Desert Environments of Republic of Chad - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 178

The international donor and NGO community in conjunction with the Chadian
government, are addressing the effects of climate change with programs aimed at
better management of dwindling water resources and at holding back the spread of
desertified land by planting trees in one of the driest and hottest countries on earth.
The Chadian Environment agency inaugurated a national data collection center
in 2001 to compile statistics on desertification in the country. The center, a unit of
the Agency for Domestic Energy and the Environment, has ended its pilot phase and
it was intended for monitoring a 200 km radius around the capital N'djamena.
Lake Chad was one of the largest fresh bodies of water on the African continent
and its disappearance will have a tremendous impact on the population surrounding
it. The problem of Lake Chad is increasingly complex because of the international
nature of the desertification (Coe and Foley 2001 ). Lake Chad is a regional problem
East African and North African member states of the African Union and the UN
must deal with it. A collaborative approach to combating the desertification of Lake
Chad is needed to reverse the current trends. Projects centered on Lake Chad's
desertification reversal highlights an important aspect of the climate change issue.
The treatment of symptoms will not solve the larger problem of global climate
change. It will take the efforts of people thousands of kms away in a combined effort
to combat the global climate change. The improvement of the global condition will
make it easier to accomplish the difficult task of desertification reversal but some of
the initiatives already in effect (Boxes 9.1 , 9.2 , 9.3 and 9.4 ) can do much to arrest
and reverse desertification.
Box 9.3: Great Green Wall to Stop Sahel Desertification
The wall envisioned by 11 African countries on the southern border of the
Sahara, and their international partners, is aimed at limiting the desertification
of the Sahel zone. The building of this pan-African Great Green Wall (GGW)
was approved by an international summit in Bonn. The GGW, as conceived
by the 11 countries located along the southern border of the Sahara, and their
international partners, is aimed at limiting the desertification of the Sahel
zone. It will also be a catalyst for a multifaceted international economic and
environmental program. The Sahel zone sens lat . is the transition between the
Sahara in the north and the African savannas in the south, and includes parts
of Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger,
Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. The GGW initiative initially involved the plant-
ing of a 15 km-wide forest belt across the continent, with a band of vegetation
as continuous as possible, but rerouted if necessary to skirt around obstacles
such as streams, rocky areas and mountains - or to link inhabited areas. Its
aim is to ensure the planting and integrated development of economically
interesting drought-tolerant plant species, water retention ponds, agricultural
production systems and other income-generating activities, as well as basic
social infrastructures.