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How farmers in Earth’s least developed country grew 200 million trees
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia May 01, 2022 01:25pm |
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| Category | General |
| Author | Katarina Hoije and Craig Welch |
| News Date | Wednesday, April 27, 2022 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | MARADI, NIGER
For centuries, rich woodlands dotted this dusty, sun-blasted region south of the Sahara. There were fat locust bean trees, wispy bushes, and sparse pockets of winter thorn and tamarind. By the time Ali Neino was a boy in the 1980s, however, just one lonely tree sprouted from his family’s land, and he could see clear to the horizon.
“There was no vegetation in between the village and the fields,” recalls Neino, 45. “No trees, no shrubs, nothing.”
Decades of drought, land-clearing, and demand for firewood had left Niger nearly treeless. Intensive farming to feed the world’s fastest-growing population ensured new trees would not take root. Government efforts to reforest in the 1970s failed. Sixty million trees were planted; fewer than 20 percent survived.
But on a recent stroll along his family’s farm outside Dan Saga, Neino pointed to the trees growing everywhere. Sun-bleached acacia trunks poked through the soil. Branches and fallen leaves littered the yellow dirt. Five kinds of acacia grew. There were fruit-bearing trees and a type of warty bush known as dooki.
In the past 35 years, as scientists begged nations to get serious about reviving forests, one of Earth’s poorest countries, in one of the planet’s harshest regions, added an astonishing 200 million new trees—maybe more. Across at least 12 million acres of Niger, woodlands have been re-established with little outside help, almost no money, and without driving people off their land. The trees here weren’t planted; they were encouraged to come back naturally, nurtured by thousands of farmers. Now, fresh trees are popping up in village after village. As a result, soils are more fertile and moister, and crop yields are up. |
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