Fires raging unchecked in an Indonesian peat swamp forest could wipe out the remaining Sumatran orang-utans which live there, conservationists are warning. The forest is one of the last refuges of the great apes. The illegal fires, started by palm-oil companies clearing land to plant the lucrative crop, are believed to have killed at least 100 orang-utans – one-third of those living in the Tripa swamp, on the west coast of Sumatra’s Aceh province. The rest could die within weeks, according to Dr Ian Singleton, conservation director of the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Programme.
“The speed of destruction has gone up dramatically in the last few weeks… This is obviously a deliberate drive by these companies to clear all the remaining forests,” Dr Singleton said. “If this is not stopped right now, all those orang-utans… will be gone before the end of 2012.”
Only 6,600 Sumatran orang-utans are estimated to be left in the wild, and the Tripa swamp – where they are most densely concentrated – is considered crucial to the species’ survival. But less than one-quarter of the peat forest remains; the rest has been converted to palm-oil plantations.
Satellite imagery showing 92 fires over the past week has horrified conservationists, who are awaiting a court ruling with far-reaching implications for the protection of wildlife habitats in Indonesia. The judgment relates to a lawsuit brought against the governor of Aceh by the local branch of Walhi, an environmental group. Walhi decided to act after the governor, Irwandi Yusuf, granted a new permit to one of the country’s biggest palm-oil companies, PT Kallista Alam. Walhi Aceh argues that the permit, which would allow another 4,000 acres of peatland to be destroyed, was granted illegally.
The judges are due to reach a decision next Tuesday. If they dismiss the challenge, other important habitats could also be threatened. Tripa is nominally protected by a presidential moratorium on new logging and palm-oil concessions, as well as by legislation governing the conservation area within which it is located.
There may now be as few as 200 orang-utans left in the Tripa forest, which shelters a dozen endangered species, including the white-handed gibbon, clouded leopard, Malayan sun bear, Sumatran tiger and giant soft-shelled turtle.
China’s Three Gorges Corp. on Thursday marked the beginning of construction for a dam that will flood the last free-flowing portion of the middle reaches of the Yangtze, the country’s longest river.
The 30 billion yuan ($4.75 billion) Xiaonanhai dam is decried by environmentalists because it will flood a nature reserve designed to protect about 40 species of river fish.
Completion of the dam would turn the middle section of the Yangtze into a series of reservoirs, leaving “no space for fish”, said environmentalist Ma Jun, who has been active for over two years in trying to prevent the dam.
“This is the last one, the last section in 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) along the Yangtze that was left for endangered or local fish species. This would be their last habitat,” Ma told Reuters.
A ceremony was held to commence early-stage preparation, including building a road and laying power lines and water pipes, said Zhu Guangming, news department director at Three Gorges Corp.
“Construction of the dam itself will begin only after we get final approval,” Zhu said, declining to give cost estimates.
“The government will give due consideration to all aspects including environment impact before issuing a permit.”
The Xiaonanhai dam would be the last in a series of 12 dams along the Yangtze, the rest of which are all completed or under construction.
The series will stretch inland from the Three Gorges Dam, which has created an inland reservoir more than 600 km long that has allowed the city of Chongqing to develop into an inland port. When completed, Xiaonanhai dam is designed to produce 1.76 gigawatts, a fraction of the 22.50 GW that the Three Gorges Dam will produce when it reaches full capacity.
AWAITING FINAL APPROVAL
The Chongqing municipal government is currently embroiled in a power struggle after the ambitious party secretary, Bo Xilai, was sacked earlier this month. The mega-city’s hard-charging police chief was also taken into custody by central authorities after spending a day in the nearest U.S. consulate.
Preliminary approval for the dam was issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top planning agency, which also has the authority to issue final approval.
The boundaries of the nature reserve were earlier re-drawn to allow the construction of the even larger Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu dams.
According to NGO International Rivers, which opposes the construction of large hydro dams and has been critical of China’s ambitious hydropower plans, the Xiangjiaba dam will be 6.4 GW and the Xiluodu dam 13.86 GW.
China wants to raise installed power capacity by 470 gigawatts (GW) to 1,437 GW by 2015 — the largest in the world. At least 110 gigawatts of the new capacity will be from hydro power — equivalent to five Three Gorges hydropower projects. Current hydropower capacity is 216 GW, also the world’s largest.
The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest power project and was controversial well before it began construction in 1994.
Objections ranged from the destruction of rare species to the flooding of historic towns and displacement of millions of people, to concerns that it would quickly silt up and lose its efficiency in generating power.
It produces about 2 percent of China’s power.
Subsequent audits of the Three Gorges project showed that many of the flooded communities were never properly resettled while the steep banks of the reservoir have been plagued by dangerous landslides as the water undermines the hillsides.
In January, China’s environment ministry told hydropower developers they must “put ecology first” and pay strict attention to the impact of their projects on local rivers and communities.
The world’s third largest mining company, Rio Tinto, and a local financial and construction firm, Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS), have cancelled plans for a $2 billion aluminum smelter to be constructed in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The cancellation calls into question Sarawak’s plan to build a dozen massive dams—known as the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) initiative—that were proposed, in part, to provide power to the massive aluminum smelter. However, the mega-dam proposal has been heavily criticized for its impact on Sarawak’s rivers, rainforest and indigenous people.
Rio Tinto and CMS stated that the project had been dropped because power supply terms could not be agreed on. The smelter would have produced 1.5 million tons of aluminum annually. According to Jacynthe Cote, chief executive of Rio Tinto’s Alcan aluminum division, there were no hard feelings over the cancellation.
“Looking into the future, we remain interested in development opportunities that may arise within the state and the country,” he said.
Beyond the internal decisions, the cancellation immediately puts Sarawak’s dam building plans under new scrutiny. After long delays and cost overruns, one of the dozen dams has already been completed, the 2,400 megawatt Bakun dam. The dam reportedly displaced around 10,000 indigenous people and flooded 70,000 hectares of rainforest (about the size of Singapore). By itself, the Bakun dam produces twice as much power as the entire state of Sarawak. Despite this, a second dam, the 900 megawatt Murum dam, is currently under construction.
Sarawak’s government, under Abdul Taib Mahmud or “Taib”, has been aggressively pushing implementation of the SCORE plan and fending off criticism, stating that the state would need the additional power for the Rio Tinto-CMS smelter.
“Rio Tinto’s decision [to cancel the smelter] proves that the Taib government’s irresponsible economic policies have completely failed. There is no need to build another twelve dams in the state as envisaged by the Taib government,” reads a statement from the Bruno Manser Fund, a group that works with indigenous people in Sarawak. “All these corruption-driven dam plans that would only benefit the Taib family’s construction companies must come tho a halt now.”
Local opposition against the dams has been fierce. Last fall indigenous groups, local people, and domestic NGOs established the Save Sarawak’s Rivers Network in order to fight the dams. In addition, hundreds of land lawsuits have been filed against the proposed dams.
The Bruno Manser Fund is calling on the Sarawak government to stop construction on the Murum dam and cancel all other dam projects.
Forests are falling across Borneo. A new videoblog by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telepak have documented the loss of one such forest in Indonesian Borneo, and its impact on the indigenous Dayak Benuaq people.
Tensions hit a high point last year as PT Munte Waniq Jaya Perkasa, a company owned by Malaysia-based TSH Resources, began clearing the forest backed by police and other security personnel. The video highlights the contrast between the Dayak Benuaq’s standing forest and reforestation project and the recently cleared area for plantations.
India is hungry for energy. Over 173 power plants, all of them coal-fired, will be built to power the nation’s high-tech industries and booming cities.
This is accelerating an ongoing “coal rush” which has put our dirtiest fossil fuel at the heart of India’s breakneck growth, and could soon make a single state, Andhra Pradesh, one of the world’s top 20 carbon emitters.
On 101 East, filmmaker Orlando de Guzman takes a dark journey through the coal belt of Jharkhand and West Bengal, to look at the winners and losers of this booming industry.
