MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="----=_NextPart_01C7220A.64D92C00" This document is a Web archive file. If you are seeing this message, this means your browser or editor doesn't support Web archive files. For more information on the Web archive format, go to http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/office/webarchive.htm ------=_NextPart_01C7220A.64D92C00 Content-Location: file:///C:/26FD3B02/brunareply-5b.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" “community-based timber management, the extraction of nontimber forest products, and other strategies advocated for slowing de

 

 

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Please cite as:

 

Fearnside, P.M., W.F. Laurance,  A.K.M. Albernaz, H.L. Vasconcelos = and L.V. Ferreira. 2005. Response [to Bruna and Kainer]. Science 307: 1044-1045.

 

ISSN: 0036-8075

 

Copyright: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

 

The original publication is a= vailable at   http://www.sciencemag.org  

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ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF AMAZONIAN ROADBUILDING

 

 

Bruna and Kain= er (1) imply that Brazil’s Amazo= nian road building could help to promote “community-based timber managemen= t, the extraction of non-timber forest products, and other strategies advocated for slowing deforestation.”  Our collective experience in Amazonia over the past quarter century suggests otherwise.  While the= ir optimistic view may apply in a few, rather-rare situations—such as limited areas of Acre where socially cohesive groups of long-term forest dwellers prevail—it seems entirely foreign to the major hotbeds of deforestation, such as those in Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Roraima, and southern Pará. 

 

For example, w= hen completed, the Cuiabá-Santarém Highway (BR-163), one of the t= op priorities of the Brazilian federal government (2), is likely to cre= ate an 800 km-long swath of forest degradation across southern Amazonia.  The highway is being paved to tran= sport soybeans from Mato Grosso to the Amazon port of Santarém, almost ent= irely for the benefit of large corporations and landholders (3).  The planned route is already swarm= ing with land speculators, cut-and-run loggers, cattle ranchers, and soybean investors—hardly the cast of characters likely to promote a “community-based” utopia focused on maintaining forest for non-timber products.  Far from= being anomalous, the BR-163 typifies the ecological impacts that often accompany major new highways in the Amazonian frontier (4-6).

 

Moreover, cont= rary to Bruna and Kainer’s suggestion, we do not advocate a “sweeping rejection” of proposed transportation and infrastructure projects in Brazilian Amazonia.  This would indeed be naïve and divorced from reality.  We do, however, believe that a lim= ited subset of the proposed projects—particularly those that would create major corridors between densely populated areas and the remote Amazonian frontier—will be so damaging environmentally that their potential societal and economic benefits are clearly outweighed (3-7).

 

The notion that society has “needs” for new infrastructure, whereas it merely h= as “concerns” for the environment and its services, is a false dichotomy that implicitly will always lead to choices in favor of infrastructure.  The implied c= onclusion that planned projects should never be rejected or delayed, but only “balanced” with environmental add-ons, would clearly imperil Am= azonian forests (7).  Current effor= ts to reduce rampant forest loss are likely to fail, we believe, unless the Brazi= lian government addresses one of the most fundamental causes of forest destructi= on: the dramatic proliferation of new transportation projects throughout the he= art of the Amazon basin.  Our rece= nt Letter to Science (2) was intended to highlight this important inconsistency.

Philip M. Fearnside1*, William= F. Laurance2, Ana K. M. Albernaz3,  Heraldo L. Vasconcelos4, Leandro V. Ferreira3<= o:p>

 

1Coordenação= de Pesquisas em Ecologia, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, C= .P. 478, Manaus, AM 69011-970, Brazil . 2Smithsonian Tropical Resear= ch Institute, Apartado 2072, Balboa, Panama.&= nbsp; 3Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Avenida Perimetral = 190, Belém, PA 66077-530, Brazil.  4Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, C.P. 593, Uberlândia, MG 38400-902, Brazil.

<= o:p> 

*To whom correspondence should be addressed.  E-mail: pmfearn@inpa.gov.br

<= o:p> 

1.      =    E. M. Bruna, K. Kainer. Science 304, ---- (2004).

2.      =    W. F. Laurance, A. K.= M. Albernaz, P. M. Fearnside, H. L. Vasconcelos, L. V. Ferreira. Science 304, 1109 (2004).=

3.      =    P. M. Fearnside, E= nviron. Conserv. 28, 23 (2001).

4.      =    W. F. Laurance et al., Science<= /i> 291, 438 (2001).=

5.      =    P. M. Fearnside, E= nviron. Manage. 30, 735 (2002).

6.      =    W. F. Laurance et al., J. Biogeogr. 29, 737 (2002).

7.      =    W. F. Laurance, P. M. Fearnside. Science 295, 1643 (20= 02).

 

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