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Environmentalist (2008) 28:108122
DOI 10.1007/s10669-007-9052-5
Raphael Abiodun Olawepo
Published online: 20 November 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract Fish production and marketing are as old as the rural communities involved in the lucrative occupation in Badagry area of Lagos State, Nigeria. A random sampling of 200 shermen using Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques (PRA) in ve Badagry villages was used to explore coastal shing and socioeconomic development in the study area with a view to enhancing local productivity and sustainability. The ndings show that an average sherman in Badagry is aware of the resources available in his environment, and can affect productivity levels positively if given adequate incentives. There are two lessons from this study; one has to do with what PRA tells us about the shing community, the other is the importance of facilitators that have, amongst other things, good listening skills. The experience also revealed that eld workers ability to listen and learn from local shermen was a critical factor in collecting in-depth information that could be used for rural community planning.
Keywords Rural Appraisal Fishing Development Participation Planning Resources and habitat
1 Introduction
Coastal regions, areas that are homes to a large and growing proportion of the worlds population are undergoing environmental decline. The problem is particularly acute in the developing world, where poverty is a major factor in their dependency on water resources within their immediate environment. Most coastal regions are based on an area within 60200 km of the shoreline and may include coastal plains, mangrove forests, marshes, and tide ats, as well as beaches, dunes, and coral reefs (Creel 2003).
R. A. Olawepo (&)
Department of Geography, University of Ilorin, P.M.B. 1515, Ilorin, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected]
Using Participatory Rural Appraisal to explore coastal shing in Badagry villages, Nigeria
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Fishing in Badagry villages has been a way of life since times immemorial as a result of their location along the seashore of the Atlantic Ocean coupled with availability of vast water resources and ood plains. According to Welcome (1975) rivers and their ood plains produce about half of the Worlds inland shing of 10 million tones.
In Nigeria, Ita and Sado (1984) report that a total of 12,487,817 ha is covered by water of which...