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Ensuring food and water security in the Inner Niger Delta, Mali

We are working to safeguard seasonal water flows that sustain the floodplains and local communities in the Upper Niger river and Inner Niger Delta. The sustainable management of these waters is essential to ensuring long term benefits to people and nature, and addressing some of the key challenges in Mali such as food and water security, reducing conflict, combatting desertification, building resilience to climate change and reducing disaster risks.

Wetlands such as the Inner Niger Delta have long been the Sahel’s most important natural resources, but they are almost everywhere in decline. Dams and irrigation diversions in this arid region end up dispossessing those people who depend on its free flow. The result is conflict; since 2013, more than two million people have fled the shores of Lake Chad, which has been reduced to a tenth of its former size by the abstraction of water from the rivers that once fed it. Our strategy is to promote dialogue around water as the key natural resource and as a route to conflict prevention and resolution.