Gore Urged to Stop Bolivia-Brazil Pipeline
10/7/99
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Title: Gore Urged to Stop Bolivia-Brazil Pipeline
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 7, 1999
WASHINGTON, (Oct. 7) IPS - Vice President Al Gore, a professed
environmentalist, is under pressure from environmental groups here to
block U.S. financing of a natural gas pipeline that would cut across
the forests of Bolivia and Brazil and the Pantanal watershed, the
world's largest wetland.
The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a taxpayer
funded investment insurance agency, currently is negotiating a $200
millio agreement with U.S. energy giant Enron International for
construction of he 630-km pipeline.
Starting in Ipias, Bolivia, the new project would branch off the
existing Bolivia-Brazil pipeline. It would run northeast through San
Matias to Cuiaba, a small city in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil,
where Enron is constructing a 480-megawatt, combined-cycle natural
gas power plant.
Shell International Gas Ltd. is partners with Enron in this project.
Environmentalists told Gore, who currently is campaigning for
president, that OPIC had approved building the pipeline straight
through the Chiquitano Tropical Forests and surrounding areas -- one
of the largest intact tropical forests.
"OPIC's environmental staff is unwilling to accept scientific
consensus and seems to be driven only towards furthering the
interests of their biggest business client, Enron," environmental
organizations -- including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace
International and Amazon -- wrote in a letter to Gore.
The area was deemed one of the 200 most globally important ecosystems
by the World Wildlife Fund and other large conservation
organizations.
Given the region's isolation, the proposed 30-meter pipeline right-
of-way would open up the heart of the pristine region to uncontrolled
exploitation, illegal hunting, logging, poaching and colonization,
environmentalists said. The project also traverses the homeland of an
indigenous community.
The affected area, spread across 2.9 million hectares, acted as a
"carbon sink" by absorbing heat-trapping industrial carbon emissions
-- which most scientists agreed caused global warming and climate
change.
"The protection of carbon sinks such as the Chiquitano Forest
furthers efforts to combat climate change," said the letter.
"However, without a clear message to OPIC from the Administration,
this major carbon sink will be jeopardized."
Environmentalists also worried over the potential impact of the
pipeline on aquatic animals in the Pantanal wetland region -- home to
caymans, giant otters, an estimated 240 varieties of fish and more
than 90,000 types of plants.
The groups urged Gore to demand that OPIC reroute the pipeline so
that it followed existing roads and skirted fragile forest areas.
Gore was likely to heed the environmentalists requests as, besides
his own pro-environment stance, he was counting on the groups members
to vote for him in 2000, political observers said.
The Vice President already has suffered one political setback when
Friends of the Earth decided he was too soft on industry and endorsed
Sen. Bill Bradley, who is running for the Democratic nomination
against Gore.
According to OPIC's own environmental guidelines, the government
agency was not allowed to finance projects that adversely affected
primary forests -- or longstanding, fully mature or ancient forests.
But the agency has taken the position that this prohibition did not
apply to forests like the Chiquitano that showed signs of commercial
activity.
OPIC's position therefore rendered its own guidelines meaningless,
the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a separate letter to Gore.
Michelle Pinard, a tropical forest expert hired by OPIC to review the
Cuiaba pipeline urged the agency to reconsider its position. "There
must be a reason for OPIC adopting their policy of not financing
projects in primary forest," she said.
"If this reason has anything to do with a concern about causing
negative impacts on forests that have important conservation value,
then I suggest that your definition of a primary forest provides you
with little guidance," she added.
OPIC's response to the controversy surrounding the Chiquitano Forest
has been the creation of a $10 million Fund to protect the area which
would be controlled by five regional environmental groups and the oil
and gas companies involved.
But WWF, an original member of the Chiquitano Forest Conservation
Consortium Protocol and Fund, withdrew its support and refused to
sign the final agreement, due to what it said was poor representation
of local people and the Bolivian government.
While WWF intends to continue with a supportive but independent
relationship with the Fund, it said that currently there was an
"insufficient base of common understanding, synergy and trust to form
a partnership that would allow WWF to maintain its institutional
credibility, integrity, and independence."
Without the environmental group's participation, the condition
imposed by OPIC's Board therefore had been breached, said the letter
to Gore.