This leads to the impairment of the health of aquatic and terrestrial organisms around the reclaimed area. By Jason Gordon, Adam S. Willcox, A.E. One, two, three, four, five, 42, 43 and 44 long years later, the Land Use Decree of 1978, promulgated by the military regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo, now retired, remains the governing law on land use in Nigeria. Once the bulldozer rolls in to mow down the mangroves, it creates depressions for tidal pressure to wash in ashore. We have carried out some investigations. The implication of these landscape reclamations is that the destruction of mangrove forests lead to a colossal loss of ecosystem services to the environment. Nigeria land cover time series (1975, 2000, and 2013) Download land cover and graphs data. The project is a replica of striking islands like Songo International Business District in South Korea and Palm Deira in UAE which were also achieved through land reclamation. Increasing population in small communities had also led to the reclamation of coastal areas to create room for the construction of houses to accommodate more people. But when it becomes rampant and reckless, the people must resist it because usurping natural settings could be disastrous in the long run, he said. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oil and gas exploration is the main exploratory activity that occurs in the Niger Delta region. This is a situation where rivers near ports are expanded to accommodate large ocean going ships. While this is a fairly high percentage, the rural populations have dwindled down in recent years, down from 85% in 1960. Government budget refers to an annual financial statement that denotes its anticipated expenditure and expected revenue generation in a fiscal year. Sand mining is also done with more sophisticated machines, where pumps are used to convey sand from the bottom of the river unto land via long pipes. You have entered an incorrect email address! It is a strategy for protecting or restoring the function, structure and species composition of an ecosystem while providing for its sustainable socioeconomic use. An example of this pattern of landscape reclamation is found in a place called Eagle Island, Niger Delta where the mangrove forests were cut down and sand filled and later the area was used for developmental project (Figure 6). In 2013, rainfed agriculture accounted for 380,000 sq km in Nigeria, covering over 40 percent of its national territory . Almost every coastal area in the Niger Delta has had one abandoned project or the other, one of which is sand dump. Globally, half of the world mangroves have been destroyed [16] as people have reclaimed those areas as a result of coastal development. Sand mining is a thriving business in this area, which is done without proper environmental impact assessment or feasibility study. Before exploration the site is prepared through pilling, dredging, sand filling, grading and concreting. Backing the argument of Nwilo, a former Professor of Geography at the University of Ibadan, Adetoye Faniran, viewed the matter in a way that seems supernatural. Sand mines are often abandoned after some years of operation. The project descriptions include shoreline protection and reclamation activities of over 1, 000 hectare of land and construction of a mixed-use development in the city. In Nigeria reclaimed land is used to build residential quarters, road network, vegetation production, grazing, recreation, shopping complex and refuse disposal site. This leads to the death or migration of amphibious species along the coast. Public Law 95-87 requires that the AML section reclaim . sea-side resort, roads, houses, light poles and shopping malls. Therefore with the enormous power conferred on the governments in each state, they can easily acquire or seize land in the name of public good and repossess it as private property for their personal aggrandizement. The reclamation land which is in two phases is located on a reclaimed land of over 100 hectares. Land reclamation impact the coastal environment in several ways (Table 1). A Federal High Court, Abuja, on Tuesday, dismissed a certificate forgery suit filed by the Action Alliance (AA) against Sen. Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The major purpose of land reclamation is to restore degraded land, but in the Niger Delta land reclamation is used to acquire land from coastal communities for the purpose of expanding land surface for construction of houses for human habitation. Private investors reclaim coastal areas to execute private business that would boost their economic fortunes. Invasion: this is as a result of the migration of people into coastal communities in search of new technologies that provide job opportunities. The region is predominantly lowland that stretches northward along both banks of Rivers Niger and Benue from the coast. Centralization: these are lands that are regarded as focal points as a result of their economic value. Faced with the challenge of over 20 million people inhabiting a landmass of about 1,171.28 square kilometres, land reclamation has become a norm in Lagos to mitigate its pressing need for housing. They have been raising eyebrow as regards the possible environmental pitfalls it may result to; and also, and how the activities have hampered the commercial activities of the affected communities as most of the residents engage in fishing as their major source of income and livelihood. More than a thousand acres of land was to be created by building a seawall more than 6km in length with. 5 Princes Gate Court, Reclamation can be defined as the chemical or physical manipulation carried out in severely degraded sites, such as open pit mines, abandoned crude oil well or large-scale construction site [6, 7]. It is a system where plants and animals have advantage in reserved area. The Governors of each states of the federation hold the land in trust for the Federal Government, and are entitled to be the sole signatory of all certificate of occupancy (C of O) before a piece of land is legally owned by an individual or group of individuals. Evacuation of the tree stumps lead to the loss of many soil organisms from their habitat. Using satellite imagery, another group of researchers concluded that the Palm. Crude oil pipeline and well head situated in reclaimed coastal area in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Kansai International Airport (in Osaka) and Hong Kong International Airport are examples where this process was deemed necessary. Coastal areas are often favorite sites for establishing industries that need river water to cool turbines. This is encapsulated in the Land Use Act promulgated in 1978, which states that all lands in Nigeria belong to the Federal Government, this include but not limited to under-water land that is 200 nautical miles from the shore. Land reclamation is also known as land fill, it is the process of creating new land from ocean, riverbeds or lake beds. On its right is the. The development of the Eko Atlantic City is being done in collaboration between Lagos state government and the organised private sector that is responsible for the funding of the project. By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers. We are a community of more than 103,000 authors and editors from 3,291 institutions spanning 160 countries, including Nobel Prize winners and some of the worlds most-cited researchers. It is business on the part of those doing it because poor people dont benefit from the houses being built on the reclaimed land. The direct causes include: (i) land expansion, (ii) construction activities, (iii) land acquisition and (iv) succession (land-forming activities of mangroves). The Great Wall of Lagos will ensure that everyone living and working within the 10 square kilometres (6.2 miles) of reclaimed land for Eko Atlantic and the population of Victoria Island are protected from the sea, Frame assured. This is because the adventitious roots of the mangrove forest serve as tidal breaks. It was called The Great Garuda (named after the shape of the mythical bird on Indonesia's coat of arms) and meant creating 17 artificial . This means that those living on the old waterfront now have a large expanse of land bordering their respective locations. Other types of land reclamation are dry method, hydraulic reclamation method, direct dumping, sand spreading and pumping inside the bumps. It also affects soil-dwelling organisms from adverse impact on water and soil quality. With . Map of Niger Delta Nigeria (circled) bordering the Atlantic Ocean has the biggest mangrove forests in Africa. The scouring of the river bottom crushes and destroys a lot of organisms such as shell and non-shell fish community in that location. They gradually occupy the area through seedling recruitment process. Reclamation is done without proper environmental impact assessment. This is because of land expansion activities such as urban development. ( See also city; urban planning .) By, this, the land reclaimed is therefore known as reclamation ground or land fill. mangrove wetlands. Land reclamation in the Niger Delta passes through five phases, which in all ramifications affect the environment. This includes zooplankton, phytoplankton, benthic organisms and fisheries. The uppermost layer or photic zone is 10m of water and absorbs 80% of solar energy, which carries out primary productivity. The dredged soil that is evacuated from the river bottom is dumped on land surface and smothers coastal vegetation such as mangroves. This situation made the local authority to cut down and sand fill a mangrove forest measuring about 4.2 million m2 in 1984 (Figure 2). Over half of Nigeria's population live in rural areas -- 52% to be exact. Landscape reclamation is intended for urban city expansion, road construction, housing project, crude oil exploration and sand mining. Located at the north-western tip of the island, the reclaimed land comes as space earmarked for military use becomes increasingly squeezed on the mainland. Thus mangroves are natural land reclaimers. A study found land-reclamation projects shrank the number of mangroves in Tubli Bay, off Bahrain's east coast. Oshodi, who was the immediate past vice chairman, Lagos branch of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP), said since the green-fields are shrinking within the city, water-bodies would continue to attract various development interests. Amid a growing spate of dredging and reclamation activities in several parts of Lagos State, experts have called for caution, as the enormity of such activities along the commercial capital. The colonization of pioneer species will accelerate the establishment of other successional stages (e.g. Creating an artificial island is an expensive and risky undertaking. Water can be drained from shallow areas, or the bed raised, making the land available for development. This system is usually used when the sea bed is shallow. This could lead to the contamination of soil surface and ground water, disruption of fishing activities and decrease in aesthetic value of the environment. There are also some burrowing organisms that dig into shore sand. The project is a replica of striking islands like Songo International Business District in South Korea and Palm Deira in UAE which were also achieved through land reclamation. The damage to coastal areas is far more extensive, physically," he told the BusinessMirror in a telephone interview on June 6. Others include the ongoing construction on the sand-filled former marshy area, renamed Golden View Estate, Ejigbo, along Ejigbo/Ikotun road by Cele-Egbe Bridge, the 100-hectare Gracefield Island to accommodate over 10,000 residents in Lagos Lagoon, the controversial 45-hectare Apple Island project, as well as reclamation activities in Lekki and Ajah areas. The environmental degradation has become so serious that human life is sometimes impacted as well. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is backing a plan to throw $64 billion . Sites T1, T2 and T3 are the end, middle and mouth of the sand fill area. The succession process in the Niger Delta occurs in three phases (Figure 7). In a classical case of land recuperation after landscape reclamation at Eagle Island in the Niger Delta, recruitment occurred through natural process within a space of 13years. Before reclamation the site is cleared, which leads to the destruction of native plant species within the reclaimed area [3]. Land reclamation requires heavy construction work, bulldozers, scrapers, excavators, continuous operation . Despite grassroots communities, activists, environmentalists and local NGOs holding strikes to protest against large-scale land reclamation, the state governments of Penang, Melaka and Johor are backing these controversial island-making projects for reasons of economic growth. We provide you with the latest breaking news. Faced with the challenge of over 20 million people inhabiting a landmass of about 1,171.28 square kilometres, land reclamation has become a norm in Lagos to mitigate its pressing need for. It is crucial to the environment's welfare both now and in the future. An example is a construction project such as the installation of infrastructure on reclaimed coastal areas e.g. It occurs at on-shore or off-shore locations [3]. The economy is all about the desire for resources and land. It also involves the establishment of well heads and booth camps. Some small towns, notably Minna, Uyo, Makurdi, Maiduguri, and Bauchi, experienced remarkable growth in population and economy after becoming state capitals. Together the system of management is called ecosystem management, which is a way of managing reserve to benefit biodiversity and people. The warm shallow waters of the continental shelves are most biologically productive and support the greatest species diversity. Not surprisingly, the country that is home to the largest population of the region also has by far the largest area under cultivation. Concrete bases are constructed on this platform to carry the pipes from the drilling point, which may be at an off-shore or on-shore site to the refinery. Land can either be physical or economic. Land is regarded in this area as the best form of asset investment because of the prestige attached to its ownership. Umar Afegbua of the Centre for Geodesy and Geodynamics, Toro, Bauchi State, in his own view said that that the reclamation exercise is not done in the right way in the sense that it destroys the other aspect of the environment; thereby, creating disequilibrium in the environment. I hope they are being done according to the best practices in order to protect the ecosystem., He concluded by saying that: land reclamation for the purpose of constructing properties in commercial quantities is risky.. 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