National development banks in countries such as China and Brazil are increasingly providing financing for infrastructure projects in South America. Because of a lack of safeguards to guide such lending, however, those projects could be particularly prone to environmental problems and social conflicts, according to a three-country study by researchers from the United States, Peru and Ecuador. A growing number of infrastructure projects, especially roads and dams, are being carried out in the Andean Amazon, producing collateral damage in the form of deforestation, according to researchers from Boston University, Peru’s University of the Pacific and the Latin American School of Social Sciences (Flacso) in Ecuador. Development banks financed 60 infrastructure projects in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia during 2000-15, of which 27 were in the... [Log in to read more]