Road Integration Plan Puts Amazon on Alert

Conservationists fear that two binational transportation routes recently announced by Peru and Brazil will accelerate deforestation and trafficking of wild species in the Amazon.

LIMA - The plans to build two highways connecting Peru and Brazil, crossing the Peruvian Amazon, have environmentalists worried because they say the routes would increase the threats to this fragile ecosystem.

The most ambitious of the eight agreements signed last week in Lima by presidents Alejandro Toledo, of Peru, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of Brazil, is a project for physical and economic integration based on three transport routes, two of which would connect the Brazilian Amazon to Peru's Pacific coast.

The accords were reached in the context of a strategic alliance between Peru and Mercosur (Southern Common Market, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), which includes a free trade agreement as well.

Although they share a border nearly 3,000 km long, Brazil and Peru historically have had little commercial contact, separated by the expanse of the Amazon jungles. Trade between the two is relatively limited: 683 million dollars in 2002, of which 72 percent was Brazilian exports.

Brazil is seeking more direct and less costly routes than shipping via Cape Horn, the southern tip of the South American continent, to reach the Asian markets. Peru, meanwhile, has its eye on the enormous market of its neighbor and would like to generate tourism to its southern regions of Cuzco, Puno and Arequipa.

In Lima, two of the planned roads have triggered elation among officials, divisions in the business community, and criticisms from ecologists.

The weekend prior to Lula's Peruvian visit, seven private-sector associations sent a letter to President Toledo expressing concern about the problems posed by Peru's week industrial infrastructure and trade liberalization with an export powerhouse like Brazil.

But at the Peru-Brazil Business Forum, held in Lima during Lula's visit, the spotlight was on the opportunities to create or expand business between the two countries, and to export food products, cement and minerals to Brazilian towns along the shared border.

From the ecological perspective, the panorama provides fewer reasons to celebrate.

"Without appropriate standards, these highways will be an environmental catastrophe. In the Amazon the conditions do not exist for neutralizing the negative impacts of vehicle traffic, depredatory businesses and massive unregulated migration," says Roger Rumrrill, an expert on Amazon issues and consultant to the United Nations.

"The roads will accelerate the unmitigated deforestation that is already occurring in both countries. It will facilitate the expansion of illegal trade in mahogany, seeds, wild animals, orchids, etcetera, which last year reached 500 million dollars, surpassing drug trafficking, which was just over 300 million dollars," he told Tierramérica.

Peru's former ambassador to Brazil, Eduardo Ponce, responded that the agreements include mechanisms for cooperation in monitoring and protecting the natural resources of the Amazon.

The third route, in the south, is already operating and does not involve the Peruvian Amazon region. It connects the Peruvian ports of Ilo and Matarani and the Chilean ports of Arica and Iquique to Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, passing through Paraguay and Bolivia.

There is also an older project for a central trans-oceanic route, which would connect Brazil's Rondonia and Acre with Peru's southern jungle, sierra and coast. All that is needed for completion is the construction of stretches of road in Peruvian territory.

According to the Ministry of Transport, "The Brazilian highways of the route are completely paved and extend to the border, while Peru needs to pave from Assis, on the Brazilian border, to Inambari, in Cuzco." That project requires an investment of 115 million dollars and will be finished in two years, with loans from the Inter-American Development Bank.

The third route, known as the "Amazonas", will cross the northern Peruvian sierra and jungle to Bayobar, adjacent to one of the world's largest phosphate fields, not yet exploited, and neighboring Paita, where the government is planning to build an airport and commercial center.

The Amazonas route will make use of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers as shipping channels from Belem, on the Atlantic coast, passing through Manaos, the Brazilian Amazon's industrial and commercial center.

That route will extend to the Putumayo River, on the shared border, and will have to branches, one that leads to the Colombian port of Tumaco, and the other to the port of Esmeraldas, on Ecuador's northern coast.

* Abraham Lama is a Tierramérica contributor.