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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research along the Gambia River, this paper examines how increasing salinity reshapes riverine livelihoods, land use, and multi-species relations, transforming wetlands into uneven and contested fluvial spaces.

Paper long abstract

Based on anthropological research in a riverine village in The Gambia, this paper examines life along riverbanks and wetlands as the Gambia River becomes increasingly saline. These fluvial spaces - rice fields, grazing grounds, fishing sites, forest edges - are environments where changing salinity reorganizes human and more-than-human relations amid ecological change.

Saltwater intrusion driven by climatic shifts is making central wetlands infertile, reshaping livelihoods and labor in uneven ways, particularly along gendered lines. Rice cultivation, once the village’s primary subsistence activity and central site of women’s labor, is increasingly abandoned as salinity undermines yields. As rice fields lose viability, riverbanks are reworked into dry-season grazing grounds for livestock from across Gambia and Senegal, while simultaneously offering diminishing refuge as salinity and drought intensify. Fishing, hunting, and herding are increasingly concentrated along the same river margins used by wildlife, producing zones of heightened proximity, competition, and care.

Seasonal rhythms further intensify these dynamics. During rainy season, flooded wetlands briefly restore productivity while reshaping access and mobility. In dry season, salinity and water scarcity compress people, livestock, and wildlife into fewer viable spaces, increasing encounters along river edges. Shifts away from rice cultivation also generate new forest-farm boundaries, altering patterns of land use and resource negotiation.

Through ethnographic attention to farming, herding, fishing, and forest use, this paper shows how salinization transforms wetlands into sites of adaptation and struggle. I argue that rive-shaped landscapes are ecologies whose changing qualities simultaneously connect and polarize labor, multi-species lives, and futures within fluvial worlds.