BRacial activists have expressed alarm over their government’s plans to bulldoze a 94-mile road 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 road that connects São Paulo with the Amazonian state of Acre and would connect the city of Cruzeiro do Sul with the Peruvian border town of Pucallpa.
Sponsors of the “transoceanic” project, which includes Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, argue that it will boost the economy of this remote region by creating a transportation hub through which agricultural products can be sent to the ports of the Pacific in Peru and China.
“This project will not destroy the forest, it will bring a sustainable development to the region warming the commercial 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 was crucial for a region that felt “forgotten and invisible to the rest of the country.” Opponents, however, fear it could have catastrophic consequences for Brazil’s environment, which is already undergoing Bolsonaro as Amazon’s deforestation rate rises to its highest level in more than a decade.
A report by the newspaper Estado de São Paulo said a 130-kilometer stretch of pristine forest would have to be cut down to build the road, which would cross the center of the Serra do Divisor protected national park. Experts call the park 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 water down their protections in an apparent attempt to speed up road construction.
Luis Puwe Puyanawa, a local indigenous 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, the head of SOS Amazônia, an environmental group based in the state capital, Rio Branco, described the project as “irresponsible” and a setback to Brazil’s military dictatorship when roads were unloaded for the Amazon in an attempt to populate and develop region.
“It’s an old-fashioned, old-fashioned view … that pays no attention to conservation. It will cut down an intact forest area and affect the headwaters of really important tributaries of the Juruá River,” Scarcello said.
He described how during the 1964-85 dictatorship these roads “decimated” indigenous communities and caused “immense destruction” in the rainforest, as loggers used them to access previously inaccessible areas. “We’re no longer in the sixties,” Scarcello said. “It’s as if we haven’t learned anything about the effects this could cause and the amount of destruction it could 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 “land-raising carnival” 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 was possible that the national park would also host 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 about a kilometer from our land. One of my most important concerns is that this stretch is home to some of the most important water sources in the Amazon basin. The Alto Juruá provides all the waters that flow into the Solimões River and then into the Negro River, until they reach the sea, “he said. “All of these rivers could be really affected and this could lead to the disappearance of important headwaters in the Amazon. With that, many species could disappear.”
Puyanawa said plans for the route had been announced by politicians for decades, but it seemed to have accelerated since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019. “No one has wanted it as much as Bolsonaro,” he said.
Bolsonaro has overseen a highly controversial dismantling of Brazil’s environmental protection system, which has led to a skyrocketing of Amazon deforestation, according to critics. Last month’s government figures showed that the destruction of the Amazon had reached a maximum of 12 years, with an area seven times larger than that lost to Greater London between August 2019 and July 2020.
This increase has been attributed to the sense of impunity that the Bolsonaro presidency has brought to illegal loggers, ranchers and miners seeking to collect money. “They feel completely at ease,” said Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian ecologist who works at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Germany. “We are ruled by people whose motto is the environment: destruction.”
The BR-364 extension, which Bolsonaro has publicly supported as a means to give Brazil “a step into the Pacific,” is not the only Amazon road project that worries environmentalists and climate advocates.
Last week, his government said it would begin paving the BR-319, a decadent-era decadent road that cuts from north to south across 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, Professor Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil’s National Amazon Research Institute, said the recovery of the BR-319, which has been abandoned since the late 1980s, “would give access to deforestation to about half of what is left of the Amazon forest country ”and was“ arguably one of the most consistent decisions Brazil is currently facing ”.