COMMUNITY PERCEPTION OF ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGES ON WETLAND AREAS OF THE LAKE CHAD

More than 30 million people in the Lake Chad area rely on activities in the lake and its catchment, which includes major wetlands and floodplains that cover 966,955 km2. Furthermore, the wetlands of Lake Chad perform an essential environmental role in controlling annual water supply, recharging groundwater, and assisting in flood management. Lake Chad is one of Africa's most prolific freshwater systems. The Lake Chad basin was an important economic region in Africa before the back-to-back drops in water levels. The degradation of the Lake has resulted in the loss of 90% of the basin's pastoral ecology. This study looks at the many changes that have occurred in the Lake Chad basin's wetland areas as a result of ecological and socioeconomic stress, as well as the people' responses and efforts to maintain growth in the area. A total of 360 respondents were sampled among the fishing, farming, and livestock communities in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger, all within the Lake Chad region, along with a literature review, field interviews, and observations on various aspects of the environment, to represent the regional economic diversity of the environment. The study's findings show that a 90% reduction in the lake's original volume of water, a general decline in rainfall, and drought episodes have resulted in the extinction of some wildlife species, necessitating changes in habitat, fauna and flora composition, and the presence of vegetation growth and sand in the lake, resulting in a decline in associated socio-economic activity. The key difficulties of environmental change in the Lake Chad basin have also been characterised as social and psychological stress, as well as growing deterioration of the lake environment due to pressure on limited wetland resources. To cope with the stress, the communities have implemented a variety of environmental, social, and economic measures, but they still require institutional and technological reforms as well as support in order to sustain emerging socio-economic development efforts and address the region's current environmental crisis.

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