Environmental problems have engendered a heated debate between the developed and developing nations all over the world.

The situation in China and some other countries in Asia are seen as prime examples. For instance, their involvement in the environmental damage is underscored; the burning of fossil fuel, according to the latter, helps them to become economically developed.

However, the research will lay bare the environmental conditions of Senegal, located geographically in the Western part of Africa. Indeed, environmental problems are strongly challenged in Senegal due to many causes such as: deforestation, water and air pollution to say the least. However, even though the damages to the environment are latent in some cases, this can bring a social turmoil leading eventually to conflicts and wars. As it is clarified through the case of Senegal and Mauritania, two neighbouring countries that conflicted themselves in 1988 due to shared water (Niasse, 2005).

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Also, these damages cause environmental change which predictably has bad effects on its inhabitants. Jon BARNETT’s words are illustrative “There have been numerous attempts to assess the extent to which environmental change causes violent conflict within and between countries.”(2007, p. 183).But preserving the biosphere, in all realms of life, is helpful for our peace, health and so on to promote sustainable development.

For such a reason environmental protection becomes among the most debated issues known in our current world. Many scientists, states and non-governmental organizations demonstrate that environmental security is a prerequisite condition for our well being and people must be sensitized to the dangers threatening the environment. Among the latter are United Nations’ Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Intergovernmental Pannel on Climate Change (IPCC), who keep on doing their research on the leading cause of many ills due to environmental pollution.

In addition, there are others such as Wildlife Trust(WT), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWFN), Birdlife International and the Audubon Society (BIAS) which according to Parikshit Ballabh (2009) “advance policies in areas such as landscape scale conservation to promote adaptation to climate change” (p. 112). Through this, one can say that climate change is a phenomenon that people must pay more attention; as many scientists think that the benefits of climate change, due to emissions of greenhouse gases, the burning of fossil fuel and so forth, are more important than the damages. Yet many scientists mainly in the Western hemisphere fail in their policy, for sustainable development, to consider the difference of prevailing realities due

to geographical area, belief, culture and religion.Then the failure to consider  the Senegalese realities may cause problems for those who promote sustainable development.

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By

Djibril Kane

Email: namous2004-at-yahoo.fr