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The Construction of Mega-
projects and the Reconstruction
of the World
David Barkin
Version of record first published: 23 Sep 2009.
To cite this article: David Barkin (2009): The Construction of Mega-projects and the
Reconstruction of the World, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 20:3, 6-11
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The Construction of Mega-projects and the
Reconstruction of the World
David Barkin
The Rio Madeira Project offers a poignant illustration of the scale of changes that
international capital has envisioned in its breakneck race to control people and
resources on a global scale. While this is not new*the long history of humanity is one
of the ever increasing attempts to extend control over new regions with horrendous
impacts on resources and people everywhere
1
*the following article, The Madeira
River Complex: Socio-Environmental Impact in Bolivian Amazonia and Social
Resistance, by Josep Maria Antentas provides some of the details by which the
process is proceeding in the Amazon Basin. But the story recounted in this article is only
part of a much longer history that dates back more than twenty years when the first
feasibility studies were published for a proposed Hidrovia, or inland water transport
route, that would enable year-round river transport on the Paraguay and Parana Rivers
as part of a much more ambitious project to forge an inter-oceanic multimodal
transport system reaching from Brazil to Chile in the south and through Peru and
Ecuador in the north. In its first (and most ambitious) versions, it contemplated port
facilities fromRio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo connecting to a 2,500-kilometer-long canal
system through the Tiete, Paraguay, and Parana Rivers to Asuncion. A further
extension then considered a 3,400-kilometer extension to the Pacific Ocean.
The regional infrastructure that the scheme envisions would place South America
at the center of a new global commercial route between Europe and the Orient. This
project involves the forging of a multi-modal systemof connections that would emplace
new export-oriented manufacturing installations in key areas where abundant supplies
of low-wage, semi-skilled workers are located or can be attracted (principally in
northeasternArgentina), while building links that would open well-identified parts of the
Amazon Basin to less costly access and more systematic resource exploitation through the
integration of a hemispheric system of interconnected river systems. Although some of
these interconnections were mentioned in an early report by the Wetlands for the
Americas organization in cooperation with the Woods Hole Research Center,
2
those
1
In this regard see the excellent collection of essays assembled in Alf Hornborg, John R. McNeill, and Joan
Martinez-Alier, Rethinking Environmental History: World-system History and Global Environmental Change
(Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2007).
2
E.H. Bucher, A. Bonetto, T. Boyle, P. Canevari, G. Castro, P. Huszar, and T. Stone, Hidrovia: An Initial
Environmental Examination of the Paraguay-Parana Waterway, Wetlands for the Americas, Publication No.
10, Manomet, MA, 1993. See especially Figure 12.
CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 20 NUMBER 3 (SEPTEMBER 2009)
ISSN 1045-5752 print/ISSN 1548-3290 online/09/030006-06
# 2009 The Center for Political Ecology www.cnsjournal.org
DOI: 10.1080/10455750903215704
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authors focused their concerns on the profound alterations that would affect the
viability of wetlands in the south-central part of the continent; they identify seven river
systems stretching from the Hidrovia all the way north to the Caribbean outlet of the
Orinoco in Venezuela. They do not examine an even more significant river project that
is being developed in a surprisingly well-coordinated effort of separate groups of
technical and financial experts throughout the region; this project proposes to create
transcontinental links including roads from the Atlantic port city of Belem in
northeastern Brazil along the Amazon River and its tributaries to Pacific ports in
northern Ecuador and central Peru.
3
This focus on the southern wetlands is of considerable importance. The Pantanal,
as the area is known, is located in the frontier area encompassing Brazil, Paraguay, and
Bolivia. It is nothing less than South Americas greatest wetland, one the most
spectacular in the world. During the wet season from November to January, the
rainwaters of the Eastern Andes and the Brazilian High Plains flood this very gently
sloping basin. Once the rains subside, the heat of the dry season begins to shrink the sea
into a series of scattered pools teeming with fish imprisoned by the advancing banks.
These provide a bonanza for birds and mammals who arrive in droves to join the feast.
At the same time, the average daily temperature soars to a scorching 1108F, eventually
converting the inland sea into a dry savanna. Four different South American vegetation
zones converge at its borders: the central Brazilian high plains, the foothills of the
Andes, the Atlantic forest, and the Argentinean Pampas all lend their typical species to
the Pantanals rich pulse of life. The South American alligator (yacare), and the worlds
largest rodent, the capybara, compete for the streams and ponds with schools of
piranha, while jaguars and giant anacondas prowl the gallery forests. Endangered
hyacinth macaws and marsh deer, as well as more than 90,000 varieties of plants, may
also be found here. Most striking, however, is the high concentration of bird species
found in the Pantanal: over 600 known species, and in such numbers as to dazzle even
the most seasoned birders. No wonder it was designated as a National Treasure in
Brazils constitution. The huge Pantanal sanctuary merits distinction not only as an
ecological treasure, but also as an example of the ability of communities to live in
balance with their environment. The local inhabitants known as pantaneiros have
developed compatible land uses based on conservation practices and adaptation to the
natural cycles of the region. A U.S. wetlands researcher commented to the press that
while Americans think of preserving wetlands as putting a fence around them, the
pantaneiros have found a way to maintain wetlands while using them.
4
The larger strategy goes beyond the river systems to integrate global shipping
channels into a motor and rail transport system. Beginning with the modernization of
3
For an early critique of the attempts to use economic analysis to justify this project, see: David Barkin, Macro
Changes and Micro Analysis: Methodological Issues in Ecological Economics, Ecological Economics, Vol. 19,
No. 3, 1996, pp. 197200.
4
Mac Margolis, Treasuring the Pantanal Brazil, International Wildlife, NovemberDecember, 1995, online
at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_n6_v25/ai_17632856/, accessed May 31, 2009.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEGA-PROJECTS 7
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the Sepetiba Harbor near Rio de Janeiro, the investment programencompasses a locally
financed road system from Rio de Janeiro south to Sao Paulo and on to Montevideo
and Colonia in Uruguay. This motor transport network would further increase
the importance of the Hidrovia and become especially valuable if the approximately
55-kilometer bridge across the River Plate were completed. A subsequent stage
contemplates a new transcontinental highway connecting Buenos Aires, Argentina, to
the port city of Valparaiso, Chile; transport costs would be reduced by blasting the
25- to 40-kilometer Juncal-Horcones tunnel through the Andes, thus avoiding the
need for making the extremely costly climb through existing mountain passes, some of
which are blocked during the winter.
Rail links would also be multiplied and strengthened. In central Argentina, a
new line from Bahia Blanca on the Atlantic would cross the Andes to end in the
Chilean port of Talcahuano. The rail system in Peru, beginning in Lima, would be
improved and interconnected with Antofagasta, Copiapo, and Valpariso to move
west to Paraguay and the Hidrovia system.
Overcoming the obstacles created by the lack of a world-class deep-sea harbor on
the Pacific Coast of Chile or Peru, the proposal offers an even more grandiose solution,
illustrating its creativity and scope: Each of the smaller port cities would be connected
by smaller ocean-going freighters to a major new international shipping center on
Easter Island.
Understanding the Geopolitical Context
The infrastructure projects, of which the Hidrovia is an important part, will
reshape the economies and societies of every country in the region and threaten
ecosystems globally. The transformations in transportation, with dramatic changes in
the relative costs of each system, will generate unimagined investment opportunities
along the new routes and in a broad hinterland, but as the Wetlands report cited above
acknowledges, [c]atastrophic flooding downstream becomes a real possibility. As
always, the problemis framed as one of the environment versus economic opportunity;
but this support is generally framed in terms of the benefits to the very poor, the most
vulnerable. As Paraguayan environmentalist and business leader Raul Gauto noted:
Trying to stop the Hidrovia is not morally right, because so many people are going to
benefit.
5
5
Raul Gauto, quoted in the Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, April 4, 1997. He remains an
influential leader of the regional and international community who argues that it is possible to bridge the gap
between social and business interests; in response to a request from this writer, he reaffirmed his position in
personal correspondence in June 2009: . . .the river is crucial for thousands of poor people, for the
communications, for the sale of their products, to generate employment, to protect their traditions. . .Today,
they continue super isolated and with their basic needs still unmet!! For this reason, I commented that opposing
the hidrov a was, and still is, morally incorrect.
8 DAVID BARKIN
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The debate has been carefully sculpted to heighten this apparent contradiction.
But the opposition persuasively insists that, as in other parts of the world, the costs of
the environmental destruction and the reshaping of productive systems will be borne
by legions of the poorest inhabitants, the beneficiaries, who will be uprooted, and
the masses of workers who will be recruited into exploitative working situations.
These changes will also increase the vulnerability of whole regions and perhaps even
nations to the changing structure of prices in world markets as they are forced to
import increasing shares of their basic consumption goods, because local producers
find themselves unable to compete with producers in other countries as transport
costs and other barriers to trade are precipitously lowered.
How are we to begin to examine this large-scale metamorphosis? Most of the
analytical tools of project evaluation are designed to examine marginal changes in
productive systems. Although we have discovered ways to begin to think about
incorporating some of the external costs and benefits of public investment projects into
our calculations, we have no rigorous set of tools to apply to structural changes of the
magnitude involved in the Hidrovia project, changes that will lead to the remaking of
economic systems, social structures, and the environment itself. Most social science
analysts, and particularly economists armed with their theoretical tool chest of
marginalist economics, are unprepared to examine the (literally) earth-shaking changes
under serious consideration by the international financial community for this region.
Concentrating on the Madeira, however, does not do full justice to the nature of
the changes contemplated by international capital on a continental scale. These involve
a reorientation of the geography to serve the demands of the world market, literally
carving out new transportation corridors that will place the regions vast natural
resources and isolated peoples at the service of anxious investors searching for new
opportunities. It is not coincidental that these projects are advancing precisely in those
areas in which the State is weakest and/or compliant, and where private interests are
most interested in extracting resources and using cheap labor for processing; this
fragmentation and deterritorialization involves changes in the States capacities to
regulate the use of its territory, where it cedes the ability to impose justice, control
environmental impacts or manage productive extraction in large areas [while also] . . .
applying some regulations, especially those that permit the extraction and processing of
resources for export.
6
Thus under the impact of global capital, nature is transformed
on an enormous scale, and Amazonia ceases to be itself.
Going Beyond the Rio Madeira Project
It is in this context that we have to examine the broader process of restructuring
the continent. The dams and massive flooding are designed to remake the
6
Eduardo Gudynas, The South American Hidrovia Parana-Paraguay: Environment vs. Trade?, Revista del
Sur, No. 160, 2005, pp. 45.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEGA-PROJECTS 9
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topography in a gigantic effort to restructure the regions economy and place it at the
service of international capital. Little consideration is accorded to the millions of
people in communities that have tried to manage these ecosystems and protect their
resources, while forging a society and economy that take the biospheres needs into
account. The Madeira waterway projects, by contrast, inscribe a story of
monocultures under the command of the merchants of grain, in which immense
amounts of soy are produced for purposes of fattening livestock, along with allied
agroindustrial projects.
It is a narrative mandating heightened conflict. The regional protests and the
national mobilizations are vivid testimony to the kinds of social conflict that are
likely to flourish as international banks and capital advance with their intentions to
implement the Regional Infrastructure Integration Program for South America
(IIRSA, as it is known for its Spanish acronym), the part of the Hidrovia program
agreed to by the executives of five countries in 2000.
7
The Rio Madeira project was
the subject for evaluation by the Latin American Water Tribunal in Guatemala in
2008 and the International Water Tribunal in Istanbul, Turkey in 2009;
8
in both
instances the jury (of which I was a member) found that the Brazilian government
had transgressed its own legislative mandates by going ahead with the project in spite
of notable violations of environmental and public works legislation as well as
ignoring its obligations to conduct appropriate environmental impact analyses and
submit the project to public hearings.
9
At the same time, the investment program is
provoking serious problems in binational relations with Bolivia as well as conflicts
within that country because of the considerable areas that would be flooded, thus
dramatically changing the way that land is used.
The infrastructure proposals, then, must be understood as a part of a geopolitical
strategy to assure a continuing expansion of supplies of raw materials and cheap labor
for integration into the global production system controlled by capital. As an
integrated project, the integrated scheme of a single link going from the Atlantic,
through the Pantanal, and then to the Pacific seems to have been abandoned. But its
most recent incarnation, the IIRSA, is strongly supported by the Inter American
Development Bank whose efforts go far beyond the multi-billion dollar dams on the
Madeira to include investments in Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, as
evidenced in the special issue of the Banks journal on regional integration cited
above.
7
The approach followed by IIRSA focuses on strategic axes of integration and development, concentrating
actual and potential commercial trade flows; these include: Andean, Southern Andean, Amazon, Guyanese
Region, Hidrovia Paraguay-Parana Rivers, Central Interoceanic, Merosur-Chile, and Peru-Brazil-Bolivia. For
more details and a detailed description, see the special issue of Integracion y Comercio, Vol. 12, No. 28, 2008,
published by the Inter-American Development Bank.
8
See http://www.tragua.com for more details on this particular case and the history of processes for evaluating
citizen complaints with regard to water management in Latin America.
9
In fact, even within the Brazilian judicial system, the review process of the environmental authorities strongly
questioned the wisdom of continuing with the project. (Personal communication.)
10 DAVID BARKIN
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As analysts examining the relationship between society and the environment,
then, we need to comprehend the new productive structures that are envisioned, the
interests supporting the projects, and the projected environmental changes. As
always, we must be insistent on addressing both the opportunities being destroyed
and those being created for the local population and the ability of ecosystems to
continue providing for the welfare of the people in the region and for the planet as a
whole. The analysis of the Madeira projects offers a window that reveals a vivid
picture of the destructive impact of current efforts to reconstruct the world in the
name of regional interconnection with large-scale investments in infrastructure.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEGA-PROJECTS 11
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