Aaron Kaah- Yancho
aaronkah@yahoo.co.uk
The Chad Lake basin has a
surface area of 1 million square miles around it, including the far north
regions of Cameroon.
The Chad Lake basin
Since this once might inland
sea shrunk by 90% in the 1970’s this region has become one of the world’s
poorest. Yet even as the Lake Chad shrunk, the population of the region
expanded.
An estimated 42 million people
now live in this region, many of whom migrated from the Sahel region in the north where arid land is turning into desert sand dunes every year.
The combination of
disappearing resources and the increasing demand for land is making an already
fragile poor region even poorer. Crop production has fallen as water becomes
very increasingly scarce. 97% of food crop production in this region is rain
fed. The extensive dry seasons is testimony that food crop production has fallen to a considerable level according to
the World Food Program.
The Lake Chad River Basin is
occupied by Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Congo and
Central African Republic.
MEAGRE RESOURCES
In the Far North region of
Cameroon all the riverbeds have dried up and the food crops on the farm fields
have turned into dry sticks in the sand dunes. As families try to make the most
of the scanty resources women and children trek long distances crying for
water. When homes lack clean water for cooking these girls don’t attend school
at all. In worse times when food is not available these girls have no alternative than to go farming
in order to lean their families support in search of a food
security.
The grazing of livestock and
the destruction of the forest for fuel wood advances erosions and encroachment
of the desert. This year the dry season has extended to seven months and only
three bags of grain and millet can be a family’s source of primary income and
food security. Women whose only asset is
landed property are mostly affected.
This bad situation is becoming
precarious as the farmers plant too much food crops and too densely on the same
pieces of land. This methods exhaust the
soils as farm fields are left unfertile. This gruesome picture explains how
agricultural output has fallen in the Lake Chad river basin even as the climate
changes put an already fragile situation to a mess.
The story of the Lake Chad
basin is exactly what scientists have been echoing worldwide. This is a simple
illustration in response to the climate changes, the unsustainable land use
systems, lack of water and forest destruction around sub sahara Africa and the
world.
As this reporter tours the far north region of Cameroon, the
land is fast turning in to a desert as the inhabitance live in near famine
conditions.
THEEVIDENCE
Change in the Lake Chad basin is constant and the people who made their homes out there are learning to make the most of this with the available limited resources. They farm and harvest their crops in the extreme conditions, sometimes following the rainy season which is always unpredictable.
Change in the Lake Chad basin is constant and the people who made their homes out there are learning to make the most of this with the available limited resources. They farm and harvest their crops in the extreme conditions, sometimes following the rainy season which is always unpredictable.
This year the rainy season has
skipped for about seven months from November to June with a dry and very dusty
weather.
According to the farmers in
the far north region of Cameroon, Lake Chad basin flooded regularly in history
providing fertile soils for the subsistent farmers in the area. But because of
it extreme shallow nature the Lake fluctuated dramatically making the farming
activities in the basin area uncertain and tidious.
The Global International
Waters Assessment, in a study of the region published by the United Nations,
reported that the Lake changed from
short and back again to its original size. The fishermen off the shores chased
this shifting patterns upstream.
As time is passing, this
irregular pattern has witnessed another story. The Sahel region which covers
the basin right up to the north of Sahara is drying up and in the last 30 years
the UN, in a report, said the Lake Chad River
basin area had attracted “the most
substantial and sustained decline in rainfall measured anywhere in the world
today.” This is blamed on the rising ocean temperatures that lead to global
warming.
THE
PEOPLE DELIMMA
As the Sahel dries up, many of the people who are nomads are chasing the south of the basin in search of arid land. But as the lake shrinks the rainy season is faded out as well.
As the population in the basin
grows and its climate changed, the locals are striving to make the most of the
limited resources available in the region and to control the disappearing
resources.
The normal agricultural life has become an uphill task as the farmers struggle to adjust with the shifting river beds.
The normal agricultural life has become an uphill task as the farmers struggle to adjust with the shifting river beds.
When the lake flooded in the
past large scale agricultural production
took place in the area but today sand dunes have taken over the farm fields.
Some projects to irrigate farm land instead drain away fertile wetlands.
Leaving the peasants down stream desperate in need of water for farming.
As the streams were diverted,
farming along the basin diminished. Without the plant cover, the temperatures
in the soils raised and water in soils evaporated swiftly.
As the mismanagement of the
land was intense and increasing, the
vegetation was also lost
As the farm lands are buried under sand dunes
and as the people strive for a food security, the basin is now prone to violence. Many villagers tussle
for water resources and grazing fields. And for many people daily life is
changing as violence is also encroaching.
In the Nigerian section of the
Lake, villages are buried under sand dunes even as the desert extends fast
southwards. The residents in the villages have become the united Nations called
“environmental refugees”.
In the nearby Sudan’s region
of Darfur, this situation has reached crisis proportions as at least 200,000
died since civil war broke out there in 2003. The United Nations secretary
general Koffi Anan called it “no accident|” that the violent in Darfur erupted
during the drought in the Sahel where precipitation declined 40% since the 1980’s. He also
attributed strife in Burkina Faso, Somalia and the Ivory Coast to a “similar
volatile mix of and water insecurity”.
A development organization
-Heifer International Cameroon is helping the villages in the far north region
of Cameroon to make the most of the resources on the ground. Farmers under various
organizations are taught simple ways of pasture establishment, animal
management and other ways of improving nutrition and hygiene in their homes.
The knowledge, most of these
groups are earning is key to the development of their lives and homes.
One of the beneficiaries- Mama
Bitang has awakened her life and that of her family with 9 dependents. This widow
has fought poverty with Heifer donated animals (sheep) and mentoring through
her Femmes Ambiteuses common initiative group.
Unfortunately this stitch in
time is not enough as the means is limited. People who live in this basin are
seeing little or no benefits from international efforts to help them. In 2008
an international organization Global Environment Facility mapped out a 20year
plan as a start to a revolution to reforests the land and change water
diversion policies in the area but the task has been too slow.
According to Heifer
International Cameroon only 3% of household in the far north region of Cameroon
with 6 million people had access to potable water or farm land.
As an urgent remedy is in wait,
the efforts to institute broad base policies is not helping at all at the Lake
Chad River Basin, because the region and
its people was fragmented by controversial policies laid down
by the different governments around the Lake basin and the unnecessary numerous
tribal conflicts over land and water resources.
With limited means or
infrastructures, information dissemination has been fragile and poor, making it
a challenging task to educate people on the issues at stake and to introduce
broad base policies to people who are either on the run or environmental
refugees.
And despite the best efforts
of a community that depends on one another, it remains difficult to overcome
the stultifying effects of the droughts. And who doubts that Violence erupts where
resources are scanty and where Governments make very little efforts to help the
people in need because of corruption
and bad governance.
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