Senegal's environmental issues are varied. According to the CIA world factbook pressing problems exist with: diminishing wildlife populations which are threatened by poaching, deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, desertification, and overfishing.

Climate change

Deforestation and land degradation Like other parts of West Africa and the developing world, social forces and policies are leading to deforestation and ecosystem degradation, leading to effects like Desertification and social erosion. Charcoal production, alongside pressure to expand agriculture in Senegal to meet the quadrupling of population has led to increased loss of forest.

In 2006, Senegal still had 45.1% —or about 8,673,000 hectares—of forest with 18.4% — or roughly 1,598,000 hectares — classified as primary forest. In 2007 Senegal was losing 350,000 hectares of forest per year through slash-and-burn for farming because of its rapidly growing population. Variability of rainfall compounded with issues like climate change, lead About 13% of the land - holding about 22% of the population - are now considered degraded. Senegal had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.11/10, ranking it 56th globally out of 172 countries.

In 2016, the government warned that the Casamance forest cover would have vanished by 2018, if illegal logging continued.

Mitigation Since 1970s Senegal has lost 25% of its mangrove forests. Recent efforts have been led by the organization Oceanium to replant the mangroves.

The national Forest Service designed in the early 2000s was designed to democratize and decentralize forest management. However, subsequent analysis by academics found that inequalities favor commercial interests and exploitation by economic forces.

Tree cover extent and loss Global Forest Watch publishes annual estimates of tree cover loss and 2000 tree cover extent derived from time-series analysis of Landsat satellite imagery in the Global Forest Change dataset. In this framework, tree cover refers to vegetation taller than 5 m (including natural forests and tree plantations), and tree cover loss is defined as the complete removal of tree cover canopy for a given year, regardless of cause.

For Senegal, country statistics report cumulative tree cover loss of from 2001 to 2024 (about 13.3% of its 2000 tree cover area). For tree cover density greater than 30%, country statistics report a 2000 tree cover extent of . The charts and table below display this data. In simple terms, the annual loss number is the area where tree cover disappeared in that year, and the extent number shows what remains of the 2000 tree cover baseline after subtracting cumulative loss. Forest regrowth is not included in the dataset.

+ Annual tree cover extent and loss Year Tree cover extent (km2) Annual tree cover loss (km2) 2001 394.98 0.70 2002 393.34 1.64 2003 392.96 0.38 2004 391.68 1.28 2005 390.97 0.71 2006 390.56 0.41 2007 388.84 1.72 2008 385.99 2.85 2009 384.39 1.60 2010 382.85 1.54 2011 381.69 1.16 2012 380.85 0.84 2013 377.10 3.75 2014 373.83 3.27 2015 370.90 2.93 2016 368.35 2.55 2017 364.44 3.91 2018 361.43 3.01 2019 358.65 2.78 2020 351.06 7.59 2021 349.30 1.76 2022 346.41 2.89 2023 344.80 1.61 2024 343.25 1.55

REDD+ reference level and monitoring Under the UNFCCC REDD+ framework, Senegal has submitted a national forest reference level (FRL). On the UNFCCC REDD+ Web Platform, the country's 2025 submission is listed as having an assessed reference level, while a national strategy, safeguards information and a national forest monitoring system are all listed as "not reported".

The first assessed FRL, submitted in 2025, covered three REDD+ activities at national scale: reducing emissions from deforestation, reducing emissions from forest degradation, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. Using a 2011-2020 reference period, the assessed FRL was -8,860,748 t CO2 eq per year. The technical assessment states that it included above-ground biomass and below-ground biomass, reported CO2 only, and used a forest definition of at least 0.5 hectares, 10 percent canopy cover and trees at least 2 metres in height.

Overfishing

West African communities face pressure from both overfishing by local fleets as well as Asian and European fleets harvesting from fisheries in West Africa as other fisheries become overfished or collapse. For example fleets in 2017 Saint-Louis, Senegal have seen a large decline in harvest, causing ripple effects on nutrition and food supply in the country, where 75% of animal protein comes from fish. White grouper fisheries in Senegal's waters have collapsed.

See also Geography of Senegal Agriculture in Senegal Water supply and sanitation in Senegal Ecological Monitoring Centre, Senegal Rally of the Ecologists of Senegal List of mammals of Senegal List of non-marine molluscs of Senegal Basse Casamance National Park

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