A $78 million promise to bring the Sahel's tired land back to life

In Saint-Louis, Senegal, the United Nations Environment Programme has set in motion a programme reaching nine Sahel countries — from Burkina Faso to Ethiopia — to heal 270,000 hectares of degraded land, an area that works out to thousands of farms and grazing pastures. More than five million people stand to benefit, most of them women, through work that mixes restored soil with better livelihoods. Backed by US$78 million from the Global Environment Facility, the effort grows the Great Green Wall idea beyond trees and into the daily economics of survival.