Changing like the tides: Culture, politics and learning in the water management of mangrove rice production in Guinea-Bissau

Mangrove rice production is vital to the economy and food security of Guinea-Bissau, a West African country plagued by political instability and poverty. To claim mangrove rice fields (called bolanhas in Guinea-Bissau’s lingua franca) farmers cut mangroves trees and then build, by manual labour, boundary and secondary dikes and canals, and install wooden tubes to facilitate rain- and saltwater management. Over time farmers have reported problems in the water management of bolanhas such as increasing labour requirement and costs, dike ruptures and (rain)water scarcity in some stages of the rice growing season which adversely affect rice yield. Existing literature identified causes of these problems to be social (urban migration, changing crop preference for cultivation) and environmental (climate change) in nature. Urban migration and changing crop preferences of farmers lead to lower labour availability which in turn increases labour costs and requirement while climate change causes sea level rise and modify rainfall distribution which increases the vulnerability of dikes to ruptures and adversely affects yield. To address these social and environmental issues, interventions by different institutions had been and are being done in the bolanhas. While the environmental issues caused by climate change are evident, it is still not clear how climate change interacts with social and political issues. Moreover, there is little information on how political instability and interventions modify the water management of bolanhas. Therefore this PhD project aims to understand how the water management of bolanhas is affected by social and environmental issues brought by climate change and politics.