L'Acquifero Guaranì è il terzo bacino più grande del mondo e il primo per capacità di ricarica. Potrebbe dissetare l'intero pianeta per 200 anni. Ma l'ecosistema amazzonico è minacciato dalle coltivazioni intensive. E dagli interessi di chi vede nelle risorse idriche il business del futuro da Puerto Iguazù - Argentina.
hard to imagine the mouth of hell as a place saturated with water. In Garganta del Diablo, the most distinctive and suggestive point of the Iguazu Falls , embedded in the portion of rainforest around the triple border between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay , the classic iconography of Dante's language of fire, magma incandescent, and asphyxiating fumes is reversed. Even so, the effect is less terrifying. There is a river. Not the mythological Lethe, or a volcanic lava flow. It's disturbing and magnificent Iguazu in an extraordinary moment of full. There is the noise, but not to the cries of the damned. are 1,800 cubic meters of water per second crashing on the rocks after a jump of 80 feet. There is pressure, but not sulfur. It is the liquid that rises after the collision with the water saturated basalt rock and the air near the falls. There is darkness, but not that of the underworld. It is a cloud formation that hides the light of day on the exact vertical 'jaws of Satan' , and is about to unleash a violent tropical storm.
The performance by the simultaneous collision of many elements of water at a specific point is huge and seems to warn the man to have a greater compared to a resource, water, which can be both a source of life and death. Today as never before warning that comes from 'Cataratas' sounds appropriate. Here it is the epicenter and the existence of a striking manifestation of the largest and most important freshwater reserves in the world: the Guarani Aquifer, now at the center of strong commercial and strategic interests, and threatened by a serious danger of contamination and extinction.
The performance by the simultaneous collision of many elements of water at a specific point is huge and seems to warn the man to have a greater compared to a resource, water, which can be both a source of life and death. Today as never before warning that comes from 'Cataratas' sounds appropriate. Here it is the epicenter and the existence of a striking manifestation of the largest and most important freshwater reserves in the world: the Guarani Aquifer, now at the center of strong commercial and strategic interests, and threatened by a serious danger of contamination and extinction.
With an estimated cover approximately 1.2 million kilometers square and a volume of approximately 55,000 kilometers cubic è il Guaranì il terzo acquifero più grande del mondo, ma è considerato il primo in quanto a capacità di ricarica.
Alcuni studi, realizzati in base a modelli matematici, indicano che sarebbe in grado di fornire l'intero pianeta di acqua potabile per i prossimi 200 anni.
Viaggiando per le terre sovrastanti il Sag, Sistema Acquifero Guaranì , non è difficile avvertire le opportunità offerte da questa inestimabile risorsa, e i pericoli insiti nel suo sfruttamento inappropriato. Non lontano da Iguazù, lungo la strada che costeggia il Paranà verso la provincia di Corrientes, all'altezza the city of Posadas, we are witnessing a gradual transformation of the landscape and water. The natural course of the river, with its sides divided and uneven start to lose form. The opposite bank, near the Paraguay , suddenly disappears. The river becomes the sea, a huge sea-green. Yet it is the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles, and the Pacific is beyond the Andes.
Viaggiando per le terre sovrastanti il Sag, Sistema Acquifero Guaranì , non è difficile avvertire le opportunità offerte da questa inestimabile risorsa, e i pericoli insiti nel suo sfruttamento inappropriato. Non lontano da Iguazù, lungo la strada che costeggia il Paranà verso la provincia di Corrientes, all'altezza the city of Posadas, we are witnessing a gradual transformation of the landscape and water. The natural course of the river, with its sides divided and uneven start to lose form. The opposite bank, near the Paraguay , suddenly disappears. The river becomes the sea, a huge sea-green. Yet it is the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles, and the Pacific is beyond the Andes.
This enormous reservoir formed upstream of the hydroelectric Yaciretà , which in Guarani language means 'the place where the moon shines'. Fifteen hundred square miles of flooded land to feed the energy a large part of Argentina and Paraguay. Forty thousand people evacuated. Giant works of consolidation, transformation and destruction going on for decades. Surreal landscapes, and very often desolation the moon itself.
is the image of progress which transformed the nature and violent beyond measure. "If it had been proposed in 2000, Yaciretà never existed," says Pedro Etchegoin, in charge of public relations of the dam, aware that the current environmental standards would prevent such 'eco monster' even here . Today, to compensate for losses products, EBY, the bi-national body that administers the dam, has created many hectares of nature reserves and those of flooded lands. That river is not the only mutation that occurs along the same path. The lush and tropical vegetation surrounding the falls has now given way to an orderly and endless forest of pine and eucalyptus, a product of intensive planting of trees for wood to rapid growth. Trees so early, cost-effective too, but this absolutely voracious water underground.
south of this region are the swamps instead of 'Esteros de Iberia' , 20 thousand square kilometers of quasi- untouched and largely inaccessible, containing one of more value in terms of global biodiversity. Here he decided to retire a millionaire U.S. businessman Douglas Tompkins who abandoned a successful career in the textile field, converted to ecology 'conservationist'. After acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres in Patagonia Argentina and Chile, Tompkins also has a good portion of these lands. The fact that a common denominator of all his possessions and the abundance of water in the form of glaciers or swamps, raised suspicions about the intentions that are subject to an ecological philosophy that seeks to privatize in order to preserve. Tompkins did not breaks down in the face of accusations of some local nationalist politicians who accuse him of being a CIA agent, or who suspects that you are taking away the water. "Now I fall asleep every night thinking that tomorrow will they think of madness," he said. He says that his death will be donating his possessions to their member Chileans and Argentines, even if you do not understand why, if you do not trust the public administration today would trust the future.
intensive crops are one of the big problems that disturb with certainty, even now, the water balance of the Sag and are compromising water quality. Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, countries where the aquifer is to a lesser depth, they derive from here the resources to irrigate millions of acres of fields planted with transgenic soybeans. Even the Chinese short of water, are here to grow soy.
Only now you are trying to quantify exactly how much of the exploitation undergone by the Guarani aquifer and its level of contamination. And even here the lack of controversy. Scientific studies that have more advanced products on the Sag, are in fact the result of a long project of investigation started in 2003 and funded almost entirely by the World Bank, the Guarani Aquifer Project. Whose implementation is entrusted to institutions, however, geophysical German, Dutch and Norwegian Organization and International Atomic Energy Agency. Italian economist Christian Gallinone, author of a study on the exploitation of water resources in Argentina, and in particular sull'Acquifero Guarani, is not the only one to be skeptical about the ultimate aim of Pag : "The main information is now in foreign hands, the water is considered by Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and the World Bank as a human right not to be secured, but as a commodity to be preserved for economic purposes. " The coordinator of the Argentine project, the engineer Jorge Santa Cruz, defends his work and argues that "the information gathered already published and are a valuable tool in the hands of local government ". But the weak point is probably right here, in local government, provinces and municipalities of the four South American countries, which manage this resource to a particular sector.
Recital mail game, this is a huge discretion in the hands of political figures often ruthless in the second floor in front of large private donations for the purchase of public goods are practically zero otherwise. The fact that in a land so rich in many water suffer from its scarcity, however, testifies to inappropriate management by local authorities. More than 130 million people in Latin America receive drinking water in their homes. Hell may be a glass of dirty water, or simply empty.
south of this region are the swamps instead of 'Esteros de Iberia' , 20 thousand square kilometers of quasi- untouched and largely inaccessible, containing one of more value in terms of global biodiversity. Here he decided to retire a millionaire U.S. businessman Douglas Tompkins who abandoned a successful career in the textile field, converted to ecology 'conservationist'. After acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres in Patagonia Argentina and Chile, Tompkins also has a good portion of these lands. The fact that a common denominator of all his possessions and the abundance of water in the form of glaciers or swamps, raised suspicions about the intentions that are subject to an ecological philosophy that seeks to privatize in order to preserve. Tompkins did not breaks down in the face of accusations of some local nationalist politicians who accuse him of being a CIA agent, or who suspects that you are taking away the water. "Now I fall asleep every night thinking that tomorrow will they think of madness," he said. He says that his death will be donating his possessions to their member Chileans and Argentines, even if you do not understand why, if you do not trust the public administration today would trust the future.
intensive crops are one of the big problems that disturb with certainty, even now, the water balance of the Sag and are compromising water quality. Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, countries where the aquifer is to a lesser depth, they derive from here the resources to irrigate millions of acres of fields planted with transgenic soybeans. Even the Chinese short of water, are here to grow soy.
Only now you are trying to quantify exactly how much of the exploitation undergone by the Guarani aquifer and its level of contamination. And even here the lack of controversy. Scientific studies that have more advanced products on the Sag, are in fact the result of a long project of investigation started in 2003 and funded almost entirely by the World Bank, the Guarani Aquifer Project. Whose implementation is entrusted to institutions, however, geophysical German, Dutch and Norwegian Organization and International Atomic Energy Agency. Italian economist Christian Gallinone, author of a study on the exploitation of water resources in Argentina, and in particular sull'Acquifero Guarani, is not the only one to be skeptical about the ultimate aim of Pag : "The main information is now in foreign hands, the water is considered by Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and the World Bank as a human right not to be secured, but as a commodity to be preserved for economic purposes. " The coordinator of the Argentine project, the engineer Jorge Santa Cruz, defends his work and argues that "the information gathered already published and are a valuable tool in the hands of local government ". But the weak point is probably right here, in local government, provinces and municipalities of the four South American countries, which manage this resource to a particular sector.
Recital mail game, this is a huge discretion in the hands of political figures often ruthless in the second floor in front of large private donations for the purchase of public goods are practically zero otherwise. The fact that in a land so rich in many water suffer from its scarcity, however, testifies to inappropriate management by local authorities. More than 130 million people in Latin America receive drinking water in their homes. Hell may be a glass of dirty water, or simply empty.
Ludovico Mori
(from L'Espresso, 19 January 2010)
(from L'Espresso, 19 January 2010)
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