The proposed reconstruction of Brazil’s BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway (Figure 1) needs a new environmental impact assessment (EIA). No rational decision can be made on going ahead with this project without considering all its major impacts, and everything points to the project being a monumental disaster for the environment, among other negative effects (see here and here). The biggest impacts have been excluded in the current biased licensing process, which is designed to guarantee approval of a road that would likely lead to the end of the Amazon forest (see here and here). The project is not viable and declaring that there will be “governance” along the highway route will not make it so even if this governance were to materialize in fact (see here and here). Figure 1. Brazil’s Legal Amazon region showing forest (green), deforestation (red) and the BR-319 highway connecting the area at the junction of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia (AMACRO) with Manaus, in central Amazonia. Like a horse with blinders, the highway proponents, the licensing agency and virtually all the political discussion focuses only on what may happen on the roadside itself, and not in the vast areas of Amazon forest that would be impacted outside of this narrow strip. The EIA considers only the roadside strip BR-319 connects the notorious AMACRO deforestation hotspot at the junction of the states of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia to Manaus, in the relatively intact central Amazon. AMACRO is the largest source of the smoke that is currently engulfing Brazil,…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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