On a mission to re-green the Sahel

On 8 February 2016, a team of six researchers including a geographer, a hydrogeomorphologist, two plant biologists, an ethnobotanist and a sociologist set off with their two drivers from Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, to travel by truck through the diversity of dry and hot landscapes along a cartoon-like green line on the map, representing the Great Green Wall (GGW) – the collaborative effort to halt desertification and re-green areas and across the Sahel region.

The trip was the kick-off mission of the French National Research Agency (ANR) Future Sahel project in which researchers from France, Sweden and Senegal will work together with the Senegalese Green Wall Agency to further the work on the GGW in Senegal.

Along for the ride was centre researcher Deborah Goffner, coordinator for the Future Sahel Project, a plant biologist by background and part of the GGW and the Sahel initiative since 2011. The team drove for nine days, very rarely on-road, completely dependent on their GPS.

“We drove off with 300 litres of water, 20 kilos of onions and 300 packets of instant coffee. Prepared for a long, bumpy and very exciting road trip and hopeful about the outcomes at the end of it,” says Goffner.

“This is the other day-to-day reality of research, the one where I’m not at my desk but on dusty roads, sleeping on mats on the floor and gathering data in the field. It makes for very different workweeks than the ones I spend in Stockholm, and it’s one I wouldn’t want to be without.”

The journey had many purposes; building relationships and trust with local stakeholders and within the team, and the scientific objective to map out the landscapes along the GGW. In Senegal, the GGW is 545 km long and extends from Potou (the most western village) to Bellé (the most eastern village), and much of it is unmapped as far as vegetation and landscape composition is concerned – the team set out to add this missing information. To do this, two methods were used:

The team took more than 1000 GPS-localized photos to reconstruct the landscape on a map.

Each researcher also had a task in observing the different landscapes with respect to his/her scientific expertise (vegetation, water, geomorphology, village life, demography and social structure, etc.). At each stop along the way, the information was gathered, discussed, and illustrated on a freehand-drawn map.

“The discussions at the end of the day, drawing the map of what we had each experienced, were very rewarding. Working in a transdisciplinary team like this, sharing how you all look at things a bit differently depending on your expertise, really opens your eyes to the different aspects that should be considers and helps you experience the landscape in a different way,” Goffner says.

A second goal with the journey was to select a location to set up an additional experimental plot to test native tree species for reforestation.

“The Green Wall project was initially aimed at reforesting a wide band across the African continent and the Sahel, and while it has since been established that restoring the landscape and fighting against desertification is a more complex issue than that, and that planting trees all across the continent would probably do more harm than good, there is great potential in reforesting certain areas,” says Deborah Goffner.

“But for the replanting of trees to be successful we need to identify the good species to work with and appropriate ways of getting it to establish in the sandy soil.”

In fact, along the almost 550 kilometres the team travelled through many different kinds of landscapes and land uses. While some areas were very dry and barren, others were used for agriculture or had different kinds of vegetation.

The village of Ranérou was chosen as the site for the test plot based on several different criteria. Scientifically it is interesting based on its ecology and geographic location, strategically it is a good place for future work, and there was a strong local interest in hosting the test plot. Twelve different indigenous tree species, selected on the basis of ethnobotanical data, are currently being tested and planted in different ways to see what is the most successful.

Six months after Goffner and her colleagues set off form Dakar, the project is progressing well.

“There are many exciting results coming up in the next few months that will guide the continuation of the project,” says Goffner.

“After all, the success of the GGW will depend on its capacity to intelligently gather, generate, integrate, and use knowledge derived from a wide range of disciplines, taking into account the nature and complexity of social-ecological systems. FUTURE-SAHEL investigates on-the-ground, pragmatic resource management solutions, provides a conceptual framework to aid the decision making process within the GGW project, and with the Senegalese National Green Wall Agency as a partner, actually translates research into direct action. Beyond these solution-oriented objectives, scientific knowledge of the diverse Sahelian social-ecological systems will be produced. This exploratory mission has been eye-opening and clearly an important first step to achieving these goals!”