It’s one of the most ambitious restoration projects on the planet: started in 2007, the 8,000 km-long Great Green Wall will span 11 African countries, from Senegal to Djibouti, unfurling a green band of restored land across the continent to fight land degradation and drought, boost food security, improve health and create thousands of new jobs.

This African-led initiative is already bringing life back to degraded landscapes at an unprecedented scale and when it’s complete, it will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef.

Support for the project is growing. At the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity in January, the project received $14 billion in additional funding pledges for the next 10 years. The financiers include France, the African Development Bank and the World Bank.

The Great Green Wall is badly needed: In the Sahel, a dry stretch of land at the southern edge of the Sahara desert, climate change is happening one and a half times faster than the global average and the region now experiences droughts every two years, instead of the typical 10-year cycle.

The Great Green Wall is the first flagship of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and it epitomizes what can be achieved by working together.

Read more about the Great Green Wall here.

Check out this speech about the Wall by UNEP’s Executive Director Inger Andersen here.