Biodiversity: Nigeria’s wasting goldmine

Biodiversity, short for biological diversity, is the term used to describe the variety of life found on earth and the natural processes such as ecosystem, genetic and cultural diversity, and the connections between these and all species.The different aspects of biodiversity have very strong influence on each other. We have only just started to understand […]

Biodiversity, short for biological diversity, is the term used to describe the variety of life found on earth and the natural processes such as ecosystem, genetic and cultural diversity, and the connections between these and all species.
The different aspects of biodiversity have very strong influence on each other. We have only just started to understand the relationships between living things and their environments. It is helpful to think of an ecosystem as a woven carpet. If you pull on a loose thread it might only affect the thread and those closest to it or it might unravel the whole carpet.
Biodiversity also helps us in our day-to-day lives. Unfortunately, the green house gases produced by human activities are building up in the atmosphere and causing climate change. Climate change is a major threat to biodiversity.
Nigeria, in 1992, signed the international convention on biological diversity and committed itself to the three tenets embedded in its objectives.
According to the Minister of Environment, Mrs Lawrencia Mallam, biodiversity is a concurrent matter but its efficient conservation is challenged.
All over the country, the indiscriminate killing of various animal and bird species for use as meat is unprecedented just as oil exploration in the South-South and desert encroachment in the north has really threatened the country’s biodiversity.
Sir Peter Idahor, Director General, National Oil Spill Detection and Responses Agency, said recently that Nigeria was naturally endowed with abundance of natural resources with luxuriant biodiversity.
“The rich biodiversity resources which constitute formidable value chain have given rise to many human activities in the country,” he added.
Dr Philip Okon, a conservation expert, said that the country had never articulated any meaningful programme to conserve the various biodiversity endowments we had.
“As a country, we had at no time think of how to conserve nature’s gift to us but rather what you see all over the place is competition of which area has the best bush meat with hunters going about killing these animals without anyone apprehending them,” Okon said.
Mr Mathew Dore, a biodiversity expert and a former director with the federal ministry of environment noted recently that issues of biodiversity have left national policy radar for a long time and as a result, the country is losing a lot of animal and plant species that hitherto were all over the place.
“The Niger Delta area is one of the endowed areas in the country as far as biodiversity is concerned but many years of uncontrolled oil exploration has left the area dry of most of the biodiversity that we are proud to accommodate as Nigeria,” Dore said.
Just as the bush meat delicacy is gaining acceptance in all parts of the country and fast becoming a source of living for many Nigerians, infrastructural development, including roads construction, have also contributed greatly in threatening plant species with most plants going into extinction.
It is a common site when travelling across the country to see hunters, women and children displaying bush meat on the highway for sale.
The bush meat business, according to Mrs Janet Efe, a bush meat merchant a long Okpela-Benin road, has come to stay. “There is no job for our husbands and children and rather than going into robbery and other dubious trades it is better they hunt in the forest where the animals roam about.”
She said that so long as human beings exist, animals will always be available for people to eat.
Bush meat is a recognised trade at rural and urban centres. Wild animals’ meat is the main source of cheap protein for the majority of rural communities in Nigeria. Over 80 per cent of the population are rural dwellers who depend on bush meat, compared with urban dwellers that depend on abattoir supplies of cow and other ruminant meat
The status of the nation’s biodiversity resources is not well known. There exist a checklist of aquatic birds of Nigeria but those of mammals, amphibians and reptiles are only extracts from lists of animals associated with National Parks and reserved areas in Nigeria
According to the FAO, the present level of information on the status of non-fish aquatic animal resources in Nigeria is still scanty and limited to a few inventories of wild stocks in the National Parks. A holistic approach to their management and conservation is required and recognition that the conservation of aquatic animals, including fish, is important because of their genetic resources, biological, and food values and the socio-economic implications of their extinction.
As Nigeria joins the rest of the world in marking the 2014 biodiversity day, it is important that government, at all levels, make conscious efforts to protect and conserve what we have left.