Southern Amazon destruction to accelerate [Article FT.com]

Thomond Pk

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/81b38d4c-f728-11d9-aeff-00000e2511c8.html

Highway to Brazil raises doubts in Peru
By Hal Weitzman
Published: July 18 2005 03:00 | Last updated: July 18 2005 03:00

Puerto Maldonado, in Peru's south-eastern Amazon region, feels like the end of the road. In this hot, dusty town 500 miles east of Lima, young men on motorbikes scour the streets looking for taxi fares. Cars cannot handle the dirt-and-pebble roads.

Small motor boats ferry passengers across the Madre de Dios river, a tributary of the Amazon. Beyond it, a track leads 244km north through the jungle to the border crossing with Brazil.

Within two years, this backwater will be at the centre of South America's most important road. Today, construction begins on the Peru- Brazil transcontinental highway, a 40-year-old plan to connect the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The ambitious project has a price tag of almost $900m (€747m, £514m). That may prove conservative, but the highway is desperately needed in a continent with a lack of good infrastructure.

It will connect existing roads in Peru to a modern highway that crosses Brazil. The road will run through Puerto Maldonado, transforming it from a jungle outpost to a hub of an international motorway system. The crowning glory will be a new 720-metre bridge, the largest in South America, over the Madre de Dios.

Although the construction will take place in Peru, Brazil will benefit most. The political impetus has come from Brasília and the highway will be built by two Brazilian-led consortia.

Brazil sends 18 per cent of its exports to Asia, and its soya and wood pulp industries want to reduce transport costs bloated by the need either to ship exports from Atlantic ports or truck them to Chile.

"This road will be Brazil's Panama canal," says Alejandro Indacochea of the Centrum business school in Lima.

Peru is taking on $800m in debt to help fund the project, prompting many Peruvians to ask whether they too will benefit.

Primarily, Peru will get a modern road link between the southern Amazon and the coast. Madre de Dios is Peru's most isolated region, and consequently one of its most expensive. The highway should help to bring down prices, and lower the cost of exporting agricultural products.

Tourism in the southern Amazon will be boosted by a proper road to Cusco, next to the tourist mecca of Machu Picchu. In the long term, the road may also attract Asian investment in Peru's degraded southern ports, where the highway will terminate.

But there is much scepticism in Peru, even within the government. "The expectation is that there will be big traffic from Brazil to our ports, but there really are no numbers," says Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, finance minister.

Eyebrows were raised when, for political reasons, the project was hurried through Peru's byzantine bureaucracy, bypassing the normal channels that assess the economic benefits of public spending. "That has generated justifiable doubts about the road's economic and environmental viability," wrote Eduardo Zegarra, a columnist, in the Peru 21 newspaper last month.

The Peruvian government claims the project will create 70,000 jobs. Even if that estimate is not wildly optimistic, they are likely to be short-term construction posts.

With heavy traffic, even well-built jungle roads deteriorate rapidly, and locals are concerned about the private contractors' long-term commitment. They doubt public funds would be dedicated to the road's upkeep: with 150,000 inhabitants, the department of Madre de Dios is not considered politically important in Lima.

José de la Rosa, Madre de Dios's acting president, plays down environmental concerns, noting that the construction will merely upgrade existing roads. But this ignores traffic pollution, illegal logging and the clearing of forest for agriculture.

The road is certain to spur the growth of Puerto Maldonado, whose population has doubled to 80,000 in the past decade, swelled by migration. An influx could offset any job-creation. Puerto Maldonado - whose economy is based on timber, gold and Brazil nuts - has 35 per cent unemployment.

Carlos Mateo, head of Madre de Dios's chamber of commerce, says the region's authorities have no plan for sustainable local development: "Brazil is much more prepared for this project."

Prof Indacochea agrees. "This road will speed up the growth of Puerto Maldonado, and they need to prepare for that," he says. "If they don't, the locals will see all the economic benefits passing them by in Brazilian trucks heading for the coast."

The President Toledo has 9% approval ratings and his protestors heckle him waving nappies in the air he is also known as the 'Pampers President' following failure to consent to a paternity test.

This is a shameful act that will wipe out much of the amazon in Western Brazil, Northern Bolivia and Southern Peru.

netwhizkid

Why don't they just use rail-freight to transport their goods ? Typical rainforest destruction eh ?

Thomond Pk

Unfortunately a similar rail route from Aguas Calientes(Machapicchu) to Quilabamba got washed away during the El Nino of 1998. This is no terrain to be build any fixed engineered solution. The Brazilians built the Trans Amazonian highway in the 1970's from Brasilia to Manaus and it lasted about 12 years and was almost fully rebuilt twice during that period. This is a once off smash and grab raid with the usual deforrestation followed by three or four crops before the top soil is irreversably washed down The Mother of God river