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Desertification in Africa's Sahel region may be driving a range of problems including terrorism. Gavin Haines investigates whether a project to reforest the region could help. Since French forces were deployed to Mali earlier this year, the Sahel has emerged as a new battleground in the so-called war on terror.  This semi-arid [...]

En collaboration avec ses partenaires, la FAO prépare des Directives mondiales pour la restauration des forêts et des paysages dégradés dans les terres arides, qui seront publiées au cours du deuxième semestre de 2013. Cette brochure décrit les principaux éléments des directives [en anglais seulement].

With EU-backed forces advancing across Mali, the need for European and other donors to accelerate the development process in Africa’s poorest regions appears ever more pressing. For development experts a simple, yet unheralded solution exists - planting trees. “Agroforestry is the future of agriculture in the drylands and sub-humid regions”, Dr [...]

Rome – Les experts ont présenté les progrès accomplis vers la réalisation de la Grande muraille verte pour le Sahara et le Sahel, une initiative panafricaine destinée à stopper la désertification, tout en améliorant la sécurité alimentaire et en contribuant à l’adaptation et à l’atténuation du changement climatique. Lancée en décembre 2006 [...]

In the Al Hajar Mountains of northern Oman, at the eastern edge of the Arabian Desert, high above the white terraces and minarets of Muscat, rain comes rarely and then in floods. Hajar means “rock” in Arabic, and the mountains are made of little else—a fractal landscape of umber and dusty limestone, [...]

A UN-led pilot scheme hopes to highlight how trees can help people in arid zone, considered to one of the most hostile habitats on the planet.  The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Acacia project's goal is to show how trees provide, food, fuel, shelter and income during times of hardship.  So far, [...]

China built its famous Great Wall to keep out marauders. Now, millennia later, a "Great Green Wall" may rise in Africa to deter another, equally relentless invader: sand. The proposed wall of trees would stretch from Senegal to Djibouti as part of a plan to thwart the southward spread of the Sahara, Senegalese officials said [...]