Chad is as geographically isolated as places come in Africa. It is also among the continent’s poorest and least stable countries, the scene of recurrent civil wars and foreign invasions since it gained independence from France in 1960. (1) Among the population poverty is severe. Only one in four adults is literate and 37 percent of the children underweight.
Yet it has shown some environmental consciousness. During the 1990s Chad increased its protected area from 1.0 to 9.1 percent of its national land. All of that land had been occupied by what are now an estimated six hundred thousand displaced people. Mark Dowie reports, “No country I could find Beside Chad and India, which officially admits to about one hundred thousand people displaced for conservation ( a number that is almost certainly deflated) is even counting this growing class of refugee. (3) Think about this for a moment; relocating an additional 1 out of every 15 persons in the name of conservation in a place with all the problems in Chad makes one wonder.
Also, in the name of environmentalism, in 2009 the government placed a ban on charcoal, the sole source of household fuel for about 99 percent of Chadians. Government officials said the charcoal ban was part of an effort the halt tree-cutting for fuel, which they said was essential to fight desertification. The environment minister said, “Cooking is of course a fundamental necessity for every household. On the other hand…with climate change every citizen must protect his environment.” (4)
Both of these seem admirable from the viewpoint of being environmentally conscious, but let’s look at another side of Chad.
Paul Collier reports that less than 1 percent of the money released by the Ministry of France to Chad for rural health clinics actually reached the clinics. In addition, in 2005 the European Commission gave 20 million Euros to the government of Chad for budget support. Since the funds given by the European Union can be spent on whatever the government chooses Collier doubts that much of it was allocated to health. So the European Commission’s well-intentioned support for the desperately poor country of Chad is likely to have ended up largely financing the army. (5)
In February of 2008, The New York Times reported that Chad had become a temporary home to nearly a quarter of a million refugees from the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur, and tens of thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic. Beyond that, almost 200,000 Chadians had been displaced by fighting which had spilled into the country from Darfur, making a vast pool of desperate people who depend heavily in international aid. (2)
Various indexes give low marks to Chad:
-The Failed States Index lists Chad number 2, number 1 is Somalia. All the rest of the top ten are in Africa except Afghanistan number 6, Iraq number 7, and Pakistan number 10 (6). A side-note—seems interesting that we are fighting, or have fought wars in the two of the top ten countries of the Failed States Index that are the only ones not in Africa besides Pakistan..
-The Global Hunger Index considers three indicators; the proportion of undernourished people in a population, the proportion of children younger than five years considered underweight, and the mortality rate of children younger than five years—to compare countries ‘hunger levels.’ Twenty-nine countries still have levels of hunger that are ‘extremely alarming’ or ‘alarming.’ The ten countries with the worst levels of hunger— starting with the worst off were Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Chad , Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Comoros, Madagascar, and the Central African Republic. (7)
-The 2010 Corruption Perception Index listed Chad at number 171 out of 178 countries.
-The Environmental Performance Index is a method of quantifying and numerically benchmarking the environmental performance of a country’s policies. Chad was 151 out of 163 countries in spite of its having over 9% of the land protected, and its recent charcoal ban.
An interesting fact is that none of this has stopped the Chinese. The New York Times reported in 2007, that the Chinese had bought the rights to a vast exploration zone in Chad. “The same is happening in one African country after another. In large oil-exporting countries like Angola and Nigerian, China is building or fixing railroads and landing giant exploration contracts in Congo and Guinea.” (1)
References
- Howard W., French and Lydia Polgreen, “China, Filling a Void, Drills for Riches in Chad,” The New York Times, August 13, 2007
- Lydia Polgreen, “World Bank Ends Effort to Help Chad,” The New York Times, September 10, 2008
- Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2009), x
- “Chad: Panic, outcry at government charcoal ban,” irinnews.org, January 16, 2009
- Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), 102
- “The Failed States Index 2010”, The Fund for Peace, Washington, DC
- Emily Stephenson, “29 countries’ hunger levels alarming report”, reutershealth.com, October 11, 2010
