Written by Marc Dourojeanni
Friday, 16 December 2011 00:00
The results of any Amazon’s environmental balance sheet get worse year after year. Of the few success stories that were really important in 2011, three stand out: the decision, forced by Bolivian Indians, not to build the road Villa Tunari and San Ignacio de Mojos; the success of Peruvian Indians, especially the Ashaninka, who held off powerful Brazilian investors wanting to build dams that would have been socially and environmentally devastating for southern Peruvian Amazon; and finally, the decision of the citizens of Pará, Brazil, which prevented the plebiscite ploy to divide Pará into three new States.
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Exploitation of natural resources
Brazil announced that there has been a significant reduction of deforestation in 2011. However, the trends of deforestation and degradation of forests remain accelerating relentlessly. In addition, especially in the Andean-Amazonian countries, the extent of degraded or abandoned land, unused, continued to grow.
Gold mining in this decade is no longer the privilege of Madre de Dios, Peru. Now it is ubiquitous throughout the Amazon and especially in Brazil. The Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Brazil, was approved even by the judiciary and so it plows through any common sense in spite of opposition, hiding plans for several dozen other dams behind its enormity. All the rivers of the Amazon may soon become dammed, flooding the best lands and forests and destroying forever valuable and unique ecosystems. The lesser impacting options for power generation are systematically discarded.
The press, despite the efforts of few, has never shown the reality of Belo Monte. In a shameful example, a well-known magazine devoted pages trying to disprove the alleged ignorance of famous artists, who actually care about the future of the Amazon, based on a "serious analysis done by students". They overlook the fact that today no one denies that the large dams also generate greenhouse gases, in addition to multiple well known social and environmental impacts. Ultimately artists, scientists and much of society only claim that the subject of the building of hydroelectric dams in rivers be matter of real debate.
Bad examples from Brazil
2011 will be remembered as the year of the Forestry Code decision in Brazil. It was hoped that, if revised, it would be modernized and strengthened, taking into account the increasingly prominent "natural" disasters. However, using distorted social and economic arguments the majority of those who were elected by the people to care for people passed a law that may aggravate the risks for the population and enables and facilitates the destruction of vegetation in the Amazon. Additionally, responding to the building of new dams and to other economic purposes, over thirty proposals for the elimination, reduction or degradation of protected areas in the Amazon were recorded in Brazil.
Payments for environmental services
The evolution of petty politics developed by some indigenous leaders, especially those in Peru, against the initiatives known as REDD and REDD + is also a bad sign They are refusing to talk outside of the framework of political activism with a minimum of common sense and are hurting the people they claim to represent. In addition, the new Brazilian governmental program” Bolsa Verde” (Green Grant) doesn’t make any sense with regard to conservation of forests. Programs such as the Peruvian government’s “Conservando Juntos” (Conserving Together) make more sense.
IIRSA
More than ten years have passed since the launch of the Initiative for Infrastructure Integration of South America (IIRSA). There have been hundreds of serious and well documented studies demonstrating its numerous errors. Nothing can touch this powerful money-making machine, assembled by international banks, the National Bank of Social and Economic Development in Brazil (BNDES), South American governments, companies exploiting natural resources and large contractors. This is why the insanity of building dams, gigantic artificial lakes and economically unviable roads in place of effective or necessary construction, often falls into oblivion.
In whose interest?
Roads, mining, hydropower etc. are proposed by powerful businessmen in search of money and politicians in the name of development. Decade after decade misery, hunger and disease remain around all these "indispensable” developments as shown in the evaluation of the Amazon Millennium Goals. The Amazonian nations still do not understand what their “Amazon” is and, worse, they still believe it is just wild territory to be conquered and exploited.
The heroic efforts of so many people, who have struggled to build a truly sustainable Amazon, quality of life, balance between environment and development and social peace are fundamental. Not to mention their achievements in 2011, does not mean they are wasting their time. It just means that the time for their visions and efforts to result in change still hasn’t arrived. I trust that the great change will come before it is too late, perhaps in 2012.
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Marc Dourojeanni was a professor and dean of the Forest College of the National Agrarian University of Lima, in Peru, and General Forest Director of that country. Currently, he is the President of the ProNaturaleza Foundation. |
