“Ministries, society divided over pros and cons of Amazon waterway mega-scheme” – 14 December 2019

… In a week that has starkly set out contrasting development options facing the government over the future of Amazonia, the government reconfirmed the go-ahead for the controversial Hidrovia project to dredge canals for deep water vessels in Peru’s four main Amazon tributaries. The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) has had the US$97 million project on its books since 2014. It is financed by China…At the same time, the Ministry of Environment (MinAm) announced at COP 25 in Madrid its contribution to climate change mitigation via a project funded by Japan’s international cooperation arm, JICA, to protect the Peruvian Amazon’s extensive peat deposits. These capture vast quantities of carbon (only surpassed by Indonesia and Congo) in wetlands that also sustain large natural extensions of aguaje, a palm-bearing fruit rich in vitamin A which provides incomes for thousands of riverine families… Some MinAm experts see aguaje as the indigenous answer to African palm oil, and researchers fear that changes to the river system induced by dredging could endanger the peatlands as well as the aguaje that grows on it…Also ranged against the Hidrovia project are the indigenous peoples that have occupied the banks of these Amazonian rivers for thousands of years…The relatively recent incursion into these areas of planters with interests in palm oil is indicative of the commercial interests on a massive scale from which the indigenous peoples have already suffered the consequences…