The international conference on saving the Lake Chad was held in Abuja, Nigeria from February 25 to 28, 2018. The theme of the meeting was, “Saving the Lake Chad to revitalise the Basin’s ecosystem for sustainable livelihood, security and development.” With over 1600 participants and presenters attending, this meeting grappled with the issues of how to go about saving Lake Chad. It was concluded that the Transaqua project, which would take water from the right tributary of inter-lacustrine region, and the River Congo, conveying the 2,000km water channel to Chari River, is the preferred feasible option to save the lake.
The urgency of saving Lake Chad
Over the last 60 years, the size of Lake Chad has decreased by 95 per cent as a result of extended drought, impacts of the climate and lower levels of rainfall in the region. The reduction, which has been called an ecological disaster, has not only destroyed livelihoods but also led to the loss of invaluable biodiversity.
The Lake Chad basin is about eight per cent of the size of Africa and is shared by Algeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Libya, Nigeria, Niger and Sudan. These eight countries have an estimated population of 373.6 million with 12 per cent estimated in 2013 living around the Lake Chad region. Together with the Congo River basin, these two basins constitute more than 21 per cent of the size of Africa and have become crucial to the project of reversing global warming and its disastrous effects.
There could be no saving of Lake Chad without the unification of the water resources of the inter-lacustrine region with the underground water resources in the aquifers in the present regions of Central and North Africa.
The lake is a source of water for the spirits of the region, water for drinking, sanitation and all aspects of keeping life and limb together.
In the 1960s, the lake hosted about 135 species of fish and fishermen captured 200,000 metric tonnes of fish every year, providing an important source of food security and income to the basin’s populace and beyond. During this period, it is estimated that there were about 20,000 commercial fish sellers in Chad alone.
President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria captured the urgency of saving Lake Chad when he stated, “The time to act is now. The time to bail out the region is now. The time to show our humanity is now.”
One of the most impressive aspects of the conference was the technical expertise of the Nigerian water engineers, hydrologists and climate scientists who have been studying the questions of the drying up of Lake Chad for decades. The linguistic and academic differences between Nigeria and the other member states were apparent throughout the meeting. The low level of participation of academic and other researchers from French-speaking states of Central Africa Republic, Chad, Niger or Cameroon was evident.
Although the general urgency of the question of saving Lake Chad was echoed by nearly every important speaker, it was the scholars and engineers from the north- eastern region of Nigeria who were the most forceful of the need for action right away. It was obvious from their representation that some had followed the varying proposals that had been put forward. Slides showing the impact of the lowering of the water table in the northeastern region graphically showed the impact on agriculture, fishing and livestock. Figures on the number of internally displaced persons inside Borno State were supposed to be over two million. There were an estimated 7million displaced in the metropolitan areas of Maiduguri, Ndjamena and surrounding urban areas in the past five years.
In the past year, the government of Nigeria worked to establish the North East Development Commission, with the clear understanding that the problems of insecurity in that region were not simply a security/military question. One limitation of this new direction was the opening up of northeastern Nigeria to a plethora of international non-governmental organisations that remain unaccountable to any form of supervision.
In July 2000, the Heads of State and Government of the Lake Chad basin at the 10th summit held in N’djamena, Chad, had agreed to mobilise US $6 million for the feasibility study of inter basin water transfer from Ubangi River in the Central African Republic to the Lake Chad. A five-year investment plan (FYIP 2013-2017) aimed at safeguarding the ecosystem of the basin was adopted at the 14th summit of the LCBC heads of state and government held in N’Djamena, Chad on April 30, 2012. Among other aspects of the five-year investment plan was the water transfer project from Ubangi River to Lake Chad.
“A donor conference with the aim of raising funds for the implementation of the five-year investment plan and the national action plan was held in April 2014 in Bologna, Italy.”
Activists from the University of Maiduguri were clear – When will the meetings and planning stop and action start? What were the initiatives that could be undertaken by the governments of the basin countries prior to any grand scheme of water transfer? Some younger ones took the view that given the gestation period for the transfer of water from the inter-lacustrine region and the Congo River, there should be water transfer from the Benue River. Calmer heads who had studied this possibility elaborated on the consequences of this option and pointed to the studies that spelt out the differing implication of this option. One unscheduled presenter declared that there was a billionaire ready to spend US $10 billion to initiate a project that would start right away to save the lake, and that there should be an examination of doing the job without going outside Nigeria. The anti-regional and pan-African spirit embedded in the arguments was patently clear.
The second position that sought to gain a footing in this international meeting was that of UNESCO (which was supposed to be a co-sponsor of the conference). This position was articulated by the UNESCO Deputy Director-General, Getachew Engida, who officially launched the BIOsphere and Heritage of Lake Chad (BIOPALT) project on the opening day, February 26, 2018. According to UNESCO, the BIOPALT project aims to increase knowledge of Lake Chad, restore wetlands, rehabilitate wildlife migration corridors and promote sustainable income-generating activities.
When stripped bare of the call to “mobilise recent advances in science and international efforts to reverse environmental degradation.” the position of UNESCO sounded similar to the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) experts who wanted nothing to be done to hurt wild game in the region. It was clear that the position of UNESCO was that some of the statements about the future of Lake Chad were “alarmist.” According to the speech, the project BIOPALT “involves a wide range of activities, ranging from the establishment of an early warning system for droughts and floods, to the restoration of degraded ecosystems such as the habitats of elephant and Kouri cattle (Bos taurus longifrons) – the latter being an emblematic endemic species that plays an important role in social cohesion.
The project also focuses attention on income-generating activities through the promotion of a green economy and the development of the basin’s natural resources. In particular, the project will help states prepare their application files for the creation of a trans-boundary biosphere reserve in the basin and nomination files for the designation of Lake Chad, as a world heritage site. The three-year project is financed by the AfDB to the amount of US $ 6,456,000 and is implemented via a multi-sectoral approach involving all UNESCO sectors at headquarters and in the field.
If this language obfuscated the real position of UNESCO, then it became clear in the other plenary presentation by the chief of section on hydrological systems and water scarcity, UNESCO, Paris.
At the plenary discussion, I intervened and asked why UNESCO was presenting the World Bank position of water as a commodity with a price. What the hydrological systems section did not disclose was that when they were representing the Dublin statement on water and sustainable development, they were basically representing the World Bank argument that had been articulated in a paper by John Briscoe in 1996.
The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use. And adequate amount of safe water is necessary to prevent death from dehydration, reduce the risk of water-related disease and provide for consumption, cooking, personal and domestic hygienic requirements.
The position of UNESCO was a presentation of the French intellectuals of IRD that nothing should be done about the drying up of Lake Chad. The IRD had inspired the Lake Chad Basin Sustainable Development Programme (PRODEBALT), which had been rolled out by the AfDB in 2008.
After the six years of this programme for sustainable development when the people of the region were clearly poorer, the AfDB, in December 2014, launched the Programme to Rehabilitation and Strengthen the Resilience of Lake Chad Basin Systems (PRESIBALT).
“PRESIBALT will facilitate the rehabilitation of all hydrometeorological networks of the basin and the establishment of robust simulation tools for rational water resource management. Furthermore, the programme will build LCBC’s capacities to optimally use the regional database instituted by the water charter and finance basin water -resource – users’ fora for better information sharing. In parallel, an early warning system and an agricultural information system will be set up to prevent the risk of natural disasters. Lastly, PRESIBALT will set up an integrated knowledge – sharing system on the programme activities which will be regularly disseminated via the LCBC website in order to build on and manage the knowledge and experiences.”
In the thinking of this author, saving Lake Chad will require a complete overhaul of the curriculum in Africa to train millions of hydrologists, engineers, climate scientists, social scientists and the intellectual cadres to meet the challenges of the drying up of Lake Chad. The UNESCO plan smacked of a minimalist interference to ensure that select schools were further integrated into the IRD intellectual networks that hid behind environmentalism to plan to do nothing about the drying up of Lake Chad.
Once the stark differences between the neo liberal line of UNESCO that water had a price was spelt out in the opening plenary session, young activists from diverse backgrounds came forward and said that the question of saving Lake Chad could not be measured in monetary terms. The minister of Water Resources of Nigeria openly articulated respect for the participation of UNESCO and co-sponsoring this major international conference and stated that it was not the expectation of the Nigerian government for UNESCO to be involved in infrastructural projects because that was not their mandate.
The intellectual position of UNESCO on integrated water resource management had been embraced by the German technocrats of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) who carried out studies on the Lake Chad basin ecosystem. It seemed as if there had been an agreement on the division of labour on controlling information and studies.
In any case, after the first day, the conference ignored discussions on BIOPALT and there was simply a routine reference to this UNESCO plan in the final communiqué of the conference.
The third position was that of the transfer of water from the Congo to replenish Lake Chad. It was this option that carried the day, and as stated earlier, was stated in the roadmap for the future of Lake Chad, that, “the inter-basin water transfer is no longer an option but a necessity.”
In light of the fact that so much power would be used to pump water from Ubangi River to Lake Chad, there were other proposals that were presented at the conference, such as the water transfer through the Ubangi, using the solar option to power the pumps instead of hydroelectric dams. There was also the presentation of the Canadian group that proffered the plan of the TransAfrica Pipeline that would bring water from East to West Africa through an 8,000km pipeline crossing the north of Lake Chad as a supplement to the Great Green wall.
What was accepted for the conference and reflected in the Abuja declaration of the conference and of the meeting of the heads of state and government was the old plan of the Italian company, Bonfica-Transaqua, which would tap the water from the lower reaches of the Congo River and build a series of polyfunctional areas along a 2400 km canal and water transfer system from the inter-lacustrine base of the Congo River to Lake Chad.
The idea of Bonfica is to transfer about 100million cubic meters of water per year from the Congo River basin to the Lake Chad and Sahel district. This represents three-four per cent of the water that flows from the Congo River into the Atlantic Ocean.
The agreed water transfer option will include an inter-African polyfunctional trading area (IPTA) (equipped for the containers exchange in order to allow connection of Mombasa, Kenya, and Lagos, Nigeria to the oceanic ports). The Mombasa to Lagos highway would be part of the New Silk Road of the: One Belt One Road” plan that had been outlined by the Chinese government.
There would also be regulation of the water flow regime on the affected rivers in order to make them navigable. This canal system would intersect with the construction of a major inland port in the country now called Central African Republic. There would be a road system beside the canal.
The Italian ambassador announced that the Italian government would donate €1.8 million for the environmental and engineering study. The plan was that this would be a US $70 billion over 30 years. One of the discussants reminded the Italians that in 1994, they had stated that the environmental assessment plan would cost over US $ 10 million. Why was €1.8 million offered more than 24 years later?
Many Africans are still unaware that French multinational companies, such as Suez-Ondeo, Vivendi-Veolia, and Bouygues-SAUR, are competing with other major European water companies such as RWE-Thames Water (Germany) and AWG- Anglian (Great Britain) in the water business. The unspoken question of the meeting was the influence of large water privatisation companies such as Veolia in discussions on the future of water resources in Africa. Water activists around the world have been able to reveal consistent prioritisation of private profit at the expense of the environment and public interest. Hence, when the LCBC promotes the idea of public-private partnerships to save Lake Chad, it is not clear that the scholars in N’djamena have followed the controversies surrounding French water companies around the world. The dominance of French institutions in the French speaking countries ensures that there is no comparable study, such as “Money down the drain: How private control of water waste public resources.”
There was more than one statement from the plenary floor that Africans should focus on stemming illicit capital flows and drop the constant babble about public- private partnership and cooperation with “development partners.” It was hammered home that the so-called “donors” could not be the basis for the financing of such an important pan-African venture as replenishing Lake Chad. In the end, there was the call for the AfDB to establish the US $50 billion fund to finance the inter-basin water transfer scheme.
The communiqué of the conference states in part, “The African Development Bank is to facilitate the creation of the Lake Chad Fund of US $50 billion, to be sourced from African states and donations by Africa’s development partners to fund the Lake Chad IBWT and infrastructure projects.”
What remains clear, however, was that the AfDB in its present conceptual persuasion could not be the vehicle for project of saving Lake Chad. In January 2018, a branch of the AfDB was opened in Abuja, Nigeria, and in the medium term, the intellectual and social ferment that is raging in Nigeria cannot be kept out of the decision-making frameworks of the bank.
Responsibility of the African Union
In the past, leaders of the Lake Chad Basin had treated the drying up of the lake as a regional issue. The projections that by 2050, average temperatures would have increased by approximately 2 to 3° C with dire consequences for the entire planet, has focused attention that the challenges involved with the drying up of the lake were not only a regional or pan-African matter, but a global question. It was thus quite noticeable that the African Union representation was at a very low level, while there were clear and concise statements from the secretary-general of the United Nations and from the UN representative to Economic Community of West African States.
The more the discussion veered toward the question of the waters of the Congo basin, the more it became clear that the planning for Lake Chad had to be done on a continental and pan-African scale. More importantly, the conference pointed to the low level of understanding of the issues by many presenters. The principal parties had engaged in knowledge management to the point where many in the hall could not properly follow the disputations. What was evident was that the varying water companies were there to collect information, but the biggest water companies in the world could hide behind international organisations that supported the idea of the privatisation of water.
In the official documents on water, there is the repetition of the mantra that “women play a key role for water resource management and that gender mainstreaming is essential.
The leadership signed on to the following, even though their day to day political actions contradict the spirit of these resolutions: the various studies carried out show that there is no solution to the shrinking of Lake Chad that does not involve recharging the lake by transfer of water from outside the basin; inter-basin water transfer is not an option, but a necessity; failure to take appropriate and timely action will result in Lake Chad completely drying up soon and that would cause humanitarian crisis, pose serious security challenges, not only for the region, but for the entire African continent and the world; the Transaqua project, which would take water from the right tributary of River Congo, conveying the water through a 2,000km channel to Chari River, is the preferred feasible option.
Despite the fact that there were sessions that dealt with funding the project, the final position was that the AfDB should establish a US $50 billion infrastructure fund.
This writer maintained that the money for the restoration of Lake Chad would be done when the Nigerian state repatriates the US $350 billion held by Nigerians overseas. Four factors will be needed – social peace (biggest task), political will, use of African resources, mobilising the people on the meaning of global warming for Africa.
Only a concerted movement based on full mobilisation of the people across Africa and the world can stop the drying up of Lake Chad. Thus far, the focus has been on studies, lobbying “development partners” and seeking resources for feasibility studies, but the evidence from BIOPALT and the green alternatives from the AFDB point to the dead end of the UN/World Bank approaches of the past 25 years.
There will be the need for a massive social movement with social change of epic propositions to bring about the steps needed to restore Lake Chad. Of course, this will mean a fundamental challenge to capitalism in Africa.
Being an excerpt of Professor Cambell’s analysis of the conference on Lake Chad which was held late February 2018. Professor Campbell is the distinguished Kwame Nkrumah Chair of African Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. He is the author of the book, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney and most recently, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya: Lessons For Africa in the Forging of African Unity.
