Desertification, the process by which fertile (肥沃的) land becomes desert, has severe impacts on food production and is worsened by climate change.
Africa's Great Green Wall is a project to build an 8,000- kilometre-long forest across 11 of the continent s countries. The project is meant to contain the growing Sahara Desert and fight climate change. They include limited political support, lack of money, weak organizational structures, and not enough consideration for the environment. Just 4 million hectares (公顷)of land have been turned into forest since work on the Green Wall began 15 years ago.
First proposed in 2005 the project aims to plant a forest from Senegal on the Atlantic Ocean in western Africa to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the east. It could also reduce levels of climate-related migration in the area and capture hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air. Several countries have struggled to keep up with the demands of the project.
Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan have all expanded their efforts. Ethiopia is producing 5.5billion seedlings leading to thousands of hectares of restored land. Efforts in Eritrea and Sudan have also resulted in nearly 140,000 hectares of newly planted forest. The U. N. desertification agency says the project will need to plant an average of 8. 2 million hectares yearly to reach its goal of 100 million hectares by 2030.
A. But the project faces many problems.
B. That is only 4 percent of the programme'sgoal.
C. However, it is difficult to work on the Great Green Wall.
D. A quarter of Africa is under threat of food shortage.
E. Some progress has been made in recent years in the east of the continent.
F. Supporters hope that the project will create millions of green jobs in rural Africa.
G. The U. N. says up to 45 percent of Africa's land is impacted by desertification, worse than any other continent.
