Lake Chad: Lingering Natural Disaster
Billions and countless conferences have been spent on, and held, respectively, in favour of Lake Chad, yet the water body ceases not to dwindle in size and depth.
Fed by the Chari River with some water flowing from the Yobe River in Nigeria and Niger, fed by its tributary the Logone, Lake Chad is a mere ten metres at its deepest.
As we pen this editorial piece, the depth of the lake is estimated at a sheer 1.5 metres.
Over the past 13,000 years, Lake Chad has grown and shrunk variously with changes in climate. It is estimated that around 4000 BC when the lake was at its largest, it covered about 400,000 km². Around 8500 BC, 5500 BC, 2000 BC, and 100 BC the lake nearly dried up.
In the 1960s it had an area of more than 26,000 km² but between 1963 and 1998, the lake shrank by as much as 95 percent. In 1983, it was reported to have covered between 10,000 km² and 25,000 km². By 2000 its extent had fallen to less than 1,500 km².
The large, shallow lake, which provides water to more than 20 million people living in the four countries that surround it (Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria) has had its size varied over the centuries by environmental circumstances ranging from increased demand for water by the local population, overgrazing in the area surrounding the lake, causing desertification and a decline in vegetation, inefficient damming and irrigation and shifting climatic conditions, with climate change blamed for 50 to 75 percent of the lake’s water’s disappearance.
The shrinking of Lake Chad is comparable to the destruction of a home to many life species that thrive in and around the water body; more than 44 species of algae, large areas of swamp and reed beds and many floating islands; domicile for a wide variety of wildlife including hippopotamus, crocodile, and large communities of migrating birds including wintering ducks, waterfowl and shore birds; two near-endemic birds River Prinia and the Rusty Lark.
The shrinking of the lake is threatening nesting sites of the Black Crowned Crane and, of course, fish. Furthermore, the birds and animals in the area that are important sources of food for the local population are also threatened.
The diminution of Lake Chad is not only hostile to flora and fauna, it is also a source of several different conflicts verging on which country has the rights to the remaining water. Violence too, is increasing between farmers and herders who want the water for their crops and livestock and are constantly diverting the water. Then the fishermen want the remaining water in the lake to stay so they can continue to fish.
Since the 1960s, a plan to divert the Ubangi River for its abundant water to regenerate the dying Lake Chad and provide livelihood in fishing and enhanced agriculture to inhabitants of the Central African region and Sahelians has been shuntted between regional and international drawers and conference tables.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Nigerian engineer J. Umolu and Italian firm Bonifica (Transaqua Scheme), proposed an inter-basin water transfer schemes.
In 1994, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) proposed a similar project and at a March, 2008 Summit, the Heads of State of the LCBC member countries committed to the diversion project.
In April, 2008, the LCBC advertised a request for proposals for a World Bank-funded feasibility study.
More than 50 years on, the Lake Chad to-and-fro tango is now being staged in Cameroon. As recently as December 2, 2013, discussions were underway at the Yaounde Conference Centre. For the umpteenth time, experts discussed the adoption of the resolutions of the 59th ordinary session of the Lake Chad Basin Commission concerning the issue of transferring water from the Congo Basin into Lake Chad.
About 30 million people living in the Lake Chad Basin await anxiously with migrate-or-perish feelings for the Ubangi River water to begin flowing into Lake Chad.
