The project also will reduce the local population's need for firewood, and thus, help cut down on deforestation. In an effort to ease environmentalists' concerns, the agency board Tuesday did require some additional environmental safeguards, including an independent audit to ensure compliance with environmental requirements and environmental training for workers. Environmentalists argue the decision to help fund the project undercuts the Clinton administration's efforts to persuade other industrialized nations to adhere to environmental standards when helping fund projects overseas. Besides the environmental activists, the project had been opposed by a group of 25 mostly liberal, environmentally conscious lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The lone Texan in the group was Republican Ron Paul of Surfside.
Government wants to subsidize the attack on the environment.
The pipeline will bisect the world's largest intact tropical dry forest. This globally important forest is the headwaters of the Pantanal watershed-the world's largest wetland. Enron is reported to have already begun clearing the right of way and moving in construction equipment. OPIC's failure to respond formally to concerns raised and documented by NGOs since November 1998. We continue to be concerned over the potential negative impacts of the construction of the pipeline on the globally important and endangered ecoregions of the tropical dry deciduous forests and the Pantanal wetlands of this area.