The director of the Department of Territorial Zoning of the Ministry of the Environment, Roberto Vizentini, said on Wednesday (19) that economic development in the Amazon region is not cast by environmental rules.

‘Such conception on environmental protection hinders developing the region is a generic speech that has no support in reality, since the data show an even greater economic growth than the average of the country in certain parts of the Amazon’, said Vizentini, during the 4th Symposium Amazônia – Infrastructure for Sustainable Development.

He also said that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will sign in early June, in the Environment Week, the decree approving the Ecological and Economic Macrozoning of Legal Amazon (MacroZEE). The document divides the region into 10 areas, according to the particular environment, and define development strategies for each location.

‘Brazil can reinvent its own model to develop the Amazon, and macrozoning offers a range of strategies for production and maintenance, according to the particularities of each region’, said Vizentini.

Amazônia interconnected
The director of the Energy Planning Department of the Secretariat for Development Planning of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Gilberto Hollauer, assured that the Amazon region is linked to the national interconnected system of power distribution until 2014.

‘Our distribution system is the world's largest, but does not cover all Brazil. This will occur in 2014, when the last states in the northern region will be incorporated into the system’, said Hollauer. According to him, make part of the national distribution system ensures that the energy arrives safely and constant.

Both deputies, Janete Capiberibe and Lupércio Ramos, criticised the exclusion of the Amazon in the distribution of energy. ‘We have a secure energy, we have isolated systems, a hydroelectric dam here and there that do not guarantee the supplying the region’, criticised Janete.

Platform for plants
Gilberto Hollauer also defended the operation of the hydroelectric potential of the Complex of the Tapajós by using five plants suchlike.

This model, he says, will ensure minimal environmental impacts to the region.

‘The plants are built without reservoir and construction sites are reduced and the employees work for long periods, as occurs at an oil platform’, was explained. He said that this model inhibits the construction of plant would result in creating new cities round the region; therefore, guarantee the preservation of the environment and make energy exploration of rivers in protected areas or native areas.

Reporting –Carol Siqueira
Edition – Wilson Silveira
Translation - Grupo Solucion-SP Language/Edgar Casadei