Peru planning highway through most biodiverse place

on earth
Manu national park in the Amazon under threat from extension of national ‘jungle highway’

David Hill
Thu 12 Feb 2015 15.04 GMT

The Manu national park and its buffer zone in Peru was international news early last year after
scientists found it is “top of the [world’s] list of natural protected areas in terms of amphibian
and reptile diversity”, beating off stiff competition from the Yasuni national park in
neighbouring Ecuador. What these news reports didn’t acknowledge, not surprisingly, are the
immense threats facing Manu - a Unesco biosphere reserve in the south-east Peruvian Amazon
where Unesco states the biodiversity “exceeds that of any other place on earth”.

The first such threat, to the park itself, is from oil and gas exploration and exploitation. For
years Manu has been believed to hold significant hydrocarbon deposits, and numerous oil and
gas industry maps depict “undrilled prospects”, “seeps” and a “spring” lying under the park.
According to Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, five distinct “geological structures” in Manu
could hold more than 14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Shell explored in the far west of Manu in the 1980s, and in early 2013 the Guardian revealed
that Pluspetrol was planning “geological exploration” there. Indeed, in a recent report NGO
Peru Equidad refers to claims by local inhabitants reported by a Catholic priest living in the
region of “continuous helicopter flights towards the Manu headwaters” which suggested
“seismic exploration or preparations for seismic” was taking place in the park. The report also
states that local inhabitants of the River Manu Chico region have been “disturbed” by
overflights which “could be related to extractive projects.”

Another, arguably more serious threat to the park is the extension of the southern branch,
dubbed “PE-5S”, of the national “jungle highway” network, parts of which were first built in
the 1960s. According to Peru’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC), the total
projected length of the “PE-5S” is just over 1,000 kms, with only 109 kms paved to date, 74
kms unpaved, and 890 kms “en proyecto”.

MTC maps show the planned route: east from the Junin region into Cusco, along the River
Urubamba and River Camisea, across the watershed into the Manu basin, and then along the
River Manu past Boca Manu, a settlement at the confluence with the River Madre de Dios, and
eventually all the way to the River Heath and border with Bolivia. What this would mean is
running right through the Manu park, as well as penetrating deep into a supposedly
“intangible” reserve for indigenous peoples living in “isolation” and “initial contact”, skirting
the Amarakaeri communal reserve, and entering two other supposedly “protected natural
areas”: the Tambopata national reserve and Bahuaja Sonene national park.

According to Peru Equidad, the very first steps towards this extension immediately to the west
of the park, in its buffer zone, have effectively already been taken. In its recent report, ‘The
Battle for “the Nanti”’, the NGO states that a trail has been opened up through the forest
linking three “Matsigenka-Nanti” settlements along the River Camisea:

It must be pointed out that [this trail] coincides with the proposed route for the national [highway]
network which comes from the central rainforest region (Junin), crosses the Urubamba towards
the south, and runs parallel along the length of the [River] Camisea, passes the three settlements,
and then penetrates the Manu national park. [A]lthough the model of the Camisea [gas] project
continues being “off-shore in-land” (without access roads), there are national and regional plans
proposing, in the medium- or long-term, extending communication routes into the upper Camisea
and the Manu park.

On the other side, to the east and south-east, things are moving too. A road ultimately running
from Cusco is gradually getting closer and closer to Boca Manu, and the plan to build the
stretch between Boca Manu and Boca Colorado, a town down the River Madre de Dios, to the
east, was declared in late 2013 in the “public necessity” and “national interest” by the
Peruvian Congress’s Commission on Transport and Communications.

Indeed, Madre de Dios’s new regional president stated before he was elected that the Boca
Manu-Boca Colorado stretch of highway is on his agenda, and only yesterday he said in a
meeting that connecting Manu to Tambopata was among his plans. Back in 2011 Unesco
expressed concern about the “increasing pressures” that the Boca Manu-Boca Colorado stretch
would “likely” bring on the Manu park, and requested that the Peruvian government provide
an “Environmental and Social Impact Assessment” by 1 February 2014, just over a year ago
today.

“The report was due by February last year [but] it was never received,” Unesco told the
Guardian. “Unesco has requested it again but it has still not arrived.”

True, the idea of building a highway into the Manu basin has been around for many years: one
president, Fernando Belaunde Terry, even visited the region in the early 1980s and was forced
to pull out after being attacked by indigenous people living in “isolation”, the “Yora” or Nahua,
who at the time had no sustained contact with other people. But MTC maps say what they say,
and the recent developments immediately to the west and east of the Manu park make it clear
that the threat is growing.

As scientists and many others have emphasised, building roads into fragile environments such
as tropical forests, like the Amazon, can have particularly devastating impacts. These include
physical disturbances to the soil, vegetation and water-flows, pollution, and opening up
previously inaccessible areas to hunting, colonisation and natural resource exploitation.

In the case of Manu, a potential highway or oil and gas operations don’t only pose dangers to
the reptiles, amphibians and other spectacular biodiversity, such as birds and butterflies, for
which it is arguably most famous. The park is also home to various indigenous peoples,
including the Matsigenka, the “Nanti”, or “Matsigenka-Nanti”, and one group known as the
“Mashco-Piro” living in “isolation.”

There are also other threats to Manu and its inhabitants: logging, cocaine industry trafficking,
and even people looking for archaeological remains including a “lost Inca city” known as
Paititi. One further, outside threat is a gas pipeline which could connect potential deposits in a
concession known as Lot 76, to the immediate east of Manu, to the Camisea gas fields, Peru’s
biggest hydrocarbons project, to the west of the park. Several years ago the International Union
for Conservation of Nature raised the possibility that a pipeline “might traverse the property”
to unite with Camisea, although Unesco subsequently reported that the company operating in
Lot 76, Hunt Oil, stated “there is no intention to plan or build a pipeline” affecting Manu.

Finally, it’s essential to point out that the park’s buffer zone - included within the scientists’
research - has already been opened up to gas exploration and exploitation for years. The
Camisea gas project, as operations there are known, has been producing gas since 2004 and
includes a swathe of the buffer zone, as does Lot 76, where Hunt Oil is currently exploring. In
fact, Sernanp, the government institution responsible for “protected natural areas” like Manu,
expressed concern that the expansion of operations in Camisea - approved by the Ministry of
Energy and Mines in early 2014 - would drive indigenous people in “isolation” into Manu to
seek refuge.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of Energy and Mines, Pluspetrol and
Hunt Oil did not respond to requests for comment.

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