Babacar Diop, 42, chooses to continue living in the single remaining room of his house, though the front room has completely fallen away. Despite the danger of the ceiling collapsing while he sleeps, it’s the only home he has ever known

A child plays on the ruins of a sea wall after the ocean surge in Saint-Louis. Hundreds of families have been evacuated to tent cities because their houses were ruined by rising sea levels

The tree that previously marked the centre of the village of Doun Baba Dieye has been taken over by cormorants. Doun Baba Dieye was a village of fishermen, farmers and cattle people, south of Saint-Louis. Due to the channel that Senegalese authorities dug, the floodwaters swelled and villagers were forced to move inland

The Senegalese government keeps track of the crumbling houses on the Saint Louis coast using personalised numbers. When people can no longer live in them, families can be identified and moved to a tented camp where they often live with three or four other families in a single structure

Fatou Ngueye, 34, and her children sit within the last two walls of her living room, which is now open to the sand and ocean. The family have slept on the floor of a neighbour’s home for more than a year so that her husband, a fisherman, can keep working

Fisherman Daoud Diallo sits under the bow of a boat for shade. He now shares a single room with nine other people

The shells of sea-facing homes that have been destroyed in Saint-Louis. Its strategic coastal location previously allowed the city to flourish, but today the ‘Venice of Africa’ is being slowly consumed by the sea

Inhabitants of this coast have been fishing for centuries, but many are now being forced to relocate, their way of life wiped out by rising waters

The cemetery in Saint-Louis is beginning to flood. Most people from the region have at least one relative buried here

A room that has broken free of the house it was connected to. As the water continues its assault on the shoreline, more and more sand is pulled away, so foundations erode and walls crumble away

Fishermen moor their boats on a narrow stretch of the Senegal River that divides the old town of Saint-Louis from the Langue de Barbarie peninsula

The main floor of a school that is breaking apart as the foundations are eroded. Other schools in the area have already been entirely swept into the ocean, with hundreds of children now having to take evening classes in available buildings instead

A makeshift drying table on the Langue de Barbarie. This thin peninsula separates the ocean from the final section of the Senegal River. In 2003, a four-metre breach was cut in the peninsula near the city of Saint-Louis to counter possible flooding. However, the breach quickly widened to 800 metres and separated the southern end of the peninsula permanently, effectively transforming it into an island. By January, the breach had widened to 6km