PERUVIAN AMAZON IN 2021 NATURAL RESOURCE EXPLOITATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE: WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

Abstract

In 182 pages, the book entitled “La Amazonía peruana en 2021”, fill in missing information regarding the social and environmental consequences of proposed investments for the Peruvian Amazon in the next decade. This article offers a summary of the publication, which brings to light the existence of a boom of little-publicized and unprecedently large scale natural resource exploitation for export, such as petroleum, gas, timber and minerals. To facilitate the exploitation of these resources an ambitious sequence of infrastructures, often of gigantic proportions, is also programmed. Several Amazon rivers are to be dammed to establish very large hydropower plants that would generate electricity mainly for export and a number of roads, waterways and railways will slice the Amazon forest from East to West. The authors question the economic and social need for many of such public works that clearly overlaps and that often seems to attend the interests of investors and constructors instead of real or foreseen needs. The environmental and social impacts of these extractive activities and public works may change the Amazonian landscape forever and seriously threaten traditional local population. The authors do not only focus on nature conservation. They clearly establish that the Amazon region of Peru should and deserve to be developed, and they recognize that doing so inevitably has environmental and social costs that have to be compensated by the benefits of development. Their main concern revolves around the fact that the social and environmental harm caused is vastly greater than the slim benefits which are all that can honestly be expected. The proposals and activities now under way cater for plans and interests that are alien to Peru and to the Amazon basin in general, whereas the resulting problems and social and environmental costs, most of them irreversible, will be borne by the Amazon region.