Progress and Challenges of Combating Desertification in Africa from the Scope of the Great Green Wall

Africa is the continent most affected by desertification. Data from the UN Environment Program shows that about 45 percent of land in Africa has experienced some degree of desertification, of which 55 percent is at risk of further desertification. In an attempt to prevent the further expansion of the Sahara Desert, African countries have been controlling desertification under the Great Green Wall Initiative in recent years. And they have drawn upon China's programs and technologies in combating desertification and achieved remarkable results.

Progress of Africa's Great Green Wall

The Sahel region, situated south of the Sahara Desert and north of the Sudanian savanna, has become one of the most desertification-stricken regions in Africa due to natural and man-made factors such as overgrazing and resource exploitation. In a bid to prevent the southern expansion of the Sahara Desert, African countries have taken countermeasures, especially the Great Green Wall Initiative, which was launched in 2007 by the African Union. the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment adopted a regional coordination strategy for the implementation of Africa's Great Green Wall in 2012.

Plant seedlings at a desertification control site in Kano state, Nigeria, on June 5, 2023. This site is the location of a joint project implemented by the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography (XIEG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the African Desertification Control Initiative (ADCI) in Nigeria. (Image by Xinhua)

The Great Green Wall was initially aimed at planting a 7,700-kilometer-long and 15-kilometer-wide belt of vegetation across the Sahel, stretching from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. Today, the initiative has evolved into a comprehensive desertification control movement involving more than 20 countries and organizations. The aim now is to restore 100 million hectares of land by 2030, sequester 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million jobs.

As shown in a report released by the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, four million hectares of land in the original planning area were restored from 2007 to 2018, and a total of about 18 million hectares of land were restored if the planned expansion area was included. Moreover, there was an increase of 20% in plant biomass over 2007, and 350,000 jobs were created, and US $90 million in revenue was generated. The countries that made the most progress in land restoration are Ethiopia, Niger, and Senegal.

China's experience to push for the Great Green Wall

Marcelin Sanou, chief of the planning, monitoring-evaluation and information management at the Pan-African Agency for the Great Green Wall, said that the inspiration for the Africa's Green Great Wall came from China's Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Project stretching from Heilongjiang in the east to Xinjiang in the west. China has held multiple workshops and technical training courses on building Africa's Great Green Wall.

XIEG signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the secretariat of the Pan-African Great Green Wall in 2017 to carry out cooperation in the fields of ecosystem monitoring, sustainable use of land resources, personnel training, and technology transfer. The goal of the MoU was to enhance the capacity of African countries to prevent and control desertification.

LEI Jiaqiang, a researcher at XIEG and the director of the Pan-African Green Great Wall Research Center, said that with the help of Chinese experts, the two sides have identified the temporal and spatial pattern of the ecological environment in the Africa's Green Great Wall. This revealed the dynamic processes and trends of desertification in the Sahel region and enabled the identification of sensitive and key areas of land degradation, vegetation damage, and wind-sand hazards. Chinese and African experts have together created a desertification map of Africa’s Great Green Wall and established a database of case studies supporting the ecosystem management of Africa's Great Green Wall.

In terms of research and development, the two sides have paid attention to local conditions and established localized desertification prevention and control technology models, including a desert urban quicksand control model, a desert highway sand damage control model, a hilly land water collection and afforestation model, and a degraded grassland restoration model.

For instance, in response to the problems of grassland degradation and shrub invasion in Ethiopia, the two sides jointly established an ecological restoration and sustainable livelihood development model. Through approaches of "shrub removal and grass cultivation, pasture closure and rotational grazing, as well as penning and herding", remarkable results in vegetation restoration have been achieved.

In addition, China has provided methods for the prevention and control of desertification and quicksand such as the selection and breeding of highly resistant grass-shrub vegetation, multi-scale sand fixation composite grids, and the construction of drip irrigation vegetation in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. China has also proposed a "two zones and three belts" plan for the construction of a protection system for Nouakchott's surrounding areas, with satisfying results.

Challenges to move forward

According to estimates from the secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, in order to achieve the goal of restoring 100 million hectares of land by 2030, the rate of restoration should be increased to 8.2 million hectares per year, requiring the annual expenditure of between US $3.6 billion to US $4.3 billion. The secretariat believes that the implementation of the Great Green Wall faces internal and external challenges such as unstable security conditions, a shortage of funds, dated technology, poor coordination, and large gaps in progress among countries. Hence, the Great Green Wall faces challenges.

Ten of the 11 founding countries of the Great Green Wall are some of the least developed countries, and inadequate funding has hindered effective infrastructure, leading to problems such as weak irrigation systems and severe project delays.

Experts believe that African countries should strengthen technical training, establish information-sharing platforms, build public consensus, and mobilize ordinary people to work on maintaining vegetation as well as collect and evaluate field data.

LEI Jiaqiang also pointed out that desertification is a global issue. He hopes to promote China's approaches for building the Great Green Wall through joint technical experiments, technical training, technical demonstrations, and other activities so that China's experiences in desertification prevention and control can benefit more people. 

Source: http://www.news.cn/20240826/14c1dd86da8349aaae2b76c69ff56555/c.html