New UN map displays opportunities for restoration along "Africa's Great Green Wall"

A ground-breaking map of restoration opportunities along "Africa's Great Green Wall" has been launched at the UN climate change conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, a UN spokesman said here Wednesday.

"The Great Green Wall's core area crosses arid and semi-arid zones on the north and south sides of the Sahara," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here.

To halt and reverse land degradation, around 10 million hectares will need to be restored each year, according to the assessment, he noted.

"Experts say a variety of restoration approaches will be required to bring the Great Green Wall initiative to an effective scale and create a great mosaic of green and productive landscapes across North Africa, Sahel and the Horn," he said.

When Africa's Great Green Wall is finished, a 7,700-kilometer wall of trees, crossing 11 countries along the southern frontier of the Sahara Desert, will run from Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the east.

Proposed by the African Union in 2007, the "Great Green Wall" will be the largest living structure on the planet when the initiative is translated into reality.

The purpose was to provide a mighty barrier against the advance of the Sahara, and to reverse the plague of desertification spreading drought, famine and poverty through the Sahel region.

About 40 percent of Africa is threatened by desertification -- the loss of arable land to the encroaching Sahara.

The Sahel, a semi-arid transitional zone between the Sahara desert and the savannah, is the focus of efforts to build a "Great Green Wall" to hold back the desert and provide jobs and sustainable development for struggling African nations. Endit