ABSTRACT
In 1952, forester and international campaigner for forest conservation Richard St. Barbe Baker crossed the Sahara on a 14,000-km expedition from Algiers to Mt. Kilimanjaro partly in response to having read a shocking story from the Sahelian region of northern Dahomey, now known as Benin. Over many decades, colonial and postcolonial governments and various experts had voiced apprehension over the desertification in the Sahelian region of West Africa and over the apparent southward march of the Sahara Desert. Exposure to the sun and wind and the high soil temperatures reduced both macro- and microorganisms in the soil. On-farm density of trees in Niger declined from around 80 trees per hectare at the start of the 20th century, to just 4 trees per hectare by 1984. Projections of the present rates of loss of productive land indicate that by the end of the 21st century, the world will lose nearly one-third of its presently arable land.
