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Senegal is pushing to plant a "Great Green Wall" of trees stretching for nearly 7,000 km (4,375 miles), from Dakar to Djibouti, to stop the relentless advance of the Sahara desert.

Environment Minister Modou Fada Diagne said: "Instead of waiting for the desert to come to us, we need to attack it."

The idea, first mooted by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, is to plant a 5 km (3 mile) wide band of trees crossing the world's poorest continent from east to west to stop the desert swallowing precious arable land. The plan was to use fruit trees to create revenues for people living near the green wall and make sure impoverished local villagers would not be tempted to cut the trees down for firewood.

In Senegal, the desert is advancing at a speed of 50,000 hectares (123,600 acres) every year.

A similar project to plant a 4,500 km barrier skirting the Gobi desert in China -- part of a reforestation plan that began in 1978 -- is expected to take more than 70 years and cost up to $8 billion.

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...New measurements suggest that forests soak up water from the ground and discharge it into the atmosphere as vapour at least twice as fast as grasses, low-lying scrub or most food crops. By 2025, around 4 billion people - half the world's population - will be short of water. India, China, Costa Rica and Panama have invested in huge forestry programmes to conserve water.

For decades, conservationists have argued that forests serve as a kind of sponge, collecting water during the rainy season and releasing it throughout the year. But in many cases, trees may make things worse...

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My guess is that an orchard of fruit trees isn't going to stop the Sahara. If they can't establish a thick bio-diverse forest (without having the locals cut it down for firewood as soon as a tree gets thicker than your thumb), they might as save themselves the bother.

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Report that trees don't save as much water as was thought.

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