Nick Ashton-Jones

“ Human society may be defined as the human species plus human technology. These influence the Biosphere so that its viability is undermined to such an extent that it is less able to withstand shocks.
Mankind's activities have affected the environment ever since we evolved as a tool-using animal, capable of reason, thought and speech. Most of the world's landscapes have been modified by mankind, but not to the extent that the Ecosystems have become non-viable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the fact is, that in 25 years time a properly managed forest will be yielding the same, or even more than it does now, while a rubber plantation after 25 years will have passed its peak and the soil may be irrecoverably damaged. How do we value the benefit of forests to future generations? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whilst Ecosystems can be described simply in terms of just plants (a mangrove forest) or just animals (the Andoni elephants) , plants and animals have a dynamic ecological relationship.
However it is a relationship where animals are particularly dependent upon plants, and nowhere is this more obvious than in obtaining and using energy. All living things need energy and all energy comes from the sun; but only plants are able to convert the sun's energy into carbohydrates, which can be stored and used as energy. ”

“ The Eco Tree can only grow in very special conditions which include: the climate of Eco Island, the aeration at its roots created by the ants' nests, and the high levels of phosphate in the soil that comes from the guano or faeces of the Aphid Eater. However if the population of aphids gets too large the Eco Tree is weakened and likely to die because too much sap is sucked from it and because the fungus on the leaves grows so thick that they cannot photosynthesise. Moreover, the aphids are unable to move much on their own and depend on the ants to move them around the tree. ”

“ That is, of course, the Environment without people, where vegetation is able to reach its state of climax for a given climate. This could be rain-forests on the West African coast, pine forests on the Siberian plain or the lime forest in much of Southern England.
But people have to be brought into the environmental equation. Our unnatural technology significantly influences the development of the climax vegetation or else destroys it altogether. The influence is clear in urban and agricultural landscapes, less obvious in inaccessible forests, which seem to be entirely natural. ”

“ It is a dynamic system: just thinking about the relationship of soils and vegetation and animals, and of grass and antelopes and lions, indicates the complexity and dynamics of Ecosystems in general.
Energy is vital to an Ecosystem being the only component which comes from outside the biosphere: all others are recycled. Looking at the forest edge again, the herbage grows because it receives energy from the sun, but also because it gets water from the rain and nutrients from the soil. ”

“ If the soil conditions are themselves understood in terms of their relationship to geology, topography, climate and hydrology, then there is no need to go beyond soil conditions in order to understand vegetation climaxes. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ However a rapid survey of animal communities has to rely partly on past experience, using vegetation as an indicator of which animals may be likely to live in or visit an area, and also on local knowledge.
People living in a locality will generally know most about the animals they hunt and/or that impede their farming activities—the 'pests'. These tend to be the vertebrates, and especially the mammals, because they are closest to humans. ”

“ Typical tropical monsoon soils, as found throughout the Delta, have a very shallow A horizon, because decomposition is so rapid. However, the underlying B horizon may be very deep, because the parent material is breaking down rapidly. The B horizon may vary in colour from deep red to white, depending on the proportion and chemical state of the iron in the soil.
Under natural conditions, leached nutrients in this B horizon are taken up very rapidly by tree roots so that the soil is often inherently poor. On anything steeper than a gentle slope, this soil is very easily eroded. ”

“ With proper planning there is room for all and for the maintenance of the ecological integrity of the ecozone. However ignorance about relationship of the marine fishing industry to the mangroves, and the immediate need for food over the longer term considerations of forestry, mean that in the next century, there is a good chance of rice and fish-farming destroying the mangrove forests of the Niger Delta. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is difficult to analyse natural Ecosystems as total and self-contained entities, in order to understand the dynamics of the natural relationships that are the subject matter of ecology. In reality Ecosystems consist of many inter-related cycles that link one with another, so that in the end there is only one Ecosystem, and that is the Biosphere. ”

“ The picture is not an accident but the result of mankind's economic exploitation of the natural ecosystems for the resources that we need, and the social structure that has developed as a result of this exploitation.
The landscape represents human society's impact upon the environment. An impact which today is potentially more damaging to the ability of ecosystems to continue to provide the resources required of them, because of fast-growing human populations and inappropriate technology. ”

“ Ecosystems are what ecologists are really interested in: they describe the mechanics of the landscape.
Technically an Ecosystem is an area within a biome which can be given a physical boundary for convenient ecological study.
#⁠Ecosystems tend to be defined in three ways
as places which can be recognised within their general surroundings, such as the levee forest at Okoroba or a shrine forest at Botam-Tai; as places which are defined by the predominance of one plant species, such as the Rhizophora mangrove forests of Akassa Creek ”

“ Nonetheless, Chromalina seems to impede the spread of the grass weed Imperata cylindrica, a notorious Southeast Asian weed which is devastating to soil fertility and which is already apparent in Nigeria: Chromalina may be the lesser of two evils.
This change, from a fertile and biodiverse landscape to one of low biodiversity and declining fertility can be very sudden. It happens as human population densities in a given area pass a critical point, so that older people can truly remember better and easier times, and do not know what has hit them. ”

“ Because it is the most immediately obvious manifestation to an observer, ecozones and their ecosystems are often described only in terms of their vegetation. However, as the preceding sections have emphasised, an ecosystem is the product of vegetation, animal communities and, most particularly in the case of the Niger delta, the soils and soil-water regime. ”

“ The agricultural problem of the LEM ecozone is a problem of declining soil conditions under an increasing pressure to produce more food, as a result of a rapidly expanding population. Within the foreseeable future, rural population densities in parts of the LEM ecozone will exceed 1000 persons per square kilometre. Generally this rapid population growth manifests itself in increased food production arising from extending agricultural land at the expense of forest rather than by raising productivity. ”

“ In this chapter the forests are considered as a resource which is useful to mankind.
Forests constitute the most valuable renewable resource in the Niger Delta, which after Cross River State, has the largest area of relatively undisturbed forest in Nigeria and probably West Africa. The resource is especially valuable because the hot humid climate of the Niger Delta encourages the fast regeneration of forest, so that the economic returns are far greater than for forests in other biomes. ”

“ Similarly, an animal can move to escape a competitor or a predator. Plants do not have this option but have evolved other mechanisms of protection. For instance a plant cannot run away from the animal which wants to eat it. But, it survives by having thorns which stop the animal completely finishing it; it may taste nasty; or it can store energy in its roots and grow new parts above ground later, when the animal has finished its meal.
Aquatic and terrestrial animals have different requirements in terms of what components of the physical environment are the most important to them. ”

“ However, the activities of mankind can have a profound influence on the hydrology of an area. For instance a natural forest ecosystem tends to act as a sponge, soaking up water in wet weather and releasing it slowly in dry thus moderating the water supply to a river systems. ”

“ RICE - Orysa sativa: a type of grass grown for its grains which tolerates wet conditions to an extent where it grows well in flooded conditions so long as the flowers (which produce the grains) remain above water level. High yields are obtained because the floodwater restricts the development of competing weeds. It is the most common food crop in the world and will become increasingly important in the Niger Delta. ”

“ In any given location, the bioactivity of the vegetation in turn determines local bioactivity of animals. In the case of the Niger Delta, for example, there are 134 freshwater and brackish water fish species, as compared with 192 for the entire continent of Europe.
The fact that animals can move complicates the assessment of their population levels and of species diversity in a given area. For example, they may feed in one ecozone and sleep in another; they may also evade observers. Plants can be immediately and directly observed and counted. ”

“ The high demand for oil palm products up to 1960 was probably the greatest incentive that the Akassa people had ever had for changing their environment, but this was mitigated by the fact that the palm was growing naturally and because Akassa is not suitable for large-scale plantation agriculture. The present pattern of land-use is less intensive, now that people have returned to fishing, than it was in the 1950s. ”

“ Small plantations of rubber and oil palm trees are common throughout the ecozone and are appropriate because they maintain soil conditions and generally contain a wider biodiversity than is found on arable land.
While large scale industrial farming may have a part to play, it is not the answer to problem, because such farming, particularly in the tropics, often leads to accelerated soil degradation which is hidden by high yielding (but often disease susceptible) hybrids and large inputs of fertiliser. ”

“ However if the marine fishing resources continue to decline then the situation could change.
Large scale arable farming does not seem to be at all practicable, and if the barrier island communities have to depend on the land for a living the answer to survival is twofold:
agriculture on the sand ridges as agroforestry techniques based on cultured forests; and agriculture on the swampy troughs as agroforestry techniques based on a combination of cultured forests, loo-type agriculture, paddy-rice (already a little at the East side of Akassa) and fish farming. ”

“ But plants need some of this oxygen, too. While it is the green leaves of plants above the surface of the ground that receive and process energy from the sun, a great deal of a plant's activity occurs below the surface. With a few notable exceptions, such as the water hyacinth, plants depend upon the soil for their anchorage, nutrition, water supply and for their oxygen. ”

“ In fact, in conditions of sustainable population densities, shifting agriculture is ecologically very efficient, primarily because farmers do not shift to areas of primary forest but return to fallow land because it is easier to clear. ”

“ Income equity is maintained and rural incomes enhanced. Management is better and yields are higher because the farmer has an income incentive to be efficient. Even under the most adverse conditions of civil disorder small farmers continue to produce, whereas large plantations crumble. A mosaic of small farms growing mixed crops, interspersed with forests in various conditions which is the result of well managed small farmer agriculture, does not present the same sort of ecological problems arising from large scale plantation agriculture. ”