B.Razilian activists have raised the alarm about their government’s plans to flatten a 94-mile highway through a biodiverse corner of the Amazon along the border with Peru, home to at least three indigenous communities.
The road planned is an extension of BR-364, a 2,700-mile highway that will link São Paulo to the Amazonian state of Acre, and would link the city of Cruzeiro do Sul to the Peruvian border town of Pucallpa.
Supporters of the “transoceanic” project, including Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, claim 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 on to China.
“This project will not destroy the forest, it will bring sustainable development to the region by strengthening commercial and cultural relations [with Peru], ”Said Mara Rocha, a center-right congressman from Acre who supports the idea.
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Rocha said the project was critical to a region that felt “forgotten and invisible to the rest of the country.” However, opponents fear it could have catastrophic consequences for the environment in Brazil, which is already shaking under Bolsonaro as the rate of deforestation in the Amazon soars to its highest level in more than a decade.
A report in the Estado de São Paulo newspaper said 130 kilometers of pristine forest would need to be cleared to build the road, which would cut right through the center of the protected Serra do Divisor National Park. Experts call the park one of the most biodiverse regions of the Amazon, with at least 130 species of mammals and more than 400 species of birds. Brazilian lawmakers are considering plans to water down protections in an apparent effort to speed up road construction.
Luís Puwe Puyanawa, a local indigenous leader opposed to the project, said: “The truth is, no one in Acre needs this transoceanic route – there is already a road connecting us to Peru. What we need is to leave the forest. “
Miguel Scarcello, the head of SOS Amazônia, an environmental group based in the state’s capital, Rio Branco, described the project as ‘irresponsible’ and a return to Brazil’s military dictatorship as roads were crushed through the Amazon in an attempt to overcome the region.
“It’s such an old-fashioned, backward vision… that pays absolutely no attention to conservation. It will cut through a pristine forest area and affect the headwaters of really important tributaries of the Juruá River, ”said Scarcello.
He described how such roads ‘decimated’ indigenous communities and wreaked ‘immense destruction’ to the rainforest during the dictatorship of 1964-85, as loggers used them to gain access to previously inaccessible areas. “We’re not in the 1960s anymore,” Scarcello said. “It’s as if we haven’t learned about the effects this can cause and how much destruction can be caused.”
He added, “They say it will bring development, but as always it will be development for half a dozen people,” and he warned of a “carnival of land grabbing” that would accompany the planned road.
If the project is approved, three indigenous communities near the road will reportedly be affected: Nukini, Jaminawa and Poyanawa. Scarcello said it was possible the national park was also home to isolated tribes with whom no contact had been made.
Puyanawa, 41, said he feared his community would be the hardest hit. “The road is expected to pass within about a kilometer of our country. One of my biggest concerns is that this stretch is home to some of the Amazon Basin’s most important water sources. The Alto Juruá provides all the water that flows to the Rio Solimões and then to Rio Negro until they reach the sea, ”he said. “All of these rivers can really be affected, causing significant headwaters in the Amazon to disappear. Many species could disappear with that. “
Puyanawa said plans for such a route had been touted by politicians for decades, but appear to have accelerated since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019. “Nobody wanted it more than Bolsonaro,” he said.
Bolsonaro has overseen a highly controversial dismantling of Brazil’s environmental protection system, which has dramatically increased deforestation in the Amazon, critics say. Last month, government figures showed that the destruction of the Amazon had risen to a 12-year high, with an area seven times larger than Greater London being lost between August 2019 and July 2020.
That increase is due to the sense of impunity that Bolsonaro’s presidency has brought to illegal loggers, ranchers and miners who want to make money. “They feel completely at ease,” said Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian environmentalist who works at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability. Studies in Germany. “We are ruled by people whose motto for the environment is destruction.”
The BR-364 extension, which Bolsonaro has publicly supported as a means of giving Brazil “a gateway to the Pacific,” is not the only Amazon road project of concern to environmentalists and climate activists.
Last week, his government said it would begin redesigning the BR-319, a decayed dictatorship highway running north to south through the Amazon from Manaus to Porto Velho. “A historic day for the north!” Bolsonaro wrote on Facebook and announced the news.
But in a recent essay, Prof. Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research, said that reviving the BR-319, which has been abandoned since the late 1980s, “ would give deforestors access to about half of what remains of the country’s Amazon region. forest ”and was“ certainly one of the most drastic decisions facing Brazil today ”.