Peruvian Fluvial Ports Expansion

The Support Program for the Sustainability of the River Transport Model in the Amazon (PE-L1294) aims to improve connectivity and expand access to river transport, health, and education services for riverside communities along the Nanay, Napo, Huallaga, Marañón, Ucayali, Santiago and Amazonas rivers.

According to project documents, 2,780 riverside communities in the Peruvian Amazon, representing around 445,000 people, have no road connectivity and rely entirely on river transport. The project finances the construction of approximately eighty river docks, a cargo port on Santa Rosa Island, the acquisition of fifty ships, and a series of studies, strategies, and guidelines to support waterway and river transport development. The operation is implemented by Peru’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) and forms part of the IDB Group’s Amazonia Forever regional program. 

Environmental and Social Classification: The IDB classified the operation as Category B under its Environmental and Social Policy Framework, indicating that its adverse environmental and associated social impacts are expected to be primarily local, short-term, and concentrated during construction.

The project’s total cost is USD $164 million. Of that, USD $130 million is coming from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Our concerns include:

• Possible underestimation of environmental risks: The Category B classification rests on the expectation that impacts will be “mostly local and short-term.” Nevertheless, the project’s “operational risk” is described as “substantial” in the Project Profile, given the numerous interventions planned across the Peruvian Amazon, including in protected areas and Indigenous communities. Although the operation covers approximately eighty docks spread across seven river basins, Environmental and Social Assessments and Management Plans have been completed for only a sample of thirty projects. The IDB has not disclosed the final number and characteristics of the remaining docks, limiting stakeholder’s ability to assess the full scope of the project’s environmental and social risks. .
• Cumulative and induced impacts on highly dynamic rivers: Collectively, the new ports, access points, and increased vessel traffic across seven basins could affect riverbank stability, sediment dynamics, fish landing and migration areas, and the aquatic resources on which riverside communities depend for food security. These river systems meander, erode and flood seasonally, and are already under stress from low-water events. Improved access could also facilitate illegal economies, including illegal mining, logging and trafficking, which are already documented on the Santiago and Marañón rivers. These are not “local and short-term” effects, and a work-by-work assessment is structurally unable to capture these impacts.
  
• Lack of transboundary analysis of the Santa Rosa cargo terminal: Project documents identify the Santa Rosa cargo terminal as the operation’s most critical dock, but assess it primarily from a national perspective, addressing only risks within Peru. The port is located at the Peru–Brazil–Colombia triple border, and approximately 90 percent of its cargo is expected to be shipped onward to Brazil or Colombia. The terminal operates in an area affected by drug trafficking, frequent armed assaults on vessels, and informal conditions in which the current port consists largely of precarious structures. Project documents note that a formal terminal could improve migration oversight, passenger registration, and emergency response. However, these functions cannot be delivered by Peru alone at a shared international border.
  
• Concerns about MTC’s institutional capacity for implementation and oversight: The IDB identified potential institutional weaknesses in implementation and plans to address these issues through capacity building, beginning with a “gap analysis” across seven standards of the Environmental and Social Framework and the MTC’s existing management and staff systems. Implementation capacity is particularly important given the scale of the project, which comprises approximately eighty ports scattered across seven Amazonia basins. 
• Prior consultation may be addressed too late: Prior consultation and the determination of whether free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is required under ESPS 7 are expected to be addressed on a work-by-work basis as individual sites are defined. If consultation is triggered only after each dock site has been identified, communities may be consulted after the location, design, and sequencing of a given dock has already been largely determined. This could limit their ability to influence alternatives, benefit-sharing arrangements, or concerns with the project.
  
• Information is not accessible to many affected communities: Every environmental and social document for the operation is published on the IDB project page only in Spanish and in lengthy technical formats. This presents a significant accessibility challenge for communities with limited connectivity, where many people speak Kukama-Kukamiria, Kichwa, Achuar, Shipibo-Konibo, Wampis, Urarina and other Indigenous languages. Project-affected communities’ ability to understand the project and participate meaningfully in consultation may be limited without information provided in an accessible format in their local language.
  
• Potential displacement and impacts on local livelihoods: The operation required a General Involuntary Resettlement Framework, indicating that physical or economic displacement could occur, although the locations and scale of potential impacts remain unknown. River docks are typically built exactly where informal landings, fish-landing points, small traders, and boat operators are already working. The selection of new sites could therefore affect existing livelihoods and patterns of river use.
  

There is a concerning precedent regarding the Ministry of Transport and Communications’ capacity to conduct this operation and its institutional track record. The Wampis Nation, whose territory overlaps with the River Transport Project, recently issued a public statement rejecting the “Hidrovía Electrónica” programme, which is also being developed by the MTC. 

This parallel project, which is not financed by IDB, involves similar infrastructure, including construction of river docks and landing platforms in 23 localities of the Wampis ancestral territory. In its statement, the Wampis Nation accused the MTC of advancing the project without consulting their territorial authorities. Although the two projects are separate, this experience raises a direct question about how the MTC will engage Indigenous governments where docks under the River Transport Project are located.

Our recommendations include:

• Determine prior consultation at the project level, before individual docks are selected: Consultations should address the project’s strategic choices rather than be limited to individual sites, including which basins and localities are prioritized, which areas are excluded, and how benefits are shared.
• Disclose the project pipeline and eligibility criteria: The IDB should publicly disclose the eligibility and screening criteria of the proposed sites, as well as the technical specifications of the planned works.
• Conduct a basin-level cumulative assessment: The project should assess and disclose the cumulative and synergistic impacts and risks at the basin and landscape levels, covering the full project pipeline before the first subprojects are approved. This should include a specific assessment and a detailed institutional plan for the Santa Rosa cargo terminal, given its critical importance. The IDB should also map and publicly report on how the project interacts with other MTC-promoted interventions in the same rivers so that cumulative effects and consultation obligations can be properly considered.
  
• Make information and grievance channels widely available: The IDB and MTC should publish accessible summaries of all projects relevant to affected communities in Indigenous languages and through oral and radio formats. Environmental and social grievance mechanisms should also be available even without internet access, in local languages, and through channels adapted to riverine and dispersed communities.
  
• Supervise FPIC and safeguard compliance directly: The IDB should verify for each dock:
  • whether ESPS 7 and its consent requirements are triggered, 
  • confirm consent through direct engagement with affected peoples and their representative organizations rather than relying solely on the executing agency’s determination, and 
  • maintain sufficient staffing and site-visit capacity throughout the life of the loan.