New initiative to combat desertification launched

Landlocked Burkina Faso has launched a ten-year plan to combat desertification and land erosion through district-focused reafforestation programmes that would also help local people generate income from the trees.

Some 350 districts will be covered in the programme which would lead to the development of 17,500 hectares of forest in the dry West Africa country. Each district is expected to plant trees on spaces ranging from 25 and 50 hectares.

The programme aims to replace the "ambitious 8,000 villages - 8,000 forests" programme launched in 1994, but which failed to bear fruits.

About 650 hectares of trees have already been planted in 13 districts to start the new initiative. It encourages the planting of "useful" or "market-oriented" tree species such as Moringa Oleifera, Acacia Macrostachya, Ziziphuss Mauritania and Balanites Aegyptiaca.

These species would enable the farmers generate income through the sale of wood, help protect the land and provide medicine for the local people among other benefits.

"This new approach fits in well with the decentralisation process and copes with the individual needs of farmers who will have a say on what they want to plant on their land according to their cultural and economic needs," the Minister of Environment Djiri Dakar told IRIN on Tuesday.

According to him, Burkina Faso aims to decentralise reafforestation activities by allowing local people to grow the trees according to their needs and to back them with technical assistance.

The government, which invests US $88,397 every year in reafforestation hopes to encourage local and private initiatives, acknowledged that it was falling short of money for continuing the reafforestation projects.

According to statistics five percent of the Burkina Faso's land is arid, while 69 percent is classified as semi-arid.