Lake Chad
Lake Chad, located in Central Africa, is a vital inland body of water that has supported diverse ecosystems and approximately 30 million people who rely on it for fresh water and fish. Historically, it was much larger, but the lake has shrunk to about 5% of its original size over the past fifty years, primarily due to human activities such as excessive grazing, deforestation, and unsustainable irrigation practices. This significant reduction in size has led to declining fish populations and increased competition among communities for the remaining resources, resulting in conflicts, particularly between pastoralists and farmers.
The lake's unique biodiversity includes 176 fish species and a rich variety of birds, making it an essential habitat for wildlife, including migratory bird populations. Conservation efforts have been established to protect this region, with several national parks and reserves designated as Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance. However, these efforts face challenges from habitat degradation, hunting pressures, and the impacts of climate change. Additionally, newly discovered crude oil deposits may influence the local economies, but they could also exacerbate existing tensions over resource rights. Lake Chad remains a crucial cultural and ecological resource, reflecting the complex interplay between human needs and environmental sustainability in the region.
Lake Chad
- Category: Inland Aquatic Biomes.
- Geographic Location: Central Africa.
- Summary: Lake Chad supports an abundance of life, but is shrinking at an alarming rate; conservation efforts are widespread but not entirely effective.
Lake Chad is a unique inland sea that receives water from four rivers and has no water outlet—yet has shrunk to roughly 5 percent of its original size within fifty years. This lake and its vast resources supported nearly 40 million people as of 2018, and its location in the southern Sahara Desert provides a perfect sanctuary for animals, making it a biome with rich biological diversity of global importance and an international meeting point for important animals, especially migrant birds. Crude oil deposits within its basin are set to affect the economies of the concerned countries, perhaps for the better. The lake, however, has become a point of contention for communal conflicts over rights to water use as it shrinks, threatening the livelihoods of pastoralists, fishers, and farmers in the area.
The name Chad is a local term meaning “a large expanse of water.” Lake Chad, in contrast to several other brackish or high-saline inland seas, such as the Caspian and Dead Seas, is still nearly entirely a freshwater lake. The lake is believed to be a remnant of an ancient sea that had drainage into the Atlantic Ocean through the Benue River in present-day Nigeria. Today Lake Chad is shared by four countries: Niger in the northwest, Chad in the east, Cameroon in the south, and Nigeria in its southwest portion.
The main influent rivers of Lake Chad are the Chari, which flows through Central African Republic, Chad, and Cameroon, and also collects the waters of the Logone River; the Komadugu-Yobe from Nigeria; and the El-Beid from Cameroon. The Chari River accounts for more than 90 percent of the water supplied to the lake, and it flows year-round, unlike the rest, which seasonally flow for only a few months each year.
Biodiversity
The lake and the wetlands of its basin combine to support biodiversity that is of global importance, including 176 fish species and 354 resident and 155 migrant bird species. Birds here include ostriches, bustards, pelicans, cranes, herons, ducks, marabous, storks, and egrets, which gather in the dried floodplains in populations as high as 450,000. Lake Chad is the wintering ground for several European bird species, too, such as white storks, ducks, waders, white-faced whistling ducks, and little egrets.
A stronghold for wildlife, Lake Chad provides habitat for animals in search of water and grasslands. These include several antelope species—dama gazelle, addax, korrigum, red-fronted gazelle, sitatunga, and kob—black-crowned cranes, giraffes, monitor lizards, elephants, lions, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and two otter species that thrive in Lake Chad's surface waters.
Conservation Efforts
The animals of Lake Chad have suffered from excessive hunting by the local population and habitat degradation by the activities of contending armies and rebel groups. Worse, the western black rhinoceros and scimitar oryx have gone extinct in the area. Since 2000, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), a cooperative body of the four national governments here, has declared the whole of the lake a transboundary Ramsar Wetlands Site of International Importance.
The basin area features nine national parks, three biosphere reserves, one World Heritage Site, and one faunal reserve. The preserved areas include Lake Chad National Park (Nigeria), Zina-Waza National Park (Cameroon), Andre-Felix National Park (Central African Republic), and Fitri Biosphere Reserve (Chad). The management of these protected areas, however, has generally been evaluated as being very poor.
Human Activity
According to the United Nations in 2022, about 30 million people depend on Lake Chad as a source of fresh water and the abundance of fish for their daily survival. The basin is rich in cultural diversity, drawing people from ethnic groups and tribes such as the Kanuri, Mobber, Buduma, Haoussa, Kanembu, Kotoko, Shewa Arabs, Haddad, Kouri, Fulani, and Manga. In Chad alone, more than 130 languages are spoken by people living in the Lake Chad basin. They are mainly pastoralists (camel and cattle rearers); fishers; and farmers growing cereals, legumes, vegetables, and forage crops.
Resources collected within and around the lake also contribute to the livelihood of the people. These resources include atroun, a sodium carbonate complex that is rich in minerals; and dihe (Spirulina), an alga with high nutritional content that grows naturally in the northeastern pools of the lake at the end of the rainy season. Dihe is a local dietary product; its nutritional value was confirmed by the United Nations World Food Conference in 1974, when it was declared an outstanding foodstuff for the future. Dihe has wide usefulness in food industries and in human and animal diets. Since 1981, the international market for dihe has taken off.
Crude oil was discovered within the lake's basin and has recently been found in Cameroon. Furthermore, the receding areas of the lake have provided another opportunity of farming on the land via a farming system called fadama.
Environmental Threats
Research has shown that since 1963, the lake has shrunk to as little as 5 percent of its original size, from 9,653 square miles (25,000 square kilometers) to 521 square miles (1,350 square kilometers). The shrinking size of the lake is due to the effects of excessive grazing; deforestation; and unsustainable irrigation projects built by Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad that have diverted water from the lake and its feeder rivers for irrigation and hydroelectric power. As a result of its reduced size, fish harvests have greatly declined, and several friendly communities along the shore are now in conflict about boundaries and access to water and pasture. Half of the remaining lake is invaded by an alien tree, Prosopis spp., that was introduced to stop desertification in the Sahel region. Furthermore, pastoralists moving their animals to greener pastures come into conflict with farmers.
Climate change has also contributed to the shrinking of the lake's surface and other complications around the lake and the surrounding area. Heavy rains in 2024 led to extensive flooding in the region and over six hundred deaths as the rivers that contribute to lake Chad overflowed their banks.
LCBC plans to construct canals to supply water from the Ubangi River (one of the tributaries of the Congo River) into Lake Chad, but the project will cost millions of dollars and its launch has been hampered by financial, political, and organizational constraints. The LCBC and the United Nations have also discussed implementing water-efficiency strategies, but much of the area lacks the infrastructure necessary to successfully carry out such strategies.
Bibliography
Batello, Caterina, et al. The Future Is an Ancient Lake. Food and Agriculture Organization, 2004.
Hanbury, Shanna. “Heavy Rains in Lake Chad Basin Leave Hundreds Dead across Countries.” Mongabay, 20 Sep. 2024, news.mongabay.com/short-article/heavy-rains-in-lake-chad-basin-leave-hundreds-dead-across-countries/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2024.
Lake Chad Basin Commission. Survey of the Water Resources of the Chad Basin for Development Purposes—Surface Water Resources in the Lake Chad Basin. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and FAO, 1972.
"Lake Chad Basin Commission, UNDP, and Partners Call for Increased Efforts to Scale Up Stabilization Interventions in the Lake Chad Basin." UNDP Africa, 9 Jun. 2022, www.undp.org/africa/press-releases/lake-chad-basin-commission-undp-and-partners-call-increased-investment-scale-stabilization-interventions-lake-chad-basin. Accessed 29 Sep. 2024.
Lemoalle, Jacques. Lake Chad: A Changing Environment—Dying and Dead Seas, Climatic Versus Anthropic Causes. Springer-Verlag, 2004.
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Taub, Ben. "Lake Chad: The World’s Most Complex Humanitarian Disaster." The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/lake-chad-the-worlds-most-complex-humanitarian-disaster. Accessed 29 Sep. 2024.
UN Environment Programme. "The Tale of a Disappearing Lake." Reliefweb, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 28 Feb. 2018, reliefweb.int/report/chad/tale-disappearing-lake. Accessed 29 Sep. 2024.