01 May 2007 - By João
Gonçalves* - It’s a cloudy Tuesday
morning and three 4X4s are leaving downtown
Santarém in the northern Brazilian
state of Pará towards Highway BR-163,
one of the main roads cutting through the
heart of the Amazon rainforest. It is early,
shortly past 6am and the weather is hot
and muggy, already 28°C, with some light
showers — a typical winter day in the Amazon.
The vehicles — carrying three international
journalists and staff from WWF and local
partner Amazon Institute for Environmental
Research (IPAM) — are loaded with equipment
and supplies to endure a grueling 100km-drive
on one of Brazil’s longest highways. Much
of the road is still unpaved, often muddy
and impassable during the wet season.
Conservationists fear that paving the entire
highway would lead to further destruction
of the Amazon.
Long distance, high impact
Distances along the highway are astronomical
— 2,910km to the capital, Brasília,
3,922km to São Paulo, 4,114km to
Rio de Janeiro. The closest state capital,
Cuiabá, is only 1,767km away!
BR-163 was built in the 1970s as part of
a government plan to develop the Amazon
region. The 1,770km-long highway connects
Santarem to Cuiaba in the southern part
of Mato Grosso State. Despite its completion
in 1972, 956km are still unpaved, and many
of the paved parts are in desperate need
of repair. The Brazilian government wants
to eventually pave the entire length of
the road to facilitate the transportation
of soy production and other commercial crops.
This may have disastrous results for the
environment.
“Highway development in Brazil has led
to large-scale deforestation and the exploitation
of other natural resources brought about
by newly developed settlements and increased
logging and agriculture activities,” said
Mauro Armelin, WWF-Brazil’s sustainable
development programme coordinator.
One recent study conducted on another highway
in the Amazon region indicates that a majority
of deforestation takes place within the
first 50km from the road.
The only paved part of the BR-163 in Pará
is near Santarém. Here, one side
is bordered by the Tapajós National
Forest. Created in 1974, its 545,000 hectares
are home to numerous bird and tree species.
It is also home to traditional communities.
There are currently 1,900 families living
in and around the forest, divided among
29 communities and organized into nine community
associations and one cooperative.
While one side of the highway is protected,
the other side has only small patches of
forest, with the rest of the area laid waste
by large soy plantations or pastures. It
was near one of these pastures that our
convoy had to pull over to the side of the
highway to make way for a huge herd of a
1,000 cattle. Four herdsmen were using the
short strip of pavement to drive their cattle
from one farm to another.
Off road
Leaving the highway for one of the many
unpaved side roads, open pasture land and
highly deforested areas could be seen just
about everywhere.
The side road we chose took us to the headquarters
of Maflops, a forest management company
that uses sustainable wood exploitation
techniques and supports community forest
management.
“We think in the long term and work in
previously defined areas,” stresses company
manager Antonio Abelardo Leite.
“We always leave a certain number of trees
remaining, especially seed-producing trees.
They will be our future trees to explore
in the cycles to come.”
After lunch at the Maflops headquarters,
the next stop is Santo Antônio, a
small village in the Moju Agrarian Settlement.
On average, a settlement plot of land consists
of 100ha, of which 20 per cent can be cut
for housing material or cleared for small
vegetable gardens. The remaining 80 per
cent is managed by Maflops.
“Maflops has already harvested parts of
my plot. Now they won’t be back here for
another 20 years,” said Seu Neguinho, president
of a local residents association in Santo
Antônio, who moved to Pará
in 2001 to work in the gold mines of the
Itaituba region.
“Before, I used to go from one place to
another and had nothing,” Neguinho said.
“Now I’m settled down. I have my home, family
and plot of land with 2,300 pepper plants.”
Seu Neguinho added that settlers often
face pressure from developers interested
in buying their land.
“People come here and offer 100,000 Reais
(U$52,000) for our land. Many sell because
they think it’s a lot of money and that
the amount will solve all their problems.
But when they get to the city they see that
it’s not enough money and end up going hungry.”
Given the fact that the value of the land
surrounding the highway is set to increase
once BR-163 is paved, clashes over land
tenure and development are expected to increase.
Dialogue
It is 4pm and time to return to Santarém.
Taking an alternative road back to BR-163,
we pass the Brazilian army doing road maintenance.
Despite reluctance to talk to members of
the media and conservation organizations,
one of the soldiers explains that they are
building a waterway, and that the paving
work would be intensified next month once
the rainy season has finished.
Given that the highway project is progressing,
WWF and its partners are working to ensure
that existing enterprises contribute to
conservation and the well-being of communities
in the Amazon region by avoiding unplanned
and unsustainable growth in the future.
Since October 2005, WWF-Brazil has been
leading the Dialogue Project, which targets
a wide range of groups — local communities,
forest operators, and public and private
sector organizations — to encourage sustainable
management of forest resources and land
development.
Today, the project works in three regions
in the eastern and southern part of the
Brazilian Amazon — Santarém area
and Itaituba, Terra do Meio in the state
of Pará, and Guarantã do Norte
in the state of Mato Grosso — covering an
area of 280,000 km2 and spreading over 25
municipalities.
“The project aims to strengthen and support
opportunities for discussion and to increase
the level of dialogue among stakeholders,”
Armelin says.
“It is important to develop a process that
contributes to effective management and,
ultimately, the protection of the Amazon.”
As the team drove back to Santarém
— 100km of dirt and pavement — it was hard
not to forget the words of Seu Neguinho’s:
“The Amazon is a beautiful place, but if
it is destroyed, we will suffer, and our
children will suffer even more.”
* João Gonçalves is a Communications
Officer at WWF-Brazil.
END NOTES:
• The Dialogue Project is funded by the
European Union in partnership with WWF-Brazil,
CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre
Working for International Development),
CDS/UnB (Center for Sustainable Development/University
of Brasilia), IPAM (Amazon Institute for
Environmental Research) and ICV (Center
of Life Institute), and federal, regional
and local agencies.
