The Proposed Serengeti Commercial Road

[G_j]

http://www.zgf.de/?id=72&reportId=85&language=en

The Proposed Serengeti Commercial Road
15.06.2010

According to articles in the local press and a statement from the Communications Officer of Tanzania National Parks, the Tanzanian Government is planning to build a commercial road cutting directly through the Serengeti wilderness, which completely bisects the path of the world famous annual wildebeest and zebra migration comprised of nearly 2 million animals. These wilderness areas are a critical habitat for endangered species like rhinos and wild dogs and with many sound reasons the Serengeti National Park Management Plan allows no commercial roads at all in this area.

There is no doubt that infrastructure is needed to help connect farmers to markets, to link communities and encourage commerce and trade in the country. Looking only at the map, the proposed road through northern Serengeti seems to make sense, as it is the shortest line between existing population centres surrounding Serengeti. But we sincerely believe that the road will have disastrous effects on the entire ecosystem. The northern parts of the Serengeti and the adjacent Masai Mara are critical for the wildebeest and zebra migration during the dry season, as it is the only permanent year-round water source for these herds. Recent calculations show that if wildebeest were to be cut off from these critical dry season areas, the population would likely decline from 1.3 million animals to about 200,000 (meaning a collapse to far less than a quarter of its current population and most likely the end of the great migration).

Commercial roads in high value protected areas have proved a disaster all over the world and UNESCO is very strongly recommending that no through roads should lead through any National Park or World Heritage Site.

The planned commercial road will become a major link between East African ports like Mombasa, Dar es Salaam or Tanga and the fast developing Central African countries. With trade growth rates rising immensely in Africa, transport will significantly increase within the next few years causing hundreds of heavy trucks to cross the Serengeti every day.

Furthermore, the road bisects an area with the highest concentration of large mammals in the world, making it evident that fencing would be needed to avoid damage to vehicles and loss of human lives caused by accidents with wildlife. Such fencing would truly mean the end of the migration as wildebeest, zebras, eland and elephant could no longer reach their only water source during the dry season, the Mara River, and thus would die at the fence-line. Similarly, Botswana has already lost its wildebeest and zebra migration due to such fences. And in Canada, the elk migration in Banff National Park was also compromised because of a dissecting road. These areas are not isolated examples, roads have caused similar destruction in many pristine wilderness areas across the globe.


..more..

[tabatha]

1. And what's more

is that roads and trucks transport, unwittingly and unknowingly, seeds of plants that do not belong in that ecosystem.

A terrible idea.

On edit:
That BP logo fits all environmental degradation.

[SharonAnn]

2. And they transmit diseases. Spreading them far and wide.

[XemaSab]

3. As an American

I think it's REALLY hypocritical for Europeans and Americans to tell these poor people how they can and can't manage their resources.

We've build large freeways through areas that are ecologically sensitive, but we have built a wealthy middle-class economy based on our advanced infrastructure. For us to tell the poorest continent on earth that they can't go the same seems like entitlement to me.

[G_j]

4. every point you make is valid

I am ashamed to say.

[Nihil]

5. Across major migration routes of one of the natural wonders of the world?

> For us to tell the poorest continent on earth that they can't go
> the same seems like entitlement to me.

Why is there this insistence that every developing nation *must* go
through all of the same stupid mistakes as the developed nations?

Whatever happened to "learn from history"?

Just because we were ignorant before we gained that knowledge, there
is no reason to encourage others to be even more ignorant when the
knowledge is widely available.

How many more species do we want to force into extinction before we
give up with this stupid meme of "Well, because we did it, they must
be allowed to do the same"?

Yes, "we" slaughtered the bison for their tongues, leaving the rest
to rot on the prairie. Yes, "we" slaughtered whales for their oil.
Yes, "we" destroyed thousands of acres of productive land for the
sake of cookie-cutter houses and the roads servicing them.

Does that really mean that *today* we cannot try to avoid the wanton
destruction of unspoiled land for the sake of profit?

We cannot try to save whales from being slaughtered for the sake of
national pride?

We cannot try to stop sharks from being caught, having their fins sliced
off then dumped back in the sea to die?

We cannot try to protect tigers from the sick bastards who think that
ground up cat penis is an aphrodisiac?

Are we really choosing to write all of this off as "hopefully they will
learn in centuries to come that it was all unnecessary and a big mistake"?

[G_j]

6. I think the problem is "we" have not learned, and continue to destroy

environment, if "we" refers to our corporate government.
However, it is not the environmentalists, biologists etc. doing the destruction. It really depends on who "we" means.
It is right for knowledgeable people to be involved in these issues.

[TheWraith]

7. Okay. You go and explain that to the people who are dying because of no food.

Who are dying because medicine can't get to them.

Who are dying because it's unsafe for them to travel to a city to get employment?

We'll have a lovely continent shared between well protected animals and human beings forced to live like animals.

[G_j]

10. Alternative Scenario

Alternative Scenario

There is an alternative that could better fulfil the development and economic goals for this area. This alternative is to bypass the Serengeti around the south by building a tarmac connection from Karatu to join the existing Shinyanga - Musoma Road. This alternative road system has been surveyed by the government already and would serve five times as many people as the planned Northern road and fulfil the same needs for linking major regional centres.

More importantly, this second option would simultaneously preserve the iconic beauty of the Serengeti National Park. We are hopeful that a solution such as this can be found to satisfy all parties.

In a world where resources become scarcer by the day, environmental catastrophes shake nations. Our most treasured areas are vanishing rapidly and wilderness is becoming an even more valuable asset. With a large percentage of its land area protected, Tanzania is one of the world leaders in biodiversity conservation. Future generations will not ask what the technological advances of our time were but who saved the majestic wild places that make our planet so special. Serengeti, a World Heritage Site, the epitome for wilderness, and biodiversity, an ecological and economical success should not be scarified for short-term infrastructure projects when reasonable alternatives exist.

We are convinced that the leaders and people of Tanzania will do nothing that could destroy the iconic Serengeti or damage such a treasure beyond repair. If made aware of the negative impact such a road could have on the Serengeti, the Tourism industry and the reputation of the country as a world leader in conservation we have no doubt that the Government will wisely guide Tanzania into a future where people are continuing to treasure the Serengeti as an exceptional natural and national heritage.

[Nihil]

11. Who wants to waste time trying to talk to the ones in your mind?

OP >> to help connect farmers to markets, to link communities and encourage
OP >> commerce and trade in the country.

You> the people who are dying because of no food.
You> Who are dying because medicine can't get to them.
You> Who are dying because it's unsafe for them to travel to a city to get employment?

Just a touch of hyperbole there?

> We'll have a lovely continent shared between well protected animals and
> human beings forced to live like animals.

Really?

How many humans do you know that have been slaughtered so that some body
parts can be hacked from them for sale?

How many humans are you prepared to fence off from their only water supply?

How many humans are trapped then killed for "bush meat"?

The only aspects of most humans that is "like animals" is the tendency to
breed like rabbits and consume resources like bacteria.

[XemaSab]

12. Usually I am 100% on the side of the animals

but I am under the impression that millions of people in Africa die every year from famine, drought, treatable diseases, HIV/AIDS, wars, senseless ethnic conflicts, and other conditions that we would not tolerate anywhere else in the world, and tens of millions of additional people live with hunger, injury, treatable diseases, and horrific poverty.

I read this article a few years ago, and it really stuck with me:

A boy named Alone Banda works in this purgatory six days a week.

Nine years old, nearly lost in a hooded sweatshirt with a skateboarder on the chest, he takes football-size chunks of fractured rock and beats them into powder.

Lacking a hammer, he uses a thick steel bolt gripped in his right hand. In a good week, he says, he can make enough powder to fill half a bag.

His grandmother, Mary Mulelema, sells each bag, to be used to make concrete, for 10,000 kwacha, less than $3. Often, she said, it is the difference between eating and going hungry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/world/africa/24zambia.html?scp=1&sq=child%20labor%20africa&st=cse

Seriously, a child crushing rocks into powder with a FREAKIN' BOLT seven hours a day, six days a week for a dollar fifty.

To me it says something truly horrifying about how cheap labor (and life) is in the area that a basic rock-crushing machine is more expensive than paying this kid and his buddies; and moreover it says something truly horrifying that this kid is trapped in a cycle of generational poverty so intractable that if someone shows up with a candy bar and a machine gun, the kid's probably making a wise life choice to ditch the quarry and become a child soldier.

According to the UN, this kid is one of 49 million children working in sub-Saharan Africa, and 44% of the people there live on less than a dollar a day. 80% of the people in Tanzania live on less than two dollars a day.

Here's another horrific article:

Aba Dione, 7 years old, met his end six weeks ago in the trash-filled corner of an abandoned dwelling here, as good a place to play as any, it seemed, when the other options were garbage and more garbage.

Except that in this case the thick carpet of crushed plastic bottles and bags, clothing shreds, old flip-flops and muck was deceptively floating on several feet of water; unknowing, Aba fell in and drowned.

Garbage might have seemed safe to the boy because it is everywhere in this forlorn, dun-colored slum abutting Dakar, the capital. Delivered on order for a few pennies a load by rickety horse-drawn carts speeding through the dirt streets of the Médina Gounass neighborhood of Guédiawaye, it is as pervasive as the hot midday sun in which it bakes. The people use it to shore up their flood-prone houses and streets in this low-lying area near the Atlantic coast; they have no choice.

Garbage, packed down tight and then covered with a thin layer of sand, is used to raise the floors of houses that flood regularly in the brief but intense summer rainy season, and it is packed into the dusty streets that otherwise become canals. The water lingers for months in the low-lying terrain of this bone-dry country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/world/africa/03garbage.html

Again, it says something horrifying that garbage is the building material of choice in this slum.

(I know that neither of these articles is about Tanzania, but there's crushing poverty in every country in Africa.)


I live a modest, middle class lifestyle by American standards. I get food at the grocery store where it's delivered in big trucks, I take the freeway to go to work, I take the freeway to go on vacation... it's a lifestyle of real privilege, but I take it for granted every day.

If there's a good alternate route, by all means it should be built in the area of less environmental impact, but like I said upthread, I really don't think I have any right to judge these people for doing something that might bring economic development to a part of the world that's that poor.

[Nihil]

13. Stories like that are tragic.

> millions of people in Africa die every year from famine, drought, treatable
> diseases, HIV/AIDS, wars, senseless ethnic conflicts, and other conditions
> that we would not tolerate anywhere else in the world

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Similarly, the impact of the news report of a car accident that wipes out most
members of a stranger's family is often far deeper than the greater numerical
body-count from a plane crash. There is a point between the two where the reader
mentally & emotionally dissociates from the event and sees it from an objective
viewpoint (the "greater good" aspect) rather than a subjective one ("it could
have been me"). When the majority of reports provoke the former response, it
can be painful to encounter one of the latter type.


I didn't mean to pounce on your earlier post so much as I know from previous
years that you care a great deal about the environment.

I just find that, in the same way that I've glibly dismissed millions of deaths
above, people find it far too easy to shout down any attempt at making genuine
progress - as in "learning from our mistakes" - with a tiresome insistence that
it is "their right" to screw things up despite having infinitely more knowledge
available now than during the first iteration. I have this hope that the rising
nations will use the corrupt, diseased & broken corpses of our mistakes as a
signpost to the right way, a bridge over the pitfalls rather than an example
to emulate right to the bitter end.

:hug:

[XemaSab]

15. .

:pals:

[TheWraith]

14. You really want to say that zebras are more important than human lives?

"How many humans do you know that have been slaughtered so that some body parts can be hacked from them for sale?"

Actually, that does happen on a regular basis in some parts of Africa. Child bones are considered particularly effective for the "spells" prepared by local witch doctors and cranks.

The rest of the time, hacking off body parts is just for the more indirect kind of profit. Do a Google search on "Second Congo War."

[Nihil]

16. They are a damn sight more important than the culprits in your post.

> Child bones are considered particularly effective for the "spells"
> prepared by local witch doctors and cranks.
>
> The rest of the time, hacking off body parts is just for the more
> indirect kind of profit.

And, in the more general case, yes, I think that it is more important
to keep an ecosystem intact than to allow humans to spread their
rapacious destruction over even more of the planet than at present.

What's your problem with that? Don't tell me you are a supporter of
the cancerous "no limits to consumption" advocates (the Dominionists)?

[Codeine]

8. They want to move their foods and goods around just like we do.

It's a bit rich for people sitting back on their computers in the nation with the most extensive highway system on earth to bitch about people trying to claw their way to a minimum standard of decent living.

Right or wrong, the rest of the world wants everything we have -- cars, comfortable homes, electricity and gadgets, convenient shopping and transportation, and an extensive infrastructure to support a pleasant lifestyle. Nothing we say is going to prevent them from pursuing those goals.

[G_j]

9. this is from the Frankfurt Zoological Society

not the US