The chalk graffiti scrawled on the side of a stumpy concrete water tank in the sandy schoolyard at Ecole B in the south Malian town of Fana reads “Force du Diable” – or “Power of the Devil”.

But it is the power of humanity the tank is there to defend against – or rather the power of human actions to distort nature, in the form of the assault that climate change is waging on the land-locked west African country.