THe Great Green Wall being built in Africa to halt the southern progress of the Sahara Desert is a favorite public works project of mine — it’s massive, ambitious, long-term, important, and if it works, the effect will repay the cost many times over. This video takes a quick look at some of the work being done on the wall in Senegal.
I think what’s really great about it is that it is not just a fix for the environment but a fix for social cohesion, for migration of youth from towns to cities and abroad.
If you have areas that aren’t bereft of hope and a future then the young people don’t leave and end up being part of the migration to cities that can’t sustain large populations without food importation.
You don’t have towns dying when only the old and infirm are left behind, families grow, food and jobs are local, and most importantly, people care about the land that sustains them.