ENVIRONMENT FOCUS: Biodiversity in the Niger Delta
The
recent occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico where oil giant British
Petroleum is unable to control a spill it unleashed on the coasts of
Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Florida is a lesson that Nigeria has to
study and comprehend. Never mind that we have organisations bragging to
deal with oil spill responses. Does Nigeria have contingency plans of
any kind to rescue man,
animals and plants that are threatened by anthropogenic or natural disasters?
How exactly is the nation’s Ecological and Disaster Fund managed?
Oil-soaked pelicans
and other avian fauna, fish and shrimp, mollusks and turtles, mangroves
and reed grass, the entire biological life and ancillary jobs are under
severe threats in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coastline of the richest
and most powerful nation in the world! What will happen in our case
where human corpses lie by the roadside, unidentified and unrecovered
for days?
Saving wild
animals, as we often see on cable television is of course novel to
citizens of poor countries who themselves are perpetually in need of
rescue from economic hardship.
We have not managed
knowledge well enough in this country to afford the common man an
understanding of how ecological systems function, and the importance of
this to jobs, food security, life and overall livelihood? If
environmental management is not fully integrated and mainstreamed into
national development, Nigeria cannot expect people to understand
sustainable land use systems.
A lot of attention
in Nigeria is paid to the so-called “oil wealth” from which the lion’s
share of the national revenue sprouts. The headaches of conflict around
this non-renewable perspective also defines the political constellation
of the country, but hardly ever is any consideration or importance
attached to the natural capital that sustains structure, function and
productivity in the Niger delta.
Experts and
expatriates writing about the resources of the Niger delta in recent
times are surprisingly blindfolded to vital biological factors, the
decimation of which is unimaginable in Europe, the US and other
industrialised places. But why should there be any concern along the
lines of biodiversity conservation if Nigeria does not institute
mandatory requirements for environmental management for the oil and gas
companies operating in its delta, and make sure that such laws are
enforced to the letter?
Apart from being
Africa’s largest delta, the mangrove ecosystem around the Niger River
estuaries is the fourth largest contiguous on earth. A combination of
marine and freshwater environments, mangroves and swamp rainforest
should be the ideal natural system for that diversity of plant and
animal wildlife which sustains fisheries, farming, hunting and
gathering of non-timber forestry products, forestry and tourism. The
big and difficult question is whether all of this could co-exist with
the petroleum industry. No one has direct answers, but a circumvention
of this problem, as is the case presently is also not an option. We are
therefore left with anecdotal accounts of the past: forest elephants in
Andoni and Orashi River areas; pigmy hippopotamuses in Finima on Bonny
Island; manatees off Opobo; dwarf crocodiles in Patani; grey parrots in
Kula and tons of fish and shrimp all over the place! Nigerians may be a
nation of story-tellers, but that is not how science works.
The Niger Delta is no stranger to studies, strategies, “master
plans” and conflict resolution. All of these now have to be reviewed
and updated in respect of coherence with biodiversity, the neglected
and missing link in what we already know.
