CLIMATE CHANGE MATERIALS DISTRIBUTED

UNCLAS NDJAMENA 000604 SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR AF/C AND S/USSES LONDON FOR POL - LORD PARIS FOR POL - BAIN AND KANEDA ADDIS ABABA FOR AU E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PGOV CD SUBJECT: CLIMATE CHANGE MATERIALS DISTRIBUTED REF: STATE 123998 ¶1. (U) Per reftel, Post has distributed E-journals and other materials related to the ongoing climate change conference in Copenhagen to officials and civil society reps in N'Djamena. We have detected considerable interest in this subject among Chadians, given environmental challenges including deforestation and degradation of Lake Chad locally. ¶2. (U) Chad's delegation to the Copenhagen conference has been hewing to the general line of other African nations, on grounds that climate change is seen as hitting hard here. Al-Jazeerra reports of Cop-15 are being followed very widely, and there have been reports of the conference in the local media - unusual, as all Chad-based print media focus almost exclusively on internal politics. One local paper, le Temps, expressed the hope that Lake Chad would receive attention in Copenhagen, while another, N'Djamena Bi-Hebdo, used a cartoon to satirize the Chadian government's focus on recent rebel incursions in the East, when the gravest problem facing the nation, in the view of the editorial cartoonist, was climate change. LNIGRO