Spills, Pipes, Deforestation’s Rhyme: Rainforests Carbon Crime
Between 1972 and 2015, the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest suffered from one thousand, one hundred and sixty-eight registered oil spills, with at least one hundred and nine sites overlapping with protected areas in nations such as Bolivia and Peru, while over two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-seven kilometers of oil pipelines crossed sixty-five reserves and one hundred and forty indigenous territories.
Between 2020 and 2021, the fast diminishing Nigerian wetland suffered from a combined total of 822 oil spills, resulting in 28,000 barrels of crude oil spewing into the environment, with 8,636 oil spill incidents causing 385,909 barrels of oil to pour into the environment in the past decade alone.
Between 2005 and 2015, the Colombian Amazon rainforest experienced about 81 percent of the reported 1,169 oil spills in the country, with a whopping figure of 50 oil spills happening between 2017 to 2021, 109 spill sites overlapping with 15 protected natural areas.
Rainforests the world over find themselves under threats from oil extraction, as spills pour into the environment, resulting in the release of toxic byproducts into local rivers and forests, while the broken pipelines leave a legacy of environmental damage.
More than 60 percent of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest suffocates under oil concessions, with almost 28,000 square miles of oil blocks under development, while oil companies intend ramping up production to 756,000 barrels barrels per day by 2025, from 482,009 barrels of oil per day in 2022.
About eight states in Nigeria's Niger Delta labyrinth of mangrove trees, wetland, swamp, and rainforest fall within areas of oil production, with the oil companies producing around 1.5 million barrels of oil per day in 2023, and the authorities forecasting 1.9 to four million barrels per day by 2030.
About 40 percent of the Colombian Amazon rainforest lies under the ambit of oil companies as oil blocks, with oil and gas projects in the western Amazon covering 733,414 square kilometers, most of the oil production taking place in departments such as Putumayo, Caquera, and Meta.
Given the extent of oil production in the zone with the resource, and the diminishing areas of the forests, rainforests could come under intense pressure from oil extraction, through oil spills and other activities like deforestation, gas leaks, and pipeline bursts.
Indigenous forests in all nine Amazonian nations acted as carbon sinks between 2001 and 2022, collectively emitting 120 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and removing 460 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas, making them a net sink of 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
The labyrinth of wetlands, rainforests, and swamps in the Nigerian Niger Delta rendered a significant decrease in greenhouse gas emissions since 2010, with emissions as low as 1.38 million square meters, the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the area at just 25.4 µg/m³.
The forests in all of Colombia's Amazon forest also acted as a carbon sinks between 2001 and 2021, absorbing 2.0 tonnes carbon dioxide per hectare per year, emerging with a net sink of 0.78 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare per year, higher than figures for the Bolivian Amazon forest.
With oil companies destroying the rainforests in Ecuador and other places, carbon sinks such as the Niger Delta and the Amazon could worsen the situation with climate change, especially with the Amazon capable of triggering the release of more than 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, approximately 2.5 times greater than annual global fossil fuel emissions.
Unless nations cut back oil exploration, or develop new technologies, or halt the construction of roads into rain forest zones, they could turn into carbon sinks in the near future, further complicating the current climate change crisis.
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