ENVIRONMENT-LATAM: Oil Spill Was a Wake-up Call, say Activists

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 27 2000 (IPS) - The oil spill in the Iguazú river, which runs across southern Brazil to flow into the Paraná river along the border between Argentina and Paraguay, served as a wakeup call to the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc on the need to harmonise its environmental laws and policies, say activists.

The process of integration must urgently be extended to the area of environmental protection, according to a joint statement addressed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Brazil and Argentina’s Fundación Vida Silvestre to the governments of the four members of the bloc — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Negotiations towards a Mercosur Environmental Protocol, which began over four years ago, have ground to a halt, although a “sub- working group” continues to hold periodic meetings on the question, the environmentalists pointed out.

The Jul 16 oil spill occurred when a pipeline in a refinery of Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobrás cracked and four million litres of crude poured out, most of it running into the Bariguí river, which empties into the Iguazú.

Petrobrás and Brazil’s environmental authorities say the oil will not reach the border, as its advance was stemmed by barriers set in place across the Iguazú river. According to the Environmental Institute of the state of Paraná, less than 250,000 litres of oil remain to be cleaned up in the river.

But Argentine tourism secretary Hernán Lombardi said he was afraid that traces of oil had polluted the waters of the Iguazú National Park, a major source of tourism revenues located more than 500 kms downstream from the spill, where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet.

Both Argentina and Paraguay said they planned to demand indemnification from Brazil in case of losses caused by the spill.

Although its direct effects have been limited to Brazil, the oil spill is a “supranational” incident that laid bare the bloc’s lack of a common environmental policy framework, Alvaro Luchiesi, an expert in foreign trade with WWF-Brazil, told IPS.

The signing of the Mercosur Environmental Protocol is indispensable in order to begin coordinating the laws of the four member countries, which share a large number of rivers, he said. Society at large must also have a much greater say in discussions and decision-making, he added.

Negotiations on the protocol have been held up by conflicting interests in various areas, especially biotechnology, said Luchiesi. In the past few years no progress has been made towards an agreement, he complained, despite the five or six annual meetings held by the “sub-working group”.

Brazil has stricter environmental laws and standards than its neighbours, especially with respect to genetically modified live organisms. That has led to discrepancies with Argentina, currently one of the world’s biggest producers of transgenic crops, second only to the United States, the activist pointed out.

Brazil’s reluctance to authorise the planting and sale of transgenic crops has unleashed a heated battle in the courts over imports of Argentine corn.

Environmental and consumer defence groups have successfully blocked the unloading of several shipments of corn found to contain genetically altered kernels.

Luchiesi’s hope is that in the next six months, during which Brazil holds the presidency of Mercosur, and now that a new government in Argentina has taken a firm grasp on the reins of power, the “sub-working group” can be “shaken” into action to take “some concrete step that would give rise to the possibility of an accord being reached by the end of next year.”

The environmental problems common to all of the Mercosur countries mainly involve water, as many rivers, like the Iguazú, spring up in Brazil and flow towards the other member countries.

In the past, the use of some of the rivers to generate hydroelectricity has triggered conflicts with Argentina, as in the case of the Itaipú dam and power plant on the Paraná river, shared by Brazil and Paraguay.

The Paraguay-Paraná river basin, considered key to the integration of Mercosur, is at the centre of a raging dispute between those who want a plan to broaden the waterway to go ahead, and environmentalists, who fear irreversible damages to the Mato Grosso swamp, an enormous wetland ecosystem mainly located in Brazil, but extending across the Bolivian and Paraguayan borders as well.

The four countries are now trying to hammer out a joint programme for research, conservation and sustainable use of the Guaraní aquifer, a huge reserve of subterranean water extending from southern Brazil to northeastern Argentina, eastern Paraguay and northern Uruguay.

Another source of cross-border environmental disputes is the coal-run thermoelectric plant of Candiota, in southern Brazil, which according to Uruguay produces acid rain that falls on its territory.

Coordinated environmental laws and policies would also have to take into account their differing economic and social effects in the four member countries, said Luchiesi, who pointed to the example of fishing, and how it could be affected by agricultural or industrial activities in other countries.