ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN THE NIGER DELTA

Environmental Degradation in the Niger Delta

Environmental Degradation in the Niger Delta

Introduction

Nigeria has a proven gas reserve of 180 trillion cubic feet including 75.4 trillion cubic SCF of non-associated gas with increasing demand for safe and clean energy globally, the Nigerian government saw the need to exploit its gas resource to generate additional revenue for the country, and this would involve the gas being transformed into a liquid state and exported to buyers worldwide.

Discussion

The debate about environmental degradation has spanned decades, if not longer, with contrasting perceptions of whether people are victims of environmental degradation or land is a victim of anthropogenic influences. While the debate rages on, the impacts of land degradation on human well-being and development are self-evident. Environmental degradation is commonly defined by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as the reduction or loss of biological and economical productivity and of the complexity of terrestrial ecosystems. This includes soils, vegetation, other biota, and the ecological, biogeochemical, and hydrological processes that operate within ecosystems. This definition does not characterize degradation as entirely anthropogenic, despite unsustainable land use by humans being a key driver of environmental degradation.

Theoretically, as many proposals exist for tackling the origin of the phenomena of environmental degradation as do different views on how to define it. First, this plethora of theoretical approaches always begins with an interest in identifying certain variables suitable for strategic policies of intercession, that is, environmental amelioration. Thus, the very question of how to define environmental degradation is contentious because it innately promotes particular policies and de-legitimizes others.

Second, besides having raw politics determine environmental degradation policy first and then popularize a theory to justify such policy afterward, the definition of environmental degradation also wrestles with difficulties in the organization of Western institutionalized divisions in academia. Particular methodological cultures compete against one another to reduce environmental degradation to their discipline instead of working together on defining environmental degradation. The topic of environmental degradation thus became divided across separate disciplines of biology, physical sciences, and social sciences (social sciences itself divided across sociology, political science, economics, and anthropological divisions of methodology). Thus the topic of environmental degradation tends to mirror reductionisms inherent in this disciplinary division, with each providing a reductionist construct on most occasions.

In short, what has passed historically for analysis of much environmental degradation has been a series of cultural filters and viewpoints that influenced approaches to its treatment. The environmental degradation construct historically determined what should be done—if anything—to ameliorate environmental degradation. What is being reacted to, in many cases, is this environmental degradation construct.

The impacts of oil and gas exploration span beyond the environment. In their study, Orubu, Odusola, and Ehwarieme (2004) made five important observations: 1) Every aspect involved in oil and gas operation has significant negative implications for the environment; 2) In all cases, all that constitute the environment are affected in one single operational line; 3) The effects of the various aspects of oil operations on ...