ALAN CLENDENNING RIO DE JANEIRO The Brazilian government has given a green light to a massive Amazon dam project intended to prevent possible energy shortages, but also criticised as a potential environmental disaster.
ALAN CLENDENNING
RIO DE JANEIRO
The Brazilian government has given a green light to a massive Amazon dam project intended to prevent possible energy shortages, but also criticised as a potential environmental disaster.
The approval from Brazil's environmental protection agency, Ibama, opens the door to bidding on the construction of multiple dams that would generate electricity and permit barges to navigate 2600 miles to upstream tributaries in Peru and Bolivia.
Other permits must still be obtained before the estimated £5bn-£7.4bn project can get under way, but the decision was a key step.
The government hopes to complete the Santo Antonio and Jirau dams on the Madeira River, a major Amazon tributary, by 2012. They are expected to produce 8% of the electricity demand in Latin America's largest nation.
"The government's decision is to build a model Brazilian hydroelectric project from scratch," said acting Energy Minister Nelson Hubner.
However, Amazon experts warn that by flooding hundreds of square miles of one of the Amazon's most pristine areas, the dams will destroy tracts of the rain forest and its wildlife.
Scientists with the National Institute for Amazon Research have said the area to be flooded by the Jirau could be nearly twice the planned 204 square miles and extend beyond Brazilian territory, prompting protests from the government of neighbouring Bolivia.
The dams also could lead to the extinction of ecologically and economically important fish species, environmentalists say.
Other potential problems include the increase of mosquitoes carrying malaria, the advance of soy plantations into the rain forest and facilitating the movement of mercury from gold mining into the food supply.
Ibama imposed more than 30 restrictions on the dam project to reduce its environmental impact. "The most complex issues will be monitored step-by-step during the process," said Ibama president Bazileu Margarido.
The Amazon River basin covers 60% of Brazil. Although the government says deforestation has fallen to its lowest rate since 1991, experts say as much as one-fifth of the rain forest's 1.6 million square miles has been destroyed by development, logging and farming.
In another environmentally sensitive development, Canada has announced plans to increase its Arctic military presence in an effort to assert sovereignty over the Northwest Passage - a potentially oil-rich region the United States claims is international territory.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said six to eight patrol ships will guard what he says are Canadian waters. A deep water port will also be built in the region, which the US Geological Survey estimates has up to one-quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it," he said.
US Ambassador David Wilkins has claimed the Northwest Passage as "neutral waters".-AP
