A project to plant a wall of trees stretching across Africa aims not only to halt desertification, but also to improve food security, create jobs, and offer young people an alternative to migration and extremism, environmental experts said on Thursday.
The planned Great Green Wall would see a 7,000km strip of vegetation reaching from Senegal in West Africa to Djibouti in East Africa, designed to trap the sands of the Sahara, halt the advance of the desert and restore 50 million hectares of land.
About 60 million Africans could be forced to leave their homes within five years as their land turns to desert, while two thirds of the continent’s arable land could be lost by 2025 due to growing desertification, according to the UN.
This could drive young people across Africa into joining militant groups, such as Boko Haram, or attempting to cross the Mediterranean to seek work in Europe, UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) spokeswoman Camila Nordheim-Larsen said.
“The Great Green Wall is about more than just planting and counting trees, it is about building resilience in communities and developing sustainable projects to give young people reasons to stay,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Dakar.
“A lack of opportunity is driving them away,” she said on the sidelines of a global conference where countries signed up to the initiative are presenting their national action plans.
Presented to the African Union in 2005 by the then-Nigerian president, the Great Green Wall initiative received US$4 billion of funding from signatories to the UN climate deal agreed in Paris last year, and has received pledges from France and the World Bank.
Critics of the project say it is a top-down approach to development, dependent on external funding and management, yet organizations such as the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) say the initiative has the backing of local communities.
“This project comes from African countries, and there is a will from affected communities,” OSS executive secretary Khatim Kherraz said.
About 15 percent of the wall of trees has been planted, mainly in Senegal, while villages in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have made progress in planting vegetation to be used in medicine and for food, according to the UN.
“There is a mobilization of local people, who are at the heart of restoration work and choosing what they want to plant,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization spokeswoman Nora Berrahmouni said.
The pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to “work, work, work, work and work” for her country has been named the catchphrase of the year, recognizing the effort Japan’s first female leader had to make to reach the top. Takaichi uttered the phrase in October when she was elected as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Many were initially as worried about her work ethic as supportive of her enthusiasm. In a country notorious for long working hours, especially for working women who are also burdened with homemaking and caregiving, overwork is a sensitive topic. The recognition triggered a
A plan by Switzerland’s right-wing People’s Party to cap the population at 10 million has the backing of almost half the country, according to a poll before an expected vote next year. The party, which has long campaigned against immigration, argues that too-fast population growth is overwhelming housing, transport and public services. The level of support comes despite the government urging voters to reject it, warning that strict curbs would damage the economy and prosperity, as Swiss companies depend on foreign workers. The poll by newspaper group Tamedia/20 Minuten and released yesterday showed that 48 percent of the population plan to vote
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
The Philippines deferred the awarding of a project that is part of a plan to build one of the world’s longest marine bridges after local opposition over the potential involvement of a Chinese company due to national security fears. The proposals are “undergoing thorough review” by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which acts as a lender and an overseer of the project to ensure it meets international environmental and governance standards, the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways said in a statement on Monday in response to queries from Bloomberg. The agency said it would announce the winning bidder once ADB
RSS