There was a precedent in Algeria, under Boumedienne, in the 70s. The army had been mobilized on a very large scale. "Socialist" governments have always had a penchant for major works, diverting rivers, stopping the desert, building a cottage (Ceauscescu), dam of the 3 gorges of Mao, program of 1 dams of Sankara in Burkina (000 , I'm not sure; well, these are small village water reservoirs, it was infinitely crazy months!) ...
Mixed success. I'm talking about the green barrier.
But we can still find significant traces of this barrier, where she took. In many places, alas, it had burst. The population had also partly looted, recovered fences, delivering seedlings to the teeth of goats, etc ...
See for example:
https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env ... geVert.pdfA balance a little more critical:
http://alger-roi.fr/Alger/agriculture_a ... e_vert.htm[77% of planned areas achieved; Survival rate at 3 years: 42%]
So nothing new.
Farther back in time, do not forget that the forests of the south and south-west of the Massif Central, around Mont Aigoual, Mont Lozère were created from scratch to fight against the erosion and siltation of the port of Bordeaux and flood, from the 1860 years, following laws on reforestation (part of which is still in force, including the almost absolute prohibition, except in cases of public interest, to shave a forest!).
Today, all these massifs seem so natural! These peaks were then laid bare by clearing, clearing, the production of wood and charcoal, etc. The consequence of this deforestation: massive erosion. See "Georges Fabre", the polytechnician who was the great instigator of all this, who has his monument at Mont Aigoual ...