BRAZIL: Controversy arises over the building of highway BR364 from Rio Branco to Cruzeiro do Sul cutting through the heart of the Amazon

Record ID: 689452

  • Title: BRAZIL: Controversy arises over the building of highway BR364 from Rio Branco to Cruzeiro do Sul cutting through the heart of the Amazon
  • Date: 14th December 2005
  • Summary: CLOSE OF `INDIGENOUS WOMAN
  • Embargoed: 29th December 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Brazil
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: Environment / Natural World,Transport
  • Reuters ID: LVABLR5JUNPSJUHZUUQPUQ9HFDN4
  • Story Text: To some, it's a dream come true, a step forward in promoting progress and integration throughout the Amazon region. To others, it's an environmental and social disaster, with terrible consequences for Brazil's indigenous communities and some of the world's most important rainforest.
    The innocuously named BR364 highway is to unite Acre's state capital Rio Branco with its second major city, Cruzeiro do Sul, spanning some 750 kilometres and running along the border between Acre and Amazonas.
    First planned in the sixties, nature managed to halt the construction of this Brazilian highway for twenty years, with the movement of the dozens of rivers in the area, combined with the sandy soil and lack of stones to pave it interfering with the progress.
    But the dream of a roadway through this densely forested area was never completely killed off.
    Eneas Salati of the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development said any highway brings its benefits.
    "When a highway is built, communication is always improved, the transport capacity increases, it facilitates the movement of people and this movement contributes to production. That is the positive side of any highway made in any place in the world."
    But despite the advantages, environmentalists won a case in the late 1990s, which resulted in the courts embargoing work on the road, deciding that the negative environmental and social impact far outweighed any economic benefits.
    With the election of Jorge Viana as governor of Acre state in 1999, things changed. With the support by various social movements and the current Environment Minister Marina Silva, the project began to move forward again. Viana opened the highway, spending almost 1,300,000 U.S. dollars (USD) a year on the maintenance of bridges and the highway surfaces.
    One of the key issues was what to do with the indigenous communities living for generations in the area the highway would run through.
    "Constructing a highway in the Amazon is synonymous with destruction. That is an obvious fact. We are trying to change that reality. That is our challenge and for that to change, the first worry has to do with the Indians, with the traditional villages and with the environment," Viana said.
    The road is cutting through land that for centuries has been home to at least two of the region's biggest indigenous ethnic groups, the Kaxinawas and the Katuquinas. And many of them feel that the government is ignoring their needs as construction continues on a roadway that will forever change the face of their ancestral territory.
    According to the leader of one indigenous community affected by the new highway, no government representatives have offered assistance to the indigenous peoples since the project started again.
    "We never had the help of anyone. We have received promises of help from the mayor, from the governor, from all the politicians, but they never help us," she said.
    Another huge concern which has stirred up controversy over the project is the impact it will have on one of the world's most important environmental resources.
    Brazil's Amazon region is home to the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet, boasting tropical rainforests with millions of insect species, and thousands of birds, mammals and plants.
    This unique ecosystem is under serious threat, with almost 20,000 square kilometers of shrub disappearing every year. And put simply, the construction of the highway involves cutting down trees, as Salati points out.
    "The first thing that happens is that it increases deforestation around it, all the way along with the secondary highways that extend for 50, 100, 150 kilometres," Salati said.
    Authorities say that the work is being done slowly, with the edges of the highway being preserved and the indigenous people transferred to national forest reserves.
    "We are creating the state forests. We are marking out the indigenous areas, creating reserves for forest exploitation and establishing very rigid rules to protect the environment so that the highway is integrated and has infrastructure of the model of sustainable economic development that we champion," said Viana.
    But the indigenous people don't want to leave the places they have long called home. Despite their objections, work continues. Some 36 kilometres have already been paved of this controversial roadway between Tarauca and Feijo, and bridges have been built.
    Although the project seems costly, it brings many economic advantages for areas like the Jurua region, where the closure of routes during winter causes prices to skyrocket. With the highway open, the cost of living in this area at least will fall by eighty percent.
    Through money collected from a number of investors, the roadway has been left more or less ready so that some 125 more kilometres can be paved in 2006. This is expected to create an economic micro-region in the middle of the Amazon rainforest that could generate thousands of jobs for those living in the area. Over 500 people were employed this year alone on the highway's construction.
    With environmentalists pointing to the global implications of the massively accelerated deforestation in the Amazon region, the controversy continues.
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