A misty morning near Endaselassie in western Tigray. |
Tigray's drylands,
home to more than 4.3 million people, are being restored on a massive
scale, said the World Future Council, a foundation which organised the
award together with the United Nations Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD).
The Tigray
government has mobilised villagers to volunteer 20 days a year to build
terraces, irrigation projects, build stone walls on mountains and
hillsides, and other projects.
As a result,
groundwater levels have risen, soil erosion has reduced, and people's
ability to grow food and gain an income has improved, the council said.
"Ethiopia's Tigray
region shows that restoration of degraded land can be a reality ... The
model provides hope for other African countries to follow suit,"
Alexandra Wandel, director of the World Future Council, told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation.
Drylands, which
cover nearly 40 percent of the Earth's land, are particularly vulnerable
to losing fertility through changes in climate and poor land use such
as deforestation or overgrazing, the UNCCD said.
"Hundreds of
millions of people are directly threatened by land degradation, and
climate change is only going to intensify the problem," Monique Barbut,
under-secretary-general of the United Nations and UNCCD executive
secretary said in a statement.
"So far, this underestimated environmental disaster has received far too little attention."
Ethiopia's Tigray
region has, however, since 1991 managed to improve soil and water
conservation, and closed off 1.2 million hectares of land to allow
plants to regrow.
"The Tigray region
of Ethiopia is now greener than it has ever been during the last 145
years," said Chris Reij, desertification expert at the World Resources
Institute.
"This is not due to an increase in rainfall, but due to human investment in restoring degraded land to productivity."
Over about 15
years, men, women and children moved at least 90 million tonnes of soil
and rock by hand to restore their landscapes on about 1 million
hectares, Reij said.
"In the process many communities have overcome the impacts of climate change," he said.
Each year the
Future Policy Award focuses on one world threat that will impact future
generations. Past awards have been for policies covering children's
rights, ending violence against women and girls, disarmament, and
protecting oceans.
This year's silver
award went to Brazil's programme to build 1.2 million cisterns, helping
millions of the country's poorest people get water for drinking and for
crops and livestock.
China's 2002 law to prevent and control desertification - the world's first such law - also won silver.
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