Road Sparks Alarm for Brazil Rainforest

Brazil and Peru have announced a £363m plan for a highway to link Brazil's Amazon basin to the Pacific, raising concerns about further devastation in the rainforest.

Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Peru's president, Alejandro Toledo, outlined plans for the 711-mile road linking Amazon river port of Assis in Brazil with Peru's Pacific ports of Matarini, Ilo and San Juan.

Brazil also plans to upgrade an existing dirt track between Assis and its Atlantic coast with an all-weather surface.

Brazilian transport officials said the main objective of the road to Peru was to provide a more efficient export route to the markets of Asia for Brazil's agricultural products.

But environmental groups said the project was another step in the process by which big areas of Brazil's Amazon region were being turned into a farm belt for soya and cattle. The advance of soya farms into the south-western Amazon has already spawned highway and river transport projects spurring land clearance and settlement along the way.

The latest proposal, known as the Transoceanic Highway, may have a similar impact in Peru, as the road would cut through a region of virgin rainforest in the Madre de Dios province before winding its way over the Andes and down to the Pacific coast.

The province includes Manu national park, with some 850 bird and 200 mammal species. It is home to several groups of indigenous people, a number of whom shun contact with outsiders.

Eric Cardich, a leader of Red Peruana Ambiental, a conservation group said: "It is worrying that this project has been announced without presenting any environmental impact studies. There are many potential problems, including direct devastation, logging and increased settlement, but we have no information yet."

Environmentalists said the Andes had served as a natural barrier to settlement and loggers. "There is already a lot of illegal logging going on. The state is not in a position to control what happens in the jungle," said Favio Rios of Pro Naturaleza, an environmental group based in Madre de Dios.

Mr Toledo's low popularity ratings have increased the pressure to deliver economic growth, and he has stressed the highway's potential to bring jobs and trade to an impoverished region.

Brazil is expected to pay £216m of the total cost, reflecting the economic gains on offer to a country which has emerged as the key supplier of food to China. Brazil's economy has surged this year, with agricultural produce accounting for more than 40% of exports.

The two presidents announced the project at a meeting of South American leaders in the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco in Peru this week.

"This is not a bilateral project. I am convinced that it is in the interest of all the countries represented here ... " Mr Da Silva told the meeting of leaders from 12 South American countries. The meeting also marked the creation of the South American Community of Nations, a political and economic bloc intended to grow along lines similar to the EU.