Environmental Impact Assessment in the Apure River
In southern Venezuela, within a context of flatlands, the “Llanos” are found. This region has the particularity of flooding during the rainy season and drying during the dry season, affecting people especially in the rainy season. To avoid this, a series of dikes to canalize were proposed in the Apure basin in 1993.
The canalization of the Apure River would benefit navigation, commerce as a consequence, and would create suitable conditions for building small dams that generated electricity and collected water. Multidisciplinary teams formed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency worked with local institutions and ministries. After a series of workshops destined to make an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), the project faced issues related with its consequences on biodiversity, water availability in some areas and flora.
Government needed quick results, reason why this information was gathered in a year and a half, constraining results and the generation of further information. Once the information was collected by multidisciplinary teams, communities should be clearly informed of the benefits and downsides of the project, their already established way of life could be affected by it. Also, they were witnesses of the yearly local cycles.
Finally, even when the project was building a channel to favor navigation and avoid flooding, the different groups arrived to the conclusion than doing so could affect too much biodiversity, waters and flora. The final proposal was that construction of dikes should be limited and vessels adapted to the rivers were better, so navigation could be sustainable during the year and biodiversity could be affected less.
Source:
Takeuchi et al (2007). Environmental Impact Assessment in the Apure River. Available at: http://library.witpress.com/pages/PaperInfo.asp?PaperID=17620 . Last consulted: 07/02/2012.
Comments Off on Environmental Impact Assessment in the Apure River /
08 Feb 2012
por
Rodrigo Capriles Mazzei
IMSD /
.png)
].gif)
.png){kind=logo}
].png)
].png)
].png)
].png)
.png){kind=logo}
].png)
.png){kind=logo}
