Mauritania

In Mauritania, sand dunes are built to stop sand dunes.

When a road was laid eastwards from the capital in the 1970s, there was so little moving sand along the route that no protection was planned. It was named the Road of Hope. Then came the drought, and the dunes began to march across it.

One solution was an artificial dune, built alongside the road and reinforced with fences of plant stems. The moving dunes get caught there before they reach the road.

Today, around two thirds of the country is covered by moving sand dunes.