Both tropical and sub-tropical rainforests in various pockets of North East India are currently under tremendous pressure from different anthropogenic activities of which submergence by artificial flooding for large dams, uncontrolled timber logging, random slash-and burn for commercial farming, mineral exploration, and expansion of infrastructures are lead factors
By Salam Rajesh
Tropical rainforests are globally important biomes, which host an outsized proportion of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and are critical to climate stability. However, these ecosystems and the people who depend on them are under severe threat from the continued expansion of agribusiness and logging.
This grasping reflection sets the tone for serious deliberation on the intensive and extensive depletion of vital sub-tropical and tropical rainforests by businesses and corporates, which can lead to significant biodiversity collapse, according to the Forests & Finance’s report ‘Banking on Biodiversity Collapse: Tracking the Banks and Investors Driving Tropical Forest Destruction’ (2023).
Vast tracts of biodiversity-sensitive tropical, and sub-tropical, rainforests in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are infamously being crushed under the expansion of different businesses of which timber logging and oil palm plantations have notoriously been in newspaper headlines in recent years.
Similarly, both tropical and sub-tropical rainforests in various pockets of North East India are currently under tremendous pressure from different anthropogenic activities of which submergence by artificial flooding for large dams, uncontrolled timber logging, random slash-and burn-for commercial farming, mineral exploration, and expansion of infrastructures are lead factors.
India’s North Eastern states, and the Andaman & Nicobar islands, which come under the cover of tropical rainforests, are critically endangered from the push for expansion of oil palm plantations on a commercial scale. This comes in line with India’s thrust on domestic production of edible palm oil to meet the demands of agribusinesses and producers of edible consumer items.
Touching on this delicate conversation, IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) author Professor Settele categorically says that, “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed. This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world”.
Ravi Menon, Managing Director of Monetary Authority, Singapore, also shares the concern of Professor Settele, saying, “Along with the climate crisis, the degradation of nature is an existential threat facing our planet. Addressing nature-related risks and its broader implications for the financial sector is no longer just prudent – it is an imperative”.
In 2022, at the UN Global Biodiversity Framework meet, 196 signatory countries had put their mark on a landmark agreement on biodiversity that sets out targets to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss, including a specific requirement on states to take policy and legal measures to ensure financial institutions align with the agreement. This is a significant step in recognizing the long-term failure of the financial sector to address its role in the biodiversity crisis, the Forests & Finance’s report says.
The Forests & Finance’s assessment tracks six forest-risk commodity sectors that are cited as wholly responsible for driving tropical deforestation globally. These commodity sectors are: (1) Beef at 1.5 billion USD investment with credit of 82.6 billion USD, (2) Palm oil at 21.3 billion USD investment with credit of 54.5 billion USD, (3) Pulp and paper at 10.6 billion USD investment with credit of 80.9 billion USD, (4) Rubber at 1.2 billion USD investment with credit of 21.2 billion USD, (5) Soy at 2.6 billion USD investment with credit of 61.9 billion USD, and (6) Timber at 0.9 billion USD investment with credit of 5.9 billion USD.
While urging Governments and financial institutions to act immediately to address global climate and biodiversity crises, the report urged the major players to address and implement five broad principles to help check global biodiversity collapse.
The priority is to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by prohibiting finance to activities and sectors that are driving nature destruction, the report stressed, while endorsing that major players must respect and prioritize the rights of Indigenous Peoples, women and local communities (IPLCs), and ensure that policies and practices protect and prioritize the human rights of impacted communities.
The report further stressed fostering just transition by prioritizing the ecological and social well-being of local communities, and engaging affected workers and communities in support of sustainable development.
Calling upon the major players to ensure ecosystem integrity by evaluating ecosystem-wide impacts prior to financing, the report stressed on prohibiting the financing of activities, which negatively impact ecosystem integrity. This principle is largely seen to be violated randomly by businesses in their pursuit of commercial gains without the consideration on biodiversity loss from massive depletion of significant forest biomes.
The report also called for aligning the institutional objectives across the various sectors, issues, and instruments by creating strong coherence between climate and nature targets and other institutional objectives. This reflects upon the decisions of policy planners generally where the interests of IPLCs are usually neglected and hardly present in the policy frameworks.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities are increasingly facing violence as the result of extractive industries driving social and environmental harms worldwide, the report pointed out drawing conclusive findings from around the world where conflicts of interests between IPLCs and businesses had locked horns in these past decades.
While Indigenous Peoples make up just 6.2 percent of the world’s population, they protect up to 80 percent of the world’s entire biological diversity. Between the years 2012 and 2022, near about 2,000 environmental and land defenders were killed for resisting companies driving destruction and violating human rights, the report stated.
Quite interestingly, in the midst of these pervasive issues of rights and privileges owing to human-based conflicting concerns, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations shares this inquisitive reflection, “Climate change threatens the effective enjoyment of a range of human rights including those to life, water and sanitation, food, health, housing, self-determination, culture and development”.
This reflection can be simply put in the delicate balance of nature in conflict with human interests where the expansion of human activities in sensitive biomes is leading to inevitable biodiversity collapse and contributing to global warming and other climate factors, thus eventually becoming an existential threat to human well-being while being a possible cause for species decline globally.