Nelson Motta
Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasília – The head of the Secretariat of Institutional Relations, minister Jaques Wagner, is on his way to the municipality of Cabrobó, in the backlands of the state of Pernambuco (PE), where he is scheduled to meet with a local bishop, Dom Luiz Flávio Cappio. The priest has been on a hunger strike for ten days protesting the government's transbasin diversion project for the São Francisco River, claiming that it will not benefit the poor who live in the region. Wagner is accompanied by the nuncio of Brazil, Dom Lorenzo Baldisseri.

"We are willing to sit down with the bishop and talk this over. We want to remove his doubts and answer his questions about what we are doing. I think we will be able to end the hunger strike with a good conversation," said the minister. Wagner added that he will invite Cappio to come to Brasilia and meet president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Also according to Wagner, minister of National Integration, Ciro Gomes, who is actually running the diversion project, has said he is willing to talk to the bishop and provide him with any necessary explanations about the project.

The São Francisco River flows 2,700 kilometers, through five states, but has never been really important because it flows through a poor, under-populated area of the country's Northeast region. The São Francisco transbasin diversion project has been designed to consist of two canals which would carry water into the center of Brazil's drought-prone semi-arid Northeast . One of the canals will head north carrying water into the states of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte. The other canal will head east carrying water into the states of Pernambuco and Paraibá. According to project planners, the total amount of water carried in the canals is to be approximately 1% of what the river carries to sea.

Bishop Cappio is not the only project critic, although his opposition has taken a radical turn. Ruben Siqueira, a sociologist who works with farmers and fishermen along the river,´points out that the water is going to be very expensive (for example, pumping stations will be needed to raise the water 160 meters above the river level for the north canal and 300 meters for the east canal). Siqueira also claims that the project will contribute to the further degradation of the basin. He says the river situation is critical due to uncontrolled irrigation projects, pollution of the water, deforestation along its banks and a serious problem with sediment deposits. The transbasin diversion will only make things worse, he says.

The government refutes its critics saying that the project is much more than a diversion of river water. It is a wide-ranging revitalization program for the whole of the São Francision basin region that will include recovery of areas destroyed by erosion, improvement in water quality, recuperation and protection of natural flora and water sources, water and sewage treatment, environmental oversight and the creation of tourism and recreational centers along the river. Estimated total cost is R$4.5 billion. The proposed project budget for this year is R$624 million.

Ministers Wagner and Gomes, bishops Cappio and Baldisseri, and sociologist Siqueira, along with a lot of others in favor of or against the project, are all very much in action at the moment because Congress is supposed to vote on whether or not to approve the transbasin diversion project today.

Translator: Allen Bennett