Abstract
One of the first environmental crises to attract interest in development initiatives and aid was the great drought of the 1970s in the Sahel. This study investigates the extent of damage caused by natural disasters from one of the most widely used databases—EM-DAT—with a sample size of 16 Sahelian countries over the period 1960–2020. These countries have been divided into three regions: Western Africa Sahel (WAS), Central Africa Sahel (CAS), and Eastern Africa Sahel (EAS). The analyses encompass four categories of natural hazards, namely, biological, climatological, hydrological, and meteorological. We used descriptive and test statistics to summarize the natural disaster records. Through this approach, we explore tendencies to identify the most frequently reported natural hazards; we examine their spatial distribution and evaluate their impacts in terms of socioeconomic damage and causalities. During the study period, a total of 1000 events were recorded in the database. The Western Africa Sahel (WAS) region had the highest number of disasters, with 476 events, followed by the Eastern Africa Sahel (EAS) region with 369 events. The most common hazards in the Sahel were hydrological (41.8%), mainly floods, and biological (39.5%) hazards. Approximately 300 million people in the Sahel were affected by natural hazards, with 59.17% in EAS, 36.48% in WAS, and 4.35% in CAS. Although droughts occurred less frequently (14%), they had a significant impact on the population, affecting 84% of those affected by natural hazards. In general, EAS experiences a higher impact from natural hazards, potentially influenced by the pastoral lifestyle of its population. However, WAS is also very vulnerable to natural hazards especially epidemics and nowadays floods. The uncontrolled urbanization in the area may contribute to this vulnerability.
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Data availability
The data used in this research are available at www.emdat.be. There is a need to have an account to get the data. The socioeconomic data are available on the World Bank website at World Bank Open Data | Data.
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Funding
This work was supported by the International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering (2iE) and the World Bank through the Africa Centre of Excellence Project (ACE-Impact) [Grant Numbers IDA 6388/D443-BF].
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Serigne Mbacké Coly, Malicki Zorom, and Babacar Leye. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Serigne Mbacké Coly, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Harouna Karambiri and Aboudramane Guiro helped for the funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Coly, S.M., Zorom, M., Leye, B. et al. Learning from history of natural disasters in the Sahel: a comprehensive analysis and lessons for future resilience. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28989-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28989-6