
The Great Green Wall of Africa - lukashed
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-great-green-wall-of-africa
======
odiroot
Hi guys.

[Shameless plug warning]

We at Ecosia (www.ecosia.org) help build this thing. You can help as well by
using our search engine and other products.

If you have any questions I can probably answer them or ask my team for
details.

Here you can find some pictures from the planting process:
[http://blog.ecosia.org/post/109214958355/new-project-more-
tr...](http://blog.ecosia.org/post/109214958355/new-project-more-trees-ecosia-
has-always-been)

I could also provide some more if there's interest.

~~~
cpeterso
Exciting work! Can you share more about your "special tree-planting method"?

Have you read about the research into using microbes to transform the desert
sand into a sandstone wall to span the Sahara Desert?

[http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sandstone.html](http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sandstone.html)

~~~
odiroot
I haven't heard about the microbes, really interesting. I will definitely
share this article with my team.

As for the actual tree-planting, it's done by WeForest (www.weforest.org).

I don't remember full details about this method, so don't quote me on that (I
am a developer). It seems it's mostly about the soil preparation. They
displace the top layer in a shape that's more efficient for water storage,
preserving it from evaporating too fast, it lasts for longer.

As far as I remember seed selection and proper mixing of different species
plays a huge role. The forest starts small (which is simple and efficient)
from grasses, shrubs to bushes and finally to trees which then become mature.

This is a nice piece of nature hacking. I could try to find some sources on
the details of tree planting tomorrow.

What is even nicer this is nearly 100% done by the locals so it empowers the
local communities, gives them not only hope but real opportunities.

We make it easy for people who care to contribute while doing everyday tasks
on the Internet.

------
yitchelle
Wondering this amount of extra trees will help with global warming as well.

~~~
struppi
IIRC it does not help because the trees will decay into CO2 after they die. So
you'd basically have to bury the dead treas if you want to prevent the carbon
from entering the atmosphere again.

~~~
vidarh
If the forest dies and is replaced by desert again, you're right. Assuming the
forest survives, dying trees will be replaced by new one, and the result is
that new forest areas means more biomass to keep CO2 sequestered on an ongoing
basis.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Carbon is also captured by turning trees into something else, like lumber or
paper. A wood house can keep several tons of carbon locked up for a few
centuries.

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sanxiyn
We learned a lot about how to do this properly from projects like 三北防护林, so
hopefully we will succeed.

~~~
prawn
To save people time, the reference is the Three-North Shelter Forest Program -

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
North_Shelter_Forest_Prog...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
North_Shelter_Forest_Program)

"... a series of human-planted windbreaking forest strips (shelterbelts) in
China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert."

------
dzdt
This sounds like perhaps the biggest geo-engineering project in history. Hope
they have good science that it will work as hoped! This is not always obvious.
For instance, in the US lot of people have been planting eastern red cedar
trees in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, and Colorado for shelterbelts
and reforestation. But it seems the tree worsens drought conditions in natural
grasslands by capturing available water. And it is vulnerable to fire, but
with infrequent wildfires the trees grow large until uncontrollable fires
break out. See e.g. [http://www.fws.gov/mountain-
prairie/pfw/r6pfw15.htm](http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/pfw/r6pfw15.htm)

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kephra
I wonder why Acacia?

This plant is not native to Africa, but only from Australian continent. I
checked other sources, and found references to "Hardy, drought-resistant
acacia trees now dig their roots into 330 miles of northern Senegal's
Tessekere-Widu rural region. Planting began in 2008."

What are the dangers of planting a foreign tree monoculture without importing
the wildlife that supports them? Why didn't they use a native African tree?

~~~
BramEsposito
Acacia is a genus, with species in both Africa and Australia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia).

~~~
kephra
_sorry_ /me stupid kraut trapped by Wikipedia, and 2005 plant
reclassification.

The German Acacia Wikipedia entry only contains the genus Acacia, while
"Akazien" points to the tribe that is including all those plants that are
normally known under the common name of acacia.

Btw, the picture of the English wikipedia also shows that the genus Acacia is
only native to Australia. I guess they are planting Senegalia and not Acacia
there. Same plant, it just got renamed 10 years ago.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegalia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegalia)

------
whyenot
What keeps people from chopping down the trees and using them for firewood --
why many areas of northern Africa became deforested in the first place?

~~~
dEnigma
Fences and guns, probably.

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thomasfl
Frustrating not being able to support this. The planet has a fever and
religious US congress members, scynical chinese and russian cleptocrats won't
do anything.

~~~
sanxiyn
China plants more trees than the rest of world combined. Your cynicism against
China is misdirected.

~~~
hueving
China emits more CO2 than any country as well. Not as misdirected as you would
think.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Mostly as the world's factory, I would add. For all the criticism of China's
environmental standard we tend to fail to mention that we procure many of the
products that are built in unsustainable ways, largely unwilling to pay a
premium to make it more sustainable. Add to that the apples/oranges comparison
where hundreds of millions of people in China live in 1800s industrial-
revolutionesque environments, it's hardly fair to hold them to a standard of
modern, efficient, sustainable 21st century production processes we find in
many OECD countries today.

Anyway, I don't mean for this to be a giant cop-out for China. But its
environmental record should be contextualized. An interesting part of that
context is that it's one of the most rapidly advancing countries in terms of
investments and capacity of sustainable energy. Policy makers definitely do
not look the other way and ignore the problems as if they don't exist. It
appears the environmental issues are acknowledged, but not always prioritized
over trying to lift hundreds of millions of people into a lower-middle class
from de facto poverty.

One may be more sympathetic to that than some of the global-warming denier
policy makers we see in the west, who are either ignorant of the problem or
prioritize economic goals while the average American or European already makes
10x more than the average Chinese. (who, again, use a significant chunk of
this money to move their CO2 production out of the country, and to China,
benefiting from the production but offloading the CO2 onto China's record, and
in the process moving any affects of local pollution onto relatively poor
Chinese. If it's waste, we call it toxic dumping and outlaw it. If it's air
and water pollution from a factory that creates jobs, it's but an unfortunate
side effect of globalism).

At least, that's the Chinese's perspective. There's more to it, but I think
it's important to be aware of the above in any case.

~~~
hueving
It's inexcusable. They choose to accept the money for manufacturing without
imposing environmental regulations. The only way people will pay for
protection of the environment is if it's priced into the market. China does
not care to price it, and that's why we are where we are.

They definitely turn their head the other way and even actively bury
environmental issues. Look what happened with the smog station on top of the
US embassy. They told them to take it down because they didn't like their
citizens getting real air quality data.

------
pinaceae
most people underestimate just how big africa and those numbers are.

no offense, but this looks exactly like any other mega development projects
put on by white people - see for the road the world food programme has been
building from the sea to central congo.

super ideas on paper, complete madness on site. most of that money will
evaporate, most of the countries along the line are mere shapes on a map,
drawn by white people, but reflecting any functioning structures.

when the europeans abandoned the colonies they failed to do one, crucial thing
- they should have taken everything they brought to africa back with them.
borders, names, government structures and yes, most "modern" infrastructure
(railway, paved roads, water lines). all that crap left behind now gives
western whites the illusion of a transaction between peers when they pour
money into africa.

this is slowly happening now anyhow, tribal warfare is turning time backwards.
from eritrea to sudan, to congo, to nigeria, etc etc etc. tribes that never
belonged within one set of borders, drawn up by the english, french, belgians,
germans, portuguese.

it would be actually much better if the west stopped pouring money into a
region were most of it will end up fueling war. more people have died in the
so called african world war than in all other conflicts since ww2 - combined.
despite white people's guilt projects.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Your post to me is uch a mixed bag of both truths and some weird conclusions.

The one crucial thing they failed to do? Not taking the water lines and
railways etc, is the one crucial failure of colonialism in Africa? Talk about
ignorant, with all due respect.

As for the connection between the west pouring in money and millions of
deaths, as if the west funded the second Congo war... It's ridiculous. And
please don't even try conflating legitimate FDI in tens of countries with
procurement conflict minerals in Congo.

I won't even mention the standard 'africa is not a country' stuff. Although
you'll obviously be aware of that, stating that the west shouldn't invest in
Africa because of atrocities in Congo is saying the US shouldn't do business
with France, because of the situation in the Ukraine. It's completely
ridiculous.

Just look at plans like these, large solar energy infrastructure projects with
European money, in part for the European market:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Morocco#/media/F...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Morocco#/media/File:DESERTEC-
Map_large.jpg)

and tell me this project shouldn't happen, because it fuels war. If anything,
it'd bring Morocco and Algeria closer together through economic cooperation
and interdependence for mutual benefit. Note that these are the exact same
founding principles that largely initiated the European Union, a set of
countries that waged brutal war for centuries yet have seen only peaceful
cooperation between its members since its inception.

I guess as you said, most people do underestimate how big Africa is, and how
diverse its political landscape.

