Fred Pearce thinks that activism and science are coming together in the South's struggle to defend water against concrete. The Gorgoram fishing festival in northern Nigeria, on the fringes of the Sahara, was once a celebration of the miraculous fecundity of even the most inhospitable environment. Every year, in mid-February, thousands of people gather to collect the last fish from the rivers. But they all say the festival is not what it was.
Catches are well down.
The rivers no longer fill with water. And round the village there are other signs of desiccation in a once-green landscape. Hundreds of trees have simply fallen down because the water table has slipped beneath their roots. Local lakes, through which boys still herd their cattle, now dry up weeks earlier than they used to. And floods no longer reach the fields of fertile soils, known as fadamas , which they once irrigated.