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| Tangem Elvis Paul: Coordinator |
Stronger partnerships, sound national policies,
more funding for climate change adaptation and mitigation, research,
community involvement and sensitization are key to realizing the goals
of the Great Green Wall initiative in Africa.
The initiative, a
pan-African proposal to “green” the continent from West to East intends
to fight desertification. The project, which began five years ago, aims
to tackle poverty and degradation of soils in the Sahel-Saharan region,
on the 8,000-kilometre-long strip of land stretching from Dakar to
Djibouti.
Speakers at COP21during the debate on the initiative
noted that urgent measures must be put in place to reverse
desertification and save human life as those living in the
Saharan-Sahelian region are among the poorest and most vulnerable to
climatic variability and land degradation.
“The livelihoods of
100 million people are in danger. We are aware that due to heat and
drought, 40 million Africans from this region migrate to North Africa
and later to Europe. Some die during the long journeys. We should solve
this problem,” said African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina.
Adesina singled out agriculture as a key component of changing
the livelihoods of millions in the region together with other
initiatives.
“There is a correlation between the effects of
climate change – like the shrinking of Lake Chad, which was 25,000
square kilometres in 1967 but is now less than 2,500 – and the loss of
livelihoods, radicalization, terrorism, forced migration, insecurity,
poverty and deaths,” Adesina said.
He announced that AfDB has
released US $12 billion and will mobilise an additional US $50 billion
to provide clean energy in Africa including in the Sahara-Sahel region.
“We
are providing an additional $4 billion and leveraging an extra $40
billion to provide water in the affected areas. The problem has forced
girls to drop out of school to look for water. If we don’t provide
alternatives to the problems, people will still cut down the trees we
are planting. This is because 75 per cent of deforestation is due to
charcoal burning,” Adesina said.
Ministers for Environment and
Agriculture from Africa attended the function and emphasized the need
for political goodwill, good governance and transparency to ensure the
Great Green Wall project succeeds.
Kenya’s Environment Minister
Judi Wakhungu concurred with her colleagues, calling on individual
member countries to do their part so that the project does not fail.
The
Ministers revealed that their countries have embarked on projects to
plant millions of trees in addition to implementing other related
projects to avert the crisis.
“In Kenya, we are using the water
from the El Niño rains we are getting now to plant trees not only in
drylands, but across the nation to realize the 10 per cent UN ceiling
for forest cover and to secure our future,” Wakhungu said.
Amedi
Camara, Mauritania’s Minister for Environment and Sustainable
Development, noted that youth and women, who are hardest hit by degraded
lands, are migrating to cities where they wind up doing menial jobs and
living in slums.
“We need rapid innovation and adaptation
skills to reverse the effects of forced migration, malnutrition due to
competition for resources,” he said.
François Lompo, Minister of
Agriculture, Water Resources, Sanitation and Food Security in Burkina
Faso, said the Great Green Wall project has helped end social unrest in
his country.
Mustafa Ali Alifei, Chad’s Minister of Environment
and Fishing, said the Sahara-Sahel deserts hosts 50 per cent of the
country’s population, but the project has given hope to a majority of
them who had previously lost hope for a better future.
Laura
Tuck, Vice-President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, said
that 300 million people in East and West Africa live in drylands. The
World Bank, she said, will continue financing the initiative.
“The
project is doing wonders. Most land is being rehabilitated and used for
farming. We have already bumped $4.4 billion into the project and
pledge more $1.9 billion. This successful project is the best African
and global answer to climate change and we will replicate it worldwide,”
she said.
Representatives from the European Union (EU), United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations (FAO) and Global Environment Fund (GEF) all
pledged more funding for the project and called for innovation,
knowledge-sharing to make the project succeed and increase resilience to
climate change.
The project has adopted the rural development
approach where community members are sensitized to plant trees, manage
them and practice agriculture on rehabilitated lands to secure their
livelihoods.
The residents of the region rely heavily on healthy
ecosystems for rain-fed agriculture, fisheries and livestock management
to sustain their livelihoods.
The economic activities which
employ 90 per cent of the locals constitute the primary sectors of
employment in the region and generate at least 40 per cent of the gross
domestic product (GDP) in most of the countries.
Burkina Faso,
Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria,
Senegal and Sudan are members of the Great Green Wall initiative, whose
integrated ecosystem management approach was adopted by the African
Union Commission (AUC) in 2007. Ghana has applied to join.
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