Those of us who belong to the Homo sapiens species owe our name and surname to our two main characteristics: we are human and we are endowed with the ability to think. When you go into Borneo and focus the microscope to get a closer look at what has happened on the huge island in the last 50 years, you conclude that those responsible for the greatest unnatural environmental catastrophe in Earth's history did not they qualify to be sapiens.
The mega-predators
These destroying men and women of the world must be placed in a new classification, a new species or subspecies, due to their very high aggressiveness and enormous capacity to cause damage to nature. Their reflective lack of measuring the consequences of their actions, which is no greater than that of a moth or lobster, places them on a scale that we could call something like Homo predator. These mega environmental predators are scattered all over the planet, but it is in the rainforest of Borneo where their devastating action broke all the molds of irresponsibility, and allowed the gravity of their actions to come to light with the transparency of the finest crystal.
And where is Borneo?
Borneo ranks third among the largest islands on Earth and is larger than France. It is located in Southeast Asia, 1600 km south of Vietnam, west of Papua New Guinea and 3500 km north of Australia. Borneo, called Kalimantan in Indonesian, is politically subdivided into three parts: Malaysia owns 26.7%, Indonesia 72.6% and Brunei less than 1%. Borneo is inhabited by 16.4 million people.
A purely artificial disaster
In the last half century, the Borneo rain forest, or rain forest, lost more than 70% of its trees and an enormous amount of habitats at the expense of the logging industry and other activities that developed with unusual speed on the island. From the late 1960s onwards hostile deforestation began in Borneo, through intensive felling of trees, which took on particular force in the period 1980-1998. The rain forest, where wetlands and swamps made it difficult to light a fire, became an arid territory prone to continuous forest fires, many of them provoked, with local effects and in more remote regions.There are experts who believe that the great forest fires that have occurred in the last decades in distant Australia and Chile are related to the drastic climate change of Borneo. What happens in Kalimantan is not a natural disaster resulting from an earthquake, hurricane, or volcanic eruption. It is a purely artificial disaster, the work of Homo sapiens, the most aggressive and armored species that has come to the planet.
Borneo, a nightmare
“Until 1950, 96% of the island was primary forest, while today only 44% remain. The destruction does not stop, but increases its speed, "says WWF. Some scientists claim that what happened in Borneo is the largest and fastest man-made ecological catastrophe in human history. In May 2007, 1,500 scientists from 70 countries drafted a document calling Borneo's situation "critical" and urging immediate action. However, little has been done so far. According to Greenpeace, at the current rate, in 2022 98% of the primary forest, habitat of the orangutan, will have disappeared. The Guinness Book of Records named Indonesia in 2008 as the world champion of deforestation. At SGK-PLANET we have written that Borneo is an ecological catastrophe, a nightmare, a horror movie,a mirror to look at us, a bad example that should never be followed anywhere in the world. Borneo's recent history is the largest and most dramatic case of local climate change produced by human hands. There are no doubts. In just half a century some humans destroyed in Kalimantan what it took nature to build 130 million years. The damages are irreversible.
Ancient forests transformed into single-use toothpicks
Before the massive deforestation to which it was subjected, the Borneo rain forest was almost impenetrable due to the large number of trees and other plants that made it up. During hostile deforestation the island became the world's largest timber exporter, even above the Amazon and Africa combined. Borneo's various trunks landed in China, Japan, the United States, and Europe, where its main buyers were, turning into wooden houses, parquet floors, furniture, paper, toothpicks, and other artifacts made of the noble plant fiber..
Exchanging ancient trees for African palms
The industrial timber trade began to gain strength in the 1970s. “Indonesian President Suharto distributed large tracts of forest to consolidate his political relations with army generals. Deforestation increased significantly in the 1980s, with the creation of roads for colonists and developers to access remote areas, ”according to Mongabay. The Sarawak and Sabah states of East Malaysia in the north occupied about 26% of the island. The forested area declined violently due to intensive logging for the plywood industry. The trees extracted in record time were leaving huge empty spaces on the big island, which almost simultaneously were occupied with African palm or oil palm plantings,known for its negative environmental impact, such as soil degradation, habitat loss, and species extinction. After Suharto left power, in 1998, a complicated web of powerful families, figureheads, politicians, corporations, corruption and mafias formed, fighting over the oil palm business, the origin of the second wave of destruction of the jungle, habitat of one of the greatest biodiversity in the world, which has not stopped until today.habitat of one of the world's greatest biodiversity, which has not stopped until today.Habitat of one of the greatest biodiversity in the world, which has not stopped until today.
An efficient plant that produces cheap but highly questioned oil
Oil palm is a plant that in a single hectare can produce about 6,000 liters of crude oil, several times higher than that obtained with soybean oil or corn oil, which makes it very profitable. For this reason, it is preferred by large corporations for food, cosmetics and other products, although some of them in recent years, due to public pressure, have canceled their relations with the large suppliers of the questioned raw material.
How could a jungle of wetlands and swamps become permanently burned land?
With the entry of the new plantations, fires in the jungle increased. Burning is the cheapest method of clearing land for planting. Oil palm has a surprising adaptation to burnt earth. Fire is also used as an eviction weapon in the fight for land tenure. In both cases it is used in a controlled manner, but during droughts the fires have got out of control, spreading rapidly and forcefully, burning large areas of forest. Greenpeace International accounted in just three months for about 112,000 fires in 2015. About 40% of these fires occurred in concessions made by the Indonesian government to companies for deforestation or the development of palm plantations.
A succession of catastrophic fires
In 1994 a great fire devastated 4 million hectares. However, the worst fires so far have been those of 1997 and 1998 in Indonesia. The incident devastated more than 10 million hectares of forest, causing serious health problems for the population and affecting the tourism industry. According to the newspaper El País of Spain, since then a satellite surveillance program, established by the UN, has been established, which allows locating the most serious outbreaks and measuring the extent of the fires. But in 2001 the alarms went off again when a raging fire broke out that threatened to overcome all the previous ones, but it could finally be controlled. But those surveillance and control measures had little effect. The fumes and fires came to Borneo to stay 365 days a year.The Homo predator knows no truces or trial and error.
Fireproof peatlands the homo predator can also set on fire
Mongabay explains: “Borneo's forests held immense amounts of carbon that were released when they were cut down to make way for the plantations. In the southern sections of the island, much of this jungle grew in peat bogs, it was made up of deep layers of organic matter accumulated over thousands of years. To plant in peat, palm oil producers dug huge ditches to drain the water. This caused them to decompose rapidly, releasing powerful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Dried peat was also highly flammable. (…). In 2006, Indonesia experienced one of the worst fire seasons on record, when smoke from fires across Sumatra and Kalimantan triggered a carbon bomb and covered the region in a haze visible from space.”Arson practices continue. According to Wikipedia, fires are still caused annually to clear the ground in agricultural areas and degraded forests.
Up to underground fires in the jungle fires menu
Peat in its natural state is one of the most difficult organic materials to burn. Professor Susan Page, a geographer at the University of Leicester and an expert on peatlands in Indonesia, explains the cause of the problem: “Ironically intact peatlands are actually very resistant to fire, as they are protected by a high water table. The problem arises when peatlands are depleted, usually for conversion to agriculture or for logging. Dry peat ignites very easily and can burn for days or weeks, even burning underground and emerging again far from the initial source. This makes this type of fire very difficult to extinguish, with slow combustion with high levels of gases and harmful particles ”, via Apespan.
Trees and other plants of Borneo devastated by the homo predator
Borneo has 15,000 plants (6,000 endemic). The mangrove is found in the coastal regions. With an estimated extension of 1.2 million hectares, it occupies only 20% of its original extension. The swampy peat forests covered more than 10 million hectares in 2002 and we have already seen the consequences of the human intervention to which they have been subjected. The mountain or montane forests of Borneo occupy the high areas of the island. In 2002 it was estimated that about 70% of the original mountain forests remained. Dipterocarp forests are the most biodiverse in Borneo, although they are also the most threatened. More than half of the original surface covered by this ecosystem has been deforested in Malaysia, and about 70% in Indonesia.
The fauna of Borneo victims of the catastrophe
WWF estimates that the island has at least 222 mammal species (44 of them endemic), including 13 primate species; 420 resident birds (37 endemic); 100 amphibians; 394 fish (19 endemic).
The orangutan, symbol and icon of Borneo
Orangutans are only found in the rain forests of Borneo, where there are three subspecies, and in Sumatra where two subspecies inhabit. These primates with reddish brown fur spend the most time in the treetops, where they eat, rest and move at full speed from branch to branch thanks to the two meter wingspan of their arms. These skilled forest trapeze artists are considered to be the smartest of the primates. They can use a variety of sophisticated tools and prepare complex nests for overnight stays in the branches. They have been extensively studied for their learning skills. At the Atlanta Zoo, two Sumatran orangutans can play with touch-screen computers.A 2008 study of a pair of orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed that they could use "calculated reciprocity," which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges. These primates are the first non-human species capable of this activity. The orangutan is a peaceful, generally friendly animal that should deserve our respect and not the mistreatment, capture, and extermination to which it has been subjected.
The tragedy of the orangutan, in the midst of the environmental catastrophe
The orangutan has a life expectancy of 30 years, the same period in which deforestation of 70% of the island occurred. In those three decades, groups of apes saw before their eyes disappear the kind forest that served as refuge and food for their ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years. It is hard to imagine, because the trees are the habitat of these primates, the tragedy caused by the intensive cutting and burning of the forests of Borneo. Disoriented, the homeless and foodless apes fled to agricultural areas, seeking to feed on the fruits of oil palms, which they were already adapting to. But instead of finding the livelihood they were looking for, they found themselves face to face with the firearms of the predator homos, who plagued the noble animals for coming to steal their crops.Without thinking twice they shot them down with their rifles, in an asymmetric, cruel and inhuman slaughter that should be considered a crime against nature. In August 2006, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), through its program in Indonesia, stated that the population of orangutans in that country was 20,000 animals, compared to 35,000 in 1996. Due to its low reproductive rate, some environmental groups have warned that the red ape could become extinct in the wild if urgent measures are not taken for its conservation.He stated that the orangutan population in that country was 20,000 animals, compared to 35,000 in 1996. Due to its low reproductive rate, some environmental groups have warned that the red ape could become extinct in the wild if urgent measures are not taken to its conservation.He stated that the orangutan population in that country was 20,000 animals, compared to 35,000 in 1996. Due to its low reproductive rate, some environmental groups have warned that the red ape could become extinct in the wild if urgent measures are not taken to its conservation.
Desertification of the Earth can be the greatest danger and in a very short time
The great fires in Borneo produce pollution, the so-called "mist", which can reach Australia, China, India and even distant Chile. Fires release large amounts of carbon dioxide, especially when the Borneo peat is burned. According to Mongabay, with 518 tons of carbon per hectare - one of the highest levels of biomass on the planet - these ecosystems can release up to 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in some years, making Indonesia the third The largest greenhouse gas emitter, despite having only the 22nd largest economy in the world. Some scientists are concerned that fires and climate change may lead to positive feedback that only worsens conditions, producing increasingly dry climates,increasing the number of fires and producing higher carbon emissions.
It is a priority to prevent history from repeating itself in the Amazon
The Amazon jungle goes the same way as Borneo, with the difference that its surface is six times larger. It is unimaginable the catastrophe that would mean not being able to stop the action of Homo predators in the enormous South American rain forest. If it is not possible to stop the damage to the lung of the world we could witness desertifications and permanent droughts in the Amazon itself, then it would spread to the south from the Andean mountain range to Tierra del Fuego and to the north from the Caribbean area to North America. Finally its influence would acquire global character. It is everyone's duty to avoid it.
____________
Sources:
Mongabay. The jungles. Borneo. Wild Fauna of Borneo. Recovered from
El País newspaper. America edition. Science Section. Borneo has already lost most of its orangutans. Recovered from
Mongabay Latam. Series. Palm oil in Indonesia. Indonesia: the palm oil fief. Recovered from
APE. Spanish Primatological Association. Gloria Fernández Lázaro. Indonesian hell: the great fires that nobody talks about. Recovered from
____________
To learn more about the author visit:
Website: sgrendask.com
Twitter: @sgerendaskiss and @ sandorgerendask
Facebook: Sandor Alejandro Gerendas-Kiss and Libros y clima de Sandor Alejandro Gerendas-Kiss
LinkedIn and Instagram
