[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
DAM-L ACTION: Stop Hidrovia in Brazil's Pantanal Wetlands! (fwd)
----- Forwarded message from owner-irn-action@netvista.net -----
From owner-irn-action@netvista.net Fri Oct 6 18:49:36 2000
Return-Path: <owner-irn-action@netvista.net>
Received: from DaVinci.NetVista.net (mjdomo@mail.netvista.net [206.170.46.10])
by lox.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA20220
for <dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>; Fri, 6 Oct 2000 18:49:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: owner-irn-action@netvista.net
Received: [(from mjdomo@localhost)
by DaVinci.NetVista.net (8.10.0/8.8.8) id e96MewZ00246
for irn-action-list; Fri, 6 Oct 2000 15:40:58 -0700 (PDT)
(envelope-from owner-irn-action@netvista.net)]
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 15:40:58 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <200010062240.e96MewZ00246@DaVinci.NetVista.net>
subject: ACTION: Stop Hidrovia in Brazil's Pantanal Wetlands!
Sender: owner-irn-action@netvista.net
Precedence: bulk
Enclosed is a request for urgent action regarding American Commercial Barge
Lines' plan to construct a soybean port in the Pantanal wetlands in Brazil.
*********
REQUEST FOR URGENT ACTION
(PLEASE DISSEMINATE WIDELY)
Stop the Hidrovia in the Pantanal!
Site of ACBL’s planned barge port in the Pantanal wetlands
Background: The Paraguay-Paraná River Hidrovia is a plan by the five
governments of the La Plata basin to channelize 2,100 miles of the second
major river system in South America into an industrial channel for barges,
intended to marginally lower the cost of exporting soybeans to Europe for
hog and chicken feed. The Rios Vivos Coalition, which brings together more
than 300 civil society organizations, technical experts, and indigenous
communities from the region, North America, and Europe in defense of living
rivers succeeded in 1997 in demonstrating the irreversible impacts this
project could have, principally on the Pantanal, the world’s largest most
important tropical wetland ecosystem, and the project was halted.
Now, despite the fact that there exist two rail lines which ship soy to
coastal ports faster and cheaper than via the Paraguay and Paraná rivers,
multinational grain interests which control the Brazilian soy trade continue
to insist that the Hidrovia must be developed, and they have used as a
pretext the false “competition” between U.S. and South American grain
traders - within a global market that they themselves dominate.
The latest threat to the Pantanal is by the shipping conglomerate American
Commercial Barge Lines (ACBL), largest shipper on the Mississippi, which
plans to construct a barge port at Morrinhos, a natural backwater in the
Pantanal to ship one million tons of soybeans per year. The government of
Mato Grosso, which has closed its eyes to the destruction of millions of
hectares of the central savanna, or “cerrado”, and the conversion of
valuable natural ecosystems to soy monocultures, which has contaminated
river systems and acquifers with pesticides and herbicides, and filled the
rivers of the Pantanal with silt, has offered to pave a road to the port
site. Brazil’s federal archaeological protection service has filed a
complaint with the Mato Grosso government, saying this road will destroy
rare archaeological sites in the Pantanal.
Although Brazilian law specifically states that the federal government is in
charge of protecting the Pantanal, and regulating navigation and interstate
river traffic, the Brazilian Environment Ministry has not yet acted to
ensure that the environmental license process be decided by federal
authorities. For their part, the Mato Grosso environment agency, FEMA, and
the ACBL company have refused to make the company’s environmental impact
assessment (EIA) publicly available for independent analysis.
URGENT ACTION NEEDED:
***SEND EMAILS TO BRAZIL’S ENVIRONMENT MINISTER, WITH COPIES TO ACBL’S
PROJECT MANAGER AND THE ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY OF MATO GROSSO STATE***
Suggested text:
To: Exmo. Sr. José Sarney Filho
Ministro do Meio Ambiente
Brasília, DF, Brasil
Via email: sarneyfilho@mma.gov.br
gab@mma.gov.br
Dear Mr. Sarney:
We are very concern regarding the impending approval of a million-ton
capacity barge port in the Pantanal for shipping soybeans. The Pantanal is
the world’s most important tropical wetlands ecosystem, an area of priceless
biodiversity. There is no justification for converting the Paraguay River
into an industrial barge channel to profit an American company. The fact
that Mato Grosso environmental authorities and ACBL refuse to provide copies
of the EIA for evaluation by independent technical experts, and the fact
that the government of Mato Grosso has provided incentives for the
destruction of millions of hectares of the cerrado ecosystem, which has been
planted in soy and contaminated with agricultural chemicals is a clear sign
that the process will be a farse. We understand that monitoring the
protection of the Pantanal and river navigation are responsibility of
federal authorities, and we urge your ministry to take action to guarantee a
transparent, and technically sound analysis of ACBL’s Morrinhos port
project.
Respectfully,
(your name and organization)
Please send copies of your message to:
Mr. Martin Pepper
Senior Vice President
American Commercial Barge Lines
Jeffersonville, Indiana, USA
Email: marty.pepper@acbl.net
Exmo. Sr. Frederico Muller
Secretário do Meio Ambiente do Estado do Mato Grosso
Cuiabá, Brazil
Email: fgmfema@terra.com.br
Secretariat, Rios Vivos Coalition
Campo Grande, Brazil
Email: rv@riosvivos.org.br
www.riosvivos.org.br
THE PANTANAL THANKS YOU!
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
Glenn Switkes
Latin America Campaigns
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703-1576
USA
tel: +1.510.848.1155
fax: +1.510.848.1008
http://www.irn.org
in Brasil:
tel/fax/messages: +55.11.3666.5853
email: glenn@altanet.com.br
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to majordomo@netvista.net
with no subject and the following text in the body of the message
"unsubscribe irn-action".
----- End of forwarded message from owner-irn-action@netvista.net -----