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"Development and the Amazon Forest"
March 2009
by Thomas Lovejoy and Bruce Babbitt
Brazil has at last reached the Pacific. By 2010 it will be possible to travel on a modern highway from Acre up through the snowy summits of the Andes to Cusco the ancient capital of the Incas, and down to the ocean shoreline of Peru.
This highway, the Interoceanica, is part of a continental plan called IIRSA, Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America.IIRSA is a little known, somewhat mysterious organization, funded by the Interamerican Development bank and other multilateral institutions. Its infrastructure plans, centered on the Amazon basin, are a collection of outdated ideas, many conceived more than twenty years ago before the advent of current scientific understanding and good land use planning.
In Peru IIRSA is working on two more transportation corridors, including a road across the Andes to Cruzeiro do Sul that will cut through the heart of Serra do Divisor National Park. In Ecuador, IIRSA plans to enter the Amazon Basin by a road and river route through the Yasuni National Park. And in Colombia IIRSA has proposed yet another route eastward to Manaus.
These outdated road and river transportation plans will radically transform the Amazon basin. Highways have always opened the door to land invasions, land tenure conflicts and massive deforestation. If Brazil is to meet its national goal of reducing deforestation by half by 2017 old road building plans must be discarded in favor of innovative new approaches to transportation and integration.
It is time to re-evaluate the entire IIRSA process. The question is not whether to develop the Amazon with infrastructure, but rather how development can be planned on a forward looking , sustainable basis, while protecting the natural values of the Amazon and its inhabitants.
At a minimum the following questions should be discussed:
1) Where should development be located in the western Amazon? New cities will arise, just as Porto Velho and Cuiaba grew into large cities as the development frontier moved northward. With planning, new population centers can be developed in the right places, much as Brasilia was planned and located as the national capital.
2) New scientific research informs us that the forest cover of the Amazon is essential to maintain adequate rainfall for parts of southern Brazil and it agro industries. The Amazon cannot be developed by destroying its forests and triggering droughts in the Amazon itself and Mato Grosso and further south. How can the pristine forests of the Amazon headwaters be protected against extensive deforestation from road building in the eastern Amazon frontier?
3)The historic Amazon is a river based economic and ecological system. To what extent can the natural waterways of the Amazon and its tributaries be developed as transportation corridors? What role could railways play?
4) Oil and gas is being discovered throughout the western Amazon. Where should road corridors and pipelines be located for access to these reserves and for access to the most appropriate sites for future hydropower development and transmission lines?
None of these questions can be answered without meaningful participation by all the peoples and communities of the Amazon basin. Conflicts can be resolved by using modern science and good land use planning. The IIRSA road builders have not done so.
IIRSA's infrastructure plans for the Amazon should be put on hold for review and revision in light of current knowledge. There is still time to evolve consensus on a visionary development future. Brazil and its leaders have an opportunity to lead the world in the management and development of tropical forests.
 Have your say: "Development and the Amazon Forest"
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