Brazil’s Amazon deforestation has traditionally been primarily in the “arc of deforestation” along the southern and eastern edges of the forest, but highways connecting this arc, such as the BR-163 (Santarém-Cuiabá) highway, are allowing this destruction to expand to rainforest areas to the north. Of particular concern at the present time is the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway that would facilitate the movement of deforestation actors and processes to Manaus, in the relatively intact central Amazon, to all areas in the northern Amazon that are already connected by road to Manaus, and to vast areas in the western Amazon via planned highways linked to BR-319. BR-319 begins in AMACRO, the acronym for area near the junction of the states of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, which is now one of the most explosive deforestation hotspots (Figure 1) Figure 1. Burning in 2022 in the AMACRO region that would be connected to vast areas of rainforest by Highway BR-319 and planned side roads (Photo: Nilmar Lage/Greenpeace/30/08/2022). On 11 June 2024 Brazil’s National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT) released the report of its BR-319 Working Group (Figure 2), which concluded that “there are elements to guarantee the technical and environmental viability of the complete paving of BR-319” (p. 65). DNIT has been trying for years to obtain environmental approval for its project to “reconstruct” the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway that, together with planned side roads, would facilitate the deforestation of much of what remains of Brazil’s Amazon forest. The highway was built by Brazil’s 1964-1985…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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