Nigeria says the current international effort on the Lake Chad region only addresses the humanitarian challenges and not enough to fix the root cause of desert encroachment and drought that is threatening the stability of countries in the region.
The region requires significant injection of capital to recharge the declining lake, which is the source of livelihood for at least 30 million people in the region that straddles Nigeria, Chad, Niger Republic and Cameroon, Amina Mohammed, minister of environment, told BusinessDay.
The Nigerian government had announced plans to recharge the Lake Chad through inter-basin water transfer from the Congo basin at a roughly estimated cost of $15 billion, which may not cover other plans to transform the region into a more stable economic hub after the counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations against the Boko Haram terrorists in parts of the North-East.
“What we have seen is a good effort but it is not enough,” Mohammed said in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay.
“We need much more than that. What they are responding to is a humanitarian course, but what we want is a root cause and that requires phenomenal amounts of money to deal with recharging Lake Chad to rebuilding that whole area.
“If you deal with the issue of Lake Chad you deal with the issue of the country and some stability, which is affecting our revenues and peoples lives, and the 40 or so million people that are affected by this are Nigerians,” she said.
The Federal Government in efforts to raise more funds plans to issue as much as 100 billion of so-called sovereign green bond within three years of an initial N20 billion issue, as it seeks private capital to fund its Lake Chad area development, she said.
“People were very interested in the green bond that we want to issue, and what is all the noise about the green bond? It is the fact that Nigeria in spite of the recession with the encouragement of the Stock Exchange can come about with the pipeline of budget based on our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and say we want a sovereign green bond to begin with.
“So, if you issue 20 billion for instance then you can go to 50, 100 and 150 over the next two three years. It then gives confidence in the market; people come to see what process we are showing, what returns are there, how is the private sector working? And that is about confidence building and trust with government and the private sector,” the minister said.
The governments of the United Kingdom and the United States of America had on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September announced additional humanitarian funding of £80 million and $41 million, respectively, to support those affected by the menace of Boko Haram and natural phenomenon in the Lake Chad region.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel had also during President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent visit to Germany announced that the German government would earmark €18 million for the Lake Chad region.
President Buhari, in talks with Merkel, linked the emergence and spread of the Boko Haram terrorism as well as the increasing number of illegal migrations to Europe from Africa to joblessness, starvation and poverty, partly arising from climate change as manifested by the drying up of the lake.
According to reports from an African Review Research paper, Lake Chad is the sixth largest lake in the world with a hydrographical basin area of 2,381,631km2 and an active basin of 966,955km2.
It is a source of fresh water, fisheries, pastoral and agricultural land in Algeria, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan, with a population of 30 million (as at 2013) spread across.
The Lake is under the threat of climatic change and has reduced from 25,000km2 1963 to 2,000km2 in 2010.
Experts say the Lake may be desiccated within 20 years if nothing is done and may have various consequences on hydrological regimes, water pollution, biodiversity, ecosystem, sedimentation, security, livelihood, regional stability, etc.
These consequences are mostly felt in Nigeria. In an effort to overcome these problems, the concept of TRANSAQUA was muted to transfer water from the Congo basin. This involves the construction of 2,500km navigable channel from the Ubangi River in the Congo basin to recharge the Lake.
According to experts, a recharge of the Lake will not only make the basin more active, it will facilitate navigation, generate electricity, regulate river regime, clear land lockedness, re-establish fishery and irrigation, promote poverty alleviation, mitigate drought, and check desertification. These will in turn facilitate economic development and enhance regional integration.
Nigeria is expected will raise the issue again this month when countries gather in Marrakesh, Morocco for the 22nd session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
