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Gulf Today
2 days ago
- Gulf Today
Villagers step up to halt Sierra Leone deforestation
Lucie Peytermann, Agence France-Presse Deep inside a Sierra Leone national park, a mother of seven was about to set dozens of tree trunks ablaze to make charcoal. Producing the cheap fuel in this way is illegal in the protected rainforest near the capital of a country highly vulnerable to the ravages of climate change. But Aminata Sankoh, a widow who said she had no other choice for making a living, defiantly shrugged off a stern warning from a group of villagers who monitor the forests as part of a groundbreaking grassroots initiative. "You are saying you are not affected by this deforestation, that there will be tree planting — but it will affect your own great grandchildren!" chided group leader Caesar Senesie. The extent of the deforestation in the humid tropical forest and what remains of the primary forest is clear as far as the eye can see. Some has been taken over for marijuana plantations — Sierra Leone is battling drug problems — and land grabbing is also rife to satisfy demographic pressures. Nearly a third, or 5,600 hectares (13,837 acres) of the forest within the Western Area Peninsula National Park has been lost or severely degraded since 2012. Last year alone "intensive deforestation" led to the loss of 715 hectares, or the equivalent of 1,330 football pitches, according to the World Food Programme. UNESCO says the area is home to between 80 and 90 per cent of Sierra Leone's biodiversity. But charcoal is the only way for many Sierra Leoneans to cook in the face of power cuts and soaring energy prices. Finding the illicit charcoal producing sites means venturing deep into the forest by road and on foot, but an AFP team managed to visit the area. Groups of men fended off exhaustion as they carried out backbreaking work in stifling 35-degree Celsius (95-Fahrenheit) heat, stacking up tree trunks covered with stones. Near Sankoh, the widowed mother, a mound several metres wide began to smoke. The worn-out 45-year-old said her husband died four years ago and to feed her children and pay for their schooling, she took a job breaking stones on construction sites. But two years ago, she made a decision. "I used to break stone... but I am not doing it any longer because I was struggling a lot. So I decided to come to the forest and do charcoal burning," she said. Faced with the failures in protecting the forest as well as land seizures, units comprising 40 villagers have been set up. "Even at night, when we have a fire break out, I call my guys, we move straight away," Senesie, the group leader, said. "We, the community, are the solution to protect the forest," he added. Funded by the Global Environment Facility, the initiative was launched by the Environmental Foundation for Africa (EFA) NGO, with support from the government and the United Nations Development Programme. People carry out illegal activities in the national park "because they can and believe that they will get away with it every time", Tommy Garnett, EFA founder and executive director, said. He blamed poverty, ignorance and greed for driving the deforestation. "This situation is destroying our natural heritage at an alarming rate," warned Garnett, who for 30 years has been involved in conservation projects in Sierra Leone and other west African countries. Sierra Leone is the 11th most vulnerable nation to the impact of climate change out of 191 countries ranked by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Faced with the inefficiency and the alleged corruption of some forest rangers — who, under-equipped and underpaid, sometimes turn a blind eye — campaigners are banking on involving the worst hit local communities. Garnett said that paying villagers an incentive of $60 a month to make daily patrols and collect evidence had shed more light on what was happening in the forest than a decade of official patrols. EFA has replanted 103,000 trees in the past year, with the goal of an additional 500,000 by 2028. A few kilometres (miles) away, another unit of villagers from the "Mile 13" settlement were doing their bit under Sulaiman Barrie, who angrily complained of recent forest fires in the vicinity. "This was never the Sierra Leone we knew... This was never the Mile 13 I knew when I was just a boy," an emotional and exhausted Barrie said, smoke from the fires still rising above the mountains behind him. "We are standing now in a protected area... where we have all sorts of animals," he said. The community must "step up and protect the forest", he insisted. The government has also taken steps, Tamba Dauda, director of surveys within the lands, housing and country planning ministry, said. "We are quite aware of the massive deforestation that is ongoing," he said, highlighting the establishment of a land and environmental crime unit within the police to pursue perpetrators. Despite such efforts, Joseph Rahall, founder of the NGO Green Scenery, warned that the forest's very survival was at stake. "We are beyond the emergency level," he said. "If we don't manage the Western Area Peninsula very well, in 10 to 15 years there will be no forest."
Gulf Today
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Mining machine swallowing up Senegal's fertile coast
Lucie Peytermann, Agence France-Presse Like something from the science fiction film 'Dune', the 'world's biggest mining dredger' has been swallowing acre after acre of the fertile coastal strip where most of Senegal's vegetables are grown. The jagged 23-kilometre-long (14-mile) scar the gigantic rig has left mining for zircon — which is used in ceramics and the building industry — is so big it is visible from space. Amid a deafening din, the massive machine sucks up thousands of tonnes of mineral sands an hour, moving forward on an artificial lake created with water pumped from deep underground. It is now tearing through the dunes of Lompoul one of the smallest and most beautiful deserts in the world — a tourist hotspot by the endless beaches of Senegal's Atlantic coast. Thousands of farmers and their families have been displaced over the past decade to make way for the colossal floating factory run by the French mining group Eramet. It denies any wrongdoing, insists its operations are exemplary and even plans to step up the pace of mining. But locals accuse it of destroying this rich but delicate ecosystem on the western edge of Africa's semi-arid Sahel region. The project has brought 'despair and disillusion', said Gora Gaye, the mayor of Diokoul Diawrigne district which takes in Lompoul. For years critics of the mine said villagers' protests at losing the land were ignored, with complaints about 'derisory' compensation smothered by the authorities. That has now changed, with tourist operators uniting with farmers and local leaders to demand a pause in the mining. Senegal's President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has also spoken out on extractive mining practices, saying some 'local populations do not benefit'. He doubled down last week, demanding more transparency and oversight of 'social and environmental impacts'. His government was elected last year promising a radical break with the past and to reclaim Senegal's sovereignty, particularly from the influence of former colonial power France. Eramet — which is 27 per cent owned by France — began mining in 2014 under the previous government after being awarded the concession 10 years earlier. The Senegalese state holds 10 percent of its local subsidiary, EGC, which mines the zircon and titanium-related minerals such as rutile and ilmenite. AFP was granted rare access to its operations and to the dredger and the plants where the mineral sands are separated before being exported via the company's private rail link through the port of the capital Dakar, 150 miles to the south. EGC insisted it was a 'responsible company', that respects its agreement with the Senegal government and that has compensated locals 'five times more' for the loss of their land than national guidelines, paying out 12,190 to 15,240 euros ($16,575) per hectare. But what are they left with afterwards, asked hotelier Sheikh Yves Jacquemain, who runs a desert eco-lodge of traditional tents in Lompoul, where until recently the only sounds were from seabirds and passing camels. 'The mine is moving forward: the fate of people once the mine has passed is no longer their problem,' he told AFP, the roar of the gigantic dredger 150 metres (165 yards) away almost drowning him out as it ate through the landscape. Of Lompoul's seven tourist camps, six have accepted EGC's money and have moved. Jacquemain is holding out for 'just' compensation for him and his 40 employees. Local communities also accuse the mine of destroying and 'degrading the soil and the dunes' and threatening their water and food security. Farmers say the compensation for the land is based on guidelines dating from the 1970s and does not make up for the irredeemable loss of revenue from their once-fertile fields. The hollows between the dunes were oases, a rare ecosystem 'which produced until recently 80 percent of the fresh vegetables eaten in Senegal', according to mayor Gaye. Gaye said locals were initially optimistic about the mining. But all they have gotten were 'broken promises, intimidation, the destruction of our ecosystem and the catastrophic moving of villages. Economic development has gone backwards,' he added. EGC argues that it has rehoused farmers and their families in four large new villages with modern infrastructure. 'A total of 586 houses and community infrastructures (a health centre, school and mosques...) have been built' serving 3,142 people. But gathered in the square of one of the new settlements at Foth, Omar Keita and around two dozen other heads of families were quick to show their anger. 'We want our land back and our village rebuilt so we can go back to how we were living before,' Keita, 32, told AFP. 'I appeal to the president and even to France,' he declared. He said he was not given a new home and showed AFP where his wife and three children have lived for the past six years — a single room 'loaned by my big brother', a mattress lying on the floor. But EGC's managing director Frederic Zanklan insisted that 'every family was rehoused in relation to how they were when the count was made', adding that it was 'nothing to do' with them if families had since grown. But Keita said that before he was displaced 'I had my fields and my house... We earned our living decently but they reduced that to naught and I have to start again from zero...' 'Here I have to work in other people's fields,' he said. Ibrahima Ba, 60, was equally livid. 'We have gone backwards in every way,' he told AFP. While still a farmer, today's harvests are nothing like what they were 'in my village, the soil was very fertile, we had fresh water and we had no problems'. He called on President Faye and his prime minister to help them 'because a foreign country is destroying the life of Senegalese citizens'. But EGC's Zanklan said the mining group had respected the law to the letter and argued that 'the project is benefiting the country... generating 149 million euros for Senegal in 2023'. He said they had paid '25 million euros in taxes and dividends' on their 215-million-euros turnover. 'Nearly 2,000 people work in the mine and the separation factories, 97 percent of them Senegalese,' with nearly half of them locals, Zanklan added. He said the company made the fourth-biggest contribution among mining groups to Senegal's state budget, according to data from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. EGC is the 'first mining company to return reclaimed land to Senegal' and replant it with trees, its managing director added. But locals complain that the land is not 'returned' to them but to the Senegalese state, which has traditionally allowed farmers to till state land. 'They promised to give the land back to us so we could continue to use it, but they have not kept the promise,' farmer Ba said. Close to where AFP saw the restored land, farmer Serigne Mar Sow pointed to the murky puddles in a barren field which he said showed the 'immeasurable damage' done by the mining. The water pumped up from 450 metres underground for the lake for the dredger rig remains close to the surface. EGC insists that this benefits vegetable growers. But Sow sees it differently. 'The vegetables and bananas we used to grow here are dead because of the water that floods our fields from the dredger 2.5 kilometres from here.' 'The land is no longer fertile,' he said. Surrounded by dead manioc and banana plants, he claimed that the water was polluted with 'chemicals'. 'There are 15 to 20 fields around here which have been abandoned because of that water coming up -- a drastic fall in the land we can get a harvest from.' But EGC insists that 'no chemicals are used', and that the extraction is 'purely mechanical'. Gaye, the mayor of Diokoul Diawrigne, has demanded that Senegal 'stop the mining for the moment so serious studies can be carried out on the damage being done — and so we can make a proper comparison of what all this is bringing to the state and to communities'. 'We cannot close our eyes' to what people are going through, he argued, 'whatever Senegal gets from this business'. Zanklan countered that there is 'no need for a moratorium... If there are worries, the authorities can come and inspect when they like'. In fact, EGC hopes to increase the dredger's capacity by more than a fifth to 8,500 tonnes an hour from 2026, he said. Pausing mining 'would mean putting 2,000 people out of work and end the economic benefits for the state of Senegal — it would be irresponsible when the country really needs to develop', he argued. In the meantime, the dredger continues to swallow up the dunes of Lompoul, Africa's smallest and one of its most scenic deserts.
