Zeitschrift für Küstenzonenmanagement

Abstrakt

Climate Change Induced Water Hyacinth Growth Impact on Water Transportation and Coastal Ecology in Nigeria at the Gulf of Guinea

Dukiya Jehoshaphat Jaiye*

Water hyacinth (Eicchornia crassipes) is one of the aquatic weed that is highly pervasive with global concern, and is leading obstructers of water craft especially at tropics. The weed has been a major transportation problem at the Nigerian coastline and inland waterways. This paper carried out an assessment of the growth, the spread, and its economic effect on the country’s transport sector. It also assessed the relationship between the global climate change, water eutophication and the water hyacinth propagation as a result of anthropogenic activities using secondary real-time data and search engine for relevant case. Environmental Management Plan (EMP) principles and trend analysis were also used in the analysis. The paper re-established the fact that the weed has the potential of producing about 150-200 tonnes of the biomass in a year per hectare, and that by the year 2050, about 50 million of the weed biomass conservatively would have grown across the nation’s water bodies going by the continuous increase in temperature and eutrphication. It is therefore recommended that both ministry of environment and transportation should develop a strategic multi-sectoral action plan to tackle the menace nationwide.