SOUTH AMERICA: Guarani Aquifer and Allegations of Terrorist Presence

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 17 2004 (IPS) - Civil society groups in the tri-border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay come together are planning their own ”social forum” this year to protest what they see as the underlying objective behind U.S. allegations of a terrorist presence in the area.

Civil society groups in the tri-border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay come together are planning their own ”social forum” this year to protest what they see as the underlying objective behind U.S. allegations of a terrorist presence in the area.

The groups organising the social forum believe Washington is seeking to gain control, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, of access to the Guaraní aquifer, the largest underground freshwater reservoir in South America and perhaps the largest in the world.

The aquifer underlies the four members of the Mercosur trade bloc: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The ”tri-border region social forum” is scheduled for Jun. 25-27 in the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú, as part of the World Social Forum, the global movement that met in January 2001, 2002 and 2003 in Porto Alegre, Brazil and last month in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India.

Regional or country social forums, like the one that will be held in June, are also periodically organised within the framework of the WSF. The movement opposed to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is helping to organise the June social forum.

The WSF has expressed its fears of a growing U.S. military presence in Latin America through U.S. bases operating in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru.

The Latin American civil society groups organising the June social forum say that objective will only be strengthened if the FTAA is created in late 2005 as projected.

But up to now there had only been isolated comments and observations on the possible link between U.S. and Israeli accusations that ”terrorist cells” operate in the tri-border region, and what civil society groups have described as Washington’s attempts to increase military control over that area, where the cities of Puerto Iguazú, Foz do Iguazú (Brazil) and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) are located.

”Claims that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq served to justify unjustifiable actions there. Now they’re doing the same thing with the tri-border region: creating an enemy through press reports, with the aim of controlling the region’s strategic natural resources,” Miguel Serdiuk, coordinator of the tri-border region social forum, told IPS.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence services began to talk about the alleged presence of operatives from the Lebanon-based Hezbollah and other groups reportedly sympathetic to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network after a 1992 blast in the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of AMIA, a Jewish community centre in that city, which left a combined death toll of more than 110.

The U.S. government holds Al-Qaeda responsible for the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. After the attacks, U.S. allegations of a terrorist presence in the tri-border region increased.

In the past few weeks, the media in Israel have once again been focusing on the supposed presence of terrorists in the tri-border area.

The U.S. State Department admitted on Feb. 10 that it has uncovered no ”credible information” on an established terrorist presence there.

However, it did state that ”terrorist supporters” in the area are ”primarily engaged in fundraising” for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

According to the State Department, the ”tri-border region has long been of interest to the United States…and we have undertaken initiatives both bilaterally and multilaterally to understand the true nature of the threat and to design the most appropriate counterterrorist measures.”

Activists say such talk is aimed at creating the conditions for the United States to gain a foothold in the tri-border area, with a view to gaining access to the Guaraní aquifer.

An aquifer is a water-bearing stratum of permeable rock, sand or gravel. The Guaraní is actually a system of aquifers that underlies an area of approximately 1.2 million square kms: 840,000 in Brazil, 225,000 in Argentina, 71,700 in Paraguay and 58,500 in Uruguay.

Experts estimate that the Guaraní aquifer holds permanent reserves of 45,000 cubic kms of water, with an exploitable volume of between 40 and 80 cubic kms a year.

Much of the water in the aquifer is under pressure, which saves on pumping costs. In the central zone, geothermal heat produces hot springs. In other parts, the water is at a depth of 1,500 metres below sea level.

Brazil makes the greatest use of the aquifer, which totally or partially supplies more than 300 cities and towns with drinking water, including Sao Paulo, population 18 million, Brazil’s largest city.

Studies estimate that the aquifer could supply the entire population of the world for 200 years, at a daily consumption rate of 100 litres per person.

However, environmentalists warn that the rising volumes of water extracted from the aquifer and pollution from agro-chemicals and urban and industrial waste threaten the reserves that millions of people depend on for clean water.

The hot springs tourism industry and the future of the aquifer’s geothermal potential as a source of clean energy are also endangered.

The four countries that share the aquifer agreed to create an ”Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development of the Guarani Aquifer System Project”, to gain a detailed understanding of the aquifer and implement a common institutional and technical framework for the joint management and preservation of the transboundary water reserves.

The experts involved in the project have until March 2007 to draw up the plan for the region’s four governments to share aquifer management.

The stated goal is to develop an adequate legal and institutional framework and to promote public participation so that society contributes to preserving the aquifer.

The project is to cost an estimated 27 million dollars, 13 million of which will come from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multi-agency consortium dominated by the World Bank.

The rest will be financed by the Organisation of American States, the four countries in question, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and private entities from Germany and the Netherlands.

But social organisations involved in the WSF say large corporations could make use of the project financed by governments and multilateral agencies, with a view to administering water resources in the region as a marketable product rather than a social good.

The groups allege that the United States went to war against Iraq to gain control over the country’s oil, under the pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs – which were never found – and that Washington could use the excuse of the ”war on terrorism” in its bid to gain control over the water in the tri-border region.

They also point out that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has linked Canada, Mexico and the United States since 1994, has already generated a market for water, and that the same thing could occur in the rest of the world if a European Union initiative prospers in the World Trade Organisation.

”The aim of international actions like the tri-border region social forum is to pressure governments to refuse to accept proposals that would limit the capacity of states to regulate or provide clean water, to the detriment of the poor,” said Serdiuk.

More than 70 organisations from Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, along with groups from Chile, Colombia, Sweden and the United States, took part in a preparatory meeting in late January in Puerto Iguazú to agree on the agenda for the late June social forum.

”We were overwhelmed by the number of people who attended, and we’ll have to meet again in March to organise the logistics of the June meeting. Puerto Iguazú has a limited capacity for providing lodging for so many people,” said Serdiuk, who argued, however, that the forum must be held ”in the eye of the storm.”