AFP UK

As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smouldering forests from burning even more.

Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometre (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of the village of Byas-Kyuel to keep an approaching wildfire at bay.

Wearing respirators against the acrid smoke, the men lit strips of rubber tyre they hung from sticks, then tapped them onto the dry forest floor on the other side of the trench to start a controlled burn.

The team has lost track of how many blazes they have tackled since late May — mostly successfully, sometimes not — as Yakutia suffers through yet another ever-worsening wildfire seasons.

“We held one property for eight days but it burned in the end because the tractors never got to us,” Zakharov said, explaining that in such cases they use shovels to dig trenches instead.

But even more than equipment, the 35-year-old brigade leader has another urgent plea: “We need more people.”

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Yakutia’s swampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia’s annual fire season.

Vast areas of Russia have been suffering from heatwaves and droughts driven by climate change in recent years, with numerous temperature records set.

It is the third straight year that Yakutia — Russia’s coldest region and bordering the Arctic Ocean — has seen wildfires so vicious that they have nearly overwhelmed the forest protection service. 

– Limited manpower –

The group of about 250 full-time staffers and 150 summer contract workers, who track the fires by air and drop in by parachute or on off-road trucks, is responsible for a region roughly five times the size of France.

Their goal, said Yakutia’s chief pilot observer Svyatoslav Kolesov, is to put out the fires entirely. But they also have to contend with blazes that overwhelm their manpower.

The number of firefighters in the region is far from adequate, Kolesov told AFP, recalling that when he started in 1988 the group had around 1,600 people before facing cuts over the years.

Kolesov, who monitors fires from daily flights and issues instructions to teams on the ground, said that because of limited resources the group will often keep an eye on a new blaze until it becomes sizeable. Only then will it send in a team.

“And if the fires spread quickly and soon cover a large area, then we try to save inhabited areas and strategic objects,” he said.

Environmentalists have long argued that Russia underfunds its forest fire fighting capabilities.

The country’s environment ministry is itself open about the policy, in 2015 issuing a decree that allows regions to ignore blazes if the cost of fighting fires outweighs the expected damages. 

“We’ve said for years that Russia needs to increase its budget to fight wildfires by at least three times,” Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace’s wildfire unit in the country, told AFP.

– ‘Everything would burn’ –

In early July, Russia mobilised its defence and emergencies ministries to help Yakutia battle the wildfires, while dozens of volunteers also took up the fight.

But the lack of funds for the Aerial Forest Protection Service — the only group wholly dedicated to fighting wildfires, according to Kolesov — are evident on the ground.

Brigade leader Zakharov said he asked officials repeatedly for a quad bike that never arrived so his men didn’t have to patrol their trench on foot.

“I lent most of my equipment to a team at a nearby fire,” he explained.

Later he received the all-terrain vehicle, but not before officials during a recent planning meeting disparaged the progress his team of five full-time staffers and eight summer contractors had made.

“What right do they have to criticise us?” Zakharov said, adding he had stormed out before the meeting had ended.

“Our guys have been working in the forest for a month straight. Anyone would start getting tired.” 

The brigade leader and his men were planning to fight on nonetheless. After Byas-Kyuel, they planned to move straight on to the next fire without taking a break. 

“If we weren’t around,” Zakharov said, “everything would burn.”

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami warning.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said. 

The quake struck at 10:15 pm Wednesday (0615 GMT Thursday). Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

The US government’s National Tsunami Warning Center immediately issued a tsunami alert for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula.

It initially warned of hazardous waves. About two hours later it gave an update that the forecast maximum height of any tsunami would be less than one foot (30 centimeters) above tide levels.

Tsunami warning sirens were broadcast across Kodiak, an island with a population of about 6,000 people, along Alaska’s coastline.

The warning center said any potential tsunami would hit Kodiak about 11:55 pm.

That time passed without any tsunami, according to a broadcaster on local radio station KMXT.

Videos posted on social media by journalists and residents in Kodiak showed people driving away from the coast as warning sirens could be heard.

A tsunami watch was initially issued for Hawaii, meaning residents were required to stay away from beaches, but was lifted about two hours later.

Five aftershocks were recorded within 90 minutes of the earthquake, the largest with a magnitude of 6.2, according to the USGS.

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Alaska was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America.

It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake also caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.

As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smouldering forests from burning even more.

Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometre (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of the village of Byas-Kyuel to keep an approaching wildfire at bay.

Wearing respirators against the acrid smoke, the men lit strips of rubber tyre they hung from sticks, then tapped them onto the dry forest floor on the other side of the trench to start a controlled burn.

The team has lost track of how many blazes they have tackled since late May — mostly successfully, sometimes not — as Yakutia suffers through yet another ever-worsening wildfire seasons.

“We held one property for eight days but it burned in the end because the tractors never got to us,” Zakharov said, explaining that in such cases they use shovels to dig trenches instead.

But even more than equipment, the 35-year-old brigade leader has another urgent plea: “We need more people.”

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Yakutia’s zswampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia’s annual fire season.

Vast areas of Russia have been suffering from heatwaves and droughts driven by climate change in recent years, with numerous temperature records set.

It is the third straight year that Yakutia — Russia’s coldest region and bordering the Arctic Ocean — has seen wildfires so vicious that they have nearly overwhelmed the forest protection service. 

– Limited manpower –

The group of about 250 full-time staffers and 150 summer contract workers, who track the fires by air and drop in by parachute or on off-road trucks, is responsible for a region roughly five times the size of France.

Their goal, said Yakutia’s chief pilot observer Svyatoslav Kolesov, is to put out the fires entirely. But they also have to contend with blazes that overwhelm their manpower.

The number of firefighters in the region is far from adequate, Kolesov told AFP, recalling that when he started in 1988 the group had around 1,600 people before facing cuts over the years.

Kolesov, who monitors fires from daily flights and issues instructions to teams on the ground, said that because of limited resources the group will often keep an eye on a new blaze until it becomes sizeable. Only then will it send in a team.

“And if the fires spread quickly and soon cover a large area, then we try to save inhabited areas and strategic objects,” he said.

Environmentalists have long argued that Russia underfunds its forest fire fighting capabilities.

The country’s environment ministry is itself open about the policy, in 2015 issuing a decree that allows regions to ignore blazes if the cost of fighting fires outweighs the expected damages. 

“We’ve said for years that Russia needs to increase its budget to fight wildfires by at least three times,” Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace’s wildfire unit in the country, told AFP.

– ‘Everything would burn’ –

In early July, Russia mobilised its defence and emergencies ministries to help Yakutia battle the wildfires, while dozens of volunteers also took up the fight.

But the lack of funds for the Aerial Forest Protection Service — the only group wholly dedicated to fighting wildfires, according to Kolesov — are evident on the ground.

Brigade leader Zakharov said he asked officials repeatedly for a quad bike that never arrived so his men didn’t have to patrol their trench on foot.

“I lent most of my equipment to a team at a nearby fire,” he explained.

Later he received the all-terrain vehicle, but not before officials during a recent planning meeting disparaged the progress his team of five full-time staffers and eight summer contractors had made.

“What right do they have to criticise us?” Zakharov said, adding he had stormed out before the meeting had ended.

“Our guys have been working in the forest for a month straight. Anyone would start getting tired.” 

The brigade leader and his men were planning to fight on nonetheless. After Byas-Kyuel, they planned to move straight on to the next fire without taking a break. 

“If we weren’t around,” Zakharov said, “everything would burn.”

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami warning.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said. The US government issued a tsunami warning for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula.

“Hazardous tsunami waves for this earthquake are possible within the next three hours along some coasts,” the US Tsunami Warning System said in a statement.

Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

Tsunami warning sirens could be heard on Kodiak, an island with a population of about 6,000 people, along Alaska’s coastline. 

The quake struck at 10:15 pm Wednesday (0615 GMT Thursday).

A broadcaster on local radio station KMXT said a tsunami, if it was generated, would hit Kodiak at 11:55 pm.

Videos posted on social media by journalists and residents in Kodiak showed people driving away from the coast as warning sirens could be heard.

A tsunami watch was also issued for Hawaii, meaning residents are required to stay away from beaches.

Five aftershocks were recorded within 90 minutes of the earthquake, the largest with a magnitude of 6.2, according to the USGS. 

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Alaska was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America.

It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake also caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.

A shallow 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami warning.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said, with a tsunami warning in effect for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula.

The US government issued a tsunami warning for Alaska’s southeast.

“Hazardous tsunami waves for this earthquake are possible within the next three hours along some coasts,” the US Tsunami Warning System said in a statement.

Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Alaska was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America. It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

More than 60 years since France started its nuclear tests in Algeria, their legacy continues to poison relations between the North African nation and its former colonial ruler.  

The issue has come to the fore again after President Emmanuel Macron said in French Polynesia on Tuesday that Paris owed “a debt” to the South Pacific territory over atomic tests there between 1966 and 1996. 

The damage the mega-blasts did to people and nature in the former colonies remains a source of deep resentment, seen as proof of discriminatory colonial attitudes and disregard for local lives.

“Diseases related to radioactivity are passed on as an inheritance, generation after generation,” said Abderahmane Toumi, head of the Algerian victims’ support group El Gheith El Kadem. 

“As long as the region is polluted, the danger will persist,” he said, citing severe health impacts from birth defects and cancers to miscarriages and sterility.

France carried out its first successful atomic bomb test deep in the Algerian Sahara in 1960, making it the world’s fourth nuclear power after the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain.  

Today, as Algeria and France struggle to deal with their painful shared history, the identification and decontamination of radioactive sites remains one of the main disputes.

In his landmark report on French colonial rule and the 1954-62 Algerian War, historian Benjamin Stora recommended continued joint work that looks into “the locations of nuclear tests in Algeria and their consequences”.

France in the 1960s had a policy of burying all radioactive waste from the Algerian bomb tests in the desert sands, and for decades declined to reveal their locations.

– ‘Radioactive fallout’ –

Algeria’s former veterans affairs minister Tayeb Zitouni recently accused France of refusing to release topographical maps that would identify “burial sites of polluting, radioactive or chemical waste not discovered to date”.

“The French side has not technically conducted any initiative to clean up the sites, and France has not undertaken any humanitarian act to compensate the victims,” said Zitouni. 

According to the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Paris, Algeria and France now “deal with the whole subject at the highest level of state”. 

“France has provided the Algerian authorities with the maps it has,” said the ministry.

Between 1960 and 1966, France conducted 17 atmospheric or underground nuclear tests near the town of Reggane, 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) from the capital Algiers, and in mountain tunnels at a site then called In Ekker. 

Eleven of them were conducted after the 1962 Evian Accords, which granted Algeria independence but included an article allowing France to use the sites until 1967. 

A radioactive cloud from a 1962 test sickened at least 30,000 Algerians, the country’s official APS news agency estimated in 2012.

French documents declassified in 2013 revealed significant radioactive fallout from West Africa to southern Europe. 

Algeria last month set up a national agency for the rehabilitation of former French nuclear test sites. 

In April, Algeria’s army chief of staff, General Said Chengriha, asked his then French counterpart, General Francois Lecointre, for his support, including access to all the maps. 

– ‘We respect our dead’ –

Receiving the maps is “a right that the Algerian state strongly demands, without forgetting the question of compensation for the Algerian victims of the tests,” stressed a senior army officer, General Bouzid Boufrioua, writing in the defence ministry magazine El Djeich.

“France must assume its historical responsibilities,” he argued.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, however, ruled out any demands for compensation, telling Le Point weekly that “we respect our dead so much that financial compensation would be a belittlement. We are not a begging people.”

France passed a law in 2010 which provided for a compensation procedure for “people suffering from illnesses resulting from exposure to radiation from nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara and in Polynesia between 1960 and 1998”.

But out of 50 Algerians who have since launched claims, only one, a soldier from Algiers who was stationed at one of the sites, “has been able to obtain compensation”, says the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). 

No resident of the remote desert region has been compensated, it said. 

In a study released a year ago, “Radioactivity Under the Sand”, ICAN France urged Paris to hand Algeria a complete list of the burial sites and to facilitate their clean-up.

The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons obliges states to provide adequate assistance to individuals affected by the use or testing of nuclear weapons.

It was signed by 122 UN member states — but by none of the nuclear powers. France argued the treaty was “incompatible with a realistic and progressive approach to nuclear disarmament”.

ICAN France in its study argued that “people have been waiting for more than 50 years. There is a need to go faster. 

“We are still facing an important health and environmental problem that must be addressed as soon as possible.”

Scores of pickers move along a raised platform of rubbish, scooping up pieces of plastic with iron hooks, alongside cattle and hundreds of egrets also scouring the trash.

The smell is rancid atop what the pickers dub “Yemen” — a volcano-like mound of multicoloured refuse in the sprawling Mbeubeuss landfill, on the edge of Senegal’s capital Dakar. 

Dump trucks tip trash onto the platform that towers over a suburb of the West African metropolis, as pickers lunge towards the fresh piles of garbage.

“Everyone is enriching themselves,” says Laye Niaye, a security guard, watching men, women and children wade through the trash.  

Dakar, a growing city of over three million people, produces hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste a year. 

Almost all of it ends up in Mbeubeuss, a landfill about 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the centre which has a notorious reputation as an environmental hazard.

Pickers set fire to the rubbish to find valuable metals, for example, spewing noxious fumes onto neighbouring residential areas. 

The landfill is also so big — estimated at 115 hectares (285 acres) — that it is difficult to control, with several informal villages within the site.   

After decades of chaotic management, the Senegalese government plans to transform the open-air dump into a waste-sorting centre over the next few years.

But the move threatens a thriving local economy. 

About 2,000 pickers ignore the stench and the fumes and make money by scavenging for plastic, iron and aluminium among the rubbish. 

They sell the recyclables to wholesalers, who then resell to companies. 

Mouhamadou Wade, a sinewy 50-year-old who has worked on the site for 30 years, explains what makes a good picker: “You have to be a hard man: Tough, courageous and determined”.

But like many of his cohort, he is concerned. “The waste centre is not good for pickers,” Wade says.

– ‘Always the losers’ –

Waste-picking is dangerous, dirty and hard. But those who excel at it can be well rewarded. 

A 2018 study conducted by Wiego, an NGO focussed on women’s informal employment, showed that a quarter of pickers in Mbeubeuss earn above 100,000 CFA francs (152 euros, $180) a month.

A minority earn more than twice that sum, but many earn far less.

Senegal is a poor nation of 16 million where about 40 percent of people live on under $1.90 (1.70 euros) a day, according to the World Bank.

Souleiman Diallo, 40, is loading bales of plastic onto a wholesaler’s truck. 

“It’s very difficult,” he says, adding that he’s on the dump because “there’s no work” elsewhere.

Pape Ndiaye, the spokesman of the pickers association, says it has become harder to earn a good living because of fierce competition and stagnant wholesale prices.  

“It’s the middleman that hurts us,” says the 66-year-old, reclining in a makeshift hut surrounded by plastic bottles.

Though the pickers perform a vital environmental service, he says, they “are always the losers.”

– Plastic fumes –

For Abdou Dieng, who runs Mbeubeuss for Senegal’s waste-management agency UCG, fires and smoke are the main concern.

He becomes agitated when he sees smoke rising from a platform that was recently sealed with gravel and sand — the result of a fire set by a picker to flush out valuables.

“Once I get my hands on him I’ll cause him a lot of problems,” vows Dieng, surveying the steaming mound. 

The young official was brought in last year to reduce the dump’s environmental impact.

“The people were revolting” because of the plastic fumes wafting over city neighbourhoods, he says.

Dieng has reduced fires by limiting dumping to managed platforms, and by punishing wrongdoers. 

Maguette Diop, from the NGO Wiego, says Dieng has improved the landfill. Fewer people are falling ill from the fumes, he says.

In any event, Mbeubeuss is expected to close by 2025 to make way for the waste-sorting centre.

Diop is pushing for more engagement with the pickers as the landfill is wound down, noting: “There will be job losses.”

In June, President Macky Sall pledged to help the waste pickers. 

But Wade, the dump veteran, says everyone is worried. “We don’t know what we will do tomorrow,” he says. 

As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smouldering forests from burning even more.

Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometre (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of the village of Byas-Kyuel to keep an approaching wildfire at bay.

Wearing respirators against the acrid smoke, the men lit strips of rubber tyre they hung from sticks, then tapped them onto the dry forest floor on the other side of the trench to start a controlled burn.

The team has lost track of how many blazes they have tackled since late May — mostly successfully, sometimes not — as Yakutia suffers through yet another ever-worsening wildfire seasons.

“We held one property for eight days but it burned in the end because the tractors never got to us,” Zakharov said, explaining that in such cases they use shovels to dig trenches instead.

But even more than equipment, the 35-year-old brigade leader has another urgent plea: “We need more people.”

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Yakutia’s swampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia’s annual fire season.

Vast areas of Russia have been suffering from heatwaves and droughts driven by climate change in recent years, with numerous temperature records set.

It is the third straight year that Yakutia — Russia’s coldest region and bordering the Arctic Ocean — has seen wildfires so vicious that they have nearly overwhelmed the forest protection service. 

– Limited manpower –

The group of about 250 full-time staffers and 150 summer contract workers, who track the fires by air and drop in by parachute or on off-road trucks, is responsible for a region roughly five times the size of France.

Their goal, said Yakutia’s chief pilot observer Svyatoslav Kolesov, is to put out the fires entirely. But they also have to contend with blazes that overwhelm their manpower.

The number of firefighters in the region is far from adequate, Kolesov told AFP, recalling that when he started in 1988 the group had around 1,600 people before facing cuts over the years.

Kolesov, who monitors fires from daily flights and issues instructions to teams on the ground, said that because of limited resources the group will often keep an eye on a new blaze until it becomes sizeable. Only then will it send in a team.

“And if the fires spread quickly and soon cover a large area, then we try to save inhabited areas and strategic objects,” he said.

Environmentalists have long argued that Russia underfunds its forest fire fighting capabilities.

The country’s environment ministry is itself open about the policy, in 2015 issuing a decree that allows regions to ignore blazes if the cost of fighting fires outweighs the expected damages. 

“We’ve said for years that Russia needs to increase its budget to fight wildfires by at least three times,” Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace’s wildfire unit in the country, told AFP.

– ‘Everything would burn’ –

In early July, Russia mobilised its defence and emergencies ministries to help Yakutia battle the wildfires, while dozens of volunteers also took up the fight.

But the lack of funds for the Aerial Forest Protection Service — the only group wholly dedicated to fighting wildfires, according to Kolesov — are evident on the ground.

Brigade leader Zakharov said he asked officials repeatedly for a quad bike that never arrived so his men didn’t have to patrol their trench on foot.

“I lent most of my equipment to a team at a nearby fire,” he explained.

Later he received the all-terrain vehicle, but not before officials during a recent planning meeting disparaged the progress his team of five full-time staffers and eight summer contractors had made.

“What right do they have to criticise us?” Zakharov said, adding he had stormed out before the meeting had ended.

“Our guys have been working in the forest for a month straight. Anyone would start getting tired.” 

The brigade leader and his men were planning to fight on nonetheless. After Byas-Kyuel, they planned to move straight on to the next fire without taking a break. 

“If we weren’t around,” Zakharov said, “everything would burn.”

More than 60 years since France started its nuclear tests in Algeria, their legacy continues to poison relations between the North African nation and its former colonial ruler.  

The issue has come to the fore again after President Emmanuel Macron said in French Polynesia on Tuesday that Paris owed “a debt” to the South Pacific territory over atomic tests there between 1966 and 1996. 

The damage the mega-blasts did to people and nature in the former colonies remains a source of deep resentment, seen as proof of discriminatory colonial attitudes and disregard for local lives.

“Diseases related to radioactivity are passed on as an inheritance, generation after generation,” said Abderahmane Toumi, head of the Algerian victims’ support group El Gheith El Kadem. 

“As long as the region is polluted, the danger will persist,” he said, citing severe health impacts from birth defects and cancers to miscarriages and sterility.

France carried out its first successful atomic bomb test deep in the Algerian Sahara in 1960, making it the world’s fourth nuclear power after the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain.  

Today, as Algeria and France struggle to deal with their painful shared history, the identification and decontamination of radioactive sites remains one of the main disputes.

In his landmark report on French colonial rule and the 1954-62 Algerian War, historian Benjamin Stora recommended continued joint work that looks into “the locations of nuclear tests in Algeria and their consequences”.

France in the 1960s had a policy of burying all radioactive waste from the Algerian bomb tests in the desert sands, and for decades declined to reveal their locations.

– ‘Radioactive fallout’ –

Algeria’s former veterans affairs minister Tayeb Zitouni recently accused France of refusing to release topographical maps that would identify “burial sites of polluting, radioactive or chemical waste not discovered to date”.

“The French side has not technically conducted any initiative to clean up the sites, and France has not undertaken any humanitarian act to compensate the victims,” said Zitouni. 

According to the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Paris, Algeria and France now “deal with the whole subject at the highest level of state”. 

“France has provided the Algerian authorities with the maps it has,” said the ministry.

Between 1960 and 1966, France conducted 17 atmospheric or underground nuclear tests near the town of Reggane, 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) from the capital Algiers, and in mountain tunnels at a site then called In Ekker. 

Eleven of them were conducted after the 1962 Evian Accords, which granted Algeria independence but included an article allowing France to use the sites until 1967. 

A radioactive cloud from a 1962 test sickened at least 30,000 Algerians, the country’s official APS news agency estimated in 2012.

French documents declassified in 2013 revealed significant radioactive fallout from West Africa to southern Europe. 

Algeria last month set up a national agency for the rehabilitation of former French nuclear test sites. 

In April, Algeria’s army chief of staff, General Said Chengriha, asked his then French counterpart, General Francois Lecointre, for his support, including access to all the maps. 

– ‘We respect our dead’ –

Receiving the maps is “a right that the Algerian state strongly demands, without forgetting the question of compensation for the Algerian victims of the tests,” stressed a senior army officer, General Bouzid Boufrioua, writing in the defence ministry magazine El Djeich.

“France must assume its historical responsibilities,” he argued.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, however, ruled out any demands for compensation, telling Le Point weekly that “we respect our dead so much that financial compensation would be a belittlement. We are not a begging people.”

France passed a law in 2010 which provided for a compensation procedure for “people suffering from illnesses resulting from exposure to radiation from nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara and in Polynesia between 1960 and 1998”.

But out of 50 Algerians who have since launched claims, only one, a soldier from Algiers who was stationed at one of the sites, “has been able to obtain compensation”, says the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). 

No resident of the remote desert region has been compensated, it said. 

In a study released a year ago, “Radioactivity Under the Sand”, ICAN France urged Paris to hand Algeria a complete list of the burial sites and to facilitate their clean-up.

The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons obliges states to provide adequate assistance to individuals affected by the use or testing of nuclear weapons.

It was signed by 122 UN member states — but by none of the nuclear powers. France argued the treaty was “incompatible with a realistic and progressive approach to nuclear disarmament”.

ICAN France in its study argued that “people have been waiting for more than 50 years. There is a need to go faster. 

“We are still facing an important health and environmental problem that must be addressed as soon as possible.”

From lettuces farmed on New York’s skyline to thick corridors of trees occupying once desolate Colombian roadsides, green initiatives are running wild in cities around the world.

At a time when coronavirus lockdowns have amplified the need for nature in urban areas, AFP has gathered images and footage of projects optimising precious city space.

Replanting initiatives have sprouted up since the start of the 21st century as urban development goals have shifted and alarm about global warming has grown.

And they’ve had an impact.

In nine cities in the world, thanks to planting schemes on walls and roofs, the temperature during the warmest month in so-called street canyons — flanked by high-rise buildings on either side — can be reduced by 3.6 to 11.3 degrees Celsius at the hottest time of day, according to a report by the French Agency for Ecological Transition.

Green spaces have also been shown to improve health and wellbeing, including by reducing stress, anxiety and depression, improving attention and focus, better physical health and managing post-traumatic stress disorder, said Stephanie Merchant of Bath University’s department for health.

“However, it’s about where they are created in relation to the needs of the local communities,” she added.

So, are all urban replanting projects worthwhile?

For a scheme to be seen as “virtuous”, it must fulfil as many functions as possible, economist and urban planner Jean Haentjens, who co-authored the book “Eco-urbanisme” (“Eco-Urbanism”), told AFP.

In addition to lowering the temperature, he said it should also preserve biodiversity, improve wellbeing, raise awareness, be appealing to residents and suitable for its social context.

– Singapore’s otherworldly garden –

The imposing “forest” of giant manmade trees constructed from reinforced concrete and steel, luxuriantly covered in real flora and fauna, is a Singapore landmark.

Towering 25 to 50 metres (82 to 164 feet) over the city-state’s new business district, the 18 solar-powered supertrees light up the night sky, their canopies looking like flying saucers.

Vast glass greenhouses also showcase exotic plants from five continents, as well as plant life from tropical highlands up to 2,000 metres above sea level, complete with an artificial mountain and indoor waterfall.

The Gardens by the Bay project, awarded the World Building of the Year in 2012, says the idea was to create “a city in a garden”.

But pointing to the construction and maintenance costs, Philippe Simay, a philosopher on cities and architecture, called it a “disneyisation” of nature. “Why make trees from concrete when you can have real ones?” he asked.

It’s a great public relations effort, says Claire Doussard, a teacher in planning and development and a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, highlighting its “technical know-how” and awareness-raising among the public about the threat of climate change.

– Farming on a New York rooftop –

With buildings all around, the Statue of Liberty in the distance and heavy traffic below, the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm grows more than 45 tonnes of organic produce a year.

It was launched about a decade ago by friends living in New York who wanted “a small sustainable farm that operated as a business”, co-founder Gwen Schantz said.

In a built-up city, Simay noted, it had been found that such initiatives were “fighting effectively against heat islands” where heat-conducting concrete and asphalt make cities warmer than their surroundings.

Now covering three rooftops, totalling more than 22,000 square metres (more than 236,000 square feet), the farm cultivates a wide variety of vegetables.

But it has to limit the soil depth to about 30 centimetres (12 inches) and “irrigate the soil a little more frequently, because it dries out very quickly”, Schantz said.

Doussard said that the logistics of rooftop farming, where water and soil must be hauled up and produce brought down, means: “These farms must be profitable because there are a lot of constraints.” 

– From living in Milan’s vertical forest… –

By adorning two high-rise apartment buildings from top to bottom in more than 20,000 trees and plants, Italian architect Stefano Boeri said he’d wanted to make trees “an essential component of architecture” and create something that could “contribute to reducing pollution”.

The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) in the heart of Milan sees cherry, apple and olive trees spilling over balconies alongside beeches and larches, selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference for sunlight or humidity.

The award-winning project opened in 2014 and, said Simay, is “an indisputable technical feat with an ecosystem function, a large diversity of trees, plants, insects”.

But, he added, concrete and steel were required to support it all, while setting it up was costly and energy-consuming.

And the price that the luxury apartments go for is also often a talking point.  

– … to vertical farming in Copenhagen –

Bathed in purple light, produce like lettuce, herbs and kale sprout in layered racks from floor to ceiling inside a massive warehouse in a Copenhagen industrial zone.

Little robots deliver trays of seeds from aisle to aisle at the vertical farm, opened by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest in December.

Produce will be harvested 15 times a year despite never seeing soil or daylight — 20,000 specialised LED lightbulbs keep it illuminated around the clock.

The need for constant lighting is one of the downsides for Simay, who also highlighted its overall costs.

But Nordic Harvest founder and chief executive Anders Riemann stresses the benefits of produce being grown close to consumers, freeing up agricultural land that can be turned back into forest.

For Haentjens, it represents “an interesting route”, depending on the context. “But we can’t make it the model of tomorrow,” he said.

– Riyadh’s mass tree planting –  

Today any greenery in Riyadh is almost lost in between the multi-lane highways and gigantic interchanges, but within nine years the city plans to have added 7.5 million trees.

The reforestation is part of an $11-billion green initiative that also includes creating 3,000 parks in the Saudi capital.

It will require one million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of water daily, which will be recycled water from an irrigation network, the Riyadh Green website says.

But it will contribute towards reducing normal temperatures by one or two degrees Celsius and improve the quality of life with less air pollution and dust, according to project head Abdelaziz al Moqbel.

“Reintroducing trees in the desert is very virtuous, you gain in terms of cooling,” architect and urban planner Cedissia About said.

But, she added, the big question would be whether phytosanitary products, which scare off birds and insects, are used when the aim is to boost biodiversity.

– Medellin’s ‘green corridors’ – 

Colombia’s second-biggest city has won plaudits and awards for its “green corridors”, an interconnected network that has transformed urban thoroughfares once lacking in nature and strewn with rubbish where drug addicts gathered.

Now the 30 tree- and flower-filled corridors connect up with Medellin’s existing green spaces such as parks and gardens.

“There’s been a real reflection citywide on the species chosen, the habitability, the constraints,” Doussard said.

The overall effect has reduced the temperature by two degrees Celsius and helped purify the air, according to a city authority video.

Bees and birds have returned, residents are engaged and gardening jobs have been created, it added.

“It’s one of the better examples (of urban replanting), driven by a policy which increases biodiversity, with a social dimension,” Simay said.

– Chengdu’s apartment blocks turned jungle – 

It promised inhabitants of a Chinese megacity life in a vertical forest, with luxuriant plants and greenery on their balcony.

“The air is good when you wake up in the morning, and the green trees are good for us elderly people,” said Lin Dengying, who lives in one of the eight towers making up Qiyi City Forest Garden in Chengdu which opened in 2018.

Some parts look like a treehouse perched within a tropical forest, while other places look overrun by their own vegetation, like a jungle is invading and bursting off the terraces.

In September, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported that only about 10 families had moved into the more than 800 apartments due to what some residents said was an infestation of mosquitoes.

It shows, said Doussard, the need not only to consider a project’s environmental impact, but also its “liveability”.