Environment • In Focus

(Sheila McKinnon photo)

They watched in dismay as the dunes gradually shifted, due to gravity and wind, to engulf their farmland. So they designed a sand dune stabilization project.

Villagers Push Back the Desert

During the 1990s, a major Africare program in Niger's Gouré district combined environmental management and agricultural development in ways that simultaneously met the needs of both nature and humankind.

The program spanned 20 villages, involving some 10,000 people. At the program's core was the formation of village groups: first, the groups received training in environmental protection; and second, they organized to manage their natural resources on their own.

For example, the people of one village identified encroaching sand dunes as a major threat. They watched in dismay as the dunes gradually shifted, due to gravity and wind, to engulf their farmland. So they designed a sand dune stabilization project. The village and Africare each paid half the cost. And the project succeeded, enclosing more than 62 acres of sand dune with "live fencing": permanent, environmentally friendly barriers consisting of trees.

Gouré, Niger, lies along the southern border of the Sahara Desert.

 

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(Updated, Dec. 17, 2007)