Pearl of the Amazon about to change
Infrastructural projects will change one of the most biodiverse areas in the world
La Perla de la Amazonia: that’s what signboards say as a traveller enters Rurrenabaque by bus or plane. This vibrant Bolivian town at the edge of the Amazon Basin and in the foothills of the Andes is a potential paradise, for local people and tourists alike.
For decades the local people have been struggling to establish a profitable ecotourism-based economy. They have managed to do so in spite of substantial difficulties that had to be overcome.
Rurrenabaque is not the easiest place to visit. It requires a 20 hour spectacular and risky bus ride, or a 50 minute scenic flight from Bolivia’s capital city La Paz. Road connections with major cities like Trinidad and Riberalta are bad, flight connections are irregular. Rurrenabaque is a melting pot of native indigenous cultures like Moséten, Tsimane, Esse Ejja, Tacana as well as settlers from the Andes of Aymara and Quechua origin. Poverty and cultural differences have slowed down harmonious progress, but this situation is changing. The understanding is growing that cooperation will benefit all.
This area is considered to be one of the most biodiverse in the world. Well known is the immense National Park Madidi with the enormous variety of flora and fauna, its altitudinal and ecological gradients, and indigenous cultures. For instance, nearby are the Toromonas who have no contact with the outside world. The biosphere and indigenous territory Pílon Lajas is another area of biological and cultural importance. These areas are protected more by the natural barriers that include the Pilón Lajas and the Bala Mountain Chains.
Here lately the threats to biology and culture have mutated from damage done by small scale logging or hunting to large scale projects that threaten the integrity of the region. These assaults include construction of road corridors to Brazil and Perú and leasing of extensive lands in both protected areas for oil exploration. Recently the Bala dam project, rejected many years ago by the local communities because of the impacts on the environment and the people, is being promoted again by a government that at the international level is giving speeches about protecting the mother earth and “Vivir bien” (good living). It seems the Amazon basin is being seen as prime real estate for hydropower projects. Currently five nations (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) are planning over 146 big dams in the Amazon Basin. Some of these dams would flood pristine rainforests, others threaten indigenous people, and all would change the Amazonian ecosysteem. http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5778
These projects require big investments that Bolivia isn’t able to realize itself. Loans from international agencies are required to accomplish them. Instead of investing in promoting the established economic activities such as tourism, small scale agriculture and forests products, the improvement of clean drinking and waste disposal, Bolivia will become indebted to be mainly a raw material exporter and a transit country for products from economic powers such as Brazil, Chile or the growing Perú. In the process.
The Bolivian constitution and laws establish that local communities should be consulted when a project might affect them Thus the indigenous people from the lowlands are marching and protesting because this right is not being respected in the whole of Bolivia. Large areas in protected areas and indigenous territories have been granted for oil exploration/exploitation or mining without the agreement from the communities. http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2010/07/03/758310/evo-morales-no-consigue-frenar.html
An example of this was when a Bridge project was rejected by the town of Rurrenabaque in 2006 because the access to it affects not just the touristic center of the town but 10 education centers, 2 hospitals, the churches and more than 400 houses. The environmental license was illegally granted in 2009 without the agreement of the town.
Road option over the island.
Road option through the city.
This latter bridge project also affects the Municipal Reserve of the town at the hills that are the reservoir of potable water for the town and are a tourist attraction for visitors who want to climb to scenic overlooks. The inhabitants in Rurrenabaque simply don’t want a bridge in the location proposed by the Bolivian Road Administration (ABC), because it would destroy the town and kill it as a tourist attraction. The economic estimates of the Environmental Impact Study explain that there will be more than 1141 vehicles crossing the bridge per day and 258 of them will be large trucks that cross the center of the town, one block from the main square. By 2031 the study estimates 3278 vehicles crossing the bridge every day, 572 will be large trucks.
The other massive threat to Madidi and Pilón Lajas protected areas are the oil companies. The company Petroandina, composed by two state owned oil companies, the Bolivian YPFB and PDVSA from Venezuela, has the largest exploration grants (see map). Despite the Nationalization in the oil sector, contracts with Petrobras, Repsol and GTLI have been ratified.
Yet another future threat is the Bala Dam project that would flood 300.000 hectares of pristine forest. Despite of opposition and protests of the indigenous people that stopped the project in 2000, this project has been approved without any consultation of the affected people from the communities in the Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve-Indigenous territory and Madidi National Park. Dams impact river flows, changing ecosystems indefinitely; they may flood large areas forcing people and wildlife to move; and in the tropics they can also become massive source of greenhouse gases due to emissions of methane.
´Puerto´of Rurrenabaque.
Daily transport between Rurrenabaque and San Buena Ventura.
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Text and photography: © Amazon Fund
