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How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

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Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#51

Post by blagie »

groby_b wrote: post #32
blagie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation required and requested. I can plant a hundred trees, keep them up for a year, and find a hundred tree stumps in two. I genuinely would like to know where on the spectrum this is: - This is a fools' errand - This requires constant upkeep and detailed construction - This requires mild upkeep - This is self-sustaining, can be done with a shovel + seeds, and once started, is self-sustaining, with the forest turn…

This requires constant upkeep. The goal is to structure it so the local community is incentivized to invest that upkeep, but it's not just gonna happen all by itself. The goal is indeed a self-sustaining ecosystem, but one with human participation. If you want more detail, a good keyword is "Farmed Managed Natural Regeneration" That keyword also makes it pretty clear it's more than a shovel and some seeds :) And, fwi…

Thank you! I received three responses.

1) One pointing to the linked promo video designed to give feel-good vibes, claiming that's a citation. (fnordpiglet)

2) One without citations, just claiming this was designed by "researchers" and I should take that on the double-authority (bluGill)

3) And yours, which is helpful and points to an actual set of citations!

Thank you for that!

Footnote: There was a point in history when slashdot, and then reddit, were populated by intelligent discussions. At some point, there was a cliff. I enjoy HN, but I feel like we're heading for that cliff. I've seen this dynamic more and more. There are good people like you still left here, but the signal-to-noise ratio is dropping....

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#52

Post by tim333 »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #26

My question is are there downstream effects? The planting techniques are fascinating but the water that they are capturing surely was going some where, right? However little the stream may be, how do they do this without messing up people who are downstream?

It doesn't necessarily work like that. Vegitation can cause more rain rather than just taking water from elsewhere. A striking example is the Loess plateau, in China which went from dessert to green. Article mentioning it:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-bigg...

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#53

Post by bluGill »

blagie wrote: post #51
groby_b wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This requires constant upkeep. The goal is to structure it so the local community is incentivized to invest that upkeep, but it's not just gonna happen all by itself. The goal is indeed a self-sustaining ecosystem, but one with human participation. If you want more detail, a good keyword is "Farmed Managed Natural Regeneration" That keyword also makes it pretty clear it's more than a shovel and some seeds :) And, fwi…

Thank you! I received three responses. 1) One pointing to the linked promo video designed to give feel-good vibes, claiming that's a citation. (fnordpiglet) 2) One without citations, just claiming this was designed by "researchers" and I should take that on the double-authority (bluGill) 3) And yours, which is helpful and points to an actual set of citations! Thank you for that! Footnote: There was a point in history…

All indications are this is supported by serious research from universities. Though I will agree that if you want to go deeper than a conversation level you will need to find who. I would assume the the researchers are writing most of this up in language others than English. In fact if you found a lot of information in English I would be very concerned as the people doing this do not speak English. They may publish some in English as well, but if the majority isn't in the local language (which might be translated or not) there is a problem.

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#54

Post by karaterobot »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)#Risk...

> As of 2023, the Great Green Wall was reported as "facing the risk of collapse" due to terrorist threats, absence of political leadership, and insufficient funding. “The Sahel countries have not allocated any spending in their budgets for this project. They are only waiting on funding from abroad, whether from the European Union, the African Union, or others.” said Issa Garba, an environmental activist from Niger, who also described the 2030 guideline as an unattainable goal. Amid the existing stagnation, a growing number of voices have called for scrapping the project.

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#55

Post by LastTrain »

robbyiq999 wrote: post #41

A lot of interesting takes in the comments where growing more plants will somehow cause ecological disaster. The only exception I can see is diverting water to support it. Otherwise, I have never heard such a thing.

Just off the top of my head: kudzu, skull weed, and tamarisk. I’m sure there are many more examples. Just because you are unaware of something doesn’t exist.

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#56

Post by growfeather »

evandale wrote: post #29
VintageCool wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sure, if you look at geologic timescales then eventually Africa will move and the region of northern Africa will cease to be desert. Within a human timescale, I think "never" is an acceptable term. Atmospheric circulation means that the latitude of the Sahara is blasted with cool dry air from the upper atmosphere. Humans planting trees might slow the spread of the desert, but will not vanquish it. To disrupt th…

Why are we working in human timescales? It's like saying the sun will never burn out because humans won't be around to see it happen. To me, that's a pretty bold and naive claim.

It is cultural human hubris to bother, in any way whatsoever, to be worried about the sun burning out. It’s an interesting curiosity but we your life, if you lived to be 2000 years old (you won’t), you will have moved yourself 0.0000571428% closer to the time when that will happen. We DO need to actually be worried about our planet overheating, our agricultural spaces becoming despoiled, and other things that can actually happen in our lives. One of these things is not like the other.

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#57

Post by [deleted] »

LastTrain wrote: post #55
robbyiq999 wrote: post #41

A lot of interesting takes in the comments where growing more plants will somehow cause ecological disaster. The only exception I can see is diverting water to support it. Otherwise, I have never heard such a thing.

Just off the top of my head: kudzu, skull weed, and tamarisk. I’m sure there are many more examples. Just because you are unaware of something doesn’t exist.

[deleted]

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#58

Post by robbyiq999 »

LastTrain wrote: post #55
robbyiq999 wrote: post #41

A lot of interesting takes in the comments where growing more plants will somehow cause ecological disaster. The only exception I can see is diverting water to support it. Otherwise, I have never heard such a thing.

Just off the top of my head: kudzu, skull weed, and tamarisk. I’m sure there are many more examples. Just because you are unaware of something doesn’t exist.

Those are invasive weeds. I don’t think they compare well to the native grass and citrus trees they are growing.

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#59

Post by dang »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #2

Further discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39466851

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the Sahara - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39466851 - Feb 2024 (68 comments)

Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert

#60

Post by blagie »

bluGill wrote: post #53
blagie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I received three responses. 1) One pointing to the linked promo video designed to give feel-good vibes, claiming that's a citation. (fnordpiglet) 2) One without citations, just claiming this was designed by "researchers" and I should take that on the double-authority (bluGill) 3) And yours, which is helpful and points to an actual set of citations! Thank you for that! Footnote: There was a point in history…

All indications are this is supported by serious research from universities. Though I will agree that if you want to go deeper than a conversation level you will need to find who. I would assume the the researchers are writing most of this up in language others than English. In fact if you found a lot of information in English I would be very concerned as the people doing this do not speak English. They may publish s…

Speculation is very unhelpful, as are uncited claims. It's just not.

FYI: Your assumption is wrong. The language used for instruction in most universities in ECOWAS is either English or French, and mostly English. If you're talking about the research, or anything vaguely like leadership, all people doing this will speak primarily English as the lingua franca.

You can figure that out with by googling this:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=top+universities+ecowas&ia=...

And visiting their web pages.

The related problem is that e.g. Nigerian English or Ghanian English isn't the same as British or American, and academic journals do discriminate on this sort of thing, very explicitly.

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