Project description
Balancing rural livelihoods and wetland conservation in the Niger Delta through participatory modelling
Wetlands in the Niger Delta are vital to traditional agricultural livelihoods. However, their rapid degradation threatens community resilience. Conservation interventions often blame farmers for this loss, overlooking the impacts of historic colonial resource extraction and top-down management policies. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the DELTA project will rethink how environmental management, knowledge and participation are organised in the region and explore how participatory modelling can empower local communities to achieve sustainability. By involving local stakeholders, it aims to co-create solutions to wetland degradation and identify equitable pathways to adapt agricultural practices that ensure food security and fair economic outcomes for vulnerable groups.
Objective
Effective and equitable environmental management of complex ecosystems like the Niger Delta requires a fundamental rethinking of how knowledge, power, and participation are organized. This innovative, interdisciplinary project reconceptualizes wetland degradation problem not as a failure of enforcement or awareness, but as a failure of design, where governance systems ignore local complexity and power asymmetries.
Focusing on the Niger Delta - home to Africa’s largest wetland complex and critical to both: rural livelihoods and biodiversity - this research investigates how participatory modelling can support locally led sustainable solutions. By integrating systems thinking, participatory system dynamics, and the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus, it offers a novel framework for linking ecological decline and livelihood insecurity, providing fresh theoretical and methodological bases for research and policy.
Agriculture is central to rural life in Nigeria and across Africa, and wetlands are crucial for food production, flood control, water purification, and cultural continuity. Yet rapid wetland degradation threatens fisheries, agriculture, flood protection, and community resilience. Existing research and interventions often attribute wetland degradation to unsustainable farming practices, ignoring the historical legacies of top-down colonial management and extractive production. This project addresses the critical gap in understanding wetlands as dynamic systems shaped by ecological, institutional, and political-economic forces, beyond their local misuse.
Through co-developing dynamic models in Niger Delta communities, it advances theory on systemic drivers of degradation, identifies recurring unsustainability patterns, and refines socio-ecological frameworks. Grounded in participatory processes, it enriches debates on integrating local knowledge into systems modelling, offering a transferable approach for wetland governance and resilience theory across the Global So
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture sustainable agriculture
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems freshwater ecosystems
- social sciences sociology governance environmental governance
- social sciences other social sciences development studies
- engineering and technology environmental engineering natural resources management water management
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
M13 9PL Manchester
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.