Some people are just extraordinary. People like Haidar el Ali.
Haider is the leader of the Green Party in Senegal and the newly appointed environment minister. But what makes him extraordinary is what he did before becoming a government minister.
I believe any of us would be proud to have this achievement listed on our resume – “I helped to organise one the largest tree planting programs in the world.”
Senegal is in central west Africa. Though a small country compared with many of its neighbours, Senegal occupies a strategic location. The north of the country is part of the Sahel, the dry grasslands south of the Sahara, while the south is covered by tropical savannah and forests.
Vast mangrove forests inhabit the coast and estuaries, and it’s here that Haidar el Ali become a celebrity international environmentalist after the success of his mangrove replanting programs.
In the video opening shots, we see the over exploitation of the mangrove forest. Huge swaths have been cleared for rice farming and for firewood. The result is all-too-predictable – the mangroves protect against erosion, floods, rising salt levels and loss of biodiversity.
Beginning in the 2006, Haidar began to organise the mass planting of mangrove forests. And when we say ‘’mass,’’ we mean about 150 million trees across 15 locations. Starting with one village and 65,000 trees, his program now includes hundreds of villages and the participation of up to 100,000 people.
To me, everything about this story is monumental – the scale of the landscape, the number of people mobilised to join the replanting effort, the number of trees that have been planted, and just as important, Haider’s bravery to continue his fight against illegal deforestation in the face of numerous death threats.
The purpose of presenting this video for the Switched ON Living community is to give us a glimpse to a world that we know very little about, and the urgency of the environmental crisis facing so much of the developing world.
As Haider says, we’re past the time to talk, it’s now the time to act.
