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Bad Idea: Foresting the Sahara

Published 01 October 2009

A plan to turn the Sahara into a forest is not about reducing carbon emissions at all

There's ambition, there's drive and then there's hatching a plan to combat climate change by turning the Sahara into a forest. The idea alone is enough to make your head ache. But Leonard Ornstein, a cell biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, reckons he has worked out the details of how to afforest the world's largest desert - oh, and the Australian Outback as well.

His academic paper appears in the journal Climatic Change this month. In it, he envisages forests of eucalyptus and other heat-tolerant tropical trees, irrigated with seawater from neighbouring oceans. Desalination plants on the coast would supply usable water, a huge system of pumps and aqueducts would carry it into the desert, and "drip irrigation" - also known as plastic tubing around the base of the trees - would keep the soil moist and the plants lush.

Along with David Rind and Igor Aleinov, climate modellers at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Ornstein has calculated that areas of the Sahara would be cooled by as much as 8°C. The trees would increase rainfall and cloud cover, and the combined effect of the Australian and African forests would be to draw down about eight billion tonnes of carbon emissions a year - nearly one and a half times the amount the US produces annually.

So, is that it? Has someone just solved all our problems? Well, not if you are one of the 2.5 million people who live in the Sahara, or one of the 700,000 Australians living in the Outback. Even if you're not - and you're also not concerned at this creepily colonial approach - there are still a few little drawbacks.

The project's $2trn annual price tag aside, there is the problem of what to do with all the highly salty waste water created by the desalination process, as putting it straight back into the sea would create "hyper-saline, anoxic 'dead zones'". There's the iron-rich Sahara dust, which at present blows off the desert and into oceans, where it nourishes sea life, but which would no longer be going anywhere. And just in case the message about the dangers of playing God weren't quite clear enough, there are also the plagues of locusts, encouraged by increased moisture.

Biblical horrors aside, there is one other, small disadvantage to Ornstein's plan, which is that it is not actually about reducing carbon emissions at all. He sees this project being paid for by a tax on petrol, the cost of which he hopes can be offset in future by increasingly fuel-efficient car design. In short, the plan is to kick millions of people off the land and throw the ecosystems of entire continents into chaos so that the west can carry on guzzling gas. If anyone has a more daft idea, we'd love to hear it.

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2 comments from readers

taghioff.info
05 October 2009 at 03:14

Yes, there is.

The Indian Government is funding a huge Afforestation Scheme by getting companies to pay for diverting Forest Land.

http://forestrightsact.com/index.php/Forest-Rights-Act-2006/...

They kick of the local people, in one of the world's most densely populated regions, let the companies come in with their thugs, and most often this leads to mining which destroys the local hydrology. Think the Niyamgiris and the Dongria Kond that have been in the news recently.

They then take the money and present it as a huge carbon offset (B2.5$) to Copenhagen. This is a country that is going to war with its people over this access for companies. Operation Green Hunt is being launched in Central India against the Maoists, mainly to secure company and investment access to these Forests.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/28/author_arundhati_roy_o...

Again the rise of Carbon Colonialism.

Jonathan B
08 October 2009 at 03:10

Hi Alyssa

Thanks for pointing us towards an interesting and provoking paper. But hey Alyssa aren't you being a bit alarmist and dramatic in your own article?

(1) There aren't any where near 700,000 Australians living in the desert which Leonard is refers to. There would be no more than 700. It has taken Australian colonialists 200 years to deforest the nation - not to mention the previous work done by the indigenous Australians and now some-one is proposing the radical idea of re-forestation? What's the problem - and every single person alive today will be well and truly dead by the time this project even recovers 10% of what has been lost.

(2) Desalination - in Australia work is underway to build huge desalination plants to cater for our existing water shortages. The ecological struggle for fresh water at the expense of oceans has already started and that is just so Australians can keep washing their cars with a hose!!! So some-one has the radical proposal to desalinate water to grow trees? Please - get things into perspective?

(3) Nourishing dust - Ask one living Australian how they feel when they see tonnes and tonnes of topsoil being blown into the ocean every summer and autumn. I think you'd find that the people who care about the "dust nourishing the ocean" would be in a significant minority. Anyway - Leonard postulates that as an issue which needs resolution - so you are being a bit discriminatory in your review of that part of his paper.

(4) Oh and by the way, just in case you hadn't heard, there is no climate God. That in itself obviates just about your entire critique - but thanks for the pointers though. Kind Regards Jonathan