The 9th World Water Forum (WWF), taking place in Dakar, Senegal, brings people from across the world together to discuss “water security for peace and development.” The forum focuses on four priorities: water security and sanitation, water for rural development, cooperation, and means and tools.
Maintaining and restoring forests, grasslands and wetlands are key interventions to reach the WWF priorities as they provide a large range of benefits such as regulating and recharging both ground and surface water as well as providing water quality benefits through filtering silt, sediments and pollutants. With climate change, communities in the Sahel are particularly vulnerable due to the changes in rainfall patterns and their restricted access to infrastructure for water access. Restoring and improved management of ecosystems can offer significant benefits.
The latest IPCC report lifted doubts, if any remained, about the dire consequences climate change will pose in the Sahel: reduced reliability of rainfalls, temperature increase above global average and increased risks and intensity of floods, droughts, invasive species and pests are counted among the likely scenarios. Pastoralists and communities relying on rain-fed agriculture are the most impacted, exposed to escalating and compounding risks, with very little technical and financial capacity to sustainably manage for these risks. Instead, short-term coping practices are adopted for immediate relief from these impacts, often with significant adverse environmental impacts, this includes encroachment on critical ecosystems in search for fuelwood or conversion of more fertile lands, the use of chemicals or the overextraction of water.