Infrastructure protectionSenegal climate change-induced flooding reaching crisis proportions: UN
Margareta Wahlstrom, the head of the UN disaster risk, last week warned that climate change-induced flooding had reached crisis proportions in Senegal, with some towns and villages now finding themselves underwater for large parts of the year. Wahlstrom, who was in Senegal for a 3-day visit as part of the UN preparations for a new global disaster risk-reduction strategy, said that mayors of coastal and riverside towns and villages told her their streets were flooded ten months out of twelve.
Enduring the flooding in western Africa // Source: adaderana.lk
Margareta Wahlstrom, the head of the UN disaster risk, last week warned that climate change-induced flooding had reached crisis proportions in Senegal, with some towns and villages now finding themselves underwater for large parts of the year.
Yahoo! News reports that Wahlstrom, who was in Senegal for a 3-day visit as part of the UN preparations for a new global disaster risk-reduction strategy, told AFP she had talked with mayors of coastal and riverside towns and villages who said their streets were flooded ten months out of twelve.
“There is a huge pressure for action. I think particularly the flooding issue is so critical… because it’s very acute,” said Wahlstrom, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“Listening to the mayors today, some of them were saying ‘we are underwater ten months out of 12’. I think that says everything. That’s acute and it’s why the country is giving full attention and full priority to flooding.
“The quicker the cities are growing, the more acute the problem will become.”
Wahlstrom said she had witnessed the impact of climate change on a trip to St. Louis, the capital of Senegal’s Saint-Louis Region. It is located in the northwest of Senegal, near the mouth of the Senegal River, about 320 km north of Senegal’s capital city Dakar. St. Louis is often referred to as the “Venice of Africa.”
In 2008, the UN-Habitat agency designated St Louis as “the city most threatened by rising sea levels in the whole of Africa,” citing climate change and a failed 2003 canal project as the cause.
Yahoo! News notes that the city is has been increasingly facing serious flooding during the rainy season when the river overflows. Scientists say climate change is making the problem worse by increasingly heavy rain and a rise in the sea level.
The UN General Assembly adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) in 2005, following the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed almost 230,000 people in 2004. HFA, which was endorsed by 168 nations, commits the organization to develop strategies for reducing the risk of, and the damage caused by, natural disasters.
HFA calls for the allocation of 1 percent of national development budgets to disaster risk reduction, in addition to 10 percent of humanitarian aid and 10 percent of reconstruction and recovery funds.
The HFA is scheduled for renewal in 2015, at which time a more important role will be given to private companies, something the UN believes is as important as donation from nations for prevention and mitigation measures in “hazard-exposed” regions like west Africa.
Senegal has made some progress toward reducing the impact of disasters, but Home Minister Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo said a lack of national coordination on civil protection is a “major weakness” in the running of the country.
“We are thinking of setting up an office to provide more resources but we think we already have the means to put in place a national plan that can coordinate all government actions in the context of disaster risk management.”
