From the MAR/APR 2006 issue of Seed:
RAINFORESTS OF BORNEO
Lat. 2°30'N Long. 112°30'E
Credit: Hannes Schleicher
Unlike in California, where it causes severe storms, El Niño brings deadly droughts to the Kalimantan Timur province of Indonesia—East Borneo to the rest of us. (Global warming, via increased sea surface temperatures, cause more El Niños.) And since the early 1990s, monsoon rains—relied upon for thousands of years—have not always come.
The water shortages have been severe, but the real problem is the fires. In the flatlands of East Borneo's Mahakam River delta, arsonists hired by local tree farms annually light tropical underbrush ablaze to clear land for planting, as they have been doing for hundreds of years, with little ecological effect.
An El Niño drought in 1997 did not deter them. Palm oil companies set hundreds of fires across the province. Then the first of Borneo's twice-yearly monsoons failed to arrive. The land was dry and the brush crackling. The result was the worst forest fire in recorded history: It has been burning on and off for the past nine years.
The flames raced out of control across the coastal grasslands toward what remained of Borneo's rainforests. The world's third largest, the forest is home to the toucan-like hornbill and the rare proboscis monkey, and is one of only two remaining habitats for the orangutan. Orang populations, already perilously low, have plunged to an estimated 15,000 since the onset of the fires—and similar fires have begun on nearby Sumatra, the orang's other habitat. One of the world's rarest flowers, the black orchid, also grows in the burn zone.
Though new laws against burning have been passed in Indonesia, which controls two-thirds of Borneo, they have been nearly impossible to enforce in a roadless area. When the rains finally do come, El Niño-weakened drizzles allow hot brush to smolder, often for months. The resulting smoke spreads for hundreds of miles in a thick, toxic cloud. Ash from Borneo regularly blots out the sun across Southeast Asia; in bad years, parts of Indonesia and the Malaysian land mass completely disappear from satellite images of the Earth.
In the next El Niño year, the fire will likely turn north toward the still-wild inland mountains.
—Marc Herman is the author of Searching for El Dorado. His book on Indonesia, Archipelago, will be published in 2007 by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.
VENICE
Lat. 45°26'N Long. 12°20'E
Water meant everything to early Venetians. Locked in the center of a shallow, 660-square-kilometer lagoon, their republic was protected from invading armies for a thousand years. Now, this very water threatens to destroy Venice.
Rising sea levels, accelerated by global warming, are forcing the Adriatic against the stones of the city, allowing saltwater to seep into brick walls and crumble them.
The early Venetians had a solution for this. When sea levels began to batter the fragile walls above impermeable marble foundations, buildings simply were demolished, foundations raised and structures built anew. Today, of course, this is not a solution for preservation, and few of Venice's priceless historic buildings have been demolished since the 1700s.
Over the past century, Venice has seen increasing incidences of acqua alta, or high water. Global warming is causing sea levels to rise more rapidly than nature once allowed. Adriatic storms are increasing in frequency and intensity, and when those storms occur on top of high tides, portions of the city go under water.
It is not unusual to see Piazza San Marco—the city's most famous destination, and lowest point within which reside some of its priceless jewels of Renaissance and Byzantine architecture and Catholic art—filling with water several times a month between late fall and early spring. Depending on a storm's strength and its timing with the tide, water in the famed piazza and other neighborhoods can range from ankle- to chest-deep.