Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
loss of wildlife habitat, and in watershed areas heavy loss of soils by rain runoff
and seriously diminished water infiltration to sustain the groundwater levels that
furnish the dry season flow in streams. The author's recommendation for saving
the world's tropical rainforests are given in Box 4.9.
One approach that appears to be feasible and meaningful for DC/forestry pro-
tection agencies was developed in preparing the EIA for a proposal hydroelectric
plant in Ecuador to be located in the Amazon portion of the country
53
. The study
made three findings:
1. The national environmental protection agency of the government, located
at Quito, near the Pacific Ocean, had very limited budget hence was not
able to protect its proclaimed national resources even in the western region
of the country, let alone for the Amazon portion on the other side of the
Andes.
2. One of the most precious wildlife regions in the country was located next
to the hydropower operations area.
3. Financial resources of the hydropower protect were very large compared
to those of the NEnPA.
The recommendation (to which the hydropower agency expressed interest)
was for the NEnPA to arrange for the hydropower agency to protect/manage the
precious habitat region as part of its overall project tasks, which the hydropower
agency could do readily as a contribution to helping preserve the nation's
eco-resources (as well as using these areas for hydropower generation).
Segara Anakarn Lagoon Preservation in Indonesia
Studies sponsored
by the ADB for promoting irrigation in the huge Citanduy River basin in Java,
beginning in 1990
90
, included attention to what should be done about protecting
the lower end of the basin where the Citanduy River discharges (along with
some smaller rivers) into the Segara Anakarn lagoon, located just next to and
discharging to the sea (like Jamaica Bay in New York City). This wonderful
eco-swamp, the last remaining large eco-swamp in Java, has over the past several
decades been filling up with silt runoff resulting from continuing development
in the Citanduy River basin. This attracted the interest of environmentalists in
developing a feasible plan for saving the swamp while a major portion of it still
exists. A number of studies concluded that the best feasible plan would be to
reroute the Citanduy River to discharge directly into the sea (bypass the lagoon),
and ADB offered a loan for doing this, but this plan is yet to be implemented,
apparently due to differences between the bureaucracies of the two provinces in
which the lagoon location is shared.
Assigning Money Values for DC Eco-Resources
The Segara Anakarn
project brought out need for recognizing that saving precious eco-resources
(like Segara Anakarn)deserves to be assigned money values representing the
economic-cum-environmental development value of these resources, and for
