Africa: Drying, Drying, Disappearing…

[StarfarerBill]

By Paul Virgo, Inter Press Service

"ROME - Lake Chad was bigger than Israel less than 50 years ago. Today its surface area is less than a tenth of its earlier size, amid forecasts the lake could disappear altogether within 20 years.

"Climate change and overuse have put one of Africa's mightiest lakes in mortal danger, and the livelihoods of the 30 million people who depend on its waters is hanging by a thread as a result.

"An unprecedented crisis is looming that would create fresh hunger in a region already suffering grave food insecurity, and pose a massive threat to peace and stability, experts say.

"If Lake Chad dries up, 30 million people will have no means of a livelihood, and that is a big security problem because of growing competition for smaller quantities of water," Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) tells IPS in Rome.

"Poverty and hunger will increase. When there is no food to eat, there is bound to be violence."

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[G_j]

1. very sad

and very alarming.

[n2doc]

2. Fighting for water resources is another sign of climate change n/t

[Igel]

4. In the American West it was a sign of

an increased demand for consumption coupled with shifting consumption patterns and various alterations in the ecology of the drainage basins.

For example, by altering the extent and type of vegetation drainage during and immediately after "rain events" was sharply increased--meaning there was relatively less to run off later.

Sometimes it was the result of things that aren't "climate change" sensu latu, but only sensu stricto. Rainfall fluctuates, sometimes up and sometimes down, and always has.

At about the same time, of course, there was climate change. Precipitation levels were increasing. And let's remember that climate change has always happened, so those fluctuations are noise on larger scale fluctuations, themselves superimposed on even larger scale fluctuations. Welcome to a post-optimum interglacial during an age ice.

[amborin]

3. K&R and China is raping Africa

[classysassy]

5. The europeans raped

africa long before china arrived.

[Kaleva]

6. Lake Chad almost dried up completely in 1908 and again in 1984

It has been shrinking steadily since it reached it's maximum size around 4000 B.C..