by Peter Ngea
February 4, 2010
World Wetlands Day is being celebrated in Cameroon with the announcement that Africa’s Lake Chad [satellite image] is now a wetland of international significance. This fulfills a promise made a decade ago by the four nations that share Lake Chad—Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Nigeria. Niger and Chad protected Lake Chad's wetlands in 2001, and Nigeria followed in 2008.
This means that Lake Chad has become the largest of the world’s few recognised trans-boundary international wetlands, where countries make a formal agreement for joint protection and management of shared aquatic ecosystems and their resources. There are only 13 such trans-boundary arrangements in the world, with 11 of those in Europe and one other, shared by Senegal and Gambia, in Africa.
Lake Chad is the remnant of a much vaster lake known as Mega-Chad which, 22,000 years ago, drained a greener Sahara and was three times the size of Lake Victoria, now Africa’s largest lake. It is now the focal point of life in a huge expanse of arid Sahelian Africa. Actually an inland delta, the new internationally protected wetland covers 2.6 million hectares, and is vital to countless birds as well as endangered otters, gazelles and elephants. The Lake is also home to hippopotamuses and Nile Crocodiles.
The Lake Chad basin is home to over 20 million people, with the majority dependent on the lake and other wetlands for their fishing, hunting, farming and grazing. But the Lake Chad basin is also highly threatened by climate change, desertification and unsustainable management of water resources and fisheries.
"Lake Chad is one of the largest and most important of the vital watering points for migratory birds from Europe and west Asia that each year cross the Sahara, and it is also where many of them stop and stay for the winter," said Denis Landenbergue, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International’s wetlands conservation manager.
In another World Wetlands Day highlight, Algeria moved to designate several of the wetlands vital to many of the same migrating birds on the northern side of the Sahara. Ceremonies this Sunday in Algeria will mark the designation of five new Wetlands of International Importance for the country.
In Cameroon, the decision protecting Lake Chad's wetlandw is but the latest of a string of protective declarations over recent years. "From the Mangrove forests of the Ntem Estuary, curling through the crater lakes of the Cameroon Highlands and into Waza Logone flood plain and the Lake Chad basin, Cameroon’s wetlands constitute a haven for biological diversity," said Natasha Quist, head of WWF’s Central African Regional Programme.
WWF, which partnered with the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the Ramsar Convention and the Global Environment Facility on projects in Lake Chad and with the governments on achieving the declaration, said the challenge now was to "turn the promise of protection for Lake Chad into a reality for the millions that depend on it."
World Wetlands Day celebrates the signing of one of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971 in the Caspian Sea city of Ramsar, Iran. The Convention, known generally as the Ramsar Convention, followed rising concern over the fate of migratory birds and was the first international environment treaty.
About the author:Peter Ngea is the Communication Manager for the World Wildlife Fund - Central African Region.
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