Journal
SUSTAINABILITY
Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/su9020311
Keywords
Senegal; forests; adaptation; vulnerability; transformation
Funding
- Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)
- Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Grant
- USAID Africa Bureau Grant
- Dutch Government Grant
- USAID Africa Bureau Grant, Research on Effects of Decentralization on Rural-Urban Relations in Senegal
- National Science Foundation Doctoral Research Grant
- Simpson Research Scholarship, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
- Institute for the Study of World Politics Doctoral Research Grant, Senegal
- Fulbright Scholarship, Senegal
- Centre for Development and Environment of Bern in Switzerland
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Adaptation is a means of reducing vulnerability. So, understanding causes of vulnerability should help to achieve adaptation. Why, then, are people vulnerable? Why do expected dry spells turn into hunger? Why do mere droughts become disasters? This article shows some of the multi-scale processes that make the lives of people in the forests of Eastern Senegal precarious; it outlines processes that reduce forest villagers' access to resources, lucrative markets and political representation. These are the processes that place villagers at risk when exposed to stressorsclimate or otherwise. In this case, the Forest Service applies double standardsfavoring urban merchants while subordinating forest villagersthrough the making, interpretation, implementation and circumvention of laws and regulations. The wealth of the poor is continuously expropriated by a well-adapted extractive apparatus, enriching urban merchants while leaving villagers incapacitated. These people may lack adaptive capacity or capability or assets or social protections, but those lacks have causes. Adaptation without identifying and addressing these root causes is palliative at best. Security requires emancipatory transformations.
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