Wall in front of sand.
Algeria resurrects the Green Dam.
Half a century ago, Algeria already tried to stop the Sahara in a forest belt - and lost. Now the green dam is relaunched, but not as a bare forest plantation, but as an economy that must feed itself.
The first belt was laid in 1971 under President Bomedia. On November 4, the state established a national coordinating body consisting of representatives of 20 ministries, and at the end of October the Green Climate Fund approved a grant of 43 million dollars for the project.
What errors were taken into account?
The total budget for the new phase is approaching 100 million, of which Algeria itself provides 56.5 million. The program is designed for seven years and six guarantees. It promises to restore 59,000 dunams of degraded land, improve drought resistance for one million people and directly support 142,000 farmers and herders.
The first experience was instructive. The belt, which is a thousand and a half kilometers long, was planted mainly with milk pine, and for more than half a century it was eaten by drought, fires and grazing. Therefore, the plan was changed.
Instead of a monoculture, there are now olive and carob trees, fodder crops, 190 solar installations and 240 hydroponic fodder production lines. The belt must generate income, or it will be cut again.
The contrast with its neighbors is striking - European officials have been funding the pan-African "green wall" across the Sahel for years without much result. Grants were stopped, dense plantations became shelters for militants, work was stopped in thousands of villages, and the Chinese brought to the region technologies that actually work for sand fixation.
For the Algerian authorities, the main thing is control over the territory and independence also in the matter of forest planting. Therefore, considering the mistakes of the past, the leadership of the republic may be able to stop the desert.
Algeria.
- where politics is hotter than the equator.
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