Encroaching energy, mine concessions threaten protected ecosystems, research shows

By David Stanway

SINGAPORE, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Millions ‌of hectares of protected ​tropical ecosystems ​are at risk from overlapping mining concessions and oil and gas blocks, researchers said on Thursday, potentially weakening a global treaty aimed at conserving 30% of the world's land, freshwater and ‌oceans by the end of the decade.

• The research, led by US environment group Earth ⁠Insight, was released ahead of a new round of UN biodiversity talks scheduled to get underway in Yerevan, Armenia on October 18.

• ‌The COP17 meeting will see the ‌publication of a global "stocktake" showing that existing government commitments were still way behind what was required to meet the "30x30" pledge.

• Earth Insight said current pledges would raise conservation levels to 23% by 2030, but reaching the ​30% target simply by "counting hectares" would not be enough if many of the areas covered were still vulnerable to industrial development.

• "To say that a third of the Earth's surface needs to be protected, and for ⁠that to be agreed upon by consensus by 196 countries, was a big deal, but the focus has just gone on that quantitative element," said ​Madhu Rao, chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

• Earth Insight used spatial analysis to examine the overlap between ​major tropical ecosystems and extractive industries, and found that oil ‌and gas blocks encroached on more than 61 million hectares (235,522 square miles), an area nearly the size of France.

• Mining concessions overlapped with another 42.7 million hectares of protected ⁠areas.

• "A majority of those concessions haven't been licensed yet - certainly plenty are, but that means there's an opportunity for countries to remove those concessions," said Tyson Miller, Earth Insight's executive director.

• Some of the concessions have already caused damage to national parks ⁠across the world, including Cambodia's Phnom Prich wildlife sanctuary, which lost 10,000 hectares to make way for an open-pit gold mine.

• ​While 97% of Cambodia's undisturbed tropical forest lies within designated protected zones, 21% is threatened by mining and 71% by oil and gas development.

• More than 40% of key marine biodiversity areas in the Amazon remain unprotected, with the figure rising beyond ‌50% in both Southeast Asia and Central America.

• Earth Insight said its findings were likely to be "conservative" and did not capture the full range of pressures on ecosystems.

• ‌More concessions could be activated as countries rush to improve energy security, with Bangladesh already inviting companies to bid for oil ⁠blocks in biodiversity-rich waters in the Bay ‌of Bengal, Rao said.

• "Given the energy ​crisis that we are in at the moment, many countries are taking the steps forward, getting into oil extraction in a way they hadn't done before."

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by ‌Kim Coghill)

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