The role of Great Green Wall in community development in Sudan
Talaat.D.Abdel Magid and Abdelazim. M. Ibrahim
Khartoum-2019 Pan Africa Newsletter
Introduction
Sudan is a vast country with an area of 1.8 million km2. Its landscape consists
primarily of gently sloping plain, with the exception of Jebel Marra, Massif Red Sea
Hills, and Nuba Mountains. Mean annual temperatures vary between 26°C and 32°C
across the country. Average annual rainfall is about 150 mm/year to 200 mm/year.
The central area is semi-desert to savannah. Sudan has established the National
Agency for the GGW since October 2010. It extends over a length of 1,520 km and
width of 15 km. The anticipated project traversed 12 states from west to east with a
total population of around 8 million people (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: The track of the Great Green Wall in Sudan
Progress made
Operational activities carried out from 2014 to 2015, in which the implementation of
Great Green Wall has led to a collection of 400 tons of seeds, planting of 1,969,000
seedlings. Community plantations come close to 165,000 ha, rehabilitation of 170,000
ha of degraded lands and enclosures of 25-km2 area implemented.
Concerning capacity building, various undertakings carried out which encompassed:
training sessions on remote sensing, GIS, GPS, monitoring and evaluation and GEF
tracking tools for 67 persons of local communities.
In term of socio-economic impact, successful implementation of the activities
resulted in the availability of fodder, access to vegetables in the dry season. It also
helps to boost incomes for women, reduce food insecurity and malnutrition, and
strengthen social solidarity of the recipient communities’.
Model activity: Community Woodlot: gum Arabic plantation and sand dune fixation
Community woodlots, including that by user groups, women, school, etc. undertaken
in common lands, institutional lands or land leased out to the user groups. Farm
forestry (including woodlots, windbreaks around farms established and managed by
the farmers, including planted in the compounds, etc.). In Sudan, the traditional
shifting cultivation, which practiced in the dry-land Savannah region (mainly Gum
belt), is a genuine form of community participation. Concerning sand dune fixation,
the activities covered included: control of the sand encroachment through
establishment of shelterbelts, windbreaks and land management activities with a very
high degree of participation from the local communities.
Conclusion and outlooks
For forthcoming actions, Great Green Wall will focus its activities on the key matters
related to concrete actions for mitigating and adapting to climate change and
investment of the carbon tax in afforestation and reforestation programmes in the
concerned states. Sudan’s forest policies and regulations put emphasis on
environmental protection and the popular participation in forestry activities.
Therefore, they stressed environmental protection and support to agriculture by
leaving forest belts of 10 and 5 percent on rainfed and irrigated agricultural cropping
respectively. Achieve the multiple use of forests as part of a land use system.
References
Talaat D. A. Magid and Abdalla G. Mohamed. 2014. Community Forestry in Sudan
FNC Experience. UNEP Workshop. Sudanese Environment Conservation Society. Khartoum
