Sociolingo’s Mali

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Timbuktu’s climate change fight

By Celeste Hicks BBC News, Timbuktu

As the Bali climate negotiations draw to a conclusion, farmers on the frontline of climate change, around Timbuktu in northern Mali have been turning the desert green.

Unpredictable rainfall and deforestation have seen the Sahara Desert encroach on the historic town over the last few years, but now irrigation projects are helping farmers to fight back.

The men always used to take decisions for the family, now the women are also making a contribution Zeinabi Maiga

Timbuktu is fortunate to be just a few kilometres from the massive inland delta of the River Niger, and draws water from vast underground aquifers - bodies of permeable rock which transmit water.

A women’s co-operative in the village of Kabara, south of Timbuktu, is using these water sources to plant eucalyptus trees.

They nurture them for two years after which the trees can then survive almost without rain.

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Driving through the south of Mali you would be excused for thinking a lot of Mali is covered by forest. A recent article however, shows just how much the forests in Mali have been reduced in the last 15 years.

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

March 28, 2007
Posted to the web March 29, 2007

Almahady Cissé
Bamako

The figures tell the story. In 1990, forests in Mali extended over more than 14 million hectares. But by 2000 they covered 13,117,643 hectares, according to a national report on the state of the environment made public in 2005. This marked a reduction of about seven percent in the West African country’s forests, in just a decade.

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MALI: The trickle-down effect of water scarcity

22 Mar 2007 21:13:48 GMT

Background

W. African food crisis

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TOROLI, 22 March 2007 (IRIN) - Like in many villages throughout the arid Sahel region of West Africa, a source of water is often the most animated place in town. At a given time 20 people might gather at a well, stretching their backs and arms in the harsh sun to hoist a few buckets of water from dozens of metres below the parched earth.In the village of Toroli in Mali, 10-year-old Amadou waits for his father while sitting on the family’s camel instead of going to Koranic school. As his father, Brahima Barry, a Fulani shepherd, explains, Amadou has to help the family gather water. The well is located several kilometres from their home.

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