Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/111

People and Resource Use Conflicts The situation is not irrecoverable: a reduction of grazing pressure will solve the problem in the Sahel. Inevitably this will happen when the water being mined from boreholes is depleted.

10.3 THE ECOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF MODERN SOCIETY

10.3.1 THE PROBLEM: ASPECTS OF HUMAN SOCIETY

The Ecological Problem in the Niger Delta, as in the entire earth, is that Modern Society is able to exploit ecosystems for resources beyond the level of sustainability. Moreover, it can exploit them in such a way that the ecosystems are damaged and unable to continue to produce the resources that people need. Our demands for resources are continually increasing because our population is growing all the time, and not being limited by any restriction upon our ability to exploit resources.

The problem can be better understood as arising from four aspects of human society.

Such as water, soil, timber and oil. How ever well resources are managed, this need remains. The need for life-dependant resources, such as water, is a basic human right.

So that human populations are growing exponentially beyond the level at which they can be supported by ecosystems without damaging them. (An ecological law demands that as the population of any animal becomes too large for the ecosystem of which it is part, food will become scarce so that the animal becomes stressed and easy prey for other animal species.)

That has an infinite ability to exploit resources to exhaustion and to damage ecosystems in the process.

Regardless of future consequences. (As summed up by the comment of a farmer in the Bamenda Highlands of Cameroon who, aware of the disastrous environmental consequences of maize farming on steep slopes in a high rainfall area, said: "I cannot just lie down and die - tomorrow will have to take care of itself.")

10.3.2 THE PROBLEM IS GLOBAL

This ecological problem concerns the entire Biosphere for two reasons:

So that, for instance, the timber and oil of the Niger Delta is demanded all over the world. In other words, demand is not limited by local needs.

Has become so large that what happens in one part of the world affects ecosystems elsewhere and can affect the entire Biosphere. For instance: pollution in the Niger Delta can damage the fishing industries of all the countries which fish in the Bight of Guinea; 109