Fact-check: Has Lake Chad shrunk as Nigeria’s president claimed?

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Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari told the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York last month that the Lake Chad basin has shrunk significantly due to climate change, leaving many people in the region without their livelihoods. are

Several Twitter users challenged the president’s statement, claiming that research shows the lake is not shrinking. AFP examined the latest international report on the matter and found that while Lake Chad has shrunk significantly in the past, the shrinking has stopped in recent years.

“As you know, the Lake Chad Basin, which used to be a region of productivity, food security and wealth for the estimated 40 million citizens living around the lake basin, has been reduced to its original value due to climate change. has shrunk significantly in size,” President Buhari said in his September 23 speech at the United Nations.

“We will continue to lead concerted partnership efforts for ecological restoration and recharge of Lake Chad.”

The statement drew criticism online from some Twitter users who said the latest research contradicted the president.

“The most disapproving (sic) study below shows that Lake Chad is not shrinking. Stop defaming us sir!” Olushola Olofolabi, a staunch Buhari critic, wrote in a tweet that was shared 150 times, and saved. Here.

“Your only knowledge of climate change starts and stops at Lake Chad.. What is your obsession with this lake and shrinking? Even when so many reports say so. That it is not shrinking in any way..Baba direct your attention to the more important aspect of climate change..” Another user wrote, Akhogba period.

Lake Chad shrank significantly in the 1970s and 1980s.

Lake Chad borders northeastern Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, serving millions of people from all four countries. The region is a hotbed of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has displaced more than two million people in the past decade, and has become a hotbed for militants.

We passed. A recent authoritative report Funded by the German and Dutch governments, the lake is much smaller than it was 50 years ago, but has stopped shrinking in recent years.

“While the lake shrank significantly due to droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, our research shows that the lake is not currently shrinking,” says the report, released in May by German think tank Adelphi. was published

“Due to these droughts, the lake shrank from a height of 25,000 km in the 1960s, when it was the world’s sixth-largest freshwater body and a thriving commercial center for the entire coast, which in the 1990s Only 2,000 km left in the decade.”

“By displacing communities and undermining state legitimacy, the drought helped set in motion a train of events that is still being felt today,” the report noted. Since then, the lake has expanded by about 14,000 km.

As for the current size of the lake, it has “remained relatively stable over the past two decades. In fact, the total water storage has actually increased, if one includes groundwater as well as surface water, which The lake goes against the prevailing narrative of terminal decline.”

According to the authors – Janani Vivekananda, Dr. Martin Wall, Dr. Florence Sylvester, Chitra Nagarajan – the report is “the first of its kind on the Lake Chad region and a pioneer in global climate fragility risk assessment”.

It is said to be the result of two years of intensive research in all four countries, “a brand new analysis of long-term hydrological data from the Lake Chad Basin, ground measurements, 20 years of satellite observations”, and hundreds of interviews with local residents.

What the United Nations has said before.

Last year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an international conference on Lake Chad that its water level had dropped by 90 percent since the 1960s.

Lake Chad was once a major source of livelihood for millions of people living in its basin, Guterres said. A message At the conference in Abuja, the UN Representative for West Africa, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, gave

“Today, the lake’s water level has shrunk by 90 percent compared to the 1960s, and its surface area has shrunk from 22,000 square kilometers to just 1,350 square kilometers.”

If Gutierrez’s estimate of the size of the lake last year seems vastly different from the latest report, that’s because — 1,350 square kilometers versus 14,000.

But we found that Gutierrez was referring to a figure given in it. 2002 United Nations report Which in turn was citing research published in 2001.

Lake Chad is still threatened by climate change.

Buhari did not cite a time frame in his speech at the United Nations and it is fair to say that the lake has shrunk significantly since its peak in the 1960s. But as a recent report argues, it is wrong to say that the lake is still shrinking.

Regardless of Lake Chad’s size, however, climate change is still having profound negative impacts on the region and calls for increased international attention are justified.

“Climate change is having profound negative impacts on conflict, intensifying existing dynamics and creating new risks. But the alleged shrinking of the lake is not the problem,” the report said.

“High levels of precipitation and wide variations in temperature are harming people’s lives and livelihoods. Temperatures in the region are rising one and a half times faster than the global average. And climate projections predict that Weather conditions will only become more severe and more unpredictable.