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It's funny, Kenyans have resisted desertification for decades by a tree-planting scheme - the women planting and caring for trees in their area. And it's worked.
But I guess we don't have anything to learn from them poor darkies...
Ah yes - Wangari Matthai and her green belt - one of those Club Of Rome people (see my comments about limits last week).
I think that tactic only works if you have a certain amount of rain though - its fine for preventing desertification caused by over-grazing - perhaps not so good for altered rainfall patterns.
It's not as simple as that. Forests actually promote rainfall. Plants when hot transpire, let off moisture - that's why they turn limp in the heat, the moisture is also used for them to stand up.
The transpiration collects and becomes clouds, and this encourages other water in the atmosphere to condense ("snowball effect"), which gets you more rain.
The reverse has been seen in Australia, where removing forests dried out the land. Bear in mind that for a good part of our history we actually paid farmers to clear their land, and if you were squatting or leasing land and didn't clear it, you'd lose it.
I mean, you can't just chuck half a dozen pines out in the middle of the Simpson and expect them to do alright, you have to work with current vegetation and build out from there. And you have to choose the right trees and plants, and tend them, and so on.
Now, we are not going to turn this,
into this,
But we can perhaps turn this,
into this:
which I reckon would be an improvement.
True - thats a realistic assessment. Providing rainfall doesn't drop to near zero.
Most Australians would support tree planting...as long as they didn't have to do it personally.
I think teh Landcare movement has done a great deal for re-building the knowledge bank as well as fostering a tree planting culture. The problem still is that we have a higher level culture which dictates that a profit must be generated at some point or the exercise is worthless.