who is Tony Rinaudo, the man nicknamed the “maker of forests”?

COP27 will begin its second week on Sunday, November 13 in Sharm el-Sheick. The role of trees in the fight against global warming is increasingly highlighted. Emmanuel Macron also announced at the end of October a “forest” plan with one billion trees planted by 2030. NGOs being cautious on the subject, explaining that it is also above all necessary to preserve existing forests. Because when the forests leave, often cut by men. Water is becoming scarcer, animals too, soils are eroding.

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The beginning of a vicious circle, particularly in Africa where the sale of wood is often also a question of survival for the poorest families. Tony Rinaudo, an Australian agronomist, arrived in Niger more than 40 years ago. “Globally, there are more than three billion hectares of degraded landindicates the agronomist. I worked in the Republic of Niger for 17 years. The landscape was very degraded, mainly by human activity.”

In Niger “by clearing land for agriculture” explains Tony Rinaudo. “We had wind speeds of over 70 kilometers per hour, he continues. When you remove the trees, there is nothing to stop these winds. Crops can be buried in sand. We have ground surface temperatures of 60 degrees. So it’s like an oven.”

“When you take away the trees, you take away the natural methods of fertilizing the soil too. But nature is actually more than capable of healing itself if given a chance.”

Tony Rinaudo, Australian agronomist

at franceinfo

Tony Rinaudo discovers on these lands where almost nothing grows, what he calls underground forests. Trees cut decades ago still existed. With a root system, sometimes buried 30 or 40 meters deep. “What I recommend, continues Tony Rinaudo, it’s to change the way we manage our livestock so that they don’t trample the land 12 months a year, explains the agronomist. Let’s change the way we cultivate so that we don’t plant every square inch of land. It’s extremely fast. In the Republic of Niger, our average annual rainfall was only 300 to 400 millimeters of rain and for eight months of the year it did not rain at all. Yet in this climate, trees grew. Maybe up to two meters the first year. No watering, no planting, just natural regrowth. And then in three years, these trees could reach three to four meters high!

In Niger alone, thanks to this method, for which he is world famous, millions of trees have grown back. This work by Tony Rinaudo and his method will be visible in a documentary by Volker Schlöndorff programmed on Arte on November 16 and entitled The Forest Maker, The Man Who Resurrects Trees.