Saving Lake Chad - Joaquim Carlos Vieira (cameraman) & Mary Ferreira (producer)

What happens when an entire lake you depend on almost disappears?

Some 20 million people around Lake Chad in Central Africa are facing this bleak future and are already feeling the strain.

Once the sixth largest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Chad used to cover more than 10,000 square miles.

Over the last four decades, however, it has been reduced to a fifth of its original size. Mustapha, Musa and Adam speak different languages, come from different African countries and eke out their subsistence in three different ancient ways: fishing, farming and herding.

But they share something precious their lives and their families survival depend on the water of Lake Chad, which is rapidly disappearing and could soon be engulfed by the desert if bordering countries do not progress on a restoration plan.

The lake is shared by Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger, where the water has totally disappeared, causing fisherman Mustapha Adamou to drift from the latter country to the Chad side.

Meanwhile, farmers such as Musa, who grow corn and other crops, have seen the water levels in their area of Chad dip so low that they must negotiate with their neighbours to determine which day each will irrigate.

At the same time, in the Sahelian, desertifying interior, herder Adam recalls, in Arabic, that his family had to move when the water retreated completely.

By the year 2020, some 35 million people almost double the amount who live there now will depend on Lake Chad for their survival and the water could completely disappear if nothing is done to save it.

The only possible solution is regional cooperation, since the water supply for the lake comes from a complex international system. A regional plan long under consideration to replenish the lake proposes building a channel 100 to150 kilometres long to divert water from the Obangui River in the Central African Republic.

The nations making up the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) have been appealing for international support for such a proposal for several years.

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• tchad
• lake
• chad
• climate
• change
• global
• warming
• environment
• greenhouse
• effect

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