Curtis Abraham
In 1944, Walter Clay Lowdermilk, the celebrated American soil conservationist with an apt middle name, wrote in his popular book, Palestine: Land of Promise, blamed Arab Bedouin pastoralists (mobile livestock herders) for widespread desertification (Lowdermilk underestimated the potential consequences of climatic change on the environment and placed more emphasis on the impact of human activity). But his cultural bias and simplistic understanding of people and planet has much deeper roots. In 1843, for example, a popular French magazine wrote; “The Arabs never plant, but constantly destroy by grazing livestock and burning pastures”. It was a sentiment echoed later in the Nineteenth century by British engineer Sir William Willocks while working in Egypt (Willocks was involved in several grandiose engineering projects including the Aswan Low Dam and was honored by having a street in Zamalek named after him). But the civil engineer was anything but civil in his criticism of Arabs and the perceived environmental impact of the nomadic herding lifestyle: “It is extraordinary how capable an Arab is in turning a country into a desert.”
Sadly, this false colonial narrative, that dryland herders have deforested their own environments leading to reduced rainfall and the creation of deserts, continues today and has helped bring about large-scale tree planting projects (what experts call dryland afforestation initiatives). These multi—billion dollar campaigns, which are meant to improve eco-systems, ease the effects of global warming, stop soil erosion, and bolster biodiversity and water supplies are, according to the latest evidence, devastating the lives, livelihoods and environments of already poor pastoralists worldwide. This has not only made them more vulnerable to the ravages of a rapidly changing climate, but has also led to the further marginalization of these communities.
Green Wall efforts are denying pastoralists their grazing areas in the world’s steppe, grassland and savanna environments by contributing to water scarcity in already water- deprived communities, forced relocations of herders, restrictions of livestock mobility, land-grabs in pasturelands by local elites, and the establishing of large enclosures used for reforestation plots-land that was previously used for pastoralists activities.
The loss of pastoralists land is threatening regional food security, increasing the possibility of biodiversity decline in these communities, and restricting herders of their inherent ability to innovate and adapt to the various existential challenges triggered by the current climate emergency.
Such is the current crisis that rangeland loss through afforestation has been identified as a priority concern by the Global Coordinating Group of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (https://iyrp. info), which has been designated for 2026 by the UN General Assembly.
Green Wall programs are defined as continuous bands of planted trees stretching across single or multiple countries in the world’s drylands, places where more than two billion people, many of them pastoralists, call home https://www.unccd.int/sites/default/files/2018-06/15.%20The%2BLand%2Bin%2BDrylands__J_Davies.pdf. In recent years, concerns about climate change and an interest in increasing the sequestration of industrial carbon has led to a rapid rise of tree planting projects.
There are currently several high profiled Green Wall initiatives with significant (national and international) political and financial backing: these include Algeria’s Green Dam, China’s Three Norths Shelterbelt Program, the Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel. There are also several “Trillion Trees” schemes including the 2020 World Economic Forum’s Trillion Trees initiative.
What makes these mass tree planting projects particularly poignant in terms of their impact on herders and their environments is that not only do they have a dubious colonial history stretching back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century (such projects also became popular in the Twentieth century among the leaders of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy), but they are yet to be proven scientifically effective both environmentally and for their presumed socio-economic rewards. Rangeland afforestation is not a natural climate solution - Briske - 2024 - Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment - Wiley Online Library
Proponents of Green Wall projects point to several successful outcomes of dryland afforestation However, these may in fact be illusions, mirages in the very deserts they are supposedly trying to keep at bay. According to some experts, what is considered success boils down to simply how many trees have been planted, or how many farmers have been trained, or how many laborers hired. Furthermore, what positive results have been reported could illustrate natural processes leading to increase tree cover and vegetation, for example. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-112321-
111102
Another major shortcoming of claims of successful afforestation in the world’s drylands is the fact that specific geographic areas of tree planting “victories” are rarely made known, which remote sensing technology would at least be able to verify. As it stands, there is very little publicly available data to independently assess Green Wall outcomes.
What is known is that these afforestation programs are damaging the very fabric of the world’s pastoralists communities. Take for example, China’s Three-North Shelterbelt Program (TNSP), which has, in combination with other Green Wall programs, removed pastoralists from their rangelands and employed them in tree-planting instead, which is meant to improve the ecological environment and increase the forest coverage in northwest, north and northeast China (the home territories of the country’s ethnic minorities such as the Mongolian and Tibetan, both traditional livestock herders, are often targeted for these ecological construction projects including the TNSP). In exchange for participating in the government’s tree-centric schemes, Chinese officials have offered subsidized grain (for a limited time period) including cash incentives to plant trees and abandoning herding.
In Africa’s Sahara and Sahel regions, where the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) and other dryland afforestation schemes are currently being implemented, land seizures in pastoralists’ areas are commonplace. In Mali, large-scale tree planting projects have allowed local elites to profit from land grabs (of formerly public lands) creating further disenfranchisement and impoverishment of its herding populations. In the Ferlo desert region of Senegal, increased water demand for GGWI nurseries has forced families to reduce their water use and delayed livestock access to water. In addition, afforestation has blocked critical livestock migration routes, and rangeland enclosures and tree plantations have obstructed rangeland access to local herders.
In Algeria, the Green Dam program (intended to create a 'barrier' of forest spanning the country from east to west in order to halt desertification) was used by the government to reduce and control pastoralism by settling nomadic pastoralists in order to make them part of a network of socialist villages was one of the goals of Algeria’s Green Dam program.
While some ecosystems might benefit from such afforestation schemes, dryland environments do not (why plant trees in places where trees don’t grow naturally?). According to Chris Reij, a senior fellow at the World Resource Institute, puts tree survival rates around 20% https://time.com/5669033/great-green-wall-africa/, while there’s also a noticeable decline in biodiversity. Afforestation is also associated with reduced soil moisture and lowering of water tables because of thirsty trees: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169417300112.This has led to increased water scarcity for people and livestock in some cases, and resource enclosures that particularly work against pastoralist livelihoods making already poor people even poorer. Mobile livestock herders often resist the replacement of their fields or rangelands with tree plantations and fences.
These Green Wall enterprises falsely imply that dryland ecosystems are uninhabited, “empty” and “untapped”, wastelands in need of improvement (in antiquity deserts were seen not as degraded environments but as exotic places with strange people who were variously depicted as rich in livestock, fierce warriors, and brigands) https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13570-017-0099-8.pdf. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they are almost always populated by pastoralists who make good use of drylands both for economic and ecological reasons.https://www.fao.org/pastoralist-knowledge-hub/pastoralist-networks/regional-networks/eastern-and-southern-africa/en/ . Furthermore, pastoralism strengthens biodiversity through extensive livestock production on drylands through grazing, seed dispersals and fire reduction. It’s no coincidence that most of East Africa’s iconic national parks and game reserves were once home to pastoralists prior to their eviction during colonial times.
large- scale tree planting initiatives in the world’s drylands should be abandoned for more science-led, evidence-based and effective interventions, and for the implementation of policies and projects that SUPPORT mobile herding activities in the world’s drylands, which would ensuring food security, bolster biodiversity in rangelands.
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