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Say NO! To PORTO SUL NÃO...!
10.12.09
Urgent Action Required for Planned Port in Heart of Atlantic Rainforest
The Brazilian Atlantic Raniforest, a World Heritage location identified by UNESCO as one of the five Biodiversity hotspots globally, already savagely reduce to 7% of it's original size, is facing yet another major threat. Commercial interests reported to be Indian and Chinese are proposing a major port development in the sleepy town of Ponto da Tulha, just north of Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil to exploit the huge iron ore deposits in central Bahia State, destined for Chinese Steel smelters to reduce their reliance on Australian Iron Ore. Other exports would include as uranium, nickel, coal, cement, fertilizers, oil derivatives, grains, and biofuels.
Local and globally supported activist group is rallying attention and action against this proposed development. A Swiss National, Daniel Krattinger is leading the local action through the platform, www.portosulnao.com.br, whose main purpose is to prevent the development of the 1770 Hectare (17,700, 000 m2!!!) site right in the middle of this ecologically hyper sensitive area.
Check out their site, www.portosulnao.com.br, for more information. The site is in Portuguese, but you can read an in depth article on the situation in English here:
Battle in Bahia: A New Port Faces Growing Resistance
by Colleen Scanlan Lyons
https://nacla.org/node/6097
"The South of Bahia is being exposed . . . to the interests of China, India, of businesses . . . that involve sectors that we have nothing to do with . . . which aren’t the economic vocation of this region. . . . We have an economy linked to culture, services, and clean industry. . . . So this local question has to impose itself on global interests that aren’t ours."
People on the streets of Ilhéus, one of Brazil’s oldest colonial cities, are furious. Wearing shirts adorned with a drawing of a skeletal fish and the words “Porto Sul No,” members of social and environmental movements are uniting in public demonstrations against an infrastructure project that gravely threatens their vision of sustainable development and environmental conservation in the interior and coast of southern Bahia state.1 Meanwhile, mining, transportation, and transnational commerce executives and politicians from Brazil, as well as from around the world, are fervently planning for the development endeavor known as Projeto Porto Sul, or the South Port Project, slated to begin in 2010.
In general, the urban areas in the South of Bahia region still have relatively clean water and air amid a smattering of historic Jesuit churches, cobblestoned streets, and deteriorating mansions from the region’s cacao-baron era. The rural areas are dotted with family farming areas, a smattering of ecotourism inns, and quiet coastal fishing communities, some of which are famous for practicing the dying art of fishing with jangadas, or sailed rafts. Although the region is threatened by clandestine logging, hunting, and unchecked urban development, it has never faced the complex environmental and cultural issues that accompany a project like Porto Sul.
Read Complete Article: https://nacla.org/node/6097
