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Countries build 9 mile wide tree wall across Africa to prevent Sahara advancing (2014)

leblancfg 6y ago
Now that’s a wall I can get behind.
- padraic7a 6y ago
  Unfortunately the Great Wall doesn't seem to be doing so well. This article is from 2024. I looked for updates and found the Wikipedia page. It contains some contradictory statistics but this is the most recent: "In September 2020 it was reported that the Great Green Wall had only covered 4% of the planned area". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
  - woofie11 6y ago
    That's common in the region. You announce major new projects, start them, and don't finish them. New leadership comes in, ignores the old projects, and starts a new set. You don't fix or finish old things started by your predecessor. You start building new ones.
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      > in the region Nah, that happens everywhere (at least where governments change every few years).
      - woofie11 6y ago
        There's a difference of scale. EU, US, China, Korea, Japan, etc. have some of this, but also successfully have long-running projects. Things build up over time. You have major institutions and infrastructure maintained over multiple administrations. This problem is common everywhere, but it's extreme in most ECOWAS countries.
  - Someone 6y ago
    https://catalogue.unccd.int/1551_GGW_Report_ENG_Final_040920.pdf https://catalogue.unccd.int/1551_GGW_Report_ENG_Final_040920... says they pivoted a bit: “The aim of the GGW was originally to create a long vegetation barrier between the 100 and 400 mm isohyets, including ramps, and over a length of at least 7000 km along the Sahel, being roughly 15 km wide. In recent years this vision has evolved into an integrated ecosystem management approach, striving for a mosaic of different land use and production systems, including sustainable dryland management and restoration, the regeneration of natural vegetation as well as water retention and conservation measures” I think that makes it hard to report % completed. Also, 4% is a lot of land (that same PDF says they currently target about 1½ million km² of land. That’s a lot more than that 7,000 by 15 km band originally envisioned (For comparison, the USA and Canada each are about 10 million km², so that would be about 7½% of North America), in the poorest part of the world. As https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-02/africas-great-green-wall-making-progress-two-fronts https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-02/africas-great-green-w... says “it will take at least a generation to make it a reality”
irthomasthomas 6y ago
The world is turning into a desert. Run for the hills! "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific literature would appear to disprove this thesis. IF the Sahara desert is expanding, it is a local issue. Elsewhere, the deserts are retreating and on average the trend is to global greening. E.g. Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 "Satellite records from 1982–2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area (browning). Ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilisation effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (4%)." Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 "Recent regional scale analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found extensive areas of “greening” in dryland areas of the Mediterranean, the Sahel, the Middle East and Northern China, as well as greening trends in Mongolia and South America. More recently, a global synthesis from 1982-2007 showed an overall “greening-up” trend over the Sahel belt, Mediterranean basin, China-Mongolia region and the drylands of South America." Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard 2014 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K "Evidence for global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2 uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Global greening refers to global net increases in the area of green canopy, stocks of carbon, and the duration of the growing season. The growing seasons in general have prolonged while the stock of biomass carbon has increased and the rate of deforestation has decelerated. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical data obtained through atmospheric CO2 observations, remote sensing, forest inventories and land use statistics." Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is projected from climate models). I hope all you empiricists will join me in celebrating this good news. Cheers!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PicassoCTs 6y ago
So what does protect this wall from human nature on a economic downturn? Everyone can build a wildlife preserve from thrust-fund money, that will be a paradise/oasis, until the money runs out. What makes this project sustainable? As in, when the money runs out, the dessert will return because its human nature to turn all but the sturdiest surroundings into a war-torn desert. Where does this redirect/change human nature?
- Someone 6y ago
  If you believe “its human nature to turn all but the sturdiest surroundings into a war-torn desert”, all hope is lost, indeed. If, on the other hand, you believe people can learn, or if you believe people can’t learn, but are driven by money, this project has a chance. As the article says, this forest brings jobs. Also, stopping the Sahara from growing protects arable land. So, I think he idea is that profit will protect this wall. The project has a site (https://www.greatgreenwall.org/ https://www.greatgreenwall.org/), by the way. It has more (likely biased to some degree) information on the project.

Now that’s a wall I can get behind.

padraic7a 6y ago
Unfortunately the Great Wall doesn't seem to be doing so well. This article is from 2024. I looked for updates and found the Wikipedia page. It contains some contradictory statistics but this is the most recent: "In September 2020 it was reported that the Great Green Wall had only covered 4% of the planned area". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
- woofie11 6y ago
  That's common in the region. You announce major new projects, start them, and don't finish them. New leadership comes in, ignores the old projects, and starts a new set. You don't fix or finish old things started by your predecessor. You start building new ones.
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    > in the region Nah, that happens everywhere (at least where governments change every few years).
    - woofie11 6y ago
      There's a difference of scale. EU, US, China, Korea, Japan, etc. have some of this, but also successfully have long-running projects. Things build up over time. You have major institutions and infrastructure maintained over multiple administrations. This problem is common everywhere, but it's extreme in most ECOWAS countries.
- Someone 6y ago
  https://catalogue.unccd.int/1551_GGW_Report_ENG_Final_040920.pdf https://catalogue.unccd.int/1551_GGW_Report_ENG_Final_040920... says they pivoted a bit: “The aim of the GGW was originally to create a long vegetation barrier between the 100 and 400 mm isohyets, including ramps, and over a length of at least 7000 km along the Sahel, being roughly 15 km wide. In recent years this vision has evolved into an integrated ecosystem management approach, striving for a mosaic of different land use and production systems, including sustainable dryland management and restoration, the regeneration of natural vegetation as well as water retention and conservation measures” I think that makes it hard to report % completed. Also, 4% is a lot of land (that same PDF says they currently target about 1½ million km² of land. That’s a lot more than that 7,000 by 15 km band originally envisioned (For comparison, the USA and Canada each are about 10 million km², so that would be about 7½% of North America), in the poorest part of the world. As https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-02/africas-great-green-wall-making-progress-two-fronts https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-02/africas-great-green-w... says “it will take at least a generation to make it a reality”

The world is turning into a desert. Run for the hills! "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific literature would appear to disprove this thesis. IF the Sahara desert is expanding, it is a local issue. Elsewhere, the deserts are retreating and on average the trend is to global greening. E.g. Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 "Satellite records from 1982–2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area (browning). Ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilisation effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (4%)." Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 "Recent regional scale analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found extensive areas of “greening” in dryland areas of the Mediterranean, the Sahel, the Middle East and Northern China, as well as greening trends in Mongolia and South America. More recently, a global synthesis from 1982-2007 showed an overall “greening-up” trend over the Sahel belt, Mediterranean basin, China-Mongolia region and the drylands of South America." Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard 2014 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K "Evidence for global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2 uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Global greening refers to global net increases in the area of green canopy, stocks of carbon, and the duration of the growing season. The growing seasons in general have prolonged while the stock of biomass carbon has increased and the rate of deforestation has decelerated. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical data obtained through atmospheric CO2 observations, remote sensing, forest inventories and land use statistics." Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is projected from climate models). I hope all you empiricists will join me in celebrating this good news. Cheers!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

PicassoCTs 6y ago

So what does protect this wall from human nature on a economic downturn? Everyone can build a wildlife preserve from thrust-fund money, that will be a paradise/oasis, until the money runs out. What makes this project sustainable? As in, when the money runs out, the dessert will return because its human nature to turn all but the sturdiest surroundings into a war-torn desert. Where does this redirect/change human nature?

Someone 6y ago
If you believe “its human nature to turn all but the sturdiest surroundings into a war-torn desert”, all hope is lost, indeed. If, on the other hand, you believe people can learn, or if you believe people can’t learn, but are driven by money, this project has a chance. As the article says, this forest brings jobs. Also, stopping the Sahara from growing protects arable land. So, I think he idea is that profit will protect this wall. The project has a site (https://www.greatgreenwall.org/ https://www.greatgreenwall.org/), by the way. It has more (likely biased to some degree) information on the project.