Africa: climate change just an excuse?
The myth of a dry Lake Chad: guest article by Volker Seitz
Lake Chad is shrinking - allegedly. Nigeria's president blames this on climate change. For the commentator, this is a pretext to cover up social conflicts. And not to forget: economic interests by third players.
Climate change as a scapegoat
Judith Curry was until recently Professor of Climate Science and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She says: "Climate change has become a convenient scapegoat. As a result, we neglect the real causes of these problems (...)." Lake Chad in Africa is shrinking. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari blames you-know-what for this. "Climate change", he proclaimed, "is largely responsible for the drying up of Lake Chad". But that is not so.
Climate change has little to do with the falling water level of Lake Chad. Rather, it has to do with poor human decisions. Climate change is just a convenient excuse that hides bad management and bad governance. Population growth, where and how people live, and the way governments manage resources are much more likely to create the conditions for disasters than the climate itself. We've always had hurricanes, droughts and floods, and we always will. "The biggest problem with climate change is not climate change itself, but the way we deal with it."
Aid money through buzzwords
For most poor countries, climate change is low on the list of priorities. It is the issues of poverty, employment, low quality education, corruption, poor governance, reliable energy, infrastructure and health that concern people in these countries. It is very convenient from the desks in Vienna, Berlin or Brussels to see climate as a priority for Africa, for example. Of course, the Nigerian president has recognized which buzzwords he can use to generate more aid money. The alleged drying up of Lake Chad is just what he needs.
In just a few years, the region around Lake Chad has become a dangerous hotspot with a total of almost 2.3 million displaced people and refugees. Climate change has been blamed for years for the crisis around Lake Chad in the Sahel region. It is repeatedly claimed that the lake will dry up. Although droughts and periods of heat have caused a considerable amount of the water surface to evaporate, the lake is no longer shrinking. Nevertheless, such reports persist in the media. Because it seems plausible, journalists write off one another. But they should be particularly skeptical and factual by profession.
The false reports have a political background as well as an economic one: The alleged threat of environmental disaster can only be averted by a canal that carries water from the Congo Basin to Lake Chad and thus refills the lake. Only in this way could hunger be ended and jobs created, and only in this way would the region have a chance for the future. A prominent supporter of the project - with the involvement of Italian companies - is Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister and former President of the European Commission. Today, Prodi is active as a lobbyist, for example for Kazakhstan. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
What does science say
The Adelphi research and consultancy institute in Berlin specializes in climate change, the environment and development. It worked on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on a study on the Lake Chad Basin. The aim was to outline the risks and elements of the crisis in this region. The study was the first of its kind in the Lake Chad region. The research work is the result of two years of independent, interdisciplinary research in the riparian states of Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad. It combines data from long-term hydrological studies in the Lake Chad basin with the latest analysis results from twenty years of satellite observations. The German Aerospace Center also confirms the measurements: There are ups and downs, but over the last 18 years there has been no trend for the lake to continue shrinking. According to the researchers, the lake could even grow again because sufficient water is reaching the lake from its sources.
The most important tributaries of Lake Chad are the Chari with its tributary Logone and the Komadougou-Yobe. The intermittent rivers El Beid and Yedseram also play an important role in rainy years, as their outflow is then large enough to reach the lake. Researchers suspect that there are groundwater reservoirs below the lake that could replenish Lake Chad. Studies have shown that a substantial amount of groundwater is renewed annually through flooding or precipitation. The neighboring countries use climate change and the alleged drying up of the lake as an excuse to cover up social conflicts.
The power elite use climate change to justify grievances. They hide behind climate change and claim that it is responsible for social injustice. And that they cannot influence the external factors. The region on the southern edge of the Sahara is characterized by poverty, low levels of education and weak socioeconomic development. "However, the underlying causes of insecurity in the region are far more complex and deeply rooted in the history of the Lake Chad region. Inequality, prolonged political marginalization and the exclusion of the Lake Chad population from the rest of society are some of the factors that have contributed to the conflict," writes Janini Vivekananda, lead author of the report and Senior Advisor at Adelphi.
What it's actually about
Groups like the Islamist Boko Haram control territories and weaken the economy in the region. They destroy crops and infrastructure such as roads, making it impossible for traders to transport their goods. This has devastating consequences for food security in the region, where 80 to 90 percent of the population live from agriculture, fishing and livestock farming. When talking about environmental and climate disasters in connection with the Lake Chad situation, it is important to realize what is at stake. Anyone taking part in the climate debate should first deepen their knowledge.
Wolfgang Behringer, Professor of History at the German Saarland University in Saarbrücken until 2023, shows in his book “Kulturgeschichte des Klimas” (Cultural History of the Climate) how the climate has always had a lasting impact on human history, including the collapse of entire cultures. This is not to trivialize the problem of climate change - which Behringer does not question. But the descriptions can help us to see the problem in a wider context. If you want to learn more about climate change in both a reputable and entertaining way, I recommend reading the book “Bier: Die ersten 13000 Jahre” (Beer: The First 13000 Years) by the two historians Hirschfelder and Trummer.
A few days ago, Michael Klonovsky also referred to this great book on his blog Acta diurna. He writes: "One chapter is devoted to the climatic optimum (roughly from the 9th to the 11th century). In these approximately 250 years, it suddenly became warmer in Central Europe, by several degrees Celsius. The average temperatures in Germany at that time were even higher than today. By the 9th century, beer brewing had already spread across what is now Germany.
There were brewing associations and municipalities that were granted brewing licenses and supplied the population with more or less good beer. This whole development of the brewing industry then came to a standstill due to the sudden warming. After all, there was no cooling technology back then. It became too warm to brew beer. There were no ice cellars like in Franconia, and certainly no refrigeration systems."
The text was first published in German by Freilich and translated into English by me. The author, Volker Seitz, was in the German diplomatic service from 1965 to 2008, including seventeen years as ambassador to Africa. He is a member of the initiative group “Bonn Appeal for the Reform of Development Aid” and wrote the bestseller "Afrika wird armregiert" (Africa is being governed into poverty), dtv, 11th edition 2021.
Guest posts do not automatically reflect the opinion of the blog owner.
A brilliant analysis of the current economic and political situation in West Africa, well done!
The narrative of 'it's not our fault, it's someone else fault' blends in perfectly with the mentality of leaders in most African countries. If this can be combined with receiving additional aid from European countries which use this opportunity to calm a guilty conscience, it's like Chrismas and Thanks Giving all together.
It is very unfortunate that leaders and decision makers in Europe don't read these wise words. Tax payers money could be saved, and actual help could be provided.