The Sahara is a living thing. It moves, it shift, but mostly it advances. And that threatens all the ares surrounding the vastness of the desert.
For those living in the Sahel, the drylands between the tropical savannahs and the Sahara desert, the slow creep of the desert threatens life and property.
Overgrazing and deforestation, mainly to use the tree limbs for fires, has created a favorable condition for even faster desertification.
850 million people are directly affected by the slow creep of desertification, although not all of them in Africa.
The UN is trying to address the problem through programs that promote planting to combat the phenomenon. The project aims at creating a veritable 'wall' of trees, on a 4,800 miles long line. The project has already started, and it will stretch from Senegal all the way to Djibouti.
The funding for the project took a long time to be approved and accumulated. The EU, the African Union and the World Bank are the principal investors. The project was approved in 2011.
For those who live in the proximity of the desert, the project brings new hope that the communities will be spared and chiefly, that the areas where some agriculture can be effected, that it will spare the people both from famine and the higher prices the shrinking of areas of cultivation engender.
So far, 12 million trees have been planted. The project principals hope the effort will cause the halting of the desertification process, but there are no guarantees. The most important thing, the botanists say, is to plant a mixture of flora that is adapted to the dry conditions of the lands that border the desert.
With the planting of trees, there has also been a return of wildlife to the previously barren land. Antelope, hyenas, porcupine and guinea fowl have visited and some remain. Their presence is formidable, since the interplay of fauna and flora is essential for re-establishing empoverished environments.
Source : The Independent / 6.17.13
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