Hidrovia CBC Canada radio

From amb.pantanal May 2, 1996

From: Glen Switkes <glen@irn.org>

The following is a transcript of a report by Bob Carty, CBC Canada Radio on the Paraguay-Parana Hidrovia. The report, originally broadcast on CBC Sunday Morning, March 3, 1996, will be repeated this week on National Public Radio's Living on Earth.

THE WATERWAY AND THE WETLANDS ECO-CONFLICT IN SOUTH AMERICA

by Bob Carty, ex Corumbaa, Brazil

SFX - newscast (0:25 ... FADE AT "And breaks out...")

INTRO: A couple of summers ago the Mississippi overflowed its banks and left $12 billion dollars worth of damage. The experts said it was the consequence of changing the river's course and flow for the benefit of commerce. Now, South America may be heading for the same tragic lesson. The governments of five countries are planning to build a seaway from Buenos Aires, up the Parana (Par-a-NA) and Paraguay (PAR-a-guay) Rivers into the heart of Brazil. But the waterway could endanger the biggest fresh-water wetlands in the world - the Pantanal - a swamp, if you wish, about half the size of California (or ... almost twice the size of Lake Superior). We sent Bob Carty to find out more about the conflict between the waterway and the wetlands. t more about the BOB8 - music + water lapping CLIP #1: (Portuguese + v/o) The river for us is our mother - - our life -- because without its water we will die. So the river is our mother. The river is sacred for us. RUNS 0:15

SFX REEL - UP WITH WATER AND MUSIC

CLIP #2: (V/O) This project of the waterway - to deepen the river and make the river straight - God will be very sad with the people who are doing this. God creates everything right and when man steps in, everything he does is wrong. My name is Severro. I am a Guato" chief. I live on the Paraguay River in the Pantanal. RUNS : 0:30

BOB9 - BIRDIES (LOUD!!!) SCRIPT: The Pantanal is an endless everglades -- brown waters bubbling through a maze of channels -- alligators slithering down the banks -- jaberroo storks and macaws flitting from tree to tree - and more mosquitos per square inch, it seems, than anywhere else on earth. For Reinaldo Lorival, a biologist who works in the Pantanal, this is one of the planet's ecological treasures.

CLIP #3: "It's a kind of paradise. It's the highest wildlife density in the Americas. I was walking at night with a cap lamp lighting all the places, and counting the animals. And I found a large pond with some caimans around. And I put the light there and I saw two pairs of eyes, and I thought it was a crab eating fox. I took notes. And then I found a couple of pumas, cougars around the bay, trying to prey the animals inside water. And I said, holy cow, they pay me to see that - laugh - it was amazing, fantastic. RUNS 0:47 see that - laugh - it was amazing, fantastic. BOB 9 - birdies SCRIPT: But the Pantanal wetlands are not so fantastic to others.

BOB 3 - iron ore loading SCRIPT: In the middle of the wetlands, a conveyor belt feeds a stream of iron ore into a barge. Watching the work, from the deck of a 4,000 horse-power tug boat, is the captain.

CLIP: My name is Rick Bateman 0:16 ... soya bean to start." BOB 3 - iron ore ... UP... SCRIPT: Rick Bateman usually runs barges up and down the Mississippi. His company sent him here because there's a growing amount of cargo to move -- this part of South America boasts some of world's largest iron ore and manganese deposits, huge soya bean plantations and immense cattle ranches. But getting products to market is no easy task. To the west are the Andes mountains. To the north, the Amazon rainforest. And to the south, it's 2,000 miles down the Paraguay and Parana rivers to the Atlantic Ocean. That's where Captain Bateman is headed - on a trail run, to see how good these rivers are as tug-boat highways. CLIP: The draft from this barge is eleven feet, but we'll never load it to 11 feet. Actually we cannot even load to nine foot - there's not enough river for a nine foot draft right now. The river's not well-marked, there are few buoys, many shoals, some of them rock shoals. AND HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO HAUL THIS DOWN RIVER? Oh, forever (LAUGH). They're telling me it'll take two weeks just to get to Asuncion which should be, if I were on my own river, a four day trip. The river lacks development. 0:37 river, a four BOB 3 - fade out IRON ORE SCRIPT: But development is on its way. Five governments in this region - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, plus two landlocked nations, Paraguay, and Bolivia - are committed to building an inland seaway or HIDROVIA, the Portuguese and Spanish word for Waterway. One of the project's biggest boosters is Juan Carlos Wasmosy, the President of Paraguay.

CLIP #6: (Wasmosy v/o) We have virgin land, very cheap labour, and the cheapest electricity in the world. But as a land-locked country, we have the problem of transportation, the cost of freight. So we need what I would call a transportation backbone - which is the Hidrovia. We must also help Bolivia get an outlet to the sea. This project if of vital importance so that our products are competitive. (fade down on last spanish -- to SFX) BOB 1 - birdies SCRIPT: President Wasmosy wants to make the Parana and Paraguay Rivers navigable for at least 80% of the year. That could take a decade and cost one-to-three billion dollars. International agencies have given for $11 million for engineering studies and an environmental impact assessment. Both are near completion. The go-ahead for stage one is expected next month. And that has Reinaldo Lorival, the biologist who counts animals at nighttime in the Pantanal, very worried. Mr Lorival is the Pantanal representative for Conservation International, one of a handful of international groups concerned about the ecological impact of the waterway. He explains that the project would dredge, dyke and straighten 2000 miles of meanandering river. It would also require the removal of several rock outcroppings in the river. But the rock outcroppings act as a natural dams keeping the water in the Pantanal wetlands. Blowing them up would uncork this swampy great lake of fresh water - and Reinaldo Lorival says that could be disastrous.

CLIP #7: The water will flow more quickly. The water usually takes six months, from beginning of Pantanal to the south. If you canalize, the water can go in 2 months. They will drain the water more quickly from the flood plain. So the water level will be lower and lower and lower. You are not going to have flood in the system. The birds depend on flood, the fish depend on flood, so you're going to have less water to re-fuel the river during the dry season. The system will be changed totally. RUNS 0:38e dry season. The BOB 6 - birdies SCRIPT: Reinaldo Lorival worries that what happened in the Florida everglades could happen here. A large part of the Pantanal could dry up, forever changing the area's vegetation, its wildlife, even its climate. And that's not all.

BOB 4 - music in slum in Asuncion SCRIPT: When the Paraguay River flows south, it leaves the wetlands, and 600 miles downstream it winds around Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay. Here, radio's blare in the muddy streets of a slum on the flood plain below the city. These people could be some of the most affected by the building of the Hidrovia, a project some of them call "hell's highway". Raul Gauto is an environmentalist with the Moises Bertoni Foundation here in Asuncion. He points out that the Pantanal acts as a gigantic sponge that absorbs the water of the rainy season and lets it out slowly the rest of the year. But the waterway could destroy the sponge. And while that would take away the flooding the wetlands need, it would deliver those high waters here. Raul Gauto:

CLIP #8: The runoff is going to be so fast that we're going to have more floods downstream. And this is something we have seen already - like in the Mississippi - it was changed, "managed" as we so arrogantly say. The losses could be a lot greater if we change the hydrology of the river that much. We could be affecting our sources of water, transportation, and considering that millions of people live along the waterway, that may be really costly. RUNS 0:34ve along the waterway, that may be really costly. BOB 7 - street SCRIPT: Critics like Raul Gauto say that governments aren't listening to their concerns perhaps because they are backed by big construction companies - companies with the most to gain from a billion dollar project. In fact, Paraguay's President Wasmosy is currently caught up in a controversy over whether his construction company improperly made millions of dollars on a giant hydro electric project. President Wasmosy insists that the economic benefits of the waterway outweigh the ecological worries.

CLIP #9: I think this project will be extremely profitable. (with a little chuckle). If I had enough money I would build it myself - and charge tolls, run it as a concession. (PAUSE) We are zealous guardians of our own ecology. Other continents have totally exploited, without mercy, what nature has given them. And now they urge us to restrict our development. I am confident we can take care of the ecological concerns. And I don't think they should put up more obstacles to our underdevelopment. RUNS 0:33 BOB 5 - drums and sticks at Indian dance SCRIPT: As much as President Wasmosy scorches ecological critics from abroad, he and other government leaders face growing opposition at home. This is a gathering of six native groups in the Brazilian Pantanal. They are part of a coalition of 300 organizations, most of them local, that are raising objections to the Waterway project. Natives and community groups have been told by the waterway's proponents that they shouldn't worry. Severro, the Guato" Indian chief, says no one has asked him for his opinion.

CLIP #10: (Severro V/O) I am completely against the project. It will be the destruction of our people. You see - we were invaded 500 years ago. They came with good manners, giving us little things to please us like candies, tobacco. They were pleasing us, but also cheating us. So today we do not believe what they say. If they straighten the river, the water will no longer come to us. The land will dry out. The fish will be gone, the animals ... everything. RUNS 0:38

(KEEP DRUMMING IN BG ... THEN SEGUE TO ... )he animals ... BOB 7 - street SCRIPT: This growing opposition to the Waterway has already had an impact. The governments that want to build the waterway - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia - now sound like they're back-tracking on the originally-grandiose plan to radically change the river. Jesus Gonzalez is the Executive-Secretary of the Inter- governmental Committee on the Hidrovia. And these days, in interviews with the press, he tries to come across as green as possible. This isn't a megaproject, he says. It won't cost one- to-three billion -- maybe only $700 million, and mostly from private investors. The project will "improve" the river, not change it. Jes#s Gonzalez says the suspicions held by environmentalists are understandable - but they are wrong.

CLIP #11: There is a lot of disinformation - and many people think we are doing this in a European way - making canals everywhere. But we are just studying how to make the river more navigable with just a little trimming of the rock outcroppings - just a little trimming. AND THE PROJECT WILL NOT INCREASE THE OUTFLOW OF WATER FROM THE PANTANAL? No, no, there are no big construction works that would do that - we are avoiding that.

*** EDIT = THIS IS ONE CLIP ON DCART -- add a little delay

CLIP: They are trying to look much more moderate now with the Hidrovia. They want to look as if they are really concerned with the environment. But I'm not sure if this is completely honest. RUNS 0:12

SCRIPT: Pablo Canevari is a biologist who works in Buenos Aires for Wetlands for the Americas. And he fears he's being conned. Mr Canevari points out that the different governments of the region are now saying very different things about the waterway. No one has a clear idea of what's really being proposed. It's like a shell game.

CLIP #12: You don't know if what they are saying is honest, if they are trying to look concerned with the environment but some things are going behind that you not aware - and they are starting to build part of the Hidrovia. And you are not aware. Argentina is dredging the Parana river from Santa Fe to south and they say they will dredge it all the way to Asuncion. In Paraguay they said they want to build a dam. This is part of Hidrovia or not? They are not going to build Hidrovia in one big step but they are doing it slowly. That's very possible. RUNS 0:34 are doing it SCRIPT: It's also possible that the Hidrovia is just a part of the picture. There's talk about other projects for the Pantanal area -- a gas pipeline from Bolivia to Brazil that would go right through the wetlands; the building of iron foundries on the Paraguay River. And earlier studies suggest that the Hidrovia would only be economically viable if soya bean production in the region doubles. For ecologists like Pablo Canevari, this means an entirely different development model for the Pantanal -- one thing could lead to another.

CLIP #13: Is as building a road - is what happened in the Amazon when they built the TransAmazonica. You first build a road, and people start coming and they open small roads to the side of the major road. come, more side roads, so all the area gets populated. It's not that in SA we have very organized way of doing things, so what follows is chaos, people disperse, build houses, clearing patches of forest to plant crops. So you cannot control what happens after you build this road. The waterway will function as that. RUNS 0:36s road. The waterway will function as that. BOB 9 - birdies and water SCRIPT: That's why some environmentalists are against any kind of waterway project. Others, however, believe the Hidrovia might be acceptable if it avoided high-impact construction and used shallow-draft barges instead of ocean-going ships. Critics of the waterway scheme insist they are not against development. They point out that eco-tourism could employ twice as many people as the waterway without hurting the wetlands. Reinaldo Lorival believes there are other options.

CLIP #14: You have also alternatives in terms of transport. You have the railway that is already built. You have to improve that railway system - and it's not being done by nobody. You have choices and economic alternatives in terms of transportation. Also you can use the river like it is. The wrong idea is that you have to change the river to the boats - no, you have to change the boats to the river. RUNS 0:30

BOB 3 - IRON ORE LOADING SCRIPT: On his tugboat on the Paraguay River, Rick Bateman watches the iron ore being loaded into his barges. Captain Bateman wants to help his company make money on this river. But he's also seen the good and bad of so-called river improvements on the Mississippi.

CLIP: (FADE UP) If it were up to me, I would try to do as little as possible. A 3000-km ship channel is ridiculous - it would be a tragedy of epic proportions for the Pantanal. I've been up this river twice now - beautiful, reminds me of my own Florida. I saw a sunset - sky seems softer here. It was the kind of sky that looked like you could just jump right up into - it went from violet to pink to blue ... and I just watched till out of sight.

BOB 3 - iron ore SCRIPT: Next month, governments are scheduled to give the green light for the first stage of the waterway's construction, with the go-ahead for the entire project expected by the end of the year. Environmentalists and native groups are anxiously waiting to see the specific design of the Hidrovia - to see just how great an impact it will have on the largest fresh-water wetlands in the world. For Living on Earth, I'm Bob Carty on the Paraguay River, in the Pantanal Wetlands, near Corumba , Brazil.

SFX - segue FROM IRON ORE -- to birdies and water BOB 9

"Environmentalists and native groups are anxiously waiting to see the specific design of the Hidrovia - to see just how great an impact it will have on the largest fresh-water wetlands in the world. For Living on Earth, I'm Bob Carty on the Paraguay River, in the Pantanal Wetlands, near Corumba , Brazil."