| Description: |
Volatile water resources
The vast landlocked West African country of Niger faces an increasing demand upon its scarce water resources, the lack of which — when added to poor sanitation and hygiene — results in high levels of death and disease among its 13 million inhabitants. Many of them subsist on less than a dollar a day following traditional farming and livestock rearing in this harsh and uncompromising climate. A number of lakes worldwide have decreased in size during the last decades, mainly due to human water use. For some of them, decreased precipitation was a significant cause, too, e.g. in the case of Lake Chad, where both rainfall decrease and human water use account for the observed decrease in lake area since the 1960s. For the many lakes, rivers and wetlands that have shrunk mainly due to human water use and drainage, with negative impacts on ecosystems, climate change is likely to exacerbate the situation if it results in less net precipitation (precipitation minus evapotranspiration). |
