What is a Green Wall

Desertification is a phenomenon that has been around for thousands of years and is one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. Desertification happens when an area becomes dry, usually through drought or human impact, and the sand turns into sandy soil that erodes easily. The topsoil can become so thin that nothing can grow anymore. The Great Green Wall Initiative is a multi-country initiative to help combat this problem by planting an area the size of France across Africa. The purpose of the wall is to provide shelter, food, and natural resources to stop the spread of the desert.

Desertification and Its Causes

The first step in fighting desertification is knowing what causes it. There are many different factors that can contribute to desertification, but three specific things cause desertification: climate change, land issues, and agriculture issues. 

The first of these issues is climate change. The changing climate causes arid or semi-arid areas to become drier for longer periods. In the past, these areas would become dry, but then the rains would return, and everything would be fine again. On an average scale, pre-industrial climates changed only in small amounts from one year to the next; this enabled plants and animals to adapt to their environment relatively easily. However, rapid climate change can cause deserts to spread into the land that used to have wetter climates. The second issue is island management. Humans can cause desertification in many different ways. For example, deforestation (the cutting down of trees) can cause desertification because the forests help preserve moisture in the soil. There is nothing to stop the area from becoming a desert when they are gone. 

Another issue that contributes to desertification is agriculture. When farmers practice modern agriculture and plant crops such as corn, wheat, and rice, they use many resources such as water, energy, and fertilizer. If these people have to move their farms to find water, they will have to spend time digging wells (which can create dunes), which can cause the water table to go down because of all the digging. Fertilizers can also cause problems. When fertilizer is used, it often washes into the rivers, which causes eutrophication. Eutrophication is when an area becomes overgrown with plants and algae that others can’t survive. This causes fish to die off and the entire aquatic food chain to collapse, which causes desertification. Another cause of desertification is overgrazing. Overgrazing means too many animals in one area eating whatever plants are leftover from a previous season. Humans can also cause the desertification process. Humans directly cause desertification when they cut down forests, change land-use patterns, overgraze, and remove marginal soils to plant their crops.

After knowing what causes desertification, the next step is figuring out how we can stop it.

Definition of the Great Green Wall

Definition of Great Green Wall can be stated as “A wall, typically a series of interlocking stone blocks, designed to prevent the encroachment of sand dunes onto farmland.” The Great Green Wall is a structure of vegetation or earth that forms or borders a large, ecologically diverse region.

How does the Great Green Wall stop desertification?

The Great Green Wall is designed to stop desertification movement by blocking the wind and rain from going over an area where it’s more likely for plants to grow.

The Great Green Wall is not just technically but also symbolically one big idea that encompasses many ideas. It includes hydrological, economic, and agronomic approaches for sustainable land use in arid and semi-arid lands.

Great Green Wall Initiative

This is a large project to build a gigantic wall of plant life in subtropical regions of West Africa, with aims to help contain global warming and protect biodiversity.

The Great Green Wall initiative is an African Union initiated a project designed to protect and restore the natural ecosystems of arid, semi-arid, and arid regions in Africa by building a wall of trees along the Sahara. This initiative aims to improve ecosystem functions, livelihoods, nutrition, and health outcomes by building a green wall that effectively reduces losses of biodiversity and water resource efficiency. It aims to achieve this by promoting integrated, sustainable land use approaches and women-led projects.

The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGW) was launched in August 2011 to accelerate the adoption of new technologies, practices, and approaches to improve the livelihoods of people in sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative aims at achieving practical and sustainable solutions through knowledge transfer and sharing of best practices that promote forest conservation, economic diversification, and improved nutrition, health, and well-being.

Conclusion

Desertification is one of the biggest problems that the world faces. It is a problem that many governments have started to address. The definition of the Great Green Wall clearly states its use and importance. The Initiative is made up of many different organizations and countries that aim to prevent desertification by planting tens of millions of trees in Africa. The GGW Initiative will include planting approximately 10 million trees on degraded land. Furthermore, it is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 10% and will also try to improve soil fertility and reduce reliance on imports of food.