CURRENT EVENTS UPDATE

By EUGENE LINDEN

Deep inside the rain forest, south of the mighty Amazon River, lies a 700-km stretch of dirt road. For many Brazilians, the paving of such rutted, often impassable routes has almost mystical significance as an essential part of economic progress. But to environmentalists this ritual of development always means destruction for the earth’s largest rain forest, and in this particular case, could unleash forces that would make this road the most dangerous thoroughfare in the world.

Such concerns have not deterred the Brazilian government from its decision to pave over those 700 km, the last unfinished portion of a highway called BR-163. That will create a 1,700-km chain of asphalt going past the Tapajos National Forest and linking the Amazon River with southern Brazil. As has happened throughout the Amazon basin, the completion of the highway will open the forest to settlers, and they will undoubtedly set fires to clear land near the road. This area, however, is regularly hit by drought and is perhaps the most vulnerable part of the forest. Fires here could grow into the worst blaze the Amazon has ever seen. Daniel Nepstad, an ecologist who divides his time between the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research in Belem, Brazil, warns that the paving of BR-163 "could be the beginning of the end of the Amazon."

The world has known for more than a decade, of course, that huge swaths of the South American rain forest are burning. In 1998, a bad fire year, more than 40,000 sq km of Brazil’s rain forest went up in flames. Ecologists say the paving of br-163 will put at risk 1.5 million sq km—one-third of the dense forest remaining in the Amazon region. To get an idea of the scale of the potential catastrophe, imagine all of Alaska as scorched earth.

Why should you care? Even if you’re not concerned that the world’s greatest trove of biological diversity, including millions of undiscovered animal and plant species, is vanishing, you should know that the burning of the Amazon is pumping countless tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, intensifying the threat of global warming.

Conditions have conspired, say scientists, to make the Amazon more vulnerable than ever before. Of most concern is the heightened impact of El Niño, the periodic warming of Pacific waters that plays havoc with the world’s weather.

Conservationists are still trying to block the paving of br-163, arguing that the government approved the project without assessing its environmental impact. There’s a chance the opposition will succeed, but powerful agribusinesses are arrayed behind the road. It will link the port of Santarem on the Amazon River with the city of Cuiaba to the south and make it easier to export soybeans.

The irony is that agribusiness will suffer along with everyone else. The destruction of the rain forest could make drought more common all over Brazil, endangering soybean production. In the face of that peril, the government will have to decide whether short-term profits are worth risking an environmental disaster for Brazil—and the whole planet.

—TIME, October 18, 2000

Questions
1. Why does the Brazilian government want to pave BR-163?

2. What dangers does the paving of BR-163 pose for Brazil and for the planet?

TIME CLASSROOM