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Photographer: Miro May/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images Photographer: Miro May/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Kenya’s Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake, may disappear because of climate change and development projects in neighboring Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch said.

Maximum and minimum temperatures in the region increased by as much as 3 degrees Celsius in the 45 years through 2012, while changes in rainfall patterns have resulted in the long rainy season becoming shorter and drier, and the short rainy season becoming longer and wetter, the New York-based advocacy group said. Insecurity and conflict are expected to intensify as grazing land decreases, it said in a report published Thursday.

In addition, hydropower projects and irrigated sugar plantations in Ethiopia’s lower Omo River Valley threaten to “vastly” reduce water levels in the lake, which is the source of livelihood for 300,000 people. The water body may divide into two small pools, devastating fish stocks, it said.

“The combination of climate change, large-scale development, and population growth poses an urgent threat to the people of the Turkana region,” Joseph Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report released before talks on climate change in Bonn, Germany, next week.