[HN Gopher] Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent exp...
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Africa is building a Great Green Wall to prevent expansion of the
Sahara
Author : girafffe_i
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-02-22 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| lancetipton wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Super interesting video. Never spent a lot of
| time with it, but I've always been curious how people could
| rebuild an ecosystem.
|
| I think it was the dune series, that I read a number of years
| back that touched on this idea a bit in the second or third book?
| It was not something I ever really thought about before that.
| It's cool to see a real life example of it.
| kadoban wrote:
| Yeah there's a lot of that even in the first Dune book. The
| Fremen's leader is an ecologist and they're explicitly
| collecting water and preparing to change the entire world to be
| greener and more livable.
| sophacles wrote:
| The linked channel has a lot of good videos it, and Mossy Earth
| is another. They aren't going to make you an expert by any
| means, but they provide good introductions to various projects
| that are underway doing ecological restoration. They're nice
| introductions to the topic.
| bluGill wrote:
| Universities all over the world are asking that question - and
| have been for centuries. They have come up with some great
| answers over time. It takes years for farmers to learn -
| agriculture (like science) advances on the death of old people
| who continue their unsustainable practices to the grave - but
| things are overall much better than the past and getting
| better.
| legitster wrote:
| Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this
| is. This isn't a "rewilding" process - there is a LOT of manual
| human labor going into supporting very low yield agriculture.
|
| It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage workforce
| willing to live on subsistence agriculture.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| > It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage
| workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.
|
| I think that is already the population. What the attempt seems
| to be is to create a green belt that prevents further
| desertification of semi-arable land that they are already
| subsistence farming on, because if the desert keeps moving,
| these people will cease to exist.
|
| Captialistically/economically, there is questions as to whether
| these people should continue to subsistence farm, but if they
| want to, and it can help keep the desert at bay, then I say
| more power to them.
| bluGill wrote:
| These people right now don't have good options. Get them
| enough food locally and they no longer need to chase all over
| trying to find enough work to afford food. In turn that means
| they can send their kids to school and those now educated
| kids can in turn apply modern things. Some of that is those
| kids - the ones who don't love farming - leave to better jobs
| in the city, while others - those who love farming - apply
| modern farming techniques (which is sustainable, contrary to
| popular myth) and produce a lot more food while building up
| the soil even more.
|
| But if you don't have enough food it all fails. History has
| taught us that in every corner.
| legitster wrote:
| I just have strong doubts that people will want to. The video
| already highlights that the problem in the first place was
| young people wanting to move to cities or other countries. I
| would suspect it would revert to the pattern when the UN
| grant money dries up.
| Nux wrote:
| They could perhaps send there criminals, prisoners.. this kind
| of people.. have them man the green wall.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Or, you know, pay locals a consistent salary, thus helping
| the environment and also mitigating extreme poverty (<$1.25 a
| day) - which is what they are doing.
| bluGill wrote:
| More importantly, these green spaces are sustainable. So
| even if you run out of budget in 5 years, the people no
| longer need you to pay them as they now get everything they
| need from the work you paid them to do in the past and so
| they can live without subsidy. Or if you do have budget you
| can move to some other village and pay them to become
| sustainable.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Yep!
| protomolecule wrote:
| And when they would need more workers... What could possibly
| go wrong.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable
| this is.
|
| What was shown in the video looks like a "mickey mouse"
| operation, akin to a local tree planting effort to combat
| climate change. For this to make any difference you can't have
| people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1 person/1 half-moon/1
| day - that does not scale in any meaningful way. You need to do
| this kind of project at an industrial scale, with large amounts
| of heavy machinery and thousands of skilled professional
| workers - especially since they are discussing creating a
| "Green Wall" across thousands of kilometers at a width of
| hundreds of kilometers.
| legitster wrote:
| Yeah, I suspect that if the UN is actually serious about a
| Green Wall in the near future, they are engaging in mass
| industrialized planting. But it's not very expensive to have
| some marginal community projects here and there
| bluGill wrote:
| There is plenty of labor in Africa, that scales very well.
| Just give the people reason to keep trees and they will plant
| and water them. There are many local advantages to trees so
| it isn't hard to get locals to take care of them with small
| incentives.
| silverquiet wrote:
| If the Titanic is going down, it's going down, but if
| rearranging the deck chairs gives you something to do to
| relieve the anxiety, then I guess you might as well (my life
| may resemble this particular metaphor).
|
| I read William Langewiesche's travelogue where he crossed the
| Sahara overland after being a pilot who flew over for a few
| years. He said that the locals are rather fatalistic about
| living in such a massive and unforgiving place (people
| frequently die there); they say that when god decides it's
| your time, then it's your time. Langewiesche added that if
| you don't believe in god, then you can replace that with "The
| Sahara" and it still works quite well.
|
| I cannot imagine that there is much humans can do to hold
| back the desert. I'm quite sure that the only thing that
| would matter, a rapid drawdown of carbon emissions, is not
| possible at this point. I know it sucks, sorry.
| autoexec wrote:
| Yeah, the video pretty much says outright that this is a
| delay tactic to keep the poors from storming into the
| cities and overwhelming them. Ultimately these people, and
| even those in the cities, will likely end up as climate
| refugees and need to relocate elsewhere. Much of the
| western US is also facing a growing desertification problem
| and dust and dust storms have been increasing. On the plus
| side, all the increased atmospheric dust has a cooling
| effect on the planet.
| autoexec wrote:
| > you can't have people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1
| person/1 half-moon/1 day - that does not scale in any
| meaningful way.
|
| It'll get harder to maintain that pace as heat increases too.
| There'll be fewer and fewer hours that people can work
| outside. Rising temperatures will bring more heat-related
| illnesses and injuries. Considering the amount of ground they
| want to cover bringing in machinery to speed things up does
| sound like a good idea.
| bluGill wrote:
| You don't need to dig them constantly. In a few years your
| village has enough, and now you just need to maintain them
| which takes less time and so can be done in the cooler
| parts of the day. And these green places will be cooler
| than the desert so even in the heat of the day the whole is
| cooler.
|
| Of course as the village population grows you send the
| "young men" out to the edge and have them dig a few more
| half-moons at a rate of one/day. However they are building
| next to previous green areas which are already lowering the
| local temperature, and if sometimes it takes 2 days to
| build one - who cares, there is no hurry.
| girafffe_i wrote:
| Or utilize metric tonnes of cheap labor.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is no particular reason to expect Africa to do better in
| the near future. Russia and Iran are making large plays and
| helping dictators kick out the western supported governments
| (which were already corrupt, but making small strides to less
| corruption). I see no hope for most of Africa to do better.
| (note that I said most - There are 54 countries in Africa -
| several of them are doing very well - I hope this trend
| continues and spreads)
|
| edit: looking closer, it looks like this might be in one of the
| few countries that might actually do better. Though that also
| helps as people who are doing better have time to invest in
| this. time will tell.
| vidarh wrote:
| Senegal has one of the worlds highest fertility rates. They
| have a surplus of labour, and slowing desertification is a way
| of improving their ability to both subsist and grow their
| economy until they can drive wages up.
|
| Note how the video points out how it is causing more people to
| have reasons to stay in villages that's otherwise get depleted
| of young people. If that continues, it will have a significant
| long term benefit for the growth of Senegals economy.
| ww520 wrote:
| Land improvement is the easiest value creation. Turning
| unusable desert land into arable land creates huge long lasting
| benefits. The land has huge value increase. If the people doing
| the work are deeded the land, they become well off. They are
| incentivized to maintain the land.
| zokier wrote:
| I believe the intent is that the local climate and soil will be
| sufficiently altered that no laborious long-term upkeep is
| needed. So its not rewilding per se, but its also not purely
| agricultural project and parts of green wall afaik are
| completely non-agricultural. That also highlights the fact that
| the implementations of green wall projects have been very
| varied, there is no single formula that is applied everywhere.
|
| But yes, it is ambitious project and there indeed are lot of
| questions on both short-term feasibility and long-term outlook.
| As is natural for a project of this kind, the financial aspect
| is especially messy.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/07/africa-g...
| maxglute wrote:
| >It seems like this idea relies on a long term low wage
| workforce willing to live on subsistence agriculture.
|
| It's a labour intensive, make work program that accepts the
| reality that there's going to be 100s of millions to billions
| of Africans who will be stuck in subsistence agriculture for
| the rest of their lives. You can incrementally improve new
| workforce over time as society develops, but people who get
| left behind generally get left behind. Ultimately, their labour
| is cheap, and need something to do. Maybe you can replace 1000
| workers with a piece of specialized heavy machinery that's
| cheaper, but then you'll have 999 idle hands.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| >> there is a LOT of manual human labor
|
| same reaction. someone bring power shovel diggers.
|
| Also it should be combined with the other Great Green Wall
| projects, the most successful being "just plant trees" to shade
| the crops and keep the area cool and humid.
| vidarh wrote:
| How much do they cost compared to the labour cost that also
| provides additional employment options and boost the local
| economy?
|
| "Just plant trees" without doing anything to ensure the trees
| can survive is not meaningful in all conditions. What they're
| doing here is effectively "just planting trees" in a way that
| ensures the area stays moist enough for the trees to survive,
| and leveraging the same space to grow crops.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I've been following Andrew Millison's work for a while, he's got
| a lot of really wonderful introductory lessons on permaculture.
| He's got an online course at the University of Oregon, I'm
| planning on taking it sometime soon
| fuzztester wrote:
| First saw this a few years ago.
|
| Permaculture - from forest to farm | Clea Chandmal
|
| https://youtu.be/KI3haUOkP-I?si=v_z8xCOKzwLO-May
|
| IMO this is one of the most succint and clear explanations of
| why permaculture is so important - because it _tries to mimic
| nature_ , which has had (m|b)illions more years to evolve and
| create much more intelligent and efficient growth, energy
| conversion, creation and destruction processes than we stupid
| and arrogant humans have had in the few tens of thousands of
| years (at most) that we have been doing agriculture, or should
| I say, monoculture or even better, stupidiculture.
| fuzztester wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472378
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| I abhor these projects, because they are seasonal- as in
| dependent on outside funds and thus hyper-fragile. Also usually
| propped up by colonizers, to detract from some ressource
| extraction destruction.
|
| Same with wildlife preserves. One bad coup with corrupt
| politicians, one recession in the west - and its all gone,
| poached and ruins. Its worthless feel good photo OP, monetary
| potemkin zoos and forrests, providing the worst kind of hope, the
| one that has no chance to last in a storm.
|
| What is their solution against nomads and there goat herds which
| are still a status symbol and in conflict with the farmers of the
| region? Poisonous plants? Guards? Landmines? How does it prevent
| building up resentment, when obviously a green landscape is more
| important to the foreigners, then the starving locals?
|
| How does it solve the hard problem of exponential mankind vs
| civilizational allmende protection?
|
| How do the plants survive in the climate change storms yet to
| come?
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I abhor these projects, because they are seasonal- as in
| dependent on outside funds and thus hyper-fragile. Also usually
| propped up by colonizers, to detract from some ressource
| extraction destruction.
|
| It depends on the institutional experience of each country.
| There's a reason this initiative is being done in Senegal
| instead of neighboring Mali.
|
| WFP funding is fairly consistent and less whimsical ime. It's
| private donors like the Gates Foundation that tend to be flaky,
| as they only answer to the whims of the Gates family.
|
| Programs like the WFP, WB, IMF, ADB, USAID, etc need to be
| auditable as significant amounts of public and private money
| are invested, leading to demands from multiple donors, compared
| to family foundations or smaller non-profits.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I dunno, maybe watch the video and get your answers from the
| people who literally answers them in the video? They're not
| "planting trees", they're basically just running the normal
| progression of how sand forests develop at a faster, but still
| slow enough to take years, rate. Nothing particularly "it'll
| never work" or "it won't survive" about that.
| burnte wrote:
| You didn't watch the video, clearly. They're incredibly simple
| projects that help permanently convert land from desert to
| arable. They're not dependent upon the outside for anything
| except directions, as the only tools needed are what the people
| already have, a pickaxe and shovel. Once started it can
| continue on with nothing but locals who want to take more land
| back from the desert.
|
| Nomads, landmines, buzzwords, you're just looking for edge
| cases where this fails, and that's not helpful. If it works for
| 80% of the land they look at, that's mre than good enough.
| ludsan wrote:
| > How does it prevent building up resentment, when obviously a
| green landscape is more important to the foreigners, then the
| starving locals? > How does it solve the hard problem of
| exponential mankind vs civilizational allmende protection? >
| How do the plants survive in the climate change storms yet to
| come?
|
| I plan on using this set of questions next time my girlfriend
| says we should do something I don't want to do.
|
| > I abhor these projects...
|
| Jeesh.
| bradleykingz wrote:
| Africa is a country
| girafffe_i wrote:
| Lol
| beezlewax wrote:
| What?
| canadiantim wrote:
| Very amazing work. Syntropic farming, hadn't heard the term
| before but glad to do more research into it. Also the half-moons
| is very smart, very interesting. Interesting they went for half-
| moons instead of swales like in permaculture design, both aimed
| to increase water-retention. I guess in such very arid conditions
| half-moons may work better for water retention
| dappermanneke wrote:
| who is africa
|
| also, this is geoengineering. the same kind the soviets used to
| do and the chinese do now. it would never be allowed to happen in
| a western country because someone with deep pockets for a lawsuit
| would find an endangered species of worm living in a dune or two
| insider-trade wrote:
| Ah, so you like authoritarian Soviet and Chinese governments?
| And you called me fascist in another thread for wanting to
| regulate oil companies.
|
| Lol. Thanks for discrediting yourself.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Check out land imprinting.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_imprinter
| neontomo wrote:
| If you're interested in the trials and tribulations of regreening
| a desert landscape, I recommend this YouTuber with an ambitious
| dream:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas
| carapace wrote:
| I hate to be negative, I do, but Shaun Overton is a fool. He's
| wasting an enormous amount of money, energy, and time to
| achieve approximately nothing when he could do so much more if
| he expended those resources on a non-idiotic project. It's his
| time and money to waste, but it hurts to see it when he could
| really do a lot of good with it instead. His heart's in the
| right place.
| neontomo wrote:
| I'm not familiar enough with the topic to know if you're
| correct or not, but I don't watch his channel to see his
| project work out, seeing him learn small things along the way
| and share that journey but also him connecting with himself
| and the community around his land in unique ways through his
| project is intriguing and hopeful. A mad dream pushed forward
| by a mad man, which may not come to fruition, but it's a
| whole lot more entertaining than watching people take on
| small projects that are guaranteed to succeed.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Very cool to see he's using prickly pear cactus. I'm currently
| working on a project for regreening arid regions in California
| using prickly pear on degraded water-restricted former
| agricultural fields. The prickly pear really is optimally
| suited for regenerating desert landscapes because they are one
| of nature's great survivors of extreme conditions. Furthermore,
| they can produce impressive biomass yields which helps drive
| significant amounts of carbon underground which helps to
| structure the soil and feed the soil microbiome / establish
| mycorrhizal networks for other plants to be subsidized with.
| Plus all parts of the prickly pear cactus are edible, the
| fruits are delicious (great at reducing LDL cholesterol too).
| They are prickly as a mfer tho, my goodness, watch your hands!
| Plus in the America's they are native and so have natural
| biological controls in these ecosystems that help prevent
| unwanted runaway growth. Lots to love about prickly pear!
| fuzztester wrote:
| Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Also a Geoff Lawton video called something like greening the
| desert.
|
| A lot of his stuff (including that desert video) can be found
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472378
| chrsw wrote:
| Or just wait a few thousand years
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
| fuzztester wrote:
| 3 words.
|
| "Geoff Lawton videos."
|
| You know, that Strine permaculture guy.
|
| Watch at least 15 to 20 of them. Many are short.
|
| Only then talk, people.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Lawton
|
| https://youtube.com/@DiscoverPermaculture?si=XVjdWpJk5ZIVTnL...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strine
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