By Roger Hamilton
There are roads, and there is BR-364, the highway that forms the spine of Brazil’s western Amazonian state of Acre.
First, it is a road with a turbulent, and for many, troubling history. It was born during Brazil’s military dictatorship, a time when decisions about massive projects were made in the capital of Brasilia with little or no thought given to their impact on local people or the environment.
The World Bank financed the first leg of BR-364, up through the state of Rondônia to its capital of Porto Velho. The Inter-American Development Bank helped finance the segment to Rio Branco, capital of the neighboring state of Acre. Along the way, and through the ensuing years, the road project was accompanied by massive deforestation, disruption of traditional communities, and violence, most notably the murder of forest activist Chico Mendes.
Then the road took a turn into a new era. After a dispute with the Brazilian government, the IDB brokered an agreement with competing groups—rubber tappers, government officials, Indians, the military—on how the funds from a US$10 million environmental program should be spent (see special report “Amazon journey”). Among other things, the program created the country’s first extractive reserves, a category of protected areas that welcomed people, rather than excluded them.
Now the IDB is helping to finance the paving of 70 kilometers of the stretch of road between the town of Tarauacá and Acre’s eastern river port city of Cruzeiro do Sul. When this segment is fully paved, it will make year-round transport a reality across the three watersheds.
This is the same BR-364, the same troubled road. But the IDB and the Acre state government are determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. They, as well as private groups and local community members, are taking measures to protect both the forest and the ways of life of local people (see article “Could environmentalists learn to love this road?”).
Fernando Moutinho is the man in charge of the complex road building job.
An engineering feat. Fernando Moutinho knows this history, but right now, he has more immediate things on his mind: He is the man charged with coordinating the construction project for the state government's highway department, DERACRE.
Moutinho stood on a rise, where he could view the entire ballet of heavy machinery—the steam shovels loading red earth into trucks, the bulldozers giving forward traction to the graders, the 4X4s of supervisory personnell buzzing about the sculpted contours of red earth. The site was alive with men and machinery, and also with the normal flow cars, trucks and buses using the road to transport cargo and people. It could make for a dangerous combination, so just to be safe, truck drivers are required to take a breathalyzer test.
The actual paving is now underway, and it’s up to Moutinho to ensure that the total 120 km of additional paving needed to link the two cities be completed by the deadline of December 2006.
Although all highway engineers must deal with peculiarities of geology, topography and logistics, BR-364 is in a class by itself.
A trip along BR-364 is punctuated by ferry rides at points where the road crosses several major rivers. The rivers will be spanned by bridges.
Moutinho offered a few examples:
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There is no stone in the area to create the roadbed.
- There is no sand suitable for making concrete.
- The clay soil is very elastic, capable of expanding and contracting 37 percent of its volume; it must be removed.
- The path of the road cuts perpendicular to the network of rivers and streams, requiring the construction of many bridges.
- Bridges must deal with wildly fluctuating river levels, from near trickles in the dry season, when only 50 millimeters of rain might fall in July, to floods that sometimes can nearly put the entire bridge under water during March, when rainfall can reach 300 millimeters.
- The rivers frequently change their courses.
Then there are the logistics. Moutinho’s team must start shipping rocks, sand, steel, and other materials in January to travel the thousands-of-kilometers journeys by river and highway in time for the dry season when the machinery can function. For example, cement barged from Manaus must travel 3,252 kilometers. Lime must be trucked 1,552 kilometers to Belém, and from there, 4,654 kilometers to Cruzeiro do Sul.
Even the road’s technological history comes back to haunt the engineers. The original dirt route was opened by the military in the 1970s, and crews used logs to firm up soft spots. Now these same logs, often buried out of sight, must be found and removed. Otherwise they will rot and the pavement will cave in.
The engineering and logistical hurdles pose one set of problems. Potential social and environmental impacts are another. All too often, roads are planned and built according to the dictates of short-term political and economic considerations. Direct and indirect impacts on the environment and local communities are frequently ignored.
The elastic soil makes roadbuilding here an edaphic challenge.
But in the case of BR-364, Moutinho is very aware that the pavement is only part of the project. “The government says that the construction of a road is not an end in itself, but a means to an end that involves respecting watercourses, archeological areas, and the forest itself,” he said. Since the current state government began building roads in 2000, its highway department has contracted environmental specialists to identify problems and come up with solutions. It may make Moutinho’s life a little more complicated, but that’s the price for building roads in the Amazon.
“Many times people destroy the environment out of ignorance,” he said. “Now we have a new consciousness, we do more studies, we use better materials,” he said. “When we have to clear an area, we replant it later.”
Building a “green highway” was not something Moutinho learned in engineering school. “It is something we do because today we have a government that is very interested in protecting the forest and the people who live in it,” he said. “This has now become the way we work. Nobody comes and tells us to do this or do that. We do it automatically.”
Ferries along BR-364 come in all sizes.
Still, for most environmentalists, a new highway is the archenemy because of its power to produce massive change, including influx of people and destruction of the forest.
“Why do the conservationists say this?” continued Moutinho. “It’s precisely because governments that previously built roads didn’t take the trouble to say, ‘No we’re not going to cut down the forest. We’re not going to destroy. We’re going to conserve.’ This is the job of the government. Governments have to adopt this policy.” But what if the government changes? “Then the people have to insist on continuing this policy,” said Moutinho, “because if the forest is turned into pasture, everything will be destroyed.”