“Make the Sahara Green Again” – Elon, Jeff, Bill, and Zuck?

BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR and PHILIP KOTLER

As the dust settles from COP 26, the world is left with a sense of deep dread.  The numbers don’t add up.

And our billionaires are busy either rigging democracy or planning to run off to Mars.

But what if there was something constructive the four horsemen – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg – could work on? What if they decided to “Make the Sahara Green Again”?

Musk, this is where you get to practice your terraforming so you can practice for your takeover of Mars.  Bezos, you could build the world’s largest Amazon robot warehouse next to the pyramids.  Gates – this is your chance to stop malaria. Zuck, the metaverse can wait.

Seriously.

Where to begin? Let’s begin by looking at some folks who have worked on this challenge for some time >>

Here’s Hugh Wilson in New Zealand:

Neal Spackman and the Al Baydha Project, Saudi Arabia:

The late Peter Andrews‘ “natural sequence farming” in Australia:

Chris Reij in Niger:

The regreening of the Ethiopian highlands:

Alan Savory‘s TED Talk:

The Greening the Desert project in Jordan:

John D. Liu’s Lessons of the Loess Plateau aka at the Green Wall of China (see also his Ecosystem Regeneration Camps):

Here’s the Great Green Wall – a critical project already in progress. Will it be enough? >>

And lastly, here’s another video that sums up the idea:

So – the question now is not Why? but Why Not?

P.S. – we don’t have to wait for the 4 horsemen. What can communities do to come together to get this greening started? How do we learn from each other?  Time is running out.

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