A Port That Could Doom the Amazon
When a massive Chinese-backed port opened in Chancay, Peru, it was the realization, nearly two decades in the making, of a dream to revolutionize global trade by connecting South America to Asia with a straight-shot shipping route across the Pacific.
The port — Peru’s first project under the banner of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and China’s flagship infrastructure investment in South America — brings tremendous economic opportunities, but also environmental threats.
The port reawakens old ambitions of roads, railways and water routes that could connect the riches of the Amazon to the continent’s west coast and the world’s largest ocean, efforts that scientists warn could speed the destruction of the world’s most climate-critical ecosystem.
Georgina, our award-winning agriculture reporter who spent a month in Peru reporting this story, explains the enormous complexities and consequences flowing from the new port’s development and how its magnetic pull may spell disaster for communities and ecosystems in its orbit.
ICN Sunday Morning is now available as a podcast! Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.
Reporter, Washington, D.C.
Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News, and has reported on the intersections of farming, food systems and the environment for much of her journalism career. Her work has won numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and she was twice named the Glenn Cunningham Agricultural Journalist of the Year, once with ICN colleagues. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and CQ Roll Call, and her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado at Boulder.