Global government, business and civil society leaders have issued an urgent call to action to grow an 8 000 km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of the African continent.

The Great Green Wall, an African-led movement, aims to drive climate-smart solutions and bring life back to degraded landscapes in order to ensure food security, jobs and new economies for the communities living in Africa’s Sahel region.

An estimated 15% of the Wall is already under way.

Influential leaders from business, politics, the media, and the film and music industries gathered at Goals House, in New York, on September 22 to highlight the Great Green Wall as a practical, low-cost nature-based solution, which responds to the “global climate emergency”.

Participants are expected to call on governments, civil society and business to join a growing global movement to make the Great Green Wall a reality by 2030.

Timberland global brand president Jim Pisani was expected to announce Timberland’s new commitment to the Great Green Wall initiative as an example of how businesses are investing in this global movement.

The Sahel, where the Great Green Wall is taking root, is said to be a political hot spot, and, with nearly 80% of the land in this region degraded, 33-million people are currently food insecure, while temperatures are expected by rise by as much as 3 ºC to 5 ºC by 2050.

The Great Green Wall is often cast as a green belt stretching across the entire width of Africa from Dakar to Djibouti, but it is also said to be a people-centred movement to restore the health of the Sahel region’s ecosystem and natural resources in order to build resilience to drought for the communities living here, enhance food security and empower them to generate new and sustainable income streams.

The Great Green Wall was launched a decade ago by the African Union with the support of many partners, including the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility and the European Commission.