IIRSA investments are expected to integrate highway networks, river ways, hydroelectric dams and telecommunications links throughout the continent—particularly in remote, isolated regions—to allow greater trade and create a South American community of nations.
The anchor project in the fourth group is the improvement of the Georgetown-Albina road, which includes a bridge linking Albina with Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in French Guiana over the Marowijne River.
[2] According to Conservation International scientist Tim Killeen, who conducted a study on the IIRSA,[8] the current plans could lead to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and have profound and far-reaching consequences.
The study shows that cutting and burning of the forests could seriously imperil the multibillion-dollar agriculture industry of the Rio Plata basin, as well as destroy the ecosystems that are home to indigenous people.
According to the study, the IIRSA would also wipe out some of Earth's richest storehouses of terrestrial and freshwater life and would negatively affect climate change by releasing into the atmosphere the huge quantities of carbon dioxide stored in the biomass of the tropical forest—estimated at twenty times the world's total annual greenhouse gas emissions.