Yacouba Sawadogo UNEP Champions of the Earth laureate, Burkina Faso

Yacouba Sawadogo 2020 UN Environment Programme Champions of the Earth laureate, Burkina Faso.
Yacouba Sawadogo is known as “the man who stopped the desert”. In the early 1980's during a phase of severe drought, Yacouba Sawadogo started to turn barren land into forest, Modifying the traditional Zaï technique, he showed how farmers can regenerate their soil with innovative use of indigenous and local knowledge. This allows crops to grow even in regions beset by water shortages. The technique, now nearly four decades old, is used by farmers across a 6,000-kilometre stretch of Africa.