Amazon Forest road to bring riches or ruin

SANTAREM, Brazil - Brazilian soybean farmers expect a rutted, muddy road through the Amazon will turn into a highway of gold thanks to plans to pave it over the next three years.

However, environmentalists fear the project will hasten the region's deforestation.

The Brazilian government plans to start paving a 1570-km section of the BR 163 highway from Cuiaba, capital of Mato Grosso state, to the isolated Amazon River port of Santarem in Brazil's North.

The project, due to start in the middle of next year, is forecast to cost 1.1 billion reais ($590 million).

Most of the highway, built by the military in 1973 as part of a strategic plan to integrate the world's biggest rainforest into the national economy, is a dirt track which dissolves into a sea of mud during the tropical rains.

Mato Grosso, in Brazil's centre-west, is the country's biggest soy-producing state and its farmers anticipate that paving the road will lead to an export boom.

An all-weather road would cut the travel time by truck to Cargill Inc.'s export terminal at Santarem to about 3-1/2 hours from nine hours. From Santarem, their product travels by ship to global customers.

"We've suffered for 30 years. We've a right to a better life," said Altair Pedro Martini, president of the Rural Workers' Union in Ruropolis.

But environmentalists fear that paving the road will speed the destruction of the Amazon rainforest by squatters, ranchers, loggers and soy farmers. About 70 per cent of deforestation occurs 50km either side of main roads, IPAM said.

They are concerned that the government, pressured by soy farmers, is pushing ahead with the project before fully analysing the social and environmental impact.

"The government is under pressure to help local people," said Socorro Pena at IPAM's Santarem office.

Some activists fear the paving project will increase violence, prostitution and disease as a wave of new settlers fight for land. They also predict social inequality will grow worse as small farmers are forced out.

They said the aim was now to limit damage. "The eggs are already broken," Smeraldi said.

- REUTERS