Dr. Jared Diamond, a world-famous physiologist and naturalist, received the United States' National Medal of Science in March. In Discover magazine last year, Diamond wrote this about a trip to the rain forest of New Guinea:
"Suddenly, this embodiment
of beauty was shattered by a column of burning gas flaring up from an
oil field. The heat withered nearby trees, a perfect metaphor for the
human desecration of nature."
Ouch. For anyone
in the oil industry, those words could cause stomach cramps. So why is
Diamond being honored this year with the Public Outreach Award from AAPG's
Division of Environmental Geology?
He hardly needs another
tribute. Diamond won the Pulitzer Prize and Britain's Science Book prize
in 1998 for his book Guns, Germs and Steel. He also received Japan's International
Cosmos Prize that year.
A leader of 17 expeditions
to New Guinea and nearby islands, he's been awarded several research prizes
and conservation medals. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences and a director of the World Wildlife Fund, USA (WWF).
Diamond earned an
undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and
a doctorate in physiology from the University of Cambridge. He now serves
as professor of physiology at the University of California-Los Angeles
Medical School.
As Mrs. Fields would
say, he's a smart cookie. And that's one reason his article "Paradise
and Oil," published in the March 1999 issue of Discover, drew so much
attention in the petroleum industry.
Diamond in the Rough
At the request of
the WWF, Diamond traveled to the Kikori River area of Papua New Guinea.
He described the locale as a remote paradise "threatened" by the discovery
of oil a decade ago.
Greeted by the blaze
of a gas flare, Diamond wrote, he expected "a lot of arguing and little
to show for it. At least I could count on some good bird-watching."
But to his surprise,
Diamond discovered that the land remained unspoiled. Primary forest bordered
the production area and birds flocked near man-made structures.
He credited the preservation
to efforts of the production joint venture partners, led by a Chevron
Corp. subsidiary, Chevron Niugini Pty. Ltd.
"The fauna throughout
the oil-lease zone remains pristine," he wrote, because the partnership
closely controls employee activities.
Weapons are prohibited
to prevent hunting, Diamond noted.
No one can remove
plants or animals, visitors are limited in number and even gardening is
forbidden. All rules aim at avoiding disruption of the environment.
"What I have witnessed
along the Kikori has changed my mind about the inevitability of environmental
disaster when oil is pumped out of the ground," he said.
Looking back on that
visit to the production area, Diamond remains convinced that environmentalists
and oil producers "are on the same side." He holds up the venture's tight
and effective environmental management as a model for preserving the forest
habitat:
"If nothing changes,
a unique irony will unfold here. An oil company intent on pumping as much
as it possibly can from the earth below a primitive rain forest may create
New Guinea's premier conservation area."
Ecological Wonderland
The Kutubu Joint Venture
project takes its name from Lake Kutubu, a scenic lake about 150 miles
northwest of the Gulf of Papua. Oil was discovered in the area in 1986
and commercial production began in 1992.
To move crude to
market, a pipeline snakes down from the highlands -- some wells are as
high as 4,400 feet, Diamond said -- to a tanker-loading facility at the
gulf.
Remote, lightly populated
and biologically diverse, the rain forest of the production zone harbors
numerous rare birds and animals. They include kangaroos that live in trees,
giant lizards and butterflies with 10-inch wingspans.
According to Diamond,
birds native to the area include cassowaries, harpy eagles, "ten species
of birds of paradise, the greater melampitta (the only bird known to roost
underground) and New Guinea's rarest kingfishers, lorikeets, nightjars,
owls and robins."
Because of the sensitive
ecology, Chevron Niugini created a comprehensive environmental plan to
minimize impact on the rain forest habitat -- and then took the unusual
step of asking the WWF to assist in drawing up an overall development
plan.
Diamond went to New
Guinea to see the results.
A realist as well
as a naturalist, Diamond doesn't expect altruism to govern corporate behavior.
The joint venture partners knew that New Guinea's inhabitants are fiercely
protective of the country's resources and also highly litigious.
"If you chop down
a tree," he said, "there will be someone there within a short period of
time to present you with a bill for damages."
Diamond also understands
that the oil industry desperately wants to improve its image in environmental
matters. A Chevron executive he encountered described the connection between
profit and preservation with these words: "Bhopal, Exxon Valdez and (Shell's)
North Sea oil rig."
To those environmental
controversies, Diamond added a mention of mining company pollution on
the New Guinea island of Bougainville, which provoked an armed uprising.
Chevron faced an
outpouring of protest when it announced the Kutubu Joint Venture's development
plans. However, since that time only a few reported protests have occurred,
and those have involved compensation issues, not environmental matters.
Development for oil
production has brought employment and a source of revenue to the Kikori
area. It also aids transportation in an inaccessible region, though not
without some downside.
"It potentially provides
access. Access can be a two-edged sword. To local people, access means
an opportunity to get their export goods to market," he said, "Access
also allows outside people to come in as squatters."
The Same Side
Diamond's view of
oil production in an environmentally sensitive area is so unusual that
he offered a postscript to his "Paradise and Oil" article:
To those who might
think he was "paid by oil companies," he said instead "I was just astonished
by what I saw."
Overall reaction
to the piece was positive, according to Diamond.
"There was a great
deal of interest from Chevron, of course," he said. "And there was a lot
of interest and favorable reaction from the public."
In the end, Diamond
left New Guinea believing that the interests of the oil industry and protection
of the environment are not, and should not be, in conflict.
"All too often, big
business in general and the extraction industries in particular have been
viewed and have viewed themselves as being on the opposite side from environmentalists,"
he said.
"My main message
is that we are on the same side."