Month: November 2021

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that 100,000 Americans died of drug overdose between May 2020 and April 2021 — a nearly 30% increase over the previous year. 

While not an official count, the CDC says it can confirm 98,000 deaths so far during the period and estimates the total number will likely be around 100,300 after causes of death are made official. It can take months to investigate and finalize drug fatalities. 

Experts say the increased availability of the deadly opioids, particularly fentanyl, is a major driver, accounting for 64% of overdose deaths.

Another factor is the COVID-19 pandemic which made it hard for drug users to get treatment or support. 

“What we’re seeing are the effects of these patterns of crisis and the appearance of more dangerous drugs at much lower prices,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNN. “In a crisis of this magnitude, those already taking drugs may take higher amounts and those in recovery may relapse. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen and perhaps could have predicted.” 

In a statement, President Joe Biden called the number a “tragic milestone,” and said his administration “is committed to doing everything in our power to address addiction and end the overdose epidemic.”

Overdose deaths are now more common than deaths from car crashes, guns and the flu. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S., killing 660,000 in 2019. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 
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With the Indian capital enveloped in a haze of toxic smog, authorities ordered six thermal plants in the city’s vicinity to shut temporarily, closed schools and colleges indefinitely and imposed work-from-home restrictions to control pollution levels that turned severe on several days this month.

A panel of the federal environment ministry has also banned construction activity until the end of the week and barred trucks, except those carrying essential commodities, from entering the city as part of the series of emergency measures.

Environmentalists pointed out that these steps would only marginally mitigate the air pollution crisis that grips New Delhi every winter.

“The emergency action is not a magic bullet that will address the pollution crisis,” said Anumita Rowchowdhury, executive director research and advocacy at New Delhi’s Center for Science and Environment. “It only ensures that it will not worsen the pollution but it will not clean the air.”

The world’s most polluted capital city has recorded levels for dangerous particles known as PM 2.5 that settle deep inside lungs many times higher than the standards set by the World Health Organization.

The haze that covers the city is a mix of fumes, including vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, construction dust, farm fires and fumes caused by the burning of waste in the open. In winter, the pollutants hang over the city due to low wind speeds.

City authorities in Delhi have told the Supreme Court they are considering a weekend lockdown, similar to what was implemented during the pandemic. If so, it would be the first of a kind “pollution” lockdown.

The toxic smog is not restricted to the capital city — skies across much of North India also turn grey at this time of the year leaving millions gasping for air.

But while Delhi has taken some steps to combat the dirty air by shutting down coal-fired power stations and switching most industry and public transport to clean fuel, the same standards have not been imposed by neighboring states, experts point out.

“Air does not respect political boundaries. The time has come to take a regional approach and scale up stringent action in the entire Indo-Gangetic plains,” said Roychowdhury. “For example, Delhi is the only city to have switched industry to natural gas, imposed clean fuel standards for vehicles and shut down coal plants. But the same needs to be done elsewhere. We really need to ramp up our energy transition.”

However, phasing out coal, which still powers 70% of India’s electricity grid, will not be easy. As North India battled its annual air pollution crisis, Indian delegates to the recent climate summit held in Scotland said developing countries were entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels.

“How can anyone expect that developing countries can make promises about phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies?” Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav asked at the summit. “Developing countries have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication.”

India and China were blamed for watering down a commitment to phasing out coal at the summit.

But in India, environmentalists said the country’s concerns were genuine. “The dilemma that India faces is, how quickly can it make the transition from coal?” said Chandra Bhushan, who heads the Delhi-based International Forum for Environment. “While coal does contribute to air pollution and climate change, we cannot shut down coal right away and replace it with renewables in a hurry. This is going to be a process.”

Meanwhile, the severe air pollution has led to a public health emergency with many residents in Delhi and other North Indian cities struggling with respiratory problems and doctors warning it is a serious health hazard.

The dirty air kills more than a million people every year in India according to a report by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, a U.S. research group.
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The port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest, said on Tuesday that all rail access had been cut by floods and landslides farther east that killed at least one person and left two others missing. 

Two days of torrential rain across the Pacific province of British Columbia touched off major flooding and shut rail routes operated by Canadian Pacific Rail and Canadian National Railway, Canada’s two biggest rail companies. 

“All rail service coming to and from the Port of Vancouver is halted because of flooding in the British Columbia interior,” port spokesperson Matti Polychronis said. 

At least one person was killed when a mudslide swept cars off Highway 99 near Pemberton, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the northeast of Vancouver. 

Search and rescue crews were combing through the rubble for signs of survivors or additional casualties, officials said. 

Vancouver’s port moves C$550 million ($440 million) worth of cargo each day, ranging from automobiles and finished goods to essential commodities. 

The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters, during a busy time for trains to haul grain to the port following the harvest. 

This year drought has sharply reduced the size of Canada’s crops, meaning a rail disruption of a few days may not create a significant backlog, a grain industry source told Reuters. 

Del Dosdall, senior export manager at grain handler Parrish & Heimbecker, said he expected some rail service could be restored by the weekend. Another industry source said he expected the shutdown to last weeks. 

Floods have also hampered pipelines. Enbridge shut a segment of a British Columbia natural gas pipeline as a precaution. 

The storms also forced the closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries up to 300,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta to the Pacific Coast. 

Copper and coal miner Teck Resources Limited said the floods had disrupted movement of its commodities to its export terminals, while potash exporter Canpotex said it was looking for alternatives to move the crop nutrient overseas. 

Directly to the south of British Columbia, in Washington state, heavy rains forced evacuations and cut off electricity for more than 150,000 households on Monday. The U.S. National Weather Service on Tuesday issued a flash flood warning in Mount Vernon, Washington, “due to the potential for a levee failure.” 

Some areas of British Columbia received 20 centimeters (8 inches) of rain on Sunday, the amount that usually falls in a month. 

Authorities in Merritt, some 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Vancouver, ordered all 8,000 citizens to leave on Monday as river waters rose quickly, but some were still trapped in their homes on Tuesday, said city spokesman Greg Lowis. 

Snow blanketed the town on Tuesday and some cars could be seen floating in the flood waters still up to 1.22 meters (4 feet) high. The towns of Chilliwack and Abbotsford ordered partial evacuations. 

Rescuers equipped with diggers and body-sniffing dogs started dismantling large mounds of debris that have choked highways. 

The landslides and floods come less than six months after wildfires gutted an entire town, as temperatures in the province soared during a record-breaking heat dome. 

 
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News outlets say the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is planning to spend $5 billion to purchase Pfizer’s new experimental antiviral pill designed to treat COVID-19, enough to cover 10 million courses of treatment. 

The revelation comes a day after the U.S. drugmaker announced it had signed a deal with Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed public health group, to authorize generic drugmakers to produce its experimental COVID-19 pill for 95 countries. 

The deal will make the pill available for low- and middle-income countries comprising about 53% of the world’s population.  

Pfizer says its new pill, called Paxlovid, reduces the risks of hospitalization and death by nearly 90% in people with mild to moderate coronavirus cases. Independent experts recommended ending Pfizer’s study because of its encouraging results.

Tuesday’s agreement between Pfizer and the Medicines Patent Pool coincided with Pfizer’s application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize use of the drug on an emergency basis.  

“It’s quite significant that we will be able to provide access to a drug that appears to be effective and has just been developed, to more than 4 billion people,” said the Medicines Patent Pool’s Esteban Burrone. 

Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, said the organization is disappointed the agreement does not make the pill available to all countries. 

“The world knows by now that access to COVID-19 medical tools needs to be guaranteed for everyone, everywhere, if we really want to control this pandemic,” she said. 

Pfizer will not receive payments on sales in low-income countries, where fewer than 1% of its COVID-19 vaccine doses have been provided. It also will waive royalties on sales in all countries covered by the deal while COVID-19 remains a public health emergency.  

The Medicines Patent Pool announced in October that another U.S. drugmaker, Merck, agreed to allow other companies to make its COVID-19 pill available in 105 poorer countries. 

Merck says its antiviral pill reduces the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 by half when administered soon after the appearance of the first symptoms. 

The Biden administration has pledged to spend about $2.2 billion to purchase about 3.1 million doses of Merck’s pill once it has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. An FDA advisory panel will meet on November 30 to discuss Merck’s COVID-19 pill. British drug regulators granted authorization for Merck’s pill earlier this month.  

Despite decisions by Pfizer and Merck to share their COVID-19 drug patents, Pfizer and other vaccine-makers have refused to release their vaccine formulas for broader production.  

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.  
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With the Earth getting warmer and weather events more extreme, the African Union has set up a Disaster Operations Center in Nairobi to help monitor major hazards and provide regional early warnings for drought, floods, extreme rainfall, food insecurity, and pests like the desert locusts. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi. Camera – Jim Makhulo.
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Russian officials on Tuesday rejected accusations that they endangered astronauts aboard the International Space Station by conducting a weapons test that created more than 1,500 pieces of space junk.

U.S. officials on Monday accused Russia of destroying an old satellite with a missile in what they called a reckless and irresponsible strike. The debris could do major damage to the space station as it is orbiting at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph).

Astronauts now face four times greater risk than normal, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told The Associated Press.

The test clearly demonstrates that Russia, “despite its claims of opposing the weaponization of outer space, is willing to … imperil the exploration and use of outer space by all nations through its reckless and irresponsible behavior,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos wouldn’t confirm or deny that the strike took place, saying only that “unconditional safety of the crew has been and remains our main priority” in a vague online statement released Tuesday.

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday confirmed carrying out a test and destroying a defunct satellite that has been in orbit since 1982, but insisted that “the U.S. knows for certain that the resulting fragments, in terms of test time and orbital parameters, did not and will not pose a threat to orbital stations, spacecraft and space activities” and called remarks by U.S. officials “hypocritical.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also charged that it is “hypocrisy” to say that Russia creates risks for peaceful activities in space.

Once the situation became clear early Monday morning, the four Americans, one German and two Russians on board the International Space Station were ordered to immediately seek shelter in their docked capsules. They spent two hours in the two capsules, finally emerging only to have to close and reopen hatches to the station’s individual labs on every orbit, or 1 1/2 hours, as they passed near or through the debris.

NASA Mission Control said the heightened threat could continue to interrupt the astronauts’ science research and other work. Four of the seven crew members only arrived at the orbiting outpost Thursday night.

A similar weapons test by China in 2007 also resulted in countless pieces of debris. One of those threatened to come dangerously close to the space station last week. While it later was dismissed as a risk, NASA had the station move anyway.

Anti-satellite missile tests by the U.S. in 2008 and India in 2019 were conducted at much lower altitudes, well below the space station at about 260 miles (420 kilometers.)
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A Russian weapons test created more than 1,500 pieces of space junk that is now threatening the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station, U.S. officials said Monday. 

The State Department confirmed that the debris was from an old Russian satellite destroyed by the missile strike. 

“It was dangerous. It was reckless. It was irresponsible,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. 

The Russian military and ministry of defense were not immediately available for comment, according to a Reuters report. 

Earlier Monday, the four Americans, one German and two Russians on board were forced to briefly seek shelter in their docked capsules because of the debris. 

At least 1,500 pieces of the destroyed satellite were sizable enough to show up on radar and with telescopes, Price said. But countless other fragments were too small to track, yet still posed a danger to the space station as well as orbiting satellites. 

Even a fleck of paint can do major damage when orbiting at 28,000 kph (17,500 mph). Something big, upon impact, could be catastrophic. 

“We are going to continue to make very clear that we won’t tolerate this kind of activity,” Price said. 

He said the U.S. has “repeatedly raised with Russian counterparts our concerns for a potential satellite test.” 

NASA Mission Control said the heightened threat from the debris might continue for another couple of days and continue to interrupt the astronauts’ science research and other work. Four of the seven crew members arrived at the orbiting outpost Thursday night. 

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who’s midway through a yearlong mission, called it “a crazy but well-coordinated day” as he bid Mission Control good night. 

“It was certainly a great way to bond as a crew, starting off with our very first work day in space,” he said. 

The U.S. Space Command said it was tracking the field of orbiting debris. NASA had made no comment by late afternoon, and there was no word late Monday from Russia about the missile strike.

A similar weapons test by China in 2007 also resulted in countless pieces of debris. One of those pieces threatened to come dangerously close to the space station last week. While it later was dismissed as a risk, NASA had the station move anyway. 

Anti-satellite missile tests by the U.S. in 2008 and India in 2019 were conducted at much lower altitudes, well below the space station. 

Until Monday, the Space Command already was tracking some 20,000 pieces of space junk, including old and broken satellites from around the world.

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said it will take days if not weeks and months to catalogue the latest wreckage and confirm their orbits. The fragments will begin to spread out over time, due to atmospheric drag and other forces, he said in an email. 

The space station is at especially high risk because the test occurred near its orbit, McDowell said. But all objects in low-Earth orbit — including China’s three-person space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope — will be at “somewhat enhanced risk” over the next few years, he noted. 

John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the most immediate concern was the space debris. Beyond that, the United States is monitoring “the kinds of capabilities that Russia seems to want to develop which could pose a threat not just to our national security interest but to the security interests of other space-faring nations.” 

Earlier in the day, the Russian Space Agency said via Twitter that the astronauts were ordered into their docked capsules, in case they had to make a quick getaway. The agency said the crew was back doing routine operations, and the space station’s commander, Russian Anton Shkaplerov, tweeted: “Friends, everything is regular with us!” 

But the cloud of debris posed a threat on each passing orbit — or every one and a half hours — and all robotic activity on the U.S. side was put on hold. German astronaut Matthias Maurer also had to find a safer place to sleep than the European lab. 
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Relentless rain battered Canada’s Pacific coast on Monday, forcing a town’s evacuation and trapping motorists as mudslides, rocks and debris were washed across major highways. 

Some 275 people, according to local media, were stuck overnight in their cars between two mudslides on Highway 7 near the town of Agassiz in British Columbia. 

Meanwhile, Merritt – about 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the coast – ordered the evacuation of all 7,000 of its townsfolk after flooding compromised the local wastewater treatment plant and washed out two bridges. Barricades also went up restricting access to the town. 

The province’s public safety minister, Mike Farnworth, said search and rescue crews were dispatched to free people trapped for hours without food or water in 80 to 100 cars. 

“We are looking at the possibility of air rescues, if needed,” he told a news conference, adding that “high winds may challenge these efforts.” 

Farnworth said there had been “multiple rain-induced incidents” in the southwest and central regions of the province, describing the situation as “dynamic.” 

Video footage showed a military helicopter landing on the highway covered in mud and debris, to pick up stranded motorists. 

British Columbia emergency health services said it transported nine patients to hospital with minor injuries overnight from the Agassiz landslide.

And it assembled ambulances in nearby Chilliwack “for any patients requiring care from areas affected by flooding and landslides,” it added. 

Emergency centers were also set up for displaced residents. 

In a Twitter message to British Columbians, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “Please stay safe.”

“We’re ready to provide whatever assistance is needed as you deal with and recover from the flooding and this extreme weather,” he said. 

British Columbia’s transportation ministry said several highways were closed Monday. “Heavy rains and subsequent mudslides/flooding have impacted various highways in the BC interior,” it said. 

The local utility issued flood alerts due to high water flows into its reservoirs, and said it was working to restore power to thousands hit by outages. 

Construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline connecting the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific coast was also paused “due to widespread flooding and debris flows,” a company spokesperson told AFP. 

In the city of Abbotsford, outside Vancouver, authorities ordered more than 100 homes evacuated in several neighborhoods threatened by flooding and mudslides, while television images showed farms in the Fraser Valley under several feet of water. 

Meteorologist Tyler Hamilton commented on social media that Abbotsford in the past 140 days had experienced both its warmest and wettest days ever. 

Environment Canada said up to 250 millimeters (almost 10 inches) of rain — what the region normally gets in a month — was expected by the day’s end in and around Vancouver, which was also hit last week by a rare tornado.

“A significant atmospheric river event continues to bring copious amounts of rain to the B.C. south coast,” it said.

“Heavy rain will ease and strong westerly winds will develop this afternoon as the system moves inland.” 

The extreme weather comes after British Columbia suffered record-high temperatures over the summer that killed more than 500 people, as well as wildfires that destroyed a town. 
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With its red and yellow rock formations, the Ramon Crater in Israel’s Negev desert has been compared to the surface of Mars. Now, scientists are using the landscape deep in the desert for experiments to help make human travel to Mars a reality. Six astronauts from around the world recently spent a month simulating a mission to Mars, living in a special habitat built to resemble a spaceship, conducting scientific experiments, and exploring the terrain that resembles the red planet. For VOA, Linda Gradstein and Ricki Rosen visited the mission in the crater.

Camera: Ricki Rosen
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The British government Monday announced Monday an expansion of the nation’s COVID-19 booster shot program to people ages 40 and up, to fight off a potential winter surge of the deadly disease.

Until now, only British residents ages 50 and up, those clinically vulnerable because of underlying conditions, and frontline health workers were eligible for booster shots. But at a news briefing in London, the chairman of Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, Wei Shen Lin, announced the extension to those ages 40 and up who have been fully vaccinated for at least six months.

He said, as with the original booster program, either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines can be used as the booster dose, regardless of the type of vaccine originally received.

The committee also recommended a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for young people between the ages of 16 and 18. In August, the committee had advised only one dose of the vaccine for people of that age group, but would review the data, and were anticipating that a second dose may well be advised. Monday, the committee chairman said that was “indeed the case.” 

The chief executive of Britain’s drug regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Dr. June Raine, said they had closely monitored the use of the vaccines in people under 18, and their use raised no additional safety issues specific to this age group. 

Speaking via video conference, British Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the data so far showed that adults over age 60 who have received the booster were achieving over 90% protection against symptomatic illness and he expected protection against hospitalization and death to be even higher. 

He said if the booster program is successful and participation numbers are high, it would “massively reduce the worry about hospitalization and death due to COVID at Christmas and for the rest of this winter, for literally millions of people.” 

 
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Pakistan rolled out a massive two-week drive Monday to immunize more than 90 million children in what officials hailed as one of the world’s biggest vaccination campaigns against measles and rubella.

An official announcement said children aged between 9 months and 15 years across the country will be inoculated against the contagious viral infections.

The Pakistani government has mobilized more than 600,000 health professionals, vaccinators and social mobilizers for the campaign with the support of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization.

“Measles and rubella are contagious diseases and can have severe complications for children even death,” said Dr. Faisal Sultan, special assistant to the Pakistani prime minister on health.

“I urge both the front-line workers to work with dedication and the caregivers to express their support by vaccinating their children against the diseases,” Sultan added.

Officials said Pakistan has experienced an alarming rise in measles cases in recent years, affecting thousands of children and claiming many young lives.

“The measles and rubella campaign will move us not only one step closer to maintaining measles elimination and accelerating rubella control, but also one step closer to reducing the overall child mortality across Pakistan,” said WHO Country Representative Palitha Mahipala.

UNICEF said children under the age of five will also receive polio drops during the campaign to support Pakistan’s eradication efforts against the crippling disease. 

“Today’s world is still grappling with the very contagious measles and rubella viruses, none of which have gone away despite being entirely preventable with a simple vaccine,” said UNICEF Country Representative Aida Girma in remarks during the launch of the vaccination campaign in Pakistan.

The WHO says more than 140,000 people died from measles in 2018 worldwide – mostly children under the age of 5 years, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine.

Measles is caused by a virus in the paramyxovirus family and it is normally passed through direct contact and through the air.

WHO experts say there is no specific treatment for rubella but the disease is preventable by vaccination.

The rubella virus is transmitted by airborne droplets when infected people sneeze or cough. Humans are the only known host. 
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ith the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, or COP 26, now over, countries are looking to begin funding a global counterattack on rising temperatures on Earth. Meanwhile, scientists in Denmark are searching for clues to our warming planet’s future by studying ice from the past. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more
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Malawi has begun a mass distribution of mosquito nets, aiming to reach almost half the country’s population of 18 million people. Health authorities say the campaign is aimed at reducing the spread of malaria, which in Malawi currently accounts for 36% of all hospital outpatients and 15% of hospital admissions.

The Global Fund-supported campaign was announced during the commemoration of Southern Africa Development Community Malaria Day November 6 and is expected to be rolled out nationally November 15.

Khumbize Kandodo-Chiponda, Malawi’s minister of health, says the intervention is a response to the health threat malaria is posing in Malawi. 

“So, one of the interventions is the distribution of the nets as vector control. As a country, we are going to distribute 9 million nets. Out target is that at least two Malawians should share a net. Our population we are targeting we are about 18 million, that why we reached the figure of 9 million,” Kandodo-Chiponda said.

She said during the campaign all expectant mothers will be given anti-malaria drugs to prevent them from suffering from malaria while pregnant. 

Statistics show that malaria is the No. 1 deadly disease in Malawi. Last year alone, malaria killed 2,500 people in Malawi, more than any other disease, including COVID-19.

However, Kandodo-Chiponda said the campaign is strewn with challenges.

“And one of the challenges is that when you distribute the nets, you will find that, especially along the lake, these nets are used for fishing and sorts of things,” she said.

To reduce the changes of such misuse of the nets, the campaign also involves teaching the recipients about the importance of sleeping under the net. 

The mosquito net distribution is part of the Zero Malaria Starts With Me campaign, launched by Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera in June as part of global campaign to end malaria by 2030.

Elias Mpedi Magosi, executive secretary of the Southern Africa Development Community, commended Malawi’s efforts to eradicate malaria and said the bloc is working to adopt a regional malaria strategy.

“Primarily because if one country, one member state removes or clears malaria, these mosquitos known no boundaries, they just relocate to another country. So, it requires a pooled regional effort, resources, attributes and behaviors so that it is eliminated,” Magosi said.

Janet Kayita, the World Health Organization country representative in Malawi, said the campaign is among major steps Malawi has successfully taken against malaria.

“Malawi has been exceptional in taking forward WHO recommendations on what to do, how to prevent malaria, how to treat malaria. But the most historic groundbreaking event in the last month actually, that Malawi is at the front of, is the information that is coming out about the new malaria vaccine for infants and children,” Kayita said.

Last month, the WHO endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine for children across Africa following a successful three-year trial in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. 

Although it is only 30% effective, scientists say the vaccine, known as Mosquirix, will have major impact against malaria in Africa, which records 200 million cases and 400,000 deaths per year.
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The idea was striking in its ambition: African countries aimed to plant trees in a more than 8,000 kilometer-line spanning the entire continent, creating a natural barrier to hold back the Sahara Desert as climate change swept the sands south.

The project called the Great Green Wall began in 2007 with a vision for the trees to extend like a belt across the vast Sahel region, from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, by 2030. But as temperatures rose and rainfall diminished, millions of the planted trees died.

Efforts to rein in the desert continue in Senegal on a smaller scale. On the western end of the planned wall, Ibrahima Fall walks under the cool shade of dozens of lime trees, watering them with a hose as yellow chicks scurry around his feet. Just beyond the green orchard and a village is a desolate, arid landscape.

The citrus crop provides a haven from the heat and sand that surround it. Outside the low village walls, winds whip sand into the air, inviting desertification, a process that wrings the life out of fertile soil and changes it into desert, often because of drought or deforestation.

Only 4% of the Great Green Wall’s original goal has been met, and an estimated $43 billion would be needed to achieve the rest. With prospects for completing the barrier on time dim, organizers have shifted their focus from planting a wall of trees to trying a mosaic of smaller, more durable projects to stop desertification, including community-based efforts designed to improve lives and help the most vulnerable agriculture.

“The project that doesn’t involve the community is doomed to failure,” says Diegane Ndiaye, who is part of a group known as SOS Sahel, which has helped with planting programs in Senegal and other countries across the Sahel, a broad geographic zone between the Sahara in the north and the more temperate African savanna to the south.

The programs focus on restoring the environment and reviving economic activity in Sahel villages, Ndiaye said.

With the loss of rainfall and the advance of the desert, “this strip of the Sahel is a very vulnerable area to climate change,” he said. “So we should have projects that are likely to rebuild the environment … fix the dunes and also help protect the vegetable-growing area.”

On Senegal’s Atlantic Coast, filao trees stretch in a band from Dakar up to the northern city of St. Louis, forming a curtain that protects the beginning of Green Wall region, which also grows more than 80% of Senegal’s vegetables. The sky-reaching branches tame the winds tearing in from the ocean.

This reforestation project started in the 1970s, but many trees were cut down for wood, and work to replant them has been more recent. More trees are also planted in front of dunes near the water in an effort to protect the dunes and keep them from moving.

“We have had a lot of reforestation programs that today have not yielded much because it is often done with great fanfare” and not with good planning, Ndiaye said.

Fall, the 75-year-old chief of his village, planted the citrus orchard in 2016, putting the trees near a water source on his land. His is one of 800 small orchards in six communes of a town called Kebemer.

“We once planted peanuts and that wasn’t enough,” he said in the local Wolof language. “This orchard brings income that allows me to take care of my family.” He said he can produce 20 to 40 kilos of limes per week during peak season.

Enriched by the trees, the soil has also grown tomatoes and onions.

The village has used profits from the orchard to replace straw homes with cement brick structures and to buy more sheep, goats and chickens. It also added a solar panel to help pump water from a communal well, sparing villagers from having to pay more for water in the desert.

African Development Bank President Akinwumi A. Adesina spoke about the importance of stopping desertification in the Sahel during the United Nations’ COP26 global climate conference. He announced a commitment from the bank to mobilize $6.5 billion toward the Great Green Wall by 2025.

The newest projects in Senegal are circular gardens known in the Wolof language as “tolou keur.” They feature a variety of trees that are planted strategically so that the larger ones protect the more vulnerable.

The gardens’ curving rows hold moringa, sage, papaya and mango trees that are resistant to dry climates. They are planted so their roots grow inward to improve water retention in the plot.

Senegal has 20 total circular gardens, each one adapted to the soil, culture and needs of individual communities so they can grow much of what they need. Early indications are that they are thriving in the Great Green Wall region. Solar energy helps provide electricity for irrigation.

Jonathan Pershing, deputy special envoy for climate at the U.S. State Department, visited Senegal as part of an Africa trip last month, saying the U.S. wants to partner with African nations to fight climate change.

“The desert is encroaching. You see it really moving south,” Pershing said.

In terms of the Great Green Wall project, he said, “I don’t think that very many people thought it was going to go very far,” including himself. But there are indications of progress, as seen in the community projects.

“It has a global benefit, and people are prepared to make those kinds of long-term investments through their children and their families, which I think is a hallmark of what we need to do in other climate arenas.”
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