Oil and gas developments on marine ecosystems off west africa

Oil and gas developments on marine ecosystems off west africa

Mamadou N. Seck¹, Bouya MBengue^2,1, Alfredo García de Vinuesa¹, Sandra Kloff³, Bocar S. Baldé⁴, Marcos Llope¹

¹ Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO-CSIC), Centro Oceanográfico de Cádiz, (Spain)

² Mauritanian Institute of Oceanographic research and Fisheries (IMROP)

³ Senegal centre de recherche oceanographique Dakar-Thiaroye (CRODT)

⁴ KLOFF, Sandra coordinador extranjero eNGO consultant BACOMAB (MAURITANIA)

 The marine environment plays a key role in global climate regulation by sequestering carbon through different types of ecosystems (seagrass meadows, mangroves) what we know as blue carbon. However, some human activities (exploitation of non-renewable offshore energies: oil/gas), can have a considerable impact on marine ecosystems and therefore, directly and indirectly, on climate change.

Contrary to Europe, offshore non renewables are currently experiencing substantial expansion off West Africa and need to be considered within MSP and EBM perspective. This study focuses on offshore oil / gas exploitation in two areas of the region: (1) central Senegal, Sangomar project  (2) border between Senegal and Mauritania, Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA project).

Sangomar is an oil development located 90 km from the Delta of  Sine-Saloum, an area that hosts an important mangrove forest that constitutes the main economic asset of the area. The GTA is a gas project 125 km from Saint-Louis, region that is being greatly impacted by climate change (e.g., coastal erosion and salination due to sea level rise) and that has an economy highly dependent on fisheries.

These two exploitation projects have significant impacts on the environment and local economies as they pose new risks (e.g. the Niger Delta oil spill in 2008 and 2009 caused destruction of several ecosystems, especially mangroves), introduce new pressures (release of chemicals and gas at the level of marine platforms) and change the patterns of sea use (fishing exclusion zones).

By using a range tools such as time series analysis, conceptual modelling techniques (with stakeholders) and bayesian belief networks we aim to better understand the trade-offs and risks that these two non-renewable developments pose on the respective marine ecosystems and the associated livelihoods as well as their external drivers in a rapidly changing geopolitical context. We expect that our results will contribute to inform decision-makers to better implement MSP in a context of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Keywords: ecosystem-based management (EBM), political ecology, marine spatial planning (MSP), offshore energy, Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN), carbon stock, seagrass, mangroves.