Women and Development in Climate Change Context: Female Salt-Collectors of the Pink Lake (Senegal)

Some decades ago, Sahel societies have been the scene of major upheavals related to climate change. These hazards especially read in terms of rainfall variability, droughts, water and wind erosion, floods affected the life of the populations and their activities, mainly agriculture. Besides, these societies are committed to struggle for the development process initiated since their independences (1960). Thus, Senegal did not depart from the rule. In such a context, women’s initiatives appear as a response to meet the dual challenge of facing the climate change effects and participating in the development dynamics. This study aims at examining the scope of the women’s activities exploiting the salt at the Pink Lake as a response to climate change risks and as participation in development. Therefore, it’s about seeing how women’s adaptation and resilience to climate change, through the salt collecting activity, constitute a contribution to development. With a triangulation of both quantitative and qualitative method, we use the questionnaire, interviews, documentary analysis, and sociological observation for the data collection. This study reveals that women of the Pink Lake with the income generated by the salt exploitation, help their households in meeting basic needs in a context which climate change, with its polymorphic effects, makes it difficult to practice activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry etc. This reflects the role that women play in climate change adaptation and development. But the constraints of the limited resources they make, the lack of information on climate change and the low level of association among other factors reduce their resilience and their level of participation in development dynamics.