An Open Letter to EU President - Political Version

 From Reception Costs to Root Causes : 

A Sahel Restoration Compact After the June Heatwave

===================================================

Dear President von der Leyen,

[  ec-president@ec.europa.eu, }

I write from Mumbai as a long-time observer of European policy, in the aftermath of the June 2026 heatwave — the most severe extreme-heat event in Europe's recorded history, with national temperature records broken across more than a dozen member states and early scientific estimates of over 20,000 excess deaths in a single week.

Two facts from this tragedy deserve to be read together.

First, the meteorology: the heat was sustained by an omega-block pattern drawing hot, dry air northward from the Sahara. Second, the climatology: Europe is the fastest-warming continent, heating at roughly twice the global average, and events of this kind are projected to intensify.

Europe has recent experience with a structurally similar problem. For a decade, the Union attempted to manage Mediterranean migration at the border, at great human and financial cost — Germany's federal refugee-related expenditure alone has run at 22–30 billion euros annually — before accepting that durable answers lie in partnership with the countries of origin and transit. The externalization agreements with Tunisia and Egypt, whatever their imperfections, reflect that learning: southern challenges are addressed at the source, or not at all.

The same logic now applies to heat. A degrading, desertifying Sahara-Sahel belt contributes to the regional temperature and dust regime on Europe's southern flank, while simultaneously driving the displacement and out-migration the Union spends so heavily to manage. One intervention addresses both: large-scale land restoration.

The vehicle already exists. Africa's Great Green Wall aims to restore 100 million hectares across the Sahel by 2030. Approximately 19 billion dollars was pledged at the 2021 One Planet Summit, with Europe prominent among the donors — yet implementation has fallen well behind schedule. Meanwhile, China's Three-North Shelterbelt programme has demonstrated over four decades that afforestation at continental scale can measurably slow desertification and reduce dust transport.

I would respectfully urge the Commission to consider:

1. Reclassifying Sahel land restoration as European climate-adaptation infrastructure within the next Multiannual Financial Framework, with funding commensurate to that status.

2. Establishing a dedicated financing window that links a share of migration-management expenditure to Great Green Wall delivery, recognising that restored land reduces both displacement pressure and the severity of the Saharan heat regime.

3. Exploring a trilateral EU-African Union-China technical partnership to transfer proven dryland-afforestation methods to the Sahel.

4. Tasking Copernicus with an annual public assessment of Sahara-Sahel vegetation cover, land-surface temperatures and northward dust and heat transport, so that progress is measured scientifically.

The experts' old warning — that the planet is one boat, and a hole anywhere threatens everyone — was vindicated twice on Europe's southern flank: first in the Mediterranean's waters, now in its winds. I hope the Union will apply the lesson the second time faster than it did the first.

Yours sincerely,

Hemen Parekh

Mumbai, India

www.hemenparekh.ai | hemenparekh.in