Beyond the Great Green Walls: Missing Links in Earth-Scale Dryland Regeneration

Christian Torvnes
6 days ago
4 min read

Introduction: The Allure and Complexity of Greening Initiatives

Dryland regeneration has captured imaginations for decades, embodied most visibly by the vast afforestation programs of China’s Three-North Shelterbelt and Africa’s Great Green Wall. These projects have mobilized tens of billions of dollars and inspired global attention with their scale and ambition. They have also produced genuine achievements: degraded land has been restored, millions of trees planted, and in some regions communities once facing collapse are now harvesting food, fuel, and resilience from revitalized soils.

Yet these successes tell only part of the story. Progress has been uneven, fragile, and in many areas dependent on bursts of funding or exceptional local leadership rather than durable systems. Large stretches of land remain degraded, political coordination often falters, and ecological gains are difficult to sustain over decades. The Great Green Walls show us both the possibilities and the limitations of earth-scale regeneration.

The challenge now is to look beyond these initiatives – to recognize what has been achieved, but also to identify the missing links that prevent promising initiatives from becoming truly sustainable.

Lessons Learned from Global Initiatives

Achievements

China’s Three-North Shelterbelt and Africa’s Great Green Wall show that degraded land can be restored when political will and funding align. In both regions, large-scale commitments have made real impacts.

In Africa, methods such as half-moon basins, zai pits, and farmer-managed regeneration have revived land and supported food production – costly and labor-intensive as they may be. In China, decades of persistence have increased forest cover, stabilized soils, and slowed desert expansion.

Insights

Both projects face structural weaknesses that limit their effectiveness.

In Africa – in particular, tree mortality has been high, progress fragmented, and reliance on external funding has left projects vulnerable. In China, centrally imposed approaches have sometimes overlooked local conditions, producing monocultures with limited biodiversity and questionable long-term resilience.

These experiences show that dryland regeneration is possible, but fragile. Large-scale projects attract attention and funding, yet without careful planning and grounded governance, gains can be overstated or short-lived.

Diverging Models

China’s Shelterbelt Program

Strengths: Centrally controlled, consistently funded, remarkable in scale and persistence.
Weaknesses: Limited community involvement, ecological diversity concerns, social impacts on local farmers who lost traditional land uses.

Africa’s Great Green Wall

Strengths: Multilateral collaboration across many nations, community-led techniques with proven local results, strong alignment with livelihood needs.
Weaknesses: Openly reliant on external support, costly and labor-intensive methods, fragmented progress, exposed to political shifts and coordination gaps.

Comparison

This divergence affects everything from the projects’ designs to the way results are presented. Both models illuminate what is possible, but each exposes structural flaws: Africa’s reliance on costly methods that struggle without continuous funding; China’s dependence on centralized power and brute-force investment, often at the expense of local livelihoods. Together they show that regeneration at scale is achievable – but not yet sustainable.

The Path Ahead

Lasting regeneration requires grounded vision, meticulous planning, integrity, and the ambition to sustain effort over decades. On that foundation, four elements must converge: changemakers, policymakers, domain experts, and capital structured to match ecological timeframes. With these in place – and with clear guardrails against hidden agendas, greenwashing, and performative metrics – progress can be measured in durability, resilience, and long-term benefit rather than in short-term numbers or glossy reports.

Funding Dryland Regeneration

Capital for climate and impact initiatives is abundant – global estimates run into the trillions each year. Yet only a fraction finds its way into dryland regeneration. The reason is not a shortage of funds, but a shortage of projects structured to absorb them.

Regeneration projects struggle with indirect returns, long time horizons, governance gaps, and fragmented coordination. The result is a funding mismatch: money is available, but it often bypasses the initiatives that need it most. Aligning capital with ecological timeframes, strong governance, and measurable social benefit is essential if large-scale restoration is to move beyond short-lived campaigns.

Next Frontiers for Dryland Regeneration

The work can be continued on Africa’s Great Green Wall itself – particularly in regions such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, where progress has stalled and existing momentum risks being lost. Beyond Africa, new or planned initiatives could be joined in other regions under severe ecological pressure:

Southern Africa – The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is advancing plans for a Great Green Wall–style initiative.
Central Asia – Aral Sea Basin – The World Bank’s RESILAND program is ongoing, and has already restored over 500,000 hectares around the Aral Sea.
Saudi Arabia – Al Baydha Project – Regenerating arid foothills near Mecca with ancient water-harvesting techniques, this project is a pioneer for the Arabian Peninsula.

Conclusion

The Great Green Wall projects show both the possibilities and the limits of large-scale regeneration. They should be seen not as final solutions but as learning grounds – demonstrations of what can be achieved, and reminders of how fragile progress can be. In spite of the tremendous effort and resources invested, we must recognize that these initiatives have only scraped the surface of what is needed. Vast drylands across the world still await restoration.

The task now is to carry forward the lessons, avoid complacency, and build new initiatives that endure. That requires projects designed with durability in mind, and funding aligned with ecological timeframes and long-term social benefit.

Terravive Group’s role is to structure early-stage projects in such environments. Our de-risking model bridges the gap between early investment and long-term impact, allowing venture investors to participate early, recover their capital with margin, and exit safely – while blended and patient capital carry projects forward.