The port of Salina Cruz, in the southern state of Oaxaca, is one of the vital infrastructures for transporting goods and hydrocarbons. It is part of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, one of the megaprojects of the current Mexican government, which seeks to connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts by means of a railroad and several highways, and is aimed at the economic development of the region through the creation of 10 industrial parks. CREDIT: Government of Mexico

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 16 2023 (IPS)

Due to insufficient pressure water does not make it up to Elliot Escobar’s house in the Mexican municipality of Matías Romero, where he lives on the second floor, so he pipes it up with a hose from his sister’s home, located on the first floor of the house shared by the two families.

“I store it in 1,000-liter tanks, which last me about a month. We recycle water, to water the plants, for example. In the municipality people don’t pay for the water because there is none, it comes out of the pipes dirty. It’s a worrisome situation,” said the 44-year-old lawyer."The most urgent thing is to make a master plan, which must have a water plan before other processes. It is crucial, before introducing industries. And each one must have very rigid zoning, to avoid pollution of water sources." -- Úrsula Oswald

Matías Romero, with a population of just over 38,000, sits along the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), a megaproject under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Navy and one of the three most important projects of the current government, together with the Mayan Train, in the southeastern Yucatán peninsula, and the Olmeca refinery system, in the state of Tabasco, also in the southeast.

The demand for water from the CIIT works is causing concern among the local population, already affected by water shortages, explained the lawyer, who shares the house above his sister’s with the other two members of his family.

“The project will require water and electricity, and our situation is uncertain,” Escobar said. “Everything has to have a methodology, be systematized, the infrastructure must be consolidated. In Salina Cruz (another stop along the megaproject) there have been complicated water problems in the neighborhoods; it’s a problem that’s been going on for years. There are too few wells to supply the local population.”

The lawyer is a member of the non-governmental Corriente del Pueblo Sol Rojo and spoke to IPS from his home in the state of Oaxaca, some 660 kilometers southwest of Mexico City.

In the area, the local population works, at least until now, in agriculture and cattle, pig and goat farming. The municipality is also a crossing point for thousands of undocumented Central American migrants who arrive by train or truck from the Guatemalan border en route to the United States.

Despite the fact that water is a fundamental element of the megaproject, CIIT lacks a water plan, according to responses to requests for access to information submitted by IPS.

The works are part of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Development Program that the Mexican government has been executing since 2019 with the aim of developing the south and southeast of this country of some 129 million inhabitants, the second largest Latin American economy, after Brazil.

A map of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, some 300 kilometers long, which seeks to connect Mexico’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts by means of highways and a rehabilitated railway to promote industrial development in the south and southeast of the country and encourage exports. CREDIT: Fonadin

An inter-oceanic transformation

The plan for the isthmus includes 10 industrial parks, and the renovation of the ports of Salina Cruz, on the Pacific Ocean, and Coatzacoalcos, on the Atlantic, connected by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Railway, which is under reconstruction.

It also includes the modernization of the refineries of Salina Cruz, in the state of Oaxaca, and Minatitlán, in the state of Veracruz, the laying of a gas pipeline and the construction of a gas liquefaction plant off the coast of Salina Cruz.

The development program covers 46 municipalities in Oaxaca and 33 in Veracruz, over a distance of some 300 kilometers. The 10 industrial sites, called “Poles of Development for Well-Being,” require 380 hectares each.

Researcher Ursula Oswald of the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico told IPS that she proposed a comprehensive model for analyzing all aspects of the megaproject.

“The most urgent thing is to make a master plan, which must have a water plan before other processes. It is crucial, before introducing industries. And each one must have very rigid zoning, to avoid pollution of water sources, and not to repeat the chaos we have seen in the north,” she said from the city of Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, next to the Mexican capital.

The researcher said it is necessary to answer questions such as “which basins and aquifers (can be used), and how does the surface water interact with the groundwater?”

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office since December 2018, is looking for companies to set up shop in the south and southeast of the country, in an attempt to attract investment and generate jobs in these areas, the country’s poorest.

But one obstacle to development lies in the logistics of moving the products to the U.S. market, the magnet for interested corporations. Other problems are the lack of skilled workers and the environmental impact in a region characterized by rich biodiversity.

Some recent cases show the difficulties of such initiatives. The U.S.-based electric car-maker Tesla chose the northern state of Nuevo León in March to build its factory in Mexico, despite López Obrador’s interest in having it set up shop in the south.

Between 2020 and 2022, the CIIT’s budget was 162 million dollars in the first year, 203 million dollars in 2021, and almost double that in 2022: 529 million dollars. But in 2023 it has dropped to 374 million dollars.

Independent estimates put the total investment required for the CIIT projects at 1.4 billion dollars, although there is no precise official figure.

A demonstration in Puente Madera, in the state of Oaxaca, against the advance of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which runs between that southwestern state and Veracruz, in the southeast. The Mexican megaproject has generated opposition from some groups in the region, which see it as an imposed initiative that will hurt local communities. CREDIT: APIIDTT

Water pressure

The megaproject puts greater pressure on water resources in a region where water is both abundant in some areas and overexploited.

Of the 21 aquifers in Oaxaca, five are in deficit, according to figures from the governmental National Water Commission (Conagua). Among these are the aquifers of Tehuantepec and Ostuta, which have suffered a deficit since the last decade and are on the corridor route.

In Veracruz, of the 20 water tables, five suffer from excessive extraction, such as the one in the Papaloapan River basin, also in the CIIT area.

One of the five objectives of the development program is to increase biodiversity and improve the quality of water, soil and air with a sustainable approach.

Meanwhile, CIIT’s regional program stipulates that the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources must guarantee water for both the incoming companies and the local residents.

However, the Auditoría Superior de la Federación, the national comptroller, found no information on increasing biodiversity or improving water, soil and air quality by 2021. Furthermore, it did not have sufficient data to assess compliance with the five CIIT objectives.

For the provision of the necessary water, CIIT identified in its 2022 progress and results report the sale of water rights among users, the transfer from the Tehuantepec aquifer, despite its deficit, and deep wells, the use of dams, rivers or the construction of a desalination plant, in addition to the consumption of treated wastewater.

A model of the Texistepec industrial center in Veracruz, which will form part of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Development Program, that includes the construction of five industrial parks in the southern state of Oaxaca and another five in the southeastern state of Veracruz, five of which the Mexican government has already put out to tender. CREDIT: CIIT

Indigenous people

A May 2021 document on consultations with indigenous communities in the Oaxaca municipality of Ciudad Ixtepec, also along the corridor, seen by IPS, suggests studies on the use of recycled and treated water for some industrial processes, the promotion of the use of rainwater for green areas, and the introduction of programs to raise awareness and foment responsible water use.

The megaproject’s area of influence is home to some 900,000 indigenous people from 10 different native peoples. But the consultation process, free of interference, prior to the development of the works and with sufficient and timely information, only covered less than one percent of the native population.

CIIT has already launched the international bidding process for the construction of three industrial parks in Veracruz and two in Oaxaca.

The right to a healthy environment is another aspect of a context of human rights violations. At the end of July, the Civil Observation Mission, made up of representatives of non-governmental organizations, found violations of access to information, free participation and freedom of expression.

For this reason, Escobar stressed the need for federal authorities to pay close attention to the project.

“Water is not a commodity, its supply has to be guaranteed to the local population,” the lawyer said. “We have to invest heavily in water and develop awareness about it. We do not understand their concept of modernity, they think it is only about building megaprojects. There is going to be an environmental problem in the medium term.”

For her part, Oswald suggested going beyond the traditional focus on attracting investment.

“No company is going to invest if it does not have guaranteed (water) supply, land, a way to export its merchandise on the sides of both oceans, and labor,” said the researcher. “It is necessary to link water, cost, social issues, and which indigenous groups are in the region. What other mechanisms do we have to provide water? Who has control in the region? That is basic to understanding the conflicts. It is a crucial socio-cultural issue.”

View of a bridge in severe disrepair on the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon, which the Brazilian government plans to repave along the 405-kilometer central section, out of a total of 885 kilometers, because it has deteriorated to the point that is impassable for much of the year. Those who venture along it take three times the normal amount of time to drive the entire length, with the risk of seriously damaging their vehicles. CREDIT: Tarmo Tamming/Flickr

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 9 2022 (IPS)

The mandatory initial permit granted by Brazil’s environmental authority for the repaving of the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, intensified the alarm over the possible irreversible destruction of the rainforest.

The 885-kilometer highway is the only overland route to Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas with a population of 2.25 million in south-central Brazil. The road runs to another Amazon rainforest city, Porto Velho, capital of the state of Rondônia, population 550,000."Restrictions arose that limited the public hearings to evaluate the studies as early as 2021, and so far there has been no solution to these problems. In addition, the participation of affected populations was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulties in attendance, especially for indigenous people." -- Carlos Durigan

The highway emerged as part of the plans of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship to integrate the Amazon rainforest with the rest of the country, through several highways crossing the then almost unpopulated jungle and the promotion of massive internal migration from other regions.

Due to heavy rains and frequent flooding many sections of the road and a number of bridges have fallen into disrepair. Twelve years after its inauguration in 1976, BR-319 was recognized as a largely impassable road, undermined by neglect.

Local interests tried to repave the road and obtained the support of the central government from the beginning of this century.

However, in 2008 and 2009, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) rejected three environmental impact studies, whose approval is essential in Brazil for projects that affect the environment and that have a social impact.

But a fourth study, presented in June 2021 by the National Department of Transport Infrastructure, was approved and the required initial permit was granted by IBAMA, despite criticism from environmentalists.

In recent years IBAMA’s credibility has suffered due to the openly anti-environmental far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, which weakened the environmental agency by cutting its budget and appointing officials lacking the necessary qualifications.

The Brazilian army always deploys members of its engineer brigade to repair roads in remote areas, such as the Amazon rainforest. But in the case of the BR-319 highway between Manaus and Porto Velho, millions of dollars in investments and costly maintenance services are necessary, which prevent its concession to private companies. CREDIT: Brazilian Army

Doomed project

“Restrictions arose that limited the public hearings to evaluate the studies as early as 2021, and so far there has been no solution to these problems. In addition, the participation of affected populations was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulties in attendance, especially for indigenous people,” said environmentalist Carlos Durigan.

The environmental impacts assessed were limited to the vicinity of the road, without considering the entire area of influence of the construction work, the director of WCS Brazil, the national affiliate of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, told IPS by telephone from Manaus.

Moreover, no prior and informed consultation was held with the indigenous peoples and traditional communities that will be affected, a requirement under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), he said. This incompliance is likely to lead to lawsuits.

The initial permit was obtained under promises of greater protection, inspection and oversight of protected areas – not very credible at a time of weak public authority in environmental questions, with low budgets and reduced human resources, said Durigan, a geographer from southeastern Brazil who has lived in the Amazon rainforest for two decades.

These and other criticisms form part of the evaluation carried out by the BR-319 Observatory, a coalition of 12 social organizations involved in activities in the road’s area of influence. The 14-point review identifies irregularities in the permit granted by IBAMA and the violated rights of the affected population.

The proponents of the BR-319 highway tried to avoid the requirement of impact studies under the argument that it is only a matter of repaving an existing road, with no new impacts. But the courts recognized it as a complete reconstruction.

In fact, of the 885 kilometers, 405 kilometers will have to be repaved and bridges and animal crossings will have to be rebuilt. The remaining 480 kilometers – the two stretches near Manaus and Porto Velho – are already passable.

But the rains and floods that have occurred since last year have broken down the asphalt on many stretches near Manaus, leaving large cracks and holes. Even without repaving, many people venture to travel along the BR-319 in cars, buses and trucks. But it takes two or three days to drive, and often causes damage to vehicles.

One of the potholes in the BR-319 highway, where the asphalt laid in the 1970s has disappeared. Inaugurated in 1976, the Amazon artery became impassable a decade later and attempts to repave it have so far failed. CREDIT: Tarmo Tamming/Flickr

More deforestation

Environmentalists fear that deforestation, illegal occupation of public lands and the invasion of indigenous lands, which are already occurring along nearly 200 kilometers of the southern section, will spread along the entire highway and its surrounding areas.

This region close to Porto Velho is the area where deforestation in the Amazon has grown the most in recent years.

A usable BR-319 would spread environmental crimes, forest fires and violence generated by land disputes in the middle section of the highway, activists warn.

In fact, 80 percent of Amazon deforestation occurs along the highways that are the arteries leading to the settlement of the rainforest, along with smaller roads branching off from the highways, environmentalists say.

Such effects are already well-known along other Amazonian highways in areas that are more populated and deforested than the territory between Manaus and Porto Velho, bathed by the Madeira and Purus rivers, two of the major tributaries of the Amazon, both of which have their headwaters in Peru. The Madeira basin also extends through much of central and northern Bolivia.

A stretch of the BR-319 highway with an ironic sign pointing to the nearby town of Realidade (Reality). The 885-kilometer road that runs between the Amazonian Madeira and Purus rivers requires high maintenance costs due to frequent flooding, since most of it is located on land that floods in the rainy season. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo/Amazonia Real

Doubtful economic feasibility

BR-319 faces another uncertainty, which is economic viability. It crosses what is at least for now a sparsely populated area, except for Manaus. The cost of repaving is not small, as the effort includes many bridges and earthworks to stabilize land that floods during the rainy season along many stretches, even though the road is located on higher ground between the Madeira and Purus rivers.

The highway also needs continuous upkeep, as is already the case in the stretch near Manaus, where the necessary repairs have not yet been completed after flooding caused by heavy rains that lasted from October 2021 until well into this year, Durigan pointed out.

Even so, the demand for the repaving of the central section of the highway is very popular, enjoying almost consensus support, the activist acknowledged. The argument in favor of the road is that Manaus is isolated by land, and depends on air or river transport to connect with the rest of Brazil and to be able to export its industrial production.

Since the 1960s, Manaus has had an industrial park and a free trade zone, supported by large subsidies that are regularly extended and will remain in force at least until 2073. These benefits shore up the electronics, motorcycle and beverage industries in the city, despite its remote location and distance from the main domestic markets.

In addition to a reduction in the city’s isolation, the population of Manaus hopes to see a drop in food prices, thanks to a workable road that would allow better access to products from Rondônia, an Amazonian state where agriculture and cattle raising have been developed.

But the beneficial effect of agriculture 900 kilometers away is doubtful. Other Amazonian cities, such as Belém, capital of the eastern Amazon jungle state of Pará, also pay dearly for their food, particularly fresh produce, because they have not developed horticulture.

New anti-Amazon wave

Along with the repaving of BR-319, Brazil’s Amazon rainforest faces other threats from infrastructure projects.

Another resurrected plan is a road through a conserved forest area on the border between Brazil and Peru. It would cross the biodiversity-rich Serra do Divisor National Park.

This plan also looks unfeasible because of its questionable economic viability and due to the severe environmental restrictions it would face.

Three railways are also planned for exports from Mato Grosso, the southeastern Amazonian state that is Brazil’s largest producer of soybeans, corn and cotton, and small and medium-sized hydroelectric plants are projected, especially in the states of Rondônia and Roraima, the latter on the border with Venezuela.

In addition to resistance from environmentalists and indigenous peoples, these projects now face a new stumbling block, or a new counter-argument: climate change, said Sergio Guimarães, coordinator of the Infrastructure Working Group, a network of 47 social organizations.

This is a variable that requires at least a review of all these projects, he told IPS by telephone from Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso.

Women join the struggle to board a bus near Hyderabad in India. Travelling by public transport presents a constant danger to women. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Feb 28 2014 (IPS)

It was 8.45 pm, and a 22-year-old woman was looking for a cab to go home after a trip to a city mall in India’s Hyderabad city. A cab arrived, and the unsuspecting computer engineer got in, little knowing she was stepping into a trap.

Within minutes the driver, accompanied by another man, locked the door and sped towards a forest on the outskirts of the city. The men tied her hands and raped her for four hours. Then they dropped her at her place and left after threatening to hurt her family if she reported the crime late last year.“Our study shows that women do not trust the police well enough to call for help."

Nearly 25,000 rapes took place in India in 2012, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. About half of these sexual assaults took place in buses, taxis and three-wheeler autorickshaws. A month before the engineer was raped in Hyderabad, a court had sentenced four men to death for raping and murdering a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi, on Dec. 16, 2012.

A judicial committee assigned to recommend ways to curb violence against women in India suggested improvements in public transport vehicles after the Delhi incident.

Thirteen months and many more rapes later, the Indian government devised a plan in January to implement some of those recommendations. With an initial fund of 15 million dollars, the plan includes installing GPS trackers, closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras and emergency phone call facilities in all public transport vehicles in 32 cities that have a population of one million or more.

According to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), the government proposes to “establish a unified system at the national level and state level in 32 cities of the country with a population of one million or more, over a period of two years.” The plan has been “formulated with the purpose of improving safety and protection of women from violence by using information technology.”

The government move is seen by many as a constructive step.

“This could be the first step towards making roads more secure for women,” Kirthi Jayakumar, a Chennai-based lawyer and founder of Red Elephant, a non-profit organisation raising awareness against gender violence, tells IPS. “It will benefit women in two ways – making their spaces safer and also making more jobs available for women – as surveillance will require a workforce in its own right.”

Jayakumar suggests that the government must create a strong workforce studying video feeds from these cameras.

Defunct surveillance gadgets and poor police vigilance has always been a security concern in India – one reason why some women’s rights activists are sceptical about the road safety scheme.

Rapid population growth and expansion of cities pose a big obstacle to the success of any vigilance and surveillance mechanism, says A.L. Sharada, programme director at Population First, one of the main partners of the United Nations Population Fund in India. Unless the government regulates urban development, violence against women on roads is unlikely to come down, she says.

“Road safety is not about making a few vehicles smart,” Sharada tells IPS. “It’s about making roads safe for women to go out at any time of day or night with confidence. To do that we need better governance, better policing and also a good community-based support system for women. Without these, you can’t change the scenario.”

Sharada cites the example of Mumbai, that has seen a spate of sexual assaults against women on the road of late. “The government has installed CCTVs at most crossroads. But most of these cameras are either defunct or of poor quality. Also, the police patrolling is so inadequate that women are molested and attacked even in broad daylight. Where is the mechanism to ensure that the gadgets are in working condition?”

Some also point to a “gaping hole” in the road safety plan such as the exclusion of trains, used by millions of women every month. There are widespread reports of women being molested, raped and even murdered on trains.

A recent victim was a 23-year-old engineer from Machlipatnam, a city 340 km from Hyderabad. On Jan. 16 her body was found by a road outside Mumbai where she worked for a leading software firm. She had reportedly boarded a train from Hyderabad to Mumbai 12 days earlier.

“Whether in city trains or metros, there are so many instances of horrific violence against women,” says Sandhya Pushppandit, a documentary filmmaker and activist at Akshara, a Mumbai-based NGO. In 2008, Akshara had co-launched India’s first emergency helpline for victims of gender violence aiming to provide an ambulance within 10 minutes of a call.

“But our trains have no helplines and emergency call buttons. One can pull a chain and bring the train to a halt, but this in itself doesn’t guarantee either the victim’s safety or the arrest of the criminal. Besides, in a small public transport vehicle like the auto-rickshaw, the emergency call button might well be deactivated by the rapist,” Pushppandit tells IPS.

One solution, says Anu Maheshwari of Young Leaders Think Tank, a New Delhi-based youth policy research group, is to address the factors that trigger fear among women on the move.

Maheshwari shares some insights from a recent survey that the think tank undertook in 18 Indian states: “From the data we collected, 90 percent of sexual assaults on public transport happen in poorly lit areas. In most cases, the driver of the public transport vehicle violates traffic rules such as jumping the signal or allowing more passengers than the law permits.

“Our study shows that women do not trust the police well enough to call for help. So improving road infrastructure, strict implementation of traffic laws, trust building and sensitisation of the police force have to be an integral part of any road safety scheme.”

But, says Sharada, while laws can only lay down rules, they can’t change mindsets. “To achieve the latter should be a matter of immediate concern for our thinkers.”

Aerial view of the Machín volcano. Credit: Servicio Geológico Colombiano/Observatorio de Manizales

By Constanza Vieira
FINCA GALICIA, Cordillera Central, Colombia , Oct 26 2013 (IPS)

A new system of tunnels at the Alto de La Línea mountain pass in Colombia’s central Cordillera mountain range will open up a key logistics route for this country and neighbouring Venezuela. But it could be overcome by disaster if the Machín volcano erupts.

The complex engineering feat includes two main one-way tunnels, 8.8 and 8.6 km long, as well as 21 short tunnels and 29 viaducts that will total 6.8 km in length.

The first of the main tunnels, which will be the longest road tunnel in Latin America, is to be completed by mid-2014. The firms that will build the second tunnel have not yet been selected.

Danger: volcano ahead

But in the department (province) of Tolima, the road passes six km from an unassuming hill which is actually the Machín volcano, one of Colombia’s most dangerous volcanoes, which has erupted six or seven times in the past 10,000 years. The most recent eruption occurred around 800 years ago.

“The most explosive volcanoes remain quiet for long periods of time,” said Marta Calvache, director of the Colombian Geological Service (SGC).

The SGC – formerly Ingeominas – drew up the first hazards map for the Machín volcano in 1998, which it amplified in 1999, 2000 and 2003.

The map recommends that the hazards posed by the volcano be taken into account in decision-making on “strategic medium and long-term plans for routes, especially roads.”

The La Línea tunnel and the Machín volcano are 15 km apart as the crow flies. If the volcano erupts, “the tunnel will be left without a road,” Calvache told IPS.

More than 100 monitoring stations keep an eye on the volcano 24/7. In 2008, authorities declared a yellow alert, which is still in place. (Green is for normal, yellow for alert, and red for warning and evacuation.)

Even the smallest eruption by Machín would be larger than the eruption of the Ruiz volcano, 45 km to the northeast, which in November 1985 spewed out 0.3 cubic km (km3) of lahar – mudflow or debris flow – which destroyed the town of Armero, killing 22,000 of its 28,000 inhabitants and leaving over 5,000 injured.

“Machín’s normal eruptions can cover several cubic kilometres. And the big ones have been approximately 20 km3,” Calvache said.

If the next one is big, “it will affect the entire central area of the country,” including parts of the provinces of Tolima, Quindío, Valle del Cauca and Cundinamarca that are home to nearly one million people combined, the geologist warned.

The Machín volcano’s eruptions “produce major pyroclastic flows (a fast-moving current of hot gas and rock). No one survives a pyroclastic flow, and the basin would be completely changed,” Calvache said.

“That change, in human terms, would be forever. It would be human beings who would have to adapt,” she said.

“The volcano has been changing,” she added. “What we don’t know is whether that change is headed towards an eruption or if it is simply being unruly and will go back to being calm again for many years.”

The authorities are apparently betting on the latter.

In the environmental impact assessment for the tunnel, “Machín isn’t mentioned as a risk factor,” environmentalist Néstor Jaime Ocampo, of the Cosmos Ecological Foundation based in Armenia, the capital of Quindío, told IPS.

One of the 29 viaducts that form part of the project to upgrade the La Línea highway and mountain pass. Constanza Vieira/IPS

Key route

The government of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) declared the La Línea route “strategic” in 2005.

La Línea is essential for trade between Cúcuta, the main city on the border with Venezuela, in the northeast, and Colombia’s only Pacific Ocean port, Buenaventura, in the west.

The road runs through the wealthiest part of the country, the central highlands, where Bogotá is located.

“All of the freight that reaches Bogotá from the Pacific comes through here,” Luis Orlando Muñoz, the head of the Colombian Society of Engineers (SCI), told IPS. “Thousands of tonnes of imports and exports are transported daily. This is the country’s spinal column, when it comes to roads.”

Ocampo, the environmentalist, said “What is being built is a modern road corridor between Caracas and Buenaventura.” In other words, Venezuela’s outlet to the Pacific.

The corridor connects the Gulf of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea with Ecuador on the Pacific, and it forms part of the plans outlined by the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA).

Stressful driving

Like almost all roads in Colombia, the one joining Cúcuta and Buenaventura has just two lanes along most of its 1,020 km.

As it climbs into the central Cordillera range – the highest of the three branches of the Andes in Colombia – the road switchbacks through a stunning landscape of cloud forest, Quindio Wax Palm (Ceroxylon quindiuense), and the royal purple flowers of the Glory Bush (Tibouchina lepidota), and past paddocks and cliffs.

Truckers treat the La Línea route with respect. Because of the frequent fog, steep inclines of up to 18 percent, and tight curves, the average speed is just 18 km an hour. It took IPS six hours to drive the 38 km between Ibagué and this mountain pass.

The need to control traffic on this narrow, busy road and the extreme poverty in the area have given rise to a strange occupation: human stoplights – men and women dressed in rags who use flags, flashlights and whistles to warn drivers that a semi-trailer truck is coming in the other direction, just around the next curve.

It is impossible for these huge trucks to avoid invading the other lane when taking a curve on the La Línea road. Drivers thank the human stoplights by tossing them a few coins.

The tunnel will ease traffic by cutting the distance by 10 km and saving drivers an 840-metre climb, which will reduce the average time it takes to drive across the Alto de La Línea pass by 87 percent for truck drivers (to 80 minutes) and by 72 percent for cars (to 30 minutes).

The average speed should increase to 60 km an hour, and accidents should be reduced by 75 percent, according to the Colombian Infrastructure Chamber.

Logistics and planning delays

Nearly 80 percent of Colombia’s domestic cargo is transported by road, according to the transport ministry.

But the country’s road infrastructure “is lagging by at least 30 years,” Diana Espinosa, the president of SCI – the engineers association – told IPS.

She attributed that to a lack of adequate state policies and to “the dedication of funds to financing the war [the nearly half-century armed conflict against left-wing guerrillas], which is causing us a huge lag in infrastructure.”

In the last decade, road freight traffic has increased multifold, reflecting the growth in foreign trade, especially imports.

The volume of imports is three times that of exports, according to the National Council on Economic and Social Policy, the national planning authority.

For that reason, the first main tunnel will serve traffic from Buenaventura to Bogotá.

Ignoring the risk

“People prefer the known risk to unknown solutions,” expert on natural disasters Gustavo Wilches-Chaux told IPS to explain why, despite the tragedy in Armero, no one is considering relocating Cajamarca, population 10,000 – the town that is closest to the Machín volcano.

To the contrary, the South Africa-based firm AngloGold Ashanti is moving forward with the massive La Colosa open-pit mine between Cajamarca and La Línea.

Ocampo said that “By pursuing economic activities in that area, like the La Colosa mine, we are inviting tens of thousands more people to live in an area of hazardous volcanic activity.”

“A blockage of the highway lasting just a few months would be a catastrophe – the country’s foreign trade would practically collapse,” the environmentalist said.

“This is not about our comfort, so our drive from Armenia to Ibagué will be 25 minutes shorter. This is for the comfort of the multinational companies. And it will be us who will pay a steep toll for going through that tunnel.”

Trucks bogged down by road repairs in the state of Mato Grosso. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

Edson Godinho, a truck driver with 35 years’ experience, was lucky this time. When he reached the southeastern port of Santos in early April, the line of waiting trucks was much shorter than it had been earlier, so he only had to wait 12 hours to unload his soybeans.

In previous weeks, many other truck drivers had had to wait more than 24 hours for access to unloading facilities in this port, where the majority of Brazilian agricultural exports are shipped. For several days the line of trucks was over 20 kilometres long.

Ports are the bottleneck that contributes most to the “logistics blackout” – an inability to cope with increased traffic – predicted for this year of record agricultural production and exports, according to Marcos Jank, a professor at the University of São Paulo who is an expert in this sector.

Grain production has more than doubled in Brazil since 1990, without improvement in agricultural logistics. Forecasts indicate that soybean and maize exports will grow 30 percent this year compared to 2012, reaching 41 and 25 million tonnes, respectively, and out-producing the United States.

Soybean output will amount to 84 million tonnes this year, according to Agroconsult, a consultancy.

Brazil’s overtaking the U.S. is partly due to drought in the United States, but also reflects a marked expansion of soybean cultivation, including in the semiarid Northeast.

The rise in exports and heavy rains in January slowed shipments of maize, which accumulated in a backlog that affected soybean exports, blocking the ports of Santos and nearby Paranaguá, the main ports in the country, in March. The bottleneck will be felt again with sugarcane exports beginning this month, and with the new maize crop in July, Jank said.

The chaos is not new, but it is getting worse. A bill to reform port activity regulations has been introduced by the government of President Dilma Rousseff, but congressional approval is uncertain, as more than 600 proposed amendments have been tabled.

Large investments are also needed. “A definitive solution will take 10 years,” Jank said. “We have 21st century agriculture and 19th century logistics,” he told IPS.

Speedy relief from the obstacles, he said, will require the opening of waterways, expansion of railroads, paving of highways to the north, enlarging of river and sea ports in the north and expansion of storage facilities at sea terminals in the south.

Santos, in the state of São Paulo, is 2,000 kilometres away from the main soybean producing area in the centre-west state of Mato Grosso, yet it handles nearly 60 percent of exports of the crop, most of which is hauled in by truck.

Transporting each tonne of soybeans costs nearly 70 dollars more in Brazil than in the United States, analysts say, adding that this profit drain would cease if production were shipped from northern ports, which are closer to the crops and to the export markets.

The predominance of trucks, which handle 60 percent of freight in Brazil, also makes the logistics more expensive.

Godinho is one of almost 600,000 independent truckers on Brazil’s roads, many of which are potholed or unpaved. He usually hauls soybean and maize from an area near his home, in the city of Ituverava in São Paulo, to Santos, 480 kilometres further south, and carries fertilisers on the trip home.

Without a return cargo, it wouldn’t be worth his while, because the road tolls cost 580 reals (290 dollars), almost as much as the fuel used by his truck, which carries up to 32 tonnes, he told IPS after unloading the soy at the port. On the positive side, the São Paulo highways he drives on are in good condition.

“The tolls and the bandits” are a trucker’s worst enemies, he said, although he himself has not been robbed on the highway. “But many of my friends have,” said the 57-year-old, who reckons he has had “a good life,” but is glad his three children have chosen other trades.

Congested ports are the tip of the iceberg, but the long logistical chain has many other bottlenecks.

Volmar Michelon, the co-founder of Pedromar Transportes, a firm with 85 vehicles and a hundred employees, told IPS that his drivers “wait up to 48 hours to unload soybean” in Alto Araguaia, on the southeast border of Mato Grosso, on to freight cars that transport it 1,240 kilometres by rail to Santos.

The time lost because of “lack of infrastructure for unloading, and lack of freight cars,” means the company wastes the opportunity of three more standard trips by the same truck, he complained. When this happens, there are thousands of vehicles parked by the side of the road, acting as enforced “storage,” he said.

There is no shortage of trucks, as many analysts and the press claim, “but rather an excess,” as two or three vehicles are required to do the job of one because of the delays in loading and unloading and other obstacles, he said. Adding to their number without correcting the hurdles would definitely obstruct the highways, Michelon said.

Pedromar Transportes was founded in 1981 in the south of Brazil, and moved with agricultural development towards the centre-west. In 2001 the firm settled in Rondonópolis, a commercial and industrial city in the southeast of Mato Grosso.

The company’s trucks operate only within the state, which is the largest grain producer in the country.

Between 1950 and 1980, Brazilian governments built thousands of kilometres of roads, to serve agricultural development in the west and north of the country. This led to waves of migration, deforestation, malaria and land tenure conflicts.

But agribusiness, and especially the boom in soybean production, did not precisely follow the highways, and now requires a logistics infrastructure that would provide less costly access to its markets, especially export markets.

Lake Budi has already been affected by the construction of the bridge to Huapi Island. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
PUERTO SAAVEDRA, Chile, Dec 27 2012 (IPS)

For more than two decades, Mapuche indigenous people in the Chilean region of Araucanía have been fighting the construction of the Ruta Costera (Coastal Highway), a megaproject initially conceived during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) which has already caused significant archeological and cultural losses and damages.

The Coastal Highway is meant to connect one end of Chile’s long, narrow territory to the other, running north to south as close to the Pacific Ocean as possible. The completed highway would be more than 3,340 km long, of which more than 2,600 km have already been built.

This highway project has become one of the main challenges facing numerous successive governments in Chile, who have consistently come up against the opposition of native communities.

In the Araucanía region, 674 km south of Santiago, the Coastal Highway would encompass 41.6 km of the Puerto Saavedra-Toltén section, precisely where the Budi Indigenous Development Area is located.

The authorities maintain that the initiative will help to integrate isolated areas, decrease travel times and promote the development of new tourism destinations.

Studies by the Universidad de la Frontera note that the area is home to “a long cultural history and clear links to this history through archeological testaments and continued cultural practices, with a high prevalence of aspects that reflect the identity and world vision of the region.”

The ancestral inhabitants of the area are the Lafkenche, a branch of the Mapuche indigenous people whose name means “people of the sea”.

Leonardo Calfuneo is a Lafkenche “lonko” (chief) in the community of Konin Budi, made up of some 60 families.

“We are opposed to this megaproject because, for the Mapuche people, it will not bring progress or development, but rather the irreparable destruction of our culture,” he told Tierramérica*.

Calfuneo lives with his wife on a small parcel of land in a cozy wood house, where they offer the bitter herbal tea known as “mate” and “sopaipillas” (deep-fried flatbread) to their guests.

“We make a living from small-scale farming, we are peasants, we are a people with a centuries-old culture and we have always lived off of the land,” he said.
Calfuneo has personally confronted the advances made by the highway project, which is not being undertaken by a construction company, but rather by the Military Work Corps, a branch of the Chilean armed forces.

In March, the military corps and their machinery carried out work on his land without authorization, destroying hedges made up of medicinal plants as well as one of the community’s sacred religious sites.

“They are coming through here and destroying everything in their path to widen the road. We are not only losing our lands, but also medicinal plants and drainage areas,” he reported.

In his community, “each family has three, five or 10 hectares to live on,” a small area of land considering that only a few decades ago this entire area was made up by Mapuche communal lands.

Through Decree Law 2568, passed in 1979, the Pinochet dictatorship divided up these communal lands into individual properties. Many of these were acquired by private parties, largely companies in the tree plantation, energy and fish farming sectors.

Local authorities claim that the Coastal Highway will enhance interconnection along the coast and thus promote the economic development of the region.

“This is a project that has taken a long time to complete, and we would like to be able to overcome the obstacles it has faced,” Andrés Molina, the governor of Araucanía, told Tierramérica.

“We support this project for various reasons. But, in practice, we have not been able to conduct an assessment of the social and economic profitability of these roads,” he admitted.

Although the quality of roads in the area has improved, “now we are working towards a social profitability study in order to be able to move forward with paving. We won’t be able to do anything until we have internally conducted a social assessment that will make it possible for us to invest as a country,” he said.

Molina’s goal is to “move forward with this as soon as possible and hopefully get the project started by the end of 2013.”

These deadlines frighten Luis Aillapán, who is the “gempin” of the community of Konin Budi – the guardian of knowledge on the culture, religion and philosophy of the Mapuche people. For him, the construction of the highway represents “great suffering”.

“We are used to our natural surroundings, to walking a short distance to the sea and fishing for the resources we need,” he told Tierramérica.

Aillapán grows crops and raises a few animals. He and his family feed themselves with what the land and sea provide for them. From his house he looks out to the Pacific Ocean on one side, green fields on the other, and a few hills that form part of the coastal mountain range.

But on the edge of his lands, the military workers and their machinery are clearing the way for the highway.

“Some of our own people have turned against us, and during the night we hear gunshots that are meant to intimidate us,” he charged.

His wife, Catalina Marileo, and their four-year-old son were charged in 2002 with assaulting civil servants from the Ministry of Public Works who were carrying out feasibility studies for the project.

Later, Aillapán, his wife, his sister-in-law Margarita Marileo and Marileo’s husband were charged and tried under the country’s anti-terrorism law, which was passed during the dictatorship and is now used almost exclusively to penalize Mapuche resistance.

The municipality of Saavedra, covering some 401 sq km between the Pacific Ocean and Lake Budi, a saltwater lake, had a population of 13,481 in 2009. More than 80 percent of its inhabitants live in rural areas, and 73.2 percent identify themselves as Mapuche.

There are 3,295 people living in the Budi Indigenous Development Area, who make up 24.4 percent of the municipality’s total population. And on Huapi Island, located in Lake Budi, there are 43 communities inhabited by some 5,000 Mapuches.

A study by the Universidad de la Frontera commissioned by the government in 2001 reported that 45.2 percent of the population was in favor of the Coastal Highway while 52.9 percent opposed it.

The situation changed when the former mayor of Puerto Saavedra, Ricardo Tripainao, traveled around the communities to explain the benefits of the highway, such as the higher prices they could charge for their products and the millions that the government would pay them for expropriating their lands.

Tierramérica observed that today, many people are angered over the government’s failure to comply with these payments and by the increase in the width of the land to be expropriated, which was initially 13 meters, but in many parts has reached 20 or even 25 meters.

But among the inhabitants of the municipal capital of Puerto Saavedra, an urban area with numerous tourist attractions, feelings towards the highway are favorable, since it will attract more visitors and reduce the town’s isolation.

The Military Work Corps camp in charge of the highway construction is moving to one of the shores of Lake Budi, a cultural heritage protected area.

Governor Molina says that there are “plans” for consultation with the indigenous communities, as established by International Labour Organization Convention 169, since “the idea is for the project to be carried out on a participatory basis.”

Convention 169, which was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in Chile in 2009, establishes guarantees for indigenous communities, and in particular the right to be consulted on activities or projects in their territories.

However, said Molina, “We are not going to carry out consultations until the project has been fully approved.”

* This story was originally published 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, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

The Roseau River runs through the centre of Roseau. Once a favourite diving spot it has been reduced to a mere spring no longer suitable for swimming. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Dec 17 2012 (IPS)

Eighty-year-old Rupert Lawrence has been living in the Dominica capital, Roseau, for nearly 60 years. Like visitors to the island, he too is fascinated by the fact that the town square has a river running right through its centre.

Sitting on his veranda on River Street overlooking the Roseau River, Lawrence recalled the words of many visitors who would remark that until then, they had never seen a river in the centre of town. But over the years, Lawrence has witnessed the transformation of the Roseau River from a deep diving spot attracting people from all over the island to a mere spring no longer suitable for swimming.

To put it bluntly, in the words of Bernard Wiltshire, an attorney who is president and founder of Waitkbuli Ecological Foundation (WEF), the Roseau River is drying up, like all the others on the island.

“They’ve been drying up because people have been using land without concern for the rivers,” he said. “That Roseau River, you could jump from the bridge into the river; head dive into the river. I remember in 1980 we could sit on the wall and dangle our feet in the water.”

Thirty years later, “the river has lost far more than two-thirds of its volume of water, and this pattern is repeated throughout the island,” Wiltshire added. He lamented that the Layou River, about seven miles north of the capital, which used to be the largest river in the country, is now “only a sand bank”.

Former national disaster coordinator Cecil Shillingford told IPS that local environmentalists have long expressed concern that the island’s rivers are drying up. He believed that development had allowed river banks to become heavily habitable.

“A lot of people pay no regard to maintaining a sort of a buffer zone along the banks of the river so they just cut everything down or even sometime rear animals on the river banks that would certainly destroy all the foliage and they would cut the trees for agricultural pursuits,” said Shillingford, who is also a disaster risk management consultant.

He said that unless there is “a radical shift in our approach to these things…the next generation might not have a Roseau River or a Grand Bay River.” He added, “A lot of policies in terms of land use planning and buffer zones and things of that nature need to be put in almost immediately. We are already late.”

Other danger zones

“In terms of coastal residences we need to start building a little further away, so there should be another buffer zone in terms of coastal communities,” Shillingford told IPS.

Wiltshire said such developmental and agricultural activities have a big part to play in climate change, and Dominica is seeing its effects. “It’s largely from the big industrial countries which seem to put their greed before the need of everyone else,” he said.

Shillingford agrees that the effects of climate change on Dominica are clear. “In recent times we have seen lots more rain…[and] more intense rain. Before, you could have a day of rainfall and you would not see any major flash flooding or even flooding in general, but now if you have a day of rain it is so intense that you could have flooding.”

“We have seen an increase in storms as well; the intensity has increased and we are certainly seeing some effects in terms of sea level rise,” Shillingford added. He noted that “before, the sea would be further away from the community”. Now, however, “It’s coming up to the community”.

In Dominica, he explained, “most of the habitation is on the coastal areas, and the western side…is much lower at sea level than the eastern side,” he added.

Combating potential consequences

One of Dominica’s efforts to combat these issues is the recently formulated Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient Development Strategy, which identifies areas that climate change is most likely to affect – namely agriculture, fisheries and ecotourism.

Shillingford noted that coastal infrastructure always takes a heavy beating during a storm. The government has to spend millions of dollars reconstructing roads after every storm. He said although massive walls are being built with government funding along the coast in many villages to combat the effects of climate change, they do not provide complete protection.

Even with a massive wall along the Dame Eugenia Charles Boulevard in the capital, the whole road was torn apart as a result of Hurricane Lenny in 1999. Nevertheless, without the wall, Shillingford said, an entire section of the capital would have been devastated.

“We had at least four or five feet of water on the road…so not even the sea walls are foolproof for the kind of effects we can have from major storm surges,” Shillingford said. He is even more concerned about tsunamis, which he said “would be the end of everybody on the west coast” of the island. “You would have half of Dominica gone.”