Infrastructure projects do not guarantee development in the country

The insistence from some government sectors, the business sector and the media in attributing environmental legislation, particularly licensing, as a limitation to the country’s development covers up the real problem. No development project exists that incorporates the necessary attributes in order to merit the word “sustainable”. The last article in the Special Issue on Deforestation that ISA published during the month of November analyzes the relation between infrastructure and deforestation.

The federal government has presented infrastructure work as the object of development; not as a means, but as an end in itself. The work creates jobs, warms up the economy, but it doesn’t guarantee development. Infrastructure work is an element, but it can’t be the final aim. In order to be vectors of sustainable development in the country, these works must incorporate  mechanisms, processes and procedures that assure a minimum socio-environmental impact in their implementation and operation.

Infrastructure projects such as power plants, roads, bridges and waterways have a direct and indirect effect on the ecosystem. In order to assess these effects and try to minimize them, or ultimately compensate them, the environmental legislation institutes the mandatory use of studies of environmental impact (EIA) for projects that are potentially damaging to the environment. These studies, established by the National Law on Environmental Policy (Law nº 6.938 of 08/31/81) and regulated Resolutions 001/86 and 237/98 of the National Environmental Council (Conama), are mandatory and are part of the environmental licensing process of projects. The licensing is an efficient procedure when the implementation of the work is of widespread interest, and when the project is well built. In such cases, the EIA, drafted by a multidisciplinary group, analyzes the environmental consequences of the project’s implementation, including the environmental evaluation of the area, the description of the proposed action and its alternatives, and the identification, analysis and forecast of significant impacts.

When the licensing process is carried out on a poorly structured project whose relevance is not recognized by the local population who are directly affected, the site ends up becoming a space where conflicts are unveiled. This is directly related to the fact that only in the environmental licensing process are the impacted communities provide space to be part of the discussion process. This has been historically intensive, in part because of the irresponsibility of entrepreneurs, who present weak projects drafted behind closed doors, in the country’s capitals, and perceive licensing as a mere formality, employing tactics to cover up the likely impact of their initiatives.

A recent diagnosis prepared by Ibama and released by the Ministry of the Environment shows that the premise that “environmental laws hinder national development” is completely mistaken. Regarding energy infrastructure developments, the Ministry of the Environment affirms: “Between March 2003 and November 2006, Ibama granted licenses to 21 power plants, totaling 4,882.2 megawatts. Seventeen of them received a license to start construction (LI), eight are already operational (LO), and four have received a license/permitting approval (LP). With an LP, projects are ready for public energy bidding processes.” However, several of these projects are not being implemented because the firms did not adopt certain measures, such as applying for an installation license (the next step after permit approval) or supplying complementary papers and analysis.

Regarding highway construction projects, the Cuiabá-Santarém Highway, BR-163, stands out. The road set off widespread negotiation processes for the preparation of the  BR-163 Sustainable Plan, a new paradigm proposal for dealing with infrastructure work in the Amazon. The BR-163 has already obtained license for 840 km. Nonetheless, according to the Ministry of the Environment: “To date, the project has required authorization for starting construction only on 87 km. Road work was authorized on the 50-km stretch known as Cintura Fina, at Serra do Cachimbo, as well as the construction of five bridges, but the work hasn’t started yet. The 20-km stretch Santarém-Rurópolis has also been licensed. Construction starts in October.”

The BR-163 has not been paved for lack of funds. The expectation was to build the road under a Public Private Partnership (PPP), but due to an absence of interested private investors, the government announced last week that it will back the project on its own.

Another infrastructure project licensed by Ibama suffering from the same problem is the thousand kilometers of the BR-230 Highway, the Transamazônica. The company in charge requested the license to start construction over only 90 km between the towns of Medicilância and Altamira, in Pará. In addition, the Ministry of the Environment reports that the government of the state of Mato Grosso has been indicted by Ibama for carrying on unlicensed construction work at Highway BR-158, between km 270 and 412.9. The Term of Reference for environmental studies was issued in September of 2005, but the studies have not been presented yet.

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Road opening and deforestation

Historically, the implementation of large infrastructure projects – particularly highways – has greatly induced deforestation in the Amazon. The paving of the Highway Belém-Brasília and Cuiabá-Porto Velho, for example, created what is called today the “arc of deforestation”. Historically, 75% of deforestation in the Amazon has occurred within a 100-km stretch along paved highways. This is explained by the fact that the impacts are not restricted to the area covered soley by the road.

According to the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), road paving  increases the risk of forest fires that lead to forest impoverishment. Once burned, 40% of adult trees may die and each time a forest burns, it becomes more vulnerable to new fires. Accidental forest fires proliferate in some regions where land is populated by roadside encroachments or by farmers using slash and burn agriculture or extensive cattle ranching. Fires invade the forest and the cerrado causing damage and making them more susceptible to new fires. Since the region’s climate is directly affected by fires, and under current trends  will increase, climatic system changes are also a possible impact of road paving

IPAM’s study also calculated that additional deforestation associated with all the planned highways for 2000 would be 120 thousand to 270 thousand km2 in the course of 20 or 30 years (400 thousand to 1.35 million ha/year), leading to the emission of 6 to 11 billion tons of carbon (200 to 550 million t/year) into the atmosphere. Another study carried out in 2001 by the team at the Amazon National Research Institute (Inpa), coordinated by Willian Laurance, calculated other planned infrastructure projects such as dirt roads and others (power plants, transmission lines, gas ducts, railways, etc.) which also require roads and induce deforestation. The scenario indicates that the planned infrastructure would increase the deforested area of the Brazilian Amazon between 269 thousand and 506 thousand hectares per year.

Land speculation increases before paving even starts

The effects are felt even before the work is done. The announcement that construction on Highway BR-163 would be given priority status by Lula’s administration caused an increase in land-grabbing, with speculators illegally moving into the region and causing an explosion of deforestation along the roadside and in the area known as Terra do Meio. The road has not even been paved yet. The damage, even without any work being done, is already as large as IPAM had predicted in a scenario of absence of governance 10 years after the road was built. And this occurred, despite all the efforts made by both the government and civil society to install a Sustainable Plan for Highway BR-163.

The capacity for large infrastructure projects, especially highways, to unleash violent land conflicts and trigger deforestation is a consensus. Other still uncalculated impacts can occur.

Roads open paths for migration to reach distant regions. Paulo Maurício de Lima, a forest engineer from Inpa, in charge of the study, comments that the cities are not equipped with adequate services and infrastructure to receive new population contingencies. “There already is great pressure in Humaitá. It is a dynamic process. People occupy an area; then sell it to large landowners and leave to look for new areas. As long as there is available land, this movement will go on”.

Based on the recent BR-163 experience, researchers and socio-environmental organizations fear that the restoration of the BR-319 may thrust deforestation into a still well-preserved region.

The Highway BR-319 case

Highway BR-319 stretches from the capital of Rondônia, one of the areas most severely pressured by the expansion of the agricultural frontier, and cuts through Western Amazon in a Southwest-Northeastern direction. The two highways (319 and 163), running perpendicularly from the so-called “Arc of Deforestation”, could cause two of the largest slashes in the world’s largest continuous rain forest.  “No one can say with any certainty what it will mean to interrupt genetic flows or what kind of an impact will be made on the region’s rain regime, but it is likely that the consequences will be felt in other parts of the region,” says Márcio Santilli, of ISA.

The analysis presented by ISA during the 4^th Technical-scientific meeting for the Analysis of Data on Deforestation in the Amazon Region, promoted by the Ministry of the Environment and by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) shows the state of deforestation thru August 2005 along the banks (50 km on each side) of five federal roads in the Amazon.

BR-158 is the most critical highway, due both to the fact that the average deforestation rate in the last five years may have been superior to the average of the four other studied highways, and because the rate (average annual deforestation percentage between 2000 and 2005 in relation to the remaining year 2000) was 250% greater than the average deforestation for the Amazon (outside Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas, which was 1.12% per year).

The remaining forest around the BR-158 was also the most devastated in  comparison to five highways analyzed in the table below. Only 35.6% of vegetation  around the BR-158 is preserved (until August 2005). Throughout the Amazon Region, outside PAs and Indigenous Lands, the remaining percentage is 64.6%. The BR-158 remains at the top of the ranks if we consider that, out of the five analyzed roads, it was the only one to present expressive increased rate of deforestation between 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, with a 16% increase rate of deforestation.

Out of the five analyzed major roads, the one with the least impact until August 2005 was BR-319 (Porto Velho – Manaus). On it, the average annual deforestation rate in the last five years was 0.29% and the remaining forest in August 2005 was at 90.2%, with a small level of increase in deforestation of 0.4% (comparing 2003- 2004 with 2004-2005). It is necessary to update these figures for 2006, as both the announcement, made during election time, that the highway will be paved and the temporary limitation, implemented by the federal government in the region, may have influenced this deforestation rate. In the other highways (317, 163 and 364) there was a reduction in the rate of deforestation between 2003-2004 and 2004-2005.

Dynamics of Deforestation (2000-2005) in surrounding areas (50km margins)

Deforestation isn’t the only negative effect of road opening and road paving. During the last meeting of the Convention of the Parties on Biological Diversity (COP-8), the epidemiologist Ulisses Confalonieri, professor at the Fiocruz National Public Health School, said that there are also known effects on human health caused by large infrastructure projects such as road opening, deforestation and the building of dams. “The connection between deforestation and the proliferation of diseases has been well known since the beginning of the past century, when the Northwest Railway Line was opened in São Paulo. Deforestation facilitated the contact of people with diseases that were sheltered within the forest”.

Government reaction

More recently, the government has created a new planning measure for areas around infrastructure projects: the Area of Temporary Administrative Limitation (ALAP).

Created through a Provisional Measure (MP) on February 18, 2005, the ALAP is a legal instrument authorizing the government to paralyze all economic activities that cause new deforestation or that can potentially cause  significant environmental degradation. The publication of the MP was part of the “Green Package” presented by the federal government to try to contain the violence, land speculation and deforestation throughout the Amazon in  response to the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang, on February 12, in Anapu, Pará. link

Even though the Action Plan for Deforestation Prevention and Control in the Legal Amazon Region, launched on March 15, 2004 by the federal government has incorporated large infrastructure projects into its first component, introducing preventive procedures and signaling a portfolio revision of the current  Pluriannual Budget Plan (PPA), little has been done for its implementation. The part of the plan on analysis treated the issue as crucial for the set of following actions, but the component not only was never implemented, but was also formally removed according to a report disclosed by the Executive Office of the President in May 2005. Recently, non-governmental organizations further demanded that the government present an assessment of the Plan incorporating information on non-developed components.

President Lula’s speech last week, focusing on the need to unblock issues regarding Indigenous Peoples, Quilombolas, environmentalists, the Public Attorney’s Office, and the Federal Tribunal of Accounts (TCU), sent the message that the federal government decided to wait until after the elections to reveal its lack of socio-environmental responsibility, despite the recognized efforts made by the Ministry of the Environment.

The evolution in four-phases of the federal government’s handling of these issues is an indication of the challenges that lay ahead. In Phase I (2003), the government recognizes that infrastructure projects in the Amazon bear direct impact on deforestation and drafts a special chapter in the Plan for Deforestation Prevention and Control in the Amazon Region entirely dedicated to preventive and minimizing measures in priority construction projects. In Phase 2 (2004) the government ignores what it had proposed before, reedits the Plan with no particular emphasis on the suppression of an entire chapter and states that this topic will be addressed in the yet uncertain Plan for a Sustainable Amazon. On the other hand, it invests in the conception of an paradigmatic proposal for infrastructure projects for part of the Amazon Region, the Highway BR-163 Sustainable Plan. In Phase 3 (2005-2006), the announcement, made in 2003,  of the asphalt paving of highway BR-163 already bears its effects on the high deforestation rates in the region. The Minister of Transportation, campaigning for the Senate in the state of Amazonas announces the paving of Highway BR-319, despite the inexistence of any previous dialogue, planning or impact analysis; the government reacts with the approval of MP nº 239/05, instituting the figure of the Provisional Administrative Limitation for the creation of PAs and creates an expressive volume of PAs in the region. In Phase 4 (post-election), Lula announces a commitment to increase the GDP over 5%, but has no consistent plan within his reach; he adopts the 1970’s discourse on ‘development at any cost’ and accuses environmentalist movements, Quilombolas, indigenous peoples and the Public Attorney’s Office and Federal Tribunal of Accounts for being responsible for the low GDP growth rate of the past few years.

The perspective for new investments in infrastructure projects to meet the development expectations announced by President Lula may demand a 5^th phase on this feature-length film. It may well deserve a review of Lula’s embarrassing speech, a responsible assessment of the development priorities for the Amazon, a consistent and integrated analysis of socio-environmental impacts on the leading infrastructure projects for the region, an open and honest dialogue with the communities potentially affected and the implementation of mitigating and compensatory measures as required by law and by the Brazilian Constitution. In short, “Development yes, at any cost, no!” Read more.

ISA, André Lima e Adriana Ramos.