The Amazon hub stretches almost 1,000 miles across the Amazon basin, from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic. Parts of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru are included in this hub, which covers the Amazon River and most of its main tributaries. It has an area of 4.5 million km2 and some 52 million inhabitants. It is also home to about half the world’s biological diversity and 15-20 % of its freshwater supply.
The Amazon hub currently contains 54 IIRSA projects, divided into 7 project clusters, the majority of which are organized around the watersheds of tributaries of the Amazon River. It is characterized by a large number of river transport, port construction, and hydroelectric projects.
This transport system is supposed to link the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific through the Huallaga, Marañón, Ucayali, and Amazon rivers in Peru; the Putumayo and Napo in Ecuador; the Putumayo in Colombia; and the Iça, Solimões, and Amazon in Brazil along over 6,000 km of navigable waterways. In this way, proponents of IIRSA hope to increase the flow of goods through and natural resources out of the Amazon Basin.
There are concerns that the implementation of these projects would greatly accelerate widespread deforestation, extraction of non-renewable natural resources, pollution, the destruction of indigenous livelihoods and cultures, and the extinction of species in the Amazon Basin.