Lake Chad lies at the southern extreme of the Sahara Desert and is well known for large fluctuations in its surface area this century. Seasonal fluctuations, however, have received much less attention. This paper presents the results of two complimentary research efforts on the south‐west shore of the lake. These illustrate how important both inter and intra‐annual fluctuations in the level of the lake are, both in terms of their impact on the environment and in the response of the communities living on the lake shore. The paper compares a time series of the fluctuations in the level of Lake Chad as monitored by the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite with findings from participatory research with the communities of the south‐west lake shore. It shows how the communities of the lake have responded to lake‐level fluctuations with their livelihood choices. These results are used to show that although vastly different in scope, a high degree of complimentarity exists between remotely‐sensed information and community‐based research and that they are of potentially great value to development initiatives on the shores of Lake Chad.
In the history of fisheries development worldwide, 1982 was a turning point, with the 200-mile economic exclusion zones set up by the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea providing the basis for the coastal nations of the South to manage and develop their marine fisheries, and the World Bank's review of the failures of earlier investments and proposal of a new strategy for future development (see Table 1 and Sfier-Younis and Donaldson, 1982;World Bank, 1984). However, in the 1990s the failures were still at the forefront of the debate and fundamental choices in the ethics and politics of fisheries development were called for (Bailey and Jentoft, 1990).For much of the post-World War II era, the fundamental debate has concerned the trade-off between technical advances in methods for catching fish and the sustainability of fish populations. Attempts to overcome perceived technical constraints by providing fishing equipment on credit were followed by investments in stock management and training. These were accompanied by concern to remedy the 'tragedy' of open access fisheries. Small-scale artisanal fishers are a recent focus of attention and many hopes currently centre on the potential for aquaculture development. Despite changing opinions, the debate has only rarely strayed inland where fish production can make an important contribution to regional diets. 1 Although pleas have been made for recognition of the special characteristics of fishery resources, policy recommendations devote minimal attention to the fisher-farmers of inland fisheries.This article examines the rural economy of the extreme north-east of Nigeria and the implications of the results of socio-economic research in fishing villages
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