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The
lake - once one of the largest in West Africa - used to be fed
by annual flooding from the Niger River. But it started to
disappear after catastrophic droughts in the 1970s, forcing more
than 200,000 people to abandon their traditional livelihoods.
"All this area was covered by water," said farmer-turned-herder
Abdul Karim Ag Al Hassane, pointing to the desert horizon in a
video shared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Now he and other inhabitants of the formerly lakeside villages
west of Timbuktu have to walk long distances to find water for
their livestock and build barriers out of sticks in an effort to
keep the dunes at bay.
The shrinking population of Lake Faguibine is set to come under
further pressure from climate change. Average temperatures are
expected to rise over 3°C in West Africa by 2100 and up to 4.7°C
in northern Mali, according to the U.N. climate body.
Efforts to boost resilience by restoring Faguibine's wetlands
and the area's role as the breadbasket of the Timbuktu region
have been derailed by waves of conflict, most recently a
years-long Islamist insurgency, according to a 2016 study in the
African Journal of Aquatic Science.
In the village of Bintagoungou, the advancing dunes have buried
a schoolyard and cracked the empty buildings' foundations.
"This is a school for almost 400 students," said mayor Hama
Abacrene. "That's an entire generation. A lost generation, a
generation condemned to flee or be recruited."
(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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