Mônica
de los Rios and Brent Millikan
“Large Infrastructure Projects, Conflicts over Natural Resources and Challenges
for Governance in the Western Amazon”
November
29, 2006
|
|
Brett
Millikan discusses large-scale infrastructure
projects and the changing debate over their impact
in the western Amazon on November 29. |
Learning
from the Past, Planning for the Future: “Development” in
the Amazon
By
Peter Dixon
In
the western Amazon, where the Madeira River flows through
Brazil , Bolivia and Peru , some of Latin America ’s
poorest populations live in proximity to some of its richest
resources. Long a site of both extreme poverty and ambitious
development projects, this region is one of 10 South American
hubs set to receive billions of dollars in infrastructure over
the next decade. And as development bank-funded state coalitions,
local civil society networks and transnational NGOs meet in
the area, they struggle over the course of the region’s
development, debating the place of knowledge and expertise
in the process.
Geographer
Brent Millikan and researcher Mônica
de los Rios addressed these challenges in their CLAS talk.
Today both are turning their attention toward the Initiative
for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America
(IIRSA), an Inter-America Development Bank (IADB)-funded project
that integrates the industrialization projects of 12 countries
into 10 regional hubs. Together these 10 hubs total $38 billion
in transportation, energy and communication investments.
Millikan
opened his talk by posing a number of important questions.
Broadly, he questioned the underlying interests and paradigms
motivating the IIRSA’s large-scale
infrastructure projects. More specifically, he asked, what
key challenges do state and civil society actors face in
implementing these projects and what lessons can be learned
from the past to mitigate their adverse social and environmental
impacts?
To
begin to answer these questions, Millikan provided a brief
history of the western Amazon and its place in Brazil ’s
industrial development over the last half-century. In the 1960s,
projects like Highway BR-364 in the state of Rondônia
symbolized the central government’s efforts to extend
its legitimacy under the Program of National Integration. During
the 1970s and 80s, these interests and paradigms shifted; private
development was encouraged with industries like logging leading
the way. This led to a surge in frontier settlement and a clash
with established forest populations such as rubber tappers.
Since the 1960s, infrastructure projects in the Amazon have
had an enormous impact on migration and occupation patterns,
with 75 percent of forest clearing occurring along highways.
Today,
development in the Amazon is heavily linked to international
markets and globalization, as agribusinesses seek land, energy
and transportation in order to expand their presence in foreign
markets. Development projects supporting export-oriented
agriculture include the damming of the Madeira River and
the paving of highways connecting the western Amazon to Lima ’s
international ports. These projects, as the IIRSA puts it,
will “improve
the competitiveness of the regional economy and its integration
into the global economy.” (note 1)
Yet, the IIRSA also stresses that its projects apply “multiple
dimensions of development, particularly social development,
competitiveness, modernization of the state, environmental
sustainability and respect for indigenous peoples and protected
areas.” (note 2)
Such
claims, of course, have been made in the past. Indeed, after
the World Bank became involved in the region in the 1980s,
it undertook a study of the environmental and social impacts
of some of the region’s large scale infrastructure projects.
But in the end, Millikan noted, the published report only reproduced “the
status quo.” The big questions for the IIRSA, then, are
how past problems like those encountered in Rondônia
can be avoided, particularly through the involvement of civil
society organizations (CSOs) and local populations. Indeed,
in Rondônia, CSOs organized around projects like BR-364
under the slogan, “Development! But not by any means!”
The
very definition of development, then, is at stake in this
remote sector of the Amazon where the Peruvian, Brazilian
and Bolivian states of Madre de Dios, Acre
and Pando (the “MAP” region) meet.
Mônica de los Rios underscored this point in her presentation,
which highlighted the MAP Initiative, a trinational network
of CSOs that has been organizing around the IIRSA in an effort
to promote its own perspectives on development and the role
of local knowledge and expertise.
 |
Mônica
de los Rios talks about some of the alternative
development strategies proposed for the tri-border
region of Bolivia, Peru and Brazil. |
A
founding member of the MAP Initiative, de los Rios began
her portion of the talk by stressing the potential costs
to the region of the IIRSA’s projects. Underscoring Millikan’s
point about the impact of infrastructure on migration and occupation
patterns, she noted that the number of cattle in the state
of Pando alone has soared along with the paving of highways,
increasing from 5,000 in the year 2000 to 55,000 in 2003. In
addition, as more people have moved to the region, the number
of forest-clearing fires has increased dramatically, a fact
readily apparent in the aerial photographs de los Rios showed
in her presentation.
Since
1999, MAP has attempted to organize around these issues to
provide those adversely affected by the development paradigms
of the IIRSA a voice in the process. In its first year, MAP
began as a conversation among a dozen or so interested academics,
activists and others. By 2004, over 1,200 people were in
attendance at the annual meeting. Today, MAP is a social
movement made up of a network of concerned individuals and
organizations. A variety of subgroups or “mini-MAPs” have sprung
up to work on specific themes such as education, health, fire,
etc., and a scientific committee was formed to conduct research
on the potential costs and benefits of various infrastructure
projects, such as the Inter-Oceanic Highway, which will connect
Brazil to global markets through Peru ’s Atlantic ports.
Thus,
MAP is very much oriented toward the production and use of
knowledge as a tool in the fight for social justice and equitable
development. De los Rios stressed that its broad range of
individuals and organizations are united by a belief in two
basic human rights: the right to knowledge and the right
to participation. Along these lines, the MAP’s Children’s
Forest Program, which offers lessons about the natural environment
to over 50 schools and 1,000 children, became an official policy
of the region in 2005.
But
as with Rondônia, CSOs in the MAP
region have faced significant challenges in making their
collective voices heard. Indeed, a recent experience recounted
by de los Rios underscores just how contested is the terrain
of development here. In 2005, a group of six international
NGOs including the World Wildlife Foundation and CARE arrived
in the region with $1.5 million from a Dutch foundation,
ready to reduce poverty and strengthen local actors. But
when MAP felt that instead of listening to local actors,
the NGOs were working with their own paradigms, it sent a
letter to the Netherlands asking for a reformulation of the
project. After receiving a less than satisfactory reply,
MAP withdrew from the project.
This
story demonstrates just how contested and fragile is the
course of development in the MAP region today — a
conclusion reached by both Millikan and de los Rios. And just
as Millikan noted the importance of learning from the past,
de los Rios stressed that patience and a long term vision of
the future are just as necessary. In a region that combines
three nationalities, two languages, a variety of cultures and
development players from around the world, building trust and
changing the rules both take time.
Mônica
de los Rios is a biologist and ecologist, a researcher
with the Parque Zoobotânico at the Federal
University of Acre and a founding member of the MAP Initiative.
Brent Millikan is a geographer who is currently working as
a consultant with the Ministry of the Environment and state
government of Acre in Brazil . This semester, both are visiting
scholars at CLAS and the Luce Project on Green Governance
coordinated by the Institute of International
Studies .
Peter
Dixon is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology
at UC Berkeley.
Note
1: From the Andean Development Corporation website (http://www.caf.com/view/index.asp?ms=11&pageMs=14448)
Note
2: From
IIRSA: Project Information Sheets (http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=834687)
Large
infrastructure projects in the western Amazon are being
debated in Brazil, in terms of changing development paradigms,
territorial planning, environmental justice and governance. Brent
Millikan and Mônica de los Rios will discuss case
studies from the state of Rondônia and the tri-border
region of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru, where large transportation
and hydroelectric projects are planned in conjunction with
IIRSA, a cooperative initiative among South American
governments supported by the Inter-American Development
Bank. One focus will be the MAP Initiative, a civil
society network linking academic institutions, NGOs and
social movements. MAP has played a major role in
stimulating discussion of alternative development strategies
for the tri-border region; however, major debates lay ahead,
with the paving of the Transoceânica Highway linking
Brazil to the Pacific Ocean in Peru, and a series of planned
hydroelectric projects on the Madeira River.
Mônica de los Rios is a biologist and ecologist, a researcher with the
Parque Zoobotânico at the Federal University of Acre and a founding member
of the MAP Initiative. Brent Millikan is a geographer that is currently working
as a consultant with the Ministry of the Environment and state government of
Acre in Brazil. Both are visiting scholars this semester at CLAS, as well
as with the Luce Project on Green Governance coordinated by the Institute of
International Studies.
- IIRSA (Iniciativa para la Integración
de la Infraestructura Regional Suramericana)
- MAP Initiative: map-amazonia.net
- CNN
article on planned hydroelectric development on the Madeira River
- Federal University of Acre
- Brazil ’s
Ministry of the Environment
- State
government of Acre
 |
The
two speakers talk with students and others
in attendance after their presentation. |
