INDIGENOUS USE OF WETLANDS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN WEST-AFRICA

There is a wide variety of wetland environments in West Africa. They i nclude various kinds of floodplains (for example those of the Senegal, Niger and Logone-Chari system), larger inland deltas and lacustrine w etlands (notably Lake Chad and the Niger Inland Delta in Mali), and co astal and delta environments (for example the deltas of the Senegal, N iger and Volta Rivers, the Basse Casamance or the Banc d'Arguin in Mau ritania). Most of them support substantial communities of people, who depend on their natural resources and the ecology and hydrological pat terns that maintain them. Indigenous systems of water resource managem ent include agriculture (including flood cropping, notably of rice, fl ood recession cropping and various kinds of irrigation at various scal es), fishing and pastoralism. In the Sahel in particular, wetlands pro vide a vital element in the resources available to people not only wit hin but well beyond their immediate boundaries. Many of these wetlands also support internationally important populations of wild species, t hose in the Sahel, for example, providing important links in the Palae arctic-African bird migration flyway. Water resource development proje cts can have serious implications for the ecology and economy of wetla nds in West Africa, and great care is needed to ensure that developmen t projects do not cause real economic costs that outweigh potential ec onomic benefits.