|
The Chiquitano Forest – A New Development Frontier The Cuiabá gas pipeline crosses four ecoregions: the Chaco, the Chiquitano dry forest, the Cerrado, and the Pantanal wetlands. The route also cuts through the ancestral homelands of Chiquitano and Ayoreo indigenous communities. It bisects Bolivia's San Matías Integrated Management Area, which is the only protected area for the world's largest intact dry tropical forest and the headwaters of the Pantanal.
Of particular concern is the Chiquitano dry forest, which has been classified as globally outstanding in terms of biological distinctiveness--the highest category. A Conservation International Rapid Assessment Program team called the forest "what may well be the largest remaining tract of relatively undisturbed tall dry forest in the Neotropics, if not the entire world."
Approximately 90 species living in the forest are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Rare and vulnerable species include the jaguar, ocelot, river otter, maned wolf, giant armadillo, giant anteater, black howler monkey, and spider monkey.
The direct impacts of cutting a gas pipeline through primary forest and indigenous communities are considerable. In the case of Cuiabá, a 2000 study by the Bolivian NGO Probioma concluded that the failure to adequately control access to the pipeline right of way or to re-vegetate the right of way violated the project’s own Environmental Impact Assessment. Deforestation and environmental degradation affected local communities who bitterly contested the project through blockades and demonstrations. Company tactics of making non-binding verbal agreements with local communities and conflict with project workers who harassed local women and depleted hunting and fishing supplies worsened social disruption.
In direct contradiction to Enron and Shell’s claims that secondary pipeline impacts could be mitigated, the Chiquitano forest is now reeling under the weight of the secondary and cumulative effects of the Cuiabá project.
As witnessed throughout the Amazon, a pipeline built through intact forest opens up the area to permanent encroachment and exploitation. OPIC stipulated that Enron must control access along the pipeline route to prevent migration to the forest. However, physical barriers built along the route to impede access proved inadequate. Historically, areas adjacent to the Chiquitano forest have been subjected to unremitting migration and a series of damaging exploitative operations include logging, mining, large-scale export agriculture, cattle ranching, land speculation, hunting and bioprospecting (Hindery, 2002). Already, local communities have witnessed illegal logging, hunting, and roaming cattle along the pipeline right of way.
In an alarming development in March 2002, the Canadian company Orvana Minerals announced the reactivation of the inactive Don Mario gold mining site in the Chiquitano forest. The environmental impacts of such an operation in the Chiquitano Forest could be disastrous, particularly given the use of cyanide solution in gold processing.
Moreover, Orvana Minerals is violating the Cuiabá project’s environmental license and original Environmental Impact Assessment and OPIC loan conditions in two key ways. In May, the company solicited an environmental license from the government to construct a 5-kilometer pipeline crossing the Chiquitano Forest to extract gas (presumably from the Cuiabá pipeline) to feed the mine’s power plant. Secondly, local indigenous communities have witnessed the pipeline right of way being used to access the mine.
Ironically, Presidential candidate and former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who helped bring Enron and Shell into Bolivia through the World Bank sponsored capitalization of the state oil company, is the new Chairman of the Board of Orvana Minerals. Curiously, in an attempt to gain political support, he used the Washington Post's May article on the pipeline to denounce the former Minister of Sustainable Development Erik Reyes Villa, whose party granted the environmental license for the pipeline and promoted legislation favoring the energy industry (the Ley Corazon) (www.boliviasipuede.com).
Additionally, recent reports in the Bolivian press reveal plans to tap the Bolivia-Cuiabá pipeline to fuel electrification in the Chiquitano region. A new network of pipelines and transmission lines would open the forest to further development. The Cuiabá project’s Environmental Impact Assessment did not take this host of cumulative and associated impacts into account.
|
