De-marginalising frontier communities in West Africa: action research, local knowledge, and resilience against natural disasters and ecological stress

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West Africa is one of the poorest regions of the world, and also subject to different climate change related environmental stresses - such as desertification, flooding, landslides, and unpredictable rains. The majority of the inhabitants of the region rely on climate-sensitive economic activities and depend on natural resources for their livelihoods (UNDP 2011). Frontier communities in Guinea, Mali and Senegal are particularly prone to the effects of long and short-term environmental shocks and stresses, which can have significant negative repercussions for their subsistence activities. However, putting the emphasis on their fragility, precarity and susceptibility to extreme climate events without acknowledging their important and long-standing resilience building strategies in the face of recurrent environmental stresses misses the opportunity to realise their potential to drive transformative adaptation and to open up new pathways for sustainable development. Despite there being ample evidence showing the important role of local repertoires of knowledge in building resilience capacity before and after climate related shocks and stresses, these rich repertoires have often been devalued or ignored in the design of climate change and sustainable development programs and projects. The overall aim therefore, of this project is to help re-centre the resilience thinking and practice in climate change adaptation policy back in local actors and communities themselves and enhance the efforts geared to achieve a more equitable sustainable development in West Africa by de-marginalising frontier communities in Senegal (Casamance), Mali (Kayes) and Guinea (Upper-Guinea). The project will focus on the longue-durée resilience strategies of populations particularly at risk (women and descendants of formerly enslaved populations). It will aim to facilitate their involvement and leadership in community-based resilience action planning and organisational learning, and integrate their experiences and knowledges across multiple scales for long-lasting development gains.Our project team brings together a unique combination of expertise in African history, social anthropology and literary studies, which are less common in development approaches. It aims at constructing a synergistic approach with transformative and catalyst effect by collecting local knowledge that can be harnessed for development activities located at the intersections between poverty, environmental sustainability, governance and vulnerability. The transformative aspect of this research relies on building knowledge networks across borders between frontier communities' stakeholders who otherwise would have little chance to connect and to share and compare their experiences and local knowledge. This cross-border knowledge networks will be facilitated by the organisation in partnership with the organisation Donkosira of training workshops with all stakeholders in each case study country, and the development of a mobile and accompanying website where historical and contemporary local knowledge data will be uploaded and made accessible to a wider local and international audience.