Re-Development of Urban and Rural Areas in Westafrica: a Critical View on Indicators for Assessment of Land-Use Options

Susanne Geissler, Mag.1 Susanne Schidler, Mag.2 Hudson Uruejoma, Dipl.-Ing.1 Rubio Viscount Odafe Uruejoma 1

1 Vivida for Better Life, PTI Road 23, / , , [email protected], [email protected] 2 Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Technology Assessment, www.oeaw.ac.at, Strohgasse 45/5, A-1030 Vienna, [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION Uvwie Local Government is a booming area in the south of Nigeria (Westafrica) in Delta State: It is strategically located being the centre of Urhobo kingdom and as a result became a perfect location for the site of oil related industries. The opportunity provided by these caused people to gravitate to it thereby creating immense population explosion. During the last 10 years population increased from 350.000 to 2.000.000 inhabitants, but infrastructure remained dormant, which means: there is no sewage system, no waste disposal system, no water supply, insufficient energy supply, traffic congestion due to lack of transportation infrastructure, no public amenities such as library, theatre, movie and sport fields. In connection with this lacking infrastructure and basic amenities associated issues come along such as diseases due to waste and in some cases excrements flooding into residential areas during raining season, air and soil pollution due to traffic and oil industry, youth restiveness and crime due to high unemployment rates, hunger, and lack of opportunities to occupy themselves. The illiteracy rate is high, up to 70 percent among women, and about 60 percent of the people are living far below the poverty line. Traditional knowledge is getting into extinction without any hope of being substituted by the so called western education: Schools are expensive and parents cannot afford the astronomical fees. As a result most children are forced to stay home and do menial jobs to help their parents instead of being in the class room. Primary school that is supposed to be compulsory is fees bound, not to talk of the secondary and the tertiary institutions. Relief can only be achieved by completely restructuring the region. A well co-ordinated and adapted effort in land use planning is needed to build a sound basis for development. Good land use planning can provide shelter and employment without negative impacts on the environment and therefore increase the quality of life: Determination of land use is a powerful instrument for sustainable settlements development. Strategic assessment of land use options provides the basis for elaborating optimised land use plans. In Europe, the method of Strategic Environmental Assessment is applied for early examination of plans in order to avoid negative impacts.

2. STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE LAND USE PLANNING In Europe, the European Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) was issued in July 2001 and must be implemented in the European countries by 2004. The directive requires that plans, programmes and politics (such as land use planning) have to be analysed regarding environmental impacts in order to integrate environmental issues into the decision making process. The core of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is 1) the development and comparison of alternative solutions in order to elaborate an optimised solution, and 2) the participation of relevant groups who develop targets and indicators together with experts in order to compare alternative options. In Europe, several SEA have already been carried out on a voluntary basis, some of them not only integrating environmental issues into the decision making process, but also the two other sustainability issues these being social and economic aspects. If all three aspects of sustainability are considered in the course of a strategic assessment of policies, plans and programmes, this will be a powerful agent of change towards a truly sustainable society. In this article, we use the term “Strategic Sustainability Assessment” for the SEA that equally considers all three aspects of sustainability. While participation is sometimes difficult to achieve in Europe, participation has had a long tradition in the Westafrican cultures. From this perspective, the precondition to carry out a “Strategic Sustainability Assessment” for land use planning in Uvwie Local Government, Uvwie Kingdom, respectively, seems to be good, but how about the administration of the process and the results, which indicators to develop? In order to deal with these questions, we have to take a closer look at the historical background and the present practice of administration.

3. THE POSITION OF UVWIE IN THE TRADITIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE Uvwie Local Government is one of 25 Local Governments in Delta State. Delta State is located in the south of Nigeria in the oil producing region; it is one among 36 Nigerian states. Counting about 120 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa. Uvwie kingdom is one of the Urhobo kingdoms: The are mainly in the core Delta State and the tribe is defined by a common language with about 5 million people who organise themselves in clans. Each clan forms an administrative unit, the kingdom. A king is elected for a life time, but the clan has the right to banish him if he does not adhere completely to the rules. Kingship is not hereditary like it is practised in European monarchies, the king is elected among the families nominated to be kings. The elders of a particular district, all men within the clan known as king makers, have the spiritual authority conferred to them by the clan to elect kings. Kingship is strictly men affairs as Uwvie is patrilocal like many other areas in Nigeria. The most important condition for being a candidate is to belong to one of the royal families and be a dedicated male child because this is the guarantee that he will feel responsible for the area he will govern for a life time. However, the traditional system in Uvwie falls under the local government and chieftancy affairs. Its position is tragically subjugated to the whim and caprices of the Federal Government who has the prerogative over the clans. At the federal level there is a political system with three political parties, PDP (People's Democratic Party), AD (Alliance For Democracy), and APP (Advance People's Party). This system is the executive system modelled after the USA with an executive president, state governors and mayors. So - what is the position of the traditional system? In fact, the "mayor is just for the political relation with the federal government, but the king and his district chiefs who report to him, deal with all the important issues". Among the important issues is the land issue, because in the past land belonged to the king by default. In order to understand the land issue in Uvwie, we have to take a closer look at history.

3.1 History of land use in Uvwie Nigeria was an administrative unit, but not a nation. Nigerians identify themselves as Urhobo, Ibo, Yuroba, Hausa or any other of the 220 tribes with their own languages. Uvwie came into existence in the 11th century, when some families escaped from the former Ogiso dynasty (in Benin) to the region of today`s Uvwie Kingdom. They left because of the brutal Ogiso rulership and migrated to a very promising region: fertile land, a river, the sea nearby and virgin. The families settled down and remained fishermen, hunters and farmers. They set up a society and selected a king among themselves who became the natural custodian of the land. The king had the prerogative to distribute land to the families according to their size: the more family members, the more land they got. Borders that existed before colonialism were invisible but correctly known by the indigenous and owners and naturally there was harmony and understanding. This is not only peculiar to small communities but to national levels. With the advent of colonialism the border situation changed and scrambling for land with absolute impunity became the accepted standard. There was no regard for customary rule, it was visited with ferocious western weaponry. The end result was border irredentism. The end of colonialism in 1960 opened a new era with high hopes which ended in coups and counter coups in the Sixties and finally in dictatorship that lasted until 1999. It was in this period after the end of colonialism in the year 1960 when oil became the focal point dictating the country`s destiny. Exploitation started in 1970, the boom period. In the pre colonial era the king was responsible for land use, he determined which land was allocated for which purpose. In the colonial era this power remained: even though the king had no official position, no decision about land use was taken without his approval because “protectors” realised the advantages of using traditional systems for their own administration. In the Seventies, the oil boom opened another chapter in land use: In 1978 the former dictator Obasanjo (who today is the democratic president) issued the “Land Use Decree”, saying that all the land belongs to the government alone and any land that delivers oil may be taken for exploitation. Now for oil producing companies abroad it was easy to achieve the permission for land use because this was the official Nigerian strategy. At that time during dictatorship the king had no official power but in fact he and his district chiefs were the people who kept daily business going. From the traditional background, the king would have been in the position to object against oil exploitation, or at least in the position to place conditions. However, he did not because he was not aware of the consequences that lead to pollution of soil, water, and air and to high rates of cancer. The tradition of "dashing you something" at any occasion turned into the habit of corruption, that lead to total confusion and mismanagement.

During dictatorship the enactment of laws such as the “Land Use Decree” paved the way for oil producing activities, for the construction of an airport, for construction business and other actions. Nobody went against this erratic, and despotic rule, so as not to be killed. After the end of dictatorship, agitation for land started. Although Nigeria is under democratic rule, the “Land Use Act” of 1978 is still in force, posing a major barrier to any local initiative and hindering sustainable land use. Decisions are made in Abuja, a 10 hours` journey by car from Uvwie. There is a master plan providing a picture of how the regional development has been planned by the state government. However, the local governments are hardly, not to say not at all involved in the elaboration of the regional development plan. New approaches that give hope such as “Local Agenda 21” remain a theoretical concept under the present conditions.

4. INDICATORS FOR STRATEGIC SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT (SSA) IN UVWIE Within an SSA, targets to be achieved by the options under discussion, and indicators used to describe and compare these options should be determined by the people affected by the new development. Several indicator systems can be referred to as a starting point: Comprehensive indicator systems can be useful as a checklist for elaborating the indicator system for the SSA to be carried out, in order not to forget important aspects.

Kopfmüller et al. (2001) reviewed and compiled existing literature and published a comprehensive list of targets and indicators for sustainable development, aiming at covering the ecological, economic and social dimension of sustainability. According to Kopfmüller et al. (2001) this list is applicable to all cultural settings, economic and political systems. They say that every measure, plan, programme, project, etc. must contribute towards achieving the following three targets of sustainable development: 1. Preserve human existence on earth; 2. Maintain the social productivity potential; 3. Preserve society`s options for development and decision making

For each of these targets they define sub-targets that are listed in the following table.

Table 1 Targets and sub-targets for sustainable development Target Preserve human Maintain the social Preserve society`s existence on earth productivity potential options for development and decision making Sub- Protect human health Sustainable use of Equal chances with targets renewable resources respect to education, job and information Assure supply to cover Sustainable use of non Participation in social basic needs renewable resources decision making processes Provide opportunity for Sustainable use of the Preservation of cultural autonomous subsistence environment as a sink for heritage and cultural emission and waste diversity Justice in access and Avoid technical risks that Preservation of cultural utilisation of natural are not justifiable functionality of nature resources Balance extreme Sustainable development Maintenance of social differences in income and of capital with respect to resources wealth material, human resources and knowledge

For each sub-target they list indicators that describe whether or to which degree a measure, plan, programme, project, etc. contributes to achieving the sub-target. According to Kopfmüller et al. (2001), these are the 10 most important requirements an indicator must fulfil in order to deserve being named as an indicator: 1. Transparency about selection of criteria and method of aggregation; 2. Transparency about quality of data; 3. Data availability; 4. Reasonable effort for data collection; 5. Reproductability of results; 6. Sensitivity with respect to changes over time; 7. Usefulness for description of trends; 8. Usefulness for political control; 9. Political and societal agreement on the interpretation of the indicator; 10. Early warning function.

They also name the usefulness for international comparisons, but limit it to industrialised countries. This is correct because conditions in industrialised countries are completely different from the situation in developing countries. However, this is also true for other aspects in this requirements list. There are especially vast differences with respect to culture and societal values, criteria and data availability. This means that indicators for conducting a SSA in developing countries will also be different. The targets and sub-targets listed in table 1 can be used as a check list for target definition for land use planning. Indicators to describe and compare options, have to be different and have to be elaborated according to the cultural background and the current potential with regard to data availability. To give an idea about the differences, the following table shows an extract of criteria and indicators for sustainability targets compiled by Kopfmüller et al. (2001) for industrialised countries, and the corresponding indicator we would suggest for the conduction of a SSA in Uvwie.

Table 2 Criteria and indicators to describe whether a programme, plan or project contributes to achieving the sustainability targets (extract) Criteria Indicators for industrialised Indicators suggested for regions suggested by Kopfmüller conducting a SSA in Uvwie / et al. (2001) Nigeria Existence Quantitative indicators: Qualitative Indicators: security • Share of population who owns • Social structures in the an insurance policy community that care for people without income or sustenance Human Health Quantitative indicators: Qualitative Indicators: • Number of medical doctors per • Access to affordable medication 1000 capita • Single use of medical equipment • Life expectancy in years instead of multiple use in • Mortality of children hospitals • Availability of the “public pharmacy” (Dogoyaro Tree, Bitter Leaf and other plants) Quantitative indicators: • Life expectancy in years • Mortality of children Nutrition Quantitative indicator: Quantitative indicator: • Share of overweight population • Share of starving population Housing Quantitative indicators: Qualitative Indicators: • Number of square meters per • Management of sewage and person waste disposal • Number of homeless people • Energy supply • Water supply Quantitative indicator: • Number of square meters per person • Number of homeless people Education Quantitative indicator: Quantitative Indicators: • Share of illiterate population • Share of illiterate women • Share of young people without • Share of illiterate young people degree • Average age of completion of • Share of young people without a primary school, secondary profession school, and high school

While in industrialised countries availability of data is good and quantitative indicators can be defined, in Uvwie in some cases we have substituted them by qualitative indicators due to lack of statistical data. However, in some cases the indicator suggested for industrialised countries are irrelevant for the conditions in Uvwie, such as “share of population who owns an insurance policy”. “Insurance” as we know it in Europe does not exist at all, but in Uvwie culture people developed social structures to cope with insecurity in every day life. Quantitative indicators such as illiteracy rates among women lack data, as well, but are based on discussion and debate. In Uvwie, participation is not just a term, it is part of the culture and people have a good feeling for their environment. In fact, Uvwie is based on the spiritual centre located close to the market. Foreigners who are not familiar with this way of spirituality will never expect that area to be something special: there is no building, no sign, nothing that would give you a hint that this is a special place. But the indigenous start every important project, event or initiative from there. With a traditional ritual, the representatives of the Uvwie people "open" the place and bring their chairs to sit down for debate. And "if you take away this place from the community, there is no Uvwie no more". Among other functions, it is the responsibility of the spiritual leader to keep the land documents that tell you, which land belongs to which family.

5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE OUTLOOK Chapter 4 points out that conducting a Strategic Sustainability Assessment in Uvwie is possible. Actually, a Local Agenda 21 process started in January 2001, the ground is prepared. However, as long as the “Land Use Decree” is still in force, all local efforts will be in vain because they will be overruled by the Federal Government in Abuja. Right now, Uvwie is confronted with single isolated measures such as an overhead bridge as a solution to the problem of traffic congestion. In fact, this overhead bridge will not solve anything, but only shift the problem to another dimension. International documents issued by the United Nations stress the important role of regional initiatives and in Uvwie we have realised the potential for developing an optimised solution for land use – optimised with respect to the economic, ecological and social aspects of sustainability. Uvwie is ready to make a change towards sustainable development - if the Federal Government of Nigeria allows us to do so.

6. REFERENCES Akpochimora-a J., Alakpodia I.J., Arukpeme C.O., Ejenobo D.T., Erowho R., Idehen K.I., Ikolo A., Obiomah o`C., Teminor M., Uruejoma N. 2001. Report on Socio-Economics and Environmental Status of Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State, Nigeria Banse G., Brandl V., Coenen R., Grunwald A., Jörissen J., Kopfmüller J., Paetau M. 2001. Nachhaltige Entwicklung integrativ betrachtet. Aus der Reihe Global zukunftsfähige Entwicklung - Perspektiven für Deutschland, Edition Sigma, Berlin Directive 2001/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment