Projects
Mali
On this page you will find information regarding the project you selected. A summary of the project proposal can be found in the publications section at the bottom of the page.
Description
Title: Integral Water Management and Food Security along the Niger River in Mali: a Spatial Environmental Economic Analysis Themes Water, Agriculture Methods Regression Analysis, Economic Modelling
General Information
The study is conducted in partnership with Wetlands International
The natural resources of the Inner Delta fully depend on the annual occurrence of the flooding of the Niger River. Because local rainfall is limited and is highly variable from year to year, the area would be a desert without these flooding events. This ecological and economic dependency of the Inner Niger Delta on the Niger River implies that each intervention influencing the river discharge upstream has an impact on the livelihood of the population as well as the ecology of the Inner Delta. The overall aim of the project is to support decision making in an integral consideration at basin level with regard to management and construction of dams in the Upper-Niger in relation to food security and ecological conditions in the downstream Inner Niger Delta. In other words, the main question addressed in the study is which river management scenario best secures food and environment in the Upper Niger Basin. At the same time, however, the project intends to provide the separate ingredients for a sound decision by the local decision makers and stakeholders in the plan area. The study recognizes the fact that not all relevant criteria can be expressed in monetary terms. Therefore, the tools applied in this project aim at identifying a best possible solution with the input of various decision makers, as well as to make existing information better accessible. This is achieved by designing a decision support model, which is driven by spatially defined socio-economic indicators for several relevant scenarios (i.e. construct new dams, improve efficiency of existing dams). Local decision makers are invited to express their preferences by running a number of these scenario simulations.
