"Trees to slow down the progress of the desert"

The President of Green Cross Burkina Faso and his whole team wish to express their heartfelt thanks to all those who contributed in one way or another to the implementation of this beginning phase of the tree planting project in Burkina Faso.

We express our deepest gratitude to the Japanese people, to Green Cross Japan, to Mr. Shoo Iwasaki and his collaborators for their unrestrained support and their financial assistance without which we would have certainly failed to attain the objectives of the project.

We are particularly grateful to Mr. Iwasaki for his boundless generosity and his strong sense of human solidarity as significant values that are the foundation of our collaboration. On behalf of the people benefiting from the project as well as on behalf of all members of Green Cross Burkina Faso, we highly praise his noble action that brings hope to a whole people.

We also thank Green Cross International for their advice and support.

We express our gratitude to Verde Ambiente (Italy) for the environmental prize awarded to the President of Green Cross Burkina Faso. That prize, awarded at a time it was needed, was given to the tree planting project and has been of a valuable help.

Our sincere thanks go His Excellency the Minister of State, Minister of Environment and Water of Burkina Faso for his availability and willingness to support us and for transmitting to us his faith for environmental protection.

We are grateful to the hard-working peasants of the Comoé, Yatenga and Kadiogo Provinces for their fierce and daily struggle against the agression of desertification.

Our deepest gratefulness to all.

Green Cross Burkina Faso with the support of Green Cross Japan and Green Cross International have launched a campaign named "IWASAKI Campaign, Hope for the Sahel ".

The project intends to fight against desertification through a large scale tree planting campaign. Its objective is to plant 371 160 trees in three distinct climatic zones of Burkina Faso :

- the Sahelian zone located in the North of Burkina Faso, in the Yatenga Province, at the 500 mm isohyet ;

- the Sudano-Sahelian zone located at the center of Burkina Faso, in the Kadiogo Province du Kadiogo, at the 700 mm isohyet ;

- the Sudano-Guinean zone at the 1000/1100 mm isohyet in the Comoe Province located in the South-West of the country, towards Côte d'Ivoire.

It should be noted that Green Cross Burkina Faso, since its creation, got fully involved in the fight against desertification, through a program including tree planting, sensitization and environmental education.

The activities of the Tree Planting Project started in 1996. The funding was received from March 1997.

The objective of this report is to provide a half-way summarized description of the results of the project, to draw lessons and suggest an activity schedule for the 1999-2000 period.