In the early 1900s, fishermen at the edge of the Sahara saw a desert lake start to die back; by 2000, Lake Chad had shrunk by 90%, and a series of NASA studies traced the cause to a deadly combination of irrigation and a drying climate

Imagine a lake so vast that it once stretched over 25,000 square kilometres, an area the size of Vermont. Now imagine that shrinking to just 1,350 square kilometres in a few decades.

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