Mauritania plants trees to hold back desert

ENN, August 20, 2010

Mauritania has launched a tree-planting program aimed at protecting its capital from the advancing desert and coastal erosion, a project that could eventually extend thousands of kilometers across Africa. The project is part of a broader ant-desertification plan, the "Great Green Wall," launched by the African Union in 2005 to try to create a 15 km-wide wall of greenery stretching 7,000 km between Africa's east and west coasts. Read more...

Desert is claiming southeast Spain

ENN, June 3, 2008

FORTUNA, Spain: Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses - 54 of them, all built in the past decade and most in the past three years - give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.
There is only one problem with this picture of bounty: This province, Murcia, is running out of water. Spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development, swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert. Read more...

See also: Desertification in Europe, a presentation