29 September 2008
In this edition you will find the following article:
IIRSA CCT Meeting on Infrastructure and the Amazon: IIRSA’s future in doubt (also in Spanish on our Spanish language page)
Also available in Spanish/También disponible en Español
In this edition you will find the following article:
IIRSA CCT Meeting on Infrastructure and the Amazon: IIRSA’s future in doubt
View the complete Bulletin with images in PDF format:
Boletin Trimestral Septienbre 2008 (English Version)
Quarterly Bulletin BICECA - Building Informed Civic Engagement for Conservation in the Andes-Amazon – A Project of the Bank Information Center (BIC)
By means of this bulletin, the BICECA project of Bank Information Center, seeks to bring news and relevant current information about particular aspects of projects and policies related with the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA). This publication is addressed to a diverse public of civil society organizations, native groups, students, academics and other people or entities that follows the different policies and projects of international financial institutions related the IIRSA project.
We thank especially the contributions of Vince McElhinny and Adriana Micalizzi.
This bulletin is a publication by civil society for civil society and its contributions are from various sources and countries. Its authors are in general researchers that study and work on questions regarding IIRSA.
If you have any comments, questions or if you wish to contribute to this publication, please contact Latin American Manager Vince McElhinny at: .
IIRSA CCT Meeting on Infrastructure and the Amazon: IIRSA’s future in doubt
On Sept. 4, the Technical Coordinating Committee of IIRSA (CCT) hosted a small day-long meeting to discuss infrastructure and the Amazon. The meeting was motivated by a growing perception that IIRSA and related investment trends in the Amazon region are inducing perverse and unsustainable effects that are undermining the legitimacy of the infrastructure integration initiative. Within the IDB, IIRSA’s principal institutional sponsor, the concerns about IIRSA’s image are exacerbated by a controversial internal evaluation that threatens to end IDB’s involvement in IIRSA when the current institutional mandate expires in 2010.
The unusual CCT meeting involved the IDB, CAF, BNDES, Odebrecht, Andrade Gutierrez, Petrobras, several civil society organizations WWF Brazil, Conservation International, Fundacion Tropenbos (Colombia) and BIC as well as several prominent political and economic analysts. Under discussion for months, the meeting was perhaps a first, modest attempt to bring IFIs, corporations, and conservationists together to debate the compatibility of large, high risk infrastructure projects in the Amazon with sustainable, equitable development outcomes. However, critics and beneficiaries of IIRSA talked past each other for the most part. The meeting ended with little hard evidence that infrastructure project design or integration planning would change in any fundamental way.
Read the full article and view all past BICECA bulletins (BICECA website)