The South American Integration Priority Project Agenda (API) was designed by the Member States of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) within the framework of the South American Infrastructure and Planning Council (COSIPLAN). It was approved by the Ministers at the Second Ordinary Meeting of the COSIPLAN (Brasilia, November 2011), and ratified by the Presidents at the Sixth Meeting of the Council of Heads of State and Government of UNASUR (Lima, November 2012).

This Agenda deems infrastructure as the main tool for South American territorial planning, since improved connectivity among the countries encourages the regional integration process. Nevertheless, the actions to be taken in the territory as pursued by API go far beyond infrastructure works, since they embrace from the start the concept of economic, environmental and social sustainability, in line with the objectives of UNASUR.

API KEY FUNDAMENTS

• The development of integration infrastructure is a tool for sustainable economic, social and environmental development.

• The Agenda is made up of projects—which may be national, binational or multinational— with a high impact on the physical integration of the region.

• The twelve countries are represented in the Agenda, and there is a balance in the number of projects promoted by each of them.

• The projects are selected by consensus on the basis of predefined criteria.

• The projects will seek, wherever viable and appropriate, a relative increase of all the transportation modes.

• The  priority projects may be supported by actions in the regulatory and territorial planning fields, which will shape an Integration Territorial Program.

• A selection will be made of ongoing projects included in AIC to be added to API, provided that they meet the selection criteria to make up API.