How a German professor plans to grow millions of trees in the Sahara
A German scientist is looking to turn part of the Sahara desert into forest. Through the Sahara Renaissance Project (SAREP), he’s aiming to green an area in the Mauritanian desert the size of Wales – and change the landscape throughout North Africa in the long run.
About 90% of Mauritania’s territory on the western coast of Africa lies in the Sahara desert. While the Sahara used to be green during the last Ice Age, current climate conditions even favour the expansion of the desert. The Sahara Renaissance Project, led by Peter Heck from the Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, wants to reverse this current trend and initiate a “renaissance” of the Sahara by planting thousands of plants and trees. The aim is to sequester up to 120 tonnes of CO2 per hectare annually, create jobs and contribute to climate protection.
First steps: A test facility in Mauritania
The project begins in Mauritania, where a test facility will be constructed on an area of 650 hectares along the Atlantic coast. Central to the test facility is a desalination plant that converts seawater into freshwater. This desalinated water will then be transported into the desert via a system of pipelines and pumps, where it will irrigate the planted vegetation via a drip system. During the test phase, several thousand trees will initially be planted. The energy for desalination and irrigation is to come from renewable sources: photovoltaic and wind turbines around the reforested areas.
Mauritania has agreed to provide SAREP with a two-million-hectare dune and let the team use it for fifty years. This agreement was signed in December 2023 at the climate conference in Dubai. After fifty years, the property and infrastructure will be returned to Mauritania in full.
The goal: A green belt to the Red Sea
Trees such as prosopis, eucalyptus, acacia and jatropha were selected for the planting, all of which are suitable for hot, sandy conditions and grow quickly. These trees not only provide valuable timber, but also stabilise the sand and sequester CO2.
Once the test facility in Mauritania proves feasible, SAREP aims to scale up. Over the next ten years, two million hectares in Mauritania are to be planted with several million trees – an area roughly the size of Wales. And this is just the beginning: in the long term, a continuous green belt is to be created from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea through Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Niger, Chad and Sudan. These green zones could sequester up to 120 tonnes of CO2 per hectare annually.
However, financing a project of this size is a challenge. The plan is to raise some of the money needed by selling CO2 certificates and wood. Nevertheless, it still needs investors.
Not a development aid project, but an investment project
SAREP maintains that it’s not a development aid project, but a sustainable investment that ensures land and profit-sharing with local communities. The local people are to manage the forests, as Peter Heck explained to Focus magazine. The team expects that each 10.000-hectare unit will create at least 2.000 jobs and combat the causes of migration as a result. The project also includes agricultural plots for a variety of different crops such as maize, sorghum, chickpeas, millet, peanuts or onions. The food produced is to be sold primarily at local markets.
To consider changes in the ecosystem, Peter Heck and his team “will provide for biodiversity stepstones especially for migratory bird[s] in the form of ponds and undisturbed afforested areas.”
Not the first idea for greening the Sahara
The idea of greening the Sahara is not entirely new: the African Union has long stated their intention to plant an 8,000km long and 15km wide green band in the Sahel by 2030 with the “Great Green Wall” project. More than twenty countries are working together to achieve this, although the project is progressing better in some countries and worse in others (in most cases, due to a lack of money). The initiators of the project now speak of a “mosaic” rather than a wall. At the One Planet Summit in 2021, almost 12 billion euros were pledged in support of the project to get the ball rolling again.
Sources: Tagesschau, Focus, SR, Zeit, SAREP
Visualisation: Sarep GmbH
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