Abstract

Lay community knowledge of the environment has a major role in the sustainable use and management of natural resources which, though ignored by experts, is increasingly accepted as fundamental to successful implementation of policies and programmes of rural resource management. This paper explores the community experience of changes over time in their environment in the Ethiope Area of Urhoboland using the relatively novel qualitative/participatory social research technique of group discussion with 31representative natural resource users from three clans in the study area. Members were engaged in onceonly integrated group discussion session during which they reflected interactively on how their natural environment has supported farming, fishing, hunting and forest resource gathering activities. The information elicited was appraised contextually; findings reveal that the area is witnessing rapid resource degradation linked to population growth, modernization influences and social transformation in values with the people increasingly demonstrating greater egocentrism in terms of use and attitude to environmental conservation. There are less altruistic concerns that favour common property resource protection for the future longterm needs of communities. Further, „biospheric‟ interests/principles, the concern for protection of nature for its sake, which were widespread in the past have all but been abandoned due to Western-linked modernization influences, population-induced land fragmentationand the intrusion/migration of „outsiders‟ into communities with more aggressive unprofessional resource use techniques that were not in tandem with the indigenous resource use norms of the forefathers. The paper recommends a new policy thrust that recognizes the principles of primary environmental care and with stronger focus on agricultural land intensification drawing on natural inputsin order to achieve sustainability