Bolsonaro revives a plan to carve a road through one of Brazil's last untouched areas

[Judi Lynn]

by Fernanda Wenzel/oeco on 11 May 2020



The Brazilian government wants to open a road through the largest protected tropical forest area in the world, a territory greater than the United Kingdom. But scientists, environmentalists and indigenous activists are worried it will be another huge infrastructure project that wreaks havoc on the rainforest with scant economic benefits for local people or the nation.

“It will have migration of people to this region, and also of investments and companies that want to explore these natural resources,” says Philip Fearnside, a leading researcher on deforestation in the Amazon. “It will open a new front of invasion and mining.”

“It will be a huge destruction,” says Adriana Tawana Kaxuyana Tiriyó, a member of an indigenous group living in Aldeia Santo Antônio, one of the communities the road will cut across. “[President Jair] Bolsonaro just wants to plant soy and to take off the timber.”

The road plan was originally drawn up by the military dictatorship that governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985, and was resurrected by Bolsonaro shortly after he took office at the start of 2019. Even in the 1970s, when the project known as Barão do Rio Branco was conceived, it was criticized for being economically unviable and socially and environmentally destructive.

. . .

The Trombetas State Forest, one of the four conservation units that the road would cut through, stores 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide — more than Brazil’s entire emissions in 2018. Calha Norte is also an area rich in biodiversity: 40% of its species are found nowhere else on Earth.

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/bolsonaro-revives-a-plan-to-carve-a-road-through-one-of-brazils-last-untouched-areas/

[BlancheSplanchnik]

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