Environment, Feature, Flora & Fauna, Mining, Provinces

Paved Inter-Oceanic Highway Jeopardizes Carbon-offset Plans

High gold prices and the resurfaced Inter-Oceanic Highway are encouraging the migration of hundreds of informal miners to Madre de Dios region in search of the precious metal, and are jeopardizing the Peruvian government’s plans for carbon-offset deals, according to a report by The Daily Climate.

Each day, some 200 informal miners from Peru’s highlands arrive in Madre de Dios, the most active alluvial gold mining region in the country where about 80 percent of the gold from informal mining is produced.

The department is also home to one of the world’s most biologically diverse forests and includes the Manu National Park – which has been a UNESCO Natural Heritage site since 1987. The park is home to over 1 million species of insects, 1,000 species of birds, 300 species of trees, 120 types of fish, and countless other life forms.

The Environment Ministry has said it is planning to conserve the forests of Madre de Dios through carbon-offset deals, which would require assurance for investors on the international market that deforestation is being controlled.

The United Nations initiative on Reduced Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is one project that could lead to carbon deals.

“To implement a REDD project, you need a clear base line,” the report cited Andre da Silva Dias from the World Wildlife Fund’s Amazon Network Initiative in Brazil. “You need to know what would happen if the project were not implemented. The threats to the forest in that area need to be thoroughly mapped.”

However, high resolution maps developed by the US-based Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology and the WWF, and in cooperation with Peru’s Environment ministry, have shown that the highway and gold mining have resulted in a 61 percent jump in deforestation emissions between 2006 and 2010, with degradation emissions doubling.

The much-promoted highway “runs from the Pacific Coast to the Brazilian border, opening Brazil’s markets – notably soy beans – to lucrative China trade. The stretch from Madre de Dios to the Andean highlands, virtually impassible in the rainy season just half a dozen years ago, is now a long day trip,” the report says.

“The future of millions of years of evolution rests in the hands of this land grab and massive development,” a tropical ecologist with the Carnegie Institution, Gregory Asner, told The Daily Climate.

Asner was one of the scientists who worked on developing the maps. “I can’t do anything but witness (the loss) with the tools I’ve developed, and it’s really hard to watch.”

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