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  • Title: Forced migration, natural resource use and environmental change: the case of the Senegal River Valley.
    Author: Black R, Sessay M.
    Journal: Int J Popul Geogr; 1998 Mar; 4(1):31-47. PubMed ID: 12293591.
    Abstract:
    This study examined the environmental consequences of forced migration in the Matam and Podor regions of the Middle Senegal River Valley, Senegal. The analysis was based on a framework offered by Black (1994) and Leach (1992). This framework posits that: 1) refugees in a zone increase population/resource ratios and that resource accounting must consider the extent of renewable resources, the use of stocks of fixed capital, the extent to which resource use generates technological or socioeconomic changes which influence the ratios, and geographic area; 2) refugees tend to be "exceptional resource degraders"; and 3) refugees may ignore or be excluded from sustainable resource use regulations. The study area in the Senegal River Valley had Mauritanian refugees in 1989. The number of refugees was an estimated 67,800 in 1995, of which 47,000 were in the study area. The study region had experienced severe drought during the 1970s and early 1980s, had experienced acute pressure on the land and forest resources, and was experiencing conflicts between farmers and pastoralists. The Mauritanian migrants were not exceptional, but were a third wave of movements in the Middle Valley. The negative environmental impacts of forced migration were minimized by the scattered sites of settlement and the long history of contact between the two sides of the border. Refugees did not use resources in a more destructive or wasteful way than local populations and were not exceptional resource degraders. Environmental degradation is attributed to prior drought, actions by governmental and nongovernmental agencies, and actions by strangers from the south.
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