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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

#41

Post by zokier »

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.

I believe the intent is that the local climate and soil will be sufficiently altered that no laborious long-term upkeep is needed. So its not rewilding per se, but its also not purely agricultural project and parts of green wall afaik are completely non-agricultural. That also highlights the fact that the implementations of green wall projects have been very varied, there is no single formula that is applied everywhere.

But yes, it is ambitious project and there indeed are lot of questions on both short-term feasibility and long-term outlook. As is natural for a project of this kind, the financial aspect is especially messy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/07/africa-g...

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

#42

Post by carapace »

neontomo wrote: post #30

If you're interested in the trials and tribulations of regreening a desert landscape, I recommend this YouTuber with an ambitious dream: https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas

I hate to be negative, I do, but Shaun Overton is a fool. He's wasting an enormous amount of money, energy, and time to achieve approximately nothing when he could do so much more if he expended those resources on a non-idiotic project. It's his time and money to waste, but it hurts to see it when he could really do a lot of good with it instead. His heart's in the right place.

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

#43

Post by neontomo »

carapace wrote: post #42
neontomo wrote: post #30

If you're interested in the trials and tribulations of regreening a desert landscape, I recommend this YouTuber with an ambitious dream: https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas

I hate to be negative, I do, but Shaun Overton is a fool. He's wasting an enormous amount of money, energy, and time to achieve approximately nothing when he could do so much more if he expended those resources on a non-idiotic project. It's his time and money to waste, but it hurts to see it when he could really do a lot of good with it instead. His heart's in the right place.

I'm not familiar enough with the topic to know if you're correct or not, but I don't watch his channel to see his project work out, seeing him learn small things along the way and share that journey but also him connecting with himself and the community around his land in unique ways through his project is intriguing and hopeful. A mad dream pushed forward by a mad man, which may not come to fruition, but it's a whole lot more entertaining than watching people take on small projects that are guaranteed to succeed.

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

#44

Post by insider-trade »

dappermanneke wrote: post #26

who is africa also, this is geoengineering. the same kind the soviets used to do and the chinese do now. it would never be allowed to happen in a western country because someone with deep pockets for a lawsuit would find an endangered species of worm living in a dune or two

[flagged]

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

#45

Post by canadiantim »

neontomo wrote: post #30

If you're interested in the trials and tribulations of regreening a desert landscape, I recommend this YouTuber with an ambitious dream: https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas

Very cool to see he's using prickly pear cactus. I'm currently working on a project for regreening arid regions in California using prickly pear on degraded water-restricted former agricultural fields. The prickly pear really is optimally suited for regenerating desert landscapes because they are one of nature's great survivors of extreme conditions. Furthermore, they can produce impressive biomass yields which helps drive significant amounts of carbon underground which helps to structure the soil and feed the soil microbiome / establish mycorrhizal networks for other plants to be subsidized with. Plus all parts of the prickly pear cactus are edible, the fruits are delicious (great at reducing LDL cholesterol too). They are prickly as a mfer tho, my goodness, watch your hands! Plus in the America's they are native and so have natural biological controls in these ecosystems that help prevent unwanted runaway growth. Lots to love about prickly pear!

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

#46

Post by fuzztester »

animal_spirits wrote: post #6

I've been following Andrew Millison's work for a while, he's got a lot of really wonderful introductory lessons on permaculture. He's got an online course at the University of Oregon, I'm planning on taking it sometime soon

First saw this a few years ago.

Permaculture - from forest to farm | Clea Chandmal

https://youtu.be/KI3haUOkP-I?si=v_z8xCOKzwLO-May

IMO this is one of the most succint and clear explanations of why permaculture is so important - because it tries to mimic nature, which has had (m|b)illions more years to evolve and create much more intelligent and efficient growth, energy conversion, creation and destruction processes than we stupid and arrogant humans have had in the few tens of thousands of years (at most) that we have been doing agriculture, or should I say, monoculture or even better, stupidiculture.

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

#47

Post by maxglute »

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.

It's a labour intensive, make work program that accepts the reality that there's going to be 100s of millions to billions of Africans who will be stuck in subsistence agriculture for the rest of their lives. You can incrementally improve new workforce over time as society develops, but people who get left behind generally get left behind. Ultimately, their labour is cheap, and need something to do. Maybe you can replace 1000 workers with a piece of specialized heavy machinery that's cheaper, but then you'll have 999 idle hands.

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

#48

Post by fuzztester »

3 words.

"Geoff Lawton videos."

You know, that Strine permaculture guy.

Watch at least 15 to 20 of them. Many are short.

Only then talk, people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Lawton

https://youtube.com/@DiscoverPermaculture?si=XVjdWpJk5ZIVTnL...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strine

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

#49

Post by fuzztester »

animal_spirits wrote: post #6

I've been following Andrew Millison's work for a while, he's got a lot of really wonderful introductory lessons on permaculture. He's got an online course at the University of Oregon, I'm planning on taking it sometime soon

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472378

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

#50

Post by [deleted] »

vidarh wrote: post #39
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 b…

[deleted]
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