Virunga National Park and Cuvette Centrale tropical peatland are parts of the Congo rainforest, the world's second biggest, which captures about 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or about three years of global emissions from fossil fuel, home to some of the world's rarest gorillas, whose population has plummeted to under one thousand.
The Widi Reserve in Indonesia consists of an entire archipelago of more than 100 tropical islands, spread out over 10,000 hectares north-east of Bali, one of the most intact coral atoll ecosystems left on earth and home to hundreds of animals of epic proportions.
Merauke district in Indonesia has 30 percent of 2.3 million hectares of land earmarked for clearing, a zone that the government previously declared as protected, an area housing more than half of the country’s total bird population, including 80 species endemic.
One factor unites these three places, their wetlands, rainforests, and grasslands are at the risk of destruction, as commercial interests are bent on infiltrating these pristine locations, with little efforts made to mitigate the environmental impacts when these places are encroached.
The Virunga area in the Democratic Republic of Congo holds a part of the proven oil reserves of the central African country, which has an estimated 180 million barrels of crude oil, and up to five billion estimated oil reserves.
The sale of 100 islands in the Widi Reserve in Indonesia will bring a lot of money to that nation's treasury, with winners of the auctions to the private islands acquiring equity to PT Leadership Islands Indonesia, which holds the 35-year lease of the entire region, committed to develop 0.005 percent of the entire reserve and about one percent of the protected forest.
The cutting down of the rainforests, grasslands, and wetlands in the Merauke district will benefit five consortiums in an 8.4-billion-dollar deal for developing sugar cane plantations, as Indonesia targets self-sufficiency in sugar consumption by 2028 through the production of 9.1 million tonnes of the crop.
In all of these cases, economic interests and greed of governments and their partners drive the intent to infiltrate pristine locations everywhere, possibly leading to unintended consequences.
At least 27 percent of the Congo Basin present in 2020 could vanish by 2050, with activities carried out by commercial interests and others, while others predict a potential loss of 174,000 to 204,000 square kilometers by 2050, leading to biodiversity loss and increased carbon emissions in an area that plays an important role in storing carbon and protecting the climate.
More than half of protected atolls in Indonesia appear ready to experience severe bleaching every year by 2044, with human activities and sea temperature increasing between 1.1 degrees Celsius and 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature, resulting in habitat loss in an area that plays an important role in regulating carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and ocean.
Almost 50 percent of the rainforest in parts of Indonesia such as Kalimantan could vanish by 2050, with no one to check activities like the one going on in Merauke, seriously hampering that nation’s ability to achieve net zero emissions, meaning increased carbon emissions at a place that plays an important role in protecting the climate.
In essence, activities in places like Congo and Indonesia are parables in relation to other places, on the need to curtail rapacious consumption and dangerous ambition of government officials and consortiums, preventing them from infiltrating pristine locations.
To protect these valuable ecosystems, the enforcement of robust environmental laws are necessary, as well as the use of technology to make informed decisions about these places, to shield them from human encroachment, which usually brings degradation.
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Vegan food from Papua New Guinea, Credit, Veg news
These trends are truly heartbreaking and insane. I question your title because I don't consider such losses to be "progress" though I know that's how humans frame it. I often push back on the term "development" for the same reason. We describe all human construction and expansion as development but development has a qualitative aspect to it -- it's about getting better not just bigger. Good work my friend. Thanks for the research and shining a light on some very dark things.
Thanks for your comments. I should have hypernated 'Progress'. I really don't see human constructions as making progress, especially when constructions are detrimental to the environment.