Outskirts Of Saint-Louis, Senegal's Old Colonial Capital, Already Drowned; World Heritage City Next

Ameth Diagne points to a single tree submerged in the ocean. It is barely visible from the patch of land where he is standing, 50 metres away. The few branches emerging from the water mark the place where he proposed to his wife 35 years earlier. It used to be the town square of Doun Baba Dieye, a vibrant fishing community on the outskirts of Saint-Louis in northern Senegal. The village has been wiped off the map, with only the tree and crumbling walls of an abandoned school remaining as testament to its existence. Everything else is 1.5 metres under water.

“This was home. I was born here. Everything which was important to me happened here,” says Ameth, the former village chief. Doun Baba Dieye is in the southern part of Langue de Barbarie, a thin, sandy strip of land protecting Saint-Louis, former colonial capital of Senegal, from the ocean. Saint-Louis, a city of 230,000 and a Unesco world heritage site, is nestled between the mouth of the Senegal river and the Atlantic.

The French chose Saint-Louis as the capital because of its strategic location, which allowed the city to flourish in colonial times. But today the “Venice of Africa” is being eaten up by the rising waters. Crossing the Faidherbe bridge, which connects the colourful city centre to the mainland, it seems as if you can almost touch the water. This state of a permanent flood alert has become the city’s new normal.

In Saint-Louis, the consequences of climate crisis are tangible: thousands of people uprooted; houses destroyed; hundreds of children attending classes in the evening instead of in the morning because their school has been swept into the ocean. The World Bank, which recently allotted €24m (£20m) to combat the effects of climate change in Saint-Louis, estimates that 10,000 people in the city are either already displaced or live within 20 metres of the waterline, the high-risk zone.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/28/how-the-venice-of-africa-is-losing-its-battle-against-the-rising-ocean