Lake Chad Updates

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Community Partnerships in the Lake Chad Basin Region

Lake Chad remains one of the largest lakes in Africa and serves as a livelihood source for over 20 million people. Its surface area, which varies by season and year, falls mainly in the far west of Chad, bordering northeast Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger Republic. The lake, whose water resources previously provided for the livelihood of many communities, has lost over 90% of its water volume and resources in the past 50 years, intensifying conflicts between farming and herding communities whose livelihoods have been impacted by these losses.

Extensive study confirms that climate impacts will bring more changes in the region, including dryness, higher winds, longer periods of drought, tropical storms, and displacement of communities due to agricultural land and resource loss. Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supplies, and human security will increase as global temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next two decades, an amount already locked in by our existing emissions.

Actions that can address these issues while reducing our emissions intensity include combined strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation, community resilience building, afforestation, climate smart agriculture, and awareness programs.

CEPB is following the lead of civil society organizations already engaged in addressing these critical challenges. So far, we have engaged with over 20 grassroots organizations to learn more about the region’s most vulnerable communities, which immediate and long-term intervention strategies are already taking place, and which community-based adaptation initiatives and livelihood strategies are proving most promising.

Through these efforts, we are establishing partnerships with grassroots organizations in the region to build human capacity, strengthen awareness programs, support climate smart agricultural initiatives, and resource biogas programs and income-generating tree planting initiatives across communities.

We join our partners in calling for collective action, international solidarity, collaboration, partnerships and funding to combat the climate impacts threatening their communities.

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Literature Review on Desertification in Ceará

Our research fellow Doina Iliescu has written a brief literature review on methodologies for measuring the impacts of climate change and its relationship to desertification. The approaches Doina outlines are essential for identifying efficient measures to prevent hundreds of agricultural communities from having their sources of income threatened by this phenomenon, which is intensified by human actions.

Elementor #4879

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Meaning-making in the struggle for climate justice:

Your life and your support matter.

Image credit: Jared Dominguez

Climate change is the defining threat of our time:

UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez has described climate change as a crisis multiplier, the defining issue of our time. In the words of David Attenborough, it is “the biggest security threat” that humanity has faced¹. Addressing climate change has, and will continue to be, a lifelong challenge for our team at CEPB and for many of you reading this message. For many of us, it is our core mission. For others, it is deeply intersectional to our struggles for justice².

We are part of something bigger than ourselves:

For most of our team, and perhaps for you reading this message, what drives us is not merely surviving climate change but a deep sense of purpose, knowing that we are a tiny part of the human component of a grand, self-regulating earth system, one that itself has the potential to thrive³. Being part of a complex system suggests that every human being is more than a chance at happiness or a flicker of light in the universe: we are closer than family, pieces of a greater whole with important roles to play, and whose contributions, no matter how small, uniquely matter.

Tipping points in crisis can create systemic change:

Because climate change threatens us all, it is imperative that we each with our own unique contribution find ways to change the human systems that, like some cancer on the planet, extract and monopolize resources in ways that disrupt our homeostasis, our chances of survival. Often elusive, systemic change is most likely to occur when, at a point of crisis, those who are most vulnerable and disempowered by current systems are most organized and connected⁴. It happens when the gains of cooperation outcompete the gains of capital and extraction⁵.

Everyone's role is important:

Our mission at CEPB is to contribute to this opportunity for systemic change during the inflection point of the climate crisis. We do this by finding out who is most vulnerable to climate impacts and building supportive connections to maximize the agency of those actors most well-posed to make change. Whether you are a donor, a volunteer, a staff member in a supporting role, or a local activist or partner organization, we are not just on the same team: We are extensions of one another, each performing critical functions to keep human beings and the earth alive and well.

Your support has a magnified impact:

Measuring the cost effectiveness of social resilience work can be challenging, particularly around work that addresses global risks. However, we can share with you the overall costs and impacts of our work, and information on the typical SROI of related activities. Our total revenue since our founding has been $250k, with $56k of that revenue in 2021. With that income, we developed a strategy for seeking out and building partnerships with community leaders in and from high risk areas, and supported them in achieving the impactful projects featured here.

Because our operations are highly cost effective, each project described here takes about $10k per year to conduct and about $30k over three years to achieve impact and scale. As of May 2022, $200 keeps our whole organization going for one day (and ensures our team can spend the whole day fully focused on supporting local climate justice work, not fundraising). Each hour of paid staff time, including overhead, is about $25 in total. Most of that time is spent in critical coordination roles, enabling local leadership to achieve maximum impact and ensuring that dynamic partnerships fostering community climate resilience are functioning well. The cost benefit analysis of this type of social resilience work is very challenging to measure, but the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Adapt Now report estimates the Social Return on Investment (SROI) for climate adaptation work is usually between 2x and 10x⁶⁷, meaning that every dollar you give likely produces between 2 and 10 times as much value for the communities benefiting as you put in.

Help us dedicate one day to you:

The local leaders CEPB supports do things that each of us individually would not be able to do on our own, and it brings our team great joy to see their incredible work. One of the aspects of our team that makes us special compared to larger organizations is that you can connect with any member of our team and experience the same awe and appreciation we do each day. Here are some quick things you can do to connect right now and make a difference.

Donate $200 (individually or with friends) here and book a time with one of our team members to learn everything our team is going to be doing that day, thanks to your donation.
Share your impact with friends! We’ll follow up with a photo or short clip from our meeting and a summary of the impact you made, which you can keep for your own memories or share with as many people as you’d like.
Ask a few people to join you in donating. If you are like us, you want to be doing good all the time and building supportive friendships. When we talk, we’ll be happy to share what we have learned about how to ask for favors in ways that benefit others and make people feel happy by focusing on building relationships.

cepbteam-admin

Lake Chad Updates

Community Partnerships in the Lake Chad Basin Region

Auto Draft

Literature Review on Desertification in Ceará

Elementor #4879

Meaning-making in the struggle for climate justice:

Your life and your support matter.

Climate change is the defining threat of our time:

We are part of something bigger than ourselves:

Tipping points in crisis can create systemic change:

Everyone's role is important:

Your support has a magnified impact:

Help us dedicate one day to you:

Make a Difference Today.

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