The photograph , captured by a NASA satellite many miles above Africa, on a clear day in 1972, shows grey-brown aridity and swathes of green and blue. The photo is of Lake Chad, which at that time was one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water with an area of over 26 000km². It provided water and food to millions of people in Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. In shocking contrast, the image of the same location taken 30 years later, shows the water mass reduced to a comparable puddle occupying small parts of Chad and Cameroon. Scientists largely blame the lake’s shrinkage on overgrazing in the area surrounding it, which they say has resulted in desertification, reduced rainfall, and a vast increase in the amount of water used for irrigation. Many of the villages that once lined Chad’s shores are gone. By 2000 the lake had decreased to 1 500km². Scientists expect it to disappear within the next two decades.
“The pictures hit people in the gut”
Both images of Lake Chad appear in a publication that’s caused an uproar among scientists, environmentalists and concerned governments around the globe. Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, compiled over three years by experts at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), is the first publication to use satellite photos to highlight environmental change in every African country over the past 35 years. U sing this evidence, some of the world’s leading scientific minds hope to alert the public, and especially policy makers, to the grave dangers facing the planet, and to inspire them to take positive action.
“We wanted to use the most striking images we could find to awaken people’s consciousness to get them thinking, and ensure immediate action is taken to stop, or at least slow down, environmental degradation,” says Dr Ashbindu Singh, a scientist with UNEP’s Early Warning and Assessment facility in North America and one of the brains behind the project. “The old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words certainly holds true here,” he said at the recent launch of the atlas at a think-tank in Washington DC.
Africa: a bird’s-eye view According to UNEP, the atlas uses graphic evidence, which Dr Singh says is designed to “hit the viewer and reader in the eyes, followed by the gut”, to illustrate how “development choices, population growth, climate change and, in some cases, conflicts, are reshaping Africa’s natural features”. He explains, “We didn’t want to preach to the converted. We wanted to reach ‘normal’ people. It is they who after all are the most important players in this whole equation. They’re the ones who are going to have to implement whatever it is that the politicians and other society leaders decide to do to protect our environment.”
He insists the best way to mobilise people is to show them “irrefutable” photographic evidence of the harm human beings are doing to the world. “If you just throw big scientific words at people, they’re not going to understand, they’re going to end up ignoring you. But if the contents of this atlas reach them, I guarantee you they won’t ignore it.” The publication contains 316 satellite images taken in 104 locations in every African country, plus 151 maps and 319 ground photographs. There’s also a series of graphs that demonstrate environmental challenges facing Africa. In short, says Dr Singh, it provides scientific evidence of the impact that natural and human activities have had, and are having, on the continent’s environment.
The roof of Africa is melting
In addition to the relatively rapid decline of Lake Chad, one of the most glaringly obvious images of environmental degradation in the atlas is found in a series of satellite photos taken of Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In a picture dated 24 January 1976, (photo 11) the glaciers surrounding the peak gleam white and magnificent. In a photo taken from space almost 30 years later to the day , it’s clear the glaciers have become insipid shadows of themselves.
Kilimanjaro’s glaciers have lost 82% of their ice since 1912, when their full capacity was first measured. If temperatures continue to rise, the ice fields that have covered the summit for 12 000 years could be gone by 2020. Many scientists blame global warming, but others point to the loss of trees in surrounding areas, caused by clearing for agriculture. UNEP says this loss of foliage means moisture is being released into the atmosphere, reducing cloud cover and precipitation, and therefore increased solar radiation and glacial melting. In presenting such images as those of Kilimanjaro, UNEP “wanted to answer a very simple question: What is happening where?” says Dr Singh.
Farmers forced out, land degraded Dr Singh describes the first chapter of the atlas as “basically an introduction to Africa”. Maps, photos and concise explanations present the continent as endowed with natural wonders including mangrove swamps, wetlands and rain forests. But Africa also has 30% of the world’s minerals, including gold, cobalt and oil. In addition to bolstering fragile economies and, often lining the pockets of various countries’ political elites, these riches have also been responsible for startling environmental degradation.
An example of this is presented in a series of images of the Doba region in southern Chad. A satellite photo (photo 3) taken in 2000, before a consortium of multinational companies began drilling for oil in the region in 2003, shows the Doba Basin when it was home to some of the most productive agricultural land in Chad. In contrast is an image from 2007 where 300 oil wells have replaced the crops. Most of the farmers of Doba have migrated to the cities.
It’s a pattern repeated across Africa and demonstrated in the UNEP atlas. Scientists say chemical and physical damage has degraded about 65% of African agricultural land, forcing people to move away. The resulting urbanisation places further strain on the resources of cities, doing even more harm to the environment. Dr Singh says in compiling the atlas he and his colleagues came across a tendency in the international community “to blame Africa” for environmental problems in other parts of the world. Often, he emphasised, the reverse was true. Pointing to a photograph showing a smoky haze hanging over large parts of Central Africa, Dr Singh comments: “When everybody thinks of Africa, they think all the dust (and pollution) comes from there. When you see this image, it’s the effect of forest fires that happened in Greece, and you can see how badly the continent is affected by the pollutants coming over from there. “Just blaming everything on Africa is not correct. Africa is also getting (negatively) affected by others,” he stresses.
Change hits home
Included in the atlas are two images taken of the Cape . D�SDr Singh says the first photo shows a large area of natural fynbos vegetation on the northern edge of Cape Town in 1978. According to UNEP a photo taken in 2007 (photo 6) of the same area shows how the fynbos is being replaced with suburbs and large farms. D r Singh says it’s clear that the Cape Floral Kingdom – home to over 6 000 plant species found nowhere else in the world – is under threat. Gazing at other images Dr Singh shakes his head. In the first photo he indicates the lush emerald landscape of the Gishwati Forest in western Rwanda in 1978; the second photo shows the same area in 2006, revealing a much duller green. UNEP explains that much of the forest was cleared in the 1980s, the trees making way for farms. More of the Gishwati was cut down after the Rwandan genocide of 1994 to resettle people following the civil war.
Flashes of hope
Dr Singh is, however, quick to assure: “This atlas is not all doom and gloom.” The satellite images also show regions where resources are being managed in a way that sustains and protects the environment. r presents photos of the Diawling wetlands in Mauritania . He points to inky areas on one image, and beams: “The dark parts are where the wetlands have come back.” The first photo of Diawling, taken in 1979, shows the wetlands greatly reduced because of poor rainfall and dam construction.
But a 2006 image shows a marked expansion of the wetlands as the Mauritanian government and international partners cooperated in a project to release significant amounts of water into the Diawling region. Animal life in the area has regenerated, and it’s once again a major tourist attraction. Yet, despite flashes of hope, the primary emotions affecting many readers of the UNEP atlas are shock, sadness and “not least, regret,” says the US’s Warren Sanborn, a senior student in environmental studies. The enduring images of the publication are the jagged scars wrought on the African landscape by mines and oil fields, the gunmetal voids where verdant forests once stood, the present-day grey cities superimposed upon the green expanses lost to the past. Aden Yarow, a Somali-born American, is cynical.
“I love this atlas, but I don’t think Africa’s leaders are going to pay it any attention!” he exclaims. “They’re too concerned about building their own wealth. Why must they think of trees and water? Also, how can you tell a poor African that he cannot cut down a tree, that he cannot earn a few dollars from wood because he must save the environment?” The solution, Yarow stresses, isn’t contained in the pages of the UNEP atlas, but rather in reducing poverty in Africa. “It’s only rich people who can afford to think about the environment,” he scoffs. “Give Africans a way to make money, and you’ll create millions of environmentalists overnight! “But by the time most Africans became wealthier it would probably be too late to save many of the continent’s natural wonders. Then we can all look at the pictures in the atlas and imagine the way things used to be.” |fw
