- After decades of crude oil spills and the introduction of invasive plant species, thousands of hectares of mangroves in the Niger Delta are destroyed, impacting aquatic species and women’s livelihoods.
- Ogoni women from coastal villages, supported by the Lokiaka Community Development Centre, have been at the forefront of reforestation efforts.
- The women have planted 2.6 million mangrove trees since 2018, drawing attention from a government agency that hired them to share their knowledge and plant mangroves for its oil spill rehabilitation project.
- Around 300 women from Ogoni communities have been trained in mangrove reforestation.
A women-led reforestation effort has planted millions of mangrove trees with a high survival rate across swamps in Nigeria’s oil-rich and severely degraded Niger Delta. For decades, the Ogoni people of the delta’s Ogoniland region have faced the impacts of numerous oil spills, logging, and the spread of invasive nipa palms that destroyed thousands of mangroves they rely on for their livelihoods.
As a result of the reforestation initiative’s reported successes so far, the government has hired some Ogoni women to share their technical knowledge and plant mangroves for its rehabilitation project of contaminated sites (Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project — HYPREP). While independent studies on the impacts of this reforestation effort are yet to be published, sources say anecdotal evidence suggests that fish stocks are beginning to bounce back and some conservationists say they’re hopeful.
“I am glad to see this women’s group so effective and active in attempting to restore their mangroves,” said Alfredo Quarto, program and policy director and co-founder of the Mangrove Action Project, a U.S.-based NGO, told Mongabay by email.
The Niger Delta hosts Africa’s biggest mangrove forest ecosystem and is also home to some of the continent’s largest oil and gas reserves. This vast wetland stretches across more than 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles) and nine Nigerian states. The mangrove forests, which often store more carbon than other forest types, contain several species of mangrove trees, such as red (Rhizophora racemosa), white (Laguncularia racemosa) and black (Avicennia germinans). They’re home to a rich diversity of marine life, which in turn are important to many local communities in Ogoniland.
While oil beneath Nigeria’s ground dominates the country’s foreign exchange earnings, it’s the wetlands aboveground in the Niger Delta that are key to communities’ local economy.
More than five decades of large-scale oil spills have polluted water sources and soil across communities, impacting food and livelihoods, particularly for women. Women in Ogoni communities are often responsible for harvesting and selling crustaceans along the coast, but these creatures are highly affected by oil exposure. A U.N. Environment Programme study calls the damages to the environment “widespread,” while the country’s oil detection agency has recorded more than 6,000 oil spills in the past decade. These have left mangroves “denuded of leaves and stems,” crops “damaged,” and fisheries suffering for lack of habitat, according to UNEP.
According to Martha Agbani, executive director of the Lokiaka Community Development Centre, about 40 km2 (15 mi2) of mangroves have been destroyed as a result of oil contamination in the Ogoni region. The government’s Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, or HYPREP, hasn’t yet carried out an effective cleanup and remediation operation, she said.
“If we wait [for the government], nobody will have a means of livelihood because we depend solely on farming and fishing,” Agbani told Mongabay by phone. “Within the fishing area, people pick crustaceans, clams, lobsters and shellfish, but the oil affected the wildlife we used to have and many coastal marine lives were lost.”
Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication.
According to a 2023 study, the expanse of mangroves in the Niger Delta decreased from 10,515 to 8,240 km2 (4,060 to 3,181 mi2) between 2010 and 2020. Mangrove forests in the wetland could disappear entirely in 50 years if the current rate of loss continues, suggests another study.
A ‘shell’ reforestation method
Literacy levels are low among Ogoni women, sources told Mongabay, so finding alternative livelihoods has been difficult.
Due to the impact of pollution on crustacean harvesting and farmwork, “women were no longer busy, their idleness exposed them to a lot of domestic violence,” Agbani told Mongabay by text message. “Their supportive role in the family was denied. Their husbands and male counterparts could go for white-collar jobs or engage in menial jobs but women were cut out of that.
In an attempt to reclaim what was lost and reestablish a sense of autonomy among Ogoni women, since 2016 the Lokiaka Community Development Centre, a local environmental and gender rights organization, has invited women affected by oil spills and other threats to enroll in mangrove reforestation training.
Lokiaka has trained about 300 women in mangrove reforestation across four Ogoni communities. Together, they’ve planted 2.6 million mangrove trees since 2018, when restoration projects began, in swamps in Bodo Creek, Yaataa and Teenama. According to Lokiaka’s own estimates, the survival rate for the planted trees ranges from 80-96%, depending on the area, though there’s no public independent research on these figures.
After years of trial and error, volunteers from Lokiaka have settled on several planting methods suited to the specific conditions of each site. This includes direct planting, or transplanting saplings from tree nurseries, where they’re grown in bags, into the ground once they’re ready.
The initiative involves local fishers, who use their nets to retrieve the propagules, the mangrove seedlings, as they float in the water. For areas with a lot of human activity that can damage directly planted mangroves, such as fishing or artisanal mining, the seedlings are kept at the nursery for longer until they reach a specific height, and then transplanted to the site.
Most of Lokiaka’s interventions take place in areas with less than 5% of mangrove cover. Each planting area is selected based on the quality of the soil and the least number of possible disturbances, such as boat traffic or mining. Once they arrive, volunteers clear any invasive nipa palms (Nypa fruticans) or trash that’s been dumped there. Clearing nipa is key, sources say, as the species outcompetes local mangrove species for resources, especially when there are oil spills. The nipa-clearing efforts have been impressive, according to Quarto from the Mangrove Action Project, which isn’t involved with Lokiaka’s work.
The red mangroves are planted on the sea-facing front of each site because of their strength, acting as a sort of shell for the more vulnerable white and black mangroves. “We don’t want it to look monotonous,” Agbani said. “We want variety so that different biodiversity can be attracted to the area.”
At first, the volunteers planted the trees close together so that they would weave together as they do naturally. However, after some time, they realized that this created too thick a barrier and the volunteers couldn’t reach the trees. Now they use a shovel as a measurement tool, leave a shovel and a half of spacing between each tree.
Lokiaka says it hopes to plant 5 million mangrove trees in the Niger Delta region over the next five years.
“They will probably need to do ongoing monitoring and maintenance work to ensure their intended species survive and are not outcompeted by the nipa in the future,” Quarto told Mongabay.
Restoring livelihoods
The center’s mission is to improve the livelihoods of these women, most of whom have lost crops, fish or land to oil contamination and other human activity. Although the women are volunteers, the reforestation work has led to greater income opportunities for some. For example, they sometimes sell the mangrove seedlings that they grow in their nurseries to contractors; in some cases, women have been hired as contract staff for other planting initiatives, Agbani said.
“Now, I can teach people how to plant mangroves,” Glory Basi, a Lokiaka trainee, said in a documentary produced by the organization. “I have benefited a lot. We didn’t even have fish, periwinkles or crabs in our rivers. But now, because Lokiaka trained us how to plant mangroves and restore them back, all these things have been restored.”
By planting mangrove forests, the women are working to gain back some of the ecosystem services the trees provide, such as flood, storm and erosion control, as well as nurseries for fish populations and food.
“Mangroves provide many benefits and services, including providing marine nurseries, habitat for shellfish, fish, shrimp and crabs, as well as certain fruits and medicinal remedies,” Quarto told Mongabay.
Since the return of mangroves on the coast, Agbani said residents have noticed an increase in the number of West African mud creepers (Tympanotonos fuscatus), a small snail species and local food source. Fishers have also reported a return of fish species that had previously disappeared from the area.
“The mere fact that the swamp is now greening again is a happy scene for the beneficiary communities,” Agbani said.
Banner image: A group of Lokiaka Community Development Centre volunteers. Image courtesy of Lokiaka Community Development Centre.
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