Read at : Google Alert – desertification
http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2011/06/fighting-desertification-great-green.html
Fighting desertification: The great green wall of the Sahara
The rainy season has started in the rest of the country, but in Widou, in the heart of the Ferlo region in northern Senegal, the first raindrops won’t fall until the end of July. In these tough times between harvests, most of the flocks have migrated to the south in hopes of grazing. There, on the brown and parched land, all that is left is a pitiful-looking green carpet burned by the sun and trampled by animals.
Just 100 meters away, an open-air lab is writing a new page of the region’s history. In the tree nursery built by the Water and Forests Department, men are working, hose in hand. The women, bent over rows of small plastic containers, plant seedlings that will have to be ready for when the first rain arrives. This year, they need 390,000 of them.
Widou is one of the first communities selected by the Senegalese government to start the Great Green Wall project, a pan-African initiative launched in 2007 by the African Union. The goal is to create a wall of trees — 15 km wide and 7,600 km long — from Dakar to Djibouti to help slow desertification. Eleven countries are participating, but Senegal, where 535 km of the wall are planned, is the first country where the project is starting to take shape.
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