Aaron kaah Yancho
K24newspaper/bamenda/Cameroon.
While
people in many parts of the world are thinking ahead how to adapt to the climate
changes, it’s impact are already
overwhelmingly being felt in
Africa. The situation at the Lake
Chad River Basin and the Far North Regions of Cameroon present a classic
challenge posed by climate changes as more than 42 million people had lost their
livelihoods over the last twenty years. Rainfall had unbelievably dropped
between 29 percent and 49 percent between 1968 and 1997, according to the
International Panel on Climate
change. The resulting effects was the drastic decline in food crop production.
The impact started from the Sahel which constitutes part of this region. As the Sahel was drying up, graziers who are nomads by tradition and necessity were chasing the south of the basin in search of arid land to feed their livestock. The shrinking of the Lake Chad River Basin made a bad situation precarious. This led to the vegetation of the region being lost. Without- plant cover, the temperatures in the soils raised as water in the soils evaporated swiftly. This absence of vegetation resulted to the high dead of cattle and the disappearance of agriculture. Most Fulani pastoralist without cattle lost not only their livelihood but heritage. “ When we lost a cattle it’s just like one of our family members has died” One Fulani pastoralist whose one but last cattle had just died told this reporter in tears.
The population in the basin had
risen even as its climate changed. To guard against hunger the locals strived to make the most of the limited resources
available and to control the disappearing natural resources. In struggling to
adjust to the shifting river beds of the Lake Chad River basin which provided
fertile land for farm work, food crop
production became not only an up hill task but not rewarding. The first early signs were droughts. It’s
the result of a string of recent droughts in this region that -the United
Nations' Environment Program (UNEP) renamed
climate change in the Sahel as
“ground zero.” These
droughts had frustrated farmers and
fishermen in their bid to provide for themselves and feed their families. Without a means to feed most girls
had abandoned schools to fend with their mothers in the dusty fields. In trying
to make ends meet women worked long hours in the fields. This meant they never
had time to learn a trade, get an education
or be part of the decision making in their communities.
When the lake flooded in the past
large scale agricultural production took place in the area but today red dusty
sand dunes had taken over thousands of hectares of farm land. Some projects to
irrigate farmland 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. Desert sand dunes and desertification took over the
fields.
With farm land buried under sand dunes,
the people strived to find hope in the diminishing resources. The competition over the few natural resources like grazing land
and water ponds prone the basin to
violence. As the villagers tussle for these water resources and grazing fields
the lack of protection for these
resources saw them diminishing at an alarming rate. And for many people daily
life was also changing as violence also
encroached. People in this region of Cameroon and the Lake Chad River basin live in
absolute famine conditions. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) had termed the situation an “ecological catastrophe,” predicting that the
lake basin could disappear at all if urgent measures were not taken.
In the Nigerian section of the
basin, food crops stood like dry sticks in the
sandy fields. As the desert was extending fast southwards, farmers predicted to be on the move through out the
year were gnashing their teeth in agony and hunger. Villagers living in tiny
villages of mud houses crowd like refugees in river beds in search of water for
drinking. “In times of high need we were all forced to move to a distance oasis
were we will be able to drink with our small livestock” Alhadji yuro a Fulani
pastoralist told this reporter. No doubt why the residents in these villages had become what
the United Nations called “environmental refugees”.
At the nearby Sudan’s region of
Darfur, this situation had reached crisis proportions as at least 200,000 died
since civil war broke out there in 2000-The United Nations Secretary General
Ban Ki –Moon 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 food and water insecurity”. As the climate change promises to make farming an
even less viable strategy in this region where at least two countries are
predicted to lose their agricultural industries in the next 100 years. A 2000
Yale University study, Climate Change Impacts on African Agriculture,
forecasted that rain-fed agriculture could disappear entirely in Chad and Niger
by 2100.
A development organization -Heifer
International Cameroon was helping the villages in the Far North region of
Cameroon to make the most of the resources on the ground. Farmers under various
organizations were taught simple ways of pasture establishment, animal
management, care for the earth and other ways of improving nutrition. This
knowledge most of these groups earned
was key to the development of their
livelihoods. One of the beneficiaries-
Mama Bitang had used Heifer Cameroon donated animals and teachings to build her life and that of her family with 9
dependents after several years of frustrations. This widow had lost her husband to the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. Through her women’s Femmes
Ambiteuses Common Initiative Group
Bitang like other women in her dry up community began finding little
hope of survival. Unfortunately this stitch in time is not enough as the means
is also limited. People who live in this basin are seeing little or no benefits
from international efforts to help them.
The UN and other Development Agencies started working with countries around the basin several decades ago. In 1988 an International
Environment Organization Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC)
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 had been too slow”
according to the UN water report.
As an urgent remedy is in wait, the
World Bank provided $10.6 million grant for
projects on sustainable land and water management schemes in some parts of this region. In
addition, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC ) was educating graziers on integrated livestock management and zero
grazing as well as tree planting and pasture establishment. Water users were taught
efficient water using schemes and fishermen more appropriate techniques for fishing.
These efforts to institutionalize broad base policies were not helping this
region at all, because the region and
its people is fragmented by
controversial and conflicting policies
laid down by the different governments around the Lake basin and the
unnecessary numerous tribal and regional
conflicts over land and water resources.
With limited means or infrastructures,
information dissemination and communication had 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 depended on one another for protection and help, it had
remained 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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