46 Time September 23, 2019
in August, and still there is no rain,” says
El Hadj Goudiaby, who has spent the past
nine years overseeing Great Green Wall
projects in Mbar Toubab for Senegal’s
forestry department. How is it possible,
he asks, to grow trees to combat climate
change if climate change is making it
impossible to grow trees?
The answer may have more to do with
changing attitudes than changing the
landscape. When people think of poten-
tial fixes for global warming, they tend
to focus on big projects. But if human
activity is at the root of climate change,
whether it be the carbon emissions of the
industrialized world or the overgrazing
of the Sahel, then that is where the solu-
tion lies as well. Environmentalists cel-
ebrate the Great Green Wall for its epic
territorial ambition, but its biggest im-
pact will come from allowing people to
meet their needs without destroying na-
ture in the process.The Sahara iSn’T expanding so much
as the Sahel is shrinking, destroyed by
decades of overgrazing, climate-change-
induced drought and poor farming prac-
tices that have stripped the once lush
grasslands of the fertile topsoil needed
to regenerate. Cattle herders resort to
the few remaining trees for animal fod-
der, denuding the landscape even further
in a downward spiral of desertification.
Planting trees not only reduces carbon
on a global scale—research in the jour-
nal Science estimates planting more than
2 billion acres of trees could remove two-
thirds of all the emissions that human ac-
tivity has pumped into the atmosphere
since the Industrial Revolution —it also
recharges the water table and creates
micro climates that increase local rainfall.
(For more on rewilding and carbon reduc-
tion, see story on page 52.) But if pastoral-
ists have nothing to feed their herds in the
time it takes those trees to mature, they
are likely to use the saplings, starting the
cycle all over again. Which is why, though
it may not sound like much, the solution
to climate change in the Sahel starts with
getting grass to grow.
“If we can solve people’s problems by
improving their living conditions now,”
says Goudiaby, “they will be able to help
themselves by protecting the trees that
protect their future.” After all, stopping
global warming isn’t about saving theT
he seedlings are ready. One hundred
and fifty thousand shoots of drought-
resistant acacia, hardy baobab and Mor-
inga spill out of their black plastic casings.
The ground has been prepared with scores
of kilometer- long furrows leading to a ho-
rizon studded with skeletal thorn trees. It’s
early August, and in less than a week, 399
volunteers from 27 countries will arrive in this remote corner
of northern Senegal to participate in one of the world’s most
audacious efforts to combat the effects of climate change: an
$8 billion plan to reforest 247 million acres of degraded land
across the width of Africa, stretching from Dakar to Djibouti.
The Great Green Wall project, spearheaded by the African
Union and funded by the World Bank, the European Union
and the United Nations, was launched in 2007 to halt the
expansion of the Sahara by planting a barrier of trees run-
ning 4,815 miles along its southern edge. Now, as concerns
mount about the impact of climate change on the Sahel, the
semiarid band of grassland south of the Sahara that is already
one of the most impoverished regions on earth, the Great
Green Wall is filling a new role. The goal now, say its design-
ers, is to transform the lives of millions living on the front
line of climate change by restoring agricultural land ruined
by decades of overuse; when done, it should provide food,
stem conflict and discourage migration. When the project is
completed in 2030, the restored land is expected to absorb
some 250 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the at-
mosphere, the equivalent of keeping all of California’s cars
parked for 3½ years.
Over the course of a week, the volunteers descending
upon the Senegalese village of Mbar Toubab will try to turn
494 acres of barren land into another forested brick in the
Great Green Wall. There is only one problem: the annual rains
have yet to arrive, and without them, none of the seedlings
will take root. “The rain used to come in June. Here we are
Land in
Mbar Toubab,
Senegal, that
was plowed in
anticipation of
the planting of
seedlings for the
Great Green Wall