Coastal Biodiversity, Sustainable Livelihood and Ecological Scenarios in Marine Wetland of Asarama Andoni in Parts of Eastern Niger Delta Nigeria

Abstract

Wetland ecosystems are very important natural environmental resource that forms part of the total wealth of a nation. The Asarama wetland in Andoni is amongst the important wetlands in coastal marine cosystems of the Niger Delta; fascinated by diverse rich biodiversity, wetland ecotypes of mangrove, mudflat, Nypa, estuary and fresh water forest habitats with range of critical ecosystem services they provide for mankind survival. The data gathering involved both primary and secondary sources of information. Result revealed diverse ecological scenarios: a livelihood system with diverse level of significant sources and benefit of the ecosystem services. Food, aquacultural practices and sea route logistic component of livelihood benefit from sources recorded significant (HS- 4) level of provisioning services, breeding / nursery benefit with high significant (HS- 4) level of supporting services among other levels recorded in Table 1. Ecological challenges revealed nypa palm invasion of the mangrove ecotypes and uncertainty of climatic relationship to hydrological tidal regime as natural scenarios; economic, social, institutional and infrastructural challenges as anthropogenic scenarios. Therefore a policy framework (legislature) as part of future directive and initiatives to enforce the practice of biodiversity priorities and sustainable livelihood is of immediate importance to Asarama - Andoni wetlands ecosystem. Keywords: Likert scale, provisioning, cultural, regulatory, supporting, natural, anthropogenic. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/13-24-03 Publication date: December 31 st 2022