Water and Politics in the Lake Chad Basin: In the maelstrom

Welcome back after reading week! This week we're doing to have a more detailed look at a particular basin, The Lake Chad Basin

The Lake Chad basin is the largest endorheic basin in the world (Mahmood et al., 2020), covering 8% of the surface of the continent of Africa. It is home to around 45 million people across 7 countries: Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad Algeria, Central African Republic, and Libya, (see figure 1).

Figure 1 Map showing Lake Chad Basin

17 million people in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad live on and around Lake Chad - relying on water from the lake for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes. Lake Chad is a very shallow lake which makes it vulnerable to even small changes in hydrological inputs and outputs (Mahmood et al., 2019).

Figure 2 The decline of Lake Chad between 1963 and 2013

Since the 1960s the lake has decreased in size by around 95% from 25,000km3 to 1350km3 in 2001(Coe & Foley, 2001). Figure 2 shows the extent of this decline. The UN and multiple world leaders have warned of the impending disappearance of Lake Chad altogether. Most empirical accounts link the dramatic shrinking of Lake Chad to the impact of climate change on precipitation levels and variability and the increased extraction of water for irrigation agriculture in the basin (Mahmood et al., 2020). 

The rapid decline in Lake Chad's size has displaced people and caused significant social unrest, resulting in conflict and poverty in what has become known as the 'Lake Chad Basin Crisis'.  7.2 million people in the affected areas across Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger are facing severe food insecurity, with the UN stating that 10.2 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. Armed terror groups, most notably Boko Haram, local militia and state security forces now compete to control the fragile region. 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes, moving to what have become overcrowded urban areas

However, over the next few posts I am going to trash the conventional wisdom that climate change is the primary cause for the lake's decline and how in turn it is this decline is responsible for the Lake Chad Basin Crisis. It is my view that the shrinking of Lake Chad has caused serious disruption and need for adaptation in the basin, but it is the political and security situation that has caused the disruption to become a full blown 'crisis'. We will come to see how the interplay between physical and political factors in the Lake Chad Basin creates a vicious cycle, or maelstrom, of food insecurity, mass displacement, violence and poverty.