ACRE, BRAZIL – The twin limbs of the half-completed bridge reach toward each other, like the outstretched hands in Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel fresco. Underneath runs the muddy Acre River, which marks the boundary between Brazil and Peru.

The little town of Assis, a short walk from the construction site, was once one of the most isolated communities in Brazil. But with the bridge’s upcoming inauguration, this sleepy Amazonian outpost, in Brazil’s far western state of Acre, will become a pivotal node in a vast network of transportation, energy and telecommunications infrastructure projects. The new works, 335 in all, are grouped in eight integration and development areas of influence, called development hubs. On a map, each of these areas is assigned a color, their bright swaths cutting across the familiar political boundaries of the 12 countries and the timeless geography of mountains, basins and plains.

This is IIRSA, the Spanish acronym for an initiative called the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America. Still little known by the general public, this new plan will attempt to finally achieve the physical integration of the continent’s countries. It will also create new economic opportunities, bring millions of people into their countries cultural and social mainstreams, and pose new challenges for conservationists seeking to protect currently undisturbed natural areas (See the January 2006 issue of IDBAmerica for articles on how one Amazonian state hopes to benefit from the new roads while actually increasing its forested area.)

The original vision for IIRSA was proposed by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso at the 2000 meeting in Brasilia of the heads of state of the 12 South American countries. Today, five years later, these same countries have agreed on a thick portfolio of proposed initiatives that include 31 top priority projects—bridges, roads, railroads, waterways, gas pipelines—many of which are already under construction. Most should be completed by the 2010 deadline.

The plan’s backers describe IIRSA with the kind of excitement that recalls the era of continental railroad construction in the United States. For them IIRSA is much more than highways and bridges—it is a new kind of manifest destiny. A person traveling from Rio Branco, capital of Brazil’s westernmost state of Acre, toward Assis is not merely driving along highway BR-317. As the big overhead signs proclaim, this is the “Estrada do Pacífico,” the Road to the Pacific, Brazil’s long-standing dream of an outlet to west coast ports. Approaching Assis, the sign informs the traveler that the Pacific Ocean is 1,470 kilometers away, and that going there is now an option.

Well, not quite yet. For now, this is a very arduous 1,470 kilometers. On the other side of the bridge, heading west from the Peruvian border town of Iñapari, the road quickly turns to dirt. During the few months of dry season, the road is dusty and punishing both to drivers and shock absorbers. During the up to 10 months of rainy season, the road becomes a muddy morass, turning the 740-kilometer drive to the Andean city of Cuzco into a weeklong ordeal.

These are the kinds of roads, common throughout the interior of South America, that make travel exhausting for people and frustrating for producers and shippers. Paving the Peruvian segment of the Road to the Pacific may be a higher priority for Brazil than for Peru: Brazil’s development bank, BNDES, has lent US$417 million to Peru to complete the project. The Andean Development Corporation is lending an additional US$300 million, and the Peruvian government is investing US$100 million.

In two years, travelers will be able to drive paved roads from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Reversing urban migration. Many assume that the Road to the Pacific will unleash the economic potential of Brazil’s vast interior, including the Amazon Basin. At long last, producers will have a cost-effective way to ship soy, timber, cattle and other products to Asian markets. But Ariel Cecílio Garces Pares, Brazil’s IIRSA coordinator, discounts this idea, at least for now.

“Anyone who thinks that you can profitably ship bulk cargo by truck over steep grades doesn’t know anything about transport,” he said in his office in the Ministry of Planning in Brasilia. To be economically viable, overseas trade in these commodities will require rail transport using a route with much milder gradients, he said.

For now, said Garces Pares, the principle objective of this new road—as well as Brazil’s new links with other neighboring countries—is to spur trade within the continent, not with overseas markets. He sees ample opportunities for business, transport, finance and job creation in currently isolated areas. Over time, the new roads could help to draw people away from big urban centers into more thinly populated regions.

The new links will also encourage cross-border tourism, said Garces Pares. For example, the Road to the Pacific will give the million tourists that annually visit the Inca capital of Cuzco and the ruins of Machu Picchu the opportunity to visit the Brazilian Amazon.

Moving into second gear. During the past five years officials have defined a continental infrastructure strategy, identified projects to carry them out, established offices in each participating country to move projects forward and coordinate with neighboring countries. They have also hosted numerous workshops with members of the public in each participating country.

The major challenge now is to drive the 31 projects named as the priorities to completion by the year 2010, according to Mauro Marcondes, IIRSA coordinator at the IDB. The IDB, along with the Andean Development Corporation and FONPLATA, a regional agency that funds projects in the River Plate basin, makes up IIRSA’s Technical Coordination Committee.

“If there’s no commitment on the part of the government, there is no chance that the project will happen,” said Marcondes, who was Brazil's planning secretary during the first administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. As with any government program, priorities can shift with new economic or political realities.

In the hope of keeping all of the 31 priority projects on the fast track, the IIRSA Technical Committee is providing government officials with a web-based management information system showing the real-time status of each of the 31 projects. In addition to providing technical details and information on critical project stages, the system will feature a visual key for each project: green for satisfactory progress, yellow for problems in execution, and red for critical difficulties. “The idea is to create a sense of urgency,” said Marcondes, “to get the different actors together, improve coordination among the countries, and solve the problems.”

In addition to the Road to the Pacific, several other projects are rapidly moving toward completion. One is a series of bridges, roads and border crossings that link Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. This so-called Capricorn Hub, so named for the latitude that it shadows, is already a major producer of agricultural, mining and industrial products.

Planning for the future. The second thrust of the IIRSA strategy is to improve planning to ensure good quality projects. “We are helping the countries to think in terms of sustainable development,” said Marcondes. Instead of just building civil works, IIRSA will help the countries identify investments that will add value to the new infrastructure, such as creation of new production and logistics centers. For example, Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso produces enormous quantities of soybeans, a major component in chicken feed. But chickens don’t do well under factory farm conditions in Mato Grosso’s hot climate. The answer would be to locate production facilities in higher, cooler Andean regions, and ship the soybeans to them on the new roads.

Good planning also means taking a hard look at the new infrastructure’s likely impact on communities and the environment. In some cases, projects can be modified while leaving their ultimate objective intact. For example, roads in remote areas are notorious for generating an uncontrollable influx of settlers, the construction of additional feeder roads, and the eventual destruction of natural habitat and the ways of life of indigenous inhabitants. If a nearby river could achieve many of the economic objectives as the road, perhaps the construction of ports and selective dredging would be a better alternative.

Environmentalists insist that good planning means taking preventative measures before a new infrastructure project is under construction, rather than after. For example, the segment of the Road to the Pacific that will pass through the Peruvian Amazon would open that region to considerable new development and increased value of natural resources, such as timber. These changes could put irresistible pressure on a group of protected areas containing some of the continent’s highest concentrations of plant and animal species. Acknowledging these risks and protecting these pristine areas with well-enforced regulations would help to reduce the threat.

“The environment does not respect national boundaries,” said Acre Governor Jorge Viana at a meeting in Cuzco last year. “Environmental destruction in Peru would seriously threaten Brazil’s natural resources,” he said, citing the fact that many rivers in the Amazon basin originate in Andean countries.

Ready for inauguration day: hardhats labeled “President of Peru,” “President of Brazil,” and “President of Bolivia.”

The IDB’s Marcondes says that even projects already underway can be modified in light of the new information that will be generated by a regional planning process. “We use the concept of sustainable development to improve the quality of decision making,” he says. “Infrastructure is not an end in itself.” An important added value of IIRSA is to get highly qualified experts from 12 very different countries to work out problems and share knowledge, ideas and experience, he said.

Good planning requires that all of these groups participate in making decisions, at the very least to prevent nasty surprises in the future, but also to maximize the new infrastructure’s benefits. Each of the workshops held this past year in the participating countries brought together 30–40 representatives of industries, academia, and civil society, each organized by a national coordinator. Last month the planning or infrastructure ministers who make up IIRSA’s Executive Management Committee met to discuss the workshops’ results.

The third part of the new IIRSA strategy consists of what Marcondes calls the “software” of physical integration. By this he means the legislation and regulations needed to smooth the transit of goods and services at the border crossings. This can range from clearly defined issues, such as cutting red tape at customs posts, to more complex problems. For example, Brazil wants to boost tourism from other Latin American countries by making it easier to travel to attractions such as the beaches of Rio de Janeiro or the ecolodges of Manaus. This will require reworking airline routes and flight schedules, and making related changes in policies and regulations.

“It’s much harder to pass a set of new regulations than to build a new highway,” said Marcondes.

Thorny politics. Both the IDB’s Marcondes and Brazilian coordinator Garces Pares are realistic about the thorny politics of infrastructure.

Both agree that it is difficult to end the constant tug-of-war among interest groups over issues that could determine the future of whole regions. Nor would they want to, since this process of open negotiation and debate is part of the give-and-take of healthy democratic societies. “The progress that IIRSA has achieved has come about as the result of continual dialogue and consensus-building,” says Marcondes. Adjustments will have to be made. For example, the Road to the Pacific was originally routed only through Cuzco. But off to the south, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the city of Puno objected. So the route will fork, serving both population centers, with both arms linking with Pacific port cities.

Similarly, the IIRSA planners are not naïve about the potential long-term effects of mega projects passing through some of the continent’s most pristine and biologically valuable areas. “We do not want the Road to the Pacific to lead to the expansion of the agricultural frontier,” said Garces Pares. In this, the states will have much of the responsibility to protect forests along IIRSA routes. This is not easy, and few places in the world, including developed countries, have succeeded in controlling the secondary effects of infrastructure improvements. “We are going to use the best technical expertise available to promote development that is sustainable and conserves natural resources,” said Marcondes.

At the root of the conundrum is the issue of political will and leadership. On the drive back from the bridge over the Acre River, Marcus Aguiar, Acre’s executive secretary for planning and sustainable economic development, laid out his state’s strategy for benefiting from the new infrastructure by using it to build an economy based on sustainable management of natural forests, not only protecting its forested land, but actually expanding it (See the January 2006 issue of IDBAmérica for details). In its own way, the Acre strategy is as visionary as IIRSA itself.

“We expect that the new bridge and the Road to the Pacific will bring many good things to Acre,” said Aguiar.