The Adrar in Mauritania is an arid plateau renowned for its gorges, regs and colorful dunes. The absence of water makes agriculture and human life impossible.
But the region was green in the Neolithic period, 12,000 years ago. Its caves conceal rock paintings everywhere, evidence of a time when the Sahara was very different from what it is today…

At the time of the last ice age, the Sahara was green and fertile, criss-crossed by lakes and rivers, and populated by giraffes, lions and hippos. In fact, for hundreds of thousands of years, North Africa has experienced several wet periods, resulting in a temporary greening of the Sahara, with the development of rivers, lakes and, above all, dense vegetation.

In all, some 230 wet periods have already been identified over the last 8 million years.
The Sahara tends to oscillate between dry and wet climates every 20,000 to 30,000 years.
The last period of wet, rainy weather in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula dates from around 8000 to 4000 BC.
Favorable, fertile conditions during this period led to the development of human settlements in the Nile Valley, Neolithic Sudan and the Sahara. These cultures create flourishing rock art, as here in Mauritania. In these inhospitable valleys of rock, dust and earth, people were living happily not so long ago.
Engravings, paintings and archaeological remains have been found all over the Adrar plateau.

People who fled. Will they come back?

Climate change could lead to the re-greening of the Sahara in the future. If our CO2 emissions continue to rise at the same rate, by the end of the century they will be as high as they were 50 million years ago, and greening could be accelerated by a North African monsoon.

But given the artificial nature of current warming, i.e. accelerated by our emissions, this scenario is only one of several. What we are seeing in Mauritania today is an acceleration in desertification.
The main factors contributing to desertification and land degradation are a combination of climate change and inappropriate land use practices such as land clearing, overgrazing, deforestation and, of course, mining.

In Mauritania, 80% of the national territory is affected by desertification.
Nearly 200,000 new hectares of land have been degraded every year for the past 20 years.

In addition to its environmental impact, land degradation exacerbates poverty, food insecurity, conflicts due to unequal access to resources and population migration.
Restoring degraded ecosystems is a real human and ecological challenge.
Land restoration brings multiple benefits: biodiversity preservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, disaster risk reduction, creation of economic activities and direct employment, food and water security and health protection.

Irrespective of the long-term issues at stake for the climate and the Sahara cycles, combating desertification has only short-term benefits, for humanity and for all other forms of life.