Tricart et al. The size of Lake Faguibine is mainly dependent on overflows from the Niger. Lake Faguibine in northern Mali is dry and has been since the 1970s. Lake Faguibine, French Lac Faguibine, isolated lake in Mali, west of Timbuktu (Tombouctou). Land Drought and water-diversion projects have caused Bolivia’s second-largest lake to dry up. Opt not to print. By mid-June 2009, the rare filling of this lake in Australia’s Simpson Desert appeared to have reached its peak. 2013). We believe that Faguibine is highly responsive to both fluctuations in the water volume of the Niger River, reflecting precipitation falling on the rainforest zone, far up river, and also geomorphological processes. Salty and fresh. As the water subsides in the dry season, the floodplain vegetation provides green pasture for the millions of cattle, sheep, and goats. Image of the Day When we came to Lake Faguibine there was a big meeting with all of the community leaders there. It quoted local engineer Mohamed Touré, as saying: “The soil around the lake is very fertile and spongy; the water can spread for 5km. The targeted waterbody, Lake Faguibine, is a closed basin lake with no fluvial outflow. Lake Faguibine is part of a Niger River-fed lake system. According to the Government of Mali, the security situation could also be greatly alleviated if the lake’s ecosystem were restored and development projects implemented in the region. Starting in the late 1980s, a drop in precipitation steadily dried the lake. Figure 3.2: Image showing Lake Faguibine, Mali: A view through time with Landsat imagery. In the past, the Lake Faguibine was a priority area for agriculture and fishery, but the Niger River-fed water system dried out with the droughts of the 1970s and 80s. All these factors combine to deprive Lake Faguibine of much needed water. In the Timbuktu region, around 72% of the land is used as pasture and the rest is reported as forested land use (DRPSIAP 2008). Livestock breeding is also associated with sedentary agropastoralism. 2014. All these factors combine to deprive Lake Faguibine of much needed water. Even though normal rainfall resumed after the year 2000, the lake remained nearly dry. They use a West African rice variety that grows well as the water rises. Then sand filled the channels connecting the lakes to the River Niger, with the result that when rain finally returned the water could no longer reach the lakes. Land Recognition of tenure rights has enabled women to participate more fully in community meetings, training, livelihood support projects, resource management planning and implementation. With only 3.8 percent of Mali having arable land, one can understand the benefits that a restored lake could bring. Interviewed in 2009 by UNEP expert Levis Kavagi, retired Col Tidiani Ascofare, the man leading the Government’s efforts to restore Lake Faguibine’s ecosystem at the time, said: ‘’In 2006, only 100 hectares of land around the lake was farmed. Image of the Day Lake Faguibine, the northernmost lake, in December after replenishing Lake Tele in August and Lake Takara in November.3 When the flood reaches its peak level, the lakes, pools, and channels enter a stage of recession as the waters return to the Niger River. Starting in the late 1980s, a drop in precipitation steadily dried the lake. Water Others said that the species had taken over land once used for cultivation and fisheries. One example of increasing aridity in Mali appears in Lake Faguibine. In the past, during prolonged rainfall in the Fouta Djallon highlands in Guinea, the river flooded and forced water to flow through two channels into the lake. In December 2009 the World Food Programme reported on the success of a UNEP-supported food-for-work programme which opened up the water channels – for a while at least. Unique Imagery. Some of the villagers pointed out that during the recent drought their animals had only been able to survive because of the fodder provided by Prosopis; others said that they had used the timber to make charcoal. Upstream, people use the water for large-scale irrigation and to produce hydropower. The once-great lake has lost most of its water and now spans less than a tenth of the area it covered in the 1960s. 41 Mid-1980s, maximum depth was around 8metres with 4.72km2 coverage Siltation caused by deforestation of Most activities have been built around small scale agriculture. Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. Caption by Michon Scott. By the late 1990s, the traditional livelihoods of fishing, agriculture, and livestock herding became impractical. Water. 4.3. Farmers cultivate rice, mainly in the southern Delta. The region's prosperity evaporated along with the water. Two kinds of mobile livestock breeding systems are present: transhumant (a seasonal movement of people and livestock over relatively short distances) and nomadic (a migration of people and livestock over longer distances). are excluded from the new lands in … An example is the drying of Lake Faguibine in northern Mali due to extended low precipitation, in which the ecological transformation caused communities to change from fishing and farming to harvesting forest products (Djoudi et al. With only 3.8 percent of Mali having arable land, one can understand the benefits that a restored lake could bring. UNEP project These are Africa’s Lake Tanganyika and Lake Rukwa. Plastic packaging accounts for 50 per cent of plastic waste. It is then harvested when the waters recede. Land use planning should be based the analysis on the value of ecosystem services instead of hotspots to make better conservation decisions. as land use changes in the catchment areas may need to be taken into account. © UNEP Terms of Use Privacy Report a project concern. In 1974, this lake covered roughly 590 square kilometers (230 square miles). The factsheet. Lake Faguibine was a productive area for agriculture and fishing but the area experienced prolonged dry phases in the 20 th century and the lake had dried out by the end of the 1970s. Simulated studies by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found that urban consumers, who usually do not produce food, are likely to be hit hardest, as would rural households in countries where land was not equitably distributed. Plastic pollution is an environmental injustice to vulnerable communities – new report, West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), New UNEP synthesis provides blueprint to urgently solve planetary emergencies and secure humanity’s future, ‘One health’ approach critical to tackle health inequality and emerging diseases, Improved livelihoods of about 200,000 mainly nomadic people living in the area, A lifeline for thousands of migratory water birds restored, Increased availability of drinking water for humans and livestock; improved groundwater resources, Enhanced local sustainable natural resource management. Life. The connector channel and lake floor are the areas of interest. Since the mid 1990’s, Lake Faguibine, once a major regional center of agriculture and aquaculture, has suffered a major drop in water levels. He spotlighted Lake Faguibine, a spearhead-shaped body of water linked with seasonal flooding of the Niger, Africa’s third largest river. rebels attacked people in villages around Lake Faguibine, located to the northwest of Goundam, which were then abandoned and whose weekly markets were shut down. One of them made a rousing appeal to me that I will always remember. Made with a combination of visible and infrared light, the images show vegetation as red, water as blue, and bare ground in shades of beige and gray. At the request of the Government of Mali, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is implementing a project to rehabilitate the Lake Faguibine ecosystem and is studying the Lake's ecosystem and looking at ways in which the management of land and the hydrological cycle could be improved. This year [2009] it will be more than 20,000 hectares. Image of the Day But over seven years, droughts in the 1970s dried up the lakes. The series of good floods from 1924 to 1930 and from 1951 to 1955 completely filled the lake. So, dams built along the Niger are likely to have impacts on it. ... increased evaporation and land-use changes – and of the benefits likely to accrue to close to some 200,000 mainly nomadic people living in and around the area. It lies north of the Niger River in the Macina depression, and it is reached by branches of the Niger in times of flood. Lake level at Faguibine is less affected by local rainfall patterns. One example of … Save the planet. 23 ... Drought in Africa Lake Faguibine Lake Chad 34 35. ... Tadesse, G., E. Zavaleta, and C. Shennan. The bulk of the remaining 20% is associated with agriculture and changes in land use. Land Flight Center. Lake Faguibine encapsulates the challenges faced in many other parts of the world where ecosystems are coming under increasing pressure due to climate change, conflict and rapid population growth, among others. Water transport benefits to the local economy. In the Timbuktu region, around 72% of the land is used as pasture and the rest is reported as forested land use (DRPSIAP-T 2006). The connector is often blocked by moving sand dunes, making the lake floor useless as major local cropland. Although the region has a long history of rainfall variability, the trend in recent decades has been … For instance, the Sélingué dam has already reduced the amount of water flooding the Inner Information flow is vital for ecosystem-based adaptation – expert. Drought Implementation of the project has faced challenges mainly due to the difficult security situation since 2011. People are certain that if they only had reliable water sources they could again turn this parched region into Mali's bread basket. At high water it reaches a length of about 50 miles (80 km). Image of the Day Two kinds of mobile livestock breeding systems are practiced: transhumant and nomadic. Unfortunately, climate change has led to erratic rainfall patterns as well as the advance southward of the Sahara desert. Since the mid 1990's, Lake Faguibine, once a major regional center of agriculture and aquaculture, has suffered a major drop in water levels. The Niger River Event Coverage - Jul 2013. Lying at the end of a series of basins watered by the Niger River when it floods, Lake Faguibine has experienced widely fluctuating water levels since the turn of the twentieth century but, at its fullest, has ranked among the largest lakes in West Africa. 4.3 The Niger River With a length of 4200 km the Niger is the third longest river in Africa. He said: 'I am an orphan of this dead lake because I lived and flourished by the lake when it was a wonderful place for fishermen and farmers and pastoralists. As a result, many nomads lost access to food, which worsened the violence and led to the stealing of … land use was previously dominated by agriculture and very few residential settlements. Even though normal rainfall resumed after the year 2000, the lake remained nearly dry. Water With the drying out of Lake Faguibine, those water dependent activities are no longer relevant. charcoal production). For the Lake Faguibine System the determining factor is the hydrograph of the Niger River, especially the height and the duration of the flood peak. Are you sure you want to print? Land use changes and GHG emissions from tropical forest conversion by oil palm plantations in Riau Province, ... vulnerability of livestock- and forest-based livelihoods to climate variability and change in Lake Faguibine, northern Mali, where drastic ecological, political and social changes have occurred. He turned out to be one of the foremost Touareg people of the region (from a 2008 diary entry by Jan Egeland, then UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser on conflict, and currently head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, quoted by IRIN). These false-color Landsat satellite images of the lake show how it changed over the decades. The same UNEP report states: “ Lake Faguibine dried out completely in 1914 and 1924, again in 1944 and has been at very low levels since the mid 1970s. It aimed to re-flood the lake’s 600 square kilometres in order to restore its vital ecosystems (fish catches were once estimated at 5,000 tons annually), boosting the livelihoods of local fishermen, reviving agriculture along the lakeside, and providing food to thousands of people as well as migratory waterbirds. On the bed of the old lakes they still have a lot of agriculture, but of course it's only a matter of time before it all dries up, and then it's the end for all the nomadic and pastoral societies in this area,said Egeland in his 2008 diary. Landsat imagery is especially suitable for detecting ecosystem fragmentation and degradation and offers a resolution (level of detail) that is ideal for developing comprehensive land cover classification datasets, another way to detect land use change (Giri et al., 2013). In years when the height of the annual flood of the … Faguibine, which is one of the largest lakes in Africa (measuring around 125 square kilometers in area), is located 60 km west of Timbuktu. The reformulated project (around $40 million when fully funded) integrates the original scheme into a broader programmatic intervention led by the United Nations, and will address both infrastructure development and socioeconomic interventions, including improving livelihoods. (1960) noted that artificial regulation of the level of Lake Faguibine, Mali, was responsible for a small amount of eolian remobilization of dune sand. United Nations Environment Programme. Upstream, people use the water for large-scale irrigation and to produce hydropower. on which they are built as the amount of water they use remains constant irrespective of dry or wet years. However, with additional funding from the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) of $5.23 million, UNEP is reviving the project to take into account the new situation. Deep and shallow. United Nations efforts to date Image of the Day Lake Faguibine, Mali: The ecosystem around Lake Faguibine has shifted from the livelihoods of a lake, fishing and livestock keeping to a livelihood that is forest-based as a new system to help combat climate change and its negative impact on the Faguibine community. ... Haiti, as well as changes in land use, loss of biodiversity and degradation of coastal areas throughout the region. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided by the United States Geological Survey. The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), established in April 2013, provides security in the country and is contributing to peace. UNEP project. However, a dissenting view began to emerge. Lake Faguibine is a lake in Mali on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert situated 80 km west of Timbuktu and 75 km north of the Niger River to which it is connected by a system of smaller lakes and channels. This means the farmers here don’t need tractors or fertilizer, they can simply plant a seed like a tree and the plant will just grow – this is true for thousands and thousands of hectares." up to three hectares of land. Home to more than 13 million people, Mali stretches from the Sahara Desert in the north to the semiarid grassland known as the Sahel in the south. The bottom image is made from observations acquired on March 17, 2005, and September 28, 2006. Our results show that the January 3, 1974, & December 26, 1978 (Landsat 1 MSS) - January 3, 1974JPEG, January 3, 1974, & December 26, 1978 (Landsat 1 MSS)TIFF, March 17, 2005, & September 28, 2006 (Landsat 7 ETM+)JPEG, March 17, 2005, & September 28, 2006 (Landsat 7 ETM+)TIFF. He spotlighted Lake Faguibine, a spearhead-shaped body of water linked with seasonal flooding of the Niger, Africa’s third largest river. Just 3.8 percent of the country’s land is arable, and increased use of natural resources combined with prolonged drought have nudged the country toward desertification, according to a report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme. Human Presence. The Lake Faguibine ecosystem restoration project involved sensitizing communities upstream and downstream on the need to regulate and preserve the water flow in the Niger and its channels. impact of the African atlas in Mali, where a project to restore the lost Lake Faguibine is now underway. The UNEP component will focus on environmental sustainability by looking at the health and productivity of the lake’s ecosystems. The Lake Faguibine System, four interlinked lakes 80 km west of Timbuktu, was historically one of Mali's most fertile areas. … Heat There is an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s surface, leading to wide spread impacts ranging from change in rainfall patterns to extinction of certain species. Image adopted from Tappan and Cushing (2004) presentation of Survey Experiences of Mapping Land Use … The top image is made from observations acquired on January 3, 1974, and December 26, 1978. Land use change Land use change [CSD] Indicators methodology sheets The workshops have also developed indicator ... Lake Faguibine for their livelihoods Republic of Mali.