Economics of Great Green Wall: Opportunities for improved targeting and efficiency

Abstract

The Sahel region is confronted with a severe problem of land degradation, which is jeopardizing livelihoods and stymieing efforts to eradicate food insecurity. The Great Green Wall programme is a colossal initiative designed to improve communities’ resilience and restore degraded ecosystems by planting locally suitable native trees and grasses. We evaluated the economic costs and benefits of land restoration under this programme. The results show that the average annual costs of land degradation due to land use and land cover changes in the entire Sahel region during 2001–2018 period were equal to 3 billion USD. Every USD invested into land restoration is found to yield from 1.7 USD to 2.9 USD. About 10 years are needed for all land restoration activities to reach positive benefit-cost ratios from the social perspective. The amount of investments needed for land restoration across the Sahel is estimated to be between 18–70 bln USD.

Reforestation and sylvopastoral systems in Sahelian drylands: evaluating return on investment from provisioning ecosystem services, Senegal

“…The creation of the Great Green Wall Accelerator in 2021 raises the question of the value of scaling up the reforestation protocol and covering 11 countries (Dia and Duponnois, 2012;Mirzabaev et al, 2022;O'Byrne et al, 2022;Turner et al, 2021). To reduce tensions with the affected populations, more recent reforestation protocols have encouraged greater participation of the population in the operations through the creation of economic interest groups (EIGs), plot managers, and women's organiszations to valorize NTFPs.…”

“…This information is well known to the development stakeholders, but there is still a question of how much can be gained by restoring degraded land. Since the creation of the Accelerator, a number of socio-economic evaluations of restoration have been published (Mirzabaev et al, 2022;O'Byrne et al, 2022;Sacande et al, 2021;Turner et al, 2021). According to the estimate of Mirzabaev et al (2022) the rate of return on investment in reforestation in the semi-arid zone would be $1.39 USD per dollar invested, notwithstanding the strong heterogeneity between countries.…”

“…The GGW Accelerator, initiated in 2021, aims to scale up these restoration operations to 100 million hectares with the objective of enhancing the economic benefits for civil society organizations (CSOs) (Sacande et al, 2022a). It is therefore timely to reflect on the economic viability of restoration practices for agro-pastoral populations living in rural areas of the Sahel (Mirzabaev et al, 2022;O'Byrne et al, 2022;Sacande et al, 2021;Turner et al, 2021).…”

“…A global economic estimate suggests that, in many countries, the return on investment is negative. Overall, the balance sheet at the Sahel level is neutral with a gain of $1.2 USD for $1 USD invested (Mirzabaev et al, 2022). The socio-economic effect of this reforestation on the communities also seems weak despite the clear intention of these actions to benefit the most vulnerable populations (Turner et al, 2021).…”

The Social Impacts of Sustainable Land Management in Great Green Wall Countries: An Evaluative Framework Based on the Capability Approach

“…The program therefore requires significant external investment, including to compensate land users for the generation of longer-term public goods [18,19]. The Economics of Land Degradation [20] evaluated the economic costs and benefits of land restoration under the GGWI program. The results show that the average annual costs of land degradation due to land use and land cover changes in the entire Sahel region during the 2001-2018 period were equal to USD 3 billion.…”