We're so grateful to be part of an exciting new partnership with funding from Global Affairs Canada, focused on regions where ecosystems are showing the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
Together with thousands of local farmers and community leaders, we want to tip the balance back toward natural environments that can flourish, protect life, and support healthy communities—and in the process, make a dent in the global fight to limit climate change.
We’re doing that through an initiative called Nature-Based Solutions, together with our partners in Lutheran World Federation. Nature-based solutions take a big, ambitious, multi-faceted approach that boils down to a simple premise: if we take care of creation, it can take care of us.
Lake Chad
The Lake Chad catchment area is the largest inland water basin in Africa, but today, the ecosystem is fragile and degrading quickly as it faces a web of related challenges.
Warming temperatures are hurting agricultural production of crops like plantains, and the World Bank projects that temperatures in the region will increase 1.5 times faster than the global average.
Lake Chad has shrunk by 90% since 1963 and continues shrinking, due to both local human activity—like deforestation and unsustainable water use—and global climate effects, like shorter rainy seasons. Meanwhile, overgrazing and pollution have contributed to the disappearance of valuable species.
Farmers say they can no longer predict rainfall. With less rain and hotter temperatures, hunger and disease are both on the rise, while livelihoods disappear. Reduced income for farmers means pulling children from school, which disproportionately affects girls.
At a household level, families are experiencing hunger, a loss of income, real safety concerns, and kids who aren’t going to school. But for these families to move past crisis and into sustainable futures, these symptoms can't be addressed in isolation. The issues faced by the people living around Lake Chad are complex—because the system that supported life in the area for so many centuries is rapidly unravelling. So, to move toward sustainable futures, we have to work with communities and think about the system that supports life in the area as a whole.
The Project
We designed this project through consultation with hundreds of families in Cameroon and Chad, and it'll be carried out alongside thousands of local farmers as we restore land, reforest, push adoption of sustainable farming and water management practices, and include voices that have been left out.
We expect that after two-and-a-half years of this project, over 128,000 people will benefit directly from an improved ecosystem—with better nutrition, water access, crop yields, and sustainable futures—and an additional 640,000 people will be able to live and work in ecosystems that will have been restored.
As we restore and transform ecosystems where life is at threat, we can put food on tables, prevent disease, limit disaster, support sustainable, growing economies, and help limit how much our world warms.
Our thanks to Global Affairs Canada and to all our Lutheran partners and friends across Canada who are making this work possible. Make a gift now to support this work, or find out now how your church can get involved!
