HUMAN-ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONS

PRE & POST FLOOD CONDITIONS AND ITS HEALTH IMPLICATIONS IN AGADAMA COMMUNITY, DELTA STATE NIGERIA

Abstract

The human-environmental relations is an intricate one as evident in the 2012 flood that lasted for three months in Nigeria and it was not without some indelible effects and changes in the life style and culture of communities inundated by the flood. Agadama is an agrarian coastal community in Uwheru clan, Ughelli North LGA, Delta state, in the oil rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The community had its own share of the devastating flood incidence and since then had not remained the same again. This is a qualitative study which employed ethnographic methods of data collection - Key Informant Interview (KII), Participant observation and In-depth Interview (IDI), adopting a purely descriptive method of analysis. The study reveals the interplay between human-environmental relations. There is also an alteration in their traditional way of life and the entire socio-cultural milieu. Uncontrollable environmental changes/hazards which the people were unprepared for, steered up drastic change in behavior, social structure and general cultural practices, no matter how autochthonous these practices may have been. Flexibility of the people’s culture was an adaptive strategy against the rampaging flood. The marginal status of most flooded rural communities led to complete or partial collapse of their subsistence base, especially for those operating an agricultural local economy.