Page 9 - AfrElec Week 40 2021

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Newly discovered trees in Sahel

could counter climate change

AFRICA THE fight against climate change and deforest- one of the most effective ways to limit the harm-
ation in Africa received a boost this week as sci- ful effects of climate change.
entists said they had discovered 7bn previously A team of more than 350 African experts ana-
unrecorded trees in Africa. lysed data from 88,000 sites across the continent.
Researchers found undiscovered trees that They examined land use and changes in that use
are located outside forests and are distributed over the past 20 years. One of their findings has
across an area equivalent to 537mn hectares, the been almost 7bn trees that, until now, haven’t
World Economic Forum said in a statement. been counted.
The team of more than 350 African experts The researchers used an open-source tech
also found concluded that there are more for- tool called Collect Earth to carry out the inves-
ests and there is more arable land than had been tigation, which was a collaboration between
recorded in the past. Google and the UN Food and Agriculture
The discovery could be particularly helpful in Organisation (FAO).
the fight against deforestation and as a defence 350 experts gathered data using Collect Earth
against climate change. and then worked on in it a series of group ses-
The research was carried out to assess the sions called Mapathons.
progress of the Great Green Wall initiative, These were run and organised by the Pana-
which aims to create a green belt of trees and for- frican Agency of the Great Green Wall and the
ests stretching 8,000 km from Senegal in the west Southern Africa Development Community,
to Djibouti in the east. along with the FAO.
The project began in 2007 and is now 15% The collection of data is particularly useful.
underway. It aims to bring life back to Africa’s “Africa [is] the first continent to complete the
degraded landscapes in the Sahel region. The collection of accurate, comprehensive and har-
Wall aims to provide food security, jobs and solu- monized digital land use and land-use change
tions to climate change, drought, famine, conflict data,” the FAO says.™
and migration.
Reversing the deforestation trend could be

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