Washington – Indigenous groups in the Amazon Basin of Latin America, the most biologically diverse rainforest on earth, are pushing ahead to oppose infrastructure projects they believe will lead to the destruction of their homelands.
”Together, our peoples are seeking a new development model for the region,” says Jose Adalberto Macuxi, a coordinator of the Brazilian Indigenous Council in the state of Roraima (CIR). A new report reveals progress made since the First International Seminar of Indigenous Peoples held in August 1997 in the northern
Brazilian Amazon town of Boa Vista.
At that meeting Indigenous leaders from Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela discussed the potential impact of proposed development projects – such as roads, power lines, waterways, pipelines, and refineries – aimed to promote free trade in the region.
”Considering the multi-national nature of the development in the region, this exciting meeting enabled indigenous peoples to come together despite their language differences and work on solutions,” Melina Selverston, director of the Washington-based Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment, an advocacy group that participated in the seminar, told IPS.
Almost all the planned or partially completed 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 Amazon.
Extraction of resources – from gold in the Brazilian state of Roraima to natural gas in Bolivia – will increase when these projects get under way.
Governments in the region, and the corporations and international financial institutions supporting these projects, argue that these plans are necessary to develop and integrate their economies and bring energy and resources to urban centers – such as the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. But, critics say these projects acting as arteries for global trade will have devastating consequences for Amazonia.
”The mega-projects planned for the Amazon would open up the heart of the world’s largest tropical rainforest to intensive exploitation,” says Atossa Soltani, director of the California- based advocacy group, Amazon Watch – who wa also at the meeting in Roraima. ”These poects will bring in their wake, a trail of industrial logging, mining, oil extraction, cattle ranching and large scale agricultural development.”
Often these projects compound already existing conflicts indigenous people have with government over land demarcation and access to natural resources, says Soltani.
The seminar last year brought together representatives of over 35,000 indigenous peoples who live around the Brazil-Venezuela- Guyana border to discuss common land demarcation problems and solutions revolving around proposed projects in the region for the first time.
CIR and the Venezuelan Indigenous Confederation (CONIVE), as well as the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) of Guyana are now calling on the governments to guarantee Indian land rights and take steps to protect the environment before building a 685 kilometer power line. The proposed line would go from the Guri hydroelectric dam on the Caroni river in Venezuela to supply electricity to Boa Vista and the state of Roraima.
As planned, the line would cut though several indigenous areas in Brazil and Venezuela, as well as the Canaima National Park that was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. Because of the line, the Caura and Paragua Rivers may be redirected through a canal 30 kilometers long which would flood approximately 500 square kilometers of land inhabited by 16 tribes.
Because the Venezuelan government has not recognized any Indian land rights, they never consulted people before making these development plans, says Jose Poyo, president of CONIVE. Indigenous groups in Venezuela also fear that the line will lead to processing and manufacturing facilities in the Amazon as it brings electricity to new gold mining and logging concessions in the Sierra Imataca Forest Reserve.
In the seminar report, other groups voiced concern about the paving of the Manaus-Caracas highway – which connects the Amazon to the Caribbean coast. When the road cut through indigenous land in the early 1970s about half of the Waimiri-Atroari Indians died from introduced diseases.
Last year the Waimiri stopped army engineers from paving until the state government agreed to conduct a full environmental impact study and provide a 3.5 million dollar grant for the group to monitor and control traffic on the road for the next ten years.
In Guyana, the government wants to improve about 450 kilometers of road from Georgetown to Boa Vista, which would allow timber and mining companies in the area to increase production. APA is demanding that all land rights issues be addressed both in general and in connection with the proposed road improvements. Land demarcation conflicts between the Amerindian and the Guyanese government are compounded by the hand out of extensive logging and mining concessions, says APA.
David James, president of APA, says they are not consulted or even notified when these concessions are granted. ”To allow uncontrolled mining and logging in our lands will ultimately benefit neither Guyana, nor the world, and worst of all it threatens the survival of the Amerindian people and the environment.”
The projects brought up at the seminar are just some of the dozens of proposed infrastructure plans expected to complete the vision of free trade in the nine countries in the Amazon basin. In August, groups plan to meet for a second seminar in Venezuela
to further organise against these proposals.
Amazon Watch published a report earlier this year showing that most of the proposed projects in the region are 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.
Many Amazonian indigenous groups say they do not know what projects are being planned until it is too late. ”It’s very hard to get documents about plans for new projects that impact our area,” Ann Paulo Souto of CIR told IPS earlier this year.
Documents on such projects were readily available last month at a U.S. government sponsored conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
At the ”Infrastructure Opportunities in South America,” conference the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA) promoted 6.4 billion dollars worth of gas production and 8.4 billion dollars in oil production for Latin American countries.
Some of the projects showcased in Atlanta, including the Camisea gas fields and pipeline in Peru and the Bolivian-Brazil gas pipeline, will harm the Amazon rainforest, says Amazon Watch’s Soltani, who protested the conference.
Just days ago, the Inter-American Development Bank approved a 240 million dollar loan to support the construction of the Bolivia- Brazil pipeline – parts of which will cross fragile wetlands and subtropical forests.
The Petrozuata heavy crude oil facility in Venezuela’s Orinoco River Basin, and Brazil’s Laeado Dam and Tocantin-Araguaia Watery are other proposed projects promoted by the TDA that environmental groups say will harm the Amazon.
While the agency does not provide direct funding or loans for projects, the TDA works closely with the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Council (OPIC) and the Export-Import Bank – that do financially encourage U.S. corporations to invest in projects in other countries. (END/IPS/dk/mk/98)
