A Tree Grows in Niger--Hope for the Future

It is nice waking up in the cold winter morning and reading some good news about Africa in the NY Times. "Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago."

For decades, environmentalists have been lamenting about the encroaching desert over the Sahel in the center of Africa. Decades of drought compounded the problem. Lydia Polgreen writes about how part of the problem in Niger was a government law that considered trees the property of the state, no one could own them. The result was people denuding the trees for firewood and to build houses, and about 20 years ago, there weren't many trees left.

"So Mr. Danjimo and other farmers in Guidan Bakoye took a small but radical step. No longer would they clear the saplings from their fields before planting, as they had for generations. Instead they would protect and nurture them, carefully plowing around them when sowing millet, sorghum, peanuts and beans.

Today, the success in growing new trees suggests that the harm to much of the Sahel may not have been permanent, but a temporary loss of fertility. The evidence, scientists say, demonstrates how relatively small changes in human behavior can transform the regional ecology, restoring its biodiversity and productivity.

Over time, farmers began to regard the trees in their fields as their property, and in recent years the government has recognized the benefits of that outlook by allowing individuals to own trees. Farmers make money from the trees by selling branches, pods, fruit and bark. Because those sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them."