The macroeconomic hypothesis that infrastructure investments stimulate economic growth assumes that these physical assets overcome a logistical or systemic constraint on production. In practice, this requires for individual projects to…
MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Daeng Bau says he has no plans to move from his home on the tiny island of Lae-Lae, a stone’s throw across the seafront here in Makassar,…
The increasing presence of Chinese companies in South America has become an issue of concern among social and political analysts. Security specialists argue they are a geopolitical threat to the…
The concessionaire system in Peru is managed by the Organismo Supervisor de la Inversión en Infraestructura de Transporte de Uso Público (OSITRAN), which oversees investments in transportation infrastructure, while the…
In spite of the ongoing build-out of infrastructure in Latin America, investment remains well below what most economists think the region needs to spur economic growth and reduce poverty. This…
In mid-April, the government of Thai Binh province on Vietnam’s north-central coast quietly issued a decision that has since spawned growing controversy. The decision removed protection from almost 90% of…
The challenges to developing waterways have focused investor’s attention on railroads. In 2020, the Amazon Hub of the IIRSA portfolio included eight rail projects, which were either completed (2), under…
The main stem of the Amazon River has provided access to ocean-going cargo ships for centuries, including modern container ships that service the manufacturing sector in Manaus and ore-carriers that…
Designing roads with wildlife in mind is an idea whose time hasn’t come soon enough: nearly a million animals are killed on roads every day, just in the U.S., and…
The modification of the rivers in Brazil has been driven by energy development, but investment in dams has the potential of creating an economically attractive option for shipping Brazil’s farm…
The past two decades saw a massive increase in hydropower across the Pan Amazon. The Brazilian government has scaled back investment in mega-scale hydropower projects but continues to pursue development…
The recent history of hydropower in Ecuador is similar to that described for Bolivia and Peru, particularly with respect to its recent expansion and the predominance of D&T systems that…
A recent Gallup poll found that 43% of Americans believe that economic growth should be a higher priority than environmental protection. But this is a false dichotomy. There is growing…
Peru has enjoyed historic levels of economic growth for more than two decades, mostly due to the expansion of the minerals sector, which is a large consumer of electrical energy.…
HOLBOX, Mexico — The tour I’d arranged in Holbox wasn’t one of the usual packages. It isn’t advertised on social media or sold at the dozens of stalls along the…
In Brazil’s semiarid Caatinga biome, wind power farms have brought dirt, noise and disruption to the livelihood of local communities.
Katavi National Park is one of the great East African parks. It's great in the sense of being an enormous, 4,471 km2 area of miombo woodland, having a high diversity…
Bolivia’s hydropower is based on medium-scale facilities located in a geographical region optimally suited for dam and tunnel (D&T) systems. The oldest of these is in the Zongo Valley, which…
How much does it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? Where does the money come from? Who pays and how is that money used? What models of forest protection work?…
In recent years, several exhibitions held abroad have featured Indigenous people from Brazil and Latin America, giving unprecedented visibility to artists historically erased by gallery owners and museums.
In 2010, Electronorte initiated the construction of a high-tension (500 kW) transmission line to connect the power plants at Tucuruí and Belo Monte; this line was extended north to the…
The Tapajós is a clear-water river and the fifth largest tributary of the Amazon; it drops in elevation from about 800 meters above sea level in the highlands of central…
The most controversial hydropower project in the Pan Amazon is the complex on the Rio Xingu near the city of Altamira (Pará). The proposal to build a dam on the…
PHNOM PENH — The Cambodian government has awarded another large swath of Botum Sakor National Park to local conglomerate Royal Group, carving out yet more land from this ostensibly protected…
A billion tires enter landfills, are burned, or litter the landscape every year, and more will be dumped as auto use surges planetwide. Industry analysts and entrepreneurs are pressing for circular economy solutions.
The Rio Madeira was the next Amazonian tributary to attract the attention of Brazil’s hydropower developers. The river is free of rapids as it flows along the western edge of…
The oldest hydropower facility in the Brazilian Amazon is the Tucuruí D&R complex (8.4 GW) on the lower Tocantins River, about 200 kilometers south of its confluence with the Amazon…
The largest hydropower complex in Venezuela is the oldest and least sustainable facility in the Pan Amazon. The complex of dams on the Rio Caroni is operated by Electrificación del…
After highways, investments in large-scale hydropower facilities are the most controversial infrastructure investments in the Pan Amazon. Governments pursue hydropower as a sovereign source of renewable energy and driver of…
Nepal is a small biodiversity-rich country that is subjected to climatic vagaries: conditions range from tropical in the south to alpine in the north. While Nepal contributes ~ 0.027% of…
