Bringing the experience of Africa’s Lake Chad Commission to the banks of the Danube
Bringing the experience of Africa’s Lake Chad Commission to the banks of the Danube
The ICPDR is forging alliances around the world to share experiences on integrated river basin management and to develop innovative and collaborative solutions to water quality and quantity pressures with other international river basins.
Lake Chad is Africa’s fourth largest lake by surface area. For thousands of years, Lake Chad has been a centre of trade and cultural exchange between people living north of the Sahara and people to the south.
The Danube River is proud to call itself the most international river in the world. The influence of the river, however, flows even further abroad, linking European and African water management teams through shared knowledge of integrated water resources management. This model of cooperation serves all regions around the globe.
A commitment to collaboration. The ICPDR is dedicated to exchanging knowledge and experience about water resources management. Encounters with other water body commissions allow the sharing of experiences and solutions to challenges which are more similar than one might expect. A recent exchange brought a delegation from the Lake Chad Basin Commission to the ICPDR.
Sharing responsibility. The Lake Chad Basin Commission was founded in 1964 by the four countries that border Lake Chad: Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad. The Republic of Central Africa joined in 1994, Sudan was admitted in 2000 but is yet to ratify and Libya was admitted in 2008. Observer status is held by Algeria, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. The responsibilities of the Commission, which is based in N’Djamena, Chad, are to coordinate integrated water resources management, provide policy advice to Member States for decision making, to arbitrate in the case of border conflicts caused by the use of water or land around the Lake Chad as well as to promote regional integration and security.
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Lake Chad is located in central Africa and is the only large natural above-ground fresh water reservoir in the arid Sahel zone. Currently, the lake is very shallow and covers a surface of about 2,500 km2 (area in 1964: 24,000 km²).
The average depth is four metres with a maximum depth of up to seven metres. The intra-continental closed basin covers an area of about 2.3 million km2. The basin is characterised by various landscapes: hyper-arid to arid in the north, semi-arid in the centre (Sahel zone) and subtropical in the south. The lake is recharged by two main rivers: the Chari-Logone (95%), and the Komadugu-Yobe, which provides 3% of the annual inflow into the lake. The lake itself replenishes significant aquifers located in the basin.
More than 30 million people are dependent on the water system of Lake Chad, dominated by fishermen, livestock breeders and farmers.
A region at risk. The lake has lost more than 90% of its surface area because of climate variations as well as the excessive use of surface water for dams, irrigation and the extraction of groundwater caused by an immense population increase in the catchment area. A core problem is the lack of effective transboundary water management to counteract the progressive degradation of the ecosystem and to secure economic development as well as social and ecological sustainability. The population in the basin suffers from drought, deforestation, desertification and erosion, which has led to the loss of biodiversity. Consequently, poverty, malnutrition and migrations cause social conflicts in the region.
Seen from space, the disappearance of Lake Chad becomes striking. Above: the lake in 1997. As the Sahara moves south and the the lake water retreats, the exposed rich and moist soil (which is moist because there is a high water table) becomes covered by green grasses and crops (which appear as red in the satellite photos). Below: lake Chad in 1963.
The technical visit aimed to compare the differences in functions and organisation, and to enhance the exchange of experience through collaboration between the ICPDR and the Lake Chad Basin Commission. The delegation from the Lake Chad basin Commission included the Executive Secretary, Director General of Operations, Director of Planning, Director of the Observatory, the Legal Adviser, Director of Protocol, Communication and Corporate Services, the Remote Sensing Expert and the Programme-Director for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Eschborn, Germany.
One of the challenges of the Lake Chad Basin Commission is to develop integrated and transboundary water resources management with socio-economic benefits. During the visit to the ICPDR, the delegation saw how an international and modern basin commission manages transboundary water regimes under economic, ecological and social concerns in an effective and sustainable way with all member countries. Participants plan to continue the intensive exchange and gratefully thank the ICPDR for the informative presentation and the fruitful discussions.
