The forest underground
Meet Tony Rinaudo, a 65-year old Australian agronomist who helped transform millions of hectares of desert in Niger into abundant forest – without planting a single tree.
Tony grew up in the agricultural region of Northern Victoria and from a young age carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He struggled to make sense of starving African children on the evening news, or the destructive impact of his family’s farming on the land. After getting a degree in agricultural science, Tony moved to Niger in 1981 with the dream of solving at least one of the world’s problems.
Nothing prepared him for what he found. Niger was a moonscape, on the verge of ecological collapse, leaving food and water in scarce supply. Tony put his knowledge to work, opening a nursery and collaborating with local communities to plant trees and protect seedlings, but nothing survived the desert heat. After two years of expensive failures, Tony was ready to give up when he had 'a divine intervention.'
He’d stopped his car in between villages to let some air out of the tyres, and as he looked around the unforgiving landscape, prayed for guidance. Moments later, a patch of green caught his eye. He assumed it was a bush, but when he looked closely, it was a tree that had been cut down and was re-sprouting from its stump. The root systems were still intact, just hidden underground. With millions of stumps across the country, Tony realised the trees had been there all along. The 'underground forest' just needed cultivating.
Growing trees from stumps is a centuries-old technique, but Tony had to convince farmers to stop burning the bushes on their land and allow them to become trees again. Eventually he rallied ten volunteers and after a few setbacks, the team gained momentum as forests grew and crops started thriving. Over the past 20 years Tony's underground forests have restored six million hectares of land across Niger, one the largest environmental transformations on planet Earth.
Improved harvests have significantly reduced the annual hungry period from six months to less than a month each year, and Tony’s approach has been introduced into another 23 countries. Despite the scale of our environmental challenges, Tony is optimistic about the future. "If the poorest people in the world, the ones with the least resources, can forge such a transformation, imagine what can we do with a problem of our own making?"
