“There were places where we couldn’t harvest anything because the land was too dry, but now it is easy to plow. Where we used to harvest 200 kg of millet per hectare, we can now harvest 400 to 500 kg per hectare,” recalls Awa Kouraogo, a 37-year-old farmer and mother of six children who lives in the Passoré Province, in north Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso's economy relies on subsistence agriculture – mainly cereals like sorghum, millet, corn and rice – but is marked by low crop productivity. In the Sahelian zone in the north part of the country, the drylands suffer from wind and water erosion that create barren clearings. In villages like Kirsi, where Awa lives, meager harvests are no longer enough to feed the 19,000 people living there.
Making peace with the land
On planet Earth, land is as crucial a resource to humans as air and water. Without rich soils and productive lands for agriculture, there won’t be enough food in the world to sustain our growing population. Land degradation, defined as the deterioration or loss of productive soil capacity, is one of the most pressing challenges humankind faces today. Deforestation and unsustainable agriculture and livestock practices are among its main drivers. Around a quarter of the planet's total land area has already been degraded and, if current trends continue, this figure could reach 95 percent by 2050.
This is an issue that affects 3.2 billion people globally, especially smallholder farmers and poor communities, as it leads to food insecurity and loss of livelihoods. Land degradation also causes environmental issues, such as loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. With climate change raising temperatures and altering rainfall patterns around the world, more frequent droughts and floods are increasing stress on arable land. In turn, when land degrades it releases carbon and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, further exacerbating climate change.
This vicious cycle is particularly relentless in the driest parts of the planet, like the Sahel, a transition zone between savannahs and the Sahara Desert in Africa. Burkina Faso is one of the countries in this region facing severe land degradation and desertification, especially since the dramatic droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, which turned the soil of the Sahel into a bare, dry crust that rainwater simply washes away, eroding the land instead of seeping into it.
Life on Land
In 2018, Kirsi residents created the Wendpanga Simplified Cooperative to tackle land degradation and desertification in their area. With 180 members, including 100 women, this community-based organization has received technical and financial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), since 2021. Under this SGP project, the cooperative has already recovered 260 hectares of degraded land by applying three techniques: the zaï, stone barriers, and half-moons.