Sea Walls Needed in Senegal
- iSSUes Vol. 1
- Dec 19, 2019
- 3 min read
Poverty and Drought Complicate Response to Climate Changes
By Dylan Snyder
Fallou Gueye is an international student from Senegal. This is his first semester here at Salem State and he majors in business. In this interview, Fallou shared his experiences with climate change in Senegal, how it is dealt with there, and his thoughts on how the issue should be handled.
He’s aware that climate change has been an issue in his country. He said, “we feel it more than the U.S. since Senegal is a tropical area.” One way climate change has affected Senegal is that “the rise of the sea started destroying people’s houses, and even the government started building some walls to stop it. But they can’t afford it because we are a poor country.”
Fallou mentioned another issue that climate change causes. He says, “it’s really hot over there” and “sometimes when we need the rain, it’s not coming in.” He continued by saying “we used to have three months or four months of rain, but right now we just have one. We need the rain to grow our food for agriculture.”
Fallou said Senegal doesn’t “have the means” to resolve the issue since they are a poor country. He believes “rich countries like China, US, Russia” and “France” are the ones that “create the climate change. We all have to fight against it cause it’s our own benefit.”
He started to realize climate change was an issue in Senegal when he was around 15 years old. Prior to that he said, “When I first heard about it, I would say I don’t care because I thought it was not happening in my country. It’s just happening in other countries. But that’s not the truth. It’s happening all over the world.”
Fallou mentioned how Senegal is addressing the issue. Senegal, along with other countries, is part of an agreement called the Cop 21. He recalls on what he and his peers did back in Senegal to invoke change. “When I was a senior, we organized a march against the use of plastic bags.” After their march, the Senegalese congress voted to stop using plastic bags.
“Our march[AGD1] convinced them. We gathered around 1,000 people and they march over the roads protesting against it.”
When asked about ways he thinks Senegal should deal with climate change, Fallou said “this problem is just not about climate change. We don’t even own ourselves since colonization is still happening in Africa.” He adds that “our government doesn’t have the means to fight against it because we don’t have anything. I think the solution to fight against climate change is other countries like US, France, China bring their help to us. So we can fight all together against it.”
He did a comparison with how climate change is dealt with in Senegal compared to America. He said, “I think in America, they take the problem more seriously than my country and they know how to fight it. They have all the scientific method” and “people are aware of it.” For Senegal, “half of the country, they don’t care about it. They don’t know what’s really happening”
On climate change activists like Greta Thunberg, he says “I encourage them cause their fight is our fight too. We have to protect this world.” Fallou believes “climate change should be our priority number one. We have to preserve this world for our own benefit and for future generations.” He states, “We have to take the world by all our forces, so we can make it better for the next generation. It’s our fault, so we got to make it better.”
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