But environmentalists are sceptical that SIVAM will promote sustainable development policies and contribute to curbing the destruction of the Amazon jungle.

A total of 25 radars, eight airplanes, 87 satellite imaging stations and 200 data gathering platforms will multiply the sources of real-time information on what is occurring in the 60 percent of Brazilian territory that is covered by the Amazon jungle.

Environmental groups have neither the capacity nor the resources to take advantage of the abundance of information that will be made available, Gilney Viana, a long-time defender of the environment and a parliamentary deputy for the state of Mato Grosso, told IPS.

Paulo Adario, the head of Greenpeace's Amazon jungle campaign, told IPS that although SIVAM will be "an important tool" for control over the Amazon, there are no guarantees that the government will make use of the information to crack down on those responsible for burning or chopping down the jungle.

Adario acknowledged that by improving understanding of the remote region, and of the causes of its problems, the new system will have the potential to favour sustainable development and environmental policies.

But, he underlined, the system will in no way replace direct action on the ground by authorities, which is the only way to identify and punish those who destroy the Amazon forest and pollute and destroy the region's ecosystems.

Cardoso, meanwhile, stated in Manaus that although the project has drawn much criticism, its significance will go down in history.

Besides opening up new horizons for defence, control of air traffic and the fight against drug smuggling, SIVAM creates an "innovative" area of integration among the eight countries that share the Amazon jungle, the president stressed.

Colombian President-elect Alvaro Uribe has already expressed an interest in obtaining information collected by SIVAM, said Cardoso, who flew afterwards to Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he will take part Friday and Saturday in the second summit of South American presidents.

SIVAM only began to partially operate Thursday, because 25 percent of the installations have yet to be completed, including two of the three control centres.

During the inauguration of the new system, the Manaus Regional Surveillance Centre, where the information will be centralised, was opened. Two other centres will begin to function within the next two months in Belem, the capital of the northeastern state of Par�, and in Porto Velho, the capital of the northern state of Rondonia.

When it is fully functioning, SIVAM will create 2,100 direct jobs, at a total cost of 1.4 billion dollars, most of which has gone towards the purchase of state-of-the-art digital electronic equipment.

The main goal of SIVAM is to monitor air traffic and to defend the national territory from incursions by drug traffickers or armed groups operating in neighbouring countries like war-torn Colombia, as well as to monitor flights over the sparsely populated Amazon jungle.

Nearly 1,500 unauthorised flights a year overfly Brazil's Amazon jungle, 90 percent of which are involved in illegal activities like drug trafficking, according to authorities.

SIVAM is an initiative of the air force, which is coordinating the project.

Fixed radars and radars on air and watercraft will now be able to identify planes of any size that enter Brazilian airspace, regardless of the altitude at which they are flying.

A bill approved by the Brazilian Congress in 1998, but which has not yet been signed into law by the executive, would give the air force permission to shoot down unauthorised airplanes whose pilots refuse to follow the orders issued by Brazilian authorities.

SIVAM could encourage harsh responses to illegal flights and to unauthorised watercraft on the rivers by sharing information with a parallel system, the Amazon Protection System, which will have its own planes and other military resources.

But 80 percent of the data collected by SIVAM will be on the environment, say air force authorities, who point out that it will include information from three meteorological satellites that will shed light on deforestation, changes in water resources, and soil use.

The system will also allow the monitoring of the Amazon jungle's little-known mineral resources.

SIVAM, which began to be implemented in 1997, has been beset by several scandals, such as complaints that U.S. radar designer Raytheon received preferential treatment in winning the contract for supplying the project's equipment.

Critics have also voiced concern that the United States will have access to secret information from Brazil.

But according to Tarcisio Muta, the director of Atech, the company in charge of developing the system's computer programmes, that risk does not exist.

Defence Minister Geraldo Quintao also said such accusations were unfounded, arguing that criticism against a project of such enormous import to national sovereignty was patently unfair.

Copyright 2002 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by IPS-Inter Press Service. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of IPS-Inter Press Service.

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