Unpacking Decades of Multi-Scale Events and Environment-Based Development in the Senegalese Sahel: Lessons and Perspectives for the Future

Abstract

A major challenge faced by human societies is to promote development that truly makes difference for people without jeopardizing their environment. This is particularly urgent in developing countries where, despite decades of development programs, local populations often live under poverty thresholds. With this study, we participate in the ongoing debate about the necessary global revision of development theory and practice in the rural Sahel. We retrace the development trajectories in the Ferlo, the northern silvopastoral zone of Senegal. We highlight how development has evolved from the 1940s to the present, from centralized development action programs focused on hydraulic infrastructure to current polycentric development with growing environmental concerns. We highlight multi-scale events that have influenced the successive development paradigms in the area. Focusing on the past thirty years, we analyzed twenty-five environment and natural resource management-oriented projects, describing the evolution of their objectives and actions over time and identifying recurring flaws: redundancy, lack of synergy, and questionable relevance to local needs We put forth that a more resilient thinking-based development paradigm is necessary to guide the growing number of environment-oriented development actions, including the African Great Green Wall, for which massive investments are ongoing throughout Ferlo and across the Sahel.

Accelerate the Mobilization of African and International Scientific Expertise to Boost Interdisciplinary Research for the Success of the Sahelian Great Green Wall by 2030

“…Others focus on case studies in Nigeria, Senegal and Mauritania. The topics of these works, which are based on different disciplines (economy, geography, political science), focus on the need to think more holistically about the implementation of the SGGW, considering the complexity of the socio-ecological systems in which it is embedded [16] and the historical context [17]. Some specific studies highlighted the importance of access to markets in SLM [18], the complementarity of shrubs with trees [19], non-monospecific reforestation [20], or the ability to integrate SGGW projects with other more local projects to facilitate their success.…”