- Colombian President Iván Duque has pushed the construction of Tribugá Port in the
Pacific department of Chocó as an economic priority for the country’s coffee-growing heartland, to increase exports to international markets. - But the plan to build the port has provoked a fierce outcry from environmental and human rights activists, as well as local tourism operators, pushing 70 organizations to sign a declaration against its construction.
- Endangered species such as hammerhead sharks, nesting sea turtles and humpback whales visit the area on an annual basis to mate, raise their young, and migrate through.
Arquimedes S.A., the shareholder group behind the project, aims to build the country’s second major port on the Pacific coast to accommodate supertankers, an industrial park and a free-trade zone near
the Darién Gap, an undeveloped, roadless region encompassing one of the world’s 24 biodiversity hotspots, breeding grounds for humpback whales, and collective Afro-Colombian and indigenous territories.
Since assuming office in 2018, President Iván Duque has pushed the construction of Tribugá Port in the Chocó department as an economic priority for the country’s central coffee-growing region, to increase exports to international markets. Duque’s 2018-2022 National Development Plan,
approved by Congress, gave the green light for the construction of the deepwater port and connecting transportation infrastructure between the inland town of Las Ánimas and the coastal municipality of Nuquí, the site of the planned port.
“The Tribugá Port is one of my obsessions when it comes to infrastructure matters,” Duque said at a town hall meeting in Chocó’s capital, Quibdó, two months after his August 2018 inauguration. “I believe that we must continue advancing, the port is viable as long as the Ánimas-Nuquí transportation corridor is improved … These two projects are decisive for the entire Coffee Region.”
style="display:block"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-5304956676531448"
data-ad-slot="9341903946"
data-ad-format="auto"
data-full-width-responsive="true">
Construction of the megaport, estimated to cost more than $300 million, will not be paid for with public funds but rather through private investments permitted by government concession for “up to 40 years,” according to statements by the minister of transportation, Ángela María Orozco. The roadways, on the other hand, are scheduled for construction with public resources as part of a wider government initiative to connect the department of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela, to the northern Pacific coast.
The port project, however, still needs to be granted a permit by the National Authority of Environmental Licenses (ANLA) and a concession agreement by the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI); both regulatory agencies fall under the government’s executive branch.
The Arquimedes shareholder group emerged in 2006 during the government of right-wing former president Álvaro Uribe. The group represents governors’ offices and chambers of commerce in Chocó and the departments that make up the coffee region, as well as private construction companies. The coffee region, known as Eje Cafetero, straddles the departments of Caldas, Quindío, and Risaralda, and is the country’s fourth-largest industrial and commercial center as well as a
center of power for Uribe’s right-wing political party, Centro Democrático.
Iván Marulanda, a senator from the opposition Green Alliance, representing the coffee-growing department of Risaralda, told Mongabay that discussions about Tribugá Port first arose decades ago, but regional political players are pressing Duque to realize the project.
“I’ve known this Arquimedes group for many years. This is an old pitch that appeared decades ago, maybe 30 or 40 years ago,” Marulanda said. “Even though things have changed and there is a greater level of environmental consciousness than there was before, they still haven’t let go of the idea.”
Marulanda said the deepwater port project did not make economic sense for the coffee region because the existing port in the city of Buenaventura, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the south, could be
dredged to accommodate larger ships without causing nearly the same level of environmental impact as building a new port and roads through rainforest in the northern Pacific.
Arquimedes S.A. did not respond to request by email for comment on the proposed Tribugá Port.
Collective communities and foreign capital
Chocó department is largely inhabited by collective indigenous territories and Afro-Colombian communities, who, under the country’s 1991 Constitution, have been granted the right to autonomy in land management, political governance and cultural self-determination.style="display:block"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-5304956676531448"
data-ad-slot="9341903946"
data-ad-format="auto"
data-full-width-responsive="true">
The department was one of several held by guerrillas during Colombia’s decades-long civil war, and today suffers the country’s highest rates of poverty and infant mortality. The construction of the
new port therefore presents an opportunity for progress, says Carlos Felipe Mejía, a Centro Democrático senator from the neighboring department of Caldas.
According to Arquimedes president William Naranjo, the shareholder group has courted foreign investment, particularly from China and the United States. There was reported interest from Chinese port-building company China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd., and a U.S. investor, but no confirmed foreign investment in the project yet.
Read full article here - https://news.mongabay.com/2019/07/colombian-investors-push-pacific-port-project-threatening-biodiversity-hotspot/
WATCH THE VIDEO AND SUBSCRIBE TO NESHALL S.
No comments:
Post a Comment