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well. The December harvest failed
in these areas, and the livestock that
sustain Life for the nomadic peoples
are dead or dying.
A report by the National Emer–
gency Relief Committee in Addis
Ababa says that deforestation, soil
erosion and population growth have
seriously disturbed the ecological
balance in northern Ethiopia.
U.N. Secretary General Kurt
Waldheim toured the drought-rav–
aged nations ofWest Africa early in
1974. He was shocked and dis–
tressed by what he saw on his tour
of North Africa. He remarked that
"sorne people and countries could
disappear from the face of the map"
in West Africa, without long-range
help. Waldheim pledged United
Nations support for the region and
declared, "Priority will be given to
this region for it has not seen such a
disaster in two centuries. I have
never been so shaken by what 1
have seen here in all my life."
What Can Be Done?
Can the Sabara be reclaimed or
has the destructive process gone too
6
far? Past history shows that the Sa–
bara is at least in part "man-made."
lndiscriminate use of North Africa
by the Romans shows what can hap–
pen to any part of the earth when
greed is uppermost in people's
minds.
The Romans cut down the trees.
Now Algeria, for example, is hoping
to replant them. An ambitious plan
to plant a "great green wall" ·to pre–
vent the constant, gradual erosion of
fertile land by the sand of the Sa–
bara was announced by Algeria in
1973. It would consist of millions of
pine, eucalyptus and other trees in
a belt sorne 940 miles across Alge–
ria from the Moroccan to the Tuni–
sian frontiers. This "wall" would
be between three and twelve miles
thick.
In addition to stopping soil ero–
sion and encouraging the growth of
vegetation, it is hoped that the
planting of these trees will affect
sorne change in climatic conditions,
such as increasing rainfall and hu–
midity. One agriculture minister
said that "perhaps we can extend
the humidifying influence of the
green barrage to the south - maybe
we can then even make the desert
go backwards."
Not too many years ago, a star–
tling discovery was made in the Sa–
bara. Underneath this desert is a
huge reservoir which hydrologists
estímate to contain five times more
water than all the world's freshwater
lakes! According to the U. S. Geo–
logical Survey, 150,000 cubic miles
of water are under an area of the
Sabara covering 2.5 million square
miles. (Fresh water in the earth's
Iakes totals about 30,000 cubic
miles.)
Usually conservative bydrologists
have issued startling statements
about the amount of water under
the Sabara. It would be, they say,
"as much as the flow of the Nile for
200 years" or "enough to irrigate a
million acres for 800 years." This
is
"fossil" water dating from the
earth's glacial period when the Sa–
bara received heavy rainfall. Desert
oases have long testified to the exis–
tence of this resource. But only re–
cently has the magnitude of the
subterranean reservoir been known.
PLAIN TRUTH June-July 1974