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Trans-Amazon highway project threatens Brazil’s biodiversity

Plans to bulldoze a 94-mile highway through a biodiverse corner of the Amazon have been backed by President Bolsonaro, despite fears it could have catastrophic consequences for Brazil’s environment.

Researchers are warning of severe climate repercussions if the Brazilian government proceeds with plans to pave a 94-mile highway through Serra do Divisor national park, one of the Amazon rainforest’s most biodiverse regions.

An extension of the BR-364 (a 2,700-mile highway which links São Paulo with the Amazon state of Acre), the road is intended to line the Peruvian border, connecting towns Cruzeiro do Sul in Brazil, and Pucallpa in Peru.

Though activists are voicing alarm over the ‘transoceanic’ project’s undoubtedly catastrophic consequences for Brazil’s environment, the area is also home to at least three indigenous communities (Nukini, Jaminawa, and Poyanawa) who are likely to be displaced if construction goes ahead. This does not include the potentially isolated tribes with whom no contact has been made.

Unfortunately, however, President Bolsonaro is firmly backing the idea, contending that it will boost the remote region’s economy by creating a transport hub through which agricultural products can be shipped to Pacific ports in Peru and on to China.

Mara Rocha, a centre-right congresswoman from Acre, is also in favour of the project, believing it won’t destroy the forest, but will ‘bring critical sustainable development to a region forgotten and invisible to the rest of the country by heating up commercial and cultural relations with Peru.’

But opponents are right to fear such plans, particularly in the aftermath of 2019’s devastating wildfires which ravaged almost one million hectares of precious natural land and sparked a global outcry regarding the lack of action from Brazil’s government who instead defended their environmental policies and right to develop territory.

Since taking office, Bolsonaro has overseen a highly controversial dismantling of Brazil’s national environmental protection system which has triggered mass deforestation, an area seven times larger than Greater London lost in the last year alone.

Arguably the most consequential conservation issue facing Brazil today, the upgrade will require a 130km stretch of pristine forest to be felled, which would cut directly through the centre of a protected national park that hosts at least 130 species of mammal and more than 400 species of bird.

Not to mention that according to leading climate researcher Carlos Nobre, the Amazon is nearing tipping point. To date, roughly 15-17% of the Amazon has been deforested, a mere 5% from the ‘point of no return’ as Nobre puts it.

As the rate of Amazon deforestation continues soaring towards its highest level in more than a decade, a new highway of this size will release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and ultimately far surpass Nobre’s tipping point.

‘What we need is to leave the forest standing,’ says Miguel Scarcello, head of environmental group SOS Amazônia. ‘Nobody needs this transoceanic route, it’s irresponsible and a throwback to Brazil’s military dictatorship when roads were bulldozed through the Amazon in an attempt to populate and develop the region.’

Scarcello is referring to the 1964-85 Brazilian dictatorship during which such roads decimated indigenous communities and inflicted immense destruction on the rainforest.

‘It’s as if we’ve learned nothing from the effects that this could cause,’ he adds. ‘We are being governed by people whose motto for the environment is: destruction.’

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