Note this item is a draft article. A 300 page package from forest communities in the Brazilian Amazon was expected to arrive Thursday at the World Bank's offices asking for a formal investigation into the Bank's failure to set up protected reserves for local communties. The newly modernised road allowed nearly half a million migrants to invade the forests and clear them for cultivation. By 1991 the destruction of Rondonia's forests had multiplied to ten times its original rate. The burning of the forest became a major focus of research as the single largest, most rapid human caused change on earth visible from space.
Diseases spread rapidly.
Malaria infection rates soared to 100 percent in some killed indigenous communities with over 250,000 people infected. Infant mortality rates reached 50 percent in some communities. The complaint to the panel is the latest in a series from local groups to make the project work. Last May activists attempted to draw attention to the lack of government cooperation by faxing a message to the Bank when it convened a special meeting of activists and industry groups in this city last May to review new Bank forestry projects. No strategy has yet been defined for regulating land titles and land use concessions.