Bolivia's Chiquitano Dry Tropical Forest has felt the force of one of the year's most controversial companies: Enron, the Houston-based energy giant currently facing accusations of corruption and negligence. Enron is not only falling apart in its own country asits international projects have led to investigations and lawsuits in other countries as well. In Bolivia, for example, Enron's construction of a huge pipeline in the Chiquitano Forest has left significant environmental and economic damage.
The Cuiaba pipeline is a 390-mile long natural gas duct going from near the city of Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia to Cuiaba, Matto Grosso, in Brazil. There, it fuels Enron's new 480-megawatt thermal power plant. The project runs through the 15 million-acre Chiquitano Forest, which is the world's last significant remnant of intact dry tropical forest, and one of the world's richest wildlife habitats. It is situated in a biogeographical transition zone between the humid evergreen Amazonian forests and the arid thorn scrub of the Gran Chaco to the south, and the seasonally flooded savannas of the Rio Beni and the upland Cerrado savannas and Pantanal wetlands - the world's largest wetlands region.
Although the number of communities is unclear from the sources, there have been between 170 and 270 indigenous and peasant Chiquitano and Ayoreo communities living in the Chiquitano forest - an estimated 57,000 people - for hundreds of years. Despite their poverty, the communities have maintained a sustainable lifestyle from the animals and plants of the forest. However, the implantation of a pipeline and resulting access roads are attracting timber poachers and illegal cattle ranchers as well as government encouraged access to loggers, miners, hunters , farmers, colonizers, and cattle ranchers. The results are increased environmental degredation including the likelihood of forest fires.
According to multiple sources, such negligence has been a distinctive feature of Enron construction actions. According to the journalist Jimmy Langman, writing for the environmental organization CorpWatch, "In January, 2000, their Sica Sica Arica oil pipeline burst, depositing nearly 30,000 barrels of oil along 160 miles of the Desaguadero River and contaminating as well the surrounding watershed, farmland, Lake Uru Uru and Lake Poopo. The livelihoods of many communities, including the 5,000-year old native tribe, Uru Morato, were destroyed". The concerns about the Chiquitano pipeline are serious: it passes just 200 yards from San Miguelito, an indigenous village in the tropical forest.
In response to all of this, there have been continuous protests by indigenous peoples - such as the one which shut down Enron's pipeline work near San Miguelito in September 2002. There has also been determined opposition byenvironmental organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Noel Kempff Museum and the Bolivian-based Friends of Nature. The action carried out by these NGOs ended in 1999 with a controversial agreement with Enron, which was also signed by Shell as secondary party to the construction project. In that agreement, the Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest was established and a sum of $30 million promised it, for use in necessary conservation work.
But so far today, says village leader Bolnino Socore, the community has received 50 cows and a water well, and little else. Enron, however, with finance for the construction scheme coming from the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) was planning to gain $50 million per year over the 40-year life span of the pipeline project.
