Come along as we connect the dots between climate, migration and the far-right
October 3, 20225:00 AM ET
As a climate change
expert at the World Bank, Arame Tall is deeply familiar with the facts and
figures of global warming. She understands how rising seas and changing weather
cycles are affecting her home country of Senegal — from a retreating coastline
in the city of Dakar where she grew up, to her mother's hometown of Diourbel,
where drought and floods have forced people to abandon their peanut farms.
But even with all that
knowledge, Tall was still shocked when her own nephew attempted to flee the
country for a better life in Europe. "To the whole family's astonishment,
he disappeared one night, and we looked for him," she told me. "He
couldn't be found."
Earlier this year,
18-year-old Amadou had reached the boat that was supposed to smuggle him out of
Senegal and into Spain. The captain warned of heavy rain that was forecast at
sea and said the trip might not be safe. Afraid for his life, Amadou
disembarked.
"Everybody else
who got on that boat never came back," Tall told me. "And they were
confirmed to have sunk in the Atlantic. So he escaped. But you always wonder,
what if he had actually taken that boat?"
There is an expression in Wolof, one of Senegal's main
languages: Djawou bou soppekou. It literally
means, "The weather is changing."
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