“Education, if it means something, I should not move away people from the earth if they do not give them more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand what has been lost. The future of the planet concerns us all and we must do what we can to protect it. As I said to the Silviculs, and women, you don't need a diploma to plant a tree ” Wangari Muta Maathai
http://revistamadretierra.com/2015/11/wangari-maathai/
Today we want to talk about a project, apparently local, but with a long -term unmatched global impact.
It is neither more nor less of stopping the advance of the desert with a vegetable barrier that crosses the African continent from end to end. With this, the hunger and poverty of the communities that inhabit such hostile territories for survival such as Sahel could also be eradicated.
Inspired by the main ideas of the Nobel Peace Prize Wangari Maathai, creator of the green belt movement, the Great Green Wall was born, an international project in order to stop desertification in Africa.
In June 2005, 11 countries in the Sahel region promised to fight against this at the seventh Summit of Heads of State of CEN-SAD (community of the Sahelo-Saharian states).
These countries were: Burkina Faso, Yibuti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Chad.
This plant belt would cover about 7000 kilometers long and about 15 wide between the Atlantic and the Indian.
With this, in addition to curbing the erosion of the land, it is possible to promote agricultural practices and educate the local population to benefit from their own green belt.
Currently in Senegal, 11 million trees have already been planted, thus recovering 27000 hectares of yerma land, while being built, polyvalent gardens and orchards that allow women to increase their income and produce the necessary food at the same time.
But we cannot talk about the great African green wall without talking about a precursor project, the Chinese green wall.
In the Gobi desert, in China, since the end of the '70s a project like this is active with the intention of reforesting the land. In fact, each Chinese citizen over 11 years of age is obliged to plant 3 trees a year. It is estimated to have covered about 400 million hectares in 2050, which would be half of one of the world's largest countries.
But the environmental impact of the wall in China is generating certain criticism from environmental organizations. These defend that planted species are not the most appropriate (they are not native) and that they are being manipulated and re-designing in a way that they consider aggressive to the ecosystem, which has very negative consequences such as the non-adaptation of the fauna of the area , or that by converting agricultural land into forests, soil capacity is reduced to absorb pollutant gases such as methane.
Despite being an example of community and environmental work we will have to wait to see and value the results in China.
We believe that in the African case it has been learned from the "errors" of the Chinese government and the corresponding fauna and fauna and flora has been respected since the zero minute and fauna and flora.
But to what extent does the human being influence the course of nature? Where is the limit?
