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Drought Management Strategies in Water-Stressed/Water-Scarce Regions
Published in Saeid Eslamian, Faezeh Eslamian, Handbook of Drought and Water Scarcity, 2017
Ismail Kaan Tuncok, Saeid Eslamian
Another example is the Great Green Wall. The initial idea of a line of trees from east to west through the African desert— a Great Green Wall—evolved into a series of interventions addressing the challenges of the people in the Sahel and the Sahara. The overall goal of this African Union initiative supported by FAO is to support local communities in the sustainable management and use of their forests, angelands, and other natural resources. The Great Green Wall Initiative seeks to improve the food security of local populations, while contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Combating Strategies
Published in Ajai, Rimjhim Bhatnagar, Desertification and Land Degradation, 2022
GGW is the Pan-African (PA) initiative, aimed at sustainable management of land in the Sahel-Sahara region for land restoration and combating land degradation. Endorsed in 2007 by African Union, Great Green Wall (GGW) is one of the earliest international initiatives on land restoration that has brought together the African countries and international partners under the leadership of the African Union and coordinated by PA-GGW (UNCCD 2020). The following 11 African countries are members of GGW: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. The total area covered under GGW (called as intervention area), spread in the above 11 countries, is 156.1 Mha (UNCCD 2020). The project initially envisaged planting of a 15 km wide transcontinental forest belt running from Dakar to Djibouti, with the aim to combat desertification. Subsequently, the project adopted an integrated ecosystem management approach, attempting towards a mosaic of different land uses and production systems, including dryland management and restoration, the regeneration of natural vegetation as well as soil and water conservation measures (UNCCD 2020). GGW aims to ‘ensure the planting and integrated development of economically interesting drought-tolerant plant species, water retention ponds, agricultural production systems and other income-generating activities, as well as basic social infrastructures'. In 2016, the GGW project was expanded to cover the drylands of Southern Africa, thus, the GGW now covers the drylands of North Africa (northern Sahara), the Sahel, and southern Africa (SADC countries). Major activities taken up under this project by the member countries include soil and moisture conservation (terracing), forest management including reforestation and natural regeneration, agroforestry, rainwater harvesting, windbreaks and shelterbelt, sand dune stabilization, etc. During the period 2007–2019, the sum total of land rehabilitation/restoration activities carried out in the above 11 member countries, under GGW, is 4 Mha (UNCCD 2020). In addition, another 17.8 Mha of land is under restoration within the 11 member countries but outside the intervention zone of GGW. The impact of the implementation of the GGW project, in terms of change in vegetation cover, has been monitored by analysing the MODIS-NDVI product. Vegetation cover map generated through the NDVI thresholding method, for the African continent, for the years 2004 (before GGW implementation) and 2019 (after GGW implementation) are shown in Figure 11.13a and b, respectively. High-resolution vegetation cover maps (grid size 500 m × 500 m) generated for the region encompassing the GGW project area (area covered in the map is approximate and only for illustration purposes) for the years 2004 and 2019 are shown in Figure 11.13c. There is a large increase in the vegetation cover (seen in green colour) in the 2019 map as compared to 2004.
Monitoring forest dynamics in Africa during 2000–2020 using a remotely sensed fractional tree cover dataset
Published in International Journal of Digital Earth, 2023
Xuexin Wei, Yang Liu, Lin Qi, Jilong Chen, Guoqin Wang, Linxiu Zhang, Ronggao Liu
Although the analysis of the effects of fires and human activities on forest dynamics is outside the scope of this study, these drivers should not be ignored. Fires were considered a restrained factor of forest at low rainfall (Staver, Archibald, and Levin 2011). Other than the threat from natural wildfires, human-set fires were reported to play a risky role in forests of Africa (Wood et al. 2022). Besides, another important cause of forest loss in Africa was human-induced deforestation (Brandt et al. 2017; Abera et al. 2022), which resulted from the increasing demand for livelihoods due to population expansion, the development of commercial and livestock agriculture and agricultural transformation (Mograbi et al. 2017; Brandt et al. 2018). The deforestation hotspots were clustered in tropical forests, such as the south-central Congo basin and East Africa. Our analysis also suggested notable forest loss in these regions. Nevertheless, the impacts of human activities are not always negative. To cope with the severe desertification and land degradation, some countries in Africa have implemented ecological projects in recent years. One of the notable efforts is the Africa Great Green Wall Initiative launched in 2007, aiming to restore 100 million hectares of land by 2030 in the Sahel countries (Nzabarinda et al. 2021). Our results also show upward trends of tree cover in these countries, particularly in Chad and Ethiopia (Figure 3), which indicates the ecological improvement in these regions.
Scanning climate change impacts on water resources of the largest African river basins
Published in International Journal of River Basin Management, 2020
Ahmed Musa Shamseddin, Thameur Chaibi
Lacking of observational datasets contributes largely to uncertainty in Africa. The HAPEX-Sahel was the most prominent north–south experiments done in Africa towards deep understanding of the land-atmosphere relationship in the Sahel, by which good observational datasets were attained too. Expanding such experiments and cooperation is utmost important in understanding climate change impacts. The ongoing African great green wall is a fruitful climate change adaptation measure in the Sahel region. Sustaining such projects via securing local components is direly needed.