Regional infrastructure mega-project involves 12 governments and $37 billion in potential investment
Infrastructure development in the name of regional economic integration poses one of the greatest challenges to environmental sustainability and social justice today. The initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) is a striking example of this new trend. IIRSA proposes a series of large-scale, high-risk and debt-heavy mega-projects that would result in extensive alterations to landscapes and livelihoods in the region. In this development framework, mountains, forests, and wetlands are seen as barriers to economic development and rivers become the means for extracting natural resources. People, industry, and governments, it is assumed, will all benefit.
Coordinated by all 12 South American governments, with the technical and financial support of multilateral and national development banks, the IIRSA initiative consists of: (a) 10 axes or “hubs” of economic integration crisscrossing the continent and requiring significant investments in transportation, energy, and telecommunications; and (b) at least 7 sectoral processes of integration designed to harmonize regulatory frameworks between countries.
IIRSA has identified some 40 composite mega-projects and hundreds of smaller, infrastructure improvement projects for potential financing, with an aggregate cost in the tens of billions of US dollars. At such an enormous cost, these projects may contribute to the region’s already unsustainable public debt. Given its magnitude and the scale of its potential impacts, many environmental organizations are referring to IIRSA as a “gigaproject.”
If you would like further details on the projects that IIRSA comprises and civil society's response, visit the webpage of our BICECA project-- Building Informed Civic Awareness for Advocacy and Conservation of the Andean Amazon.