Bolsonaro-backed highway would trigger an explosion of deforestation, say Amazon researchers

REALIDADE, Brazil (Oct 3): Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon almost always begins with a road, which brings logging, ranching and eventually commercial farming and towns in its wake.

In a report by Reuters on the run-down logging town of Realidade in the state of Amazonas, ecologists say history looks set to repeat itself. The BR-319 is a highway built in the 1970s by the military and was quickly abandoned. During the rainy season that lasts half a year, it is impassable. Outside of the rainy season, broken pavement, massive potholes and jungle debris serve as obstacles to vehicles. And, there are, in the northern areas of Realidade, jaguars.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s President plans to resuscitate the road, a plan which scientists say may jeopardise parts of the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest.

Slated to begin reconstruction by 2021 it would reconnect Realidade with Manaus, home to 2 million people, and mainly accessible by water or air from the rest of Brazil.

"We are certain that our BR-319 will be paved," Bolsonaro was quoted as saying by the publication in July at a public event in Manaus.

Amazon researchers said the repaved road would trigger an explosion of deforestation in Amazonas. The rainforest state is the best preserved due to its lack of good roads, which would enable subsistence farmers, land speculators and loggers to penetrate deep into the jungle, according to Philip Fearnside, an American ecologist at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus.

The project is estimated to result in a fivefold rise in clearing by 2030, according to a study led by the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Carlos Nobre, a leading climate researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, is quoted as saying that the Amazon is nearing a tipping point, beyond which the rainforest would enter a self-sustained cycle of "dieback" as it turns into savannah. He said that 15-17% of the forest is already destroyed while the point of no return is 20-25%.

This “dieback” would likely result in global consequences for the climate, resulting from a release of greenhouse gases, which will flummox efforts to restrict a rise in global temperatures to 1.5-2 degrees Celsius, say Nobre and other scientists.