Pressure to move a bill forward in the Senate has revived a decades-old dispute over the Iguaçu National Park, where the Falls are located. The text aims to rebuild an old road on the site, which contradicts the vision of environmentalists.
In addition, the proposal creates the institution of a “park road” — which could be used for the construction of roads in other conservation areas.
The text provides for the creation of parkways in any conservation unit in the country. According to the NGO WWF, there are more than 2,300 in Brazil. Of these, 73 are national parks, such as Iguaçu, Chapada dos Veadeiros, Amazônia, Chapada Diamantina and Lençóis Maranhenses.
In recent weeks, Senator Alvaro Dias (Podes-PR) has been pressing for the progress of the text, which is currently in the Committee on the Environment. According to him, there is a commitment by the president of the House, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), for the matter to be voted on in Congress.
In theory, it would still have to be appreciated by the commission and, as a way of delaying its progress, the rapporteur Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES), contrary to the issue, withdrew the report he had already made. Senator Eliziane Gama (Citizenship-MA) presented a request for a new public hearing on the matter.
Entities linked to the environmental sector fear that pressure from Dias will make the project go straight to the Senate Plenary — Pacheco can, as president, opt for that path, if a request is presented to do so.
Wanted, Dias did not comment until the publication of this report – he contracted Covid in the last few days. In speeches, the senator claims that the construction of the road would activate the region’s economy and save time for those who need to travel around the park to reach the other side.
In reaction, World Heritage Watch (WHW), an NGO (non-governmental organization) linked to UNESCO, sent a letter to Pacheco saying that, if the construction of the road is approved, the Iguaçu National Park runs the risk of losing its title of natural heritage of humanity.
The document was sent on the 20th. José Pedro Oliveira da Costa, representative of Brazil at WHW and a researcher at USP, tells the report that there is already a dossier on the park ready to be presented to the World Heritage Committee (a body that deliberates on the subject). If construction of the road is approved, the document will recommend that the site gain “endangered” status.
“The first stage in removing a site from the world heritage list is the declaration that it is in danger, and Iguaçu has already been through this”, he says, referring to the fact that the same park was already on this list in the decade from 1990.
About two weeks ago, businessmen published a letter stressing that the construction of the road would be bad, not good, for the local economy – due to the risk of the park losing its tourist attraction. Furthermore, the creation of the “park road” threatens the biomes and attractions of other regions of the country.
“What we are defending is the integrity of conservation units. This PL is an open door for the same thing to be done in other units, to meet the interests of mayors and deputies”, he says to Sheet businessman Roberto Klabin, vice president of SOS Mata Atlântica.
The settler’s road would cut the Iguaçu Park from one end to the other, dividing it into two parts precisely in what environmentalists call the “intangible zone”, the heart of the biome.
The construction of a road on the site would increase the risk of fires, jeopardize the development of the local flora and cause the so-called “edge effect”—a zone into the forest that suffers from the effects of the road.
The road would also create the risk of fauna being run over and facilitate the entry of illegal hunters into the park, which is home to a third of the approximately 300 ounces of Atlantic forest in South America.
According to Angela Kuczach, director of the National Network for Conservation Units, it is also the only place in the biome where the population of the animal, considered threatened, is growing.
Opening a road would cause decades of damage to the development of the park’s fauna and flora, and similar situations could happen across the country, she says.
“It depends a lot on the type of road. If it were dirt, we would be talking about 20 to 30 years, from the moment it was opened, for its recovery. … you can put 50, 100 years of damage there”, she says.
The colonist’s road, in fact, already existed. It was made of earth and operated between the 1950s and 1980s, when it was closed. Since then, it has been illegally reopened, had clandestine tolls and was also the scene of Federal Police operations. Today, what used to be your path has been completely taken over by the forest.
The bill for the construction of a new road, in the place where the old one used to be, dates from 2010. It was approved by the Chamber, but later shelved in the Senate in 2018. Alvaro Dias unarchived it in 2019.
There is also a parallel project in the Chamber. The two have exactly the same menu.
ISA (Instituto Socioambiental) and OAB (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil), for example, have already published documents criticizing the construction of the road and the creation of the “park road”, while the Commercial Association of Capanema and the Municipalities Association from the West of Paraná took a stand in favor of the work.
The MPF (Ministério Público Federal) issued a technical note in 2019 against its construction. There is also one from the Federal Police, from 2012, which states that, when it existed, the road served on a large scale for the smuggling of goods, drugs and weapons.
The decision to close the old road has already been the subject of a dispute in the Federal Court, which decided not to allow its reopening, and an appeal to the Federal Supreme Court, denied in 2020.
Therefore, if it is approved in the Senate and sanctioned by the Presidency, it can still be questioned.
“The sentence [que fechou a estrada] was confirmed in all instances. In view of this, if a law is passed to recreate the road, it must be declared unconstitutional”, says Alexandre Gaio, president of Abrampa (Brazilian Association of Members of the Public Ministry for the Environment). extended in court for 34 years. It would not be reasonable for the Legislature to reopen it just when the matter was closed in the Judiciary.”
