ENVIRONMENT-AMAZON: Infrastructure Plans Threaten Amazonia | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

ENVIRONMENT-AMAZON: Infrastructure Plans Threaten Amazonia

June 25, 1997 | Pratap Chatterjee | InterPress Service

ATT EDS: Please relate the following to ‘ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL:
Indigenous Communities Fend Off Gold Miners’, moved from Brazil/

Boa Vista, Brazil – Soldiers dressed in olive-green
camouflage uniforms sit high up in the cabins of three bright
yellow bulldozers, maneouvering their way up the uneven dirt road
in the dense, tropical forests of the northern Amazon.

Another soldier, who has a carbine slung over his shoulder,
waves traffic to one side as the bulldozers slowly widen and
smooth the dirt road that will turn into a 570-km paved highway
between the two Brazilian states of Amazonas and Roraima.

The road which begins at the Amazon river port of Manaus, the
capital of Amazonas, will end in this city of Boa Vista, the
capital of Roraima. It will allow heavy vehicles to carry goods
through to Caracas in Venezuela, another 1,000 kms down the road,
and out to Caribbean ports.

The road is just one of dozens of major new infrastructure
projects – that include waterways, railways, massive refineries,
and grain terminals – that are expected to complete the vision of
free trade in the nine countries of the Amazon basin.

These projects will vastly increase the extraction and export
of resources to Europe, North America, and Japan. The resources
range from gold in Roraima, to timber in Amazonas, natural gas in
Bolivia, and beef, soy beans, and other agricultural products in
western Brazil.

Almost all the new projects are designed to run through
millions of hectares of indigenous territories, dense forests, and
complex river and swamp ecosystems, and would bring far-reaching
changes to the region.

The California-based environmental group Amazon Watch has
analysed the overall impact of the new infrastructure projects.

“This could well be the final assault on the Amazon, Brazil’s
most precious asset,” says Atossa Soltani of Amazon Watch. She
adds that the entire Amazon region is home to “half the
(terrestrial) species in the world and a fifth of the fresh water
on the planet.”

“The latest statistics show that the rate of destruction of
the Amazon has gone up by a third since the 1992 Earth Summit here
in Brazil,” Soltani adds. “The situation is about to get much
worse unless we step back to examine the consequences of these new
investments.”

Soltani and her colleague Tracey Osborne have just published an
82-page report, titled, ‘Arteries for Trade: Consequences for
Amazonia’. The report’s release coincides with this week’s special
session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where some 40
world leaders are measuring progress on efforts to protect the
environment since the Brazil summit.

The report shows that the new investment is focussed along
three major corridors: from Manaus in northern Brazil out to the
Caribbean through Guyana and Venezuela; from southern Brazil out
to the Pacific through Bolivia, Chile, and Peru; and from central
Brazil to the Atlantic.

In the Manaus-Caribbean corridor, the road could have a major
impact on the Waimiri-Atroari indigenous peoples, while a new
project to expand the Guri dam in Venezuela and bring power to Boa
Vista will impact the Canaima national park in Venezuela as well
as the Caura and Paragua rivers.

A plan to link Boa Vista by road to Georgetown, Guyana, will
impact the Macuxi and Wapixana peoples as well as the Guyanese
Amazon.

In southern Brazil, four competing road projects are intended
to traverse the rainforests to provide access for exports to the
Pacific. Two of the projects go through Bolivia and Chile, while
the other two go through Peru.

The first Bolivian link runs 2,043 kms from Cuiaba in the
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to Arica in Chile, while the other
runs 642 kms from Puerto Suarez in Brazil to Santa Cruz in
Bolivia.

One Peruvian option is the completion and rehabilitation of the
BR-364 highway, which also begins in Cuiaba, Brazil, crosses the
border at Boqueirao do Esperanca, to Pucallpa in the Andes and
then out to Lima in Peru.

The second Peruvian option is the completion and rehabilitation
of the BR-317 highway, that runs from Rio Branco, Brazil, to
Puerto Maldonado in Peru, from where a dirt road leads to Cuzco
and out to southern Peruvian or northern Chilean ports.

The southern export corridor also includes a proposed natural
gas pipeline that would run from Santa Cruz in Bolivia to Brazil’s
Sao Paulo.

Work has already begun in the central export corridor on two
new waterway projects that threaten to severely impact local
fishing and agriculture on the river banks. The first involves
deepening and widening the Madeira river, while the second
involves similar developments on the Tocantins and Araguaia rivers
to allow deep-water river barges to travel to the agricultural
heartland of central Brazil.

The third major infrastructure project in the central Brazilian
corridor is for the Ferronorte railroad, which would stretch 5,000
kms.

Groups in Brazil have begun to protest these projects. A few
months ago, the Xavante physically disrupted construction works in
the Tocantins-Araguia waterway projects. And just last week,
lawyers from the Instituto Socio Ambiental in Brasilia, who are
representing the Xavante, won a temporary injunction against the
development project.

But for the most part, Brazilian groups say they do not know
what is being planned.

“It is very hard to get documents about plans about new
projects in the state of Roraima, let alone other parts of Brazil
or other countries,” says Anna Paulo Souto, a lawyer at Conselho
Indigena de Roraima (the Indigenous Council of Roraima) here in
Boa Vista.

For one thing, funding for these projects comes from private
sources who rarely publish detailed plans of their construction
projects let alone consult with local communities.

But questions about the project are slowly being raised in the
federal capital of Brasilia.

“We want development, but this cannot come at the expense of
selling off the Amazon forests to foreign companies for them to
destroy,” says Gilney Viana, a Brazilian congressman from the
Worker’s Party in Mato Grosso.

Viana has organised public hearings to expose the environmental
records of the foreign companies that have bought timber
concessions in the country.

“We all need to ask a lot more questions,” says Soltani.
“The funders and planners need to talk to the communities. And
above all, they need to recognise the rights that indigenous
groups have to their lands under the constitution.”
(END/IPS/PC/YJC/97)

Origin: Washington/ENVIRONMENT-AMAZON/
– –

[ Redistributed to NATIVE-L and Usenet newsgroups with permission. ]

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