Bridging Troubled Waters

Harvard conference seeks common ground for waterway project

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Hidrovia (Spanish for waterway) is the largest development project in South America, as well as the most controversial. The project, a cooperative undertaking by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, would make more than 2,000 miles of the Paraná-Paraguay River system navigable by barge trains and open the interior of the continent to international shipping.

Last week, Harvard hosted a conference where, for the first time, advocates of Hidrovia had a chance to discuss the project with environmentalists and development specialists and to work toward forging a consensus on some of its more ambiguous and hotly debated aspects.

The Paraná-Paraguay Hidrovia Conference, cosponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Real Colegio Complutense, took place April 3-4. It brought together representatives from the principal countries involved, officials from United Nations agencies, international development banks, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Harvard scholars.

According to Otto Solbrig, the Bussey Professor of Biology who helped to organize the conference and chaired the first day's proceedings, the goal of the conference was "not to define which view is correct, but like the three blind men who each had a different impression of an elephant, to combine our knowledge in order to create a more complete vision."

John Coatsworth, the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs and director of the Rockefeller Center, said that the conference was valuable because "it brought together people who needed to talk to each other in a setting that made it easy for them to do that."

Solbrig added: "We're trying to serve as objective mediators who may be able to help clear up some of the misunderstandings among the interested parties."

By the end of the conference, Harvard had also emerged as the logical choice to coordinate monitoring efforts and the dissemination of reliable information as the project becomes a reality.

Progress or Disaster?

Labeled "Hell's Highway" by some of its more ardent detractors, Hidrovia has been condemned as a potential environmental disaster that would interfere with the ecology of the Pantanal, the world's largest wetland, causing uncontrollable flooding downriver.

Critics also point out that providing easier access to the ocean would encourage growers of soybeans and other cash crops to accelerate clearing of already threatened tropical forests, thereby hastening the extinction of numerous plant and animal species as well as destroying the traditional lifestyles of native peoples.

In his opening remarks, Solbrig also cautioned that the record of large projects like Hidrovia has been "dismal." He cited the floods that devastated the Mississippi valley in 1993 despite billions of dollars spent on flood control; the construction of a major dam in Thailand that resulted in the relocation of thousands of families and the extinction of 150 fish species; and a hydroelectric project on the Columbia River that has reduced the annual salmon harvest from 20,000 pounds to about 500.

In order to avoid such disasters in the Hidrovia project, it will be necessary to provide for the integrated management of ecosystems over the whole basin, Solbrig said. The ecosystemic impact of the project will also have to be monitored over the long term.

"Keeping the natural ecosystems healthy will result in the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people," he said.

The project's advocates tended, understandably, to minimize the negative impact on the environment and to emphasize the ways in which the project would benefit inhabitants of the region.

Luis Lacalle Herrera, former president of Uruguay, portrayed the project as essential for the five developing nations involved.

"Landlocked countries need a way to transport goods to the ocean, but they also need the assurance that their right of access will be protected. We are very much prepared to hear and consider any proposal, but we cannot stop development in our countries because that is the first human right, to improve the conditions of life."

Lacalle also emphasized that the project has been downsized since it was first proposed. Originally, the plans called for extensive dredging and blasting to reshape and straighten the river channel, an alteration that critics said would speed the flow of water and destroy environmental balances. As currently conceived, the project would leave the meandering channel as is, but deepen it to allow barge convoys to negotiate the river system year-round.

"The project is very important to us," said Manuel Caceres, deputy minister of the Paraguayan embassy. "In a landlocked country such as ours, access to markets is very difficult. Hidrovia is there. It has been there for centuries, and we will continue to use it. We just want to improve the navigability of the river."

Marcello Jardim of the Brazilian ministry of external relations said that Hidrovia represented a new spirit of integration among the five countries involved in the project and that it was simply an improvement on transportation routes that were employed by native peoples, by Spanish colonists, and by people of the present day.

Fernando Petrella, deputy foreign minister of Argentina, emphasized that Hidrovia was a cheaper and less environmentally destructive means of transporting produce and materials than either rail or road.

"The consequence of not having Hidrovia will be more beautiful Route 95s through the jungle," Petrella said, with a glance out the window in the general direction of America's Technology Highway.

Economic and Environmental Issues

Economists and environmentalists generally took a more skeptical view of the project.

Roberto Messias Franco, a Brazilian who serves as deputy director of the U.N. Environment Programme, said that he was very happy that such a conference was happening at all. "Twenty years ago, it was impossible to change stupid projects that threatened the environment," he said.

Fred Moavenzadeh, director of M.I.T.'s Technology and Development Program and a consultant to many international development organizations, said that it was important to look at the economic and environmental consequences of Hidrovia very carefully before beginning the project.

"It's essential to examine the economic issues," he said. "Will the project pay for itself, and how? But without understanding the environmental issues, you won't get the project off the ground. You should not put the environment at the bottom of the list."

Theodore Panayotou, Institute Fellow in the Harvard Institute for International Development, said that the feasibility studies of Hidrovia were incomplete and contradictory and that far more work needed to be done.

"Otherwise, this project could be a white elephant of global proportions."

Panayotou said that when doing these preliminary studies "we should be a bit more modest about our level of knowledge and more generous about our level of ignorance. No project is exactly like another. Even with simulation models, we will get surprises. We should err on the side of being too cautious."

Jorge Morello, an environmental scientist in the University of Buenos Aires' Center for Advanced Studies and a former Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor at Harvard, pointed out that it was important to get the environmental costs into an economic framework.

"According to one estimate, it would cost $40 million a year to dredge the sediment caused by erosion from increased soybean production, and $40 million a year in environmental costs would make the project unfeasible."

A Role for Harvard

The final session of the conference was devoted to a general discussion and the drafting of a final document. Coatsworth said that he felt this part had gone extremely well.

"I think the conference demonstrated Harvard's capacity to convene specialists and experts from both the academic and public communities to discuss issues of importance," he said.

Solbrig said that at the final session, "There was a consensus that we needed more monitoring of the project and more dissemination of information. We decided that Harvard would take the initiative in organizing a consortium of universities and institutions in the area to carry out this task, with an information center in Asunción, Paraguay."

Solbrig thought the conference was a great success.

"The level of discussion was very high. The participants didn't always agree but it was all in a civil tone, and it led to some resolution of the principal issues. Overall, I thought it was fantastic!"