Farmers once planted their crops in
the wet soils as the waters receded.
Pastoralists grazed their animals
where forests and wildlife flourished.
But the dam and its related projects
are estimated to have resulted in the
loss of 90% of the fisheries and up to
47 750 hectares of fields that were
previously covered by water from the
rising river during the wet season, a
system of natural irrigation known as
flood-recession agriculture.
The Senegal River Basin
Development Organization – the
intergovernmental agency that is
responsible for the dam project and is
known by its French acronym, OMVS
– conceded in 2014 that eliminating
the river’s annual flood “has made
flood-recession crops and fishing on
the floodplain more precarious, which
makes the rural production systems of
the middle valley less diversified, and
therefore more vulnerable”.
This is clearly at odds with the
organisation’s mandate to “ensure
food security for all people within the
river basin and region”. But Amadou
Lamine Ndiaye, the OMVS’s director
of environment and sustainable
development, told me his agency
regarded wetlands such as river
floodplains primarily as a source of
revenue for tourists, rather than as a
lifeline for rural communities.
Worse still is the crisis affecting
the region around Lake Chad, which
until half a century ago was Africa’s
fourth largest lake, straddling the
border between Nigeria, Niger, Chad,
and Cameroon. The lake has lost more
than 90% of its surface area since
then. Initially, this was largely due to
persistent droughts in the Sahel that
often dried up the rivers supplying it
with water. Since 2002, rainfall has
improved markedly, but Lake Chad has
not recovered.
That is because of dams on the
rivers flowing into the lake from the
wetter south, mainly in Cameroon and
Nigeria. The Maga Dam in Cameroon
has diverted 70% of the flow of the
Logone river to rice farms. This has
both dried up part of the floodplain
pastures that once supported 130 000
people, and dramatically reduced
inflow to Lake Chad.
In northern Nigeria, up to one million
people have lost livelihoods because of
dams on the River Yobe that once fed the
Hadejia-Nguru wetland and flowed on into
Lake Chad. In both cases, says Edward
Barbier, an environmental economist
at Colorado State University, the dams
have had an overall negative effect on
local economies, as losses to fishermen,
pastoralists, and others exceeded gains
from irrigation agriculture.
Social breakdown
The poverty is driving social
breakdown and conflict all around
the lake. Mana Boukary, an official of
the Lake Chad Basin Commission, an
intergovernmental body, told Duetsche
Welle two years ago: “Youths in the
Lake Chad Basin are joining Boko
Haram because of lack of jobs and
‘Food security’
contributor
fisheries and up to 47 750 hectares
previously covered by water.
L a s t y e a r, I t r a v e l l e d w i t h
Wetlands International, a Dutch-
based environmental NGO, along the
valley of the River Senegal, which
forms the border between Senegal
and Mauritania. Farmers, herders,
and fishermen told of their battles
against the ecological breakdown
that has followed the building
of the Manantali Dam, which is
located upstream in Mali and was
completed in 1987. The dam holds
back a large part of the river’s
seasonal flood flow to generate
hydroelectricity for cities and provide
irrigation water for some farmers.
But there have been more losers
than winners.
Seydou Ibrahima Ly, a teacher
in the bankside village of Donaye
Taredji in Podor district, said that
when he was young, “the river had
a flood that watered wetlands where
fish grew”. But “now there is no flood
because of the dam… Compared
to the past, there aren’t many fish.
Our grandparents did a lot of fishing,
but we don’t”. With their livelihoods
gone, more than 100 people had left
his village, he said. “In some villages,
they are almost all gone.”
“The migrants know the boats
[travelling to Europe] are dangerous,
but they have a determination to go
and find a better life,” said Oumar
Cire Ly, deputy chief of neighbouring
Donaye village, which has also seen
an exodus of its young people.
The major wetlands and water basins of the Sahel region in Africa.
Water Sewage & Effluent November/December 2017
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