|
Spanning more than seven million square kilometers in nine countries, the
Amazon Basin contains the world's largest tropical rainforest and houses nearly
fifty percent of the planet's terrestrial biodiversity.
Deforestation in the Amazon Basin is fueled by economic globalization and the ensuing boom in such large-scale development projects as new roads, power lines, oil & gas pipelines, dams, and massive timbering operations.
The construction of infrastructure mega-projects recklessly threatens millions of hectares of pristine frontier rainforests and the indigenous peoples who depend on these forests for their physical and cultural survival.
Industrial development corridors and "mega-projects"
In order to facilitate industrial access to the natural resources of the Amazon frontier, South American governments are building "development corridors" that link the remote and resource rich areas of the Amazon to regional and international markets. These corridors snake for hundreds of miles across national borders, indigenous territories, and pristine forest and wetland ecosystems.
Most of the proposed corridors would invade such sensitive and supposedly protected areas as national parks and demarcated indigenous reserves. Mega-projects have both direct and indirect impacts on the Amazon's ecological diversity and integrity as well as on the welfare of its traditional and indigenous communities.
Direct impacts include the pollution and habitat destruction associated with any major development project in a pristine and sensitive area. The indirect and long term impacts are of even greater concern: Mega-projects allow unsustainable extractive industries, e.g., oil, agri-business, logging, and mining, to expand profitably and permanently into otherwise inaccessible frontier regions.
Corridors in advanced stages of planning include transportation projects (roads, waterways, railroads) and energy projects (dams, pipelines, power lines) connecting Brazil to neighboring Amazon countries. Such projects, which we refer to as "mega-projects," create the infrastructure essential to the extraction and export of oil, gas, timber, gold, and other commodities.
The consequences for the Amazon's ecology and peoples are well documented: habitat destruction and degradation; toxic pollution; violent disruption of indigenous communities. Globally, predictable consequences include irreversible loss of biodiversity and climate instability.
Indigenous lands intersect the routes of all of the major development corridors, and indigenous communities are on the front lines when the bulldozers begin clearing the forest for roads, pipelines, and other mega-projects. Supporting these groups advances indigenous land rights, deters North American investments in infrastructure projects, and strengthens protection of ecologically sensitive areas. We currently work directly and closely with indigenous partners in Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela.
|
