Integrating environmental memories to address environmental changes: a case study in Ferlo, Senegal

International audience This paper addresses the need to engage knowledge-based experiences in conservation projects. To effectively integrate them, despite lack of equivalencies with scientific knowledge, we explored the role of environmental memory -that is, people's memories of their past environment. We conducted this study in the Ferlo, a very isolated rural area in the Sahel region of Senegal, which has undergone significant environmental change over the past century, and whose inhabitants primarily rely on livestock breeding for their livelihood. We assessed environmental changes that occurred in the Ferlo since 1900 according to a literature review. To collect environmental memories carried by Ferlo inhabitants, we used a mixed methodology combining qualitative and quantitative data, conducting 40 semi-structured interviews and 300 surveys to a cross-quota sample that was representative of the total population in terms of age and gender. Our findings show that environmental memories enable respondents to understand environmental change through daily observation, intergenerational transmission and changes in their interactions with the environment. There were similarities between the environmental changes assessed by scientific monitoring and by respondents. Divergences between the two were discussed. We argue that environmental memories might offer a more grounded and local perspective on environmental changes. In this sense, they could facilitate 1) the consideration of environmental change's impacts on local inhabitants, and 2) their integration into conservation projects by giving meaning to these projects for these residents.