Analyse de la construction de la vulnérabilité des ménages du système irrigué de Guédé au nord du Sénégal

Abstract

Despite the improvement in agricultural production, irrigated schemes generate significant social, economic and ecological risks that raise questions about their actual impacts on the social, economic, environmental and food vulnerability of beneficiary populations. The reflection on the construction of vulnerability mobilized in this paper seeks to analyze, from a socio-historical and economic perspective, how the processes, changes and disruptions in time and space can explain the mechanisms at the source of the current vulnerabilities of households settled around the irrigated system of the Guédé basin in Senegal. The results highlight a differential vulnerability of households to several stressors. This vulnerability is a function of the small amount of land cultivated and yields, high production costs or difficulties in accessing off-farm activities, but also of the period and location of settlement of households, which partially define their resource endowment, and thus their capacity to cope with changing conditions. To provide a multidisciplinary, systemic and nuanced reflection on the vulnerability of agricultural households in the Guédé irrigated system, it is important to understand the mechanisms that underlie the construction and evolution of vulnerability and to see how their dynamic interactions can reduce or reinforce existing vulnerabilities or create new vulnerabilities.