 2030. GGW member states and their indigenous communities need to plant over 8 million trees annually, which requires funding of US$4.3 billion per year. 

Additionally, the socio-ecological concerns of the indigenous people living in this region need to be addressed and traditional land management systems incorporated into the GGW to avoid negatively impacting local livelihoods.

Furthermore, the perennial climate of instability in the Sahel region raises questions about the feasibility of completing the project. Presently, the Sahel region has earned the epithet of the “Coup Belt” of Africa due to the prevalence of military coups that have occurred in at least one-third of the countries in the area. At least one-third of countries in the region are led by military juntas that forcefully seized power from democratically elected governments. The most recent being Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, all of which have been suspended from the regional bloc – ECOWAS, further complicating the political situation in the region.  Additionally, there are swathes of ungovernable spaces being held by terror groups across the region. This political instability is a major obstacle to initiatives like the Great Green Wall project. In some areas, work has come to a halt, while in others, progress is shrouded in uncertainty, making it difficult to ascertain work progress.

Overall, while the GGW presents a novel and plausible strategy for the implementation to restore the degraded ecosystem of the region, its implementation has been slow and the pace of deforestation in the region remains alarming, risking it may overtake any meaningful remediation action taken to address it. Therefore, to ensure that the project is successful, a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework should be developed. Additionally, it is important to involve local communities in the planning and implementation of the project. Finally, regional governments across the Sahel must increase their efforts in both adaptation and mitigation measures to contain the effects of climate change and to ensure its long-term sustainability.

Featured image: Mission de l’ONU au Mali – UN Mission in Mali/Flickr