Mangrove Restoration in Nigeria


(Sunday, 2022)

         

            Mangroves are a major player in biodiversity. Healthy mangroves can help to support not only the marine life that exists within them, but also wildlife in the area, birds both local and migratory, and humans as well. Healthy mangroves help to mitigate the effects of storms and flooding, they provide an amazing habitat for many living organisms, and they are very efficient in carbon dioxide conversion making them a proprietor in the mitigation of climate change. Restoring these areas are not easy and ensuring their sustainability in order to support a biodiverse habitat for all potential inhabitants is even more the challenge, but in doing so you can be assured that it is a resource well spent.

          Since the 1950’s Nigeria has been plagued with oil drilling by large gas companies like Shell and Chevron just to name a couple. Today, the Niger Delta region has over 600 oil fields that produce great quantities of oil. This is a field in which Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on (Onyena & Sam, 2020). In the past 60 years, there have been over 200 oil spills releasing millions of gallons of oil. This has destroyed over 1M Ha of mangroves in the country.

          In 2020, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, announced the government’s plan to restore mangroves in the Niger-Delta under the ‘Mangrove for Life’ project (Whyte, 2021). This project includes adding around 25% of mangrove area coverage and the introduction of Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s). MPA’s will help to ensure the area stays undisturbed in order to allow the mangroves to become sustainable on their own. This project is community-based which allows the people in the region a sense of ownership over the project. I would love to investigate this project further. I am very passionate about it and truly believe that it will make the world a better place.

 References:

Sunday, O. (2022, August 22). Niger Delta mangroves in ‘grave danger’ from oil spills, poverty, invasive species. Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/niger-delta-mangroves-in-grave-danger-from-oil-spills-extraction-invasive-species/  

Onyena, A. P., & Sam, K. (2020). A review of the threat of oil exploitation to mangrove ecosystem: Insights from Niger Delta, Nigeria. Global Ecology and Conservation, 22, e00961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e00961

Whyte, D. (2021, November 10). ‘Mangrove for Life’ — restoring Nigeria’s mangrove ecosystem | One Earth. One Earth. https://www.oneearth.org/mangrove-for-life-restoring-nigerias-mangrove-ecosystem/

 

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