Potentialities!?

Hitherto, I explained on the one hand water management solutions, which were mostly quite small and may not have the power to rescue the lake. Or on the other hand solutions, which were most likely too big to realize, for example the Inter-basin Water Transfer Project. Therefore, I want to concentrate in this post again on the causes of the drying and in particular which causes could be changed.

The effects of climate change may be important for this area, but cannot be solved from the local people. Hence, I will more focus on the man made factors, which could be changed from the local people. For instance, agriculture and irrigation and how they influences the river recharges of the lake. Which are according to Rititingar et al. (2012) on of the most important causes for the shrinking of the lake.

But not only the dropping of water levels are a problem, which are generated by irrigations schemes. In addition, if you look at the Southern Chad Irrigation Project (SCIP), which should provide 67,000 hectares with water, you will a different kind of problems. Because the project ran out of water, the canals dried up and were taken over by an invasive plant species. (Rititingar et al. 2012)

By looking at the geographical position of the lake, in particular by looking at the two main rivers, which are providing the lake with water. The Komandugu-Yobe River and the Chari-Logone River are both coming from relatively tropical and therefore rainy areas. Both rivers are providing, before ending in the lake Chad, many cities and wetlands with water. On account of that could be a potential in just increasing the river flow.

Figure 9: Tschierschke, K. 2002

In general, an even more complicated solution, because more stakeholders are involved, but with the trans boundary organisation LCBC, it could be the most powerful stakeholder. I am going to verify or falsify this personal idea in my next post by looking more specifically on the wetland areas of the Chari-Logone River and the Komandugu-Yobe River.