A Green Renaissance for the Sahel

Anyone who recalls the images of famine victims in the Sahel region of Africa might be startled by the scene today in one village in Burkina Faso. "In 1985 the situation was desperate: no water in the wells, very few trees," says geographer Chris Reij of the Free University of Amsterdam. "Now you have roughly 40 trees on a hectare—baobabs, neem trees—some of them grown very tall."