Sahara fills everything with sand and makes life unbearable: how to stop the desert

Is it possible to stop the Sahara, whose sands move several kilometers annually, absorbing more and more tracts of fertile land? The organizers and participants of the Great Green Wall project are sure that it is possible. African countries have joined forces to preserve the territories on which they can live, cultivate fields and graze pets, and we will tell you what results they have achieved.

The African Sahara Desert is the largest sandy desert on our planet. But scientists believe that not so long ago, only 15-20 thousand years ago, the Sahara was a fertile plain, and its transformation into a lifeless desert provoked overgrazing and climate change. Today, the desert treads on southern lands at a speed of 6-10 kilometers per year, filling the sands with fields and forcing people to leave their homes in search of a better place to live.

The Great Green Wall is a project that brings together 11 African countries: Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Eritrea, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti. In these countries there is a natural savannah zone located south of the Sahara. Here they are just going to save her from the onset of sand, planting millions of trees along the border. A huge forest belt should stretch across Africa, from the Atlantic coast in the west to the shores of the Red Sea in the east. The forest belt will consist of local, drought-resistant tree species, and its width after the completion of the project should be 15 kilometers.

At the moment, project implementation has begun in Senegal and Burkina Faso. With the financial assistance of international organizations, more than 10 million trees have already been planted.

It is worth noting that work to contain the Sahara sand was undertaken earlier, and they also included tree planting. But these were not so large-scale projects implemented in a small area. So, for example, in the north of Burkina Faso in the 80s of the last century, millions of trees were planted in the framework of the state program to combat the onset of the desert. In Kenya, a large-scale project to restore deforested forests was also implemented, which largely served as an impetus for the emergence of the Great Green Wall program.

If the project to create the Great Green Wall can be implemented at least partially, it will be a significant breakthrough in the fight against desertification in Africa and will improve the quality of life of people living south of the Sahara.