Analysis

Observations of an Expat: Great Green Box Ticker

August 3, 2024

The Great Green Wall is an international undertaking to prevent creeping desertification in Africa

By Tom Arms

As a box ticking exercise it is difficult to beat the Great Green Wall of Africa.

For those not familiar with this incredibly important and ambitious project, the Great Green Wall (aka GGW) is an international undertaking to prevent creeping desertification in Africa. It proposes to plant and maintain on the southern border of the Sahara Desert a nine-mile wide forest stretching 4,831 miles from Dakar on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Red Sea.

It is estimated that the GGW will create 10 million jobs in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world. That means 10 million people less likely to seek survival in Europe and America.

More jobs means more income for governments which means increased political stability and improved governance in one of the most of the world’s most politically unstable and corrupt regions.

The Great Green Wall project proposes to plant and maintain on the southern border of the Sahara Desert a nine-mile wide forest stretching 4,831 miles from Dakar on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Red Sea.

From a climate change perspective the GGW is potential wonderful news. The proposed grass and tree coverage is projected to restore 250 million acres of degraded land and capture 250 million tons of carbon dioxide. Trees also play a major role in reducing global temperatures.

So far about $30 billion has been pledged from a variety of sources to complete the project by 2030. There has already been extensive planting in Senegal, Chad and Ethiopia.

But according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, one of the GGW’s major sponsors—the Great Green Wall is in danger of collapse. The number one threat is violence. Nine of the countries through which the GGW crosses are in the top 20 of the 2024 Global Terrorism Index.

They are the victims of civil war; Jihadist terrorist attacks; the withdrawal of French troops from the Sahel region and their replacement by Russian forces. The Jihadists in particular—and the Russians to a lesser degree—feed on political instability. The GGW encourages stability, so the Jihadists do whatever they can to disrupt the planting regime.

Violence is not the only problem. Critics also claim that the environmental initiative lacks political leadership. That is not surprising. Its roots stretch back to 1952-53 when one of the early climate change activists, British explorer and botanist Richard St Barbe Baker, first proposed the Great Green Wall. He went on to found the International Free Foundation which has since planted an estimated 26 trillion trees.

By the end of last year, 18 percent of the Great Green Wall of Africa had been planted. And where the trees have been planted farms have taken root alongside businesses in forestry management, eco-tourism and renewable energy

Many of the foundation’s trees were planted in the Sahel Region. But the foundation is a charity. Governmental coordination and vast amounts of aid were needed to ensure success. In 2002 the project was revived at a special African summit in Chad to launch World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. In 2012 the African Union took it on as a flagship project and in 2014 they were joined by the EU and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). At the One Planet Summit in 2021 various partners pledged $14.3 billion.

But the widespread interest also created problems. At the beginning of 2024 the project involved 21 countries and the same number of international organizations as well as a plethora of charities at international, national and local level. The wall needs directed political leadership and instead is plagued by a confusing babel of competing interests.

The Great Green Wall has serious problems. But the success of similar projects proves that it can be done. In the 1960s, Algeria successfully planted the Algerian Green Dam–a 600-mile long and nine mile wide stretch of forest on the northern edge of the Sahara.

India has plans to plant an 800-mile long and three-mile wide ecological corridor from Delhi to Gujarat. The Aravalli Range will hold back pollution rather than sand.

More impressive is a Chinese project to hold back the Gobi Desert dubbed the Great Green Wall of China or the Three-North Shelter Forest Program. The Chinese are taking a slowly but surely approach to their GGW. They started planting in 1978 and don’t expect to finish the 2,800-mile forest until 2050. So far the Chinese have reversed desertification which destroyed 6,000 square miles of farmland a year in the 1980s. In 2022 the figure was down to 1,200 square miles.

India has plans to plant an 800-mile long and three-mile wide ecological corridor from Delhi to Gujarat. The Aravalli Range will hold back pollution rather than sand.

It is not all disappointing news from Africa. By the end of last year, 18 percent of the Great Green Wall of Africa had been planted. And where the trees have been planted farms have taken root alongside businesses in forestry management, eco-tourism and renewable energy. The Great Green Wall remains a project worthy of global attention.

World Review

Donald Trump is the “Great Obfuscator.” When asked to clarify his outrageous claims he muddies the political waters even more in an attempt to be all things to all people.

Last Friday he told the Christian political pressure group Turning Point Action that if they voted for him in November they wouldn’t have to vote again. He would “fix it.”

Liberals immediately raised the anti-democracy hue and cry. Donald Trump, they said, planned to either abolish elections or rig the system so that conservative Republicans would stay in power forever.

Read- Observations of an Expat: Kamala v. Donald

No, no, no, say the MAGA people. That is not what he meant at all. He meant that they won’t have to vote for Donald Trump again because he is prohibited by the constitution from running for a third term.

It was left to Fox News—Trump’s chosen television medium—to clarify the muddle. Interviewer Laura Ingraham pressed him to explain. Trump said the statement was made to encourage Christians to vote in November because American conservatives don’t often vote. He added that the same could be said for gun owners.

This was patently false. As a group, America’s Christians and gun owners are among the largest proportion of voters in the US. His clarification made no sense. So what did the Great Obfuscator mean?

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Just as confusing is Trump’s position on the much-discussed Project 2025.

For the benefit of those who have been trapped in a sealed cave for the past six months, Project 2025, is a 900-page report compiled by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. It sets out in great detail a program for Donald Trump if he is inaugurated president in 2025.

Among its provisions are proposals to gut the FBI and Department of Justice and replace tens of thousands of federal civil servants with loyal MAGA Republicans. It wants a national ban on abortion and restrictions on contraception and IVF treatments. Project 2025 proposes a strong “unitary executive branch;” an “end to civil rights protections” and no more “safeguards on drinking water.” All efforts to combat climate change would end” and America would focus more on drilling for fossil fuels. The Department of Education would be scrapped along with all economic ties to China.

Democrats immediately denounced Project 2025 as anti-constitutional, anti-Democratic, anti-American and verging on the illegal. And they added that all those antis pretty well summed up Trump himself.

A fair amount of the mud stuck and Trump quickly started to distance himself from Project 2025. This proved difficult because one of the main contributors to the report was his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The Director of the Heritage Foundation, and the main impetus behind the report, Paul Dans, was Trump’s Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management.

This week Mr. Dans resigned as Director of the Heritage Foundation and claimed that Project 2025 was not meant to be an action plan for Donald Trump. Instead, he said, it was merely some thoughts for any future conservative administration.

The Trump campaign immediately put out an “I told you so” release. But then we need to look at what Trump has personally promised to do: Gut the Department of Justice and the FBI and put on trial for treason the “Biden Crime family” and political opponents such as Liz Cheney. “Drill, drill, drill for oil.” Raise tariffs on Chinese exports for between 65-100 percent. Pardon most of the Capitol Hill rioters. Round-up and deport up to 15 million illegal immigrants and “fix it so you won’t have to vote for me again.”

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If Israel was genuinely committed to Gaza peace negotiations, one would have thought it would have refrained from assassinating Hamas’s chief negotiator.

It appears they are not, for Ismail Haniyeh was blown up in a rocket attack while visiting Tehran for the inauguration of the new president.

Mind you, the Israelis refused to take credit for the assassination which most people believe was in retaliation for a Hezbollah attack which killed 12 Arab children who were playing football in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. That attack was immediately followed by a targeted Israeli attack on Beirut which killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. The Israelis did claim responsibility for that assassination which they said was in retaliation for the death of the 12 children.

In the Byzantine world of Middle East politics it is often difficult to tell who is responsible for what. Or, more likely, which faction is responsible. But what is clear is that the tit for tat attacks “don’t help,” as President Biden said this week.

At the end of May, President Biden unveiled what he said was an Israeli peace plan. But then Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of a Joint Session of Congress and vowed to completely destroy Hamas and demilitarize and deradicalize the Gaza Strip. The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh was a logical extension of that speech which in turn has been the thrust of Netanyahu’s policies since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

In the meantime, Iran has threatened to retaliate against Israel, although it has not specified what form that retaliation could take.

President Biden, for his part, is clearly frustrated by his failure to rein in either the rhetoric or actions of Netanyahu. But the US is committed to the defense of the state of Israel and on Thursday Biden phoned Netanyahu to tell him that the US would protect Israel from an attack by Iran.

It is just as likely that the retaliation will come in the form of increased attacks by Hezbollah—Iran’s chief proxy in Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah is the world’s largest non-state military power and its low-level war with Israel has forced the evacuation of about 100,000 Israelis from northern Israel. Either way, it looks, as a Fatah spokesperson said, “The door to Hell is opening.”

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It’s more or less official—Nicolas Maduro cheated in last Sunday’s presidential elections in Venezuela. But there’s more, the opposition can prove it.

The presidential elections employed a combined electronic and hand-counted paper tallies system of voting in an effort to insure that the elections were cheat-proof.

They worked like this: voters punched a button on a voting machine next to their preferred candidate. The voting machine then produced a ballot receipt which was deposited in the sealed ballot box.

When the polls closed the paper receipts were counted by hand and then compared to the electronic record on the machines. If they tallied they were sent under armed guard to the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Caracas who announced the results.

The counting of the paper ballots and their comparison to the electronic record was open to any member of the public at the local polling areas.

With 80 percent of the vote counted, the CNE announced that Maduro had won with 51.2 per cent of the vote compared to 44.2 percent for the lead opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.

But the opposition had—as they were allowed to—been conducting their own count which showed that Gonzalez had a landslide victory with 67 percent of the vote. Demonstrators took to the street. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and more than 1,000 people in Caracas alone were arrested.

So what went wrong? How did Maduro appear to win? Simple. Three of the five members of the National Electoral Council were personally appointed by Maduro. The council president was Maduro’s legal counsel.

The US, EU, UK, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and a host of other countries and international organizations have declared the elections a fraud. But Maduro is non-plussed. He has said he will present the voting records to the country’s Supreme Court (aka Supreme Tribunal of Justice or TSJ) for a legal audit.

There are two problems with this: The audit would be conducted behind closed doors and the judges have been appointed by Maduro.

The Carter Centre was engaged by the Venezuelan government to oversee the elections. It said that the TSJ “is another government institution, appointed by the government to verify the government numbers for the election results which are in question. This is not an independent assessment.”