Desertification

Back in the 1980s I remember seeing one of those public service announcements about doing something good, and one of the scenes was of people planting trees in the sands of a desert. I laughed at that, until my oldest brother explained the problem of desertification to me. The main line of defense against this loss of arable farmland was trees. I stopped laughing. The other day I read that there’s an effort underway to plant a “great green wall” of trees in the Sahara region of northern Africa in an attempt to hold back the ever-encroaching desert. This ambitious belt of trees is to be around 7000 kilometers long (roughly 4350 miles) and should cost only around $3 million. I say “only” because it doesn’t seem like that much in the light of the expense of the ongoing war in Iraq, the U.S. market bailout or any number of routine government agencies in the Western world. For Third World African nations, though, it’s a princely sum.

For further information:
An article about the Great Green Wall.
An official report (.pdf) about the initiative.
A blog about desertification.