BRussian activists have expressed alarm over their government’s plans to bulldoze 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 the BR-364, a 2,700-mile highway that connects São Paulo with the state of Amazon Acre and would connect the town of Cruzeiro do Sul with the Peruvian border town of Pucallpa.
Proponents of the “overseas” project, including Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, say it will stimulate the economy of this remote region by creating a transportation hub through which agricultural products can be shipped to Pacific ports in Peru and China.
“This project will not destroy the forest, it will bring sustainable development in the region by warming trade and cultural relations [with Peru]”Said Mara Rocha, a center-right congresswoman from Acre who supports the idea.
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Rocha said the project is critical for a region that feels “forgotten and invisible to the rest of the country.” However, opponents fear that it could have catastrophic consequences for the Brazilian environment, which is already spinning under Bolsonaro, as Amazon’s deforestation rate rises to its highest level in ten years.
A report in the Estado de São Paulo newspaper said that a 130-mile (130 km) clear forest would have to be cut down to build the road, which will cross the center of the Serra do Divisor National Park. Experts call the park one of the most biodiverse regions in the Amazon, home to at least 130 species of mammals and over 400 species of birds. Brazilian lawmakers are looking at plans to reduce protections in an apparent attempt to speed up road construction.
Luís Puwe Puyanawa, an indigenous local leader who opposes the project, said: “The truth is that no one 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 return to Brazil’s military dictatorship when roads were bulldozed through the Amazon in an attempt to populate and develop. region.
“It’s such an old vision, back … that pays absolutely no attention to conservation. It will cut down an untouched area of forest and affect the sources of some really important tributaries of the Juruá River, ”said Scarcello.
He described how during the 1964-85 dictatorship such roads “decimated” indigenous communities and caused “immense destruction” in the rainforest as carpenters used them to access previously inaccessible areas. “We’re not in the ’60s,” Scarcello said. “It’s as if we haven’t learned anything about the effects this could have and how much destruction it could cause.”
He added: “It is said that it will bring development, but, as always, it will be development for half a dozen people” and 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 be affected: Nukini, Jaminawa and Poyanawa. Scarcello said it is possible that the national park will also house isolated tribes with whom no contact has been made.
Puyanawa, 41, said he feared his community would be hardest hit. “The road is expected to 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 offers all the waters that flow into the Rio Solimões and then into the Rio Negro, until they reach the sea, ”he said. “All these rivers could be really affected and this could cause the disappearance of some important waters in the Amazon. With this, many species could disappear. “
Puyanawa said plans for such a route had been promoted by politicians for decades, but it seems to have accelerated since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019. “No one wanted as much as Bolsonaro, ”he said.
Bolsonaro oversaw an extremely controversial dismantling of Brazil’s environmental protection system, leading to rising Amazon deforestation, critics say. Last month, government figures showed that the destruction of the Amazon reached a maximum level of 12 years, with an area seven times larger than that lost by the Sea of London between August 2019 and July 2020
This increase was attributed to the feeling of impunity that Bolsonaro’s presidency has brought in illegal cutters, farmers and miners seeking to raise money. “They feel completely at ease,” said Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian environmentalist working 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 advocated as a means of giving Brazil a “passage to the Pacific,” is not the only Amazon road project that worries environmentalists and climate activists.
Last week, his administration said it would begin repaving the BR-319, a decadent highway from the dictatorship era that runs from north to south through the Amazon, from Manaus to Porto Velho. “A historic day for the north!” Bolsonaro wrote on Facebook, announcing the news.
But in a recent essay, Prof. Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at the National Amazon Research Institute in Brazil, said the resurgence of BR-319, which was abandoned in the late 1980s, “would give foresters access to about half of what what remains of the Amazon of the forest country ”and was“ certainly one of the most important decisions facing Brazil today ”.