Saint Louis, Senegal

Saint Louis, a comparatively small town in Senegal, which is designated as a world heritage site due to its history as a trading town and its richness in colonial architecture. The city of Saint Louis was founded in 1659 and owes its existence to a colonial past. In 1885, it served as the capital of Senegal and French West Africa and was one of the largest and most active cities in Africa; the capital was moved to Dakar in 1958.

The city of Saint Louis is located on low-lying islands near the mouth of the River Senegal on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The City is anarchipelago of 4600 hectares, with a population of about 200,000 inhabitants (2002) living in a very scattered surface area.

According to a report of the United Nations, Saint Louis is most threatened by rising sea levels in the whole of Africa and the climate change is the principal reason. Saint-Louis, are exposed to sea level rises prompted by climate change and accompanied by increased frequency and intensity of sea storm surges, floods, gale force winds and tropical cyclones These trends were evident during 1998 and 2000, when almost all of the districts of Saint-Louis flooded.

The following pictures are intended to tell and shed what climate change and rising sea levels mean in connection with significant population growth.

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References

UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles Senegal. 2012.

Climate change and Urban Vulnerability in Africa. D3.1 Report on planning system and government structure in 2 case cities . Seven Framework Programm.

Climate change and Urban Vulnerability in Africa.  D2.11: Review and evaluation of existing vulnerability indicators in order to obtain an appropriate set of indicators for assessing climate related vulnerability. 2011 Seven Framework Program

Commune de St Louis, 2011. Strategies de developpement urbain 2030. City of St Louis: St Louis. Davidson, O., et al., 2003. The development and climate nexus: the case of sub-Saharan Africa. Climate Policy, 3 (1), 97–113.

Desanker, P., 2009. Africa and global climate change. Volume 8 of CR Special. Inter-Research, University of Virginia.

Diagne, K., 2007. Governance and natural disasters: addressing flooding in Saint Louis, Senegal. Environment and Urbanization, 19 (2), 552–562.

Jonathan Silver , Cheryl McEwan , Laura Petrella & Hamidou Baguian (2013)

Climate change, urban vulnerability and development in Saint-Louis and Bobo-Dioulasso: learning from across two West African cities, Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 18:6, 663-677, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2013.807787

UN-Habitat, 2011a. Some considerations on water and climate change impacts – St. Louis, Senegal.