Covering 1,284,000 km2, the Republic of Chad has a population of 8,500,000 inhabitants most of them residing in the rural environment.  It is bounded by Libya to the north, theCentral African Republic to the south, Sudan to the east, and is surrounded by Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon to the west. Its economy is mainly based on agriculture, livestock raising, fishing, and craftsmanship.  The Republic of Chad is considered one of the planet’s less advanced countries with a GDP (PPP) per capita estimated as USD 220 in 2002.  Poverty is an alarming issue, a 57% of the population live below poverty threshold (USD1/day). 

Chad has rich hydraulic resources, the most important being the Chad Lake. The Chad Lake and its watershed humid areas form a unique, very special and fragile ecosystem, extremely rich in natural resources.  It is a biodiversity reservoir of world interest and one of The Sáhel’s most humid areas.   As an example, 21 fish species were tallied in the Chad Lake (CADP, 1992; Neiland et al., 1994; Ita, 1993), and 372 bird species in the watershed – out of which a third corresponds to those migrating towards the poles (paleartic) and the tropics (afrotropical). These humid regions play an essential role in the ecology, hydrology, and economy of the Chad Lake’s watershed.  

The Chad Lake is located to the east of the African Sáhel and on the Sahara’s southern border constituting a vast extension of fresh water shared with Cameroon to the south (8%), Niger to the northwest (17%), Nigeria to the west (25%), and Chad to the east (50%). Extended over a slight closed depression, it is the fourth African lake and the world’s third endorheic lake.   The lake has a low depth of 1.5 and 5 meters, a fairly low mass (20 to100 thousand millions of m3), and a very changeable area linked to the annual pluviometry of the high watershed and the lake itself (2,000 to 26,000 km2).  Approximately 30 million people live over this extension and their lives depend on the natural resources found there. 

Today, and over the last 30 years of drought in the Sáhel, the lake area has been reduced to less than 5,000 km2.  The lake area used to vary between 26,000 and 10,000 km2 during the humid and mid-periods (1880-1970).    This global drop observed since approximately a century, makes the inhabitants of the region think of its progressive extinction.

CNCPRT believes that people must be involved at all levels in order to better preserve and appraise natural resources.  

To succeed in this undertaking, we propose:

• to strengthen the capabilities of the local population and their organizations,
• to establish common resources conducting systems,
• to support and finance conducting and regulating initiatives,
• to contribute to the legislative and regulating evolution of the lakes.

The actors and their organizations

A central organization gathering the fishermen members of CNCPRT have just been established.

Relationship with other allied members:

FPH, APM Afrique network, WFF

Scheduled elements:

2007-2008