Vulnerability to Climate Change has a distinctive nature, one which one of my dear colleagues coins “fractal”. Fractals are rough geometric shapes that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole . As a result of this inherent property of the object, it displays self-similarity, in a somewhat technical sense, on all scales.

Well, climate change vulnerability operates in the same manner as a fractal does. At the global scale, there are winners (those who will not suffer from the immediate impacts of climate change), and there are those who lose and are left to bear the brunt of adaptation to a changing climate. The more you zoom in geographically however, this pattern of winners and losers from climate change is also replicated, whether you are at the national scale, at the district scale or at the community scale.

This concept is a theoretical model that struck me as an adequate depiction of reality when, last week, I visited a small island community in Northern Senegal: the village of Doune Baba Dieye, in the Delta region of Saint-Louis (see map 1).

Located a forty-five minute boat ride away from the city of Saint-Louis, Northern Senegal’s capital, Doune Baba Dieye is a small island on the Senegal River Delta in between land and ocean, from which it is only shielded by a long narrow strip of land known as the Langue de Barbarie.

The 750 inhabitants of the island live mostly on fishing and market gardening. Until recent years, Doune Baba was the main provider of market produce for the entire Saint-Louis region, and its inhabitants enjoyed a relatively prosperous life – with revenues approximating 60,000CFA/year – living off a river replete with fish and farming on the Langue de Barbarie .

Today, Doune Baba is a village on the verge of extinction due to permanent flooding, year-round tides and river floods that combine to make the village nearly uninhabitable.

In 2003, abnormally strong rains fell over the region and the Senegal River rose to dangerous levels. Hydrologists watching the river level upstream at the Diama dam, warned that if nothing was done, the river would flow downstream with a velocity that would overcome the dikes protecting the city of Saint-Louis. Public discontent with authorities was coming to a zenith after a month of flooding, and public pressure on local authorities to take action to relieve flooding was so great that the central government was called in. The authorities of the Senegal government decided to dig an outlet canal (practically, a hole of 3-4 meters) in the middle of the Langue de Barbarie to allow the River to join the Atlantic Ocean earlier, 20km before its natural exit at the mouth of the river, located at the southern tip of the Langue de Barbarie, named the Gandiol (see map 2). The results were immediate: within 48 hours the water level of the river began to drop, and after ten days the water level was approximately one meter lower. The canal’s inauguration ceremony was televised and all applauded this positive action on the part of the Senegalese government to come to the help of its its vulnerable inhabitants of the city of Saint-Louis.

Now let us now fast forward to six years later. The breach has now reached a diameter of 1500 meters (from its original four meters) and continues to grow as the primary exit point where the Senegal River drains into the Atlantic. The former mouth of the river (at Gandiol) is almost completely sealed, as a result of wave action depositing sediments from the new “outlet canal” to the southern tip of the Langue de Barbarie (see map 3).

Doune Baba Dieye lies directly in front of this new man-made opening, and the Langue de Barbarie that used to shield it from the Atlantic is no more, parted as it is in half. As a result, the village of Doune Baba Dieye, can no longer provide for themselves, as fishing and farming have become ghost industries, due to increased water table salinization and diminished fish catch. The direct exposure to the ocean brings an increase in tidal activity in the River, griping inhabitants in fear that the floodwaters might take them away during their sleep.

Thus, the opening of the Langue de Barbarie breach provided a solution to stop flooding in Saint-Louis (winners) but in the process it sacrificed the populations of Doune Baba Dieye and surrounding villages (losers).

From December 2-4, 2009, an “Early Warning – Early Action” Initiative chose Doune Baba Dieye as a pilot site to discuss how communities could learn to live with their changing climate and could benefit from climate and weather forecasts. The 3-day workshop, held in Saint-Louis, was organized by the International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Zone office for West and Central Africa and focused on the theme of “Community Early Warning – Early Action: Bridging the gap between climate scientists and communities”.

Following a similar structure of a July 2009 “Early Warning – Early Action” Workshop (facilitated by a 2009/2010 ACCFP Fellowship awarded to Arame Tall), the IFRC appropriated its concept of bringing together scientists and communities, engage with one another through a range of games and interactive activities. The workshop convened more than 10 scientists from all levels of forecasting at the national level (national, regional and district) with 15 Red Cross community volunteers and the two community spokespeople from Doune Baba Dieye, Ahmed Diagne and Birane Sene.

The main goals of this endeavor were:
1) Convene all the Senegalese institutions involved in climate, weather and hydrological forecasting with two key users of these forecasts (members of the Red Cross and vulnerable communities), in order to jointly lay the foundations of an operational multi-hazard pilot Early Warning Early Action system;
2) To establish mechanisms to make climate forecasts trickle down to communities at risk, such as Doune Baba Dieye, either directly or via the extensive network of community volunteers of the Red Cross, present in literally every community in Senegal, who can serve as community relays of meteorological forecasts;
3) Identify current climate, weather and hydrological information needs of the Senegalese Red Cross and the communities they serve;
4) Prioritize early actions that could be taken in response to plausible predictions delivered by Red Cross;
5) Propose improved content and format of hazard-related forecasts, devising templates for operational alerts to be sent out to Red Cross.

Thus were laid the challenges: on the one hand were the residents of Doune Baba Dieye, who embodied vulnerability to a changing climate (both directly, and as casualties of bad Climate Change adaptation policy making) and could largely benefit from receive flood forecasts that; and on the other, were the providers of these forecasts (scientists able to tell the inhabitants of Doune Baba when flood is coming, or when to go at sea or not because of swells, etc.) bringing to bear the Red Cross, their community relays.

Just as in the July workshop, again the results of these three days of complete interaction were magical:

• Both scientists and communities learnt to know and listen to each other;
• They realized their usefulness to one another, and realized that they were natural partners in the endeavor to save lives in communities vulnerable to climate changes across the country;
• They agreed to never again Know without Acting (the scientists), nor Act without knowing (the communities);
• Last but not least, the Red Cross and the National Meteorological Agency pledged to draft and sign a partnership document (MoU) to provide an official framework for their interaction, one that would enable the transfer of meteorological information from the forecasters to the communities via the Red Cross volunteers, and feedback from the communities to the forecasters.

From the workshop also emanated interesting perspectives on how to improve workshop methodology, to allow its replication beyond the borders of Senegal. Towards the goal of bridging the gap between scientists (providers of an essential public good: information about when danger looms) and vulnerable communities (natural beneficiaries of such early information) in other countries across the region, and the world.

Most significant in my eyes was the fact that scientists (seldom in contact with the users of their information) came out from this workshop learning they needed to listen to vulnerable communities (at whose service they are).

Indeed, at the end of the workshop a trip was organized to Doune Baba Dieye and community meeting was held during which community folks clearly spoke about what their climate information needs were. For the first time, the National Met Agency, scientists and the Red-Cross went side-by-side directly to a local community to address their needs and think of what could be done in anticipation of disasters (ex-ante preparation).

We hope that these needs will from now onwards be taken into consideration by forecasters. Most of all, we hope that in Saint Louis the founding stone was posed for the establishment of an operational multi-hazard EWS for Senegal, one urgently needed in the country to do away with unnecessary loss of lives and damage and following completely predictable disasters.

Map 1 - Saint-Louis Region in Senegal

Map 2 - In 2003, a canal opening was dug directly in front of Doune Baba Island

Map 3 - After the Langue de Barbarie canal is opened, the old mouth of the river is closing up

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