Get Your Facts Straight, PBS, Senegal’s Prospects Have Improved Amid Climate Change
By
H. Sterling Burnett
April 17, 2025
PBS News ran a story claiming Senegal is suffering from climate change and that developed countries aren’t keeping their pledges to help the country out. The first claim is definitely false, Senegal’s economy has experienced significant growth during the recent period of slight warming. Another major metric for improved prospects, life span, has improved markedly as well. Concerning the second claim, it is unclear whether developed countries have made specific commitments to Senegal regarding climate funding, but it is certainly clear that Senegal gets billions in foreign aid each year.
The story, “Senegal struggles to cope with climate change despite promises of help from other nations,” consists of a series of interviews with and anecdotes shared by select Senegalese with PBS about the troubles they face, which they tie to climate change and lack of Western funding for climate mitigation. In particular, PBS’s story focuses on woes of Senegal’s fishing industry and non-governmental organizations’ (NGO) claims that the world isn’t providing promised funds to held the country contend with climate change. Even while acknowledging funding from the World Bank built a sea wall which helped prevent flooding, beach erosion, and benefited tourism, Fred de Sam Lazaro reporting for PBS says:
[E]fforts so far by the World Bank and donor nations have done little to help those hardest hit. Around Saint-Louis, which has long been pummeled by devastating floods, a two-mile seawall was built and fishing families relocated farther inland. They’re safer, they say, but hardly secure.
. . .
Their struggle is starkly visible in fishing communities up and down the coast. A backbreaking morning’s worth of work, and all that this boat brought back today was one crate about a quarter filled with anything that is marketable out there.
https://climaterealism.com/2025/04/get-your-facts-straight-pbs-senegals-prospects-have-improved-amid-climate-change/
