Journal

Our History
Richard ‘St Barbe’
ITF’s visionary and pioneering
The life and work of Richard St. Barbe
Baker, founder of the Men of the Trees
(now International Tree Foundation in the
UK), one of the world’s greatest foresters,
environmentalists and conservationists,
spans most of the twentieth century.
He was a prodigious and innovative writer and
broadcaster, bringing his message about the importance
of trees in creating and regulating the world’s atmosphere
to audiences around the world.
So wide-ranging were his achievements, taking in such
a breadth of countries, cultures and figures, that to
address all their aspects could be daunting. But Camilla
Allen from the University of Sheffield is looking to
bring Baker’s achievements to new audiences by
focussing her PhD research on his most visionary
proposal: the Great Green Wall.
The Great Green Wall
Unrealised in his lifetime, The Great Green Wall is gaining
momentum in Africa today as political will gathers behind
this ambitious landscape project with international backing
from bodies including the European Union and World Bank.
St Barbe
Meeting the
Morans from
the Dance of
the Trees held in
1922
Sahara Challenge
map
The Great Green Wall aims to protect communities in
the Sahel from a growing humanitarian crisis, one
that Baker warned against long before others in the
international community had recognised it: the
complex issue of desertification.
Camilla’s research will also examine the organisations
and individuals who took up the cause and continued
the projects he conceptualised as the Green Front and
the Sahara Reclamation Programme, as well as later
interpretations of the Great Green Wall by figures
like Burkino Faso’s Socialist President Thomas Sankara
in the 1980s.
16
Autumn 2016