Powerless Plight As Lake Chad Shrinks

For 40 years, people living along the shores of Lake Chad have watched helplessly as it vanished before their eyes. Stark warnings, grand pledges of action and prayers have failed to make a difference -- Africa's fourth largest lake has been drying up like snow melting in the sun since the 1960s, experts say.

"You see, last year the lake came to here," Isaac Bikhat, an official in the office of the Chadian environment minister said, anxiously drawing the river in the sand. "Today, it is five metres (16 feet) lower."

Lake Chad, which lies in hot and arid territory on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, shrunk from 25,000 square kilometres (9,650 square miles) in 1964 to less than 2,000 square kilometres in 1990 -- the sort of problem that will be in the spotlight on World Water Day on Thursday.

Designated by the UN General Assembly, the day has been observed internationally every March 22 since 1993 to focus on problems surrounding this precious commodity. This year's theme is water scarcity, notably as global warming begins to bite.

For Lake Chad, climate change and increased human use of its waters for fishing and agriculture are blamed for the fall in the water level of what is the world's third largest totally landlocked lake.

However, older residents of Bol, a town about 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of the capital N'Djamena, say the lake's rise and fall is a cyclical phenomenon which occurs every 40 years.

"Children of today don't believe us but, we, who have seen the two eras, are surprised," Youssouf Bodoum Bani, the head of Bol's highest traditional regional authority said.

from Terra Daily