Lorena Rojas reports for Pagina Siete:
Collective claims six reasons to reject the TIPNIS road
They consider that the Government is trying to implement an unviable development model that will affect the indigenous peoples who live in the park.
The civic platform A New Opportunity raised at least six reasons, “of national importance and implication”, to defend the Indigenous Territory and Isiboro-Secure National Park (TIPNIS).
The document published by the platform indicates that the first reason is environmental and ecological: “The opening of the highway will be the spearhead for extensive deforestation and colonization of one of the last well-preserved forests of the Amazonian region of Bolivia “.
TIPNIS is the largest ecological reserve in the country and is home to endangered species.
The Constitution and national laws establish that indigenous peoples have the right to prior, free and informed consultation before the execution of any development project.
The Government claims that in 2011 a consultation was held with the TIPNIS indigenous people to build the Villa Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos road, but that consultation was “posthumous,” according to the group, because the construction of this road began in 2008 Without the consent of the indigenous peoples.
President Evo Morales promulgated on Sunday the law that annuls the intangibility of the TIPNIS to give way to the “integral development” in the territory of Chimanes, Yuracarés and Moxeños.
One of these development projects is the construction of Villa Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos road through the heart of the indigenous territory.
The group indicates that the third reason to defend the park is that Law 180 of intangibility, recently canceled by the Government, prohibited extractive activities that generate environmental liabilities, settlements of outsiders such as cocaleros and loggers and the construction of a road, and not the development of communities, as claimed by MAS.
The fourth reason is the expansion of coca and drug trafficking, and illegal logging.
The fifth reason to defend the park, according to the platform, is the pressure that the Government has to fulfill commitments acquired in the pre-election stage, such as the annulment of Law 180.
The sixth reason is the pattern of abuse of power to impose an unworkable vision of “development.”
About TIPNIS
Origin. The indigenous territory is the largest reserve of animal and plant species in the Bolivian Amazon, and indigenous peoples live there.
Law. The MAS, with its two thirds in the Legislative Assembly, annulled the intangibility of the TIPNIS to give way to the construction of the Villa Tunari – San Ignacio de Moxos road through the heart of that park.
Bolivian Thoughts opinion: I never trusted the coca grower caudillo, the self-appointed Mother Earth Defender … what a joke, what a delusional maniac!
He is by far the worst president we ever had! He does as he pleases, despises democracy and believes he is more than a king … what infuriates me more are those ignorant people that continue to support this egocentric “caudillo”.
Bolivian Thoughts 
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