BBrazilian activists expressed concern over their government’s plans to destroy a 94-mile highway through a biodiverse corner of the Amazon along the border with Peru, which is home to at least three indigenous communities.
The planned road is an extension of BR-364, a 2,700-mile highway that connects São Paulo to the Amazonian state of Acre, and would link the city of Cruzeiro do Sul to the Peruvian city of Pucallpa.
Supporters of the “transoceanic” project, which includes the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, argue that it will boost the economy of this remote region by creating a transportation hub through which agricultural products can be shipped to Pacific ports in Peru and later to China.
“This project will not destroy the forest, it will bring sustainable development to the region, heating up commercial and cultural relations [with Peru]”, Said Mara Rocha, an Acre center-right deputy who supports the idea.
road route
Rocha said that the project is essential for a region that feels “forgotten and invisible to the rest of the country”. Opponents, however, fear that this could have catastrophic consequences for Brazil’s environment, which is already staggering under Bolsonaro as the rate of deforestation in the Amazon reaches its highest level in more than a decade.
A report in the Estado de São Paulo newspaper said that an 80-mile (130 km) stretch of virgin forest would need to be cleared to build the road, which would cut through the center of the protected Serra do Divisor National Park. Experts consider the park to be one of the most biodiverse regions in the Amazon, home to at least 130 species of mammals and more than 400 species of birds. Brazilian lawmakers are considering plans to ease their protections in an apparent attempt to speed up road construction.
Luís Puwe Puyanawa, a local indigenous leader who opposes the project, said: “The truth is that nobody in Acre needs this transoceanic route – there is already a road that connects us to Peru. What we need is to leave the forest standing. “
Miguel Scarcello, head of SOS Amazônia, an environmental group based in the state capital, Rio Branco, described the project as “irresponsible” and a setback to the Brazilian military dictatorship, when roads were destroyed by the Amazon in an attempt to populate and develop the region .
“It is such an old-fashioned and backward view … that it pays absolutely no attention to conservation. It will cut an area of untouched forest and affect the headwaters of really important tributaries of the Juruá River, ”said Scarcello.
He described how during the 1964-85 dictatorship these roads “decimated” indigenous communities and inflicted “immense destruction” on the rainforest, as loggers used them to access areas that were previously inaccessible. “We are no longer in the 1960s,” said Scarcello. “It’s as if we haven’t learned anything from the effects it can have and how much destruction it can cause.”
He added: “They say it will bring development, but, as always, it will be development for half a dozen people”, and warned of a “carnival of grilagem” that would accompany the planned road.
If the project is approved, three indigenous communities close to the road will be affected: Nukini, Jaminawa and Poyanawa. Scarcello said it is possible that the national park also houses isolated tribes with whom no contact has been made.
Puyanawa, 41, said he feared his community would be hardest hit. “The expectation is that the road will pass about a kilometer from our land. One of my biggest concerns is that this stretch is home to some of the most important water sources in the Amazon basin. Alto Juruá supplies all the waters that flow into the Rio Solimões and then the Rio Negro, until they reach the sea ”, he said. “All of these rivers can be really affected and this can cause the disappearance of important headwaters in the Amazon. With that, many species can disappear. “
Puyanawa said plans for such a route have been praised by politicians for decades, but appear to have accelerated since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019. “Nobody wanted him as much as Bolsonaro,” he said.
Bolsonaro oversaw a highly controversial dismantling of Brazil’s environmental protection system, causing deforestation in the Amazon to skyrocket, critics say. Government figures last month showed that the destruction of the Amazon peaked at 12 years, with an area seven times larger than Greater London lost between August 2019 and July 2020.
This increase was attributed to the feeling of impunity that Bolsonaro’s presidency brought illegal loggers, ranchers and miners who seek to profit. “They feel completely at ease,” said Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian environmentalist who works at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Germany. “We are being governed by people whose motto for the environment is: destruction.”
The extension of BR-364, which Bolsonaro publicly supported as a means of giving Brazil “a ticket to the Pacific,” is not the only road project in the Amazon that concerns environmentalists and climate advocates.
Last week, his government said it would start repaving the BR-319, a decadent road from the time of the dictatorship that cuts from north to south through the Amazon, from Manaus to Porto Velho. “A historic day to the north!” Bolsonaro wrote on Facebook, announcing the news.
But in a recent essay, Prof Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at the National Research Institute of the Amazon, said reviving BR-319, which has been abandoned since the late 1980s, “would give deforesters access to about half of what remains of the Amazon of the forest country ”and was“ certainly one of the most important decisions that Brazil faces today ”.