Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-3 (section)

==== 3.7.2.3 The Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative ====

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The Great Green Wall is an initiative of the Heads of State and Government of the Sahelo-Saharan countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to improve the food security of the Sahel and Saharan peoples (Sacande 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1598|1598]]</sup> ; Mbow 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1599|1599]]</sup> ). Launched in 2007, this regional project aims to restore Africa’s degraded arid landscapes, reduce the loss of biodiversity and support local communities to sustainable use of forests and rangelands. The Great Green Wall focuses on establishing plantations and neighbouring projects, covering a distance of 7775 km from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast, with a width of 15 km (Figure 3.13). The wall passes through Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal.

The choice of woody and herbaceous species that will be used to restore degraded ecosystems is based on biophysical and socio-economic criteria, including socio-economic value (food, pastoral, commercial, energetic, medicinal, cultural); ecological importance (carbon sequestration, soil cover, water infiltration); and resilience to climate change and variability. The Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall (PAGGW) was created in 2010 under the auspices of the African Union and CEN-SAD to manage the project. The initiative is implemented at the level of each country by a national structure. A monitoring and evaluation system has been defined, allowing nations to measure outcomes and to propose the necessary adjustments.

In the past, reforestation programmes in the arid regions of the Sahel and North Africa that have been undertaken to stop desertification were poorly studied and cost a lot of money without significant success (Benjaminsen and Hiernaux 2019 <sup>[[#fn:r1600|1600]]</sup> ). Today, countries have changed their strategies and opted for rural development projects that can be more easily funded. Examples of scalable practices for land restoration include managing water bodies for livestock and crop production, and promoting fodder trees to reduce runoff (Mbow 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1601|1601]]</sup> ).

The implementation of the initiative has already started in several countries. For example, the FAO’s Action Against Desertification project was restoring 18,000 hectares of land in 2018 through planting native tree species in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal (Sacande 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1602|1602]]</sup> ). Berrahmouni et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r1807|1807]]</sup> estimated that 166 Mha can be restored in the Sahel, requiring the restoration of 10 Mha per year to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality targets by 2030. Despite these early implementation actions on the ground, the achievement of the planned targets is questionable, and will be challenging without significant additional funding.

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'''Figure 3.13'''

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'''The Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel. Source for the data layer: This dataset is an extract from the GlobCover 2009 land cover map, covering Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The GlobCover 2009 land cover map is derived by an automatic and regionally tuned classification of a time series of global MERIS […]'''
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[[File:7908b973d5538d2af6a02e2650686e0f Figure-3.13.jpg]]

The Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel. Source for the data layer: This dataset is an extract from the GlobCover 2009 land cover map, covering Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The GlobCover 2009 land cover map is derived by an automatic and regionally tuned classification of a time series of global MERIS (MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) FR mosaics for the year 2009. The global land cover map counts 22 land cover classes defined with the United Nations (UN) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS)

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