A disappearing coast, deserted fields and the search for solutions

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By Webdesk


Diogué Island, Senegal – When Cherif Diatta was a child, he played football on a beach on Diogué, an island at the mouth of the Casamance River in southern Senegal. At that very spot, nearly five decades later, boats float in deep water.

“And the [seawater] is getting faster and faster,” said 66-year-old Diatta, now the head of the island.

The consequences of the chewing away water on the coastline of Diogué are visible.

Residents are retreating inland and rice paddies are being replaced by mangroves. Tree carcasses lie on the beaches, their rotting roots suffocated by the advancing salty groundwater. As seawater creeps in, locals have had to leave the island’s main reservoir and relocate the primary school.

“This place where we are now, it’s not sure if it will be there tomorrow,” said Diatta, standing on the beach a few meters from the water.

Diogue
The beaches of Diogué are littered with dead trees [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]

Experts say the steady and growing retreat of Diogué’s coastline is due to climate-driven rising sea levels.

As global temperatures rise, in part due to increased production of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, glaciers and ice caps are melting faster than new snow is accumulating. This sends more water out to sea, amplifying tides and waves and leading to coastal erosion, flooding and salt water infiltration.

West Africa, where Senegal is located, is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels, despite producing only about two percent of global emissions.

Senegal’s 718 km long coastline is key to its social fabric and economy. Exposed to the Atlantic Ocean, it is home to most of the country’s population and economic activity – from fishing to agriculture – and contributes to nearly 70 percent of its gross domestic product.

But the low and sandy coasts receded by up to 10 feet between 2014 and 2018, according to a report from the Journal of Coastal Erosion. In Diogué, the retreat over the past decade has been about 50 meters (164 feet). Such degradation has both changed the ecosystem and threatened livelihoods, with the World Bank estimating the national cost at more than $500 million per year.

“Humanity accelerated the process thanks to their own development, which is a process of self-destruction – it’s quite disturbing,” said Boubou Aldiouma Sy, a geography professor at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis.

“Places like Diogué,” added Sy solemnly, “will disappear.”

[Diogue]
The island’s water reservoir was abandoned five years ago because the groundwater had become too salty [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]
[Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]
The arms of the Casamance River have reached island areas that used to be paddy fields [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]

Like people in the rest of the Casamance region, most of Diogué’s residents depend on fishing. But as seawater progresses, it kills vegetation, which in turn affects several fish species that rely on ecosystems like mangroves to breed and spawn.

Agricultural production has not been spared either. Seawater infiltration into the country has made the groundwater too saline, making it unsuitable for growing foods such as rice, which plays a key role in the diets of families across the region.

While the traditional staple is mainly for consumption at home and not for sale, a decline in local production has exacerbated food insecurity and poverty, according to PAPSENPAIS, an organization focused on agricultural development in Senegal.

The National Network of Development Actors of Senegal estimates that saltwater destroys 25 to 30 percent of rice paddies along the Casamance River each year — from the regional capital of Ziguinchor to Sédhiou, further east.

“The water is advancing, and with it poverty,” says Bruno Bouyoyo Diatta, the traditional head of Kabrousse, near the tourist destination of Cap Skirring, where rice fields have been replaced by dry land.

In the past four decades, half of the village has ceased rice production, he said. The situation is exacerbated by many young people choosing to migrate to urban areas or work in the region’s holiday resorts rather than work in the fields.

[Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]
In Kabrousse, rice fields have been replaced by dry land due to the excessive salinization of the water [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]
[Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]
Villagers in Kabrousse have built a barrier to limit seawater intrusion, but flooding is more frequent and intense [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]

Still, those left behind are trying to adapt — and fight back.

In Kabrousse, bottom-up projects that have sprung up among the local population include erecting barriers to slow down saltwater intrusion.

“Agriculture is all we have,” Bouyoyo Diatta explained.

And in Diogué, Patrick Chevalier, an economics professor at the University of Ziguinchor, has delved into techniques pioneered in Australia and Canada to address similar erosion-related problems.

In 2019, he and a team of local volunteers embarked on an experiment in which he planted wooden sticks along the beach and placed coconut palm branches at their base with the aim of holding the sand and preventing it from washing away.

And it worked. Three years later, the beach expanded to 30 meters (100 feet) in certain parts of the island.

Today Chevalier, in collaboration with local authorities, has won funds from the Senegalese government to expand the project to a wider area.

Local producers whose paddy fields have since dried up have set their sights on oyster farming instead of rice as part of the same initiative.

“It is important to think in terms of integrated management, which means adapting the territory to protect certain areas and transform others,” said Chevalier. “It’s a matter of being active rather than passive.”

However, he acknowledged that such projects are not enough to meet the major challenges of rising sea levels.

“The situation will worsen,” Chevalier warned. “It will become more difficult in the coming years, but we have to start now to organize the area so that it is ready to cope. If we do nothing today, it will be a catastrophe in 20 years.”

Patrick Chevalier started an experiment in 2019 by planting wooden sticks along Diogue beach and placing coconut leaf branches at the base that would hold the sand and prevent it from washing away [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]
Professor Patrick Chevalier started an experiment in 2019 planting wooden sticks along Diogué beach, placing branches with coconut leaves at the base that would hold the sand and prevent it from washing away [Virginia Pietromarchi/Al Jazeera]



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