AN APPEAL to turn Sudan green has been launched by a Rugby-based charity.
Practical Action wants to help turn the tables on climate change this Christmas.
With the help of Mayor Bill Lewis and children from Hillmorton Primary School, the charity launched the appeal at its Albert Street bookshop to shine the spotlight on climate change and the solutions available to help people in Darfur adapt to it.
Children from the school demonstrated Practical Action’s newest education resource, which helps young people understand the impacts of climate change on the world’s poorest.
Practical Action is asking people to support its work regreening the desert and helping farmers in Darfur to return to their lands through a combination of novel ideas.
Darfur farmers returning to their land after civil war found trees which stopped creeping sands had been chopped down, rain had become shorter and more unpredictable, and temperatures had risen, leaving them coping with flooding then water shortages, little cultivation time, and a lack of topsoil.
Practical action staff will work with farmers to rebuild dams, capture the rainfall and irrigate the soil. They will also help villagers plant trees and grow community forests so they halt the desert and provide an income.
Traditional seed varieties more resilient to the weather will be distributed, old skills and knowledge will be shared, and crop rotation and planting methods will keep the soil fertile and produce more valuable harvests so that families can eat and afford to send their children to school.
The charity’s CEO Paul Smith Lomas said: “This appeal is an example of how ingenuity and local knowledge can overcome one of the world’s toughest problems: how to adapt to the changing climate and allow some of the world’s most vulnerable people to take back control of their lives.
“This clever approach has been tried and tested around the world and by supporting this project you could help thousands of farmers coping with devastating climate change.
“Every pound you donate until March 9 will be matched by the UK Government, meaning you will be helping even more people turn the tables on climate change.”
Visit www.practicalaction.org/turn-the-tables for more information, or to donate.
