A desert is advancing on Nigeria and its neighbors. Each year, the Sahel cuts deeper into the land, overtaking farmlands, rupturing biodiversity and breeding insecurity. In my country, these are the real-world ramifications of climate change happening now. And it is time to fight back—with trees. We must use nature’s basic material (all too often overlooked) for solutions to one of the continent’s greatest challenges.
At this year’s United Nations special conference on climate change, I announced the planting of a further 25 million trees in Nigeria. It contributes toward a larger project: a Great Green Wall stretching the breadth of the continent from Senegal to Djibouti. A bulwark against climate change and ecological breakdown, it shall hold back the advancing tide of dunes, restore biodiversity and healthy soils and serve as a great carbon sink—soaking up the CO2 emissions that humans have already released into the atmosphere.
Critically, ecological restoration reduces the threat of land disputes. In the dry season, barren—often drought-stricken—pastureland in the Sahel forces nomadic herders to drive their cattle further south to graze. Here they come into conflict with sedentary farmers, whose numbers have increased with exponential population growth. Two livelihoods—one itinerant, one settled—compete for dwindling resources and clashes break out; vast human and economic costs have been the result. If this ecological breakdown continues unabated, it will only exacerbate this competition for land.