ALERT scientists tell G20 leaders to stop the 'infrastructure insanity'!
This has been a big week for ALERT.
In the Amazon, 95% of all deforestation occurs within 5 kilometers of a road (Google Earth).
On March 5, the top-ranked journal Current Biology published a hard-hitting paper -- led by ALERT director Bill Laurance and including ALERT member Tom Lovejoy, former environmental advisor to three U.S. presidents -- that the G20's plan for infrastructure expansion bordered on ecological insanity.
In case you haven't been following this story, during its meeting late last year in Australia, the G20 leaders -- who lead the world's 20 biggest economies -- pledged to invest $60-70 trillion US dollars globally in new roads, hydroelectric dams, power lines, gas lines, mines, fossil-fuel projects, and other infrastructure over the next 15 years.
To put that number in perspective, the current value of all infrastructure across the entire planet today is roughly $50 trillion.
So, we're talking about more than doubling the amount of global infrastructure in a very short period of time.
Road kill. Roads and other infrastructure in wilderness areas often have fatal impacts on nature (©WWF-Malaysia/Lau Ching Fong).
Nobody is denying that the world needs better and more infrastructure -- especially developing nations trying to improve their economic and social conditions.
But to subject the planet to an unprecedented tsunami like this is almost unfathomable. The environmental consequences -- the impacts on nature and native ecosystems -- simply boggle the mind.
One bit of good news is that the Current Biology paper is being used as the scientific foundation -- by scores of the world's top scientists, environmental leaders, and other luminaries -- to lobby the G20 leaders to back down from their pledge to hyper-drive global infrastructure.
The paper lays out nine specific recommendations to help make infrastructure projects environmentally safer and more sustainable. It's no magic bullet, but if taken seriously these recommendations could make a real difference.
Let's hope the G20 listens. If they don't, they'll be guilty -- and this is no exaggeration -- of promulgating the worst environmental calamity in human history.