When Governments Dont Communicate with Each Other

There are few people in the Inambari River area who support a Brazilian and Peruvian government sponsored hydroelectric dam. The funny thing is that this dam imposes on another project (the Inter-Oceanic Highway) The Economist reports:

Inambari is one of up to six proposed hydroelectricity schemes on Peru’s jungle rivers, costing around $16 billion, contained in an agreement signed in April by the president, Alan García, and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The Inambari dam would be the first to be built. It would generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity—twice the output of Peru’s largest existing hydroelectric plant, and almost half its current electricity consumption. Most of the power would be exported to Brazil to start with, but the proportions would slowly reverse and after 30 years Peru would own the $4 billion project.

The dam would create a lake of up to 450 square kms (175 square miles), flooding some 60 villages, as well as roads and forest. Egasur, a Brazilian-owned consortium promoting the scheme, says that people displaced by the dam would be rehoused in better conditions.

Peru’s environment minister, Antonio Brack, has dropped his earlier opposition to the scheme. He says it offers benefits, including fish farming. The government claims local politicians are whipping up dissent ahead of local elections next year.

But for whatever reason, opposition is growing. Locals are keener on another big project, the paving of the grandly named Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Pacific ports in southern Peru to the Brazilian city of Rio Branco, from where a highway goes on to São Paulo, 3,600 kms (2,250 miles) from Cusco. The two governments agreed in 2005 to asphalt the road. Work is proceeding rapidly and both presidents would like it to be finished before they leave office in 2011. Inconveniently, the Inambari dam would flood 120 kms of the highway, on which upgrading work has already begun. It seems that in both Peru and Brazil the ministries of transport and of energy don’t talk to each other.