15km wide and the width of the entire African continent. Now that’s what I call a piece.

I have seen a lot of treeplanting contracts but this is one beyond anything I’ve ever seen. According to the BBC, African leaders plan to plant a belt of trees 15 km wide from Senegal to Djibouti that will cover almost 12 million hectares to stop the advancement of the Sahara desert. They plan to use native, drought-resistant species which they hope will slow soil erosion and wind speeds. I have no idea if that kind of thing will work but I would think that, given that they are planning on spending $119 million on this, there is some good evidence to think that it will.

Here’s another quick post about this at Global Poverty.

Even though I’m almost two years away from the last tree I planted, I still can’t help but think things like, “I wonder density they’ll plant them at,” and, “if they plant them at 1,000 trees a hectare, $119 million is almost 20 cents a tree!”

Apologies in advance but I can’t resist  throwing in a couple more treeplanting references:

“See the country sticking out right next to Ethiopia? Djibouti? Yeah, flag into there.”

“I’m going to need an internal–in Nigeria.”

Comment or email me if you have more…