Biodiversity Conservation and Unmet Social and Health Needs in the Rural Communities of Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

The establishment that 70% of the world's poor residing in rural areas depends directly on biodiversity for their well-being has ignited the call for sustainable usage of biological resources. Biodiversity conservation has thus become a novel project with noble intention of providing a habitat and protection from hunting for threatened and endangered species and ecological processes that cannot survive in most intensely managed landscapes. Nigeria has created protected areas under the coordination of National Park Services in line with this. As a result, residents of communities surrounding the protected areas could not meet their basic needs like employment, water provision, educational facilities, medical services, energy supply, livestock grazing, and motorable roads. They have subsequently deviated from the extant rules that guide their conducts and by ensuing difficulties see biodiversity conservation as an elitist policy despite their understanding of the idea behind it.