Sustaining the Sahel

The great narrative of the African Sahel throughout my lifetime has been that the Sahara Desert is expanding precipitously, forcing an increasing number of subsistence farmers into a decreasing patch of arable land. That's no longer true, reports the NY Times:

Another change was the way trees were regarded by law. From colonial times, all trees in Niger had been regarded as the property of the state, which gave farmers little incentive to protect them. Trees were chopped for firewood or construction without regard to the environmental costs...

But over time, farmers began to regard the trees in their fields as their property, and in recent years the government has recognized the benefits of this by allowing individuals to own trees. Farmers make money off the trees by selling branches, pods, fruit and bark. Because these sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them.

The greening began in the mid-1980s, Dr. Reij said, "and every time we went back to Niger, the scale increased...The density is so spectacular," he said.

The market solution here - giving people full ownership of their land and its produce - is not nearly as spectacular as the French colonial nearsightedness. The belief that a central government (of Europeans at first, then of Western-educated Africans) was more competent to ensure the livelihood of farmers than the farmers themselves were is a stupendous idiocy.

Government or NGO-imposed solutions were not the answer, notes the Times:

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

The article offers a few sops to collectivism at the village level. But the backstory to the collectivism is that its purpose is really to protect private property rights.

Left alone, the people of an oft-patronized, oft-criticized society are establishing and protecting private ownership and securing their own survival. That's a beautiful human story.