by Daniel Onyango

Created on: January 07, 2010   Last Updated: January 16, 2010

Lake Chad straddles four countries: Chad with the largest surface area of the lake, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon. Believed by geologists to have been formed 50,000 years ago, as an inland fresh water sea of 2 million square km, it has been shrinking ever since. Its most recent massive shrinking was during the 1968-1973 drought period. However, there have also been periods when it expanded.

The Lake Chad basin is an important ecosystem, with approximately 20 million people believed to be relying on it and competing with the natural fauna and flora for its waters and soils. Of great concern is that this once massive inland sea is literally disappearing, and could be non-existent in the next twenty years.

Knowing the cause of its shrinking and that of other fast disappearing lakes, could be crucial in arresting the extinction of the world's internal water bodies, and thereby stabilizing the earth's ecosystem. So, the most important question now is: what is causing Lake Chad and others to shrink? There are a number of reasons for lake Chad's seasonal fluctuations over the years, and its current rapid shrinkage.

The first possible cause of Lake Chad's rapid reduction is global warming and climatic change. There has been overwhelming evidence in recent years, that the atmospheric temperatures around the earth have gone up by several degrees, causing ice-melts in the polar regions, desertification in tropical climates, milder winters in temperate regions and evaporation of internal water surfaces. The area around Lake Chad has in recent years seen reduction of rainfall , thereby causing the volumes of Lake Chad's river tributaries to fall.

Lake Chad is also situated right at the southern tip of the great Sahara desert, whose expansion southwards is estimated at 48 km every year. The Sahara, the hottest place on earth with temperatures reaching 57 degrees Celsius, causes rapid evaporation of water. At that rate of its extension, lakes that are in danger of extinction include Lakes Kyoga(Uganda), Lake Tana(Ethiopia), Lake Turkana and Victoria(both in Kenya). Other drainage systems on its path stand very little chance of survival. Global warming and climate change, have been given various interpretations, but the major culprit has been man's rapid industrialization which produces huge emissions of CO2. The CO2 emissions create greenhouse effects on the atmosphere which raise atmospheric temperatures. There has never been more urgent need than now to cut down these emissions

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