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Google Alert for Desertification
The Tide
Project to combat desert encroachment under way
• Wednesday, Aug 8, 2007In a bid to combat further desert encroachment into Nigeria, the Ministry of Environment has embarked on a project designed to recover the ecosystem in the affected area. Mr. Nkem Ononiwu, Director, Drought and Desertification, in the ministry told our correspondent in Abuja Monday that the project was known as the “Green Wall Sahara Initiative (GWSI)”. He said the project, initiated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo at a continental meeting in Libya in 2005, was expected to run across Africa, from Mauritania in the North West, to Djibouti in the North East.
According to him, the current rate of desert encroachment into Nigeria is 0.6 km per annum and not 6 km as recently reported in the media.
“If you say the rate is 6 km per year, it means that within 10 years most parts of the country would be covered and in 50 years, desert will cover the whole of Nigeria,” he said.
The director said the ministry would soon embark on the measurement of the rate of desert encroachment into Nigeria using modern technological methodologies and that within two to five years it would arrive at a standard figure.
He said that the GWSI project would restore the fertility level of the soil and reclaim it for various economic activities.
The land, he said, would be reclaimed for food under a “desert-to-food programme”, which would incorporate areas designated for human settlement and tourism. The project would involve the planting of important economic plants that would replenish the organic nutrients of the soil in 11 “frontline” states affected by the desert encroachment along a 1,500-km stretch.
The states are: Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, Kano, Bauchi and Borno. Ononiwu said: “Green wall is designed in such a way that desertification is curtailed and you manage the desert in such a way that you restore the land to its fertility level and reclaim it for food. That’s where our desert-to-food comes in.
“You can reclaim it for urbanisation, which means that there will be settlements; you can reclaim it for tourism. In fact, we are going to have car or bicycle tracks where competitions can be held.”
He further explained that primary and cottage industries as well as an export processing zone would be set up to take advantage of the primary activities to be undertaken. He said that under the “desert-to-food” programme, crops, vegetables and flowers would be planted in addition to livestock farming.
“If you process all these agricultural products, for example livestock, you will now have beef and diary industries,” the director said.
“We are hoping that by the time we finish these, we will have milk industry and dairy products along the belt alongside agro-industries. Desert-to-food is capable of making Nigeria self-sufficient in food.”
He said that four economic plants - jatropha, cactus, neem tree, and vativa grass, would be planted in the area. Ononiwu described the jatropha as a drought-resistant wonder plant capable of producing 2,000 litres of diesel fuel per square mile as well as oil for local use. Cactus, he said, has the capacity to produce fodder for livestock feed.
“If you put the livestock in a cage and continue to feed them with the fodder, they will grow fatter than you can ever think of,” he said.
According to the director, these plants were chosen because of their ability to survive drought conditions and their capacity to yield economic dividends.
He said that every activity in the area would yield economic returns, adding: “we do hope that in time to come, we are going to have economic boom in the entire 1,500-km belt.
“For example, when you talk about industries spanning Kebbi to Bauchi and Borno, you can now see a belt of complete industrialisation, with one industry using the product of another to manufacture other products.”
On the tourism aspect, he said that the 267 oases in the country would be exposed to tourists for the purpose of revenue generation.
Ononiwu said that the baseline studies for the project would soon commence and called on the private sector to invest in the project, which, according to him, would take about 10 to 15 years to be completed.
He said the project would create about 300,000 to 500,000 thousand jobs, adding: “the desert-to-food aspect is the economic engine that will drive the Green Wall Initiative.
The director stressed the need for the installation of early warning systems in the area to be able to detect drought which, he said, was the major risk factor to the project.
We learnt that a National Steering Committee and a National Technical Committee on the implementation of the project are already in place while an Israeli company, Framan and Agridev, is expected to execute the project.
