Forced migration, natural resource use and environmental change: the case of the Senegal River Valley.

Abstract

This paper addresses concerns about the potential negative environmental consequences of mass population displacement, through an examination of changes in natural resource use in an area of northern Senegal affected by an influx of Mauritanian refugees in 1989. Drawing on a survey of refugee and local households, the paper examines the livelihood strategies and patterns of natural resource use of the two populations, and considers the notion that refugees are forced, through poverty or for other reasons, to use natural resources in a more destructive manner. The paper also considers the regulation of natural resource use, and the socio-economic and political context within which this resource use takes place. The paper concludes that there is little justification for viewing refugees in the Senegal River Valley as ‘exceptional resource degraders’, but rather that the livelihood strategies developed by refugees are similar in many respects to those of local populations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.