Women in the Niger Delta: Environmental Issues and Challenges in the Third Millennium A. O. I. Gabriel Introduction

The Niger Delta is located in Southern Nigeria and is Africa’s largest delta, covering about 70,000 square kilometers, and with about one-third of it made up of wetlands, and the third largest world mangrove forests. The Niger Delta is unique in Nigeria because it is the home of Nigeria’s oil industry, with its attendant environmental hazards such as water, land, air pollution, etc. Human activities and those of oil exploration and exploitation raise a number of issues such as depletion of biodiversity, coastal and river bank erosion, flooding, oil spillage, gas flaring, noise pollution, sewage and waste water pollution, land degradation and soil fertility loss, deforestation, etc which pose great challenges to women’s economic development of the Niger Delta. This study focuses on the consequences of the above-mentioned environmental issues on women’s economic activities in the Niger Delta communities of the following oil producing states in Nigeria, which are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Rivers and Ondo.