International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
Water–poverty relationships in the coastal town of Mbour (Senegal): Relevance of GIS for decision support
Highlights
► We study the link between poverty and access to water. ► A town from the Senegalese coastal region was studied. ► The main investigation tools were GIS software and statistics. ► The water poverty map of the town overlaps with that of the general poverty.
Introduction
Coastal area is always a zone with complex problems. Due to the attraction they exert, are facing many social problems. Therefore, a coastal city is usually a city with problems. The costal zones are faced with a pronounced increase of population, compared with the continental zones, due to the opportunities linked with tourism development, commerce and a friendlier natural environment.
Access to water is now a political and strategic problem. Solving the issue of access to water is one of the Millennium Development Goals. It has attracted numerous conferences within the United Nations. The need for water is a key need, directly affecting the economic and social development for a certain region. Water scarcity means a financial bottleneck (Dutheil and Gaussens, 1967). In order to resolve the water issue at the local level, the World Water Council set up an index, the Water Poverty Index (WPI). It ranks 147 countries according to five variables: availability, access, use, capacity and environment (Lawrence et al., 2002).
The study of the relationship between water and poverty is a new problem in Senegal. The evaluation at the national or local level does not take into account the local differences, which is an essential factor for the efficient management of water resources. In addition, water policies are not in favor of the poor people.
The town of Mbour was taken as an example. It is a coastal city, located at 80 km southwest of the capital of Senegal, Dakar. The water service is precarious. The network of the Senegalese Waters (Sénégalaise Des Eaux – SDE) does not cover the whole town and the water quality is poor in many places, primarily in areas using water from wells, polluted because of lack of sanitation.
The objectives of this study are the following:
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to test and to release relevant indicators in the study of associations between water and poverty;
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to allow the characterization of the spatial distribution of economic poverty and water shortage and to show up critical issues and priority areas in order to establish an integrated approach;
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to develop a tool for decision support in order to establish a new integrated approach that takes into account all stages of water management in order to solve the water poverty problem. The results obtained in this study can be used by municipal officials as a decision tool in matters related to access to water.
Thus, to complete our study, a methodology with two stages was adopted: the collection and the processing of data. A random spatial sampling by stratum was used. The use of GIS has been of great utility because it allowed us to deal with spatial information and as a result, to take account of geographical space as a whole. In this way, the local differences, our main concern, were highlighted.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The methodology consisted in collecting and processing data. Two types of data were collected. The first category of data is the Kompsat satellite image (Fig. 1). The second is composed by additional data, including bibliographic data and field investigation results collected from households in all neighborhoods of Mbour, following a clear methodology. In this way, indicators related to resources, access, use, living standards, quality of water and sanitation were established. Using satellite
Results and discussion
The methodology allowed us to reach a certain number of results related to the water usage and to the correlation with the economic indicators.
Conclusions
The town of Mbour is not exempt from the problems of water and poverty. It is a city which is marked by the development of tourism which makes it very attractive, but hides some problems. In fact, the inflow of people, especially of new rich people to Saly, hides disparities: luxury homes and tourist facilities were made in poor areas, sometime using traditional modes of water supply, which made the habitat and lifestyle heterogeneous within the neighborhoods of the town.
In addition, income
Acknowledgments
This research presented here is part of the master's dissertation of Nene Makoya TOURE, under the supervision of Professor Alioune KANE, Mister Vincent TURMINE and Doctor Adrien COLY. We also thank the staff of the former laboratory C3EDAO, Professor Jean François NOEL for his advice and linguistic assistance, Mister Bara Diakhate of the National Society of Senegalese Water, the mayor of Mbour, Mbaye Moussa for his help and his availability, Cheikh Tidiane Mbengue for the linguistic assistance.
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