Alternative Routes for a Proposed Nigerian Superhighway to Limit Damage to Rare Ecosystems and Wildlife (2017)
Authors
Abstract
The Cross River State Government in Nigeria is proposing to construct a ‘‘Cross River Superhighway’’ that would bisect critical remaining areas of tropical rainforest in south eastern Nigeria. We offer and evaluate two alternative routes to the superhighway that would be less damaging to forests, protected areas, and biological diversity. The first alternative we identified avoids intact forests entirely while seeking to benefit agriculture and existing settlements. The second alternative also avoids intact forests while incorporating existing paved and unpaved roads to limit construction costs. As currently proposed, the superhighway would be 260 km long, would intersect 115 km of intact forests or protected areas, and would cost an estimated ~US$2.5 billion to construct. Alternative Routes 1 and 2 are only slightly longer (~290 and ~353 km, respectively) and have markedly lower estimated construction costs (~US$0.92 billion). Furthermore, the alternative routes would have negligible impacts on forests and protected areas and would be better aligned to benefit local communities and agriculture. We argue that alternative routings such as those we examined here could markedly reduce the economic and environmental costs, and potentially increase the socioeconomic benefits, for the proposed Cross River Superhighway.
Citation
Mahmoud MI, Sloan S, Campbell MJ, Alamgir M, Imong I, Odigha O, Chapman HM, Dunn A, Laurance WF (2017). Alternative Routes for a Proposed Nigerian Superhighway to Limit Damage to Rare Ecosystems and Wildlife. Tropical Conservation Science. 10. 194008291770927-194008291770927.This citation is automatically generated and may be unreliable. Use as a guide only.
Keywords
Cross River National Park; Cross River State; equatorial Africa; habitat fragmentation; highway; Nigeria; protected areas; superhighway; tropical rainforestANZSRC Fields of Research
30 - Agricultural, veterinary and food sciences::3007 - Forestry sciences::300707 - Forestry management and environment12 - Built Environment and Design::1205 - Urban and Regional Planning::120504 - Land Use and Environmental Planning
41 - Environmental sciences::4104 - Environmental management::410402 - Environmental assessment and monitoring
41 - Environmental sciences::4104 - Environmental management::410401 - Conservation and biodiversity
Rights
Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Related items
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