The Resources of the Niger Delta: Forests
The bottom line for the villager is survival: if she cannot feed and support her family from the forest as it stands, then it must go for farmland. The bottom line for the state government is to maximise income for the period that a particular regime is in office.
The irony is that, properly managed, the forest could yield large and immediate cash flows to both government and village alike, in addition to all the other economic benefits. Here are two examples of wasted opportunities:
- Iroko trees (Chlorophora excelsa) are sold by village chiefs to timber dealers for about N60 (about US$2.50) per stump (the whole tree) while, illegally exported, they fetch about $3000 per m3 in New York; and
- Forestry land containing standing timber worth N21 million (about US$800,000) was recently "sold" to an international rubber company for planting rubber for N40,000 (about US$1600).
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. Control over forest reserves seems to be a major incentive to gaining political power (second only to control over oil revenues). In the end, while the destruction of forest reserves makes a few powerful people very rich, it makes the mass of Local People much poorer.
As far as the Niger Delta is concerned, the economic problem is the cause for the loss of the last areas of forest that might have been sustainably managed in the Lowland Equatorial Monsoon ecozone, (the last forest of this type in Botem-Tai was cleared in 1992/93). Elsewhere in the Delta large areas of forest are intact in their various conditions because of their comparative inaccessibility for large-scale logging or plantation activities, compared with other parts of Southern Nigeria. However as forest resources are used up in these parts, the FAM ecozone of the Niger Delta, in particular, becomes more economically attractive
Small businessmen and Local People have, nonetheless, found it economically worthwhile to exploit timber in some of the most inaccessible areas of the Fresh-Water ecozone since the 1960s and perhaps earlier. On the flood plains, high value timber is felled in the dry season and floated out along ditches in the wet season.
12.5 ECONOMIC COST BENEFIT ANALYSES OF FOREST EXPLOITATION
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. Market conditions have to be improved so that cash actually reaches forestry departments and Local People; and forestry policy has to be reorganised so that fees paid for exploitation of forest reserves actually match the real values of forest products, (and continue to match, despite devaluation of the currency).
Economic cost benefit analysis (CBA) of forests in relation to other uses of the land is not easy because of the practical philosophical problems of valuing ecological and
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