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"What most people don't really know is that the war, the instability, in Darfur is all based on the lack of water," said the renowned geologist. |
BOSTON — A newly found imprint of a vast, ancient underground lake in Sudan's Darfur could nourish the prospects of peace in the troubled region by providing a potential water source to an area ravaged by drought.
"As proven earlier in southwest Egypt, just northeast of Darfur, a similar former lake is underlain by vast amounts of groundwater," Farouk el-Baz, director of Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing, told Reuters on Wednesday, July 18.
The potential water deposits were found with radar that allowed researchers to see inside the depths of the desert sands.
The images, said the Egyptian-born US geologist, uncovered a "megalake" of 19,110 square miles (30,750 km2) -- three times the size of Lebanon.
"As we began to look into this, we realized we were dealing with a vast low area, a depression. And then we began to look at the details of the depression and we actually found the terraces, meaning the edges of the lake, way up on the nearby mountains," Baz said.
"That's why we call it a megalake, because it is an incredibly large lake. It is the size of the state of Massachusetts, or Lake Erie."
Lake Erie in North America is the 10th largest lake in the world.
El-Baz, who worked on NASA's Apollo program as a supervisor of lunar science planning, says groundwater deposits below the surface can be drilled for water.
He hopes for backing from regional governments as well as international NGOs.
His initiative, called 1,000 Wells for Darfur, has gained the support of the Egyptian government, which has pledged to start building an initial 20 well.
A similar discovery was made in Sudan's neighbor Egypt, where wells have been used to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland.
Dry for Peace
The world-renowned geologist believes the new find would nourish the prospects of peace in Darfur, where a four-year conflict has killed at least 200,000 people and forced more than two million from their homes.
"What most people don't really know is that the war, the instability, in Darfur is all based on the lack of water."
El-Baz said many refugees from Darfur settled in regions that were once the domain of nomads, straining water resources and sowing conflict between farmers and nomads.
"So now, if you find water for the farmers ... in addition to that for the nomads ... for agricultural production, to feed them, to give them grain, then you resolve the problem completely."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon believes the conflict in Darfur, a region the size of France, has its roots in water and food shortage.
"Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," he wrote in an editorial in The Washington Post on Saturday, June 16.
In a June report, the UN Development Programme said widespread environmental problems are a root cause of the violence, noting that deserts had spread southwards by an average of 62 miles (100 km) over the past four decades.
The Khartoum government has always insisted that the Darfur conflict had its roots in competition between Arab nomads and non-Arab farmers over land and water resources in a changing ecosystem.
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