This September, a high level meeting among the participants of the African Great Green Wall Initiative (AGGWI) implementing countries has been held in India and an agreement reached by the partners to develop a new roadmap to revitalize the initiative operation that aims to achieve restoring 100 million hectare degraded land and creating 10 million jobs in the Sahel region by 2030.
The initiative that has been implemented to build climate change resilient economy and improve people’s lives in 11 African countries covers about 8,000 km land stretched from Senegal to Djibouti. AGGWI covers about 780 million hectares of arid and semi-arid land around the Sahara which is home to 232 million people. However, the twelve years old greenery program has shown less progress in contrast to what has been expected.
Nevertheless, some countries like Ethiopia have made positive progress in terms of tree plantation and job creation despite notable shortcomings. The country has been working to implement the initiative in 58 selected woredas in three states including Tigray, Afar and Amhara since 2014. The major objective of the initiative is to prevent desertification and improve the lives of the people.
AGGWI specifically helps to improve food security, poverty and migration reduction among others, said Abebe Seifu, Ecosystem Rehabilitation and Desertification Protection Director at the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission. As part of the Sahel region, the selected woredas have experienced severe drought, land degradation, shortage of water and increased temperature so that the people obliged to migrate to other places.
In 2018 EU granted the country about seven million Birr to the operation of the initiative. Consequently, some 496.5 million seedlings were planted and 1,173 jobs were created to those who engaged in incense and gum business in the same period. Moreover, 1,600 people have been engaged in nursery opération. In addition, Training of Trainers in seed collection, nursery management, planting, construction of physical structure, and the use of improved stoves was given to 2,958 frontline staff and 24,423 agro-pastoralists.
According to Abebe, Ethiopia is better than some member states in terms of applying the initiative and paying the membership fee. However, it needs cooperative work among the states as some of the members have not paid any of the fees over the past decade. The member states must exert more efforts as they once pledged in their ambitious agreement. “Demanding assistance is right but it should go along with employing responsibility.” This is the major shortfall in achieving the initiative despite the highest amount of the money.
However, there are some countries like Mauritania and Senegal that actively implementing the initiative beyond paying the annual fee. Every member country that applies the initiative ought to pay 115,000 USD annual membership fee to AU. Accordingly, Ethiopia has paid four times since the country has started implementing the initiative. However, over the past five years the country stopped paying the fee due to hard currency crunch.
There are also challenges related to shortage of technologies that can be adapted to the cultivation activities in arid and sub arid areas. There is also lack of administrational structure at lower level to undertake monitoring activities of the initiative, according to Abebe.
Such projects need appropriate inspection and evaluation for better achievement by identifying shortcomings and applying relevant solutions said Kurabachew Tenaw, a Forest Expert at the commission. The AGGWI is very important to handover a suitable environment to the coming generation.
It is important to create a buffer zone in the area to nurture the already planted trees. On the other hand, there is a plan to participate the surrounding community in the selected places. It is also significant to create conditions in which the community actively engages in the initiative in a way it can partake in agricultural plantation.
According to Aweke Shitaye, Land Rehabilitation Expert at the commission, such project is important to recover lands and improve lives so that it needs active cooperation among world countries to combat climate change impact in bringing relevant result in the area. The African nations in general and Ethiopia in particular release very low amount from the global greenhouse emission.
However, these countries have been affected a lot from the impacts in terms of drought and unpredictable weather condition. And the developed countries participate only in funding while they need to exert extra efforts in knowledge and technological assistances as they are the major role players in releasing higher carbon dioxide.
Currently, the country is working to recover 15 million hectare land from degradation in various greenery programs including the initiative until 2030. Therefore, the government and all stakeholders and international partners need to exert more efforts than any other times to succeed in building climate change resilient economy by realizing the greenery projects and of course the AGGWI too.
The Ethiopian Herald November26, 2019
BY YOHANES JEMANEH
