Inflows into lake Chad

The Komandugu-Yobe River is providing the northern pool of the lake Chad. As I already pointed out in an earlier post, the total inflow to the lake is just about 5% and in the dry seasons, the river sometimes not even reaches the lake.

Figure 10: Wikipedia

On the first view, the situation looks quite dramatic, just seasonal inflow, several irrigation and damming programs and large wetlands upstream. Not to mention the planed Kafin Zaki Dam, which would be the largest dam in this area. But if you look closer, there could be an opportunity as well. For example, by using water more efficiently. Thomson and Hollis (1995) are naming in their paper a study from Barbier et al (1991), in which he proofed that the traditional usage of the wetland is generating more benefit than the usage of irrigation schemes.

At the moment, there are two main damming projects, which are the reducing the river flow. The Tiga Dam, which is connected to the Kano River Irrigation Program and the Challawa George Dam, which is connected to the Hadeija Valley Project. According to Barbier and Thomson (1998) these projects are causing more harm to the wetlands downstream, including lake Chad, than bringing benefits. Just by comparing the economical (agriculture, fishing, livestock) aspects and not even mentioned the ecological ones, like destroying the ecosystem of the wetlands and the ecosystem of lake Chad.

Barbier and Thomson (1998) are proposing a regulated flood release to revitalize the wetlands and increase at least temporary the river flow. I think this proposal could be a possibility for lake Chad to gain more river inflow. Especially, if the LCBC would build an alliance with the other stakeholders, who are negatively affected by the large damming projects, they could force them to do that.

Figure 11: Wikipedia

But more important for the inflows into lake Chad is the Chari Logone River, which is providing up to 95% of the inflows to the lake. Again it is a large river system, like the Komandugu-Yobe, with several damming projects. The most important one is the Maga Dam, which is connected to the SEMRY project, one of the most important rice cultivation projects in central Africa. The project was founded in the 1960s, but caused a lot of damage to the environment in the floodplain area. Therefore, the WWF and the UICN launched a project named Waza-Logone to revitalize and recover the floodplain and use the Maga Dam more sustainable. (Mouafo et al 2002)

There are lots of studies to restore the Waza Logone floodplain and the connection to the Maga Dam, but they are mostly not mentioning the affects on the lake Chad. (Loth 2004) In addition, there is a good case study concerning the river discharge, made by the BGR in 2013. But they just measured current situation, therefore it is not possible to make a statement regarding the impact of the damming to the inflow into lake Chad. Furthermore, they are trying to recover the environment, which is harmed by the dam nearby. Hence, the lake Chad is most likely the only one who gets damaged through the process of damming. For this reason, I don’t see many opportunities for the LCBC to get more water from the Chari Logone River.

To conclude, maybe there are some possibilities to increase the river inflow, the best would be at my opinion the support of a regulated flood release. This could be just a step in the right direction of saving the lake, but it is by far not enough.