The lagoon, called Ebrié lagoon after the ethnic group that inhabits its banks, extends over tens of km, from Abidjan to Grand-Bassam in the east, to the Azagny park in the west: it is considered the largest area of brackish water in West Africa.
And the shores of Béago, one of the villages on the edge of the lagoon, are crumbling under the plastic waste which extends for at least one km.
“The situation in Béago is alarming, there are no more fish because of the pollution and the fishing activity has been abandoned”, deplores Paul Abé Bléssoué, the village chief.
Aged 73, he accuses the urban and industrial waste of Yopougon, the largest town in Abidjan, of having transformed his village of 3,000 inhabitants into an open dump.
Surrounded by notables, he believes that the very existence of Béago is threatened. “If we are not careful, Béago could disappear in a few years, abandoned by its inhabitants”, he says near two mangroves, the last ecosystem still present.
According to Yaya Koné, president of Coliba Africa, a company specializing in the recycling of plastic waste, “460,000 tons” of this waste “are produced each year in Côte d’Ivoire, more than half (290,000 tons) of which in Abidjan” and ” only 3% is reused and recovered”.
The remaining 97% “find themselves in nature, especially in the lagoon and the sea”, he told AFP, recalling that “unfortunately, plastic cannot be completely degraded”.
Coliba Africa has just launched a training project for 6,000 plastic waste collectors.
“Plastic objects are the substances that have polluted our bays the most,” notes Ayenon Séka, from the Institute of Tropical Geography at the University of Cocody in Abidjan, a megalopolis of nearly six million inhabitants.
Around the bay of Biétry, a district where many Europeans live located not far from the French military camp and the international airport, plastic pollution is compounded by the extraction of sand and the anarchic construction of embankments.
– Dead bay, paradise lost –
“The bay of Bietry is a dead bay, because it is extremely polluted, a real ecological disaster”, notes the industrialist Bernard Derrien, 76, resident of Biétry since 1998. “1.6 million square meters of the surface” of the bay “have been backfilled to install factories there”, he adds.
Gérard Frère, a Frenchman who has lived in Abidjan for 67 years, owner of a hotel in the bay, remembers the old days with nostalgia: “In Biétry we were in a corner of paradise, now it is a refuge of pôtô- pôtô”, muddy area infested with mosquitoes and constantly exposed to flooding, in popular language, he says.
Specialized in sport fishing, he saw his activity drop by half due to “pollution which discourages many followers. Because here, it’s polluted from polluted!”. He claims that “30 centimeters of plastic (waste) are carpeted at the bottom of the lagoon”.
Faced with this situation, many experts are advocating the installation of a vast water purification network for the lagoon.
“It’s now, otherwise it will be too late to react,” warns Bernard Derrien, who recommends “very large-scale works, a sanitation network in the city of Abidjan to stop this pollution and bring the lagoon back to its original state.
A specialist in remote sensing applied to oceanography at the University of Abidjan, Kouadio Affian remains pessimistic, however, because in Côte d’Ivoire, “the citizen” is not aware “that by throwing a plastic bottle in the street , she could end up in the lagoon”.
“Abidjan ma lagune”, an association recently created by residents of the Biétry district, intends to promote a depollution campaign to save it because, they regret, it no longer deserves its name “pearl of the lagoons”.
