Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/113

People and Resource Use Conflicts This process is called the Greenhouse Effect because it works just like a greenhouse in cold climates. The glass panes of the greenhouse allow the short waves of the sun's heat to pass into the building, but the long-wave heat radiating from the warmed surfaces inside cannot pass out again. Thus the inside of the building becomes a lot warmer than the outside, so that plants can be grown in cold weather.

It follows therefore that if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing, more heat will be trapped inside the Biosphere and the earth's average temperatures will increase. As a result of burning coal and oil, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing, and global temperatures have increased by about 0.45°C since 1900, and mostly since 1940. This may seem insignificant, but it is enough to have caused the shrinking of Alpine and Polar ice caps causing a sea level rise of about 1.5mm per year over the same period. These processes are complex and not fully understood, but they appear to be accelerating.

Carbon dioxide is not the only Greenhouse gas. It makes up about 55% of the total. Pollutants from air-conditioners and refrigerators (Chloroflurocarbons - CFCs) make up about 20%, and Methane makes up 15%. Gas flaring in the Niger Delta is considered to be a major source of Greenhouse gases.

10.4 RESOURCE USE CONFLICTS The demand for resources beyond the ability of an ecosystem to supply them causes four resource conflicts.

For instance, do we fish as much as our technology allows us to do now, or conserve breeding stocks for future supply?

For instance, should the mangrove forests remain undisturbed to maintain the fish food chain, or should they be developed for rice production?

For instance, does land and the minerals below it ultimately belong to the state or to the Local People; does this bit of forest belong to me or to the community; does this tree belong to me because it is on my land, or to you because your father planted it?

For instance, should land be developed for agriculture as agro-industrial estates controlled by companies or as small farms controlled by Local People?

Rarely are these conflicts efficiently resolved and the most obvious manifestation of this lack of resolution is social discontent and even a breakdown of civil order. The recent problems in Burundi and Rwanda arise from resource conflicts in an area which has one of the highest human population densities in Africa. Civil disorder is often met with oppressive military backed governments which are careless of human rights and which get no nearer to finding a solution to the Ecological Problem.

More insidious than a breakdown in civil order is ecological degradation and breakdown, which causes a rapid decline in the yields of forest products, and in agricultural and fisheries production. These problems encourage people to leave the countryside to seek work in the towns, which in turn causes rapid urbanisation: another 111