Water–poverty relationships in the coastal town of Mbour (Senegal): Relevance of GIS for decision support

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Abstract

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. Its extension, caused by the influx of people from different backgrounds, creates an increased demand for services. One of the problems frequently encountered, especially in Senegal, is access to water. The problem of access to water is poorly treated, without being correlated with the urban evolution, i.e. with increasing population and demand growth. The water resource is facing numerous complications such as the lack of integrated management, integration issues at the governance level, where the local factor is often forgotten.

The town of Mbour, object of our study, does not come out of that lot, being an attractive coastal city, from an African country. This indicates the need for an integrated management oriented from local to a global basis and not vice versa. The study presented in this paper indicates that a large proportion of the population has not access to a verified drinking water system and uses water from wells or standpipes. Half of the surveyed population (50%) has no access to a water supply system. The water poverty map of the town overlaps with that of the general poverty excepting few neighborhoods. This means that even areas that are not affected by poverty have a very low or poor access to water, which so far remains the perverse effect of the reform of the Senegalese water sector in 1995.

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:

  • to test and to release relevant indicators in the study of associations between water and poverty;

  • 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;

  • 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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