Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/214

Human Ecosystems: Anyama District the government, will have caused a rapid growth in human population from the 1920s onwards. which continues today (despite a high child mortality, at rates of between 2.5 and 3.5% per annum). However pressure on land resources would have been relieved somewhat by the rich fishing of the Ekole Creek and the easy accessibility to the palm-oil market, while wholesale destruction of the swamp forests would and still is restricted by the agricultural limitations of the land.

Nonetheless by the 1960s all the Anyama levee was cleared and farmed, with inroads being made into the flood-plain forest. The mammal population was substantially reduced by hunting and those not able to take refuge in the more inaccessible swamps were extinct or close to extinction - elephant, chimpanzee and hippopotamus - although, due to people's farming activities, the variety of birds was greater than in the natural ecosystem of the area.

18.6 MODERN SOCIETY

Population densities on the levees of the Anyama district are high, and the "settleable" land in the area is as densely populated as other parts of Southern Nigeria. Pressure is mitigated by the large areas of swamp and semi-swamp that provide additional resources (and a refuge for bio-diversity) but on "dry" land modern populations suffer the same problems as do poor rural communities everywhere: declining agricultural yields and poor sanitation.

This illusion, of empty land, is the problem of modern people in the Niger Delta which is seen as the place where economic problems can be solved: where additional food can be grown and where valuable mineral resources can be extracted cheaply. Development of the Niger Delta may indeed be one of the solutions but because it looks large and empty the answer is seen in terms of large-scale developments that by nature are careless of the local people and the environment.

The Niger Delta as a whole is being adversely affected by large development projects: up-stream dams, oil extraction, agro-industrial projects, and up-stream industrial projects. The Anyama district in particular is affected by large-scale industrial agriculture: the Risonpalm developments on the Eastern side of the Ekole Creek and the Niger Delta Basin Authority rice project South of Anyama towards Okodi (see map 8). Both projects involve the large scale clearing of what is assumed to be useless "bush" and are being undertaken without the benefit of environmental or social impact analyses. Thus there is no awareness of their costs and while the short-term financial gains may be substantial to limited members of society, these gains will be out-weighed by the long-term economic costs. Costs that are felt locally, nationally and internationally; and that concern immediate financial costs, and immediate and future economic costs.

Immediate financial costs of the wholesale clearance of flood-plain and swampforest includes the loss of a range of renewable resources: timber; fish; and all nontimber forest products (NTFPs) such as bush-meat, rattan cane, chewing stick, raffia rope, raffia wine and a range of spices, vegetables and medicinal plants. This loss results in an immediate financial cost to local people and to the down-stream economy (rattan furniture makers and gin distillers for example) which affects the wider local economy and puts additional pressure on the resources arising from the remaining forests.

The immediate economic costs include all the parts that the forest plays in the ecosystem, such as: providing fish breeding grounds, acting as a water and air filter (much more efficiently than do plantations), and acting as a buffer against the problems 212