IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) granted this Thursday (28) an initial license that will allow a major highway in the center of the Amazon rainforest to be paved, the infrastructure minister said, in a move that threatens increase deforestation.
Campaigning President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) promised to repave the road, called BR-319, which would link the capital of Amazonas, Manaus, to Porto Velho (Rondônia) and the rest of Brazil throughout the year.
The road was originally built by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, but quickly fell into disrepair in the harsh conditions of the rainforest. Much of the route is an impassable stretch of mud during the approximately six-month wet season.
Paving the road would allow illegal loggers and land grabbers to more easily access remote and relatively untouched areas of the forest, environmental experts said. One study estimated that the project would result in a fivefold increase in deforestation by 2030, equivalent to an area larger than the US state of Florida.
Bolsonaro’s weakening of environmental protections has already spurred increasing deforestation, and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached a 15-year peak in 2021.
Infrastructure Minister Marcelo Sampaio announced the license on Twitter, posting an image of the Ibama license. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“In an engineering alignment with respect for the environment, we are going to take Amazonian society out of isolation”, wrote Sampaio.
He did not immediately respond to a question about environmental concerns.
The initial license will allow the government to hire companies to pave the longest stretch of the worst-off half of the road. Contractors will design projects, but will need another permit to start construction.
This first license would stipulate many conditions that must be met in projects to start construction, said Marco Aurélio Lessa Villela, a former environmental analyst at IBAMA.
“There must be a huge list of things… that would be necessary for a road in that place to not be a tragedy,” Villela said.
Still, an initial permit means there’s a good chance the road will move forward, he said.
Bolsonaro celebrated the leave in his weekly internet speech.
“I hope that soon there will be another license on the way and our (Transport Department) can start bidding and working for the paving of BR-319”, said the president.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
