Prevalence of the Vulnerability to Coastal Erosion: Case Study of Saint-Louis City

Abstract

The coastal areas of Senegal are increasingly affected by climate change and Anthropogenic activities. Accelerated Sea level rise is actually resulting in serious processes of coastal erosion with huge environmental and socioeconomic damages. The city of Saint-Louis is particularly sensitive to coastline retreat as the phenomenon has become recurring with significant impacts along the “Langue de Babarie” sand spit. That particular area is undergoing huge losses of human settlements even if solutions have implemented and affected populations temporally relocated inland. People and economic activities are therefore threatened by coastal erosion. The ongoing urbanization has deeply disturbed the natural sedimentary transit of the coastal area as such practices like sand beach extraction induces serious sedimentary imbalance. Human and environmental security in this coastal part of the country becomes an emergency, given the high vulnerability to marine submersion. Facing coastal erosion should be therefore based on sustainability rather than technical solutions.  This paper is aimed at analyzing population’ behavior to the various coastal protection measures put in place by local authorities.