Environment and development in coastal regions and in small islands

CSI info 7

HIGHER EDUCATION: UNESCO CHAIRS IN SUSTAINABLE COASTAL DEVELOPMENT
El Hadji Salif Diop, United Nations Environment Programme

SUMMARY

Africa’s coastal regions are held back by many things, such as deterioration of the coastal environment, decline in the quality of life of local people, excessive use of natural resources, water pollution, falling productivity and diminishing biodiversity. This paper will cite various examples to show the part that higher level instruction – through education, training, research and communication – can play in promoting the sustainable development of the continent’s coastal regions and small islands.

Education and training seem essential if we want individuals and communities to grasp the complexity of the environment and coastal regions in particular. The complexity arises from their physical, biological, social, economic and cultural characteristics. Applying sustainable development policies in coastal regions means coming up with multi- or cross-disciplinary approaches to developing human resources, taking into account the different cultural factors and the requirements of fair and rational ecological development.

The Cheikh Anta Diop University set up a Chair in integrated management and sustainable development in coastal regions and small islands on the initiative of UNESCO’s Coastal Regions and Small Islands platform (CSI). The Chair deals with aspects of sustainable development backed up by pilot projects in the field. The cross-disciplinary approach has been stressed with courses, seminars and instruction covering not just natural sciences but also social sciences, the humanities, law, economics and anthropology. The practical work (remote sensing, use of geographical information systems (GIS), building computer models) and the field research, closely related to the pilot projects, have highlighted the aspect of sustainable development of coastal regions.

The idea of the Chair is to encourage dialogue between not only experts in marine and coastal environment, but also managers, decision-makers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Using this integrated and novel approach, the Chair wants to strengthen, at student level, people’s understanding of the complex relationship between socio-economic development and sustainable development of coastal regions. Coastal communities, along with local officials and other parties involved, are associated with field programmes through pilot-projects. Using such an approach, which involves implementing inter-sectoral plans, sustainable and fair solutions can be worked out with the local people, who of course are the main beneficiaries of the research results.

The lessons drawn from field work have led to a constant concern among a range of researchers, students and administrators: the need to work out a list of ‘wise practices’ in the interests of sustainable development and management of the coastal environment and its natural and cultural resources.

A few examples of topics, suggested by teacher-researchers and the Chair’s students as pilot projects in the coastal regions of Senegal, will show what I mean. These are:

• the Saloum Estuary and mangrove where researchers and students from the Chair are working on integrated management of the biosphere reserve and on repairing damaged coastal ecosystems in co-operation with the local population.
• the suburban coastal area of Yeumbeul, where the focus is on nitrate pollution, water quality and improving the hygiene and health of the local people. The work is being done in association with hydrologists and epidemiologists, the NGO Environment and Development–Grassroots Economy (ENDA-ECOPOP) , the local population and the Community Centre for Appropriate Technology in Health (CCTAS). We are now trying to present, as part of this research involving students from the Chair, some initial practical solutions which can illustrate ‘wise practices’ in the sustainable management of the Yeumbeul environment, at the same time as trying to improve things using local rather than outside resources (tests are under way for a project to remove nitrate pollution using local materials).
• the village and island of Yoff, with a focus on research into biodiversity and into nature conservation using local knowledge and cultural practices. Encouraging results have been obtained in the area of biodiversity, cultural diversity and sustainable development of coastal regions. Yoff is an opportunity to highlight wise practices.

Wise practices (sometimes called ‘best practices’) implies that lessons learned from projects in coastal regions and small islands can lead to sustainable development practices, so the question of communication is extremely important. It would seem hard to work anywhere without appropriate communication with local people to convey the most suitable message to encourage sustainable management practices. The main thing is to raise awareness and help local people understand the problems better.

Examples of ‘wise practices in sustainable management of coastal regions’ include the rehabilitation of damaged ecosystems in some estuaries and deltas in Senegal where the local population uses the mangroves as a source of firewood and building material, as a good place to grow rice, and for many other purposes. Add to this the effects of desertification which have afflicted Senegal for more than 20 years and seriously affected its environment and it is easy to see that the mangrove ecosystem along the country’s entire south coast has been badly damaged by a combination of natural forces (salination of water and soil, acidification of the sub-soil) and the action of humans.

So how do we restore these special and vulnerable ecosystems by working closely with the local population? Various experiments, sponsored by the Chair and by research programmes, have been launched both in the laboratory and in the field. The aim is to see how far the results in parts of the mangrove (including reforestation tests) can be passed on to the local people concerned.

It has become clear that sustainable management of ecosystems must involve local people and communities, if only to ensure long-term follow-up of efforts to restore such ecosystems, at least in the case of the mangroves. Also, the need to rehabilitate these environments must be understood f rom the beginning by the local population, which means working out suitable communication plans.

So from the start of our research programmes, we have had lengthy discussions with local people and community groups who have grasped the need for such rehabilitation. Local people already know what the mangrove ecosystems are for. But now they can understand better all the advantages they can obtain from them and therefore the need for their rehabilitation. These are ongoing field experiments involving students and university researchers. Depending on the results, they are used to illustrate the notion of ‘wise practices’.

But we must also remember the need to incorporate a certain amount of local knowledge into the body of scientific data, which is why anthropological surveys should be carried out at the same time. An example is the cultural heritage aspect of preserving the heaps of shells, or tumuli, of the Saloum Islands, which have great historical and environmental importance and fits in with our concerns about sustainable management of coastal environments. There are many other examples, such as traditional uses of mangrove areas involving the local Diola, Nalou and Baga peoples all along the coast of West Africa, as far as southern Sierra Leone and beyond.

These examples show that an integrated research-training-communication formula is an important way to understand and manage better the natural resources of coastal regions, taking into account all the social parties involved – scientists and researchers, decision-makers and managers, local people, local communities and NGOs.

start				Introduction    Activities   Publications				word search
				Wise Practices   Regions   Themes