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The Documentary Podcast

Gran Chaco - Paraguay’s vanishing forest

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Gran Chaco Forest is Latin America’s second largest ecosystem. It is a mix of hot and arid scrublands, forests and wetlands, part of the River Plata basin, so large it extends into Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. Large parts of the forests have already been cleared to make way for farms. Now a new highway being driven through it is heralding further change. The so called Bioceanic Corridor will transport the produce of cattle ranchers and soya-bean farmers in Brazil and Paraguay across to ports on the west coast. Members of some indigenous communities like the Ayoreo see it as a further threat to their way of life. The new road is being cautiously welcomed by some members of the Mennonite Community, a Christian religious group who came to the Gran Chaco 100 years ago via Prussia, Russia and Canada and bought land from the government to farm. Will the impact of the road on the indigenous and Mennonite communities - and the environment - be worth the economic benefits? Jane Chambers travels across the Gran Chaco for Assignment. Produced by Bob Howard. The Paraguay producer was Santi Carneri.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

At normal transactions.

0:03.0

It's a kind of cyberadagwana bank.

0:05.0

Ten of millions of dollars.

0:07.0

Something I don't think anybody has seen before.

0:09.0

It's a cyber criminal group.

0:11.0

From the BBC World Service.

0:12.0

The Lazarusized is back for season two.

0:15.0

It was really like in the movies.

0:16.0

Find out more at the end of this podcast.

0:19.0

Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC.

0:23.0

Not many people have heard of the Grand Chakka,

0:25.0

even though South America's second largest ecosystem

0:28.0

after the Amazon.

0:29.0

I didn't know what to expect from the vast forest

0:32.0

that covers more than half of Paraguay.

0:34.0

Sometimes it looks like pristine, orderly farmland

0:37.0

with herds of cattle grazing

0:39.0

at others its thorny, impenetrable, scrubland.

0:42.0

The heat's fierce and there are swarms of mosquitoes.

0:45.0

But for me what's most interesting

0:47.0

are the different communities living there

0:49.0

and the mixed feelings they have

...

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