Lake Chad

Context: A report by Refugees International, a humanitarian organisation has highlighted the dangerous link between climate change and conflict in countries like Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria in the Lake Chad Basin.

• Shrinking natural resources due to adverse weather are heightening tensions across communities and displacing people.
• Around 3 million people have been displaced and an additional 11 million need humanitarian assistance.

About Lake Chad:

• The Lake Chad is a vast area of fresh water located in the middle of sand dunes which covers territories in 4 countries: Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
• Palaeography informs us that the Lake Chad has been constantly evolving with respect to the environmental conditions.
• It is an endorheic lake fed mainly by the Logone Chari and Komadougou watercourses.
• This ecosystem contains a great variety of wet zones which include open water, polders, temporary or permanent ponds, some of them being rich in natron.
• Around the lake, sand deserts and water meet in a complex network of meanders which are sometimes cultivated.
• Receding waters in dry season expose wide floodplains on the banks of the lake.
• They shelter water plants such as papyrus and spirulina but also numerous animal species such as the migratory birds, which use these plains as resting areas.
• The Chad Basin National Park (Lake Chad Nigeria Section) is located between Borno and Yobe states in the extreme north-eastern corner of Nigeria.
• The Park is generally described as being in the conventional basin of the famous but rapidly shrinking Lake Chad.
• The Chad Basin remains the only existing stronghold of Giraffe and Ostrich in Nigeria.
• The Lake Chad environment presents an exceptional mosaic of plant formations forming as many biotopes, oasis and wet zones of international importance.
• The Lake Chad and its islands, maintain their natural morphology which gorges this cultural landscape on which human communities developed.
• The Chad Basin National Park shares the same ecosystem with the Waza National Park in the Republic of Cameroon to the east.
• Its Wetlands and Oases are very important in the mitigation of the desertification process in north-eastern Nigeria and the overall conservation management efforts of the Chad Basin as a whole.
• The natural values are almost identical to those of the Okavango Delta, the Lakes of Ounianga and the Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley in Africa; but they are also comparable to those of the West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou in China and the Ahwar of Southern Iraq.

Source: DownToEarth

Previous Year Questions

Q.1) Which one of the lakes of West Africa has become dry and turned into a desert?

1. Lake Victoria
2. Lake Faguibine
3. Lake Oguta
4. Lake Volta

Q.2) The term “Levant” often heard in the news roughly corresponds to which of the following regions?

1. Region along the eastern Mediterranean shores
2. Region along North African shores stretching from Egypt to Morocco
3. Region along Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa
4. The entire coastal Mediterranean Sea of areas