location: Senegal

location: Senegal

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To renew or not to renew? African nations reconsider EU fishing deals
- The European Union currently has fisheries access deals with 11 African countries, several of which are up for renegotiation this year.
- Under the deals, called Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPAs), European fishing companies gain access to resource-filled foreign waters, while the African countries get cash.
- Senegal was the first country to sign such a deal, in 1979, but President Bassirou Diomaye Faye was elected in March after proposing to suspend it altogether in response to concerns that it’s unfair to local fishers. It’s not yet clear whether he will follow through, but his rhetoric reflects shifting arrangements in African fisheries, where the EU no longer dominates as it once did.
- Experts see this as a possible win for local control of precious marine resources, but they also caution that many of the alternative arrangements African governments are turning to instead of SFPAs are more socially and environmentally problematic, and less transparent.

Fishing by dodgy fleets hurts economies, jobs in developing countries: Report
- A recent report gauged the economic damage done by fishing fleets with shady track records in five vulnerable countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Peru, the Philippines, and Senegal.
- It found that these fleets’ activities could be costing the five countries 0.26% of their combined GDP, leaving some 30,000 people jobless and pushing around 142,000 deeper into poverty.
- “The report emphasizes that the uncontrolled growth in global fishing has led to overfishing, stressing fish stocks and impacting communities and the oceans’ well-being,” one of the authors told Mongabay.

Report shines partial light on worst labor offenders in opaque fishing industry
- In recent years, examples of forced labor on industrial fishing vessels have commanded headlines in prominent media outlets. Yet ship owners are rarely held to account, often because it’s hard to identify who they are.
- A new report from the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC), a consortium of international NGOs, examined cases of reported forced labor on 475 fishing vessels since 2010.
- The authors could only identify the legal owners (often a company) of about half the vessels, and could only identify the beneficial owners (the people who ultimately keep the profits) of about one-fifth of the vessels.
- Of the accused vessels for which it could identify legal owners, half are owned by Asian companies, and nearly one-quarter are owned by European companies.

As companies buy ‘plastic credits,’ are they reducing waste or greenwashing?
- Companies and other entities are buying “plastic credits” allowing them to offset every ton of plastic they make with an equivalent amount of plastic waste collected and taken out of the environment elsewhere — often in poor nations lacking waste management programs. Several organizations now offer credits and will certify plastic collection and reuse.
- No worldwide standards or regulations govern the use of these plastic credits or assure their reliability, nor what gets done with the collected waste. Verra, which runs the world’s largest carbon credit verification system, but has come under fire for that system’s poor verification record, recently launched its own plastic credits verification system.
- Skeptics warn the plastic credit systems being created by various organizations, rather than recycling significant plastic waste, merely amount to greenwashing and allow companies to continue to make and use polluting materials, while running PR campaigns to make themselves look environmentally responsible.
- The credit system at best only deals with waste already manufactured and thrown out; it doesn’t address the need to ban the most toxic plastics, reduce production of others, or replace disposable single-use plastic with eco-friendly or reusable materials. Verra is urging that plastic credits become part of the U.N. global plastics treaty currently under negotiation.

In Senegal, rice intensification helps farmers grow more with less
- To fight food insecurity and climate change, Senegal is increasingly employing a relatively new strategy for growing rice, known as the “system of rice intensification” (SRI).
- Developed in Madagascar in the 1960s, this method of growing rice intentionally stresses the plants, which allows the farmer to use less water, improves soil fertility, decreases methane emissions, and, most importantly, increases yields.
- Critics of the method say it’s more a list of principles than set rules, with some farmers also turning to herbicides to deal with weeding.
- Still, the method has been scientifically shown to provide numerous benefits for growing rice in drier climates.

Forests & finance: Protection and restoration in Cameroon and Senegal, fire threat in Angola
- A new project aims to reform Cameroon’s domestic timber market and reduce unregulated felling of trees.
- Scientists fear pockets of species-rich afromontane forest in Angola’s Namba Mountains will be lost if uncontrolled fires continue.
- A Senegalese association is protecting and restoring southern Senegal’s tree cover by establishing community forests.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Senegal herders demand return of grazing grounds controlled by U.S. firm
- African Agriculture (AAGR), a U.S. company planning to grow alfalfa for livestock feed in Senegal, is set to launch an initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange.
- But the land concession it holds used to be part of the Ndiaël nature reserve, a wetland that’s home to many threatened species and a key grazing ground for local herders.
- The land was declassified by presidential decrees without the consultation or agreement of the local population, who are considering suing AAGR in the U.S.
- Hydrologists warn the use of pesticides during the cultivation of alfalfa will contaminate the nearby Lake Guiers, which provides 65% of the capital Dakar’s drinking water.

Video of rare West African lion cubs sparks hope for the population
- New video of a West African lioness and her three cubs is exciting news for conservation as it sparks hope for the recovery of a population perilously close to extinction in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park.
- The lioness in the video, named Florence or Flo by researchers, was the first lion fitted with a tracking collar in Senegal by Panthera and is considered NKNP’s matriarch. She had given birth to three healthy cubs while denning in the dense forest.
- West African lions are critically endangered, with only 120 to 374 remaining in the wild. Florence is the mother of an estimated nine cubs, including the first males in NKNP.
- Panthera and Senegal’s Department of National Parks have been monitoring the small West African lion population in Senegal since 2011, and after hiring anti-poaching brigades, the lion population has more than doubled from 10-15 individuals to 30. Their goal is to reach 100 lions by 2030.

Win for science as BP pressured into cleaning up offshore gas plans
- BP is launching an offshore gas platform with a pipeline through the world’s largest cold deep-water coral reef off the coast of Senegal and Mauritania.
- The project’s environmental impact assessment has been described as “nonsense” by a group of marine biologists
- A group of scientists has been fighting for four years to change this. Their proposals are currently being studied.

Forests & Finance: A road project, food baskets, and unique wildlife
- An environmental impact study warns that a planned highway between the Senegal cities of Dakar and Saint Louis would lead to nearly 400,000 trees being cut down in two forest reserves along the route.
- In Zambia, a study shows that households are heavily reliant on forest foods, which leaves them vulnerable to food insecurity as forest loss increases in the country.
- Researchers hoping to create a new protected area for southwest Ethiopia’s Gura Ferda forest, have highlighted a rich and unique biodiversity following an expedition to the area.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Fished out at sea and smoked out on land, Senegal fishers take on a fishmeal factory
- A fishers’ collective in Cayar, east of Dakar, says a fishmeal factory there is jeopardizing livelihoods and endangering public health.
- Analysis in September of water from a lake revealed pollution by biodegradable organic matter causing deoxygenation that is harming aquatic life.
- Some residents of Mbawane, in Cayar municipality, say the fishmeal company’s operations are a good thing, making use of surplus fish which would otherwise rot on the beach.

Book Review: ‘Slaves for Peanuts’ gets to the troubling roots of a beloved snack
- Journalist Jori Lewis’s “Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History,” tells the stories of “people that history forgets and the present avoids.”
- The book sheds light on how the commercial trade in peanuts in Senegal was driven by European expansion and drew on unfree labor.
- The mutilation of Senegal’s lands resulting from peanut commerce foreshadows the damage that commercial monocultures continue to inflict today.
- “Slaves for Peanuts” is published by The New Press, a nonprofit, and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and bookshop.org.

A tale of successes and new challenges in Senegal: Q&A with ICCA coordinator Salatou Sambou
- The Kawawana conserved area (ICCA) was created by a group of Indigenous Jola fishers in Casamance. After almost ten years, they have succeeded in restoring an area where biodiversity had all but disappeared.
- Now that biodiversity and resources have recovered, life in the village has become more secure. The model’s success has also encouraged young people to return and to renew their commitment to its conservation.
- But the ICCA has also come up against many challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, state indifference to poachers and climate change, since Mongabay’s last reporting in 2018.
- Mongabay interviewed Salatou Sambou, ICCA coordinator involved in the Kawawana conserved area, about the recent successes and challenges the ICCA is facing.

Small farmers take a stand for one of Dakar’s last urban woodlands
- A forested strip that’s one of the last green areas in Dakar could be razed for new developments under an urban expansion plan.
- The strip of filao trees is also home to small-scale farmers who grow organic fruit and vegetables for sale in local markets, and whose presence has protected the trees against sand miners and unlicensed development.
- In June 2021, Senegal’s president authorized a new urban plan that “downgraded” 150 hectares (370 acres) of the filao strip, removing its protected status; 43% of this area will be allocated for new homes, and 21% for new roads.
- The farmers have protested the plan, saying they contribute both to the protection of the filao ecosystem and to the local economy.

Worked to death: How a Chinese tuna juggernaut crushed its Indonesian workers
- One of China’s biggest tuna companies, Dalian Ocean Fishing, made headlines last year when four Indonesian deckhands fell sick and died from unknown illnesses after allegedly being subject to horrible conditions on one of its boats.
- Now, an investigation by Mongabay, Tansa and the Environmental Reporting Collective shows for the first time that the abuses suffered by workers on that vessel — most commonly, being given substandard food, possibly dangerous drinking water and being made to work excessively — were not limited to one boat, but widespread and systematic across the company’s fleet.
- Moreover, migrant fishers were subject to beatings and threats to withhold pay if they did not follow orders. Many have not received their full salaries or been paid at all.
- China has the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet, and Indonesia is widely believed to be the industry’s biggest supplier of labor. In 2019 and 2020, at least 30 fishers from Indonesia died on Chinese long-haul fishing boats, often from unknown illnesses.

In mangrove restoration, custom solutions beat one-size-fits-all approach
- The loss of mangrove forests worldwide is slowing, except in Asia, where there’s been a massive increase in deforestation over the past 30 years.
- Previous mangrove restoration projects have proved unsustainable over the long term due to a focus on planting “in the wrong place, the wrong species, the wrong density.”
- A new approach, called community-based ecological mangrove restoration (CBEMR), accounts for an area’s altered hydrology and encourages natural restoration, resulting in better survival rates, faster growth, and a more diverse, resilient forest.
- Proponents say restoration projects must be supported by robust legal frameworks that protect mangroves across national jurisdictions if they are to be successful over the long term.

Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances
- Agroforestry is an ancient agricultural technique being rediscovered all over the world as limitations of the globe’s highly industrialized agriculture become obvious.
- On the old and exhausted soils of Africa, trees’ power to nourish life is potentially integral to a reboot of the continent’s agriculture.
- Agroforestry is the intentional combination of woody perennials like trees and shrubs with crops and also livestock to create a resilient “food ecosystem” that benefits farmers, biodiversity and the climate.
- In an analysis for Mongabay, agroforestry expert Patrick Worms suggests that while news reports show forests burning in many places, one can take heart from the fact that trees are busily taking root upon the world’s vast swaths of farmland.

10-year plan hopes to give western chimpanzees a fighting chance
- The IUCN recently released its latest 10-year action plan for the critically endangered western chimpanzee.
- Poaching, habitat loss and disease were identified as the key threats to the species.
- These threats were found to be exacerbated by the high rate of population growth in West Africa, resulting in rapid agricultural expansion and a demand for economic development projects.
- The IUCN plan sets out nine strategies to be implemented between 2020 and 2030; they include filling research gaps, ensuring chimpanzees are considered in land use planning, improving legal protection, and raising awareness of the plight of western chimpanzees.

Global fisheries deprive local communities of key nutrients, study finds
- New study shows that fish in tropical regions have higher concentrations of calcium, iron and zinc – critical for human health – than fish in colder waters.
- Fish already being caught off the shores of many nutritionally-vulnerable countries could easily meet needs for vital micronutrients for people living within 100 kilometres of the coast
- Fish – including small species traditionally landed, processed, and eaten locally – is instead being processed into fishmeal for export.

Deadly parrot virus found in native birds from Asia and Africa
- Researchers have found beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) in wild parrots from eight new countries.
- BFDV spreads through captive parrots worldwide, but its prevalence in wild species is unknown. Infected escapees could threaten native parrots, especially small populations.
- Parrots in West Africa carried viruses that probably spread from other countries, showing that the human pet trade market has made the BFDV epidemic worse.
- New regulations of live parrot trades are essential to protect susceptible species, researchers say.

Women’s work in Senegalese conservation includes exorcising demons
- Women, and older women in particular, play important roles in the Kawawana ICCA, an indigenous conservation group in Senegal’s Casamance region.
- They set rules for oyster harvesting and mediate conflicts that arise with outsiders who infringe upon Kawawana rules.
- They also deploy ancient animist traditions in defense of the local environment and act as spiritual doctors for those who break the rules.
- Since 2010, Kawawana has made huge strides in repopulating the local river with fish, reducing damaging levels of salinity in its waters, and halting deforestation, largely by returning to traditional fishing and forestry practices.

Watching the wildlife return: Q&A with a rural Senegalese river monitor
- In the mid-2000s, villagers from the Jola ethnic group in the Casamance region of Senegal noticed a decline in local fish stocks and forest cover, and an increase in water salinity, all of which threatened their food supply and way of life.
- They formed a fishing association in 2006 that grew into a community-wide conservation group known as the Kawawana ICCA in 2010, and have since turned their dire situation around by reviving traditional fishing and forestry methods.
- As part of that effort, the Kawawana ICCA established a team to check up on the state of the river and forest, counting birds, fish, crocodiles, otters and dolphins, whose presence indicates healthy fish stocks, and monitoring rainfall and river salinity.
- Bassirou Sambou, 53, a fisherman by trade, heads that effort. Mongabay interviewed him as part of a larger reporting project about the Kawawana ICCA.

Senegal: After reviving fish and forests, Jola villages tackle new threats
- Thirteen years ago, the eight Jola villages in Mangagoulack, in Senegal’s Casamance region, were indebted and hungry, with overfishing, rising saltwater levels and rampant deforestation of mangroves contributing to a downward spiral.
- In 2006, the community formed an association and began work toward drawing up a code of conduct based on traditional fishing and land-management techniques. The group, now known as the Kawawana ICCA, operates through consensual decision-making and has pledged to remain independent from the government and NGOs.
- By 2012, the river was full of fish, oysters and other wildlife once again. Local people rejoiced at the renewed supply of food and income.
- Today, climate change, a dam, state indifference to poachers, and a youth exodus are putting their hard-won standard of living at risk. Kawawana has served as a model for other communities in the region, and now the villagers hope that working together will help them face down their problems and fortify their gains.

Investors learning to pay heed to community land rights
- Most conflicts besetting private investments in Africa – 63 percent – relate to pushing people off their lands.
- These conflicts affect agriculture, mining, and even green energy investments.
- In Southern Africa, 73 percent of conflicts turned violent and 73 percent halted work on the developments.

West African countries come together to stop the illegal rosewood trade
- Several species of rosewood, belonging to the genera Dalbergia and Pterocarpus and collectively known as hongmu, are highly sought after by Chinese furniture manufacturers, who use them to make products that are coveted status symbols.
- The majority of rosewood imports into China have traditionally come from Southeast Asian countries, but West Africa has become one of the largest exporting regions feeding China’s growing demand for rosewood in the past few years.
- In 2014, nearly half of China’s rosewood imports came from Nigeria, Ghana, and other African countries, which supplied just 10 percent of Chinese rosewood imports a decade ago.

Threatened West African rosewood species gets CITES protection
- Demand is booming in China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam for furniture and other goods made from hongmu, or rosewood, a term used to refer to a wide range of richly hued tropical hardwoods.
- Last week, the Secretariat of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) officially announced the listing of the West African rosewood species Pterocarpus erinaceus on Appendix III of the Convention.
- Pterocarpus erinaceus, known as “kosso” in China, is an increasingly threatened species native to the vulnerable savannah ecosystems of West Africa.

Countries call for new CITES protections for rosewood species
- Booming Asian demand for luxury furniture and other goods made with deeply hued tropical hardwoods is driven primarily by China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam.
- Forests and local communities from Asia to Africa and Latin America are feeling the effects of Asia’s hongmu demand.
- None of the three most sought-after hongmu species are currently listed by CITES.

Dolphins caught in fishing nets: to eat or not to eat?
- Small-scale fishermen and women in West African fishing communities commonly treat accidentally caught dolphins as an opportunistic source of food, according to a recent study
- Cultural differences often govern consumption patterns of dolphin meat, the study found.
- Protecting dolphins in the region would require protection of fish stocks in the West African waters and prevention of overfishing by industrial fishing vessels from developed countries, researchers said.

Flag states can be held liable for violations of fishing vessels abroad, international tribunal rules

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