Rare ape’s peril seen as Belt and Road downside
A billion-dollar hydroelectric dam development in Indonesia that threatens the habitat of the world’s rarest great ape has sparked fresh concerns about China’s globe-spanning infrastructure drive.
The site of the dam in the Batang Toru rainforest on Sumatra island is the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, a newly discovered species that numbers about 800 individuals in total.
The $1.6bn project, which is expected to be operational by 2022, will cut through the heart of the critically endangered animal’s habitat, which is also home to agile gibbons, siamangs and Sumatran tigers.
Indonesian firm PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy is building the power plant with backing from Sinosure, a Chinese state-owned enterprise that insures overseas investment projects, and the Bank of China, company documents show.
Sinohydro, which built the mammoth Three Gorges Dam in China, has been awarded the design and construction contract for the project.
The development is one of dozens being pushed by the government to improve electricity supply in the sprawling archipelago, parts of which are regularly plagued by blackouts.
But the Chinese-backed project has sparked fierce resistance from conservationists, who say the potential environmental risk has already resulted in the World Bank Group shying away from involvement.
Its Chinese backers appear undeterred, which critics say underscores the troubling environmental effects of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to link Asia, Europe and Africa with a network of ports, highways and railways.
“This issue is becoming in some ways the face of the Belt and Road initiative,” said Prof Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Australia.
“I think this crystallises in a way that people can understand what a tsunami of 7,000-plus projects will mean for nature.”
Until recently, scientists thought there were only two genetically distinct types of orangutan: Bornean and Sumatran. But in 1997 biological anthropologist Erik Meijaard observed an isolated population of the great apes in Batang Toru, south of the known habitat for Sumatran orangutans. Scientists began to investigate if it was a unique species and concluded that they had indeed discovered a new species, giving it the scientific name Pongo tapanuliensis or Tapanuli orangutan. Meijaard said that the dam would be the “death knell” for the animals. “Roads bring in hunters [and] settlers. It’s the start, generally, of things falling apart.”