Current Affairs

The Three Basins Hazard Assessment

The Three Basins Hazard Assessment

Participants in the Summit of the Three Basins, an important endeavor to improve governance for three crucial ecosystems—the Amazon, Congo, and Borneo-Mekong/Southeast Asia—are assembling in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. However, a recently released international study titled "The Three Basins Threat Report: Fossil Fuel, Mining, and Industrial Expansion Threats to Forests and Communities" emphasizes the ongoing difficulties that these regions' tropical forests face as a result of the expansion of the extractive industries, mining, and fossil fuels.

Threats to Tropical Forests

Earth Insight and other charities collaborated to compile the study, which emphasizes the serious threats that the world's remaining tropical forest basins must face. A systemic breakdown with far-reaching impacts on biodiversity, the stability of the global climate, and the lives of many thousands of native peoples and nearby residents is being pushed toward these places by severe forest loss.

Petroleum and Gas Licensing

Currently, there are around 20% of the three basins' intact tropical forests situated within operational and prospective oil and gas concessions. Approximately 25% of the forests in the Amazon and Congo basins are located within active or prospective mining concessions.

Effects on Local and Indigenous Communities

More than 200 million people are directly impacted by these expansions, a large percentage of them are Indigenous people and local communities whose livelihoods are strongly linked to these forests..

Demand Safety and Inclusion of Indigenous Peoples

The report highlights the significance of putting local communities and Indigenous peoples at the center of the solutions proposed within the framework of the Three Basins Initiative and calls on world leaders to commit to preserve the forests in these three basins.

Particulars for Every Basin

Over 33% of active and idle mining concessions and about 13% of unspoiled tropical forests in the Amazon basin intersect with planned or existing oil and gas blocks. These zones contain indigenous territory that span approximately 31 million hectares.

Over 39% of the undisturbed Tropical Moist Forests in the Congo basin share boundaries with gas and oil blocks, and roughly 27% share boundaries with mining concessions. The research highlights that Indigenous pygmies and other endangered and rare peoples face an existential threat from these developments.

Approximately 20% of Southeast Asia's intact Tropical Moist Forests are located inside gas and oil blocks that are intended for exploration or production. In Indonesia, concessions for logging, mining, palm oil, and electricity might potentially be awarded for 53% of the country's natural forests..

Worldwide Call to Action

On October 26–28, leaders of state, government representatives, representatives of international organizations, donors, financing organizations, and specialists are expected to attend the Summit of the Three Basins. The president of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, underlined in his welcome address the necessity for international mobilization to address the environmental and climate emergency that faces the earth.

Historical Background

The inaugural Summit of the Three Tropical Forest Basins was held in Brazzaville in 2011 and resulted in the Summit of the Three Tropical Forest Basins Declaration, which acknowledged the need to create a forum for collaboration between the nations that make up these three crucial basins.

 

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The Three Basins Hazard Assessment
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