Mayotte: rethinking urbanization
On December 14, 2024, Mayotte was swept by tropical cyclone Chido, with the human toll still difficult to estimate. This natural disaster cannot be dissociated from vulnerabilities linked to social organization. The risk factors linked to the demographic explosion and disorderly urbanization must be analyzed in order to better plan reconstruction. President Macron has announced a special law and says he no longer wants shantytowns. Is his method the right one?
Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud, University of BordeauxFahad Idaroussi Tsimanda, University of Montpellier and Olivier Chadoin, ENSAP Bordeaux
The notions of vulnerability and risk are closely linked: they are the result of the cyclonic hazard and the fragility of Mayotte's social organization. Although the media often make comparisons between cyclone Chido and Dicel in 1934, the force of the winds and the damage are in no way comparable. Between 1934 and today, the landscape of Mayotte has changed considerably: it has become urbanized, artificialized, coastalized and denser. In less than forty years, the island's population has more than quintupled. In addition to the island's geographical vulnerability in this part of the Indian Ocean, there is also a social vulnerability: social adaptations to climatic and demographic variations have had a major impact on the landscape and natural resources (soil, planting, urbanization, water, forests, etc.), which, combined with the lack of commitment on the part of public authorities to tackle the ecological and demographic crisis, has led to a general vulnerability that makes it impossible to draw a distinction between natural and non-natural disasters.
From rural to urban landscape
Until about fifty years ago, the Mauritanian landscape was rural. Dwellings were mainly built of wood and/or earth, and roofs were made of coconut or raffia leaves. The few permanent buildings on the island were found in a few localities such as Dzaoudzi and Pamandzi. With the creation of the Société Immobilière de Mayotte (SIM) and the SIM hut project, the hut and its banga, built using natural materials (earth and plant fibers), were gradually replaced by permanent housing, initially in response to the need to reduce precarious housing and the arrival of a large number of civil servants. Over the past three decades, as the population has grown and living standards have risen, a new form of multi-storey housing has emerged, built with imported materials (concrete blocks, cement, sheet metal).
Despite this trend towards modernization, from the 1990s onwards, other types of precarious housing, often described as informal or irregular, spread throughout the island, developing mainly on the outskirts of village and urban cores. These shantytowns take the form of real neighborhoods, each with its own history and temporality, where narrow alleyways open onto public spaces. Neighborhoods that are home to administratively heterogeneous populations too poor to qualify for social housing.
In 2017,Insee estimated that these fragile constructions (mostly tin houses) make up almost four out of every ten homes. Foreigners live in them much more frequently: 65% of them live in a tin house, compared with 25% of French natives. During the alert period, it seemed unlikely that almost 100,000 people would be sheltered in the 71 shelters. All the more so as the vast majority of them, due to the irregularity of their stay on the island, were wary of the idea of going there. In this post-disaster balance sheet, one wonders where these people have gone.
These precarious dwellings are often built on the steep slopes that make up the island's relief, with almost 56% of the territory exposed to at least one high-level natural hazard. More generally, as a result of intense land and demographic pressure, whether from agricultural development or the expansion of built-up areas, low-lying areas are rare and the occupation of slopes has become an obligation. Directly linked to the shortcomings of our housing policy, these heights are constantly creating precarious living conditions, which can quickly be transformed into humanitarian disasters by the vagaries of the weather. This problem has already been widely highlighted and studied, revealing the failings of a cobbled-together, magnetized state.
To think about the place of these homes on the island and stabilize the land, we need to get out of the rut of a normative, repressive and security-based vision (following the example of Wuambushu), and transform the neighborhoods "from below", by making them secure, bringing in water and electricity networks, and putting in place safe paths that stabilize the slopes.
This question of land use in Mauritania will arise very quickly, as people are already rebuilding their precarious housing in the aftermath of Chido's passage, and others will probably be forced to mourn the loss of the place where they used to live, as the political authorities define new zoning zones classifying their former districts as dangerous.
In this respect, President Macron's recent declarations on the introduction of a special law and his assertion of the need to avoid rebuilding the bangas may well clash with the present reality. Indeed, of the estimated 100,000 inhabitants of these areas, not only were they not all illegal immigrants, but they also need to find alternative accommodation now. It should be remembered that the cyclone season is not over, and that rain and wind are frequent in January.
Thinking "afterwards
Vulnerability is the combination of the degree of foreseeable consequences of phenomena linked to climate change and a society's ability to respond to a potential crisis. It is this capacity to respond that is problematic in Mayotte.
In situations of intense crisis, individuals break away from their usual social attitudes and relationships to develop specific interactions of mutual aid, assistance... However, this adaptation presupposes, on the one hand, an ability to converge with the aid provided, and on the other, a certain homogeneity of the social groups concerned. In Mayotte, a territory of great inequalities and social and spatial boundaries, this is clearly not the case. For example, comments quickly focused on the presence of looters and other "dakous", often defined as "Anjouanese criminals", with calls for increased law enforcement and a state of emergency. While looting is not to be minimized, it remains a very small minority compared to solidarity actions, and reveals biases in the interpretation of the disaster.
There's a great deal at stake here, as the perception of the event and its political interpretation will determine the definition of this disaster as a public problem. This definition will undoubtedly be the main challenge in thinking about how to deal with the devastating effects of Chido and its "aftermath". Indeed, if the precarious housing was the first to be devastated by the cyclone, it is also the one where most of the precarious and stigmatized migrant populations are concentrated. In fact, it is highly likely that the management of this disaster will be affected by representations of the island's social functioning such as those circulating in the French political arena.
Once the shock has worn off, the search for political culprits begins. It has already begun, for example, with the comments made byAnchya Bamana and Jean-Luc Melenchon. Others are sure to follow. This blaming and reduction of calamity to culpability risks imposing a reading to justify political choices to end the crisis. But if the dysfunctions and vulnerabilities, the hierarchies and social divisions of the pre-crisis period reappear, it is highly likely that they will produce the same decision-making logics and the same results. Here again, the risk is that Mayotte will be trapped and unable to take control of its own destiny, unable to be mobilized as a complement to the public assistance provided.
The crisis facing Mayotte is an opportunity to rethink a number of issues, such as the scarcity of resources, environmental degradation and the demographic crisis. Considering the "aftermath" also means making Mayotte an actor in a project and a narrative, a collective memory, experience and attitude in the face of risk.
Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud, Geographer, teacher-researcher, UMR 5115 LAM, University of BordeauxFahad Idaroussi Tsimanda, Geographer, University of Montpellier and Olivier Chadoin, Professor of Sociology, Pave - Centre Emile Durkheim CNRS 5116, ENSAP Bordeaux
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.