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Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

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Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#31

Post by bluGill »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #8
legitster wrote: post #4

Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture. It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.

> It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture. I think that is already the population. What the attempt seems to be is to create a green belt that prevents further desertification of semi-arable land that they are already subsistence farming on, because if the desert keeps moving, these people will cease to exist. Captialistically/economically, there is…

These people right now don't have good options. Get them enough food locally and they no longer need to chase all over trying to find enough work to afford food. In turn that means they can send their kids to school and those now educated kids can in turn apply modern things. Some of that is those kids - the ones who don't love farming - leave to better jobs in the city, while others - those who love farming - apply modern farming techniques (which is sustainable, contrary to popular myth) and produce a lot more food while building up the soil even more.

But if you don't have enough food it all fails. History has taught us that in every corner.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#32

Post by bluGill »

autoexec wrote: post #23
macspoofing wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. What was shown in the video looks like a "mickey mouse" operation, akin to a local tree planting effort to combat climate change. For this to make any difference you can't have people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1 person/1 half-moon/1 day - that does not scale in any meaningful way. You need to do this kind of project at an industrial scale, w…

> you can't have people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1 person/1 half-moon/1 day - that does not scale in any meaningful way. It'll get harder to maintain that pace as heat increases too. There'll be fewer and fewer hours that people can work outside. Rising temperatures will bring more heat-related illnesses and injuries. Considering the amount of ground they want to cover bringing in machinery to speed things u…

You don't need to dig them constantly. In a few years your village has enough, and now you just need to maintain them which takes less time and so can be done in the cooler parts of the day. And these green places will be cooler than the desert so even in the heat of the day the whole is cooler.

Of course as the village population grows you send the "young men" out to the edge and have them dig a few more half-moons at a rate of one/day. However they are building next to previous green areas which are already lowering the local temperature, and if sometimes it takes 2 days to build one - who cares, there is no hurry.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#33

Post by protomolecule »

Nux wrote: post #9
legitster wrote: post #4

Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture. It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.

They could perhaps send there criminals, prisoners.. this kind of people.. have them man the green wall.

And when they would need more workers... What could possibly go wrong.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#34

Post by bluGill »

alephnerd wrote: post #12
Nux wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could perhaps send there criminals, prisoners.. this kind of people.. have them man the green wall.

Or, you know, pay locals a consistent salary, thus helping the environment and also mitigating extreme poverty (<$1.25 a day) - which is what they are doing.

More importantly, these green spaces are sustainable. So even if you run out of budget in 5 years, the people no longer need you to pay them as they now get everything they need from the work you paid them to do in the past and so they can live without subsidy. Or if you do have budget you can move to some other village and pay them to become sustainable.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#36

Post by bluGill »

lancetipton wrote: post #2

Thanks for sharing. Super interesting video. Never spent a lot of time with it, but I've always been curious how people could rebuild an ecosystem. I think it was the dune series, that I read a number of years back that touched on this idea a bit in the second or third book? It was not something I ever really thought about before that. It's cool to see a real life example of it.

Universities all over the world are asking that question - and have been for centuries. They have come up with some great answers over time. It takes years for farmers to learn - agriculture (like science) advances on the death of old people who continue their unsustainable practices to the grave - but things are overall much better than the past and getting better.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#37

Post by legitster »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #8
legitster wrote: post #4

Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture. It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.

> It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture. I think that is already the population. What the attempt seems to be is to create a green belt that prevents further desertification of semi-arable land that they are already subsistence farming on, because if the desert keeps moving, these people will cease to exist. Captialistically/economically, there is…

I just have strong doubts that people will want to. The video already highlights that the problem in the first place was young people wanting to move to cities or other countries. I would suspect it would revert to the pattern when the UN grant money dries up.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#38

Post by alephnerd »

bluGill wrote: post #34
alephnerd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, pay locals a consistent salary, thus helping the environment and also mitigating extreme poverty (<$1.25 a day) - which is what they are doing.

More importantly, these green spaces are sustainable. So even if you run out of budget in 5 years, the people no longer need you to pay them as they now get everything they need from the work you paid them to do in the past and so they can live without subsidy. Or if you do have budget you can move to some other village and pay them to become sustainable.

Yep!

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#39

Post by vidarh »

legitster wrote: post #4

Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture. It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.

Senegal has one of the worlds highest fertility rates. They have a surplus of labour, and slowing desertification is a way of improving their ability to both subsist and grow their economy until they can drive wages up.

Note how the video points out how it is causing more people to have reasons to stay in villages that's otherwise get depleted of young people. If that continues, it will have a significant long term benefit for the growth of Senegals economy.

Re: Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara

#40

Post by ww520 »

legitster wrote: post #4

Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture. It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.

Land improvement is the easiest value creation. Turning unusable desert land into arable land creates huge long lasting benefits. The land has huge value increase. If the people doing the work are deeded the land, they become well off. They are incentivized to maintain the land.
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