Forecasting the future in Senegal's erratic climate

IRIN: In the darkness after pre-dawn prayer a village elder would squint at the sky overhead, tilting his head back until his cap fell off, looking for a cluster of bright stars that signalled the middle of the rainy season. Now many traditional methods are becoming increasingly unreliable predictors of the weather due to climate variability, and African farmers already facing fluctuations need scientific data to help them adapt, farmers and climate experts say.

"You plant your seeds and then the rain doesn't come. So next year you change your approach and you plant later, but the rain comes earlier," said Paul Thiao, a farmer and regional coordinator for the Senegalese Federation of NGOs (FONGS). "Farmers have become gamblers," he said. "The system has been disturbed and now they must take a gamble on when the rain will come. But they are gambling with their livelihoods."

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Canadian organisation supporting scientific research in developing countries, is working with FONGS and other organisations to diffuse scientific and local knowledge to help Senegalese farmers adapt.
Farmers need scientific data on soil fertility levels and adaptive seed varieties in order to assure a good harvest, but traditional cultivation methods and local perspectives on climate change are also vital to maintaining crop yields, said Ndiankou Seye, head of planning and research at the government's regional council of Thiès, 70km from the capital Dakar, told IRIN. "There are things the climatologists cannot tell you and there are scientific facts that are incomprehensible to the farmer," Seye said.

Madeleine Diouf Sarr, who leads Senegal’s climate change committee at the Ministry of Environment, agreed that efforts to adapt to changing weather patterns must combine traditional and scientific knowledge. "Even though the [weather] shifts, the plants do not lie. When plants feel a certain amount of humidity they will bloom. So the indigenous approach is as valuable as the science involved," she told IRIN…..