Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
It is to those policies that we now turn. We consider the impacts of roads, the
requirement of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), the special needs of peoples
living in voluntary isolation, the use of strategic environmental impact assessments,
and the role of the international community. In each case, the policies adopted will
have signifi cant impacts one way or another on the region's biodiversity and the fate
of its indigenous peoples. This is not an exhaustive list, but topics our experiences
suggest are the most important.
Roads
Roads are one of the strongest correlates of Amazonian deforestation [47, 48]. New
access roads cause considerable direct impacts—such as habitat fragmentation—and
often trigger even greater indirect impacts, such as colonization [30], illegal logging
[49], and unsustainable hunting [27, 28]. Animals often targeted by local and indig-
enous hunters are involved in key ecological processes such as seed dispersal and seed
predation [50]. The overhunting of large primates, for example, has the potential to
change the composition and spatial distribution of western Amazon forests due to the
loss of these important seed dispersers [51]. Even a rough extrapolation from the oil
extraction in previous decades suggests that the planned wave of oil and gas activity
may similarly fragment and degrade largely intact forests over huge areas in coming
years and decades.
Two Amazonian modeling efforts indicate that deforestation is concentrated in
the eastern and southern Brazilian Amazon—areas with high road density—but the
western Amazon is largely intact due its remoteness and lack of roads [9, 43]. Oil
and gas blocks, however, now fi ll much of these remote areas. A primary concern
is that new oil and gas projects could bring a proliferation of new access routes
throughout the western Amazon. Indeed, pending oil and gas projects are currently
the primary threat to areas in eastern Ecuador (Blocks 31 and ITT), northern Peru
(Blocks 39 and 67), Peru's Camisea region, Brazil's Urucu region, and Bolivia's
Madidi region.
Oil access roads are a main catalyst of deforestation and associated impacts. A
report from scientists working in Ecuador concluded that impacts along new ac-
cess roads could not be adequately controlled or managed, particularly in regards
to actions of the area's local or indigenous peoples [52]. The report, along with op-
position by the Waorani indigenous people, pressured the Ecuadorian government,
which banned Petrobras from building a road into Yasuní National Park in July,
2005. The government forced the company to redesign the project without a major
access road. As of this writing, Petrobras plans to use helicopters to transport all ma-
terials, supplies, equipment, and people to and from the well sites, with oil fl owing
out via a roadless pipeline. This decision by the Ecuadorian government might set
an important precedent for policy no new oil access roads through wilderness areas.
A major roadless oil project in Ecuador's Block 10 was the region's fi rst example
that such development is possible [53], and Block 15 also features a roadless pipe-
line with canopy bridges. Elimination of new roads could signifi cantly reduce the
impacts of most projects.
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