ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: IDB Called to Defend Clean Energy

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 24 2000 (IPS) - Latin American environmentalists call on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to change its energy policy for the region, saying it must finance clean sources of energy that benefit the poor instead of funding harmful mega- projects.

Glenn Switkes, the Latin American programme director for the International Rivers Network (IRN), said it is disturbing that the IDB will likely finance the Cana Brava hydroelectric plant in Brazil, a project of the Belgian firm, Tractebel.

Cana Brava is one of eight plants included in the Brazilian energy plan for the next eight years on the Tocantins River, which originates at the country’s geographical centre, near Brasilia, and runs north, crossing the eastern Amazon region.

The river, already affected by the building of two enormous dams, the Tucurui and the Serra da Mesa, “has become a hydro ‘staircase’,” without any environmental impact statement done on the potential effects of the 10 hydroelectric plants, Switkes pointed out.

There are also two plants planned for the Araguaia river, the largest branch of the Tocantins. Officials plan to construct a waterway with the two rivers in order to transport soya produced in the nation’s central region to a port on Brazil’s northern Atlantic coast – another project environmentalists condemn.

Tucurui would be Brazil’s second largest hydroelectric dam and, in its second phase of construction – ending December 2002 – would flood part of the Amazon forest.

Cana Brava, to be completed in July 2002, would intensify the damages caused by the nearby Serra da Mesa, which flooded 1,784 square km of the Brazilian savannah, and 10 percent of the territory reserved for the Ava-canoeiro, a small indigenous group.

Work on the Cana Brava dam, to be 30 percent larger than the Itaipu, the gigantic hydro-electric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay, may have also triggered an outbreak of yellow fever, suspect environmentalists, a disease that has caused several deaths recently in the outskirts of Brasilia.

The dam would mean further damage to the Ava-canoeiro reservation, changing the levels of its rivers, observed Laudovina Aparecida Pereira, local co-ordinator of the Indigenous Missionary Council, an agency of Brazil’s Catholic Church.

Other hydroelectric plants, such as Serra Quebrada and Lageado, will affect the Apinaje and Xerente indigenous peoples, who live on reserves along the Tocantins River, she added.

A group of Latin American non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has applied pressure on the IDB to suspend funds for this type of project in the region, sending delegates, like Switkes, to the bank’s annual meeting in the US city of New Orleans, Louisiana, in late March.

The bank “continues to reinforce the conventional energy model and the interests of the region’s elites,” by backing down on the commitments it made in 1994 for sustainable development and social equality, according to a report presented at the IDB meeting, authored by the National Health, Environment and Labour Centre ‘Agua Viva’ – a Colombian NGO.

>From 1995 to 1998, the IDB spent just 1.5 percent of its money on promoting alternative energy sources that are more efficient and environmentally healthy, while 83 percent of the funds went to projects that involve fossil fuels, argued environmentalists in New Orleans.

A large portion of the remaining money went to hydroelectric production, which is a renewable resource but often harms the environment by flooding forests and displacing people from their lands.

IDB funds are not used for reducing poverty, according to the NGOs. Latin America still has 75 million people who lack access to electricity and they are not included as a priority in related projects, especially those funded by private firms.

Increasing energy resources that are “truly sustainable” and giving the communities affected by the projects a voice throughout the process were among the demands the NGOs made on the multilateral bank.

In a letter to IDB president Enrique Iglesias, Switkes asked the bank to review its intent to loan 150 million dollars for the construction of the Cana Brava plant because it belongs to Tractebel, which “would be able to obtain these resources on the international financial market.”

The IDB is already greatly responsible for the negative impacts of the “cascade” of energy plants on the Tocantins because it approved a loan for setting up transmission lines that run the length of the river to carry the generated electricity to the heavily industrialised and densely populated areas of south- central Brazil.

The argument that Cana Brava electricity will serve the local population makes no sense because it will principally supply distant, wealthier cities, Switkes pointed out.

The environmentalist also condemned other “omissions and errors” in the bank’s assessment, which ignored the major impacts of the project on biodiversity, the environment and the people.

The ‘cerrados’ or Brazilian savannahs are among the ecosystems with greatest biodiversity in the world, and are some of the most threatened, according to environmentalists and the Brazilian authorities themselves, emphasised the IRN leader, who charged that the IDB report’s statement that there are no species threatened by the project is misleading.

Ignoring the indigenous people affected, just because they are few in number, contradicts the IDB’s own policy, he said.

In addition, the bank denigrates the population by displacing 110 families and is not taking into account the local “quilombola” population, black descendants of slaves whose rights are protected under the Brazilian Constitution.

The battle for the rivers also includes the Araguaia-Tocantins Waterway, one of the mega-projects included on the Brazilian government’s list of priorities. It would mean the dredging of the river bottom in several areas in order to permit access for bigger barges.

A lawsuit by the Social-Environmental Institute (ISA), an NGO, filed on behalf of the Xavante Indians, put a stop to the project last October.

A judge ruled in favour of the Xavantes because the Impact Statement, a legal requirement for beginning major works, was false in that it omitted the assessments made by anthropologists entrusted with studying the project’s social effects.

Because research, presentation of evidence and other procedures are required, waterway construction will be held up for “at least six months,” estimated Fernando Batista, an ISA attorney.