Lake Chad
Topic: World Physical Features and Natural Regions · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Lake Chad is a shallow lake in the Sahel, the partly dry belt south of the Sahara. Four countries share it: Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria. Because it is so shallow, it shrinks fast when rain fails or when people take its water. It has shrunk by about 90% since the 1960s because of drought and irrigation. Millions of people depend on it for fishing, farming and grazing. Its loss has made poverty and conflict worse.
Example
Around the shrinking lake, people lost fish, farmland and pasture. Armed groups such as Boko Haram have used this poverty to recruit people. Mains answers often pair Lake Chad with the Aral Sea as cases of environmental damage with heavy social costs.
Don't confuse with
- Aral Sea (Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan): it also shrank by about 90%, but mainly because Soviet projects took river water for cotton. Lake Chad shrank because of both drought and irrigation.