Why has the Great Green Wall reforestation and soil restoration project been struggling to get off the ground since 2010 in Senegal?

The Senegalese Great Green Wall Agency has once again been strengthened by the new authorities, maintaining its status and even redefining it as the ASERGMV, Senegalese Agency for Reforestation and the Great Green Wall, with the appointment of Mr. Sékouna Diatta, Mayor of the city of Mangagoulack in Casamance –south west of Senegal, Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Plant Biology and Co-Coordinator of the Master's Degree in Agroforestry Ecology and Adaptation (AFECA). His technical profile will certainly help him to carry out his no less exciting mission at the head of this umpteenth agency retained by the State of Senegal.

The Great Green Wall project, which involves 11 African countries south of the Sahara Desert, aims to restore and develop nearly 150 million hectares (370 million acres) of land in a strip 7,000 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide from Dakar to Eritrea. Senegal's share of the project is expected to cover around 800,000 hectares (1, 97 million acres) in the north of the country, between Senegal and Mauritania. This represents 1.31% of the total surface area.

In June 2010, the 11 states involved created the Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency to coordinate implementation of the initiative and support resource mobilization, and in 2012, the development and adoption of a harmonized regional strategy, define the official GGW intervention zone on a territory between the isohyets - the line connecting points on a map that receive the same amount of rainfall in a given period - 100-400 mm for each country, highlighting the line below, consisting of a green line running from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in the east.

This project revolves around 3 main themes:

i.       Forestry and agriculture (reforestation, seedling and plant production)

ii.      Water (management of basins and aquifers, drilling and irrigation)

iii.     Soil (restoration)

Pitfalls in achieving the objectives of the Great Green Wall project (contained in the 2020 report of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). ''The Great Green Wall -GGW: Implementation status and prospects to 2030 by Climatekos gmbh'' for © UNCCD 2020.

1.      Lack of political support from GGW member state governments for their environmental policy programs.

2.      Lack of structures and processes within ASERGMV-Senegalese agency, neither within government institutions nor through the creation of such capacities within the private sector, NGOs and research.

3.      Lack of coordination and engagement with other relevant sectors, the GGW Initiative should be cross-sectoral by including organizations, agencies from other relevant sectors. ASERGMV would coordinate the implementation of the various local, national, regional/international partners contributing to GGW activities.

4.      Lack of integration of environmental change and action into respective sectoral strategies, policies and programs - to reach local levels. Agricultural policy, land use, rural development and energy need to be associated with operations to achieve GGW objectives.

5.      Weak governance in the field of environmental change, leading to recurring institutional problems that hamper implementation of the GGW on the Senegalese side.

6.      Lack of effective monitoring and reporting tools in the implementation of the strategy and action plans.

7.      Lack of coordination and transnational cooperation between the respective GGW structures in each of the 11 states.

8.      Lack of appropriate monitoring-evaluation systems and mechanisms for sharing information and knowledge to capitalize on positive developments.

9.      Lack of rigorous application of results-based and financial management principles by the new international standards taking into account environmental and socio-economic impacts, necessary for the acceptance of funding applications.

10.   Inadequate reporting to bilateral and multilateral donors and financiers, leading to a lack of credibility and reduced funding for implementation of the GGW Initiative. Reporting on the use of funding and related evaluation and learning mechanisms should justify the proper use of financial resources allocated to GGW projects.

11.   Difficulties in mobilizing or receiving funds allocated for the costs of expertise in monitoring and supervision of GMV projects and field activities.

12.   Problems of funding via international institutions and green funds, which should just supplement the supposedly superior contributions of states. The Pan-African Agency for the Great Green Wall (APGMV) estimated the GGW's 2016-2024 funding requirements at around $500 million a year. The COVID crisis between 2019 and 2022 has divided budget contributions by more than 80%, drastically slowing down the operation of national GGW agencies and budgets dedicated to implementing programs on the ground.

13.   Poor use of national and international funding due to lack of organized, modern local structures for good project management.

14.   Insufficient budget for the Senegalese Agency for Reforestation and the Great Green Wall (ASERGMV), based on data from the Senegalese Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development

15.   Lack of transparency in the mobilization of green funds received by the State of Senegal and their allocation.

16.   Low Mobilization and development of water resources through Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) aims to increase access to water by developing and rehabilitating water points (boreholes, wells and conveyance) and supplying motor-driven pumps to facilitate the production of forest seeds, the basis for reforestation operations. There is little or no data available for Senegal in this area.

17.   Weak consideration or even ignorance of high-quality reports advising on good practices that can be applied by ASERGMV; we can cite a few:

- Étude diagnostique des cadres juridiques, politiques et institutionnels de la Grande Muraille Verte au Sénégal, by

Colonel Babacar Salif GUEYE, produced by Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment - International a.i.s.b.l. (GLOBE) with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF6) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as part of the GLOBE Legislators Advancing REDD+ and Natural Capital Governance Towards the Delivery of the 2030 Agenda project.

- CSFD - Comité Scientifique Français de la Désertification or French Scientific Committee on Desertification, February 2011 Coordinator: R. Escadafal, CSFD Chairman Authors: R. Bellefontaine, M. Bernoux, B. Bonnet, A. Cornet, C. Cudennec, P. D'Aquino, I. Droy, S. Jauffret, M. Leroy, M. Malagnoux, M. Réquier-Desjardins, CSFD Members Editor: S. Jauffret, Consulting Ecologist

- The Great Green Wall: An African response to climate change, Gilles Boëtsch, Aliou Guisse, Priscilla Duboz, Papa Sarr, Publication date: 04/04/2019

- Au Sénégal, le mirage de la «Grande muraille verte» Investigation, or: In Senegal, the mirage of the "Great Green Wall" Investigation, Léa Szulewicz, Camille Lafrance, Kpénahi Traoré from Reporterre.net,

Publication date: November 26, 2022 with the support of the Civil Forum for Asset Recovery (CiFAR)

- La Grande Muraille Verte, Capitalisation des recherches et valorisation des savoirs locaux, or The Great Green Wall, Capitalizing on research and promoting local knowledge; under the direction of Abdoulaye Dia, Robin Duponnois, IRD Éditions Collection: Synthèses

Publication date: September 2012

- The Great Green Wall: trees against the desert, by Gilles Boëtsch, Arnaud Späni,

Published on: 29 May 2013

- What contribution can CIRAD make to a revisited Great Green Wall? Agricultural Research for Development,

Publication date: May 2022, Jean-Baptiste Cheneval, Jean-Paul Laclau

What strategy for a leading Senegalese Agency for Reforestation and the Great Green Wall (ASERGMV)?

Country ownership and a country-led approach are fundamental principles for successful access to Green Climate Funds (GCFs). One of the operational priorities of the UN system's main funds dedicated to the fight against climate change is to respond to the needs and priorities of developing countries, but the expression of needs, the definition of priorities and the objectives must be determined by each country.  The agency must renew its clear and strong commitment to achieving the initiative's objectives and enlist the support of its supervisory minister and the State in its mission to attract funding for reforestation, land restoration and water management operations under the GMV project for the Senegalese part.

Analysis of the various documents written by project specialists and feedback from experience leads to the following recommendations:

i.       Capitalizing on the popularity of the Great Green Wall project, which is the first flagship of the United Nations decade for Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. UNEP, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) are working with 10 other UN agencies and development banks to coordinate action in favor of the GGW.

ii.      Adopt a flexible approach that makes the most of best practice in sustainable land management, taking into account the results of the many green belt, plantation and agroforestry projects that have already been carried out, as well as local know-how;

iii.     Identify and disseminate the most effective regeneration techniques that are easy to manage (technically and financially) and profitable;

iv.     Build on the decentralization process by ensuring that local people are involved in the implementation of GGW, by guaranteeing them the benefits of the spin-offs (improved land quality and yields and diversification of income-generating activities) :

a.      Promote very light village management structures, such as rural markets;

b.     improve training for members of village management structures and for women;

c.      put in place an appropriate institutional framework in terms of taxation and land ownership, in line with genuine decentralization, with a view to strengthening local capacity to manage resources, plan and control development.

v.      Encourage the intensification of agriculture and livestock farming in order to reduce the pressure on forest resources.

vi.     Increasing forest cover: a sustainable development strategy for the region

vii.   Combating the geopolitical instability in the Sahel region, which is putting a considerable brake on the ambitions of the various players. Given the complexity of the challenges, the success of such an initiative is highly dependent on the pacification of the region.

viii.  The need for local authorities to take ownership of the project through an inclusive approach. In this respect, it is essential that local people are convinced that the project offers them a better future, through awareness-raising work, which has been insufficiently carried out.

ix.     Federate non-state actors around the relaunch of the main lines of the GMV initiative so that they can act as a resonating echo to relay and reinforce state investments. They can help to enhance the value of foreign contributions and encourage the sharing of knowledge and experience through a dynamic organized network that meets regularly to review progress.

x.      Reinvent intra-African communication about the project by bringing together: experts from the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall and its member states, representatives of the Initiative's statutory institutions, intra-ministerial collaborators, representatives of civil society and the national and regional private sector for the areas directly crossed, stakeholders in territorial governance and shared resource management (pastoral units, borehole management committees, communal councils);

xi.     Ensure transparency in the funding mechanisms, in particular by clarifying relations with the authorized bodies of the United Nations green funds system, which have been accused on several occasions of not skimping on expenditure on operating costs, travel and forgetting to provide the beneficiary states through the Ministry of the Environment and the agency for reforestation and the Great Green Wall with funding for operations on the ground;

xii.    Ensure rigorous financial governance in order to avoid the financial mismanagement of the Great Green Wall Agency (the forerunner of ASERGMV), which has failed on several occasions with regard to staff costs due to recruitment of convenience, low self-financing capacity, unpaid tax and social security obligations and, more recently, late payment of salaries.

xiii.  Work to estimate Senegal's share in order to benefit from the sequestration of its share of the 250 million tons of CO2 throughout the project.

xiv.  Reinventing itself despite the reports of failure; the GMV must build on the technical expertise it has acquired over the past 10 years and use the accelerator with over €14 billion in promised funding, of which €650 million has already been mobilized, to push the GMV to change its pace, scale and action strategy through political and media mobilization with real leadership that must be taken at the level of a national civic awakening.

The place of the environment, energy and ecological transition, reforestation and climate action in Senegal's political project

The terms used above are perfectly consistent with the reconciliation of ecological regeneration, sustainable development, the adoption of a pragmatic energy mix and the consideration of the values and aspirations of local populations through a political programme applied over the long term.

The environment as an ecosystem and the protection of nature have often been the spearhead of policies to manage the relationship between citizens and their activities, their natural resources and the wealth they create.

Senegal has succeeded in adapting the names of its ministry in charge of the environment to include ecology and sustainable development, guided by the global evolution of the phenomenon of climate change observed over the last 30 years and which the United Nations Conference of the Parties, which brings together all or almost all the States of planet Earth, is trying to contain.

The complexity of setting up the Great Green Wall initiative, associated with reforestation in Senegal within the Senegalese agency for reforestation and the Great Green Wall, is due to the fact that the annual budgets for reforestation - around $3 million - and for the running of the GGW agency - also around $3 million - are pooled to give greater impact to operations housed at the Ministry of the Environment, Sustainable Development and Ecological Transition. Even if the main reforestation or reforestation operations should be prioritized in the Ferlo zone in the north of the country, close to the route of the Green Wall, they cannot be dissociated from the major GGW initiative.

Observers and progress reports conclude that the Great Green Wall project in all its components: Reforestation and restoration of 100 million hectares of land, water management and the creation of a circular economy with 10 million sustainable jobs and the sequestration of 250 million tons of CO2, have barely achieved 10% of their objectives after 10 years of operations across 11 countries south of the Sahara.

We were able to show through this study by the Energy Transition Center – CTE Senegal www.ctesenegal.com that the Great Green Wall project, led in Senegal by ASERGMV, should change dimension to accelerate the achievement of its cruising speed in the materialization of its achievements.

The pitfalls to achieving the objectives of the Great Green Wall project having been identified and known to all, clear recommendations having existed for several years and contained in brilliant publications and other reports or articles, the titanic work already done by precursors having started the first agency for the Great Green Wall (AGMV) ancestor of the Senegalese Agency for Reforestation and the Great Green Wall (ASERGMV),  are elements to be taken into account in the definition of a recovery and efficiency strategy that ASERGMV and its new management must put in place to succeed in making its mark the rendezvous of 2030 with a great leap forward.

The initiative for the Great Green Wall in its Senegalese part represents a unique opportunity for Senegal to develop nearly 850,000 hectares (1,97 million acres) of its territory where poverty and desert are most present. Succeeding in restoring the land around Matam, Podor and Bakel will be an unprecedented victory for the State after the failure of several major unfinished and yet budget-consuming offensives, which had a very small impact on the populations concerned.

The Great Wall project should be transformed into the Great National Offensive for the Restoration of Agro-Sylvo-Pastoral Life (G.O.R.E.S.V.I.A) and be a priority project for national survival (PPSN) in the same way as energy autonomy and for agricultural inputs.

The Head of State must take ownership of this project and should, in the same way as the Strategic Orientation Council for Oil and Gas, have ASERGMV in his cabinet or even better make it a full ministry with at least 100 billion CFA francs ($200 million) budget so that we finally succeed in a more than structuring project that would be solved within 15 years (2039) the problem of ecological transition and would reduce the poverty of at least 1 million Senegalese in the northern part of the country. The Great Green Wall project alone could constitute the economic pole of the northern region and constitute our bulwark against the advance of the desert and its climatic hazards. /.

Assane Ndao, Associate researcher, Energy Transition Center, CTE Senegal, August 2024, cte@ctesenegal.com