[dehai-news] (SD) Planting program under the auspices of Eritrea, 5 other countries to be finalised soon


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From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Wed Jul 16 2008 - 16:50:06 EDT


Community of Sahel–Saharan States: Transcontinental wall of trees gets
underway

Author: Esther Tola and Christina Scott

Wednesday 16 July 2008

 
'Wall of trees' gets underway
 
Three years after it was first proposed, preparations for an African
'wall of trees' to slow down the southwards spread of the Sahara desert
are finally getting underway. A plan for the proposed US$3 million,
two-year initial phase of the project — involving a belt of trees 7,000
kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide — was formally adopted at the
Community of Sahel–Saharan States (Cen-Sad) summit on rural development
and food security in Cotonou, Benin, last month (17–18 June).
 
North African nations have been promoting the idea of a Green Belt since
2005 (see African nations agree to boost desert research). The project
has been scaled down to reinforce and then expand on existing efforts,
and will not be a continent-wide wall of trees, despite the name of the
project. The Green Wall will involve two planting projects on the east
and west sides of Africa. The Inter-State Committee for Drought Control
in the Sahel region (CILSS) is working with scientific consultants and
representatives from the arid nations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania,
Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal to launch pilot planting projects planned
for September. Another planting programme, including Chad, Djibouti,
Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan, should be finalised within two months
under the auspices of six states in the Horn of Africa, linked through
the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
 
Mariam Aladji Boni Diallo, the Benin-based president of the Cen-Sad
summit organising committee, says she hopes the Green Wall will consist
of more than just trees. Diallo told SciDev.Net that "reforestation,
restoration of natural resources and the eventual development of fishing
and livestock breeding" were priorities for the project. However, she
said that funding for the project was still tentative. The
UNESCO-linked, non-profit Observatory of the Sahara and the Sahel has
prepared a report on the project, saying the labour-intensive project
should be used to create employment but advising that payments be partly
withheld for two years until the trees were established, and that
payment be based on plant growth.
 
The project will be monitored from Tripoli by Cen-Sad, and Senegal will
provide 'close technical cooperation' because of its success in fighting
desertification. Joséa Dossou Bodjrčnou, head of the Nature Tropicale,
an environmental education organisation at the Museum of Natural Science
in Benin, warned that the project can only be assessed once it stops
being words on paper and becomes action. "The population needs to be
sensitised to the importance of planting trees and taking care of them.
Otherwise, they would destroy them without knowing it's dangerous for
the ecosystem. All this work would lead to nothing," Bodjrčnou, told
SciDev.Net. "It's really important for the work to be done with local
experts in each country because they know which species can grow on
their soil. And we have to use local species, not imported ones."
 
Source Website: <http://www.scidev.net/en> www.scidev.net/en
 

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