Nick Ashton-Jones, with Oronto Douglas and Susi Arnott

“ The result is not only that, to use a cliché, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; it is not only that while some Nigerians, as a result of oil, are amongst the richest people on earth while the mass of Nigerians are now amongst the world's poorest, (in the 1970s, incredible as it seems now, Nigeria was a middle income country) ; but also, that Nigeria has got itself locked into a double economy so that it is, in a way, both a first world economy for the fortunate few and a third world economy for the unfortunate many. ”

“ We want to give you the reader a picture, in your mind's eye, of what it is like to be part of a human ecosystem that is not your own. And finally we want to stress that ecosystems are dynamic and when we describe an ecosystem and the human relationship to it we are, by necessity, describing it as it WAS at a point in time: not as it IS for ever. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus land is cultivated beyond local needs, the limiting factor being the supply of labour, so that the criterion for cultivation is not local need but market demand. In the present times, in much of South Eastern Nigeria, demand for agricultural and forest products is effectively infinite, the limiting labour factor being overcome by importing excess labour from other areas. In the end, the only limiting factor becomes the resource itself, which is exploited to exhaustion because of what has been called the "tragedy of the commons." ”

“ In many communities in the Niger Delta, while the Council of Chiefs is exclusively male, it generally has a broad representation and is accessible to most members of the community. Moreover, while abuses are common, individual chiefs are often suspended or even chased away from the community for mis-deeds. Nonetheless, and particularly in oil producing areas, it is not uncommon for a chief to accept personal favours from oil companies in return for persuading their communities to accept conditions which may not actually be in the general interest of the community. ”

“ Viable human ecosystems can support remarkably high human populations. This is because viable human communities will never cultivate more land, or hunt and gather more forest products than they need for their own immediate survival (or to trade with similar neighbouring communities, for things that they cannot produce, e.g. palm-oil for fish) . However this relationship is upset where human communities become part of a trading community which stretches beyond their immediate locality especially when unnecessary consumer items (trade goods) are introduced. ”

“ Our knowledge has developed in a circular way. By working with communities we get to know the ecosystems of which they are part, and we build up our understanding of the whole ecosystem. This leads us back to reassess earlier work and points us in new directions. For instance our early work in Ogoni in 1993 led us to the slum communities of Port Harcourt to consider them partly as the result of rural land degradation, and then to consider the urban areas as major components of the whole Niger Delta ecosystem. ”

“ The environmental impact of modern people on the Southeast of Nigeria can be best understood in two stages.
The first stage occurred before the recent accelerated growth in human population. In this stage the traditional activities of shifting agriculture and hunting, fishing and exploitation of forest products were distorted by contact with the industrialising European economy which introduced a strong market impact in all West African society creating an infinite demand for some of its products. ”

“ This is an important factor, because by undermining the human relationship between Europeans and Africans it led to the European underestimation of the value and strength of African culture, and thus prepared it for its subsequent destruction by missionary activity and imperialism. Later (when the Americas were satiated with slaves who were reproducing to satisfy the market) , trade was dominated by palm-oil (essential for lubricating the machines of Europe and for providing candles, soap and margarine for its exploding population) and other natural resources such as timber. ”

“ Now, viable landscapes - the landscapes of viable people - are so rare that they are often preserved as National Parks (an irony, because the very people who have created these landscapes are suddenly excluded from them!) ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Niger Delta is a young, complex and dynamic ecosystem which can be understood in terms of five prime ecozones, unique to it, as described in Chapters 5-9. With the exception of the Estuaries and Offshore-Waters ecozone, the Niger Delta lies within the West African tropical rainforest biome, so that regardless of the human impact, the natural climatic climax vegetation is tropical rainforest. ”

“ In the Niger Delta, an expanding poor and urban population makes most resource and land use decisions. Their decisions are being driven by lack of development, stagnant agricultural productivity, negligible opportunities in urban areas, rapid population growth, tenuous property rights... ”

“ The landscape represents people'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. ”

“ In theory Nigeria is a Federal Republic where states have certain powers of government, which is supposed to come directly to the people through local government institutions. In practice, at least as far as the Niger Delta is concerned, Nigeria is a very centralised state, with state administrations operating as puppets of the central authority: Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States, for instance, at the time of writing, have military administrators. ”

“ Thus the present state of the ecological resources and land-use of the Niger Delta is best understood in terms of:
the natural ecosystems; human economic impact; society; and the resulting human landscape. ”

“ The human landscape resulting from the six social indicators briefly described above is discussed in the following chapters. Because ERA seeks always to understand the environment of the Niger Delta through the people who live in it, the discussions are based on real communities with whom ERA has worked. ”

“ Nonetheless, within local communities self-government survives, and is in some ways becoming stronger in response to the irrelevance of the state administration to local needs. This community government, which has its roots in antiquity, is based on a Council of Chiefs, and while it is open to corruption, there tends to be a fairly efficient degree of self-regulation. ”

“ Traditional activities in terms of shifting agriculture, hunting, fishing, gathering, crafts and marketing remain very important, especially amongst women, and are likely to remain important for a long time to come. Nonetheless, there is a definite and urbanising tendency towards employment in the oil and gas industry, in other secondary industry and in services. ”

“ This explains why, once conservation traditions have broken down (and viable communities have many such traditions, examples of which can be found, still, throughout Nigeria) , resources are exploited to exhaustion very quickly where there is an infinite demand for them. ”

“ These manifestations are met with a ruthless military or mobile police jack-boot, with arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, and many examples of what has been described by world leaders as "judicial murder." ”

“ Poverty. Despite its vast oil reserves, the region remains poor. GNP per capita is below the national average of US$280. Unemployment in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, is 30 percent and is believed to be equally high in the rural areas of both states. ”