A FORMER FRENCH colony, Chad has a land area of 495,753 sq. mi. (1,284,000 sq. km.), with a population of 10,146,000 (2005 est.), and a population density of 20.4 people per sq. mi. (7.9 people per sq. km.). Although 85 percent of the people work in agriculture, only three percent of the land is arable; a further 36 percent of land is used for pasture, much of it with extremely poor soil. Some 26 percent of the country is forested, and this has lessened the already extremely low carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Its per capita emission rate is 0.01 metric tons per person, the second lowest rate in the world, only slightly more than Somalia.
All of Chad’s CO2 emissions come from liquid fuels. The country has a very small public transportation system, with most people traveling long distances by hitching rides with trucks. The railway line planned in 1958 to link Bangui in the Central African Republic with N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, was never completed. As a result, many of the elite and middle-class use cars, adding to air pollution. The government of Hissene Habre ratified the Vienna Convention in 1989. His successor, Idriss Deby, took part in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in Rio de Janeiro in May 1992.
Although the Deby government has not expressed its stance on the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Chad is likely to be one of the countries most affected by climate change and global warming. This is particularly apparent through the marginalization of agricultural land, the reduction of rainfall, the increased demand for water for agricultural irrigation, and temperature change. These environmental factors have led to a dramatic reduction in the size of Lake Chad, which has decreased in size from 9,650 sq. mi. (25,000 sq. km.) in 1963, to 521 sq. mi. (1,350 sq. km.) in 2007.
