[imagesource: Sia Kambou / AFP]

Acquiring UNESCO World Heritage Site status means jumping through a number of hoops, and for years, the governments of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria had been working together to nominate the Lake Chad cultural landscape.

With the end goal in sight, and without consulting the other governments involved, Chad’s tourism and culture minister wrote to UNESCO requesting that they suspend the process.

The reason – so that Chad can explore oil and mining opportunities in the region, having signed “production-sharing agreements with certain oil companies”  – doesn’t sit well with many, reports the Guardian:

“We worked two years to put together the application and we had never heard about this before,” says Alice Biada of Cameroon’s arts and culture ministry. “It would be a huge waste of time and resources if the process doesn’t go ahead.”

Today, the lake itself spans the border of Chad and Cameroon, while the Lake Chad basin straddles all four countries. Chad’s ministry of tourism and culture did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Image: Guardian

“It is important to recall that the goal of the inscription of a site on the world heritage list is to ensure conservation of its outstanding universal value for future generations,” a spokesperson for the Unesco world heritage site centre said. “A suspension of the inscription process is not contemplated among the possibilities offered by the provisions of the world heritage nomination process”.

If Chad goes ahead with the oil and mining exploration, UNESCO says the process will be cancelled.

The preservation of the lake and its surrounds isn’t just for aesthetic value, because it’s estimated that around 45 million people live off the lake’s resources.

If drilling begins, there is also an increased risk of insurgents moving into the area and attacking pipelines, which would lead to pollution.

In the Niger Delta, for example, contamination levels in the water are so high that even large-scale cleanup operations hardly make a dent.

Niger’s deputy director of wildlife, hunting, parks and reserves, Hamissou Halilou Malam Garba, says the other countries that border Lake Chad won’t give up without a fight:

“We cannot give up on this process, we owe it to future generations…The lake is a shared resource, no country can do it alone. It would be profoundly unfair.”

We can only wish them luck.

[source:guardian]