New African Highways Have High Environmental Price

非洲新路环境代价高

撰文/播音 克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔（Christopher Intagliata）

翻译 M

审校 惠丹丹

An analysis determines that many road-building projects in Africa would bring only modest benefits to people, while devastating the environment. 

一项分析显示，非洲的许多道路建造计划只能给人们带来很少的好处，却会严重破坏非洲的环境。

By the end of the century, the United Nations reckons the population of Africa could hit 4.3 billion people—four times today's numbers. It's the fastest-growing spot on the planet, which inevitably means growing pains:"We're seeing a real rush, almost a feeding frenzy of foreign mining investment, and in some cases, land grabs." Bill Laurance, an ecologist at James Cook University in Australia. 

根据联合国的估计，到本世纪末，非洲的人口将达到43亿，是现今的四倍。非洲人口是全球增长最快的地方 ，这就无法避免人口过度增长带来的代价：“我们正在看到一次疯狂的争抢，外国矿业投资几乎是疯狂的吞并，在某些程度上，可以说是圈地运动。” 澳大利亚的詹姆斯库克大学的比尔?罗伦斯说。

"We're living in the most active era of infrastructure and road expansion in human history. We're projected to see 25 million kilometers of new paved roads on the planet by the middle of the century, which is enough to go around the world more than 600 times." Thirty-three of those roads—spanning 53,000 kilometers—are already planned in Africa. So Laurance and his colleagues examined the pros and cons of the new projects. They measured potential benefits, like more agricultural opportunities, and weighed those gains against environmental impacts.

“我们正生活在人类历史上基础建设与路网扩展最为活跃的时代。到本世纪中叶，我们将会在全球范围看到2500万公里的新铺设的道路，这足够围绕地球600多圈。”其中的33%的道路——长达53000公里——已经计划在非洲建设。因此，罗伦斯与他的同僚考察了这些新项目的优劣。他们估计了可能的好处，比如更多潜在的耕地，并权衡了那些收益对环境的影响。

The research team determined that the planned roads and railways would slice through more than 400 protected areas. And if you include a 25-kilometer buffer zone on each side of the road—where Laurance says new hunting, poaching, farming, logging and mining are bound to pop up—the tally of violated protected areas rises to more than 2,000. The researchers do endorse five of the 33 roads as promising—good for humans, not so bad for the environment. And they identify the six worst planned roads, which they say probably should not be built at all. The study is in the journal Current Biology. [William Laurance et al, Estimating the Environmental Costs of Africa’s Massive "Development Corridors"]

研究团队发现，那些预定修建的道路与铁路会撕裂超过400个保护区。如果计算的时候包含道路两侧的，由道路往外延展25公里的缓冲区——罗伦斯认为这些缓冲区域会出现大量新的狩猎，剽窃，种植，砍伐与开采行为——这些受影响的保护区数量将上升到2000多个。研究人员认可了33个项目中的其中5个——它们既有利于人类，又不会过多破坏环境。同时他们指出6个最差的道路计划，他们认为这些道路根本不应该建设。这项研究发表在《当代生物学》。

Laurance says we've seen the effects of rampant road-building before: "Two-thirds of the world's forest elephants have been wiped out in the last decade. And this has actually been linked pretty clearly with the expansion of the road network in the Congo already." And the first paved road through the Amazon, finished in the early 70s, is now a 400-kilometer-wide gash through the rainforest. Considering all the attention carbon emissions are getting in Paris right now, it might be worth remembering where one-sixth of the world's emissions come from: deforestation.

罗伦斯说，我们在过去已经看到过道路建设猖獗带来的影响：“全球三分之二的森林象在过去的十年被消灭。这个现象已经被确认与刚果的道路网络扩建有显然的联系。”同时，在上世纪70年代完成的，首条横跨亚马逊的道路，现在已经变成了雨林中的400公里宽的裂缝。考虑到现在所有关于二氧化碳排放在巴黎所引起的注意，这是时候提醒大家全球六分之一的二氧化碳的排放是从哪里来的——森林砍伐。