Climate Change: Borneo

With 222 species of mammals, 420 bird species and 15,000 types of plants, the forest of Borneo is almost twice as old as the Amazon Rainforest and has hosted an almost incomprehensible number of animal species for more than 130 million years.

- Elyssa Yong

With 222 species of mammals, 420 bird species and 15,000 types of plants, the forest of Borneo is almost twice as old as the Amazon Rainforest and has hosted an almost incomprehensible number of animal species for more than 130 million years. For the vast majority of that time, human presence has been minimal, with only small indigenous tribes that coexisted with the native animals and paid their respects to the forest.

However, with the onset of industrialisation and modernisation, the geographical landscape of Borneo has been irreversibly changed. Just over the last five decades, Borneo's human population has doubled to around 19 million people and the island has seen rapid development in the form of high-rise apartments, five-star hotels and shopping malls shaping its largest cities. As time goes on, urban areas are only growing, and even in rural areas, populations are swelling.

Inevitably, something must give to make room for this growing human presence. As the population balloons, man-made structures are steadily eating away at Borneo's forests. In the 1930s, roughly three-quarters of the island was forested. Today, that figure has been reduced to half, a loss of some 187,000 square kilometres of forest.

This level of rainforest reduction spells disaster for Borneo's biodiversity, with the threat of extinction looming large. There are a number of reasons why Borneo's rainforests have been suffering in recent decades, and they all stem from the activities and population growth of humans.

Logging