Drought renews push for paving controversial Amazon road

The community of Igapó Açu lies on the banks of an eponymous river, 230 kilometers southwest of Manaus, as the vulture flies. Unusually for this part of the Amazon rainforest, where most riverside towns and communities are only accessible by boat, Igapó Açu is reachable by land from the Amazonas state capital, a slow and bumpy 250-kilometer drive along a road whose poor paving ends some 200 kilometers in.

The BR-319 links Manaus, in the middle of the rainforest, to Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia state. While it might not have as evocative a name as the Trans-Amazonian highway running 4,000 kilometers east to west, it is equally important to many in the region: when it is passable in the dry season, the 885-kilometer road is the only overland access connecting Manaus, a heaving city of 2 million people, to the rest of Brazil.

The road and its accessibility are a controversial subject. 

To its advocates, the BR-319 is a vital piece of infrastructure that must be recovered for the benefit of the populations and economies of the Amazon; to its detractors, it is a blight on the most preserved area of the rainforest, that threatens widespread environmental destruction.

Cutting through the rainforest

The BR-319 was constructed during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, part of the ruling generals’ push to occupy and develop the Amazon. The road was inaugurated in 1976, but within a decade it had fallen into disrepair and was essentially abandoned after 1988. 

With large sections of the road becoming unpaved and given back to the forest, the BR-319 became impassable — and still is for around six months a year, when the rainy season turns the dirt track to mud.

The reconstruction of the road was initially mooted during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration (1996-2002) and then included in the national growth acceleration program (PAC) designed by the first Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva government (2003-2006). Long-winded administrative proceedings ensued, with the environmental protection agency Ibama refusing various licensing requests for the upgrade project to go ahead — until July 2022.

In the twilight months of the Jair Bolsonaro government, Ibama approved a preliminary license to upgrade...