Togo - Geography
Togo is a thin strip of land in West Africa. Togo is located in West Africa on the Atlantic coast of the Gulf of Guinea. It is bordered in the west by Ghana, in the east by Benin and in the north by Burkina Faso. The north of the country is in West Africa's semi-arid Savannah belt, while the south is tropical. The southern coastline is on the Gulf of Guinea.
The country spans an area of 54,400 km2 encompassing rolling hills (the Chaîne du Togo) in the north, a southern plateau (Ouatchi Plateau or Terre de Barre), and a low coastal plain with extensive lagoons and marshes. A number of lakes dot the Togolese landscape, the largest being Lake Togo, in the south.
Togo was once covered with dry land forests, but most of these are gone—the result of agricultural expansion and the need for wood over the centuries. Traveling from south to north, the change in climate and environment for each region is readily apparent, from the humid coast to the semiarid north. There never were the vast concentrations of wildlife that most Americans associate with Africa—or more specifically, East Africa. Most of the indigenous species are gone, due to human population pressures on the land and hunting practices. Togo does have some areas set aside for national parks, but increasing pressure for farmland is reducing the size of these areas.
Togo has 50 kilometers (31 miles) of coastline, of which 40 kilometers has been severely eroded. The government has already built some physical defences. Between 2010 and 2014, it erected groynes and riprap to protect the coastline at Aneho and surrounding areas. Groynes are low walls or barriers built out at sea. Riprap is the name given to large boulders or manufactured concrete objects used to fortify shorelines. The Gulf of Guinea has a history of man-made coastal erosion which began with the building of the Akossombo Dam on the Volta River in Ghana in 1961. Its construction kept back sediment that should have been deposited along the coast.
From the existence of old sea-beaches lying parallel with the present shore, and which are to be found several miles inland, it was evident in the 19th century that the continent was at this part gaining upon the sea. A sand-bank formed, and gradually rose above the sea-level, enclosing a stretch of water behind it; then the bed of this salt lake gradually silted up, partly through the alluvium that is washed down during the rains, and partly through a slow process of upheaval which appeared to be in progress; until at last, instead of a shallow sheet of water, there is a broad sandy plain, whose origin was explained by the old beaches which bound it on the south, by the presence of lagoon shells in large quantities, and by the entire absence of every description of stone and rock.
Coastal erosion exists in nature, it is not necessarily man-made. But in Togo man-made coastal erosion has reached alarming proportions in Togo. It is threatening the future of two major cities, Lome and Aneho, the current and former capitals, as well as dozens of fishing villages.
Coastal erosion, in which land or beaches are worn away by the wind and the waves, is destroying around five to ten meters (16-32 feet) of shoreline every year. In some locations, up to 25 meters has disappeared over the same period. The sea doesn't only eat away at the shoreline, it also consumes any infrastructure, such as roads or buildings, or vegetation which may have been growing on it. Nothing remains.
Both the Togolese Environmental Department and the World Bank have launched projects to limit the damage being caused by coastal erosion. They involve, firstly, the building of physical structures that inhibit the destructive power of the wind and the waves, and secondly, encouragement for coastal communities to play an active part in defending their shoreline and to develop alternative sources.of income to replace those that contribute to coastal erosion.
The damage can be traced backed to human intervention and the building of the autonomous deep sea port of Lome in 1968. The port can accommodate heavily-laden seagoing cargo vessels that require a water depth of more than nine meters. The port's construction had disrupted the process of sedimentary accumulation. This is a natural process in which the beaches continually acquire deposits of sand, making up for the amount lost by erosion. The building of the port changed the direction of the currents and created a huge drift of sand just off the coast. The drift prevents sand from being deposited on the beach.
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