Reforestation projects fail, most of them. Trees are planted, photographs are taken, and within five years a majority of saplings are dead โ victims of drought, pest pressure, inadequate aftercare, or the simple mismatch between the species chosen by project designers and the conditions of the soil in which they are planted. Morocco's programme has been notably resistant to this pattern, and the reasons are instructive.
The Moroccan Green Wall Agency's approach begins not with saplings but with seeds โ specifically, with the seed banks maintained by communities in the pre-Saharan regions of Drรขa-Tafilalet and Souss-Massa, which hold genetic material from native argan, atlas cedar, and aleppo pine varieties adapted over centuries to local drought cycles and soil chemistry. The agency provides technical support, land tenure security, and a payment-for-ecosystem-services income stream to communities that maintain and expand established forest cover โ but the planting decisions, species selection, and maintenance are executed by local land users with inherited ecological knowledge that no outside consultant can replicate.
The result, across a verified area now exceeding one million hectares, is survival rates of 78 percent at five years โ compared to a global average of roughly 40 percent for comparable dryland reforestation schemes. The cost per surviving tree is approximately MAD 12 (around โฌ1.10), against a typical World Bank benchmark of โฌ3โ5 for equivalent African drylands.
Carbon sequestration measurements from independent verification body Verra have issued the project 47 million certified carbon credits, generating revenue that has funded 340 kilometres of rural water supply infrastructure in participating communities.
"The trees that survive are the ones planted by someone who plans to still be here in thirty years," said Agency Director Fatima Zahra Benali. "That is who we work with."