49
353
million
Number of trees
planted in Ethiopia
in 12 hours on
July 29, a world
record47%
Projected increase
in the population of
the Sahel by 2050,
to 340 million
people total85
million
Number of people
in sub-Saharan
Africa projected to
migrate because of
climate changeglobal repercussions. Some 150 million
people live in the Sahel, nearly two-thirds
under age 25, and the region has the high-
est birth rate in the world. The World
Bank predicts climate change will force
about 85 million sub-Saharan Africans to
migrate, many to under-resourced urban
enclaves in the region, while a significant
number will attempt the deadly pas-
sage to Europe and the Gulf countries in
search of opportunity. “It’s a time bomb,”
says Thiaw.
The immediate risks are equally trou-
bling. Across the region, governments
have lost local control to extremist groups
such as Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and the Is-
lamic State. Some 4.2 million people have
been displaced by drought and conflict,
particularly in the region bordering Lake
Chad, which used to supply fresh water
and livelihoods to nearly 30 million peo-
ple but has shrunk by 90% because of
climate change and overuse. The lack of
economic prospects provides rich recruit-
ing prospects for Boko Haram, which can
dangle employment and goods that are
otherwise unavailable. Dennis Garrity,
the Drylands ambassador to the U.N. Con-
vention to Combat Desertification, likens
conditions in the Sahel to those in the im-
poverished, ungoverned swaths of Paki-
stan and Afghanistan that were the font
of global terrorism two decades ago. “The
Sahel is not only the area most vulnerable
to climate change in the world, it is also
the region where terrorism and extrem-
ism are growing most rapidly,” he says.
The rains finally came to Mbar Tou-
bab on Aug. 19, a full month later than
the year before. There wasn’t much, but
it was enough for the volunteers to get
started, and by the time they left, 88,000
seedlings had been carefully set into the
ground. The irony of people flying in
from as far away as Hong Kong to plant
trees to combat climate change, which
is exacerbated in part by transconti-
nental flights, is not lost on Goudiaby.
“Maybe they are making up for climate
sins they have committed back in their
home countries,” he proposes, a kind of
climatic reparation. The countries of the
Sahel contribute least to global warming,
yet they reap the worst repercussions of
the wealth generated by more industrial-
ized nations. It only seems fair, he says,
that members of those nations come to
Senegal to pay their debts. plantations are the solution. The survival rate of planted
trees in arid regions like the Sahel hovers around 20%. “If
all the trees that have been planted in the Sahel since 1980
had survived, it would look like the Amazon by now,” he says.
Goudiaby concedes that planting trees on the edge of the
Sahara may not be the most cost-effective solution to climate
change. But given time, he says, it works. Over the nine years
he has been working the plots of Mbar Toubab, he estimates
a 70% survival rate. A walk through one of the earliest plan-
tations in the area does show signs of progress. Some of the
trees are 10 ft. to 12 ft. tall, and though it’s not exactly a for-
est, it’s certainly not barren land either.
Reij argues it would be more cost-effective to restore the
original grasslands, which are almost as good at capturing
carbon. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, for example, are fenc-
ing off large areas to allow the land to recover from the ef-
fects of overgrazing over time. In agricultural areas, farmers
are being taught to plant around existing trees and sprouts,
rather than plowing them over. The result, says Reij, “has
been mind-blowing,” with 12 million acres regreened in Niger
over the past 30 years.
No one approach is better than the other, says Ibrahim
Thiaw, the executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to
Combat Desertification. Whether countries plant trees or
promote grasslands, the end result is 21 African nations are
working together to combat climate change and make peo-
ple’s lives better in the Sahel. His biggest concern is that so
far, only 15% of the proposed area has been restored. Some
of the delays are because of a lack of funding. Senegal spends
$200 million a year on planting and caring for its section
of the wall; poorer nations of the alliance can’t afford even
that. Only half the $8 billion pledged for the project has come
through, largely because other climate emergencies are draw-
ing attention away from the Sahel.
Long-term, says Thiaw, the impact of climate change
ILLUSTRATION BY JACQUI OAKLEY FOR TIMEon one of the world’s most impoverished regions will have