Climate Action Senegal Project #52348

50000 trees/year for a self-reliant rural Senegal

by Center for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology for the Environment (CREATE!)

Summary

With your support, CREATE! will plant 50,000 trees in 19 rural Senegalese communities in 2022. This will not only provide food, shade and fuel to the communities, but also help fight desertification, improve soil conditions, regulate temperatures while offsetting more than 1,730,000 pounds of Carbon each year. This reforestation effort will also fight challenges like human migration, loss of resources and economic opportunity and reduced quality of life that is brought on by desertification.

$50,000
total goal

$27,282
remaining

63
donors

1
monthly donor

1
fundraiser

2
years

Challenge

Climate change and deforestation are contributing to the rapid desertification in rural Senegal. From 2001 to 2020, Senegal lost 4.47kha of tree cover, equivalent to a 11% decrease in tree cover since 2000, and 856kt of CO2 emissions. Such deforestation causes the soil to degrade, agriculture to be less productive, temperatures to rise, and critical natural resources to decline, making it a major environmental crisis. The reforestation campaign is one of the ways CREATE! is fighting the problem.

Solution

CREATE!s reforestation campaign trains participants to plant tree saplings around communities with seeds and saplings bought by us and established as a nursery. The nurseries are maintained till they can be replanted around the villages during the rainy season. The trees provide shade, food, fuel, serve as windbreaks and living fences in community gardens while absorbing Carbon emissions from the air. Community members will maintain the trees for 2-3 years till they have established root systems

Long-Term Impact

"Reforestation may be one of our most powerful weapons in alleviating climate change."- Vox article. Trees are usually 50% carbon by weight, and the vast majority of that comes from CO2 absorbed from the air. On average one tree offsets 34.6 lbs of Carbon. CREATE! will plant about 30,000 trees per year, thus offsetting 1,730,000 lbs of Carbon every year by our campaign, regulating harmful impacts of fossil fuels. Over the years, the trees also mature and provide shade, food and firewood.