Placating water spirits on Senegal River

Navigating water tenure in Senegal
Levelling the playing field on access to a vital resource

In the northern Senegalese fishing village of Ngaolé, local residents intone long traditional poems, known as pekaans, to placate the water spirits on the nearby Senegal River. The fishermen and their communities believe these lyrics help offer protection from the teeming crocodiles on the red muddy banks. But crocodiles aren’t the only challenge facing people in this part of the country, just a short distance from the Sahara Desert.

For Ousmane Ly, a 59-year-old pastoralist living near the village, eking out a livelihood is becoming ever tougher. He says he and his fellow herders have dwindling numbers of animals, which they’ve had to move ever earlier in the year and further afield to find grazing. Apart from the obvious factors of climate change and prolonged drought, together with overuse of groundwater and pollution, Ousmane sees the cause as a surging population, expansion of surrounding villages and the demand for water from nearby large-scale irrigation projects.

All this adds up to trigger growing competition over water between farmers and herders. Moving from one place to another, pastoralists need water for their livestock, but farmers are not always willing to share their limited water resources.

These are precisely the kinds of tensions that an assessment of water tenure in this area by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) aims at addressing. The process looks at the relations that people have around water resources, whether based on formal laws and regulations or customs and traditions. The goal is to promote social cohesion and peace among different water users.

Many people, especially in developing countries, rely on customary rules, which have been there for generations, rather than formal legal rights. It’s easy to see how the two can be at odds.

“Rural people have their own conflict management mechanisms, and this works a lot of times until they get in an argument with a big water user or a big dam being built. This is why water tenure is so important. It allows actors to look at these different rights systems and to make sure that all people are able to access water and what they need to have legal security in doing so,” says Benjamin Kiersch, Global Coordinator for FAO’s Knowing Water Better (KnoWat) project, which encompasses the water tenure evaluation.

In Senegal, the assessment found many examples of water tenure were based on custom or religious beliefs, which do not fall within the country’s legal framework. For example, “People have a practice of fishing in the Senegal River, but the legal framework does not recognize this type of custom, and the fishermen are not yet aware of it,” said FAO’s Sofia Espinosa, one of the supervisors of the water tenure assessment.

“Similarly, some farmers in the region are involved in flood recession farming, but if there are dams in certain areas, this type of farming will be threatened and reduced to a minimum.”

FAO says its aim is to protect and secure local practices by including them in the legal framework or finding an alternative solution, such as strengthening local water governance institutions in the villages themselves.

Agropastoralist and civil society leader, Babacar Diop, says the project has helped shed light on the complexities of water tenure issues and will help local leaders to better understand water governance and be able to address conflicts. He hopes “this approach and the results obtained are disseminated and known to the public, in particular to decision-makers at national and local levels.”

The results of the assessment were presented at an inter-ministerial committee tasked with reforming the water law of Senegal. “There’s no prescription but the simple fact is that legitimacy can stem from different sources,” says Kiersch, so the aim is to “level the playing field” to also protect those whose legitimacy of water access is based on customary or indigenous rights.

To address such issues, FAO and its partners will launch the Global Dialogue on Water Tenure at the United Nations (UN) Water Conference in March 2023 to strengthen water rights for all users, provide mechanisms for resolving conflicts over water resources and agree on common principles for responsible governance of water tenure.

Water tenure is just one strand of the KnoWat project, which also focuses on multiple aspects of water governance, including an accounting of physical water resources and water productivity through FAO’s WaPOR water remote sensing tool, as part of the integrated water resources management approach. These are likely to be key elements informing countries’ work to put in place and take ownership of National Water Roadmaps.

“The National Water Roadmaps were developed to foster collective action at the national level to improve water management and governance in support of the Sustainable Development Goals,” explains Lifeng Li, Director of FAO’s Land and Water Division.

“The question is how to solve this puzzle for sustainable development for people and the planet. We believe that responsible water governance, including work on water tenure through the National Water Roadmaps, is an important tool to address the challenge of the decade,” Li concludes.

Like the Global Dialogue on Water Tenure, National Water Roadmaps will be presented in a dedicated side event at the UN World Water Conference in March 2023.