SENEGAL-CLIMATE CHANGE MARCH Senegal's capital turns out for first-of-its-kind climate march

Record ID: 149787

  • Title: SENEGAL-CLIMATE CHANGE MARCH Senegal's capital turns out for first-of-its-kind climate march
  • Date: 2nd June 2015
  • Summary: SENEGAL, DAKAR (MAY 31, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS PEOPLE ON THE STREET TAKING PART IN DAKAR CLIMATE MARCH YOUTH MARCHING WHILE HOLDING A BANNER THAT READS: "DAKAR MARCHES FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE FOR AFRICA" IN FRENCH ABDOULAYE BALDE, SENEGALESE MINISTER OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (BLUE AND WHITE SHIRT) MARCHING YOUNG GIRL HOLDING A POSTER READING: "CLIMATE EM
  • Embargoed: 17th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Senegal
  • Country: Senegal
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA972AYZAQ6XSB2Y3DEGXQTHAPU
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: In a first-of-its-kind march in Senegal, nearly a thousand people - including the country's environmental minister - took to the streets of Dakar Sunday (May 31) asking for action to deal with climate change.
    The march was part of a weekend international mobilisation, in countries from Europe to Africa, aimed at kickstarting public awareness and political support for action on climate change.
    "We are as responsible as the major polluting countries, even if our responsibility is limited, we want to maintain our quantitative and qualitative and growth and development objectives intact while continuing to improve our living environment," said minister of the environment and sustainable development Abdoulaye Baldez, who led the march.
    Assembling at a national memorial site along Dakar's coastal road, hundreds of people arrived on local transportation.
    The march comes as U.N. climate change negotiations kick off in Bonn, and seven months ahead of negotiations in Paris that are expected to agree a new global pact to curb climate change and deal with its impacts.
    Senegal has much at stake, with climate change impacts already reducing rainfall inland and causing coastal flooding as the sea level rises and storms worsen.
    "If we talk today about resilience, it is because we have already missed our mark a little, we only see climate change, we can't stop it anymore, but we are the human beings who caused this climate change, and so I think that it is good to make people aware, there are many people who suffer, here in the region of Dakar alone we have 2 million people who are affected by these issues of floods, and also the world needs to wake up," said Mandou, one of the participants.
    A range of local and national efforts are already underway in Senegal, but like many sub-Saharan African countries it will need international funding to help it shift at sufficient scale to cleaner energy and adapt to new climate pressures, including on its farmers, experts say.
    "Today more than 70 percent of the African population doesn't have access to energy even though the potential for energy is here, we have the sun, the wind, we have hydroelectricity, for us we need a movement in favour of renewable energies but also to say no to fossil fuels that increase pollution, that weaken our economies. It was also to say that Africa demands climate justice. We are the continent most affected by climate change, we see only negotiations and negotiations, the right decisions are not being made so that Africa can finally face these climate changes," said Aissetou Diouf, climate advocacy manager with ENDA Energie, a Senegalese non-profit organisation.
    The project is among a range of efforts in the Sahel, East Africa and Asia supported by Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED), a UK aid project to build resilience of some of the world's most climate-vulnerable people.
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