Huge living buildings
Climate change is a big achievment of humanity.
An international panel tasked with studying climate
Change by the united nations recently released its sixth assessment report, and things aren’t looking great.
They predict that humanity will warm the Earth’s climate by 2 degrees Celsius by 2080 unless radical change is undertaken right now. Thankfully, there is hope. Across the globe, changes are taking place
And on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, work is currently being done on a revolutionary green initiative that, when completed, would become the largest living megaproject on the planet. The Great Green Wall is a massive environmental project being undertaken in the Sahel region of Africa, on the southern tip of the Sahara desert.
The Sahel is a transition zone of the Sahara and consists of parts of ten African countries - Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and. Eritrea. This region is one of the poorest in the world, and in addition to that, they are also dealing with the strongest effects of climate change. The climate in the Sahel is dry, arid, and extremely hot. While there’s not a significant amount of rainfall anywhere in the Sahel, the northern half (the half that’s closer to the Sahara Desert) receives far less than the southern half. But the small amount of rain that the region receives mostly comes down as extremely heavy rain, a phenomenon that is made much worse by climate change. This can lead to massive flooding as the dry soil cannot absorb the large amount of rainwater. Although the winter is generally colder, the Harmattan winds, which run through the Sahara, often bring incredibly dangerous dust storms, massive sand accumulation, and a harmful reduction in air quality.
But this extreme weather isn’t the only challenge facing the Sahel. Another major issue is overgrazing. Many people of the Sahel are semi-nomadic, meaning they travel around raising livestock and farming based on the season. While this sounds like a solid system, growing populations have led to overgrazing, which means there is not enough food for the animals in the area. Finally, there’s perhaps the biggest problem of all: desertification. Desertification is the process by which fertile land becomes desert. Generally, it results from things like deforestation, drought, or bad farming practices. This is happening in the Sahel region as we speak, and it makes all the issues we’ve spoken about much worse.
But this has been going on for at least the past 100 years. Some statistics suggest that the Sahara has expanded by at least 250km to the south by 1900. An area of half a million square km, which is roughly the size of California. That’s a massive amount of land! Another bad example is the case of Lake Chad. This once-proud body of water has shrunk by over 90% since the 1960s. This has been caused both by climate change and the rampant overuse of the lake by humans. The lake borders 4 countries - Chad, Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon - and the impact on locals has been catastrophic. Land conflicts, mass migration, and wildlife dying off have all directly resulted from this ecological tragedy.
It’s pretty clear that many of these issues are worsened by climate change, especially in the context of the UN committee’s report. According to their data, if we make no changes, 40% of the earth’s land area is at risk of desertification. That’s a shocking number! So far, we’ve painted a pretty grim picture.
It may seem like there’s no hope.
Thankfully, there are people around the world working to reverse the tide of climate change and desertification. Some of these people are trying to create the largest living structure on the planet, 3 times the size of the Great Barrier Reef: Africa’s Great Green Wall. The Great Green Wall is a revolutionary project aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change in Africa. It will cover the Sahel region, which we’ve told you about throughout this article.
The Wall is intended to consist of roughly 100 million trees and span over 8,000km across the entire width of Africa. Currently, the project is about 15% complete, and there have been approximately 17 million trees planted as part of the Great Green Wall. Of course, something like this doesn’t come cheap. Initial estimates put the cost of completing the Great Green Wall Megaproject in Africa at a whopping $8 billion. However, as we will explain in a moment, the project is facing major problems and the real cost will likely be much higher. But let’s first take a look at why this wall is being built in the first place. First and foremost, it’s to slow down the erosion of the soil and thereby stop the Sahara’s advance. A forest of this scale can also serve as a massive wind breaker.
Secondly, it will immensely reduce the amount of Carbon in the air, fighting climate change every single day. And finally, lots of workers are needed to plant all of these trees! Some estimates predict that this project could create hundreds of thousands of jobs for people across Africa. The idea for the project was initially conceived by British explorer Richard St. Barbe Baker in the 1950s. In 2002, it was considered and soon approved by the Community of Sahel-Saharan States as a way to curb the rapid expansion of the Sahara Desert. In 2007, it was also endorsed by the African Union. In all, more than 20 African countries are participating in the project. Additionally, there are a number of corporate and international partners who have since signed on to help.
Sadly, the Great Green Wall is facing many roadblocks. The project was initially slated to be complete in 2030, but it’s looking more and more like that’s unrealistic. To start with, it’s way behind schedule. According to its own website, the project is only 15% complete. That’s 14 years into the initiative with only 9 to go before its original 2030 deadline. Not enough trees have been planted during this time, and not enough land has been reclaimed from the Sahara. The largest issues are a lack of proper management and insufficient funds. An extra $14 billion of pledged funding gave the Great Green Wall a much-needed cash boost in March of 2021, but even that may not be enough.
Some estimate that the project may need another $11 billion of funding to have any shot of being completed, and it may be hard to convince the African governments that it’s worth such a large investment. But unfortunately, there is an even worse problem. Many of the planted trees have already died due to a lack of continued care. This has led many to ask if the project was too ambitious in the first place. Interestingly, Africa is not the only place building a Green Wall. There is a similar project in the works only one continent away! And this one is off to a much better start. In India, a massive megaproject is currently in the works: The Great Green Wall of Aravalli. It’s being built in the Aravalli, a mountain range in the northwestern part of India.
The region is humid subtropical, meaning that it experiences very hot summers and relatively cool winters. Much like the Sahel, the region is quite dry and receives very little rainfall. India’s Green Wall will be 1,600km long and 5km wide. It’s estimated that about 1.35 billion trees will be used to create it, a staggering sum. The project started in 2019, and it appears to be off to a good start. Its planned end date is 2029, but we’ll see if they’re able to hit that target. While the project shares many similarities with the Great Green Wall of Africa, there are some key differences. While Africa’s Great Green Wall is specifically designed to stop the Saharan expansion and fight climate change, India has some different goals.
The Aravalli Wall is designed mainly to do two things. Firstly, they hope to restore deforested land throughout the Aravalli Mountains. Secondly, they’re erecting the wall to serve as a barrier for the massive amounts of dust that blow in from the deserts in western India and Pakistan. Only time will tell if these projects become successful. What do you think, is building a massive wall of trees a stupid enough idea?