Lake Chad

Subject – IR

Context – Lake Chad not shrinking, but climate is fuelling terror groups: report

Concept –

Lake Chad is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Central Africa, which has varied in size over the centuries.
According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank by as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998.
- The United Nations has term the Lake Chad crisis as “one of the worst in the world”.
Lake Chad is economically important, providing water to more than 30 million people living in the four countries surrounding it (Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria) on the central part of the Sahel.
It is the largest lake in the Chad Basin.
- This is the second-largest lake in Africa (after Lake Victoria).
The freshwater lake is located in the Sahelian zone of West-central Africa.Despite high levels of evaporation, the lake is freshwater.
The Chari River, fed by its tributary the Logone, provides over 90% of the lake’s water, with a small amount coming from the Yobe River in Nigeria/Niger.
The Lake Chad basin comprises biosphere reserves, World Heritage and Ramsar sites as well as wetlands of international conservation importance.