The Lake Chad is a source of livelihood to millions of people that live around it. Nationals from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger share the lake in different proportions. Tilting the soil and sailing the water for 24hrs in every single day of the year, there could be no better resource than the lake within the over 2.4 million km2 circumference of the Lake Chad river basin. No wonder Kanem empire, one of world’s longest documented kingdoms in human history flourished within this region for over a thousand year. Hunger is unheard of and poverty had no place here. All that was shared was the love, we-feeling, joy and of course food.
Out of the blues, the woodland began to disappear, and the northern Sahara desert began to encroach as fast as wild fire. Temperature is now at the extremes as it alternates between day and night. This is no good news to the biotic factors inhabiting the region. The mobile ones began to migrate while others chose to exit the universe in their entity. For those that are left, their lives are endangered, if only they had choice, they would have left, since they don’t they allowed the situation to decide their fate. Living components began to decline drastically in number as they do so in specie.
To the over 68 million people in the region, the story is no longer the same; the lake has shrunk to less than 1,350 km2 now, the Kanem kingdom fall alongside the lake. Hunger is prevalent and one needs not stress himself to notice it. Greed, poverty and illiteracy have now taken over. Fighting among different nationals over the residual water is quite rampant. Every new threat has the potential of triggering another, just like a chain. Now, terrorism has set in consequent to poverty and illiteracy but indirectly to climate change. Human lives are lost in thousands yearly if not to bullets and bombs then to hunger and starvation. The situation is pathetic; millions are displaced both internally and otherwise. Properties worth billions of dollars are lost to this.
Climate change is real; it is the author of the most neglected environmental disaster on earth – the Lake Chad. Or perhaps, humans are to be blamed because they are the creators of climate change itself. If they are then, here is a responsibility they cannot shy away from – saving the Lake Chad. Inter-basin water transfer also known as transaqua is a project that has the potential of reversing the effect of climate change in the Lake Chad river basin. Ubangi river, a tributary of the biggest river in Africa, Amazon, will be diverted to Chari, the biggest tributary to Lake Chad in order to recharge the lake. This will also actualize to some extent the great green wall, a barrier between the Sahel and the Sahara desert, some 7 million hectares of land can be acquired for irrigational agriculture, canals can be constructed to link land lock countries in the region to the Atlantic ocean hence, opening them to international commerce and electricity will be generated in the course of the project. The project is capital intensive requiring some $14.5b, if actualized, the region will be transformed to where was known to be a center of hunger, starvation and terrorism to the food basket of the world.
Ultimate solution however is to boycott fossil fuel and cut down carbon emission in the entire world. After all, scientists have shown that Lake Chad’s shrinkage is attributed to air pollutions released in America and the European world which led to shifting rainfall patterns farther south living the northern region drier. That can be proven considering the fact that, Lake Chad regained some of it water when Europe decided to reduce carbon emission as seen in it satellite image of 2007. If that had continued, it would have recovered to its full size by now and even the Sahara desert could be reclaimed to some extent. That is a hope this vulnerable community cherish immeasurable!
Sadiq Muhammad Rijiya, Kano.
