The next big environmental crisis: Indonesian New Guinea
We had a bit of fun with our 'Drop Bears' blog last week -- which was based on a legitimate scientific paper but was entirely in jest -- but we're being deadly serious now.
In brief, the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea -- one of three great remaining tropical wildernesses on Earth -- is under dire assault. This is an issue that should light up the radar of conservationists throughout the world.
Rampant oil palm development in Indonesia New Guinea (photo (c) Ardiles Rante, Greenpeace).
The other half of the island of New Guinea -- the nation of Papua New Guinea -- has certainly suffered its share of environmental ills, with rampant industrial logging and mining development, severe fires in the highlands, and the notorious SABLs -- Special Agricultural and Business Leases -- that have often been snapped up by foreign logging firms and now span some 11% of the nation's land area.
But the situation in Indonesian New Guinea -- the Provinces of Papua and West Papua -- is, if anything, even worse. And it is likely to become one of the major rainforest crises of our time.
People in the know say its only a matter of time before environmental chaos descends in Indonesian New Guinea. First, the government there places little emphasis on the rights of the island's many indigenous communities, who have lived on their traditional lands for millennia.
Second, the Indonesian government has transmigrated millions of Javanese and other Indonesians to New Guinea, displacing traditional peoples and destroying native ecosystems in the process. This program has been enormously unpopular with native New Guineans.
Third, oil palm is exploding across Indonesia New Guinea. The Indonesians have a saying, "Sumatra was yesterday, Borneo is today, and New Guinea is tomorrow", reflecting their wildly ambitious plans to expand oil palm, logging, mining, and other developments across the island at the expense of native ecosystems.
Indonesia now has the world's highest absolute rate of forest destruction (from Mongabay.com).
And finally, Indonesia President Joko Widodo has just announced a scheme to build a 4,000 kilometer-long 'Trans-Papuan Highway' across Indonesian New Guinea. This has the potential to open up the island like a flayed fish, exposing it a range of new environmental pressures -- the results of which are often fatal for forests and biodiversity.
We've been accustomed to hearing about environmental crises in Borneo, Sumatra, and the Amazon. Unless the international community can convince the Indonesian government to change its tack, get ready to start hearing a lot more about environmental crises in Indonesian New Guinea too.