Jean-François Noël

Water–poverty relationships in the coastal town of Mbour (Senegal): Relevance of GIS for decision support

Abstract Coastal area is always a zone with complex problems. Due to the attraction they exert, are facing many social problems. Therefore, a coastal city is usually a city with problems. Its extension, caused by the influx of people from different backgrounds, creates an increased demand for services. One of the problems frequently encountered, especially in Senegal, is access to water. The problem of access to water is poorly treated, without being correlated with the urban evolution, i.e. with increasing population and demand growth. The water resource is facing numerous complications such as the lack of integrated management, integration issues at the governance level, where the local factor is often forgotten. The town of Mbour, object of our study, does not come out of that lot, being an attractive coastal city, from an African country. This indicates the need for an integrated management oriented from local to a global basis and not vice versa. The study presented in this paper indicates that a large proportion of the population has not access to a verified drinking water system and uses water from wells or standpipes. Half of the surveyed population (50%) has no access to a water supply system. The water poverty map of the town overlaps with that of the general poverty excepting few neighborhoods. This means that even areas that are not affected by poverty have a very low or poor access to water, which so far remains the perverse effect of the reform of the Senegalese water sector in 1995.

The Bouchereau woodland and the transmission of socio-ecological economic value ☆

Abstract This paper reports on an empirical study that investigated the value, or significance, attributed to a rural woodland, and the social mechanisms by which this value may be transmitted (or lost) through time. A survey-interview enquiry was conducted which combined a data questionnaire with in-depth interview procedures, centred around: (i) the transaction price for the privately owned plots of trees and (ii) the disposition of wood-lot owners towards eventual sale of their plots, and the circumstances under which they would envisage such transactions. The forest value needs to be understood in patrimonial perspective, as a collective investment. The woodland as a whole, and the plots individually, are carriers of meaning — elements of family and communal heritage — proudly inherited from the previous generations and destined to be passed on to future generations. The case study illustrates a more general proposition, that evaluation of alternative uses of environmental resources, and their benefits and costs, is inseparable from the question of the distinct communities of interest to be, or not to be, sustained.