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The Trans-Amazonian Highway
The Trans-Amazonian Highway was one of the most ambitious resettlement-economic development programs ever devised,
and one of the greatest failures. In the 1970s, Brazil planned a 2,000-mile highway that would bisect the massive
Amazon forest, opening rainforest lands to settlement by peasants from the crowded, drought-plagued north and development
of its timber and mineral resources to maintain the country's impressive economic growth.
Colonists would be given
250-acre lots, six months' salary, and easy access to agricultural loans, in exchange for settling along the highway
and converting the surrounding rainforest into agricultural land. The plan would grow to cost US$65,000
(1980 dollars) to settle each family, a staggering amount for Brazil, a developing country at the time.
The project was plagued from the start. The sediments of the Amazon Basin rendered the highway unstable and subject
to inundation during heavy rains, blocking traffic and leaving crops to rot. Harvest yields for peasants were dismal,
since the forest soils were quickly exhausted, and new forest had to be cleared annually. Logging was difficult
due to the widely spaced distribution of commercially valuable trees. Rampant erosion, up to 40 tons of soil per acre
(100 tons/ha), occurred after clearing. Many colonists, unfamiliar with banking and lured by easy credit, went deep
into debt.
Adding to the economic and social failures of the project, were the long-term environmental costs. After the construction
of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Brazilian deforestation accelerated to levels never before seen, and vast swaths
of forest were cleared for subsistence farmers and cattle-ranching schemes. The Trans-Amazonian Highway is a prime
example of the environmental havoc that is caused by road construction in the rainforest.
"Rainforest" is used interchangeably with "rain forest" on this site. Same for "rainforests" and "rain forests". "Jungle" is generally not used.
Recent news
Amazon deforestation rate falls to lowest on record (8/10/2007) Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon for the previous year were the lowest on record, according to preliminary figures released by INPE, Brazil's National Institute of Space Research.
Lowland rainforest less diverse than previously thought (8/9/2007) While rainforests are the world's libraries of biodiversity, species richness may be more evenly distributed in some forests than in others, reports an extensive new study by an international team of entomologists and botanists. The work, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, has important implications for forest management and conservation strategies.
Experts: parks effectively protect rainforest in Peru (8/9/2007) High-resolution satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest in Peru shows that land-use and conservation policies have had a measurable impact on deforestation rates. The research is published in the August 9, 2007, on-line edition of Science Express.
