In what has become a relative, 'life's work', as it were, over the past 5 weeks I have tried to elucidate at least some of the political geographies of water in the Lake Chad basin. One thing I have not discussed is groundwater in the basin, which some call a key solution to the shrinking of the Lake. If you want to know more about groundwater in the Lake Chad basin, please go to Kae's blog post - which covers the subject really nicely!
What has struck me the most as I have dug deeper into the Lake Chad Basin Crisis is how most figures relating to the Lake seem to contradict one another. Scholars cannot even agree on how deep the lake is! It seems as though every empirical study uses a different method which produce values that vary massively. Further, studies that link demographic change with the lake's decline frequently use population figures for the Lake and entire basin interchangeably - seemingly picking whichever one best illustrates their point.
I have presented to you empirical accounts of how climate change and irrigation have decimated Lake Chad to a point of no return. Nagarajan et al. (2018), however, trash these accounts as empirically lacking and even blatantly misleading. They instead cite how the lake has actually increased in size since the 1980s to 14,000 km3 (see figure 1), that irrigation is very limited, and how the basin is marked by inherent variability (and has been for thousands of years). They also point to the lack of available hydrological data in the Lake Chad basin, which makes assessing water resources increasingly difficult, and makes drawing conclusions from this incomplete data pointless and misleading.
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| Figure 1 2018 USGS survery of Lake Chad |
So where did our earlier figure of 1350km3 come from? Well, according to Magrin (2016) this figure is based off the lake levels at their lowest point since 1950, in 1973 and 1983, and that now the lake has actually increased size to 14800km3. Magrin (2016) outlines the 'myth' of Lake Chad's dissapearance, argues that western science has repeatedly labelled Lake Chad as in decline because western imaginaries of lakes do not factor in the year-on-year variability that wetland basins like Lake Chad exhibit. What is alarming about this empirical obfuscation is that many NGOs and world leaders use the data to make decisions, decisions that drastically impact the lives of those who live in and around Lake Chad, and, as we have seen, different parties are using whatever data best suits them to promote certain agendas.
Why is this?
Well from an NGO perspective - a disappearing lake and subsequent humanitarian crisis, with thousands of helpless Africans is right up their street. A humanitarian crisis gives NGOs agency and purpose - so no wonder they'll pick whatever data they can find, set up a website with some really emotive photographs and throw a bag of rice at the first emaciated Chadian they set their eyes on. It probably makes them feel very good about themselves.
We have already discussed why riparian states have misrepresented the truth. But for the rest of us - the notion of an ever shrinking lake, a lake that is home to vast riches in wildlife and traditional ways of like, is very African isn't it. It certainly fits into the Joanna Lumley and David Attenborough visions of African beauty and how it is under threat. Oh how terrible is it that one of the world's great natural aquatic wonders is dissapearing because of overpopulation, overuse and climate change? Wouldn't it be great if we could just make it come back?
As for hydrology, I am sorry Tatiana, Richard and Julian but over the course of the blog I have come to feel like it displays a sort of 'masculinist positivism'. Every time some new figure is produced or some new metric is devised Africa is effectively remade into something new. It almost feels like, from the papers I have read at least, Africa becomes the playground for western academics - who are free to produce Africa in any way they see fit.
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