APA-Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) Yacouba Sawadogo, the tireless defender of nature, has died aged 77.
The Burkinabe government announced on Sunday that Yacouba Sawadogo, winner of the 2018 Alternative Nobel Prize, had passed away in Ouahigouya on the same day.
It paid tribute to “a visionary and a man of action” who “lived a useful life.”
“Yacouba Sawadogo’s work must inspire the current generation for an unconditional protection of the earth resource so that it benefits us to the maximum,” Captain Ibrahim Traoré wrote on X.
Nicknamed “The man who stopped the desert,” Yacouba Sawadogo made a name for himself by reclaiming degraded land and reforesting a 27-hectare area in the Ouahigouya commune.
The internationally-renowned man had been planting a tree every day since the 1980s.
Today, his forest is home to over 90 different species and a rich plant and animal biotope.
Winner of numerous awards, he received the “Right Livelihood Award,” also known as the alternative Nobel Prize, in 2018.
Two years later, the UN Environment Programme awarded him the Champions of the Earth prize.
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