The Algerian advances, the desert moves back.” The slogan, in these years of postindépendance, made a success. The building site launched by president Houari Boumediene in 1969 was admittedly Pharaonic: a “green stopping” of 3 million hectares, a barrier of 1.200 kilometers length trees on 20 broad, was to protect north from Algeria of inexorable advanced of the Sahara. Nearly four decades later, Algiers is indicated by capital UNO of the Year of the deserts and the turning into a desert, of which on June 17 is the world day.

Vaster country of Africa after Sudan, Algeria is concerned in the highest degree. Most of its territory 84% is covered by sands with the largest desert and most arid with the world: the Sahara, old man of at least 7 million years. But, if its magic sites make dream, the turning into a desert takes worrying forms there: nearly 13 million hectares of the country are threatened by the projection of the desert, while 32 million hectares of the steppe zone are in danger of turning into a desert, causing concern as for the future of more than 7 million people, whose majority saw breeding.

Palm plantations. “The desert advances, the Algerian moves back”, summarizes today an Algerian expert of the regional planning. Time is far, indeed, where the army mobilized 20.000 recruits of the national service to carry out famous “the green stopping” on the steppe and the high plateaus, with 150 kilometers in the south of Algiers. If work had a certain reality until the beginning of the Eighties and if they were never formally cold, they were somewhat surbedded at the beginning of decade 90. The civil war was announced. The administration of the forests took again the building site in 1994 officially.

Meanwhile, the situation was terribly degraded. In the Sahara, the infrastructures and the cities, villages and oases are regularly threatened by the stranding, the deterioration of the palm plantations, the drying up of sources and the salinisation of the grounds. However, according to the Minister for the water Resources, the drinking water reserves nonrenewable of the Sahara are estimated at 40 billion cubic meters, “what to ensure the food of the Algerian South and to allow its development”.

Napalm. The north of the country is not parcelled out much better. In mountain, fires, including by the napalm employed during the “dirty war” of the Nineties, and hydrous erosion destroy forests and grounds. Invaded by the concrete or subjected to industrial pollution and erosion, the most fertile plains lose their agricultural capacity. The unrestrained and anarchistic urbanization would have thus caused the loss of 200.000 hectares arable lands since independence, while 500000 hectares cannot be used any more for agriculture because of the salinisation.

Today, Algeria finally engaged in a construction schedule of new stoppings and units of desalination of sea water in the large cities. And it remakes a “national priority” of famous “the green stopping”, which should be completed in 2020. Algiers wants to also develop tourism to prevent the exodus of the inhabitants of the desert. The formidable archaeological richness of the Sahara which knew green and inhabited eras there is less than 5.000 years largely authorizes it. However, an expert estimates, “the absence of any environmental policy and regional planning worthy of this name remains alarming whereas the turning into a desert is a major and permanent problem for Algeria”.