Management of a Tropical River: Impacts on the Resilience of the Senegal River Estuary

Abstract

Tropical rivers are under constant pressure and are subjected to flood control policy and planning. The Senegal River has been, for more than thirty years, under multiple types of management and planning. That has become recently more important because of significant hydro-climatic variability that has occurred during recent years. Higher levels of winter rainfall have resulted in frequent occurrence of flooding which guided Senegalese authorities to create an artificial opening on the sand of spit so-called Langue de Barbarie. The major consequence of this has been the closing of the old mouth of the Senegal estuary 25 km downstream of the town of Saint-Louis. However, two new mouths have opened themselves recently within 150 m of the current mouth. The increasing vulnerability in the Senegal River estuary has been one of the main impacts of the watershed management of the Senegalese northern River accordingly. The developments of Senegal River management policy have been based on the concept of remedying the consequences of climatic events; then, the utilization of water resources presented risks that are far greater than expected.KeywordsWatershed managementResilienceRiskEstuarySenegal River