Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

SUSTAINABILITY: ‘Conspiracy’ Looms Over South American Aquifer – NGOs

Marcela Valente* - Tierramérica

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 23 2004 (IPS) - The placid waters of the Guaraní Aquifer, an enormous underground reservoir beneath 1.2 million square km of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, are at the centre of turbulent debate.

A conservation project for the aquifer, which began to be implemented in 2003, triggered a volley of accusations between those entrusted with carrying the initiative forward and the civil society groups that warn of an alleged U.S.-led conspiracy to take control of this important freshwater source.

Scientists, environmentalists and governments have worked for three years to design the Project for the Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development of the Guaraní Aquifer System.

Their aim is to determine the reservoir’s potential and the threats it faces in order to set up joint management among the four countries that share it.

The aquifer beneath the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) countries holds an estimated 37,000 cubic km of water, though just 40 to 80 cubic km can be accessed, in the areas where the recharging process takes place.

An Argentine pro-democracy group of retired members of the military, CEMIDA, issued a statement earlier this year that Washington was using the alleged activity of terrorist groups in the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay (where Iguaçu Falls is located) as a pretext to try to beef up its own military presence there "and silently take over the Guaraní Aquifer" through the conservation project.

Founded in the 1980s, CEMIDA is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to protecting human rights, and tends to take positions towards the left of the political scale. Its membership includes both retired military personnel and civilians.

"The United States set up a system to determine the size of the aquifer, ensure its sustainable use and prevent any kind of contamination, (and) for this effort it put at the head of the research the World Bank, the Organisation of American States (OAS) and other bodies that are under its control," states the CEMIDA report, written by history professor Elsa Buzzone.

Washington created a budget of 26 million dollars "and suggested the ways that indigenous communities and civil society could participate in order to maintain its control (over the aquifer) as long as necessary," says the text.

This thesis is shared by the organising groups of the Tri-Border Social Forum, which is to take place Jun. 25-27 in the northeastern Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú.

But the secretary-general of the Guaraní Aquifer Project, Brazil’s Luiz Amore, told Tierramérica that such charges "don’t make sense."

The project emerged as an initiative of the four countries that share the aquifer, and it was they who asked for financial assistance from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), created with contributions from various countries and under the financial management of the World Bank, he said.

During the past four years, civil society organisations have participated in different facets of the programme, said Amore.

"From Brazil, which has 71 percent of the aquifer in its territory, 176 institutions participated, including national and state bodies, universities and NGOs," he added.

The project’s national divisions, comprising officials from each country, chose the OAS as the executor agency of the initiative, which is financed by 13.4 million dollars from GEF, 12 million from the four governments, and the rest from other donors for a total of 26.7 million dollars, Amore said.

A Brazilian water rights network of some 60 organisations, also questions the Guaraní Aquifer Project.

"There is no transparency" in the project’s contracts, nor is there access to its technical data, such that "Amore is negotiating our sovereignty and we can’t know to whom he is passing the information he receives," and he exercises a "dictatorial power" to decide who will participate in the process, says network leader Leonardo Moreli.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and GEF should audit the project, Moreli said in a Tierramérica interview.

Furthermore, "it is not normal that there are Green Berets (U.S. army special forces) in Entre Ríos and Misiones (northeastern Argentine provinces) engaged in exercises against dengue," said Moreli with a note of irony, in reference to the CEMIDA report.

According to Amore, Moreli’s accusations are an attempt to gain better footing to carry out aquifer-related projects for citizen awareness and education, which are to be financed through the Citizen Fund, which has a budget of 240,000 dollars.

"It is a disgrace. Once the four countries finally agree on a project to establish preventative actions and not just to remedy the situation, there are suspicions and fears," said Amore.

If the governments wanted to privatise the aquifer, he said, "It would be under the authority of the countries themselves, not the project."

But the secretary-general clarified his position in the matter: "Water is a social good that has an economic value, but that does not mean a sales value. This is about a resource to be protected from contamination and for the use of all."

Uruguayan geomorphologist Danilo Antón, who specialises in underground water resources, agrees that the claims that Washington is trying to gain control of the Guaraní Aquifer "are outside of reality".

"There could be strategists who fantasise about it, but it is not sustainable under any logic," he said.

The water from the aquifer can only be used locally, by hundreds of communities, but exploiting its deeper reaches "is difficult and very expensive," said Antón.

"To empty the aquifer, most of which is more than 1,000 metres below ground, would require a pumping effort that is not economical and is technically impossible."

"Another thing is the fear that they will privatise the wells or the distribution systems, but that depends on the governments," Antón said.

It was the Uruguayan geologist who in 1996 proposed the name "Guaraní" for the aquifer, which previously went by different names in each of the four countries.

The new name pays tribute to the indigenous nation that has historically lived in the region encompassed by the underground reservoir.

(* Marcela Valente is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Mar. 13 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)