Nick Ashton-Jones, with Oronto Douglas and Susi Arnott

“ Life for the great majority of people in Port Harcourt, as in most of the world's cities, is a grinding, daily struggle for survival in an environment that offers no comfort and little hope. Port Harcourt is devoid of sanitation, education or physical beauty. It is a reproach to all the technological advances of the twentieth century and must call into question the validity of what we glibly call development. ”

“ All members of society appear to suffer from frustration for themselves and for their children. This arises from poor agricultural yields, the lack of education and opportunities, their apparent abandonment by the government, but above all by the manifestation of the oil industry in their mist that seems to represent huge wealth and yet has given nothing to them except for the impoverishment of their land. This sense of frustration is most apparent amongst the young men and women who want a better education but if they get it find that they can do little with it. ”

“ ERA aims to be the voice of Local People, but it can only be their voice if it has their trust and if it speaks their truth. Gathering relevant knowledge comes from throwing off all preconceptions and by a humble immersion into local life.
ERA's approach is necessarily based upon what ERA people are able to do in the field with limited resources. This means getting to know a community by living within it, in order to feel as far as possible what it may be like to be a member of that community. ”

“ Tropical rainforest is the climatic vegetation in the tropics wherever rainfall and low temperatures are not limiting factors. But any definition of tropical rainforest begs the question: 'what is a forest?' As we will show, it is far more than a collection of trees; all forests contain non-tree plant communities such as "tree" ferns and bamboo, and the forest ecosystem is comprised of plants, animals, microbes and soils and their interrelationships. ”

“ I am frustrated at the turn of events: plants are dying, lands are flooded, fishes are killed, water with green colouring matters. We, I, yearn for the time past when we were the centre of agriculture; we do not understand these things, having our baths in the river, our life-wire, is becoming more and more unbearable. ”

“ The landscapes that we see around us today are the visible manifestations of human ecosystems: the concepts of 'wild landscapes' or 'natural landscapes' that imply some sort of landscape that has evolved without the aid of people is nonsense.
For the greater part of our history, people have lived in ecological balance with the environment. We lived as viable people exploiting the ecosystems of which we were part in a sustainable manner. Thus our ecosystems remained healthy and were able to continue to supply the resources that we required from them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Contrary to the popular view, most renewable resources are less easy to manage than non-renewable resources. This is because renewable resources are only potentially renewable and are dependant upon healthy ecosystems: Modern Society seems unwilling (because of short-term economic laws) or unable (because of ignorance) to manage ecosystems in a way that ensures the sustainable production of resources. This is a worldwide problem, so that, for instance, fish stocks in Europe's North Sea are declining just as fast as are the fish stocks in the Bight of Guinea because of bad management. ”

“ One might say that agroforestry is a necessity rather than an option if the agricultural and environmental problems faced by farmers in the LEM ecozone are to be solved. Improved varieties of crop species and the liberalisation of fertiliser marketing are essential, but their benefits will only be felt if they are applied to healthy soil. And given the demands that are being and will continue to be made of them, the soils of Southern Nigeria can only be maintained and improved through raising Biomass and by practising sustainable agriculture, which is, in the tropics, agroforestry. ”

“ In healthy, viable ecosystems, resources are constantly being recycled in a complexity of inter-related cycles. For instance nutrients in soil are taken up by plants, and the plants grow, die and decay to become part of the soil to nourish new plants. Within this process, the element nitrogen is taken up by plant roots as a vital nutrient and released again into the soil by the micro-organisms which are the agents of decay. These are two simple inter-related cycles in an ecosystem, but they are part of increasingly large resource-cycles, the largest of all being the Biosphere in which we live. ”

“ Humankind cannot achieve happiness in a degraded environment; living in harmony with other forms of life (as in some traditional relationships between people and their environment) is in itself a human right. Furthermore, every individual and responsible human being has an equal right to happiness, regardless of his or her wealth. ”

“ Despite the low value that governors and villagers place on the long-term ecological value of forest reserves and on their ability to yield income continually, there is an intense competition for the short term returns arising from the sale of timber as logs and of land as cheap "virgin" land for plantation crops. Thus there is a thriving black market relationship between those who have the political control over forest reserves and those who want to make short-term high profits. This in turn makes political control over forest reserves lucrative and therefore desirable. ”

“ Housing is the most obvious demonstration of Port Harcourt's poor social infrastructure, and indicates why the city so manifestly fails the majority of its citizens. The housing reality for most people is four to six people living in one small room of less than 10m2. Moreover, the house is in a compound that does not have a water supply for much of the time, where each person shares a toilet with thirty to forty others and a bathroom with perhaps more, where the overall population density is from 1,000-2,000 persons per hectare, and where the only open space is the street. ”

“ The primary beneficiaries will be the shareholders of the oil companies, the highly paid technical and managerial staff and, most of all, the plethora of corrupt officials, politicians and military personnel. The wealth generated by the oil industry has been concentrated in a very few hands while the avaricious desire for a portion of the wealth directs and has thoroughly corrupted and criminalised the political life of the state to a degree where civil society is collapsing. ”

“ Parallel to the spiral of land degradation has been the rapid growth of the oil industry, which arrived in Ogoni in the early 1960s. It is not surprising that the local community should blame the industry for all its problems, because as pipelines were laid across their land, as the oil was pumped out, and as surplus gas was flared night and day for thirty years, the land became poor. ”

“ The high light intensities on the edges of the forest—naturally alongside rivers, lakes and swamps, and man-made beside roads—do present a tangle of vines, shrubs and young small pioneer trees that may indeed seem impenetrable until the deep forest is reached. ”

“ The health problems of Port Harcourt are mainly caused by poverty and poor water supply, and public health policy seems to be concerned with treating the symptoms of poor health rather than the causes.
Education facilities are scandalous and we use the word advisedly, showing what amounts to contempt for the up and coming generation of adults in Port Harcourt and the region. That students and children in the public sector receive any education at all (remembering that study is impossible in their over-crowded homes) is a credit to the genius of their lecturers and teachers. ”

“ Given the poverty outlined above and visible injustice in the distribution of wealth in the Niger Delta, is it any wonder that there are so many manifestations of discontent with, and disrespect for those who are in authority? ”

“ It is not surprising that the other aspect of the environment permanent in the consciousness of the Okoroba-Nembe people is the rivers as communication, the link with the outside world, and the channels through which bad and good things come. In maps, rivers are always very wide taking up a large part of the landscape. ”

“ Without water there is no life, and access to drinking water is the prime factor in human settlement.
The irony of the Niger Delta is that while water dominates the physical environment, decent drinking water is hard to find: in the Brackish-water and Sandbarrier Island ecozones, the scarcity of drinking water has always determined the pattern of settlement. However in the Fresh-water and LEM ecozones, the availability of drinking water has only recently become a problem: because of pollution in the former, and in the latter because of falling water tables arising from forest clearance. ”

“ It must be stressed that there is nothing new about agroforestry in Nigerian agriculture. Indeed it is true to say that traditional agriculture is agroforestry which has historically been able to adapt in response to changing social, economic and climatic conditions (for example it is interesting to see how agriculture quickly changed in the Niger Delta in response to a demand for palm oil in Europe from about 1850 onwards: whole communities re-organised themselves and their land in order to maximise the production of the oily gold) . ”

“ If the forests of the Niger Delta are to survive into the 21st century, then their true economic value must be understood by all who are in a position to influence their use. An understanding of their economic value is not enough, and financial management needs to be reformed in order to ensure that there is a real financial incentive for the political controllers of the forest not to destroy them unnecessarily. ”

“ Oil extraction severely conflicts with the exploitation of other resources primarily in the way that it affects water resources. The irony is that if the oil industry took the same care as it takes elsewhere, for instance in North America and in the United Kingdom, there would be much less conflict: despite the pollution caused by the subsequent mis-use of oil products, oil extraction can be a clean industry and there is no reason why it should not be clean in Nigeria and the Niger Delta. ”

“ We believe that the company is environmentally and socially careless and tactless, having allowed itself to be seduced by the climate of low environmental standards and carelessness for human rights within which the Nigerian oil industry works. Moreover, as a major transnational company that has had a substantial impact upon the communities amongst whom it has worked, Shell has shown, to say the least, a cavalier attitude to the well-being of these communities that currently amounts to a cowardly disregard, at a time when these communities most need their help. ”

“ Species evolution into more diverse forms is like a fast breeder nuclear reactor: the more species there are in an ecosystem, the more interaction there will be both within and between species, resulting in the evolution of yet more species that in turn feed the process. ”

“ Human Rights needs: because Local People have a right to a healthy environment and to the maintenance of the local ecosystems of which they are a part. However, with the best will in the world, any solution is bounded by a sea of ignorance about ecosystems and resource cycles. Usually decisions are based on easy short-term pragmatic solutions without any consideration of even the immediate, let alone the longterm, ecological implications of these decisions. But a solution has to be found because the Ecological Problem will not go away: the human population will continue to increase ”

“ These definitions help our understanding but the ecozones are no more than convenient boundaries for the description of the Niger Delta ecosystem as a whole. An ecosystem which itself is no more than a convenient boundary for study, and actually an interrelated part of a hierarchy of ecosystems. A hierarchy that may, for example start with the West African biogeographical sub-region and reach down to the estuaries of the Niger Delta and defined species populations that live in them. These ecological interrelationships become more obvious when they are subjected to human influence. ”

“ As Map 7 shows, Botem-Tai people see their village and the roads leading to it as huge, set in an incidental agricultural landscape; whereas to someone passing by on the Federal Road the landscape is an endless plain of oil-palm-bush, the villages so incidental to it as to be almost un-noticed. However, the local people are right, for the human element of the landscape is the most important: it is a landscape created by mankind. ”

“ Farmers do find ways to survive and in doing so often find sustainable solutions which can be seen throughout the LEM ecozone. For a start, the bleak Chromalina/Cassava/Oil Palm landscape generally represents land far away from home so that much farmer energy is wasted in walking to and from the farm. Land nearer home is often more thoughtfully cultivated and thus more productive, while compound gardening is often very productive and diverse, producing good soil conditions. Urban and urban-fringe agriculture is similar in many ways to near home and compound farming in rural areas. ”

“ State governments are generally ignorant of the potential financial value of the forests and effectively give away logging concessions or land use concessions as political favours or in return for favours. Local People, on the other hand, may also be ignorant of the financial value of the forest but may in any case be unable to take advantage of the market for forest products. Either way the forest does not yield its potential financial returns and is therefore not seen as something that is valuable. ”

“ Port Harcourt has failed to even attempt to provide decent housing to its citizens. This is because economic power does not lie with the majority of citizens who are poor and who therefore cannot affect the free market in housing: the minority of citizens are rich and it is their spending power that influences housing policy. Because income is so badly distributed capital investment for housing is concentrated on building a few large houses for the elite minority, and no small houses for the poor majority. ”

“ For example, the nature and location of soil itself is difficult to define because of the spatial confusion of the various soil and semi-soil components: litter, detritus, humus, inorganic particles, organic compounds, and the soil-water and soil-atmosphere interfaces. Apart from the parasitic plants, all plants need soil of some sort and since rainforest trees give physical support all sorts of other plants—in branch forks, in holes made by animals, on stems and branches, and in any nook or cranny—there is soil in places other than on the ground. ”

“ This frustration leads to expensive attacks upon oil industry installations. The only benefit that accrues to the local people is the temporary work available to young men, mainly, it seems, from the seismic prospecting Companies; but even this is a double-edged sword, for the young men get a brief taste of a cash-rich life only to have it frustratingly snatched away.
In the fresh-water ecozone, the prime economic activity is agriculture and forest exploitation, both for subsistence and for trading. ”

“ Ironically where the flowlines leap a stream they can be used as a precarious foot-bridge, but an abiding impression of the Niger Delta countryside is of women farmers head-loading produce back to the village after a day's farming and negotiating the flowlines with an elegant skill. ”

“ Thus a vicious cycle commenced: growth of a human farming population on a fixed area of land, causing fallow periods to become shorter and thus the sandy, easily leached soils to become increasingly degraded, demanding harder work for lower yields of cassava which is all that can be grown on the impoverished soils. With each cycle the soils become more impoverished and the pressure on the land becomes greater, while the population continues to grow. ”

“ By the time we got to the Anyama district we were looking at the environment with the hindsight of a lot more knowledge than with which we had worked in Botem-Tai in Ogoni: in turn we learnt more at Anyama, for instance about the nature of rural human population densities, which made us reassess our views about Botem-Tai. Each community with whom we work raises new issues about people's relationship to ecosystems, so that we are continually reassessing our data. ”

“ Rarely is the natural tropical rainforest a nightmare 'jungle' of vines and thick undergrowth. More often the dense tree canopy above ensures that light intensity on the forest floor is limited, so that there is little undergrowth and passage is easy. ”

“ In order to be able to have a clear and objective view of how the oil industry makes an impact upon the environment it is necessary first to understand the nature of environmental impact assessment in terms of the mining of oil. ”

“ The usual example is a forest in a country where there is an acute shortage of timber and fuel, and where the forest is held as a common resource: no man or woman is going to consider conserving the forest because if s/he does not exploit it to his own maximum ability then someone else will, and so down to the last tree until there are no trees left which is the tragedy. The situation is exacerbated because poor people (made poorer by environmental degradation) cannot afford to think about conserving resources: present needs take precedence. ”