kg per hectare! And rain is decimating our
livestock. Our animals tend to be suited
to Sahel conditions and when they have
their hooves in water they catch a form of
pneumonia.
How does the population react to
this calling into question of ancestral
practices?
Our dwellings and our farming are affected
because we do not master the local
weather any more. When you are a farmer,
you instinctively want to plant in low-lying
land because there is more moisture; now
you have to go higher to hope to see Noah
go past with his Ark! And then what will
happen if the rainy season is a bad one? We
don’t know where to turn our heads …
Before, when we had a few drops of rain
in March everyone went wild with joy and
sang ‘Here’s the mango rain, here’s the
mango rain’. This year, it is now on 7 March
and it has already rained three times. Three
rainfalls—if it were June, that would be
enough to prepare the land and sow … But
a farmer who prepares his land in March
would be crazy!
Before, we also made much use of animals
and plants to forecast what was going to
happen in the days to come. Migratory birds
showed us when the rainy season was
arriving. For example, when the toucans
and black herons leave for the south this
marks the beginning of the winter season
and the harvest. But I haven’t seen any
black herons for several years. This is a
great loss as they also get rid of locusts
for us: our best insecticide. This was
also the sustainable management of our
environment!
And it’s not just the migration of animals
that has changed. In 1969, when I started to
work, there wasn’t a single Fulani nomad,
or a Mossi. The cattle farmers arrived with
the great Sahel droughts in the 1970s and
then they got into the habit of returning;
today they form a fair proportion of the
population, I would say half came from
the north because of climate change and
the shortage of grazing in the Sahel. Think
that some farmers have as many as 10000
head of cattle, so they send 500 to the left,
500 to the right and 500 to the south, ... And
as their cattle are used to eating the foliage
of trees and eat the regrowth, the farmers
don’t hesitate to cut down our trees for
forage. This is not in line with sustainable
development.
What are the urgent things for you, in
terms of adaptation?
I am very pessimistic. We are not prepared
to go towards sustainable development
or to adopt ways of life that have a small
impact on the climate. We farm right to
the banks of the rivers, we clear much
woodland, we cultivate our land with much
less labour than before, some people even
use herbicides, hybrid seed, GMOs, and
so we are losing control of our production
circuit. Our incessant little tribal wars and
our post-electoral quarrels do nothing to
improve things. What’s going to happen to
us when climate change hits Africa hard,
like ‘the Big One’ that the Americans have
been waiting for years?
You westerners are hyper-developed—and
your factories send us carbon dioxide—
and you think that you can reconcile
climate change and development, but not
necessarily sustainable. Here, everything
comes from the land and only from the
land. We have 80 percent illiteracy and so
how can you explain the problematics of
sustainable development to a farmer or
say that he can’t grow as much as in the
past because of climate change? They
say that the pack ice is melting. Do I know
where the pack ice is? How does it melt,
like butter? I don’t know at all. Why on
earth are you talking to me about a climate
change?
So all this requires first and foremost a very
great effort in education skills, teaching
and training. The western countries, and
France in particular, have a responsibility
to help us to warn populations of what is
threatening them and to provide them with
the means to adapt.
c
i
Fidel Yogo Adiguipiou is concerned about the
consequences of climate change for plantations.
Here, a cotton crop.
© Christophe Nussli
i
Science and tradition in Burkina Faso. A technician is measuring water quality. The initiation of a new
soothsayer of ‘the congregation of leaves’. Soothsayers are consulted when the rains are later than usual.
© Florence Fournet and Stéphan Dugast/Indigo/IRD
i
A Fulani caravan on its way to the weekly market
in Oursi in northern Burkina Faso.
© Daina Rechner /Indigo/IRD
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