Crue et développement rural dans la vallée du Sénégal : entre marginalisation et résilience

• Main Author: Laurent Bruckmann
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography 2018-09-01
• Series: Belgeo
• Subjects: irrigation; flood; water resources management; resilience; agriculture; West Africa
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/23158

This article analyzes the relationship between rural development and the flood in the Senegal river valley, here considered as a water resource for natural irrigation. Transboundary water governance and agricultural projects have transformed the hydrological functioning, the agricultural landscape, and marginalized traditional activities. These policies, built on an economic reading of water uses, have shown important limits by the lack of integration of local knowledge and natural heritage. Flood is a water resource actually exploited by the valley populations, and flood recession agriculture is part of an agricultural complementarity with irrigated crops, which must be integrated into the governance processes to ensure sustainable trajectories of development.