The Cape Verde Ministry of Agriculture and Environment announced today the planting of date palms and coconut trees, replacing acacias, to resist climate change.
The Government intends to plant forest and fruit species “with the aim of increasing resilience and strengthening the adaptation capacity to face additional risks arising from climate change”, it announced in a statement.
The objective is to fight against “desertification and land degradation in Cape Verde, as well as promoting participatory forest management against desertification”, he added.
The campaign, which brings together the Cape Verdean Government, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the farmers’ association of Ribeira de Rabil, on the island of Boa Vista, began symbolically on Friday and foresees the planting of 228 coconut trees and 178 date palms, totaling 406 trees.
The Government intends to promote “afforestation closer to the reality of Cape Verde, which is why we are committed to establishing as many plants as possible every year”, defended the minister responsible for the sector, Gilberto Silva.
“The objective of this campaign is to remove the acacia trees and transform Ribeira de Rabil into a site for agroforestry production”, highlighted the Cape Verdean ministry.
The American acacia, a tree species that was introduced en masse after independence to fight against the desertification of the islands, is degrading the soil and eliminating native and endemic plants in many parts of the archipelago, explained in August, to Lusa, the Biodiversity Project Association that also promotes conservation actions.
One of the initiatives aims to save a date palm tree that only exists in Cape Verde: it is the species ‘Phoenix Atlantis’, classified as “endangered” on the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – that is, it is middle of the scale between preservation and threat of extinction.