How to make Africa ’ s ‘ Great Green Wall ’ a success
NEWS
One of the world ’ s most ambitious plans to restore degraded land needs a more meaningful way to measure its achievements
Nature . com
Reprinted from : https :// go . nature . com / 3IVSPnv
It ’ s now 15 years since the African Union gave its blessing to Africa ’ s Great Green Wall , one of the world ’ s most ambitious ecological-restoration schemes . The project is intended to combat desertification across the width of Africa , and spans some 8,000 kilometres , from Senegal to Djibouti . Its ambition is staggering : it aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 , capturing 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and creating 10 million jobs in the process . But it continues to struggle .
An assessment two years ago by independent experts commissioned by the United Nations stated that somewhere between 4 % and 20 % of the restoration target had been achieved ( go . nature . com / 39zqgkr ). That figure has not changed , according to the latest edition of Global Land Outlook ( go . nature . com / 3kdjtw5 ) from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification ( UNCCD ), out last week . Equally concerning is the fact that funding for the project continues to lag . Africa ’ s governments and international donors need to find around US $ 30 billion to reach the 100-millionhectare target . So far , $ 19 billion has been raised .
A pandemic — and now a cost-of-living crisis — has placed demands on all governments , and that means countries might be expected to reduce their green-wall commitments . But the project continues to be weighed down by other difficulties , including the complex system through which it is funded and governed , as well as how its success is measured . These problems can and must be fixed , otherwise , it will struggle to achieve its goals .
One potential solution — improved metrics — comes from an analysis published last year by Matthew Turner at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and his colleagues ( M . D . Turner et al . Land Use Policy 111 , 105750 ; 2021 ). The researchers explored limitations in the Great Green Wall project metrics by assessing the impact of World Bank funding from 2006 to 2020 . As their work indicates , definitions of success depend on which measure is used .
In Niger , for example , green-wall projects could be said to be succeeding if measured by the area of eroded soil that has been recovered or by the number of trees that have been planted . But the authors report that these gains were not necessarily benefiting the most vulnerable people . In places , women were being excluded from employment in green-wall projects , and in some cases , local administrations looked to privatize restored land that might instead have been owned by everyone in a community .
Broader problems with metrics are highlighted in the UN ’ s latest land-degradation report . This estimates that nearly half of the land that has been pledged for restoration worldwide will be planted predominantly with fast-growing trees and plants . This will provide only a fraction of the ecosystem services produced by forests that are allowed to naturally regenerate , including significantly less carbon storage , groundwater recharge and wildlife habitat .
The Great Green Wall project also needs more predictable funding and more transparent governance . The project was conceived by Africa ’ s leaders for the benefit of the continent ’ s people , on the basis of warnings from scientists about the risks of desertification and land degradation . The original idea was not brought to Africa by international donors , as is often the case in international science-based development projects . But it still relies on donor financing , and lots of it — and that brings other problems , among them coordination challenges .
The project is the responsibility of an organization set up by the African Union called the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall , based in Nouakchott , Mauritania . But some donors , such as the European Union and the World Bank , are not providing most of their Great Green Wall funding through this agency . Instead , they often deal directly with individual governments , because this gives them more control over how their money is spent . It is unfair to expect the Pan African Agency to coordinate a raft of donors doing one-on-one deals with individual countries . Bypassing the Pan African Agency also creates a problem for transparency , because it makes it harder for the African Union to determine precisely who is funding what .
In January 2021 , at an international biodiversity summit hosted by France , Emmanuel Macron , the French president , announced that the Great Green Wall would receive an extra $ 14 billion in funding for 5 years . He also said that a new body , called the Great Green Wall Accelerator , based in Bonn , Germany , would be responsible for pulling together funding pledges and tracking progress against targets . This is well-intentioned , but the accelerator needs to coordinate its work with the Pan African Agency . It is not yet clear how this will happen .
A potentially more transformative solu-
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