7 - The bigger picture: indirect impacts of extractive industries on apes and ape habitat

Summary

Introduction

As illustrated in the preceding chapters, clear standards exist to regulate the direct impacts of extractive industries. However, responsibility and management for the indirect impacts caused by natural resource extraction are mostly absent. Yet, these often pose the greatest threats to natural habitats as well as to indigenous territories. Although mining and oil/gas extraction have significant localized impacts on the surrounding environment, their indirect impacts can also be substantial and reach beyond the immediate exploitation areas. This is relevant to even extensive logging activities, especially where sustainable management practices are in place. Logging, as with mining and oil and gas extraction, results in infrastructure development that is often accompanied by the growth of human population centers and marketplaces, dependent upon the exploitation of land, forests, and wildlife. Evidence from remote sensing indicates that infrastructure created for extractive industry operations causes wide-spread changes in regional land use. These changes can have long-term effects on forest ecosystems and forest-based livelihoods (Asner et al., 2009). In this chapter, we describe such impacts on apes and their habitats, present options for their mitigation, and examine some of the challenges faced.

The first section focuses on the indirect impacts of extractive industries on apes and ape habitats. Although all indirect impacts are important, in this chapter we concentrate on those that are most pressing at this time.