Climate change destroys a nomadic life in Senegal

Inside Bay Area (San Francisco), a story by independent journalist Bob Butler about Senegal: As a boy, Pathe Kane's family farmed a large plot of land on which sat deep lakes filled with wildlife. In his youth, Ousman Sow wandered the land raising cattle with his Fulani nomad tribe. Over time, sand from the Sahara Desert drove Kane's family from its farm, and drought forced Sow's tribe to forego its nomadic lifestyle.

The Senegalese government believes the advance of the desert and the drought are results of climate change that are having a dramatic impact on several countries in Africa — forcing whole communities to relocate, changing entire lifestyles and making it harder for people to make a living.

"There were very, very deep lakes where people were doing fishing. All these depressed areas (valleys) were lakes originally," said Kane, 56, fondly recalling what his home was like during better times. "This area was so beautiful that the Shah of Iran visited here and wanted to build a tourist residence."

… The transformation was hastened by 30 years of drought. "When it rained, there wasn't enough rain and the landscape disappeared, so the land found itself naked and was vulnerable to be taken away by the strong winds and the sand," said Samba Thiem, regional director of the Senegal Ministry of the Environment, through an interpreter.

… "With the drought since the 1970s, we have been forced to settle to find new ways of making our living while also maintaining our traditional way of life of cattle breeding," Ousman Sow, 48, the chairman of the Nguigalakh Peulh Village Association, said through an interpreter. The tribe settled in a farming community near the old Senegalese capital of St. Louis and is now realizing unforeseen benefits.

"One of the disadvantages of being a nomad was we could not get proper education for our children, who were roaming around the bush with us. And we used to live off milk," Sow said. "But now with the drought, there is less and less milk, and that is why we had to make an adjustment to our traditional way of life by combining cattle breeding with agriculture."

Along with raising their cattle, they also are manufacturing traditional clothing and jewelry, which they sell in the village store. They have created a fund that provides loans to needy villagers who can't afford health care or medicine.

…The recent climate change conference in Bali that resulted in a road map to a solution to curbing greenhouse gases has sparked cautious optimism among officials in Senegal. But that optimism may be premature, said Professor Daniel M. Kamman, the director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.

…Kamman said experts who are the most knowledgeable about climate change are the most worried because change is happening a lot faster than they thought — and few of the impacts being experienced in Senegal actually can be tied directly to climate change at this time.

"But," he went on to say, "when we look back on this decade, I bet we're going to tie a huge number of things that we're right now not totally sure of, but suspect are climate change, very clearly to exactly that."