Central Africa's Lake Chad Is Disappearing

Central Africa's Lake Chad Is Disappearing

By SHASHANK BENGALI
McClatchy Newspapers

Sinyaka Island in Lake Chad formed less than five years ago as lake waters receded to unprecedented levels. The lake that once covered some 9,000 square miles — roughly the area of New Jersey — has shrunk to less than 2 percent of its original size. SINYAKA ISLAND, Chad There’s nothing remarkable about this lump of hot sand, tangled weeds and tree-branch huts except that, until a few years ago, it didn’t exist.

More precisely, the island was underwater, hidden beneath the vast surface of central Africa’s Lake Chad. The emergence of the island, whose sweltering shores have been settled by dozens of families, is evidence of an unsettling ecological trend: The lake is drying up.

Once among the largest lakes in the world — at some 9,000 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey — Lake Chad has been decimated over the past four decades by rising temperatures, diminishing rainfall and a growing population that’s using more water than ever before. Today, estimated at less than 2 percent of its original size, the lake’s surface would barely cover Brooklyn and Manhattan.

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Lake Chad Is Dying

My entry on this from last year... and it still gets worse. We need hope here, not to continue to allow this to go on. Where is the education? Where is the real aid? Where is the plan on the part of the western world to really curb carbon emissions that are contributing to what we see in Africa and in other places where emissions are not as great? Why is the world abandoning Africa?