Name: Africa's Desert Problem: How to Stop the Sahara
Uploaded: 2021-01-11T21:10:46.000Z
Duration: 11 min 28 s
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The African continent is probably going to end up becoming the location of the most important demographic event of the 21st century.

Adverbs of manner

Today, the population of Africa already accounts for roughly 17% of the human population, the second highest of any continent after Asia, which represents almost 60% of humanity.

However, Africa's population is growing significantly faster than anywhere else in the world is right now.

By the end of the century, it's estimated that Africa will by then be home to roughly 40% of the human population, while Asia will by then be home to only 43%.

The 21st century is going to be largely defined by the rise of Africa, but the continent faces several serious challenges to overcome in her rise to global prominence, and one of the biggest of these problems is desertification.

Everybody who's ever played Civ six knows this, but desertification is essentially defined as the degradation of land, such that it is no longer productive for useful things such as agriculture, land can only provide so much.

And if the demand is too great that it cannot satisfy the needs of the population, especially in the 21st century, the pressure is ever increasing on dryland ecosystems across the world for providing goods such as food, fuel, building materials and water.

The humans need to survive and economies need to thrive as the pressure to provide these resource is for the world's rapidly expanding population increases.

Coupled with the growing threats of global climate change, drylands across the world are experiencing mawr soil erosion than ever, and thus an inability for the land to retain water or ever re grow plants again.

So while yes, the term does bring to mind the windswept sand dunes of the Sahara, it's important to remember that this term reaches far beyond just those living in and around the world's deserts.

If we take a look at the world at large, we can see the drylands cover roughly 38% of Earth's total land area and cover much of North and South Africa, western North America, Australia, the Middle East and Central Asia, and all of these areas are home to roughly 2.7 billion people across the world today.

But the major concern isn't just that soil degradation is happening, but the increasing pace at which it is happening.

What used to take 30 years to degrade is now happening in just a single year.

Leading many toe worry about what the's expanding population groups will do in these regions over the next century, possibly forcing them to migrate elsewhere.

It is now of such a concern that the United Nations even has a special convention, the Convention to Combat Desertification, or the U.

D, that regularly meets and is comprised of 122 countries, each committing tow land degradation targets now focusing back in on Africa as we first discussed.

It is home to the world's third largest desert, after both Antarctica and the Arctic, which of course are both technically considered desserts as they receive far less than the 250 millimeters of annual precipitation to be considered one.

But what we're focusing on here is the Sahara Desert.

This colossal desert, which comprises much of northern Africa, covers some 9.2 million square kilometers and spans roughly 3000 miles from coast to coast.

Right below this vast pile of sand is a region known as the Suhel.

It is tucked in between the Sahara in the north and the Sudan Ian Savanna to the south.

Here, some 135 million people live their lives.

But what is troubling is the increasing desertification in the region, which is essentially pulling the Sahara desert south.

In fact, over the last 100 years alone, the Sahara desert has grown by 10% and much of that growth has been in this south where direction The fear is that if nothing is done, the Sahara will continue to expand, and this essentially wiped out this entire region and push even further into Central Africa.

And the worst thing is that this is expected to affect a ton of people, while today the population of the saddle is a lot at 135 million, it is expected that by 2050 the population could grow to as high as 340 million or more, or roughly with the United States population is today, and without any productive land to grow food on or to sustain a decent life, a spiraling cycle of even worse poverty than the saddle.

Currently, experiences will quickly emerge, and this is actually already sort of happening.

For instance, over the past couple decades, this issue has already fueled severe food and water shortages, which in turn have caused recurring military conflicts.

Over these declining resource is and thus forced migration to better and more prosperous areas.

One of these resource is the premier lake in the region.

Lake Chad has shrunk to incredibly low levels in recent years.

What has historically been an extremely important body of water for countries like Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and *** has seen its levels shrink to less than 10% of what they once were when the lake was at full capacity, meaning that the 30 million or so people who rely upon this lake each and every year are under serious threat of losing their entire water supply.

In the face of this massive challenge, however, many community leaders, scientists and politicians have begun looking at long term solutions.

But finally in 2007, under the leadership of the African Union, countries across the region took a bold first step at solving this problem by unveiling their plans for what has become known as the African Great Green Wall.

The plan is to essentially built a wall across the entire southern edge of the Sahara Desert, all the way from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, all in the hopes of blocking the Sahara's continued relentless march south.

And this isn't just any wall because of the wall completely made out of trees, which, once complete, will make it the world's largest natural wonder, albeit sort of man made.

It'll be, ah, whole three times as large as the Australian Great Barrier Reef.

Once constructed, the wall will be 4800 miles long and be roughly 10 miles wide through most of its path, which is about the same distance as a wall from Portugal.

All the way to Mongolia would be the estimated cost of constructing.

Such a titanic structure is believed to be around $8 billion.

It's a small price to pay because in the end it could transform the lives of millions of Africans who see themselves on the very front lines of climate change.

And this isn't even the first time that this type of project has been undertaken.

Similarly, both China and India have undertaken or are considering a green wall of their own that would aid in blocking the expanding Gobi Desert and Tar desserts, respectively.

The project in the Sahel is being spearheaded by the African Union, but it's also being helped out by many other organizations like the United Nations as well as several other countries around the world, with the hopes of completing the wall by 2030 and once completed.

Not only could it stop the Sahara from expanding, but the amount of CO two that all of these new trees could absorb will also provide a great bonus benefit as well.

It would be equivalent to the entire state of California keeping all of its automobiles parked for 3.5 years.

But this project alone is not enough to save this region or, for that matter, all of the regions across the world facing a similar crisis.

In addition of this, we as a species have to begin taking better care of our environment.

Two decades of overgrazing, climate change induced droughts and poor farming practices are stripping not only the Sudan ian grasslands of their once fertile top soil.

But hundreds of other regions like it across the world.

But what is also needed is to allow for regions to recharge their water tables and create the micro climates necessary to thrive so the vegetation can flourish.

For instance, countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and *** are adopting a practice of fencing off large areas of land to allow it to recover from the effects of overgrazing.

Likewise, and agricultural areas farmers were being taught to plant around existing trees and vegetation rather than just plowing over them as faras, the wall itself is concerned there is a long way to go.

With just over a decade left to meet the goal.

The project is currently only 15% complete with the most significant gains in Senegal, with over 11 million trees planted, Nigeria with 4.9 million and Ethiopia with 15 million.

However, there is so much more work left to dio, some of the delays have been due to funding, but a lot of it is also just the sheer level of manpower required to plant so many trees.

With what could be over 300 million people living in the Sahel after the next three decades, It is now Mawr important than ever to save this land from falling beneath the sands.

For if not, a mass migration could occur.

Unlike the likes we have ever before seen, this year is my five year anniversary creating videos here on YouTube.

It's pretty crazy to think back on the journey that I began all that time ago and all of the lessons and all of you who have joined me along the way back then, five years ago, when I was just starting out, I didn't know a single thing about animation, video editing or even how to record my own audio.

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If you go back and watch any of my ancient five year old videos from back, then you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

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