What are wetlands?
Wetlands encompass a wide range of landforms including but not limited to swamps, marshes, mangroves, fen and even man-made fish ponds. Formally, according to the Ramsar Convention (1994):
"[Wetlands area] areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres”. - Ramsar Convention Article 1.1
Wetlands provide a wide range of ecological services including regulating water flow, providing and storage of nutrients, food and raw material. They also support biodiveristy and wildlife, being an important habitat for an estimated 126,000 species (IUCN 2010).
Opportunities
Over the years, wetlands have seen increasing land use change. During the wetter season of the 1970s, due to the costs incurred from clearance and weeding, agricultural activity on these lands were generally avoided. Farmers opting to rely instead on rainfed agriculture and shifting cultivation made possible with a low population density and extensive land. However, because of growing population pressures, countries like Burkina Faso have had to adapt, intensifying the use of their bas fonds (Hottinga et al. 1991) for agricultural production growing crops like rice, maize and garden vegetables.
In recent years, there is an increasing recognition of wetlands' role in poverty reduction, securing food security and livelihoods in the face of climate change. Used in tandem with the drylands, the wetlands aid in the diversification of crops that cannot be grown on the former, particularly during the drier season. This increases food security and also helps generate cash crops during the lean season (Scoones 1991).
In the long term, the generation of additional and higher incomes together with savings have also allowed farmers to pursue entrepreneurial endeavours. For example, wetland farmers in Mpika, northern Zambia have managed to dabble in entrepreneurial pursuits in retail, moving beyond their local market in the urban centre. Others have found ways to trade with grain (McElwee and Wood 2017). This increases livelihood resilience by diversifying their sources of income.
Challenges
Given the many uses of the wetlands, one of the obvious challenges stems from the conflicting use of this resource. In semiarid areas, wetlands can also be important for livestock to graze on given the large amounts of biomass present. In northern Nigeria, the access to fadamas have become increasingly restricted as wetlands reserved for agricultural purposes expand, leaving less space for livestock (Kolawole 1991). As human ecology would have it, the physical environment works in tandem with the human one. In this case, the Nigerian governments prioritisation of irrigation and wheat production have only exacerbated this conflict use of resource among its people. Violence has erupted because of this.
Conflicts also arise between different users. In the Hanang district, Tanzania, a large-scale commercial project is removing the bottomland grazing zones. Problem is, these grazing lands have traditionally been used by the Barabaig pastoralists. More perniciously, this harms their livestock rotation schedule and its productivity is affected (Lane 1990). Overall, the impacts are multifold:
Environmentally, from the land use changes;
Socially from the removal of not only the Barabaig people but also the burial sites that had to be removed for the project; and
Economically for the pastoralists.
Another source of damage to wetlands come from dams. Because dams work by storing discharge and controlling its time of release, this often has negative impacts on the natural variability of discharge throughout the year. This removes the scenarios for flooding (Adams 1985).
This damage is best illustrated using the Bakolori dam located on the Sokoto river in Nigeria as an example. The flooding of the wetlands was necessary to support the livelihoods of 50,000 people downstream. However, the construction of the dam, at its peak, reduced flood discharge by 60%. Farmers growing crops that were meant for the wet season then had to switch out crops more suited for the dry one. Still this incurred losses for farmers (Adams 1985).
The impact of dams don't just stop with the Sokoto river. Another notorious case of damming is with the Jonglei Canal (Howell 1983).
While the canal was proposed, it had never formally been executed. The plan was to divert water from the Sudds wetlands of South Sudan to downstream Sudan and Egypt so they could use it for agriculture. However, the beyond the losses incurred to farmers as explained in the previous example, such construction of dams also have larger geopolitical complications. The diversion of the White Nile's waters to Sudan and Egypt (the beneficiaries) would leave the bulk of the burden on South Sudan's shoulders. These damages include the failure of fisheries and seasonal movement of wildlife (Laki 2009). Allam et al's (2018) simulations also predict a 7-16% shrinking of swamp area.
While wetland are filled with promise, the way humans use it inevitably cause further complications not just socially, economically, environmentally but also geopolitically. Truly, for all the promise and potential that wetlands hold, a misstep can also take all that away.