Advance Brazil or Undermine Brazil?

In an article in the Jan. 19 issue of Science, a U.S.-Brazilian team of biologists reported that as much as 42 percent of the Amazon River basin of Brazil will be seriously damaged or lost altogether in the next two decades if the country’s infrastructure development projects go forward as planned.

The projects they refer to are part of the “Avanca Brasil” (Advance Brazil) program, which is intended to boost the industrial agriculture, timber and mining sectors of the economy by investing $40 billion in infrastructure projects from 2000 to 2007.

William Laurance, a scientist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, led a research team to systematically assess the effects of development trends and projects on the region. They
developed comprehensive computer models that integrate current data on deforestation, logging, fires, mining, roads, parks and reserves with information about a host of existing and planned infrastructure
projects, including the construction of railroads, highways and hydroelectric dams; the installation of power lines and gas lines; and the channelization of rivers.

The authors suggest that “Rather than punching many new roads and highways into the remote frontier” that they invest in existing roads, public services and financial incentives that favor sustainable forest management and permanent, intensive agriculture like fruit trees and timber.
“Under the Kyoto Protocol,” Laurance states, “countries like Brazil could be paid by other nations to save their forests, thereby locking up billions of tons of carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere.” He calculates the carbon-offset revenues available to Brazil to be as much as $2 billion a year, without sacrifice of sovereign control over its Amazon forests.

An article in the January issue of Nature came to similar conclusions. The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental na Amaz”nia – IPAM) and Woods Hole Research
Center used computer modelling to analyze the 30-year record of satellite monitoring to predict the consequences of the projected roads. It shows that roads planned by the Brazilian government will lay waste to about a third of the Amazon forest.

About a week after the articles appeared, Joao Paulo Silveira, who is in charge of Avanca Brasil at the development ministry, said the government decided to conduct an environmental impact study of all projects envisaged in the program. The study will be carried out over 12 months and is expected to cost $400,000. Silveira said the projections in the Science article were faulty because they did not consider the more stringent environmental laws enacted in recent years. He countered that the Avanca Brasil plan was developed with sustainable development as a premise. “There is not one single kilometer of new roads to be built in the Amazon. What there is, is paving and improvement of existing ones,” he said.