Combating Desertification of Rural Areas and Improving the Sanitary Conditions of Urban Areas by Applying Indigenous Ecological Knowledge of Hausa Cultivators in Southern Niger: Contributing to Human Security Based on the Field Research

Abstract

The land degradation is causing the decline of crop and livestock production in Republic of Niger. The Human Security is threatened by food shortage and loss of subsistence resources, especially in rural areas. The objectives of this paper were to: (1) describe the ecological knowledge of Hausa cultivators to land degradation (desertification) and daily practices for soil fertility improvement and plant production recovery in the degraded fields, (2) indicate the cause of land degradation problem and (3) introduce my trials for combating the land degradation problem and contributing to the human security in southern Niger.
Hausa cultivators intend to carry the household waste into the degraded land every day for improving the soil fertility and plant production. According to the interviews from villagers, the land degradation was recently accelerated by the decrease of household waste in the agricultural villages because they sell more agro-products including the crops, livestock, firewood and pasture to the market under the market economy. The population of urban areas is rapidly increasing and food demand becomes higher. The population of Niamey, capital of Niger increased from 70,000 in 1970 to 675,000 in 2001. The residents consume agro-products from rural areas and waste the trash for everyday life. Lack of public disposal system accelerated the insanitary conditions in Niamey. During rainy season, infectious diseases such as cholera and typhoid occur in Niamey every year. We could comprehend the unbalanced conditions between rural areas and urban areas. The organic matters in rural areas are decreasing and the residents face the poor soil nutrition problem, namely desertification problem because they sell the agro-product to the market. The urban areas accumulated the organic matters and the residents face the insanitary problem. The author established local NGO“OLDCS- shara (Combating desertification and improving the urban sanitary conditions)”in Niger. We plan to divide the organic matters from urban trash and carry them into the degraded land of rural villages under the cooperation of the Government and Niamey Metropolitan administrative agencies. We aimed to contribute human security, by combating the desertification and food shortage in the rural agricultural villages as well as improving sanitary conditions and preventing from infectious diseases in Metropolitan areas.