Back in 1992, Sazoba was the perfect place for location scouts looking for a place to film "The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert." Substituting for the Negev desert in the film set in Beersheba, Israel, the rural neighborhood in western Turkey remained barren for years before the start of a campaign to change its fate. Today, trees dot the dry landscape, a testament to Turkey’s efforts against desertification.
As the country marked World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought on Friday, authorities warned that 22.5% of Turkish lands are at high risk of desertification, a risk that the country seeking to bolster its agricultural sector cannot afford. With erosion taking away precious lands, Turkey turns to trees with mass planting campaigns.
Sazoba in the Akhisar district of Manisa province sets an example of how barren land can be converted into lush territory in less than three decades. Until the late 1990s, the neighborhood was known as Taysun Desert, after professor Alaettin Taysun, who highlighted the dire state of Sazoba which was affected by strong winds carrying sands from the nearby Kum Stream basin over the agricultural lands, creating dunes. Losing their vineyards and fields to the sand, farmers started leaving the neighborhood, before the local branch of the Directorate of Forestry Services and a nongovernmental organization specializing in fighting erosion started a tree-planting campaign in 1996.
Across a land of 358 acres (145 hectares), 101,000 saplings, from eucalyptus to pine and almond trees were planted, along with the grass that served as land cover and stopped the movement of sands. Today, Sazoba is back to its fertile old self, with vineyards and orchards blooming.
Çetin Karabulut, a resident, says along with “a new beauty,” the planting campaign created new income for families who turned to agriculture again. “The forest changed a lot here. We thought there won’t grow even a single blade of grass but now it became a perfect forest,” Önder Ünlü, mukhtar of the neighborhood told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Friday.
Minister of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change Murat Kurum says Turkey has determined areas sensitive to desertification and aims to decrease the amount of soil lost to erosion to 130 million tons and below annually by next year. In a message issued on the occasion, Kurum said the pressure on land resources was “more than ever” today amid global warming, climate change, desertification and drought.
“Turkey’s location, climate and the characteristics of its soil make it more vulnerable to desertification and drought. We are aware of our responsibility to prevent it and implemented an action plan covering the period between 2019 and 2030 on this issue,” he said.
The Directorate of Forestry Services announced on Friday that it ran projects against erosion in an area of 90,675 acres (36,695 hectares).
As a country with a higher elevation of land in its immediate region, Turkey is at greater risk of erosion. Terracing and forestation are key to putting an end to erosion or at least slowing it down. Eventually, erosion leads to desertification, something worsened by incorrect crop cultivation and inefficient irrigation techniques where farmers drain the underwater resources necessary to keep the soil alive and safe from desertification.
As part of efforts to fight desertification and erosion, Turkey has carried out hundreds of projects in recent years, from upstream basin flood control, afforestation catchment basins, avalanche defense, landslide hazard maps, integrated watershed rehabilitation, general soil conservation, measures against rock falls, afforestation and setting up wildlife corridors.
Turkey also increased efforts for reforestation with the "Breath for the Future" campaign where people across the country gathered to plant trees on Nov. 11 for National Forestation Day. More than 3.8 million saplings were planted that day.
