As James Tindall correctly stated, “Critical resources like water and arable land will likely become scarcer than oil, exacerbating political, economic, and ethnic tensions, which will present risks for corporations, Non-Government Organizations, government agencies, and militaries through massive civil unrest.” Therefore, the United States must treat all potential environmental disasters as a security concern. Additionally, the United States has a proven track record of humanitarian aid. Many US policy makers believe it is in the best interest to provide aid to those who need, or request it. However, given recent US concerns, the US can ill afford to directly participate in every short or long term aid project. Therefore, the US must carefully weigh any potential aid to against the likelihood for long term entanglements. As a result, not every humanitarian program is worth helping using direct means.
Case in point: Lake Chad. The Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) is asking the international community to help pay for their plan to refill Lake Chad. Most agree the problem of Lake Chad is obvious and something must be done to save it, if humans are going to continue to live in the lake basin. Therefore, in February 2013, the LCBC announced plans for a 14.5 billion dollar project to reroute waters from the Congo 1,500 miles north and into Lake Chad. They claim the strategy will save the lake and the people living near the lake from certain disaster.
Historical background: Over the last four decades, water has been disappearing from Lake Chad at an alarming rate. According to LCBC, if nothing is done, within twenty years, more than 20 million people are at risk of not having water. The proposed plan is both daunting and daring. If it succeeds, it will be an engineering marvel, but only if it is successfully completed and safely maintained over the coming decades.
To give a better idea of what is involved, the Lake Chad Basin is situated in the Sudano-Sahelian zone in Western and Central Africa and covers an estimated area of between 2,381,635 and 2,434,000 square kilometers, or approximately eight percent of the total African land surface area. The basin itself, spreads over seven modern countries: Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Sudan. However traditionally, the area called the “Conventional Basin” includes only five states: Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Central African Republic, or an area of just over 96,000 square kilometers. It was this Conventional Basin, and not the entire Lake Chad Basin, that came under the mandate of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) in 1964.
Since the 1970s, the region experienced a number of devastating droughts.
Even when it was at its fullest, Lake Chad only averaged an overall depth of about seven meters, making it particularly susceptible, even though it was one of Africa’s largest freshwater lakes, to the combination of the naturally occurring droughts, construction mistakes, and mismanagement. Enhanced satellite images demonstrate the water losses for anyone willing to look at them. For example, in 1984, Lake Chad’s open surface water at 1,1612.23 square kilometers, but only by 2001, the lake had shrunk to a mere 4,691.09 square kilometers. That meant, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, Lake Chad had shrunk to less than one-twentieth its former size thirty-five years earlier.
While that seems alarming, there is no way to tell for sure because no accurate record exist for the size of the lake before 1964. Therefore, some researchers believe the lake may be experiencing its normal drying cycle, however most disagree. Although the written records do not exist, there is ample historical evidence to support the premise that the shrinking of Lake Chad is unique to our time.
Ample archeological evidence demonstrates numerous peoples lived in the Lake Chad Basin since possibly the dawn of history. Written records show lake itself became a unifying entity in the ninth-century when that the Islamic Kanen-Borno Empire took over the basin. Early European explorers who visited the area praised the Kanen-Borno Empire for its culture, learning, and for its commercial and diplomatic links with North Africa and the Middle East. However all that changed in the nineteenth century, when colonizing European powers destroyed the traditional cultural and political links among the indigenous peoples by redrawing political boundaries and enforcing those changes with force.
In the 1960s, four countries, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria gained their independence. During that time, the new political leaders soon recognized that only by working together could Lake Chad benefit of all their peoples. Therefore, the leaders created the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) in 1964 to coordinate the development, promote cooperation, and to benefit all the people who lived in Lake Chad drainage basin. Eventually, two more countries joined the LCBC; Central African Republic as a full member in 1984, and Sudan with observer status in 2000.
Together, the LCBC attempted tried to use Lake Chad to benefit all their peoples. So why did Lake Chad shrink?
The LCBC blamed the shrinking Lake Chad on a number of important reasons. Severe droughts during the 1970s and 1980s caused the lake basin to begin to shrink. The LCBC tried new approaches to the management, but the combined effects of climate fluctuations and unsustainable mismanaged water projects led to further reductions of rivers that drained into Lake Chad. Eventually, the situation got so bad that projects like the South Chad Irrigation Project (SCIP) in Nigeria, and the MAMDI Polder Project in Chad, began failing. By the 1990s, the LCBC abandoned the projects altogether; the lake shore left them completely dry. Further climatic changes took place. Poorly designed dams, dikes, irrigation systems, and unsustainable reservoir operations further degraded the lake. For example, while dams along the rivers helped control flooding, they then resulted in degrading the river channels. Flood waters that formally cleaned out the riverbeds, no longer did. Without the naturally occurring floods, dramatic changes of topography along the riverbanks took place. Wetlands dried up. Invasive weeds, such as the Typha, helped destroy what was left of the trees along the lake shore. Without the tree canopies, the sun baked the soil. Wind erosion made the land even more arid. Farmers misused chemical fertilizers because a poor, uneducated farmers, naturally assumed that if a little fertilizer was good, a whole lot more of fertilizer would be even better! Eventually, soil around the lake became almost sterile. Now, almost nothing grows there. As a result, the desert sands are encroaching, and the lake today is in danger of near total collapse.
So what could be done? According to the LCBC, the solution was to refill the lake.
In 2004, the LCBC came up with a novel plan to harness the Congo to refill Lake Chad. The idea was to divert 80 million acre feet of water every year from the Chari River and have it flow almost 1500 miles northwards into Lake Chad. According to Adamou Namata, Niger Water Minister and Chairperson of the LCBC, “If nothing is done, the lake will disappear.” In 2002, several governments met in the rain-forests of Central Africa and signed an agreement on sharing the waters of the Congo. They hoped to raise $5 billion for a dam and waterworks that would barricade one of the river's major arms, the Ubangi River, at Palambo, in the Central African Republic, and then reroute thirty percent of the water north towards Lake Chad, instead of directly out to sea.
In late 2004, the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, agreed to pay $2.5 million for a feasibility study of the project. Eventually in 2008, 14 million dollars was raised, and Canada’s CIMA-International, began the study.
According to the LCBC, the survival of more than 20 million people in the lake basin depends on the Lake Chad Replenishment Project. Their hope was the project would be “an opportuinty to rebuild the ecosystem, rehabilitate the lake, reconstitute its biodiversity, and safeguard its people.”
Safeguarding the people in and around the Lake Chad Basin may be a major problem.
Since the 1960s, when the main countries solidified their independence from the colonial powers, every one of the basin countries have had civil wars of some degree and some countries remain unstable. According research by Stucki and Niasse, since the 1960s, twenty-six coups and sixteen cases of civil unrest occurred in the region. Furthermore, while the area has been relatively calm since 2002, the possibility of a sudden change is always real because some of the countries remain relatively weak. Additionally, war-torn countries also suffer from financial shortcomings. LCBC member states that were supposed to provide yearly disbursements to the commission had not been doing so, so how can they possibly raise the money necessary for such a huge project? They cannot. The LCBC seems to be fully dependent on outside donor financing. Outside influences will affect the LCBC ability to work and maintain its work once the vast amount of money starts flowing.
In February 2013, CIMA-International released its final report. CIMA agreed that if nothing is done to save Lake Chad, the lake would probably disappear altogether by 2025. However, there was some good news, and some more bad news. CIMA International announced the lake could be saved by refilling the lake, but it will cost a minimum of 14.5 billion dollars to do so. Furthermore, the scheme will only work if regional cooperation between the countries in the Congo Basin and the Lake Chad Basin continues unimpeded.”
Although the LCBC now has the regional leader support, everyone agrees, financially, it will not be enough if there is to be any chance at success.
Sanusi Imran Abdullahi, executive director of the Lake Chad Basin Commission announced, "We will host an international donors' conference early this year [2013] to see what we can get, and from there we will [assess] what the member states will contribute." Abdullahi was quick to add, “As long as funders are guaranteed a return on their investment,” the bulk of the financing will probably come from the private sector.”
However, financing the scheme using the private sector poses risks too. Rasheed and Sadig pointed out that while privatization is seen as a way to increase both efficiency and capital it may mean “cherry picking of the profitable segments of the sector leaving poorer areas to fend for themselves.” Furthermore, “To attract foreign capital, governments are often eager to surrender their rights on bulk water pricing and control, agreeing to conditions and clauses which sacrifice the national interest and the right of the people to safe and sufficient water use.”
In 2010, the UN made water a human right issue because it was concerned the availability of relatively cheap water and good sanitation became a problem when water became privatized.
However, the LCBC does not seem concerned. Instead, the LCBC claims the water project would do more than just provide water: The waterway will encourage electric lines to be extended. Better river transportation will allow goods to be moved from east to west across Africa. New irrigation and agribusiness in the region will also improve economic activity and the livelihoods for people throughout the basin. In all, the LCBC believes using private enterprise is a good way to finance the project. However, this plan has several problems too.
Even if the proposed financing solution works as intended, Lake Chad basin faces many challenges including: ecological, socioeconomic, institutional, political origins, variable and unreliable rainfall pattern. Additionally, a highly interlinked water balance, considerable variability of soil types, a proneness to droughts, desertification, and human-caused environmental degradation all must be considered with the problems that come with deforestation and dam construction. Additionally, historical conflicts may re-erupt producing political issues over sovereignty and other security concerns.
Because of the large number of people who already completely depend on Lake Chad for their water needs, any major failure to the new water project will deprive critical water, and pose a huge and significant security risk to the entire regional population.
Once the waterway is built and the water begins flowing, security concerns associated with waterway will continue to be challenging. People relying on a single water project for all their needs means any deprivation of the water become critical because there are no available substitutions for that water. This is especially true for Chad, who unlike their neighbor Nigeria that produces three million cubic meters of desalinated water every day and so cut its outside dependency on water to just 23%, Chad produces no desalinated water. As of 2007, Chad continued to get nearly 65% of its water from outside the country.
This becomes a major problem because, “The complexities and the cascading failures and resulting disruptions among infrastructures will decrease the effectiveness of response and recovery efforts during man-made, natural, or technological hazards, or may result in common cause failures that leave planners and emergency response personnel unprepared to effectively deal with operational continuity and the impacts of these disruptions."
Once American firms join in the effort to refill Lake Chad, they then open themselves up to a host of potential security concerns, including terrorism. Unfortunately, once American firms become entrenched in an issue, it then also becomes a US security concern. So while the Lake Chad issue can rightly be called humanitarian problem, it is a humanitarian problem that the US can ill afford to participate in, particularly if there is a good chance it will escalate into a new zone of regional conflicts.
Along with the actual construction of the waterway, American firms will be quick to realize the infrastructure and equipment needed to provide sanitation and water reclamation associated with the project will be potentially lucrative too. Therefore, once the money starts flowing to make the scheme work, the combined potential economic gains may be too much for US investors to ignore.
However, it cannot be stressed enough, the Lake Chad Basin has a history of many problems and conflicts. Local laws make the owners of public works completely responsible for anything that goes wrong. Once American firms jump onboard the multibillion dollar project, they become responsible for whatever happens, for good or bad. Since artificial waterways are inherently difficult to maintain and secure over long distances, US interests and American firms may be better served only by participating through government proxies and the more easily defended public support roles through international aid groups so it can disentangle itself quickly from the region if necessary instead of finding itself in a new protracted fight or security arrangement of one kind or another.
In conclusion, while the United States of America has a proven track record of providing humanitarian aid throughout the world, it must carefully weigh the potential for long term problems whenever aid is requested. US policy makers must learn any disaster may end up being a national security issue. Therefore, not every humanitarian program is worth the associated risks. Humanitarian missions, even when legitimate, may sometimes prove more trouble than they are worth. Therefore, although the aid given to the Lake Chad Restoration Project could potentially help more than twenty-million people, the likely long term political and security risks of the basin demonstrate the Untied States should not participate directly in the LCBC’s scheme.
Bibliography:
Secondary Sources:
International Water Security: Domestic Threats and Opportunities. Ed. Nakayama Pachova, and L. Jansky, United Nations University Press, 2008.
Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus, Ed. Dominic Waughray, Washington: Island Press, 2011.
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Tindall, J., and A. A. Campbell, Water Security: Conflicts, Threats, Politics, Denver: DTP Publishing, 2012.
Internet Sources:
Odada, Eric O, "Lake Chad: Experience and Lessons Learned Brief," International Waters Learning & Exchange Resource Network, 2005.
Rasheed, Gourisankar Ghosh and Sadig. "Integrated Water Resources Management: A Right Based Community Approach Towards Sustainable Development." In Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Harare, Zimbabwe: United Nations, 1998. http://www.un.org/documents/ecosoc/cn17/1998/background/ecn171998-comu2.htm
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